Twenty
“This feels wrong,” Rui said.
“Like getting an erection off Jessica Rabbit? I know she’s a cartoon, but…” Ben trailed off, staring at the horizon.
“No. Not hot wrong. Like… I know the government thinks of us as traitors, terrorists. But we’re about to seriously start setting fire to an American military base.”
“One that shouldn’t be in Cuba, one that’s in Cuba solely to violate civil rights in ways they couldn’t if it was in U.S. Territory. Besides, this is a rescue mission; if they hadn’t been kidnapping kids, we wouldn’t have to be here. We aren’t the villains, here.”
“Maybe,” Rui said. “But that doesn’t necessarily make us the heroes, either.”
“Meh,” Ben shrugged. “I’m doing what’s right, what feels right in my soul. What my brother would tell me was right, if awful people hadn’t murdered him. That just makes me ‘Ben.’ I can handle being just Ben.”
“I don’t also have to be Ben, do I?”
“Nah. Be Rui. Be somebody else, if that doesn’t feel like a good fit anymore. Just do it while distracting a shitload of American Gestapo, or they’ll throw us all in the Gulag.”
“You’re mixing your- whatever.”
“Besides, I don’t set shit on fire.”
“Yes, you ‘vibrate’ shit.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t belittle my ability. It’s petty.”
“Sorry, man. Just, I can fly, and I have near-microscopic control over my atomic structure. But it’s neat that you can shake stuff. You know, like a baby with a rattle.”
“I asked nice. When this is over, you and me are doing this.”
“Except that I can just turn into a gas, and, while being vibrated might be fun, it kind of loses it’s violence.”
“I hate you sometimes, you know that? Handsome, wealthy, great teeth. And you get a better power.”
“Unrequited love, personality issues. We all got our stuff, man. And vibrating things is far from the wimpiest ability we’ve seen.”
“Thanks?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. But since we agree yours is the less subtle ability, you should start off the festivities. And I’ll bring the house down after you pack the seats.”
Rui kicked off the ground, and transmuted his atoms into a gas, and then to a plasma. “Feels good to be back in the air.” Ben flipped him off. “Sorry, wasn’t poking more fun at your, ahem, ability.”
“Something tells me you were always this smarmy, even before you learned you could fly.”
“I prefer to think of it as confidence,” Rui swooped over him, spreading his arms and shooting jets of flame into several buildings in two straight lines.
“It looks like the DeLorean from Back to the Future was here,” Ben yelled.
“Right? I wasn’t even trying for that.” He swooped again, this time gaining altitude, burning a strip strategically along the waterline. He landed noiselessly behind Ben. “That should set off some alarms, and with any luck, the entire base will respond, when they think it’s a terrorist breakout plot.”
“Um,” Ben closed his eyes, “just had a pertinent thought. What if we do too good a job?”
“It’s probably a big ask- and I expect a slap is a more realistic result- but I say we ask for lapdances.”
“Noted. But I mean… there actually are terrorists inside this base. And we may have just created an opening for them to escape.” “Well… fudge. Looks like our mission just got a little extra complicated. Apparently, we’re going to be creating a distraction and making sure no terrorists escape. Because apparently the first terrifying problem just wasn’t fucking dramatic enough.”