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queen-of-france asked: fsajdfk I'm sorry but can I give you an outright prompt? Because I was reading throguh your archives and got an idea of Carolina asking Wash about the dynamics in the Red and Blue teams and Wash giving her an angry gossipy rundown of everyone and everything? Please? *_* I'm sorry for th ehigh levels of fanfic extortion tonight, say a word and I'll can itn sgkjdbgjdk

(Zuzanna, you can always give me prompts, lyric or not, any time. <3)

“Finally,” Carolina said, the relief in her voice overpowering. “I can get a proper debriefing on everyone in this canyon.”

“What?” Wash said, not following.

“I asked for reports on the strengths and weaknesses of each member of the two teams in this canyon. All I’ve gotten out of that question is headaches. No one seems capable of an impartial answer.” She smiled and clapped a confused Wash on the shoulder. “Finally, I can get a real answer.”

“Oh,” was all he could think of to say. “Oh, yeah, of course.”

“Start with the blue team. I already know you, so go by rank, which means start with Tucker?” She fiddled with her helmet and he figured this was going to be recorded.

“Well,” he started with a deep breath. “Tucker’s got one of the alien artifact swords. Yeah. Tucker. He’s the only one who can operate it. He also seems to be an ok shot, but he’s complete crap with a sniper rifle. And, honestly, the amount of times he says “bow chicka bow wow”, I’m surprised he has room for normal conversation. Plus, he exaggerates the amount of women he’s been with. Grossly exaggerates.”

Carolina didn’t move for a moment and Wash swore he could almost see the expression she was making. He figured it was probably the same expression she used to give York when he’d start whining about how Wash was a bad roommate in the middle of their cuddle time. (The fact that Wash was in the room did not mean they felt the need to reschedule said cuddle time, apparently. Nor did it mean that York shouldn’t talk about how Wash leaves clean socks in the hamper in the middle of the room for days.) He kept going anyway.

“Caboose has the benefit of always following orders without question. And the drawback of always managing to cause the most harm to people on his own team. We’re probably better off keeping him far away from any kind of battle. Ever. Also, don’t give him grenades. Or let him talk to anything that F.I.L.S.S. runs, because all he’ll do is call her Sheila and flirt with her. Badly.”

“Wash,” she started saying, and he could hear the tiredness in her voice, but this was all important, vital information and he’d be damned if he let her go into battle believing these clowns to be anything resembling real soldiers.

“Sister, well, I don’t know her very well, but she seems to be a female version of Tucker. Probably with more experience. Sexually. Definitely a much worse soldier. Bonus is that the reds won’t actually attack her because she’s the sister of one of them, so she makes a pretty good human shield if need be.”

“You know we’re not going to be fighting the reds, we’ll be working with them?”

“Oh. Then her value starts and stops at the hilarious words that come out of her mouth. As long as you don’t mind disturbing mental images. Or a gradual loss of faith in humanity.”

“No actual combat skills?”

“God, no.”

“Then move on, Wash.”

“Right, well, then there’s the red team. I guess we’ll start with Sarge. His raging insanity is only rivaled by his desire to kill Grif and defeat the “dirty blues”. Or perhaps those enhance it, I don’t know. I’ve only ever seen him use a shotgun. I’m not sure he has any other weapons training. He also seems to be allergic to walking, because he need to use a vehicle to travel distances longer than ten feet. Don’t ever, ever, let him volunteer to acquire a vehicle for you. He’s only good with them once he already has them. It would be the worst plan. Ever. Of all time.”

“I got it, Wash,” she said impatiently. “No, really. Never let him try to get me a car. Got it.”

“Sarge is also kind of mad scientist good at robotics, because he built Lopez. For some reason, Sarge built him to only speak Spanish. That robot seems to be the most competent one in the entire canyon, but most of his processing power is spent insulting his teammates, none of whom can understand Spanish.”

“How long has he been with the red team?”

“Oh, years, apparently.”

“…And they never learned Spanish, or upgraded his speech unit, anything of the sort?”

“Nope. They’ve upgraded the rest of him plenty of times. I think he’s also backed himself up on every computer he’s ever come in contact with. He can fix vehicles, because he’s had a lot of practice with the way those idiots go through them, but, like Caboose, he tends to get all…weird at the mention of “Sheila” or F.I.L.S.S.”

“Weird? How?”

“Weird like…like love song weird.”

Carolina didn’t say anything, just stared blankly until Wash moved on.

“Simmons is good with computers. He also seems to have unresolved issues that come across as blind rage when using a gun mounted to one of their vehicles. That has potential to be useful. Of course, it comes at a cost of having to deal with him trying his best to impress whoever is in charge.”

“So he’s the one who offered to make color-coded agendas for weekly meetings?”

“Yeah, that definitely sounds like him. Anyway, he’s common-law married to Grif, as far as I can tell. Grif really doesn’t have many useful qualities. Or any. No, no, wait. He does run over people well.”

“What?”

“He’ll argue and pout and huff to get out of doing work, but put him behind the wheel of a car and he’ll run over anything he can get to. Also, he seems impossibly hard to kill.”

“Is he another robot?”

“Can robots gain weight?”

“…Probably not.”

“Then he’s not a robot. He’s just lazy and has developed some kind of natural bonus to not dying. Probably because Sarge keeps trying to think of excuses to shoot him.”

“Sarge is trying to kill his own soldiers?”

“Oh, no, just Grif. I think every emergency plan they have at their base involves the immediate execution of Grif.”

Caroline reached up stiffly and turned off the recording. “Right. I think I’ve got all I need.”

“Are you sure? I can-“

“No, I’m sure,” she said firmly, cutting him off and standing up. “Thanks, that was very…helpful,” she said, and for some odd reason, Wash got the impression that she didn’t really mean it.