by Anna Wu
Chapter 43: Agreeing to Live
Jimmy and Cindy fell the seven feet straight down onto the top of the Yolkian mother ship. They both attempted to shield their faces with their arms, but there wasn't enough time to successfully complete that task. They landed on the unforgiving metal with a sickening crack. "Give 'em hell, you two," Nick told the two of them.
Jimmy lay on the metal for a few more seconds, trying to gather his strength. "Ow," he summed up while standing up.
"Not your best idea," Cindy said as nicely as she could while getting up as well.
"Break anything?" Jimmy asked.
Cindy glared at him and took her left hand away from her swollen and bleeding nose. "What do you think?"
Jimmy quickly felt his nose, and breathed a sigh of relief as he found that it was uninjured. "Alright. Well, we better find some kind of a hatch to get into."
"Fine," Cindy mumbled while beginning her trek along the ship's hull. But as Ike's ship flew away from them at top speeds towards the white ball in the distance that was Ergo 22, both she and Cindy couldn't help but stare at it.
Jimmy watched as the rocket disappeared from his view as it circled to the far side of the planet. He and Cindy stared at each other at the same time. "Shall we get to work?" he asked her.
She nodded and tore a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt. She gritted her teeth as she held it against her broken nose and squeezed. "Yeah, let's go."
The two members of the suicide team made their way across the hull; slowly at first as their bones screamed in agony from their fall, but gradually picking up speed. They realized that their aching bones were nothing compared to the pain that lay ahead.
With each step he took Jimmy moved a few centimeters closer to Cindy. When he was within two feet of her, he casually let his left hand brush against her right arm. Cindy noticed this and looked down. Jimmy began to innocently whistle, and she smiled. She grabbed his hand and intertwined their fingers.
They swung their arms a little as they walked. They made sure to shove their joyous emotions and tingling skin aside, however. They knew that they had a job to do. They constantly scanned the hull for any sort of hatch. After ten minutes, they still hadn't found any means to enter the ship.
"Maybe we will have to enter through an exhaust pipe," Cindy finally told Jimmy.
Jimmy slowly nodded his head as his eyes quickly scanned the area around him. He abruptly came to a halt when he saw a rectangular metal box sitting on top of the hull far to his right. "See that?" he asked Cindy while pointing to the horizon on his right.
Cindy squinted her eyes and nodded. "Let's check it out," she eagerly offered while letting go of Jimmy's hand and dashing off to the odd structure. Jimmy quickly set after her, albeit at a slower pace.
Cindy slowed down so that Jimmy could keep up with her and they both slid to a halt in front of the structure. They split up and walked around it. Cindy checked the back, and Jimmy inspected the front.
Cindy stopped her investigation and walked over to Jimmy as she heard him let out a low, shrill whistle. "What's up?"
Jimmy smiled as he pointed to a small keypad attached to the far right of the front of the box. "Looks like this may be our way in."
Cindy tilted her head and looked closer at the keypad. There were three rows of three buttons, but the buttons didn't have numbers inscribed on them. There were strange symbols and drawings on each of the green buttons. "We don't know the code. We don't even know if this is a door," she said while shaking her head. Her words were true. The box was completely silver and smooth, no hinges or any other signs that it was a door. It seemed to simply be an oblong extension of the ship.
Cindy watched as Jimmy continued to examine the device. "This is very interesting, Cindy. What do these symbols remind you of?"
He shuffled a little to his right so as to allow Cindy room. She joined him in staring at the keypad. She looked more closely at the symbols on the buttons. "They're…" she began before pausing. She was puzzled. She was about to admit defeat when a light bulb went off in her head. "They're almost like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics."
"Spot on," Jimmy proudly praised her. "Not an exact likeness, of course. There are some minor deviations from several key Egyptian symbols, but the similarity is uncanny."
Both Jimmy and Cindy suddenly looked up from the strange keypad as static buzzed in their headsets. Cindy looked to Jimmy for an explanation, but he merely shrugged.
"Libby here." Libby's voice suddenly pierced the static. "Sorry about the interference. Control Team's got it patched up. How are you two doing?" Cindy noticed that Libby seemed a lot calmer then when she had bid them goodbye less than twenty minutes ago.
"Fairly good," Jimmy answered. "I think that we've got a way in. Hang on; I'm going to try to get this door. Cindy, you're stronger than me. I need you to use your gun like a hammer and smash this keypad off the wall."
Cindy nodded while pulling her pistol out of her waistband and making sure that the safety was on. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and gathered all of her strength. Her eyelids quickly fluttered open, and she gripped the butt of the pistol in both hands. She swung it as hard as she could, and a large dent appeared in the keypad. Frowning, she spun around and kicked the dented side of the device as hard as she could with her right foot. That sent the keypad tumbling onto the ground.
"Good work," Jimmy congratulated her while staring at the mess of wires that lay behind the keypad had been. "It will only take me a minute to figure out how to open this," he explained while picking up a green wire, studying it, and touching it to a blue one.
Cindy rubbed her strained toes and watched. Jimmy's hands moved over each of the wires with practiced ease, and a low click was heard as the last wire was inserted into its correct place. The metallic door in front of them began to fade from view, and then disappeared altogether.
Cindy and Jimmy stared in amazement as the door simply vanished. Jimmy put his hand through the space where the door had just been, but found no solid resistance. "Must be some sort of advanced holograph with physical properties. We better be careful. If the security is this advanced outside the ship, I can only imagine what they've got in store for boarders on the inside."
Jimmy stuck his head past the doorway and looked down. There was a hole that seemed to drop some eight feet onto the ground. A low purple light came from the opening beneath him.
As Jimmy examined their entryway, Cindy grabbed her mike. "Nick, Libby, everyone else, Jimmy and I are about to enter the ship. Do not initiate any further conversations with us. I don't want to risk the Yolkians picking up our chatter. Only talk to us if we talk first. Got it?"
"Roger," Libby and Nick answered.
"Good," Cindy said. "Cindy and Jimmy out." She then turned back around and looked at Jimmy. "Can we get in this way?"
Jimmy continued staring down the hole, listening and looking for any sign of Yolkian activity. He heard or saw nothing; the area below them seemed empty. "Yeah, but it's another drop. Six, maybe eight feet. I'll lower you down as far as I can and then I'll lower myself down."
Cindy silently nodded her agreement as Jimmy turned to face her. He held out both of his hands so that he could lower her down. She continued staring at him. "Something wrong?" he asked.
Cindy's expression suddenly saddened. "Anyone who's on the ships monitoring our conversations, Jimmy and I are doing some private strategizing. We'll be back on in a few minutes." She flicked her headset off and hung it around her neck. "Turn yours off too," she told Jimmy.
Jimmy's face radiated confusion, but he did as Cindy asked and turned his headset off. "Cindy, what's wrong?"
Cindy walked closer to him and stared at the ground. "What would you say our chances are of surviving?"
Jimmy silently cursed her question. He had been using every ounce of his concentration to keep his mind off of their seemingly inevitable deaths. Now he had to think of it all over again. "I'd say a hundred to one," he tol
d her after a moment's silence.
Cindy sat down on the rocket's hull, and Jimmy joined her. "That doesn't seem so bad. I mean, all the stuff we've been through, they all must have had worse odds than that."
Jimmy shrugged. "Yeah, you're right. But, I don't know." He wiped his hands through his hair and down his neck. "Maybe the odds are worse. But, doesn't this mission, this adventure, whatever you want to call it, seem kind of final?"
Cindy began to nervously twirl a strand of hair that was loose in her face. "How so?"
Jimmy cleared his throat and drummed his fingertips against the metal plating beneath him. "I, it's hard to explain. But ever since I came up with this whole suicide team idea, I just felt like the name did it justice. That, this was it." He leaned back against the one of the boxlike structure's three remaining sides. "It doesn't have to be," he thoughtfully said while staring at her golden hair. "I mean, we've done the impossible before."
Cindy chuckled a little at the mention of the seemingly impossible things that they'd accomplished. "Yeah, we sure have. I mean, how many kids have fought space aliens? Spent days on the moon? Competed on an intergalactic game show?"
"And won," Jimmy quickly added. They both laughed. "Entering each other's dreams, going into alternate dimensions, visiting the future, weren't all of those impossible?"
Cindy sighed as she leaned against the wall, only a few inches away from Jimmy. "Why did you ask? Are you scared?" Jimmy questioned.
Cindy was about to argue that she wasn't scared, but she realized that he wasn't mocking or challenging her. He seemed to simply want to know. "Yeah, I'm scared," she admitted.
"Me too," Jimmy offered. "I don't think there's anyone that's not scared about this last fight."
Cindy slowly nodded. "That's not why I asked about the odds, though. I've been scared lots of times, and I've always done what's needed to be done. You take a moment to let it embrace you, and then shove it down to finish your task."
Jimmy turned his attention from the twinkling sky to Cindy. "Then why did you ask?"
Cindy sighed once more. "I guess, ever since we agreed to be on this suicide team, I've been worried about dying. But I never really realized that, if we do die, this will be the last time we see each other. I don't want to get into a big talk about meeting in an afterlife, but these could be our last moments together. And, well, I guess I wanted to say something."
Jimmy stopped leaning at an angle and sat up straight. He pulled his feet in towards himself and stared at Cindy. Her eyes were closed and pointed towards the ground beneath them. She seemed to be fiercely debating about whether or not to say what she had in her mind.
"Jimmy, I know that we're friends. Maybe more than that…" she paused for the first of many times, "well, yes…more than that. That's evidenced by the past year and a half or so. I mean, back in third and fourth grade, we really hated each other. At least I did."
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. This wasn't coming out right. She looked at Jimmy and locked her gaze onto his blue eyes. "I guess what I'm getting at is that I'm glad you moved here, even if I didn't always show it. Before you came, I thought I was happy, you know? I had friends like Brittany and Libby, I was the smartest kid in school, and there was no competition. I was at the top and would stay that way. I thought I was happy," she repeated.
"But once you came things were different. I had to fight for my spot at the top. I don't want to argue over who is at the top, who's better…not now. But I struggled to beat you, and each victory, no matter how rare or few, meant something. Because it was a challenge."
"And before you came, I thought that I was having fun. Going to the mall, hanging out with Libby. But there was … an emptiness. I didn't really notice it then. Or maybe I did." Cindy suddenly shook her head and laughed slightly. She banged it against the wall behind her and clutched her eyes. "I don't even know what I'm saying."
Before Jimmy could assure her that he knew what she was saying, she started to talk again. "I guess, things were too normal," she continued. "It's like I was too smart for just hanging out at the mall or chilling with Libby. It was fun, but it wasn't exciting. And I wanted excitement. And once you were here, it was there. The things the five of us did, even when we weren't all friends, were amazing and … fun."
Cindy looked at Jimmy, and found that he was staring more intently at her than ever before, hanging on her every word. "And now we might die, and…" she sniffled and wiped her bloody nose, "and…" her voice suddenly became squeaky as she rubbed her eyes. "And you don't know how much you mean to me."
Jimmy started to cry as well. He wrapped her in a hug, and they cried on each other's shoulders, something they had never done before. "Cindy, I felt the same way before I came to Retroville. The emptiness, the dullness, the lack of a challenge." He tried to phrase his thoughts as eloquently as Cindy had, but found that he couldn't.
"Everything you've said, I feel the same way. And," he coughed as the tears flowed faster, "And you mean a lot to me. You're more than my friend. When I'm with you, I don't know. I'm happy, I'm challenged. I loved it when we fought, but I love it more now that we get along. I mean, god, I don't know," he whispered while kissing her cheek.
"I love you," they both said at the same time. Jimmy spun Cindy's ponytail around as they finished crying. They quickly pulled away and kissed before resuming their position on each other's shoulders. They let the last of their tears flow out as rested on one another.
Jimmy had no idea how long it was before they finally were able to pull themselves together. But at the same time, they scooched away from each other and wiped their eyes. "It took way too long for us to say that," he said while wiping his nose.
Cindy laughed while stopping her sobbing. "Way too long."
They both looked at each other and realized that they were blushing furiously. They averted their eyes and stared in opposite directions. "We, um, probably should have done that before now. Before we have to dive into the heat of battle," Cindy told Jimmy, her voice barely above a whisper.
Jimmy nodded while standing up. "Let's, let's make it through this, ok? Let's not let this be goodbye." He tried to smile, but found that he couldn't. There was no way that survival could be as easy as agreeing to live.
"Yeah, that would be best," she muttered while wiping the last few tears from her eyes. "Living is nice."
They both chuckled and finally pulled themselves together. "Ok, let's focus. Enough sob stories," Jimmy said while straightening his clothes and grabbing his gun. "Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, let's feel angry at those Yolkians. They're the ones that are making us say goodbyes," he told Cindy, pushing his love and sorrow aside. He forced himself to be angry. It's our only weapon, right?
"Making us form suicide teams and become martyrs," she offered, her familiar temper rising.
"Killing Sheen," Jimmy said while squeezing his gun. He turned towards Cindy and saw her looking back at him. There was no romance in their eyes this time. Love had taken backseat to the only emotion powerful enough to rival it, anger. Their eyes were ablaze with hatred.
Jimmy turned his headset back on, and so did Cindy. They looked to each other, their eyes meeting. They nodded and pulled their guns' slides back at the same time. They silently and swiftly walked up to the hole that Jimmy had found and stared down it. They holstered their weapons and gripped each other's hands. Jimmy got down on his stomach and lowered her as far down the hole as he could without falling with her. Cindy lightened Jimmy's load by bracing her legs against the wall beneath the gap. She nodded up at him while saying, "Drop me." He did, and she was sent plunging into the near-darkness.