Hewwo, peoples! This here's chappie 6, and you know what that means! (dances around, whilst singing goofily) Space trip! Space trip! Space trip!
Jimmy: ; Please get on with it...
(stops dancing) Oh. Right. (clears throat) To my reviewers!
Reviews: You guys are so sweet! As sweet as...pecan brittle! (hands out brittle)
Snapesucksman: (bows) You're too kind...
fanjimmy: Er...sorry it took so long...again...(grins sheepishly) I hate writer's block!
PinkPowerRanger07: I hoped someone would like that part of the chapter...(chuckles) Those poor bats get confused because of Sheen approximately every 1.2 hours. (smiles) Hope you like this chapter!
I'm SO sorry this took so long! Really, truly, I am. I've been weighed down lately with responsibilities and my grandmother died and my New World series (the first chapter has yet to be written!) and my web site and- Oh, no! I gotta go update it! (bangs head) ARGHH!
Disclaimer: I do not now, nor ever will, own Jimmy Neutron, Cindy Neu- er, Vortex, Libby Folfax, Carl Wheezer, my own CGI bin...(sigh) I wish I owned Sheen.
Sheen: (is playing with his Ultra Lord doll) It's not a doll! It's an action figure!
Cindy: (rolls eyes) If that's an action figure, then my name's Jimmy.
Sheen: But you're Cindy! (suspiciously)...or are you?
Cindy: (rolls eyes again)
; Then again, maybe it's best I don't own Sheen. The good folks at Viacom and Paramount do, though. And the Wachowski Brothers own Neo, Trinity, and the Matrix Trilogy. But I own Karen Vortex! MWAHAHAHAHA!
Jimmy: Have you been reading Sonic fan fics again?
...maaaaaybe... Enjoy the chapter!
Karen giggled with a high-pitched voice. "Go-going on a what!" she half-giggled, half-demanded. An odd sound, really.
Jimmy looked around his group of friends (and antagonizers). "A space trip. Someone's gotten ahold of the matrix generators!
Everyone but Karen gasped. The teenager just looked confused. "Matrix whatta-what? You mean, as in Keanu Reeves and Neo and Trinity and-"
Jimmy cut off her nervous rambling with a sharp shake of his head. "No, not that Matrix," he interjected. "The matrix generators give whoever uses them almost anything they want. Meldar was the one we took them from, and he used them to control and terrorize countless civilizations- all for the 'entertainment' of others."
With a nod, Cindy added, "He blew up entire worlds just because somebody lost on his stupid 'game show'."
Karen just stood there, looking confused, then frightened, then...well, kind of sick. Green, really. Sheen hastily moved out of her way once he noticed the sickening tint to her face.
Jimmy's face became strained with unusually deep lines. He gazed around the group, and ended with looking at the teen. "Anyone who wants to help save the galaxy, meet me in the lab. The rest, go home."
Karen thought for a moment. Ooh, toughie. Risk my life and save the universe...or play it safe and stay here, in Retroville, while anybody who even knows who I am and is under the age of, like, thirty is off fighting bad dudes and risking their lives while I sit around, bored out of my brains? Yeah, REAL tough choice.
With a sigh, she shrugged almost carelessly. "I'm in."
Cindy and Jimmy stared at her in disbelief. After all, wasn't this the girl who didn't want to go into space in the first place to retrieve the message from April? Perhaps she's been kidnapped and replaced with a look-a-like robot! (Or maybe I just need to shut up and move it along...)
Jimmy, after staring at Karen for what seemed an eternity without blinking, finally blinked and shrugged. "OK. Anybody else?"
Carl and Sheen looked at each other. "Will there be snacks?" Carl asked hopefully.
"Will we get our heads shot off?" Sheen asked worriedly.
"Will you shut up!" Cindy demanded. Shaking her head at the stupidity surrounding her, she held up a hand. "I'm in, but I got to call Libby. She'll want to be in on this."
Sheen perked up a little at this. "Libby's coming? I'm in!"
Karen cast a glance at Carl, who looked worried. "What'sa matter?" she asked absently. Quite frankly, she was shocked to have actually offered to go into space, without Cindy forcing her to, and thus didn't give much attention to what she was saying.
Carl looked up at her. Waaaay up, since Karen was, like, 5 foot 8 or something, and Carl is just a short kid. What, he's like 4 foot 2?
Anyway, Carl looked up at her, and his eyes got that little puppy look in them, all anime-y. Why, I don't know, but there it is.
Right about now, Karen got a bit suspicious. I mean, Carl with big anime eyes is sure to be followed by something weird, right? Or at least something weirder.
But he surprised her by asking a simple question, one that she'd heard many times before: "Who are you?"
Karen blinked in surprise. "I- uh, my name's Karen. I'm Cindy's cousin."
Carl's nose kind of scrunched up, then he nodded in what seemed to be understanding. "Oh."
Karen glanced back at Jimmy, who currently stood alone, since Cindy had left to get Libby sometime during Karen's confusion and short-lived conversation with Carl.
"When do we leave?" she asked of the young genius. Jimmy thought for a moment, then replied. "Tommorrow morning. We all need to get our bare essentials; change of clothes and such. Be ready to go by 5 a.m." And he turned and walked into his house.
Karen stared after him, her jaw barely missing the ground. "5 O'CLOCK! IN THE MORNING! What, does he think we're automotons or something?" She shook her head.
Sheen's left eye twitched slightly in what was, for him, a confused expression. "Auto-ma-what?"
Karen looked at the kid, and remembering what Cindy had said in her numerous e-mails about the boy known as Sheen Estevez. Particulary, what she'd said about his I.Q.
"Automotons are robots," she clarified quickly, before Sheen's eye could twitch any faster.
"Oh." His left eye stopped twitching.
"Hey, where's Nerdtron?" Cindy walked into Karen's line of vision, Libby in tow. Sheen's right eye started twitching as soon as he laid eyes on the cocoa skinned girl.
Karen cast the strange kid an equally strange glance as she replied, "He's gone inside. He said we need to pack and be ready to go at 5 tommorrow."
Cindy considered this. "Tommorrow night?"
"No, 5 in the morning."
Cindy's emerald eyes rounded until they were nearly as large as the saucers her mother used to balance tea cups on when guests came over. "5...in the morning?" she choked out. At Karen's nod, she made a strangling motion in the air. "I'll be ready," she growled. "Ready to kill him that early in the day..."
Karen observed with amusement Sheen's right eye. It twitched mostly twitched at a steady rate, but when Libby crossed the yard to hold his hand, it jumped and jerked with a life of its own. A strange sight, if you really think about it.
A door slammed, and Jimmy walked out onto the grass, rejoining the others. He held up a funny looking contraption and began his explanation. "This is the Neutronic Invisi-Ray. It turns you-"
"Lemme guess," Cindy intterupted. She crossed her arms and shot the boy genius a look. "It turns you invisible."
Undisturbed, Jimmy nodded. "Yes, that's right. And it-"
"You're gonna have to use it a lot sooner than tommorrow, Neutron!" Cindy jumped for him, but the startled boy genius moved away. His blonde nemesis followed, and he matched her step for step.
"5 o'clock in the MORNING!" Cindy shrieked, making another lunge for Jimmy. He quickly moved aside, leaving the girl to hit the ground. She tucked and rolled, almost immediatly on her feet.
"Cindy...it's not that bad!" Jimmy protested. "We'll need to be up early enough to get to the Gorlock homeworld on time!"
Not 3 yards away, Libby, Sheen, and Karen watched in amazement as the two traded words and blocked hits, as well as giving them. "Go Jimmy!" Sheen hollered at the top of his lungs. Karen glared down at him, and he moved away again, almost dragging Libby with him.
With a sigh, Libby distangled herself from Sheen's grip and headed to Cindy and Jimmy. At this time, the blonde had our young genius by the throat, and had put just the slightest bit of pressure. Libby rescued Jimmy before any further damage could be done, however, and Cindy huffed angrily.
"This is not over yet, Nerdtron!" she threatened with one fist raised and shaking. Jimmy took another step back, behind Libby, and peered cautiously at the blonde girl over Libby's shoulder.
Karen decided to intervene, and stepped between Libby and Cindy. "Well, it can't be that bad, Minds," she tried to reason. "I mean, we get up at about 6:00 every day to go to school, right? What's an hour earlier?"
Jimmy nodded silent agreement, but took another step back when Cindy tried to charge past her older cousin.
"You wanna know what the difference is? Tommorrow's SATURDAY!" She lunged at Jimmy, only to collide with Karen, who'd stepped between them again.
Meanwhile, while Karen tried to talk some sense into her younger cousin, Sheen fought off the bats furiously attacking his head, coming out of nowhere (but presumably from a southward position...) unnoticed by all but he and Carl. "Back, you! Back, you minions of Big Bat, Ultra Lord's worst enemy!"
With a simple, calm voice, Carl pleaded with the bats. "Please, Misters Bats, sirs, leave Sheen alone." He looked at them pleadingly. "Please? Pleeeeeeease?"
His voice actually reached a high pitch that further irritated their sensitive ears and sent them screeching back home. Their screech, by now, was actually audible to human ears due to the incredible duress they endured from Carl and Sheen's voices.
After this display of incredible weirdness, Karen and Libby finally seperated and kept seperated Jimmy and Cindy. Only then did Libby give Sheen a strange look. "Why were you screaming?"
Sheen, who kept fighting off now-gone bats, lowered his hands and looked around uneasily. "Do you see them?"
Everyone exchanged weirded out looks. Jimmy started to say something, but then, thinking better of it, decided not to ask. He gave Cindy a strange look and, staying behind the much taller Karen, continued his argument.
"If we don't get an early start, we won't be able to reach the Gorlock homeworld by their night time!"
Cindy, arms crossed and eyes glaring, replied, "Really? Or are you just in a hurry to see your alien girlfriend again?"
With an angry cry, Jimmy tried to fight Karen to get to Cindy, but the teenager grabbed his arms and pinned them behind his back so fast, it took the others a moment or two to register what happened.
"Shut up, both of you!" Karen glared at her younger cousin for a beat, then down at the kid she held. "We're going to the...uh...what was it again?"
"Gorlock," Carl offered.
"Yeah. We're going to the Gorlock homeworld to save the universe. No ulterior motives are neccesarily there, so just go home, pack, and be back here by...what, maybe 6? 6 o'clock tommorrow morning." She eyed the slack-jawed group. "Got it?"
Sheen nodded quickly and gave her a salute, walking backwards as he spoke. "Aye, aye, Capt'n!" And without a glance back, he scurried off to his house.
Carl glanced between everybody and nodded to himself. "Yeah, I gotta go, too. See you later, Jimmy!"
After Carl left, Libby made sure Karen had the situation in hand, then waved goodbye and went to her house.
Cindy glared at Jimmy, her green eyes snapping. "I'll see you at 6 in the morning, Nerdtron," she growled, and stormed off to her house.
Karen sneaked a glance at Jimmy's unafraid expression. "Uh...I don't think she meant she'll just see you, see you." She turned the younger kid's arms loose. "I think she meant, 'my fist is gonna meet your face', see you." Karen scratched the back of her head. "Get it?"
Jimmy rubbed his sore arms ruefully. "Yeah, I think I do." He glanced up at her. "But at least you and Libby will be there, right?"
Karen shrugged. "Just don't make me pin your arms again, all right?" She gave him a wink.
Jimmy responded with a lopsided grin. "OK. See you tommorrow..." He started off toward his house.
Karen glanced around, finally realizing she was left alone. She stood still, staring up at the darkening sky. "Guess I'd better go pack..." she murmered to herself. Starting for the Vortex house, she grinned at the thought of Cindy's face at 6 o'clock in the morning...
With her overnight bag slung over one shoulder, Cindy squinted at the rising sun. "Almost time to get to Nerdtron's house," she muttered to herself.
Right behind her, Karen lugged three over-filled, monster-sized suitcases, and yet somehow managed to whistle enough to get on her cousin's nerves. "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to space we go!" Finally coming to rest beside Cindy, she dropped the suitcases and collapsed on the ground.
"Whew! Those things are heavy! Why do we need all this stuff, anyway?" Karen asked, sliding her book bag off the other shoulder.
Cindy ignored her. Watching the Neutron house carefully, she spotted a certain high haired boy coming out the door. "Come on, Karen. Let's get this over with." She marched on ahead, leaving her cousin to carry the suitcases.
"Hey! Wait up!" Karen cried, standing to drag her cargo again. "A little help...please?"
Eventually, they made it across the street and onto Jimmy's lawn. The boy genius' friends and Libby had already made it, which tells you how long it took Karen to lug those blasted suitcases.
Jimmy looked around at all the faces surrounding him. "Looks like everybody's here," he said, grinning at Karen. "So...shall we go?"
"Yeah, yeah," Cindy grumbled, scowling at her nemisis. "So, how're we gonna get there, anyway, Pewtron?"
Cindy noticed Karen glance between her and Jimmy with a odd look on her face, but dismissed the thought in favor of getting on Jimmy's nerves.
Jimmy just stood there, grinning like a fool. "I thought we'd take the NSE on its maiden voyage."
Sheen started to say something that sounded a lot like, 'Oh, man, more girls!", but Libby clapped her hand over his mouth in time to muffle it. So now it sounded more like, "Ohum mam, thurm hims?"
Karen, however, had no one to stop her from asking, so ask she did.
"What's the NSE?" she asked, then adopted a confused look when everyone but herself and Jimmy groaned. "What?"
Jimmy sensed everyone's impatience to get on the road -or through the atmosphere, as the case now- so he made quick work of the explanations. "NSE stands for Neutron Space Explorer, and it's just your basic, space traveling vehicle." He made sure no one was disgruntled at the explanation, then nodded.
"Last chance to back out, guys. Who's going?"
Hands went up all over the yard. And when Jimmy asked who wanted to stay, no one made a move.
He nodded again. "OK, then. Let's load up. The NSE's over here."
10 minutes later, everything and everybody got loaded up. Jimmy phoned each parental units' house, explaining (through a voice synthesizer, of course) that each child would be going on a 4 week trip to Yellowstone park, courtesy of Eustace Strych's father.
And then, with a firing of the rockets, the group set out on a space trip.
A hooded figure observed the gathered Earth children. The three males looked weak and sickly, though Ga'Laa knew appearences could be decieving. And the blonde Earth girl with the big mouth...he knew she would be a formidable opponent.
As for her darker friend...not much was known of the earthling called 'Libby'.
And if little was known of her, than nothing was known of the tallest in the the group. He watched them pulling those strange Earth things to the big headed human's space ship, and couldn't help observing the tallest's strengh.
Why did they not include a file on her? he asked himself, unnoticed by the humans as he watched the ship fire up and soar into the heavens.
He would find out soon enough, he supposed. But for now, all the duties required of him consisted of calling the commander and awaiting a transport ship.
A pity such fascinating beings will go to waste, he mused to himself, flipping open the communicator. But life goes on...even without Jimmy Neutron and his human friends...
Ooh...who's the mysterious figure in the hood? Will Karen's space sickness wear off eventually? Do I even know what I'm doing! ...no, I don't suppose I do...
Now, about the strange parts, such as Carl's anime-y eyes and such...er...I really don't know what happened. I had a cold and had to take Day-Quil for it...boy, that was a while ago... That's why a part of this chapter is so strange. (shrugs)
Anyway...um...sorry it took so long. I gotta get started on the next chapter. Hopefully, it won't be quite as...strange...
Honest to goodness, I'll get to work on the next chapter right away! Promise! Hey! I prom- (dodges tomatoes) Ha ha! Missed m- (KO'd by a tomato) ...
Day-Quil is (c) the owners of Day-Quil. There is no copyright infringement intended. Go eat some chocolate-covered waffles, and have a nice day.
