Hello, everyone,
It's been a while for me since I last was on this board, so I hope all's well with everyone here, including our delightful hosts.
Anyhow, here's a little something I just wrote tonight. The muses are being silly with me today.
Cheers!
Fred
**** **** ****
The Loon and the Ladies from
Avalon
by Fred Herriot
**** **** ****
Based on Drunkard's Walk,
created by Robert M. Schroeck; and Phoenix From the Ashes, created by
Fred Herriot
**** **** ****
Local date: Unknown,
Location: Unknown
I woke up in a tall field of
grass.
Blinking as I noted the sun
high in the sky, I then sensed some dirt lying on my face and touching my
lips. Spitting out same as I reached up
to wipe my face clean, I then moaned as I slowly boosted myself into a sitting
position with my elbows. Looking through
my helmet's eye protectors, I was quick to notice that I was in what appeared
to be a well-trampled military training reservation. The worn-down track ruts – while quite fresh –
clearly indicated this was some sort of tank range.
Before I could take a
detailed look around, my ears then picked up something.
A tank's diesel engine.
Sensing the slight tremor in
the Earth under my butt, I quickly turned to look where the noise was coming
from . . . and then gaped on seeing a very impressive-looking machine come out
from behind a thick stand of trees, racing down a nearby path at a VERY good
clip. On recognising said tank as a
Leopard 2 – the main battle tank of the German Army and a few other armies – I then
blinked as nearly-forgotten briefings on such machines came back to me. Leopards were diesel-driven machines; they
didn't have the turbine engine an M1A1 Abrams possessed. Yet this machine here . . .!
I then winced as said machine
suddenly came to a screeching halt – a "combat stop" as it was called
amongst regular Army boys worldwide – and then the commander's hatch popped
open to allow said commander to lean out and look my way.
Whoo, boy . . .
"There you are!"
I perked on hearing that
shout from somewhere to my left, and then I turned . . .
. . . to find a small group
of women walking towards me, visibly armed in what seemed to be fighting order
and clearly out for a wonderful constitutional in the boonies. While not recognising the actual pattern of
their camouflage shirts and pants – not to mention their web gear and even then
boots! – I was quick to see the low-visibility flags on their
shoulders. One with a simple design of
dark sides with a pale middle the same width as the flag's height, a stylised
maple leaf placed there.
Okay.
I was somewhere in Canada.
Or possibly in Germany
butting in on a NATO exercise being run by the First Canadian Infantry Division,
whose 4th Brigade was – as I barely could remember in my universe – based in
the Black Forest of Baden-Württemberg near the Rhine River.
A glance back at the tank.
Yep. Black maple leaf on the turret.
"I'm in Germany, aren't
I?" I then asked the person whom I believe called out to me.
A shake of the head as a too
cute for words smile crossed her camouflaged face. "No, you're currently in the exercise
area of Canadian Forces Base Niagara, sir," she answered in a polite voice
as she slung her rifle – an M16A2 derivative, not the Canadian-built FN FAL
rifle soldiers of that nation used when I was last on my Earth – over her
shoulder. Her friends were also relaxing
as they slung their weapons.
That struck me immediately as
odd.
Unless . . .
"Am I home?" I
whispered.
Sympathy seemed to flow out
from all their faces. "No,
sir," the woman who had spoken to me replied, looking as if she wished to
take personal responsibly for my decades-long separation from my home dimension
and my wife. What the heck? "Haida detected the space-warp
that brought you onto the exercise range about ten minutes ago. We were busy enjoying some time out in the
field after coming back to rejoin our battalion after graduating from trades
training at the Valcartier Garrison."
I smiled. "Vandoos?!"
A grin came back. "No.
Canadian Guards. First
Battalion."
A nod. Canadian troops assigned to the Warriors
often came from that youngest of the Dominion's six full-time infantry
regiments. "A unit worthy of its
hire," I then complemented them, which made them blush to their toes even
under the camouflage.
"Thank you," she
replied as she gave me a knowing look.
"I assume you come from a universe where the Regiment also
exists?" she asked.
"It does,
Guardsman," I replied, noting her rank slip-on on her front was blank over
the unit tag CG; obviously, the short-form title of the Regiment of
Canadian Guards. "Sometimes frowned
on by the old boys in the Vandoos, the Royal Canadians and the Princess Pats,
but they do their job and take good pride in it." I then moved to stand. "I apologise for butting in on your
exercise. How is it . . .?"
Turning to gaze to the
southwest, I stopped . . .
. . . on seeing HER.
"Oh – my – GOD!"
The guardsmen all grinned.
"That's Haida,"
the one who had been talking to me proudly declared.
I blinked, gazed on her for a
moment, and then turned back to gaze on the cigar-shaped starship
floating serenely over the ground in the near-distance.
One honkin' HUGE starship to
boot!
And incredible as this is
going to sound . . .
. . . it had the Canadian
flag painted on the hull aft of amidships.
"Yeah . . .!" I
breathed out.
THIS was going to be
different . . .
* *
*
Local date and time: Sunday 9 May 2011, 1322 hours EDT
Local location: Over Canadian Forces Base Niagara (east of
Welland, Ontario),
"Hey!"
I perked on hearing that
voice, and then looked up to see a smiling Navy medic – I assumed she was Navy
given her nearly-black work dress uniform, black beret with the badge of the
Canadian Forces Medical Services on it and the blank rank slip-ons on her shoulders,
though those were decorated with a very nicely-designed unit tag with the word HAIDA
in orange-gold on a dark blue field surrounded by ship's rope and topped by a
British-type naval coronet – gazing at me.
"Yeah?" I asked.
"You sure you don't need
to get into Sickbay?" she asked.
For the fifth
time since I got aboard this rather LARGE shuttlecraft – it was called a
"Star Flare" and looked like a weird mix of a Lambda-class shuttle
from Star Wars and the Gemini-class shuttle from Battlestar Galactica
– which had, some minutes before, picked up Mrs. Sangoir's only son from the
exercise field now over a kilometre below the keel and was now taking me aboard
Her Majesty's Canadian Starship Haida.
Yep.
You read that right, folks.
Starship.
In the Year of Our Lord
TWO-THOUSAND AND ELEVEN, to boot!
How the HELL that was
possible, I couldn't BEGIN to guess.
Still, it was a change of
pace compared to other times over the last several decades that I've initially
arrived in other dimensions.
Clearly, the tech – which was
WAY above Earth baseline for MY own dimension, not to mention all the other
places I've been to in my travels – could sniff out dimensional breaches with
great ease. And clearly, whoever was
controlling the tech in Canada was either knowledgeable enough or experienced
enough to make going out to find my lonesome self quite easy. Even better, I didn't have to cook up false
identities and find some way to fit in while I waited for the chance to find a
proper Gate song to move onto the next step of my journey. That told me one good thing about these
people.
They had experience in
dealing with dimensional crossings.
How that would benefit me, I
couldn't begin to guess.
But I hoped to barter my own
experiences for all the help they could give me.
Noting a pair of very lovely
green eyes staring knowingly at me, I gave the medic – her family name was SASAMOTO
as stitched on her left chest under the twin-headed thunderbird ship's crest of
Haida – a smirk. "When I
normally drop unexpected into a new dimension, I'm normally quite whole and
healthy if not conscious at the time the transition occurs, Ordinary Seaman
Sasamoto," I explained. "I'm
just glad that after doing my latest Gate jump, I came to a place where I could
get help right away in lieu of being sneaky about it and being forced into
quasi-legal and sometimes-immoral acts to forge a false identity so I could
interface with the local population."
"Wow! He's roughing it, isn't he?" the
guardsman – I spotted her name, CROCE, on her tunic – said as she
exchanged a knowing look with the medic.
"That he is,
Henrietta-chan," the medic answered.
I then blinked.
They were talking in Japanese
. . .
. . . while my ears picked up
their words in clear English.
"Translation
field?" I asked in Nihon-go.
"Omni-translation
field," the medic stated as those green eyes of hers sparkled with
amusement. "It can interpret any
language a sentient can speak and translate it automatically into the native
language of the speaker. So if you're
more comfortable speaking English, sir, speak in English. We can all understand you."
I nodded. "How come you're travelling from
dimension to dimension?" Guardsman Croce – I felt it a little improper to
call her "Henrietta" even if she struck me as being about twenty
years of age – then asked. "Are you
an explorer?"
A sigh as I decided to honour
their obvious concern with the truth.
"I'm a metahuman warrior who serves in a group working for the
United Nations in my universe," I explained. "In a battle many decades ago in my
time-line, I was propelled into an alternate universe. Over the following years, I've travelled from
universe to universe in hopes of rejoining my friends and my wife." I opened up my jacket and pulled out the
necklace bearing my wedding band.
"It's been quite interesting, but believe me . . . HEY!"
The "hey" came from
something that reminded me a little too much of Minakami Wataru's twelve
half-sisters – save Chikage, of course – and how they reacted whenever
something their "Big Brother" did or said broke their hearts.
An honest-to-goodness Hug of
True Love from the medic and ALL the guardsmen!
I tried not to blush TOO much
on feeling that . . .
* *
*
The landing of the Star Flare
on the upper flight deck of H.M.C.S. Haida was pretty much like the
landing of any shipboard helicopter aboard any navy vessel that wasn't a
purpose-built aircraft carrier: Come to
a hover over the green flight deck with the yellow landing lines and the white HA
at the aft end, square off on the centre of the deck, and then gently drop down
until solid rubber tires kissed metal deck.
Even better, since the ship was only about a kilometre above the Welland
By-Pass that split its home base from the urban part of the Rose City of
Ontario, the outside atmosphere was quite breathable . . . as witness the
opening of the Flare's cargo doors aft onto the deck, thus allowing myself and
my current escorts – with Guardsman Croce and Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto having
wrapped one of their arms around one of mine – to walk onto a very clear day
over the Niagara region, with Lake Erie in the near distance.
As soon as we were aboard the
starship – and my mind was STILL boggling at the idea of a NATION on Earth
having a STARSHIP of all things! – proper, the group around me paused as they
straightened to attention, and then saluted the large ensign flying off what
appeared to be a sensor vane sticking up from the fantail of the ship between
the exhaust ports of a pair of ramjet-like engines that could swallow a whole
AIRCRAFT CARRIER from my universe with room to spare! Realising that despite these girls' quite
friendly attitudes that they were still-serving soldiers and sailors of the
Queen of Canada, I straightened myself and gave the flag – a Canadian version
of the British White Ensign with a blue cross and the Maple Leaf Flag in the
canton – a Sandhurst-perfect salute.
That caused my companions to all blink in surprise.
"Are you a serviceman?"
OS Sasamoto then asked.
"Technically, I'm a
colonel in the United Nations Metahuman Peacekeeping Force, code-named
'Warriors Alpha,'" I explained.
"The rank is honorary to me but to those who care for it, it's
quite real." I gave her a
wink. "I assume British shipboard
rules still run the Royal Canadian Navy?
Or is it still Canadian Forces Maritime Command?"
"MARCOM for now,"
the medic stated, a smirk crossing her face.
"That might change in the near future; you know how RUMINT can be
at times."
I smirked. RUMINT:
Rumour Intelligence, sometimes the most reliable information one could
get in the military. "Indeed I do. And . . . " I straightened myself as I properly saluted
her. "Permission to come aboard,
Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto?"
She returned my salute. "Grated, Colonel . . .?"
"Douglas Q. Sangoir,
code-named 'Looney Tunes.' Call me
Doug."
She smiled as she lowered her
arm. "Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto
Narumi. We use proper Oriental
name-order in the United Nations Earth Defence Force. Welcome aboard."
I shook her hand . . . and
then perked as someone came walking our way from the large hangar deck
structure forward, where the Star Flare that brought us aboard was now being
wheeled into to join three sisters already folded up in their parking
spaces. Said person, I was quick to
note, also appeared Japanese . . . even if her brown hair was done up in a high
beehive on the back of her head and she had amethyst eyes. She was in the same uniform Narumi wore, but
her shoulder boards had the single gold stripe – with that funny circular loop
British navy officers wore on their uniforms – of their equivalent of a United
States Navy ensign over her ship's unit tags.
She also had the badge of the Naval Operations Branch of the Canadian Forces
on her beret.
"Our traveller from
another dimension, Narumi-chan?" she asked, smiling.
"Hai, Tomomi-chan. May I present Douglas Sangoir-taisa of the
United Nations Metahuman Peacekeeping Forces in his dimension. His battle-name is 'Looney Tunes,'"
Narumi then stated. "Doug-san, this
is Yoshino Tomomi-shoi, junior ship's combat warfare director. In case you don't know, her rank in Canada is
'acting sub-lieutenant;' I can hear the London accent in your voice even if
your words are clearly American."
"Yes, I am American,
Narumi-chan," I said as I reached up to unbuckle and slip off my
helmet. I was quick to sense the
appraising looks all the girls around me were giving, though Tomomi was quick
to see my wedding band. "And
believe me, that I'm in the land of my homeland's brother born of the same
mother does my heart a world of good."
"Wonderful," Tomomi
stated. "In the meantime, Hiromi-onesama
awaits. This way."
She turned and headed to a
recessed stairwell in the middle of the flight deck close to the hangar. "What do you want done with your
motorcycle, Doug-san?" Henrietta asked.
"Could you put it
somewhere safe, Henrietta-chan?" I asked in turn. "And PLEASE, don't take it apart! I had a nosy goddess of the future do that in
one of my longer stays and I prefer not to go through putting it back together
again."
"Which goddess of the
future?" Tomomi asked.
"Skuld."
A surprised look crossed her
face. "From A Megami-sama?!"
I blinked in confusion . . .
* *
*
Somewhere, a different
dimension,
"AH-CHOO!"
"Bless you, Skuld! Are you alright?"
A moan. "Someone's talking about me, One-sama!"
Belldandy hummed. "I wonder who would it be . . .?"
* *
*
It's been a while for me since I last was on this board, so I hope all's well with everyone here, including our delightful hosts.
Anyhow, here's a little something I just wrote tonight. The muses are being silly with me today.
Cheers!
Fred
**** **** ****
The Loon and the Ladies from
Avalon
by Fred Herriot
**** **** ****
Based on Drunkard's Walk,
created by Robert M. Schroeck; and Phoenix From the Ashes, created by
Fred Herriot
**** **** ****
Local date: Unknown,
Location: Unknown
I woke up in a tall field of
grass.
Blinking as I noted the sun
high in the sky, I then sensed some dirt lying on my face and touching my
lips. Spitting out same as I reached up
to wipe my face clean, I then moaned as I slowly boosted myself into a sitting
position with my elbows. Looking through
my helmet's eye protectors, I was quick to notice that I was in what appeared
to be a well-trampled military training reservation. The worn-down track ruts – while quite fresh –
clearly indicated this was some sort of tank range.
Before I could take a
detailed look around, my ears then picked up something.
A tank's diesel engine.
Sensing the slight tremor in
the Earth under my butt, I quickly turned to look where the noise was coming
from . . . and then gaped on seeing a very impressive-looking machine come out
from behind a thick stand of trees, racing down a nearby path at a VERY good
clip. On recognising said tank as a
Leopard 2 – the main battle tank of the German Army and a few other armies – I then
blinked as nearly-forgotten briefings on such machines came back to me. Leopards were diesel-driven machines; they
didn't have the turbine engine an M1A1 Abrams possessed. Yet this machine here . . .!
I then winced as said machine
suddenly came to a screeching halt – a "combat stop" as it was called
amongst regular Army boys worldwide – and then the commander's hatch popped
open to allow said commander to lean out and look my way.
Whoo, boy . . .
"There you are!"
I perked on hearing that
shout from somewhere to my left, and then I turned . . .
. . . to find a small group
of women walking towards me, visibly armed in what seemed to be fighting order
and clearly out for a wonderful constitutional in the boonies. While not recognising the actual pattern of
their camouflage shirts and pants – not to mention their web gear and even then
boots! – I was quick to see the low-visibility flags on their
shoulders. One with a simple design of
dark sides with a pale middle the same width as the flag's height, a stylised
maple leaf placed there.
Okay.
I was somewhere in Canada.
Or possibly in Germany
butting in on a NATO exercise being run by the First Canadian Infantry Division,
whose 4th Brigade was – as I barely could remember in my universe – based in
the Black Forest of Baden-Württemberg near the Rhine River.
A glance back at the tank.
Yep. Black maple leaf on the turret.
"I'm in Germany, aren't
I?" I then asked the person whom I believe called out to me.
A shake of the head as a too
cute for words smile crossed her camouflaged face. "No, you're currently in the exercise
area of Canadian Forces Base Niagara, sir," she answered in a polite voice
as she slung her rifle – an M16A2 derivative, not the Canadian-built FN FAL
rifle soldiers of that nation used when I was last on my Earth – over her
shoulder. Her friends were also relaxing
as they slung their weapons.
That struck me immediately as
odd.
Unless . . .
"Am I home?" I
whispered.
Sympathy seemed to flow out
from all their faces. "No,
sir," the woman who had spoken to me replied, looking as if she wished to
take personal responsibly for my decades-long separation from my home dimension
and my wife. What the heck? "Haida detected the space-warp
that brought you onto the exercise range about ten minutes ago. We were busy enjoying some time out in the
field after coming back to rejoin our battalion after graduating from trades
training at the Valcartier Garrison."
I smiled. "Vandoos?!"
A grin came back. "No.
Canadian Guards. First
Battalion."
A nod. Canadian troops assigned to the Warriors
often came from that youngest of the Dominion's six full-time infantry
regiments. "A unit worthy of its
hire," I then complemented them, which made them blush to their toes even
under the camouflage.
"Thank you," she
replied as she gave me a knowing look.
"I assume you come from a universe where the Regiment also
exists?" she asked.
"It does,
Guardsman," I replied, noting her rank slip-on on her front was blank over
the unit tag CG; obviously, the short-form title of the Regiment of
Canadian Guards. "Sometimes frowned
on by the old boys in the Vandoos, the Royal Canadians and the Princess Pats,
but they do their job and take good pride in it." I then moved to stand. "I apologise for butting in on your
exercise. How is it . . .?"
Turning to gaze to the
southwest, I stopped . . .
. . . on seeing HER.
"Oh – my – GOD!"
The guardsmen all grinned.
"That's Haida,"
the one who had been talking to me proudly declared.
I blinked, gazed on her for a
moment, and then turned back to gaze on the cigar-shaped starship
floating serenely over the ground in the near-distance.
One honkin' HUGE starship to
boot!
And incredible as this is
going to sound . . .
. . . it had the Canadian
flag painted on the hull aft of amidships.
"Yeah . . .!" I
breathed out.
THIS was going to be
different . . .
* *
*
Local date and time: Sunday 9 May 2011, 1322 hours EDT
Local location: Over Canadian Forces Base Niagara (east of
Welland, Ontario),
"Hey!"
I perked on hearing that
voice, and then looked up to see a smiling Navy medic – I assumed she was Navy
given her nearly-black work dress uniform, black beret with the badge of the
Canadian Forces Medical Services on it and the blank rank slip-ons on her shoulders,
though those were decorated with a very nicely-designed unit tag with the word HAIDA
in orange-gold on a dark blue field surrounded by ship's rope and topped by a
British-type naval coronet – gazing at me.
"Yeah?" I asked.
"You sure you don't need
to get into Sickbay?" she asked.
For the fifth
time since I got aboard this rather LARGE shuttlecraft – it was called a
"Star Flare" and looked like a weird mix of a Lambda-class shuttle
from Star Wars and the Gemini-class shuttle from Battlestar Galactica
– which had, some minutes before, picked up Mrs. Sangoir's only son from the
exercise field now over a kilometre below the keel and was now taking me aboard
Her Majesty's Canadian Starship Haida.
Yep.
You read that right, folks.
Starship.
In the Year of Our Lord
TWO-THOUSAND AND ELEVEN, to boot!
How the HELL that was
possible, I couldn't BEGIN to guess.
Still, it was a change of
pace compared to other times over the last several decades that I've initially
arrived in other dimensions.
Clearly, the tech – which was
WAY above Earth baseline for MY own dimension, not to mention all the other
places I've been to in my travels – could sniff out dimensional breaches with
great ease. And clearly, whoever was
controlling the tech in Canada was either knowledgeable enough or experienced
enough to make going out to find my lonesome self quite easy. Even better, I didn't have to cook up false
identities and find some way to fit in while I waited for the chance to find a
proper Gate song to move onto the next step of my journey. That told me one good thing about these
people.
They had experience in
dealing with dimensional crossings.
How that would benefit me, I
couldn't begin to guess.
But I hoped to barter my own
experiences for all the help they could give me.
Noting a pair of very lovely
green eyes staring knowingly at me, I gave the medic – her family name was SASAMOTO
as stitched on her left chest under the twin-headed thunderbird ship's crest of
Haida – a smirk. "When I
normally drop unexpected into a new dimension, I'm normally quite whole and
healthy if not conscious at the time the transition occurs, Ordinary Seaman
Sasamoto," I explained. "I'm
just glad that after doing my latest Gate jump, I came to a place where I could
get help right away in lieu of being sneaky about it and being forced into
quasi-legal and sometimes-immoral acts to forge a false identity so I could
interface with the local population."
"Wow! He's roughing it, isn't he?" the
guardsman – I spotted her name, CROCE, on her tunic – said as she
exchanged a knowing look with the medic.
"That he is,
Henrietta-chan," the medic answered.
I then blinked.
They were talking in Japanese
. . .
. . . while my ears picked up
their words in clear English.
"Translation
field?" I asked in Nihon-go.
"Omni-translation
field," the medic stated as those green eyes of hers sparkled with
amusement. "It can interpret any
language a sentient can speak and translate it automatically into the native
language of the speaker. So if you're
more comfortable speaking English, sir, speak in English. We can all understand you."
I nodded. "How come you're travelling from
dimension to dimension?" Guardsman Croce – I felt it a little improper to
call her "Henrietta" even if she struck me as being about twenty
years of age – then asked. "Are you
an explorer?"
A sigh as I decided to honour
their obvious concern with the truth.
"I'm a metahuman warrior who serves in a group working for the
United Nations in my universe," I explained. "In a battle many decades ago in my
time-line, I was propelled into an alternate universe. Over the following years, I've travelled from
universe to universe in hopes of rejoining my friends and my wife." I opened up my jacket and pulled out the
necklace bearing my wedding band.
"It's been quite interesting, but believe me . . . HEY!"
The "hey" came from
something that reminded me a little too much of Minakami Wataru's twelve
half-sisters – save Chikage, of course – and how they reacted whenever
something their "Big Brother" did or said broke their hearts.
An honest-to-goodness Hug of
True Love from the medic and ALL the guardsmen!
I tried not to blush TOO much
on feeling that . . .
* *
*
The landing of the Star Flare
on the upper flight deck of H.M.C.S. Haida was pretty much like the
landing of any shipboard helicopter aboard any navy vessel that wasn't a
purpose-built aircraft carrier: Come to
a hover over the green flight deck with the yellow landing lines and the white HA
at the aft end, square off on the centre of the deck, and then gently drop down
until solid rubber tires kissed metal deck.
Even better, since the ship was only about a kilometre above the Welland
By-Pass that split its home base from the urban part of the Rose City of
Ontario, the outside atmosphere was quite breathable . . . as witness the
opening of the Flare's cargo doors aft onto the deck, thus allowing myself and
my current escorts – with Guardsman Croce and Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto having
wrapped one of their arms around one of mine – to walk onto a very clear day
over the Niagara region, with Lake Erie in the near distance.
As soon as we were aboard the
starship – and my mind was STILL boggling at the idea of a NATION on Earth
having a STARSHIP of all things! – proper, the group around me paused as they
straightened to attention, and then saluted the large ensign flying off what
appeared to be a sensor vane sticking up from the fantail of the ship between
the exhaust ports of a pair of ramjet-like engines that could swallow a whole
AIRCRAFT CARRIER from my universe with room to spare! Realising that despite these girls' quite
friendly attitudes that they were still-serving soldiers and sailors of the
Queen of Canada, I straightened myself and gave the flag – a Canadian version
of the British White Ensign with a blue cross and the Maple Leaf Flag in the
canton – a Sandhurst-perfect salute.
That caused my companions to all blink in surprise.
"Are you a serviceman?"
OS Sasamoto then asked.
"Technically, I'm a
colonel in the United Nations Metahuman Peacekeeping Force, code-named
'Warriors Alpha,'" I explained.
"The rank is honorary to me but to those who care for it, it's
quite real." I gave her a
wink. "I assume British shipboard
rules still run the Royal Canadian Navy?
Or is it still Canadian Forces Maritime Command?"
"MARCOM for now,"
the medic stated, a smirk crossing her face.
"That might change in the near future; you know how RUMINT can be
at times."
I smirked. RUMINT:
Rumour Intelligence, sometimes the most reliable information one could
get in the military. "Indeed I do. And . . . " I straightened myself as I properly saluted
her. "Permission to come aboard,
Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto?"
She returned my salute. "Grated, Colonel . . .?"
"Douglas Q. Sangoir,
code-named 'Looney Tunes.' Call me
Doug."
She smiled as she lowered her
arm. "Ordinary Seaman Sasamoto
Narumi. We use proper Oriental
name-order in the United Nations Earth Defence Force. Welcome aboard."
I shook her hand . . . and
then perked as someone came walking our way from the large hangar deck
structure forward, where the Star Flare that brought us aboard was now being
wheeled into to join three sisters already folded up in their parking
spaces. Said person, I was quick to
note, also appeared Japanese . . . even if her brown hair was done up in a high
beehive on the back of her head and she had amethyst eyes. She was in the same uniform Narumi wore, but
her shoulder boards had the single gold stripe – with that funny circular loop
British navy officers wore on their uniforms – of their equivalent of a United
States Navy ensign over her ship's unit tags.
She also had the badge of the Naval Operations Branch of the Canadian Forces
on her beret.
"Our traveller from
another dimension, Narumi-chan?" she asked, smiling.
"Hai, Tomomi-chan. May I present Douglas Sangoir-taisa of the
United Nations Metahuman Peacekeeping Forces in his dimension. His battle-name is 'Looney Tunes,'"
Narumi then stated. "Doug-san, this
is Yoshino Tomomi-shoi, junior ship's combat warfare director. In case you don't know, her rank in Canada is
'acting sub-lieutenant;' I can hear the London accent in your voice even if
your words are clearly American."
"Yes, I am American,
Narumi-chan," I said as I reached up to unbuckle and slip off my
helmet. I was quick to sense the
appraising looks all the girls around me were giving, though Tomomi was quick
to see my wedding band. "And
believe me, that I'm in the land of my homeland's brother born of the same
mother does my heart a world of good."
"Wonderful," Tomomi
stated. "In the meantime, Hiromi-onesama
awaits. This way."
She turned and headed to a
recessed stairwell in the middle of the flight deck close to the hangar. "What do you want done with your
motorcycle, Doug-san?" Henrietta asked.
"Could you put it
somewhere safe, Henrietta-chan?" I asked in turn. "And PLEASE, don't take it apart! I had a nosy goddess of the future do that in
one of my longer stays and I prefer not to go through putting it back together
again."
"Which goddess of the
future?" Tomomi asked.
"Skuld."
A surprised look crossed her
face. "From A Megami-sama?!"
I blinked in confusion . . .
* *
*
Somewhere, a different
dimension,
"AH-CHOO!"
"Bless you, Skuld! Are you alright?"
A moan. "Someone's talking about me, One-sama!"
Belldandy hummed. "I wonder who would it be . . .?"
* *
*
Canadian lighthouse to U.S. Warship approaching it: "This is a lighthouse. Your call!"