The first part of my ongoing fic has already been posted at Suze's. I
meant to post it here, but somehow never got to it, and I'm sorry. :P

So here's the first part to my fic (a bit redundant, I know). The
second part's coming in a minute.

Untitled (But considering "A Normal Vacation, Quest Style")

by Cielita

Archivers: Ask and ye shall receive.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Quest crew. Wolfeboro, NH is a real
place, as are the streets mentioned. Specific stores and such have been
made up. Non-JQ characters are mine, but anyone else who wants 'em can
use 'em.

Category: H, maybe E

Content: Not much to be concerned about.

Notes: Thanks to Bryne for beta-ing, even though she's insanely busy.

This gets silly. Read at your own peril.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The first three days they had spent in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire had
been fun as they explored the house and the small town. Now it was
Wednesday, the fourth day. The place had been explored, the few sights had
been seen, and the boredom was settling in. Jonny felt that boredom as he,
Jessie, and Hadji were sitting on the screened front porch. Or rather,
Jessie and Hadji were sitting on the porch, she reading and he
meditating. Jonny was alternating between sitting, playing fetch with Bandit,
and pacing the porch restlessly.

After about five rounds of sitting, fetching, and pacing, Jonny finally
gave up and collapsed on the wicker settee next to Jessie. She glanced
up from her copy of _The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe_,
somewhat annoyed with Jonny’s incessant motion. “Sit still for once, will
you? What’s wrong with you?”

Jonny threw up his hands in disgust. “There’s nothing to do here! What
a dumb place to go for vacation! Why couldn’t we go someplace cool,
like New York or Miami or the Bahamas?”

“Because it’s quieter here,” replied a baritone voice. Dr. Quest
stepped onto the porch holding a glass of iced tea. He paused to take a sip,
then continued, “This is vacation, Jonny, a time to relax, and
Wolfeboro offers the peace and quiet necessary to do so.”

“So does a graveyard,” Jonny retorted.

Jessie snickered from behind her book.

Dr. Quest eyed his son sternly. “If you’re looking for something to do,
I can think of a few things. For instance, you can walk to the post
office and pick up the mail.”

Jonny sighed and hauled himself to his feet. “Oh, alright.” He looked
at his two best friends. “You guys wanna come?”

Jessie shook her head. “No thanks.”

Hadji, deep in a meditative trance, didn’t respond. Jonny took that as
a no. He shrugged and stepped off the porch.

* * *

Jonny shuffled through the random assortment of letters that had come
in the mail. Nothing really worth looking at, he decided. As he left the
post office, he decided to go to the café across the street for a snack
before heading back to the house.

The inside of the Cocoa Café was dim, cool, and quiet. A few scattered
people sat at the tables reading books or newspapers, and three more
lounged at the counter. The servers behind the counter chatted with some
of the customers and with each other. Jonny seated himself at the
counter, ordered a chocolate milkshake, and glanced around. A boy about his
age was sitting two seats down from him, munching on potato chips and
fiddling with a straw wrapper.

“Hey. I’m Jonny Quest. What’s your name?” he said.

The boy looked up. “Hey, yourself. I’m Stacey Ferguson.” He stuck out
his hand and Jonny shook it.

Stacey Ferguson was thin and rather pale. The navy blue T-shirt and
black jeans he was wearing accentuated his complexion. His shiny jet-black
hair went down to his ears, framing the pair of sunglasses that perched
on his nose. Jonny thought the presence of the glasses was somewhat
odd, since they were indoors and the café was dim.

Stacey had been looking Jonny over as well. “You’re new around here,
aren’t you.” It was not a question. “You a tourist on vay-cay?”

“Yeah.” Jonny’s milkshake arrived, and he sipped at it.

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s boring around here.” He
tilted his head in a way that reminded Jonny of a lizard. “Have you
noticed?”

Jonny blinked, somewhat taken aback. “Uh… yeah, kind of.”

“Well, let’s hang out and be bored together.”

They continued to talk as Jonny drank his milkshake and Stacey finished
his chips. Stacey seemed nice enough, an interesting person to talk to.
He had an abrupt and forthright manner of speaking, as if he couldn’t
be bothered with polite formalities. Jonny, in his intrigue, grew to
like him.

When they finished their food, Jonny invited Stacey to come back to the
house with him so they could continue being bored. Stacey accepted, and
they walked back to the house, talking and joking.
 
 

When they arrived at the house, Hadji was reading a book on the porch
but Jessie was nowhere to be found.

“Stacey, this is my brother Hadji. Hadji, this is Stacey,” Jonny
introduced the two.

“Hello, Stacey. It is nice to meet you,” said Hadji politely.

Stacey flipped a stray lock of dark hair out of his face. “Same here.”
He and Hadji shook hands.

Jessie wandered onto the porch from the living room. Seeing them – or
actually, seeing Stacey – she stopped.

“Oh, there you are, Jessie. This is Stacey. I met him in town,” Jonny
told her. He looked at her closely. “You okay? Your face looks a little
– whaddayacallit? – flushed.”

Jessie glared at him. “I’m fine.” She turned to Stacey and stuck out
her hand. “Hi.”

For the first time since Jonny had met him, all of forty minutes ago,
Stacey took off his sunglasses, revealing gray eyes. He smiled. “Hey.
Pleased to meet you.”

Jessie gave him a shy half-smile and said nothing.

“Anyway,” Jonny said. “There isn’t all that much to do here. We could
watch TV or something…” an idea struck him and he brightened. “I know!
Let’s have a water fight!”

Stacey brightened, too. “Hey, yeah! Let’s play Pan-Galactic Water
Warriors!”

Everyone looked at him.

Unabashed, Stacey continued. “It’s something my brother and I made up.
Basically, you run around and try to get the other guy wet.”

Hadji furrowed his brow in confusion. “But… ah… forgive my saying so,
but… that does not seem much different from just having a water fight.”

“It isn’t.”

This plunged Hadji even further into the depths of confusion. “So, ah,
why is this game, ah, Galactic…”

“Pan-Galactic Water Warriors.”

“Right. So why is it different from any other water game?”

“Because it’s called Pan-Galactic Water Warriors.”

“I see,” murmured Hadji, who really didn’t.

“First we need to set up teams,” Stacey informed them briskly. “How
about you two” – he was pointing at Jonny and Hadji – “against us two?” –
meaning Jessie and himself.

Jessie nodded enthusiastically. Jonny and Hadji looked at each other
and, deciding not to question Stacey and risk getting even more confused,
nodded their agreement.

Jonny dashed into the house. “I’ll go get the water guns,” he called
over his shoulder. He came back a few moments later with the water
pistols. “Here you go,” he announced, presenting the pistols. “They’re the
good ones.”

Hadji sighed and shook his head. Stacey glanced at him. “What?”

“Hadji doesn’t like those guns,” Jessie explained.

Hadji nodded. “They are a bit too lifelike for my tastes, I am afraid.”

“But they hold a *lot* of water,” Jonny jumped in. “They’re the best
ones we got.”

Hadji looked unconvinced.

“Oh, c’mon, Hadj, they’re not *real* guns. Won’t you play for just a
little while?” Jonny wheedled.

Hadji sighed again and shrugged. “All right.”

Jonny’s face lit up. “Slammin’!”

The two teams split up, filled the water pistols, and got down to
playing Pan-Galactic Water Warriors.

Jonny managed to squirt Jessie and Stacey just as they finished filling
up their pistols. Jessie and Stacey retaliated by ambushing Jonny and
Hadji some five minutes later.

Jonny hid in a tree and dropped a massive water balloon on whom he
thought was Stacey but later turned out to be Hadji.

Hadji drenched Jonny with the hose.

At that point, Jessie and Stacey popped out from the bushes, took one
look at the two soggy brothers, and decided that there really wasn’t any
point in pelting them with their store of water balloons.

Then they shrugged and pelted them anyway. Water balloons are just too
good to waste.
 
 

Jessie crouched, a wicked grin curving her lips. She could hear Jonny
around the corner of the house. This was perfect. She had a full water
pistol, and she had Stacey make sure that Jonny did not.

She crept closer to the corner of the house, barely suppressing a
giggle. She watched his shadow moving, its owner unaware of his watery fate.
Any moment now…

She did a last-minute check on her water pressure, pumping the pistol a
few times to be sure. The shadow moved again. Jonny was walking toward
her. In a few seconds he would turn the corner. She got into position…

…then sprang up, yelling “Gotcha!” as she emptied her water pistol on
her unsuspecting target…

…who wasn’t Jonny at all.

She dropped her water pistol and smiled nervously at her very wet – and
consequently very cranky – father. He wiped his face. Glared at her.
Opened his mouth to speak–

“Gotcha!” Jonny yelled as he came around the corner, throwing his water
balloon.

“Ha!” agreed Hadji, who was with Jonny and was brandishing a garden
hose.

“Uh-oh,” replied Jonny as the look of dawning comprehension crept over
his face. He gaped at what had been Race’s blue silk shirt, which just
happened to be dry-clean-only.

Race gave them a glare that would fry meat.

“Yah!” Stacey leapt from the same corner of the house, wielding a water
balloon. “I’ve got-” He stopped. “Oh. You’re not Jonny, are you?” He
looked at Race intently. “Nope. You don’t look a thing like him.”

Race, stomping into the house, was too busy to answer him.

“Okay! See you around!” Stacey called to his retreating form. In the
awkward pause that followed, he turned and flung the water balloon at
Jonny.

* * *

“I do not think this is a good idea,” Hadji commented for the third
time that night.

Jonny rolled his eyes, jumped to the ground, and looked back up the
tree. “You coming or not?”

Hadji sighed. Did he have a choice? Well, actually he did, but all the
choices available to him were bad ones. Sometimes – he was thinking
this with the gentle patience and affection of an older brother and
trained yogi – Jonny could be a butthead, and being his keeper could be more
trouble than it was worth. He climbed out the window and down the tree.
Jessie followed, bringing the hoverboards.

It was 11:30 at night, and the three were on their way to meet Stacey
at the parking lot of the Shipley Shopping Center, where they would
continue their game of Pan-Galactic Water Warriors.

“It is just that this does not seem like the best way to earn Race’s
forgiveness,” Hadji said.

Jessie shrugged and handed a hoverboard to each boy. “Dad’ll get over
it.”

“Yeah. This’ll be fun,” Jonny added, mounting his.

Hadji could not fight the chill that crept up his neck at what he was
sure were famous last words.

* * *

J.D. Benson pulled the Mercedes into the empty parking lot, toward a
Dumpster. He glanced at his watch. It was just after midnight. He parked
the Mercedes in a shadowed area thirty feet away from the Dumpster and
cut the engine, turning the keys with a majestic flick of his wrist.
The Mercedes was not his; it was his employer’s, used for business. J.D.
decided to own a car like this when he became rich.

Actually, it was highly unlikely that J.D. would ever become rich. This
was because it was J.D.’s invariable fate to fail at everything he
tried. But, deep at heart, he was an earnest optimist; the words “give up”
had never meant a thing to him, which was either good or bad, depending
on how one looked at it. Under the futilely hopeful reasoning that his
ship was bound to come in, he hopped jobs, relationships, and criminal
activities, failing each with alacrity. He never had money to spend,
never had a lasting relationship, and only rarely had anything that could
be considered an address.

His newest job was one as a lackey to some rich guy; an “Import/Export
Specialist,” the guy called himself. J.D. didn’t know specifically what
that meant, but he wasn’t the type to care enough to ask a multitude of
annoying questions. He might not know the exact meaning of “unlicensed
commercial transoceanic cargo,” but he *did* know the meaning of
“payday,” and that was all the vocabulary he needed.

This attitude was precisely why he had been hired.

Now he had to pick up some “clients” and take them to the boss’s cushy
mansion so they could be taken care of. Boss usually liked the business
his clients brought him, but these clients were different. Boss said
they asked too many questions, did too much poking around in his personal
business. Boss, being a private person, did not appreciate this.

J.D. reached into the cooler he had brought with him and took out a
beer. This was his second beer that night. He opened it, brought it to his
mouth, and in two gulps, drained half of it. Then he ran the back of
his hand across his mouth.

The clients were late. He was bored. Then, out of the corner of his
bloodshot eye, he noticed two figures hurrying furtively toward the
Dumpster, the agreed meeting place. When they reached the Dumpster, they
turned and crouched next to it, facing the direction from which they had
just come, instead of continuing on to the car. The clients, J.D.
thought. Boss was right, they were nitwits. They didn’t even know to look
around for the car. They were probably on the lookout for him. Settling his
beer can in the car’s cupholder, he watched the two figures closely.
They were conferring with each other, shooting quick glances back in the
direction from which they had come. One of them shifted, lifting up and
inspecting the object that he – or she – was holding. J.D. stiffened as
he recognized the object. It was a gun, like the ones Boss shipped for
people. But when clients brought the guns, they didn’t actually have
them out and ready… unless they were planning on using them real soo
n.

J.D. scowled. Those people must have thought that he was a real idiot.
But he’d show them. They didn’t even know that he was here. And they
wouldn’t know what had hit them until it was too late.

With that decided, he grinned to himself. He opened his door, silently
slid out of the car, and stalked toward the two figures. Stealth was a
skill learned from his days as a burglar, long ago. Granted, he had
ended up in jail after the second job, but then again, that was what one
called a learning experience.

* * *

“Hang on a sec, Stace, my gun’s dry,” Jessie said. “Can I just have a
minute to refill?”

Stacey glanced down at his water pistol. “Yeah, now that you mention
it, my water supply’s going nonexistent, too. Let’s go refill.”

Knowing that Jonny and Hadji could jump out and ambush them at any
time, they quickly and quietly jogged across the dark parking lot to the
faucet behind a Laundromat that Stacey had pointed out earlier. They had
become a real team, learning how to work together and look out for the
other with a quick, intuitive ease. They had only known each other for
a few hours, but their spontaneous cooperation was that of a team that
had been together for years, as Hadji and Jonny had.

They refilled their pistols, one standing guard as the other refilled.
That task done, they looked at each other.

“So now what? Where are they?” Stacey wondered aloud.

Jessie pursed her lips, thinking. “Are there any other faucets around?”

He thought for a few moments, then shook his head. “No. Not that I know
of.” His lips formed a Cheshire cat grin. “I know what you’re
thinking.” The two grinned at each other mischievously. “They’ll have to come
here sooner or later.”

Jessie glanced around the lot. “So where do we hide?”

Stacey gestured to a place about fifteen feet away from them. “How
about over there?”

Jessie looked in the direction he was pointing and wrinkled her nose
slightly. “A Dumpster? Won’t it be a little stinky over there?”

“Got a better idea?”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed, “the smelly ol’ Dumpster it is.”

Keeping a sharp lookout for any wet surprises, they made their way to
the Dumpster. They crouched behind the shelter of the Dumpster, still
watching for the other boys.

“Phew! It smells worse than I thought it would,” Jessie complained in a
loud whisper.

“Ssh! Just breathe through your mouth or something,” he whispered back.
He picked up his water pistol, checked its power, then put it back
down.

“The soaking we give the guys had better be worth it.”

“Oh, it will, Jess, it will.”

“You know how much trouble we’d be in if our parents find out that
we’re here?”

“Well, lot’s, of course.”

“Um… yes. Well.”

The conversation died at that point. Jessie shook her head. As great a
partner Stacey was, he sure wasn’t a very good conversationalist. But
then again, they weren’t here to talk.

Jonny’s distant voice said, “Dang it, where *are* they?”

Stacey and Jessie tensed, getting ready for action. Then Jessie tensed
even more at the sound of nearby footsteps, the hairs on the back of
her neck pricking up. She had long since learned to trust her instincts
when it came to danger, and her instincts were clearly informing her
that danger was very, very near. Stacey, concentrating on locating Hadji
and Jonny, was oblivious to anything else. She opened her mouth to warn
him, but the explosion of pain at the back of her head, and the ensuing
darkness, prevented her.