Church's Crusade #5: Revelations

Church told them everything. Well, almost everything. There were certain incidents that he would never tell them about, such as the one with Tucker, the switch and the Reds coming over in the middle of it. In fact he would never tell anyone about that. Afterwards everyone was silent for a moment. Then Anna spoke…

"So, you're a ghost of someone who was blown up by one of your team mates who was in a tank 800 years ago?"
"Yes."
"And you are now possessing a robot so that you can have a body of your own again?"
"That's right."
"And somehow you ended up travelling back in time and causing your own death?"
"Hey don't get started on that."
"Sorry. And then as you tried to stop the bomb that sent you back in time in the first place you created hundreds of copies of yourself? And then finally travelled forwards in time with the rest of your friends?"
"When you put it like that it does sound kind of unbelievable," Church admitted.
"Oh no. No we hear about this stuff all the time, 'said Rourke, 'In fact back home I ran a small clinic for possessed, time travelling robots suffering from post-mortem depression."
"Oh fine,' grumbled Church, 'call me crazy. All I did was save your lives from overwhelming odds. I'm sure that people do that for you every day." He paused as he considered the stupidity of this comment in his current company. Paul leaned forward.
"Well, you may be crazy, but in my opinion it's the good kind of crazy. You could of left us to die, but instead you risked your li – risked your body, to help us. I may have lost my brother but at least I'm still alive."
Anna nodded in agreement. "I think we can all agree that were much better of with you than we would have been without you."
Both Paul and Anna looked politely at Rourke. He laughed. "Well with such overwhelming support, I'd be foolish to go against it. Looks like were stuck with you sergeant."
Church looked at them all for a moment then grinned, "Well if that's the case then could someone help me off with this armour..."

They stayed there for a few days, the others healing and Church doing repairs on his various damaged systems. On the second day Paul approached him while he was repairing some damage to his leg.
"Sir. I was thinking, seeing as there are so few of us and were all in a pretty bad way that maybe we should start looking at ways to improve our chances of survival."
"And?" said Church as he reattached the fixed limb to his body.
"Well, I had a look at our supplies and then I started thinking about some of the things my dad showed me when I was a kid, and I came up with this." He showed Church a collection of ropes, some of them tied around weights. One of the weights was a grenade. Church took it in his hands and examined it. He looked at Paul again. "This is all very nice, but what does it do?"
Paul grinned and pulled out another one made without the grenade. He took one of the ropes in his hand and began to spin the thing above his head. The stones whirled about freely until he led the rope go, at which point the entire mass of rope spun off and rapped itself about a pole he had set in the ground a short distance away. Paul turned to Church.
"When thrown at a person the ropes can rap around arms, legs and weapons. And the grenade just adds a slightly deadlier element to it. I also had a look at some of the other weapons, and I think that with a few modifications we could greatly improve our chances. For example, what would you say to an automatic pistol?"
"Point that thing somewhere else?"
"Good one sir. But seriously, that's just the start of what we could do."
Church stared at the young private in complete astonishment. Then he looked around and shouted to the other squad members, "People guess what? Where back in business thanks to Private Stevens here..."

The characters Church, Caboose, Tucker, Simmons, Sarge, Grif, Sister, Donut and Doc are owned by Rooster Teeth Productions.