[personal profile] benchilada

“Explain to me again why I’m letting you Atomic Blast the other engine?”
            “Well, since the first engine fell off, we’ve become unbalanced.”
            “Ah.”
            “And if we—or rather, you—are to have any chance of surviving the impact of landing, I’m going to have to make this terrible little plane into some sort of a glider.”
            Sir Reginald and [profile] atomic_robo were in rather a predicament, they had independently decided.
            Given Robo and Reginald’s combined luck, it should have come as no surprise that the pilot and co-pilot of the turbo-prop they were taking to Uruguay had both turned out to be secret agents. To their mutual surprise, however, they were secret agents from different people.

            In the cockpit, the two undercover bastards had serendipitiously revealed their intentions at exactly the same time. Man-X’s spy had gotten the upper hand early by magnetizing his iron chest, jerking the pistol from Helsingard’s man. The latter was well trained, however, as he got in a speedy left jab on Man-A’s smirking mouth.
            While this was going on, Robo and Reginald were in the passenger area. They each had cigars, but Robo had somehow jammed his inside his torso. The smoke was leaking from tiny orifices around his head, a trick they found inexplicably hilarious.
            Meanwhile, back up front, the two secret agents were having a truly depressing fight. It was too cramped for either of them to get in good hits, so they grappled with each other and tumbled through the thin curtain that separated them from the body of the plane.
            Robo reacted with incredible speed, shattering the seat in front of him as he stood up and pointed his arms at the fighting pair. They rolled out of his way, however, and his Atomic Blast did nothing except destroy the airplane’s instrument panel.
            “Don’t shoot those things around me!” shouted Reginald over the ruckus. “What if I can’t have kids now?”
            “Then the world is a richer place.”
            The magician mumbled something under his breath and made counterclockwise motions with his fingers.
            Robo lowered his arms and decided to watch the show. It was painfully brief. As the evildoers exchanged blows, the exit next to them suddenly swung open. Both were sucked outside as the door closed behind him.
            Reginald made ready to say something terribly clever when Helsingard’s man struck the propeller, exploding blood all over the windows of the plane. Man-A’s body, being mostly made of awkward and unwieldy metal, struck both the propeller and the engine. The latter decided to call it a day and unceremoniously fell off. It would later kill a mule.
            “Why didn’t you perform some sort of security check on them before we took off, you worthless heap of aggravating scrap?”
            “Do I look like a walking homeland security computer? I don’t have retinal scans of everybody in the world!”
            “Well, maybe you should!”
            “Don’t take that tone with me, Reginald. After all, your fingers are better suited to check people who are going to fly our plane for guns.
            “I’m not the one who shot out the most important part of the plane!”
           
“No, you’re right. I’m the one who didn’t throw a man made of metal at our engine.”
           
“The most important thing survived, anyway. Don’t forget that I’m still here.”
            “How could anybody forget you're still here, Reginald? God knows I’ve tried. I’ve even formatted over all my memories of you, but they keep coming back. In any event, we should probably try to sort this out. I’m relatively certain that Mr. Roboto was one of Man-X’s servants?”
            “Indubitably. And I’m guessing by the muttonchops and ridiculous moustache that the other fellow belonged to Helsingard. Must they all have awful facial hair?”
            “The style and length of their sideburns are a carefully calculated system of rank that only they know the details of. I’m pretty certain that those really, really thin ones that turn into a really, really thin beard designate the equivalent of a Sergeant.”
            “Well, that’s fascinating, could we get back to not dying?”
            “What? Oh, that’s right, you’re made of meat. I forget sometimes that you’re not comprised entirely of alcohol, nicotine, and hate.”
            “I need meat to keep all of that in.”
            The two of them made a search for parachutes, which yielded nothing but a supply of Playboy magazines.
            “I bet those belonged to your guy,” said Robo.
            “My guy probably didn’t even have a penis anymore. Look, back on topic here. Can you fire your atomic blasters through the hull and give us some thrust back?”
            “Well, sure, if you don’t mind explosive decompression, followed by the sudden realization that my blasters don’t actually provide thrust, what with them firing ATOMIC RADIATION.”
            “Don’t your—” Reginald was cut off as the plane took a sudden downward lurch.
            “Speak quickly, Reginald, we have less than sixty seconds left.”
            “Don’t your feet have bloody rockets in them?”
            “Yes, and if I fire them through holes in the hull, I’ll simply take off and smash through the ceiling. And don’t suggest you ride on my back. At this speed, as soon as we hit the air outside, your eyelids would fly off and your cheeks might tear open. Actually, let’s keep that as an option.”
            “Ha-fucking-ha. Well since I’m about to die,” screamed Sir Reginald over the keening wail of imminent destruction. He withdrew a small wizened stick from his pocket and pointed it between the two of them.
            “I’ll remember you fondly to—oh, not your stupid ‘stick trick’ again you silly little—”    
           
Robo’s voice cut off as the plane struck the ground at a speed that bordered on obscene. 


           The tulips smell particularly nice, Robo’s olfactory sensors told the rest of him. You’re stepping on them, said his feet. Be quiet, said the central brain. I’ve just lost my best…one of my fr…a guy I knew , due to a terrible accident, and…wait a minute. Tulips?
            A few feet away Reginald was picking a flower and grinning.
            “Your stick,” Robo said. “Your stick actually was a wand this time?”
            “Yep.”
            “And you could have teleported us out of there at any moment?”
            “Yep.”
            “If I had hate circuits, they’d be smoking right now.”
            “You do have hate circuits, and you are smoking right now.”
            Robo opened a small compartment and pulled out his cigar.
            "I assume you thought that was very funny," ventured Robo.
            "I didn't think it, I knew it."
            "At least I'm not unconscious," Robo steamed.
            "Oh no you don't! I'm not going to fall for the old 'But I'm not unconscious!' and then you hit me in the head gag!" Reginald shouted, stepping back and pointing his stick.
            “Well, at least I’m not stuck here,” said Robo.
            “I’m not stuck. I’m in a field of beautiful tulips—”
            “In the middle of the Netherlands, according to my GPS, 68 miles from the nearest town. With a complete lack of rockets in your feet,” said Robo as he began take-off. “See you at the club in, say…a week?” he shouted as he ascended into the perfect blue sky.
            Sir Reginald realized that a witty retort was useless when the person was already a hundred yards over your head, so he started walking. He contented himself with not mentioning that the teleportation spell shifted you one dimension to the side.
            “I hope you enjoy meeting President Pat Robertson, you clanky stack of—”
            Reginald was rudely interrupted by tripping over his own feet, hitting his head on a rock, and falling unconscious.


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benjamin sTone
Who politely asks you to please read more of [profile] atomic_robo's adventures over at his journal.

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