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Four days into Road Trip 25k95, and Benny had accidentally crashed the ship onto an out-of-the-way sort of planet very similar to Earth in nature, with very limited spaceship repair facilities. This was extremely inconvenient, especially when you took into account the fact that their mission - e.g., save Bernice Summerfield from certain death and/or involuntary personality wipe - was very much a time-sensitive one, and being stuck on a frankly boring planet for the foreseeable future wasn’t at all conducive to their purpose.
“It’s probably my fault,” Benny said at some point directly after the crash as they both were staring at the wreckage of what had been, up to a few minutes ago, their tiny but comfortable spacecraft.
“Almost certainly, yes,” Brax agreed, no doubt using that magnificently arrogant but impressively clever brain of his to figure out a way to get them out of their current predicament.
...so, things were going swimmingly.
(
And on the topic of the so-named 'Road Trip 25k95':
On the first day of the trip, Braxiatel had rejected Bernice's suggestion of 'Benny and Brax's Excellent Adventure' only milliseconds after she had suggested it - which she felt was more than a bit unfair, and she had told him so at the time. He had countered by telling her that really, Bernice, there's nothing 'excellent' about having to race against time for the cure for your Space Brain Cancer (paraphrased, obviously), and she had countered by telling him, well not with that attitude, there isn't , and he had said, I object to the flippant tone you're using when discussing your own mortality, and she had said, well, I object to the fact that you refuse to use your TARDIS to stop the whole 'mortality' thing from being a problem in the first place and he had gritted his teeth audibly and said, Benny, you know time doesn't work that way - and she had got annoyed at his 'I'm A Time Git And Therefore I Am Superior' tone of voice and snapped, you know, you're acting remarkably like your brother right now, and apparently that was actually a very touchy topic for him because he had gone into his private cabin in the spaceship that they had borrowed from God (actual literal God, yes - long, long story) to sulk; properly and pointedly, for a good few hours while Bernice bullied the ship's computer into letting her stream old Earth episodes of Star Trek while she had the chance to do so without him providing biting and unwanted commentary.
And long story short, he did end up emerging from his lair and apologizing (will wonders never cease? Yes, they probably will) although it did end up being a bit of a snippy apology, and they ended up compromising on just calling the entire venture 'Road Trip 25k95', since 'FountainQuest' was now out of the question, considering that the Fountain of Forever had now been irrefutably proven to be a complete and utter fake.
"It's not really a road trip, though," Benny had pointed out after maybe five full minutes of peace and quiet after this apology. "Seeing as we live in space, and are travelling through space at this very moment. And there aren't any roads."
Brax had taken up residence in the kitchenette at this point, and looked like he was strongly considering breaking his personal, eternal, 'no coffee' rule. "Nobody lives in space," he had said. "Or, technically speaking, everybody lives in space. And the point is moot, either way, since I rather assumed 'road trip' was metaphorical."
“There’s nothing metaphorical about a road trip,” Benny said. “You’re either on a road, or you aren’t. And we definitely aren’t on a road right now. We’re in space, Brax.”
"We're not getting into another argument about naming this trip," he said with a this is final sort of tone.
"...fine. Road trip it is, then."
And that was (rather pointlessly) that.
)
A few hours after the crash, and Braxiatel had somehow arranged for their ship to be repaired (although it was entirely unclear how long this would take), and they had taken up residence in a local hotel. And if their accommodation slightly-less-than-opulent facilities didn't quite meet Brax's rather stringent standards, he was doing a remarkably good job of concealing his disdain.
It had only been a short while after they had settled in, and Benny was sitting at the table in the central area of the small apartment that they had acquired, staring at a half-empty page of her latest diary, twirling a pen from hand to hand, - and utterly failing to write anything down, as had been the case for the last couple of days. She had been falling seriously behind on keeping her diary up-to-date lately, and she knew she should probably be doing something about that, but at the same time - she just really couldn't bring herself to record anything, especially when she couldn’t be entirely sure that she was remembering everything correctly.
To take her mind off this, briefly at least, she looked around the small living space that the two of them found themselves sharing, and her eyes fell upon Brax. He was doing something incomprehensible in the kitchenette that involved carefully picking up every item in sight individually, examining it in great detail, and then either nodding approvingly at it or shaking his head at it very sadly - and then, either way, replacing it, very precisely, back where he had taken it from, before continuing the entire pointless cycle again with whatever new object caught his eye. Benny watched him do this with an overripe banana, a half-broken spatula, and a completely unremarkable unlabelled silver can that looked like it contained some form of processed food - then looked back at her diary and sighed. She hadn’t really intended it to be audible and pointed, but that was just the way it ended up coming out.
There was a beat.
"Is everything all right?" Brax asked, in the sort of tone that implied that he didn't really actually want to know and was only asking because saying anything else at all would be just plain rude. (And heavens forbid that Irving Braxiatel was anything other than unfailingly polite at all times.)
Benny sighed again. "Yes. I'm - no. I mean yes. I mean, I'm currently dying at an alarming rate, and that's - but, yes. Except, no -"
When she trailed off, he said, "I'm sensing some indecision here."
She huffed, and slammed her diary shut quite abruptly. "Okay. Fine. I just feel like we're wasting time. I'm dying at a frankly terrifying rate - see above - and we haven't found anything at all; and now we're stuck on this planet for Goddess-knows how long, and - I just -" She bit her lip, and then slumped over onto the table's surface, the very picture of exhaustion. "Brax," she said, head buried in her arms. "…I really don't want to die."
There was a moment of silence. She didn't look up, and he didn't say anything, and she thought that maybe he had just straight-up left the room. She wouldn't have blamed him if he had, really; emotions weren't his forte in the least , and really it would be just like him to saunter cheerfully away from an awkward conversation. But then she felt his hand rest lightly - almost tentatively - on her shoulder, and he said, "you are not going to die."
"You can't promise that," she said, still not looking up.
"I most certainly can." She heard him sitting down on the chair next to her. "Promises are just words - nothing more and nothing less - and words are often empty; ultimately meaningless. I could promise you anything if I wanted to. If you wanted me to. But it would mean nothing, because people can and frequently do break promises, and the people that are on the receiving end of those tend to get very angry for some reason that I’ve never been able to quite work out. And I’d hate for anything I said to you to be meaningless.” Benny got the distinct impression that he had lost control of whatever he had been trying to say. Apparently that was a character trait that ran in the family. And nonetheless, he pressed on - a phrase that could easily be the tagline to any argument she got into with him. “Life should be full of meaning, in my opinion - as should death, although it frequently isn’t. Regrettably.”
"Thanks," said Benny, raising her head to look him in the eye so she could glare at him properly. "You always know exactly how to make me feel better."
"I wasn't trying to make you feel better," he said evenly, apparently having regained his train of thought. "I was attempting to impress upon you the finite nature of promises , a thing that human beings seem to be so frequently fixated on."
"Consider me impressed upon, then," she said. "Or thoroughly unimpressed, since that might be more accurate. Are you actually going anywhere with this?"
"Yes. I'm not going to let you die, Bernice," he said.
She looked at him strangely. "And… that's not meant to be a promise?"
"No," he said. "That's a fact."
And he chose this point to saunter somewhat-less-than-cheerfully out of the room, like she had expected him to do a considerable while ago. She watched him go with a kind of shocked confusion.
“What?” she said aloud.
Sometimes, he completely baffled her. Occasionally, he was inhuman, aloof, arrogant; at other times he could almost be considered sweet. It was all-but impossible to predict how he would act on any given day - and she deeply suspected he did this intentionally, to throw off other people who thought they had a handle on how he behaved. It was clever, but maddeningly so. He seemed to have a near-endless collection of facades and masks that he could throw on at will, and it gave her a headache trying to figure out which one of them was the most genuine.
It was almost like he was a particularly well-known mythic character being written by a great deal of people at once, most of which who greatly disagreed on some key points of his characterization, motivations, and in some cases, backstory. And whichever mad scribe that had seized control of the narrative at this point in time had decided to shift his ‘caring about other people’ dial uncomfortably close to the ‘frankly this is kind of creepy’ end of ‘overprotective’, for whatever reason.
It seemed that he was busy doing something in his room - although exactly what he was doing wasn’t clear, really - and the final sort-of way that he had left the living quarters left Benny reluctant to go after him to see what it was. Instead, she picked up her pen again, and made a concerted effort to at least make a start on a diary entry, ignoring the mild headache that was already blooming right behind her eyes.
Nearly half an hour later, Brax came sweeping back into the room with a data tablet in his hands and an insufferable sense of supreme self-satisfaction hanging in the air around him.
“Ah, Benny!” he said cheerfully. “I have good news.”
Benny was in the kitchen at this point - having given up on the diary endeavor for the day - and was rooting around in the fridge for something to drink. (Unfortunately, there was no alcohol whatsoever. Which was probably a good thing, with her condition in mind, but goddess could she do with a stiff drink right now.) “Oh, excellent,” she said. “Does this mean we can get off this goddessforsaken planet yet?”
“Unfortunately, no. It’s going to be several days before the ship is ready to depart. However,” and here he flashed her a bright, apparently entirely genuine smile, “I believe I’ve come up with the perfect way to take your mind off things.”
“Oh?” She couldn’t help the skeptical note that found its way into her voice, at that.
“We’re going to hold up a bank,” said Brax, as if it was the most logical, sane thing in the world to say.
Benny - who had just taken a comedically appropriate sip of water from a bottle she had tugged out of the fridge - choked and spluttered incredulously. “We’re going to what now?”
“There is a storage facility doubling as a bank and money-exchange facility a short distance away from this hotel,” he said, sitting down at the table. “It turns out, this planet happens to be home to one very old artifact from Earth, circa thirteenth century, which has been missing for... well. Over a thousand years, linearly speaking.”
Benny came over to stand behind him, and read the screen with narrowed eyes. “The Honjo Masamune. Okay, that’s impressive. But how did a sword like that end up in a place like this? This is - it’s a nowhere planet.”
“It’s anybody’s guess, really.” Brax swiped left, and she saw detailed schematics and plans of what looked like the bank that he had been talking about. “But what I find much more important is the fact that the current owner of the Honjo Masamune has absolutely no idea of its true worth, and in fact is only hoarding it for...” He paused for dramatic effect. “...tax reasons.”
Benny frowned. “Now, that is just plain rude.”
“Indeed. And to me, it is a clear sign that they are no longer worthy of the sword’s ownership. I’m sure the Collection would be a more appropriate location for it - it can be properly appreciated there.”
Benny started to nod in agreement, and then abruptly stopped herself. “Wait. What am I saying? You’re asking me if I want to commit a felony with you. You’re actually suggesting that we break into a bank and steal something as a way to pass the time. This is ridiculous. ”
“You’re an archaeologist, Bernice. You steal artifacts quite frequently, as I recall. It’s practically in your job description.”
“I - all right, first of all, I do not steal. Archaeology isn’t about stealing, Irving, it’s about... digging up the past. Respectfully. And second of all - usually the people I’m stealing from are long, long dead!”
“That can be arranged, if that’s really an issue,” said Brax, but his mouth twitched upwards slightly, which meant that he was joking about it. Probably. She hoped.
She sighed, and sat down heavily in the spot across from him. “...I don’t really object. To stealing an ancient sword, I mean. Goddess knows I’ve conducted enough heists; it’s not really an ethical thing anymore. I’m just... confused, Brax. Why this? Why now?”
“You didn’t seem to be very happy,” he said, “for obvious reasons. So I scoured through my records for something local that might make a good diversion. For the both of us.”
“All right,” Benny said. “So... wait, why this? ”
“Well, stealing priceless artefacts always tends to make me feel better,” he said, with a minute shrug.
Benny stared at him for a long second, but - no, he actually seemed to be completely serious. “...are you trying to cheer me up by inviting me on one of your illegal art heists?”
He looked almost comically worried at the implication that this could be a faux pas of some sort. “...is that something I shouldn’t be doing?”
Benny laughed, and then buried her head in her hands and laughed some more, and at some point the laughter may or may not have turned into mild sobbing, but to Brax’s credit, he didn’t say a word about it -- either right then and there or later on. When she had recovered enough of herself to think clearly about what was going on, she looked down at the schematics, and then looked up at Brax again, and said, “all right. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
“Oh?”
"We're going to rob this museum of an irreplaceable ancient Japanese sword, get back into space, get this thing out of my head, and ,” she said, “when this is all over and I'm not dying slowly and painfully, we're going to sit in your office on KS-159 and argue for hours about the history of said ancient Japanese sword until we're sick of each other's company."
He smiled. "I look forward to it,” he said, and indicated the data tablet. “Well, then. Shall we begin?”
And so they set about planning a bank heist, which, in itself, was a lot less exciting than it sounded. It took about two full days of poring over maps and schematics, and throwing back and forth things like all right, but what if - and, this part, that seems more your sort of thing, you can handle that , and a truly absurd number of cups of tea. And by day three, when Brax had received and relayed the news that their ship was fully repaired and ready to leave, the two of them agreed that the heist was ready to commence.
“We’ve got our target, our plan, our escape vehicle,” Benny said. “What else do we need?”
Brax scooped up his data tablet, reading over something one last time. “Nothing whatsoever,” he said, and they went to pack up all of their belongings from the hotel room before signing out, permanently.
They stopped by at the repaired spacecraft to drop off all of their possessions, and then -
“It’s heist time. ”
“Yes, thank you, Benny.”
Main Street (some things were commonplace no matter what alien world you were on) ran almost a mile down through the capital city of the planet, and it contained basically every shop and location that you might ever want to visit, as far as this particular planet was concerned. Which was to say: not all that much, but it was nice of them to try to group everything together.
The bank was at the far north end of Main Street, but for some reason, Brax had shook his head when Benny started to lead the way there, and diverted their course to the shopping district, and then beyond that, until she really wasn’t sure what they were doing or where they were going at all.
"Maybe we shouldn't be wandering down the streets of an alien planet, looking at thrift shops, when we've got a bank hold-up to get on with," suggested Benny, following Brax at a light jog as he led the way down said thrift shop-lined street - his legs were longer than hers, and it took a considerable effort to keep up with him.
He sighed. "You're probably right," he said, and slowed down to accommodate her. "Although -" and here, his eyes tracked across to the other side of the Quadrangle and he paused before shooting her a rueful sort of half-smile. Benny followed his gaze, and then sighed. The store he was looking at dealt in old (and probably rare) antique books - and was open for at least the next couple of hours, no less.
"Bank robbery," she reminded him, but there was a smile twitching at her lips too.
"It'll only be for a few minutes," he assured her, and tilted his head very slightly to the side. "And besides, it's not as if either of us are the sort of person to just walk away from an open bookstore."
"Or a closed one, even," Benny agreed. "All right, Irving, you've twisted my arm. Let's go throw off our tight schedule by half an hour so we can go look at dusty old books."
They exchanged a quick glance, followed by startlingly identical grins of anticipation, and they hurried across the street, squeezing past each other through the doorway and into the store. The bell jingled behind them as they entered the quiet, Earth-style bookshop - although most bookstores, wherever you went in the galaxy, were the same. Tight, hard-to-navigate corners, piles of books stacked everywhere that looked ready to fall over at literally any second, books you couldn’t care less about for insanely high prices and books that you did for ridiculously low prices. And of course, that Old Book Smell, which could never in good conscience be referred to as anything else.
Benny immediately gravitated towards the section of the store containing ancient texts. She saw Brax melt away towards the shelves labelled ‘PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS’, and, for a good few minutes, lost herself in the simple pleasure of browsing through old books. She could hear Brax a few rows away, humming lightly under his breath and occasionally muttering to himself.
After a while, she moved onto the small but dedicated archaeology section, and was... well, not exactly ‘pleased’ but maybe a bit gratified to see that Braxiatel was already there, flipping through a moderate-length paperback, with several other books tucked under his other arm.
“Everything all right?” he asked, as she kneeled down to look at the books on the very bottom shelf, and let out a very audible noise of pain.
She grimaced. “Headache.” She rubbed at her temples, trying to shake it off. “Found anything good?”
“A copy of the original libretto to Thespis, ” he said brightly, closing the book he as reading, “and... this.”
Benny looked down at what he was holding, and her eyebrows jumped up sharply. “But. That’s.”
“Yes,” he said, apparently immeasurably pleased. “It is, isn’t it?”
She blinked once, twice, and then reached over to snatch it from his hands so she could properly read it. “ The Dead Men Diaries, by Professor Bernice Summerfield, M.A., Ph.D., EdD - Brax, I don’t have a doctorate in education.”
“Not yet, certainly.”
“And I don’t remember ever writing this book.” She waved it in the air at him. “Although, with the state of my timeline in general, that means absolutely nothing... hang on, let me just -”
“ No, ” he said, and snatched it back from her before she could open it up, and then he said, with considerably more calm, “no need for that. I took the liberty of checking for you. And I can indeed confirm that it is from your future. Quite a few years into your future.”
“Oh.” She frowned at him. “I mean, it’s good to know that I end up getting around to - wait just a second, are you saying - ”
“Yes,” he said, now properly grinning at her. “This book is remarkable - not just because you actually did manage to finish writing it, although that’s quite something in itself - because it proves that you have a future to publish it in.”
Benny just stared at him for a long moment, before arguing, “unless it’s been published posthumously.”
He flipped through the book, scanning the pages. “Mm... no, I don’t think so. According to this, you are very much alive and kicking in the future.” He looked up at her, face suddenly falling serious. “I told you I wouldn’t let you die.”
She stared at him for a long second, eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you. You’re actually trying to claim that this - this, me probably surviving; everything - it’s all down to you? Really? ”
“Yes,” he said. “Most things are.”
The most astounding thing about this was how certain he sounded about it.
The second most astounding thing about this was that she almost believed him.
They left the bookshop shortly after that, several old books heavier - although they didn’t end up buying Benny’s book, for obvious reasons.
They dropped off the books in a secure location, picked up their equipment. Brax tried to give a rousing speech. Benny immediately shut him down, and suggested that they develop a secret handshake instead. Brax immediately shot that idea down, and they compromised by placing their hands on top of each other and chanting ‘one, two, three, break’ which was just as pathetically nerdy as it sounded.
And with that, the heist commenced.
Benny was the one to set off the detonator, which triggered the bombs that they had carefully set around the lobby beforehand. (This was referred to in their notes, affectionately, as ‘Ace-ing’ the building.) This caused a big enough panic at reception for them to slip inside the inner workings of the bank, and head off in separate directions - Brax to tinker with the security tapes and get the guards off their backs, and Benny to obtain the keys to the lower corridors of the bank - the corridors which contained the vault that was their first target.
This was achieved through punching the guy holding said keys (pacifist? More like pass a fist -), stealing them, and running before anybody could actually notice she had done anything. Not exactly elegant, but sometimes the simplest solutions tended to be the best.
She reached the end of the hallway at pretty much the exact same moment that Brax, approaching from another direction, did; and they fell into step as they continued down towards the basement vaults.
“The keys?” he asked.
“Got them,” she said, jingling her jacket pocket. “The guards?”
“Sufficiently distracted,” he said in an utterly smug tone of voice, leading her to believe that he had done something incredibly dubious and possibly terrifying to whoever the guards had been - while somehow never laying a single finger on them.
(She decided not to think too hard about that bit.)
“Having fun?” he asked, eyes practically sparkling.
She thought hard about this, and came to a definite conclusion. “...yes. Absolutely.”
“Good,” he said, and then they went to the vault and started burning it open with laser cutters, and that wasn’t even the hard part. The hard part came several minutes later, when they were standing inside the bank vault proper, beginning the second phase of their plan; and the manager chose that very moment to walk in and stare at them for a very long moment.
“You’re robbing the bank ,” the manager accused.
It took another moment for everybody there to process what was going on.
“Robbing the bank?” Braxiatel asked eventually - sounding startled; as if the very thought of it hadn’t so much as occurred to him. “ Us? Never! - I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You are standing inside our top-security vault,” said the manager, sounding very tired, “which you had to incapacitate exactly thirty-eight guards and a janitor to get into -”
“Well, accidents do happen,” said Braxiatel.
“- half of the reception room has been destroyed in a massive, city-shaking explosion -”
“Very unfortunate accidents, but accidents nonetheless.”
“ - you burnt through the vault door with specialized equipment which you could have only bought for the express purpose of robbing a bank -”
“We’re only passing through,” Braxiatel protested.
“- and you’re currently holding several sacks with large dollar symbols printed on them.”
“It’s tradition!” Benny called from across the vault.
“And you still claim you’re not robbing the bank?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” said Braxiatel. “Forgive me while I monologue for just a moment, won’t you? Your bank’s security is impressive - no match for us, of course, but very impressive. I would call it second to none on this planet - but that’s not quite right, is it?” Barely waiting for a response, he ploughed on. “The most top-of-the-line security, of course, is reserved for the most important location on this planet - the museum, which is located next door. It would be quite a chore to break into, wouldn’t it? - but fortunately, we don’t need to do that, when breaking into this vault and cutting through to the other side of that wall is an option in our hands. And I’m revealing all our cunning plans right now because I’m trying to buy time for my friend to hurry up with the molecular destabilizers so we can make our escape as quickly as possible, Bernice. ”
“All right, don’t get your knickers in a twist - they’re ready! We’re good; let’s go!” said Benny, clamping the final two parts of the molecular destabilizers to the far wall of the vault.
“At last,” Braxiatel said, striding across the vault to stand right next to Benny. She wrapped a hand around his waist, and he mirrored her, and she flicked the switch on the destabilizer component in her hand.
“Toodle-oo,” Benny said cheerily, just as the manager raised his hand to his radio to call for security.
“Good evening,” Braxiatel said politely to the manager, and then they fell backwards together, melting through the structure of the bank vault wall, and into the museum’s basement exhibit.
It took them a moment or two to acclimatize to the sudden shift in light, but when they did, they saw that their target was, in fact, right in front of their eyes.
“Remarkably,” Brax said, eyeing the ancient sword appreciatively. “Not a single sign of decay after all these centuries. This will be a fine addition to the Collection, I think.”
Benny scooped up the Honjo Masamune, and stuffed it ignobly into one of their bank robbery sacks, which they had obtained specifically for this purpose.
“Okay, we’ve got the sword,” she said, looking around. “What nex -”
And it was at that precise moment, they heard the distinct, completely unmistakable, completely unwelcome sound of several of the museum’s alarms going off, loudly.
“We’re in the basement of an impregnable museum,” Benny said slowly.
“We are.”
“With a priceless Earth artefact that we’ve just stolen for no reason other than the two of us being being bored and restless.”
“Indeed.”
“And the only way out is through the museum itself, because I left the molecular destabilizers on the other side of the wall, like an idiot,” she said. “And considering the level of security on this place, and the fact that getting in was a chore in and of itself -”
“ - escape from this situation seems rather impossible, yes.”
“Very impossible,” Benny agreed.
“Ridiculously impossible, one might say,” Brax said.
“Hm. Yes.”
A moment passed, and then a smile cut its way across Braxiatel’s face. “...I do love the impossible, don’t you?”
An identical smile found its way to Benny’s lips. “Oh yes.”
“So, would you care to do the impossible with me tonight, Ms Summerfield?” Brax asked, sweeping out a hand dramatically in her direction.
She outright grinned. “Honestly, Brax? There’s absolutely nobody else in the universe I’d rather be doing it with right now.”
So they proceeded to successfully break out of a museum together, evading guards and traps in the most impressive of ways, and also stealing way more things than just the sword in the process -
- and that was just the beginning.