By Your Side (JWCC Darius x Oc)

At Least......

We continued to walk through the dark cave, which turned out to actually be a tunnel, until we exited the tunnel and into a desert. Everywhere you looked there was sand, no trees, more sand, and even more sand.

"Okay, so........definitely not Costa Rica." Brooklyn confirmed.

"It looks more like.......Australia?" Darius questioned. "No way we went that far, though. Right?" Kenji then put his hand on Darius's face. "Kenji, what are you doing?" Darius asked.

"Making sure we're not dead. 'Cause if we're dead, we'd be ghosts, and if we're ghosts, I'd be able to, like..........ooh, go through you." Kenji explained while sounding like a ghosts and wiggling his fingers at Darius.

"We're not dead!" Darius snapped as he slapped Kenji's hand away.

"Well, now you know. You're welcome." Kenji said.

"So, we know where we aren't. Any idea where we are?" Brooklyn asked as Kenji and Darius went down the mountain we were on to stand beside her.

"Nope. Just that we're stranded. And alone. Again." Yaz said as she sat on a rock a few feet away.

"We just gotta access the situation." Darius said.

"Hey, hey, guys! Look at that!" Ben called as he slid down the slope to be in front of Kenji, Brooklyn, and Darius. "Over there in the distance. Something shiny!" Ben pointed. We looked at where he was pointing to see something in the distance shining.

"I see it! Looks like the sun is glinting off some sort of metal thingy?" Sammy questioned.

"Something metal could mean someone had to make it. We gotta go check it out." Ben said.

"Hang on. You wanna go walking across a blazing hot desert just because you saw something shiny?" Kenji asked.

"We have no idea what's out there." Darius added.

"Oh, my sweet frightened children. So, we're not in 'Costa Rica'. And we don't know 'where we are'. And we have 'no hope'." Ben said with quotes. "We didn't know how we were gonna survive on Nublar and yet, we did. By sheer will, determination, and teamwork. There aren't even dinosaurs here! So logically, this should be easier. So, let's go out there and, you know, survive!" Ben finished his speech.

"Why not?" Yaz sighed.

"We can at least try." Sammy shrugged. She, Kenji, Yaz, and Brooklyn started sliding down the rocks while Ben jumped down from the rock he was standing in for his speech. He had a sad expression on his face as he watched the others slide down the rocks.

"Good speech, Ben." Darius said as he placed his hand on Ben's shoulder before following the others.

"That's my brother." I grinned as I put my arm around Ben's shoulder and lead us after the others. We reached the bottom of the rocks before starting to walk across the desert towards the shiny thing. As we walked, we looked around at our surroundings. There was sand everywhere and the only thing keeping this from being a barren desert we the cactuses and a few bushes everywhere.

"This place is weird. It's like another planet or something. Oh, maybe we were abducted by aliens." Kenji suggested. Brooklyn laughed and lightly shoved him.

"Because that makes perfect sense." She said sarcastically while she laughed.

"No, that.....that...no, that'd be dumb. It's dumb. Never mind. What? No, you shut up." Kenji stammered. I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep my snort from coming out. I'm starting to have an idea of why Kenji was super worried about Brooklyn and why he had held a grudge against Darius for risking her life.