So glad y'all like it. Here's the rest!
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"CRUDDY SUNLIGHT!" Wallabee Beetles yelled at the sky. "Can't leave me alone for a cruddy second, can ya?" Numbuh 4 stretched and stood up. The candy store doorway was very small and cramped, but Numbuh 4 loved it nonetheless. The drifting smell of taffy and the colorful candies that surrounded him made him feel a little better. Now what could he have for breakfast? Gumballs? Numbuh 4 loved gumballs. He always used to go into battle with him favorite 2x4 weapon, the G.L.U.M.B. He remembered sitting in the aftermath of the battle, popping leftover gumballs into his mouth. "Well, those days are over," Wally said bitterly. He pushed open the candy store door and walked up to the guy at the counter.
Even since Mr Jelly was revealed to be Knightbrace, the local dentist's younger brother had taken over. "A huge bag of gumballs," Numbuh 4 demanded. The man handed him a bag. "Fill her up," he said cheerily. "Thanks. Put it on the....on the Kids Next Door account," Numbuh 4 said, pulling his hood over his head. He should stop charging things to the KND. Wally strode over to the gumball machine and turned the tap. Gumballs came tumbling into the empty bag. Once it was full, Numbuh 4 walked out of the shop, stuffing his face with the round, spherical, chewy goodness.
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"His watch, lotsa orange hoodies, lotsa jeans, some wrestling posters, his diary, some money, a KND two-way radio, some comics..." "Hold up," Numbuh 5 said. Numbuh 3 and Numbuh 5 had finally decided what was missing. "What was that again?" "Comics," repeated Numbuh 3. "No – before that," 5 said. "A Kids Next Door 2-way radio," Kuki said. A grin spread across Numbuh 5's face. "Numbuh 4 hasn't lost communications totally," she said.
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Wally slammed his radio down on the ground. "Cruddy piece a junk," he said. The microphone and speakers were broken. "How am I supposed to ask Numbuh 2 for my boxing gloves back with no radio?"
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"I take that back," Numbuh 5 muttered, hanging up the treehouse radio line. "He musta broke it or something...." Numbuh 3 looked depressed. "I wish he'd come home," she said tearfully. "I'll wait until I'm decommissioned until he comes back." "Whichever comes first," Numbuh 5 muttered.
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2 YEARS LATER
"Stupid, stupid, stupid." Wallabee muttered to himself. "That's what I was, but I'm not stupid anymore." He kicked a can away from him. The 'former' Numbuh 4 was walking to the bus stop to get to school. He was 12 – and would almost be decommissioned. If he were still in the KND, that is. Wally was remembering back when he first ran away from that organization. He'd lost all contact with the KND, and he had wandered the streets for about a day, then came to his senses and decidedly went home.
Wally slung down his backpack next to the bus sign. He leaned against the pole as a giggling group of girls walked by, winking and waving at him. Wally slumped down a little bit more. "He's so dark and sensitive," the girls whispered to each other. "Looking so poetic and moody!" Inside, Wallabee burned. Him? Sensitive? Oh, come on. Poetic? He couldn't even spell Mississippi. He continued his trudge down memory lane.
There were no regrets floating about in Numbuh 4's mind, except for one nagging memory. A memory of a brunette, Japanese girl named Kuki Sanban – Numbuh 3. If there was anything that would convince him to have stayed in the KND, it was her. "Oh, god," he muttered, practically on the sidewalk now. "I...loved her so much..." Wallabee shook his head, mentally whacking himself. OK, NOW he was getting sensitive. He could almost hear her voice now. "Numbuh 4," she was saying. "Numbuh 4! Over here!" Odd, Wally thought. It was so crystal clear. At that moment, the school bus parked itself in front of him and a bunch of other students.
Climbing onto the bus, he plumped himself into the back seat. For some reason, Kuki's voice was still ringing in his head. Wallabee swiveled around. Somebody was probably pranking him - and if that was the case, he'd beat the crud out of them. To his utter shock, he saw a girl running after a bus. A happily smiling girl clad in an oversized green sweater and a pair of black pants. Wally gasped for breath – it couldn't be. No way! "Numbuh 3!" he screamed, pressing his face into the window, paying no attention to the kids staring at him inside the bus. All he could do was watch as Kuki chased after the bus until she was out of breath.
Wallabee watched the girl stand in the middle of the almost deserted road, panting, a single, bright green figure amongst the white and grey of suburbia. Wally turned around. He couldn't believe it. It was so...close. SHE was so close. "Argh!" he said, a little quieter, not wanting to attract more gazes. He punched the seat. Crossing his eyes, the thought of him losing Numbuh 3 again sunk deeper into his mind. Maybe he was still stupid after all...
Stupid. Oh, so stupid.
Wallabee's brain wandered into blankness. He couldn't think any more, everything was so blurry. All of a sudden, a crash rattled the school bus like ice in a glass. Wally was jerked back to reality. Jumping to his feet, he automatically reached for his pocket, then realized he didn't have any 2x4 technology. No weapons. He wasn't technically a Kid Next Door anymore. Sullenly sinking back into his seat, Wally waited to see if anyone did anything.
The tip of a small laser cutter poked through the ceiling, slicing a neat circle in the roof of the bus. A blonde, short-haired girl popped through the hole and ran over to the driver. "Keep moving," she demanded, spinning around. The number '362' was displayed boldly in purple on her shirt. Following her were a bald boy in a red sweater and a boy in a 20's fighter pilot helmet. Wally squinted. "It...isn't. It can't be!" he gasped, once again at a loss for words. He jumped off his seat again, rushing over to them. The boy in the leather helmet looked a little skinnier than Wally had remembered, and the bald kid had appeared to have purchased a pair of baggy grey pants instead of his usual shorts.
"Numbuh 2!" Wally yelled happily. Numbuh 2's response was to whack him on the back of the head. "Doofus!" he said cheerily. "Why did you run away?" "I don't know," Numbuh 4 lightly lied. The bald boy turned to face Numbuh 4. "Er. About....about that night..." "It's OK," Wally said. Well, after years, of course it was. "I just want to say I'm sorry," Numbuh 1 gabbled quickly. "I don't really know what happened..." Wally smield evilly. "Lizzie problems?" he said. Nigel blushed. "No!" he denied loudly, shuffling back nextto Numbuh 2.
Then, an African-American girl – Numbuh 5 - dropped from the roof. Flicking up her red baseball cap, she scanned Numbuh 4. "Well, what do ya know," she declared. "Fool," she grinned. "You got Numbuh 3 all worried." "I did?" Wallabee said. "What did she say? How did she...I mean...oh. Yeah. That's nice." Numbuh 5 eyed Wally. "Are ya blushing?" she smiled. "Uhh, no," Wally said, hoping he wasn't bright red. "Um. Where's...where's Numbuh 3?" he said. The operatives eyed each other.
"Well...it's like this," Numbuh 1 said, attempting to explain. Numbuh 2 rolled his eyes. "Numbuh 30C probably rescued her from the road and took her out for a soda," he said. Numbuh 1 glared. "Numbuh 2! I thought we agreed we were going to break this to him slowly. If ever," he added nervously. Wally – or should I say Numbuh 4 – looked at them suspiciously. "What?" he said. "Er. Well. Numbuh 3 and Numbuh 30C..." "They're going out," said Numbuh 2 in a rush. "Hoagie!" said Numbuh 5 harshly. "There, now you know," he said, patting Numbuh 4 on the back. He looked at the expression on Wallabee's face. "I'm sorry, buddy," he said.
Numbuh 4 just couldn't believe it. "G...going out?" he stuttered. This just didn't make sense. How could she? It didn't make sense, now that Wally thought about it. Why would she chase after him if she already had a boyfriend? And how did the rest of the team find him anyway? Pushing these thoughts away for now, Wally managed to open his mouth. "How did you guys locate me?" he said, not able to keep the sadness from his voice. "Do you have me micro chipped or something?" he said, laughing feebly. "Not you, exactly..." Numbuh 362 said, wandering back towards the operatives. "Keep driving!" she snapped at the bus driver.
"For Numbuh 3's birthday, we gave her a bracelet hat had a small locater which made her visible on a digital map by global positioning satellite because she kept wandering off to look for YOU." She explained. Most of the technological jargon just flew over Wally's head, but he got the general gist. "It also had a tiny microphone on it that would transmit anything of importance. We usually give them to operatives who tend to get lost or wander off. It's relatively new, so you didn't get one when you ran away," Numbuh 362 smiled. "We have an operative on the other end skimming over the transmissions to try and find items of importance. Well, this time we stationed Numbuh 23 over at that particular station, but she had gone off to call some guy and left the machine on speaker. I happened to be passing by, and picked up some of Numbuh 3's ramblings about a school bus stop on Oakland Avenue and something about you – so we came over to retrieve her and find out if what she said was of anything significant."
Numbuh 4 nodded. "yeah. OK." He had heard about half of 362's speech, and his mind was back on Kuki. She DID care...