When the Delightfulization Chamber exploded, its five test subjects still inside, Father at first thought he'd made a terrible mistake.

For all that Sector Z had been annoying brats, Father hadn't actually wanted them dead. Any of Monty's old teammates would be far more useful to him alive, and besides, his machine wouldn't do much good for him in the future if it were destroyed.

Father had meant to use it on KND operatives all over the world. If those pesky Kids Next Door wouldn't behave when grown-ups asked them to, Father reasoned, he was going to make it so that he didn't have to ask anymore. Those kids would do as they were told without question after they'd been delightfulized, like good, obedient little children should. It was a dream that evil adults shared all around the world.

But now that dream was all up in smoke. That wasn't a metaphor—the lab was literally up in smoke and flames. Father's Delightfulization Chamber had blown a fuse in the middle of the procedure. He coughed, enraged, his yellow eyes struggling to see through the dust and debris that had once been a spotless science laboratory in his mansion.

Rotten kids, he thought with a surge of anger. This mess would take days to clean up. Father would make them all stay here and scrub on their hands and knees if he had to, until the job was done!

"Hey out there," he called irritably, as the smoke cleared from the badly destroyed room. "Any of you brats survive? I'm not cleaning this mess by myself!"

He was mostly shouting out of anger—he didn't actually expect to get a response. To his shock, however, a moment later Father heard an injured groan coming from beneath the smoldering wreckage. Immediately he registered that the groan had actually been five, identical groans, all made in such perfect harmony that they could scarcely be told one from one another. Could it be...?

Yellow eyes widening, he dropped his pipe and hurried over to the remains of the Delightfulization Chamber. There would be no salvaging his test machine, but maybe there had been some results from the experiment before it all went terribly wrong. He had to be certain.

"Come out of there!" Father ordered, crudely kicking aside a fist-sized hunk of machinery. "All of you, this instant! OUT!"

Five voices groaned again in unison from beneath the rubble. A moment later, the debris stirred, and five pairs of hands lifted away the biggest chunk of scrap. The children's movements were painful, unsteady, but perfectly synchronized. The effect was strangely uncanny.

Together, Sector Z shoved aside the rubble of the Delightfulization Chamber. All of them worked with identical shaking limbs, holding their heads painfully in the exact same place.

"Ow..." they groaned in unison, disoriented. Moving as one, they stepped out of the ruined machine that had buried them, emerging in perfect formation out into the fluorescent light of the laboratory. "What's...what's happened to us?" they asked together, sounding confused and afraid. The five children looked down at themselves in unison, realizing with expressions of horror that their appearances had completely changed.

Father could hardly believe his eyes either. The children standing in front of him resembled nothing close to the snot-nosed brats Sector Z had been: their scruffy sweaters and sashes were gone, replaced by preppy jacket-suits and frocks, all perfectly tailored to uniform regulations. The children's ugly hats and mussed hair were a thing of the past; their hair was now smoothed down neatly or done up in tight braids, and the boy in the tinfoil helmet even wore a safe red helmet. Their once-grimy boots had become neat shoes, laced up and squeaky clean. The five children spoke and moved as one entity, seeming to share all the same actions and even thoughts. Best of all, Father saw that their dark, rebellious eyes now shone a pale and empty shade of blue. Those blank eyes were devoid of all desire for resistance and childish play.

Sector Z was more delightfulized than Father had even hoped to dream. The blown fuse in the chamber hadn't ruined his experiment at all—in fact, it had enhanced it, at least eleventy-billion fold!

Father couldn't help himself: he laughed. His whole body shook with it, lean dark silhouette looming over his newest creations, a black shadow that threw its head back with howls of laughter that spawned fire in a wall behind him. He'd shelved his ridiculous hopes of having children as soon as he'd gotten to be an adult, knowing how putrid they all were...but that had been before he knew how wonderful his own children would be. These five delightfulized former brats were going to make his wildest dreams come true.

"Yes," he hissed, throwing up his hands in savage joy. "Yes, yes, I've succeeded! They're perfect! These children are DELIGHTFUL!"

The Delightful Children stepped away from him in sudden fear, their five bodies working as one. "E-Excuse us, sir," they all said, with trembling politeness, "But, we can't seem to recall what's going on. Where are we? Who are we? All of our memories are..."

Father's laughter slowly died down, tapering off into a breathless chuckle.

"Of course, of course!" he said grandiosely, stepping menacingly toward the children, not heeding they way they cringed back from him. "How very rude of me to forget! You five are my Delightful Children from Down the Lane, and I am your beloved Father. You live here, with me, in our Delightful Mansion. You're the most smartest, perfectest little children in the whole wide world, and you hate those other misbehaving kids for their DISGUSTING immaturity—especially the Kids Next Door!"

"Kids...Next Door?" the children asked, blinking their pale blue eyes in confusion. "Who are they, Father?"

"A group of vile, despicable children," Father hissed, looming over them. "Horrible little brats, who do nothing except misbehave and create trouble for adults like me! Can't you see how awful that is?"

The last words were shouted, flames rising wildly. The Delightful Children jumped in place, startled, and nodded quickly. They no longer looked quite so frightened of him, more contemplative over his words.

"But that's terrible, Father!" they said together, looking alarmed. "We hate children who make trouble for adults! They're the most horrible rotten pests in the whole world! In fact...all of them need to be eliminated."

It was exactly the answer Father was looking for. "Yes, they certainly do," he purred, letting the flames die around him. He extended an arm toward the bewildered children and took their five small hands in one of his, leading them toward the kitchen of the mansion. "Come, my Delightful Children. Let's go have a nice bowl of ice cream from the freezer, and we can talk about all the evil things you're going to do to the Kids Next Door when you meet them tomorrow in their giant ugly treehouse!"

"Yes, Father," the children chorused in unison, dark smiles spreading across their angelic faces as they looked up at him. "We would like that very much. Those K-N-Dorks don't stand a chance against the likes of US!"

They laughed. Father laughed with them, the viciously evil sounds echoing throughout the halls of his ornate mansion.

Such a perfect family had surely never existed.