Gryphon waited for the murmur of consternation to fade, then
said, "We might be able to take them, but hopefully, we won't have to
try.  I need six pilots for a deniable operation in Salusian
airspace."
	Convinced that he was in danger of being drowned out by a
massive chorus of volunteers, Lt. Mark "Haywire" Luchini shot to his
feet, nearly dislocating his shoulder in an attempt to reach higher
than his relatively short stature would allow, and shouted at the top
of his lungs,
	"MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!"
	Since no other pilot had so much as twitched or coughed, this
sent the entire room over the edge into gales of howling laughter.
When the dust cleared, Gryphon continued, "I need -five- pilots for a
deniable operation in Salusian airspace.

This incident is, I am not ashamed to say, lifted (not word-for-word, but in spirit) from the most excellent first volume of the late Richard P. Feynman's autobiography, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! I don't have my copy handy to check, but IIRC, the real-life version happened during Feynman's days in grad school at Princeton, and had to do with him being desperate to volunteer as one of the "test subjects" for a visiting hypnotist. The inquiring faculty member's only response was to say, "Well, yes, Mr. Feynman, we assumed you would volunteer - is there anyone else?"

(FYI, the second volume of Feynman's autobiography is entitled What Do You Care What Other People Think?, and is only slightly less excellent than Surely You're Joking. I like to envision Get the Girl, Kill the Baddies (And Save the Entire Planet), UF-Gryphon's fictional Golden Age memoir, as being largely in the Feynman style - except, of course, that Gryphon isn't a Jewish Nobel-laureate theoretical physicist from Rockaway and, as such, has a slightly different relationship with language. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.