Thanks for the feedback in the first chapter, guys! I read all the comments, and they're always really helpful. So per request, here's the next chapter!

-x-

Abby walked down a crowded hallway. All she could hear were people buzzing about the N.A.N.O.M.I.T.E. announcement from an hour before. But she wasn't interested in talking about any of that. Not now. Now, she had something else in mind.

Abby put her hands in her pockets. She nonchalantly veered off into a secondary hallway that branched out of the first one. It was no accident that a few yards in front of her happened to be Numbuh 86 walking straight down. Abby followed behind her, and did her best to stay out of sight.

Abby briefly glanced down at a glass display case right before she passed by it. Inside of the case was a pair of sleek sunglasses, which had the words 'Numbuh Zero's Legendary Sunglasses-For Display Only' written in red crayon under it. She shifted to a brisk powerwalk to keep up with Numbuh 86.

Numbuh 86 stopped in front of a door with a number pad mounted next to the lock. There was nobody else in this area. Abby hid behind a pillar and watched her type the code in.

3-8…

Numbuh 86 darted her head back. Abby quickly hid more carefully behind the pillar.

86's eyes looked around the area and then back again. She focused on the number pad again just in time for Abby to stick her head back out.

3-8-4-0

The door opened and 86 walked in. It was only a few minutes before she and Numbuh 274 both walked out. They both paused in front of the door to talk for a minute, and then the two of them walked away. Abby didn't know what they were talking about. Nor did she care. She had gotten what she had come for.

Once those two were out of sight, Abby quietly walked over to the door right after she looked behind her. She looked down at the keypad.

3-8-4-0

She heard the lock click open. She rested her palm on the doorknob and looked back one more time. She quickly opened the door and slipped inside.

Before her was a small room with a metal floor, and a set of computers and seats in the front of the room. She decided to waste no time.

She briskly walked over to the computer in front and booted it up. She breathed a sigh of relief. It was still logged onto Numbuh 274's account. She went straight to the "Archives" folder.

There were about 50 folders within it. She scrolled down to try to find what she was looking for. She stopped by a folder that said "Personnel." Out of curiosity, she double clicked it. She could see a set of folders inside, and they were all numbered. But she knew that the numbers didn't represent actual files. They represented the operatives. She clicked on her folder, and found a full bio of herself. 'NAME- Abigail Lincoln. NUMBUH – 5, AGE- 10.' She was surprised at how up to date the system was. Her 10th birthday was just last week. Her bio went on to fully detail her history, her experiences, her strengths, her weaknesses, and it was all accurate to the T. She supposed that this was how thoroughly they had to check out their operatives before they joined the force. Still, that didn't make it any less creepy.

She exited her folder, but then had a fleeting thought. She scrolled down the folder and found another subfolder called, 'interns'. She found Nigel's name at the very bottom of the folder listing. She read it

'NAME – Nigel Uno, NUMBUH – N/A."

The next line read,

"Profile truncated due to indefinite disbarment. Intern shows tactical promise but exam scores prevent him from being considered seriously as a future operative – Take special notice to test scores listed below."

For some reason, that made her angry. In comparison to her bio, Nigel's had barely anything. And it wasn't for any reason except that his test scores were low, so they didn't see the point of paying anymore thought to him. Abby shook her head right before clicking two times and fiddling on the keyboard for a moment. Then she caught herself. She had already spent 5 minutes in here, and she hadn't even done what she came here to do yet. She exited the folders and opened the Archives again. She soon found the folder she was looking for.

Archived Messages.

This was it. She clicked on it, and found a folder that was dated from a few days before. She opened the file that she was after. It was exactly like Rachel said. It was an encrypted transmission from an unidentified ship. The whole thing was a mess of different numbers and symbols. To a lesser mind, these texts would have been meaningless, but Abby used to deal with encryptions on a regular basis. She skipped past the standard notations that were in the transmission, and came across a line that didn't look like the others. It stood by itself in the middle of the text, and was in a different notation than everything else that was in there.

/118 8.267 7.249 9/

After those numbers, the encrypted codes continued.

It all happened too fast. Once Abby got through reading them, the door swung open and the lights turned on.

"FREEZE!"

Abby's eyes shot open as she accepted the truth. She had just been made. She turned around in her chair. Of all people who could have caught her messing around in this room, she couldn't have been more relieved to see Rachel holding her gumball gun out at her. Rachel slowly lowered it.

"Abby?" 362 said, unbelievingly. "What are you doing here?"

"Rachel. I was just looking around, you know. Surfing the Web."

362 looked up at the screen.

"Oh no, no, no." She said while packing her gun and walking over to the chair. "Abby you can't be here. You've got to leave before…"

"Before WHAT!" Even 362 jumped at Numbuh 86's loud voice. Both Rachel and Abby looked 86 in the eye. Numbuh 86 pointed at Abby as she stomped over to her.

"I KNEW I was being followed. How on earth did you get in here? What's this all abou…"

She too saw the screen.

"These files are classified!" 86 boomed, "How did you even know they were here?"

Rachel and Abby avoided eye contact with each other. Numbuh 86 turned right back around.

"I'm telling Numbuh 274, now."

"Fanny, wait." 362 said while grabbing her wrist. Numbuh 86 looked back at her. "Just, don't tell him, alright?"

"And why shouldn't I?"

"If you tell him, he'll know that it's your fault that she got in. And then we'll all be in trouble. This whole situation will be a lot cleaner if we just leave him out of this." Numbuh 86 bounced her eyes between Numbuh 5 and 362.

"I can take care of Numbuh 5." Rachel continued, "Just go back to your meeting with him before he suspects that something's up."

Numbuh 86 remained quiet for a few seconds. Then she walked up to Abby.

"Consider this your first and last warning. If I catch you sticking your nose into where it doesn't belong again, I won't be so nice." She pointed at the screen, "And I don't want you digging any deeper into this, you understand?"

Abby quietly nodded.

"UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes! Sheesh…"

Numbuh 86 looked back at 362. "She's all yours. Take her out of here."

Numbuh 86 turned around and exited the room. The slam behind her seemed especially loud.

"That girl should really invest in some anger management classes." Abby said while cracking a smile

"It's not funny, Abby. You almost cost me my job."

"Yeah, I owe you one."

"You owe me a lot more than that. What were you even trying to find here, anyway?"

Abby remained silent. 362 was forced to answer her own question.

"The Teen Ninjas." She said

Abby slowly nodded. "Yeah." Abby said

"Abby, you promised me that you wouldn't look into it!"

"I know…"

"You know? Then what do you call this!"

"I know…Rachel. And I'm sorry. It's just that these guys are the reason why Cree's…"

362 looked at the ground

"And in some twisted way, it's like they're my last connection to her. I was just trying to see if all of this would lead me anywhere." Abby concluded

362 put her hands in her pockets and looked up at the screen

"So did it?"

Abby looked back at her

"Did you find anything?"

Abby shook her head

"Nothin'. Nothin' but a bunch of meaningless numbers."

"That's what I tried to tell you."

They were quiet for another moment

"I understand that you want to avenge her." 362 said, "You're not the only one who looked up to Cree as an older sister, you know. But breaking the rules is no way to go about it. Next time you want to find something out, just do it by the book. You'll get more out of it that way."

362 reached to turn off the computer. Abby looked at the screen one last time before it shut to black.

"Now let's get out of here." 362 said "Numbuh 86 would do backflips if she saw that we were still in here."

Abby smiled, and Rachel did the same.

-x-

Abby quickly walked back into the main hallway. She pulled a gum wrapper out of her pocket and used a pencil to write down exactly what she saw.

/118 8.267 7.249 9/

Before Rachel had shut off the screen back in the room, Abby made sure to memorize every symbol, every number, and every space because each was of the utmost importance.

She could hardly contain her smile as she decoded the numbers at the bottom.

'118.8…' Abby wrote

It's nothin' but a bunch of meaningless numbers. That was the lie Abby had told to Rachel. Abby genuinely felt bad about doing it, but she didn't want to make her worry. But the truth was, these were more than just a bunch of numbers. These numbers in this notation never appeared in a standard encrypted message. They were put there on purpose. And In these numbers, she was one step…no…ten steps closer than where she was at the beginning of the day. She decoded the numbers below.

'118.8…267.7….'

She was almost done. Her palms began to sweat as she finished off the set.

When she and her sister were kids, they made up a way of communicating in order to bypass their parents' attention when need be. It started off as a silly joke, but it soon came to be quite useful. And the best part was that it was never that hard to figure out. It started off with substituting certain words for other words and certain letters with other letters. But more relevantly, they would sometimes substitute certain symbols for spaces and certain spaces for symbols.

And this was no exception. She was to substitute the periods for spaces and the spaces for periods. The backslashes were just there to indicate the beginning and end of a statement, kind of like a capital and a period. It was Cree's way of signing the message.

'118.8…267.7…249.9.'

This time, Abby couldn't help but smile ear to ear. She not only knew how to decode the transmission, but she knew that her sister was the one who sent it. Cree was still alive. Abby deduced that she must have been captured all this time and was trying to send out an S.O.S., in desperate hopes that Abby would somehow see it.

And as for the meaningless numbers? They weren't really numbers. They were coordinates. Cree's coordinates.

And despite the fact that she could already hear 362's pleas, 86's screaming, and 274's strict orders going around in her head, Abby had already made up her mind.

She was going to go find her.

-x-

Wally paced down the sidewalk, and kicked a crushed Pepsi can down the way.

"Why'd we have to move here in the first place?"

Wally kicked the can a few feet forward

"I said that we were just fine where we were. But nooo. Dad has to go and get a job heeeree."

He kicked the can a little harder.

"UGGHHH, I'm so bored already! B-O-R-D, bored! I bet there's nothing fun to do around here at all!"

Wally looked up a little bit and spotted a squirrel eating an acorn next to a fire hydrant. He looked back down at his Pepsi can and then back up at the squirrel. His mouth thinned out into a devious smile.

The squirrel nibbled down on its acorn, and barely noticed when the Pepsi can was hurled all the way over to it. Once it saw the can coming, its eyes bulged out of its head, and it turned around and ran. The can landed right where the squirrel ran away from. Wally ran over to the can and kicked it again towards the squirrel.

"Come on squirrely! Why don't you put up a fight?"

The squirrel quickly changed directions and ran straight for a tree, just missing the can again. It quickly climbed up to the top branch. The squirrel stuck its tongue out at him a and spat. Wally walked over to the can again.

"I never was the best at football…" Wally said while eyeing the squirrel in the tree. "But even I know how to hit a moving target."

An "uh-oh" seemed to come out of the squirrel's mouth. Wally ran over to the can and kicked it as hard as he could.

But it never made it over to the squirrel. Instead, it was caught by one of the Teen Ninjas.

"Huh? Who the crud are you?!"

He held the can in front of him, and then dropped it down to the floor.

"Wallabe Beatles." The Ninja started "We've been watching you."

"Hey! How do you know my name!"

Just then he was grabbed from both sides by the arms. Two more Teen Ninjas were now on either side of him, holding him high over the ground.

"What the! GET OFF OF ME!" Wally demanded while attempting to flail his fists around

The Teen Ninja in front bent down and looked Wally in the eyes

"Impulsive. Rude. Loud mouthed. Generally speaking, a jerk to all animals."

The Ninja eyed his two companions.

"Our leader was right. He is perfect. Take him away."

They began walking out of sight. Wally tried kicking and screaming, but it was of no use.

"LET GO OF ME! LET GO I SAY! HEELP!" Wally screamed.

He was wasting his breath. Within seconds, the four of them were already gone.

-x-

Nigel was sitting alone on the floor with his legs crossed, and his back resting against the bottom of the rocket ship. He was once again in the empty basement. He had his notepad and pen in his hands, and was intently drawing ideas inside of it. His brown lunchbag was also next to him, but he seemed too engrossed in his notepad to care.

The door sprung open. Nigel flinched when Abby stormed into the room.

"Cree's alive."

Nigel clicked the back of his pen and put it in his pocket.

"Come again?"

Abby helped herself to a nearby computer and took a seat. She logged on using her codename and password.

"My sister. Numbuh 11. She's alive, but she needs my help. I knew she wasn't really dead. I could feel it!"

Nigel stood to his feet and walked behind her

"And you're basing this off of…" He started

"A transmission that we received. Numbuh 362 told me about it. And Numbuh 5…" She said pointing to herself, "snuck into the boss's office and decoded it myself."

Abby furiously typed on the keyboard. She was viewing a 3D model of outer space.

"And you're sure that Numbuh 11 sent it?"

"100% positive. She sent me these coordinates." She showed Nigel her bubble gum wrapper without taking her eyes off of the screen. Nigel adjusted his glasses and took a moment to read them.

"She's probably being held captive by the Teen Ninjas. She sent me the coordinates to their base of command, or at least one of their airships." Abby said while Nigel was reading

"They look to me like a bunch of random numbers. How do you know that these aren't just…" Nigel said

"Trust me, Nigel." She said, interrupting him. "This is the way that my sister and I speak to each other. She must've gotten a hold of one of their communicators, but didn't want them to know what she'd sent."

Desperate. Paranoid. Those were the words that Nigel wanted to say. But somehow, he couldn't bring himself to say it.

"It makes perfect sense." Abby continued, "I would do the same thing if I was in her situation."

"Why would she have waited all this time to send for help?"

"I don't know. Maybe it was the only chance she got to hack into one of their computers or something. But that's not important to me. What's important is what I'm gonna do about it."

Nigel opened his mouth to ask a question, but when he saw what Abby was doing on the computer, another one quickly came out instead.

"Wait. You're not planning to…"

"Yeah. I am. As fast as I can." Abby said

"Numbuh 5, you can't go there! What if…what if there's nothing out there?!"

"Then at least I'll know that I tried."

"But don't you think that we should at least submit this information to Numbuh 274? Maybe he could send backup or something."

"No!" It was the first time Abby stopped typing and turned around to look at Nigel. "Nigel, you can't tell anyone else what I told you. If you do, they won't let me within a hundred miles of that place. They probably won't even believe me."

Nigel crossed his arms.

"So what then? You're just going to charge into the Teen Ninjas' spacecraft all by your lonesome?"

"No." Abby stood to her feet and looked at Nigel straight on. Her silence in between told Nigel that she was gearing up to say something important. "No, I want you to join me."

Nigel's face fell.

"What?"

"There's a reason why I came to you and not anybody else. You have incredible tactical abilities that might even be better than mine. And your sheer dedication is something that I'll need when I go to rescue my sister."

"Numbuh 5, you can't ask me to do this. I'm just an intern. If anybody knew that I followed you on some rogue mission, that would eliminate any chance I could ever have of joining the Kids Next Door as an operative."

"I've already considered the risks, Nigel…"

"You want to know another time you 'considered all the risks'? It was the time that we first met. You remember that, Numbuh 5?"

Abby looked the other way

"I was an innocent little kid when those Delightful Children From Down the Lane kidnapped me. And you convinced your entire sector that you had this 'simple search and rescue mission' under control. You went in by yourself, but didn't anticipate that they'd be prepared for you. It took longer than expected to get past their diversions, and in that time, they tortured me. They permanently cut off all of my hair. Even though we were the same age, you took me under your wing that day, and I appreciate that. But you were also wrong that day. And I don't see how this is any different."

"You know, Nigel, I could have done anything with this information. I could have already packed up and gone by myself. But I came here and told you. Because I did learn my lesson from that day. And that's to never enter into battle alone. Which is why I'm still standing here now."

Abby held out her hand. Nigel looked down at it.

"I need some water." Nigel said. He turned around and left the basement. Abby slowly dropped her hand and looked straight ahead.

-x-

Wally face was thrown down onto the floor. He pulled his head up and spat out all of the dust and dirt. He had a red rag around his eyes, which effectively blindfolded him.

Someone pulled the rag away, and Wally's eyes became visible through his hair.

He groaned, rolled his body around and looked to see that he was inside of a dark, flying spacecraft. He glanced over at the windows, and saw the stars.

"Where in blazes am I?"

"Outer space."

Wally looked straight ahead at the Teen Ninjas who said it. The two that had dragged him in were standing in the background with their arms crossed next to each other.

"YOU!" Wally yelled. He jumped up to his feet and sprinted over to them with his fists out. One of them simply held his head at an arms distance away as Wally tried to fight through.

"Persistent little runt, isn't he?"

"Who you callin' a runt!?" Wally shouted "I'll teach you to make fun of me!"

"Ninjas, please."

Those two words seemed to quiet everything down. They looked forward at the Teen Ninja who was at the front of the ship. The Ninja turned around and looked down at Wally.

"Let's not upset our guest."

It was clear that this one with the synthetic voice was their leader. Even though the person's eyes were the only part of their body that was visible, it was enough to bring order to the entire ship.

"After all" The leader said while stepping down a couple of steps, "We don't him to leave without his gift."

"Gift?!" Wally wondered, "I don't need no stinkin' gift."

The leader lightly nodded at one of the Ninjas in the back. He briskly turned around, went to the back and rummaged through an open box.

"In fact, I've got a gift for YOU!" Wally said to the leader, while standing on his tip toes. He brought out his fist. "A good old fashioned knuckle sandwich! And I'll have seconds for all of you guys if you don't let me go right no…is that what I think it is?"

The Ninja from the back had returned with an iPod and noise cancelling headphones. And once Wally's eyes settled on it, they glistened with joy.

"You see we teenagers spend too much time on our mp3 players and laptops." The leader explained, "And personally, my iPod has been distracting me from my normal, teenage duties. So I asked my guys here to bring me a kid who looked like he could use a little something to take his mind off of what's going on at home. And here we are. So take it. It's all yours!"

"You've gotta be kiddin' me!" Wally said with a smile on his face, "Why didn't you just say so?!"

He looked around the room

"Hey…I'm not bein' punk'd am I?"

"If you were being punk'd, I'd have a camera crew in here." The leader said plainly

Wally scratched his head, "Oh yeah!" He said in a light tone. He eyed the iPod and headphones.

"How do I know that this thing isn't broken?" Wally questioned again

"I'm not asking you to take something you haven't tried out yet. Why don't you give it a shot?" The leader said

"Don't mind if I do!" Wally exclaimed while rapidly snapping the headphones on. "Man, I can hardly hear anything through these. I can't wait to use this on my dad. Woah! You have like 1000 songs on here!"

The leader's eye was beginning to cringe

"Where to start…I kind of like rock, but I have a soft spot for heavy metal too…I never was a country fan. Are you a country fan? I'm not a country fan at ALL. I mean there's some mainstream stuff that I like, but most of it's complete and utter…"

"JUST PLAY THE MUSIC ALREADY!"

"Alright…sheesh…" Wally said, "No headphone can drown out that loud voice…" He said quieter

He pressed play on a random song.

"Hey. These headphones are pretty nice!" Wally began playing air guitar "Yeah…I can get used to thees…"

That's when it happened. It wasn't a couple of seconds after that before his eyes shot wide open.

Smiles began to creep across all of the Ninja's faces. They all knew what was happening. Because on a microscopic level, the headphones Wally was listening to were laced with black N.A.N.O.M.I.T.E.S. They swarmed into his ears-about 12 in each of them.

Wally stood still as a statue with his eyes taped open. The headphones that were around his ears slid and dropped to the ground, as did the iPod.

"You think it worked?" One of the Ninjas asked.

The leader walked closer to Wally, and waved a hand in front of his face. Nothing. Then the leader slapped his cheek.

Wally's eyes snapped shut, and then open again right before he blinked a few more times.

"What's your name?" The leader demanded

"Wallabe….Beatles." Wally said in a monotone voice.

"And who do you work for…Wallabe?"

Wally looked up at the leader

"I work for you." He replied, "My loyalty is to the Teen Ninjas."

The rest of the Teen Ninjas couldn't help but break out into applause

"And what will you do when you see any of those pests from the Kids Next Door?"

"I'll defeat them. All of them."

The leader smirked and stood straight. The other teens watched the leader return to the control panel.

"It's like I said, team. If you want to fight a dog, get a dog. If you want to fight a lion, get a lion. And if you want to fight those pesky children…you get a child. And this one's even better than we bargained for." The leader said, while leaning against the dashboard. "Suit him up and prepare him for battle."

The teens promptly escorted him out of the room.

"Consider our plan…in motion."

-x-

Abby printed off three pages from the computer. She studied them carefully as Nigel walked back in. She lowered the pages

"That was one long water break." She said

"Yeah, well I had a lot to think about."

Abby stood up straight

"Like how I owe you a lot. How I wouldn't even be part of the Kids Next Door if it weren't for you." Nigel continued

"This isn't an obligation. It's entirely up to you."

"I know." Nigel said after a pause. He walked up to her. "The Teen Ninjas are dangerous. You know that better than anyone. At best, this is a suicide mission. And at worst, this is a shot in the dark..."

"But it's a shot Numbuh 5's willing to take." Abby said. Nigel crossed his arms.

"You're going to do this with or without me, aren't you?"

Abby nodded. "Yeah."

Nigel dropped his arms

"Well I've made my decision. If you're serious about going through with this, then you're going to need somebody to watch your back. The way that you used to watch mine."

Abby widened her eyes under her cap. Nigel held his hand out.

"Besides, it's Kids Next Door regulations. Article II, Section 3 to be exact..." Nigel let out a smile. "No operative gets left behind."

Abby hid her eyes behind her cap and smiled

"Yeah, baby." She said as she grabbed Nigel's hand. "Welcome aboard."

They dropped each others' hands.

"So…" Nigel started, "How are we planning to get there?"

Abby looked up at the rocket ship

"In that." She said plainly.

"This?!"

"You said it yourself. It's not registered yet, and has no working GPS. That way, the administration won't be able to track it. If we're lucky, they might not even realize that it went missing!"

"You seem to be forgetting something." Nigel said, "This rocket's a pile of junk right now. I can't even get it to fly."

"But you can get it fixed soon, right?"

"No, I can't. I already told you, I'm not that good with electronics. As hard as it is for me to admit, this is about as far as I can get on my own."

Abby took a moment to think

"Do you happen to know anyone who can help you out? Preferably someone who doesn't number among the KND administration and/or anyone who would tell them what we're doing down here?"

Nigel pondered for a while, but eventually, his eyes lit up.

"I like that look…" Abby said, "Any ideas?"

"One." Nigel said, while turning around "There's a hall monitor from school, his name's Joe Balooka. I knew him fairly well back in the day. He used to have a partner who he said had a knack for inventing all kinds of things. But Joe said that since the two of them broke up, this other kid's been spending a lot of time in his room making free-lance inventions and selling them to clients for baseball cards. It's the only time I've ever heard Joe use the term, 'genius' to describe anyone."

Abby stayed quiet for a moment before she spoke.

"So this other kid…" Abby said while tilting her cap up, "Does he have a name?"