"Bam!" Jay slammed the newspaper on the lunch table in front of the guys. "Check this out you guys."
"We're officially your sidekicks!" Jeanette chirped happily.
"PARTNERS." Jay held up a finger towards her.
"Right, partners."
The boys leaned in to read the headline. "The Minutemen: New Recruits," the title said.
"Nice!" Virgil high-fived Zeke. "It's about time they got the name right."
"I guess you're lucky that I happened to set them on the right track," Jay sat down, wearing her Vampire Smile.
"How?" Virgil asked.
"When we went back to help that girl, I left her a note," Jay explained shortly.
"We're lucky we even got the Snowsuit Guys," Zeke said. "Imagine what we would've been called had we stuck with our old costumes."
"The Hobos," Jay said.
"The Hitchhikers," Zeke added.
Grinning, Jay nodded. "Yeah it could have been MUCH worse."
…
Virgil decided to take Charlie and Jeanette back to the past this time. He wanted to give Zeke and Jay some time to hang out, but he also wanted to give the big guy some time to rest; he'd been going back on EVERY mission, Virgil thought he needed some time to rest. Although Zeke was hesitant about it at first, he finally agreed to stay behind when Virgil reassured him multiple times that he, Charlie and Jeanette could handle the heat of the past.
After helping a majorly clumsy kid, the trio ran down the stairs to the lower level when the five minute bell rang. A guard passed the base of the stairs, making them skid to a stop. Unfortunately, the guard saw them and as soon as he recognized them he gave a shout, starting up the stairs.
Virgil, Charlie and Jeanette sprinted up the stairs and upon Virgil's demand, they split up. Instinctively, Jeanette followed Charlie while Virgil ran off on his own. Charlie didn't notice because he was focused on escaping the guard and he saw the hall coming up fast on his right.
"Come on." He grabbed Jeanette's arm knowing that if they went around they'd be able to hide. He steered them into the hall and went around a corner, pushing them against the wall.
"Do you…think he…followed…Virgil?" Jeanette managed to ask among her gasps. Charlie slowly peered around the corner and immediately pulled back when he saw the guard's figure. He slapped a hand over Jeanette's mouth and essentially squeezed her against the wall as he cowered away from the corner.
Controlling his breathing, Charlie listened as the footsteps faded away. He was so tense, Jeanette had to poke him in the ribs way after the footsteps disappeared. When he didn't respond, she tried to talk.
Blinking suddenly, Charlie took his hand off of her mouth. "Huh?"
"How long are we going to stay like this?" Jeanette whispered.
The scenario finally hit Charlie and with a yelp, he jumped away from Jeanette, shaking his arm as if he were putting out a fire.
"Let's just go," he finally said. "And forget that anything happened," he muttered under his breath.
"Like what?" Jeanette asked.
Charlie gave her a look and shook his head. "Never mind. Let's go find Virgil."
…
"Maybe it's just me, but lately I've felt like I'm being stalked," Zeke said a few days later in the basement. "I hate it."
Virgil raised his hand. "I've felt the same thing. So the other day I went to the gas station to buy a slushee and I was getting these weird vibes from a guy in a suit."
"Hold up," Jay held up her hands and paused before asking. "Was he wearing sunglasses?"
Virgil frowned in confusion. "Yeeaahh…Where are you going with this?"
"Inside?"
Virgil nodded slowly and tried to catch her drift. "Yeeaahh."
"Why would he wear sunglasses inside?" Jay wondered. "That's weird."
Charlie was panicking while the rest talked. He was breathing really fast and playing with his fingers.
Jeanette noticed. "What's wrong hummingbird?"
He hesitated. "…There was one piece of the formula that evaded my mind for several years until I found what I was looking for through an extensive, round-the-clock internet downloading procedure."
Staring at Charlie intensely, Zeke deciphered his language. "He was hacking."
"Hacking?" Jay and Jeanette said together.
"It gets worse," Charlie rubbed his mouth. Virgil was wondering how this could get WORSE when Charlie's next answer made his blood freeze. "I robbed NASA."
"You robbed NASA?!" Virgil asked loudly. Everyone else stared at Charlie with wide eyes, their shock making it difficult for them to react as Virgil did.
Charlie held up his hands to calm Virgil down. "It's not as bad as it sounds."
"No it's way worse than it sounds!" Virgil paced in place, trying hard to slow his breathing down. "If we go to jail—"
"Whoa, whoa," Jay interrupted. "No one said ANYTHING about going to jail."
"If we do and we share a cell," Zeke started, looking at Virgil and Charlie as he spoke, "you guys should know that I snore like a chainsaw."
"The files were from the 1900s. They were defunct. NO ONE HAD LOOKED AT THEM FOR AGES," Charlie said the sentence slowly to get the concept through.
"By the way things are working out, I'd say they just did," Virgil said, placing a hand up to his forehead and another on his hip.
"We'll be fine," Charlie reassured him. "We just have to stop using the machine and lay low for a while."
The mere thought of stopping the missions brought an eerie silence in the basement.
"But…what about those kids?" Jay asked softly.
Charlie looked at her helplessly as if saying, 'We've got no choice.' Jeanette couldn't handle the emotion and she bowed her head down. After another moment of silence, Virgil sighed loudly and brought his other hand to his hip. He looked up at the ceiling. "Okay. We'll lay low."
