Kids Next Door

Operation: A.N.G.E.L.

Angelic

Nuisances

Guardians

Eliminate

Loftily

Chapter 06

Note: Vensy is used with permission of Vensy-Chan her creator.

Wally arrived at Earth Central Headquarters. He was actually above it, but he was there to stop the latest angel, a monster that looked like a floating dark blue cube, from drilling into and destroying the underground base. Numbah Five, Abby, was in another E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. But her unit had been rendered helpless shortly before he arrived. Abby's status was unknown. Wally was not happy, the curmudgeon that he was, he didn't like it when anyone, especially monsters, hurt his friends.

Numbah Four attacked the cube with the large knife. Unfortunately the knife deflected off of the tough smooth hide of the angel. Wally tried stabbing at it, unsuccessfully. After ten minutes of stabbing at, and dodging, Wally received a transmission from Hoagie at headquarters. "Use the Numbah Five's unit's gun."

Wally piloted his giant mech over to the until Numbah Five was in, and went to grab the gun from it. He was shocked when he picked up the gun and one of the hands from Numbah Five's unit came with it. He felt ill.

In his moment of distraction Wally was hit by the angel, the laser cutting into the leg of the mech. It was apparent that if he wanted to survive, he had to forget about the 'grossness' of everything and concentrate. The gun was large, almost too large for the E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Unit he was piloting. The knock back from the first shot he took with it almost sent him and the unit flying.

The shot did hit and injure the angel. Numbah Four was able to get his balance back and evade the counter attack before hitting it dead on.

The angel was dead and a medic team recovered Abby. It took Numbah Two, and a couple other engineers, to get Abby out of the cockpit. She, thankfully, was a live but was unconscious and did sustain some relatively minor injuries, including some bruising and spraining.

Numbah Two felt horrible. The E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Units were his creations, and one of his friends ended up hurt because of it. In the first battle they were used, Wally did get injured, but this seemed different. It was the first time an experimental technology was used, it was more expected. The second attempt should always be an improvement over the first, he believed, but this 'second' was a failure he felt. How quickly Numbah Four took the angel down, Numbah Two figured Abby should've been able to take it down in half the time.

"You've got to be kidding me," Numbah Three-Sixty-Two sighed. "We just now have two working units and you want me to disallow their use, despite them being the only effective weapon we have against the angels, so you can tinker with them some more?"

"You saw what happened today," Numbah Two argued. "Abby is damned lucky to be alive and in one piece. The units have to be fixed. I have several modifications in mind. I'll work as quickly as I can, but this has to be done."

Numbah Two handed Numbah Three-Sixty-Two some schematic drawings. "Here's the updated version of the building plans. In case you want to go behind my back again and have your monkeys build another unit."

Numbah Three-Sixty-Two used all of her self-restraint to walk out of the room without yelling at Numbah Two. She realized that the Kids Next Door was depending on his designs for those machines, and that without him the angels would have destroyed it by now, but his 'god'-complex was starting to annoy her.

Abby was running. She had never run so hard so far in her life. She was gasping in all the air she could. Her legs and arms burned and ached. She was exhausted too. She couldn't wait to be able to stop running. To be able to just stand there and catch her breath. But she was afraid that time would come too soon. You see, she was being chased. Bad things were after her and she had to get away from them.

Abby had always been a healthy girl, she could count the number of times she had gotten sick on one hand. She remembered a girl from her preschool who was not very healthy, the girl who would be sick a couple times a month. There was just something unnatural about that girl, the one thing about her that Abby would always remember was her eyes, they were bright and feverish. Bloodshot, but the color of the irises were bright, almost brilliant.

The sickly girl had transferred to a different school for first grade. Abby hadn't heard anything about the girl, she assumed that the girl eventually got better. How the girl's eyes were constantly bloodshot and gross used to bother Abby.

They, now each as big as her, were chasing her. Abby felt like the end of the race was near, soon she'd get away from them for good. But, she felt something hold her foot. She tripped. She picked herself up and glanced back to see how close the eyes were.

She saw them blink and then close. The eyes of the E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Unit she had been piloting. The bed she had been put on was across the hall from the storage area Hoagie was working on the mech units. Abby cried out when she realized what the eyes were from. A meek operative, the one who was in charge of tending to agents who had minor injuries, came over to Abby to see what was the matter.

"I-i-it blinked at me!" Abby said pointing at the unmoving E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Unit. The operative measured Abby's temperature, certain that it was just fevered delusions.

Luvara and Xanthanos had just sent them to get a special brand of bottled water. Luke and his father, a villain known as the Tolienator, were mildly vexed when they returned to the mages cute suburban house, only to find it empty with a note on the door.

"Angel failed, went to do research. Leave water in kitchen.

Luvara"

"Great," the Tolienator grumbled. He wasn't happy. Grocery shopping was a chore, he hated it. To make it worse, he hated going around in public in his villain-suit. He may be called 'slow' on occasion, but even he knew that a man in a yellow body suit wearing toilet paper roles and a toilet seat gets mighty odd looks. He grumbled, pondered why he felt such loyalty toward the magically inclined couple, and took his son and left.

Luvara was happy. She got to wear her new red and white stripped bikini, sunglasses and straw hat and lie out in the sun (but under an umbrella of course- she didn't want to get too tanned!). The good thing about having a summoner as a husband was that their libraries were generally in tropical locations. She conjured up an icy fruit beverage while she relaxed and waited for her husband to finish his research.

Xanthanos appeared neither as young, as relaxed, or as happy as his wife, but he was busy. Very busy. Old, ancient, almost as old as the written language itself, tomes lay out on the desk in front of him. A library mage came by every hour or so to recast the protection magic one them, as that was the only thing that was keeping the books from crumbling to dust. Xanthanos was glad he bothered to keep up on his dues to this library, for it had the oldest books in the world.

Numbah Two worked day in and day out for a week. He enlisted a few curious operatives to help along with the engineer operatives. In addition to making corrections and modifications to the two existing E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Untits he also built a new one. When Eighty-Six heard about it, she demanded to be made its pilot.