Priestess Aishisu: Well, my fanfiction was supposed to be over. It was originally very long, but so angsty I cut out at least twelve chapters. We're talking suicide attempts.
But I can make an uncensored version if you really want. All right, back to the original message: Well, my fanfiction was supposed to be over. Unfortunately, you idiots just had to go and give me twelve reviews for Chapter Three! Some fans, whose names I wont mention incase they didn't want me to, even emailed asking for updates.
So here's Chapter Four. Are you happy now? (You had better be! ::Gives you a very threatening look::)

«§ψ§»

Wally rolled over and smelled peppermint and some herbs he couldn't name. They blended to make a crisp scent quite different from the sweaty and recently bloody smell of his usual bed.

Moaning softly, he opened his eyes and glanced around. This wasn't his bedroom. In his sleep-induced haze, he didn't know whose room it was—and he had been in it quite often.

Looking to the side, he noticed Abigail and almost screamed. Clamping a hand over his mouth just in case, he took a breath and the memories of last night surged back. He smiled and practically jumped out of Abigail's bed, feeling happier than he had in over a month.

No, make that in his entire life.

«§ψ§»

Hoagie practically drifted out of bed, following the delicious scent of pancakes. He wasn't entirely certain what he expected to find, but it certainly wasn't Wally cooking pancakes—especially not Wally smiling as he cooked pancakes. He hadn't smiled for a week!

"Uh…Numbuh Four?"

Wally glanced at him, looking—for a moment—startled. Then he smiled. "Hey, Numbuh Two!" He sounded cheerful, just like his old self. Hoagie wondered if he had gone insane, or just gotten over…whatever it was that had been keeping him mad for a week.

"Are you…cooking?" He asked uncertainly. There were at least a hundred pancakes piled up on plates next to the blonde operative. Clearly, he had been cooking for a while.

"Yup!" Wally replied happily. "Want some?"

"Err…" Hoagie felt as if he had been backed into a wall. On one hand, he didn't want to offend his friend and risk losing a limb. On the other hand, he sincerely doubted Wally's cooking ability.

Deciding he preferred having a bad breakfast to needing a new body part—he could always eat something else later—he slathered a pancake with as much syrup as he could and, very aware of Wally's emerald eyes fixed on him, took a hesitant bite.

His jaw dropped. The fork slipped from his chubby fingers. "Did you like it?" Wally asked. Hoagie replied with a bunch of garbled, choked sounds, and Wally's expression melted into a scowl. "Oh, come on!" he protested. "It couldn't possibly have been that bad!…Could it?"

Instead of replying, Hoagie started shoveling pancakes whole into his mouth as fast as he could. Wally's eyes looked like two perfectly round limes, each set on the center of a plate. (A.k.a they were really big) "Well…Ah guess he liked it…"

"Do I smell pancakes?" asked Abigail, coming into the kitchen. Nigel and Kuki came in a few seconds after. Kuki's eyes narrowed when she noticed Wally. He met her glare evenly. Nigel and Abigail groaned. Hoagie just kept eating.

"Um…who cooked this?" asked Abigail, pointing a finger at the mountains of pancakes with a rather tentative mien.

"Mmumuh Fum coke id," replied Hoagie, though his words were garbled into near-incomprehensibility by the pancakes he was rapidly filling his mouth with.

"Huh?" Nigel replied stupidly.

"Ah cooked it," Wally said.

Abigail did a double take and stared at him as if he had just started singing the Rainbow Monkey song (Evil…) "You," she said in apparent astonishment. "You cooked something. You."

Wally scowled. "Yes, me! Why is that so unbelievable?"

"Umm…is there any cereal left?" asked Nigel uneasily, opening the fridge and searching for the milk.

Wally's scowl deepened. "It's nice to know you all have so much faith in me," he informed them with scathing sarcasm. "You can at least try it before deciding it sucks."

"Well, maybe they don't want to die," said Kuki with a look of wide-eyed innocence that she rendered useless with a mean little snicker. Wally glared at her and opened his mouth to reply.

"All right, all right, I'll try one!" Abigail cried, if only to keep another argument from blooming. She picked up a fork and tasted a pancake, and Kuki made an exaggerated sound of astonishment and horror.

As with Hoagie, her jaw—and the spoon—dropped. She stared down at the pancake she had just sliced a morsel from as if it had spoken—and said something astounding, like that Wally had gotten an A in something other than Gym and, surprisingly, Science. (He loved Chemistry because he got to work with chemicals that could burn through human skin.)

"Well?" Wally prompted anxiously.

She didn't reply. "It's all right, Numbuh Five," said Kuki soothingly. "You can tell him how bad it was." Wally clenched his teeth and glared at her. Nigel looked as though he wished he were somewhere else. Hoagie ate faster, trying to ignore the entire thing.

"All right," Abigail replied in a remarkably frigid voice. "I will." To Wally, who ripped his glare away from Kuki to hear Abigail's opinion, she said quite frankly, "That was the best pancake Numbuh Five has ever tasted."

Wally's tense face flowered into a grin. Kuki looked as if she had just said Rainbow Monkeys were made of dead puppies—astounded, horrified, and a little angry. Hoagie grinned around the edges of his spoon. Nigel looked skeptical, but tasted some.

His eyes widened, and he took another bite. "This…This is…It's amazing! Who taught you how to cook, Numbuh Four?"

A chagrined Kuki went to the fridge Nigel had vacated, finding the milk immediately. "Are you sure you don't want any?" asked Nigel as she poured in her milk, then her Frosted Flakes, then four tablespoons of sugar.

"No, thank you," she replied, her prim attitude clashing with the Japanese accent that made everything she said sound rather childish. "I think I'll be just fine with eating edible food."

Abigail's fingers tightened around her fork, her shoulders tensing up. Hoagie started eating frantically, wanting to eat everything that he possibly could as quickly as he possibly could—in case Wally decided to do something crazy like punch the table in half. (And he doesn't even know what happened in Chapter One!)

"Nobody even wanted yah ta eat anyway!" snapped Wally, though he looked rather chastised. Nigel also started eating faster—none of them wanted to be around for one of their arguments, though Abigail considered herself obligated to stay in case somebody got hurt: not so much because it was her fault in any way (it wasn't) but because Wally was her friend and she just naturally wanted to help.

Though she personally thought that Nigel ought to feel more obligated than she did—she wasn't the one who was dating the long-time crush of one of her best friends.

Hoagie pushed away his empty plate. "May I please be excused?"

"Go," Wally growled through gritted teeth. His fists were clenched, eyes narrowed, breathing harsh. He was clearly trying very hard to keep his temper. Personally, Abigail was grateful that he was at least trying.

"Umm…I'm going to go check the Kids Next Door Mail-Drop," said Nigel quickly, sprinting out of the room as fast as he could possibly manage without dropping his pancakes.

Abigail was now the only one left, and she personally would have given anything to be anywhere else at the moment. Wally and Kuki were still glaring at each other, any thought of breakfast forgotten. And, while Kuki's fury was more calm and icy, Wally still seemed on the verge of a(nother­) breakdown.

"Don't," whispered Abigail, unable to keep the desperation from her eyes. The month had been bad enough already—if there was another disaster, she didn't think she could stand it. "It isn't worth it."

Kuki immediately whirled on Abigail, her eyes now blazing, any façade of calm gone for the moment. "What the Hell is that supposed to mean?" she demanded, and called Abigail something very rude.

"You can't talk to Numbuh Five that way!" Wally shouted, and Abigail almost jumped. Even Kuki cringed at the jade fire that was blazing in his eyes, but she got over it immediately.

"Oh?" she almost sneered, eyes colder than Abigail—or anyone except Wally, for that matter—had ever seen them. "And what, exactly, are you going to do about it?"

"'Do?!'" Wally yelled, so loudly the Delightful Children From Down the Lane could probably hear it. "Ah'll rip you limb from cruddy limb, that's what ah'll 'do.'"

Some divine intervention would be useful right now, Abigail thought grimly. And, at that moment, there was a sort of intervention—if not a particularly divine one.

"Numbuh Four!" came the near-deafening shriek. "Kuki! Get over here, both of you!"

Kuki and Wally stared at one another, though 'stare' is a very mild word. Kuki's eyes could have frozen Africa in summer, Wally's could have melted Pluto—or, rather, burned it to a crisp.

"Now!!"

At last, Wally turned away from Kuki with a sneer that Abigail only half-believed. "You're right, Numbuh Five," he said flatly. "It isn't worth it. Or rather she isn't."

Then he stormed off in the direction of Nigel's shout. "You didn't seem to think that way a month ago!" Kuki called after him, before walking in that same direction.

Abigail felt her blood turn cold with fury. She knew that it was wrong to be angry. She knew that Kuki had every right to be mad at Wally. But she couldn't help it.

In that instant, the same all-encompassing—but at the same time sharply pointed—rage came over her that had when she yelled at Nigel, but a few hundred times stronger. And, in that instant, she hated Kuki.

Hated her.

Fighting to tamp down an emotion that she knew would bring nothing but more pain—and the last thing she needed was more pain—she gulped down the last of her pancake and ran after Wally and Kuki incase they killed each other on the way.

«§ψ§»

Abigail had known Nigel quite a long time, and in that time she had been unfortunate enough to have seen him angry a hundred or so times—maybe more—but never so angry as he seemed now.

Breathing as hard as Wally had been a mere minute ago, he pointed to the letter in his hand. "Do you know," he demanded, glaring at them. "What this is?"

"It looks like an official notice from the Kids Next Door," Kuki replied, who was being all safe and sweet and stupid again—with her voice, many things could sound sweet and stupid.

But even Kuki's innocence did little to tamp down the flames of Nigel's fiery fury, a fury that even Abigail couldn't understand—though she would in a moment. "Yes, Numbuh Three, it is an official notice—of chastisement."

Numbuhs Two through Four were at loss to what chastisement meant, but they didn't have time to ask even if it had seemed safe (which it didn't), for Nigel wasn't finished yet.

"I know," he told Kuki and Wally, "that you two have been having some difficulties lately. But this has gone too far! We go from having an almost perfect track record—perhaps one or two failures a month—to an average of four failures in one week."

"How do you know that's my fault?" snarled Wally.

"Well, it certainly isn't my fault," snapped Kuki, emphasizing this sentiment by stamping her foot in a markedly childish manage. Nigel covered his eyes, shaking his head in frustration.

"I'm not done yet," he growled. He started reading directly from it: "'Because of this alarming decline in your performance, we have taken away your title as 'best team' and given it to Sector U.' Sector U! But wait, I'm not finished yet! It gets worse!"

"Ah didn't even know we were the best team," muttered Wally. Hoagie nodded, and Abigail rolled her eyes at their ignorance—she had known for years. Kuki hadn't either, but she wouldn't agree with Wally.

Ignoring this, Nigel continued reading. "'Furthermore, your only chance to regain this title lies in a thorough inspection. As thus, your team will be temporarily joined by either the closest trusted operative or the Ultimate Second-In-Command of the entire Kids Next Door—incidentally, in your case they are the same.'"

"So, we need to get a new member for a while," said Wally, not understanding why Abigail looked so utterly horrified. "It can't be that bad!"

"Yes it can!" shrieked Abigail, loud enough to make him jump. She seemed ready to either faint dead away or strangle somebody. Noticing this, he crept away stealthily. He did not want to get strangled, thank you very much! "The Ultimate Second-In-Command is—"

"Me!" cried a familiar, imperious voice from the doorway. They all gasped.