"Crossogre" By Distracted Rating: PG Genre: Sincerest Form of Flattery Challenge, humor Disclaimer: I only wish the idea were marketable! Summary: A view of TnT from a unique point of view. When Crunch woke that morning he was in a very foul mood. That in and of itself was by no means unusual. Being an ogre, Crunch was virtually always in a foul mood. No, the unusual thing was the reason he happened to be in such a mood that morning. Having to dig himself out from under a pile of sizable boulders had had something to do with it. His head ached most abominably. Primarily though, it was the fact that the huge metal object that had fallen out of the sky in the middle of the night had picked his cave to land on that was so distressing. His cave had been filled with decaying meat fragments adhering to the bones they’d arrived on, piles of semi-rotten leaves, and the bits and pieces of rocks that were left over when Crunch had done what he liked most to do with them, which was to crunch things. In short, he’d just gotten the cave exactly the way he liked it when something came along and crunched the whole thing much more completely than he’d ever be able to. It would have been embarrassing if Crunch had taken the time to think about it. He didn’t, of course. Ogres rarely do. He scratched his scalp through his mud-matted hair, trapping a stray louse in the process and squishing it satisfactorily between his fingers, and then looked around for the source of his trouble. He found it soon enough in the form of a puny little figure exiting the metal thing. It looked almost like a child—a rather sickly, excessively clean child dressed in an unappetizing shade of dark blue. Following the first figure came a second carrying a large bag. It was dressed in a very nice shade of blood red, and had some impressive bazonkas for such a scrawny thing. Crunch thought a moment. The action gave him a headache again, but allowed him to take stock of both his hunger and his disappointment. They wouldn’t be any good at all for breakfast. Crunch preferred his food liberally seasoned with grime. It didn’t taste right otherwise. He was really hungry, though, so he decided to make do. “Hey! Are you okay? We didn’t land on ya or anythin’, did we?” piped the blue-clad pipsqueak. Crunch blinked and studied him for a moment. He sounded like he was speaking Ogreish, an obvious impossibility since it would never occur to an ogre to ask such a question, and so no words existed to express the concept. He straightened up to his full height and looked down on the tiny fellow, who reached his navel at best, and crossed his filthy, burly arms across his chest, squinting in puzzlement and smacking his lips. He discovered a bit of last night’s supper between his pointed teeth and sucked at it to free it up. His stomach growled loudly. The little man’s eyes widened and he backed up a bit, reaching for something on his belt. He turned to his companion and showed her the gadget with a worried look. “You think this new UT is workin’, T’Pol? I don’t think he understands me… and he doesn’t look like somebody I’d wanna have a misunderstandin’ with!” The female took the device from the male’s hands and studied it calmly. Then she made eye contact with Crunch and spoke directly into it. “I am Commander T’Pol. I am Vulcan. This is Commander Tucker. He is human,” she said succinctly. “Who are you?” Ah. Now this was interesting. His breakfast could talk to him. Crunch mustered his verbal skills, and then rumbled, “Me Crunch. Me ogre,” which was quite an erudite statement for an ogre. The female raised a single brow at him. The male looked very confused. “Ogre? Did he say ogre?!” he said in a perplexed voice. He took the device back from the female and studied it. “There’s gotta be somethin’ wrong with this thing!” he exclaimed, tapping it on the heel of his hand. “Perhaps the computer searched the human cultural database and found the closest descriptive term?” suggested the female. Crunch paid no attention. His eyes were fixed on her chest. If only she weren’t so puny—and so disgustingly clean. He was beginning to think of something else he might do with her besides have her for breakfast. “He seems ta like ya, T’Pol,” said the male with a smirk. He bent down and opened the bag the female had been carrying and pulled out two objects with handles and broad flattened ends, handing one to his companion. Then he gestured toward the metal object he’d just exited where it lay half-buried in dirt and scree. “Why don’t ya ask him ta help us dig the shuttle out? From the looks of things, he knows his way around dirt,” he said jokingly. “Indeed,” replied the female dryly. She gave Crunch a once over. Crunch stood just a bit taller and grimaced menacingly, just to show off. It didn’t phase her in the least. He blinked in surprise, and then upped the ante with a deep reverberating growl. Immediately, the male stepped forward in a laughable attempt to protect her. The little fellow didn’t even have a sword. The only things in his possession were his digging tool in one hand and a tube of metal with a hand grip in the other. It was clear from the small male’s manner that he considered the female his own. That changed things considerably. As far as Crunch was concerned, any female dropped on his head in the middle of the night was his, no questions asked. The female placed a hand on the male’s arm. “If you confront him, you’ll merely anger him, Commander,” she said softly, eyeing Crunch with a wary expression and a hand at her own belt, from which jutted a hand grip similar to one in the male’s hand. “He looks like he wants ta eat ya… or somethin’,” protested the male, giving Crunch a suspicious look. His eyes cut to the female and back to Crunch. “I was just tryin’ ta protect ya, T’Pol. Ya usually like it when I go all alpha male on ya,” he said with a teasing smile, his eyes still fixed on his rival. The female rolled her eyes and addressed Crunch. “We need to dig,” she said, indicating the half-buried metal object. “This is our ship. After we dig, we will go. Will you dig too?” It was a simple, straightforward question. Crunch understood every word. His eyes narrowed with the effort it took to come up with a way to take advantage of it. “Crunch dig. Man go. You stay,” was what eventually came out of his mouth. Both of the female’s eyebrows lifted at that. The male’s response was a little more emphatic. “Now you just wait one cotton-pickin’ minute, you big, stupid, ugly, filthy…” “Trip!” warned the female. “He understands you!” Crunch wasn’t particularly bothered by the name calling. The male was very observant. He wasn’t about to let him have the female, though, so he charged, voicing a loud and impressive roar. Immediately, he saw a flash of light and felt a sensation like kick in the chest, so powerful that it knocked him cleanly off his feet and onto his rump, knocking the wind out of him with a sudden “Whoosh”. He landed on a pile of sharp rock fragments with a startled expression on his face, now at eye level with his rival. How had the puny little fellow done it? The tiny male waved his metal tube in Crunch’s face. “She’s mine, ogre,” he said menacingly—at least, as menacingly as a midget armed with a tiny metal tube could. “Next time I’m settin’ it to kill!” At the blank expression on Crunch’s face, the blue-clad annoyance did something to the device in his hand and then pointed it at a nearby rock. A beam of light came out of the end of the tube and struck the rock, pulverizing it explosively. Crunch was suitably impressed. He climbed heavily to his feet, absentmindedly digging pieces of rock out from under the back of his muddy loincloth as he approached the smoking pile of shards that had once been a rock the size of his head. He vigorously scratched beneath the cloth as he studied the small man’s handiwork. Then he turned and gestured to the device. “Crunch dig. You keep woman. Leave crunching tube,” he said dismissively. Then he ambled over to the “ship” and began to dig with both hands. Small rocks and dirt began to shower in a pile behind him. Crunch was very good at digging. He could hear his visitors talking as he worked, but the rattle of the rocks and the sheer joy of digging completely occupied his small mind. He heard the words, but made no effort to understand them. “He expects a phase pistol in return for his labor, Commander. I will tell him that this is not an option,” said the female. “Are you crazy, T’Pol? Don’t tell him! Look at him! He’s like a back hoe or somethin’! We’ll be outta here in a half hour at this rate. Let the man work,” replied the male with admiration. “We cannot give him this technology, Commander,” she protested. “I know that, and you know that… but he doesn’t know that!” he answered flippantly. “What do you propose to do, then?” she demanded in a long-suffering tone. “Well, I dunno about you, but I’m gonna go help him!” A moment later, Crunch heard a shout from over his left shoulder. It was the shoulder where he habitually did not throw dirt while he was digging, and so was the safest place to stand. “Hey, ogre! Want some help?” Crunch paused for a moment in his labors and turned his head. Both of them were standing there with digging tools propped on their shoulders. The male had his teeth bared, but seemed friendly enough. The female looked ready to do battle. Crunch decided that maybe he was better off without her. He stepped to one side without a word to allow them to join him, and the three of them worked for a time in silence interspersed with the occasional grunt when the small male encountered a heavier rock fragment. Crunch began reaching down with one hand and grabbing the larger ones just so he wouldn’t have to hear the noises the man was making. The female never grunted. Within much too short a time, the job was done. (Crunch did so enjoy digging!) He stopped suddenly and stepped back, eyeing his fellow diggers as they cleared the last of the rubble from around a set of openings at the rear of the ship. He was really starving now, and the pair in front of him looked much more appetizing covered in sweat and rock dust. His belly rumbled. It occurred to him then, in a completely unexpected and miraculous moment of insight, that all he’d have to do is eat them, and then he’d have both crunching tubes. It didn’t occur to him to stop and consider the fact that he had no idea how to operate the devices. He was too hungry for that. He just walked up to the dirt-covered blue-clad one and grabbed him by the neck. He’d found that with larger prey, meals went so much more quickly and easily if he snapped the neck first. The small male was dangling from his fist with his eyes bugging out and his face beginning to go purple when Crunch felt the familiar kick of the tube weapon in the center of his chest, wielded by the female this time. He stayed standing. He had been expecting her to attack, and had braced himself against the ship, brandishing the struggling male threateningly in her face, as if her actions would affect his decision to kill or not to kill. He planned to eat them both anyway, of course, but she didn’t know that. Or perhaps she did. His eyes widened as she pointed the weapon directly at his forehead and pulled the trigger. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Trip piloted the shuttle back to the rendezvous coordinates in silence. The frosty disapproval from the copilot’s chair was almost palpable. Finally, T’Pol spoke. “Was it necessary to leave him the entire contents of our emergency ration pack, Commander?” she asked with cool displeasure. He grinned wryly with his eyes fixed on the forward view screen. “He worked hard, T’Pol. He’ll be hungry when he wakes up.” He cut his eyes at her impassive face, and then continued teasingly, “Would ya rather I left him the other things he wanted?” He stuck his tongue in his cheek to suppress the overwhelming urge to laugh. Her face was a study in trying not to look outraged. He couldn’t resist twisting the knife a little. “If you wanted ta stay, T’Pol, all you had ta do was tell me. I’d a put a nice ribbon around ya so he could unwrap ya when he woke up from his little nap.” She sniffed and lifted her chin, but didn’t deign to respond to the jibe. Trip snickered. He was laughing when he said, “Yeah… I guess that woulda been ogre-doin’ it a little, wouldn’t it?” T’Pol rolled her eyes and sighed. “You are incorrigible, Commander,” she said. End

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