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Chapter Text

Mac carefully measured the reactant into a vial.  Smitty set down the beaker he’d half-filled with hydrogen peroxide and backed away.  Mac grinned wildly. “Brace yourself; this could be fun!” He declared, upending the vial into the beaker and backing up hurriedly.  So hurriedly, in fact, that he tripped over his own feet, crashing to the floor as the beaker exploded.  His fall did conveniently keep him out of range of the spray of glass.

“You okay, Mac?”  Smitty called out from where he’d taken shelter behind some unused crates.

“Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Mac assured him cheerfully.

“Are you that certain one of your experiments isn’t going to kill you?”  Smitty retorted, coming out of hiding.

Frankie handed him a broom as she came the rest of the way down the steps into their experimental lair in the Tombs.  “He’s probably quoting his grandfather again. Master of motivational cliches, that man,” she declared.  To Mac, she added, “He probably needs them, since his grandson has doubtlessly blown the roof off his house.”

Mac pouted.  “His house is still standing, roof intact.  Or it was the last time I was there.” No point mentioning his school's stadium. The stadium hadn't had a roof before The Incident.

Frankie snorted.  “And what plan do you have tonight to take the roof off the Tombs?”

Mac grinned and held up some aluminum pipes and a metal file.  “Did you bring the hydrochloric acid?”

“You are a terrible influence on the sanity of this elite university,” Frankie informed him, handing over the bottle of HCl she’d liberated from the lab.

“Then why’d you bring the acid?”  Mac retorted, finding a suitable container for the metal shavings.

“Because, if I didn’t, you’d talk Smitty into lighting a candle under a hydrogen balloon to recreate the Hindenberg, as if scientists haven’t conclusively explained exactly what went wrong in the decades since.  As if scientists in the 30s in Germany didn’t already know what would happen if the hydrogen gas in the airship reacted with the oxygen in the air.  As if you had some more noble reason for the experiment than your fascination with explosions.”

“Department Mom,” Smitty coughed.

“If you all didn’t act like children,” Frankie retorted.

Mac assumed his most innocent expression.  “I am a child.  Not 18 until May,” he reminded her.

Chapter Text

“Welcome to the United States Army, gentlemen.  I will be your drill sergeant for as long as you survive in basic training.  I won’t be learning your names,” The drill sergeant informed the recruits, as if their names weren’t printed on their damn uniforms.  “I am not your friend.  If I’m doing my job right, I am your worst enemy and when you face the real enemy, it’ll be a cakewalk compared to this.  Let’s be clear: I am not your mommy.  I will not coddle you.  I expect you to give me 110% every minute of every day.”

“That’s not possible,” Mac muttered, unable to contain himself any longer.

The drill sergeant pounced.  “Something to share with the class, Recruit?”

“It’s mathematically impossible to give 110%, sir.  ‘Percent’ means ‘out of 100’.  You can’t have more than 100 out of 100, respectfully, sir.”

“So you’re a mathematician, then?”

“Engineer, I guess, sir,” Mac said.  He hadn’t graduated from MIT, so he wasn’t sure he could claim the title.

“WRONG.  You are a recruit in the United States Army.  Anything you thought you were before you enlisted is over.  Do you understand, Recruit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you understand, recruits?”  The drill sergeant demanded, without taking his eyes off Mac.

“Yes, sir!”  They answered in a ragged chorus.

The drill sergeant resumed his pacing and introductory lecture.

🖇

The third time Mac opened his mouth, exasperated with the drill sergeant, the recruit next to him wrapped an arm around his head, covering his mouth with one gloved hand.  “Don’t you learn?  Shut up,” his apparent battle buddy hissed.

Mac tried to say something, but the hand didn’t move.

“I’m serious, man!  This is like something out of a horror movie!”

“With the usual level of betrayals of the laws of physics,” Mac muttered rebelliously.

The drill sergeant reached the far end of the line and executed a pivot that brought them back into view.  Mac’s new friend immediately dropped his hands, moving back to perfect attention.  The drill sergeant still caught the movement.

“Were you given permission to fall from attention, recruit?”

“No, sir,” Mac’s neighbor replied contritely, facing straight ahead.

“Fifty pushups.”

The recruit promptly dropped to the floor and started his pushups.  Mac, knowing it was all his fault, dropped down to share the punishment.

“Who gave you permission to move, recruit?  On your feet!”

“It was my fault, sir,” Mac explained.

“I swear to god…” the recruit doing pushups panted from the floor.

The drill sergeant sighed, and cast about.  “Do you see that potted plant, Recruit?”  He asked Mac, pointing to a plant on the concrete slab outside the reception hall, just visible through the front window.

“Yes, sir,” Mac answered.  It was a dumb question; it wasn’t like a blind man could pass the physical.

“Go get it and bring it back here.  While we’re waiting, the rest of your platoon will do jumping jacks, starting now.”

With barely contained groans, the recruits, except for the one still doing pushups, started their jumping jacks.  Mac wanted to say something, to defend his apparent friend, but a few glares made him realize he had to go get the plant first.  He sprinted for the door, returning in seconds (he liked running) with the plant.

“At attention,” the drill sergeant barked once Mac was back in his place in line.  The platoon returned to attention, except Mac, who was still awkwardly holding the plant. “You will keep that plant with you at all times, until it has made up for every bit of oxygen you waste.”

Mac felt his cheeks heat at the snickers from others in the platoon, but he was already contemplating ways to create a sling so he could put the plant on his back.  He didn’t think the drill sergeant was going to give him a pass on the physical training just because he was supposed to be carrying this plant around, and he expected his lack of brain-to-mouth filter was going to have the plant working hard to make up for his “waste of oxygen”.

Chapter Text

“We’re lost!”  Bozer wailed.  “How are we lost?  We have a map!”

Mac knew better than to say it out loud when Bozer was already having a freakout, but he did wonder how this was his life.  As Bozer said, they had a map.  A perfectly good map that had gotten them to the mission objective.  They’d found every landmark on their way to exfil exactly where the map said it would be, right up until they ended up in the middle of this forest that was nowhere on their map.

It didn’t help that they were on hour 34 without sleep.

“We can’t be that far from exfil,” Mac said reasonably.  “We found every landmark we expected.  The last one was supposed to be just 3 klicks from exfil.”

“But we’re at least one kilometer into a forest that’s not on the map,” Bozer reminded him.

Mac held his hand out for the offending map.  “The great thing about a map: it gets you in and out of places in a lot of different ways.”

Bozer raised an eyebrow, even as he handed over the map, plainly doubting that this map could help them any further than it already had.

Mac folded the paper map busily into a flared shape, setting it aside to pull some random doo-dads from his pockets for a second build.  Once he had everything he wanted, he fit the folded map into his second build and flicked his lighter on, lighting the tip of the map and using his second build to launch his improvised flare high above the trees.

“Now what?”  Bozer demanded when Mac put his lighter away.  “You burned our map, however useful it was or wasn’t, and we’re still lost.”

“We are lost,” Mac agreed.  “Jack isn’t.  And now he knows where we are.  So now we just wait for him to come get us.”

🖇

Jack was pacing at the exfil location, staying in front of the helicopter since the rotors were in idle, not completely powered off.  Mac and Bozer were late.  Not so late that something had certainly gone wrong, but late enough that Jack was on edge.

A flash of light caught his eye.  He tracked a piece of flaming debris as it climbed into the sky above the trees, about a klick and a half from the clearing where he and the helicopter were parked.  An improvised flare?  That was his boy.

Jack keyed his comms.  “Boss lady, caught a flare from our boys.  Can’t get the chopper any closer, so I’m leaving it here and going after them.”  He wasn’t asking permission, but leaving high technology (like a state of the art chopper with classified weapons and stealth) unattended was against protocol, so he felt obligated to declare it.

“We saw the flare, too,” Riley confirmed.  “I can guide you in.”

🖇

“I got ‘em,” Jack reported to Matty and Riley before clicking off his comms.  Mac and Bozer were back to back, drifting sleeping where they sat on the forest floor.  Mac stirred as Jack knelt in front of him, hands reaching to check him for injury.

“You’re here,” Mac murmured.

“Yeah.  What happened, buddy?  Everything was going well, and you were on your way to exfil ahead of schedule when you two had to dump your comms.  Riley didn’t see anyone following.”

Mac shook his head.  “Followed the map right into a forest that doesn’t exist.  Knew you’d find us.”

“No one’s hurt?”  Jack confirmed.  “Not even a little?”  He pressed, knowing Mac was prone to underselling his injuries.

Mac shook his head.  “Just tired.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long couple’a days.  Let’s get back to the chopper and get you home to a real bed.  This forest floor ain’t the best place we’ve ever slept.”

“Ain’t the worst,” Mac replied, checking over his shoulder that Bozer was awake before letting Jack pull him to his feet.