(A/N) IT'S FINALLY TIME FOR THE OTHER AGENTS TO REMEMBER! Will they take it well? Or will the weight of their actions as agents have taken it's toll? Read on to find out!


Chapter 7

The Rebel's Secret

"How's it going?" Drew whispered.

Reed poked his head out from behind the project that he had been working on since they had hacked the Black Dragon's network. They had stayed up all night working on a machine that could reverse all damage done to their brains. "Still needs some finishing touches. Now I've got a question for you: do I have to use my own invention on myself?"

"Do you remember living here seven years ago?"

"No."

"Then you have your answer."

Reed sighed. He was about to ask for a socket wrench when he heard the sound of someone coming down the stairs. "Quick!" Drew hissed, and Reed threw a sheet over their machine and dove behind it just before Violet stepped in.

Reed peeped out from behind the sheet to watch. Violet blinked in surprise at Drew. "Wasn't expecting to see you. I thought maybe Ted might have slipped down here to tinker. What are you doing up so early?"

"Oh, you know me, just practicing for Spinjitsu class tomorrow," Drew bragged. Reed's eyebrows went up. This wasn't like Drew. He was never flirtatious. He shook his head in disbelief as he realized what was going on.

Drew had a crush on Violet.

Reed would have groaned, but he kept it in as it would have given them away.

"Uh huh. So then what's with the big thing under the sheet?" Violet asked, pointing out their project with a smirk that clearly stated that she knew he was lying. Quite honestly, it was hard not to notice their project, since it was enormous. Reed and Drew weren't putting much effort into keeping it hidden. They hadn't thought anyone would come down while they were working.

For a split second, a spark of fear went off in Drew's amber eyes. The look quickly disappeared though, and he sighed. "Okay, okay, you got me. It's the robotics project Ted and I are working on for Sensei Zane's class. Right, Ted?"

Reed knew that was a cue for him to come out. He stood up behind the machine and gave a thumbs-up.

"Umm... you won't tell anyone, will you?" Drew asked Violet nervously.

"Nah. Besides, I don't even know what's under there. See you later, you two. Have fun staying awake for class," she added with a hint of sarcasm.

"Bye," the boys answered as she climbed back up the stairs again. Reed noticed that even after she was gone, Drew kept looking at where she had just been. Reed grinned. He decided to have some fun with this...

"Hate to lie to her..." Drew muttered under his breath.

"So you got a girlfriend?" Reed teased.

"W-what!? She's not my girlfriend! We hardly even know each other!"

"But you obviously like her!"

"No I don't!"

"Mm hm. And I'm Santa Claus."

Drew huffed. "Just hurry up and finish that machine. We have to have this done by morning."


Lex kept working on his current task. Drew had given him a code last night to figure out. It was very complex, having multiple different translations. The only thing that was not written in code was the date it was sent, which was ten years ago. Lex liked challenges though, and it was worth staying up all night to receive the satisfaction of decoding yet another message. So far however, he hadn't figured out what type of code it was. It was composed of letters and numbers, but he couldn't quite figure out-

Wait a minute.

There was one sequence of letters and numbers that kept popping up in the message.

XT3RM1N8.

And then it clicked.

Lex began scrawling furiously on the wall. It was similar to one of those times when he suddenly saw a connection between his calculations. If his hypothesis was correct...

XT3RM1N8.

X=EX. 3=E. 1=I. 8=ATE.

EX-T-E-R-M-I-N-ATE.

EXTERMINATE.

When Lex finished, his heart dropped into his stomach . The crayon fell out of his hand and broke as it hit the floor while Lex stared at his work in shock. He swallowed hard and took a few steps backward, still staring wide-eyed at his solution written on the wall.


Two hours later, at 4 a.m., Reed popped his head into Mark's room. Mark and Gretta were huddled around Reed's computer speaking in hushed tones.

"Do you think that's all of it?"

"Yes, that's everything."

Reed cleared his throat. Mark slammed the laptop shut and turned around to look at the intruder with a look of one who had just been caught red-handed. "Ted, I'm surprised to see you up so early," he said, putting on a fake smile and trying to hide the computer from view. Gretta just glared at Reed with a look that could kill.

Reed narrowed his eyes at the team leader. "I could say the same thing about you. What are you doing on my computer?" he asked suspiciously.

"Sending a few emails," he answered. "You left it in here last night, so we figured we'd get a few jobs out of the way. We didn't think you'd mind."

"Well, I do mind," Reed snapped. "And I'll have you know that that was one of the worst attempts at a lie that I've ever heard."

"What do you mean?"

Even though Reed hadn't had his memory restored yet, he'd noticed that ever since he'd read the files last night, he'd felt different. He'd been more aware of changes in people's stories, their habits, their flaws. He'd been thinking faster, clearer, and more thoroughly than he ever had before. It was almost like a computer upgrade; in one click, the entire system was better than it used to be. And this new system allowed him to pick apart every word Mark had just said.

"The last time I used my computer was in my room, looking something up with Drew," he began. "I left it on my desk. The only way you could have gotten your hands on it is if you and Gretta stole it. Which means," Reed's voice rose momentarily to stop Mark, who looked like he was about to protest. "Which means you shouldn't be surprised to see me up, because I was already gone by the time you snuck in. That also means that since everything else you had just told me was a lie, it is extremely likely that you were not, in fact, just sending a few emails. So, now that I've officially shredded apart your alibi, why don't you tell me what you were really doing on my computer?"

Mark stood up from the chair, his eyes flashing in anger. "What happened to you? Suddenly you're bolder than before."

"To tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure. Something about an incident that happened seven years ago."

"You're not making sense."

"Actually, I'm making more sense than I ever have for quite a while."

"Don't get smart with me. You'll regret it."

Suddenly Gretta smiled. "Threats! This just got interesting," she remarked, no longer bored with the situation. Reed ignored her. He watched Mark's face. He could almost see the gears in his head turning. And suddenly, it clicked.

"Drew," he growled.

Reed smiled. "You finally put it together, huh?"

"You're both rogues!"

"I guess you could say that."

Mark charged, and Gretta followed. Reed bolted; his work was done. They had taken the bait. Now he just needed to lead them into the garage.


Drew heard the pounding of feet coming down the stairs just as he finished concealing the machine behind some loose machine parts and boxes. He darted into the shadows just as the three arrived in the garage. Reed backed into the spot against the wall that Drew had showed him earlier. He made his best impression of being cornered as Gretta and Mark closed in on him.

"Game's over, Ted," Gretta sneered, setting her gun to stun mode. "You've gotten yourself into a heap of trouble. Say goodbye to your name being under Team Nightprowler."

"You can all say goodbye to your names," Drew said suddenly, firing up the memory-restorer. Mark and Gretta turned around to see the giant machine humming to life, pointed straight at them. "Here comes your wake-up call." Taken completely by surprise, they didn't even have the chance to react. The light from the beam hit them, blinding them before everything went black.


I remember it well. It was a cold, late autumn night. The sky was covered with clouds so that not one star shone. Even the moonlight was blotted out. The wind howled eerily outside the monastery.

My father was just putting me to bed. "Goodnight, Drew. Sleep well," he told me. Then someone screamed downstairs. Everyone, teachers and students, ran toward the cry. When we reached the front hall, we were terrified at the scene before us. The Black Dragons were invading.

The teachers told us kids to run and hide while they held the intruders back. We ran upstairs, but we were cut off on the fourth floor by more Black Dragon agents.

They lined us up and inspected each and every one of us, looking from us to a tablet device and then back before moving on. Suddenly, an agent pulled out of the line one six-year-old student, Reed, and handed him over to another agent who led him toward a window and jumped out with him. A nine-year-old, Emma, Reed's sister, screamed and broke out of the line. An agent shot a tranquilizing dart at her. She fell to the floor. He looked at his screen, and handed her over to be taken away, too. After that, no one dared break out of line. They ended up also taking a ten-year-old, Nick, and finally, me.

We were led to a black airship outside the monastery. Before they could take us in, however, there was a yell, and Heather, Sensei Lloyd's wife, was suddenly there, fighting. Only a few seconds in, however, she suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed to the ground. The agents threw us and her into the back of the airship and took off. That was the last I saw of our home for years.

Before long we arrived at the ocean. The airship descended, transforming itself. When it hit the water, it was no longer an airship, but a submarine. We traveled through the water for a long while before we finally broke the surface. They took us out of the vehicle and onto the dock of an unfamiliar island. The night was even colder and darker there than at home. I was afraid.

They led us down a path through a dark, misty jungle until we came to a large building: the Black Dragon Headquarters. Inside, they separated us kids from Heather, and we were taken down a long hallway to a large laboratory full of giant machines. They lined us up, and one by one they put us through a memory-altering machine. First they took Reed, then Nick, then Emma, and finally me.

I was strapped to a chair. They adjusted the angle of the laser. When they pressed the button, I felt a sharp pain in my forehead, but it passed after only a few seconds. I was a bit dazed, but after a moment I realized that it hadn't worked; I remembered everything. The doctors figured that since I was a descendent of Amber, a very powerful element, the brainwash had been blocked. They threatened me, saying that if I told anyone what had happened, they would kill someone close to me.

My name is Drew. I am fifteen years old now. For seven years I have been forced to live a life of crime, lying about who I really am. Now the truth can finally be told. Now you finally know my secret.

Wake up.


She had a name.

What was it?

She searched her brain. To her surprise, it felt like she hadn't used it for years. Her thought process was clumsy, and felt like a journey through a swamp on foot. And then, out of the cloudy void, it came to her.

Emma.

She also knew that she was looking for someone she had lost. Who was it?

Reed.

"Reed!" she shouted.

And to her astonishment and relief, a groggy answer came. "Calm down, sis, I'm right here!"

Emma opened her eyes and slowly sat up to see her little brother doing the same. They looked at each other for a minute, then they were hugging and crying and nothing mattered anymore because they remembered each other and they were back together after those evil people had separated them...

"I always love a happy ending!"

They looked up to see Drew hopping out from behind the memory-restorer, a huge grin on his face. "I've been waiting for this day for seven years. I think this deserves a celebration."

"Celebration? Why would we celebrate after what we just did?"

Everyone turned to see their old team leader staring at the floor with an expression of - what was it? Anger? Guilt? Fear? A combination? It was hard to read.

"What do you mean, why would we-" Reed stopped as the agent known as Mark slowly stood up and turned toward his team. When he did so, it became clear that they were not looking at agent Mark. This person seemed more grown up and more militaristic than Mark ever had been. He looked at them with dark eyes that told them that he felt no relief at his memory's awakening. No, this person was not Mark. This person was Nick.

Nick's glare settled on Emma. "The email. The one we were working on when Reed interrupted us." Emma's expression turned from confusion, to realization, to horror.

"Nick, what have we done?!" she cried. She buried her face into her hands.

Reed looked bewildered. "I'm confused. What have you done?"

Nick turned to his teammate. "Right before you walked in to see us on the computer, we had just sent an email containing a file with all of our surveillance, observations, pictures, voice recordings, everything we accumulated over the course of our stay."

Drew stood up, panic in his eyes. "Nick. Who did you send it to?Who did you send the email to?!" he pressed.

"To the a-a-agency!" Emma bawled. There was silence as the statement sunk in. Emma could almost feel the energy and enthusiasm from finally awakening their memories drain from the room.

Drew took a deep breath. He was clearly trying to keep his frustration level down. "What are the consequences?" he asked in a low tone.

"We don't know," Nick responded gravely.

There was another silence until Reed suddenly stated, "Well, it looks like we're about to find out." He pointed at the stairs. Peeking from behind the railing was Lex, hugging his composition notebook and observing the scene with his wide, hazel eyes. As the youngest team member crossed the garage towards his troop, Reed began to explain.

"Last night, while Drew and I worked on the machine, we had given Lex the task of deciphering a coded message we'd found in the archives on the Black Dragon network regarding our mission. It had been sent from an agent to Vladomir, and the sequence XT3RM1N8 kept popping up in it. We wanted to know what it meant." Lex opened his notebook to a certain page and handed it to Drew, who then proceeded to read it to the group. It was a bit hard to do, since Lex had messy handwriting and only ever wrote in all capital letters.

"'SIR,

MY INTELLIGENCE HAS CONFIRMED THAT THE NINJA HAVE ORGANIZED THEMSELVES INTO AN EDUCATING FORCE WITH THE PURPOSE OF PASSING ON KNOWLEDGE TO A NEW GENERATION OF NINJA. NATURALLY, THIS SITUATION MUST BE DEALT WITH AS QUICKLY AND EFFICIENTLY AS POSSIBLE.

WE AT THE DEPARTMENT OF MISSION PLANNING HAVE THEREFORE WORKED OUR HARDEST TO CREATE A PLAN OF ACTION THAT WILL CREATE AS MUCH DAMAGE TO THE NINJA AS POSSIBLE. WE ARE PROPOSING OPERATION: XT3RM1N8, OR OPERATION: EXTERMINATE, WHICH INVOLVES AN UNDERCOVER MISSION TO INFILTERATE THE MONESTERY AND SEND BACK TO HEADQUARTERS ALL INFORMATION GATHERED THERE. THEN WE MUST USE THE THE INFORMATION TO FORM A PLAN TO DESTROY THE PLACE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, ALONG WITH ALL ITS RESIDENTS. AFTER THIS OBSTACLE HAS BEEN DISPOSED OF, THE PATH TO BLACK DRAGON TAKEOVER WILL BE SMOOTHE SAILING.

I TRUST YOU WILL BE ABLE TO FIND THE RIGHT AGENTS FOR THIS MOST CRUCIAL MOMENT IN OUR HISTORY.

SINCERELY,

AGENT I'"

When Drew finished, there was silence as the gravity of the situation sunk in.

"So that's what they're gonna do," said Reed quietly. "They're gonna kill us all."

There was another long silence until Nick suddenly said in that determined tone of voice that only the bravest of leaders seem to possess, "No they're not."

Everyone looked at him with sad eyes, believing he was once again following a cause before he thought it through. However, Nick's face didn't seem to suggest that. In fact, he looked like he knew exactly where he was going. He looked at his four teammates with that face he often gave them when they were slacking during missions. It was his game-plan face.

"Agents! Pull yourselves together!" He had turned back into the good old drill sargent he used to be. "Attention!" The team shot up and formed the old soldier line. Nick slowly paced back and forth in front of them, eyeing them with the disciplined and experienced stare he had acquired over the past seven years. "I know things seem pretty grim right now but I can guarantee you four that I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen and I expect ALL of you to do the same. CLEAR?!"

"YES SIR!"

"I know as well as you all that this plan has probably been in the making for longer than we would all like to imagine. Maybe this was why we were all taken in the first place: to carry out this very mission. But does it matter now?"

"NO SIR!"

"That's right! Because that's in the past and there's no use whining and crying like babies about it. What we need to worry about is the Black Dragons' plan to blow this place to smithereens! We all know that this is our fault so we have to be the ones to fix it! UNDERSTOOD?!"

"YES SIR!"

"We all have our different talents and I plan on using mine to help the right side in this fight! How about you all? Will you take a stand, or let the Black Dragons destroy this place?"

"TAKE A STAND!"

"Okay then! Let's do this thing!"


(A/N) Now were finally coming close to the climax of the story! But how will the Ninja react to all this? You'll see in the next chapter!

Thanks again to NerdyJD and lovesgod12!

Review!