Newsman
Title: Newsman
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Mitchell, Landry, Vala, Jackson, Teal’c, O’Neill
Rating: Gen
Orientation: Gen
Word Count: 1,265
Warning: Apparent!Character!Death
Prompt: Dark Bingo Fill: “Psychotic Break”
Ten Tropes Fill: “Red Shirt Reporter
Note: for
camshaft22 , for prompting me. She wanted me to break Cameron. Blame her.
“Mitchell! Get the van and head out to mile marker one three four,” shouted Hank Landry, the news director for SGC TV News.
Cam rocked back in his chair and peered around the edge of his cubicle. He was in the middle of doing the write up for the six o’clock news and didn’t have time to go haring off after random stories. Not in this weather! “Sorry, Chief, I’m still not done for tonight’s telecast.”
“Hand it off to Vala, she’ll sub for you. I want you on this story.”
“But sir! It’s coming down in buckets out there.” Which was probably exactly why Landry wanted Cam on it. Jerk.
Landry sneered at him nastily. “Wear a raincoat. Take Jackson and the big guy to crew for you.” The boss walked off - apparently that was the end of the discussion on the matter.
Angrily, Cam closed the file he had been working on and saved it to a flash drive. He yanked the drive out of his laptop and walked over to Vala’s cubicle. “Landry said to pass this over to you.” The statement was a waste of time, she’d surely heard the whole thing.
“Why Cam, darling, did you draw the short straw again?” She fluffed her hair and smiled at him. Vala Mal Doran wasn’t too bad, once you got past her need to be the center of attention and camera hogging. She was ambitious. Cam had been like her once, a long time ago, when he first came to the station and still cared about his ideals enough to crusade for them.
“You know how it is, Landry hates my guts, any excuse to send me out in the field.” He was growing so weary of all of this. He felt his life must have some greater meaning, that he must have some purpose other than reporting news on a hack cable station in the middle of Nowhere USA. But he felt trapped, stuck in a rut with no way out.
He found Daniel in the breakroom. “C’mon Jackson, we’re heading out into the weather to be reporters.”
“Crap! This sucks!” Jackson slammed his books, he was studying in his spare time for his degree in something exotic, Cam forgot what it was, something useless out here. Daniel followed him out of the room, and they headed to the locker room to get wet weather gear for themselves and their equipment.
When they got to the garage, their tech-slash-driver was already waiting patiently beside the Red and white SGC TV van, as Cam had expected. “Hey T, ready to get wet?”
“Indeed,” he circled around to the driver’s side and climbed in, saying nothing else. Cam wished he had the guy’s stoicism. Especially these days, he was on his last nerve, he felt ready to snap at any moment.
Mile marker one three four was inaccessible, due to an overturned tanker truck that was burning right up against an overpass. T pulled over onto the median and Cam hopped out, slipping in the mud and cursing Landry for sending him out. Daniel followed with a plastic-wrapped camera on his shoulder. T handed Cam a microphone.
“Go in three, two, one,” T intoned from the control board inside the van. He’d be nice a dry today.
“This is Cam Mitchell for SGC TV news. As you can see behind me, there’s been an accident on the Interstate, right near exit eighty at Thomasville. We’ve just arrived on the scene and don’t have any details yet. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the weather has... God damn it!” Cam screeched as an electric charge ran up his arm from the mike.
“Are you hurt, Cameron?” T asked, coming to the door of the van.
“I nearly got fried!”
“We had a surge, my apologies.”
He restarted his intro, trying not to shake the feeling back into his numb hand on camera. He was here to report the news, not be part of it. “I see some emergency vehicles, let’s see if we can get some more information. This is sure to impact the commute home for those who were unlucky enough to be forced out into the elements today.”
Daniel cut the feed and they wandered over to get a closer look and see if someone would toss them a bone. “Hey, Mitchell!” Cam looked up and Saw Jack O’Neill, the local fire chief waving at him.
“He’s not gonna let us film,” Daniel predicted.
“He might, you never know. He likes you. Smile at the man.” Cam waved back and started over to O’Neill.
“You guys need to get back, this thing could blow.” O’Neill pointed at them, shaking his head to ward them off.
“Boss says I need a story, Jack!”
O’Neill scowled at him. “Don’t make me get the cops, buddy, just go back by your van, okay?” O’Neill was a good guy, a friend. Cam shot pool with him once a week and occasionally played poker at his house. The threat was only half serious. ‘The cops’ included several other poker buddies of them both, Cam saw some of them milling around behind the firefighters.
There was shouting from over by the tanker, Cam looked and saw sparks showering from an electrical line under the bridge that had been severed. He waved to Daniel to get a shot as he backed off a bit. He did have a small sense of self preservation, after all.
Daniel pulled him back towards the van. “I can get a shot with the telephoto. Let’s back off, this is making me nervous, Mitchell. Let’s leave the fire to the pros, huh?”
Sloshing off through the muddy grass, they were about halfway back to the van when there was a roar of sound from the tanker. Cam spun around and saw a wall of flame rolling from the truck. Police and firefighters that were too close were engulfed in the horrendous flames. He saw O’Neill, recognizable by the color of his hat, running to escape the oncoming flames, but he wasn’t fast enough. Cam screamed his friend’s name, instinctively starting back to help.
Jackson grabbed him around the middle, holding him back as he struggled to get free. “No! No, let me go, I have to help!” Cam shrieked. Jack was in there. His friend was in there!
“You can’t help! It’s too late, you can’t go over there! Mitchell! Stop! Stop it!”
Pushing at Jackson, he stared at the flames, hearing screams. Why were there screams? Who was screaming in the rain?
He went limp, sliding to his knees in the mud of the median. His hand went limp and he dropped the microphone beside him. “There shouldn’t be fire,” he said, looking up at Jackson. “Not with all this rain. The fire should go out. This isn’t right.” He stared at the flames again.
“Mitchell?” Jackson said in an odd voice, crouching down and touching Cam’s shoulder.
Cam pointed to the emergency vehicles. This would make a pretty good story, Landry might even like it, and Landry hated everything Cam did. “Look Daniel, the firemen are here. My buddy Jack should be here too. Maybe we can get an interview. We should go and look for Jack.”
Daniel turned around and looked over at the van. “T!!!” he shouted and then looked back at Mitchell and shook his head sadly as Mitchell smiled up at him.
“It’s raining,” Cam said to Daniel. That was news. He was a newsman, he needed to report the news to people.
The End.Originally posted at http://rinkafic.dreamwidth.org/
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Characters: Mitchell, Landry, Vala, Jackson, Teal’c, O’Neill
Rating: Gen
Orientation: Gen
Word Count: 1,265
Warning: Apparent!Character!Death
Prompt: Dark Bingo Fill: “Psychotic Break”
Ten Tropes Fill: “Red Shirt Reporter
Note: for
camshaft22 , for prompting me. She wanted me to break Cameron. Blame her.
“Mitchell! Get the van and head out to mile marker one three four,” shouted Hank Landry, the news director for SGC TV News.
Cam rocked back in his chair and peered around the edge of his cubicle. He was in the middle of doing the write up for the six o’clock news and didn’t have time to go haring off after random stories. Not in this weather! “Sorry, Chief, I’m still not done for tonight’s telecast.”
“Hand it off to Vala, she’ll sub for you. I want you on this story.”
“But sir! It’s coming down in buckets out there.” Which was probably exactly why Landry wanted Cam on it. Jerk.
Landry sneered at him nastily. “Wear a raincoat. Take Jackson and the big guy to crew for you.” The boss walked off - apparently that was the end of the discussion on the matter.
Angrily, Cam closed the file he had been working on and saved it to a flash drive. He yanked the drive out of his laptop and walked over to Vala’s cubicle. “Landry said to pass this over to you.” The statement was a waste of time, she’d surely heard the whole thing.
“Why Cam, darling, did you draw the short straw again?” She fluffed her hair and smiled at him. Vala Mal Doran wasn’t too bad, once you got past her need to be the center of attention and camera hogging. She was ambitious. Cam had been like her once, a long time ago, when he first came to the station and still cared about his ideals enough to crusade for them.
“You know how it is, Landry hates my guts, any excuse to send me out in the field.” He was growing so weary of all of this. He felt his life must have some greater meaning, that he must have some purpose other than reporting news on a hack cable station in the middle of Nowhere USA. But he felt trapped, stuck in a rut with no way out.
He found Daniel in the breakroom. “C’mon Jackson, we’re heading out into the weather to be reporters.”
“Crap! This sucks!” Jackson slammed his books, he was studying in his spare time for his degree in something exotic, Cam forgot what it was, something useless out here. Daniel followed him out of the room, and they headed to the locker room to get wet weather gear for themselves and their equipment.
When they got to the garage, their tech-slash-driver was already waiting patiently beside the Red and white SGC TV van, as Cam had expected. “Hey T, ready to get wet?”
“Indeed,” he circled around to the driver’s side and climbed in, saying nothing else. Cam wished he had the guy’s stoicism. Especially these days, he was on his last nerve, he felt ready to snap at any moment.
Mile marker one three four was inaccessible, due to an overturned tanker truck that was burning right up against an overpass. T pulled over onto the median and Cam hopped out, slipping in the mud and cursing Landry for sending him out. Daniel followed with a plastic-wrapped camera on his shoulder. T handed Cam a microphone.
“Go in three, two, one,” T intoned from the control board inside the van. He’d be nice a dry today.
“This is Cam Mitchell for SGC TV news. As you can see behind me, there’s been an accident on the Interstate, right near exit eighty at Thomasville. We’ve just arrived on the scene and don’t have any details yet. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the weather has... God damn it!” Cam screeched as an electric charge ran up his arm from the mike.
“Are you hurt, Cameron?” T asked, coming to the door of the van.
“I nearly got fried!”
“We had a surge, my apologies.”
He restarted his intro, trying not to shake the feeling back into his numb hand on camera. He was here to report the news, not be part of it. “I see some emergency vehicles, let’s see if we can get some more information. This is sure to impact the commute home for those who were unlucky enough to be forced out into the elements today.”
Daniel cut the feed and they wandered over to get a closer look and see if someone would toss them a bone. “Hey, Mitchell!” Cam looked up and Saw Jack O’Neill, the local fire chief waving at him.
“He’s not gonna let us film,” Daniel predicted.
“He might, you never know. He likes you. Smile at the man.” Cam waved back and started over to O’Neill.
“You guys need to get back, this thing could blow.” O’Neill pointed at them, shaking his head to ward them off.
“Boss says I need a story, Jack!”
O’Neill scowled at him. “Don’t make me get the cops, buddy, just go back by your van, okay?” O’Neill was a good guy, a friend. Cam shot pool with him once a week and occasionally played poker at his house. The threat was only half serious. ‘The cops’ included several other poker buddies of them both, Cam saw some of them milling around behind the firefighters.
There was shouting from over by the tanker, Cam looked and saw sparks showering from an electrical line under the bridge that had been severed. He waved to Daniel to get a shot as he backed off a bit. He did have a small sense of self preservation, after all.
Daniel pulled him back towards the van. “I can get a shot with the telephoto. Let’s back off, this is making me nervous, Mitchell. Let’s leave the fire to the pros, huh?”
Sloshing off through the muddy grass, they were about halfway back to the van when there was a roar of sound from the tanker. Cam spun around and saw a wall of flame rolling from the truck. Police and firefighters that were too close were engulfed in the horrendous flames. He saw O’Neill, recognizable by the color of his hat, running to escape the oncoming flames, but he wasn’t fast enough. Cam screamed his friend’s name, instinctively starting back to help.
Jackson grabbed him around the middle, holding him back as he struggled to get free. “No! No, let me go, I have to help!” Cam shrieked. Jack was in there. His friend was in there!
“You can’t help! It’s too late, you can’t go over there! Mitchell! Stop! Stop it!”
Pushing at Jackson, he stared at the flames, hearing screams. Why were there screams? Who was screaming in the rain?
He went limp, sliding to his knees in the mud of the median. His hand went limp and he dropped the microphone beside him. “There shouldn’t be fire,” he said, looking up at Jackson. “Not with all this rain. The fire should go out. This isn’t right.” He stared at the flames again.
“Mitchell?” Jackson said in an odd voice, crouching down and touching Cam’s shoulder.
Cam pointed to the emergency vehicles. This would make a pretty good story, Landry might even like it, and Landry hated everything Cam did. “Look Daniel, the firemen are here. My buddy Jack should be here too. Maybe we can get an interview. We should go and look for Jack.”
Daniel turned around and looked over at the van. “T!!!” he shouted and then looked back at Mitchell and shook his head sadly as Mitchell smiled up at him.
“It’s raining,” Cam said to Daniel. That was news. He was a newsman, he needed to report the news to people.
The End.Originally posted at http://rinkafic.dreamwidth.org/