How do they come up with Callsigns?

 

“Hey, I’m -,”

“We don’t go by names around here?”

“Huh?”

“As in, he doesn’t need to know your name Meat.”

Teddy glanced at the woman.

More specifically, he glanced at her ample bosom on display first, flicked his eyes up to her own eyes to assure her that he wasn’t looking at the creamy skin of her boobs, then double checked to make sure they were still there.

His eyes did a little dance, a bounce up and down, and each time he did so, her eyebrows crinkled and crunched in growing rage.

“Do I have to make up my own or am I stuck with that one?” Teddy asked.

“Which one?”

“Meat?”

“You earn a nickname,” the other man in the room advised. “Until then, you’re just a walking sack of meat.”

“Fair enough,” said Teddy. “Can you just like, call me Teddy until then though.”

“We like meat,” said the woman.

“I bet you do, and I’m no kind of vegetarian myself, though I don’t go for the sausage,” he winked. “But meat sounds so impersonal. So distant. And I can tell by the way we’re getting along that we are going to be best mates. I mean, the warmth in the room right now, I could practically toast a smore over, you know what I’m saying?”

“Do you always talk this much,” the man asked.

“Sure I do. Relieves tension,” said Teddy. “What is your nickname?”

“Callsign,” the man corrected.

“Good one, Callsign,” Teddy held out his hand.

“My name’s not callsign, that’s what we call them.”

“Call what?” Teddy looked at them both, confused.

“He’s saying they’re not nicknames. They are call signs. Signs by which we are called.”

“So you’re not Callsign?”

“Ricochet,” the man snapped and pointed a finger at him.

Teddy tilted his head, more confused.

“Is that like Bingo, but not a name Bingo, but bingo, you got it Bingo?”

“What the fuck is this guy talking about?”

“He’s stupid, Ricochet.”

“Oh,” Teddy beamed. “Your nickname is Ricochet.”

Ricochet opened his mouth.

“I mean callsign,” Teddy corrected. “Hey Ricochet.”

He pointed at the woman.

“And who is she?”

“Starglide.”

Teddy snorted.

“Star? Glide?”

She put a fist on each hip and let the rage in her eyes flame up to a level ten.

“What’s wrong with Starglide?”

“I mean, I don’t know,” said Teddy. “I get Ricochet. A shot goes wild, or he misses something and it hits something. That’s how these things get started. But Starglide? I’m trying to imagine it.”

“She-,” Ricochet started to say.

“No, no,” she held up a hand. “Let him say what he’s imagining.”

The words coming out of her mouth said she wanted to hear his line of reasoning, but the look on her face suggested that if he did, there was murder under consideration.

“Starglide,” Teddy sputtered. “Well,  you know, star is outer space, right? And another word for outer space is astro, and we all know what Astroglide is used for, so that’s why I was wondering about starglide.”

He wiggled his eyebrows at her and gave his best winning smiles.

When he woke up an hour later, he figured it was the eyebrows that pushed her over the top.

“It was a reasonable question,” he said.

The words were more of a mumble than actual speaking, because his jaw was swollen, and half the side of his face was numb.

“Oneshot,” Ricochet said from the chair beside the couch.

He handed Teddy a frozen bag of peas and helped him put it on his jaw.

“What?”

It came out as whaa?

“Your call sign,” Ricochet explained. “She took you out with one shot.”

He held up a green patch with black words embroidered on it.

Teddy blinked them into focus.

“Oneshot,” he mumbled and didn’t sound happy about it.

“Rise and shine,” Ricochet stood up and stretched. “Time you got some training.”