They were teaching tigers how to hunt. They were sharpening the teeth of sharks. And the W.O.I.I. knew it.

I could only imagine how people came about a profession such as creating killers. How corrupted the morals they grew up with must have been. Even more so than the orphaned boy living on the streets, finding fun in tormenting gang members, earning well deserved troubles. The seventeen year old boy who knew how to shoot a gun without a shooting range. Without a mentor.

The five of us slugged down the labyrinth style hallways of the W.O.I.I headquarters towards our room. We'd now memorized the route to and from the cafeteria, however, this was the furthest extent of our knowledge. It was still a winding chaos of unknowns.

As we forced the bulk of metal and pad locks aside, everyone entered with an ambience of relief and exhaustion. I could still feel the shape of a gun in my hand, I could still sense the reverberations of each shot coursing through my fingers. It was so easy to pull the trigger when your target was make of paper.

Dawn collapsed on her bed with a dramatic huff, letting each limb loll across the mattress until she was completely placid. Though, I saw a small frown tug at the rich girl's lips.

"These pillows are so uncomfortable!" She moaned, shooting upright and beginning to prod and pull at her pillow in disgust. She fondled with the rough edges, eventually pulling out a single white feather. "It's filled with feathers!"

"Oh get over yourself, Dawn. It'll do you good to live in the real world for once." Gary countered as he slumped onto his own bed. Only, he too became curious with his pillow and began to tug sundered feathers from the gaps in sewn thread.

"I do too live in the real world! You should have seen the shit that went down in my high school!" Dawn argued, all while picking stray feathers and thus opening the pillow case a fraction.

"Right, and let me guess, you were Miss Queen Bee, never wearing the same outfit twice and shifting through your friends like clothing at a thrift store? Your handbag alone must have been at least 500 dollars, even though you had an entire shelf of them in your walk-in-closet." The mahogany haired boy spoke listlessly, mimicking Dawn's actions of slowly ripping the pillow case open, stitch by stitch.

"I'm not going to tell you how accurate you are. And besides, I don't go to the thrift store." Dawn scoffed, turning her nose skywards and pouting her lips that were still marginally tinged rouge from lip stain.

"Exactly. You don't know the first thing about shit in high school." Gary hissed and Dawn inhaled a sharp parcel of air. She appeared offended.

"And you do?" The bluenette challenged. Her opponent smirked. My new friend lifted his right sleeve, shimmying the fabric onto his collar bone and thus revealing an angry scar across his bicep. It was inconsistent and erratic, not properly healed.

"I got this twenty feet from the school front doors." Gary displayed his marking like a gleaming jewel in a glass case.

"You were bullied." For a split second, sympathy struck at Dawn's expression. He chuckled bitterly.

"I was the bully. It's only when the victims got cocky that trouble started. But I never lost a fight." The shrewd smile that consumed Gary's lips could have had lightening cackling between each tooth, and it was threatening.

"No one likes a bully, Gary." Dawn chided, launching her pillow across the room in a bordering outrage, a low-rumbling grouse seeming to tremble her lower lip. The pillow soared then landed dead against it's targets face and thus created an eruption of feathers. They danced in the air, tumbling and drifting like winters first snow. Delicate rainfall with a shuddering touch.

One of the bizarre precipitation landed on my lip, causing me to scrunch my face up and spit simultaneously. I glared at the bluenette from under my thick lashes, seeing the incredibly smug expression across her face from where I sat on my bed.

"Watch it, rich girl!" I warned, an undertone of a roar lacing the words. Although, it didn't seem to raise nearly as comparable alarm as Gary's response.

"What the fuck, Dawn?!" He growled. The mahogany haired boy was speckled with bird shedding. Feathers peppered his bronze locks until they could have been forced through a raging blizzard. And his smirk had immediately been discarded for a frown of long pent up anger. His eyes shone with the squall of a temper.

Serena was in hysterics as she attempted to slink slyly into the changing rooms. Her melodic laughter echoed off all corners of the room, instantaneously capturing Gary's turbulent attention. Out of sheer impulsiveness, Gary pelted his half-torn pillow at the honey haired girl.

Her pupils dilated, sapphire blue peaking out from from her pupils and I swore I saw the inner workings of her mind in that moment. Serena deftly ducked, as if the pillow was traveling at a painfully slow speed, and it flew passed her head.

Alternatively, it struck Iris straight in the chest, casting a second typhoon of adrift feathers. Her ebon skin was ultimately contrasted by the white shedding, and it almost seemed to highlight the scowl across her face. It was the kind of scowl that had an essence of hell laced between every frowning cell. Iris glared at Gary who had now been downed in regret.

"Maybe you should try to become as good at throwing as you are at fighting." The plum haired girl seethed and I saw panic begin to harden in Gary's veins.

"I'd wish you luck, but I think you're going to need more than that." I sniggered and Gary seemed somewhat relieved to have an excuse for his gaze to leave Iris's glower.

"Hold up!" Serena intervened, expression twisted into a brewing concoction of maliciousness and irritancy. It was hot and cold currents swirling behind a pretty pout. "Did you just throw that at me?!"

"It didn't hit you!" Gary reasoned, but Serena didn't appear impressed. He'd officially gathered the disapproval of every female in the room. And gosh did their aloof expressions construct queens of revenge. Serena stormed over to her bed, like thunder could guffaw from her every surge. She slipped her nail across the pillow edge, digging darling little claws into the fabric and popping each stitch out with rugged jerks.

Next second, the pillow was launched across the room and her shilling frustrations powered it. Or perhaps it was her sense of humor. Either way, I found myself with a mouthful of bleached feathers, tickling my lips and making my nose twitch. My hair creased with each snowflake-like adornment, supple with the new addition to my look.

"You missed, pretty." I spat, a few feathers spewing downwards in the process. Serena giggled.

"I didn't miss. Let's remember who had the gun to my head earlier. This is payback."she cooed sweetly and I couldn't help but smile at her antics. She was clever, a good-sized dose of adrenaline in itself. And I was almost addicted. Gary, Dawn and Iris burst out into laughter, clutching their stomachs and seeming to fuel the smugness that creeped into Serena's expression.

"Well, three of us here are covered in feathers. The other two seem awfully pristine to me. It would be a shame if we covered them in feathers too." I insightfully suggested, catching Gary's eye with a mischievous gaze. He latched onto my plan with nothing more than a smirk. Then my eyes fluttered to Iris, who indeed was grinning. She held my stare captive with a raised eye brow, a subtle warning. But she was almost like a child with arrangements for world domination.

I saw her fetch a rope dark from the belt around her waist and use the gleaming tip to puncture her pillow, ripping the fabric with a swift tug. Taking my own pillow, I severed the stitching like a door from its hinges. Dawn and Serena were still trying to figure out what to do with themselves and how to outrun the situation. I would not let them defy anything.

"You can't run down here. There's no escaping. I guess you'll just have to take your punishment." I jeered, tormenting in the most psychotic tone I could muster, one I'd learned from the gang leaders who used to try corrupt my mind with their empty promises.

With a silent signal passed between flickering gazes, Gary, Iris and I charged. The plum haired girl rolled her arm back and hostilely threw her fissured pillow at Dawn. The silky snow detonated across the side of the bluenette's cheek. I believe I heard a high pitched squeal follow.

But Serena was mine. A target in the shape of a pretty face, and I took pride in the fact that I would dowse her in bothersome trinkets. And because revenge was the sweetest taste to the tongue.

I captured Serena's eyes in a scrupulous stare. She knew what I was thinking. She was not foolish. The edges of her lips perked into a sly grin and her eyes twinkled with a twisted malice.

"Catch me if you can, Ash Ketchum." She sneered, drawing two casndecent knifes from her belt and flashing them like over-proud mothers display their prodigy children. I'd had knifes pulled out on me before, countless times. I may not have been intellectually advanced, but I was certainly street smart. And these were the kind of pop quizzes I excelled in.

"Suit yourself. Might as well go down fighting." I licked my upper lip, savoring the way banter settled on my taste buds. Sugar and spice.

I lunged forward, briefly letting the pillow drop to the ground and giving me two hands to disarm her. But I should have expected that she wouldn't go down in one swing, cause when my fingers reached for her wrists, she was gone. Spinning around my frame and using my shoulders as her axis, dainty nails digging into my skin. Serena swung herself onto my back, legs stradling my waist for stability and temporarily throwing my center of balance completely off normality.

"It'll take more than that to get me." She sniggered into my ear, amiable lips grazing lethargically across my helix. Next, the honey blonde took one of her newly-trusted knifes and placed the sharpened blade against my throat. It was cool and unforgiving.

"And you should know, this isn't the first time I've encountered such situation." I replied hoarsely, struggling against the pressure on my airways. I grabbed one of her wrists, urging the blade away from my flesh and then the next wrist in my other hand, forcing it off my shoulder. Serena grunted irritably.

Using sheer power to my advantage, I tugged the slim girl over my head, using her arms as levers. Leaning forward allowed for a slicker dismount and Serena came tumbling down my back, looking similar to a rag doll. She flipped and her feet slammed against the floor, desperately skidding to find purchase. The honey blonde's back was mere inches from the ground, held up solely by my grip on her wrists. The girl panted in shock a few inches from my nose, bleak knifes on either side of my head.

I forced two fingers between Serena's, loosening her grasp until the blades slipped out her palms and clattered to the floor. I slipped both of her disarmed hands into one of mine and used my free arm to motion Gary to give me the pillow. He did without hesitance. And with great pleasure and considerable glory, I tipped the entire content over her head, watching the feathers cling to her figure like lint. The honey blonde spluttered in defeat.

"Jerk." She huffed through the stringy threads and heaving breaths. I couldn't help but chuckle.

For the next fifteen minutes, all five of us collected fistfuls of stray feathers and drowned each other in them. Making rain like we had our own lands to water and laughing like we couldn't tomorrow. Desperately trying to make our teammates look as close to a white dove as possible, knotting feathers in hair and sticking it down the back of shirts. Pouncing and shrieking and cleverly out strategizing each other.

"Excuse me!" A bellowing and abhorrent female voice yelled and we all paused our movements instantaneously. Miss Fisher stood in the doorway, gawking at the utter disaster that played itself before her. Feathers were scattered across every square inch, the floor, the beds and bodies. No one dared to speak a word. "Right, I guess I'll have home maintenance know that team XXA needs more pillows. And I'll guess we'll have to  get the cleaning department in here immediately. So out, now!" She commanded.

We all listlessly did as we were instructed, striding back into the labyrinthine walkways, most likely back to the canteen. Dawn and Iris already started pulling strewn feathers from their hair while Serena smirked at Miss Fisher and Gary saluted her. I left last, turning to look at the business woman's immaculate complexion. She appeared very misplaced in all the mayhem.

Winking in spite of her stern expression, I trotted out after my teammates.

I couldn't entirely be sure if the world was ready or not, but it didn't matter, team XXA was about to make their misfit, shinning diamond mark on it.