Annnnnnnnd for the excuse of the year, we have Speakamumbo's excuse of watching this Ted talk! Yep, that's my excuse for not updating. (It was actually school, but we ignore that because this is so much more entertaining.)
Chapter 17
In the air - without a plane
0530 hours
As we calmly drifted towards the ground a thought popped into my head.
"Do you think we got tricked by SKORPION?"
"What do you mean?"
"I feel like they're leading us onto a wild goose chase."
"Why?"
"I feel like every time we find something, it has been too easy. Like wayyyy too easy you know what I mean?"
As we landed in a cornfield. Erica quickly unbuckled her parachute and climbed out from under it before it could fully cover her. I actually attempted that, but failed when I tripped on my own foot and fell face-first on the ground, and let the parachute cover me.
Erica giggled and quickly hurried over to untangle me.
"Continue, what were you saying?"
I made a mental note to myself to never do something I can't do in front of Erica again.
"Every time we had tried to investigate them, it had been too easy. The real SKORPION would never let us find their secret base. Or let us eavesdrop on their conversations without any precautions."
Erica looked thoughtful.
"We could have gone over that theory with Cyrus." She said, then looked up for a split second. "Come on, we need to finish thwarting SKORPION." And then she started to tread towards the direction of a house in the middle of the cornfield.
I followed, then chanced a glance to the airspace above us. What I saw astonished me; there was an enormous ball of fire with falling debris everywhere. I looked back at Erica and saw that she was looking up too.
And for the first time I've met Erica, she was tearing up.
"I'm sure our friends and your family are still alive," I said as soothingly as I could in that situation, although I wasn't sure myself.
She gave me a teary smile, "Thanks," and gave me one of her rare smiles.
"Hey, you kids!" Someone shouted behind us and shattered our somewhat romantic moment. "This is private property, and you are breaking the law by trespassing!"
Erica wiped away her tears and pointed upwards.
The man was a Chinese farmer who looked like he was in his 30s. He was wearing a t-shirt and shorts and had a very long mustache. Long Mustache looked in the direction Erica was pointing and turned as white as a sheet.
He sprinted to us and shouted, "What happened there?!"
"Our plane blew up! We were on that plane! It was sooooooo scary, but thankfully we had the parachutes we had found with us and didn't die!" perked Erica, fully merging into Sasha Rotko mode.
Long Mustache's eyes grew even larger "Oh my god, are you guys OK? Sorry about being so threatening, there was recently a teenager that was on my land and kept stealing crops from me. At first, I was nice and let him go, you know? I thought he would learn his lesson after being caught and not come back, but no. He kept coming back, and I thought this time he brought you guys with him. My name is Austin by the way." He said in a Chinese accent.
I suddenly had a brainwave,
"What did he look like?" Austin screwed up his eyes in concentration "Curly brown hair, and pretty fat."
See how many of you guys get it. ;) I felt so proud pressing the "Publish" button.