Author's Note: In each and every fanfic that I've written, there's always a chapter labelled 'The Visit" and this one of them. Come to think of it, it may have become a trademark of mine. Heh. Sixteenth chapter is up, and our favorite jinx is the star of this chapter. And also (spoilers) this is most probably the first and the last time we'll ever get to 'see' Arnold, briefly - cameo apperance. I mean, what's a Hey Arnold fanfic without Arnold, isn't it? Unless of course, there's the Patakis. Oh yeah, I've heard that IM convo is not allowed, but I hope that this will make an exception since it's a conversation between two fictional characters and not a real one.

Legal junk: I don't own Hey Arnold, but Nickelodeon does and Mr. Craig Bartlett created it. But this fic belongs to me. Clear? Good.

Chapter 16: A Visit to Eugene's.

The doorbell to Eugene's house was rung by Gerald as he and Sid waited for someone to show up. They could hear a thumping noise that most probably someone was descending down the stairs. But then, the noise suddenly became more violent and more vicious with a couple of "Ow!" and "Augh!" were heard. Then a pause and a soft "I'm okay…" was heard. That must be Eugene. The door opened revealing Eugene holding a tissue up on his nose, smiling at them.

"Hi, guys!" he greeted cheerfully with a bit of a nasally voice, "Oww…" but still in pain. "What brings you two here to my residence?"

"You're okay?" Sid asked him concernedly. "That's quite a bloody nose you got there…"

"Ah… don't worry about it. It'll stop bleeding eventually." He said optimistically. "Oh, where are my manners, come on in!" he invited, and Gerald and Sid went in.

"Nice crib you got here." Gerald complimented as he observed his surroundings inside the house, as he and Sid followed Eugene to his room.

"Thanks," he said back, "I helped mom with the interior decoration and stuff. So… is there anything that I can help? Is this a social visit or you guys have something on your mind? If you guys are here for a part in the play, then I'm sorry – it's already full." He explained to them, as he opened the door to his room. His room was small and kind of messy, but cozy and a heaven for a geek such as himself. It was small partly due to lots of computer equipments were in his room. And most of it weren't his: he ran a small business of repairing computers for his friends. He earned a little cash, and his friends loved it since it's cheaper and faster than the repair job in the stores, so it's a 50-50 win for them. On the shelf, he collected some Japanese manga and animes he downloaded through the internet and burned them into CDs. Computing textbooks such as Linux, Visual Basic, and PHP dominated the middle shelf and bottom part was dominated by novels such as Dune, Fight Club and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the likes.

"Uh… no." Sid replied back, as he took a seat at Eugene's computer. His computer was a flat screen LCD monitor, with an awesome speaker, and a cool, neon-lit transparent casing that houses the CPU, RAM, motherboard, and all. Sid then opened a web browser and went to his favorite website. "Toons! Games! Characters! Downloads! Store! Email!" a character in the website said.

"We're here to ask you if you know anything about this." Gerald said as gave the device to Eugene while he took a seat on Eugene's bed. "I suspect that it's some device thing."

He took a look at it and he was puzzled himself. "You're asking the wrong guy here. I don't even know what the heck this is." Eugene said quizzically to Gerald, as he threw the bloodstained tissue into the wastebasket.

"Well, we thought you knew." Sid shrugged, and peered into Eugene's 'My Pictures' folder. Inside, there was a folder named 'The Gang' and he double clicked on it. Hundreds of pictures of their friends were inside, and being categorized very well, from 'Bowling', '6th Grade', and most notably, a folder titled 'Arnold's family and us'. He quickly clicked on it.

Eugene gazed disbelievingly at them for a moment and said, "What makes you say that?"

"Well, you're the only guy we know who'll go nuts about these things, so we thought that, well, you knew. Who knows, it might be one of those new 4th generation iPod thingy."

"Hey…" Sid suddenly interjected, "is it just me, or Arnold's mom is really hot?" he said as he looked at a picture of Arnold, Stella, Miles and the rest of the gang at the airport taken years ago when Arnold was about to move away. Eugene and Gerald could only stare at him in shock disbelief as Sid could only grin nervously at them.

"Get outta my computer, Sid!" Eugene smiled as he ordered Sid to get out from his seat. But still he didn't budge, but only when Eugene came over to him and smacked his back, he finally moved away, and Eugene took his seat.

"Man, what the hell is wrong with you?!" Gerald said as he playfully jabbed Sid's shoulder. Then the three of them heard a chime from the computer, and Eugene checked the taskbar to see what the chime was for.

"Hey…" he chuckled, "Arnold's just got online." He said as he double-clicked his username on the instant-messaging list. "Wanna me to tell him what you just said about his mom?"

Sid pointed threateningly at him, "Don't you dare, man! Don't you freaking dare…" but in a joking threat kind of way.

"Gravity… is… pulling my hands… to… keyboard!" he said jokingly, impersonating a certain Star Trek character badly.

"Aw hell no…" Sid shook his head in disbelief. Eugene's username was a satire of his own nickname he gained when he was in grade school. He couldn't care less what people called him, as long it did not offended him. And jinx was just one of those words derived from the time when they were just stupid little kids.

Jynx-ish: Hey, Arnold!
Footballhead: Hey man, what's happening?
Jynx-ish: Heh, Sid just said something interesting about your mom.
Footballhead: Huh? What about my mom?

Gerald was chuckling as Eugene read the chat transcript good-naturedly to mock Sid. Eugene was ready to reply when all of the sudden Sid quickly ran to the computer and shoved him off, and took over his keyboard. Perhaps Sid shoved Eugene too hard, since he hit his head on the wall rather hard. "I'm okay…" he said, as he rubbed his head in an attempt to heal it.

Jynx-ish: That your mom is alright!!!11!
Footballhead: …
Footballhead: Man, grandpa was right. You guys really have gone totally nuts ever since I left town.
Footballhead: brb
Footballhead is away: (Out to Lunch)

Sid let a sigh of relief as he slouched back of the chair, staring at the ceiling above. He then turned his head to the left, and saw Eugene still rubbing his head. He chuckled nervously and said, "Sorry dude… heh, heh. It ain't my intention to push you that hard…"

"Ah, it's okay. I deserved that anyway for making fun of you." He replied modestly in defeat.

Gerald smiled softly at his friends and said to Eugene, "so Eugene, can you help us or what?"

"Oh, about that. Sorry you guys. I simply don't have the time to do it."

"What? Oh c'mon dude, it's not like it's going to take much of your time. How hard is it to find that thing on the internet, anyway?" Sid said to him.

"First of all," Eugene explained to him, "that thing is not from any gadget company I know, and I know my gadgets. Secondly, it looks like some sort of a rejected prototype-stage device, and thirdly, I have better things to do to occupy my time. I'm really sorry you guys." He refused politely to them.

"C'mon, man…" Gerald tried to persuade him, "Help a friend, will ya? We're running out of options here."

"I really, really want to Gerald, but I can't. I have a map to make, a fanfic to write, homeworks to finish, a play to manage, and a website to code. And my hands are already full as it is." He explained thoroughly to them, in hoping his dilemma would be understandable.

Gerald and Sid understood, and thought it would be pointless to carry on the talk. "Yeah, we understand. Thanks for your time anyway, Eugene." He said weakly as he nodded. Gerald then motioned his head at Sid to the door and both of them got up from their seats. As they were walking to the door, Gerald saw something concealed on the shelf that looked like a picture of Sheena. He suddenly had this one crazy idea that he thought that might just work.

"Say Eugene, how about if," he stopped at his tracks, looking at him, "you help us, and I'll fix you up with Sheena." He smirked.

Eugene was at first startled at the offer, but somewhat exited, since he never had the guts to make the move, but alas, he felt that she was too perfect for him so he had to decline the offer, "I don't know Gerald… I'm too nervous. Even the mention of her name makes me tremble. I just can't…"

"C'mon, man." Gerald said coolly. "Just take it easy. I think it's high time for you to make the move, don't you think so? You'll miss your chance if you're still waiting for the 'right' time, man. Procrastinating will get you nowhere, and in the end, you won't get the girl that you love."

Eugene contemplated deeply and carefully at Gerald's words as he rubbed his chin. Maybe Gerald's words did have merits in it. Maybe this was the opportunity he was looking for. Maybe with Gerald's help he could finally go steady with her. He then decided, "I'm in Gerald." He said, smiling.

"Glad you could join the bandwagon, dude." Sid said with a relief, patting his back.

"So, where's the thing that you want to know?" Eugene asked Gerald. He then put took the device out from his pocket and gave it to him. Eugene then brought it to his computer table and put it next to the keyboard. He opened a drawer next to him to find his miniature screwdriver set. He took the largest out of them and proceeded to open the device with it as Gerald and Sid watched him attentively. The contents inside the device impressed Eugene as he gazed at it.

"Holy crap… whoever designed this thing must be a freaking genius." He said to himself in awe. He then took a magnifying glass to get a closer look at the circuit board. "And there's a lot of stuff inside here that isn't in the consumer market either… where do they get all this?" he asked himself.

"Interesting…" he said, finally could recognize what the device actually was, "It's an IEEE 802.11b compliant device. Very, very interesting."

Sid and Gerald glanced at each other in perplexity of Eugene's techie argot, "Uh, Eugene… in English?" Sid inquired as he looked at him again.

"Oh… it's wi-fi. Wireless Local Area Network." He answered. "See this little black thing?" he asked to them as he pointed a pointy piece in the circuit board, "It's a receiver/transmitter antenna. I must've not following the news lately, because this thing isn't suppose to be in the consumer market yet…" he said in disbelief, and then he gazed at his computer, and an idea popped in his head.

"Hmm… maybe my computer could read this thing, hopefully." He wondered. He then switched his wi-fi device on and booted the program for it.

---
Searching for the nearest wi-fi device…
25 percent…
50…
75…
100…

Two devices found:

(Unknown Device) 907830GGW
Mokia 6060 DF#3233
---

He then clicked on the (Unknown device) on the selection window and to him and his guests' surprise; the options were shown as follows:

---
Tracking Devices- A-101
---

"That thing is a tracking device…" Sid said incredulously as he stared at the monitor screen. Reluctantly, Eugene clicked on the A-101 and a few moments later, the tracking device started to beep and emitted bleeping lights. In realization that he was on a verge of a clue, he quickly launched yet another program that'd track any wireless frequency around his surroundings. The program revealed three addresses; one came from his computer, another one from the tracking device and another from a foreign location that it's only revealed itself as 'LESpheeb'.

"LESpheeb?" Gerald said quizzically, "do you think it stands for the LES spy agency and… Phoebe?"

"This is getting complicated than I thought…" Eugene said to himself as he rummaged through the drawer for a paper and pen. "There's only one way to find out…" he said as he wrote down the foreign address. He then restarted his computer and logged on into a different operating system. At the OS' command prompt, he typed a command that would see if the user's address were online or not. The screen then displayed the answer to Eugene as he nodded in understanding.

Sid and Gerald couldn't comprehend what was actually displayed on the screen since it was all a bunch of numbers and words to them, so one of them asked Eugene, "So… what does this all means?" Sid asked him quizzically.

"One thing's for sure, the line is active…" he replied to them, and continued on typing. "Judging from this serial number right here, I'm currently breaking into a PDA." He informed them as he pointed the numbers on the screen. He typed some more. "Let see if I can look into the contents of this thing…" he said to himself.

The PDA's backlight suddenly went on and a soft chime was heard, but it didn't wake Phoebe up from her nap. She didn't have much sleep last night partly because she was up until the wee hours in the morning where they apprehended the sniper (and lost him later), and due to school today. To compensate the lost hours, she had to take a nap even though she didn't want to. Before she took a nap, she read a novel for her English class but her eyes were getting heavier and heavier by the minute and she had to succumb to her biological needs. She needed a rest.

Back at Eugene's house, all three of them were incredulous disbelief when screen revealed many of the PDA contents. Folders such as Applications, Code Breaker, and Global Positioning System were shown on the screen. But the folder that struck them the most was a folder with a title 'Personal Information', with Phoebe's picture on it.

"That's Phoebe…" Gerald said disbelievingly, as Eugene and Sid looked at him, waiting for him to say something. Gerald then looked at Eugene and said, "Well, what are you waiting for? Click on it."

Eugene nodded nervously and proceeded to do what Gerald had requested. Phoebe's information files and her logbook were located in the said folder. Eugene positioned the pointer over the logbook file, and looked at Gerald again nervously, "Should we go on? Clicking on these files is just like invading Phoebe's privacy…"

Gerald contemplated nervously at the thought of invading Phoebe's privacy, "No… don't," he said, which was a right move, "Let's see if there's anything else you can dig into."

Eugene nodded in relief, and pushed the 'back' button on top of the screen. Again he rummaged through all the files and folders, nothing very important but intriguing nonetheless. Inside the Network Settings folder, Eugene spotted another address which triggered his curiosity instincts to life. He then copied the address and pasted it on the command prompt. He typed another set of command but the result displayed was:

---
Address may be blocked by a firewall or masked.
---

"Interesting…" Eugene said with a smug smile, "This may prove challenging." He said to himself as he cracked his knuckles. Eugene then typed a command on the prompt line to open up an application to break up the address concealment. The software works, but it only revealed a portion of it, as the others were secured greatly. The portion of the address was still masked by an incoherent bunch of alphabets and characters. Eugene smirked broadly since he felt this little puzzle was more of a challenge than an aggravating speed bump. He tried again, but this time, he messed with the programming a little bit. Gerald and Sid couldn't cope with all the cockamamie jargon that Eugene typed on the monitor and that appeared on the screen, so they went over to the bookshelf and rummaged through the novels, magazines and comic books to pass time, as Eugene still engaged himself with the computer, scanning ports and all.

Sid saw something between the JavaScript and UNIX book that caught his eye, "Hey Eugene," he called, interrupting Eugene's concentration, "Are you taking any Japanese classes or something?" he said, showing him a book titled 'Japanese for Everyone'.

Eugene smiled a bit at Sid and said, "Japanese language is an interest of mine, so it's something that I personally want to know." He said, "Thanks to animes…" he thought, "And I'm glad Pheebs is around to help me with the language. She gave me that book actually. She's a great teacher." And he then continued typing. Eugene remarks seemed to make Gerald smiled a bit, in proud of her.

Minutes later, Eugene finally cracked the address, accompanied by a loud "yes!" from him, and copied it up and pasted it to the command prompt to retry it again. And this time around, it worked. The computer was active, so Eugene cautiously broke into the computer that was linked from Phoebe's PDA. Alas, another obstacle: a firewall was guarding the security of the computer.

"Ah, crap… not another firewall…" he sighed in annoyance, but he always knew in every firewall, there was a weakness, or a security hole, and only experienced hacker such as himself would know how to exploit the weaknesses (he 's a goody-two shoes hacker anyway, he'd report the administrator if there was any leaks on their servers or databases). He looked at Eugene and Sid, who was reading some books and magazines, and said to them, "Hey guys, do you have any plans after this?"

"Uh no… is it going to take long?" Sid asked him.

"This might take a while…" he said to them, sighing. Seconds became minutes, and minutes became hours. What started as a favor for Gerald had become an exciting challenge for Eugene. He liked every single thing that he had discovered and typed. They were proven invaluable to him. He became… passionate of it. Sid and Gerald, on the other hand, were getting bored. Gerald was lying on the floor playing Eugene's portable game console while Sid was asleep on Eugene's bed, with a videogame magazine placed on his face. Tired of waiting, Gerald asked Eugene, "Are you done already?"

"Almost finished… just give me a couple of minutes, will you?" he replied, as he furiously punched the keyboard buttons to type the commands. Funny, Gerald thought, since that was the same answer that he gave to him ten minutes ago. Gerald then switched the game console off, and decided to take a nap. A few moments later, Eugene euphorically shouted, "YEAH!!" loudly, making the Sid and Gerald woke up from their slumber.

"What? What did you find?" Sid said, rubbing his eyes.

"Gentlemen, I have successfully broken into their database, and suffice it to say: it's a huge treasure trove of information inside." He said happily, showing them the result on the screen.

"Good job, man. Good job." Gerald complimented him as he patted his back, "but won't you get caught or something?"

"Oh please Gerald, you know me, I'm too good for that." He bragged proudly. "Now, let's see what is stored in their database." He then clicked on a folder named 'Agent recruitment 1996-present'. Eugene then inputted Sheena's name on the textbox and entered it, but a pop-up window opened up and said 'No such member exists'. Eugene let a sigh of relief.

"Try Phoebe's name." Gerald suggested to him. Eugene nodded, and typed 'Hyerdahl, Phoebe'. One match was found, and it indeed was Phoebe's. Gerald was speechless.

"What about Nadine? Put Nadine's name." Sid said worriedly. Eugene then typed her name, and again a match was found. Sid was lost on words to say anything.

It was the time for the routine server check for an agent as she entered the agency's server room. She then took a seat in front of a computer terminal and started typing away. She inputted a command on the prompt to check for anyone who had entered the agency's main server. The screen then showed a table of addresses of anyone who had entered, and so far so good, all the addresses were legitimate and from the members themselves, until she came across with one that was labeled 'Unknown Address'. This raised an eyebrow as she double-clicked on it for more information.

To her shock, it was the work of a hacker, and a good one too since their server's address was fairly hard to find. And to add insult to the injury, the hacker managed to breach the firewall, and was currently hovering around the network, searching for any valuable information. She had to act quickly. She then ragingly typed a series of command on the prompt to find the hacker's address.

Eugene's firewall chimed an alert as it revealed an address trying to connect with his computer, but the firewall reflected it back. "Crap…" he said in annoyance as he opened the firewall's window, "it's from the same address that I got into. The user is trying to find me…"

"What're you going to do?" Gerald asked concernedly.

"I'll have to download these folders first, then and I have to disconnect the cable cord so she can't find my computer. Sid, go to that socket over there and wait for my signal." He said as he downloaded the classified information. The whole file was about 2.2mb, but thankfully Eugene was on a cable modem. It should take about a minute or so for the download to finish. But as long as he was online, he was in danger of being discovered. He must end his online session quick.

Gerald and Eugene watched the progress bar dreadfully as it advanced to its completion. "Come on, come on…" Gerald said worriedly. The agent was nearing her objective of finding the hacker. Finally, the progress bar hit 100 percent and quickly Eugene shouted, "Sid, unplug it now!!" and Sid proceeded to do so. The agent could only stare in defeat of her monitor, flashing 'Session Terminated' at her. "I must report this to Bridget…"

Back at Eugene's room, there was much rejoicing, as they gave each other a high-five. "Awesome job, Eugene! Awesome job!" Gerald said as he patted his shoulder. Eugene smiled broadly as he stretched his body as to claim the victory.

"C'mon, let's see what's inside the folder." Sid said to all of them, and they proceeded to do so. Inside the folder, there was database of the active current agents was displayed, crime statistics, and the agency's funding. Although it wasn't much, but they're proven very helpful nonetheless.

"So it is true then… Phoebe, Lila, Rhonda, Helga and Nadine are a member of LES." Gerald said ponderingly.

"So what's your next move, dude?" Sid asked Gerald.

"What else? We're going to Fuzzy Slipper's place and ask him about this, since he's like, their number one informant and all. Eugene, call me if you find anything important."

"I will. Man, that was the ugliest hack I've ever done…"

The next chapter we'll finally get to see the famous, yet mysterious Fuzzy Slippers. But I won't spoil it to you, anyway. Again, thanks for reading and please leave a review.