Jack and James dust themselves off from the rough landing on the pavement and Jack turns to James as he's about to speak. Before he can, James puts his finger to his own lips and gestures for him to get on the ship with him. Jack's a bit confused as normally when James tells him to quit talking, he's much more direct about it. He follows James onto the ship, wondering if someone might be watching them.
When they get on the ship, James pulls out a spare set of clothes from one of the drawers and gives it to Jack. He then points to the bathroom and mouths the words "Not… a... word...". Jack's now more worried than ever that maybe Genie did something strange to them while they were bound, but goes into the bathroom anyway. He changes his clothes faster than he probably ever has in his life, and even though the clothes are about a size too small for him, he comes out of the bathroom just in time to see James coming out of the back room, also in a new set of clothes.
He holds a metal bucket that contains all of the clothes he was once wearing, and James pushes it in front of him. Jack freezes for a second, now genuinely panicking, but James gives him a reassuring nod. Jack drops his clothes into the bucket, and James heads outside with it. Jack stays in the doorframe of the ship, and is happy to stay behind and watch James's actions from relative safety. James gets about fifty feet away from the ship when he sets the bucket on the ground, and takes a little green ball of energy from his pocket. He nonchalantly tosses it into the bucket and a huge fireball plumes from it.
Jack hides inside the ship when he sees the explosion go off, and when James reboards the ship, he has a happy little grin. "Alright now, we're good to talk", James says as he sits down in the captain's chair.
"Oh, good, because I was just about to ask WHAT THE HELL THAT WAS ALL ABOUT?"
James simply points out the window, which Jack looks out of to see the fiery bucket. "See those little wisps of red smoke coming out from the bucket?", he asks Jack as he begins firing up the engines of his ship.
Jack squints to look out at it, and can just barely see the bits of red smoke James's talking about through the fog of black smoke coming from the burning clothes. "Sorta? You sure that isn't burning dye from the clothes?"
"Those little bits of red smoke come from burning little coils inside certain electronics. Namely… microphones."
"Microphones? How'd we get a microphone on…", Jack pauses mid-sentence as he puts the pieces together. "Did Don Genie bug us?"
James hits a button on his control panel that sounds like a winner's bell for a game show contestant. "Probably while his goons were spinning us around. They had hands all over us and could've just slipped it onto us at any time. That's a little thing I've picked up from working with folks like the Don. Even when they give you work, you can't always trust them."
"But why would they feel the need to mic us? I mean, we're doing what they want."
"Probably thinking we're more in cahoots with the feds than we're leading onto. I get why he'd do it, I just don't wanna be bugged, by either Don OR the Feds."
Just then, a sharp ringing blares out in the cabin of the ship. James looks at his comm device and sees that he's getting a call from an unknown and untrackable number. He's about to answer it, but pauses, thinks, and decides to give Don a taste of his own medicine. He turns on the call but has the call play in the cabin of the mothership as well, so the other racers can hear it too, and be more aware of what's going on from the man himself. James hits the button to turn on the call, and wonders just how foul of a mood Don's going to be in for breaking his microphone.
"WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO MY BUG?", shouts Don as James's smile gets really big.
"Oh wow, you were right about it, nice job, Captain…", Jack says to him, trying to keep up the ploy of him being a rookie Galaxy Dog, which gets a big thumbs up from James.
"Sorry Don, but you know I don't like being tagged like that. If the Feds can trust me to do my job without asking any questions, then so can you."
"Yea, we'll I'm not the Feds, I'm THE Don Genie, and I don't appreciate you taking liberties with my possessions."
"Alright Don, I won't set any more of the bugs you plant on me on fire."
"I'm gonna hold you to that. Anyway, I'm sending you the coordinates of where the ambush is planning to be. Tomorrow at sunrise sharp. Don't be late."
The call hangs up before James can say something snarky in response. James simply nods in understanding as Jack exhales again. Talking with someone like the Don is still a bit of a harrowing experience for him, but hopefully he's getting better. The two make it back to the ship without any more problems, though Jack feels comfortable enough now to ask a bunch of questions about being a mercenary, the mechanics of his ship, other experiences James has had with Don Genie and others like him, among a litany of other things. It's along this journey back to the ship when James remembers why he doesn't have a lot of friends.
When they get on the ship, the other five crew members are in the cockpit, chatting it up. Zoda turns to greet James and Jack, and has a tale to tell them. "Guys, guys, guys, you just missed it. We were all just hanging out, doing nothing, but there was a fly in the room with us. We all tried to get it, but everyone missed."
"Even Gazelle?", James interrupts to say.
"I could've got it, but you'd have a big hole in your control panel if I did", he'd retort. "Anyway, don't interrupt. So we all had a crack at this fly before finally, Monique… oh sorry, Mrs. Arrow (*thumbs up from Monique*) finally kills the darn thing. And like two seconds later, this voice comes booming over the intercom. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO MY BUG?" Scared the crap out of her, everyone was just dying in here. You should've seen it."
"I'll check the security tapes later", James says while chuckling at the story, as Jack is busting a gut behind him. "But that does answer the question I was about to ask if you heard the call we had with Genie."
"Yep, very loud and very clear", Jody says as she turns to Jack. "So, how'd the meeting go?"
"Not bad…", James starts to reply before Jody interrupts him.
"Sorry, but I wanna get the story from Jack, that's the whole reason he went." James rolls his eyes a little and flops into the captain's chair.
Jack thinks long and hard about everything that happened between when they left and when they came back. Unfortunately, he goes through as much detail as he can so that he can remember everything, so the recounting of it ends up taking almost half as long as the entire trip down there and back as he recounts every detail of every conversation he saw or was a part of. When Jody tries to get him to move ahead in the story, he starts having trouble remembering stuff, because his train of thought is disrupted, and he just goes back to where he was before. Eventually, Jody relents and asks to hear the story from James instead, but he insists that Jack tell the story, since Jody wanted to hear it so badly.
"And then we came into the cockpit, and Zoda said there was a bug, and…"
"OK, I think we've got everything, thanks a ton, Jacky", she says, pushing away her tablet with pages and pages of notes typed onto it.
"Good job, Jack. Just like what I told you to tell her", James says while still reading his tablet with his feet kicked up on the console, to which Jody exasperatedly shoots a middle finger at him.
"Alright, so now that we know absolutely everything we could ever need to know about this ambush, who're we sending down to do it?", Jody asks while barely lifting her tired head off the table.
James sets down his tablet, finally ready to rejoin the conversation. "Oh it's still going to be just me and Jack. Those are the people Don knows are going to be down there, and I don't want to surprise him with anyone he's not expecting, especially if it's a cop. If we start changing the terms of our deal, he might feel comfortable doing the same thing."
"I mean, I guess, but I figured I'd give you an out."
"Oh what the matter, Jody? Is the bit not funny anymore since we're getting along just fine now?", James replies with a smirk that's almost stretching off his face.
Jack turns to James, "Hey James, when we head to the mission tomorrow, can we leave early for some breakfast?"
"Yea yea, whatever, we'll get some grenades. Point is, Jack and I have this totally under control, and once we're done, we can take Guster back to the GSF, and we don't even have to unhypnotize him. Don's just going to give him to us since Shadow held out on him."
"By the way, James", pipes up Dr. Clash, "a couple of us were talking earlier, and sending Antonio back still mind-controlled probably counts as 'needing serious medical attention upon their return', so I hope you don't mind that little cut in your bounty."
James freezes in place. "I… had not thought about that. Damn… Alright, new plan. Once we get Guster, we do everything we can to unhypnotize him, and if that doesn't work, we'll send him to the doctor's office."
"What do you mean 'everything we can'? Do you have any ideas about how to do that without injuring Antonio or worse?", Jody asks, once again getting concerned James is going to do something dangerous and life-threatening in the name of a better mission result.
"Relax, Jody. I'm not going to do anything that'll put him in danger, we'll just all come up with ideas, and test them out on the way to GSF headquarters, and if we can't figure it out by then, we'll take the 100 million, and move on with our lives. Honestly, you worry too much", James says as he relaxes in his seat as Jody is on the verge of an aneurysm across the aisle from him.
As the tension looms in the air between the two, Jack raises his hand awkwardly. "Jack, you don't need to raise your hand", James says in an annoyed tone. "You aren't in school anymore, and we're all adults here. Now what's your question?"
Jack looks a little uncomfortable from all that he'd just heard, and is a little nervous to ask. "So, what's an ambush entail?"
"Oh yea, you've never done this sort of thing before, right. So, there's a base that the Sabaku No Ei have set up and we just need to go in there, and just push them back, as far as they can go. Eventually, they'll be pushed back to the ships they arrived on, and will hopefully retreat off the planet. Easy peasy, as long as we have some experienced… combat… shooters…" His sentence trails off as he realizes who he's talking to, with Jack nodding weakly at him while having trouble looking anyone in the eye.
James puts his face in his hands and lets out a long sigh. "Jack, have you ever used a gun before?", James asks, already knowing the answer, which Jack gives him with an embarrassed head shake. James lets out a groan, but then composes himself with a deep breath. "Alright, this is fine. We have 12 hours, and at least two skilled gun users on here. We can make this work."
"Will we still have time for breakfast tomorrow?"
