"Ugh, where on earth is he?" asked Carrie as she nibbled on the back end of her pen before putting it down on the project paper.
"What did I say, Carrie? He does disappear like this quite often, but always comes back. Eventually," said Darwin, also putting his black biro down on the paper.
"It would be a shame if something were to happen to him," said Penny, shrugging. At that exact moment, she heard the jingling of keys from downstairs and rushed down.

Gumball entered the house, sodden from the rain, with a ring binder in his hand. His black hoodie was drenched and dripping with water, and his left foot - was that blood coming out of it?

"What the fuck happened here, Gumball?" asked Penny.
"Oh nothing. Had to pick up this from somebody, and decided to take an alleyway as a shortcut, thinking that it would be a good idea. It wasn't, and I need to see a doctor," said Gumball calmly. "Thank God for the bullet only going into my foot," he added.
"What? Gumball, you got shot?" asked Penny, shocked. "Mrs. Watterson, Gumball's been shot," she shouted. Nicole immediately sped out of the kitchen, taking off her cooking apron and chucking it on the bannister.
"Gumball Watterson, what on earth have you got yourself into?" she asked in utter disbelief, looking in horror at the state of his foot. Crimson blood had spewed out of it and dried on the leather of his shoes. His Jordans, which he had spent ages imploring his mum to buy, had been ruined, and it would take some time to clean off the blood. "I'll be taking that," she added, and while everyone gave a bombardment of questions, she nipped off the lever arch file.

'Alex Rose,' it read, and it only had a few pages inside it. She entered the basement through the hidden stairside door and put it in a bookshelf.
"This is for Anais," she muttered as she went back upstairs. She dialled her friend Mori's number and asked her to come over for a quick check up. Mori (Teri's mother), knowing her, said that she would come at once.

The next day
As Gumball walked in the school halls, he had a slight limp in his step. Not that it was anything particularly significant, but it still affected his movement. Mori told him that the bullet was significantly slowed down by his tungsten laces (not that he was aware that he had those on, or even aware what tungsten was) and had only just caused a small fracture in the bone on his foot.
Therefore, he had felt immense pain because the bullet impacted his nervous system quite severely, or something. Gumball himself wasn't listening to the conversation, but basically he wasn't as screwed as he could have been.

It may have been a good thing for later, but it also meant that at the moment his foot was temporarily paralysed. So here he was, limping off to Further Maths where his teacher, Ms. Simian, was looking down at her watch, standing by the door.
"You're late, Watterson," she screeched. Ms. Simian was a woman in her sixties, but even since middle school everyone had been theorising that she indeed had been alive for far longer. Gumball simply sighed, as he was in absolutely no state to argue with his teacher who had been his mortal enemy for some time now. "Up to your antics again?" she added, looking down at the cast over his foot. Gumball said nothing, and put his book on his desk before, with some difficulty, sitting down in his chair.

"Alright class, since a certain somebody has sat down, we may begin. Get out your calculus textbook," she said as the students let out a groan. "That does not require any noise at all," she added, glaring at the students. Gumball was past his pranking stage now, and couldn't be bothered to even mess about, so he silently got his textbook as he heard Ms. Simian drone on.
"Turn to page 35. We will be studying the application of Leibniz's integral rule to integral calculus. Now get out your pens, and…"
Gumball let the drone of her voice fade from his ears as he took out a piece of paper and began to doodle. He didn't care about the calculus stuff as he was certain that he would never use it. He was so certain that he just doodled away, almost honing out when he felt a hand tap his shoulder.

"You know you should be doing your work, right?" He turned to see a black-haired Asian girl looking at him. "You don't want to be caught, again," she said, emphasising the final word.
"Why does it even matter, Masami? Think of one time where I will be using whatever on earth Libzineez's rule is," he asked.
"You're making me look like a fucking nerd here. Leibniz," she said. "Oh well, do as you wish. What happened to your foot, by the way?" she added.
"Got into an accident, don't want to talk about it," he replied. He put his scrap of paper away and took out his biro. "Fucking shit, what on Earth is this?" He looked down on his textbook page in horror at the formulae and equations. She simply laughed, and said nothing else, as he clutched his pen.

In fact, the numbers clattered around his brain so much that by the time the period ended, Gumball was completely dumbfounded. He looked down at the absolute mess that he had made of his workbook page with numbers scattered everywhere, and closed the blue book. He was lucky that he had a free period next, so he limped to his locker and crammed the books inside.

"Hey, Gumball, are you okay?" asked Penny as she approached him.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I got pretty roughed up yesterday, so I've been limping like this. But yes, I'm not too bad."
"How could you get that badly injured though? It must have hurt," she said.
"It did. It hurt like hell. I wish that I just took the longer route; I would have been much better off," he said. As he continued to cram his books into his locker, he realised something. It was a free period, and neither Carrie nor Darwin were around.
It was no secret that he had been crushing on Penny for a while now, and was well aware that the feeling was reciprocated. However, he still hadn't got a chance to act upon it, whether it be due to shyness, bad timing of interruption, or fear of being rejected. But now they were both pretty much alone. He inhaled deeply. What should he say?
"You don't look bad, you know," he said. And he already managed to screw it up. What kind of pickup line was that? Well, he had to wait to find out.
"Aww Gumball, come on," she said, shrugging. "My clothing is a mess, I forgot my makeup–"
"That's not important. You're fine as you are, and I don't understand why you girls care so much about makeup anyway," he interrupted. Penny giggled at his naïvety.
"Gumball, girls are different to boys you know," she replied. "Hey, you know Panther 2 just released yesterday?"
"We've been waiting for too long for the movie, you know. Should we go see it at the cinema? I know how much of a die-hard fan you are."
"Sure, I'd love to. Who else is coming? Usually it's just the gang, right?" she said. Gumball sighed.
"No, that's not what I meant. Just us," he said. He had to muster up a lot of courage to say the last bit, as usually it would be with many more people that they would go to the cinema. Penny's face turned a shade of red.
"Oh, as a–"

"Hey gal, looking sweet," jeered a voice from behind them. They both put on a poker face as they saw a rainbow-haired jock slightly taller than Gumball coming towards them.
"What could you possibly want, Tobias?" she said, frowning at him.
"Just complimenting you, right? Don't see a problem with that," he flippantly said. Gumball was tired of this happening every single time.
"What do you want? Spill the beans," he blatantly shot at Tobias.
"Well, I got two tickets for Panther 2, you know. VIP as well," he added, smirking at Gumball as he raised his eyebrows. "Penny?"
"Of course not, Tobias. You must have something better to do than ask out a girl who once again is rejecting you for the millionth time," said Penny, rolling her eyes.
"Well, did I say you have a choice?" he said. "VIP seats right in the middle, one of the sofas just for us two." Gumball was clearly pissed as Tobias knew perfectly well that he and Penny crushed on each other.
"What on God's green Earth are you playing at?" he said, pushing Tobias. "If she said no, she said no. What don't you understand?"
"Woah, it's not like she's your bitch or anything," smirked the jock. Penny gasped in absolute horror.

And Gumball just wouldn't have it.

He balled his fists and the taller one squared off to him. "Do you want to fucking go, mate? You'll get beaten to a pulp."
"The pulp which will be your corpse after I'm finished with you," said Gumball.

It is quite important to note that Tobias Wilson was one of the stronger students in the year, with the idyllic muscles of any high school jock, even if he was an absolute arsehole. What's even more important to understand though, was that Gumball was perceived as a weakling in the year, and nobody knew of his training, or his strength. It was part of keeping his secret, anyway. Taking this into account, Tobias was at an absolute loss when his jab into Gumball's stomach was instantly caught before it came near him, and he was even more confused when Gumball spun behind him and caught him in a deadlock around his neck. He didn't even care about the secret at this point. He was going to make Tobias pay.

"Listen here, you little shit. I do not care about your hopeless attempts on girls around the school, or even on Penny. But if you think about calling my best friend, or anyone else affiliated with me for that matter, a bitch, you shouldn't blame me when your whore of a mother finds out that you have gone missing, and eventually finds your body rotting in a sewer," growled Gumball in a demonic voice not too different to that of Agent X. He grabbed him by the collar, lifted him up and punched him square on his nose. He clearly heard the crack of the cartilage snapping and heard Tobias's shout as blood started running down his nose.
"Get lost, you son of a bitch," he said to Tobias, who complied and hurried away. "Shit, what did I do?" he muttered to himself.
"Wow Gumball, how did you do that?" said Penny in shock and (slight) admiration.
"Unimportant. I wasn't thinking straight," said Gumball, with a hint of resentment in his eye.
"I never knew you were that strong, Gumball," Penny said, looking into his eyes and resting her hand on his shoulder.
"Well, who knows. Maybe I am–"
Gumball's phone buzzed in his pocket, his ringtone chiming out. He quickly apologised to Penny and picked it up.

"Hello?"
"Nightshade. Library. Now."

Gumball hung up the phone and sighed.

"Hello there Gumball," said Anais as he entered the library and sat down next to her.
"Anais. What do you want?" asked Gumball, annoyed that he couldn't continue talking with Penny. In response, Anais waved the lever arch file he brought yesterday.
"Been studying this for a bit, you know. Now would you look at this," she said, opening it up and flipping to a page. "The file on Agent Rose."
The page was a full on fact file, almost like a wiki, on his arch nemesis. Gumball raised his eyebrows as he looked at it.
"What's more, this," she said, flipping to the final page. There was a mission overview there, and it was full of her assassinations. He scanned through the names, looking at people who had been terminated by COBRA, and then looked at the blacklist of targets. There was one name there.

Patrick Fitzgerald.