Again, how did we reach the last chapter of this arc so fast?
Chapter 182: Gen & Pym's Vacation Hideaway Part Five
Florida State Courthouse - 16:18 PM
This is a fucking trap.
James tenses in his seat as he refocuses on the trial, silently grunting as his knee seizes a bit. Nothing much seems to have changed since he spaced out. The same FBI investigator is questioning Gen who now sits in the witness stand with her arms crossed on her chest. Her face has never been more annoyed, which is saying something since James has only ever seen Gen irritated.
"Objection!" James exclaims, standing on his bench in the gallery.
All eyes turn to him, Gen's wider than anyone else's since she's wondering what he's doing.
"On what grounds?" The judge asks.
"Call for a mistrial?" James tries.
"Again, on what grounds?"
"Power outage."
"There is no-"
Before the judge could finish, James fires some bioelectricity at the nearest wall socket. As it sparks, James lunges forwards and grabs the shoulders of one of the fake SHIELD investigators. He swings his legs around and latches his ankles around the neck of the other one. Once he has a firm grip on them both, he barrel-rolls downwards, shrinking and flying away before they hit the ground.
James flies up just in time to see Gen pull an icer from her belt holster and fires at the fake judge. When she sees the fraud FBI investigators pull their guns on her, he whips a Pym particle disc from his pocket at the witness stand. It grows to be as tall as the judge's bench, shielding Gen from bullets. He fires at the investigators as Gen ducks out the judge's door.
Instead of following Gen, James flies through the vent. He has to come up with a distraction to cover their tracks as they escape.
He comes across an ant in the vent and he's got it. Flashbacks of his days at private school and his pissed-off father fill his mind but that means it'll work.
James takes out his phone and releases a new EMP. When he watches the ant twitch her antennae, sending out James's signal even further, he continued flying.
James exits the vents at one of the main hallways of the courthouse, growing back to his normal size once he hits the ground. He straightens his blazer and looks around him. No perpetrators or Gen in sight, but he does notice colonies of ants draping over the windows.
James shrinks and flies over the crowds of people as they burst from the courtrooms due to the ant infestation. He turns a corner and sees Gen spinning on her toes at the unexpected chaos. And to make things better, she drops into a ballerina splits to cause people around her to trip. When she scrambles back onto her feet, she locks eyes with James as they head outdoors.
-o-
Somewhere in Lecanto, Florida - 17:46 PM
James shrank his bright yellow convertible in the parking lot and put it in his pocket in exchange for a bright blue punch buggy. James flew in through the window and grew in the driver's seat as Gen got in next to him. He started the engine and slammed on the gas to get them out of the courthouse amidst the growing chaos.
James has no destination in mind and neither does Gen as they speed through the interstate. She takes her blazer off and throws it in the backseat, turning around to keep an eye out for anyone possibly following them.
Up ahead, James spots a wildlife preserve. He quickly turns in. He doesn't bother parking but throws his blazer in the backseat. Once he and Gen are out of the car, he shrinks it and shoves it in his pocket.
They speed inside and James slaps a fifty on the admission desk for two passes. He didn't care for change and they ran inside with paper bracelets as their tickets. Before entering the preserve, they run into the gift shop. James gives the cashier 5 hundreds before he and Gen grab a change of clothes. It's not like they had a lot of options. Baggy tees and button-ups, all patterned with either a cartoon animal on the preserve or a plant. James even snagged a postcard from the spinning rack and a pen.
"Keep the change!" Gen yells as they run to a bathroom to change.
They walk out of their respective bathrooms, stopping when they notice they're in the same stupid outfit. The same cartoon cactus-patterned button-up, jean shorts, floppy sunhat, and big sun-framed sunglasses. At least their shoes were different sneakers they wore to the courthouse. They abandoned their formal court clothes with James' Pym discs shrinking them so they could be placed in their pockets.
At least they look like one of those tourists instead of two SHIELD agents who escaped a trap in a courthouse in which one of them started an ant infestation.
No time to change. They enter the wildlife preserve and embark on one of the bridge paths, surrounded by the sounds of nature instead of gunfire and pestering questions. Tall trees and birds soaring overhead, a calm breeze fluttering past them as they stop on an observation deck overlooking a body of water where manatees were occasionally bopping on the surface. It matches the postcard James got from the gift shop.
For the first time all day, they feel relaxed.
"It's like being on vacation all the time," James comments, leaning on the railing overlooking the manatees.
Gen cringes as she stands next to him. "That's something Daniel would say." She smiles a little when a pair of manatees break the surface for a moment and a small laugh escapes her mouth. "How didn't we die?"
"The matching shirts."
Gen scoffs. "I could've gotten either hot Rogers twin, Asgardians, that freaky Barton or even Daniel, but I got you with your busted knee, incomplete dissertation, and this stupid outfit."
"The better deal."
"Don't oversell it." She takes off her shades and glances over at James who's writing the postcard to Angela. "How did you know the hearing was a set-up?"
"I was trusting quantum entanglement," he responds. "Even when particles are separated by a great distance, they always find their way back to each other."
Gen blinks. That stupid incomplete dissertation worked. "Well, thank you. Even I was getting suspicious when they kept badgering me to tell them what I got when SHIELD knew I didn't solve it."
"I figured you solved it and lied."
Gen nods. "Good job, Pym, because I did. Do you really think I couldn't? Get out of here. The death threats were real, though, and I said to SHIELD that it was interfering with my work so they pulled me from the case and relocated me to Florida. But after I decoded it and told SHIELD that lie, I scrambled the message and set up a program. It was a code on the carbon atoms so I installed a delay. Let whoever solves it next think they're getting somewhere when they discover it could be coordinates but really the code will flip into whatever I crafted. Geophysics and encryption, my specialties. The death threat people? They must've known I screwed with the diamond's encryption, hence the destruction of evidence."
James exhales a laugh. "You did say you'd go to jail for perjury. But why mess up the code? You're not that petty."
"Pym, I'm a petty mastermind. I had a plan that would get too convoluted if I told SHIELD the truth. Besides, I couldn't when I realized SHIELD was infiltrated. Didn't know who was compromised. I was even skeptical of you when you showed up."
"Seriously?" It's another reason for pointing a gun at him when she opened the door.
"But you brought your incomplete dissertation and kept whining about Angela so I figured you were real. Besides, you would've just let the bomb go off."
He grins. "So you cracked the diamond."
"Of course I did."
"Gen, please tell me the final destination of the weapons shipment. We didn't go through all that for you to keep quiet."
Gen's face softens as she looks around them. "Pym, you have to promise me that when I tell you, you won't act on it. I meant what I said when I told the fake court that nothing will happen if nobody knows the coordinates. If none of the parties have instructions, then they won't know what to do. Besides, the final destination can handle themselves and it's probably already resolved by now."
James is skeptical but as he said, they've been through too much at this point. Besides, she's a mastermind. "You have my word. Where is it?"
"Wakanda."
And that ends Gen & Pym's Florida adventure. You will meet our wonderful mastermind, Gen, again in SA.
Onto our final destination: Wakanda.