Disclaimer: I do not own Codename: Kids Next Door or it's magnificent characters. They are the property of Mr. Warburton and Curious Pictures.
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Chapter 1Thursday morning, Abby, Hoagie, and Wally sat at the back of the bus, riding to school. Abby sat with her back against the window, cushioning her head with her arms, hat down over her eyes siesta-style. Hoagie sat next to her with her feet propped up on his knees. Wally was in the bench across the aisle with a seat to himself, using his book bag as a pillow. Hoagie was the only one of them that was fully conscious, the other two being extremely exhausted from their mission the previous afternoon. The Kids Next Door had received an anonymous tip that their principal had ordered the case of Romeo and Juliet scripts. Romance literature was considered a type R torture device, so the team intercepted the delivery. Hoagie's job had been, unarguably, the least exerting, so while the others were still trying to rest, he had nothing to do but review his English homework.
"Hoagie, y'all know you spent an hour on that thang last night. If it was gonna get any better, it would be there already," Abby said groggily.
"I just wanna be sure. I'm not good at English like you are. I'm a math and science person," Hoagie responded.
"Oh, just let me see the dang thing," Abby said, lifting her hat and reaching toward the paper.
"No! You can't read my homework!" Hoagie exclaimed.
"Oh, come on! It's a haiku! How complicated could it be?" Abby retorted, snatching the paper out of his hand and lifting it to her face. "Ascending through stars; Eluding spheres and comets; Martians quake in dread." Abby thought about it for a moment. "Thesaurus?"
"Thesaurus…" Hoagie replied dismally.
"Hoagie, Miss O'Dell don't care what you write, as long as you write it," Abby informed him, handing the paper back.
"Yeah, that lady's so spaced out, you could probably hand her your math homework and she'd think you were Frost," Wally put in blearily from across the aisle as he sat up, stretching as the school came into sight.
"Think you were who?" Hoagie asked.
"Robert Frost. Didn't you read that list of poets she gave us?" Abby posed.
"Uh, well, no. I was more preoccupied with the thesaurus," Hoagie answered, stuffing the paper back into his book bag.
"Aw, sheez," Abby commented. "Well, what I wanna know is how Mr. Marsupial over there knows who Robert Frost is," Abby shot a suspicious glance over at Wally.
"Hey, I read the list," Wally answered indignantly, standing up when the bus had come to a stop.
Abby made a horror-struck face and clutched at her chest. "No! It can't be possible! Wallabee Beatles doing homework?" she gasped. Then she and Hoagie started laughing as Wally's face flushed pink.
"Yeah, yeah," he said stiffly, trying to mask his discomfiture. "Well, how d'you think I got into your class, Abby?" He grabbed his backpack and started down the aisle after all the other kids.
"I don't know. It still baffles me," Abby responded to Hoagie, taking her feet off his knees and standing up. "That boy used to the stupidest child on Earth, and now he's in half my classes."
"It's a mystery," Hoagie agreed, as the two exited the bus.
Wally stood at his locker, digging his math book from its back corner. A couple of years ago, he wouldn't have given a crud about math, English, history, or any of it. However, a couple of years ago he'd had a close call and just barely avoided failing. One of the most unlikely rules of the Kids Next Door was that all operatives must maintain their grades above passing. It was an obscure policy, but its stance was that kids of such low intelligence could not reason efficiently enough to think on their feet or operate the two by four technology.
Wally didn't find out about this rule until the third quarter of fifth grade. Embarrassed and scared, the only people he confided in were Nigel and Kuki- Nigel for his willingness to teach and Kuki for her undying optimism… which she actually almost did lose when she found out Wally might not go to school or on missions with her anymore. The three of them pulled together to make sure that Wally passed, and when he got sent to summer school, the team guarded the location to make sure the Delightful Children from Down the Lane and any other villains could not interfere with the studies of the kids there, although Wally's presence there was kept secret from Hoagie and Abby.
Since that narrow escape, Wally had taken extra care to keep his grades up. If he'd been held back in fifth grade, Wally would have been suspended from the Kids Next Door for eighteen weeks, and if his grades still hadn't improved… He'd been decommissioned early before. He didn't want to go through it again… permanently.
"Hey, Wally," he was greeted from the other side of the locker door.
"Oh, hey, Kuki," he answered, closing the door. His eyes widened, and he laughed when he saw Nigel on the other side. "Oh, sorry, mate. Hard to tell your voice from the girls lately."
Nigel scowled, "Hmph. I just can't wait until your and Hoagie's voices start changing."
"Hey, don't blame me just because you sound like a girl," Wally responded. "Speaking of girls, where's yours?"
"Oh, Lizzie's home sick today. I stopped by her house this morning, but her mom told me she had the flu," Nigel replied as they started toward their math class.
"Right. Getting the homework for her like a good boyfriend?" Wally asked.
"Of course," Nigel answered. The bell rang just as they reached their classroom. Every student scrambled for his or her seat as the teacher, Ms. Hesse, closed the door.
"Everyone take out a sheet of paper, pencil, and calculator," she said, as she flipped off the light, moving to the overhead projector. By the time she'd reached it, the students had collected their materials. Ms. Hesse flipped on the projector, revealing a monster of a word problem. "Pop quiz. Begin."
The whole class made a loud collective groan, but put their pencils to paper. Wally wrote his name at the upper-right hand corner and, below that, the date: September 25, 2007. ((a/n: Unless Mr. Warburton releases anything to the contrary, we're going to assume that the kids are ten in 2005 and will be twelve in 2007. Granted, they've been ten since the show aired, but then the Rugrats were one for ten years and suddenly became eleven in 200-whatever.))
Third period rolled around. Miss O'Dell stood at the front of Kuki, Wally, and Abby's English class, with a book open on the podium before her. "'Violent socks; my feet were two fish made of wool; two long sharks; sea blue, shot through; by one golden thread; two immense blackbirds; two cannons,'" she read. "'My feet were honored in this way; by these heavenly socks.'"
Abby leaned back in her seat, nearly dozing as she had on the bus that morning. Kuki sat behind her to the right, right behind Wally, doodling in her notebook. Wally was stationed right in front of her, to Abby's right, the only one of the three that could fake paying attention, though his mind was wandering quite a bit.
"'They were so handsome for the first time; my feet seemed to me unacceptable; like two decrepit firemen; firemen unworthy of that woven fire; of those glowing socks,'" Miss O'Dell recited overdramatically. The woman was a flaming nutcase by general consent, although by and large completely harmless. Her black hair was wispy and seemed as scattered as her every thought while her dark skin seemed to cling to her bones for dear life. Thick-rimmed rectangular spectacles balanced precariously on the slope of her nose.
When she had finished reading the poem, Miss O'Dell sighed exaggeratedly. "Oh, the socks… The socks, the socks, the socks!" she said. "Can anyone tell me what Neruda's 'Ode to My Socks' is about?" She looked about the room at all of the blank stares she was receiving. Flustered slightly, her gaze landed on Abby and she smiled. "Abigail!" she declared. "Would you like to make a guess?"
"Um… not really," Abby answered. There were a few snickers around the room.
"But if you had to, what would you guess?" Miss O'Dell inquired.
"Uh, socks?" Abby replied before the whole class erupted in laughter.
Miss O'Dell waited a moment before the class finally settled down. "Um, yes, it is about socks. But, does anyone know the deeper meaning?" she asked.
"Is it anything like the tomato he murdered?" one boy asked, causing the class to start laughing again.
"Well, yes and no," Miss O'Dell answered. "You see, 'Ode to My Socks' is actually-." A loud beep overhead cut her off.
"Miss O'Dell?" the voice of the secretary came over the loudspeaker.
"Oh, yes?" Miss O'Dell answered, forgetting all about Neruda's "calcetines."
"We have a package here for you from Izaak High School," the secretary informed her.
Miss O'Dell gasped loudly. "They're here! They're here!" she exclaimed, dashing out the door. The class stared after her a moment before she popped her head back in and called to the secretary, "I'll be right there!"
The classroom was left unsupervised. "Woo! No teacher!" someone shouted, before the class erupted into pandemonium. The students began talking loudly amongst them selves.
"Saved by the secretary!" Numbuh Five declared. "Man, that 'poem' was weird!"
"Yeah. Who writes a poem about socks?" Kuki replied.
"Pablo Neruda, apparently," Wally answered.
"If you even wanna call it a poem," Abby put in. "And that's a big 'if.'"
"It's not his best anything, that's for sure," Wally said.
"How would you know?" Abby asked, tipping her hat up, so she could scrutinize him teasingly. "You seem to know plenty about poets."
"So I went home and looked up those poets this weekend," Wally replied, shrugging his shoulders, though it was clear that he was a little embarrassed.
"So what did he write that you did like?" Kuki asked.
"Well, his poem about the turtle was pretty good," Wally answered. "Or at least it wasn't way out there weird."
"I think y'all need to just stop talkin' 'bout the nutty Peruvian poet," Abby decided.
"Okay, what do you want to talk about? …Oh, and he's Chilean, not Peruvian," Wally corrected her.
"Whatevuh. I wanna talk about that sick new headphone policy they got started," Abby said, narrowing her eyes at the thought.
"What's the problem? You don't even bring your CD player to school," Kuki said.
"It's the principle of the matter, girl!" Abby declared with conviction, pounding her palm with her fist. "Even if I don't use the thangs here, there are other kids who do. It's their right! Adults don't like it when kids listen to their music in their bedrooms, and the hate it when we change the radio station in the care. Now they want to take it away from us in our few moments of free time in between classes? We may not listen to our CD players in school, but those other kids do, and as Kids Next Door operatives, it is our duty to preserve the rule for their sakes."
"…I can imagine an American flag waving behind you with the national anthem playing in the background," Wally said finally. He and Kuki immediately started laughing.
"Laugh all you want, but there ain't no way they're takin' these kids' headphones away while I'm around," Abby stated.
"And what exactly are you going to do about it? They haven't taken anything away yet," Wally said.
"Oh, Numbuh Five's got her plans, baby…" Abby said to herself, quietly rubbing her hands together and grinning mischievously.
"Abby, that's kind of creepy looking," Kuki told her friend.
"Of course it's creepy. It's Abby," Wally said, starting to laugh again.
"Oh, yeah? Then what's with that mask you be wearin', pretty boy?" Abby returned.
"Hey! Watch it! And I've told ya before! I'm not pretty… I'm handsome," Wally marked.
"That's because girls are pretty and boys are handsome," Kuki said.
"Not all boys are handsome, girl. Especially not Wallabee Beatles," Abby answered.
"Stop teasing. Wally is to handsome," Kuki responded. Wally sat and listened, laughing nervously.
"Maybe, but you said it, not me," Abby smirked, mischievously. She glanced over at Wally and winked inconspicuously.
"Uh, yeah, so… how 'bout that mission yesterday?" Wally asked. "Pretty rough, eh?"
"Yeah, it was a pretty close call," Kuki agreed. "It would have failed if the M.O.P.E.D. had been damaged more than just losing the passenger seat."
"I'll give you that one," Abby said. "Just think. If you guys had shown ten seconds later, those scripts would have made it all the way to school, and kids in all English classes would be stuck reading Romeo and Juliet."
"Yeah, lucky for them they have the Kids Next Door," Wally stated. "Otherwise they'd be stuck reading the 'greatest romance of all time.'"
"I don't see what the big deal is about that play," Abby asserted. "Cree read it back when she was in seventh grade, and from her summary, it's just a couple of teenagers who fall in love, but their parents hate each other, so they decide to kill themselves."
"Ugh!" Kuki blurted.
"That wouldn't have happened if they were kids… or rainbow monkeys," Wally grinned, shooting a sideways glance at Kuki.
"Please don't remind me of that!" Kuki begged. "That day was horrible, and rainbow monkeys are annoying now!"
"You know you still sleep with that one doll from Christmas in fifth grade," Abby laughed.
"It's like a pillow. Come on, you guys! You don't have Mushi running around your house, smacking two rainbow monkeys together and making kissing noises," Kuki said.
"You're right. I have Joey watching The Wiggles and Jojo's Circus," Wally answered. "Do you have any idea how annoyingly pointless those shows are?"
"Nope, and I'd like to leave it that way. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for making me the youngest daughter," Abby laughed at both of her friends' expenses.
"Anyways," Kuki cut in. "It's a good thing we got rid of those scripts so we won't have to read Romeo and Juliet for ourselves." Wally and Abby expressed their agreement.
"Wheeee!" Every head in the classroom turned toward the door, the source of the noise. A few seconds later, Miss O'Dell came dashing through the door with a large box in her arms. "Oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy!" she squealed. She rushed to the front of the room and set the box on her desk.
"How many teachers you know say 'whee' and 'oh, boy?'" Abby whispered to Kuki. When Miss O'Dell had herself situated, she turned around to face her students.
"Class, I have an announcement to make," she said, barely containing her excitement. "I've wanted to make this announcement for a long time now, but I didn't want to until it was absolutely official, because I didn't want to get your hopes up and then let them fall again. Don't roll your eyes, the project almost fell through yesterday when the CPS was attacked and our special gift from the principal stolen." The three Kids Next Door operatives exchanged low-fives.
"You see, kids, I have a passion for theater. Why, I almost became a Broadway actress, but, alas! They said I was no good, and so I became an English teacher-."
"What was in the package?" someone asked.
"Oh! Well, the package that was stolen from the delivery truck was a case of new scripts for William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet," Miss O'Dell gushed. "But, since they were stolen, I had feared last night that my project might fall through. However, the kind administrators over at Ignatius High School were kind enough to give us their old copies of the play!" she informed, pulling out one of these scripts from the box. The whole class groaned.
"You mean we still have to read that stupid play?" Abby inquired loudly. "Man, that stanks!"
"Oh, no, Abigail! You have it all wrong, it's wonderful!" Miss O'Dell said. "And besides that, you'll be doing much more than just reading Romeo and Juliet."
"Say what?" Abby asked, confusedly.
"In addition to reading the greatest romantic tragedy of all time, you will be memorizing, blocking, and building set for it," Miss O'Dell told them. The class stared blankly for a moment.
"You can't possibly mean…?" Wally asked.
"After years of begging and pleading, Mr. Lapicnirp has finally allowed me to organize a school play!" Miss O'Dell declared excitedly. "Romeo and Juliet, presented by Hendrie Middle School's seventh grade class! I can see it now," Ms. O'Dell said. "A full house, a lit stage, and two of my students performing the balcony scene." She sighed loudly at the image.
"Wait a minute! I thought this was a romance? Won't there be… kissing?" Abby asked.
"Well, certainly, Abigail! This is The Bard we are talking about. You cannot improvise from him!" Miss O'Dell said. The whole class went dead silent. "Now, I'm going to begin auditions next Friday. Who wants to be the first to sign up?" she asked, picking up a clipboard and pen and waving them in front of her class to entice them.
Every student stared blankly, paying no attention whatsoever to the clipboard.
"This… is… wrong!" Abby summed it all up.
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Hand-me-down scripts? Was their mission for naught? Maybe you should stay tuned to find out!
Post notes: Yes, Wally has increased his intelligence and started applying himself. No, he's not a genius, but he's in some enrichment classes.
Yes, Nigel and Lizzie are still dating. No, she will not be sick the whole story, nor will they break up in this story.
Yes, the headphone issue is based on a policy instated at my school where students caught using headphones in the hallways will lose their headphones and be added to a secret tally which, if it equals thirty or more by the end of the year, will cause a policy that doesn't allow headphones at all on school grounds. No, I did not need to explain the whole situation to you.
Yes, Pablo Neruda and his "Ode to My Socks" is a real person and a real poem. No, I don't know what it is actually talking about.
Yes, Wally was referring to Operation: T.R.E.A.T. with his pretty-handsome comment. No, Abby was not implying that either of her teammates has a crush on the other.
Yes, Wally was referencing Operation: K.A.S.T.L.E. No, he didn't have any thoughts running through his mind about the end of that episode.
Yes, Kuki grew out of rainbow monkeys. No, she did not completely grow out of her girly-girlness.
Yes, I hate The Wiggles and Jojo's Circus. No, I don't have to watch it as much as you guys that may have siblings that are three years old.
Yes, Miss O'Dell is a spoof of every crazy drama teacher ever shown on television. No, not all Drama teachers are that crazy, as evidenced by Ms. Duehring.
Okay, well, until next time, peoples. R&R! (Spreads aloe on sunburns…)