A.N.— And here is chapter 14! :D Hope you enjoy :D
Chapter 14: Never...
Adriana and Pedro quickly slide over the tropical undergrowth, not looking back. They both know that if they look back they will probably see the jaguar and slow down and then they'll be easier catches. Pedro darts into a crevice in a dark, rocky wall which is hidden well behind a large Ceiba tree. He sharply pulls Adriana over its large buttress roots and into the crevice after him and then pushes her further into it than himself. They stay there, panting quietly, leaning against the walls of the extremely small space. Once Pedro has caught his breath again, he peaks cautiously out of the crevice with his small gun loaded. He does not see the jaguar, and relaxes just a little before leaning against the wall once more.
"Pedrrrrrrro, get off my foot." Adriana then says in a harsh, almost angry whisper.
Pedro looks at her, though he can't really see her in the dark. "I'm not on your foot." He says silently.
"Okaaaaaaay...And I'm going to guess that you're not hugging my waist either, verdad?" She whispers with her emerald-green eyes growing slightly wider in the dark. Pedro hears her and quickly fumbles for his flashlight and flips it on. He nearly drops the light when he sees the young yellow anaconda that has started to wrap herself around Adriana's waist.
"Hisssssssssssssssss..." Hisses the anaconda irritably as she averts her head away from the light. She is not fond of her prey blinding her with this light-up stick. She starts to constrict more around Adriana in her irritation.
Adriana puts her flippers upon the growing coil around her and pushes downward as hard as she can with a small gasp. Pedro quickly gets out a match and lights it. "Pedro!...A little...Help!" Adriana gasps. She is starting to feel a little lightheaded from the constricting.
"I know! I know! I'm working on it!" Pedro replies and he gets the lit match near the snake. The snake hisses and recoils her head back from the match. "Right, Srta*. Anaconda doesn't like the fire and I'm not too fond of you trying to eat Srta. Adriana either. Release the mujer* and the fire will go away." He says and holds the fire closer to the snake. The snake recoils more and her hold on Adriana loosens just a little, but still enough for the penguin to push herself up and out of the coil. She then runs out from the crevice, dragging Pedro quickly behind her. The irritated anaconda slithers out behind them, hissing. She soon gives up the chase, though as she knows she can't catch them.
Adriana glances back at Pedro. "Can you run any slower?! Seriously, I've had faster pet iguanas!" She pants at him.
"Well...Excuse me...For not...For not being an...Iguana!" Pedro replies with a small tired laugh. He glances back behind them and doesn't see either predator and slows down. "I think...I think we're clear." He pants.
"Are you...Are you sure?" Adriana asks as she slows down also.
Pedro nods. "Yeah...Yeah, I am..." He says and stops running. He leans against a large Brazilian nut tree to catch his breath and rubs his flipper a little above where the flipper-cuffs have been chafing it during all of the running and movement. Adriana does the same thing and looks at the cuffs aggravatedly.
"If it wasn't for you losing the keys to these stupid cuffs we wouldn't be in this mess, would we?" She snarls at Pedro. She is tired from all of this, irritated that she is still a prisoner and still cuffed to this agent, and she is just in a bad mood in general now.
"I wasn't the one who lost them. You were." Pedro replies, rolling his eyes. He, too, is tired and irritable, and also is nowhere near in the mood for Adriana to be moody. "If you hadn't tried pulling them away from me, they wouldn't have did what they did!"
"I DON'T CARE!" Adriana then shouts at him angrily and bitterly. "IT IS STILL YOUR FAULT!"
Pedro looks at Adriana as if she has lost her mind. "Shhhhhh! Do you want to alert the jaguar that we're here?!" He asks her with a much lowered voice. "Because, if you do not, then you should stop shouting, no?" Adriana just glares maliciously at him for a moment before a bit reluctantly nodding her head. Pedro nods a little, too. "Bueno." He then sits down on the forest floor and tugs her down after him. "Might as well rest a little before we continue on...I need to check where we are now anyway, after you dragged us through the forest like a terrified, loco headless pollo*..." He mutters.
"WHAT?!" Adriana exclaims very loudly and angrily. She shoots Pedro a very evil look. "If you want headless chicken, I can make you a headless pollo!" She growls and reaches for her knife, but actually just reaches into empty space. She growls as she remembers that Pedro confiscated all of her weapons already. Pedro stifles a rather amused chuckle and Adriana just looks with an even angrier, if possible, look at him. "Shut it." She growls and then turns away from him with her beak slightly in the air.
"Technically, Adriana, I haven't really said anything." He says with a slightly amused tone in his voice. Adriana continues to keep her back to him with her beak tipped up into the air. Pedro then just shrugs and gets out the map. He also has to take out the flashlight again as it has started to get dark. "Let's see...We past that...I don't think we've been near that...Ehm…" He mutters to himself as he looks at the map. He raises his head and checks their surroundings to best of his ability in the dark. "Hmmm…" He tries to find a landmarks or something, but actually is unable to. "Gran...Thanks to you, we are way off the trail…" He sighs.
Adriana glances over her shoulder at Pedro and slightly lowers her beak. "Off the trail...You mean we're lost?" She asks, just a bit quieter and thoughtful.
"In a way of speaking...Sí…" Pedro sighs with a nod. He rolls the map up once more and looks at Adriana with his hazel colored eyes. "Though, I wouldn't say we're too lost...I mean...No, I don't know where exactly we are...But, I do have a basic knowing of what area we are in." He says. He isn't really sure why he is explaining this to Adriana as he is sure that she could not care less about anything he says.
Adriana quietly nods a little and turns to look at Pedro again. "So...About how lost then are we, if you basically know where we are?"
Pedro shrugs. "I can't exactly place us on the mapa." He says. "But, I could put a circle around the area that we might possibly be in."
"Oh." She says and nods a little. "Alright…"
"Yeah, so...I guess we'll go that way and hope I'm correcto." He says as he stands up again and points off to the left. "Maybe we'll be even luckier and will not come into the paths of any other predatory animals, no?" He says with a small, unamused laugh forced into his voice.
"Sí…" Adriana nods as she also stands up after Pedro. She looks at him for a moment. "Do you think that since we're lost that I might be able to—"
"No." He retorts shortly. He knows exactly what she was going to ask without her asking. "Lost or not lost, you're still a prisoner; you still are not allowed to have a weapon." Pedro gives her a look.
"Darn it..." She murmurs rather silently to herself and shakes her head a bit with an irritated sigh.
Pedro starts dragging her forward. "Now we go again." He says.
Adriana nods with an annoyed look. "Yay..." She says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Aaaaarrrrrrrooooooooooooo!"
Adriana and Pedro stop for a second and look at each other with wide eyes as they hear a howl. "Copper...Is that what I think it is?" Adriana asks silently.
Pedro nods a bit slowly. "Maned wolf? Oh yeah...You bet...Heh..." He replies just as silently. They just stare at each other for another second.
"Grrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaooooooooooooooooo!" They then start sliding headlong and very quickly away once more. It has gotten dark enough now that they can't really see where they are exactly heading. They still slide quickly, though, heedless of their inability to watch where they are heading. Adriana slides a bit quicker than Pedro and pulls him over a rock that she had seen. Her night vision is pretty decent from how she usually does all of her villainy at the darkest part of night.
"Oof!" Pedro silently grunts as the large rock meets his gut. He shoots a slight glare at Adriana as they slide. He is pretty sure that she had meant for him to do that.
Eventually they finally stop their headlong fleeing and stand up. They look around some in the dark, panting hard. "Are we...In the clear?" Adriana asks and looks towards Pedro.
Pedro nods a bit, trying to catch enough breath to reply. "Ye...Yeah...Thi...Think so..."
"Great..." Adriana pants and nods. She takes half of a step backwards and sits down and keeps going as there is no ground where she sits. "WAAH?!" She exclaims as she falls. Pedro is jerked down hard and quickly onto his stomach from her falling. He lands with a soft grunt and holds on to the cuff which is still linking them together.
Adriana looks up at Pedro from where she is hanging. She is holding tightly onto the single thing keeping her from continuing her fall. "Don't worry...I've got you." Pedro says softly, looking down at Adriana's hanging form.
"Don't you dare let me fall..." She replies silently and kind of scared sounding and looking upwards. The cuff links strain with the effort of holding Adriana up as they were not made for this kind of abuse.
"I would never let you fall..." He nearly whispers. "Never..."Adriana nods a little and doesn't take her eyes from Pedro's. "Give me a second and I'll pull you back up." He says. He then reaches down with his free flipper. "You're going to need to let go of the cuff, though." He says.
"Alright..." She replies silently. She lets go of the cuff so that she is just hanging by it with her single flipper.
Pedro reaches for and grasps her flipper. He pulls on this flipper and on the cuff and starts to inch backwards slowly on his belly. Soon Adriana is where she can reach the side of the cliff herself with her flippers. She flails a little as she tries to pulls herself the rest of the way up. Pedro smiles some at her as he helps her up. He then gently holds her close to him, away from the cliff edge. "See? I told you I wouldn't let you fall..." He says softly.
Adriana nods a little but remains silent. She leans into Pedro as she silently tries to make sense of what just happened.
Translations:
* Srta (abbreviation for señorita)— Miss
* Mujer — woman
* Pollo — chicken