Penny watched Jordan go helplessly. She tried her best. He was leaving anyway. How was she supposed to respond? He had it stuck in his head that nothing could ever be different for him. And...maybe he was right. If he really did look exactly like Archer, then every agent that had seen Archer before he vanished would always see Archer in him, even if they didn't want to. She was immune to the effect, since Archer wasn't even someone she knew existed until days before, but most of the other agents weren't. How wasshe supposed to help?

Maybe she really was useless, like Jordan had implied. She had barely done anything for the team since they were put together, and all her efforts to try and bring everyone closer together just seemed to be pushing everyone apart. They would probably do better without her.

But...would she do better without them? If she was alone... Penny couldn't shake a horrific feeling that if she was completely useless in the team, then she'd be completely useless as an independent agent. There was no point in asking Major Monogram to replace her with someone else, because even if it helped the team do better, she'd still be just as much of a burden to herself.

Penny inhaled shakily, feeling tears well in her eyes as the realization hit. She hugged herself tightly and squeezed her eyes shut, forcing back the tears. No, she couldn't afford to dwell on those thoughts. Even if it was all true, pity parties never got anybody anywhere. She just...just had to keep trying. Eventually she'd pull the team together, right? Then she'll have contributed something to them!

There was no point in standing outside; Jordan clearly wasn't coming back any time soon. She had to check on her brother and see what the rest of the team wanted to do without their leader there.

But once Penny made it back to the gym, Perry wasn't there. Maxwell was- he must have arrived while she was gone- but there was a noticeable lack of her older brother.

Astrid noticed Penny first. "So. I assume Jordan wouldn't listen to reason?"

Penny shrugged helplessly. "I don't know, he seemed pretty upset. He's not coming back though, I don't think. Where's Perry?"

"He decided to leave early, since Jordan did too," Astrid said. "I think he felt a bit drained after his story." She paused. "How are you feeling after learning that?"

Penny sighed, trying to ignore the fact that she hadn't been there for her brother when he probably needed her. "I'm just happy to finally know what happened, honestly. It was a bit difficult to hear, but Archer's a total stranger to me and...well... I barely knew my parents either." She frowned, a thought hitting her. "But Perry didn't even mention Dennis in his story. Why would he be involved? I mean, what reason would he have to lock their information on the system?"

"Hm." Astrid paused thoughtfully, tilting her head. "That's a good point. I'm not sure, I hadn't thought about that. You don't think Perry left something out, do you?"

Penny shook her head. "No. He said he'd be honest, and if there's one thing Perry doesn't do, it's lie."

Astrid snorted. "You're right. Actually, he tends to be a bit too truthful. He probably wouldn't have forgotten either, since the whole situation's definitely burned into his memory."

"Maybe Dennis was lying? He played into our suspicions and pretended that he did it when he actually didn't? He knew he wouldn't be there, so he wouldn't get caught for the lie."

"It's possible," Astrid admitted. "But it boils down to the same question: why? What would he have to gain?"

"I..." Penny sighed. "I don't know. Maybe we could talk to an agent from his generation? They would probably be able to provide better motives than we could."

"I guess. But that shouldn't be our main focus." Astrid rested her paws against her hips and stared out the gym doors into the hallway. "We should be trying to figure out a plan to take down DANGER now that we've located them, but two of our team members are missing and one of them's our own leader."

"Well..." Penny cocked her head thoughtfully. "Maybe we could work out some steps, just the three of us? We shouldn't be useless without Jordan, right?" If they could make some progress on their own, maybe it would cheer Jordan up. And, as much as Penny loved her brother, Perry did have a tendency to make cooperation more difficult; they might make more progress without him there.

"I'm not very familiar with how OWCA's team system works since we're one of the few teams it's had over the years," Astrid admitted. "So I'm not sure if Jordan would have complete veto power over all of our decisions or not. But I guess it's worth a shot."

"Great!" Penny clapped her paws together. "Let's try that, then."

So the two approached Maxwell, who was sitting on the floor, typing something into his phone. Penny plopped down next to him, while Astrid sat more gracefully across from both of them.

This must have caught Maxwell's attention. He looked up and noticed his teammates around him. "Is something up?'

"Penny and I were just talking, and we decided to try and work without Jordan or Perry here," Astrid explained. "With the states they've both been in recently, we're never going to make any more progress with DANGER unless we try and work without them."

Maxwell nodded slowly, setting his phone on the ground. "Alright. You think it's okay without Jordan?"

Astrid sighed. "Well, if he's not okay with us trying to do our jobs when he's not willing to, then quite frankly I don't think he has a right to be upset with us. I'll take it up with Major Monogram if I need to."

"And I guess it's okay if Perry misses a meeting today, since I was hoping to stop by his place after and catch him up on what he missed," the olive green platypus mused, staring at the wall behind Astrid.

He said something else, but Penny missed it because she was so caught up in his previous sentence. He was...going to stop by Perry's house? Today? "I...don't think my brother would like to be visited without any warning."

Maxwell shook his head. "No, I mentioned it before he left, and he seemed cool with it."

"Oh." Penny frowned. Well, that stung. Perry rarely was okay with Penny visiting him, it seemed. He didn't have much time at home because of OWCA and said that he usually preferred to spend time with his host family. She had probably only visited him a few times ever since he started living there, and one of those times was the week before when Perry had threatened to quit.

Astrid cleared her throat, and Penny forced her attention to the white platypus sitting across from her. "Now, unfortunately, DANGER has remained rather elusive. We don't have much information about them except that Dennis and Rodrigo are both members. We have their current location as well, but that's it. We don't even know how many members DANGER has total, or how many of them are high-level threats."

And there's only five of us. Astrid didn't say it, but Penny could tell she was thinking it. "We...can call in other agents for backup, right?"

"We might have to," Astrid admitted with a small sigh. "But I don't want to have backup ready if DANGER is a team that just the five of us can take down. What I think we need to do next is get a better understanding of what other members DANGER has in its ranks. I'm just not sure how to do that."

Penny frowned, staring thoughtfully at the ground. That was a real issue. "Would you be able to find any more information online about DANGER? Getting into their system or something, like you did with the security cameras?"

Astrid shook her head. "No, I already ruled that out. The security cameras were on a completely separate channel from any other data; I just had to unblock some signals. I don't have anywhere near enough knowledge to try and hack onto a database, if they even have a database at all. It's possible that they're avoiding technology as much as possible just to avoid us."

"Instead of worrying about what we don't know, let's think about what we do." Penny whirled to her right and saw Maxwell glancing between the two of them. She had almost forgotten he was there. "We know that Rodrigo and Dennis are part of DANGER, and we know that they are high-level threats. Maybe we could infiltrate DANGER again, just the five of us."

Astrid opened her mouth, clearly to protest, but Maxwell kept talking. "But infiltrate it with our goal being taking down Rodrigo and Dennis. Catching them, incapacitating them, and keeping them out of DANGER's way. Then DANGER will either fall apart or be easier to take down."

That was genius! It kept their task in healthy bite-sized chunks, something they desperately needed. Penny glanced over at Astrid. The white platypus shut her bill for a moment, processing what their teammate was saying. After a moment, she nodded. "That actually makes a lot of sense. You should speak up more often, Maxwell."

He shrugged.

What felt like several minutes passed as the two girls waited for him to say something else, but he never did. Astrid sighed. "Anyway, you'll update Perry later? We should run this by him and Jordan first before planning it in any more detail."

"Sure thing." He nodded. "Then are we done for the day?"

"I..." Penny hesitated, wracking her brain for anything else they might be forgetting. "I guess."

Astrid snorted. "We really do get a load more done way faster without the two troublemakers constantly snapping at each other."

Penny frowned. She was overwhelmed with a desire to defend her brother in that moment, but... Astrid was right. It was easier to be productive without Perry especially, since Jordan only snapped at Perry, not the whole group. She glanced over at Maxwell, but he was staring at the floor, a similar conflicted expression on his own face. Were the same thoughts running through his head, too?

She paused as a thought hit her. Wait. Perry wasn't there. As much as she loved her brother, it was difficult to encourage cooperation in their team when he was constantly throwing a wrench into it. But maybe this was her chance to start helping the team get along better!

Penny glanced around at her two teammates before opening her bill to speak. "So... what's everyone heading home to?"

"Mabel and Opal." Astrid rested her paws on the ground behind her, leaning her weight on them as she turned her gaze up to the ceiling. "Mabel doesn't actually have class on Mondays, and Opal works from home as a website tester."

"You..." Penny hesitated. "You said Mabel's eighteen, right?"

Astrid smiled. "Almost eighteen. Her birthday's in September. September 7th."

An unexpected soft chuckle pulled Penny's attention to her less talkative teammate, who, to her surprise, was actually saying something again. "Angie and Andie's birthday is October 7th."

"Huh." Astrid's smile actually grew into a grin. "Small world, I guess. And you said they're ten?"

Maxwell nodded. "Yeah."

"So..." Penny pulled her knees up to her chest and turned her full attention to Maxwell. "Then you're heading home to two hyperactive ten year-old girls?'

He shook his head, a small smile playing at his bill. "No, they do have school. I'll...actually be returning to an empty house. Esther works a 9-5, although she's been doing a lot of overtime recently. And Henry actually just works for a temp agency; he's been struggling to find a good paying full-time job."

"Oh." Penny cocked her head curiously. "And what job does Esther have?"

"It must pay pretty well for Henry not having a great job," Astrid added. "It would explain her overtime."

"I..." Maxwell paused, staring at the ground. "To be honest, I'm not sure. She doesn't really talk about it. She's always saying she has these meetings to attend, though, and that they take up most of her schedule. So I think it's something in business- maybe marketing." He cleared his throat, turning his gaze up and over to Penny. "What about you?"

Penny bit the inside of her bill. "Oh, I just stay here in the dorms. I-I don't have a host family." She smiled weakly, her gaze falling to the floor. "Perry's all I got."

"O-Oh, that's right. I'm sorry." Penny glanced up to see Maxwell's gaze, sympathetic and embarrassed, shifting away from her. "It wasn't my place to ask."

"N-No!" Penny shook her head vehemently. No, no, no, she didn't want him to clam up again, then she'd be back to square one! He had actually opened up for once! "It's fine, really. I'm a...bit of an odd case." She sighed. "I might as well tell you guys the truth, I guess. You already know half of it anyway." Besides, Perry just opened up about something way worse than her little sob story.

She risked looking up from the floor again, this time seeing both of her teammates watching her with curiosity. Penny inhaled deeply. "So...you guys know that I graduated a year later than I should have, and you know that I don't... I stay here because I don't have a host family. Like I said, you know half of the story already.

"But," she continued, forcing herself not to clam up, "you don't know why. The truth isn't because I just didn't want to deal with it, like some agents before me, it's that... No one ever wanted me."

Penny closed her eyes. "I saw how happy Perry was with the Flynn-Fletchers, so I desperately wanted a host family my whole life. So I was put up for adoption in OWCA's system as soon as I turned six months old, just like Perry. And I waited."

She sighed. "And waited. Then a month had passed. That was about when Perry was adopted- after a month- but he was adopted quickly for an agent, so I held out hope. I waited some more. Then... Then our parents died when I was barely old enough to remember them, so he was all I had. If I got a host family, that wouldn't be the case anymore. So I waited even more. More time passed. Soon Perry was graduating and becoming an agent. I... I kept waiting. I just knew, eventually, the perfect family for me would walk in and fall in love with me.

"More time passed. Suddenly I had my first birthday. I had..." She inhaled. "I had been hoping to celebrate it with my family, but I didn't have one yet. So I just waited some more. And kept waiting. I waited another...another eight months to be adopted. Still... Still no one chose me."

Penny sighed again. "And that was when I gave up, eleven months and two and a half weeks after I was first put up for adoption. Just a complete waste of time. I moved into OWCA's dorms and officially began my training."

"And that's why your graduation was delayed," another voice said from behind her.

Penny whirled around to see Jordan standing awkwardly behind the trio, his arms crossed. "J-Jordan! You're back? I- we thought you were taking the day off!"

"I..." Jordan cleared his throat, staring at the ground. "I took a walk, cleared my head. I felt bad and wanted...to come apologize." He looked up and glanced around. "Where's Perry?"

"We let him off the hook for the day." Astrid stood up, crossing her arms. "The whole debacle from earlier threw him off his game."

"Oh. Oh, right. Okay." Jordan blinked a couple of times before nodding. "Y-Yeah, that makes sense."

Penny frowned. "You... You can go home too, if you want. Don't force yourself if you don't want to, we're doing alright without you." She almost flinched as she heard the last words come out of her mouth. Was that too harsh? She hadn't meant to be harsh...

He didn't seem to care, if he even noticed at all. "No, I want to be here. Sorry." He shook his head, as if to clear it. "So what did I miss?"

"That depends." Penny turned to see Astrid speaking to her right. "When did you come back in? None of us noticed you."

"I came back in just in time to...hear Penny's story."

Penny bit the inside of her bill. Well, that was awkward. Hopefully he wouldn't think she was trying to gain their sympathy or let them go easy on her with a pity party. She had just told them so Maxwell wouldn't clam up again.

Wait, Maxwell! Penny glanced to her left to see Maxwell sitting there. He was watching everything, but stayed completely silent. Well, maybe her story hadn't done anything then.

"W-We were just talking about our host families," Penny added, hoping to direct the conversation away from her. "And I explained why I don't have one. But you do, right, Jordan?"

He sat down next to her, his paw almost resting on hers. "Yeah, I do. There's only four of us, though, including myself. Deana and Harrison, and then their kid Elliott."

"So your family also has a child, then." Astrid sat back down on the other side of Penny. "How old is he?"

"They," Jordan corrected. "And they're ten, but they're turning eleven in just a couple months."

"So then just a few months older than the girls." Maxwell spoke up again, a small smile across his bill. "I wonder if they know each other."

"Well, Elliott attends John P. Trystate Elementary," Jordan replied, turning to look at him. "Do they?"

"Yeah, actually." Maxwell's smile grew a bit wider. "They have one more year after this, then they graduate up to the middle school. Elliott's probably graduating after this semester though, right?"

Jordan nodded. "Yep, they're entering sixth grade in the fall."

As the two continued talking about their host families, Penny couldn't help the grin that overwhelmed her as she pulled her knees back up to her chest. Jordan seemed to be back to normal, and Maxwell was actually coming out of his shell. Not only that, but they had a plan for how to handle DANGER, a task that seemed overwhelming only hours before. If only every day at work could be this peaceful.