Chapter Five: Need to Be a Little Crazy
"Jamie!"
The blogger grumbled and rolled over in her sleep.
"Jamie!" Rollo tried again, shaking her until she opened her eyes and sat up, her brown hair askew.
"What?" she grumbled.
"Your phone's ringing."
She stared at him.
"You could have let whoever it was leave a message!"
"But the display says it's Vince calling. What if he's on patrol and he needs help?"
"Then he could have gotten his dear husband to go with him," she muttered. Or Rollo could have answered it himself if he was so worried about the Cape. Alright, maybe she was a tad cranky upon waking up, but she hadn't had her coffee yet. She squinted at the clock, grabbed the phone from him and answered it. "It's a quarter after five in the morning. This better be important!"
"Orwell, how the HELL could you tell Ruvi that we were expecting?"
"What are you talking about? I haven't spoken to Ruvi…" Jamie narrowed her eyes and looked at her boyfriend. Rollo began backing towards the door of the bedroom.
"You get back here!" she hissed. "I specifically told you not to tell anyone!"
"Funny, that's what I remember telling you," Vince interjected.
"I am so sorry, Vince! That's what I get for thinking that someone knew how to keep a secret." Pausing only to grab a robe and slip into it, she followed Rollo into the state of the art kitchen.
"Don't go blaming this on Rollo! You're the one that blabbed, even though you had the most experience in secret-keeping.
"Tell me the truth, if I hadn't accidentally married your father would I ever have gotten your real name?"
"Yes…maybe…" but probably not, if she were being honest with herself. She sighed. She wouldn't have been so secretive if she hadn't been worried about her partner's reaction to her relation to one Peter Fleming. How was she supposed to know that a few years later they would be giving her a sibling? Ugh, too early in the morning for that thought.
She glared daggers at the back of Rollo's head. The shorter man was busying himself with making a pot of coffee, which showed that he wasn't completely suicidal.
"I doubt that," Vince said, reminding her that she was still on the phone.
"You can't seriously blame me for telling my boyfriend that I'm going to have a brother or sister Vince," Jamie argued. "And on top of that, he's your best friend. Weren't you going to confide in him?"
"…Eventually," Vince sighed. "Yes, I was, but he told Ruvi! I am never going to hear the end of this! It's…"
"I'm sure it could be worse," she assured her stepfather as Rollo handed her a mug of coffee that proclaimed her the 'WORLD'S GREATEST HACKER.'
'TELL HIM' Rollo mouthed to her. She looked at him blankly. 'ABOUT ELAINE,' the thief continued. Finally understanding, she shook her head and tried to hand him the phone. He backed away out of reach. Jerk, she thought.
"Er, Vince, I don't know if you've heard yet, but I received a text from Trip and…"
"Is he alright?" the vigilante asked in concern.
"He's great," Jamie bit her lip and then plunged on. "So is his little sister." She waited for a response.
"His little sister," the Cape repeated.
"Her name is Elaine Kirchner; Vince? Are you okay?"
"Of course; I'm happy for Dana and Jack. I have to go finish up patrol. I'll talk to you later."
"Goodbye," Jamie said, before hanging up.
~VF~
He was happy for them, he reminded himself. Dana was part of his past. They had both moved on.
Vince had to look on the bright side, he told himself as he changed out of his costume at home. He was in love; between him and Peter they already had two healthy kids that loved them (or loved him, anyway; Vince wasn't too sure how Jamie felt about her father) and they were expecting another. So what if Ruvi now knew that he and Fleming were having a baby? He could handle Ruvi. Hell, he could hypnotize Ruvi and teach the jackass to mind his own damn business.
Things could be worse.
He crawled into bed beside Peter and fell asleep within minutes.
~VF~
"Vincent, could you come out here, please? We have company," Peter called not long after Vince had risen.
"Coming," Vince called back. He went out into the sitting room and froze.
Things had just gotten worse.
The Jackals were assembled there.
~VF~
"Please tell me this is a bad dream."
When Vince had been in the army, which seemed a lifetime ago, he had headed a crack team code-named the Jackals. More like the team acted like it was on crack, he thought, a smile curving his lips. There had been certain instances that he wasn't too proud of, some of which had led to the signing of a contract that, it was hoped, would keep the Jackals from reuniting after returning to civilian life.
As fate would have it, the contract's loophole that permitted contact after a third party's intervention had been triggered a few years ago, on Vince's wedding night, to be precise. Jake Lofgren happened to have been dating the officiator, who brought him in as a witness.
(Watching Faraday play tonsil-hockey with his groom was one way to learn the former officer was bisexual.)
The fact that Jake was still in one piece was a testament to the fact that he had kept the former Mrs. Faraday from learning his involvement in Captain Faraday's nuptials to Fleming.
The entire group wasn't assembled. Marty, of course, was gone. And the last time Vince had checked, Tom Hartman was a resident in a facility, being treated for compulsive fire-setting. No, wait, it couldn't be…
"Hiya, Captain!"
"Hartman, since when are you allowed to use Skype?"
"They're rewarding me for good behavior. I haven't set anything on fire in…two, three weeks, maybe?" This was a record for him. "And I may have hinted that letting me video chat would keep me from setting fire to the computer…"
"What are you guys doing here?"
"I bumped into a friend of yours at a casino last night," Lofgren began. "Romanian fellow, what was his name?"
"Ruvi," Vince supplied through gritted teeth.
"That was it," Jake nodded.
(Ruvi had met Jake at Vince's last birthday party. The vigilante suspected he would come to regret that. Truthfully, his amusement outweighed his fear and his anger. It was good to see his old friends again. But the hypnotist had been trying to stick it to him and for that he would pay.)
"So as I was saying, he caught up to me at the slot machines. Imagine my surprise when he said you were having another kid. I had to call the others. If this isn't a reason to get the gang back together, then I don't know what is!"
"Is it true? Father Jackal's going to be a father again?" Gregory Hanson asked. He had flown in from Georgia and was already regretting not taking the road. The plane was faster, but it was also impossible to smuggle a gun aboard.
"So much for being discrete," Peter muttered. "Don't tell me you're here to throw him a baby shower?"
"Some of us aren't gay," Winston Greene piped up. "We're here to get him blind drunk!"
"I beg your pardon?"
"We never got to give him a bachelor party before his second wedding," Hanson pointed out.
That's because there was no period of bachelorhood separating the two marriages, Chess observed.
"So we're absolutely going to party now," Winny declared.
"I see. If you'd like to use the penthouse—"
"NO!" Vince interrupted Peter before he could finish making the offer. Much as he used to look down on the penthouse, it had become his home, and he'd like it to remain in one piece. The odds of it surviving the presence of so many Jackals unscathed were not good.
"I mean, we'll go out," Vince continued quickly.
"Hey, Captain, when do we get to meet the woman carrying the youngest Faraday?" Hanson asked.
"You don't." The last thing Vince needed was for Deveraux to meet the Jackals.
"Do you want to hit the—"
"No, we are not going to the casinos," Vince interrupted Lofgren.
"Spoilsport; do you know if it's going to be a boy or a girl?"
"Not yet," Faraday replied as the veterans piled into the high-rise's elevator. He turned to the others. "I do hope you're smarter than to let him give you anything other than 50/50 odds on that."
~VF~
Back in his room, Hartman frowned at his computer. It was completely unfair that he had to miss out on all the fun because of his mandatory treatment. He debated setting the P.C. on fire. It would satisfy him in the short term, but then he wouldn't be able to use it for video chatting anymore.
It was best to pick a different target. Maybe this time he could make it look like spontaneous combustion…
Really, he didn't see why out of the original six men, he was the only one that wound up in an institution. The shrinks would say that they each had their own pathology. Alright, so his involved pyromania; Lofgren was a compulsive gambler; Hanson had a tendency to shoot people and Greene was terribly quick to employ his expertise in demolitions.
The Captain was the only one that was tricky to diagnose, but if pressed Hartman would say that Faraday's problem was recklessness. Time after time he would get himself into a situation that he might not have been able to walk away from. The incident at the train yards awhile back was a good example: Faraday had come incredibly close to being blown to smithereens. And would anyone have been called to account? No; ARK's justification was that a dangerous nut had been resisting arrest.
That may have been the case, but was that any reason to kill the man?
~VF~
Sometime in the dead of night, Vince stumbled back into the penthouse. Not ambitious enough to try for the bedroom, he collapsed onto the couch.
Peter took one look at him, sighed, and roused him enough to be able to half-drag him to their room.
Author's Note: Chapter title from Avril Lavigne's "What the Hell".
Well, I am an author of my word. I promised IronAmerica that after she wrote "What the Hell Is Going On?" I would have her Jackals make an appearance in "The Baby Carriage." (Yes, it took me awhile, but I still did it.)
Thanks again to IronAmerica and Orwell for reviewing!
Now, I don't want to say that it'll be months before the next chapter if I don't get reviews, but…