East hall 3rd floor, must find clothes - Thunderbirds... I'm back bitches!

Clicking send, I grinned as I strolled down the hallway, pocketing my phone. I scratched my nose as I passed Melissa, a fellow Thunderbird junior. Without acknowledging me, she sent a message to all the people who were in on my return to pranking. Upon receiving the go ahead from Melissa, a dozen clues would be deposited and my game would be set into motion.

"Jessy-Jess," I sang when I walked into our room. "Would you like to get some prime seats for the show? Or shall we sit back and wait for the replay?"

Pulling me to sit beside her in the bay window, she handed me a hot chocolate. "We can wait."

For the past two weeks, the hijINKs updates, which I checked only at the end of everyday now, were stupid little half point pranks. There was something big coming from the Hellhounds, that neither Jess, Ashley, nor myself had been able to crack. But I wasn't going to wait for it to happen. I was going to blow it out of the water with my prank.

"I'm glad you're back, Nicole. Things are much more interesting with you."

I smiled as she leaned into my side. After my explosive rant in the library, Jess and I were back on track again. I was surprised to find out that she—and even Ashley—was more on my side of things than I'd thought she'd be. They both hated being treated like mindless peons, and simply knowing that I had them on my side, made me want to play the game again. My own way.

My phone soon beeped and I eagerly yanked it up off the bench and peered at it. With a cackle, I turned it to Jess. There were the four students, two in towels, still dripping and two wrapped in hastily tied bed sheet togas.

"You're welcome Thunderbirds!" I dropped my phone beside me, like I was dropping a microphone.

Jess bowed down to me, giggling. "You are so the Queen of us sublings!"

The four Hellhounds in the picture were two couples who were dating each other's roommates. Twice a week they swapped roommates and did what horny teenaged bunnies did. Orchestrating the stealing of all their clothes had been a bit troublesome, but well worth the hilarity that was unfolding as they followed my scavenger hunt to retrieve them.

At each of the checkpoints they'd receive a new clue, and I'd receive another picture at which Jess, I, and now Ashley would fall apart in laughter. During their frantic hunt for their entire wardrobes, they'd garnered a large audience that travelled with them from clue to clue.

The last beep had us all peering at a video of them reaching the end of the hunt. After several tries at spinning the combination of the lock on the door, a Hellhound from the audience did it for them. When they yanked the door open there was an explosion of confetti.

"Trumpet music, Nicole? You're so overdramatic!" Jess giggled as we watched the four confetti covered students jam themselves through the door and slam it shut.

My phone beeped once more and as I grinned at the hijINKS update, I curiously took note of the text from an unknown number that scrolled the top of my screen. 

Welcome back.

-.-

"The Hotness is missing." Ashley whispered as she sat beside me at dinner. Sure enough, The Hotness Trifecta was not sitting at their table. So what? They often made grand entrances. But I flicked my gaze only momentarily to the table behind me and saw Katia, too innocently throwing a look over her shoulder to their empty seats.

Before I could ask, the dining hall was flooded with the familiar sound of phones going off. I reached into my pocket instantly this time, and found that it wasn't there. Right. I couldn't check my phone if I left it behind, now could I? Silently cursing, I looked to Jess, who sheepishly shook her head. I reached over the table and grabbed someone's phone.

"I need this."

What the actual hell?

After a moment, I jabbed the update and a secondary blurb came up.

The Hellhounds are holding the Trifecta in an undisclosed location. Without their precious leaders to rally the forces, can the Thunderbirds come back from this humiliating blow? Wethinks this game has possibly come to an official end. Thunderbirds, your move. If you can pick your jaws up off the floor. 

A fury built up inside of me; how dare the Hellhounds claim victory? We were not lost little sheep with no minds of our own who would wander uselessly without shepherds. But then I looked up and saw the defeated looks on the faces of the remaining Elite at the Thunderbirds head table. Oh for the love of flying roundhouse kicks! Pathetic couldn't even begin to describe the scene.

-.-

"Jess, what do you want us to do?" asked Camille, head of the stealth team. She leant against the rack of canoes in the boat house where our Elite had congregated at Jess' request.

Jess paused mid rant and stared at her in a stupor, as if she couldn't assemble words into a coherent sentence. Her brother was missing, as part of a silly prank, yes, but that didn't mean she wasn't worried.

"What does she want you to do?" I accidentally knocked over some archery equipment as I flailed at Camille. "Your job, you Fuck! Find out where they are. Get them out."

Jess and Camille shot me two completely different looks; one thankful, one seething. Guess which one I ignored. 

"What she said!" Jess folded her arms and glared at them all.

"We have to wait for orders." The words came from Remi Montague, junior, co-head of strategic maneuvers and executions, direct link to Leon. 

I looked at him, incredulous—wait for orders? And how were we going to get them, by carrier pigeon? As Jess and I looked around at them, every one of them nodded; Lark Peterson, co-head of strategic maneuvers and executions, Salome Nana, head of electronics and cyber warfare, Dev Nandi, head of recon.

"Remi's right, you know?" Dev said. "We should wait for their orders."

Jess sat dejectedly as the last of our team leaders agreed. Leaders. Right. Something in me snapped and even though I didn't give a shit about any of this, their lackadaisical attitudes forced a volcanic reaction from me.

"You guys are supposed to be our leaders? You're fucking jokes." I led Jess from the room. "Keep waiting for your orders, Dipshits! Good luck with that happening this century." 

-.-

My words hadn't been very nice, I'll admit that. But they turned me into a pariah; wanting to take action instead of sitting on my ass somehow turned me into enemy number one. I even heard I was being so loud about it to throw off suspicion I was to blame for their kidnapping. The sheeple of Waterbridge—both sides—were convinced that my return to pranking was nothing but a massive, well planned distraction so Katia and the Triad could do away with the Trifecta.

Utterly laughable! I wondered why they didn't use their ridiculous imaginations to figure a way to find Kellen and the boys. Maybe they could tell them about my horrific betrayal when they did.

"Ashley?" I asked as she entered my room, "Anything?"

"I've been trying to follow them, but they're making it so hard. I can only be in one place at a time and they keep splitting up!"

Tapping my chin, I reached a hand out to Jess expectantly, gesturing for her to hand me something. "The roster," I said after a minute, finally making enough sense of my thoughts to speak. She sprung across the room and returned a minute later with the large book.

"What's that? What are you doing?" Ashley watched me curiously.

The roster was our secret, Jess' and mine. Every year, since we began attending Waterbridge Academy, we made note of the players on both teams. Being recon and stealth, we learnt a lot about our peers without them ever knowing—and it was all in our book. Jess and I could take down the entire school, if we were so inclined. Ashley gasped when I opened it, realizing what it was.

As I perused the pages, I made little notes on a blank paper until the alarm on my phone beeped, reminding me of curfew. Ashley was still in our room and I gestured at the door with a raised eyebrow, but she refused to leave if I was planning something.

I laid the book down, opening it to the Thunderbirds' half. Tapping the familiar sophomore face of my sparring partner I said, "Mark. He is easily the most stealth being I've ever met. We need him. He moves like a ghost."

Flipping a few pages over, I pointed out a freshman who'd been a Thunderbird before she even got to Waterbridge because of her brother. "Rebecca Hofstead, tiny, fast, flexible. Not to mention her older brother Eddie and her are a mini spy agency. They have crazy gadgets, and Eddie's the genius who reverse hacked Kellen's socials. We need both of them." 

With Eddie's excellent skills we could be in three places at once. Jess grabbed my paper and started jotting amendments to my notes; room numbers.

"Good idea, Jess. Okay... Robert Sedgewick, recon, not so stealthy, but oh so strengthy."

Ashley chuckled and I mocked a bow; who said planning military operations had to be boring?

"Emma Tripp. That sophomore from strategic." I didn't need to explain my decision further, and Jess noted down her room number. I added two more faces to our team, one more junior and one more senior. Katy Chu, who worked with Eddie Hofstead on the cyber squad, but also secretly specialized in detonations, and her boyfriend Brian Grenier.

"Is that everyone? Do you have any back ups?"

"Nope. We have to get them all in. No options. They're in, or we take them hostage so they don't blab on us."

A slightly terrified look crossed over Ashley's face; I don't think she expected me to be so serious about this. Which I was.