The Final Battle

  Chapter 49: Sheen's Question

  The gunshot was a lot quieter than he had expected. Almost as if it had come from the other end of the room. He kept his eyes closed and waited a few more seconds, but there was no pain. Did I die quickly and painlessly? He opened his eyes, not sure what he expected to see, and immediately assumed that he was in some sort of afterlife when he saw Sheen.

  He realized that he was still alive when he saw that he was still in the Yolkian ship. He looked down and saw that his body was free of gunshot wounds. Jimmy then noticed a moaning Eustace lying at his feet, clutching his back. He looked back at Sheen, who was staring at Eustace in disbelief with a gun in his hands.

  For all of Jimmy's mastery over the English language, he could only manage to say, "Huh?"

  That one word snapped Sheen out of his daze, and he tucked his gun back in his waistband and picked up the knife that Eustace had dropped onto the floor. "Hang on," he told Jimmy while running up to his friend and cutting his ropes.

  "Sheen …what?" he asked, still not believing that he was alive, much less that Sheen was.

  Sheen cut the last ropes and then noticed the handcuffs. "I can't cut the handcuffs," he told Jimmy.

  "Check Eustace's pockets for keys," Jimmy offered, his face contorted into a look of confusion. Sheen nodded and patted Eustace's waist. He then reached one hand into a pocket on Eustace's right and came out with a ring of keys.

  It took a few minutes for Sheen to figure out which keys went to which handcuffs, but he eventually matched them up. The handcuffs clicked open, and Sheen helped hoist the shocked Jimmy up. "What happened to Cindy?" Sheen asked while running over to her.

  Cindy's name reminded Jimmy of the situation at hand, and he ran over to his girlfriend. One more miracle. Come on, just one more miracle, he desperately pleaded while lifting the bottom of her shirt and looking at the hole in her skin. Blood was steadily pouring out of it, and he instantly took his shirt off and pressed it down on the wound.

  Sheen was fumbling around her neck, trying to find her pulse. Jimmy glanced over at him and saw the grim look on his face. "I'm not getting anything," he told Jimmy.

  Jimmy's heart sunk at Sheen's words. He was about to take his hands off of the wound in defeat when he noticed that Sheen had his fingers in the wrong position. He forcefully shoved his friend out of the way and placed his middle and index fingers onto her neck. His eyes instantly lit up as he felt her arteries pumping. "Oh thank god," he whispered. He resumed applying pressure to her wound and smiled as he saw her chest slowly rise and her fingers twitch.

  "Is she going to be alright?" Sheen quietly asked, choosing not to reprimand Jimmy for pushing him.

  Jimmy's smile faltered as he realized that Cindy wasn't out of danger yet. "I, I don't know," he said while staring at Cindy's pale face. I don't think any vital organs were hit, but she's losing blood."

  Sheen looked down at the wound on his own side. "Maybe you should do that thing where you heat up the wound to stop it from bleeding?" he asked while pulling a spear out of his pocket and extending it.

  Jimmy shook his head. "The bullet's still inside her. I don't want to seal it in. I … I don't know what to do," he admitted. Cindy gave a light moan, and he wiped a few strands of hair out of her face with his bloody right hand. "Hang in there," he told her.

  "Shouldn't one of us take care of Eustace?" Sheen reminded Jimmy.

  Jimmy cursed under his breath. Sheen's reappearance, his missing friends, Eustace, Cindy's injury; there were too many things going on at once. "Give me a gun," he started to say, but Sheen had already handed Jimmy Eustace's revolver. Jimmy angrily snatched it from Sheen's hands, mumbled a quick, "Thanks," and walked back into the room where Eustace lay.

  Jimmy saw Eustace look up at him and try to crawl away. Jimmy easily surpassed the injured boy's speed and stood in front of him. He pointed the revolver down at Eustace's pained face. "I told you to stop it," Jimmy angrily told Eustace.

  Eustace resumed clutching the bleeding wound on his back, and glared up at Jimmy. "Fuck you."

  Jimmy kicked him hard in the stomach, and Eustace began to cough violently. Jimmy slammed his foot into his waist once more, but he felt no joy at seeing Eustace's pain. The injured boy was still coughing. He finally spat out a mouthful of blood and glared at Jimmy. "Too scared to pull the trigger?"

  Jimmy cocked the revolver in response. He tightened his grip on the trigger and watched Eustace avert his gaze. Pull the trigger. Pull it, go find the parents, and get the hell back home. Jimmy nodded at his logic and grabbed the revolver with both hands.

  "Well?" Eustace weakly asked, but he still shot Jimmy an icy stare/

  The gun was shaking in his hands. Just shoot him. Shoot him and end it. But as he tried to pull the trigger, he realized that he couldn't. He lowered the gun slightly and closed his eyes.

  I have to do this. He's insane. He won't stop until me and my friends are dead. The authorities have proven that they can't handle him. If I don't kill him now then he'll kill me later. Or worse, he'll kill someone else, and then it will be my fault. Jimmy knew that he was making sense, that killing him was the only sensible thing to do. But he simply could not pull the trigger. Not after killing before and realizing that it had been in vain.

  Jimmy completely lowered the gun and spun around. He noticed that Sheen was staring at him, but his friend quickly averted his stare. Jimmy then focused on the bleeding body of Cindy, lying in a heap on the floor. His eyes narrowed in hatred as he watched her chest slowly rise, far too slowly. He stared at her pale skin, frowned at the fact that her beautiful eyes were hidden behind drooped eyelids. Filled with rage, he spun around once more and fired two shots at Eustace.

  Eustace gasped as the two rounds hit him in the stomach. He tried to scream out in pain, but could only manage to let out a wheezing sound. He fell onto the floor, his hands flailing about in an attempt to grab his wounds. Through it all he still glared at Jimmy. Jimmy aimed his gun at Eustace's head, looked away, and fired the remaining bullets.

  The wheezing abruptly stopped. Jimmy stared at the smoking gun in his hands, clenched it in fury, and tossed it across the room. He caught a glimpse of Eustace's corpse, but quickly looked away and walked back to Cindy.

  "So it was Eustace?" Sheen asked, still confused about the whole mess. "Was he working with the Yolkians?"

  Jimmy glanced at the puzzled Sheen. He was sure that he had the same look of confusion etched across his face. So many questions, so little time. "Sheen, do you know where the other kids are?" he asked, ignoring Sheen's inquiries.

  Sheen shoved aside his confusion and nodded. "Yeah. They're on the floor above us, in a big room. But the air is weird. It nearly made me pass out."

  "Sheen, go up there and untie two people. Tell one of them to wake up everyone else, and then bring the other person down here. There should be a tank either in the room or in the ventilation system that is filling the room with that gas. Find it and shut it off. Do you understand?"

  Sheen nodded. "Ok. I'll go get them," he said while standing up and running down the hallway.

  Jimmy watched as his friend rounded a corner and then immediately stared down at Cindy. "Hang on, Cindy. Just hang on," he told her while applying pressure on her wound with one hand and squeezing her left hand with his other."

  "Please don't die," he begged while tears streamed down his bloody face and splashed onto Cindy's exposed stomach. "I mean, we've been through worse, right? Eustace is dead; you don't have to worry about him. Don't die, not now. Not after all we've been through. Not after we've come so close. Don't die," he pleaded while resting his head on her chest and sobbing. He squeezed her hand, and he felt her lightly squeeze back.

  Thirty minutes later, Sheen was running down the flight of stairs that led to the second floor. It had taken him fifteen minutes to find the tank of gas that Jimmy had described, and then another to shut it off. He had been forced to hold his breath and only stay in the room for around a mi
nute at a time. Once the air had begun to turn back to normal, Sheen woke up Ike and Nick. Ike had stayed behind to wake up everyone else, and Nick was several yards behind him, struggling to keep up.

  "Hang on!" Nick shouted while slowly jogging down the stairs. His head felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it, and he was a little dizzy, just like when he had woken up on the night of the kidnappings.

  "Jimmy and Cindy are down here!" he shouted over his shoulder while rounding a corner and running down the hallway that Jimmy and Cindy were in.

  "Sheen, did you come back alone?" Jimmy angrily shouted as he turned around towards the sound of Sheen's voice. He had managed to fashion a makeshift bandage and wrap it around Cindy's wound. He had been cradling her head, but now he gently set her down, stood up, and walked over to Sheen.

  "No!" Sheen shouted back.

  Nick suddenly rounded the corner, clutched the wall, and began to breathe deeply. He coughed for a few seconds before weakly saluting Jimmy. "What's up, chief?" he asked while still coughing. He then noticed Cindy over Jimmy's shoulder and paled. "Oh my god," he whispered.

  Jimmy grabbed Nick's shoulders and stared up at him. "Nick, this is very important. Stay here with Cindy. I know you're not a doctor, but I just want someone here with her. Sheen and I are going to pilot this ship. Eustace must have taken our headsets off, so we can't keep in touch. Just, don't let her die," Jimmy pleaded.

  Nick looked over Jimmy's shoulder once more and got a good look at Cindy. There was a large puddle of blood on her waist, and she was unconscious. "Yes, sir."

  Jimmy nodded, grabbed Sheen's wrist, and then led him to the bow of the ship. "We've got to get out of here fast," Jimmy explained. "Jake's mom is a doctor. She can help Cindy."

  Jimmy found the bridge of the ship and sat down in one of the piloting chairs. He cracked his knuckles and stared down at the array of buttons on the control panel. He saw Sheen sit down on the seat beside him. Sheen immediately pressed several buttons, and the ship began to accelerate forward.

  Jimmy stared at him in both amazement and confusion as Sheen began to pilot the ship. "Sheen, keep doing whatever it is that you're doing. I'm going to try to find our parents."

  "Roger that," Sheen answered while flipping several switches.

  Jimmy saw a monitor attached to the dashboard beneath him and pressed several buttons nearby. It took a few minutes, but he soon had figured out how to instruct the computer to do a DNA scan for human life. The monitor displayed a set of coordinates.

  "Sheen, give me a second to activate the auto-pilot," Jimmy told his co-pilot while pressing several more buttons.

  Sheen took his eyes off of the view screen and looked over at Jimmy. "I think the red one does it."

  Jimmy briefly looked at him, and then pressed the red button. "You're right," he said in incredulity while pressing several more buttons to plot the course. Jimmy nodded towards Sheen, and he let go of the piloting controls. The ship continued to fly itself.

  Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief and leaned back in his seat. Suddenly, Ike ran into the room. "Jimmy!" Ike shouted.

  Shocked to hear his voice, Jimmy spun his chair around to face him. "What's wrong?"

  Ike took a brief second to look around the vast room, and then shook off his wonderment. "Nick wanted me to tell you that Cindy seems pretty good. Nick said that she woke up for a few seconds, but that she's out cold again. Her pulse is still good though."

  Before Jimmy could respond, Ike had dashed back out of the room. Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness."

  Satisfied for the moment that Cindy was in stable condition, he turned to Sheen. "Now, what the hell happened to you?"

  Sheen leaned back in his seat as well and put his feet up on the control panel. "Long story short, I crashed onto an asteroid. I nearly died of thirst, hijacked a Yolkian ship that landed on the rock, and then flew towards the Yolkian planet to help you guys. I saw this ship and noticed your three ships on top of it. I came in, freed Cindy, and then helped you." Sheen then narrowed his eyes in anger and glared at Jimmy. "Thanks for coming to rescue me, by the way."

  Jimmy rubbed the back of his neck and gave a nervous laugh. "Sheen, um, well, there's a very good reason why we left you behind. You see..."

  Sheen shook his head and motioned for Jimmy to stop talking. "Screw the apologies for a second. Why were the Yolkians and Eustace working together?"

  Jimmy shook his head. "The Yolkians had nothing to do with it. It was all a trap designed by Eustace."

  "Wait," Sheen continued while pushing his hands forward in a motion for Jimmy to slow down, "The Yolkians were innocent?"

  "This time," Jimmy answered.

  Sheen nervously bit his thumb's fingernail as he remembered how mercilessly he had dispatched Dopsil and the other Yolkians. Oops.

  For the next hour or so, Jimmy and Sheen related the details of their separate adventures. It took Jimmy twenty minutes, but Sheen finally agreed to forgive him for not coming to rescue him.

  While they talked, Jimmy continued to figure out how the control panel worked. Once Sheen had finished recounting how he had freed Cindy, Jimmy pressed several buttons, and smiled as he got the response that he wanted. "Two hours until we reach our parents," he said once Sheen had stopped talking. Even better, I'm getting some pictures of the base that they're in. I don't see any guards. They're just fenced in. It’s hard to tell, but I think they're under that knockout gas."

  "No guards, no need to fight our way in," Nick happily said while strolling into the piloting room. Jimmy jumped a little as he heard his voice, but spun around to see him. "Don't worry, she's fine."

  "How fine?" Jimmy asked.

  Nick put a reassuring hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "She's awake. It took a dozen of us to calm her down. She was worried as hell about you. Took another half dozen to keep her pinned down so she wouldn't go running around the ship to find you," Nick said with a smile. "I assumed that you wouldn't want her up and about in her condition."

  Jimmy closed his eyes and smiled widely. "No. She needs to rest. I'll check in on her soon." He then lifted up his eyelids and stared at Nick. "She's really ok?"

  Nick nodded. "See for yourself if you want." He turned around and was about to walk out of the room when he snapped his fingers.

  "Oh yeah," he said while turning back around. "Cindy told me that it was Eustace who did all of this. We found where he put our headsets. Here you go," he said while unclipping one from his jeans and handing it to Jimmy. "Thought you'd like to phone home first."

  "Thanks," Jimmy said while slipping it over his head. As soon as it was in place, he felt a new calm click into place.

  "Now," Nick continued, "I obviously have a lot of questions about what happened while I was out of it, mostly about Estevez here. I also know that you're probably too busy to answer than all. But could you just tell me one thing real fast?"

  "Sure," Jimmy said.

  "Who the hell is Eustace?" Nick shouted.

  Jimmy and Sheen looked to each other. "He's an old friend," Jimmy answered, not in the mood to explain further.

  Nick stared at Jimmy for a few seconds before accepting Jimmy's answer. "Some friend," he said while exiting the room.

  Jimmy turned on his headset and breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the familiar sound of static. He made sure that the headset was tuned to the common frequency that they all used and then pulled the microphone closer to his mouth. "Folfax, this is Jimmy Neutron. Do you copy?"

  Jimmy found that he was holding his breath while waiting for Libby's response. He finally let out a sigh of relief as Libby answered him.

  "Neutron!" Libby screamed. "Where the hell have you been? We have been going absolutely crazy down here! We've been trying to get in touch with you for nearly twelve hours!" she hysterically shouted. "What the hell is going on up there?"

  Jimmy closed his eyes as her insane shouting began to give him a headache. "Libby! LIBBY!" he shouted at the top of his lungs. Her frantic
shouting finally subsided. "Libby, I can't even begin to explain what is going on up here. But we're all basically fine. Cindy got shot..."

  "Cindy got shot!" Libby shouted.

  "But she's doing alright!" Jimmy immediately assured her. "The bleeding's stopped, she's conscious, and we'll have the Dr. Brigham take care of her once we free her and the other parents." Before Libby could respond, Jimmy immediately continued speaking. "But I think there's someone here that you'd rather talk to than me."

  Jimmy pulled his headset off of his head as Libby began shouting again. He handed the device to Sheen, who looked like a little kid on Christmas morning. He immediately snatched the headset out of Jimmy's hands and slipped it over his head. "Libby!" he ecstatically shouted.

  As soon as Sheen had spoken, Libby immediately became silent. "Sheen?" she whispered.

  Sheen smiled wider than he had since Libby had first kissed him. "In the flesh," he said while struggling not to cry.

  "I…" Libby continued, tears of joy falling down her cheeks, "I thought you were dead," she whispered.

  Sheen stopped fighting his emotions and started to cry as well. "Me? Die? And leave a girl like you behind? Why would I do that?" he said in between sobs.

  The rest of Control Team took of their headsets, not wanting to listen in on Libby's private conversation. Carl smiled and patted Libby's shoulder before following the rest of the kids into the lab's lobby.

  Libby tried to think of something to say, but she wasn't sure that she could speak even if she did find the words. She was crying uncontrollably at this point. "How?" she finally asked.

  Sheen finally stopped his crying and wiped the tears from his eyes. "It's a long story," he told her, vastly understating his ordeal. "Libby, I…I never thought that I'd see you again," he whispered.

  "Me neither," Libby said while laughing. "I can't believe that you're alive."

  Sheen briefly looked over at Jimmy, and was surprised to see that his friend was tearing up a little as well. "Libby, there's a lot of stuff to do here," Sheen sadly told her. He looked to Jimmy for reassurance, and he nodded. "I'll talk more once we get our parents back. Love you."

  Libby nodded on her end. "Love you too," she whispered while tilting her head back. She clicked her headset off and tried to convince herself that she wasn't dreaming.

  Sheen turned his own headset off and handed it back to Jimmy. Jimmy took it and rested it on the control panel in front of him. They both sat in silence for several minutes, looking at the beautiful sky on the view screen.

  "Sheen," Jimmy finally said, "I wanted to apologize."

  Sheen chuckled a little. "I already forgave you for not coming back to save me."

  Jimmy shook his head and clasped his hands in thought. "No, not for that. Sheen, for a long time, even during this whole ordeal, I really underestimated you. I thought that you couldn't pilot the rocket through the asteroid belt, I hesitated to pick you on my capture the flag team, I left a drugged up Libby in charge of the lab that first night…" he rattled off.

  Sheen frowned a little at the reminder of Jimmy's distrust of him. "Thanks," he mumbled.

  Jimmy shook his head. "What I mean is, I was wrong. I mean, god," he said in disbelief. "If half the stuff you said that you did since you crashed is true, then…wow. Surviving on that asteroid, hijacking a ship, and then coming to help us instead of going back to Earth? That…and then saving me and Cindy?" Jimmy stared at Sheen. "Sheen, I was wrong. I…I don't know what else I can say."

  Sheen's anger dissipated and he smiled at Jimmy's flattering words. "Oh, stop it," he said while blushing and looking away.

  "No, I mean it," Jimmy continued. "What you did was amazing," he summed up.

  Sheen realized that he was due a little appreciation. "Well, yeah." He chuckled and leaned back in his seat. "I guess it was."

  Jimmy turned his attention back to the control panel in front of him. "Shouldn't you go to check on Cindy?" Sheen asked him.

  Jimmy nodded as he looked down at his bloody hands. "Yeah." He didn't stand up, though. He rubbed the back of his neck and gave a thoughtful smile. "Sheen, there's something that's been bothering me ever since that first night after the kidnappings."

  Sheen looked away from the view screen that showed the space surrounding the ship and stared at Jimmy. "What?"

  Jimmy continued looked down at the control panel. "That first night, you wanted to ask me something, and we all made fun of you. Then you stormed out." Jimmy glanced at his friend, his eyes sparkling with curiosity. "What did you want to ask?"

  Sheen laughed and stood up. "No, it's stupid," he said while pacing around the room.

  "No, really," Jimmy told him while watching Sheen walk around the room. "What was it?"

  Sheen finally sat back down in his seat and shrugged. "Well, alright. I know there's probably some simple and obvious explanation that will make me look like an idiot, but here it goes." He leaned back and remembered the first night in Jimmy's lab. "Remember the video of the abductions? The one you showed us?" Jimmy nodded.

  "Well, I was wondering how come there was only a sliver of moon in the sky on the tape, but a full moon outside that night," Sheen said.

  Jimmy took in Sheen's words and shook his head in disbelief. "I know," Sheen said while chuckling. "Stupid, right?"