It Was a Pleasure to Burn

It Was a Pleasure to Burn

Fire washes the skin off the bone and the sin off the soul. It cleans away the dirt. And my momma didn’t raise herself no dirty boy.

VIII - Just Another Day at the Office

__________

I love my job, I love the pay!

I love it more and more each day.

I love my boss, he is the best!

I love his boss and all the rest.

I love my office and its location, I hate to have to go on vacation.

I love my furniture, drab and gray, and piles of paper that grow each day.

I think my job is really swell, there's nothing else I love so well.

I love to work among my peers, I love their sneers, and leers, and jeers.

I love my computer and its software:

I hug it often though it won't care.

I love each program and every file.

I'd love them more if they worked a while.

I'm happy to be here, I am, I am.

I'm the happiest slave of the firm, I am.

I love this work, I love these chores,

I love the meetings with deadly bores.

I love my job - I'll say it again - I even love those friendly men.

Those friendly men who've come today,

In clean white coats to take me away!

~The Lost Dr Suess Poem

~~~

"I still think this is a bad idea."

"Yes, Luna, I heard you the first time."

"He's been willing to cooperate thus far, but only because he has no other choice. I doubt waking him up in the middle of the night will cause him to be very friendly, to say the least."

"This coming from the pony who tried to make the night last forever because ponies always slept during the night."

"A lot can change over the course of a thousand years, Celly."

"Mm-hm."

"Well if you are going to wake him up, at least do it in a less dramatic way!"

"Given everything he's put us through, I think he owes it up to us."

Luna just sighed. It seemed there was no way she was going to talk Celestia out of her little prank on Caulk. Fortunately, she at least had a good idea of what he would do. Luna kept up her charade of disapproval as Celestia silently approached Caulk's sleeping form. He was lying down on his side facing the entrance to his 'room', from which Celestia was approaching him. How Caulk managed to stay on his side in such an unbalanced suit of armor puzzled Luna to no end. She would have to ask him about it later. Once Celestia was about ten hooflengths away, she inhaled sharply so that she could deliver a particularly loud shout in the Royal Canterlot Voice. Unfortunately, that was as far as she got.

"WRAH!" Caulk yelled, causing Celestia to leap backwards thirty hooflengths where she landed on her plot, releasing her pent-up breath in a high pitched scream.

Luna and Caulk were rolling on the ground next to each other laughing themselves silly. When Celestia finally stopped screaming almost ten solid seconds since she began, a unicorn guardspony entered the room, glowering at Caulk with his horn glowing. A hint of confusion was present on his face when he saw Luna laughing next to Caulk.

"Is everything alright, Princess?" the guardspony asked without taking his eyes off Caulk.

Taking a second to catch her breath, Celestia said, "Yes... I think so. Return to your post."

The guardspony cast another slightly confused look Caulk's way before departing. Celestia's confusion rapidly turned to one of irritation when she realized what was implied when she saw Luna laughing with Caulk.

"You planned this out?" Celestia demanded, almost shouting at Luna. Luna simply nodded, unable to stop laughing to talk. Celestia sat and waited, patiently, for the two to calm down, which seemed like it would be a while.

Once the two finally managed to contain their mirth, Luna said with a smirk, "Remember all those pranks you and Philomena used to pull on me when we were foals? Consider us even now."

Celestia's jaw worked for a moment, obviously trying to think of a rebuttal. When none were forthcoming she shook her head and said to Caulk, "I suppose you are wondering why we woke you up so early in the morning?"

"Technically it was Luna that woke me up about five minutes ago. But yeah, you have thirty seconds to present a good argument as to why you woke me up before I punch you so hard you experience relativistic effects." Luna had a feeling that had they been able to see under Caulk's helmet, he would have been speaking through gritted teeth.

Not wasting any time, Luna quickly said, "You insisted yesterday that it was impossible for any single being to move a mass as large as the sun and moon. We decided that now would be an excellent opportunity to prove otherwise."

Before she was even done talking Caulk stood up and said, "Alright alright alright you've made your point. Lead the way."

Luna and Celestia shared a glance before they settled for simply shrugging and exiting the room with Caulk--and a group of ten guardsponies--in tow. As they worked their way out of the warehouse, Luna heard Caulk mutter under his breath, "Just how early is it?" before reaching up and tapping the side of his helmet twice. After a short pause he groaned, "Oh, you've gotta be fucking kidding me..." and fell silent.

"I take it you are not much of a morning pony?" Luna teased.

"What's 'morning'?"

"... I will take that as a no."

"Nah, I'm just messin' with you," Caulk said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "Back in boot camp we had to wake up before dawn every day, and I still get woken up someway or other by a very specific idiot on base. Although considering all the crap I put him through, I kinda deserve it."

When the group arrived at one of the warehouse's loading doors, the Princesses exited without a second thought. At least, not until they heard a loud THUNK! and saw Caulk on all fours trying to squeeze his way through the door muttering, "This is fucking bullshit!" Trying to withhold her laughter, Luna grabbed Caulk with her telekinesis and carefully pulled him out, wincing as his armor made deep gouges in the wood framing of the door. Caulk gave a curt nod of acknowledgement to Luna after pulling himself to his feet.

As it was so early, the vast majority of the ponies were still in bed, leaving the streets of Canterlot temporarily deserted. Reminding him to be quiet, the Princesses guided Caulk through the dark, empty streets to a large platform that was a popular place for tourists, as it gave an unobstructed view of the entire southern half of Equestria. Caulk whistled softly as he peeked over the edge and saw the five thousand hooflength drop to flat land.

As Caulk observed the darkness-obscured landscape before him, Luna began her process of lowering the moon, which was already close to the western horizon. Just as it disappeared from sight, the sun began to appear in the east, inundating the lands before them in its light.

Despite the grandeur of the sight, Caulk still seemed unimpressed.

"Okay, the sun came up. Whoop-dee-freakin'-doo. I've seen that thousands of times."

As much as Luna had expected Caulk to remain skeptical despite this demonstration, she still felt a flash of irritation run through her. She and Celestia had anticipated that he would remain unconvinced, so they had planned this whole thing out so that they would be able to raise and lower the sun and moon not only at such a time so that it would disturb few, but also so that they would be able to put them back into their previous locations, all without anypony losing any sleep.

Caulk watched, seemingly transfixed, as the sun changed direction and retreated behind the eastern horizon, once again shrouding the world in darkness. The instant the light from the sun was no longer visible, Caulk whirled around to face the opposite side of the landscape, from which the moon was already appearing. Once it stopped in its original place, Caulk continued to stare at it silently.

"What. The. Ass," Caulk said in utter disbelief.

"That," Celestia said, "was us proving to you that such a thing is possible."

"But that... You can't... Guh...," stammered Caulk, unable to come up with an intelligible response. At this point he had sat down on his rear with a loud CLUNK! with his massive fists clenched against his head. "How. I am trying to think of something that better describes my thoughts, but none of my ideas are better that 'How'."

"Magic," Luna said. She felt somewhat sheepish with the answer, but it was nothing short of the truth.

Caulk simply stared at her for a long moment before stating, "If anyone else had told me that something worked because of magic, I would have given them the stare of contempt. Now, I'm just going to give you the stare of confusion. I have no other way to possibly explain what just happened here. The Protoss and the Queen of Blades wouldn't have been able to do something like that, even if they were all working together. Normally, I would try to think of someway that would make this just a coincidence, but I've taken statistics classes. There was causation in that." After this, Caulk fell silent and settled for staring at the ground between his feet.

Luna and Celestia looked at each other with widened eyes. Neither had expected Caulk to accept this as a fact so quickly. "So... you believe us now?" Luna ventured to ask.

With a grumble Caulk said curtly, "I do not like admitting that I was wrong, but it's stupid to continue to believe something even after its been disproved."

Beaming, Luna said cheerily, "Well, then, now that that is out of the way, I assume you will be wanting to go back to sleep?"

"Yeah... But could you do me a favor?"

"Yes?"

"As much as I enjoyed pranking Celestia, don't wake me up. A sleep-deprived Caulk is an angry Caulk."

~~~

There were few things that Archie was truly afraid of. First and foremost on his list was an angry Colonel. It was at this moment that he had managed to not only anger the Colonel beyond measure, but make it so that the anger was directed at him. The Colonel had not looked highly upon Archie's decision to come to a truce with Imorin and her troops when he first explained it. Not only had the Colonel disapproved of it, but so had the marines under Archie's command with the death of the original captain. There had been many a foul word directed at Archie, and no matter how much he told himself that he had made the right choice, he could not help but regret his earlier decision.

What remained of Archie's squad and Imorin's equivalent had worked their way back to the subterranean base camp, and it was only through his insistence that the sentries did not open fire on the Protoss. Archie and Imorin had walked side-by-side while Aldarix and Davis had regarded each other with indifference, and behind them the rest of the marines and zealots had kept at least six meters away from each other and frequently cast glances of utter contempt across the gap.

When they had entered the base, they had found several platoons of marines pointing their rifles at them in the hangar with the fully armed and armored Colonel at the center. Archie had struggled to make his case to the Colonel, but as much as he felt he justified his actions he could not fight the sinking feeling that he was going to be court-martialled anyway. The Colonel had dismissed the rest of the marines in Archie's squad and insisted that the zealots remain in the hangar under the "supervision" of the guarding marines. Afterward, he had dragged Imorin and Archie to his office where he left them outside his door. The Colonel had then called the senior officers to discuss the situation privately, leaving Archie and Imorin outside where they could only guess at what was being discussed.

It was during this time that Archie had noticed Imorin bleeding profusely from a short, but deep, wound on her upper arm. Frustrated, he realized that he would have to be the one to stitch the gash together, as the medics on base had even less medical training than he had, and their laser scalpels were only programmed for treating Terrans. Groaning, he stood up and fetched a bright red first-aid kit from its place on the wall.

"What are you doing?" Imorin asked. She had apparently not noticed her injury amidst all the excitement and adrenaline. Archie wondered if the Protoss even had adrenaline.

Archie pointed to her arm and said, "You're bleeding. I'm going to need to stitch that cut so you might as well hold still. Unless, of course, you don't mind bleeding out."

Imorin looked almost surprised when she saw the cut on her arm. She glanced between the first-aid kit and Archie for a moment, then extended her arm in invitation for him to stitch it. Archie sat down on a bench next to her and removed the neo-steel exo-gloves so that he would not accidentally do more damage with their powerful grip. He actually had to scoot a bit closer because the lack of the gloves made Archie's arm that much shorter.

While he worked on disinfecting and sewing the cut, Archie took the opportunity to observe a Protoss up close. He found that they really did have two fingers and two thumbs with a claw on each, as he had been told, and that Imorin's skin was actually covered in pale blue scales that were about as small as those of a lizard. She had digitigrade legs that ended in two-toed feet. The blood Archie was working on stanching came out a dark blue, as opposed to the bright red that was shared by the Terrans and Zerg. Like Terrans, Archie found that Imorin, being female, had a much lighter build than that of her male counterparts. She had a bony crest extending backwards from the top of her head that vaguely reminded Archie of the xenomorph from Alien, although she lacked a nose and mouth instead of eyes, which glowed a bright blue.

Archie felt Imorin tense up each time he ran his needle through a stitch. He was careful to make sure that each time he sent the needle through her skin, that he did it quick and straight to keep her discomfort to a minimum. Before too long, Archie managed to completely sew Imorin's cut closed, but a small amount of blood continued to ooze out. He then wrapped her arm in a bandage to finish it off.

Examining his handiwork, Archie said, "Well, it should at least keep you from passing out from blood loss."

Imorin observed the dressing and said, "I would not have taken a warrior such as yourself as being proficient in medicine."

Archie shrugged. "That was one of the things we had to learn to do in officer candidate school."

No sooner had he said this did the Colonel's door swing open. The senior officers left the office and made their way back to their quarters, casting looks over their shoulder at Archie and Imorin. A soon as the last one left, the Colonel was standing in the doorway, still in his armor, with his arms crossed and visor up. The Colonel was an older man with graying hair, which was kept short to disguise a receding hair line. He had pale skin and dull, gray eyes, which were locked in a harsh scowl at Imorin.

"You two. In here. Now."

Archie and Imorin stood up without a word and followed the Colonel into his office, which proved to be an obstacle for Imorin as a result of her height. The Colonel and Imorin both sat down, behind and in front of the large steel desk, respectively. Archie decided to remain standing at attention, and was struck with a blow to his pride when he found that Imorin was as tall as he was even sitting down.

The Colonel looked between the two for a few seconds, then addressed Imorin. "I want to make sure that we are clear on one thing, Executor. I don't like you, but as long as you're willing to help us, I'm not going to complain." That said, he turned back to Archie. "Lieutenant, you sure as hell should know by now that I think you made a terrible decision." Archie's face fell. "Under the circumstances, however," the Colonel amended, "Rather than punishing you for this, I will instead applaud your actions. Had you continued fighting, I'm sure all of you would have been killed."

"Yet you have next to no anger for the loss of your subordinates?" Imorin interrupted.

"You obviously are unfamiliar with how we generate most of our troops. The vast majority of them are resocialized criminals. What would be better than cutting down prison and military costs to one small price tag?" It was obviously a rhetorical question, so Imorin remained silent. "Furthermore, Lieutenant, to show that I recognize your abilities as a commander, I am promoting you to First Lieutenant. Congratulations. I'll make sure to update your files."

"Thank you, sir."

"Considering how extensive your chains of command are, this promotion seems rather informal," Imorin commented.

This time it was Archie that responded. "Yeeaahh... We're, uh, not very big on paperwork out here." The Colonel simply nodded in agreement.

"The only thing all those forms are good for is helping the Dominion keep track of everything," the Colonel explained. "Thing is, none of us out here approve of Mengsk or the Dominion, but we would rather not go rogue. We'll do anything we can to hurt the Dominion's foundation, though we're pretty limited in what we can do. The most we can do is feign incompetence and 'forget' to send in a report and feed them false info. Also, we're all too damn lazy to type out twenty page reports, and even if it's unavoidable, we mostly just BS most of them.

"Going back to the matter of which we are all here in the first place, I think it's time to figure out what we're going to do with this underground warp gate terminal. I think it's safe to assume that Caulk went through one of them, but now we need to figure out which, and how we find him if we can figure out where he went."

"My cohort's high Templar was attempting to identify which warp gate had been used when your forces arrived. Given enough time, we believe we can do so. Finding Caulk will fall to you, as our technology's tracking systems are incompatible with yours," Imorin reminded the Colonel.

"Right, then, at least we can narrow it down to one planet at least, which doesn't really help much. Lieutenant, you majored in radio communications. Any ideas?"

Archie thought for a moment. "If we had powerful enough radios, there's a chance we may be able to triangulate his position, assuming he hasn't gone far, which I doubt he has."

"Why don't you think so?"

"Have you heard how he's always bitching and moaning like a female dog in heat about how hard it is to run in his armor?" Archie asked incredulously. "Besides, knowing him, he would probably be getting more hours of sleep in than there are in the time he's been gone."

The Colonel grinned. "Executor, we would appreciate it if you would assist and accompany myself and the Lieutenant on our endeavor."

"Of course," Imorin agreed.

"You're coming with us, sir?" Archie said with surprise. He hadn't expected the Colonel to actually get down and dirty now.

"I'm going to command Phi Squad personally, after we round up some more troops for it. You're not the only one who has a bone to pick with Caulk," he said with a malicious grin, "I've been his commanding officer since the day he went on active duty. I've been putting up with his insanity for fifteen years, Archie."

"... Good point, sir."

"YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT IT IS! Now get your ass out of here and start finding places for the Executor and her men to bunk. We're heading out tomorrow."

"Sir, yes sir!" Archie shouted with a salute before turning on his heel and exiting the office, followed closely by Imorin.

After informing the marine guards that they were to release the remnants of Imorin's cohort, she informed them of what had transpired, or at least, that was what Archie thought she said; he was not familiar with the Protoss' language. Archie guided them to one of the now unused reaper bunk rooms, telling them, "Sorry about the squeeze." Since she was the equivalent of an admiral, Archie figured it would be more proper for Imorin to bunk in one of the officer's quarters. The quarters of the now dead captain of Phi Squad was the only one that Archie could think would be available, so he guided her through the passageways.

On the way to the room Archie piped up, "Hey, you know what I think?"

"Yes?"

"I think the reason Caulk got stationed here on this base with is was so that he wouldn't be able to do much damage, and he would have someone to supervise him."

Imorin cocked her head to the side. "Is he truly that dangerous a warrior?"

Archie shook his head. "No, it's more so that he possesses the unique ability to drive anyone insane. The little eccentricities the troops on this base have isn't the result of the isolation, although it might be a factor. It's all because of Caulk's hijinks."

"What does he do?"

"Elaborate pranks, mostly. But if you spend too much time around him, you get caught up in the bizarre universe that he lives in. I still remember when he and I were on leave together... God, that was both the greatest and worst time of my life."

"What happened?"

"The car that they had given us to drive around town started backfiring in the parking lot of my friend's apartment complex. It startled one of his neighbors cats so much that it had a heart attack and died on the spot."

Imorin laughed at that. Archie was not entirely sure that Protoss actually could laugh until then.

"Oh, but wait, it gets worse. Caulk felt guilty about having killed it so as we were driving he saw a stray cat on the side of the road and decided to pull over and catch it so he could give it to the neighbor. He brought it back to my friend's apartment where we were staying, and the damn thing went nuts and started scratching all of us like crazy. And before it made its way out of the apartment, it ate all of my friend's goldfish."

"So, what you are saying is that you are less concerned about Caulk's well-being, and more so about the psyche of those he contacts?"

"Pretty much. We've been keeping this up for a few months now. Keeping tabs on him is like herding lolcats. And honestly? This isn't the worst thing he's done."

"Like herding what?"

"Nothing."

--------A/N--------

Holy balls, sorry about the huge wait you guys. Some of you already know the reason why, but I still feel like such a jerk for keeping you all waiting so long. Without further ado, I, JeffNunchucks, hereby declare the hiatus on this story to be lifted!

If any of you listen to Car Talk, you might get that joke at the end with the car backfiring and giving the cat a heart attack.

Less than a month until the end of the world (but who's counting?). I hope you all have your street prophet stuff ready to go.