Mercy

[niyazi-a.livejournal.com]

M
Bayverse 2007 movie/Reign of Starscream
Salazar, Maggie Madsen, Glenn, Sec Def Keller, Frenzy
language such as will blow your ears off, character death

written by request for a fan of Agent Salazar who asked...where's the fic?  He cusses a lot--that's all I had to go on for character.  

Presume, if you will, that SOMEONE had to go in under the Hoover Dam and rescue Keller and the others....

Salazar cursed, hitting his walkie. “Fuck.  Hey. Revise estimate. NOT two females and Sec Def. One female, one walking meatloaf, and one Sec Def.”

Donovan laughed. The sound crackled tinnily into Salazar’s earbud. “Sounds like you’re about two steps away from a party.”

“Yeah, or some kinky Client Number Nine.” Salazar tried to nod at the three aforementioned in front of him, lowering the muzzle of the M-4.

“Never can tell with these Pentagon types.” 

Salazar eyeballed Defense Secretary Keller. “Uhhh, let’s just hope not, then.”  He cut the channel. Uh oh. Looks like the DefSec had figured out the Spitzer joke.  Salazar blurted, brightly,  “So, how you folks doing?”

Keller cocked his head at him. “We’ve had better days.”

“Understatement, man!” the walking meatloaf said.  Jesus, Salazar thought. They make them in Large Economy Size now?  “You shoulda seen that thing. It was trying to kill us!” 

“What thing?” The gun came up of its own accord in Salazar’s gloved hands, finger tapping by the triggerwell.

“The thing! The thing! You shoulda seen it, man! It was all like zzzroomm, and then pewpewpew and ehehhehehehehehe!”  

The, uh, hand gestures were really interesting.  As for what the fuck he was trying to say, Salazar was at a loss. Never thought he’d actually see some merit in those stupid SALUTE reports. “Uh, does he speak like…actual English?”

“What he’s trying to say,” the blonde—well, fake-blonde female said, straightening up from behind the monitor. “Is that it moved fast.”  She said it like ‘fost’.  Accent was probably fake, too. 

Well, thanks. That’s helpful. He followed the muzzle of the gun in a quick semicircle in the direction they’d been facing when he’d managed to squeeze himself between the gap in the blast doors.  Nothing.  He rose a bit from his crouch. 

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” the blonde asked. 

“Hey,” he said, irritated, “Doing my job, Miss Manolo Blahniks.” His job was to ensure the safety of the Sec Def.  No one had told him about babysitting.  Especially not a bimbo and a blob.

“They’re Choos.”

“What?”

“They’re Jimmy Choos.” She waggled one of her feet up as if he wanted to admire.  Fuck no. Only way he’d heard of Manolo Blahnik was his ex-girlfriend dragging him to see Sex and the City.  Too much of the latter and not enough of the former for his liking.  Both the movie and the ex.

“You know, every time someone buys a pair of those, God kills a kitten, right?” he snapped.  Well, he should.  If there were any divine justice.  Which there obviously wasn’t otherwise Salazar would have a babe and a martini right now, instead of sweating under full body armor that snagged on everything.  Not to mention the damn balaclava.  That itched.  Yeah, no wonder he was a little off his charm today.  

“What?” both the fat one and the bimbo said.  Good. Donovan always told him he was a weapon of mass confusion.

“To business, soldier,” the DefSec said, crisply. “Alien life form.  We managed to juryrig communications to get a message out. It was trying to stop us.”

Salazar grunted, sidling around the clutter of chairs and tables and stacks of computers older than his Commodore 64.  Sure. Some super high tech alien robot’s hiding out in here.  Playing super-advanced Pong.

Donovan hit his comm again. Great timing. He slapped it on. “What?!” Yeah, because he didn’t have enough pressure with the three civilians back there.  “Other rooms cleared.”  Well that was awesome news. 

“Alleged enemy contact here,” he said, quickly. 

“Alleged?”

“Alleged until I fucking see it.  The Sal-amander doesn’t do hearsay.”  He could hear the civs grousing behind him. He waved them quiet with one hand, abruptly. Yeah, yeah, shaddap.  Whiney.  Seriously. He did not need that.

He tensed, hearing a sort of metallic skitter on the tile floor, over whatever banality Donovan was throwing his way. Probably some really profound militarism like ‘all the way’ or ‘hoooah.’  “Fuck,” he whispered. 

“Fuck yourself,” Donovan stage-whispered back. “What kind of fucking military status is that?”

“My fucking status, you fuck!” Salazar hissed.  “There’s something here!”

“What is this, fucking Aliens?” Donovan sniped. “Game over, man, game over!”

“Your ASS is gonna be over when I get out there,” Salazar snapped. Fuck. He did not sign up for this shit.  Signed with Sector Seven more or less to get the fuck away from precisely this kind of shit.  And away from the crap drug-interdiction hey-Salazar-your-latest-wanted-poster-by-the-Juarez-cartel-has-your-Raybans shit.

And here was fucking Donovan sitting in the nice comfy ops center with its own radio transmitter and power source and NO fucking alien thingies making Freddy fucking Krueger noises on the floor.

He kicked over a plastic bin. Yeah, real high quality military stuff here: he had an identical one he’d bought at Wal-mart to shove all those fucking cables from all his fucking computer equipment in.  Probably cost the taxpayer a couple of hundred bucks right here. 

The bin clattered across the floor revealing, huddled in a strange spiky shape what must be the smallest freaky-ass alien robot he’d ever seen. It took him a minute to figure out where the face was, and that was kind of hindered by the big metal disk like a sawblade sunk halfway into it.  The blue eyes guttered, trying to focus on him. The weird metallic clittering sound was its limbs thrashing, almost like convulsing on the ground.

Fuck.  Well wasn’t this just flashback central.  Salazar’s mind threw the image up at him: that drug interdiction run all those years ago, Villa Ahumada, the farmer lying in a pool of blood so dark it turned the dust black, the machete sunk so deeply in his skull that the assailant hadn’t been able to pry it out.  Next to him the damn steak knife he’d brought when he’d run out of his house, determined to defend his fields. He had looked at Salazar with the same kind of bitter hopelessness.  And our boy Sal, too young for that shit, had simply stared back.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

He must have lowered his gun: the civs took it as a sign to step forward, cautiously, staring at the little mangled robot with a curiosity that suddenly seemed disrespectful to Salazar.

“Hoist by his own petard,” the Sec Def said sententiously.

“What by what now?” Chunkstyle said.  Great. Get a better catchphrase, dude, Salazar thought, irked. 

“It’s an expression,” the blonde said.  Wow, she’d tottered all the way over here in those spindly Choo shoe things. And hadn’t broken an ankle.  What talent! What skill! If only it were like…useful.

“’Up your nose with a rubber hose’ is an expression,” Salazar snapped. “Show a little fucking respect.”

The fat one was tapping away at some handheld…walking meatloafery. “Petard,” he recited, his voice going that blank monotone everyone remembered from school. “From Middle French ‘peter’ meaning to break wind,” he looked up. “Like, to fart?”

Salazar rolled his eyes, jerking the balaclava’s black wool off his mouth and nose. “It’s a small bomb they used to use against walled fortifications, you fucktard.”  The Sec Def clucked at him. Seriously. Like he was a chicken or something. And because, yeah, bad language was really going to hurt Novelty Funsize over here. “What?  I know my fucking military history. What’s he know?”

“I can beat Dance Dance Revolution on Super Maniac.”

“Glenn,” the blonde said, watching Salazar roll his eyes. “Not helping.”

“None of you are helping,” Salazar snapped.  “Back off.” 

The blonde, of course, did the opposite.  Wow. And they wondered why people made jokes about them?  “What is it?”

“It is an alien robot.”  Please to use your eyes, he thought sarcastically.  She can’t be this stupid.  Civs didn’t come here unless they had something upstairs.  And he was used to that meaning that while some of the attic rooms were full, the main floors were kinda empty.

“What’s it doing?”

Wrong question, lady.  “It is suffering.” He raised the M-4.  The optics focused on the round muzzle bearing down at its central mass. Salazar shook his head, trying to shake away the image of that Mexican dirt farmer.  Another victim, armed too little, caught up in a fight he probably couldn’t understand.  You’re me, and I’m you, Salazar thought.  Both soldiers.  You and me, little freak, probably have more in common than I do with any of these three. 

“What are you doing?” the blonde asked. “Maybe we can study it!”

“Study this,” Salazar snapped, and pulled the trigger.  The recoil jounced the gun in his hand, the round drilling straight through the center mass of the huddled thing.  It gave a long horrible shriek, like nails on chalkboard crossed with bad guitar feedback, and then fell back, the four blue eyes dimming to grey.  He looked up at the three civs, not caring if they saw the tight anger on his face, not giving a half a fuck about the outrage on theirs.  “it’s fucking called mercy.  Learn it, or you’re in for a hell of a long war with these things.”



Comments

[swordage]

I had to sit here and just be quiet for a long time after reading this. Agent Salazar feels real - he's got surprising depth to him, though I was rather surprised at the things he was willing to say over the radio with, like, the Secretary of Defense right there. And the end was a fist to the gut. Oh, Frenzy, little Frenzy.

"What's it doing?"
"It is suffering."

I think my heart stopped then. I knew what he'd do, and I knew it was the right thing, and I knew it would hurt like hell. And it did.

[mpinsky.livejournal.com]

Hooray, my ears didn't bleed!

I'm definitely agreeing with Swordage. There is great depth to this, even though, as a character, he has very little screen (well, panel time). I never particularly liked Salazar, but this fanfic sheds a new light in him that I am surprisingly pleased to see.