C.N. - chapter 55

So we were going somewhere, as Theo just told us, and specifically, that location was 4° 23’ N, 173° 8’ W. I was going to suggest that we should call the window installation company around to come and fix the windows I had exploded accidentally with sonic blast, but since men in black carrying high-powered rifles were flooding into Theo's room and coming at us, I had to put off the window fixing suggestion and maneuver the hovercraft away.
Judging by the speedometer, we were going at fifty kilometers per hour through the air.
After some discussion with Mr. Kent and Dennis which I did not hear, Theo told me to go faster. I looked down to the ground at the receding view of Theo's backyard and saw a number of black armored jeeps speeding up from an underground ramp. They seemed to be coming our way to follow us.
'Why aren't they coming with helicopters?' Theo saw the view too, she asked Dennis.
'I told my buddies at the airfield to disable all the other choppers.' Dennis replied.
'What about the one they brought to you?'
'It's still on the roof, I disabled it, like the rest,' Dennis said, 'Why didn't you tell me you have this getaway? That would have saved my buddies and me a whole lot of busting helicopters.'
'Don't look at me, I didn't know about this.' Theo said, she turned to me and asked with amazement, 'What did you do?'
I told a compressed version of what happened as I drove, 'I ran into the secret passage, just like you told me to, and then I remembered that you told me to go to the roof via the secret passage, but by then I had gotten lost, so I looked for a way to the roof but found this in an awesome underground cavern instead. There were other machines there too, I was awestruck, it's like the Batcave in the Marvel comics!' I paused, and then asked a question that came up just at the right time, 'Is anyone in your family a superhero?'
Theo didn't seem to know how to answer my question at first, she turned to Mr. Kent and raised an eyebrow, 'Can you explain this?' She said.
'Um...well...' Mr. Kent looked uncomfortable, he fidgeted and rubbed his fingers on his tie. Maybe he didn't want to reveal his superhero identity (that would make Mr. Kent the superhero who owns this thing I was flying in, wow!) and was trying to come up with a white lie. If Mr. Kent really was a superhero, I understood why he wouldn't want to reveal his secret identity, it's just like in the Marvel comic books, and I understand that.
The interruption came just in time for Mr. Kent not to answer the question of whether he's a superhero or not. We heard the honking of a klaxon, because stealth mode was still on and the hovercraft was flying silently. I looked outside of the cockpit and found a jeep racing below us on the ground in front of all the rest, which were behind us. The hood of the jeep was rolled back, and driving the jeep was no other than Heathcliff, his face distinctively red. I think he was intoxicated.
As he honked the jeep horn, Heathcliff raised one hand and waved up at us. The hood of the hovercraft was still open, so we could hear what Heathcliff was shouting very clearly.
'Don't leave me! I'm coming too!' Heathcliff was shouting.
Mr. Kent and Dennis, both leaning against the port side of the hovercraft, both did not know what to say. Theo pushed between them and shouted at Heathcliff.
'Go back! Go back before you hurt yourself! GO NOW!'
Heathcliff didn't shout, and we all heard him clearly.
'Nay, I shan't! You are the eternal love of my life, my dear Theodora, and where ever you go, I shall follow 'till death do us apart!' The expression on Heathcliff's face at the moment that declaration was made could not be more genuine, if the language he spoke hadn't been soiled by cliche, it would have been a grand moment. Sadly, Theo did not share my opinion; I think she is probably a more realistic person than an idealistic one, and that's why she didn't buy Heathcliff's gushy declaration of love on a speeding jeep racing next to a speeding hovercraft.
'I SAID GO! THIS IS TOO DANGEROUS FOR YOU! JUST GO! GO AND RUN, DON'T LET KYLE'S MEN CATCH YOU, GO FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE!' Despite the lack of droning noises, Theo was shouting at the top of her lungs.
'Everything that is not too dangerous for you is not too dangerous for me, my love!' Heathcliff, proclaimed, throw me a ladder! I shall jump!'
Theo replied with another volley of shouting, but as I was rather deep in thought, I didn't hear exactly what she said.
Just then, I found, conveniently, a button located in the far left corner of the control board, it said 'ladder', I pressed it and a hatch at the left side of the hovercraft opened and a rope ladder unrolled from within and dangled towards the ground next to the jeep. I thought that if Heathcliff wanted to jump, he might want someone to catch him just in case if me misses, and I should probably do that, since I had stuntman experience on a movie set once, I'll tell more about that later.
I tapped Dennis on the shoulder and said, 'Can you steer the ship while I help Heathcliff up?' Without waiting for a reply really, I put his hand on the throttle and climbed out of the cockpit and onto the side of the hovercraft, where I held on to the railings, and then onto the flimsy ladder descending to the ground below. We were speeding out of the huge courtyard of Theo's house, and it was a vast flat field without a lot of obstructions. If I wanted to help Heathcliff up onto the hovercraft, I was going to have to do it quickly, because visibly up ahead was the outer wall that surrounds Theo's house, and there wasn't a gate for Heathcliff's jeep to go through and he was going to crash if he kept going straight ahead. While the hovercraft could fly right over the tall wall (if we adjust the altitude up a notch), a jeep couldn't fly, and Heathcliff was not going to drive away from the hovercraft (like he said, and I think he was very serious when he said it).
I suppose Dennis was not a very skilled aviator, because the hovercraft suddenly lurched and the ladder swung, I almost slammed into the jeep.
'ARE YOU CRAZY TOO!' I heard Theo shout, 'GET BACK UP HERE, CHARLIE!' Oh, she was yelling at me, I think she realized then that I wasn't at the controls anymore. She was yelling something else when a deafening sound blasted through my ears and the hovercraft swayed mightily. Somehow, stealth mode had been turned off, and not far behind us, the other jeeps with the men in black in them were catching up.
I reached out my hand, now that I was at the bottom of the rope ladder, to Heathcliff, who had one hand on the wheel of the jeep and was stepping on the gas pedal with one foot and standing up. The jeep was racing a meter beside where I was dangling on the ladder.
'Reach!' I yelled through the drone of the hovercraft engines.
I didn't hear what Heathcliff said in reply, but he certainly reached.