And that's how Jubilation Lee and I ended up with our arms in up to our shoulders inside the walls of an armored military train car.
"Woo!" Jubes crowed. "I~ got~ the panel~ off! I~ got~ the panel~ off!" She sang aloud.
I ducked my head back out of the food-storage cabinet in the end wall of my compartment. "Aw, what? I can't even find a panel."
She waggled her lightly illuminated fingers at me.
"Remind me again how I'm useful..." I muttered, sticking my head back among the pile of protein bars in the cabinet, and resuming my fumbling along the inner wall, feeling for the lip of an electrical panel cover. "Also, remind me again how exactly he knows so much about our death train?" I called out, much more loudly.
"I designed it." Warren Worthington the Third said with a heavy sigh. "Not these military-adapted ones - but the 'Executive Passenger Leisure Suites' were essentially the same." He cleared his throat, "Now, there should be two switches, J-"
"If you call me anything but 'Jubes'," Miss Jubilation Lee warned him, "I will make sure you live to regret it."
"Duly noted." Warren paused respectfully, then continued, "So, two switches, Jubes... One for the main overhead lights, and the other for-"
There was a click.
"Ooh, mood lighting." Jubes whistled quietly. "Nice design work, Casanova."
I groaned. I wasn't about to spend the rest of the week in the dark. "Let-" I bashed against the inside surface. Nothing. Solid. "There-" I reached in further and higher, and gave it another thump. Zilch. "Be-" I tried lower, hitting along the shelf line. To no avail. "Light!" I shouted, exasperated – my hand icing slightly despite my inhibitor collar, as I slugged the inner wall one more time – and, all of a sudden, something popped open under the pressure of my fist. "Yes!" I quickly wiped the condensation from my hand off on my shirt, flipped the switches I found behind the panel, then rejoined the others.
Warren had moved his bed into the middle of his area, and was now starting to remove his shoes. Jubes shrugged at me; we both decided to follow suit.
"Okay, so what on Earth inspired you to design a train?" I asked, dragging my plastic bed frame to a central position.
"I thought it'd be obvious..." Warren mused as he tossed his Mezlans into the corner of his compartment. "I hate flying."
Jubes and I exchanged another wordless glance with one another.
Warren rolled his eyes, and clarified, "...When it involves using anyone else's wings. You know, big metal ones."
"Uh oh, I might have to promote Wings to 'wit', Bobberoo..." Jubes cast a brief smirk in my direction, while we watched Warren situate himself on his back on the floor and start doing leg presses, effortlessly lifting the paltry weight of his bed as makeshift resistance.
"Don't get too carried away just yet, Jubes..." I chided her, as we convened on the floor under our own beds. "'Cause I get the feeling that Jack LaLanne over there isn't too concerned about the amount of laughter in our training regime..."
"I can hear you, you know." Warren had stopped mid-rep, and propped himself up on one elbow to give us both a withering look.
"Right." I swallowed, and placed my feet on the underside of my bed frame. "Well, 'when in Rome'..."
"...'Try not to get thrown to the lions'?" Jubes gave me one last quick grin before focusing her concentration on the exercise.
We carried on for some time, mostly in silence - save for Warren barking out new positions, or rest intervals, or how many more repetitions we had to do.
"Well. I feel bad. For Julian." Jubes was the first to cave, doing her best to converse between push-ups. "He's prob'ly. Gonna spend. The rest. Of the week. In the dark. Swearing himself. Hoarse."
"Five more." Worthington declared indifferently.
"Unless he. Accidentally. Trips the lights. While he's. Trashing his room... ugh!" Jubes let herself collapse to the floor as she finished, waiting a few moments for her breathing to steady itself out. She sighed aloud. "Is it bad that I'm thanking my lucky stars there's not another room in our train car? I mean, not that I don't wanna see him... but... he's just a total ass when he's angry. Not the kind of reunion I wanna be party to, y'know?"
"What did you say?" Warren asked, eyeing her from under the edge of a lifted wing, as he too was laid out prone on the floor.
"Oh – Julian – um, the Idaho tribute." She said, pushing a few stray hairs back behind her ear. "You saw the reaping, right? So... I actually knew him in L.A. when we were growing up. He's sort of a j-"
"No, not that." Warren's brow furrowed and his feathers ruffled reflexively while he looked past us to Jubes' far wall. "I meant – it's odd – there should be one more compartment."
Jubilation Lee stared intently at her other wall in all of its opaque glory, then looked back at us and shrugged. "Unless you guys got a pair of x-ray specs I can borrow... There's a whole lotta nothing there, that I can see."
"Maybe they just left out the fourth wall on these military trains." I sat up and rolled my shoulders to ease the tension out of the muscles, "You see it all the time in accounting case studies; if your client - in this case, the government – massively overspends on, let's say, nuclear warheads, then they try to cut costs somewhere else to meet budget, and-"
I could feel two pairs of eyes suddenly boring holes into me.
"And I said that out loud, didn't I..." I rubbed my face wearily. "I guess there's no point in keeping it secret any longer." I cleared my throat and admitted, "My name is Robert Drake. And I'm a CPA."
"Oh man," Jubes exclaimed, "You're like Clark Kent, only more boring!"
"Yeah," I coughed, "You know, that's exactly how Harras, Anderson & Brown offered the job to me."
"Sorry, B, I like you and all. It's just..." Jubes giggled unapologetically, "It's just – you're doomed, y'know – 'cause everyone hates accountants."
"Well, I don't hate them." Warren offered. "Sometimes they save us money."
"Yeah, thanks..." I shook my head, "But it's fine. I always knew that death and taxes were the only certainty in life." I shrugged, "Just kind of hoped it was going to take longer to prove it..."
"Mm, it could be worse," Warren countered. "The only thing you ever designed in your life could come back to bite you in the ass." He gave a half-hearted laugh, and pushed himself up to sit on the edge of his bed. "Oh, but I bet Industries is having a field day right now - R&D always gets approached for all sorts of weird stuff for the Games... We'll see what they can come up with to save me from this." He sighed, "Wouldn't be surprised if my father rigged it all somehow, just for the publicity."
"Wow," Jubes gave us a polite round of applause. "Well, if you guys are done getting all those impressive, mopey monologues out of your systems... Maybe we could carry on with this 'trying to save ourselves' junk?"
