Chad didn't know which made him more pissed; the fact that he had been assigned to the stupid javelin team for covert work instead of football where he belonged, or the fact that fucking Nigel Uno had to show up when his teammates decided to turn into a bunch of assholes.
It was part of the job as a teen spy to have to treat kids badly every once in a while. Chad had to partake in it to fit in, no matter how much it made him feel like a traitor, a monster, or just your everyday douchebag. It was bad enough for him to taunt and ambush-attack some little third grader who had never seen him before on the guys' way home from practice, but now he was being forced to do the same thing to some little fourth grader who knew all about him. It only helped a little bit that that fourth grader finally knew Chad didn't really want to do this.
Flying around on jetpacks to keep up with the sector leader's shoes, the javelin throwers were probably the most dangerous teen ninja ambush team you could get out of a high school. Carrying around those giant spears was risky enough when you weren't actually fighting with them. Like the idiot he usually was, though, Nigel didn't seem worried about it at all, flying in and out of swings the teens took with a determined expression plastered to his face. He only had a SPLANKER for a weapon, meaning he was forced to get close to the teens in order to land a hit. That meant he had to dodge a lot more. He probably welcomed the challenge.
Luckily for him Chad was able to stay on the sidelines "in case the kid came in his direction." He carefully watched Nigel's movements; they were admittedly skillful, and he hadn't come close to getting hurt yet, even managing to hit a few particularly shitty classmates of his in the side or the jaw. But the taunts of the teens came through as if they had already won.
"Don't you know how to throw one of these, little loser?" the team captain sneered, taking a huge sweep of a swing with his javelin that Nigel avoided by kicking the air in front of him with his feet, sending him straight backwards. "You seem like you're lost all the way out here."
"Yeah, do you even lift?" a smaller, pimply member of the team snorted, and another teen ninja rewarded him with a high-five.
"The only thing I'll be lifting," the operative shot back, defiance never absent from his voice, "Will be your kicked butts to the Arctic Prison once we clear up this little disagreement." Ignoring the mockery from the team, he was clearly agitated enough by their getting in his way to attack-the threat of arresting them was particularly telling, as it was far too confident-there was no way he'd be able to take them all down that completely. Chad tensed up and flexed his fingers, hoping nobody would call Father if a bigger fight ensued and make things even more complicated.
Taking Chad out of his thoughts, Nigel shot like a bullet towards the team captain, at a remarkably strategic angle so not to be hit by any of the javelins that were around him in the sky. Chad silently prayed that none of the swings being taken would graze him. Taking aim with the SPLANKER Nigel zoomed by the teen's face and-amazingly-managed to smack the wood right onto his smug face. The blond boy smiled to himself as he watched, silently congratulating his friend.
But that was before he noticed where the Captain's arms had flailed as he was hit, and which way his weapon was pointing as Nigel soared away from the attack.
Chad felt his blood run cold the second he saw his team captain's javelin touch Nigel's midsection. It was almost as if he gained the ability to zoom in, at that moment, to see the pressure the sharp tip applied to his thin skin before it tore it open as Nigel flew against it. Looking straight ahead, the kid's eyes went wide as he realized he had been hurt in a way he couldn't recover from immediately. He gasped and convulsed midair and went to grab the site of the pain, but in the process he lost full coordination and balance, the boy's shoes lacking control of where they were propelling him and driving him to desperately force them off his feet midair. He dropped soundlessly into the water below, almost limp.
Oh, shit. "Don't react like that matters to you." the teenager forced his muscles to freeze, sucking in his cheeks and biting down on them inside his mouth, darting his eyes around to see how the others were reacting. They had roughed kids up before, but this was a serious injury. They had to kind of care?
Some of them seemed to realize this and looked a little taken aback, doing the same kind of reaction-checking Chad was doing, but most of them saw the look of approval on the face of their peer group's leader and went back to grinning with a cockiness that was making Chad's blood boil silently. He wanted to drop everything and take them all down right now. But even if he could afford to do that, he wouldn't. It wouldn't give Nigel enough time.
"Looks like we're done here," the burly captain bragged, crossing his arms and looking around. "What do you boys say we split before this brat learns to swim?"
There was a light chuckle of agreement amongst the group. "Goin' for sodas?" one of them asked.
"Yeah, sure," the athlete said, examining his nails, trying to look as cool and unconcerned as possible. "Let's go in for a landing."
Chad knew he had to do something as soon as they were on dry ground and he started moving away from the beach with the rest of the boys. There were no sounds or movements behind them; these were crucial moments to act if he wanted to save the operative he now felt responsible for. He would have felt responsible even if he hadn't been a part of this stupid gang. Thinking fast, he quietly dropped his backpack on the beach and then waited until the group had walked a few meters past it.
"Hey guys," he called to the teens, briefly stopping their laughter ahead of him. Combined with the mystery surrounding how Nigel was doing in that water, the whole celebration was making him sick. "I left my bag on the beach. How about you just go along without me."
"Huh?" the big guy's expression changed to one that looked a little too suspicious. "You can't just run to get it and come back? Doesn't take that long, bro."
"Nah," he shot back just as quickly. The social mask held fast with honed skill. "It's just my parents, y'know? I'd never hear the end of it if I took any longer. Just order an extra round of sodas and pretend I'm there, okay?"
"...yeah, sure. Whatever," he said, and quickly turned around to jostle another boy as the group continued on with just a few backwards glances.
When he was sure they no longer saw him or cared, Chad darted back to the beach, past his bag and thoughtlessly waded into the bed of water looking for any signs of Nigel's form. He almost started to panic when at first there was nothing, but then he saw splashing in the distance and swam towards it harder than he had in any test at school.
The operative was in the later stages of drowning, sinking under the water for a good minute or so before he finally got the strength to try to bring himself up again. He was only fighting to the surface with one arm, the other one clamped against his injury that bled unseen into the beach. Chad was yelling his name, not caring as much as he should have about his team hearing, as he got closer, and then finally got close enough to grab his arms and swim backwards where he had come. By this time it was clear that the kid wouldn't have fought anymore even if Chad hadn't come.
Nigel was visibly out of it by the time he came out of the deep water, looking around without really looking, his eyes going in many directions. He was clearly under the impression that the rest of the group had come back to take him prisoner. To Chad, the saddest part was that they would never do that-because they didn't think twice about kids who they just shoved around like this. "you're...wasting your time trying to get anything out of me," the operative mumbled, words slurred and eyes unfocused as he felt himself being dragged onto dry land.
"Shut up," said Chad. Recognizing the steady voice underneath the mask, Nigel did and hesitantly let himself relax as he was laid down on the beach, his eyes in rapid movements as he struggled to assess the situation. The older boy knelt and put his hands on Nigel's and lifted them away from their protective positions clutching his injury with only a slight bit of resistence. They came off covered in a watery, deep red liquid; he placed them out of the way at his sides. Being in the water had caused the blood to run faster and quicker, making it more difficult to find the source. But still seeing the trails flowing at an even pace, the blond boy diligently folded the red sweater in front of him up halfway and touched the skin, tentatively feeling for the primary wound.
A sharp intake of breath from Nigel as his back muscles jerked away from Chad's hand let him know when to stop. Up close, the gash looked jagged and murky, and it stretched from the boy's hip all the way around to his stomach, stopping just shy of his belly button. Several layers of skin had been seperated, and blood started to again leak out of the edges.
The width of the gap between one side of the gash to the other was well outside Chad's comfort zone. He turned to his backpack in the sand, pulling out a medium sized cloth and rummaging around for something to douse it with. He settled for his almost-empty water bottle; the seawater, he figured, had done a painful enough job of cleaning the injury. Laying one hand on the shaky rising and falling of the operative's chest, he gently cleaned the skin until only the cloth had a faint red tinge. Then he reached back without looking and pulled out pieces of gauze, carefully putting down and taping them in place where they were needed.
"I'm going to go and rinse the handkerchief," he said, not looking away from his work as he addressed Nigel. His eyes looked glazed over. "The other teens are going to notice if it isn't clean when I get back. But you're going to be fine. Don't you dare move until I get back, do you understand?"
Nigel nodded weakly, his gaze wandering up to the clouds and away from Chad's eye contact.
The blond ground his teeth together in frustration but figured the quicker he left the boy's side the sooner he could come back.
As Nigel heard the footsteps of his old hero jogging away towards the shore, he squinted as they started to morph into the beating of his own heart. Soon the heartbeat was the only thing he could hear. He was in pain, and he knew that, but he also felt strangely numb, almost as if he was floating. Time was passing at a pace he wouldn't have been able to put into words, if he was even thinking in words at the time. He focused again on the appearance of the sky. It wasn't as blue as before, and the clouds had seemed to take on a different shape. What would Numbuh 3 say these clouds looked like? Gas...they were so blurry...and when did it start getting dark...
"...shit, SHIT." Nigel realized someone was speaking long before he registered being held in a sitting position with someone shaking his physical form. "Wake up, you fucking dweeb! When I said don't move I meant don't pass out either!"
The pain in his side slowly returned to him, as if someone was dialing it up like the sharpness of a camera lens. The strange glow of nighttime bled through his eyelids as his sight cleared, and he lifted them slowly to stare into Chad's still blurry face against the starry sky. The pain in his side intensified as if someone was turning up its sharpness like a camera lense. "How many is this?" the teen asked firmly, raising three digits.
"F...our? Why are you..."
"Saving your ass? Because obviously you can't take care of it by yourself, stupid. Why the hell are you out here by yourself? Is getting ambushed your hobby?"
"I..." it wasn't that he couldn't summon the energy to answer. He just didn't want Chad to know. And this whole consciousness thing was still new to him.
"...I don't know. It was reckless of me."
"No shit. I don't know how many lives you think you have, Uno, but look at your codename and take a fucking hint." Chad shook his head in frustration, turning away to look out on the horizon and away from Nigel's gaze. "Does it hurt anywhere else?" he asked begrudgingly.
"It's fine."
"Yeah? Get up and walk home then."
"It'd be a lot easier if you had just protected me in the first place."
"Oh yeah, outing myself as a spy forever to spare you one boo-boo. Sign me up."
Chad slipped one arm under Nigel's upper body and began to lift him up, putting unpleasant pressure on his injury. "What are you doing?" he growled, clenching his teeth.
"Taking you to the nearest treehouse. Start thinking of your story for how this happened, and don't make me a character in it."
"I can tell them you're working for us-"
"Not everyone will believe you. And if you push it to the wrong people, they're gonna start believing you're not working for us either."
Nigel kept quiet for a while, realizing the boy was right. It was becoming more and more dangerous to have sympathy for teens at all after the Treaty fiasco. Leaves crunched under the two of them as they walked, an unsteady rhythm with Nigel's limp.
"Don't you worry...that you'll get in trouble now? For this?" the operative asked quietly. He looked up at Chad. Even though he couldn't see his face as well with his wavering vision, it looked strong against the moonlight.
"Yeah," he said flatly. "I do. But that's not your problem."
"...maybe I'd like it to be."
Chad stopped, looking back at him and studying his face. "No you don't. Actually, it doesn't even matter if you don't. I'm not letting me be your problem, okay? We both have shit to do. My shit could get us both killed. So we're not touching it. End of story."
Nigel wanted to argue with that, but he was too tired to think of a comeback that wouldn't just make him sound...needy. Lonely. So they kept walking.
"I came here to meet Lizzie," he said quietly, after a while. He sounded out of breath and like he wanted to sleep.
Chad furrowed his brow. "Why would your ex come all the way out here to meet you? Doesn't she know where you live?"
There was a silence. "Yeah," he admitted. "That's the thing. She didn't really want to meet me. She didn't come. It...was probably a trap set up by someone who knew the teenagers would be here around this time, now that I think about it." he was starting to slump a little in Chad's grip. "I can't believe I was that dumb."
"I'm sorry, man." Chad gave the boy's shoulder a little squeeze of sympathy and then briefly thought again about what would happen to him if Father found out about this. "We all do kind of stupid and dangerous stuff for love, I guess. That sounds lame."
"It is lame," Nigel mumbled. "But it's true."
"Yeah." Chad looked up. The conversation halted. There was an abnormally large tree in the distance, a gigantic tow truck sticking out of one of its higher branches from what Chad could see. No matter whose sector this was, they'd have to know Nigel and they'd have to help him out. Chad suddenly picked up the pace towards the landmark, and Nigel, realizing why, tried his best to keep up.
"Got your story?" Chad checked, looking back beside him.
Nigel's eyelids were drooping. "I have amnesia. I'll deal with it later."
He smirked. "Gotcha."
By the time they got to the base of the treehouse, the sector leader had fallen fully unconscious again and starting to breathe more unevenly. Chad set him down on the grass, lifted up his shirt and saw the gauze he applied earlier partially soaked through. Sucking in air through his cheeks in frustration and suppressed worry, he ran a hand through his hair and impusively ran to pick up a rock and chuck it at the window of the house below the sector base. Instantly hearing the gratifying sound of an alarm and seeing a light go on somewhere upstairs, Chad sighed in relief and as a final measure took a spare jacket from his backpack and draped it over Nigel's body.
"This thing is new," he said quietly. "So I guess it's yours now. You'd better thank me."
Then, hearing footsteps, he took off into the woods and hid behind a growth of trees until he was sure the operatives from inside the base had taken Nigel in. He didn't hear much of their conversation except for something about wondering who brought him here. In his earlier days of covert operations, he would have smirked at that all the way back home, thinking about how sneaky and heroic of a martyr he had become. But he had been doing it all for too long, his face was grim; he hoped they never learned, and he hoped he had covered all his tracks.
Because then he and Nigel could talk again.