A Night on Barracuda Airlines

"Direct flight to South America on Barracuda Airlines, what more could you ask for?" JJ asked.

Kiara extends her arm out, lightly touching JJ's before asking him, "Are you sure?". They face each other and look directly into each other's eyes before JJ, now smile stricken, asks if she has somewhere else to be. She knows that there is no place she would rather be at this moment in time than with her best friend, who she so wholeheartedly fell in love with.  

She pauses, smiles, and shakes her head softly before saying "Not anymore". 

For JJ, the second he discovered that Mike and Anna Carrera had their daughter, his best friend, the girl he was in love with, sent away to some wilderness camp, he knew he had to go find her. He could feel the want and need to be with her tangling and knotting in his chest. And now that he's found her and told her he loves her too, he knows now that there is no place else he would rather be at this moment in time than with his best friend, who he so wholeheartedly fell in love with.  

"Me neither" he replies.

JJ, realizing that his eyes are becoming misty, looks in the direction of Barracuda Mike's cargo plane, looks back at Kie and announces that their next stop is El Dorado. He smiles and she smiles back, and he notices that her eyes too have begun to well up with tears. "Let's go" he says as he brings his right arm behind her shoulder and guides her to the entrance of the plane.

"Come on, let's get the hell out of here. Go, go, go!" Barracuda Mike says as JJ and Kiara enter the small cargo plane. Barracuda Mike closes the back of the plane, and the plane begins to take off. JJ and Kiara, tears in both their eyes with nothing but pure blissfulness, high five and interlock their fingers. "Let's go!" JJ calls out, and Kiara swears she's never seen JJ smile so big in all of the years she has known him.

"Hang onto something, take off gets a little rickety!" Barracuda Mike announces from the front of the plane. "Sounds familiar" Kiara says looking at JJ, thinking about when they got rescued from Poguelandia by the late Jimmy Portis.

JJ doesn't necessarily smile while also recalling the memory because 1. that was the day they left their island paradise, and 2. those were the last moments he had with Kie before she got nabbed by Carlos Singh. He has since tried to block those memories from his mind. There was no reason to dwell on the past now. All he cared about now was being here with Kie and them getting down to South America to help his family find El Dorado.

After they are up in the air and flying smoothly, JJ spots a space in between two extremely large wooden crates for him and Kie to sit and hopefully rest for the duration of the flight to South America. Kiara sits down with her back against one of the crates and takes a deep breath before resting her head on the wood surface behind her. JJ sits down beside her looking ahead with an exhausted expression on his face and then looks over at her, their eyes meeting again, they can't help but shake their heads and burst out into laughter and disbelief over the day's events. Only this morning, they were all watching their beloved Chateau burn to the ground. It all seems like a lifetime ago to both of them.

After about a half hour of them just talking and enjoying being back in each other's company, JJ decides to use his backpack as a headrest and lays down to try and rest a little before the expected events that are to come in South America. "Well I don't know about you Kie, but I'm going to try and get a little shut eye." Kiara sees him lay down and decides to do the same, taking her Kitty Hawk hoodie off to use as a makeshift pillow. She lays down, but she feels like she needs to get something off her chest before she can fully relax.

"Hey Jayj…" she says softly.  

JJ opens his eyes when he hears her. "Yeah?" he says.