Hello again, happy end-of-holidays. And we have some questions to answer...
Illyria: Memory! Get over here!
Memory: No.
Illyria: Why not?
Memory: You scare me.
Illyria: Shut up and tell Honeybee4Eva why you have your iPod even though it's not always playing.
Memory: See? This is why you scare me. Asking questions... *sigh* whatever. I do that so that people will not think that I am paying attention even though I am. So that they will talk as if I am not listening, so that I can listen. May I go now?
Illyria: Fine.
Memory: *runs off in fear*
Illyria: Purplee Uzumaki, I'm not going to asnwer your question now, because I answered it in the chapter below. Now, Klutzy, Xandora wants to know if you think if Herbert is cool or lame.
Klutzt: *thinks deeply. Clicks hands*
Illyria: Fascinating. And now I make this pre-chapter AN even longer than it needs to be, by letting a special guest on board. Emma2679?
Emma: *to Jetpack* ANSWER THE QUESTION!
Jetpack: I can't! *points to Illyria* She won't let me!
Emma: Fine! JEzzie, you answer it!
Jezzie: I can't!
Emma: SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR COUCH THEN!
Jezzie: NOOOOOO!
Illyria: And the final words before we get to it...
Emma: *Slaps Herbert with a fish* DO THE DISCLAIMER!
Herbert: Illyria Lives doesn't own anything except for Jezzie, Robinson, Memory, and Rookie's girlfriend.
Jetpack sat across the table from Robinson, the old timer. Usually, Jetpack was on pretty good terms with the man in the fedora, but now they were both shooting daggers back and forth whern, somewhere, Rookie was getting his wounds stitched and resting. Jetpack didn't know why that was so wrong, or why that entitled him to an interrogation.
"You went against PSA orders, Guy." Robinson said.
Jetpack gazed at him silently.
"What do you have to say for yourself?"
Jetpack took a breath and looked his mentor right in his icy gray eyes. "The orders would have killed Rookie."
"Are you saying that you have no regrets?" his voice was rugged, filled with venom. Robinson, like Jetpack, was an Academy brat, and held the PSA code above everything else. To see another high up young agent such as Jetpack going against orders was unfathomable…
"I only regret that it took me so long to make the decision."
Robinson leaned away from the table and gave Jetpack an appraising glance. The boy surely had grown since his parents had gone MIA. From the frightened pale boy in oversized sunglasses to this… a defiant teenager, glaring from across the silver table, with glass in his hair, and blood staining his fingers. Robinson exhaled slowly, and lifted his hat to run his fingers through his salt and pepper hair. Maybe he was getting little too old for this…
Jetpack lifted and eyebrow, waiting for his punishment, imagining being stripped of his rank or being dishonorably discharged.
But instead, Robinson stood up, and paused just short of leaving. His hand on the doorknob, he turned slightly around to face Justin and said in a low voice: "You did good, kid. But the good guys don't always win."
With that heavy sentence polluting the air around him, Robinson left. Jetpack sat there, thinking this over, before leaving to get a few stitches in his abraded palms. It took his a while to find an open doctor, since most were hovering over Rookie and his girlfriend with injections of this and bandages for that. And even after he found a doctor, he made a few of the stitches too loose, and Jetpack had to bunker down in a supply closet to redo them. It hurt like an asterisk, and he had to bite down on a rag to keep from yelling. Despite the pain, he couldn't fight the overwhelming sense of success.
Whether or not he won, he'd never stop being a good guy. Never.
Deep beneath Club Penguin, Jezzie and Memory stood at the cusp of a huge, well-lit room that they both recognized as the Boiler Room. Memory made a note to gripe about how they could have just gone down through the Night Club.
Inside the room, there were rows upon rows of files for the Club Penguin Times, and the massive boiler that fed heat through vents to the lower half of Club Penguin. Next to the massive boiler, a tall man in a white coat with albino skin and hair was bent over a wired contraption. Beside him, a few yards away from where Jezzie and Memory hid, his strange drilling machine was Klutzy, who was sitting placidly by a tool box about twice her size. As Jezzie and her partner watched, she reached one delicate hand in and pulled out a huge wrench and gave it to him with barely a sound. Herbert took it without looking, and jumped when he saw what he had taken.
"Klutzy! I said monkey wrench! MONKEY WRENCH!" he threw the tool back in the box and groaned. "What good is a sidekick when they don't listen?"
Klutzy snapped her fingers angrily in response. Herbert snorted, and Jezzie took a step forward. "Herbert! Stop right now you son of an-"
Faster than you would think possible of a middle-aged man that was pushing seven feet, he was up and rushed at her, pinning her against one wall. His pink eyes were crazed as he added pressure to her neck. "You PSA brats! You don't know what it's like; staying up all night for your crazy parties! You don't even realize how long it's been since I've slept! So focused on keeping me out that you don't even realize…" his eyes flitted around as if he had said a bit too much, and was afraid of the repercussions. He leaned towards Jezzie, and she could smell the coffee on his breath. "I need my quiet. And I'm gonna get it." He let her go, and she hit the ground with a wheeze and a few good coughs.
"Jezzie!" Memory was quickly at her side, supporting her as she got up, watching Herbert go to his machine, flip a switch, and then scoop up both Klutzy and the tool box in his strong arms. He ran out into the corridor. Jezzie took a hold of Memory's shirt and pulled him close. From her bruised throat she hoarsely whispered.
"Get… Herbert… I've… Got… The…"
Bless his soul, he left before she even had to finish. Jezzie shuffled up to the bomb and peered at it with a hard stare, like it would just stop counting down on the LED clock from the force of her hate.
It continued to blink menacingly down. She had one minute.
"Okay. You can do this, Jez." She said aloud as encouragement. "It's just like that electronic lock that your landlord installed." She poked a thick bundle of wires hopefully. And then…
Nothing happened. She groaned. Where was Jetpack when you needed him?
Okay. Focus. Jezzie honed in on the bundle of wires again, and this time actually pulled a few. Same result. Thirty seconds. Think like the Jetpack… she frowned and glared, and with a raised eyebrow she yanked on the entire handful of wires. They came free, and the countdown stopped, with ten seconds to spare.
Jezzie let out a relieved sigh and smiled, before her ears could pick up the small metallic beeping still going strong. Jezzie spotted the huge wrench still on the ground, and, with no other options, picked it up and brought it down hard onto what looked like the most important part of the bomb. Weak metal dented, and glass something collapsed onto itself with a pleasant crunch. All sounds stopped, but Jezzie continued to smash, completely detaching the bomb from the boiler. When her tirade was done, Jezzie sat down, panting. If that bomb had gone off…
"Hey." She jumped, and turned to see Memory standing behind her. He too was panting, and covered in a coat of fine rocks and dust and sweat. Under one arm he held a huge gear. "He got away." Memory sighed, and sat down next to her. Jezzie felt a slight drop in her stomach at the news, but couldn't just sit around being afraid. She struggled to her feet, fearfully numb again, and went over to the staircase that would lead to the Night Club. Memory followed her. As they went up, Memory cleared his throat.
"Jezzie… you do realize that when we go to G about all of this, we will be in big trouble, yes?"
"Yes, Memory. I realized this."
Memory nodded with a blank expression. "And this does not worry you?"
"Oh, it scares the asterisk out of me."
"And yet we are walking right towards it…"
Jezzie stopped in her tracks and looked over at him, lagging behind, hugging his stolen gear to his chest. When he didn't respond to her "Are you kidding me?" look, she turned completely around to face him. "Rookie. Hurt. Bad. Remember?"
It took him a moment. "Oh, right! Rookie, hurt. Lead the way." He waved towards the far-off Sports Shop. Jezzie gave him a tired glare but let him be. She entered the HQ slowly, looking around for anyone that could potentially stop her. It was empty, so she made her way to the infirmary, bent over and trying her best to look inconspicuous. She failed entirely, and Memory took a mental picture to laugh at, at a later date.
The PSA infirmary was small, only equipped to treat two or three people at a time, so it was easy to find Rookie and Jetpack. The younger agent was sitting up in his bed, his arm held up in a wave to her. The entire limb, elbow to shoulder, was covered in hard green plaster. Jetpack, who was leaning back in his visitor's chair, looked over his shoulder to see Memory and Jezzie standing outside the room. He tweaked a tired smiled and waved them in.
Jezzie went and claimed the only other seat, on the other side of Rookie, and hugged him silly. "I'm so happy you're okay!" she gushed, and he laughed nervously.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Jezzie… I can't breathe."
"Oh. Sorry, Rooks." She let him go with an apologetic smile. He gave her a grimace in response and massaged his bruised ribs with his one good hand. Jetpack had his hands in his lap, wrapped in bandages. When he noticed Jezzie looking at them, he put them by his sides.
She looked up at his face, once again closed and unemotional. He raised an eyebrow. "You okay?"
"Yeah." She said quickly, trying to shake off the paranoid feeling creeping up her neck from what Herbert had said. Something of the crazed, desperate look in his eyes when talking about them looking in the wrong place. She knew that he was insane, but she never let it get to her the way it got to her now.
Jetpack's face told her that he didn't believe her for a second, but he let the subject drop when Memory gave a theatrical sigh and dropped the huge gear with a deafening slam. Everyone shot him a look, and he raised his hands in defense against the annoyed stares. "What? It was heavy."
"Is that what I think it is?" Everyone looked to the doorway. Memory took a step away from the scientist framed within it, moving behind Jetpack for protection. Justin stood up, as did Jezzie. Rookie shrunk back a bit into his pillows and comforted himself that he wasn't a part of this particular argument.
G didn't glare. He didn't yell. He simply stood there, looking over them, taking them in. He spent quite some time looking deeply at Jetpack, who refused to meet his gaze. Soon he passed over Memory's jittery face, glanced at the discarded gear, and finally settled on Jezzie.
"We… that is, the PSA, have been having some problems recently. And so… the Director is coming down to review our HQ, and attend the PSA ball." everyone was silent, and then Jetpack burst.
"What? The Director isn't supposed to reveal himself no matter-" he continued about how many rules and traditions this was breaking, and Memory joined in.
"Completely a disgrace to the PSA memory-" his French accented voice molded together with Justin's, and Rookie decided to jump in.
"Why are you telling us, for all you know there's a bug in this room-" G held up his hands for silence, and got nothing more than a volume increase. He quickly shut the door and held up his hands again.
Finally, Jezzie spoke up, her voice louder than everyone else's, and silencing everyone else's as they stared at her in shock.
Cupping her hands around her mouth, Jezzie asked "Who's the Director?"
"Who is the Director?" Memory exclaimed. "He-"
"Or she." Rookie reminded him, and proudly fist-bumped Jezzie for his equality-run young mind.
Memory waited patiently for them to be finished before continuing. "They are the person who runs the entire PSA." He said. "Rumor is that they do not even live on the island."
"Rumor is a lot of things, Memory." Jetpack reminded him, massaging his temples. "But it's not fact. Another rumor is that the Director is an immortal, celestial being that is having an affair with Sensei."
Rookie, who had not heard this particular myth, gagged.
"In short, the Director is the only person who knows everyone in the PSA." G said solemnly. "They personally control everything from payroll to recruits to the kind of coffee we drink. And they are coming. Tomorrow. And I want Squad Delta to protect them."
All of the teens in the room caught their breaths in their throats as the enormity of this task hit them full on in the face. They, after going against orders, were being given the most important job that a PSA agent could be given.
Jetpack was the first to find his voice. "I… I… don't get it." He looked around, like the answers were hidden around him in the crowded hospital room. "We went completely against your orders, almost got killed, let the bad guy go…"
"Not my fault." Memory broke in, offended. "That man is very, very fast."
Jetpack didn't react, only went on to beg G for answers with his eyes. "Why are you trusting us with this?"
G looked around at them. "Because you are the only people I can trust. Something…" he scrunched up his face, pained at the very thought, and disgusted that he was about to admit it out loud. "Something is wrong in the PSA. I need you to protect the Director from anything that would happen, especially with e PSA ball coming up. I don't feel like anyone else would do the job as well as you four." His blue eyes were at their most serious. "It will be dangerous. Possibly deadly. But… I have no one else to go to."
Jezzie looked at her teammates, who all nodded at her with hardened expressions. She took a step forward and touched G's arm. "We'll do it."
He smiled sadly. "Thank you."
Hours after, when Jezzie had collapsed on her couch, with Jetpack on her floor, still vainly clutching the floor plans that they had been memorizing together when they finally slept. Rookie, after getting a short time visiting his just-a-friend (who only happened to be a girl, he kept on insisting to Jezzie, who had only grinned and said girlfriend with long rolling Rs), had also fallen asleep, his casted arm itching beneath her signed name. Hanna. Such a pretty name. And she had looped the end of her name in a little heart. But that didn't mean anything, he kept on telling himself. G wasn't asleep, being too worried over all the safety measures he had to throw together last minute, along with the final preparations for the PSA ball, an annual event for all active agents to meet and socialize with former agents. Memory was clutching his iPod as he walked around randomly, nodding to people he knew, too antsy to sleep, living in haunting memories of what had gone down in an underground tunnel with an albino psycho.
Hours passed.
And somewhere, someone touched a communicator to their lips and glanced around to make sure that they were alone. When they had no confirmed witnesses, they dipped their head down and clicked a button.
"I have confirmation on the arrival of the PSA Director, arriving tomorrow morning, oh-seven-hundred. Commencing tomorrow, oh-eighteen-hundred, the PSA ball will begin. Let nothing stand in our way to complete control. Insurgent Cerebrum over and out. Operation Villain has begun."
They slunk back into the shadows and resumed being a PSA Agent.
No one saw.
No one knew.
And by six o'clock the next night, someone would be dead.
News: Starting sometime next week (or the next week) I will begin the Finale of Secret Agents Wanted. I will update it in several parts, once a week until finished. And once it's finished... you will probably all hate me. And plot twists. Just a warning.