Uncle Si decides to take a leap

As Uncle Si stands on the edge of the big building watching planes take off, he decides he's going to take a leap. Not off the side of the building, because something like that might hurt a little man made of plastic, but an even more crazy leap. He doesn't know how he's going to make it happen, but Si is going to get on one of those planes.

Making his way toward the airfield, Uncle Si passes the Boardwalk. He recognizes the place because of everything the Uniforms said about it back when he stood all those months underneath that computer screen. If there is one thing Si learned to do during his time in the office with the fluorescent lights, it is listen, and that skill is really coming in handy now that he is on his own. 

At the Boardwalk he finds a sign pointing directions and giving distances to so many places he could go and wonders which, of all places in the whole Outside, is the place he will end up. Will the plane he gets on take him to Frisco, TX? UAE? Belgium? Panguitch? The thought that he could get on a plane and end up anywhere is exciting, especially to someone who has never really been anywhere. 

As Si watches a group of Uniforms playing football on a plastic green field at the Boardwalk (with green workout clothes and shorty-shorts, they must be Marines, Si thinks), he hears other Uniforms behind him talking about how they will have to hurry to make it to the air passenger terminal on time. They are each wearing full combat gear and carrying three bags and lumbering along slow enough that Si is able to follow them and keep up, even with his little plastic legs.

When the Uniforms get to the terminal, they drop their bags and their protective vests and go into a building. By the time they return, they have no idea that Uncle Si has found a pouch on the side of one of the their vests and climbed in. 

They have no idea that instead of three, the Uniforms are now traveling as a party of four.