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2020-11-05
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Trip And The Sleeping Prince: A Fairy Tale

Summary:

Summary: Malcolm tells a bedtime story. Or he tries to.
Author's Note: This is an AU of "Precious Cargo." What if the cargo had been a prince instead of a princess? Thanks to Kalita, Kyrdwyn, and Red.

Work Text:

Trip And The Sleeping Prince: A Fairy Tale
by MJ
mjr91@aol.com

 

What? You want—me, a story? It's my turn? And since when was that, blast it? Oh, very well, I'll go deal with the children, then.

All right, then. A story. Let's see—what stories do I know? I must know one or two, somewhere—oh, yes, of course. I know a very good one. Come on 'round then, that's a good boy, and I'll tell you about the sleeping prince.

Once, a very long time ago—in fact it was so far back, I'm sure even Trip doesn't remember it, there was a boy named—hmm—well, in fact, let's call him Trip, shall we? Now, Trip was a peasant boy—

—keep out of this, Trip Tucker, this is my story. Go off and fix something. But you don't like peasants? Very well, then. Now, leave me alone and let me tell this.

Now, where was I? Ah. Trip was a peasant, as I said, but he was very, very good at fixing things, and so people started to notice him, and he became a very important person in the military, an officer, and it was his job to go fix things, because he was terribly clever and could fix anything that had ever broken, anywhere.

Trip lived on board a big shiny ship, with lots of friends and a big engine that he got to fix all the time. He was on the ship with his friends Hoshi and Travis, and his very good friend Jon, who was probably Trip's best friend ever, and Jon's puppy Porthos, who was a very nice puppy indeed even if he did chew Trip's boots sometimes, and with his very good friend—oh, let's call him Malcolm, shall we? Now, Trip and Malcolm were very good friends indeed—in fact, they might have been just a bit closer than that, but they hadn't told anyone else on the ship yet, because it was supposed to be a secret.

As it happened, sometimes Trip would fix things on other ships too, because everyone didn't have a person on their ships who was as clever at fixing things as Trip was, and sometimes their ships couldn't sail and they would have problems. So Jon, who was the captain, would let Trip visit their ships and fix things for them too, because Jon and Trip were very nice and liked to help other people. Which occasionally got them in all manner of trouble that they could have avoided in the first place if they'd have listened to what Malcolm was telling them, of course, but that's another story.

Except that this was one of those occasions. Malcolm had told Trip to keep his nose out of trouble and not to go messing around on the other ship, and of course he just couldn't stay out of things, could he?

Oh, excuse me, I'm getting a tad ahead of myself.

So anyway, Trip went to the other ship that needed help, and he had to fix all kinds of things in the other ship's engine room. But while he was waiting for some tools, he started poking around the engine room in all sorts of places that he shouldn't have poked. And what do you think he found when he started poking about?

No, not a turtle. No, it wasn't a big scary monster. No, it wasn't a big pirate chest full of latinum, though the ship probably had one of those on it, too.

You can't guess? Well, then, I'll tell you. In a corner of the room, over where it was very dark, there was a prince who was sound asleep. And all the noise Trip had been making couldn't wake the prince up, you see, because there was a spell on him. Now, this prince was very, very handsome, or so Trip thought at the time, though what business he had noticing anything like that is utterly beyond me, Charles Tucker the Third, if you're still eavesdropping,

So Trip, not even caring that he was risking being killed by Malcolm if Malcolm ever found out that Trip was thinking with a part of his body that had no brain in it, remembered something he'd learned when his mother had told him fairy tales when he was a little boy just like you. And that was that when you find a prince who's been enchanted so he can't wake up, you can break the spell if you kiss the sleeping prince. Now, what do you think Trip did?

Right. He leaned over the sleeping prince and planted one right on the prince's mouth, damn his miserable hide. And the prince woke up, took one look at Trip, and said, "Who the hell are you?" and hit Trip right in the face. Which of course Trip deserved, but he didn't quite see it that way, now did he?

The prince, who was rather dressed up for sleeping in an engine room if you ask me, but just because you're a prince, children, doesn't mean you have any common sense or good taste, you have to understand, stood up and looked at Trip, who was nearly speechless. All our hero could choke out was, "My name's Trip and I'm trying to fix this ship. Who are you?"

"I'm Prince Kaitaama. My friends call me Kait. You're not a friend of mine, so you may call me Your Royal Highness. And grovel when you say that, serf."

"Hey," Trip told the snooty prince, "I'm not one of your subjects and you're not gonna tell me what to do. I'll call ya the monarch currently known as Prince. Prince for short."

"You're rude, and why did you wake me up?" the prince asked Trip then. "This ship is supposed to be taking me to my planet so I can take over as Head Honcho. It's a long trip and I need my nap."

Now, thanks to all his poking around and meddling, Trip had also figured out that the ship was run by pirates, and that the prince was being held for ransom. So he tried to explain that to the prince, who didn't want to hear it. In fact, the main thing this overdressed two-bit tramp of a prince that Trip was drooling over wanted to do was to cosh Trip over the head again. So they wound up wrestling about for control of the engine room, which Trip enjoyed entirely more than he should have.

Unfortunately, that was when one of the pirates came into the engine room and caught them. The evil pirate threatened to keep them both as hostages, even if Trip fixed the engine, which proved Trip's point but didn't do anything particular, of course, to help. And as Trip, who had foolishly ignored Malcolm's urgent advice to take a weapon along, had no way to defend himself or the prince, the sodding bastard marched right out of the engine room in one piece and locked the engine room door behind them.

Now, Trip was not only clever at fixing things, but was also, when he would bother thinking, quite clever at many other things too. And since he knew all about how ships were built, he knew there had to be another exit from the engine room, and that it might lead to a lifeboat or some such thing.

So Trip bravely started knocking things apart, which is really the opposite of fixing things and is something that I never want to catch any of you doing, if you understand me, because you don't have any reason to go tearing things up, now, do you? And after a good bit of knocking things about, he found a teeny tiny corridor that was barely big enough to crawl through, that went right to where a lifeboat ought to be. So he looked up inside it and offered to help the prince escape to the lifeboat.

The prince looked at him with a sneer, and said, "Do you really expect me to go about getting my royal clothing and my royal hands all dirty like a commoner? I'd much rather die than get messy. Messy is totally disgusting." So Trip grabbed the prince about his middle while the prince kicked and screamed, children, and finally just shoved him into the escape corridor ahead of him. Just like what happens to you when you won't go where you're told.

And so brave Trip got the whining, complaining prince to a lifeboat, and he climbed on in. The prince tried to climb on in, but his fancy clothing kept getting caught on everything, so finally he had to wreck his fancy outfit by tearing it down to shorts and a tee-shirt. Which is why you should always wear what you're told, and not what you want to, because sometimes the clothing you want to put on isn't the right clothing for what you have to do, like when you want to play outside in your good outfits. But nobody had ever told the prince what to do in his life, and he was a whining, spoiled brat just like that little girl down the way that your father and I were complaining about last night. And I don't ever want to hear you talking to any adults the way she does, missy, or you'll be in very big trouble.

Well, now Trip had to get the lifeboat away from the ship with the evil pirates, and that wasn't very easy to do. Because Trip knew how to fix things, and he knew all about sailing things, but the pirates didn't speak English, so nothing on the lifeboat was in English, and Trip had trouble figuring out how to get the lifeboat away from the big ship. It didn't help one little bit that all the prince could do was keep whining. He had to sit too close to Trip, and his clothes were all messed up, and he didn't have any of the palace guard around to order about, which was what the prince liked to do best. And Trip needed some help with the lifeboat, and he actually expected the prince to help him. The prince thought he was too good to do anything of the sort, and no matter what Trip wanted, he kept refusing to help because he was a very spoiled, whiny sort of prince that nobody liked much. And exactly what Charles Tucker the Third thought he saw in that no-good little—well, never mind, I'm getting distracted. So I'll get right back to the story, shall I?

Finally, Trip got the prince to understand that they would never get away from the pirate ship unless the prince helped. So the prince rather grudgingly gave Trip as little assistance as he possibly could, just to get them away from the pirates. And finally, Trip got the lifeboat loose and started looking for someplace to go.

Unfortunately, they were so far away from Trip's own ship that he couldn't figure out where it was, and Trip had no idea where they really were, so he dug through some maps that the pirates had in the lifeboat, even though he couldn't read them, and though even if the prince had been able to read them, he wouldn't have bothered to help do it, because although he was apparently very good-looking he wasn't terribly nice at all. And I'm not even sure the prince was all that good-looking really, maybe just in a tawdry kind of way, but he wasn't what you'd call really handsome, I should think—I think all it was is that the prince was rather on the tall side, whereas Trip's friend Malcolm, who was really extremely handsome as well as intelligent and always very helpful to everyone, was unfortunately a bit on the short side, and the best thing I can say about the whole unsavory incident is that Trip must have just gotten carried away with the whole thing just because—oh, sorry, I need to get back to the plot, don't I?

Finally, Trip found what looked to be a nearby island on one of the maps, so he headed for the island. Now, he had no idea if the island had any people, or any food, or anything at all, but they had to get away from the evil pirates before anyone noticed he'd escaped, so he had to head for the island right away.

When he and the prince finally got to the island, there weren't any people at all. There was a lot of jungle, with big plants and trees, and all kinds of swampy stuff that wasn't at all nice to walk through, and nasty big animals that Trip had never seen before. The prince had never seen anything like this place before either, and he kept whining to go home and back to his nice comfy palace where the food was already cooked and the palace guard could go kill any animals that bothered him. But Trip, being a brave and clever sort, had figured out how to catch some fish, and which plants to eat, and how to start a fire to cook everything, so there was plenty to eat. And he found them a place to sleep, and pretty much did all the work because the prince, being so spoiled, was not only lazy but completely helpless out in the jungle.

Finally, while Trip was busy trying to catch some food and protect their campsite and otherwise take care of the prince's miserable hide, he got himself hurt a bit. And finally, the prince wound up being nice. Because the annoying spoiled prince, like everyone else out there who seems as if they're not very nice people at all, had one nice thing that could be said about him, and in his case that was that he didn't much like seeing people being sick or hurt, so he made Trip sit down and took a look at Trip's injuries and actually took the first aid kit from the lifeboat and patched Trip up, for which I suppose I ought to be grateful, but—ah, right, the story.

Finally, Trip, who was always able to think of fairly clever things but would have had a much easier time of absolutely everything if he'd only taken a weapon with him, just as Malcolm had told him in the first place, decided that the best chance on his ship rescuing them would be to build a gigantic signal fire that could be seen from out on the water. The only problem was that if his ship could see the signal, the pirate ship might also see it and might come after them, and of course, there he was without weapons for driving off pirates, the way he should have been if he'd listened to any bloody sense.

Well, just as you might expect, the fire became very very big, just the way Trip wanted it to be, and it could be seem from nearly anywhere. Anyone out there on the water for miles and miles and miles would know there was an island there with people on it. And just as you probably suspected, the pirate ship spotted the fire and set sail straight for the island with Trip and the prince on it. Because besides being mean and evil and horrid, the pirates weren't altogether stupid, and they knew that the fire could be from the missing lifeboat, and the prince was worth a great deal of money to them so they wanted him back.

So some time later, Trip heard sounds out in the jungle that he hadn't heard before, big, scary pirate-type sounds, not animal sounds. And he knew that meant the pirates had seen the fire and come after them. Which meant that Trip, of course, had to find a way to protect himself and the prince from the pirates, because the pirates were very dangerous and because the lazy, selfish, no-better-than-he-should-be prince was certainly not going to be able to do a bloody thing to defend his own miserable skin, let alone Trip's too.

At any rate, Trip very cleverly laid a trap for the fiendish pirates. He stripped off his uniform, and stuffed it with branches and vines and such, and all manner of things that you find in the jungle—-which I'd tell you more about, you know, but I'm awfully allergic to things like that, I don't know how I got that exobotany badge in Scouts—and made it look as if it were Trip in the uniform, and then he put a big jungle gourd on top of it to look like his head. And then—then Trip and the prince laid in wait for the pirates to hunt down the stuffed uniform, which was all a very big trap for the very bad pirates.

And when the pirates, which turned out just to be one pirate, but he was big enough and mean enough and scary enough for a dozen ordinary pirates, you know, because he was a very awful pirate indeed, came up on the trap, Trip jumped on him from above where he'd hidden in a tree, and he beat the pirate within an inch of his life and threw the miserable beast in the river, which was where he certainly belonged.

Now, the prince was very happy that Trip had rescued him from the horrible, evil, very bad, no-good pirate, and so the horrible, evil, very bad, no-good prince decided to show Trip just how grateful he was, by doing something that I'm not even going to discuss, because you're too young to hear that part of this story—what?

Well, yes, the prince did kiss Trip, and it would be much better for Trip Tucker if he'd let the matter stop right there, and that's the last I'm going to say about that. But if I ever catch you doing what your fa- I mean, what Trip did, you'll be grounded for the rest of your lives, all right?

No, I don't have to tell you what he did in order to threaten you like that, missy. Don't do it. Just don't. Because if any boys you know ever try one thing further than kissing you, I'll have to do to them what I should have—er, what should have been done to Trip, in the story. And I don't want you to go kissing any boys anyway, all right?

Fortunately for everyone, the pirate was not the only person who had seen the fire. Trip's ship had seen the fire, too, and they had set sail to find out if it might have been Trip who set the fire. So the ship sent some crew out to find Trip and the prince, and the very bravest people on the whole ship went after them, which were the ship's captain himself and Trip's friend Malcolm.

After hiking through the jungle for hours and hours in the heat, and with the bugs, and the nasty, sneezy-making plants, the captain and Malcolm finally found Trip sitting around in his underwear with the prince, who wasn't wearing much more than that himself. And Malcolm, who was very clever himself, knew exactly what Trip and the prince had been up to and promised Trip, even while he was rescuing him, that Trip was never going to be allowed to forget anything in the entire matter for the rest of his life.

So the prince went on board Trip's ship, where they fed him and cleaned him and put rather a lot of clothing on him so Trip couldn't walk around drooling at him, and they took the prince to his home where he belonged. And Malcolm quite properly refused to speak to Trip for the better part of a month, for not taking a weapon with him, and for nosing around where he shouldn't have, and for—well, getting himself in trouble with what he was doing with the prince and all that.

Now, there is a moral to all of this, children. It's that you should always remember to take a weapon with you in a dangerous place. And you should never go poking around where you shouldn't be, or you could get in all kinds of trouble.

And above all, never, never make a Reed angry with you or you'll live to regret it. For the rest of your life, Trip Tucker, and I know you're listening from the hallway, blast it. All right, now, into bed, everyone. Except for you, Trip, you can sleep on the sofa. I'm mad at you again.

Are we ready for lights out now? You are? All right then, good night, both of you.

Oh, yes. I love you, too.

 

end