(Arriving) On A Jet Plane
Her eyes moved back and forth across the many people walking around the airport; some hugging others in reunions, others in goodbyes, people in business suits walking quickly towards the exit to find a cab and get back to work.
Her knuckles turned white as she grasped the sign with the codename 'Round Table' scrawled in her big block letters.
She wanted to be someone in a business suit - jumping in a cab and getting the heck out of here.
"Any sign of 'em?"
"Nope."
She sighed and glanced over the crowd again and tensed when she saw a slow moving crowd come forward from the arrival gate, some running to those they were meeting, others just walking along straight to the Luggage Claim.
In her ear, Dylan laughed.
"This is gonna be good."
"Shut your trap, Roosevelt."
He only laughed harder, and replied with something probably sarcastic, but she didn't hear it as her eyes locked onto a pair of familiar green ones. And the one with such eyes was walking straight towards her with a slight grin on his lips.
He was with three others.
She recognized the woman, but there were two other men, one bald with horn rimmed glasses, and the other with a thick head of chestnut brown hair. The four of them all wore suits which seemed a bit too much, especially for L.A., but from her research of the branch, their cover was a tailor shop; their agents were always impeccably dressed. She on the other hand, was casual; dressed in her Kingsman jeans (bulletproof) and favorite t-shirt.
They all came to a stop before her, and she smiled at them, falling short when she looked at him as she dropped her arms, folding the sign in half. Thanks to her research, she turned to the bald man and smiled as she held out her hand, greeting the superior first.
"Arthur, sir, a pleasure."
He raised an eyebrow but shook her hand with a firm grip.
"And it's a peculiar honor to meet the agent that solely took out two of my best; humanely with a tranquilizer dart, no less."
She shrugged as she ducked her head.
Someone cleared their throat and she looked up, meeting his gaze as he looked at her, an amused look on his face.
"How's your hip?"
She raised an eyebrow.
The first time she trained after she came home, she tore her stitches. During her second visit to the infirmary, she convinced the doctor to use glue instead. Since then, she trained through the pain. It was better to feel the physical than the emotional.
"How's your bruised ego?" she replied.
The woman burst out laughing as he frowned.
She only grinned and turned, motioning for them to follow.
"The luggage carrier should be rotating by now."
"That was rough."
She rolled her eyes, turning away and walking towards an empty column as she brought out her cell phone, pressing it to her ear so it didn't look like she was talking to herself.
"Oh please, he was asking for it."
"You're threatened by him, aren't you?"
She held back a laugh.
"Am I?" she asked sarcastically.
"Hey, he got the one up on you with the knife… and I distinctly remember you telling me that, and I quote: 'He's the best fighter I've met in a while. I didn't know if I really could've finished the job…'."
She brought a hand to her face, groaning.
"Jesus, I'm never drinking with you ever again."
He only laughed in her ear.
"You tell me that at least once a month, but the next weekend we're right back where we started."
"Sorry, excuse me," she heard a voice and closed her mouth from giving a retorting remark. She turned and pocketed her cell phone as she saw it was the woman she shot with her tranq dart. The fellow female Kingsman agent.
"I didn't mean to interrupt-"
"Nope, just my colleague," she said, pointing to her ear. The woman smiled in understanding and nodded.
"Are they here with you?"
"Yeah, he's waiting in the car. You guys got your bags?" she asked, glad that the woman, codename Lancelot if she remembered correctly, didn't hold any bad blood between them. Maybe she was feeling the same residual shock and admiration that there were other female Kingsman agents.
The woman nodded as he – Galahad – came up to them, grinning down at her shirt.
"Sometimes it helps, y'know," he said, tilting his head.
She rolled her eyes, glancing down at her shirt of a cartoon taco with its hand in the air, the text below reading 'Don't wanna taco bout it.'
"That's the oldedst line I've gotten from this shirt. At least try to be original."
"So you're the taco, then."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Excuse me?"
He raised an eyebrow in return.
"Hard shell on the outside, but chewy and soft on the inside," he said, and then gave her another look, down an up her body.
Lancelot slugged his shoulder, but he acted as though it didn't affect him at all as he kept her gaze.
She didn't flinch at the stab on her weight. It was almost a compliment compared to what other people felt the need to say – especially being a woman in her field.
"You're the taco. I'm… I'm the jawbreaker," she said, looking towards the others to make sure they were ready and had their bags before turning back to him, "Taco shells break easily."
She smiled at the others, "Alright then, follow me, ladies," she said, hearing a laugh from Lancelot as she walked away, not bothering to look back to see if they were following. They were agents; she didn't need to babysit them.
"Jawbreaker's not a food, it's a fight move," she heard him mutter and almost laughed out lout.
"Have you never read Willy Wonka?" Lancelot whispered back.
"What, the movie with that bastard Johnny Depp?"
"Jawbreaker's another word for gobbstopper…"
"But that's got a bunch o' layers. What does that have'ta do with the taco?"
"Oh, you are so hopeless."
"Better movie reference would be Shrek and the onion."
"And I shall repeat, you are so hopeless."
She grinned all the way to the parking lot, turning at the last row of cars where she saw Dylan leaning against the trunk of the Cadillac SUV, smiling as he stood up and uncrossed his arms once he saw them. He'd dressed up for the occasion, in his uniform jeans with a white shirt and black blazer.
"Fellow colleagues! Welcome to America!" he said dramatically, popping open the trunk, smartly reaching for Arthur's suitcase first.
"Shut it, Roosevelt," she muttered and he laughed, throwing an arm around her shoulder. She returned the gesture, her hand reaching into his jacket pocket.
"I can only hope that Lincoln here was a bright and sunny greeter?" he asked.
Lancelot nodded and the three men looked at one another.
"Of course!"
There was a beat of silence.
"Well, even though I've been sitting for the past eleven hours, with these three snoring like a winter storm, I'm so tired I need to sit again! Let's go to headquarters, Roosevelt, shall we?"
Lincoln and Roosevelt looked at each other. Seems that she wasn't the only one who did their research.
"I like her," Dylan whispered as the guests entered the car.
"Wait, who called shotgun?" Dylan asked.
She smiled, holding up the keys she'd lifted from him.
"Not my problem," she said as she moved the the driver's side, climbing in and buckling her seatbelt before she turned on the car.
She heard the final car door slam and checked the rearview mirror. Lancelot and Percival were in the far back, with Arthur and Dylan in the back – which meant… she turned to the passenger seat, and refrained from rolling her eyes at Galahad.
With her research, she memorized all of their codenames and faces before she left with Dylan for the airport. She still didn't know their names though.
She turned the car on and lithely pulled out of the parking spot, giving the parking attendant a hefty tip as they left.
It took a while to leave the airport with such traffic, but soon enough they were on the freeway, leaving them in awkward silence.
She let out a soft sigh and turned on the radio, a Black Keys song filling the car.
"Turn it to bluetooth," Dylan said.
"That's a warning if I've ever heard one," she muttered and changed the audio setting. "We're Going To Be Friends" by The White Stripes started playing.
She let out a harsh laugh and switched it back to the radio.
"Hey, we'll need the right playlist if we're gonna be working together," Dylan defended himself.
She looked at Galahad out of the corner of her eye, and caught him doing the same.
Galahad. What a name. Knights of the Round Table... it was almost too British. Though if she really thought about it, the lot of the UK branch probably felt the same with their code-names as U.S. Presidents.
She looked back to the road, slowing down as she saw traffic ahead.
"So… I'm guessin' you guy's don't use cabs?" Galahad asked.
Dylan was the one to speak.
"Turn it back to bluetooth and I'll tell ya."
Galahad leant forward and fiddled with the console, and "With a Little Help From My Friends" started playing. Galahad laughed along with others, and she looked in the rearview mirror, surprisingly meeting Arthur's gaze. He only raised an eyebrow at her. She raised one back before looking towards traffic.
"As for your question," Dylan continued, "we have one or two cabs and a Business Uber Account, but with our training in driving, we usually just drive ourselves."
She felt his gaze on her and she ignored him, keeping her eyes on the small sedan in front of her, with the cliché family stickers that included two dogs and a cat.
"What was the trainin' with drivin'?" he asked, confirming her thoughts that each branch had a different 'interview' process.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
Street racing. It was a two parter, mostly. Undercover was the first part, not to raise any suspicions and blend in, the second part was winning the race itself. The last three to cross the finish line were sent home, and three more remained.
Dylan answered again.
"Street racing."
There was silence.
"Well that's vague," Percival muttered.
"What were your weapon scores?" Galahad asked instead, looking at her, "Must've been top notch; that butterfly blade you dropped back in New York but risked discovery to go back for… I figure that's your weapon of choice."
She frowned and something in the corner of her eye had her moving her gaze to the rearview mirror again, in time to see Dylan's jaw twitch.
She looked to Galahad. When they were having a slumber party and painting each other's toenails, then she would tell him why she went back for it.
"Scores mean nothing. I'm here now, aren't I?" she asked, giving another glance towards Dylan, checking to see how he was doing. He lifted his head and they caught each other's eyes before she turned back to watch the road. She checked her side view and swerved to the next lane, speeding up and passing another slow moving car, her signal on the whole time as she stopped in the number one lane of the freeway.
"She's still rough with a sniper rifle. She does better hand to hand," Dylan said, and Ana rolled her eyes.
"Yeah, I know that," Galahad muttered, and she turned and glared at him.
He only grinned, and she shook her head.
"I could help train you, if you'd like. Seems you've got some more to learn in that field," she said.
His grin fell, and his eyes dropped into slits as he turned away and faced the windshield, taking the liberty to change the station back to KROQ, currently playing a Red Hot Chili Peppers song.
"Oh come on, I had the Toy Story song next," Dylan said.
"Hell no," she said at the same time he muttered "Nope".
They drove in silence the rest of the way. Percival and Lancelot put the windows down and enjoyed the coastline as they drove down the PCH for a few miles.
She turned onto a shoulder and onto an unmarked road, the dirt road a little bumpy.
"Doesn't look like much at first, but it's all mostly underground," she said, "We're close enough to LAX that it needs to seem like just another mansion in the Pacific Palisades to overhead planes."
"Why so close to... to..."
"To civilization?" she finished, looking over at Galahad. "Because shit goes down in the city, not the suburbs. And there's not a lot of untouched area here. Just big properties."
"We're one of the big ones," Dylan said.
Soon the dirt road smoothed out into pavement, and they turned a corner to see the luxurious mansion that was the US Kingsman Headquarters. But, like the iceberg of the Titanic, there was much more below.
She pulled up to the doors, where two techies rushed forward to open the car doors for their guests.
"Welcome to Kingsman, the American branch."
Leaving On A Jet Plane by John Denver
Thanks for the reviews! They mean a lot. Seriously. Expect more puns regarding reviews to come. It engages my creative side.
G: I gotchu, girl. With this specific character I had a lot of inspiration from my own A&D, if you get my drift. Thank you for the review.
Guest: I hope you read further. If not, I understand. But to be honest your review gave me a great idea for a future chapter, so thank you!
That's why I love reviews. Negative and positive. It helps me as a writer grow and change and think of better things.
You all are amazing and beautiful and I am forever grateful.