Have you ever had to deal with drunks?
I have. And let me tell you: they are foul-mouthed, incoherent, smelly, disgusting, and, above all, incredibly annoying.
I've spent fifteen minutes trying to get this idiot—whom we found passed out among the rubble of the main building—to tell us where the tech equipment we came for is located.
The man was a wreck. He was bald, with a matted, dirty blonde beard, and wearing a tattered military uniform. He was sitting on the ground, surrounded by empty bottles, babbling what Alex would technically describe as "gibberish."
"I... I know you... hic!" the man said, his eyes glassy and unfocused. "You came... you came for Sergeant Slug's famous training..."
The man tried to drink from his bottle, but realizing it was empty, he stared at it with infinite sadness.
Alex sighed, losing his patience. He knelt down to be at eye level with the drunk, trying to reason with him one last time.
"Hey, focus," Alex said, tapping his cheek hard enough to sting a little. "Look at me. Where is the Automatic Blaster?"
Alex held a photo of the technical schematic in front of the Sergeant's face, moving it so he could focus.
"The machine... the weapons... Where are they?"
Sergeant Bough looked at the photo, then looked at Alex. His stomach made a strange noise, like a clogged pipe.
"Wuaaa-ha..." stammered the Sergeant.
Suddenly, his cheeks puffed out.
Look out! thought Alex, but it was too late.
"BWAAARRGH!"
Sergeant Bough spat an explosive mixture of saliva, bile, and pressurized vomit.
Alex, who was right in front waiting for a verbal answer, took part of the discharge directly to the face.
Time seemed to stop. Disgust overrode reason.
"YOU FILTHY PIG!"
THWACK!
Alex's fist flew on pure I'm-going-to-kill-you-moron instinct. With a flawless right hook charged with fury, he connected with the Sergeant's jaw. The blow sent the drunk to sleep instantly; his head snapped back, and he hit the ground with a heavy thud, totally unconscious.
But the victory felt hollow.
"YOU SON OF A...!" shouted Alex, jumping to his feet and frantically wiping his face with his uniform sleeve. "MY MOUTH WAS OPEN! I WAS TALKING AND IT GOT IN MY MOUTH!"
Alex began spitting violently on the ground.
"Ptoo! Ptoo! Agggh!"
He was trying to expel the acidic taste that had entered his oral cavity. The gagging was uncontrollable. The sound of his own retching, triggered by pure revulsion, echoed in the room, accompanied by a grimace of horror on his face.
His soldiers, watching the scene from the doorway, looked at each other, torn between horror and the urge to laugh, but wisely decided to remain silent. Their commander had just been "christened" in the worst way possible.
"Pack this moron up 'to-go'," Alex ordered his soldiers, pointing at the Sergeant's unconscious body with a gesture of disdain. "And make sure he doesn't choke on his own tongue. I'm going to get... this off my face."
Alex stormed away from the group, fuming, annoyed by the situation and the rancid smell that now permeated him.
He strode toward one of his subordinates' mecha-beasts. He knew exactly what to look for. Blakk Industries didn't just equip its troops with heavy weaponry and ghoul slugs; their logistics were impeccable. Every mount carried saddlebags with essential provisions: spare radios, emergency flares, dense protein bars to keep energy up and stomachs full in the field, and what Alex was desperately seeking: bottles of purified water.
Alex ripped the security seal off the saddlebag and yanked out three bottles.
He leaned forward, separating his torso from his legs to prevent the vomit-mixed water from dripping onto his pristine commander's uniform. He opened the first bottle and poured it directly onto his face, scrubbing his skin hard to remove the viscous layer.
Then, he opened the second one. He took a long swig, gargled loudly, and spat the liquid violently to the side.
"Pleh! This disgusting taste won't go away," Alex thought with distaste, still feeling the acid in his throat.
He ran his hand over his head and felt something wet and sticky. "Shit, I think it got in my hair too."
Without hesitation, he proceeded to dump the entire third bottle over his hair, shaking himself off like a wet dog.
"If I didn't need this guy alive, I would've beaten him into a permanent speech impediment by now," Alex muttered with annoyance, crushing the empty plastic bottle in his hand until it was a compact ball.
Alex was an observant guy and, for better or worse, tended to judge people by both their dress and their attitude. And his judgment of Sergeant Bough was clear: he was a disaster.
As he watched his soldiers load the prisoner like a sack of potatoes, Alex's mind began to work.
"That drunken idiot is the man from the report... but it doesn't add up," Alex reflected. "I could swear that guy doesn't have the neural capacity to build an Automatic Blaster. He can barely hold a bottle."
Alex looked at the ruins of the base.
"He had to get it from somewhere or someone sold it to him."
That thought instantly formed his Plan B.
With the whole place destroyed, nothing guaranteed they would find the weapon prototypes in good condition; they were probably crushed under tons of concrete. But knowledge... knowledge was something else.
"If the machines are broken, I'll look for the supplier," Alex decided. "My new objective is to find out who sold that tech to Bough. If I hand the real engineer who built them over to Blakk, it'll be even better than bringing him a broken gun."
Alex looked at Sergeant Bough, who was snoring on the ground with a saliva bubble on his mouth. The idea of interrogating him himself and risking another "surprise shower" vanished quickly.
"Ugh, what a hassle," Alex huffed, shaking his head. "I'll just bring them the drunk and let them worry about making him talk. I don't want to see this guy's face for the rest of my life."
He decided to delegate that horrible responsibility to Maurice or Blakk Industries' torturers. They had stronger stomachs and more persuasive tools.
Bzzt...
The static from Alex's communicator broke the silence. He lifted it reluctantly.
"Sir, we found the machine," informed a soldier's voice.
"That's great," replied Alex, feeling a slight relief. "What is the status of the device?" he asked.
There was an awkward pause on the other end of the line.
"Sir... I don't know how to say this, but it's not very good," said the soldier, sounding quite anxious.
"I'm on my way," said Alex, cutting the communication and heading to the indicated site.
When he arrived at the discovery zone, his hopes crumbled.
"What the hell...?" Alex stood staring at the first prototype. "Why is it cut into three perfect pieces?"
The cuts in the metal were clean, almost surgical, as if a hot blade had passed through the reinforced steel without resistance.
"What happened? Did a samurai have fun here?" said Alex, irritated and exhausted, cracking a bad joke to try and maintain positivity in the face of disaster.
"And the other one isn't any better, sir," said the soldier, pointing toward a corner.
Alex turned his head and saw a massive concrete pillar that had collapsed, completely crushing the second automatic blaster.
"Ugh..." Alex sighed, wiping a hand over his face. "Bring the Mecha-beasts."
Two Bull Mecha-beasts, heavy load models, approached and hooked chains to the pillar. With a growl from their hydraulic motors, they managed to lift the rubble.
Alex approached to inspect what remained underneath. What was once a revolutionary weapon was now a metallic pancake. It was completely flat.
"Sigh..." he let out a huge sigh of resignation. "Well, Blakk's scientists are smart, right? Let them put the puzzle together."
Alex turned around, ending the inspection.
"Load up the scrap and the drunk. We're getting out of this dump."
The trip back wasn't nearly as cheerful as the morning race.
Here is a universal truth: having a drunk vomit on your face ruins your day. It doesn't matter if you are a soldier, a commander, or a king; the disgust lingers. Furthermore, the convoy's speed was torture. Alex had to rein in the power of his Tiger to march at a turtle's pace, waiting for the heavy Bull Mecha-beasts carrying the scrap and the prisoner to keep up.
Three interminable hours later, Alex and his platoon finally arrived at Blakk Industries.
Alex had already notified his arrival by radio, so a logistics agent was waiting for him in the main hangar, in charge of receiving recovered assets. The man was impeccable, with his pressed uniform and a tablet in one hand and a clipboard in the other.
"Good afternoon, sir. I will receive the package and process the inventory," said the agent, snapping to attention firmly. "I need you to sign for the delivery of..."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah..." interrupted Alex, walking past him without stopping.
With a quick movement, Alex snatched the clipboard the man was holding. He knew what it was: the standard form for the mission report.
"I'll turn in the filled-out report in about four hours," Alex threw a look over his shoulder while walking briskly toward the elevators. "Right now, my strategic priority is scrubbing my teeth with a wire brush and taking a bath until I forget this smell. The cargo is all yours."
The agent stood there blinking, watching the young commander disappear down the hallway. He shrugged; high-ranking officers were always eccentric.
Sighing, the agent approached one of the large containment crates the mecha-beasts had deposited on the floor. He verified the cargo code: "CLASSIFIED BIOLOGICAL ASSET."
"Let's see what they brought," he muttered.
He unlocked the magnetic seals and lifted the lid. He expected to find a rare slug or an exotic animal.
Instead, he saw a bald man, with a dirty beard, curled up in the fetal position and covered in a dry crust of his own vomit. Sergeant Bough was snoring loudly.
The agent raised an eyebrow, totally confused. He leaned in a little to see if he was alive, but as soon as the acidic, rancid stench hit his nose, he slammed the lid shut with a dry thud.
"Phew... I definitely don't get paid enough for this," he thought, marking the box as "RECEIVED" and walking away quickly to find a gas mask.
After a forty-minute shower and an intensive ten-minute tooth brushing (until his gums bled to make sure no trace of Sergeant Bough remained), Alex felt human again.
He dressed in a clean uniform and headed to the Intelligence Offices. He had to turn in his report before the administrative day ended, or Maurice would give him a sermon on bureaucracy.
He arrived at the armored doors of the department. Unlike the automatic doors in the rest of the base, these remained closed. High-level security.
Knock, knock.
Alex rapped the metal with his knuckles.
"Come in," invited a female voice from inside, sounding bored and distracted.
The magnetic locks deactivated, and the doors slid open.
Upon entering, the first thing Alex noticed was a brown-haired woman sitting with her back to the entrance, typing furiously on three monitors at once. The second thing he noticed was the chaos.
"Wow... what a nice feminine touch you've given this place," said Alex with pure sarcasm, inspecting the room with a raised eyebrow.
The place was a pigsty. Shiny protein bar wrappers covered the floor like carpet, and the trash cans were overflowing with disposable soda cups stacked in precarious towers. There were papers with codes, dirty clothes on chairs, and tangled cables everywhere.
My ten-year-old cousin's room was an operating theater compared to this, thought Alex, suppressing the urge to tidy something up.
"Leave the report on the table," said the woman without turning around, with a tone that clearly said: Yeah, yeah, stop judging my lifestyle and get out of my cave.
Alex walked toward the table the woman had indicated with a vague wave of her hand. He was going to leave the clipboard and leave, but then... it happened.
His nostrils picked up something.
It wasn't the smell of vomit, nor machine oil, nor ozone. It was an intoxicating scent. Warm. Oregano. Melted cheese. Baked dough. Tomato sauce.
Alex froze. His pupils dilated.
Forgetting the report and protocol completely, Alex practically leaped toward the woman's swivel chair. With a confidence bordering on madness, he grabbed the backrest and spun her abruptly to face him.
They stared into each other's eyes for a fraction of a second. The girl, surprised, had her eyes wide open. But Alex wasn't looking at her eyes. He slowly lowered his gaze to what she was holding in her hands and what rested on her lap.
"You are exactly what I was looking for..." whispered Alex with a hoarse voice, with a burning, absolute desire shining in his eyes.
The woman, with a piece of food halfway to her mouth, blinked in confusion.
"What...?" she asked, not understanding why this strange commander was looking at her with such intensity.
Pizza, Alex groaned internally, ignoring the girl and locking his gaze on the beautiful, greasy, perfect slice of pizza she was holding.