A Jellyfish's Worst Nightmare by Becky Rock
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Author's Chapter Notes:

Trish Cummings, my co-author for the Blood Line arc, was surfing the net and saw an interesting story she just had to share with me. An evil plot bunny took hold and I couldn’t resist. I needed to practice my writing funny bone. So, here’s the nose cola warning.

 

October 2007

 

Tiny sat at his desk and pulled out a sheet of paper.  Every Sunday night, he wrote a letter to his friend, Captain Jack, telling him about his week – the unclassified version, of course.  It was mostly just stories about his teammates, but this time, he had a story to top everything he’d ever shared with Jack so far.

 

Even as he picked up his pen, he started to chuckle.

 

Hi Captain Jack!

 

You know how last week I was telling you Jason was griping about out training?  I swear he’s not happy unless he’s griping. He told Chief Anderson the training was ridiculous, that no one could do what he wanted us to do.

 

So, the Chief decided to accompany us on this week’s training trip just to prove Jason wrong.

 

Man, the Chief sure chose the wrong week to prove Jason wrong!

 

We had diving training this week.  Deep diving.  Jason immediately started griping. ‘What are we going to need this for?’ The Chief told us, but I can’t tell you that part. J

 

For the first dive, they split us up into two groups: me, Jason and Princess since I’ve got experience, then the Chief, Mark and Keyop, since the Chief has experience (which we didn’t know).

 

Since it’s cold out and we were going deep, they set up one of those diesel powered industrial water heaters that takes sea water and heats it up, then pumps it into our wet suits through garden hoses to keep us warm. It’s great!  It’s like being in a hot tub, but I’m sure you know all about that, with all the diving you’ve done.

 

Everything went fine the first two dives.  For the third dive, the Chief had us divided up so that Mark and I were with him.

 

We were down below for about twenty minutes, simulating a repair, when the Chief suddenly started doing the jig. I’ve never seen anyone move like that in a heavy duty wet suit before.  It was kind of dark, so I thought maybe he was being attacked by a shark or something.  I swam over and tried to tie in our communicators so I could find out what he was doing.  He was waving his arms at me and his mouth was going and I swear he was crying.

 

Mark came over and we tried to calm the Chief down, thinking he was having a panic attack or the bends or something. I called topside and everyone up there was howling.  I mean laughing their freaking heads off.

 

The Chief took off for the surface and we had to hold him back – we were deep enough we had to have in-water decompression stops.  The whole time, Mark and I were trying to make sense of what everyone on the surface was saying.  All I caught through all of the hysterical laughter was something about a jellyfish.

 

Thirty-five minutes later, we finally got to the surface.  By then, all the Chief had on was his brass helmet.  He’d pulled everything else off and was digging at his butt like you wouldn’t believe.

 

Jason and the ship’s medic met us and helped pull the Chief out, warning Princess back since the Chief was in his birthday suit.  Jason was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes and his face was red. Keyop was howling, too and even our stoic Princess was shaking with laughs while she looked the other way. They threw us into the dry decompression chamber and I saw the medic hand the Chief a tube of something.

 

As we decompressed, the Chief told us what happened while he lathered his butt crack with the tube of cream. The whole time, we could hear everyone outside still laughing over the intercom as they listened.

 

Apparently, the pump had pulled in a little jellyfish and sucked it down the hose to the Chief’s suit.  Thank God it wasn’t mine! It shot the jellyfish down his back to his butt.

 

His crack suddenly started burning and itching, so he tried to scratch it through the suit. He was grinding the jellyfish in, poisonous tentacles and all and he didn’t know it!

 

By the time he realized what had happened, his butt was on fire and he was in agony.

 

The cream the medic had given him alleviated some of the burning, but he couldn’t sit down. By then, Mark and I were cracking up with the others- no pun intended!

 

Needless to say, Jason’s having a field day, coming up with every butt joke he can.  The Chief added fuel to the fire by telling us he couldn’t poop for two days because his butt was swollen shut.

 

I kind of feel sorry for the jellyfish. After all, it spent its last moments in the Chief’s crack.

 

Your friend,

 

Tiny J

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