The drill instructor was a younger man, well-muscled, wearing a pair of thick black eyeglasses beneath his campaign hat. His dark skin glistened in the 100-degree sunshine, and there was a Decepticon badge on his lapel.

“It doesn’t matter what my name is; you crotchjockeys don’t have the brain cells to say it without making my ancestors howl worse than your parents when they saw your SAT scores,” he barked. “Just call me Sergeant Poindexter. I joined up because I wanted to boss around the jockstrap sniffers that used to snap decent people with towels. So saddle up, my precious unorganized grabastic amphibians, because I am the Kwisatz Haderach and my name is a killing word!”

Some of the recruits exchanged nervous glances. One seemed about to ask a question; the sergeant quickly stepped in front of him, nose to nose. “From now on you speak only when spoken to. You talk out of turn and I will pluck a strand of your hair and give it to the voodoo chaplain to curse you with crotch sores, yea unto the seventh generation! You got that, padawan?”

“Y-yes sir!” the unfortunate recruit stammered.

“I am not ‘sir,'” howled the sergeant, “‘sir’ is your deputy basketball coach or whoever else in your life regularly handled your balls. You will call me ‘Sergeant’ or so help me I will mow you redneck zombies down like George Romero and keep your heads in my icebox next to Zuul! That clear, you piss-poor pack of level one fighters?”

“Yes sergeant!”

“Come on, now, sound off like you got a pair! How’s Cobra Commander going to know you’re coming if you can’t even squeeze out a decent ‘yo Joe?’ All of you, in unison!”

“Yes sergeant!” the men cried at what could hardly be described as the same time.

“My job is to weed out all you letter-jackets who are too dumb for even the United States armed forces,” the sergeant continued. “I asked for a bunch of Imperial Stormtroopers, and I got you! I don’t need to see your identification, I know you’re not the recruits we’re looking for. You’re clueless as a bunch of Microsoft dancing paperclips and twice as annoying; but you popped up and by God I’m going to bend you into shape even if I have to rewrite the source code. You grok me?”

“Yes sergeant!” the men answered once more, a bit more in unison.

“From now on, you maggots are my own personal Pokémon: I throw down, and you do what I say without question. You don’t need to know how to do anything but follow orders, say your own name, and learn to like getting repeatedly shoved in the balls. You are the lowest form of life on Earth, all equally worthless. A flu virus in a Chinese hooker contributes more to society. Are your feelings on this matter clear? Let me hear it again, Recruitmons!”

“Yes, sergeant!”

With apologies to Stanley Kubrick and Skippy.

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