From: "Lesli Weird" Disclaimer: I wrote this while sick. It's a product of brain fever. Missy is not based on a real person because I have to believe people like that don't really exist. It's the only thing that keeps me from waking up in a cold sweat and screaming. Also, I'm well aware that Jonny and Jessie probably don't go to high school, and Hadji certainly doesn't. I ignored that. Sorry to anyone who feels unfavorably stereotyped by this story. I wanted to call this "Jealousy" but there was already another fic out there with that title, so it's just "Jealous?" MST3Ks Welcome and invited. Legal disclaimer: I don't own Jonny Quest, the concept of high school, or any paraphrased Star Wars quotes appearing in the following text. Someone else owns all of these things, and frankly it's a big mess I wouldn't really want to deal with owning. Date (for the Wildeys): uh... 4-22-99? I think that's right... it's thursday... Rating: I, H, DBN, J&J HR Jealous? By LesliWeird The coarse bark bit into Jessie's hands as she worked her way through the tree's branches, wincing at the ruckus her companion was making behind her. "Can't you keep it down?" she hissed dangerously. Behind her, Hadji looked up, missed a handhold, and fell flat on his stomach on one of the bigger limbs. The leaves around them cackled conspiratorially. "Jeez, Hadj," she mumbled, "why did I even bring you?" "That was not readily obvious to me either, Jessie," Hadji groaned as he picked himself up. "Do you not think this is unhealthily clandestine?" "Saywhat?" "It would seem," Hadji intoned cautiously, steadying himself as he slowly stood halfway up, "that we are in danger of losing our very real substance as we grasp at the proverbial shadow." Jessie ground her teeth. "Speak English!" Her friend winced. "I am simply attempting to say that I do not think it is right for us to be spying. And certainly not to be spying so far from the ground." "Why didn't you just say that?!" "I did." He pointed out. "Twice." Jessie groaned. This was going nowhere fast. She turned around and motioned for Hadji to follow. He clutched the branches desperately as they moved along the canopy of the school's huge tree. Jessie felt more than a little sorry for him when she looked back. Hadji had never been good with heights in all the time she had known him, and this wasn't really his problem anyway. But she needed someone there as a witness and a conspirator. She could already hear her enemy's oblivious giggles. "Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaly?!" squealed an excited girl's voice from somewhere below the branches. Jessie's face contorted in rage. "No kidding!" Jonny's voice answered. "And after they cleaned up the mess from the robot army, the Prime Minister gave me this cool ceremony, with this awesome medal. I have it right here." There was a pause as Jonny riffled through his schoolbag. "Oooooh Joooooonny!" the other voice chimed, "You're sooooo coooool!" "I'll KILL her!" Jessie growled, unshouldering her school bag. "Yeah," Jonny replied. Jessie could practically hear that damn lopsided grin. "That's me: Jonny Quest, man of action." "I'll kill HIM!" Jessie amended. She pulled a small black globe out of her bag and grinned evilly. "Paint-bomb," she mouthed to Hadji. "Jessie I do not think that is such a-" "What was that, Hadj?" SPLAT. "WHAT THE HELL?! IT'S PINK!" "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!" "Bannon one," Jessie gloated from the treetops, "Quest zero!" Jessie practically skipped through the school hallways. The sight of Jonny glaring murderously at her from under all that pink paint had really brightened her day. Behind her, Hadji shook his head and sighed. "It is not as if Missy Belland is an EVIL person," he put in meekly. Jessie spun and smacked him with a shocked and betrayed look. "Hadji! She's a total DITZ! The only reason her words are more than one syllable long is because she holds them out to sound cute! Besides which she's the president of the home EC. Club, and next year she'll be a cheerleader! Hadji, she does that... that HAIR TWIRL thing!" Jessie stuck her fingers into her own red hair in an attempt to demonstrate, but she only got them stuck. "How could Jonny POSSIBLY go for a girl like that?!" "I must confess it is confusing to me too," Hadji mused, leaning up against the lockers. "Personally, I have always gone more for the mature, career-oriented type." He stopped when he saw her incredulous look. "What?" "Terrorist is a career?" "Shaddap." "Jessie!" Both of them looked up. The voice belonged to Todd Majors, the captain of the Junior varsity baseball team. He trotted up to Jessie's locker and stopped to catch his breath, grinning from ear to ear. "I just heard the news! That's really terrible." Jessie blinked. "Come again?" "Uh.." Todd was at a very athletic loss for words. "The break up, Jess! Y'know. With Jonny? That must have been awful for you. I'm really sorry." He smiled a flawless white smile and ran his hand through his sandy hair. "BREAK UP?!" Jessie's eyes flashed a livid green. Todd blinked. "Well, yeah. I mean, now that he's going steady with Missy, I guess you guys aren't, like, a couple anymore." "COUPLE?!" She sputtered, her hackles rising. Hadji held out an open hand to Todd. "No WAY!" the captain balked. "You two were always together! And, I mean, you always acted like, I mean, I just assumed, I mean, even your NAMES! J&J for crying out loud! How perfect is that?" "WHY DOES EVERYONE ALWAYS ASSUME WE'RE DATING!?" Jessie shrieked. "WE'RE ONLY FRIENDS!!" She stood hunched over and panting, practically dripping a battle aura. Todd jumped back. Hadji coughed and stuck out his hand again. "I can't believe you're holding me to that, man!" Todd grumbled as he reached for his wallet. "I told you it was an unwise wager, my friend. I live with them, after all." Hadji took a wad of bills from the other boy and stuck them into his pocket. "I trust you will inform the rest of the team?" He gave Todd a congenial wave as he left. "HADJI!" "Yes?" "I thought you were a non-materialist!" "Well, yes," Hadji replied guiltily, "But the wager WAS his idea, and Tae Bo does not pay for itself." He smiled and strolled off, leaving a thoroughly perplexed Jessica Bannon. An eerie silence filled the boy's locker room. Aside from the drip of the broken shower, it sounded like high noon at dodge. Everyone gathered around, eager to hear whatever news it was Todd had run in gasping to tell. "Dudes!" He said, pausing for maximum dramatic, "Jessica Bannon..." Everyone leaned forward. "...is..." No one breathed. The air was so tense some of the boys were tempted to put ice on it and force it to sit the game out. "...single!" Todd breathed. The crowed exhaled in awe. "Do you know what this MEANS?!" one boy asked. Todd nodded with the utmost sincerity. "It means we all owe Hadji five bucks." "No! It means JESSICA BANNON IS SINGLE!!" There was an instant of hush. Then everyone ran for their shorts and showers, clubbing each other to get out the door first. Jessica Bannon was single! "I'll get you, Jess!" Jonny Quest cackled maliciously, flipping dried chips of pink paint off his cheek. The green of the computer screen enveloped his vision. Down to three variables. Jonny leaned in closer. Two variables. One. Zero. Jonny leaned back from the computer screen and blinked. The password was... Spicegirl?! It didn't matter, Jonny told himself. His fingers flew across the keys and Jessie's email scrolled down in front of him. What the...? There were at least a hundred e-mails from various guys in the school, all with the tittle "hey." Jonny grinned evilly. He scanned through them until he found the perfect e-mail and clicked reply. "Dearest Martin..." he typed out loud, snickering. "Meet me..." He closed the door to the computer lab behind him. Without warning he felt something wet in his pocket, seeping into his pants. He looked down in horror as a black ink stain crept its way across his favorite jeans. He found the dissolved remnants of a capsule and a note from Jessie. "Dr. Quest isn't the only one who knows his way around a lab! By the time this stuff eats through the capsule it should be Bannon two, Quest Zero." Beside it was drawn a laughing smiley face in red and green. Oh man was he going to get her! Jessie ran desperately down the halls, jumping over one of the unfortunates with a bottom locker. "Excuse me!" she called out, dashing around a corner. A suave looking boy in a polo shirt was waiting in ambush. "Jessie! I've been looking for-" "Can't talk, Mason!" she said quickly, ducking to avoid him, "Gotta run!" She sprinted her way into the girl's restroom and hid in a stall. Why were all these guys chasing her? Jonny MUST have put them up to it! She pulled her laptop out of her bag and checked the batteries on her cellular modem. What she needed now was a good round of e-mail to calm her down. One hundred "hey"s popped up to meet her. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!" She lumped them all into a batch and dumped them into her "read later" file. Only one letter was left. One from Jonny, titled "truce". She opened it carefully, as if it would bite her. "I'm really sorry about all this, Jess, could you meet me at..." "If you think you're getting a truce out of me, Jonny Quest," Jessie mumbled to herself, rifling through her personal arsenal of a backpack, "You're dead wrong." Hadji kept a practiced look of meditative calm on his sculptured face. "It is a powerful ally. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. We are luminous beings, not this crude matter." Missy batted her eyelashes obliviously. "So you're, like, a Jedi?" Hadji's eyebrow twitched. "Let me try this again. I am a yogi-" "Like the Bear? He's so cuuuuute!" "Not exactly, you see, I study-" "Is that like homework and stuff?" Missy let out a well-trained giggle. "I'm not very good at homework. Jonny has to help me." She gave a pretty smile to her study buddy, who was busy wolfing down her cupcakes. "Well, actually, it is both a physical discipline and a spiritual philosophy-" "Eeeeee! A philosophy?!" Missy shrieked in horror. "You shouldn't have those! My friend Dana had one last year, and it made her nose cave in! She looked horrible!" "That," Hadji sighed, "Is a rhinoplasty. I can assure you it has nothing to do with philosophy." Missy let out a deep breath of obvious relief. "Just show her that trick with the fork," Jonny urged. Missy's eyes sparkled. "I am not a magician," Hadji pouted. "And I am not a circus act." "Mumphrunkn," Jonny replied around a mouthful of cupcake. Hadji sighed, picked him up, and dragged him off to a corner. "Aside from the cupcakes, my friend, WHY? Why on Earth did you choose a girl like that?" Jonny swallowed hard. "Well... she's nice... and we can talk..." Hadji raised an eyebrow. "Okay, we can't TALK really, but... well... I dunno Hadj, with Jess I always just fell kinda nervous. I mean, she always knows what to say to shoot me down. And she's so much smarter than me! Even Pop likes her better...Missy's just so much more..." Hadji put his hand on his friend's shoulder and smiled. "Do you really like Jessie, then?" Jonny blinked. He looked back at the table where Missy was laboriously twirling her blonde hair around her little finger. She giggled and waved. Jonny's expression hardened into determination. He nodded solemnly. "Then go tell her, my friend. You cannot imagine how much this episode with Missy is upsetting her." Jonny's jaw went slack. "You mean she's been like this because she's JEALOUS?!" Hadji nodded. "I believe so." Jonny's grin peeked out on his pink splotted face. "You explain it to Missy, Hadj, I gotta go find Jess!" Before Hadji could even open his mouth, Jonny was out the door and he was alone with a smiling, giggling, Missy Belland. Jessie examined her weapon. Crude, but effective. No matter how big it was, a water gun wasn't much compared to the pant bomb, or her own invention of the ink capsule, but it would do the job. She held the weapon in both hands, grinning with her back to the tree where her enemy was lurking. Of course there would be a trap, but that's why she'd chosen an easy weapon. This way it would be easier to dodge whatever he was going to throw at her. "Bannon three," she smirked, twirling around and firing, "Quest ZERO!" She mercilessly blasted the skinny figure in front of her. Until she saw that the stumbling boy wore glasses and carried a carnation. She stopped the spray and he tripped and fell to his knees. "MARTIN?!" she gasped. She tossed aside her gun and bent down next to him. She had seen him in the computer lab, he was the only guy who even came close to out-programming her. "Jessica!" he fumbled. He cradled the muddy, broken carnation. She stared at him. She'd never really seen him without his glasses. His eyes were beautiful. "I heard..." he began, "and then your e-mail... I thought... but I guess it was a joke like everything else. This is what you really asked me here for. Well I hope you think it's funny." His hands fumbled for his glasses. Jessie bit her lip. She had never asked Martin out here. The truce note! Jonny had led them both on as part of some kind of sick pay back. She looked down at Martin. The poor guy hadn't had a clue what he was getting into. She bent down and handed him his glasses. He took them back without looking at her face, mumbling a quiet "thank you." His soft voice was somehow soothing. "I thought you'd be different, Jessica. You really aren't like other girls. You aren't afraid of what other people think of you, so I thought maybe you wouldn't be afraid to be seen around school with a guy like me. I read your article on the blind salamanders in the-" "You read my article?!" Jessie stopped him, shocked. She had poured her heart and soul into that research and to this day she had only gotten apathetic shrugs from everyone but Dr. Quest, Hadji, and her father. And that was at best. Lots of her friends had teased her for weeks about it. Martin looked up, accidentally, and straight into Jessie's eyes. His own pretty brown ones widened in shock and then jumped down again. "That's how I first heard about you," he continued unsteadily. "I love biology. The whole out of doors, really. I go camping a lot. It's sort of my hobby, and, well..." There was a heavy pause, and Jessie looked guiltily down at the carnation. "I had no idea until we had a class together that you were so beautiful." Jessie's breath stopped dead. Nobody but her father had ever told her that. She looked at Martin's lowered face. He really did have a crush on her. She felt utterly overwhelmed. "I'm not..." she whispered. His head snapped up suddenly. "You really are! But more than that, you're smart! And you're exciting! Even if you were ugly..." he abandoned that sentence. Something in the way he was looking at her told Jessie he would never think she was ugly. "Even before I knew what you looked like, I thought you were really..." He looked at her, his brown eyes scanning for some response, some proof that she wasn't going to laugh at him. Jonny tripped on a tree root when he saw the two of them sitting together. Damnit, he was going to have to get Martin out of the way if he wanted to tell Jessie how he felt about her. At least Jessie wasn't looking as embarrassed as the plan had called for. In fact, she was looking suspiciously happy... It couldn't be! "Really wonderful," Martin finished. He let out a deep sigh and waited for Jessie's harsh reply to hit him. Instead, Jessie herself hit him, with a full tackle hug that knocked him completely to the ground. "Thank you," she whispered happily, burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder. Martin could think of nothing to do but timorously put his arm around her. "Do you understand now?" Hadji asked patiently, as he and Missy watched lazily from a second story window. "Not really," Missy admitted, "I still don't get how the clothes figure in." Hadji shook his head. "That," he corrected, "is ironing. This is irony." Fin :) Cute huh? I promise, no more sappy stuff, really. This is just because I'm sick and had a powerful urge to write fanfiction that I really couldn't explain. Actually, I can't explain the urge or the fiction. But that's okay :) G'night! LesliWeird _______________________________________________________________ Get Free Email and Do More On The Web. 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