Kids Next Door
Operation: A.N.G.E.L.
Chapter 08:
Note: Vensy is used with permission of Vensy-Chan her creator.
Numbah Eighty-Six shifted her weight, started the E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Into motion. Its feet created waves as it approached the aquatic Angel.
Numbah Four scrunched up into the corner, pouting. He figured Fanny could handle this one, but didn't like having his unit commandeered regardless.
The giant mech waded until it was up to its waist in water. Then, they saw the enemy. The graceful blue Angel, appearing as something between a manta ray and a dolphin, was approaching them. It swam swiftly with ease. Fanny readied the E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Unit with its knife. Unfortunately, she did not anticipate its attack. The Angel jumped out of the water briefly and attempted to swallow the mech whole.
The weight and momentum of the Angel knocked the E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Over, submerging it in the water. Fanny and Wally got tossed about as the Angel dragged its prey deeper into the Ocean. Fanny, after reorienting herself, pulled herself back in front of the controls. She tested to see how much she could maneuver the unit, which turned out to not be very much.
She maneuvered the arms of the mech so that the "elbows" of it pried the mouth of the monstrous Angel apart slightly. She used what space she could gain from that to increase the momentum of the hand holding the knife, hoping she could stab the glowing red pulsing "heart" of the monster to injure it enough to release them.
Although he would never admit it, Wally was very impressed. Numbah Eighty-Six showed more resolve and cunning than he did during a battle. It took just five good stabs before the red sphere gave out with a sickening crack.
After returning to base, Numbah Four couldn't get out of the E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Fast enough. He may have thought that Numbah Eighty-Six did come up with a good way out of a rather nasty pickle, but he still didn't like being cooped up with her that much. Unfortunately his day was about to go from bad to worse.
"Guys," Numbah Three-Sixty-Two began during the debriefing. "I know you aren't going to like this, but, frankly, those monsters have shown they can attack anywhere anytime. We need to be more centralized. Four, Five, and Eighty-Six, I need you to relocate yourselves to Sector V's clubhouse. You all officially live there now."
"Numbah Five thinks you must be kidding!" Numbah Five started. "What about Numbah Five's family? They'll miss me!"
"It'll just be until those monsters go away," the leader of Kids Next Door explained. "It's for everyone's safety. As soon as we find and defeat the source of the monsters you'll be more than free to go back to living with your family if you want."
That was right, there had to be some sort of a source for the monsters. If there had been only one or two, it could have been explained away as an odd fluke, but there had already been four, and not much time in between them either.
Someone had to be behind it.
The question was, who?
Father and the Delightful Children from down the Lane didn't seem likely, it's doubtful any of them would have monsters at their disposal, much less trained to attack.
The Boss didn't seem the type, he had no known interest in magic or monsters.
The Tolienator? That's a laugh.
Who else was there? Crazy Cat Lady? Hmmm... the realization popped into her head that it might be a new villain, one who had not shown themselves yet.
Numbah Eighty-Six was happy. She was excited about moving, unlike Numbah Five who dreaded it or Numbah Four who was indifferent. She was happy that she was going to soon have a whole new room to decorate.
She put all of her favorite posters over the walls. When Wally walked in to see if she needed anything at Numbah One's request, he wasn't sure what color paint was on the walls originally. She closed and locked the door when she unloaded her "secret" stuff. She hid them under her bed, knowing certain Kids Next Door Operatives would give her a hard time if they knew she had them. She smiled, knowing she was keeping her little secret of being a Rainbow Monkeys fan.
………
"I'm serious!" Wally said exasperatedly, his arms outstretched. "It's a conspiracy, at first we had the majority, now we're equal, next they'll out-number us! They already do in terms of pilots! You have to do something!"
"Numbah Four," Numbah One said calmly but forcefully. "There is no 'Cootie-ridden-Girl conspiracy. It makes sense that Numbah Eighty-Six come stay with us for a while, her home clubhouse is a ways away and it's good to minimize transportation costs. Numbah Five is one of our top fighters; Numbah Eighty-Six has connections high up- that's why they're E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. pilots. If it'll make you feel better I'll recommend the next boy candidate for the next unit."
Numbah Four considered the offer. It wasn't what he wanted, he wanted Numbah One to acknowledge that he had a point, but that didn't seem likely to ever happen. Maybe Numbah One was in on the girl-conspiracy. He grimaced realizing that he didn't even want to entertain such a horrible idea. While he knew Numbah One wasn't taking him seriously, he knew that the offer Numbah One made was about all he would be able to get his leader to do without solid proof. Wally thanked Numbah One, and went off to see if he could get any evidence from Numbah Two. Numbah Two always seemed more sympathetic, well, when he was busy and just said "yeah" to everything.
……………………
Numbah Two was working on a new mech design in his room when Numbah Four barged in. Hoagie tried to retain his focus on the semantics he was drawing, but it was a rather futile effort.
"Numbah Two," Wally began. "Do you realize that, yesterday, there were more of us boys here than those girls. Today, we're even, I can only imagine what tomorrow or next week will bring!"
Numbah Two just looked at the young Australian confused. "What?"
"Today," Wally said almost too dramatically- putting an emphasis on the word 'girl.' "Yet another GIRL started living in our clubhouse. There are three boys and three girls here now!"
Hoagie put his head down on the desk and muttered something about some crazy people.
"This is getting serious Hoagie," Wally said. "I need to ask a favor of you. It's kind of big but really important."
Numbah Two tried to raise an eyebrow, without much apparent luck given as his eyebrows were completely concealed. "Explain."
"I need you to make the next unit you build to only accept a boy as a pilot," Wally said. "Two of the pilots are girls, and I'm the only boy-pilot, we need more representation!"
"There's not much I can do," Hoagie said honestly. "Besides, I don't think that having more girls on the team is necessarily a bad thing."
Wally raised an eyebrow, "Whose side are you on?"
Hoagie didn't get Wally sometimes. And this was on of those times. "You know I'm your friend, but I really think you're overreacting."
Wally's jaw protruded in a frown and he stormed out of the room. Hoagie rolled his eyes and went back to his work, he knew Wally would be fine the next day or so.
……………
"Those blasted kids and their blasted abominations of mechanical suits," Xanthanos cursed, holding his head as if he suffered a headache due to frustration. "It seems every time we send out an Angel they have more of those… things."
"They look like those robo-things from 'Power Rangers'," Luke added. "That was a good show, well, the first season was. It kind of went downhill after that…"
"What we need is an Angel that adapts to its enemy," Luvara said, talking over Luke's ramblings on the children's show he used to like. "In this case, the number of opponents the Angel needs to face seems to increase with each combat. I think I know of an Angel that might be effective against them."
"Oh?" inquired her husband, it wasn't that he was surprised his wife was smart, he knew she was, but he also knew she specialized in enchantment magic- a school that had next to nothing in common with summoning magic.
Luvara nodded and walked over to the table with the reference book of Angels, flipping through it page by page for a couple minutes, only pausing every now and again to brush a stray lock of hair away when it fell over her deep blue eyes.
Luke - eventually realized that no one else cared about who the best Power Ranger was- stopped talking. Noticing everyone was watching Luvara; he went over to her and looked over her shoulder, as she flipped page by page through the encyclopedia of Angels. Luke had gotten to look at the book a couple times before, but he still retained his insatiable-child-like curiosity about it and about the information in it.
There were pictures and descriptions of Angels that looked like almost everything in the tome. From giant cubes, spheres and other geometric shapes, to Angels that resembled animals, even an Angel or two that could very easily pass as humans.
"A-ha! I found it!" Luvara announced almost playfully, she was pleased with herself. "The Angel we need is 'the burning one'- Israfel."
"Kids Next Door's weapons don't like fire?" Luke asked, wondering if Luvara had a particular insight into such things. Thinking about it, he realized that if the units could do battle in water effectively; they were probably fire resistant too.
Luvara smiled condescendingly at the boy. "There is more to Israfel than what his name indicates. He is the Angel of resurrection and song. He is nearly impossible to defeat."
Luke smiled thinking that finally they had found the unbeatable Angel that would bring down the Kids Next Door.
A loud alarm jolted everyone in Sector V's clubhouse awake and alert. An Angel was attacking- Wally, Abby and Fanny ran to their E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Units and to the monster to defeat it.
They got there in record time. The angel was huge, vaguely humanoid. It resembled paper-doll-man with its head cut off. The jewel that needed to be broken the banish the monstrosity was located where the heart would be. It was colored a red and orange, lines of those colors zigzagging around each other, almost striped.
Numbah Eighty-Six smiled proudly she was going to prove herself this day. In a burst of youthful enthusiasm she charged forward in her E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N.
The energy knife the Angel in half. Half way across the country, Luke gasped when he saw what had transpired in the scrying pool they, Luvara, Xanthanos, his father and he watched the progress of the Angels in.
"Wow Wally," Numbah Eight-Six boasted, grinning broadly. "That was easy, you make it look much harder."
"F-Fanny!" Wally stammered, as he saw that the Angel wasn't dead. It wasn't even one any longer.
"Yes," Fanny said, as if she figured he suddenly star-struck to be talking to her.
"Behind you!" Numbah Five shouted.
Fanny turned her unit to see not one, but two Angels behind her. While her back was turned a gray and blue Angel identical to the original appeared.
"What the?" Numbah Eight-Six exclaimed, backing away from the Angels, due to being outnumbered. "Where'd that one come from!"
"You cut it in half and it became two," Numbah Four said. "I think we should get out of here before we make it more."
"You're kidding!" Numbah Eight-Six exclaimed. "I thought stuff like that only happened in movies!"
The Angels regained their composure and starting lurching forwards. While not completely recovered, they were still obviously formidable opponents. It was unnatural how they moved, so big and heavy, cracking whatever was beneath them just due to their sheer weight- yet their movements seemed effortless.
"Numbah Five thinks we should definitely run," Numbah Five said. "Otherwise, we'll just keep splitting them every time we hit them!"
"Numbah Five'll hold them off!" Numbah Five volunteered, this was the first time she'd been so talkative in a while. "Run!"
"No!" Numbah Four and Eight-Six said, in unison. "We're not leaving without you!"
"Hey guys," Numbah Eighty-Six said- something odd had caught her eye. She pointed the hand of her E.V.A.N.G.E.L.I.O.N. Unit up at something in the sky. "What's that?"
At first it looked like a jet-plane up high in the sky. As their eyes adjusted to the bright sun-light, they were able to see it was just a kid on a glider. As it approached, the crew recognized the familiar figure, it was Tommy, Numbah Two's uber-talented younger brother. Not just that, he appeared to be dragging a large bag of something with him, it looked like he was planning on dive bombing something.
"Hey," Numbah Four asked- not believing his own eyes. "Is that Tommy? Or am I seeing things?"
"Former Kids Next Door operative T," Tommy yelled loudly and proudly. "Commencing mission: Smoke Screen! Bombs Away!" With that he spilled the contents of the large bag, engulfing the two Angels in smoke.
Despite being exuberantly rescued- there wasn't a smile among their fellow operatives after they unloaded. It was a bleak situation Kids Next Door was in, they had a power enemy who was hurling harder and harder monsters at them.
"Numbah Five, Eighty-Six, let's meet in that meeting room in ten minutes," Numbah Four ordered. "We need to figure out how to beat those things fast."
The two girls nodded. Numbah Five went off to talk to Numbah One, she didn't feel like dealing with Numbah Three or Numbah Two today. Numbah Eighty-Six walked off, to try to relax during her break.
"Hey," Numbah Three-Sixty-Two said to Numbah Eighty-Six, smiling weakly. "How's it going?"
"How do you think it's going!" Numbah Eighty-Six rebuked her superior. Numbah Three-Sixty-Two's half-smile vanished, she looked at the other girl expectingly. The red-haired girl stormed off- obviously angry.
"Thanks," Numbah Four was saying to Numbah Five as Numbah Eighty-Six opened the door and entered. She did realize she was late, but she had figured a couple minutes wouldn't be the end of the world. She wasn't surprised they started without her- after all she was the one who had just goofed up.
"About time," Numbah Five said jokingly. "Numbah Four's got a good plan."
"In order to make sure we don't spawn anymore monsters," Numbah Four said, proud of this plan he devised. "Two of us should, in unison, attack the monsters and only attack that red-orb thingie, that seems to kill them. Last time going for the body was, I think, what caused the failure."
The word 'failure' echoed in Numbah Eight-Six's head. She hated it. But it was there, echoing in the recesses of her mind, she tried to fight it off, when Numbah Five playfully tapped her with a rolled up paper and reprimanded her for not paying attention.
"Anyway," Numbah Four continued. "We need to fight in synchronization. We should start working on it today."
Numbah Eighty-Six felt dread in her gut. "We? You and Numbah Five? Or me and Numbah Five?"
"You and me," Numbah Four clarified. "Numbah Five isn't ready."
"Sorry," Numbah Five said sheepishly, smiling a nervous smile.
Numbah Eighty-Six spent the next five hours synchronizing attack patterns with Numbah Four. The training ended when she threatened to beat him senseless.