Special thanks to BTRlover1122, foodluver, amichele, Nonya Bidness (clever name, by the way ;) ), ChaseBreeAdamLeo, and monkeygirl77 for the reviews last chapter! And you guys are all correct. Leo called himself the Enforcer, which Marcus seemed to challenge when he scoffed.

Thanks to all who favorited and alerted, too! :D

Here's the next chronicle!

Episode Tag to: Spy Fly

Chronicle 002

Chapter: Recon

Password: ************

Date: 04.06.13

Time: 9:51 PM

I haven't been too sure whether I like having siblings or not lately. On the up side, there are more people I can ask favors from, more people I could play video games with, and there are more people to keep me company besides the voice in my head (which, I think, is really just Eddy who's been too intent on messing with me these past few days). On the down side, there are more people who get upset with me when I accidentally break their stuff, more people I have to share things with, and there are far too many people who expect me to be as mature as an eighteen year-old.

See my problem here?

When it was just me and my mom, things were a little simpler. She would go to work, I'd go to school, I'd come home. At around five in the afternoon, she'd be home. She would either cook dinner for us or we'd go out to eat. We'd go to sleep, and the cycle repeats again. There were not a lot of rules I had to follow. 'Do your homework before playing,' 'do your chores before I get back,' and 'lights off at 9:30' were the three major rules that Mom repeated to me so many times that I know them by heart.

After Big D and Mom got serious when they were dating up to the time he proposed to her, things were still the same. Except that she came home two hours later than usual, and Big D would always be with us when we went out to go somewhere.

I could tell they were worried that I wouldn't be okay with their relationship. But Big D was nice, and he really respected my mom and he loved her. So I gave him my approval.

Knowing that he's a billionaire scientist didn't hurt either.

Last year, when they got married and I discovered that not only do I have a new stepdad but also three older bionic siblings, the schedule became a little complicated—but in a good way! I get to hang out in the lab when I'm bored, watch trainings. Sometimes, I'm even able to go to missions…if I find a good way to sneak into their carriage or to get there myself.

The rules piled up, and that's what's bad. Besides the renewed house rules that Mom drafted, Big D had given me a two-inch binder containing the do's and don'ts around the lab.

I haven't really read it. I thought trial and error may be the best way to go. Plus, thanks to that, Pascal can now see the world outside since his cage is inches higher.

Besides that, I'm doing pretty good with the whole adjustment.

Come to think about it, maybe I do like having siblings. It's cool that I have brothers now. Adam's always up for a game. Basketball, football, ping pong—you name it. One time we even played floor hockey inside the house with Big D's phone as a puck and brooms as sticks.

Adam accidentally knocked Chase out as he was stepping off the elevator. The guy ended up with a dislocated shoulder, and Big D's phone was smashed into crumbs. They asked us what happened, and we told them that we were sweeping the floors when we stepped on the phone (Adam actually did, when he was trying to get Chase to wake up).

Eddie ratted us out, and we both ended up doing all the house chores for a month.

Chase is great when it comes to video games. The guy's competitive, which pushes me to step it up. We even have an ongoing match in Fruit Ninja to see which of us can get the highest score by the end of this week.

I can't make heads or tails with Bree. She's a good friend when it comes down to it. She's a lousy sister. All she seems to want to do is to teach me a lesson, like how I shouldn't take advantage of other people or how I should be conscious with how I act.

She's just like Mom, always trying to be reasonable.

Her latest lecture had cost me a great summer and then some. She wouldn't let me cheat off her! That Physics test was a huge deal for me, and I needed her help. She wouldn't even lend me a hand.

But I guess through all the frustration and Principal Perry taking the spy flies and the flies getting out and attacking people, she was able to get her point across. I was unfocused and irresponsible, so I had to face the consequences.

Ugh. I hate it when she makes sense.

I had to confess to Principal Perry. Then, later on that day, she called my mother about the summer school that I'd have to attend. She and Big D came up with a punishment, and it's pending at the moment. Maybe they got creative with it because they didn't want me to start locking up myself in my room again, and Mom didn't want me to 'form a friendship with the lunatic on the wall.'

To be fair, Bree has her moments when she falls through. Like earlier. I was babysitting two of Adam's kids, Change Your Own Diaper and Don't Be a Baby. I renamed the first one Max because his volume was cranked that high, and I renamed the second Ferdinand, because it has a nice ring to it. He promised to pay me five bucks if I watch them, and I wasn't going to say no to that.

We stayed at the living room after dinner. Max was asleep on the couch—since I turned him off. Ferdinand was sitting on my lap, watching me finish my Physics extra credit work. It was a quiet evening around the house. Big D took Mom to a banquet held by his company to welcome some investors, and they'd be gone until midnight tonight. Adam and Chase were at the game room, involved in a heated foosball match.

Bree, I thought, was in the lab. Then she startled me by asking, "Where's everyone?"

I had let her know she scared me, too. "Parents at a fancy company dinner, brothers in the game room," I said. "Uncle Leo in the living room."

She grinned, but only slightly. "You're stuck babysitting Adam's babies?" she had asked.

"Yeah. I got two of them. He owes me five bucks."

"You got ripped off. I'm taking care of just one, and he's paying me the same amount."

"What? Who did he give to you?"

"What Are You Staring At."

"You. We are talking."

"No, Leo. That's the baby's name."

Bree was laughing because I misunderstood her, but it wasn't in a way that seems like she's making fun of me. We talked more about Adam's unfairness. Then she asked about Max, why he was quiet all of a sudden. I told her why, and she said she should have thought of that earlier when her 'niece' was howling like a madman.

I couldn't remember exactly how we finished that part of the conversation and moved on to the consequences of cheating off her test. I zoned out when she mentioned Ethan, but we won't tell her that.

"I heard you got sentenced. How bad is it?" Bree asked.

"Well, right now you're looking at the Davenport's new gardener. Lasts all spring." Then I gave her a look.

"Oh. So you've just put the kids across the street out of business."

"Seems like it."

None of us said anything for a while.

Although, I wasn't expecting Bree to feel bad because of us not talking. Case in point, her next question: "You don't think I hate you, do you, Leo?"

"No," I told her. "Where'd you get that from?"

"Eddy. He said you were going on and on about it yesterday."

"Uh, not that I remember. I didn't say that."

"Oh." She sat beside me. "I don't even know why I listened to him."

I nodded. She really shouldn't.

"You know you can talk to me if something's bothering you, right?" she asked.

That was when I started getting nervous, and I had to turn on Leo's stealth mode—conversation version. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know. It just seems like you're walking on eggshells when you're with us. I mean, you did come out of your room, but it seems like you're interacting with anything but us."

"I've been coming to the lab!"

"Yeah, but to play with the other inventions. The spy fly, the holo-pets. It's like you don't want to be with us anymore. Is it because you don't want us in your family?"

"That's a long shot, Bree. That's not true."

It's true. It isn't. Of course I couldn't tell her the reason: I don't want to be too attached to them. Read chapter one for a full detail why. That will explain a lot.

I also figured that I can protect them better if I'm not too close to them. You know? I'd rather like a spy fly or one of the holographic pets too much, see them break down and know that they can be replaced than like my siblings too much and be so scared to lose them because they couldn't ever be replaced.

That makes a lot of sense, right?

But to keep her from drawing that out of me, I asked Bree instead why she threw that question on the table. Didn't they want me in their family?

"Well…you did have the tendency to destroy things a lot when you first met us," she said.

"Wow."

"I'm only being honest! Plus, like I said, that was back then. I like having you and Tasha with us. It's more complete." She smiled. She nudged me before asking, "But you're too emotional lately. What's up with that?"

I gave her the same answer as I gave Big D. "You wouldn't understand. And even if I told you, you would just ignore me."

"Try me. You don't know."

"Oh, but I do."

"Okay. Fine. I won't force you. But I wish you'd know that as your sister, I'm not just good at calling you out or lecturing you about invading other people's privacy. I'm also here to protect you. I'd do anything I can do for you, like how I would for Adam and Chase. Maybe even more."

"Because I don't have any abilities like the three of you?"

"Because you're the brother I feel the closest too. Maybe even literally sometimes because you follow me around school—which you should consider to stop doing. Plus, don't you think you're selling yourself short?"

"Please. I'm awesome. I know that. But I also know the facts here."

"You saved us plenty of times in the past. You didn't have any abilities. It didn't stop you."

"Are you here to cheer me up?"

"Maybe. Did it work?"

I thought about it, and it did. I told her that.

She did something she doesn't do often. She hugged me tightly, but only for a second. "No one's to hear about this," she told me. Before I can think of how to react, she was already up, said her goodnight, and then left.

So that was Bree's redeeming moment. It made me glad that she's my sister, even if it may be short lived. I had to do some arm twisting with Eddy for the video surveillance so I can record everything in detail. He's not too happy that he was mentioned, but since he owes me for rebooting him when Big D shut him down this morning, he couldn't say no that easily.

I learned two interesting laws from my Physics class. Newton's action-reaction law states that interactions result from forces between two objects, not just one. Like if Chase was to pitch a baseball towards Adam, and Adam hits it with the bat. The force applied on the bat (Force A) interacts with the force applied to the baseball (Force B) which causes Force B to move to the opposite direction.

Or like when I needed Bree's help to put the flies back into the hive but not want to tell Principal Perry what I did (Force A), and then she told me that she'd only do that if I admitted the truth (Force B), I had to change my mind. Circumstances exerting pressure added to the equation, so I had to cave in.

The second law I learned is the Law of Inertia, which states that a body in motion tends to stay in motion until an outside force acts against it. Like if my mom is walking down the hallway with a basketful of laundry. She would keep going until she trips over one of Big D's automatic vacuum on a test run. She would have to stop, dart daggers and the poor autovac, and you can only guess who she'd be yelling at next.

Or like me. I'm getting to the point that I've had enough of Eyebrows' interference with me and my family. Once this baby's in motion, I'm going to stay in motion!

And once I get a plan together, even he wouldn't be able to stop me.

Signed,

Leo Francis Dooley

End of Chapter Recon

Re-Enter Password: ************

Date: 04.06.13

Time: 11:35 PM

In Spy Fly, what did Leo say was the effect of being stung by a spy fly on attack mode, and for how long?

Answers are optional, as always! Reviews will be very much appreciated! ^_^