Teen ninja training had kept up until our sophomore year - keeping track of all KND sectors around the world, combat drills, practicing with our Armor, and some new stuff such as disguise training. At school, I finally got into cheer practice where I met a brown-haired 14-year-old girl named Stacey, who was apparently the captain of the team. I also saw her at the hide-out every once in a while. Stacey was intimidating at first. I think it was just her energy. But after a while of practicing with her and a lot of exercise, I got more and more comfortable as part of the cheer squad. And my shape-shifting opened up a lot of fun ideas for our routines - one of my favorites was forming a tower with the others with me being on top in the form of a bonobo! And like back in elementary school, the other students never messed with me again, knowing the consequences, but some just started ignoring me, just like back in grade school.. I simply sucked it up and tried not to let it bother me.

Moving to the year of 2004, Cree and I turned the big 16, and of course, went to each other's parties. But it turned out Cree was happy about.. more than just getting older. You see, that summer, she'd been in town for a week, and out of town for atleast two weeks in a strange pattern, getting more and more gleeful as time went on.. until one night, she greeted the hide out, and in trudged our long lost friend: Chad Dickson. He appeared to be gazing at the floor and breathing heavily, his face wet with tears..

"I-it isn't fair.. I'm gonna miss them s-so much.." he squeezed his eyes shut against the salty sting of tears dripping from his chin. "I know, buddy.. c'mere.." Cree said softly before she Stacey pulled him into a loving hug. Feeling terrible, I, too, ran up and hugged the sobbing, hiccuping 13-year-old as my own tears stained the fabric of his t-shirt. After around five minutes, Chad calmed down, wiped his eyes and took a deep, firm breath in an attempt to be more determined. ".. a-atleast I have you guys again. Thanks for being here, I guess.." he said, his voice hoarse from crying. "Anytime, dear. We're here for you~" Stacey cooed, caressing her boyfriend.

"Alright, attention everyone!" Cree exclaimed as we all turned to face her. "Now, some of you may not have heard about our latest plan to stop the Kids Next Door.." Cree's voice softened a little. "..so to put it briefly, once a certain someone ages out of said organization, me and multiple other teens will occupy a place we call "Chicken Pox Island". See, we'll lure those unsuspecting little brats to a street carnival, while we prepare my pox cannon and then aim and fire the nasty sickness right on top of them! And to make it even better, you'll all get front row seats at the school gymnasium to watch it all go down!" after explaining, Cree gave a soft but sinister giggle. "We've been putting this plan together for almost a year, and now is our time~"

The other teens around me seemed to be either intrigued or sharing the same sinister feelings, but I, however, held a finger to my chin in deep thought: did I really wanna do this? But then I remembered The Steve's words to me when I 1st got here: "accept and keep your memories of the KND, but work for us, and ONLY us." I quickly snapped put of it, and put on a canined grin. Maybe I'd like to try out this whole teen ninja thing..

So a little over a week after that, it was a hectic day - me, Cree and a few other teen ninjas caught sight of the kids on some sort of stake-out, instantly starting a street battle between us and Sector V. We all swarmed around them and shot at the giant 2 by 4 contraption that constantly swung at us. At one point, I saw that some teens were actually knocked unconscious, so I retaliated by shifting into numerous animals to confuse and distract the kids, topping it off by body slamming their machinery in the form of a whale.

Once that ended, Cree gestured me to come with her into the teen ninjas' van. I sat in the back cargo and looked around, until..

"Psst!"

I turned to face Maurice, who was sitting on the other side before my face instantly lit up in joy! "Maurice, is that you??"

"The one and only~" he said before we briefly hugged each other. Suddenly we felt the force of the vehicle taking off into the sky, and that's when I saw none other than Abby clinging onto the rear bumper between the open doors. "Uhm.. who's that?" Maurice asked. "It's no one, sweetie," Cree said as she got up from her seat and made her way towards her sister. I did too, but Cree stopped me. "Settle down, Lily, I got this."

I watched as Cree shot down Abby with pox, the 10-year-old plummeting to the ground.. feeling a wave of deja vu, I then turned to face Cree one more time, who smirked at me. "You are gonna love this, I promise~"

Around a week later, we were all loading the cannon with the chicken pox when we got an unexpected visitor: Abby! Apparently she had reached the island and made her way to the main base. "Uh, Cree? There's a kid in here.." I stammered. "Oh, there is~?" Cree gave a snide chuckle before she pulls a lever, dropping Abby into the heart of the base, smack-dab in front of the cannon.

Two teen football players then proceeded to grab and restrain the girl and Cree unraveled our plot to her: "I invited EVERY kid in town to a street fair, with pony rides and everything else that snot-nosed brats love! All i have to do is enter coordinates to the targeting computer, fire the cannon, and BAM! Every kid in town will be bed-ridden for THREE WEEKS! Finally.. us teenagers can enjoy ourselves without you stupid brats all barging into our rooms and reading our diaries and stuff. Three. Whole. Weeks! Oh, and that includes weekends!" Cree cackled.

"Oh, it's gonna be so cool! No teen is gonna wanna miss it! And that's why I broadcasted a live feed of the strike during the giant pep rally at the high school! How cool is THAT??"

"Cree!" Abby growled. "Y'know ya can't do that!"

"Why not~? And PLEASE don't say it's because I'm chicken!"

"No, because I swore to an old friend that I wouldn't letcha!!" Abby rebutted before Cree pressed a button on the control panel which activated the cannon. She then tossed two explosive marbles in our direction, which disarmed us both of our wrist blasters. The explosion freaked me out big time and sent me into a rage, and shortly the situation broke out into a round of hand-to-hand combat. Of course, Abby outsmarted both of us, then made her way to the control panel. She pulled out three explosive marbles and said, "This ends TODAY!! When I blow this cannon sky high, I'm takin' you both in so you can finally be decommissioned!!" My heart was pounding at what she just said, until Maurice grabbed her wrist and swiftly disarmed her.

"Don't do that," he said to Abby in a low voice. I breathed a sigh of relief as Cree went on to boast that Maurice was now one of us, and that "in fact, I wanted to wait until he was a teen to use my cannon~"

This ultimately caused Abby to fall to her knees and forfeit. "I give up. What's the point? My sister's a teen, the greatest Kid Next Door I ever knew is a teen, and I'll be a teen soon enough. I mean, just look at me. I'm practically a teen now! I can't keep fighting it. I just.. I give up." the child sighed in a defeated tone. I frowned a little, feeling a little sympathy for the little scamp, knowing what growing older is like and the pain that comes with it..

Hearing this, Cree was so happy, her eyes welled up with tears, "Oh, Abby, you have no idea how long I've waited for you to say that! Come give your big sister a hug!" Cree ran and hugged her little sister as I looked on, unsure of what to do, when we instantly heard multiple explosions - the chicken coop hills were detonating!

"Look out! The Kids Next Door are here!" that was the last thing we heard before we fell off the walk-way and into the chickens below, me screaming for help and Cree angrily crying out Abby's name.. we were then sucked into the cannon and got fired right over the children at the street fair and instead hitting everybody in the gym, leaving them, AND US, horribly infected with the illness..

And so for three weeks, Cree and I stayed home, mostly taking medicine and sleeping on and off. But one afternoon I decided to message her in a private chat room on my laptop, as I decided to tell her about my feelings on the recent events.

"Hey there, Cree. There's something I need to get off my chest. I've been thinking of the whole chicken pox situation and, well.. honestly, the whole thing kinda stressed me out.. mostly cuz I didn't know what to do at the time, there was just one event after the other, and it ended with everyone getting hurt and sick, and that just made me feel sad.. it's nothing against you or the teens or anyone else, really, I just couldn't catch a break.."

I waited until the check mark turned blue, indicating Cree had read my text and started typing..

"Wait, really? Oh my gosh, Delilah, I'm SO sorry! If I'd have known, I wouldn't have asked you to tag along.." I could sense the immense guilt in her words, instantly feeling bad as I quickly typed another text:

"Hey hey, it's alright there. I went along with it because I didn't want you to feel like I didn't care about you or your plans, but I always thought it'd be better to try to get the kids and teenagers back in each other's good graces. That's actually what I wished to say before it was too late. Oh, heck.. I'm so sorry I didn't say anything sooner.. I just don't want everything to get permanently ruined one day.."

"Aaaww! I'd hug you, but we're both sick right now, LOL! I'm so sorry, Dilly-Bean. I didn't mean to make you feel like that. Tell you what. Once we're all feeling better, I'm gonna make it up to you. Okay? Oh and Maurice says hello and get well soon-"

"Same to you! Peace out-" I giggled weakly as I sent that last text before opening one of my favorite PopCap games titled, "Feeding Frenzy" and playing around until finally falling back asleep.