Sorry for the short scenes. This chapter is my lead into a very long one that I'm almost done with so.... READ!

Also: thank you to Erato son of Zeus and Athena for threatning me into updating. YOU ARE SO NICE!!!

Morning. Early mornings are the quietest times of the day, that time when everything is still and calm. The time where only birds and insects can be heard. Wally awoke in a bedroom on the third level of the house, he knew this only because he had seen this room before. He had been in this room before.

He panicked. Why was he in this room? And then he remembered. Kuki found him by the lake, they started making out and then Kuki wanted to move the fun to somewhere more private. It was dark, he couldn't tell where she was leading him, partially because the whole time her face was glue to his. Damn, he said to himself. He knew that somehow he had crossed a line and that there would be repercussions for it, whether they happened now or later. And he was scared.

He tried to sit up, run away from the room but he was stopped by the dead weight of a sleeping Kuki. She looked so peaceful. Her cream colored skin so smooth and flawless, her jet black hair fanned around her body, she was so doll-like.

Wally slowly lay back down, putting his hands behind his head and tried to relax. I'm so dead, he cringed as he put a face to the room, or am I? I mean this is a very natural thing for couples, sex. No matter where it is had. So the only thing to mad about is the fact that we did it here and not the fact that we did it.

Rationalizing himself was almost as tiring as the act itself. The truth of the matter was that Wally didn't know if he felt right or not. He didn't wake up with the same vigor, it didn't even feel as great as when he was with…

Not that it mattered now. Once Abby found out she would be furious and probably castrate him.

With a snort, Kuki stirred and then curled into a ball on the opposite side of the now messed up bed, the bed Wally had put so much time and energy into making the previous afternoon. It took him seconds to have his clothes back on and out the door, flying down the stairs to anywhere that would be safe until he sorted through his thoughts. Anywhere he could just breathe.

"So how does that make you feel, Mr. Gilligan?" A fourteen year-old TND psychiatrist sat opposite Hoagie on a large throne-like chair. He scribbled furiously on the little yellow pad of paper in his hands as he listened Hoagie drone on and on about his troubles.

Hoagie lay down on a lounging chair, red and plush, fingers laced and thumbs twiddling. He had his goggled pulled over his eyes even though they were closed, focused on going back in time and pulling out whatever he could to tell the doctor so he could help himself out of the ward. With a deep breath he answered, "It makes me angry… jealous."

"Mhm," the good doctor scribbled on his paper again, "So you think Numbuh 4, Wally as he is informally known as, is after your girlfriend?"

"I don't think, I know." Hoagie replied, "I've seen the way he's looked at her for years but he's never acted on it. But I've noticed a change in his eyes," he slowly sat up on his lounging beach, "Yes, somehow whatever he was feeling intensified ten fold recently." He was shaking and on the brink of yelling, scaring his doctor into standing up and slowly backing away from his patient. Hoagie ripped the goggles off his face and threw them somewhere across the room, "But Abby wouldn't… couldn't feel the same way! There is no way! She is mine! She is MINE! SHE! IS! MINE!"

The doctor whispered into a mini microphone attached to the collar of his tweed jacket, "Security."

Within seconds a team of people dressing all in white came bursting through the door. While the majority of them went and tackled the still be-crazed Hoagie to the ground one security nurse prepared a sedative. "Sir, the subject has been secured!" one yelled.

And with the utmost of ease the needle-bearing nurse plunged the tip into Hoagie's thick neck. It took only seconds for Hoagie to go from livid to lucid and fall limply onto the floor.

The nurse brandishing the needle shook his head, "It is doubtful that this one will go back to his team anytime soon. He's too far gone."

"A little faith please," the psychiatrist said jokingly, "No one is above help."

"We'll see." And then he joined his team in carrying Hoagie back to his cell, wondering if what he said was in fact to harsh or just a sad truth.

Abby sat on the dock that lead inward towards the still waters of the lake, he feet hanging off the edge and not quite touching the water. She was leaning back on her elbows, face towards the sky and inhaling deeply. The morning air was chilly but crisp, waking her up from the groggy state she had found herself in as she staggered her way from the house, down the hill and to the lake. She wasn't exactly in the best mood.

She heaved out a sigh that was so deep it cooled her insides before letting it go. There was nothing to take the image of Wally and Kuki sleeping in her bed from her memory. Nothing, except for total amnesia… and how hard is that to accomplish really? That fact that she had just contemplated giving herself amnesia sunk her further into the depths of her own thoughts. She sighed again, what she wouldn't do for a distraction at the moment.

The sight from only moments before seemed to be burned into her mind. Kuki wrapped around Wally like a parasitic vine, in her bed. She scoffed as the vivid memory of her walking in on them came back and tried to surpress it with something less offensive to her. But did she have a right, she wondered, to be offended. The dilhema that has been plaguing her for the last few days was now a constant nagging in the back of her brain. Wally wasn't hers to be jealous over. He was a meaningless fling. He is Kuki's boyfriend.

Yadda, yadda, yadda…

Same ol' song played to a different tune each time she thought about it. She did have a right to feel disrespected though, she noted. They probably had sex in her bed, meaning they should be the ones to clean it and rid it of their stank and whatnot. She smiled, the word stank made her laugh a little on the inside despite the current issues at hand.

Her thoughts flicked to Hoagie, so brief and fleeting that she was suddenly stricken with the disntinct feeling of regret. She had barely thought about him and he left for her in the first place, to make their relationship better. She reckoned that his letters were starting to come in and pile up back at the tree house and she had never even thought about writing him a note, not once. Not even an email or a text—did he have his phone with him? It didn't matter.

As if on cue, Abby's phone began to vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out and read the caller ID with much distaste, it was Wally. She pushed reject and slammed it into the dirt next to her. He could go jump in a frozen lake for all she cared at that point. She wanted nothing to do with him, he had single-handedly managed to ruin her cool and she didn't know id she could ever truly get it back.

Her phone rang again. It was him again so she just let it ring. And ring. And ring until finally it stopped.

That joker.

"Your message was delivered, Father," she spoke calmly into the monitor before her the bore her boss' blacked out face. She disengaged her BRA and shook out her long black hair that was coated in her own sweat. Despite feeling gross, she was proud. Her team had completed the mission and they had done it in less time than she thought. She had assumed that the TND could handle an invasion force of such a miniscule number. Then again, it was the medical wing and she was better than them now, better than them all now.

On the screen Father took a long drag from his pipe and puffed out two large clouds of smoke. He leaned back into his throne-like chair and chuckled, just loud enough for Mushi to hear, he was overjoyed with how things were turning out for him and A.P.P.L.E. It took everything in his power not to laugh hysterically into the vast emptiness of his mansion. He turned to wards the screen and gave Mushi a smile, "Well done my little Mushi, you do me proud." He told her.

"I can never repay you for what you've given me," she said almost regretfully, "My team is on our way back to the base. We will coordinate with the others from there. Mushi out."

The screen went blank.

From her chair in the middle of everything she could see that everyone was working diligently at their stations. She used to hate the ship she was in, it looked to much like the Star Trek ship and she was tired of all the nerds on the base hitting on her. At one point she realized that they had somehow gotten cameras into her living quarters. There were a lot of busted, bruised and broken limbs that night.

But she could not complain. The time she spent under Father's regime has been the most fun and excitement she has had in her life. They don't worry so much about following the rules as much as getting the job done. The ends justify the means, with A.P.P.L.E and that's how she liked it. Plus, they had fixed her. She was new and improved and wasn't slowing her roll for anyone any more. The paralysis she had gotten from the Toilenator incident was but a memory to her now. Sure, A.P.P.L.E coordinators have to make sure she is as far away from him as possible at any given time but that was his fault. She could give a flying rat's ass if he were to drop dead by her hand or by the TND's. She'd rather it be her hand that ended the bastard though.

"Captain Mushi." A voice snapped her from her fantasies of maiming the Toilenator and back to the terrible ship she was sitting. It was her lieutenant, a jacked up jock who went from the KND to A.P.P.L.E before she did. They had trained together, hung out together, used to bunk together and, hell, they had even slept together but Mushi only thought of him as her lieutenant—barely a friend. He, on the other hand, had feelings for her, feelings that he had professed and has tried to subdue ever since she rejected him.

She turned to him briefly before going back to watching the screens around her, "Yes, Ronnie?"

"Captain Beatles is on the phone for you," he started, almost nervous to be talking to her, "He won't leave a message. He insists that you talk to him… now."

Mushi turned back towards him, eyebrow raised and nostrils flared, "Well you tell him that he can wait a few hours until I'm back at the base to talk to me." She was at a harsh whisper now, trying not to yell.

That Joey Beatles, she recounted, always demanding shit when has shit to say. The younger of the boneheads was probably more annoying that the older one and that was hard to do by anyone's standards. They had hooked up a few times, it was whatever and he understood that it was nothing but pure, ravenous, totally empty sex. But when he wanted some tail, he called her. He demanded her was more like it. It had gotten so bad that in his commander position he was actually able to take her off missions and have her brought to him. She regretted ever getting with him in the first place.

But what could she do? She had gone on a binge of endless, passionless sex that had resulted in her making ties with people she never meant to. She was empty inside and the only thing she could do to take the edge off now and days was to relax with some company. Ugh, she scoffed herself, slut.

"Tell him I'll return his call as soon as we dock." She said in a calmer tone.

Ronnie stepped back slowly, fully aware of what the Commander wanted with Kuki, "Yes, captain."

Kuki watched him leave the bay out of the corner of her eye, sighing when he finally disappeared behind the double sliding doors. She hated what she had become almost as much as she loved the power she had acquired over the years. Stupid boys…

"Dinner is ready, Tommy!"

Tommy snapped out his daze, his room coming back to his sensed. The smell of old gym socks, the bright light of his computer screen, the sounds of noobs being pwned in world of warcraft—the feeling of his cold steel of his wheelchair. He put the joystick in his hand down on the computer desk and began the process of turning himself around towards the door, "Okay, ma, I'll be right down." He yelled back.

Rolling over carpet was hard enough without the new Persian carpet his mother put in the hallway. After an extreme workout he made it to the stairs, where he hooked himself into the carrier and was slowly taken down the stairs. The hooking apparatus got snared on his shirt at some point, causing a bit of difficulty when he tried to unhook himself. Tommy cursed, loudly.

His parents, dad far more plump than his mother, came running to his aid, something he had grown to both expect and loathe. The took one look at him, then looked at each other with the same sympathetic look and then went to pull his clothing from the gears of the machinery. The entire time Tommy couldn't help but think about the car in his pocket. It felt like it was the only signifigant thing on him at the moment.

I won't call, he told himself, I won't sink to that level.

So he sat at the table with his family, minus Hoagie of course, listening to their pointless adult drabble. They talked about their day, work, shared some funny stories about their co-workers. They knew absolutely nothing of what was going on outside their own existence and it somewhat sickened him to know that someday he may be as useless as his parents. He blew a long, exhausted sigh into his mashed potatoes.

"Oh," his mother turned to him, surprised, as though she forgot he was sitting there for the last thirty minutes, "Tommy, honey, how was your appointment today? Anything new?" she asked him.

"Fine," he said, lying through his mash potato covered teeth. He let those words settle in the air before his parents stares finally forced him to say something else, more uplifting, "He says I'm making progress." The smile he gave them after his statement was nothing short of fake and forced onto his face.

His mother was delighted to hear such a thing, he saw this bright as day on her chubby face and felt bad for lying so much, giving her so much hope.

Once a stone cold silence had settled on Tommy it was like something just snapped within him. He didn't want to lie anymore. He didn't like the look his mother got on his face when he lied and told her everything was okay. He did not like getting stuck on the lift or accidently rolling down the stairs when he's to drowsy to know exactly where he's going at 2am. He didn't want to have to go to the TND medic wing every weekend and receive the same pathetic stare form his doctor anymore. He hated it all.

He pushed himself away from the table so hard that it shook and the glasses of milk his mother had set for him had tipped over. As he wheeled himself from the room his father called out to him, "You okay, son?"

Tommy paused just long enough to get the sentence out of his mouth, "I just have a call to make."