BecauseI justrecently discovered that my dad has Cartoon Network, it has allowed me to start watching Codename: Kids Next Door, which is a show I've started to like a lot. I've only seen some random episodes, and I don't think that is enough for me to even think of writing this kind of story. But, since this story has been buzzing in my head for the last three weeks, I had to write it down to make room for other things. That, and I was bored of the darn buzzing noise it made in my head. The echo in there is awful. Anyway, I've tried to find as much info about the different elements of the show to try to make the story atleasthalf-good.
The story has not been beta-ed, and it's written in one sitting at 2 am, which is great nesting ground for misspellings and errors. Ah well, no one's perfect. :D
Disclaimer: I do not own Codename: Kids Next Door or any of the characters, Mr. Warburton does, and you do not mess with Mr. Warburton. I simply put the characters in situations where they risk to go way out of character, and no one can stop me! -insert insane cackle here-
He didn't look back when he was escorted out of the pod. Had he done that, none of the ones left in the pod would have met his eyes anyway. He was no longer one of them. He was a threat, a teenager, nearly an adult, and could no longer be a part of their association. They had to remove him to protect the younger members, and he understood that.
Before they stepped out into one of the corridors, he was freed from the boots with the built-in rocket boosters and the other KND standard equipment he had grown so used to over the years. Of course, in about half an hour, he wouldn't remember how to operate them anymore.
While they walked through the corridor, he allowed his mind to work freely, releasing the bonds he had strung around the memories he had not allowed to surface for a long time. Memories that would be gone forever in a few minutes.
It was almost eight months since the operatives that had once formed Sector V were transferred to their new positions. No one spoke of the changes, but each member of his team had known the reason to their transfer. They were no longer fit to work in the field – not after their enormous failure to complete what had been their toughest mission ever. No one spoke of that either, but the boy's name was still whispered respectfully in the halls of every Kids Next Door base on the planet – and off the planet.
Maybe that was why Numbuh 2 hadn't protested against his transfer to the post as a full-time head developer of new 2x4 devices… Because he couldn't stand the looks of pity and doubt he received everywhere he went. After all, Tommy had been his little brother, but he had failed to protect him when he had to. They had all failed to do what they had sworn to do – to protect kids all over the world – when they couldn't save one of their own.
Numbuh 1 still couldn't believe that 'The Tommy' actually had been granted permission from the Supreme Leader to use the codename 'Numbuh T' despite him not being an official operative, just because of the now legendary things he had done for the association. He had thought that it was all a bad joke when he heard of the boy's unofficial initiation. However, he had been proven wrong.
Everything had gone so wrong that fateful day eight months earlier. They had received news that Father had teamed up with every villain they had ever faced, to launch one final attack against the Kids Next Door. All bases had been alerted, and were ready for battle. Or so they had thought.
They could never have thought that the enemy would have gone to such measures as to actually be prepared to kill every single kid if they had to. It had been a real war this time, but to bring such weapons…
The Sector V treehouse had been the target for vicious attacks, not only by Father and his Delightful Dorks, but an army of adults that was larger than anything they had ever seen. The Sector V operatives had all suffered great injuries, and wore the scars to prove it. However, the scars made to the soul wouldn't heal as easily as a minor scratch.
Numbuh 1 wished that his mind would be cleared of the image of Hoagie coming towards him over the battlefield that once had been their treehouse, with his little brother's lifeless body in his arms, not even wincing as some unidentified projectile nearly took his head off by the shoulders. He had known that as the team leader, he was supposed to know what to do and what counterattack to launch, but at that moment, he hadn't even known what to say.
Death was something he had never even thought about while in battle. It was something he associated with old people, not with kids that were younger than he was. Most of the kids had reacted in the same way, not being able to believe that someone would actually kill a kid.
Oh well, the decommissioning would take those memories away. But Tommy wouldn't become more alive because of that. His mother wouldn't withdraw her lawsuit against the company that built the jungle gym in the playground, and Numbuh 2 wouldn't become less depressed and consumed by his work with the 2x4 devices.
All his newest creations had sent chills down Numbuh 1's spine when he saw them. This was because of their clearly lethal functions and slightly… insane appearence. All of these had been refused and scrapped, because they did not follow Kids Next Door regulations.
The official cause of Tommy's death was that he had fallen from the highest platform of the jungle gym because one of the security-fences weren't fastened properly, and broken his neck. How the medical operatives had managed to make the boy's singed and bruised body pass as 'death by jungle gym-related accident' was beyond his understanding, but grownups usually never saw what was right in front of their noses, so maybe it wasn't that odd anyway.
He hadn't spoken about the transfers with his former teammates, but he knew that Numbuhs 3 and 4 had been assigned posts as instructors at the Arctic Base, while he was pretty sure that Numbuh 5 was somewhere around here at the Moon Base, training spies for the association.
The whole association had seen them unfit for the field, but the Supreme Leader had made sure that their experiences and knowledge wouldn't go to waste. They had taught new operatives until they had nothing else to teach, and then there had been nothing to do but to repeat the same thing for another group of cadets, and another, and another, while waiting for the day when the monotonous rituals would end.
Being stuck in a room while trying to make group after group of newbies – all of them seemingly hyped up on too many bowls of sugarcoated Rainbow Munchies – learn the importance of working together as a team was so much worse to him than feeling the days go by until the day when he would be rid of the whole thing. In the end, he had longed for it all to end.
Through a small window in the corridor, he could see the main hall of the Moon Base, where kids were darting from one corridor to another, handing out orders to the sectors on Earth and processing tons of data together with the Arctic Base to figure out exactly what the adults were up to.
He understood their worry. There had hardly been any reports of adults mistreating kids since that day, and even the Delightfuls had kept uncharacteristically calm for a very long time. The Supreme Leader suspected another wave like the one before, and a great number of spies had been hired among the teens to find out as much as possible about the whereabouts of their enemies.
It was a risky operation to work together with the teens, but Numbuh 1 didn't blame them. It was simply far too dangerous not to do it. As long as they continued to hire spies among the teens that were not too popular, but considered cool enough to pass as one of the enemies, they should be safe, at least for a little while longer.
Being shoved in another direction, he obediently followed his captors, not even trying to resist the procedure he had fought to save his friends from a few years earlier. It didn't seem like such a bad thing anymore.
Yesterday had been his thirteenth birthday, and his family had thrown a huge party just for him. Everyone he knew had been there, (both operatives and non-operatives) and he had to admit that they had been putting on a great show, pretending to enjoy themselves, when he knew that the ones still enlisted as operatives wouldn't speak to him when the day was over.
His teammates had been there, and they too had managed to plaster big smiles on their faces as they danced, watched the horror movies and ate pizza and snacks. But he had seen the glances they cast his way, and he had known that they were looking for signs of teenage behaviour. Signs that they in a year or so would discover that others would be looking for when they looked at them. It was normal, and he had done it himself many times before.
They reached the door to the decommissioning chamber, and he felt a light tremble going through his body. The door was opened and he was escorted into the chamber, and placed in the decommissioning machine. Removing his sunglasses, he caught the eyes of the bespectacled girl standing behind Numbuh 86 at the controls. It seemed like she was more or less forced to wear those glasses these days, no matter what she thought of them.
He hadn't been prepared to see her there. The decommissioning had always been something he associated with Numbuh 86. She had been in the Moon Base handling the decommissioning procedure for as long as he could remember, but he couldn't even imagine seeing one of his teammates behind the controls, about to clear the memories of a trusted friend.
Not even feeling slightly uneasy, he tucked the sunglasses into his pocket and leaned back, not taking his eyes off the dark girl even as he was strapped to the chair (standard procedure since a group of teenagers scheduled for decommissioning managed to break out and nearly destroying the Moon Base again before being captured).
"Tell the others that I'll see you all in school," he said calmly, immediately being admonished for speaking to a Kids Next Door operative.
He could swear that he saw a tiny smile flicker across her face, but it faded just as quick as it had appeared.
"Numbuh 5 will remember to tell them that… Teenager."
---
Nigel Uno found it very strange that from the day after his thirteenth birthday, he couldn't stand being called a teenager, even though that was what he was. It was almost as if the word held some deep, insulting meaning that he didn't understand other than on a subconscious level. The word brought a strange feeling of strained recollection that somehow failed every time he tried to think of any reason to why he experienced it. The same feeling came over him when he saw a certain group of kids in the grade below him, but he couldn't possibly think of why that would be.
But after a few days of endless thoughts about these strange feelings, he began forgetting about it. Friends, school and his dawning understanding of his own social status took up most of his time, and he didn't have the time to think of that sort of things.
He allowed the thoughts and puzzles to rest, and put everything about that where it belonged – in the past.