Professor Oak, as he liked to call himself, was my close combat trainer. He was rather jolly, for someone who could behead another with the simple swing of a blade. The older man with tuff combed back hair specialized in swords, most specifically, rapier blades, so I did too.

I had gotten my very own, personalized to my tastes and so that the handle perfectly fit the curves of my hand. I rolled the shinned metal between my fingers and let the fresh metallic smell rub onto my skin. It was cold, bitter like the gashes it would leave on its victims. A blade so sharp that one wouldn't realize they had been penetrated until possibly minuets later.

This weapon was a killer. This weapon had death practically engraved into its blade. Sure, I was a criminal. Sure, I was a thief. But I was no murderer. The action of thieving a thousand times over never amounted to taking a human life. I wasn't even sure I was fit to kill.

But I held a killing tool. And it was mine.

"Take a break. Go eat something at the cafeteria." He said, approximately ten minuets ago. Then, professor Oak left. And I stayed in his training room with the freshly made weapon in my clutches. My fingers like tendrils draped across the gleaming blade. This was their silent way of telling me I would have to kill someday. It wasn't words to be spoken, rather, silently implied. A subtle nudge to send you over a cliff. Miss Fisher had done her job well, I had gotten the memo.

With a heavy and prolonged sigh, I decided to push the thought away, for now. Someday I'd have to deal with the tragic losing of my sanity, but I could afford to ignore it for the time being. Honestly, even thinking about it made my insides conflicted, almost raging.

I was no murderer.

Putting my sword back in its rack, I left the training room. This place was odd, even for me. Somehow, everything felt surreal, like I had simply conjured it up amongst the swirling twisters of my imagination.

Closing the door to Professor Oak's training room, I found myself once again under the towering ceilings that beheld an abstract canvas of metal bars, climbing until mere inches before the sandpapered concrete ceiling. It was a structure that simply struck you with a sharp intake of breath each time you witnessed it. The metallic jungle was a luxury I had never been exposed to before, however, I noticed that it appeared familiar to Serena. I watched as she mindlessly clutched the reachable bars between her pale fingers and lost all sense of the world. She forgot anything else existed.

But she wasn't here anymore. In fact, the bars were occupied by someone els, still a somewhat familiar face. Iris, I heard her name was. Though I'd only heard her speak once, she seemed stubborn and hotheaded. A girl that cemented the idea that rules were meant to be broken, and she would be the one to test their limits. Though she often kept to herself, I found her increasingly becoming impatient with the lack of communication.

Currently, she hung upside down, her legs curling around the bars to sturdy herself, placed directly in the crook of her hamstrings. She swayed aimlessly, eyelids snapped shut and thick hair sweeping left and right like the ticks of a clock's second hand. Even as my footsteps approached her, she never appeared to notice.

Truth be told, I was interested in the wordless girl. She fascinated me almost as much as Serena did. Her strange periwinkle hair that was bunched in the most peculiar style and brown eyes that held some of the coldest looks I had even seen. Which was seriously saying something.

Every person of team XXA was a mystery, including myself. Well, other than Dawn. She was too much of an extrovert to really be deemed a mystery. Simply a rich girl who was born an adrenaline addict and rebelled against her family. A girl born with a hazardous fate.

"Iris, is it?" I questioned once within hearing range. The plum haired girl didn't flinch, nor did she even peek open an eyelid. The scowl plastered across her face seemed to be its resting appearance.

"I don't associate myself with little kids." She responded flatly. Her statement made my eyes ample with disbelief. Excuse her?

"I'm hardly a little kid." I scoffed, leaning against the nearest vertical bar in a casual manner. Irked, Iris continued to gently sway as I gazed upon her.

"You share personality traits with a three year old misfit. Hardly civilized, self centered, impulsive, and immature beyond belief. How Miss Fisher thought you would make a good W.O. I. I agent is far from my understanding. The world is clearly in trouble." Iris remarked, a twisted kind of happiness quirking the halfhearted smile on her lips. I glowered, a sudden anger pulsing within my bloodstream and beginning to suffocate my patience.

"Who are you to judge? Don't tell me what I'm like, you don't know me." I seethed through a clenched teeth frame.

"I know enough. Enough to know that you will be the reason someone gets hurt here. Enough to know that your lack of observance and knowledge will destroy someone. And quite currently, that someone appears to be Serena. So watch your step, thief, cause accidentally pulling innocent girls into your crazed inferno will not end well. I'll make sure of that." She resorted, peaking one eye open to witness my reaction. And quite a show that reaction was.

My fists clenched without warning, bleaching from strain. My jaw trembled shut with tension and eyes spiraled into a look of hatred.

"I don't need to be scolded by a wannabe poet. Piss off." I hissed as I took a shark turn on my heels.

" Suit yourself" I heard Iris exclaim quietly as I exited.

Dismissing the plum haired girl, I stalked out of the training room, taking the short and somewhat familiar route back to the canteen for my break.

It was dead silent, submersing me into an uneasiness. My movements became cautious upon entering, rendering this nothingness to be the absence of company. Which, I was pleased about, to an extent.

My predictions where almost correct. The canteen was empty, excluding the honey haired girl that ghostly situated herself on our teams designated table. The anger and enmity I had felt beforehand seemed to vaporize off me, slowly allowing a quirky meticulousness to take its place.

I strolled up to where she was seated and silently slid into the space across from her. Serena's competent fingers were busy with shinny objects. Sharp, shinny objects. As I drew near, I recognized them to be knives. They had been platted with a multicolored finish. Weapons that could trick the eye into believing they were art. They were, in all honesty, admirable and almost beautiful.

"Mind if I sit?" I queried with a classic pretty-boy smirk, although already seated. Serena peered up at me from behind her thick lashes with those ambiguous blue eyes. They were still untamed. They still captivated me in a way I could not describe.

"Well, considering you've already gone ahead and invited yourself, I'm not stopping you." She spoke irritably. Her fingers paused for a split second on the knife blade, lightly grazing over the metal with a touch soft enough to keep her from slicing the flesh clean.

"That's convenient, since you never really had the choice." I beamed, placing my intertwined fingers onto the table before her. She glanced at them before continuing to spin the knife clockwise in her grasp.

"Just remember who has the knives, here." Serena warned, rotating the intricate blade faster.

"And you just remember who's the stronger one here. Who could over power you." I countered, watching as her face went hard, reanalyzing my build and height. Instead of retaining her argument, she changed the subject.

"So you're a thief, huh?" She asked, her eyes still fixated on the blade in her fingers.

"If that's what you want to call it." I shrugged. Thief was a very broad term, in my opinion. Everyone is a thief in some respects, we steal people's friendships and we steal people's hearts. I was more a profound type of thief. My art took skill.

"Don't start that survivalist bullshit with me." Serena chided in a harsh rasp. The threat almost caused a snicker to bubble from the corners of my mouth. I found her aggressiveness and lack of tolerance quite entertaining. Or in other words, adorable.

"Don't worry, I'm not in the mood to argue my point." I stated and the honey blonde looked rather relived. There was a short passage of silence before she continued to bug me on the matter.

"What do you're parents think about it? You being a thief, I mean."

"My parents need to be alive to have such opinion. However, I can assure you, they probably wouldn't be very pleased with my life choices." I responded with a knowing nod. Serena's face fell, looking distraught over my answer.

"I'm sorry to here about you're parents, but, don't you care at all about what they would think of you?" She questioned as if it raised a problem that I had no such intentions. I honestly couldn't see how people cared so much about what their parents thought about them. It didn't seem like something to stress over.

"I don't even know their names, pretty. Hardly care what they would think." I replied, casually implementing the little nickname I had created for her.

"How long have you been an orphan, then?"

"Since the day I was born."

"Oh..."

Another strange silence that consisted of my malicious grin and Serena's rotating knife.

"What about you're parents, huh? You've got to have done some dangerous things to land you in this place." I asked with curiosity etching into the creases on my forehead.

"My mum hardly knows anything. I never get caught and she never finds out." Serena remarked with a newborn smirk of her own, features twisting into accomplishment. But I sensed a piece missing from the puzzle.

"And what about your dad?"

No reply. Just a sky rise of tension as her thin frame went rigid, eyes dilating, jaw clenching, fists fastening around the table edge.

"Oh, someone has daddy issues?" I teased. Big mistake.

"I do not have daddy issues!" She growled, face inching across the table in a flared up scowl. Instinctively, I leaned away from danger.

"Awww! The little princess doesn't get on well with her daddy." I pushed, more than I should have. More than was considered healthy. But I loved the way she angered due to my antics.

"You have no idea what it's like!" She snapped, driving her current knife blade into the plastic surface of the table. I jerked backwards, watching her fingers tighten their grasp on the handle and harshly pull it from its hold. Without hesitation, she began exiting the room with her knives in hand, determined to put as much distance between us as possible.

"Come on, Serena! Don't be like that!" I shouted after her but she never glimpsed back. Albeit, she was long gone before I could plead another word. I sat in the empty canteen, unaware of what to do with myself. With a sigh, I realized just how much her presence lifted me.

"It's official, you've made every single girl you could possibly fuck, hate you." An annoyingly familiar voice called from the canteen entrance. I didn't even have to glance in the general direction to know it was Gary.

"How long have you been there?" I queried, reluctantly picking myself up from my seat. He shrugged.

"Long enough."

"Not that I would care very much. We're about to become secret agents, and if the ladies don't love that, then I don't know what fucked up universe we're living in."

Still, this statement would continue to lose it's meaning the longer I stayed here. I thought the streets had lined my heart with titanium. But, I guess some fires are just scorching enough to melt anything that draws too close. And I walked straight in.

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So that should be the last of it for a little while. But, don't worry, I will be back soon and I can't wait to see you then!