![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
atomic_robo presents us with a new tale of Sir Reginald. It's...ummm...sirreginald to be rather cross about thisatomic_robo, thorn in the side of Sir Reginald, has a story up about the two of them.He breathes in and you can hear the air rattling around in his chest. He speaks slowly and purposefully. “Well, I suppose we knew this day would come.”
“Honestly, I was starting to wonder what took so long,” I say.
He makes a pained expression. It’s a smile, but everything he does is pained at this point. “Finally got tired of putting up with your incompetence.”
“Just hurry up and die, will ya? I’ve got to give a presentation to some NASA folks in an hour. Opening with, ‘Sorry I’m late, had to watch a lonely old man die,’ will be a tremendous downer and sad people don’t write billion dollar checks.”"
---------
atomic_robo HAS BEEN RECLASSIFIED AS RESTRICTED BY THE SUB-GOVERNOR OF THE UNITED OTHERSTATES. WE APOLOGIZE, RATHER INSINCERELY, FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.atomic_robo and Sir Reginald team-up for yet another hilarious misadventure, in which our intrepid heroes are cast...oh, just read the fucking story.“I’m afraid that I must, to some degree, accept responsibility for our current predicament,” said Sir Reginald, refusing to open his eyes.
“I, too, must admit that I made mistakes,” offered Atomic Robo, refusing to activate his optics. “I feel obligated to add, though, that I end up in far more parallel universes than I would care to when you and I work together.”
“Oh, don’t you dare start! If I had a dime for every instance I’ve ended up lost in time because of you, I’d have thirty cents! And that wretched Grandmother Paradox idea…”
“It would have fixed things very quickly—”
“—and would have required me to have sex with my grandmother!”
“Well, technically, she wasn’t your grandmother yet…”
“You insufferable tin can!”
“You’re just jealous because robots don’t have disgustingly saggy jowls.”
Over the sound of their shouting, a booming voice echoed.
“Ho ho ho! It appears, Sir Robo, that these villains can scarcely speak to each other with civility, let alone team up to wreak havoc! Destroying these freedom-hating freaks should be as easy as ordering Freedom Fries at McDonalds!”
The speaker was floating fifteen feet above the ground, wearing a garishly-colored costume so tight that Sir Reginald wagered that the fellow wasn’t Jewish. His eyes were glowing green and his cape flapping in the wind, in spite of there being none. On his chest was a stylized radioactivity symbol superimposed over an American flag, above the words TREAD ON THIS!.
“Tally-ho, Atomic Reginald!” said a nearby robot. It was thin, gangly, and had a face that appeared to have been applied with magic markers. “We’ll kick their knickers and be back in time for tea, wot?”
Atomic Robo and Sir Reginald turned to look at each and said, at exactly the same time:
“This is your fault.”
“Do you have anything to declare,” asked the customs agent.
“Is it too much of a cliché for me to say ‘Just that I’m devilishly handsome?’” asked Sir Reginald, immediately after which he was tackled by a half-dozen Homeland Security agents. He tried to say something witty from under the mound of people, but all that came out was blood and a tooth.
benchiladathe_crowchan
benchiladathe_crowchanthe_crowchan from a script I wrote for her, and we're on Part Three.
benchiladathe_crowchan
benchiladathe_crowchan“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 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
atomic_robo's adventures over at his journal. Everybody in The Spot went quiet when Hamir Mendra walked in the front door. The customers of the greasy spoon—located in a town which, at 4400 people, was the largest in its county—rarely saw an Indian on television, let alone in person. Everybody stopped and stared at the Hindu holy man, with his long white hair, flowing white robes, and black pottu spot on his forehead.
In the eerie silence of this Midwestern restaurant, Sir Reginald’s booming voice was all the more distinct.
“BABA MENDRA!” he shouted through a mouthful of beans and sausage and egg on toast. “Good heavens, it’s been years! Come, sit, eat with me!”
The patrons of The Spot were of two minds about whether they should keep staring at the Indian or at the shouty English man who was eating a plateful of what appeared to be vomit.
“Namaskar, Sir Reginald! Kaise ho aap?" exclaimed the man in the doorway. “I’ve been looking for you for months!” he said, with such a stereotypical accent that it practically dared somebody to make fun of it
atomic_robo pulled an Savage/Reinhold, then you'll likely cry yourself to sleep when you atomic_robo HAS BEEN RECLASSIFIED AS RESTRICTED BY THE SUB-GOVERNOR OF THE UNITED OTHERSTATES. WE APOLOGIZE, RATHER INSINCERELY, FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.Wait for it...wait for it...
benjamin
Sir Reginald and
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
atomic_robo like each other very much, they will both tell you, but
they do have a bit of a friendly rivalry going on. It's like playing
pranks on your best friend, only with more explosions. And fire. Oh,
and occasional dead things. I mean, the last time they met led to some...complications. But still...
------------
There are cardinal rules to exploring houses where you know that horrible and sinister acts of cult worshipping and ritual sacrifice have gone on. At 419 W. Greencroft, Sir Reginald had violated a bare minimum of six: never go in alone; never go in the basement; never open the box with the runes on it; when the door opens by itself, pick a different room; and last but not least, never whistle the tune from The Exorcist.
In fact, he
had just violated all of them in a row when the door to the basement exploded
inwards.
( Well, I suppose worse things could have happened. Read on, if you want to see if they did... )
atomic_robo's work
This Sir Reginald story was almost painful to write. I hope you enjoy it.
----------------------------------------------
Thankfully, the salad course was uneventful. Sir Reginald enjoyed one made with spinach, bacon, mandarin oranges,
roasted pine nuts, and a lovely homemade poppy seed dressing. Horace had a spicy lettuce salad with lots of arugula
and diced chili peppers. Both declined offers from the waiter for ground black pepper on top.
When their sirloins appeared—both rare, of course—they spoke their first words to each other.
( A Pleasant Meal Together? Please Continue, Dear Reader )
benjamin sToneSir Reginald would send his season’s greetings, but he spent Christmas eve being worked over by half-a-dozen cultists from the Church of the Sexless God sent as a “present” by one of his ex-girlfriends.
On a
positive note, he also received both a new
------------------
benjamin
Sir Reginald has always had a difficult time making a cup of tea, but only because he has seventeen favorite kinds. Chinese black tea, the kind with bits of dried lychee in it, was his choice for relaxing after a very hard day’s work. It was not the most difficult day that Sir Reginald ever had, but his knuckles were bloody and raw, the result of punching a gorilla in the head a dozen times.
( Oh! That certainly must have been odd! )
benjamin
"The Great Below" - Nine Inch Nails
“Well,” said Sir Reginald, “this is
awkward.”
“Indeed,” answered Sir Reginald,
“not to mention a tetch disconcerting.”
They stood at opposite sides of the
parlor, one holding an empty revolver, the other half-a-dozen bullets.
“Are you my doppelganger?” asked
the revolver carrier.
“Are you my fetch?” questioned the bullet keeper.
“For the sake of argument, I shall
call you Sir Reginald B…”
“…and you shall be Sir Reginald 2.”
They both half-smiled at their
subversive little attempts to establish dominance and began to walk toward the
sideboard. Pocketing their respective weapon halves, they set about preparing
drinks.
“Whisky?” asked B, his nimble
fingers grabbing two glasses.
“Indeed,” answered 2, his arms
intertwined with his partner’s, grabbing the ice tongs. “On the rocks, I
assume?”
“Ah ha! I always—“
“—drink my spirits neat. I thought
that I could trip you up there.”
“And how could you trip me up, what with
my being the original?”
“That, my brother, is where you’re
mistaken. I am the genuine article, and you merely a malicious spirit, come
to…steal my soul, perhaps.”
“No, no, no! After all, if I were
not the true Sir Reginald, why would I have a reflection!” he posited, waving
grandly at the mercury glass across the room, where neither of them appeared.
“Damn,” they said simultaneously,
and finished preparing their drinks and lighting their cigars in silence.
Taking seats opposite each other on
the matching paisley davenports, they began to visually examine their
respective duplicate. Four eyes ran fast across tweed, whiskers,
pleasingly-plump bellies, and even examined the way the other held his glass.
Nothing.
“Time traveler?” asked Reginald B.
“I hate time travelers,” responded
Reginald 2, pointing at a small machine across the room and the basket of
grenades that sat next to it. “Changeling?"
“There are enough sprigs of rowan
hidden about this house that I imagine even thinking about coming in would give
one a headache.”
“Well,” said Reginald B, pausing to
take a sip of single malt. “there must be a reason you’re here. So out with it.”
“You’d know better than I,
imposter.”
“We’re getting nowhere.”
“I see that.”
“Shall I put a record on the
phonograph?”
“Please. Let’s have ‘Take Me Back
Again,’ by Jimmy Dorsey.
“Third shelf. Got it.”
Reginald B stood up, pausing only
to tip a bit of ash into the tray on the table between them. He turned towards
the Victrola and, with his right leg, kicked the coffee table over, sending it
flying towards Reginald 2, who was already ducking.
Reginald 2 threw his glass at
Reginald B, who was hurling the heavy glass ashtray towards his twin.
The items met in midair but the
ashtray was more massive, and the rocks glass shattered against it. The ashtray
went on to do rather an abusive number on Reginald 2’s forehead. He fell
backwards against the davenport, blood streaming into his eyes. He tried to
stand up, but his legs simply wouldn’t listen.
His companion walked over to the
fireplace and grabbed the poker.
“Gracious,” said Sir Reginald B, as
he went to stand over his double, “I do so very much hope that I’m the real
one.”
And then he went to work.
------------
timeasmymeasure