Hello, lovelies! I'm sorry I've been so long, I've had work and finals and so much other things to do I just haven't gotten the chance to finish typing this. This chapter is definitely somewhat more serious than the others, but whatever. They also may seem OOC, but hey, I'm the author, if I want them to be OOC then I'll make them that way. They won't stay like that for long though.

Anyways. I have a little surprise for you at the end, and I hope it goes over well. I feel kind of perplexed. I want to write in this story, but I don't know where I want it to go. Yet I know where I want the other one to go, but I don't know how to write it adequately. They keep seeming too much unlike themselves, and I don't know how to fix that without ruining the plot. groans whatever.

I'd Rather be Anywhere but Here
By me, Cassi Mo.

Mmmm, Barbeque.

The next day at dinnertime, Jimmy watched Cindy enter the mess hall from his seat, his eyebrows raised. Cindy was beet red all the way down her body, her skin sun-burnt very badly in some places. On her face she wore a very miserable frown. As she gently lowered herself to the seat across from Jimmy, he could almost say he felt bad. Nah.

Trying not to smile too widely, Jimmy remarked, "Oh, cute. I hear pink is a great color for blondes. Makes your eyes pop." Jimmy accented the last word by flicking open his fists near his own eyes.

Cindy's miserable frown turned to one of fury. "You know, my joke was just slightly humiliating. Yours is physically painful!"

"Hmph. I said your time would come. And I even said when. You made the mistake yourself when you let down your guard for the night."

"Well, you didn't have to be so cruel!"

"Baby."

"Abuser!"

"Wimp!"

"That's it!"

"What?"

With an inhumane cry, Cindy leapt over the table and tackled Jimmy from his seat, knocking them both to the ground. They rolled on the ground, fighting, for about thirty seconds, when Cindy's skin started to feel like it was going to peel off her body. Immediately she jumped up and assumed a fighting stance. Jimmy watched as her eyes rolled in the back of her head and she slumped to the floor in exhaustion and pain.

Wiping his bloody lip with a napkin, Jimmy slowly got up and walked over to her with apprehension. "Cindy? Is this for real? Or am I going to get my feet knocked out from under me?"

When his questions spurred no response, his apprehension quickly turned to full-out concern and worry. Dropping to his knees, he opened her eyes, checked for a heartbeat, and listened to her breathing. Well, she doesn't need CPR. Too bad.

With one smooth motion, he picked Cindy up bridal-style and walked quickly out of the hall, striding toward his cabin as it was the closer of the two.

Cindy awoke about a half hour later, yawning and rubbing her eyes as if she had just woken from a great nap. Wait, something's not right here. She fully opened her eyes to see a different ceiling than the one she woke up to this morning. Sitting bolt upright in bed, she noticed that she wasn't in her cabin at all. Why am I in Jimmy's bed? She wondered, becoming increasingly agitated. Just as she stood up, a cool breeze flew through the open windows, and she shivered, hugging herself. What the… She was dressed only in her underwear and bra! I am so going to kill him for this. Just after she thought that, she heard a floorboard creak. She slowly turned around, seeing Jimmy in the doorway, his jaw slightly slack and his face as red as hers. Oh God, he's embarrassed! And he should be! But that's kind of mean to let him stand there. I can't let him know I'm embarrassed either. Quickly wiping her face clean of expression, she put a hand on her hip and cocked her head.

"What? Haven't you ever seen a girl in her underwear before?"

"I… Cindy…" Jimmy did not know how to tell her this without sounding like a pervert. "Well, this doesn't look too good, does it?" He chuckled nervously.

"Chillax, Nerdtron. I'm not mad at you."

"Wait. So you aren't embarrassed being in your underwear in front of me?"

"No; you see more of me in a bathing suit. Everything's covered. Why should I be embarrassed? It's all clean and matching."

"That's a relief." Jimmy sighed inwardly. "I, uh, had to take your clothes off, because, well, the chafing of excess denim and cotton would only make your burn worse. You really shouldn't even be wearing that much. But I didn't want to risk getting killed because you woke up naked and got the wrong idea."

"I'm not sure what to say to you right now. I don't know if I should yell at you because I could be in less pain than I am now, or if I should hug you because you'd rather let me be in pain than disrespect me."

"Um, let's just skip this awkward part of the conversation and get some aloe on you." Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck, shifting his weight, clearly uncomfortable.

"Wait. Aloe? That's it? You don't have any Neutronic De-burning Serum or anything?"

"Hello! Teen genius speaking. Do you think I would carry artificial sunscreen without carrying an adequate remedy for it? This isn't just aloe, honey. It's super-concentrated, modified so it not only heals the burn but prevents any other UVs to do that again, if you forgot your sunscreen again."

"I did not forget my sunscreen, and you know it, Neutron!" Cindy got frustrated that he would even think his last sentence. "If it wasn't for you and your funny little prank, I wouldn't even be here in my underwear, freezing my butt off!"

Jimmy's face turned gentle. "I know, Cind. I'm... sor...sorry that I went overboard. It was thoughtless of me, and if I play any more pranks, I'll be sure to not make them humiliating. Does that suit your needs?"

"No. I need aloe."

"Lay down on the bed, face down." Knowing he wouldn't try anything funny, Cindy obliged, moving slowly as the burning and stinging came anew with each step.

"Herr harr hi ho?"

"Take your face out of your pillow and re-ask your question," Jimmy ordered. He squirted some of his modified aloe vera onto his palm and rubbed them together.

"I said, where are my clothes? Oh, that's cold!" Cindy stiffened as Jimmy's hands touched her shoulders, but she relaxed as he started to work the aloe into her burnt skin.

If you looked straight ahead, that is, with your head to the side, you'd see them on a chair against the wall."

"I see them." Cindy closed her eyes and let her mind wander. "Jimmy?"

"Hm?"

"What was it like after I left?"

Jimmy paused before answering. He didn't want to tell her about how he moped around for two months after school began in their sixth grade year, about how he missed arguing with her and the content feeling he'd get after they fought, knowing she'd always come back for more. He didn't want to say how he stayed up at night, having had nightmares that someone had come back and told him she'd died and he never had the chance to tell her the words he'd been so longing to say since they were trapped together on that island. And yet, he couldn't just lie to her. He sighed.

"Boring," he answered truthfully, "and depressing. It had to have rained for at least two months straight after school started the year you left. Or maybe that was just a cloud over my head. Anyways, it just didn't deem like any fun without anyone to question my intellect. I wasn't used to being the smartest without having to always defend my title. For that reason, I didn't really go to school that much that year, yet no one questioned me. My mom would ask me once in the morning and leave me alone in my lab. Needless to say, it was hard for me, emotionally."

"I had no idea…" Cindy paused; she didn't know how exactly to word herself. "When I started school that year, I was an enigma to most of the kids in school. I easily became the smartest kid at school, but no one could understand my attitude. Instead of gloating over my straight A's I would just shrug and bury myself in a book. Not having to work for what I wanted made me depressed, so I just dove further into my schoolwork, often forgetting to eat and sleep. I figured if I needed to work hard for my grades, I would get better. You know, I did not make one friend all of middle school? No one knew how to handle me. Not even the teachers. It wasn't until I went to high school that I made my first friend.

"Lexa is one of those people that when she finds a cause, she leeches onto it and doesn't let go until she gets the results she wants. I guess she kind of reminds me of you. Anyways, she did cheerleading in the fall and swimming in the winter like me, so we had a few things in common. Besides the sports, we both had amazing competitive streaks. Maybe that's why we meshed so well: we both needed someone adequate to compete with and had to respect each others' skills. Either way, Lexa and I became great friends. This in turn established me on the 'social market', and soon enough, I had a boyfriend."

Jimmy, noticing her pause after her speech, went out on a limb. "I take it you broke up?"

"Two weeks ago. We would have been going out for two years this December."

"If you don't mind, what happened?" Jimmy, sensing she needed to talk, squirted more aloe on his hands and started rubbing it into the backs of her legs.

"I found him in a closet. A janitor's closet. I needed to get paper towels for a spill on the stairs. I wish he had been in there with a stranger. Even my best friend would have been better than this. Jimmy, I found him making out with a boy from my chemistry class! The irony struck me as he stepped out and said, 'This doesn't look too good, does it?' I wished I could have answered him. Instead I walked away without the towels, and didn't stop walking until I got to my bed. In fact, he's the reason I'm here. I went over my cell phone minutes by a lot and I'm here to pay it off."

Jimmy took a minute to absorb all of this and to close his mouth. "That's horrible. I would have never guessed."

Cindy sighed. "Well, things happen. Now I'm going to change the subject. When did your touch get so gentle? I don't remember this from when we were kids during our physical fights."

Jimmy started at this turn of events. "Well, I work with delicate machinery on a daily basis, so I can't get a wire in by jamming it everywhere. And Sophie helped me too."

"Girlfriend?" Cindy couldn't help but feel a little disappointment, but Jimmy just chuckled.

"No. Sophie's my sister. She was born sometime after you left, so she's about four now. She showed me that people are to be treated with gentleness, or they would grow callous. Let's see if you're anything like her." Jimmy gently poked her side, and Cindy twitched. "Yep. All girls are the same in that sense."

And he kept tickling her until she rolled over onto her back, and scolded, "James Isaac. Look at this. You just spent all that time trying to heal my skin, and I just rubbed off all the aloe because you tickled me. Now what do you have to say for yourself?"

Jimmy grinned. "I have to say,you're screwed. Because I have to go. Put some more on when you go to bed, and you should be better tomorrow. I'll see you at breakfast." Waving, Jimmy gently pushed the now-clothed Cindy out the door.

Also waving, Cindy smiled inwardly and thought wickedly, Now the fun begins.

Well, I also promised a sneak peek at my next fic, and I'm a lovely woman of my word.

A figure sat in the sumptuous office, occupying the only chair in the room. To her back was a window that took up one wall, showing off her lavish kingdom down below. Abruptly, the figure turned from her cluttered desk to face this window in anger and frustration.

"I don't get it! Why is my mind suddenly blank when I set out to destroy him? I can't just go and capture him, he's protected his stupid inventions and that crazy dog. I can't send a hit man to out and kill him, there's too much risk of it being traced back to me, and I can't afford to land in the slammer again." The voice had grown calmer as its owner thought out loud, becoming more and more pondering as she went on. "I couldn't—"

"Ma'am!" A minion clad in white armor burst into the office. "They're leaving! They're going now, and you didn't tell them what you wanted for lunch! Quick, tell me now, and I can catch up to them before it's too late!"

The figure looked at the out of breath guard with boredom and annoyance. "TK-421, why aren't you at your post? And how many times do I have to tell you to call me something more authority-inducing, like Your Excellence, or Potentate?"

TK-421 cocked his head in confusion. "But… Th-The meal," he stuttered, but the figure cut him off.

"I'm not hungry. I've got a lot of things to do this afternoon, and eating doesn't exactly crack my top ten. Now go back to your post before I kidnap you and lock you in the S-Wing."

"Yes, ma'—I mean, Potentate." TK-421 saluted and left quickly. He couldn't think of any punishment worse than the S-Wing, except… the T-Wing. He had never been there before, but rumor had it no one came out of there alive.

Meanwhile, the figure in her office was struck with a brilliant idea, as if a light bulb was suddenly switched on above her head.

"Kid…Kidnap… that's it!" The figure snapped her fingers. "If I can't get to him, I'll get him to me! If I take the person closest to him, I can lure him here, and destroy him on my own turf. The death of Jimmy Neutron will make me the most renowned, feared and revered villain in the universe! Jimmy will finally see what revenge tastes like from the other end!"

The figure then pushed a button on her desk and TK-421 reappeared on her doorway. "Get two other men and prep the T-Wing for me." At the guard's shudder, she sighed in exasperation. "It's not for you, dipstick. But make sure the sheets are clean, and the floor and walls are cleaned of any old blood. We're going to have a very special guest there soon."

Now I will leave you with my golden rule. Because everyone likes nice reviews, don't they? Review like you want to be reviewed. If you don't want bad feedback, don't give it!