Newfound Independency

Chapter 9

By: CC333

Disclaimer: I do not own Codename: Kids Next Door

The next few hours moved in slow motion. The lower levels of the moon base were in complete disarray. Multiple fires had raged without mercy and burned a good chunk of equipment past usability. It was a good thing that the operatives down in the badly crippled Engineering were keeping their relative cool. That was the one thing with working alongside others in this particular division; most had the natural disposition of remaining placid and rational, especially after the problem had been diagnosed.

Too bad no one had a clue as to what was going on, so all they could do was fight the symptoms, which included vicious fires, live wires, and spills a plenty. The lower levels of the base were in absolute chaos. Hoagie was never one to have a short fuse, but with all this fire and incompetent cadets roaming around everywhere, his patience was being tested. There was simply just too much going on, too much on the line at once.

"Deep breaths, Gilligan," he muttered to himself while attempting to calm himself down. Upon inhaling, his throat was hammered with a succession of hacks and deep coughs. The soot in the air was becoming thick. The conditions down there were rapidly becoming completely unacceptable. Something would have to be done soon or else they all may be in deeper trouble than originally estimated. By a long shot.

This thought did nothing to help steady out his already troubled head. In order to not completely lose it, he began to make a mental list of essentials that needed immediate attention. This included the three main furnaces that were burning out of control, the control panels that need re-systemizing, and the fact that he needed a flippin-giant mop to clean up the mess. Numbuh 2 couldn't help but think about how all these tasks would be much easier to deal with if the official Head of Engineering wasn't out cold on a cot somewhere.

He wondered how long it would take for all these mess to be cleaned up. The remaining oxygen tanks were saved and being closely monitored by the time he had emerged with the department head from the out-of-control furnace. He had missed this event but it was all right. Besides, he was a bit busy saving countless lives from a hot, explosive death.

No biggie.

Hoagie, having recently found his hat on the concrete, was genuinely relieved at that point. Something familiar in all of this disarray was marginally comforting. Of course there were still all the poor souls depending on him as if he were their mom or something.

"Numbuh 2, help me with this!"

"Numbuh 2, how do we stop the leakage?!"

Numbuh2Numbuh2Numbuh2Numbuh2Numbuh2

He has just about had it with kid after kid calling out to him, dragging him by the arm to their problems, and begging for his assistance. All while he had to brainstorm why the main grid was down. For once, his abundance of patience was running thin. Never in his life had so many people been dependent on him. In the past, only his small team of four other kids needed him this badly.

Great, now he was thinking about Sector V.

Shaking his head, Numbuh 2 grabbed the low-hanging sides of his pilot hat and closed his eyes, trying his best to focus on the distressed boy who was explaining to him about how he couldn't find his twin in all of this mess. They had been walking at a rather quick pace across the main floor of Engineering. Hoagie was on power trip to the main grid's utility board and established that nothing would stop him along the way. So when this small boy, no older than nine for sure, fought through the panic and other operatives flocking around Numbuh 2, he instantly began walking on his heels, yapping on and on about how worried he was with the absence of his brother. Hoagie, one whose always had a caring, concerned disposition, couldn't bring himself to dismiss the boy, just as he had stood and listened and helped all the other operatives that had requested his assistance.

By the time they had reached the door that led to his destination, Hoagie had assured the young operative that his brother was probably just busy with the reconstruction efforts and would be floating around here somewhere.

To be honest, Hoagie was more perturbed than he had let on. Something didn't settle right with new, little kids running around while Engineering was in this state. Even he himself had already had many close scrapes with injury within the last 45 minutes and that wasn't even mentioning the whole furnace undertaking before that. The moonbase's health clinic would extra busy in the near future…

The door of the main grid's utility room had an access code pad similar to the ones for the vacpods. He entered in the code from before and, luckily, it shortly chimed a sharp beep twice before the jolt of the retracting locks vibrated his hand. A draft of cool air began to seep out through the crack in the door as it was opened. Stepping inside, a chill ran up the boy's back as he looked around the white, cold room. This may have been the one room in the entire base where the cords and wires weren't running across the floor or cascading through the ceiling. It looked exceptionally empty, when not considering the multitude of control panels around the room. The four walls were whitewashed and bare with the exception of a number of dark screens. A thin fog obscured the sight of the tile floor.

"Why is it so flippin' cold in here?" he muttered to himself while moving further into the room and running one hand along the chilly control panels. It wouldn't surprise him if he went home with some sort of illness with all this radical temperature change. For at least the tenth time that day, Hoagie thanked the heavens that his little brother had caught something that had been going around at school and therefore couldn't come up to the moon base for the Inauguration and, more importantly, not be in this mess.

None of the large displays mounted onto the walls were on, he noted. Crossing over to the other end of the room, He stuck his tongue out and made a "hmmm" noise while inspecting the controls before fiddling with the various buttons and knobs. When trying to work the system through its own devices didn't work, Hoagie got down onto his hands and knees and yanked off the large panel which had never been properly bolted in the first place, causing him to roll his eyes before beginning to shift through the various wires in the limited light he was provided.

"Green wire, green wire, green wire," he muttered as he worked, being careful not to disrupt any of the other ones too much. The green wire he was looking for happened to be near the very back of the panel. Usually the most neatly hidden, it happened to be the thickest and most dangerous out of them all. Hoagie bit his tongue harder as he was forced to move himself into an awkward position on the floor in order to see correctly. The large wire wasn't even connected to the bright yellow port that provided power. Without any further hesitation, Hoagie simply plugged it in. A searing pain ran up his arm and the room seemed to spin rapidly before dipping into darkness.

It wasn't until after he woke up, that he realized his mistake. Numbuh 2 had forgotten to express care and protect himself before hooking up that much power in one instant. The end result had knocked him out and left him with a scorched hand. The boy sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth as he sat up and accessed his surroundings. The place was still cold, but the remaining lights had turned on and the screens were now active. The handy PDA device around his wrist brought him relief by displaying and announcing the time; he hadn't been out for too long. He managed to stand back up without further injuring his hand. Unfortunately, that hand happened to be the one he favored. The next 20 minutes of restoring the main grid was done carefully and slowly with his slightly clumsier hand.

The largest of all the screens that displayed the power flow and usage throughout the moon base was directly above him. Its speakers began to make a faint beeping noise and a red dot began to flash on the map, indicating to the storage area beneath the stadium. Hoagie looked though the locks of brown hair that kept getting in the way and gazed at the screen's readings in disbelief. Whatever was happening down there was powerful.

A bang on the door to the grid room startled him. The next thing he knew, a hole was blasted into the door. After the dust cleared a bit, he would make out the faint online of a girl. She stepped through the dust, revealing her identity. Numbuh Two did a double take at the Chief Of Engineering whose head and arms were bandaged up rather abundantly. Her face was red and her expression could have scared a million adults away.

"There. Is. Someone. On. My. Moon. Base." She hissed at him though her teeth, "And. They're. Uninvited."

The boy noted her stacatto sentence and uneven breathing and felt like hiding. She glanced around the grid room. "You did it. You fixed the Main Power Grid for me. Smart kid."

He could only manage an uneasy grin in response while scratching the back of his neck with his one useful hand.

"Come on," she barked, taking long strides towards him and grabbing his cold shoulder, "There's something fishy going on at the stadium and I'm not havin' it."

Before Hoagie could mention what he saw on the display screen, she was dragging him out of the refrigerator of a room and across the main floor of Engineering.

It was getting harder to think straight. All his friends would be in the stadium. His only hope was that they were okay. The boy's eyes widened as he realized that Abigail was supposed to deliver her speech. The one he had helped her with (albeit he had just mostly given her goofy suggestions). His fist tightened at the thought of someone hurting her.

Oops. Thought I had uploaded this already until I received a review saying I was wayyy behind. My apologies. Between writing and doing well in school, there wasn't much time. I'll attempt to make it up by updating more frequently. Though I must say, there won't be another update until a month for a month because I will be studying abroad until July. Thank you for your support.