Happy Late Halloween, everyone! Or Happy Dia de los Muertos, or any other fall holiday that you may celebrate but I do not know about.

Before we start, I have a Review Response:

JustVildaPotter: Thank you, as always! Nicky is not a fan of the food at Prufrock, as you could see. Carmelita songs are fun to write!

Of course, if you did not review, but simply followed or added this story to your favorites, thank you for your support!

Alright, enough babbling.

Chapter 5

Orphan Complications

"Nobody wants to have dinner with people who live in the Orphan's Shack!" It was moments after we last left Nicky and the two Quagmires in Prufrock Prep's cafeteria, and Carmelita was still screaming. However, the three people receiving her insults were not our three main characters, but three other children: a boy, a girl, and a baby who had evidently tried to sit by Carmelita.

"I guess those are the new orphans," remarked Isadora. She picked up her tray from the serving line and tapped Duncan on the shoulder. "C'mon, let's go sit down."

Duncan removed his tray from the serving line, only to set it down immediately on the condiment table. But he did not do this because he wanted ketchup.

"What are you doing?" Nicky asked as Duncan began to walk away. "Don't you want my explanation?"

Isadora put a hand on her brother's shoulder. "I know what you're going to do, and it isn't worth it. We've got Carmelita off our backs. Leave it alone."

Duncan shook his head and walked away, toward the three new orphans. Isadora sighed, set down her tray, and followed him. And Nicky followed her, so as not to be left standing alone with the ketchup, mustard, relish, and horseradish dispensers.

Now, Carmelita was tap-dancing and chanting: "Cakesniffing orphans in the Orphan's Shack! Cakesniffing orphans in the Orphan's Shack!"

The other students had joined the chant when Duncan butted in. "Oh, leave them alone, Carmelita!" The rest of the student body fell silent, the way a room full of people falls silent when someone says or does something shocking. "You're the Cakesniffer, and no one in their right mind would want to eat with you anyway!"

Isadora tapped the new orphan boy on the shoulder. "Come sit with us."

The trio of children gave her a grateful smile and followed Nicky and the Quagmires to an empty table, tucked in a corner at the back of the room.

"I'm Violet Baudelaire," said the girl when everyone had seated themselves. She had long, dark hair with bangs in the front, and appeared to be the eldest, though it was hard to tell because her brother was taller. "And this is my brother, Klaus, and our baby sister, Sunny."

"It's nice to meet you," said Duncan. He was smiling again. "I'm Duncan Quagmire, and this is my sister, Isadora, and Quig-" he paused, then continued introducing Nicky. "I mean, Nicky."

"And the girl who was yelling at you," said Isadora, "I'm sorry to say, is Carmelita Spats."

"She didn't seem very nice," Klaus remarked.

"That is the understatement of the century. Carmelita Spats is rude, filthy, and violent, and the less time you spend with her, the happier you'll be."

"Read the Baudelaires the poem you wrote about her," suggested Duncan.

"You write poetry?" Nicky and Klaus asked at the same time. Nicky sounded surprised, because he had found another thing about Isadora that reminded him of Ricky. Klaus, on the other hand, looked genuinely interested, and it was his reaction that Isadora focused on.

"A little bit." As blush crept onto her cheeks, Isadora reached into her pocket and pulled out a notebook with a pitch-black cover. Once she had found her page, she leaned forward and read the poem. "I would rather eat a bowl of vampire bats, than spend an hour, with Carmelita Spats."

"That's a couplet!" Klaus cried out suddenly when Isadora had finished. Noticing the look on Isadora's face, he too blushed. "Sorry. I read that in a book of literary criticism a few years ago, and I've only now gotten a chance to share the knowledge."

Isadora giggled. "That sounds like an interesting book. Could I borrow it sometime?"

Klaus frowned. "That book belonged to my father. It was destroyed in a fire, along with our home."

Isadora exchanged a look with Duncan, then turned back to Klaus. "That's terrible. Did your father die in the fire?"

"Yes he did. And my mother, too."

Isadora reached across the table to pat Klaus' hand. "I'm sorry. Our parents died in a fire as well. It's awful to miss your parents so much, isn't it?" Klaus nodded. Sunny babbled something in agreement.

After an awkward moment of silence, Duncan admitted his fear of fire, and Violet talked about a woman called Josephine, with whom she and her siblings had lived with before coming to Prufrock Preparatory School. The conversation then turned to the horrors of Prufrock Prep, and it went along happily from there until Duncan proposed visiting the library, and Violet said something that completely changed the mood of the table.

"We'd love to see the library. It sure is lucky we ran into you two twins." Nicky watched as Violet's seemingly harmless sentence took its toll on the two Quagmires. Isadora stared straight ahead, not focusing on anything in particular. She appeared to be trying to force her face to keep a bland expression rather than forming a frown. Duncan looked down at the table, staring intently, as if some grand performance was being put on in the graffiti left by past students.

"What's wrong?" Klaus asked. "Did we say something that upset you?"

Nicky looked from Duncan, with his head down, to Isadora, who was struggling to make her lips form words. And then, without giving much thought to what he was doing, Nicky spoke up.

"Actually," said Nicky, looking Violet in the eyes, "we're triplets."

Duncan looked up. Isadora looked surprised. Violet looked taken aback, a phrase which here means: "surprised".

"I'm sorry," Violet apologized. "I didn't know."

Nicky shrugged. "It's a common mistake. We're fraternal, so we all look different, but we are triplets." In Nicky's mind, this phrase triggered a sudden memory.

The Harper quads had been around nine or ten, when some kid at school had been teasing them and saying they weren't really quadruplets. Dawn and Dicky has yelled at the person to shut up, but Nicky had brought up the issue in the quads' room later that day.

"What if we aren't related?"

Dawn had rolled her eyes, and Dicky had stared blankly into space. But Ricky was happy to offer an explanation.

"We're fraternal, so we all look different, but we are quads. Not looking alike doesn't mean we aren't related."

Actually, Ricky, it means exactly that, Nicky thought now. For once in your life, you were wrong about something. How do you like that, you-

"Nicky!" Nicky had been so lost in thought that he hadn't paid attention to Isadora's saying to the Baudelaires: "Will you excuse us for just one minute?" He had not comprehended his following the two Quagmires out of the cafeteria and into the hallway. He had not heard whatever the two triplets had just tried to tell him, and now Duncan was clapping in his face to get him to pay attention. "Did you hear what we said?"

"Sorry, what?" Nicky asked.

"Are you crazy?!" Duncan yelled at Nicky. This appeared to be something he had previously yelled, but he seemed more than happy to repeat it. "We don't know who you are, where you're from, what you did-"

"As long as you love me!" Nicky sang out with a grin.

"To get here," Isadora finished, shooting Nicky one of her trademark glares.

"And now you're going to pretend to be our triplet?" Duncan added.

"I pretended to be a quadruplet all my life," Nicky pointed out. "This can't be very different."

"Nicky," Isadora sighed. "If you have a family, you need to go back to them."

"You two are my family," insisted Nicky. As Duncan opened his mouth, Nicky added, "And it wouldn't make sense if your triplet brother disappeared without an explanation, would it?"

"No," Duncan agreed, "It wouldn't."

"But won't your family notice that you're missing?" Isadora asked.

"I told them where I was going," Nicky lied.

"Fine," said Isadora, "You can stay. But if something goes wrong, you head straight back home."

Nicky grinned. "Nothing will go wrong."

Throughout the first week at Prufrock Preparatory School, Nicky and the two Quagmires spent every spare moment with the Baudelaires. They fixed up the Orphan's Shack, and researched a mysterious object that both sets of siblings owned part of. Each day, they were only allowed ten minutes in the school library, but they made the best of their time in there, and continued their search for a mysterious book that the Baudelaires had discovered in a safe in their Aunt Josephine's home. The Quagmires had seen this book in a safe as well, the safe of two women they had stayed with over Prufrock's summer holidays. Despite all of these mysteries, that first week with the Baudelaires was one of the happiest weeks of the orphans' lives, and it seemed that Nicky's statement of "nothing will go wrong" was turning out correct. That was, until the day Prufrock Prep had a pep rally.

The Quagmires had offered to sneak some fruit from one of the dorms to share with the Baudelaires during the pep rally. This they had no way of doing, of course, but the two triplets really wanted an excuse to have a conversation with Nicky.

"Okay, you have got to return home," Isadora said as the trio walked down an empty hallway.

"But nothing's gone wrong yet," Nicky pointed out. "And you said-"

"We all know what she said," Duncan interrupted. "If you are staying, you have to start eating something other than the few things you have stored in your backpack."

"I have plenty of food." At this statement, Nicky's stomach made a loud grumbling noise.

"You ran out yesterday," Duncan observed. "You ate it all too fast because you're going to have a growth spurt."

"How do you know that?"

"I'm a journalist. I notice things. For instance, yesterday at dinner you looked into your bag while the rest of us were talking, then closed it without taking anything out. You looked disappointed. Also, you're a twelve-year-old boy with an excessive amount of voice cracks."

"Touché," said Nicky. "I didn't know you were a journalist."

"I decided on this career path two years ago! Honestly, Quigley, how many times do I have to-" Duncan stopped.

"Duncan," Isadora said gently. Duncan quickened his walking pace. Isadora matched the pace and caught up with him. "Are you-"

"I'm fine."

The two triplets turned the corner, with Nicky trailing behind.

"Hello, hello, hello, children," a man's deep voice announced.

"Hello?" Isadora said.

The man laughed a cruel laugh. "Don't play dumb, orphans. Don't pretend this handsome face doesn't haunt your every sleeping and waking moment."

"I'm sorry, it doesn't."

"So this is your new strategy? Acting completely clueless? I guess you know by now that no matter what you do, I always manage to find you. And this time, I will not let you three-" the man paused. "You two- wait." He looked at both Duncan and Isadora, counting as he went. "One, two- Where's the midget?"

"I'm not a midget," Nicky announced, finally coming around the corner. "I'm about to have a growth spurt."

The older man gave Nicky a confused look. "Who are you?"

"Who are you, you miscreant?" Duncan demanded.

The man's dirty face formed a surprised smile. He raised his single eyebrow. "Miscreant," he repeated. "Oh, I know exactly who you are. Your mother liked fancy words too. 'You miscreant, never again will you darken the doors of this airplane hangar.' She was a rather boring woman, actually, always sitting around and reading Italian poetry- hey, where do you think you're going?"

Nicky and the triplets had run away while the man was giving his speech. They did not stop running until they reached the Prufrock Prep athletics field, where they collapsed into three chairs set up in the same row the Baudelaires were sitting.

"What happened to you?" Violet asked, but the Quagmires had no time to answer, as Vice Principal Nero chose that moment to walk onstage. The student body erupted into mandatory applause.

Two cheerleaders - who looked suspiciously like older women- walked out behind Nero with a large paper circle bearing the image of a skeletal horse lying on its back, and the phrase Memento Mori. Nero gave a long-winded announcement about the school's former gym teacher and her disappearance. He finished with announcing that he thought he had found someone who could suitably fill her shoes.

Then, the paper circle ripped, the students cheered, Carmelita Spats danced, and Nero played a very off-key rendition of some dramatic entrance music, as a man wearing a woman's winged athletic boots stepped through the circle and into the stage.

"I am Coach Genghis, your new gym teacher," the man announced with an obviously fake Southern accent. "And I, am here to school you."

My longest chapter yet!

Author's Note: In the Austere Academy, the Quagmires and Baudelaires meet at lunchtime. For the purposes of this story, they meet at dinnertime.

Thanks for reading, and please review!