Here's chapter four, picking up about an hour after chapter three ended. As said before all feedback is welcome, both on the story, the language and the layout. Special thanks to you, my anonymous reviewer, wherever you are

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Chapter 4

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"Cheer up, guys", Barry said, not for the first time that afternoon.

The mood was glum in the O'Reilly gang's lair, also known as the shed in the back of Eggy's parent's rather overgrown garden. It was a cozy, medium-sized, sparingly red-painted shed, with room for 3 chairs, a table, an old mattress, a videogame poster, a pile of Yipper comics, a workbench – and a number of hiding places for soda, disguises, a printing press for fake collectible cards and various other tools for larceny.

Even the frothing bottles of soda on the table could raise the spirit of the gang. Kyle was muttering in a choked voice to no one in particular about "..need a cake …", "what are we going to do" and " …l promised Ysande…" and Egbert was staring at his soda with a blank expression and had not uttered a single word, since the loss of the cake. So it was left to Barry to point out the – admittedly meager – silver lining of the situation.

"So, we lost that cake, and that blows, but we still have the entire afternoon to find another. Here's a thought: Mrs. Van Dusen is done baking at three. Let's put on the Skunky Scout uniforms and do the classic one, Kyle and me at the front door and Eggy through the kitchen window. Piece of cake"

That at least caught Kyle's attention: "But…but that's an apple pie, not a real cake"

"Yes, but it's GOOD, Kyle. That's all that matters. Ysande won't mind as long as it's GOOD, will she ?"

"Well…I guess not.." Kyle said slowly.

"Right, let's get to work then. You and I distract the Van Dusen broad, and Eggy …"

Barry broke off. Eggy was gone. His chair was empty and his soda was standing untouched on the table.

Barry and Kyle looked out of the window, just in time to see Eggy jump on his bike and disappear around the corner of the house.

"Wh-where is he going?" Kyle asked in a wobbly voice.

"I don't know," Barry said, puzzled. It was not like Eggy to miss an opportunity for cake or pie. "Oh, well, never mind him, we only need to be two to get that pie."

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Mrs Van Dusen's Saturdays went after a firm schedule. She got up at eight and had breakfast with Mr. Van Dusen, and sent him off for his Saturday golf at nine. Then she drove downtown for shopping and had coffee at the mall. She was home at 12.30 and had lunch, and then started baking one of her famous apple pies. That took 45 minutes all in all, then 30 minutes in the oven, and 30 minutes cooling in front of the open kitchen window.

But this Saturday, the doorbell rang, just as she had placed the hot pie on the kitchen table. Mrs. Van Dusen was puzzled – her friends were never too early, that would be rude. She went from the kitchen, through the living room and out into the hallway and opened the front door. Outside stood a tall, brown-haired boy in a worn Skunky Scout uniform.

"Good day, ma'am", the boy said with a winning smile. "I come from the Skunky Scouts, and we are selling cookies to finance our jamboree next month. "

"I don't see any cookies", Mrs. Van Dusen observed.

"Well spotted, ma'am. That is our new modern approach to cookie selling – you won't find it with any other scouts. Here," the boy pulled out a stack of papers from his breast pocket, "is a list of our available cookies, you just mark your order and pay and two days later your cookies are delivered. Skunky Scout honor. Now, we have a new and improved selection …"

Kyle slowly and laboriously eased his upper body through Mrs. Van Dusen's kitchen window . Although he knew he had plenty of time – Barry was a 10th level motor-mouth, and a black belt blatherer – his heart was racing and his mouth was dry. This breaking and entering stuff was normally Eggy's job, Kyle neither had the nerves nor the build for this kind of thing.

The pie was standing on the kichen table in fromt of him, looking monstrously delicious. The entire kitchen smelled mouth-waterin gly good. Kyle rose up on tiptoes and stretched his arms forward. Almost there. He leaned forward, squeezing more of his bulk through the narrow opening, cursing the lack of foresight that had made him keep is duster on. He grabbed the pie with both hands. Made it. With a small sigh he started to move backwards. And that was when he realized that he was stuck. Some part of his coat was lodged tight somewhere around the window frame. Fighting a rising panic, he slowly let go of the pie with his right hand, reached back and started fumbling around to try and pry his coat loose.

Mrs. Van Dusen's old cat, Mittens, slunk glumly under her Mommy's meticulously cut hedges and dabbed towards her back door. She had been prowling the gardens of the neighborhood since lunchtime, with the aim to practice the traditional catly art of capturing and tormenting small, cuddly animals, but so far without success. Mittens' eyesight had, regrettably, deteriorated quite a bit lately. In her latest attempt to pounce, she had been so close, and then she had misjudged the leap and soared straight past the bird and into a pond, reducing her to her current soggy state. How the bird had laughed.

The day couldn't possibly get any worse, she thought, glumly. But then she saw something that immediately made her forget her disastrous hunting trip. There up by the kitchen window, a large pink bird was flapping frantically around, next to some dark piece of cloth, obviously stuck. Mittens'ancient hunting instincts took over, she sprinted across the last few yards of lawn and leaped towards the bird, claws first.

"Meeoow…"

"AAAAARRRGGGH!" Kyle gave a tremendous jolt at the sudden intense pain in his hand. The pie flew through the air…

"NOOOOO"

Crash!

"What was that?" said Mrs Van Dusen.

"What? Oh, probably nothing," the scout said. "So, how many cakes can I write you down for?"

But Mrs. Van Dusen was already on her way back through her living room, calling "Is anybody out there?". She entered her kitchen and froze at the horrible sight that greeted her.

Mittens was sitting dazed on the kitchen floor, trying to understand what had happened. She remembered sinking her claws into the bird, then there had been a scream and a lot of frantic movement and suddenly the bird had turned into a large red-faced boy with a panicked expression. Then there had been the sound of her Mommy's voice from far away and the boy had frantically picked her up and hurled her through the open window, where she had tumbled across the kitchen table, fallen down on the floor and landed in something hot, soft and sticky – not on her feet, to add insult to now her Mommy was standing in front of her, sounding angry.

"Mittens! You BAD CAT!"

Mittens still didn't know what had happened, but she knew that she had been wrong a minute ago when she thought that her day could not get any worse.

xxxxx

"Now", Barry said as he poured the bright yellow liquid on a piece of medical cotton. "This might sting a bit."

Among the utilities hidden in The O'Reilly gang's lair was a medical kit. The gang had quickly learned that scrapes and scars and boo-boos gained in the course of larceny tended to lead to awkward questions with less than convenient answers, so to keep fibbing to a minimum, they preferred to treat each other in the privacy of their lair. And right now, Kyle's cat-mangled right hand was on the table.

Kyle didn't wince as Barry disinfected the scratches Mittens had left on his right hand. But then again, he already looked so pained, that the additional burning from the iodine probably didn't register.

"It was a clever move, throwing the cat through the window", Barry said. When that piece of praise did not seem to cheer Kyle up, Barry decided that there was no sugar coating this one.

"Look, maybe you're just going to have to do a birthday party without a cake? "

Now Kyle winched.

"Come on, can't you just say to Ysande that we did our best, and hand her a soda?"

"You don't know anything about girlfriends, Barry," Kyle whined. "I have already promised Ysande a cake. If I don't get her a cake now, then she becomes" he lowered his voice to a whisper, "…frustrated."

"Holy cow," Barry muttered. He did not know what "frustrated" meant, but the terror in Kyle's voice made the small hairs on the back stand on end. In his mind he swore an oath to never have a girlfriend, ever. Or, if he couldn't avoid it at least a more reasonable one than Ysande. "So, what do we do, then?"

"I'll tell you what we'll do!"

Barry and Kyle's heads snapped around. Egbert was back! He was standing in the door, cheeks flushed after his bike ride, a fresh match in his mouth, eyes shining with steely determination.

"Holy cow – Eggy," Barry said, "Where have you been?"

"Out asking around and finding out what's going on" Egbert said as he rushed into the shed and threw his bag on the table. "The Kids Next Door gets really talkative, when things are going their way. Right now Harvey and his sector are guarding the Delightful Children's cake in their tree house, until it can be taken to the Moon Base and shared tomorrow. But that won't happen, 'cause we're going to take it back tonight!"

"No! No way!" Kyle exclaimed.

"What did you say!?"

"I … I won't do it, Eggy," Kyle's voice went falsetto, "A Kids Next Door tree house…. It's too dangerous! It was bad enough with the ice cream men. I won't! You can't make me do it!"

"Yeah, Eggy, I have to be with Kyle on this one," Barry said, even he a tad nervous, "Can't we just get an ordinary cake somewhere else?"

"CAKE!?" Egbert banged both his fists on the table and stared at them with eyes that looked like the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. "This is not about some cruddy cake anymore! This is about REVENGE! REVENGE and HONOR and SELF-RESPECT ! That dirty rat Harvey McKenzie thinks that we're just some gnats that he can use and throw away like a piece of gum wrapper – that he can step on us with his stupid 2x4 shoes and take our cake and get away with it, because he is one of the oh-so-heroic Kids Next Door and Egbert O'Reilly is a cheap Elementary school hustler. But I will show him! WE will show him! Oh, yeah! We're gonna snatch that cake from RIGHT UNDER HIS BIG BUCK TEETH! TONIGHT! Unless YOU want to tell Ysande that there won't be a cake at the birthday party because YOU are a couple of Coward McPants-wetters!"

The thought of having to tell Ysande that he could not get any cake and the following frustration clearly scared Kyle even more than anything the Kids Next Door could possibly do to him. "All right, all right, I'll do it," he whined.

"Yeah, Eggy – you can count on us, you know that", Barry said in a reassuring voice.

"Good! Now come and have a look at this."

Egbert pulled a paper roll from his backpack, and rolled it out on the table.

"This is a map of Sector W's treehouse. The cake is kept here," he placed his finger on a large room in the corner, "in the control room, in a locked cage, equipped with a 2x4 alarm system with a direct line to all the other sectors in the area. Harvey, Sonya and Lee will be staying in the room guarding the cake all night. The control room is completely locked down, with steel shutters for all the windows. The only access is through the main corridor - here, " he traced his finger along the corridor, "which is protected by a Sooper 2x4 Alarm System and Automated defense mechanism, that's triggered if a hamster as much as sneezes in the hallway. It's completely impossible to get in – but I've got a plan! We'll need one issue of "Ultimate Blood-freezing Horror Magazine", a mobile vending stand, a broken light bulb, two scary Halloween masks, a can of whipped cream, a crowbar and thirty feet of rope. Let's go to work."