Peppermint

Chapter 27 - Juke Box Hero

***GABE***

The Second 'Verse looks eerie as hell when we return to it. It's daytime, but as the Bay Area takes a lashing from a major rainstorm, you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise. And despite this darkness, there's almost no light on the ground that we can see from our current perch on top of one of the tallest buildings in downtown San Jose.

Almost no light.

But there's an exception roughly to the west-northwest - the shining green circle that is Peppermint world headquarters. Merry Christmas, assholes, that's what they're telling us. They're also luring us in. Me, Fionna, Jackie, Yash, Aditya, and Liz. We're ready to come at them, and they're ready to cut us down the second we set foot on their property.

We barely have a plan, any more than the last time I was on a sneak-in party at this place. But we also don't have time to make one, and everyone else with me accepts that enough to go along with the non-plan to rush Peppermint like we're trying to steal the football from Kaepernick. Okay, bad analogy, because that makes Peppermint sound like the good guys here. No, they're more like Tom Brady.

The one thing we have closest resembling a plan, Liz came up with it, based on her prowess as a light elemental. "Once we're inside," she says, "if they have any powerful sources of light - fluorescent tubes, laser tripwires, et cetera - I can catch them in my hand and use these mirrors" - she holds up one small silvered disc, which she keeps in her pocket - "to help redirect them like banking shots."

I nod, liking the idea already. "Sounds like a Jak and Daxter weapon."

"You're old enough to know those?" Jackie asks.

"My brother and I grew up with a vintage PS2," I explain.

Liz puts her mirror disc away. "No, I kinda got a little inspiration from Brazilian jujitsu. I call this trick-"

"Something Portu-GAY-zee?" Aditya affects a Brazilian accent so high and nasally, it makes his voice break on the last two syllables. Yash coughs, his brown skin flushing a bit at his embarrassment for his brother.

"If only Russell were here," Liz says coolly. "He'd start swearing at you in Portuguese for mangling his mama's ancestral tongue."

"You know Russell?" Fionna asks.

"A bit, yeah. Old friends and all that." Liz smiles fondly at the thought of him - more than he deserves, a small, uncharitable part of me wants to say. "No, but I didn't give it a Portuguese name. I call it the Romanian Reflexion."

"Why?" I ask. "'Cause of the banking? Doesn't Romania have one of the twistiest hairpin roads in the world?" The facts I've picked up from Alex picking them up in the first place, you wouldn't believe.

"That's true, but it's actually a linguistic joke," Liz says. "Romanian uses tons of reflexive pronouns. You can say 'Nous nous aimons' in French, say, but in Romanian you can say 'Noi ne iubim pe noi înșine.'" Her Romanian flows very well, and she underscores it by talking with her hands as effectively as any Maltese or Italian. "Like...'We ourselves love for ourselves in and of ourselves.'"

"Loosely," says Fionna.

"As one of the Bay Area's few Romanians, I take my Romanian pride seriously," Liz says with a wink.

I tap the toes of my Chucks on the edge of the roof. "Listen, I hate to be that guy, but time is of the essence, and I got a cousin and a cute boyfriend among those we gotta save, so...maybe we should get moving?"

"Yeah..." Fionna stretches the wings in her suit, which she stole from Harlan's lab along with those of Yash and Aditya, plus two prototypes for Liz and Jackie. It's so weird, me being the only one in this party with naturally working wings. When was the last time that ever happened? If I spent time searching my memory banks, I'd likely just stay up here while everyone else flies on ahead to Peppermint HQ. And, because of Murphy's Law, they'll all get shot down and leave me with the kind of survivor's guilt I think Alex still feels for me. I mean, I felt it myself when Fionna died, but that was pretty much only when I was still alive in Prime...