Coffee black, cigarette. Gonna start this day like all the rest. It was a rough night in the newly constructed and dedicated AOM barracks. Intermittent screeches of pain and squeals of delight kept most of the Muppets bobbing in and out of sleep as Ink finished up tattooing dancing bananas over Flotsoms entire body. Last night all Ink had left to do was the bottoms of his feet. I grab my aching forhead and shuffle down the hall toward the living area as I think about Flot insisting that every part of his body be covered with an emoticon so he can insinuate the annoying things in front of every single person he comes in contact with – as if the poor AH BBS slobs aren’t enough.
I notice that the only two other Muppets up are Flench and Kappa. I walk into the Kitchen/Living area and notice a portfolio binder in the trash. I smile to myself, walk over to the trashcan and fetch it out. Yep, it’s Grizz’s binder with pages and pages of screenshots of the AH front page showing his Top Fighter rank. It looks like that failed to impress the ladies at the bar once again, so he brought it home and threw it away – as usual. I dusted it off and took it over to his locker and placed it back in its spot next to his JB11 and TonyJoey voodoo dolls. I was a little surprised to note that the TJ doll was sitting on a compass rose and it had a miniature Oakland Raiders pennant pinned to its forhead and the doll was turned to point the pennant to the SouthEast. I shrugged my shoulders, closed the door, wondered what that was about and headed to the coffee pot.
On my way to the coffee pot, I kicked a butter knife that was on the floor in front of a wall socket and only then did I notice the signs that a bit of a scuffle must have taken place. My guess is that Zap tricked IrishOne into sticking the butter knife into the wall socket again.
I got my coffee and headed to the front door when I noticed that a faint wiff of Chanel No.5 and honeybuns was in the air - Delirium must have come in and snooped around some last night while we were sleeping. Made a mental note to ask him for his keys back next time I have a chance.
I opened the door, stepped out into the morning and practically twisted my ankle on The Daily Whine – the AH world’s daily newspaper. I picked it up and made my way out to my spot past the hangers. I noticed Kappa’s LA-5 was gone and saw Flench spear fishing down by the lake. I sat down, took a sip of coffee and flipped through the paper. Nothing new, same old stuff, the limey’s are whining about being locked out of the reindeer games, lawsuit upon lawsuit about collisions where each is blaming the other, blah, blah, blah. I turn to the obits, pretty much the same there too, everyone died yesterday at least four or five times, nothing remarkable except for the fact that some guy named shogun was murdered 49 times by a guy named Twintail. Interesting.
I tossed the paper aside and it being Monday morning I decided to ponder CorkyJr’s sermon from the day before. It was called “Down and Dirty on the Deck”. It was pretty much the same as all of his other sermons and that got me to wandering why I still go to hear him anyway. Then I remembered the last time I missed a Sunday meeting and how high and mighty Shuffler acted when I bumped into him at the dime store later that week. I just can’t give him the satisfaction and besides, I like seeing how Ack-Ack fixes his hair and what Silat wears that day.
Just as I was setting the paper down and about to pull out my smokes and my limited edition SunBat Zippo, my phone starts to ring the General Lee horn ringtone. That’s Kappa’s ringtone - he never calls unless there is an emergency. I answer and he is frantic telling us to roll the WAW unit immediately. He explains that only the AoM WAW unit can handle a mission of such great peril and import as this one. I jump up, run to the nearest hangar, slam the WAW ALERT button and the entire base is filled with Agent360’s voice “Wings Against Wheels, Scramble, Scramble. Wings Against Wheels, Scramble, Scramble.”
I run to the black JU-H88 and begin the preflight checklist. Zap appears and jumps in next to me in the co-pilot’s seat, Irish comes bouncing in and lands in his spot in one of the rear gunner’s seat. I turn to Zap and ask him where Grizz is and he explains that he was running along side of him and then he turned around and ran back into the barracks. I curse under my breath and start to taxi without him. Irish yells for me to stop and wait, Grizz is on his way. Grizz climbs in with a big white sign in his hand and sticks it up against the window. We roll.
On the way to the target Corky’s sermon replays in my head over and over again. I want this to be quick, I want this to be clean, I want to keep my crew safe, I want to hit hard and be cheap if necessary and I want to get out of there. But the sermon echoes in my head. Down and Dirty on the Deck. Down and Dirty on the Deck. Down and Dirty on the Deck. I make my decision. This is going to be a fair fight no matter what. I’m doing it Corky’s way even if Irish, Zap, SunBat and Grizz all show up in the obits tomorrow one more time than we should. It’s gonna be down and dirty on the deck even though this foe is skillful, lethally armed, spry, slick, sometimes invisible, and very very deadly. It doesn’t matter. When the fight is over and AoM WAW owns this guy, he is going to know he got owned fair and square.
We approach the target.
I drop two warning shots across his bow to let him know we are definitely engaged. We see his gun pointed at us, but we let honor quell our fear of death and do not go for the kill.
Taking great personal risk and showing him our 6, we release the bombs long that we brought before we decided to get Down and Dirty on the Deck.
Next I come in low and fire shots out over his head to let him know what this is going to be fair and we won’t be cheap. We want to be his friend after we murder him. By the way, you can see him do some tricky WCM’s to avoid my shots and attempt to work himself around on us.
I don’t fall for it and do some fancy ACM’s to take a lower pass letting him know that we mean business and he had better be ready.
Now the battle is joined. He maneuvers for the kill, setting up a deadly crossing shot.
(At this point please note that he is unfairly using his gun and we are only firing warning shots.)
Luckily for us he fires low. I turn my head to see my tail to deliver the final death blow --- BUT GRIZZ’S SIGN IS BLOCKING MY VIEW!!!!!!!!!!
I use my instinct; (I think Corky was there with me because I had been so honorable up to this point
). The death blow is coming!!!
OWNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AOM OWNS YOU – Down and Dirty on the Deck – Fair and Square…
