Sorry for the delay on this one! But it's extra long this time. Yes, Matt really IS the "number three" of Wammy's House. Who knew? oO;
And... for those of you who care to know, "Masen" is actually pronounced "Mah-sen" because it's derived from the apparently common practice on Japanese fansites of calling that lady with glasses and red/brown hair that shows up in page.59 (do you know who I'm talking about? u.u;) "Mama-sensei."
Lalala. I don't own Sherlock Holmes or the movie Clue, or, of course, SoUE or DN. I think I own the titles of the books they were reading... unless those books actually exist, in which case I don't.

It is a sad fact that not all people in life are honest. Even the most charming and friendly person could have a hidden agenda, a phrase which means, "a secret goal, different from he or she proclaims, which he or she will use anything to get."

The poor Baudelaires had run into almost as many hidden agendas as they had guardians. Sir, their guardian at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, seemed to have adopted them with the hidden agenda of gaining more workers. Principal Nero, the principal of Prufrock Preparatory School, had probably taken them in with the hidden agenda of obtaining more people to listen to his horrible violin playing. Esme Gigi Genevieve Squalor, one of their most recent guardians, had adopted them not only with the hidden agenda of being "in," but also for the purpose of getting their fortune for Count Olaf. And of course, the hidden agenda they ran into most frequently was Count Olaf's. Time and time again, he had come after them in disguise, fooled all the adults around them, plotted to steal their fortune, and attempted to murder them.

Unfortunately, the Baudelaires were to be the victims of hidden agendas yet again at the Wammy's House. And during their first class at the orphanage, they found a hint to the nature of one of those agendas.

The teacher, a mild-looking woman by the name of Ms. Masen, started class by handing back tests that the students had apparently taken last class. "The top score on this exam," she announced, holding out a piece of paper, "goes to Near."

The white-haired boy that the Baudelaires had met yesterday came up to get his test. "Impressive as always, Near," Ms. Masen said, and Near returned to his seat. As he went by, the Baudelaires saw Mello crane his neck to peek at Near's score.

"Our second-best score was obtained by Mello," Ms. Masen continued, and the blonde went to fetch his paper. "Well done, as usual," she added as he took it. He glanced at the score and returned primly to his seat.

Next was the third-best score—Matt's—and the fourth, which went to a girl with long black hair, and the fifth, the sixth, all the way down to the lowest score. The Baudelaires were rather taken aback. There was nothing unusual about handing back test scores, of course, but to do it in descending order, like rankings, seemed somewhat unkind, especially to the poor, pudgy boy who earned the lowest grade.

But none of the other orphans seemed to think it unusual, so they said nothing, and Ms. Masen began the class. "We start each class with literature," she explained to the Baudelaires, handing Violet and Klaus each a copy of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Then she addressed the whole class, telling them, "Your assignment for today is to read from "A Scandal in Bohemia" through 'The Man with the Twisted Lip.' When everyone is finished we will have a discussion. Please begin."

Violet and Klaus found it slightly curious that the teacher would assign such a long section for in-class reading—it was nearly a hundred pages, and seemed like it would take a while. Nevertheless, they began to read, Sunny chewing on another biscotti to amuse herself.

After what felt like only ten minutes, Ms. Masen called the class back together. "It looks like most of you are finished."

Klaus and Violet looked at each other in surprise. It had felt like only ten minutes because it had, in fact, been only ten minutes. "How far are you?" Violet whispered to Klaus.

"I just finished the second story, 'The Red-Headed League,'" Klaus replied with a slight frown on his face. But when they looked around the classroom, it seemed that Ms. Masen had spoken the truth. The rest of the students were all finished reading.

With that, the class launched into a detailed discussion of the various tricks and methods Holmes had employed. Ms. Masen then demonstrated the real-life applications of a complicated calculus theorem, and then she went over a sheet of vocabulary words in a language that the Baudelaires didn't recognize. (Mello told them in an undertone that it was Mandarin Chinese.) By the time the class had finished a lengthy science lesson on various methods of DNA fingerprinting and were dismissed for lunch, the Baudelaires' heads were reeling, a phrase which here means that they were so overwhelmed that it felt like their brains were spinning dizzily in their skulls.

"How did you like classes?" Mello asked as they stood in line for their lunch.

"They were overwhelming," Violet answered honestly.

"My brain feels like it's spinning dizzily in my skull," Klaus added.

Mello gave a sympathetic chuckle. "Yeah, a lot of new students feel that way at first. Lunch will cheer you up, though. It's alphabet soup—one of the favorites here."

They received soup and obtained a few carrots for Sunny; then Mello led them to the same table they'd sat at for breakfast. In a minute, Matt joined them. He placed his soup on the table and whipped out the same video game he'd been playing earlier.

After a few bites of soup, which the Baudelaires enjoyed but found nothing particularly special about, Violet decided to ask something that had been bothering her. "Mello, the tests at the beginning of class were returned in the order of highest to lowest scores, right?"

"Yeah," Mello answered unconcernedly.

"Yes, I noticed that too," Klaus said, "and I thought it was rather unusual."

"Is it? That's what we always do here."

Violet frowned. "But that seems like it would create a lot of tension and competition," she protested.

To her surprise, Mello nodded crisply. "Exactly," he said. "It creates lots of competition between us. Competition to get better. Competition to get smarter. And then we try harder, and we do get better and smarter. I suppose it's sort of a hidden agenda of the adults'. I guess it's not hidden very well, though."

"Weird," Sunny commented between bites of carrot.

Seeing that the Baudelaires weren't impressed, Mello offered an example. "Well, for example, Kristian—you're used to being the fastest reader around, aren't you?"

Klaus blinked. "How could you tell?"

"Easy," Mello replied flippantly, a word which here means, "as if it were nothing." "Your expression when you saw that we had all finished long before you—but that's beside my point. You're going to read faster next time, aren't you?"

"Yes," Klaus confessed, for that was exactly what he was planning to do.

"See? You're going to work harder, get better—and no hard feelings, right? The fact is, there's plenty of competition here, but little of it is really serious."

"Tana," Sunny, who had spent class watching the other students, remarked quietly, her eyes focused on Mello. He looked back at her, puzzled, until Violet translated for him.

"She says that that may be true, but you are in a serious competition. And she's right, isn't she? You and Near."

After an immobile second, Mello gave a grudging smile and admitted, "Yeah, it's pretty serious between Near and me."

Matt, still playing his game, snorted at that and promptly received a glare from Mello.

"But I meant what I said," the blonde insisted defensively. "Near's more effort than he's worth." The Baudelaires were still dubious, but Mello shrugged it off and told Matt, "Your soup is getting cold."

"One sec."

As Matt continued to play, Mello, finished with his own soup, took a chocolate bar out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and bit off a piece with a crisp snap. "So what are you three going to do for free rec?" he asked. "I think there's a soccer game arranged, if you want to play."

The siblings exchanged glances, knowing that they were all thinking the same thing. "We're going to check out the library," Klaus told him eagerly.

Mello wrinkled his nose slightly. "You can do that during independent study," he pointed out. "Don't you want to play outside or something?"

"Explore," Sunny answered, meaning, "During independent study time, we'll have to study, but this way we'll be free to explore the library as we like." Klaus explained what she meant, and Mello shrugged.

"Well, do what you want, I suppose," he said, taking another bite of chocolate. "I'll see you later, then. I'm going to go help set up the soccer game." With a wave good-bye, he brought his dishes to the side of the cafeteria and headed outside.

In a moment, Matt switched off his game and finally took a taste of his soup. He made a face. "Ew, it's cold." Then, without taking another spoonful, he stood. "See you guys later," he said, brought the still-full soup bowl to the side of the cafeteria, and left as well.

The Baudelaires stared at each other for a moment. "Weird," Sunny repeated, and then the three finished their lunches, took care of their dishes, and went to the library.

There were already several other orphans milling around, and Near was once again kneeling on the floor. This time he was not playing with blocks; he had thin plastic shapes spread out around him and was taking from them to make a mosaic design.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny exchanged glances. Now that they knew (or thought they knew) about Mello's hidden agenda, they felt it would be impolite to ignore Near as the blonde had instructed, so Violet walked over to him and asked, "Excuse me, Near, but do you know where I could find some books about inventions?"

This time, the boy at least looked up when he was spoken to. He had the same dark-rimmed, bulging eyes as Mello had, but maybe a little wider. With those eyes focused on Violet, he replied dispassionately, "Five shelves down, top row, left side."

"Rocks?" Sunny questioned. Though she couldn't read yet, she enjoyed looking at pictures of hard stones and imagining what it would feel like to bite them.

"Six shelves down, third row down, in the middle."

The Baudelaire sisters looked at Klaus. His taste in books was so wide that he often had trouble deciding what to read. Finally, he looked at Near and said thoughtfully, "Do you have any books that list various abbreviations for things?"

Without expression, Near turned his wide eyes to Klaus and answered, "Nine shelves down, the right side." Then he dropped his gaze back to his mosaic.

The Baudelaires thanked him and then exchanged a glance. They'd thought that Mello had simply been misleading when he said Near was difficult to deal with, but it appeared that there was quite a bit of truth in the statement. The white-haired boy seemed more interested in his design than anything else.

But no matter, they decided silently, and went to find their books. Violet chose a thick book called The One Hundred Greatest Inventions of All Time; Sunny selected a geology book with plentiful pictures; and after a minute of scanning titles, Klaus picked out Abbreviations for Things You Didn't Even Know Existed. They brought their books to a nearby table, made themselves comfortable by sitting down in the soft chairs and, in Violet's case, tying up her hair to focus better on the inventions, and began to read.

Many people believe that one of the most fun things about reading with friends or siblings is being able to talk about what you're reading with them. The Baudelaires were certainly firm believers in this idea and often looked up from their books to share interesting tidbits of information or things that reminded them of shared experiences. For example, when Violet came upon a section devoted to various types of welding torches, she touched Klaus's and Sunny's arms to get their attention.

"Look, welding torches," she said with a hint of sadness in her voice. "Doesn't that remind you of the welding torches we made to try to help the Quagmires?"

Klaus nodded in agreement. "They're much more complicated than the ones we made, though. It was brilliant of you to come up with such a simple design."

"It still didn't do any good," Violet pointed out glumly. "Count Olaf had already taken them away, and all we found at the bottom of the elevator shaft was the empty cage."

The three sighed and returned to their reading, thoughts of their friends weighing heavily on their minds. They knew from personal experience that it was not pleasant, comforting, or safe to be in Count Olaf's clutches, so the Baudelaires spent a lot of time worrying about the Quagmires.

In a few moments, Sunny also called her siblings' attention to her own reading. "Garrld," she said, which probably meant, "Look! It's Aunt Josephine's house."

Sure enough, the picture in Sunny's geology book was an old one of Aunt Josephine's house, still perched on the rocky cliff high above Lake Lachrymose. The caption read, Humans, ever resourceful, build their houses around and on natural rock formations.

"This book must have been written before Hurricane Herman," Klaus commented. "Now that house is at the bottom of Lake Lachrymose."

"Jomo," Sunny murmured sadly, meaning, "And so is poor Aunt Josephine."

Violet shuddered. "I still can't believe Olaf pushed her to the leeches."

To wrench their thoughts away from morbidity, the Baudelaires returned again to their books and threw themselves into their reading, a phrase which here means, "focused as hard as they could on the words, as if they were throwing themselves into a wall rather than enjoying a pleasant pastime."

In a short while, Klaus surprised his sisters by chuckling.

"What is it, Kristian?" Violet asked, looking up from her book.

"Do you remember the movie we saw once, Clue?" Klaus asked. "That one man worked for the United Nations Organization's World Health Organization, remember? Well, the abbreviation for that is U-NO-WHO. I never noticed."

Violet smiled too. "I didn't either. That's clever."

With a nod, Klaus explained, "I thought this book might contain information on VFD, but there isn't a single entry for that group of letters. Not even for 'Very Fancy Doilies.' Fortunately, this book is very interesting in its own right. Did you know that 'RSS,' the name of the computer file format, actually stands for 'Really Simple Syndication'?"

"No," Sunny replied.

"It does," Klaus said. "Doesn't that seem like a strange thing to call it? Anyway, I just thought it was interesting."

The Baudelaires continued to read, every now and then stopping to talk with each other again. They found it very pleasant to have the freedom of partaking in such a large, varied library at their leisure. In fact, they were enjoying themselves so much that they failed to notice when the white-haired boy, Near, slipped past them and out of the library.

-----Later that day

Mello made his way up to the second floor, his arms loaded with books of various sizes. It was independent study time. While the lower-ranked students usually specialized in one or two subjects, Mello tried to learn as much as he could about as many subjects as he could. Some said this put him at a disadvantage, but he just rolled his eyes at that. After all, Near did the same thing.

Mello had just reached his room and was attempting to re-balance the books so his hand was free to open his door when he heard another door open down at the end of the hallway. He looked over curiously—and then his eyes narrowed at once.

Near was coming down from the attic.

The white-haired boy noticed Mello's glare and gazed back impassively for a few moments, then walked past and down the stairs to the library. Mello continued to glare at his withdrawing back; then he muttered a curse and stalked into his own room.