Work Text:
It was the end of the school day. Whitney High's Special Ed teacher - Ralph Hinkley - was watching the clock almost as often as his disinterested students were. When the bell finally rang, he called out something about homework being due, then quickly gathered up a bunch of papers on the desk.
He usually waited for his students to leave, in case one of them had a question to ask. But this time, he almost ran out the door.
Ralph was on his way to meet his partner - F. B. I. agent, Bill Maxwell. He promised that he’d meet him right after his class let out. Bill had an important case he was working on, and he needed Ralph’s help. This time, Bill had a hot tip that an elusive gun smuggler was setting up a table at a local gun show. Ralph and his superhero suit – given to him by alien beings in the desert three years ago – would help Bill sniff out the smuggler. The doors were opening soon, so there was little time to waste.
Unfortunately, one of his students wanted to speak to him.
“Yo, Mr. H,” Cyler called out after his teacher, as he quickly followed out of the classroom. “You got a minute.”
“Um, I don’t know, Cyler. I’m in a real rush.” Ralph looked at his wrist watch, as he tried to hold onto his briefcase and a bunch of papers. They were on the verge of falling out of his arms.
“In a rush?” Cyler asked, with an edge in the tone of his voice. “You off to see that loser friend of yours?”
Cyler’s comment caught Ralph completely off guard. In fact,
“You know, he’d be nothing without you, man...”
“Excuse me?” Ralph said, getting a bit defensive of his best friend. “Agent Maxwell is a real American hero! Defending our country from criminals and communists. Fighting for our rights...”
“Yeah, yeah, I know all that, Mr. H.” Cyler said, cutting off Ralph’s imminent Patriotic spiel. “But if it weren’t for you and that suit, he’d be nothing...”
Ralph’s facial expression went from angry to shock in less than a second. In fact, he turned pale as a ghost, as his draw dropped in disbelief.
It was way past the point of denial. Cyler had specifically mentioned the suit. He knew something. He knew more than something. It was pretty clear that Cyler knew everything.
Cyler was, after all, the smart one in the class. Certainly, the other students had their moments, and their own individual talents. Most were street smart, at the very least. But Ralph could sense in Cyler an intellectual curiosity that was unique amongst his students. If anyone was going to figure it out, it would be Cyler.
Cyler smirked at him, in a knowing way. He nodded his head, just slightly, to indicate that Ralph’s greatest fear was in fact reality.
“Uh, how ‘bout we go back into the room, Cyler?” Ralph said, with an extended arm, pointing back into the classroom.
“How about you take me with you?” Cyler responded back, in a smart ass sort of way.
“I can’t do that, Cyler.”
Cyler pursed his lips a little, and began to chew on his bottom lip just a little, as if saying without saying a word “You damn well CAN take me with you, and if you don’t, I’m going to tell everyone I know about your little secret.”
Ralph understood that, loud and clear.
“Ok, Cyler” Ralph acquiesced. “You can ride with me downtown. But only if you tell me exactly what you know, and how you found out.”
The two climbed into his station wagon and headed out of the Whitney High parking lot. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Ralph finally broke the silence.
“How long have you known?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. Ya know?” Cyler explained. “But things started to make sense. I think going down to the islands made it really clear. I mean, how could you two fight of all those voodoo guys?” Cyler was referring to a class trip to the Caribbean, where Ralph and Bill were able to uncover a case of political corruption; in the process were targeted by a voodoo cult. Ralph remembered the whole case. He smirked, just a little.
“Then, I started to put two and two together, you know? You becoming so close with Maxwell... none of it made sense. You know, he’s not the kinda guy you’d hang out with. Remember how he pulled a gun on Tony Villacana.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I remember, Cyler. Still, that’s quite a leap of faith to make!”
“I just figured, you know, you were some kind of informant... you know? Giving him info about us, that sort of thing. But, nah. It just didn’t seem right.”
Ralph tried to not let his expression of panic show as he drove the car. He tried to listen to Cyler’s story as calmly as he could.
“But, then I saw you...”
“What? What do you mean?” Ralph said, as the car swerved slightly.
“Hey man, watch the road.”
“What do you mean, saw me?”
“You. In that superhero suit. I saw you…” Cyler made a whistling sound, and then made a sudden gesture with his hand, as if simulating a take off.
Ralph began to panic a little. If one of his students actually saw him in the suit, flying… well, how could he deny that?
“At first, I didn’t believe it. But, you know, I’m clean, man.” Cyler was referring to a problem some of the other students in Ralph’s class had; but Cyler wasn’t a drug addict. In fact, he was completely clean. No drugs. No alcohol. He was a pretty straight kid, relatively speaking at least.
“You know, one time Villacana brought in a rag that had some cheesy photo of a flying guy. We all laughed about it. And then I’d see things in the papers. But then, the other night…” Cyler shook his head in disbelief.
“Um, Cyler, where did you see me?”
“At your house,” Cyler confessed. “Look, Mr. H. I’m sorry to be spying on you like that, but I just had to figure out what the deal was, you know?”
Ralph sighed. Inside, he knew that one day this would happen. How could he hide the fact that he owned a super suit from the world? Sooner or later, it would have to come out.
“Well, we have a problem now, Cyler,” Ralph finally said, after another few moments of awkward silence. “It’s a really big secret.”
“Tell me, Mr. H. Where did you get it?”
Ralph hated to lie, but this was as good a reason as any. Anyway, it wasn’t like he hadn’t been fabricating tons of lies over the past three years.
“Well, Cyler, you have to swear that you won’t tell anyone.”
Cyler agreed.
“Well, it’s kind of a top secret military experiment.”
Cyler’s face squinched up, in disbelief. “Military secret?”
“Mr. Maxwell is an important federal officer, you know.”
“Aw come on, Mr. H.! Don’t play me like that!” Cyler shook his head in disappointment. “Come on. I was there. That night out in the desert? That’s the night you met Mr. Maxwell. And we saw all those lights in the desert. Pffft! It ain’t no surprise that right after that, we started to see reports of flying men and superheroes in all the tabloids.”
Ralph took in a very deep breath, and then slowly blew it out again.
“Come on, Mr. H. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? That night in the desert. You had a close encounter, didn’t you?”
Ralph finally nodded. “Yeah Cyler. I did. I did! Mr. Maxwell and I were approached by an alien space ship and given a super suit. The two of us fight evil.”
“Yeah. I thought so.” Cyler said, finally satisfied with the explanation.
“Are you alright with this?” Ralph asked, now concerned for his student, more than for himself.
“You know, if I hadn’t have been there, in the desert with you,” Cyler said, shaking his head in amazement. “Nah. I wouldn’t have believed it. But I saw them lights. We all did.”
“It must have been very frightening, Cyler,” Ralph said, now trying to counsel his student. “I know I was terrified. Even Mr. Maxwell… you should have seen him!”
“Yeah…?” Cyler thought about it for a moment, then started to chuckle. “You know, Villacana would have paid money to see that.”
“I bet he would!” Ralph said, laughing, too. “Listen, Cyler, you’re going to have to keep this a big secret.”
“You think I’m gonna tell anyone? Are you crazy, man? No way…”
“Ok. That’s good.”
Ralph Hinkley decided to drive Cyler back to his house; it was a little bit out of the way, but Bill could wait a few minutes. He once again made Cyler promise not to spill the beans, but the whole revelation made him very nervous.
***
Nervous, however, was not the way to explain how Bill took the news.
“He saw WHAT?” Bill yelled at Ralph, right after telling him the story of how Cyler figured it all out. “Wha… what are you doing to me, kid?”
Bill, driving his government issued sedan, broke out into a small sweat. Beats of perspiration trickled down his brow. He almost began to hyperventilate, but he was able to finally gain control of himself.
“Ralph, what are we going to do? This … this yahoo delinquent of yours…”
“Bill, he’s not a delinquent. He’s my student. And one of the best.”
Bill chuckled, as if to say “That isn’t saying very much.”
“Well, what would you like me to do, Uncle Bill? Hit him over the head, so he gets amnesia and forgets the whole thing?”
“Well…” Bill singed out, liking that idea quite a bit.
“Aw, come on Bill! You know I can’t do that. And it’s not like I can just use the suit to wipe his memory!”
“Well, we don’t know that,” Bill suggested.
“Oh, come on.”
“If you hadn’t of lost the instruction book…”
“Oh, here we go again…”
As Bill drove, the two continued to bicker – about Ralph losing the instruction manual to the suit, about Bill’s hard line approach to everything, and even Bill’s old time gripe that Ralph was wasting his time teaching a bunch of mouth breathers.
“Maybe we can get the green guys to wipe his memory for us…” Ralph finally suggested, as they pulled into the parking lot of the American Legion, where the gun show was already in progress.
“Oh, that’s a WONDERFUL idea, Ralph. Let’s just go find a pay phone at the next gas station and call them up! I’m sure they have a direct line… or a 1-800 number!” Bill climbed out of the car, and then slammed the door shut, in disgust.
“Come on, Bill, that’s not what I meant,” Ralph said, running around the vehicle to be by his side. He tried to keep his voice down, since there were people congregating near the building. “I mean, the next time we see them…”
“Oh, when will that be, Ralph. Come on! Get real!”
“Well, do you have a better idea?”
“Yeah! We put this canary in a cage and lock it up!”
“You can’t just lock up a kid for no reason,” Ralph yelled at Bill, disgusted.
“Well, then we get him in for a psychiatric evaluation, and they pump him up with some thorazine.”
“That’s your solution for everything? Lock ‘em up, and throw away the key?”
“In a nutshell, yeah!” Bill led the way into the Legion Hall. They paid an admission fee at the door, and then walked into the main hall.
“Now, listen Ralph. This is very easy. We’re looking for this guy” Bill said, pulling out a photo from a manila envelope stuffed in his jacket. “He should be here.”
“Bill, why the blazes would this guy be here? Wouldn’t this be the last place he’d show up? A gun show? That’s like a … a car thief showing up at a Cadillac showroom!”
“I got a good tip, Ralph.”
“You got a good tip. That’s it?”
“Well, that’s all I got, Ralph,” Bill said, exasperated. “And when you tried to vibe in on this guy yesterday, we got nothing. So…”
Ralph sighed in frustration.
“You got the magic jammies on, Ralph?”
“Yeah, I got the magic jammies on,” he snapped back, emphasizing the nickname for the suit.
The two men walked around the entire show. They stopped at every table. Bill was like a kid in a candy shop. Ralph wanted to vomit a little at each stop. They (rather, Bill) casually spoke about all the different kinds of illegal firearms that were featured in recent articles of Guns and Ammo Magazine. At each stop, Bill tried to make it seem like he was dropping hints, as if they were in the market. And each time he played that rouse, it was obvious that the two of them were going fishing…
“I can’t believe this,” Ralph mumbled as he looked at his watch, after the umpteenth inquiry at the umpteenth table.
“You got a better idea?” Bill mumbled back, frustrated by his own lack of luck.
Ralph paused, then finally said “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”
***
Ralph and Billed pulled up at the apartment building. It was getting a bit dark, but it wasn’t too late to arrive unannounced.
“This is a terrible idea, Ralph!” Bill grumbled, as they got out of the car. “Getting this kid involved? That’s not going to work.”
“Oh, why not, Bill! It’s not like my students haven’t been involved in cases before! So, since he knows anyway, we might as well have him help us…”
“But running decoy? For a gun smuggler?” Bill wasn’t buying the whole scenario.
“Why not? He’s not going to stand out like a sore thumb, the way we do! I mean, come on Bill! Did you see the way everyone was staring at us in that show.”
“Staring at you…”
“I bet that smuggler was out the back door the moment we walked through the door, anyway.”
Bill couldn’t disagree, but his explanation for why they stood out had more to do with Ralph’s tweed jacket and tie than the “Happiness is a warm pistola” t-shirt he was wearing. Still, he wasn’t thrilled by Ralph’s plan. But for the moment, it was all they had. And if he wanted the kid to play along…
“Um, yes, is Cyler here?” Ralph asked a middle aged women who opened the door. “I’m Mr. Hinkley. His teacher.”
“You’re his teacher? The one who takes him all over the place?”
“Um yes…”
“The one who fills his head up with all that nonsense?”
“Um…”
“And who are you?” she asked Bill.
Ralph jumped in, not wanting him to flash a badge or anything. That wouldn’t do them any good.
“Is he home?”
Ralph shifted uncomfortably where he stood. He remembered briefly meeting her a few years back, but things had changed a lot since then. So had she. Life had been hard, it seemed, for this woman. She was a single mother trying to raise her son. Life would be hard for her.
“No,” she snapped back. “He ain’t home. He left about an hour ago… I saw him get into some car, and it sped off.”
“Some car?” Ralph asked, concerned. “Do you know who’s it was?”
“No, I don’t know all his hoodlum friends! Speeding around in their cars like that. Gonna get themselves killed.”
It seemed pretty clear to Ralph that she had made up her mind about it, and she probably expected that, sooner or later. It made him all the more determined to make sure that didn’t happen.
“M’am. Do you remember what kind of car it was?” Bill asked, politely. Maybe it was Villacana Piranha. At least then they’d know where to start.
“Um, I think it was some kind of bug.”
“A bug?” Ralph asked, confused.
“Yeah. A white bug. Like one of those old Volkswagons. You remember…”
Ralph and Bill looked at each other. A white Volkswagon bug? That was the kind of car that Ralph’s wife Pam drove. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Had Cyler contacted Pam?
Ralph and Bill thanked the woman, then hurried back to Bill’s car. It was, amazingly enough for that neighborhood, still intact.
***
Pam’s car was parked in the driveway, but it was clear that it had been parked in a hurry; it was parked partly on the grass. Something was wrong.
The two men rushed through the door.
“Pam! Are you ok?” Ralph called out, as he entered.
“Ralph!” Pam called out from the kitchen. She emerged, with Cyler right behind her. The two had drinks in their hands. Cyler seemed a little nervous, but not nearly as nervous as Pam did.
“Pam, is everything ok?” He said, giving her a kiss hello.
“Um, yeah… Cyler, there’s some cold cuts in the fridge. Why don’t you and Bill make yourself some sandwiches…?”
Bill was no stranger to Ralph’s fridge, but he didn’t appreciate being sent out of the room like a little kid. Ralph shooed him away, though, so he could talk to Pam.
“Pam, what happened? Why is Cyler here?”
“Ralph, you’ll never guess,” Pam said, whispering. She started shake, just a little.
“Calm down,” Ralph said, guiding her over to the couch. “What happened?”
“I was driving home from court,” Pam said, referring to her job as a lawyer. “Then, all of a sudden, my car…” She slapped her hands together then shot one hand out in front of her, indicating her car sped off. They both knew what that meant; she was being abducted by the alien beings who gave Ralph the suit.
“The green guys?” Ralph asked, in disbelief.
“Yeah! But they didn’t bring me out to the desert – not at first,” Pam explained, with her large grey eyes open wide in disbelief. “They brought me to Cyler’s place. And he was standing there, on the street. Like he was waiting for me.”
“Really?”
“He said someone spoke to him, through his radio…”
It all made sense to Ralph. That’s how the little green guys communicated with humans. He was surprised, though, that they contacted Cyler.
“Then, he got into the car, and explained your whole conversation,” Pam whispered. “You know. That he saw you! Well, as soon as he got in…” Pam made the same hand gesture again, indicating how the green guys abducted people using their cars.
Ralph’s eyes grew wide, too, in disbelief.
“Next thing, we’re in Palmdale!” Pam emphasized the word Palmdale; it was, after all, the team’s code word for Our Friendly Alien Meeting Place.
“He saw the ship?” Ralph asked, worried.
“Ralph, he saw the ship. He saw INSIDE the ship!”
“What?”
“They beamed him up, Ralph!”
Ralph’s jaw dropped, and he covered his gaping mouth with his hand.
“But then, after a few minutes, they sent him back down. Then they flew away. But Ralph, after the ship left…Well, he doesn’t remember anything!”
“What?” Ralph said, excitedly. “They wiped his mind clean?”
“No, Ralph,” Pam reassured him. “He just doesn’t remember anything about the ship, or the suit…”
Ralph shook his head in disbelief, and let out a simple “whew!” He was both in shock, and relieved.
“Pam, Bill and I were kind of joking today, about trying to call up the green guys, and having them wipe his memories clean.”
“Really? Do you think…”
“Pam, I don’t know what to think.”
Ralph considered the possibility that this was a new suit power – trans-galactic communication with the aliens who created it. It made sense, in a strange sort of way. How else would they have known when Ralph had been shot? How did they know to find them in Latin America, when they met up with the Delavera Family? Perhaps just thinking hard enough about them, he could summon them. The possibility was intriguing.
Yet, in some way, he was relieved. While it might have been nice for Cyler to become part of the team, Ralph knew that bringing him into the fold would potentially put him at risk. He didn’t want to do that to one of his students. It was bad enough that it sometimes happened that way.
This was better. This was the way it really should be. And somehow, the green guys knew that, too.
As the two sat on the couch and hugged briefly, Cyler came storming out of the kitchen, with Bill in tow.
“Hey, Mr. H.! This guy is a real nut job!” Cyler called out, pointing to Bill over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Raaaalph…!” Bill called out, a bit angry. “I thought you said…” Ralph’s stern facial expression cut him off.
“You know what this guy is saying, Mr. H.?” Cyler continued. “He’s talking about space men, and flying men in pajamas! Man, he’s a real loon.”
Ralph looked at Pam, and she simply nodded.
“Oh, Cyler, don’t worry about Bill. He’s just teasing you,” Ralph reassured him, as he got up from the couch. “Weren’t you, Bill? Just teasing Cyler here?”
Surprised, confused, and tongue-tied for words, Bill simply nodded.
“Listen, Cyler. Why don’t we drive you home? It’s late, and it’s been a long day.”
No one mentioned space ships and superhero suits for the entire trip back to Cyler’s apartment.