The Other Eight (24 page)

“I guess so,” Non Sequitur said. Rather than
relief, a hint of disappointment seeped into his voice. “But, hey.
We put on quite a show. I guess you could always milk it, try to
cash in a bit.”

“A hero does not milk fame for cash!” she
said with halfhearted mock outrage.

“You never know, there might be other teams.
Maybe once this is over you’ll get a shot at the marine team, or
the air force.”

“I can’t imagine they’ll be any more
receptive to my particular brand of heroism than the army was. But
I suppose I can’t let the years of hard work go to waste. All of
the training, the uniform design, the catchphrase writing…”

Non Sequitur snickered.

“What’s funny?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Out with it. If you’ve got some constructive
criticism, now’s the time.”

“It’s just that, after the combat drill you
said, ‘A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest
men.’”

“And?”

“Well, it just seems like when the goal is to
strike fear into the hearts of villainy, quoting Willy Wonka might
not be the way to do it.”

“You knew where that was from?”

“Willy Wonka had a disproportionate influence
on my formative years.”

“Oh. Well,
you
try to come up with a
good one for Nonsensica. I had a
great
one for Non
Sequitur.”

“What was it?”

“And let you steal it? Not likely,”
Nonsensica said. She sighed. “So. What’s next for you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, is there a missus Non Sequitur waiting
for you at home? A girlfriend perhaps?”

“Not since last October.”

“Did she give you a dramatic ultimatum,
demanding that you give up your daring life of heroism, and you
chose justice?”

“Close. I caught her cheating on me with her
yoga instructor.”

“Ouch.”

“I should have realized. When your girlfriend
is paying a guy to teach her to contort her body into interesting
new configurations, and he wants to give her a private
session…”

“Yeah, that’s a bit glaring. Did she ever
explain why she cheated?”

“She said I was boring.”

“Well, you
are
boring,” Nonsensica
admitted.

“Thanks, that’s very helpful,” he
grumbled.

“That’s no excuse for cheating, though. If
you’ve got a boring guy, that just means the onus is on you to
inject the excitement into the relationship. And vice versa.
Anyway, look at you now. Tangling with super villains. Engaging in
war games on live TV… Say… you didn’t do this whole thing just to
impress little miss yoga, did you?”

“No way!” he objected, a bit too vigorously.
“I’m not going to bend over backwards to please her, particularly
since she’s now hooked up with a guy who can already do that.”

“Well, it’s for the best. A hero can’t date
someone outside of the hero biz. That’s a surefire way for them to
get kidnapped and held for ransom by a dastardly villain. That’s
why I stayed unattached.”

“Really?” he said. “You wouldn’t date a
non-superhero?”

“Nope. Must be able to stand up to the
villains, minimum requirement.”

“What about someone who has the powers, but
doesn’t fight crime?”

“Pff. If he can’t commit to wearing the cape,
why would he commit to a relationship? No thank you,” she stared up
at the bottom of his mattress, a smirk coming to her lips. “Why all
the interest?”

“No reason. Look, we should probably get to
sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. “Big
day.”

The night of
the war games was unusually cool and overcast for the Virginia
summer. If there had been any doubt about who was expected to win
this final test, one glimpse at the battleground was all it would
have taken to settle the argument. In the middle of a gently
rolling grassy field with a few scattered trees was a mock base
that covered about the area of a city block. Surrounding the
outside stood a fifteen foot wall lined with barbed wire, with a
catwalk around the top. With the exception of a rolling chain-link
gate wide enough to allow vehicles to drive through in the front,
the only other ways through the walls were two heavy doors on the
far corners. Within the wall was a large courtyard, taking up about
half of the area, with the main “facility” filling the rest. It was
a plain, boxy hunk of concrete. A double door adorned the first
floor at the front, with another door erected at every corner.
Beside each door was a window without so much as a pane of glass to
protect it. External staircases, one on the back side of the
building and one on the front to the left of the double doors, led
to the roof, where a watchtower stood. Beside the watchtower stood
the flagpole that needed to bear their flag by the end of the hour
if they expected to win. It was a bit like “Baby’s First Military
Base,” unrealistically accessible and with little in the way of
true fortification, but it more than made up for it in personnel.
Aside from the eight top superhero finalists, there were three full
squads of fully trained general infantry. That made for a total of
thirty-two soldiers, and meant that the training bunker may as well
have been a fortress. Clearly General Siegel was taking no chances
about the bottom eight actually winning.

If there was one thing working in the favor
of the infiltrating team, it was that this final trial had been set
up to begin at sunset, meaning that they at least had the cover of
darkness. To combat this, the defending team had set up large
floodlights on each of the surrounding walls. The courtyard was lit
as bright as day, and the lights penetrated far into the
surrounding field. So while sneaking in would be easier than in
broad daylight, it would still be no simple task.

At the very edge of the training area, the
eight heroes gathered behind a low hill. Most were dressed in their
standard-issue fatigues. The only holdout was Nonsensica, who had
rigidly refused to give up her costume. In light of the task at
hand, however, she had forgone the vibrant colors of her typical
garb, replacing them with a black latex bodysuit, black equipment
belt, and highlight-free hair.

Despite the assertion that, by design, they
had no chance at victory, the team had rehearsed their plan all day
long in hopes of producing a winning strategy. They would be using
a three stage assault, precisely timed and designed to make the
most of their abilities.

“Okay, everyone clear about their part?”
Phosphor asked.

“Hold on…” Bomb Sniffer said. She’d been
getting increasingly distracted as the group had drawn closer to
the facility, and when she realized no one else was similarly
distracted, she decided to speak up. “Am I the only one who smells
that?”

“Smells what?”

“I don’t know. It smells like a truck
stop.”

“I don’t smell anything,” Gracias said.

“Well, if I’m the only one who can smell it,
then we’ve got a problem, because it is definitely coming from the
base.”

“What do you mean when you say a ‘truck
stop’?”

“Like gas.”

“Diesel fuel?” Nonsensica offered.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Do you usually smell diesel fuel from far
away?”

“No,” she said. “Only explosives.”

“It is probably… oh, what’s that stuff that
uses diesel fuel… ANFO! That’s it. Ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. I
understand they use it in mining and such,” Phosphor said.

“Ammonium nitrate… Hold on… that’s the stuff
that got hit in that first heist. What was the second heist?”

“The squib thing,” The Number said.

“Right, a remote detonator for squibs,”
Nonsensica nodded. “I gotta figure that’s good for bigger
explosives, too.”

“Hold on. You don’t think there’s a bomb in
the base,” The Number said.

“If Bomb Sniffer smells it, then there
is
a bomb in the base. Or at least explosives.”

“But we stopped them!” Bomb Sniffer said.
“They didn’t get away with the detonator.”

Nonsensica nodded. “That one, no. But they
were after it. And they got away. Who’s to say they didn’t find
another?”

“No, no, no. I mean, even if those villains
were building a bomb, how do we know it was them that put this bomb
here? Maybe this is just residue on one of the trucks that brought
us here. Or maybe they just finished building this place and there
was blasting involved,” Non Sequitur reasoned.

“This is no residue. There is a
lot
of
it,” Bomb Sniffer said.

“And think about it. They were super
villains, and this is the only place in the world guaranteed to
have sixteen superheroes in the same building.”

The group silently considered the words.
Finally Phosphor keyed his radio and switched to the emergency
band. “Attention, we may have—”

Non Sequitur snatched the headset from his
head. “Don’t!”

“Why? We’ve got to let them know.”

“Look, we may not be on a military base right
now, but this is still a military exercise. I’ve got to believe
they wouldn’t have just let the whole thing start without searching
for anything dangerous. If there is a bomb on-site right now, then
whoever planted it had to have someone on the inside in order to
get it placed, and we already know they were planning to remote
detonate. If we let them know the jig is up, they might just light
the candle now.”

The group quietly entered this new
realization to the growing pile of problems.

“So what do we do?” Bomb Sniffer asked.

“As far as I can tell, there’s only one thing
we
can
do,” Nonsensica said. “We find the bomb and defuse it
ourselves. Losing this war game is no longer an option.”

Phosphor’s face took on a steely hardness.
“Okay. The plan stays the same, except the primary target is going
to be the lower level, not the upper level. If that bomb has stayed
hidden, it must be tucked away somewhere they didn’t expect us to
look. I know a bit of electronics. I’ll have to be on the search
team.”

“Wait. Do you really think we can do this?”
The Number asked.

“We better be able to. I didn’t put on my
stealth suit just to be blown up,” Nonsensica said.

“All right then. I’ll take Team A and go
around back. Team B, up front. I want you folks in and out quick,
right? A precision strike. And if things look like they are going
to go to pieces, try like mad to get that flag raised; and if you
get hit, you’ve got to go down and stay down, like the rules say.
The longer they think we’re playing the game, the longer it’ll take
whoever’s plotting this thing to figure out we’re on to him or her.
Got it?”

“Plus, if we’re going to die, we might as
well die winners,” Chloroplast quipped.

All nodded.

“Okay, hands in,” Phosphor said, sticking out
his right hand.

One by one the other members of the group
stacked their hands on his.

“To save lives,” Phosphor said.

“To become what we were meant to be,”
Nonsensica said.

“To continue the family legacy,” said Non
Sequitur.

“To see the look on Primadonna’s face,” said
The Number.

“To show what a real sidekick is made of,”
Gracias said.

“To make those bastards eat their words,”
Chloroplast said.

“To prove once and for all that I’m not just
a kid,” Bomb Sniffer said.

“Go-o-o te—” they began.

“To be remembered!” Afterthought added
quickly.

“Right, sorry. Once again,” Phosphor
said.

“Go-o-o team!”

They stood, eyeing up the fort in the
distance.

“Time to be heroes,” Non Sequitur said.

#

At the fort, Retcon stood at the top of the
wall, eyes peeled and gun ready. Beside him waited Undo. Below them
one of the squads of soldiers patrolled, slowly circling the wall
and sweeping the field around them with flashlights.

“So what do you figure they’ll do?” Undo
asked.

“Well, the way I figure, their only hope is
to try to sneak in. We got ’em out-manned and out-gunned. If we so
much as catch a whiff of ’em, we’re gonna have them painted head to
toe with pellets. So they’re gonna lay low, move slow, and stay
real quiet,” Retcon reasoned.

Undo nodded in agreement. For a beat, there
was silence, then in the distance a voice echoed, “
Hey,
everybody, look over here!”

Retcon and Undo, along with the soldiers
stationed at the top the wall and the nearest patrol, turned and
raised their guns. A pivoting spotlight was shifted to the source
of the voice. Standing on the top of a hill was Gracias. A grin to
came to his face.

“Grassy ass!”

An absurd serenade of puffs and rustles rang
out as the watch and the patrol suddenly received an uncomfortable
gift courtesy of his powers. Before any of them had recovered from
the initial shock of having to deal with a problem no sane human
has ever had to prepare for, Chloroplast sprang up from behind the
hill and sprayed the soldiers with a flurry of paintballs. Gracias
raised his own weapon and picked off a few more.

“Dang it!” Retcon growled, ducking below the
edge of the wall and pawing at the seat of his pants.

“I’m on it,” said Undo, who had managed to
un-look. He fired a few shots in the Blue Team’s direction, causing
them to retreat into the darkness, then pulled a radio from his
belt. “Enemy sighted on the west side of the facility. Men are
down. Dispatch support!”

#

The sudden attack from their foe plunged the
fort into a frenzy of activity. Only four soldiers had been hit,
but those in the best position to pursue the attackers were now
discovering the severe chafing that comes with a landscaped
posterior. Additional troops were pulled from the east side,
flooding out of the fort with their guns ready. A final soldier
bolted out of one of the rear doors. Behind him, the door began to
close but stopped just short of latching. Twenty seconds later, Non
Sequitur, grabbed it and pulled it open.