I could blather on like I usually do before a chapter, but I think I'm at a loss for things to blather about.

Disclaimer: I do not own Jimmy Neutron or any related characters.

Running Scared

Sheen regained consciousness in an unidentifiable, bland room. "What happened?" He asked thin air. "And why am I tied up?" With a painful rush of remembrance he suddenly recalled how they had been tricked and the killer had fired some sort of weapon. Think! Think! What would Ultralord do? Sheen asked himself, scanning the room, the whitewashed walls offered no ideas so he examined the chair he was sitting on. Bingo! He thought wildly.

"Damn it, I was so sure that would work!" Sheen said, he was now almost completely upside down, still tied to the chair, against the wall, where he had tried to bust through the steel. He tried shifting to reduce the pain in his lower back and gazed intently at his lopsided reflection in a mirror two feet above.

Cindy was bound to a similar chair in an identical room. Hopping the chair over to the wall she pressed her ear to it to try to hear anyone on the other side, silence was all that met her ear's however and when she shouted for help, none came.

Examining her surroundings, Cindy searched for a means of escape. What would Jimmy? Spotting the mirror on the wall, she hopped over to it and began slamming into the wall beneath it, trying to knock it off its peg in the wall.

Finally, the mirror was shaken loose and smashed on the floor Cindy braced herself and pushed herself and the chair over backwards, the impact shook her body and she felt a brutal pain in her spine. That's gonna hurt in the morning. In fact, that's gonna hurt now! She thought grimly. Cindy inched sideways until she felt her hand connect with a rather large piece of broken glass from the mirror, twisting her wrist around, she began to try to saw through the ropes that bound her to the chair.

The killer leaned back in its chair, watching the blinking red dot that was Jimmy stop in its tracks, really, a locater device in the knife the killer had left for them, it was all painfully obvious. (I call the killer an it because I am not yet prepared to reveal its gender)

"Ah Jimmy, I expected better from you, pathetic really. You fell for the oldest trick in the book." The killer mused, rising from its chair, the killer turned to several doors behind him and strode quickly towards one. Off to check on the prisoners.

In his room, Sheen was still crumpled, upside down on the floor when the door swung open. He struggled to lift his gaze to the doorway, where he was surprised to see Cindy.

"Shhh!" She whispered urgently, bending down with what looked like a broken piece of mirror, in a few seconds, he too was free and straightened up.

"How did you?'

"No time!" She cut him off. "I stole the sonic weapon he used to knock us out and this from the next room, he's in Carl's room now, no time to rescue him, we've got to find Jimmy!" She said quietly.

"Just then, the door flew inwards with an almighty crash, the ninja-like figure of the killer framing the doorway.

"Oh crap." Sheen said.

"Damn straight."

The killer just looked at them completely silent, then he marched forward and hit Sheen around the side of the head with a vicious roundhouse. The teenager crumpled like a sack of bricks and the killer drew a gun from inside his outfit, paying no heed to Cindy behind him.

Sheen desperately searched the killer's eyes for a hint of mercy, but could find only anger, boundless rage tempered by intellect.

Cindy raised the sonic weapon and pulled the trigger, when nothing happened she pulled it again and held it pressed down for a few seconds.

She flipped it around in he hands and when she couldn't find any other controls shrugged. "Guess manual works just as well." She said nonchalantly, as if she was settling for a subpar meal in some restaurant. Raising the weapon above her head, she took aim and brought it crashing down in the middle of the base of her enemy's skull, unconsciousness was immediate, and the figure crumpled. She bent down and grabbed the gun from his hands, a Walther close range model, light and small, easy to carry. She judged, pocketing it and helping Sheen up.

"Come on!" She pressed him, running through the white door and into the room filled with computers and other gear, the chair where another captive had been tied was empty, it's former occupant moved.

They burst into Carl's room and Cindy used the gun to blast his bonds off, having lost the piece of mirror.

Carl started to thanks them, but Cindy waved at him for silence and led the other two through the other room and into a hallway.

"We've got to save Jimmy and Libby!" Cindy told them as they ran, tearing up the distance between them and where Cindy had seen Jimmy's dot on the GPS locator screen.

Jimmy and Libby were standing as still as they could possibly be, Jimmy had figured out that they had been tricked but they were hiding in the shadows along the side of a corridor.

"We can't go anywhere, the killer's here somewhere, or there's some bomb or something." Just as he spoke, they heard booted footsteps from up the hallway. Jimmy nodded to Libby and they began to run as quietly as the could in the other direction, slipping and sliding down the over-polished corridor floor.

Cindy, Carl and Sheen also heard the footsteps, from where they were heading, they were to heavy to be Jimmy or Libby and the killer was knocked out, so they were a trick to get their two friends to run this way, into a trap!

"STOP!" Cindy yelled as they rounded a corner and saw Jimmy and Cindy running towards them on the other end of the long hallway.

"Come on!" Cindy cried, gesturing frantically to Carl and Sheen who followed her down the hallway, cautiously avoiding the walls and doors.

Libby spotted their friends first and threw out her arm to stop Jimmy, down the hall, Cindy, Carl and Sheen similarly halted, unwilling to risk the journey down the hallway, Jimmy turned around to see if they could go that way, but at the very end, he saw rubble blocking the hall, and heard footsteps that were growing louder. Searching the walls, Cindy ripped a lamp from its place in the wall next to the door to room 712. She rolled it down the hall, testing for explosives, when nothing happened, the three slowly proceeded down to Jimmy and Libby.

"What happened?" Jimmy started to ask, but never got a chance to finish, for right behind Cindy, Carl and Sheen stood the familiar black-clad killer, and just then, explosions trapped them as portions of the roof fell down on either end of the hallway, blocking any escape.

"Hello again. And goodbye." The killer said, raising a flamethrower, his eyes glowing with fury.

A/N: Please review! Please!