A/N: Hello everyone! 20th chapter! YAY! **blows on party horn** Happy 20th anniversary everyone!

Okay, this is it! The big one! I'm sorry I'm a bit late, I just wanted to make this one extra special. Okay, I'm not going to delay you any further.

READ! :D

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Kids Next Door Mission...

Operation: F.O.R.G.E.T.

Fragments

Of

Recovery

Gradually

Enable

Team

Chapter 20 – The Return to Glory

Joey was bored. Restless, fidgety, and bored. He hadn't slept in at least thirty-six hours, and was having trouble concentrating on the blackboard the teacher wasa writing on. He found himself zoning out every now and then for a few minutes, snapping bak to reality to find himself slumped on his desk, with either the clock ticking away like a time bomb desperate to go off, or the scornful glare of Mrs. Brennan telling him off... again.

It had been absolute torture at home, ever since he found out. He still got goosebumps whenever he thought about it. Which was a lot. Joey had had to relent to leaving the dinner table early and putting himself to bed in order to keep his mouth shut.

There were a few close calls, walking past Wally- Numbuh 4- his brother in the hallways. He gritted his jaw as tight as it would go, and on more than one occasion, he had to literally bite his tongue and clench his fists to the point of breaking skin just to keep his composure. The feeling was something Joey had never experienced before. It started low, that excited buzz in is chest, almost as if it were trying to squeeze the words out of him. Then, it rose to his throat, like a rising tide of words that, once started, would not stop. Then, once the feeling was done constricting his throat, it moved on to pestering his head, making it swirl with giddy anticipation. It made him want to just open his mouth and let the noise roll out. Even as he lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, wide awake and bored to death, he was seriously considering gagging and chaining himself to the bed, to avoid any unwanted sleepwalking mishaps.

But, as it turned out, he never got to the point where that would be a problem.

That is to say, he never fell asleep.

He was just about to nod off, just about to leave the world of long division that was too blurry around the edges to focus on, when the pencil resting limply in his right hand began pulsing with a bright red light.

Joey was wide awake within two seconds.

And he knew what to do.

He shot a quick glance left and right, checking that the coast was clear, then, reaching for the underside of his desk, found the little knot in the wood. To everyone else, it was merely a chip in the wood, something natural, and it did nothing remotely interesting. But, to a Kids Next Door operative, it was a highly-complex fingerprint scanner that would allow a quick and effective escape from the classroom if the situation arose.

Pressing his finger against the dent in the old wood, the floor underneath Joey's chair gave way, and Joey was dropped into a chute that would take him to where Robert was no-doubt waiting for him, his presence in class replaced by a robotic stand in.

The trip through the tunnel was a lot like a slide in a funhouse. Those tube-shaped ones that twist and turn so much that you end up almost forgetting which way is up. It was stomach-turning at the best of times, but today, when Joey's insides were already muddled up and tossed around from the physical effort of keeping his secret, the ride made him feel queasy and eager to get off.

The slide let out way off in the back of the schoolyard, behind the Oak trees and beyond the reaches of the teachers' cold yet close watch. Joey was all a mess. His eyes were tired and sagged just slightly with his sleeplessness, his hair was ruffled out of its natural low fringe, instead hanging all over the place from being jostled about on the slide. He looked like he was in need of a shower and a good nights rest (and a comb), but there was no time for that now that he was about to meet his hero, and get to see his brother as the Numbuh 4 once more.

Robert met him at his exit to the tunnel. He stood there, gripping his clipboard so tight that his knuckles had turned white, and a huge, infectious smile that caught onto Joey straight away on his face. Joey felt a little pang of optimism; this was the first time Joey had seen his leader smile in almost four months.

'Are you ready?' Robert asked, evidence in his tone that suggested that he, too was holding back a squeak of excitement.

'Dude, Ah was ready two days ago. Ah you ready?'

'Too ready, Joey my man. Too ready.'

Joey paused for a second, wondering what had caused Robert to say that.

'You really miss Jamie, don't you?'

A deep sigh. There were a lot of them around lately.

'Yup. A heap.'

'Well, let's go quickly, then.'

'Okay.'

'Who first?'

Robert looked at him, aware of how big this was not just for them, but for everyone, all KND operatives now and in future. This would go down in history as, depending on the outcome, either the smartest or the dumbest idea in history.

'Thought we could take it from the top,' Robert started, 'and start with Numbuh 1.'

Joey pictured going through the procedure, and something occurred to him. What person would willingly go along with a bunch of kids and let them tell you that they were part of an organisation of kids dedicated to bringing justice to children worldwide and that they were once part of the best team known to that organisation and -you get the picture-?

'Won't we need backup? Y'know, in case they... break for it?' Joey asked, eyebrows creasing a little.

'Taken care of,' Robert said, obviously proud of the fact that he'd thought of pretty much everything. 'I thought the rest of your sector could tag along with us as well. We're going to pick them up now. Oh- if that's okay with you, that is.'

'Oh... okay.'

And so, the duo set off, first to make a stop at the rest of the classrooms the members of the current sector V were trapped in, and then to the high school where they would find their heroes.

Numbuh 1, 1130, 29th November, 2014

'And so, if we square the values of angles A and B, we know that the sum of these values will be the same as the square...'

The teacher droned on. Nigel was listening, but only taking in half of what she was saying.

He had had another dream last night.

This time, he had been somewhere up in what he thought was a spaceship. He was looking out the window, out at all the stars. A little blue dot floated far, far off, and he had felt a yearning for that blue dot, a bond that was being tugged to the point of breaking. He looked away from the window, and as he turned around, he realised that he was in an almost boarding school-style room. A drab grey bed had Nigel once again longing for his own union jack Duvet cover. A desk stood in the corner, with a bunch of files sprawled out on it, a lamp shining accusingly onto them from one side. Nigel walked over to the table, looking over the papers sadly. Like they meant something horrible for him and those he loved. He thought of a few people; some he recognised, some he didn't. But all of them conjured the same feeling of; I miss you. And it could be my fault if you get hurt.

And all that emotion, all that homesickness that Nigel could not explain, caused something to snap.

Before he even knew what he was doing, he had snatched the files off the desk and grabbed a small case by the side of the bed. Running over to the door, he keyed in a code to a pannel on the side and waited impatiently while it opened.

Five minutes later, he was in a ridiculously impossible spacecraft, in the middle of space, hurtling towards that blue dot, with sirens screaming at him from inside and alarms blaring away behind him.

Nigel had woken that night, after a mere hour and a half of sleep, knowing that was all he was going to get.

So now, he was here, wishing that there was some way he could escape class.

Well, Nigel was sitting there, slouching in his desk with his head propped up on his hand, when the loud beep! of the PA system caused him to jolt with surprise, much to the amusement of the kids in the desks around him.

'Could -um, Nigel Uno please report to- uh, to Administration... immediately.' the person on the other side of the speaker said, and Nigel wasn't sure, but he thought he heard a twinge of nervousness in their voice.

As a reflex, Nigel found himself running through everything he'd done in the past week, trying to think of anything that might have gotten him in trouble as he slowly rose from his desk and walked towards the door.

The walk to the office was lonely. Only a few seniors wandered the halls, on free period, and as always, they were pretending that all students younger than they were did not exsist. That made walking the hallways feel like walking through a movie. Unnoticed, unimportant, and for all they cared, non-exsistant.

He was almost to the main office, at the front of the school, when he thought he heard something behind him. A whisper, something that sounded a bit like a child.

He stopped, and looked around for where the noise might have come from.

This time, he definitely heard someone talking.

'Darn it! Numbuh 202, you idiot, now he's heard us!'

Alarm bells went off in Nigel's mind. the feeling of being watched, being followed, was somehow not so much scary, but more concerning. Like something that had to be fixed, not something that was going to be nerve-wracking.

'Should we just grab him, Numbuh 121?'

Nigel found himself unsure of what to do. He didn't know whether to run, to fight or to try to call someone. So, he pretty much just stood there.

'Oh geez, you're lucky he's still there! Just- shoot him with the sleeping gas and let's go.'

Wait a minute, sleeping gas?

But before Nigel could do anything, he was already swarmed with a white mist, and he was slowly drifting off...

'Numbuh 1, you realise that when this war is over, there are going to be people trying to catch you, right?'

'Yeah, you'll be decommissioned the second they find you!'

'I know. I thought about that before I left the space station. But I had to warn you. Nobody up there was going to do anything! They were going to just let the adults attack, and if they had, you would probably be under the influence of Chemical Z2A already.'

'You're gonna have ta go into hiding!'

'I know, I know. But it was all worth coming back. I swear, seeing your faces again... I'm just glad to be home.'

Blurry shapes started to sway around Nigel's vision. He had the feeling that he was moving. People were talking, above him. He was lying down, facing a bright white ceiling, fluroescent lights glaring at him, making his eyes hurt. The shapes moved, swayed, then finally, slipped into focus.

'So what do we do from here, Numbuh 263?'

'Sh! He's waking up...'

Nigel's eyes flickered open, and he groaned groggily as the light from the lightglobes overtook his sight.

Once his eyes had adjusted to the harsh lighting, Nigel sat up slowly, his limbs tired and heavy. What he saw astounded and confused him.

'K-kids?' He managed to stumble. The four or five little figures in front of him took a step back, as if giving him space, or maybe nervous that he would try to break for it.

For a while, no-one spoke. There was a stiff silence, as the children studied Nigel like he was a wax figure in a museum, and Nigel took in the appearances of these kids.

They all looked to be around ten years old; maybe some a bit older, or a bit younger.

There were five of them in front of Nigel, with one over in another corner, operating what looked to be a steering wheel. A steering wheel? Where was he? Why had these kids knocked him unconcious and dragged him aboard what looked to be a spaceship from a far-fetched science -fiction comic?

'W-what am I doing here?' he forced himself to say. The kids just looked at him, as if they had no answer. For some reason, Nigel wasn't surprised at that. He wouln't have been surprised if no-one knew why he was there.

Finally, one of them spoke up.

'Okay, Nigel-'

'You know my name?'

'Uh, yeah. Anyway, Nigel, we... okay, I don't know exactly how to tell you this-

'Is this about all those dreams I've been having?'

'Dreams? You've had dreams? Wait, stop. Focus-'

'Do you know what happened to me when I was a kid?'

'Nigel! Will you let me finish?' One kid, who looked a little older than the others, said, looking at him with a slight int of sympathy, as well as- something like amazement.

'Oh. My. Gosh! I cannot believe that this is really Numbuh-'

A little girl started to say something, bouncing up and down on her heels, before another, more serious looking girl clapped a hand over her mouth, stopping her before she could say anything else.

'Sh! Numbuh 303, wait until he actually knows what you are talking about,' the girl hissed, speaking through gritted teeth as though that would stop Nigel from hearing. But he had heard what the first little girl was starting to say. Suddenly, he felt dizzy with realisation. Something was pushing, pushing from underneath his usual brain. There was something there.

'W-wait. Wait a minute. What were you going to say?' Nigel asked, fighting to keep himself from zoning out completely. He got up from the stretcher-like bed, standing up to keep himself alert.

The children.

The outlandish vechiles.

The Numbuhs.

It was all starting to come together.

'What, me? I was only going to say that you're Numbuh 1.'

And that did it. Nigel was fell to the floor as if shot down by an invisible bullet.

It all came back.

Everything.

Everything from the cadet graduation, to all the cake missions, to the war, to leaving, to running away, to those few months as a fugitive, to the capture and the decommissioning.

Everything.

He felt sick.

He felt like his head was going to burst.

Information overload.

Those people. All those people he thought he had never known, they were there the whole time.

And suddenly, those four people. Hoagie, Kuki, Wally and Abby. They weren't Hoagie, Kuki, Wally and Abby anymore.

They were his team.

And he was their leader.

From that moment, he was no longer Nigel Uno.

He was Numbuh 1, Numbuh 1 of the Kids Next Door once more.

Nigel had vitually tuned out of reality, when he heard someone calling his name. Not his Nigel name, his Numbuh 1 name. It felt good, like a lost-then-found toy that he was playing with for the first time in years.

'N-Numbuh 1? Is that... you?'

Numbuh 1 stood up, as if just checking that he was, in fact, still able to do so. He looked to where the voice was coming from, and saw the brown haired boy from before, looking up at him hopefully, his expression of awe and anticipation matching that of everyone else in the room's.

Instantly, Nigel recognised the helmet that this boy wore. It reminded him of Rachel- uh, Numbuh 362.

'You- you're a Soopreme Leader, aren't you?'

The boy stopped, apparently stunned by Nigel's words. Then, he broke into a smile bigger than anything Numbuh 1 had ever seen.

'Boys and Girls, Numbuh 1 has returned!' He yelled triumphantly. That resulted in a cheer from all the other kids. And Numbuh 1 couldn't help it -he was himself again!-; he beamed from ear to ear as well.

Then, something came to his mind.

'Why am I back?' he asked. 'What's happening to the KND?'

And that's how the entire story had begun. The boy, Numbuh 263, Nigel found out, told him everything, with little add-ons from the rest of the current Sector V here and there. And Nigel was amused to see Joey Beatles as a Kids Next Door operative, following in the footsteps of his older brother.

One thing he noticed, all through the story, was that all of the kids (spare the pilot, obviously) never took their eyes off him. They all looked at him constantly, acting as if he might disappear if he looked away. He knew him and his team were sort of famous around the KND, but were they that well known?

Numbuh 1 knew that this situation was dire; it had to be if they had relented to reommissioning past operatives. But he had never expected something this bad. From the situation report, Numbuh 1 figured exactly what was going on; he knew that Colter was back, but he made the decision to wait until they had finished with this whole recommissioning buisiness. He didn't want to ruin these kids' moment. Numbuh 1 knew how amazing it felt to have someone so close to you be such a big figure in Kids Next Door history. He had gone through that with Numbuh 0-uhm, his father.

But one thought remained with him the whole way through the breifing of the situation; he just wanted to get his team back.

So when the story was over, he looked at each one of the eager young operatives in front of him, and said one thing;

'Let's go get the team back together.'

'Wait!' He heard a voice from behind him. He turned to see Lucy, Numbuh 121, the leader of the current Sector V looking up at him, holding in her hands, nothing other than his own black sunglasses.

'I thought you would want these back. They were left at our treehouse. In your room.'

Nigel took the glasses, smiling at the girl, before sliding them on, feeling them slip back into their place once more.

'Okay, now we're ready to get going.'

Numbuh 2, 1245, 29th November, 2014

Hoagie was meant to be eating his lunch. Instead, he was finicking over the final touches on his now completely tricked out remote control airplane. Now, it could do more than just fly. It could take high-resolution photo and video recordings, go almost three times as fast, operate under a GPS, and there was a neat little grappling hook that let him pick things up from all the way across a football field.

He was just about to start the calibration for the homing device when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a little white piece of paper slide under the door to the AV club room he was in. Curious, he walked over an picked it up, reading with confusion the messily-scrawled text on one side.

Hoagie,

I need you to meet me behind the gym.

Now.

No clue as to who had sent it or why.

Hoagie smiled a little.

This should be interesting.

And Hoagie had always liked mysteries. He considered himself a detective of sorts.

Though if everyone else had a say in it, he was less a detective and more of a wannabe Sherlock Holmes.

So, Hoagie left the AV room, and headed for the back of the school, and to the gymnasium.

When he got there though, he was in for a big surprise.

Nigel, and a bunch of kids.

He stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he saw them, wondering vaguely if he was seeing things.

'N-Nigel?' Hoagie frowned in utter confusion, trying to piece together a scenario in which this could possible make sense.

None came to mind.

'Hello, Hoagie. Uhm, do you wanna come over here?' Nigel said, looking somewhere between awkward, happy and one other thing that Hoagie couldn't quite manage to put his finger on. But he knew one thing for sure; he was not going to follow a person, surrounded by kids for some reason, after he had left a slightly creepy note under his door asking to meet him in a place that was meant to be out of bounds.

'Uhh, no, thanks. I'm really... okay here, thanks,' he blurted out, taking an involuntary step backwards.

'Okay,' Nigel began. 'Let me rephrase that. Hoagie, as your friend, I need you to trust me. It will all make sense soon. Just follow me.'

What was strange to Hoagie was that part of him actually wanted to go. Where the other half (probably the sane half) wanted to call the police, or an insane asylum, for that matter, part of him, somewhere inside, wanted to follow Nigel. And the expression that showed a determined despiration in Nigel's eye, as well as the pleading, hopeful faces of all the kids around him made him, for reasons he didn't even quite understand himself, say;

'O-okay. Alright. I'll go with you. But where are we going?'

Nigel smiled, as did the six children who stood around him, and who were now, walking up to Hoagie and leading him in the direction of the school gates. As for the question he had posed, Nigel had only one answer;

'You'll know when we get there.'

Five minutes of walking through trees in the park outside the school fences later, Hoagie found himself and the rest of the people he had been talked into following, standing in front of what he thought could have been the coolest thing he had ever seen. It looked like an old school bus with jet wings, two big propeller engines on each side, and the words SCAMPER II painted along the sides. Images of the strange machines that Hoagie had been conjuring up from his mind lately cam to mind instantly. He knew that this could easily have been one of them. And now, he knew that this whole buisiness had something to do with that.

'N-Nigel? Why are we here? What is this thing?' He said, not taking his eyes off the huge aircraft in front of him. He wanted to touch it, to see inside it, find out how it worked, and, more than anything, he wanted to take it for a spin.

'We're just going to use this little thing on you, Hoagie. It will... help you remember some stuff.'

Hoagie reluctantly pulled his gaze away from the huge plane and turned to face Nigel, only to see him holding what looked like a wooden box with a handle poking out one end.

'Okay, Numbuh 2, let's see if you can still fly a SCAMPER.'

And that did it. He wanted to signal Nig-Numbuh 1 to stop, but it was already too late.

In a flash, everything came back. He remembered his first tool kit, the first time he flew on his own, he remembered Numbuh 5 -the girl of his dreams, even now- and he remembered their moments alone. Everything shocked him, from the fact that Abby had been his girlfriend -she had actually gone out with him!- to the realisation that Tommy had, in fact, known all along.

Before he knew it, he was on the floor, head pounding with all the pressure. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to get up, but his legs wouldn't work for some reason. It all made sense. The dreams, that horrible, constant familiarity, all the things that seemed out of place, they all suddenly clicked.

And then, he was unconscious.

When he woke up, the first thing he saw was a little girl with curly red hair looking at him curiously. He blinked a few times before sitting up, looking around, trying out the world through his own -Numbuh 2's- eyes again.

'Uhm, guys? Numbuh 2's awake,' the little girl said, hopping down off a chair she had been standing on.

There was the sound of multiple pairs of feet walking over to him. Then, Numbuh 2 realised that he was himself again;

'Numbuh 1! I'm me again! I'm Numbuh 2, and- and you're Numbuh 1, and... and I'm back!' He yelled, jumping off the bench he had been lying on and practically bouncing around the room.

'Not just yet you're not,' Numbuh 1 interjected, putting a hand out to stop Numbuh 2's uncontrollable bouncing.

'Numbuh 202, I believe you took the liberty of bringing along one of Numbuh 2's things?'

A little boy, aged around nine or ten, emerged from the cluster of kids, holding something in his hands that made Numbuh 2's heart miss a beat.

His cap.

His aviator's cap and his goggles. Right there. After all these years.

The little boy spoke, his voice nervous and his face showing almost disbelief that Numbuh 2 was actually there.

'H-hi, Numbuh 2,' he said, face reddening. 'I- you've always been my hero, and I- I brought you your cap and your goggles from the Kids Next Door museum. I thought you might want them...'

Numbuh 2 looked down on the little boy, a warm feeling rising from his chest.

'Hey, thanks, kid,' he said, taking the cap and goggles and placing them back where they belonged.

'Okay, so someone tell me what's going on,' Hoagie demanded, ready to get down to buisiness now that he was back to the way he should be.

Half an hour and a lot of explaining later, he knew exactly what was going on. He and Nigel had shared a lot of looks during the storytime session, and somehow, had non-verbally decided to put off telling the kids what the two of them knew for at least a while.

They were about to leave again, and had fired up the SCAMPER II, when Numbuh 202 reported a problem.

'Guys? The SCAMPER's acting up. I can't seem to get it to switch into gear.'

Everyone at that moment literally looked straight to Numbuh 2. He smiled.

Back where he belonged once more.

Numbuh 202 didn't mind giving up his position as pilot for the moment. He was awe-struck at getting the chance to watch his idol in action.

Hoagie slipped into the pilot's seat, feeling instantly comfortable. His hands instincually found their positions on the control board, and he knew eactly what he had to do net.

'Okay,' he said, giving a mischeivious smirk behind his goggles.

'Let's see what this baby can do.'

A/N: Did ya like it? Huh? Huh? Did ya? But seriously, I hope you did. It was really fun to write, and I just had Hoagie's face in the last part in my head the whole time.

They're ba-ack! Was it over the top? was it not enough? Please tell me! Okay, that's all for now.

G'night! or G'morning! or G'd'evening! or Good somewhere in the middle!

-Numbuh 25