Pale orange and pink sunlight faded away into the darkening sky, leaving behind millions of specks of light shining across the dark blue plain. A beautiful night to sit beneath the stars. Unfortunately, I could barely see it through the tiny windows way up above my head. Only starlight made its way through the dusted windows onto the concrete floor down below where I paced.

After a long afternoon of convincing the terribly suspicious lady, what was her name? Michelle? Rochelle? Who knows? Probably Pudding, who was hoarding the papers with the lady's name on them. Maybe I should have paid more attention, but useless details like those served little purpose most of the time for my position on the team.

Anyway, after convincing Ro-Michelle to let us stay the night at her warehouse, we found ourselves waiting in the boring-est building in the entire city of Wellington. I would have rather stayed at Ro-Michelle's arguing that maybe bringing the item this thief wanted so bad to her house wasn't the smartest idea she ever made. Seriously, she was a scientist, shouldn't she have had at least enough brain cells to realize that?

Being in the boring-est building in Wellington, there wasn't all that much to be amused with. At some point, we started a game of I Spy. With grey walls, shelves, floors, and boxes making up the entire room, our options were a little limited. "I spy with my little eye something..." Pudding's hazel eyes gazed around the dark room. They glanced at me before darting away suspiciously. "Blue."

"Misha's eyes," replied Echo instantly as she leaned back over a box. Her short black hair hung towards the floor, and her eyes were lightly shut. If it weren't for the fact that I blamed her for everything, I wouldn't have blamed her. Sleeping the night away was becoming incredibly tempting. "You've already done that one twice, plus I did it once too. Can't we be a little more creative?"

Pudding huffed and replied, "Well, we're running out of options and your eyes are closed." Indeed, every color had turned grey or black ever since the sun set. The sooner something else would come in, preferably something we could arrest and finish our mission with, the better for my ever-shortening sanity- whatever I had left of it.

The black-haired girl raised her hand in the air lazily. "I have a suggestion. How about we play the animal game where you say an animal that starts with the last letter of the animal before you. You can use extinct animals and mystical creatures too."

"Okay. I'll start," I stopped pacing and replied. The game actually sounded sort of interesting, but watching a good fight always won the amusement factor. With a smirk that they couldn't see, I said my animal, "T-rex."

Echo fell quiet for a few moments, thinking of an animal that started with "X". After a few brief moments of me waiting with anticipation, she turned her head to face Pudding and said, "Well what are you waiting for? You've got X."

"We're going clockwise," she replied with her lips tipping down into a frown. Ohh, bonus! I thought to myself, The competition is in Pudding's favor. "It's your turn now."

Their bickering continued, like littermates fighting over a mouse. I leaned against the solid metal door, watching with a grin they couldn't see in the dark- or at least I hoped they couldn't see. However, my enjoyment was abruptly halted when my ears picked up the quiet sound of nails scratching on metal.

Is there something scratching on the door? was my first thought as I pushed my ear onto the cool metal, willing my human ears to work at least half as well as my cat ears.

"Since when have we gone clockwise!" whisper-shouted Echo. The scraping noise paused as if the producer of it had heard. Quietly as possible, I pushed away from the door and stepped back, cursing under my breath as my sneakers squeaked on the concrete ground. Isn't SNEAKer supposed to mean something?

While waving my hand behind my back, in hopes of catching the squabbling semi-humans' attention, I tilted my chin up to look towards the windows. The troubling, but undeniably exciting, thought raced through my head, Is there something climbing up the side of the building?

"You always go clockwise. That's basic ga–" Pudding cut her response off short when she noticed my finger raised to my lips. Echo too stopped to look at me, drowning the warehouse in complete, eerie silence. Clouds covered the stars that had once been providing the bare amount of light to see. Although I would probably have jumped if it had happened, I hoped for a breeze to brush by the building, providing noise to fill the silent room.

Unfortunately, the noise that came wasn't the wind nor a comment from one of my companions. No, the noise that came was the skittering sound of nails, claws, scratching the outside wall. Despite quiet, it pierced the silent room, causing more noises to follow. The soft tapping of a shoe touching the floor, and the sound of clothing sliding across a surface as Pudding stood up, but my attention wasn't on her or Echo, who had no doubt already slunk beside Pudding without making a sound.

My palm grasped the chilled door handle. I couldn't tell if the feeling in my chest was fright or anticipation, but I pushed it away nonetheless. As Boss always said, "Acknowledge your emotions because they are who you are, but if they are unnecessary or hinder what you have to do, then tuck them away until they are needed. Just remember, what you do is up to you."

Missions, being the top of all necessities for me, therefor required me to push aside my emotions for another time. However, the emotion fear I found a tricky one. Where is fear necessary?

The scrapping seemed to get louder; closer to my ear level. Accompanying the scrapping noise was the sound of a chittering animal. Like a chipmunk, but more... enthusiastic? Perhaps there were multiple sources of the chittering, but it was hard to tell with human ears. A fist formed on my other hand, ready to fight if need be. Prepared for combat and to witness whatever laid behind the metal door, I forcefully swung it open quicker than a diving peregrine.

I froze along with my two companions. Neither because I was scared nor because my muscles had tensed. I wasn't in a trance, and no one had used their power on me. I was simply shocked. I had absolutely no idea what to do, and even if I hadn't been prepared for the worst, I still would have cluelessly stood there like an idiot.

For on the pavement walkway up to the door sat four curious animals- by both meanings of the word "curious". They were about the size of small cats, but their body shape was totally different. With large heads, tall, skinny bodies, long, delicate legs, and long fingers, they were quite the peculiar sight. Their bellies were a mix of white and brown while their backs looked almost as if they had black and grey tabby stripes. The stripe parts, however, were harder to make out than on tabbies and much thicker. But the most eye-catching part about them was the coloration around their black eyes in the shape of a brown and black mask.

Recognition was there in my mind, but I couldn't quite think up what they were. Speaking of my mind, it seemed to have been having some errors and wasn't working as usual- which was still pretty slow, but not frozen. The screech to my left that sounded like nails scratching a chalkboard broke the ice that had frozen over my brain. I turned to see one of those... things sliding down the gutter next to the door.

It had been making that gosh-awful noise earlier, realized my brain. Well done brain. To my right, my sister stood just as shocked as I had been. However, disturbingly enough, her lips slowly turned up into a smile and she clenched her fists as if she was trying to hold something in. Whatever that something was, it didn't look like it could be kept in much longer.

To my left, the black-haired witch known as Echo leaned against the edge of the doorway, mild shock written over her face. She seemed more like, Not what I was expecting, but whatever. I have no idea what we're supposed to do now, just so ya know. Her eyebrows raised ever so slightly as she pondered who knows what. I shivered imagining what the wicked witch of the shadows was thinking.

No longer able to contain it, Pudding burst out, "They're so frickin cute! What are they? What are they?" I gave her a look that asked, Are you five years old? The little blobs of brown, black, white, and grey fur seemed terribly disturbed by Pudding's outbreak, perhaps even scared. They huddled around each other in a tight circle.

"You seriously don't know?" asked Echo as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "They're little baby trash pandas. Here I was getting my hopes up for some tasty bird to fly through the window, not these nasty critters." She shrugged before continuing, "Never been a big fan of 'em. Call me discriminiatory, but I've never met a raccoon in my life that didn't at least eye me as if they were about to snag my wallet. Jokes on the ones that tried, I'm broke as a human straight out of college."

Raccoons? That's right, I recalled seeing them at a younger age when I joined S.H.H.A. Maybe there were Raccoon semi-human/semi-beast members of S.H.H.A. even. I highly doubted any as young as the ones huddling together before us.

Realizing that I was in the same boat as Echo, young children not being my specialty, I shouldered my sister to knock her out of whatever spell she had fallen under. "You're up," I told her, fully aware that they weren't Pudding's specialty either, but also aware that Pudding was the best choice for dealing with them. "You're good with kids, right?"

Echo stifled a chuckle earning her a questioning side glance from me. What is it this time? I thought to myself tiredly. The girl responded, "They're not kids. At least not semi-human kids. They're just a gang of young raccoons."

Not semi-humans? Then how are they robbing- wait, are they even the criminals? Are they a distraction?

Before I could voice my concerns, Pudding spoke up, "Not all of them." She took a slow step towards the bunch, causing them to start chittering again, but this time in panic. My sister cooed as to not further frighten them, "It's okay little ones. I won't hurt you."

The chocolate haired girl touched her knees to the dirt-covered pavement path. She extended her tanned arm out and opened her palm as if to say, See? to the frightened critters. Her warm brown eyes stared at one of them that had been slowly shuffling away from the rest. As if speaking only to it, she said, "Don't worry, we aren't your enemy."

Then it clicked in my mind that there was a semi-human leading them. They weren't being used as a distraction, but rather, being led by a... kid. Apparently, the kid knew it had been caught at that moment too. He kicked out his back feet in an attempt to jump towards the corner of the building where he'd hastily escape, but his attempt immediately failed as I took my opportunity to pounce on the little bundle of fur.

The other raccoons scattered in fright, leaving their "leader" struggling against my firm grip around his body. Its light body and frail limbs stood no chance against my tight hold. I could feel its rapid heartbeat through my shirt and my fingers grasping his short, stiff fur. His breathing quickened to the point where I nearly loosened my grip, but Pudding retrieved him from my hold and started whispering words into his little ears that seemed to calm him down ever so slightly.

My face showed no emotions as I stared blankly at the young raccoon semi-human. However, my thoughts were all but emotionless. Neither were Echo's, as she blended into the shadows behind the door, nor were Pudding's who smiled only for the sake of the one she held in her arms. Call us hypocritical, being young ourselves, even Echo who was sitting on the line between seventeen and eighteen human years old, but we were all trained under and during the time of Boss who laid out some morals in our young minds.

Harming or using a child, be it semi-human or semi-beast, for your own personal evil desires could not be repaid by any amount of karma in a single lifetime. Boss always took it upon herself to do what karma couldn't. As disciples, it was our duty to continue performing that task. I may have had no clear answer for where fear was needed, but anger? I knew where anger was necessary.

Hydel Triant. Boss may not be here in person any longer, but I'll see to it that she finds you. And when she does, I sure hope you're prepared.