The Arrest of Moonbeam Darling
by Sammie

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. "Airwolf" belongs to Belisarius Productions and CBS and USA and Universal. The reporter, Carling Morgan, comes from "Severance Pay".

RATING: K+

SUMMARY: Airwolf's crew faces intelligent, dangerous criminals on a regular basis. This is not one of them.

A/N: Dumb criminals are funny. The letter format is an inspiration from "dumb criminal" stories in the "TM7" fandom, and "Darling" comes from the awesome comedy "Blackadder". This is also, I suppose, a poke at all the things that made me go, "What?" when I watched the show. All out of affection, of course.

Dear Ms. Carling Morgan,

I'm thinkin' you'd be interested in this story, since you did all that on the intelligence stories some time ago. This is even bigger. Da - dapper rights of American citizens, gettin' trampled on by da - dabbin' crazies. (I've been tryin' not to swear. Rainbow says it makes bad energy 'round my plants.)

I'm mindin' my own business - I swear it. A man's got a right to grow whatever he wants in his own house without federal nutjobs coming down and tramplin' all over my rights.

It was a beautiful mornin', and Mother Gaia had delivered to me personally the wonderful fragrance of life. (Red insisted that was simply the flowers in my garden blooming. I'll get to Red later.) My girl Rainbow and I were completely at peace with ourselves and with all the world. Well, all the world except Screechy Penguin. And her crew. And her pals. (I'll get to them in a moment.) And the fat, mean squirrel who lives near our house and keeps coming into our house through the dog flap, which Rainbow won't let me nail down because, she insists, all the animals are our neighbors and should be allowed to feed as we do.

Anyhow, we was out enjoying the wonderful fragrance of life when we heard this screeching whine coming over them mountains. It seemed like a helicopter, 'cept it was really pointy-nosed - ain't those things normally round? - and was painted all black and white. It screeched a lot. It landed on our front lawn and blew everything everywhere. It upset my dynamic equilibrium.

Them chopper blades slowed down, and the doors opened, and out came three people. One was a skinny man who looked like he'd just drunk a cup of lemon juice, another a pretty redheaded lady, and an old fat guy.

Seemed that Oscar the Grouch had been a sour mood all week, and it was on account of Red - and Red wasn't apologizing.

"That poor thing stank to hell," she argued. "I hate to think what you did to the poor girl BEFORE I started flying her."

"YOU SPRAYED HER WITH AIR FRESHNER!"

"First of all, mountain man, I chose a mountain scent. You keep whining and the next time I'll spray Airwolf with...with...apple cinnamon with an undertone of vanilla. Secondly, if you and Dom would bother with airing the poor helicopter out on the inside as much as you take care of her on the outside - !"

"We take fine care of her."

"Fine, schmine. You don't treat her very much like a lady, no matter what Dom calls her."

"We take care of her just fine."

"You two sweat like pigs inside of that poor helicopter and then you don't clean her up! And you blame me for using air freshner?"

"She does smell nicer, String."

"Thank you, Dom." Red turned back to the skinny one. "Oh, and another thing. Would you do like Dom does and put on an undershirt when you put on that stupid flight suit! That suit reeks!"

"I'll wear my flight suit how I want!" Grouchy glared.

"That's fine - then you can clean your flight suit how you want!"

At this point, having exhausted the topic of air freshner and cleaning, they looked around, and Red exclaimed when she saw the landscape, "It's beautiful out here!"

I puffed out my chest. Red scored a point in my book of coolio peoples. "Thanks."

"Not like you made it," she snarked back at me. I mentally erased that point.

"Well," said the old geezer, "let's get done whatever Mr. Clean wants us to get done."

For the record, I strongly disapprove of Mr. Clean. Chemical cleaners destroy our environment. I prefer not cleaning. It's a much better solution than the one that sharp-tongued shrew at the store gave, which was to use natural cleaners. Using natural cleaners doesn't save as much time as not cleaning.

Sourpuss looked me up and down, then shook his head. "Not him."

"What do you mean, not him?" the other, older man exclaimed, gesticulating wildly. "Do you see anybody else around here for fifty miles? It has to be him. We checked those coordinates five times."

"He look intelligent enough to be a criminal?" (I'm insulted.) "I'm going to radio in and check." He went back into his screaming little black hellhole and picked up a radio. He continued to glare at me through the windshield. I'm beginning to think that's his normal state of mind.

Just then another chopping sound happened above us, and this huge white blob came down out of the sky, landing right next to the first chopper. I don't know why it was all white. Perhaps it was snow camouflage. We have snow up here in the mountains. I haveta say, I'm Mr. Eagle Eyes, and I didn't see that puppy comin' before I heard it. From the one side came a man dressed in a white suit plus the Panama hat...all he needed was a cricket sweater and a sprig of celery and a blue British police box. From the other side one beautiful lady, also dressed all in white. For the record, this was long after Labor Day.

Whitey talked with Grouchy for a long time, and Grouchy looked mad. That's not saying much, I know; he looks mad all the time. Anyhow, that's when I heard that that Mr. Grumpy Pants' name is Stringfellow Hawke. There's your personal interest story. Who'd name their kid 'Stringfellow'? It's like they lost a bet with Rumpelstiltskin. I mentioned that and got a big glare from him. Well, he just glowered at me and glowered at me, like it was my fault he was out here with his crazy helicopter. He had a permanent sour expression on his face, and when I informed him that smiling took less muscles, his pal dressed in white and with that eyepatch - I'll get to Pirate in a second - said that Hawke liked exercising.

At that point Grumpy glowered at the man in white. It didn't last long, though. When I laughed he went back to glowering at me. I don't know why it's called 'glowering'. Ain't nothing glowing about it.

The old geezer didn't look too happy, neither. I don't know if it's 'cause it was so cold or if it was 'cause I called him old geezer right after I commented on his frowning friend. Still, you gotta call it like you see it.

Now Red's got a sense of humor. She looked at all of us, and at Cranky, and she started to laugh and laugh and laughed herself stupid. Cranky and Oldie just glared at her.

I told Crabby he ought to take a lesson from his three-piece suit pal and repaint his helicopter. His chopper looks like a penguin with that black top and white underbelly. Gramps patted that screechy black penguin helicopter and said, "Baby, don't listen to him. You're beautiful." (And that sharp-tongued shrew at the store thinks I'm stupid for talking to my plants.)

For the record, I want to comment on those flight suits. Are they silver or light purple? Real men don't wear purple. And purple doesn't go so well with Red's hair, anyhow. They need to take a fashion lesson from that crew with the white helicopter, though admittedly, the two of them looked like disembodied heads against all the snow.

When I said that last part, Pirate glared. But I managed to get a smile out of Tetchy.

How comes that eyepatch ain't white, too? And that cane?

Anyhow, Prickly got grumpy again pretty fast, and he started hollering about waste of resources and waste of time, and the old man started hollering 'bout waste of time, too, since apparently they actually have jobs - REAL JOBS! - that don't involve them wearin' purple and flying a penguin around. Apparently they have bills and such to pay, just like the rest of us.

When I asked how they managed to afford to fly that big penguin helicopter and them purple flightsuits, Oldie glared at me and then patted the helicopter again, saying, "Baby, don't you listen to him," as if that helicopter were actually alive. And Mr. Personality over there just glared at me and growled that he was not wearing a purple flight suit - it was gunmetal gray. Silver.

Silver, my a - archery. I know purple when I see it.

"It is kind of purple, String."

"What, you're on his side, too?"

"You don't tend to notice the obvious."

"Like h-ll I don't!"

I gasped and glared, then clapped my hands over the ears of the pink flower in my headband. Such language!

"Case in point - when Sam Roper and Nihong visited. I think Stringfellow Roper's a cute, cute kid, but seriously. Are you sure Nihong's his mother?"

"What are you TALKING about?"

"I mean, seriously, Hawke. Look at Le, then look at Stringfellow. I haven't ever seen the child of a full-blooded Asian who has blond hair and light gray-blue eyes. I don't even think it's genetically possible."

"Asians have very dominant brown-brown genes," confirmed the dark-haired lady dressed in white. "A full-blooded Asian woman wouldn't have a blond child."

"So what are you saying?" Grumpy crossed his arms.

"What I'm saying is, you better start looking at the Caucasian women you've slept with while you were in 'Nam who have ties to Nihong."

"Yes, all fifty of them," Pirate smirked.

"Are you calling me some kind of lothario?"

"If the shoe fits, Casanova."

"Can we focus, here?" Grumpy waved at me.

At this point I heard Pirate refer to himself as Archangel, and others called him Michael. Now I don't know much about religion - perhaps I should've kept going to church - but that ain't nothing like the real archangel Michael. I'd be insulted if I were the real one. And if he's the real one and he's in charge of heaven, the Big Guy up there might need to get some more hired help.

Though, the lady's he had with him looked like an angel. She had beautiful brown eyes and beautiful black hair.

They asked me if I was El Toronado. Sure was. Did I ever sell anything across the border?

Sure did. I pointed to my turkey pen. I keep 'em wild turkeys, and they sell great at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I let them run around during the winter, and they feed themselves on public land. I believe like the Indians do, that we don't own land. It belongs to everybody - including my turkeys. Even if I make the money from selling the turkeys.

"Michael." Grumpy Parents looked really furious. He had this muscle in his face that twitched when he looked mad, and I should know when he looked mad, because he spent all sixty minutes here lookin' mad. Anyhow, this muscle twitched when he was mad, and it was twitchin' like there was an electric shock goin' through it. "You sent Airwolf to pick up a pot-growing TURKEY FARMER?"

I resented that. I'm not one of them hick Midwestern farmers. I'm a Californian agriculturalist, thank you very much.

"There's no way he's El Toronado."

"I think he is. And I think your people screwed up! And wasted valuable time and resources on...HIM!"

I'm vaguely insulted that I'm not worth their time and resources. I'm a fine, upstanding, tax-paying citizen of - OK, not tax-paying; I refuse to pay taxes to any government that forbids me to grow what I want in my house.

"Mr. - ?" Red looked at me.

"Darling."

"Darling?" Red looked like she's going to start laughing any minute. "All right...Darling..." Yeah, yeah, my last name makes everybody laugh. "Let me ask you a few questions," she drawled. Oh, great. She was some Texan redneck. "Do you cross our national borders in order to sell your turkeys?"

"Yep. Mexico. I don't know why, but they don't really eat turkey down there."

"Imagine that. Do you have a license for this sort of international business?" Red continued.

"I'm a citizen of the world," I replied snootily. "I know no national borders."

"I'll take that as a no." Next to Red, the beautiful angel in white (the lady, not the guy with the cane) smirked and scribbled something on a notepad. I hope it was her phone number. I'd love to have it.

"All right. And you grow" Red waved at my beautiful plants in the greenhouse "pot."

"It's cannibalis," I told her haughtily.

Grumpy Pants snorted derisively.

"It's cannabis, not cannibalis, and medical marijuana isn't even legal here or in the rest of the country, and you have way too many plants to even be considered legal under any of the county laws that are being considered. Nor do you look like any medical professional."

OK, so she was a redneck who knows California law. Oh, cra - crackers.

"I'm avant garde."

"You're contra ius is what you are."

OK, so she was a redneck who knows foreign languages, too. Oh, shortcake.

"She was a cop," Grumpy Pants announced to me with a certain kind of sadistic glee. Oh, great. I had to pi - pincushion off a cop, and now that grouchy, purple-wearing son of a bi - biscuit-tube was smirking at me.

"So there you go. I think he is who we came for," Red concluded. "I mean, illegal trafficking is illegal trafficking, turkeys or otherwise, and growing pot is producing illegal material."

Grumpy Pants swore for the hundredth time that he was going to kill 'Michael'. I rather think killing angels get you sent straight to the other place, but Grumpy Pants seemed not to care. Yeah, if I were wearin' a purple flight suit and flew a screechy, pointy-nosed penguin, guys in white choppers wouldn't be my biggest problem neither.

I think I smoked a little too much that morning. I could have sworn that helicopter was glaring at me.

Grumpy Pants announced that he was going to bill Pirate for the five wasted hours of his life and for any lost business while they were out here. He then ordered the old guy and Red back into the helicopter, and they actually left.

Pirate looked at me and sighed in exasperation, pinching the bridge of his nose, and then said to the pretty lady near him. "Fire the person who gave us this intel."

"Yes, sir."

So, Ms. Morgan, that's my story about my visit with that top secret helicopter. And I want fifty thousand dollars for my story and interview. And if I don't get it I'll take it to that other chick who broadcasts on the weekends. You know, the pretty one.

You can forward my money here to the minimum security prison in Los Angeles. Make sure you spell my name right.

Not yours,
Moonbeam Darling