I'm sitting here, at my desk, like I always do, listening to chipmunked music as I write this (btw, highly recommend the Youtube channel "Chipmunks go to MTV"). And I realized that it had been a long time since I've ever actually seen any of the movies or episodes of Alvin and the Chipmunks. For inspiration, I went back and checked some of them out.

I really hope you guys are liking this story so far, because it's going to get darker. It's also going to start picking up with the action soon, though. Hopefully the intensity doesn't scare too many of you away ;).

Anyway, be sure to read and review once you're all done!

Chapter 17: Breathing Room

Jeanette's POV

Under no circumstances were we going to take any breaks until I felt like our defense system was built exactly the way I had envisioned in my head. We had all gathered in the armory, just outside of the wire mesh wall. Alvin and Theodore both had ion torches in their hands with which to melt and cut through the wire. We all just kind of stood there for a few moments, staring at it, not really knowing how to start.

I looked down at my environment reader. The temperature inside of the base had already climbed back up to 67 degrees fahrenheit. "Well," I said, "this should make things easier," as I began the process of taking off my Mars helmet.

As the others only realized in that moment that it had gotten so much warmer, they began to follow my lead and completely remove the suits from their bodies. This left us all in pretty much just underwear, but even though it was still kind of cold we didn't really care. It was better than baking alive in those suits, and besides even though no one ever admitted it, it was pretty refreshing to actually get good looks at each others' bodies after so long. The boys were all in boxers and tank tops and the girls were in spandex with sports bras.

I caught Alvin staring Brittany up and down and I had to hold in a giggle.

"Ok," I spoke up, "best way to keep warm is to get to work. Come on, now!"

And with that, Alvin and Theo walked up to the fence with their torches ready.

"How should we cut it?" Theodore asked me.

"Four even pieces," I said. "Start here. Bottom left corner. We can use every single little bit of this stuff so try to be precise."

Alvin rolled his eyes. "If I had a dollar for every time you've stated the obvious, Jeannie, I wouldn't have had to agree to this stupid trip in the first place."

"Watch the attitude, Alvin," Simon scolded his brother.

Instead of cooling down, Alvin jabbed back: "You wanna do my job?" He held out his torch in Simon's direction, prompting him to take it. "Be my guest."

Simon grabbed his arm and awkwardly looked at the floor with his one good eye. I could see the wheels turning inside his head. He had considered it, but he was too afraid that he would screw it up with only one eye.

Alvin could obviously tell he had cut his brother deep. "Si… I'm-" he trailed off as Brittany grabbed his shoulder solemnly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

Simon suddenly seemed to shake out of his trance as he put on a stone cold face, obviously trying to hide the pain. "Sorry for what? Last I checked, I'm captain of this expedition and you're the operations officer. That means things like cutting through this fence are your job, not mine. Understood?"

Alvin hesitated. The whole room fell uncomfortably silent, before Alvie finally just turned back towards the wired fence and muttered, "aye."

After that, he and Theodore wasted no time in heating up their torches. Starting at different spots on the fence, they were actually making relatively quick work of cutting out sections of the wired mesh. As these sections would hit the ground, it was the rest of our job to carry or drag them all the way back to the first sentry gun.

After a few trips back and forth, the opportunity seemed right to try and speak to Simon one on one.

"Simon!" I called over to him from across the armory. "Help me carry this section back."

Simon's POV

I blinked, gazing in Jeanette's direction. At first, I couldn't even really see what section of fence she was talking about. She was pointing in the direction of the floor, but it took me a moment to realize that the section which appeared to be a foot or two behind her was actually right below her finger.

I hesitated but walked over cautiously to where I saw her standing, until suddenly I felt her warm breath in my face and I stopped myself as quickly as possible. I blinked again and realized I ad almost accidentally ran right into her. I couldn't tell if she knew what had just happened, but she was quick to move on as she hunched over and grabbed ahold of one side of the portion of the fence.

She then looked up at me. "What're you waiting for, Si?" she asked me playfully.

I bit my lip and maneuvered my way to the other end of the mesh. I bent over and reached my hand for the edge of the wire. Once the tip of my fingers were touching the floor, I tried to scoop up the bottom of the wire. But to my surprise, I hadn't even touched it. I had missed.

I looked back up at Jeanette, embarrassed. She had definitely noticed this time. She gave me a sympathetic look, but I was still just embarrassed.

This entire trip I had been wearing specialized contacts, as my eyesight was never very good from the beginning. My one good eye still had one in, but my lack of ability to perceive depth was making everything kind of blurry. It was extremely hard for me to tell the distance away from me that an object was. One moment I'll be looking at something or someone, like Jeannie for instance, convinced she's far away from me and then I'll look away for even just a split second. But when I look back in her direction all of a sudden she'll be right in my face.

All of this was something I was going to have to get used to, and fast.

Trying to act like it didn't happen, I set my attention back to the wire. Watching carefully, I pressed my hands palm up on the ground and slowly slid them forward until I felt them both touch the wire. I then forced them underneath until I could grasp the mesh tightly.

"Ok," Jeanette said, "three, two, one."

We both stood up at the same time, lifting the mesh which was surprisingly heavy.

"I'll go first," she said.

"Fine by me," I tried to respond nonchalantly.

I followed her as we carried the section of the fence around the corner towards sentry guns A and B, doing my best not to run into anything.

Once we were clear of the hearing distance of any of the others, Jeanette asked me, "how's the eye?"

I shrugged, trying to keep up with her pace. "Healing ok, I guess. Haven't really spoken to Eleanor about it yet. Why?"

"No," she said shaking her head. "I meant your good eye."

"Fine," I said. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"Look, I'm not the only one who's noticed you struggling to not bump into things," she said, lowering her voice.

"Well, I don't know what to tell you, Jean," I snapped at her. I then pointed at the gauze that was covering my right eye. "See this? This means I only have one eye now. It's going to be an adjustment."

"There's no need to get pissed at me, Simon," she snapped back at me. "I'm not the reason that happened to you. I'm only trying to help."

I sighed. "Ok, how do you want to help me?"

"I- I don't know," she admitted after hesitating. "I guess I just wanted to make you feel better."

"Just talking to you makes me feel better," I said, smiling at her.

She giggled.

I suddenly noticed that Jeanette was just a few steps away from backing right into sentry gun B. "Watch it!" I exclaimed.

The smile fell off of her face as she suddenly snapped her head around. She then looked back at me with a sly look on her face. "That gun is several feet away from me, Simon," she chuckled.

"Oh," I said, embarrassed once again.

The moment that we had set the mesh down on the ground, Jeanette spoke up again. "Look, I don't want to sound too blount here, but we need to talk about leadership."

"What about it?" I asked defensively even though I knew damn well where she was going with this.

"Simon, look at me," she snapped, prompting me to look her in the eyes. "You're not fit to take back over as captain. You've done a great job so far of taking it easy, I just want to make sure you're still planning on just focusing on yourself."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Why?"

"I… I just think that in an emergency situation you might struggle to lead us out ok. That's all."

"Ok," I groaned. "You clearly did an ok job while I was out. I'll stay out of your way."

"I didn't totally mean that," she admitted, grabbing her shoulder. "I still need your help. I just need you following my lead is all."

I suddenly grabbed her waist with both hands and pull her closer, causing her to look at me in surprise. "You have my full support," I whispered before pulling her in for a kiss. The moment our faces locked, I didn't want to pull away. And I could tell that she didn't either. We stood there for a good few moments making out and moaning as we felt each other up. This was undoubtedly the best part of the trip so far for me.

Suddenly the sound of scraping metal caused us to pull away, as Brittany had just rounded the corner towards us. She grinned slyly at us, obviously realizing what we were just up to. "Am I interrupting something?" she asked sarcastically.

"Brittany!" Jeanette exclaimed. "Are you sure you should be carrying that thing all the way over here by yourself?"

Brittany rolled her eyes. "What are you, my mother?"

"No," Jeanette said, shaking her head. "The only mother around here is you."

My eyes went straight down to Brittany's belly. There seemed something off about it. I leaned into Jeanette and whispered, "is Brittany showing or is it my poor eyesight again?"

"No, she definitely is," she whispered back.

Brittany suddenly stopped moving towards us and gave us a very suspicious look. "What?" she said.

"You've got a little beer belly," Jeanette giggled.

"Surprise," Brittany snapped, rolling her eyes, "it's what pregnant girls do. Now come on, we almost have the rest of the fence."

Alvin's POV

It felt like it had taken forever, but the second mesh wall was almost finished. The first one, in front of sentry guns A and B, had a giant learning curve in terms of using our torches to weld the pieces of fence back together in order to build that thing up almost all the way to the ceiling. But Theodore and I, as well as the others, had found a good system.

Every time we moved, either sentry gun C or D would suddenly snap its barrell in our direction, and follow us for a little bit before it would move on to one of the other chipmunks. We had gotten used to it, obviously, though we knew that if these things were armed and loaded that we'd have an unimaginable amount of giant bullet holes in our bodies.

"Man," I chuckled as Theodore and I slowly worked towards each other from opposite corners with our torches. "If those things were loaded, our corpses wouldn't even be recognizable."

"Let's hope so," Theo responded through gritted teeth. "We need them to be on top of their games against the Martians."

Theodore and I finally met at a single spot. Our torch flames met as the last strand of this section of mesh was fully welded on.

I looked down at the others, standing and watching us on the ground. We were several feet above them. Much closer to the ceiling than the floor. "How does it look?" I called down to them.

"Serviceable," Jeanette called back up. "Come on down and take a look for yourself!"

With that, Theo and I started climbing down the wire wall that we had just created. The sentry guns followed us all the way down. It was almost like they were so desperate for something to shoot. Once we had both touched the floor, we walked over to join the others, who were standing behind the sentries and staring at our second line of defense.

It wasn't as pretty as we had thought when putting it together. It looked pretty patchy and thrown together, but it was pretty strong and it reached almost all the way up to the ceiling. There was overlapping in some areas, and it just overall didn't look professionally done. But that wasn't the point.

"Now we just have to load the guns," Simon said.

We started with sentry gun C. And it was a group effort. I had to climb up to the top of the tripod that was holding the weapon above the ground to unlock the ammo cartridge. Then I needed help loading the damn thing up from Theo and Eleanor.

We repeated the process for sentry gun D, just like we had the other three, and then we stood safely just behind the watchful eye of each weapon's infrared motion-detecting scanner.

"Are they live right now?" Eleanor asked in a shaky tone.

"No," Jeanette muttered, shaking her head. "We have to activate them from within the control room."

"Are you sure?" Ellie didn't sound convinced, as she was staring intently at sentry gun D to her right.

I slyly walked up behind her and grabbed both of her shoulders. "Only one way to find out."

Before I could do anything her survival instincts kicked in and she jumped out of my grasp. She looked at me in shock as I lost my self control and broke down in laughter. She huffed and stuck her middle finger at me.

Brittany rolled her eyes at my immaturity.

"Secure the BS, Alvin," Jeanette said, "we should get back to the control room."

Which was just fine by me.

Brittany's POV

The pregnancy may have been affecting me at that point. But just a little bit, if any. At least, that's what I was telling myself.

The climb up to the top of the blockade seemed more daunting than ever with a big bulge in my belly. With that said, I wasn't going to let the others know that I was slowing down. One by one, we began climbing. I was going to bring up the rear, but Alvin insisted on going after me to make sure I was ok.

I did everything I could do keep up, but no matter how much effort I put in, it felt like I was falling behind. Alvin was being patient with me, clearly not trying to push me too hard.

I actually felt like I was doing ok, until I came up to a higher than usual ledge. I reached up and grabbed it, but the second I tried to pull myself up, I felt a sharp kick in my stomach.

"Ah!" I grimaced as I snapped back and hunched over, clutching my stomach with both hands.

Everyone above us stopped climbing and looked back to see what the commotion was about.

Alvin rushed to my side, holding me gently. "Are you ok?"

"Fine!" I said through gritted teeth.

"Is the baby ok?" he asked me.

"Do I look like a doctor?" I snapped at him.

"No," he said rolling his eyes. "Did you you feel him?"

"Yeah he just gave me a kick, that's all." I was starting to recover. "Who said it was a he?"

"N-no one. I didn't mean it like that."

Now that I was over the shock, I tried grabbing the ledge again. "Help me up?" I asked him nicely.

He chuckled and grabbed my waist. "Three, two, one!"

With his help, I made it to the top of the ledge and eventually to the mouth of the tunnel at the top. The others were up there waiting for us.

"You doing ok, Brit?" Eleanor asked me.

"Yeah I'm fine," I shrugged. "What're we waiting for?"

Jeanette looked at me, unsure, but finally turned and began to lead us one by one through the tunnel. Once again, Alvin brought up the rear to keep an eye on me.

Once Jeanette had finally made it through, I heard her gasp. This prompted the rest of us to rush our way through to see what it was that she saw. Simon was the first out, followed by Theo, and then Ellie, then myself.

Once we were all out and had caught what surprised Jeanette, none of us could believe it. There, sitting on top of the computer table in the middle of where we had set up our little camp spot, was the bottle of Crown Royal that I had found in Mrs. Velazquez's drawer. With a plastic straw sticking out of it no less.

"How?" Jeanette's confused question echoed through the room.

"Merry Christmas, gang!" came the response of a certain insufferable chipmunk who was just now stepping out of the tunnel to join us. "I carried it in here while you all were busy."

"How…" Jeanette trailed off before speaking again. "It doesn't matter. Put it back, now!"

Alvin looked shocked. "I was expecting a thank you."

"Thank you?" Simon scoffed. "We could all die here any day now and you're trying to get us drunk?"

"Uh, yeah. That's exactly why I'm trying to get us all drunk." Alvin chuckled.

"I can't even drink," I protested. "I have a baby inside of me. Or did you forget?"

"I didn't forget, Brit," Alvin sighed. "I was just trying to find a way all of us could loosen up."

"And so you came up with a way which involves directly violating NASA's space code," Jeanette scolded.

Alvin pretended to think about this. "Well, last I checked, NASA sent us up here to die."

"So you want to make it easier for them?" Simon interrupted him.

"No," Alvin retorted. "I'm just saying that NASA code doesn't mean anything to us anymore. Them and all of their rules can kiss my ass."

Jeanette seemed to consider this before shaking her head. "Doesn't matter. It's still a bad idea. Take it back, right now."

Alvin shrugged. "Would if I could. But the Marine's sleeping quarters are on the other side of the hallway. And we just fenced ourselves in." He finished with a sly grin.

"Fine then," Jeanette scoffed, rolling her eyes. "In the morning, we'll all work on getting that thing out of here." She began to climb down, before turning back towards Alvin, "until then it stays right where it is."

Alvin had the look on his face like a kid who just convinced his mom to buy him a piece of candy at the store. I giggled at his childishness, before following the others down the blockade. I had a feeling that things were going to get real tonight…

And that's all for chapter 17! As always, if you haven't already, hit that fav/follow button so you can get the notification the second I post the next chapter!

And of course, be SURE to leave a review and let me know exactly what you think. If you liked certain parts, didn't like certain parts, etc. I want to hear all about it! Praise and constructive criticism alike are totally welcome!

I'll be hard at work tryna get chapter 18 out to y'all! Till then!