Anouncement: This fic is now available en español! Many thanks to Andy N.V (Author ID: 4787333) who made a Spanish adaptation of this called "Mis verdaderos sentimientos" (Story ID: 12487895) If you can read Spanish, be sure to check it out!
Hey readers! Before you start reading, I just wanted to make a quick shout out to a fellow author, and a new friend of mine. She inspired me to write this story and challenged me to expand my writing skills by attempting to write it in first person present tense! If you've got a further hankerin' for more JN fanfiction, particularly with JxC goodness, be sure to check her author's page out! Her username here is jcfreak4ever.
So without further ado, my first ever first-person present fanfiction... starring Jimmy Neutron!
My True Feelings
I listen to the tap-tap-tap of my fingers on my keyboard as I type out a complex equation for VOX to evaluate. The rhythmic beats match the beating of my heart as it pounds with adrenaline; this moment, right now, as another invention nears its last steps of completion, is ecstasy for my soul. Fingers tingling with excitement and the numbness from typing so long, I at last hit the 'Enter' key, completing the formula and instructing VOX to initiate the construction sequence. My brain is practically buzzing during the time I wait for the process to complete. Each and every number, variable, and determination matrix runs through my mind once more as I double, triple, and quadruple check my calculations to pass the time. Each time the math checks out. Math doesn't lie, my math is correct, and there is therefore nothing that can go wrong with this invention.
The sweet ting of the timer let me know my invention's construction is now complete. I anxiously approach the synthesizer (which used to be mom's microwave oven, until I, uh, enhanced it) and depress the lock release button, my breath catching in my throat as the door swings open. There it was, my magnificent invention. On a platter in the center of the turntable rested a tiny white ellipsoid; looking, well… unimpressive. I'll have to change that… have VOX give it some color or a bit of shine… something that gives it that "Wow! Jimmy Neutron's a total genius!" flair. Appearances aside, this little baby was going to solve my slight academia problem.
Vox's voice broke into my aesthetic ponderings with the report: "Possible intruder detected. Unidentified rotund humanoid approaching clubhouse in erratic patterns. Initiating defensive strategy 314159-PI in ten seconds…"
"Vox, stream security video." I command, briefly stepping away from my new gem of an invention to assess the external situation. The instant the video feed loads on the screen I issue another command, "Vox, abort defensive strategy 314159-PI, and… direct our guest inside."
"Command acknowledged. Cancelling defensive strategy and activating the worm hole…"
Panicking, I cry out in protest, "Wait, Vox, no! The worm hole hasn't been properly beta tested yet! Abort!" Note to self: fix bug in Vox's algorithm selection function.
"Ok, plan B. Goddard, go out and bring Carl inside safely!" I instruct my reliable robotic dog, who shortly returns with my 'rotund' friend… and Sheen.
"Hey, Jimmy! I was just on my way to spy on Libby-licious, but then I saw Carl walking around all funny! Did you mutate his feet again!? Can I see!?" my hyperactive Hispanic friend inquired. The reason for Carl's serpentine path traversal was quite apparent to me, a genius, but before I formulated a proper response, Carl answered for himself.
"No, I just can't see where I'm going. I accidentally broke my glasses and my new pair won't arrive until tomorrow. Hey, when did you dye your hair blond?"
"Uh, Carl… that's a broom. I'm over here." Sheen corrected.
"Oh."
"I'm sorry your vision is compromised, Carl." I expressed my sympathies, but was too excited about my new invention to dwell on the topic of his eyes any longer. Beaming with self-satisfaction, I announced, "Well, gentlemen, you're just in time to witness my Neutronic Skill Enhancer!" My loyal minions followed me as I led them back to the microwave-turned-Neutronic-synthesizer and pulled out the newly formed pill.
"You know, Jimmy, for something that's supposed to be 'enhanced', it's kinda small… and BORING!" Sheen blurted, nearly spewing some spit on it.
"Where is it? I don't see it!" Carl complained, scrutinizing an empty flower pot that had once held my Girl-Eating plant experiment. I had to dispose of that one after it found my photo stash of Betty Quinlan and ended up eating so many photos it became too large to manage. I still theorize that Vortex had something to do with that particular incident. "Carl, over here!" I called, waving him over with a nod of my head.
"Oh, okay, I'll just follow the friendly chocolate ice cream cone over there; it sounds like you're behind it."
"Carl, that's Jimmy's chocolate whippy-dip hair!" Sheen exclaimed, laughing, "He just called you an ice cream cone! PAHAHA!"
Ugh, this was taking too long. I settled for retaliating with a mere glare of anger in Sheen's direction and proceeded with my layman's-termed explanation of my invention. "This Neutronic Skill Enhancer will have the temporary effect of augmenting the skill it's been formulated to target. For instance, this pill will give me a boost of creativity and poetic writing skills, so I'll once again be able to top the scoreboard at school, even though this assignment is poetry."
"But Jimmy, don't you hate poetry?" Carl inquired.
Sheen gave a similar protest before I was able to address Carl's, "And didn't you nearly delete ALL of MANKIND – except Ultralord of course – the last time you tried to use science to improve your creative writing skills?"
"Guys, trust me. I ran the calculations MULTIPLE times on this one, and I'm using the principles of biochemistry this time instead of nano-bot technology."
"Well, if you put it that way… CAN YOU MAKE ME MORE LIKE ULTRALORD!?" Sheen burst, shaking me by the shoulders until I consented to grant his wish. "Okay, okay, I can make you a pill if I adjust the formula to accentuate your, uh… crime-fighting ability…?" I offered, though in reality this would probably only make him even more A.D.H.D in the end. At least the effects were only temporary… and with Sheen's imagination, he'd probably convince himself that the pill had succeeded.
"How about me, Jim? Can you make my eyesight better until my glasses arrive?" Carl timidly approached and inquired of my lab coat hanging from the coat rack.
"I'm over here, Carl. And sure, you could definitely use the eyesight boost." I strode back to my keyboard and quickly whipped up a couple dozen more equations to target and stimulate the other areas of the brain instead of the creativity sector I'd targeted for my own. For Sheen's, a little reality-bending enhancement… and for Carl's, simple: just a tweak directed at the optical receptors.
Pretty soon, we all had a pill in hand, and I instructed them, "For maximum effectiveness, it should be allowed to dissolve completely under your tongue."
"GOT IT!" Sheen yelled, sticking it in his mouth immediately and beginning to chew.
"No, Sheen, I said-"
"ICK, GROSS! This stuff is NASTY!" Sheen yelped and spat out the fractured pill into his hand.
I looked to Carl for reassurance, but even his iron stomach couldn't seem to handle the taste. "Yeah, Jimmy, I think I'd rather not see for a while…"
"Hm, I hadn't considered the taste aversion when formulating the oral administration." I thought over possible solutions and pretty soon the ideal one came to me. "I still have some vials of concentrated flavor serums from when I made the ultimate candy. Carl, why don't you grab a couple vials from that shelf over there while I reconfigure the synthesizer to inject the extracts into the pill."
This required quite a few new equations and commands to correctly instruct VOX to make the pills with the additional flavorings without compromising the integrity of the pill. I got so caught up in my work and the tap-tap-taps on the keyboard that I tuned out the sounds of Carl and Sheen talking behind me.
"What flavors didja get, Carl?" Sheen demanded.
"Oh uh, I dunno… I couldn't read the labels or anything, so I just grabbed some vials…"
"Here, lemme look! 'F…r…u…i….t…y…' FRUITY! I want that one! Gimme the next one! 'M…i…n…t..y…' MINTY! Wait, I changed my mind! I want THAT one! Ok, what's the last one? 'T..r..u…t..h..' TRUTH! I changed my mind! I want THA- hey, wait a second… what the heck kinda flavor is 'Truth'!? Ick, no, we can give that one to Jimmy! You can have the 'Fruity' one, Carl."
"Thanks, Sheen, I love fruit! They remind me of picnics in the park with Jimmy's mom…"
"Dude…" Sheen said, nearly speechless in awkward horror.
"…'s COOKIES! The lemon ones!"
Completing my calculations, I called out to my friends who were fighting about who knows what, "Ok, load Carl's flavor bottle into the injection duct." Within a minute, Carl's pill was ready. Likewise, I instructed Sheen's flavor to be made next, then finally, my own.
"Cheers, my friends. Soon we will be infinitely better at our respective skills for the next eighteen hours!" I toasted, raising my pill before placing it in my mouth with a flourish. Puking Pluto! These pills really DID taste gross, even with the flavor addition! Perhaps there was a clog in the flavor tube or something, 'cause frankly, I can't taste ANY of my candy serum flavors. With a cough and a sputter, I ran off to get a glass of water the moment my pill had dissolved. When I returned to Carl and Sheen, I was pleased to find that despite the poor taste, the pills seemed to be having the desired effect. Carl runs toward me and proclaims I don't look like exactly like a chocolate ice cream cone anymore, just mostly, and Sheen is engaged in mortal combat with the broom.
"DIE, you straw-headed DEMON!" Sheen battle-cried, giving the broom a good headbutt or two.
I roll my eyes at his antics then begin to usher them out of my lab. "You have a good night! Enjoy your enhanced skills! I'll see you in school tomorrow morning!" I call out after them.
Alone at last… now to tackle that creative writing assignment.
It is bliss to chop
Invigorating to kick
This power of force
These are my feelings
In haiku form I'm reading
I love Tae Kwon Do
I listen to the last two stanzas of Cindy's extremely long haiku on her feelings about various martial arts, tapping my finger impatiently against my desk. The sound is drowned out by the 'whoosh' noises Sheen is making from his desk, no doubt pretending it's some sort of aerial device for his super-hero travels. I check my watch as Cindy bows to indicate the completion of her performance; I've still got three minutes until the effects of the skill enhancer wear off.
"That was – brawwwwk – verrrrry interesting, Cindy!" Miss fowl complimented my arch nemesis. Just you wait, Miss Fowl; my poem will blow Cindy's away; you'll see…
"Thank you, Miss Fowl." Cindy said with another bow; then she turns to me with a smirk that silently screams 'Top THAT, Neutron'. I merely glare my response, 'Oh I will, Vortex, I will…'
"Now, let's see… Continuing with our presentations of poems about how we feel…" The eerily bird-like teacher looked even more like she belonged in an aviary as she craned her neck over the list of presenters to see who was next, elbows poised at her sides like she was ready to take flight at any moment.
"Next up is… Jimmy! Please come to the brawwwwk front of the-rrrrrr classrrroom-awk!"
"Gladly, Miss Fowl." I respond as I grab the poem I wrote up Sunday evening and trod up to the blackboard. I glance at my watch one last time; guess I'll have to make this quick, for I only have twenty seconds left before the skill enhancer wears off. Clearing my throat, I begin to read:
A virus threatens to smite me
The virus of Aphrodite
That vile, yet pleasant ailment
That of love which does not relent
It came upon me without warning
And holds me, even now, on this morning
A love so sweet, it'd put honey to shame
I cannot even escape the thrill of her name
I feel a tingling sensation as the effects of the skill enhancer wear off. The effect temporarily renders me unable to speak, as my mind tries to reconcile the changes that just took place in my brain. Note to self: find antidote to this side effect. When I find I'm able to speak again, I first take a glance up at my classmates, for they've been eerily silent despite my… dramatic pause. The sight is unsettling, for not only are they gaping in awe, but the look in some of their eyes – the look in Cindy's eyes – clues me in that something is off. I quickly scan over my poem once more, truly taking in the meaning of what I wrote, each line causing my eyes to dilate more and more in horror. Holy Heisenberg! Why the heck had I written THIS!? I calculated all the variables, all the equations, how could it go this horribly wrong!? My thoughts are interrupted when Brittany suddenly cries, "Well don't stop, Jimmy! Keep going! It's SO romantic!"
I feel the heat rise in my cheeks as the consequences of what I'd just read start to unfold. Butch stands up and yells, "I always KNEW you were a pansy, Neutron! Haha, that's an EXTRA wedgie penalty!" My posterior seems to chafe at the very thought of it.
"Oh, STOP, Butch! I think it's sweet!" Brittany exclaimed, "So what IS the name that makes you so thrilled!?" she asks me, regarding me much differently than she used to before – wait, did she just… wink at me? What was going on?
"Oh please!" Cindy snaps, finally snapping out of her temporary stupor, "We all know he follows Betty Quinlan around like a little lost puppy! Why don't you go and read it to HER, and SPARE us before we BARF!" She glares at me like such a thing would be a horrible crime against nature, and slumps down in her desk, looking almost… defeated. But for what reason?
Someone – but I'm not sure who, since I'm still visually assessing Cindy's reaction – begins to sing that classic taunting song, "Jimmy and Betty sittin' in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!" At this, my embarrassment meter exceeds my maximum threshold and my mind contemplates the fight or flight signals my adrenaline is giving it. It ultimately decides on the flight option, and before I realize what I'm doing, I'm running out the doors of my classroom and clear out into the playground, choosing a solitary swing to escape the harassment and sort out my thoughts on the horrific poem my own hands wrote.
Sighing in humiliation and dreading the moment I'll have to face my peers again, I drag myself back towards the entrance of Lindbergh Elementary. As I approach the steps, I realize I'm still clutching my abomination of a poem, and in a surge of terror, rush to the trash bin at the bottom of the school stairs, crumple the paper into a wad, and chuck the incriminating poem into its billowy depths.
Finally feeling a touch more at ease, I begin to ascend the stairs, only to bump into a humanoid obstacle – a FEMALE humanoid obstacle – a blond-haired, green-eyed, female humanoid obstacle – CINDY. As each new detail dawned on me, my dread returned exponentially, as did the blushed color of my cheeks. Keeping my head low in the hopes my distress would go unnoticed, I try a simple, "Excuse me, Vortex."
"Poetic AND polite? Pinch me, Libby, I think I'm dreaming!" that blond vixen commanded, which somehow managed to make the back of my neck tingle despite the harsh tones that laced her otherwise pleasing voice. The girls continued to giggle, so I attempted to slip past them and into the relative safety of the school building, then stopped dead as a haunting realization hit me: if they were coming out of the school just now, that meant they'd seen him trash his poem.
Stealing a quick glance backwards, I noted that the females were regarding me with confusion, but still giddy over their last jab, and apparently uninterested in the garbage bin. Now would be the only time to make my escape; I'd have to take my chances with the trashed poem, which seemed to have gone unnoticed by them.
The rest of the day – nay, the rest of that week - was unbearable. I suffered immeasurable teasing from my classmates – Cindy being the primary culprit, of course. I finally found the culprit behind my close call with a public confession: Carl had grabbed my vial of experimental truth serum for my flavoring. An oversight, on my part; both to place the truth serum adjacent to the flavor serums, and to trust the half-blind Carl to grab the correct ones. One would think that by now, I'd learn not to jinx myself and say, "Nothing could possibly go wrong.", because every single time, an unknown variable pops in, mixes with a little entropy, and causes near catastrophic side effects. To think I'd nearly confessed my love in front of the entire class! …Wait, I love her? That can't be right, those feelings must've been a side effect of the truth serum… yeah, that's it… Did Carl accidentally put a little Love Potion 976/J in my flavor serum too? A quick scan on Vox's inventory levels showed that no love potion had been lost, it was just the truth serum. Could this possibly mean… his TRUE feelings were…?
~ Epilogue ~
"So, Cindy, what'll it be? Truth… or DARE!?" Libby asked playfully as the two kicked off their Friday night sleepover.
Cindy mulled over that for a little while, then responded confidently, "Dare. Hit me with your best shot, Libby!"
"Perfect! I've been saving this one all week!" Libby exclaimed, then rushed over to her duffel, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper that looked like it'd gone through the war.
Cocking an eyebrow inquisitively, Cindy asked, "What's that, Libs?"
"This - " Libby replied, brandishing the dirty paper before Cindy's eyes, "- is Jimmy's poem he wrote for class last Monday!" Libby exclaimed in triumph, "And I triple dog dare ya to read it out loud to me."
Surprise and indignation written on her face, Cindy demanded, "What!? Where did you get that!? I looked all OVER the school for that!"
"Oh you DID, did you?" Libby taunted with a knowing smirk, "And just WHY did you look all over for it?"
"Hey! This is 'Truth OR Dare', and I've already picked dare, so you don't get to ask me that!"
"Girl, I don't NEED to ask you that. You reeked of garbage all week! I knew you were dumpster diving, trying to find where Jimmy chucked it."
Laughing nervously, Cindy spun another lie, "What!? That's preposterous! I would NEVER-"
"Oh, save it. Just read the poem already! We both know you want to! And speak up; I want to hear EACH juicy word of it!"
Nervously accepting the paper from Libby's hand, Cindy meticulously flattened it out slowly, anxiety growing with each stroke. It's true, the curiosity was overwhelming, yet at the same time, she dreaded finding out just who Jimmy felt so strongly for. No doubt it was Betty Quinlan, of course, but still, Cindy didn't want to have that little detail affirmed. And then… at the back of her mind, there was that little spark of impossible hope that dared to dream despite the odds, begging her to read and see if there was cause to hope. But if what she read instead shot it down, that hope would be forever extinguished, and she wasn't sure how her heart would handle that. Finally gathering up the courage to look, she hesitantly raised the paper to eye level and began to read with marked anxiety in her voice:
A virus threatens to smite me
The virus of Aphrodite
That vile, yet pleasant ailment
That of love which does not relent
It came upon me without warning
And holds me, even now, on this morning
A love so sweet, it'd put honey to shame
I cannot even escape the thrill of her name
Her eyes pull me in with emerald intensity
Her hair captivates; it is my golden destiny
Her neck calls to me with flesh alluring
Her lips tempt me; irresistibly inviting
Her beauty is overwhelming, yet I hide my stare
Her intellect intoxicating, yet I dare not declare
For I fear she will not accept me
I fear she'll think herself above me
So with each achievement I boast
Hoping she'll notice me most
I try my best to prove I am worthy
Despite knowing, deep down, I'll never be truly
Will I ever be good enough?
Will I ever be brave enough?
To earn her affection?
To proclaim my affliction?
Will today be that day?
The day I will say
That out of all the fairer sex
I will never love any more than Cynthia Vortex
Footnotes
(listed in order of appearance)
Defensive strategy 314159-PI - No such strategy exists, not in the real world, and not in the Jimmy Neutron canon, but it IS a reference to the mathematical constant 'PI', used for calculations of circular nature. The value is an infinitesimal decimal, but it starts off: 3.14159, hence the strategy name.
Girl-Eating plant experiment - The girl-eating plant was featured in the Jimmy Neutron movie, and was depicted chomping on a photo of Cindy Vortex, as opposed to the picture of some fellow male classmates.
Photo stash of Betty Quinlan - From the episode "League of Villains". Cindy expressed annoyance multiple times upon finding them in various locations in Jimmy's lab, and even one in his rocket.
Didn't you nearly delete ALL of MANKIND... ...the last time you tried to use science to improve your creative writing skills? - Episode "Return of the Nanobots"
I still have some vials of concentrated flavor serums from when I made the ultimate candy - Episode "Krunch Time"
Truth serum - mentioned at the end of the episode "Grumpy Young Men"
Jimmy's Mom's COOKIES! The lemon ones! - From the episode "League of Villains", when the kids are imprisoned by Zix, Travoltron, and Tee, and talking about what they'll miss most. Carl starts off by saying he'll miss Jimmy's mom, but then corrects himself when he realizes the others staring at him in horror. Sheen falls for it and agrees that Mrs. Neutron's lemon cookies are delicious.
Aphrodite - AKA the goddess of love
Love Potion 976/J - From the episode of the same name
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