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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ledded" data-source="post: 1420325" data-attributes="member: 12744">[PLAIN]We were like gods once... [Basic Training, Hank-style][/PLAIN]England, 1944, late July. Weeks pass…  Hank took another deep breath and tried to not let his irritation show. “Alrighty now, give ‘er another try there gov’ner”, the cockney-accented voice carried to Hank once again. He looked again at the huge open cube of steel girders sitting in the hanger’s floor. Over five feet tall and over a thousand pounds worth, it looked like a giant child’s toy. Several men dressed like Oxford professors, lab-coated technicians, and a few uniformed military men stood nearby, all looking to Hank. A few looked on with concern, taking notes and nodding as they watched. Most just looked bored. Several shook their heads and made snide comments under their breath.  Hank knew that the explosion had made something different inside him. He could feel the metal sitting there, almost see it like a shining beacon with his eyes closed. Almost caress the shapes of it with his mind, the balance of imperfect/perfect latticework in its structure.  He knew that he could do things, things that didn’t make sense to him, but Hank was tired.  And a little scared. Ever since he ‘volunteered’ for this team, they had been putting them through their paces; attaching them to strange machines, doing grueling physical tests, drilling them endlessly about how they felt, how they thought, how they slept. It was all very annoying, to be honest. Plus, he could feel this… force… building inside him, the same feeling he got way back when he fixed his Pa’s tractor, but steadily growing until it reached a near-constant hum in the back of his mind, like he had drank way too much coffee and sneaked a big chaw of his Pa’s chewin’ tobacco. But they didn’t really care, they just kept pushing, testing, stretching him. They didn’t understand that he was *afraid* of what he might do if he really set it free, but they weren’t happy anymore with his “little sideshows”, as a couple of the snide bastards had started calling it. Especially that little Lord Fancy-Pants, Sir Reginald Sumthin’-Snotty, a nasty kind of fellow with his near-undecipherable royal-soundin’ speech that for some reason had to always be delivered to Hank down the length of his appreciably large and bumpy nose. It was startin’ to rankle just a bit, really. But Pa always taught him to be patient with the ignorant. Hank drew on the feeling inside him, and stretched out a shaking hand at the cube.  It shivered slightly on the floor, and the hair on Hank’s arms stood on end as he felt the control roll through him and around the cube, heck, *all* the metal in the room. Like poking a ding-dang whole inna danged-ole m-m-mud dike, Hank thought with alarm as the power threatened once again to overwhelm him like a busted riverbank under a Texas flash-flood. Like whut nearly ding-danged killed me an’ Pa. He closed his eyes and, scared and shaking, pushed the oscillating wave away, back into the core of his mind. He let out another deep, frustrated sigh. The sound of a slow clap was the first thing that came to him as he opened his eyes, then that damn sarcastic, prissy British voice. “Oh. Well then. You may very well win this war all by yourself, bumpkin. I say, the American is *quite* a showman. Good show, old boy. You made metal vibrate. Think of how we can annoy countless tank crews with that kind of power”, came Sir Reginald Snodgrass’s caustic comments, accompanied by snickering and a few jeers from his immediate fellows. Several others spoke up, trying to explain or defend it; but Snodgrass would have none of it as he waved all their complaints away and looked at the shame-faced Hank down his nose like a hawk about to strike on a field mouse. “Well, it would seem that this has been a monumental waste of our time and effort. This ignorant dirt-scratcher has no more sense than God gave any of the inhabitants of that barren desert plot he calls home, this unholy quagmire of misbegotten rejects he calls Texas, and besides, the ill-bred savage doesn’t even speak understandable English for the Queen’s sake! Let’s pack his filthy carcass back to Dixie and be done with him and the ignorant dust-bowl he hails from.” Well, that just about did it. He could get all fancy snide on Hank. Talk about him all he wanted. But you didn’t mess with Texas. You just didn’t mess with home. Hank shook with rage, and felt the bonds holding back the flood of power slowly thinning as he went through several homicidal fantasies in his head, watching Snodgrass’s back as he walked off. “Hey there Snoddy, ding-dang ole Itellyouwhat, I got’s sumthin’ ta show ya…”, Hank said in a perfectly calm voice. Snodgrass tuned around and, laughing, said, “What? Are you going to reenact a quaint musical of the Alamo for us all in your next act? Or would acting out *that* failure only make you even more homesick?” Yup. That did it. Hank’s hand flew up behind him, arm outstretched, eyes never leaving Snodgrass, and it shook as he finally unleashed the hum that had built inside him for the last several weeks. It rushed through him like a torrent, wrapping the steel cube like a piece of cloth over a round of cheese. He felt as if every hair on his body was trying to snatch free, and a droning exultation filled him instead of the expected dread and pain. The cube leapt into the air, turned on its corner, and slowly spun in a circle above their heads. There was a hissing chorus of gasps, and several men slowly backed away. Hank, never looking at the cube, smiled at Snodgrass, and then made a squeezing motion with his hand, as if crushing a small piece of paper. The cube crushed inwards with incredible speed. Hank twirled his fingers. The beams tore apart, quickly arranged themselves, and all began spinning above their heads in a grotesque caricature of a chorus line of kicking stick-figures. Hank grinned at Snodgrass as the figures stopped dancing, straightened, and arranged themselves over Snodgrass’s head like a column of rotating metal spikes. Snodgrass looked up, eyes wide, and made a loud swallowing noise. He looked back to Hank, and noticed that his grin was showing teeth and gums and contained very, very little humor at the moment. “Um, uh, I s-s-say, there… oh dear…”, Sir Reginald Snodgrass moaned, raising one arm protectively as the column suddenly ceased spinning and the room became deathly quiet, except for a very faint “oh.. oh… oh no… ohhhh no…” from somewhere in the back. SPLANG! When the dust settled, and people regained their feet and wits. The first person noticed that where Snodgrass was, there stood a large cage of metal beams, perfectly enclosing his entire body as tightly as a suit, including his now comically-upraised arm. And he was perfectly unharmed. At least, by the whimpering and mewling sounds, he was reasonably intact. Hank, calmer now, looked at his hand in wonder and slowly breathed, “Well… ding… dang…” The group of scientists and soldiers all looked, quietly, mouths hanging open and eyes wide like spotlights, turning slowly, dreadfully, to look back at Hank. He could hear one of them whisper dumbly “That’s the first bloody thing he’s said I understood”. Hank, smiling evilly, slowly raised his arm towards them, arched his eyebrows menacingly, then quickly waggled his fingers at the group with a slight stomp of his foot and said, “Wwwiggidty!” Most of the researchers and technicians jumped with a loud gasp; four of them screamed like 6 year old girls and fell flat on the floor, three dropped their clipboards with a squeak, two passed out straight-away and fell over like 10-pins, and there was a rapidly spreading puddle under one wide-eyed fellow that corresponded to the stain on his trousers. Hank giggled like a school girl, bending doubled-over and holding his ribs as tears of relief and strain fell from his eyes.  The people recovered as Hank fell into guffaws, glancing at each other and laughing nervously as they strove to regain some sense of composure. “Phleeeashe… uh… shir… c-c-could you… I… caunt… breafff…”, came a muffled voice. Hank looked at Snodgrass and laughed even harder at the silly sounding speech trying to escape the mass of twisted metal. He sat down on the floor and laughed hard, slapping the ground for emphasis. One of the researchers walked up to Hank nervously and asked “Um, Hank, um, could you be a good fellow there and release Reggie, I do believe that he may well smother…” Hank, lifted his hand, but then suddenly broke out into gales of laughter and fell over onto his side, head shaking ‘no’ back and forth as uncontrollable fits of amusement came over him. Just then a huge shadow fell over the questioning researcher and a voice like mountains grinding together said, “Nice work dere Hank, I’ll take care o’ dis for ya”. Moose, having watched the entire scene from the hanger door waiting his turn at ‘testing’, gently moved the stunned man out from in front of him like a recalcitrant child and with a smile walked over to the metal cocoon. Hank just gave him a shaking thumbs up and resumed his laughing fit as he fell over, holding his sides. Moose calmly grabbed the top of the structure and, with a slight tug, peeled a long strip of it down like a giant banana. There was a sharp intake of breath as Snodgrass came face to face with Moose’s smiling, baby-like countenance. “So, didja enjoy yer show dere Snoddy? Cuz dere’s a double-matinee tomorrow if you get my meanin’. Two for da price of one, you bring da snacks, ok dere, dontcha know? Whew, I do think ya soiled yerself, you might oughtta go change dere. Here, lemme…” And with that, Moose reached to either side of a sputtering Snodgrass, grabbed beams of metal, and quickly yanked them down to the floor. He stood, crumpled the beams up like long pieces of cardboard with a grunt, and negligently tossed them over one shoulder to BOOM-boom-boom bounce into a far corner. Moose took a step to the side to avoid Snodgrass’s completely stiff, wide-eyed body as it toppled out onto the hard ground with a SMACK and a slight groan. Hank roared with laughter, hands smacking the ground as he pounded his fists. Moose stepped over Snodgrass and went to help Hank up. Hank sniffled and giggled as he tried to get his mirth under control. “So, you wanna go get a pint now, dontcha know?”, Moose asked Hank, which only got a tight lipped smile and nod in reply as Hank tried to stifle his glee. “Um, dat is, unless you fellas need another demonstration dere?”, Moose directed with a smile and raised eyebrow at the group of stunned men. Moose supported Hank as a now renewed fit of mirth overtook him, laughing as they walked away to a chorus of quavering British and American voices. “N-n-n-no sir, that, ah, that’s quite all right” “Oh no, tip-top, j-j-jolly good show…” “B-b-be al-al-alright, um, got just enough data… yes.. very well…” One man watching from where he leaned against the wall in a shadowed corner did not laugh, nor quaver. The brightness from a cigarette tip lit up his scarred, eyepatched face, as he dropped the butt crushed it. He blew out his last drag of smoke with a sigh and shook his head as he left the building and the gaggle of squawking researchers.</blockquote>

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