Some Acknowledgement
(Gingeh owns neither Jimmy Neutron nor a rocket ship, therefore she cannot go to Pigfarts)

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Cindy angrily ripped a brush through her freshly washed hair, muttering darkly under her breath.

Neutron had done it again.

(When she'd been ranting to her best friend earlier, Libby had asked what exactly 'it' entailed; Cindy had given her the best furious glare she had in her arsenal and loudly proclaimed, "IT!")

For crying out loud, you didn't just kiss a girl when you had a stash of hundreds of pictures of a different girl hidden away in your stupid lab!

She threw the hairbrush to the floor with a loud clatter, and left the bathroom in a huff, flopping face-down on her bed moments later.

Either he liked her or he didn't!

Dear God, she'd lost count of the number of times he'd made some sort of move on her!

…She'd also lost track of the number of times he'd made some sort of move on Betty Quinlin.

She flipped over to lie on her back, staring at the ceiling hard enough to bore holes into it.

That Betty. While this wasn't all her fault—most of it was stupid Nerdtron's—she definitely held some of the blame. What did Betty have that she didn't have? Other than niceness, of course. But come on! That goody-two-shoes act of hers got so old after a while; no one was the sweet in reality! It made her want to barf magical pixie dust.

Maybe she should just give up. There were plenty of other guys out there, guys who would worship the ground she walked on (as was proper), instead of arguing with her constantly, getting her involved with his idiotic adventures and inventions that always went horribly wrong, and calling her a stupid girl!

She fumed silently for another minute before groaning loudly and throwing a pillow across the room.

She was Cindy Vortex! Why should she have to give up? If anything, Nerdtron should give up, because she was so out of his league. He should have been begging for the opportunity to date her, but here she was, practically offering herself on a silver platter before him, and half the time he still made those stupid goo-goo eyes at Betty.

For a genius, he obviously had a lot of stuff gone wrong in his head.

After few minutes of frustrated screaming into her pillow (the one she hadn't tossed across the room), she sat up and grabbed the book sitting on her bedside table. Obviously, thinking about Spewtron was getting her nowhere but extremely frustrated; she'd just put him out of her mind for a little while.

She hadn't been reading five minutes before the main character and her love interest were sharing a passionate kiss, and Cindy was suddenly remembering the feel of Jimmy's lips on hers that evening in the alley . . .

Shortly thereafter, the book joined Cindy's first pillow across the room. Damn romance novels!

It wasn't like any of this was her fault! She never initiated anything! She may have done a little sabotage between Neutron and Betty now and again, but she'd never directly instigated anything between herself and Jimmy.

…Well, nothing concrete and physical. She may have hinted to him a couple of times, asked him to be her partner for a few things, almost confessed once or twice…

But she hadn't started that game of footsie in the library! She'd never pecked him on the check when he came up with a good idea! She hadn't been the one to pull them into the oh-so-brief kiss in the alley!

Yes, it was all Neutron's fault.

. . . Betty had kissed him on the cheek. More than once, actually.

Maybe that was it.

Maybe she just needed to be more assertive!

(If anyone had heard Cindy Vortex telling herself that she needed to be more assertive, they would most likely have either started laughing hysterically, or run away in screaming terror.)

That was it! Maybe if she just did something first for once, things would turn around! Sure, it wouldn't be something she would normally do, but hey, she could change! And, if she changed, maybe Jimmy would—

She brought her thought process to a screeching halt there by bringing her palm to her forehead with a smack. "Hold it right there, Vortex. I'm Cindy; Neutron can take it or leave it. I am not going to become some dopey-headed fangirl who chases him around and pulls him into random dark corners for heavy make-out sessions!"

(She had to close her eyes for a minute to suppress all the distressingly hot thoughts that flooded her brain after that last idea.)

If Spewtron wanted some simpering little oh-James-you're-so-handsome-kiss-me-you-fool kind of girl, then he could just go and look somewhere else.

If he wanted her, he could chase her.

If he didn't want her, he could go to Hell.

That settled, Cindy reached for her boom-box remote and turned up the music as loud as it could go. (That outta drown out any more Nerdtron thoughts!)

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Unfortunately, despite several hours of blasting the new Grey Star CD Libby had loaned her at eardrum-splitting volume (she'd been forced to plug in her earphones after the first five minutes, because her mother had marched upstairs and told her off for disturbing the peace), Jimmy was still in her head.

...He was also on her windowsill.

She blinked—once, twice, three times—and rubbed her eyes. When he was still there, making frantic shushing noises at her and attempting to clamber the rest of the way through her window, she opened her mouth and practically shrieked, "Nerdtron! What do you think—mmph!"

The rest was muffled when Jimmy, finally making it into her bedroom, practically threw himself at her and slammed a hand over her mouth.

A slightly tanned, callused, warm hand. It was firm against her mouth, and when she opened her lips to yell at him—because how dare he manhandle her like this, it was her house, she could scream if she wanted to, and what was he doing in her room at one in the morning—she could taste his skin.

She quickly shut her mouth again.

"Listen, Cindy." He looked nervous, probably because as soon as he moved his hand, she was going to bite his head off. "I need a serious favor."

She wanted to say, "It's always something," or "No thanks, I'm not in the mood for anything life-threatening today," or "Why don't you go ask Betty?"

But he still had his hand over her mouth, and she sure wasn't going to try talking again, not after the last experience.

"Look, I—"

So she bit him.

He started to yelp, but somehow managed to stifle it. He quickly brought his hand away from her mouth and whispered heatedly. "Vortex! What in Newton's name was that for?"

"You put your hand over my mouth!" was her somewhat-breathless, but nonetheless very angry reply. "What the hell did you expect?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe I expected you not to bite me!"

"Well, you should have! What else was I gonna do, kiss it?"

Silence.

She'd spat it out without thinking. The 'K' word.

She knew they didn't talk about it. Any of it, but especially that.

…Well, whatever! Hadn't she had this with conversation with herself earlier? He could either just finally admit that, yes, he actually thought she was smart, yes, he had kissed her, and yes, he liked her, or he could take a hike.

It would probably be a stupid nature hike with Betty Quinlin, surrounded by butterflies and baby rabbits and unicorns.

But that was okay. Fine. She didn't care. She didn't want to be Betty!

Jimmy coughed. "Um. Yeah. Anyway."

Oh, no! He was not just going to ignore this again! "Look, Nerdtron, you like me! You admitted it on Mars—"

"I did not," he immediately cut in. "I said you distract me!"

"And that I'm pretty, smart, and smell nice; it's the same thing."

"Is not!"

"Is so!"

"Is not!"

She rolled her eyes. "Fine! Then explain the kiss!"

"I don't know why I did it!" He panted heavily in the brief quiet that ensued after that, and glared at Cindy as if this was all her fault.

"You know what?" She shoved at his chest and he fell backwards to the floor, catching himself with his hands at the last second. He opened his mouth to yell at her, but she cut him off. "Fine! That's just fine, Nerdtron! Then you don't like me, and you had no reason at all for the stupid mushy things you've done to me over the years. Whatever. Just don't do anything anymore, and go date Betty Quinlin, okay? I'll find someone else to like, someone who will actually appreciate me!"

She paused for a minute, letting him absorb that, before growling, "Now get out of my house!"

He didn't move, and she was on the verge of picking him up and throwing him out the window when he said, "I never said I didn't like you."

She blinked. "Um…come again, Neutron?"

"I said, that I never said I didn't like you."

If she hadn't already been sitting on her bed, she probably would have ended up on the floor with Jimmy. "Okay. So . . . you don't not like me?"

"Yeah." He shifted uncomfortably.

"So you do like me?"

"I never said that either!" He shot back viciously.

"Well, it's gotta be one or the other, Neutron," she retorted crabbily—couldn't the guy just make up his mind? "So pick: Right here, right now. Do you like me or not?"

"I don't know!"

Could he be more frustrating? "What do you mean, you don't know! You have to know!"

"Well, excuse me, but I don't, Vortex!"

"Well, find out!"

"How am I supposed to find out? I am not experimenting with the love pheromone again, not after what happened last time!"

"Just kiss me, idiot!"

Immediately, she shut her mouth and started inwardly berating herself. First off, not only had she said the 'K' word for the third time, which would no doubt send him running from the conversation, she had basically just asked him to plant one on her. Hadn't she been complaining about lowly fangirl-types earlier? Well, how was her saying, "Just kiss me, idiot," any different from the mushy "Kiss me, you fool," she'd been so determined to never become? How had she sunk so low in just a few minutes of arguing with Neutron? …This was obviously all his fault.

She'd tell him that. "Neutron, this is all your fau—mmph!"

For the second time that night, she was cut off, and while her first instinct was to inflict some sort of heavy damage on him, her second instant to turn into a gooey pile of mush quickly overwhelmed the first.

Because Jimmy was kissing her. Seriously kissing her this time, not just a brush by the cheek, or even like the brief peck in the alley. He was actually kissing her.

Seeing as she was Cindy Vortex and most definitely not a stupid fangirl, she powered through her mushy second instinct and kissed him back. (She was pleased to notice that his legs had gotten too wobbly to support him, and he'd had to sit down on the bed next to her or else he might have fallen over.)

When they broke apart, Cindy immediately attempted to pretend that she wasn't breathing heavily at all—what the hell was he smirking for? She wasn't! And besides, she wasn't the one who'd gotten weak-kneed halfway through!

"Well?" She scowled at him, annoyed at that purely-male smile of satisfaction still on his face.

He cleared his throat. "More experimentation is required before I can make a full analysis."

. . . Had he just said he wanted to kiss her again?

It wasn't exactly a confession, but she'd run with it. "If you want to do more . . . experiments, understand that this is a one-subject thing. No running over to Betty's house for counter-experiments. You have to draw conclusions just from this. Got it?"

Had that stupid smile just gotten bigger? "Understood, Vortex."

"Good." She folded her arms and arched an expectant eyebrow at him.

For once his big brain actually seemed to get the message, and he leaned in to kiss her again.

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"Hey, Neutron? What was the favor you wanted to ask me earlier?"

"Huh? Oh, I was hoping you'd come have dinner with me in my lab tomorrow. Aunt Bertha is coming over, and I can't stand her—she always pinches my cheeks—so I'm going to be holed up my lab all night. Vox can't cook, and Mom won't let me sneak anything out of the kitchen, so I thought maybe you could bring food."

"…That's the most unromantic dinner invitation I've ever heard."

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Author's Note:

Wow, first time writing something outside the Anime/Manga section! (Avatar: The Last Airbender is a weird splice between cartoons and anime, and doesn't count.) …It's a lot less different than I thought it would be. Although the lack of honorifics was strange, and I wanted to write sweatdropped once or twice xD.

Anyhoo, this was just something fluffy to keep me going with Secret Memories (which is going to start maybe getting somewhat dark soon; I'm dreading it). Hope you enjoyed it :).

The alley kiss I keep referring to, by the way, is that one from the end of the episode, "The Lady Sings the News". Which was entirely too brief and not nearly dramatic enough, because, for crying out loud, they've been trying to get Jimmy and Cindy to kiss for three seasons! It at least deserved a close up!

…Also, Pigfarts is (c) to Starkid. GO WATCH AVPM. 8D

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