꧁꧂

ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴡᴇɴᴛʏ-ᴛᴡᴏ: ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ɪɴ ᴍʏ ᴡᴀʏ

She clicked on the flashlight, glancing down the airducts as she made a loud hmmm for all of us to hear. Sat up on the counter, I tilted my head slightly as I watched her walk back down the steps and turned back to us, a little hair flip along with it as she did so.

"Yeah, I don't know." The girl began, stepping towards our table of blueprints.

"You don't know if you can fit?" Dustin clarified, hands in pockets while we awkwardly waited around.

"Oh, I can fit." She tells him. "I just don't know If I want to."

I sighed at her words. There was nothing quite as annoying as ten-year-olds sometimes. "Are you claustrophobic?" Robin asked the girl.

Erica snickered. "I don't have phobias."

"What's the problem, then?" I asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"The problem is, I still haven't heard what's in this- for. Erica." She said the words firmly, and I found myself glaring at a ten-year-old, yet part of me wondered how on Earth I ended up there: in an ice cream parlour, with Steve, Robin, Dustin and Erica, plotting to sneak the youngest one of us through the air ventilation system. Rule number sixteen: whenever evil Russians are involved, maybe just stay at home next time...

The oldest boy sat across from Erica, sliding across a banana split, with extra large scoops of strawberry, vanilla and fudge on top. She grimaced as we all stared hopefully at her, sliding the boat right back over at him.

"More fudge, please." She said. I looked at the boat, and then back up at Erica. "Go on." She waved over at Steve. He looked so reluctant that I would've sworn that he'd prefer to be back in the junkyard in November.

"Alright..." Robin picked up the blueprints beside her and waved them up in the air for Erica to see. "You see this? This is the route you're gonna take." She pointed it out as if it wasn't in a red marker pen. "Then we just wait till the last delivery goes out tonight. Then you knock out the grate, jump down, open the door." As the older girl spoke, Erica looked down at her drink and took a large slurp of it.

"Then you find out what's in those boxes?" She asked, looking over at us with the most tired look in existence.

"Exactly." A less tired, but annoyed with children, Robin replied.

"Mm-hmm... And you say this guard is armed." Erica continued, looking over at me with an expression which spoke length.

"He won't be there." I insisted to her.

"And booby traps?" She asked on, making any smile on my face prior drop off.

"Booby traps?" I repeated. "Trust me, this isn't Indiana Jones."

"Lasers? Spikes in the wall?" She wasn't having it. "You know what this half-baked plan of yours sounds like to me?" We all waited for a reply as she looked around at the three of us. "Child. Endangerment." 

I rolled my eyes and shook my head in disbelief while Robin tried to fight our corner. "We'll be in radio contact with you the whole time-"

"AH-AH-AH!" She held her index finger in the air over at Robin to shut her up. "CHILD. ENDANGERMENT." She repeated herself and Robin gave up, sighing with an even more exhausted way.

"Erica? Hi, uh..." Dustin took his go while it lasted. "We think these Russians want to do harm to our country... Great harm. Don't you love your country?"

"You can't spell 'America' without 'Erica'." The girl fired the comment over at the boy fast, and I personally took a minute to let her reply sink in. You can't spell America without... Erica...

She slurped on her slushie loudly while Dustin took that in. "Uh... yeah... yeah. Oddly, that's uh... totally true... SO- Don't do this for us." He said, going back to subject eventually. "Do it for your country." She was at that point in the slushie where the straw made the loudest noises humanly possible (next to girls screaming when the lights turn off unexpectedly and dad sneezes). "Do it for your fellow man. Do this for America... Erica."

Erica smiled as she placed the empty cup down. "Oh! I just got the chills." Erica's comment made the boy smile, before it then quickly fell back off his face. "Oh, yeah, from this float, not your speech." Ouch. "Know what I love most about this country?" She asked, facing back at us and the table full of untouched ice cream. "Capitalism." I pulled a face that was hopefully unreadable to the girl as she said it over at me. "Do you know what capitalism is?"

"Yeah..." I murmured, nodding my head. "Yeah, I do..."

"It means this is a free market system." She says to us all. "Which means people get paid for their services- depending on how valuable their contributions are." Oh... so that's what she was getting at. "And it seems to me, my ability to fit into that little vent is very, very valuable to you all. So, you want my help? THIS USS Butterscotch better be the first of many." I looked over at Robin with a slight pleading look as Erica spoke to her. "And I'm talking free ice cream: for. Life." Rule number seventeen: forget bringing ten-year-olds on secret missions to do with evil Russians, because they will use you to their advantage.

⊹˚˖⁺

"Erica, do you copy?" As we sat on the rooftop, I watched next to Robin as she spoke to the girl through the radio. If you'd have told me a week ago, I would be chasing Russians at Starcourt, I would've laughed, I can't lie to you.

"Mm-hmm, I copy." Robin gave me a look as we heard Erica's voice through the radio. "You nerds in position or what?"

"Yeah, we're in position." The girl tells her. "It's all quiet here, so you've got the green light." I glanced over at Dustin with his binoculars and gave him a look, hoping he could just hear me and my questioning thoughts. I still didn't get why he needed them.

"Green light, roger that." We heard Erica say. "Commence Operation: Child Endangerment." I let out a quiet chuckle at her words, while a more stressed-out Robin and Steve leaned over the radio.

"Can we maybe not call it that?" Robin asked her.

"See you on the other side... Nerds." Silence went on between us all as we waited, hopeful that something good was to come from it; along with the fact that Erica was going to be just fine. "All right, nerds." I perked up a little at the ten-year-old's voice. "I'm there."

"Do- do you see anything?"

"Yeah, I see those boring boxes you're so excited about." I groaned a little at her choice of words, but then again, the rest of me didn't really know if I wanted to be here, and instead laying in my bed, thinking and pining over Max Mayfield.

"Any guards?"

"Negative." Erica replied.

"Booby traps?" I mocked, not realising the Robin had the radio on.

"If I could see them, they'd be pretty shit traps, wouldn't they?" She asked me in return.

"Thank you for that." Robin says, but I don't know if it's at me or her, so I take it as it was for me. Not even two minutes later, the girl was in, and didn't hang around in the room, the door slowly opening for the four of us to see.

Erica walked through, with two flashlights on her crash helmet on. She looked up at us. "Free ice cream- for, life." She repeated, making me smirk.

⊹˚˖⁺

The four of us leapt down to the room, wasting no time and not hanging around. Soon, the group of us were crowded around a table and one box of many that was stacked on top of it.

The oldest boy of the two opened it up with a knife before handing it over to Dustin. When Steve opened up the cardboard box, that's when I got confused. A metal container, yes another box, sat in the middle of the cardboard one, with a large metal hatch at the top to be used to open it up.

Steve didn't hesitate, hand grabbing it and twisting open the hatch, causing air to hiss from the box as he opened it all up. Now, not to say that these Russians are extremely careful with packaging, but inside was four more hatches to be opened. Someone didn't want this stuff to be touched, that was for sure.

"That's definitely not Chinese food." Steve says, stating the bare obvious.