"You are terrible, you know that? Absolutely terrible." Headmaster Lance snapped. "None of the other teams have this problem. But I swear, every year there is one group, ONE, that just cannot get the idea of teamwork!"

Sasha's head snapped up at that, and Nick braced his mind for her latest tirade. "Sir! JP and Addison fought all the time until they started hooking up, and-"

"I don't want to hear it!" Headmaster Lance shouted, "We are here to talk about you, and not them! AND YOU ALL ARE DOING TERRIBLY! So," he said, visibly regaining control of himself, "You are all going on a mission. And by the end of the mission, if you haven't learned to work together, you will be held back a year."

Oooh, Nick thought. Giles is going to flip his lid.

"HELD BACK!" Giles shrieked. "YOU CAN'T DO THAT!"

Hina whimpered. But she did it quietly enough so that Headmaster Lance wouldn't notice and focus his draconian (Ha ha) rage upon her.

"I can and I will." Headmaster Lance snapped. "So get together, or get ready to be the only ones in your grade to be here for an extra year. DISMISSED!"

Well. This had started out like such a nice day, too. I should've known that it couldn't last. And it was so close to lunch that I had a feeling we were going to miss all of the good foods.

. . .

All of us exited Headmaster Lance's office building with our hearts weighed down with ten thousand pounds of hopelessness. We'd been sent on several missions before, and we had managed to flub all of them in some spectacular way. The last one had gotten all of us a lifetime ban from the Safari Zone in Jhoto. And also detention for a week.

When we all reached the courtyard, Giles spun around and planted himself in a stance that clearly telegraphed I am completely serious about what I am about to say and nothing you can do will sway me! "Look," Giles snapped. "I WILL NOT get held back. Not for anything. We can do this; we just have to work harder! Especially you, Hardy! Now, let's get our mission dossier and work up a plan of action!"

"What about lunch?" Sasha grumbled.

When Giles turned to glare at her, clearly gearing up for another motivational/manic speech, Sasha caved.

And off we went, forgoing what could have been a lovely lunch in favor of listening to Giles fight with Sasha over what we were going to do, with Hina nearly crying from all of the negative energy, or something.

This academy isn't bad, really. Alto Mare has a pretty good climate, and most of the teachers are good. There's a rumor going around (started by either that idiot Quincey Hayden for a joke or one of the more paranoid types) that the school is funded by the Global Police Agents, and that the whole point of the teams is to try to figure out which ones of us are good enough to tap for recruitment. However, since there was also a rumor (Again, started by Quincey) that Ms. Barlow used to be one of those secret agents before retiring to force Math down the throats of teenagers, so nobody really believed it. The only piece of evidence I know of in favor of the rumor is our Logistics Division. It's in the second sub-basement of the library, run by a guy named Meredith Hickett (And isn't Meredith supposed to be a girl's name?). And poor Meredith Hickett is the stereotype of every nerdy lab worker in existence: skin so pasty you can practically see his veins, hair so greasy and dusty that even Meredith has forgotten what color it used to be, a back hunched at practically a 90 degree angle, and glasses out of the 1970s.

Every student in this school adored him shamelessly, even the people who tried their hardest to pretend otherwise. Meredith was like a baby pokemon you just wanted to hug until he giggled. It also helped that if you were nice to him he would tell you the best and cheapest places to get food while you were on a mission and that his Porygon liked to do funny tricks for anything shiny you had on your person.

But anyway, Meredith was more than happy to give us files and files of our make or break mission. And boy, was it a weird one.

"So," Sasha said, as we all sat an hour later in the library, as we finished up reading the files (They sat, I slouched in a chair and pretended to read, mostly to annoy Giles, who was pretending that it wasn't bothering him to the point of his teeth grinding), "Eight years ago, these kids, Kim Burrel, Douglas Parr, Roxanne Solberg, and-"

"Terrance, Terrance Vinson." Hina supplied.

"Right, yeah. So these four people are in a race from Veilstone to Pastoria, and they go missing. Nobody hears from them for a week, and then out of the blue Burrel and Vinson show up out of nowhere and refuse to say a word about what happened to them or to Douglas or Roxanne."

Giles and Hina nodded, and I gave an affirmative sounding grunt.

"Do you think that they're dead?" Hina whispered, after a few seconds of silence failed to elicit another word. "Roxanne and Doug, I mean."

That made me sit up and pay attention. Murder was nothing to joke about.

Giles was the one to respond. "I don't know. But Vinson and Burrel were our age when this happened…Maybe it was just an accident, a battle that went wrong, or something, and they tried to cover it up?"

"Oh come on, Fitzroy!" Sasha snapped. "Don't try to make this into an episode of Law and Order! They were our age. None of us are the murdering type. Except maybe Rebecca, when Quincey won't leave her alone."

"Well what do you think happened, Sasha?" Hina asked.

"It's obvious. They both just decided to leave the race and go somewhere else. I might have done it myself."

"Of course you would have, Celera, but by all accounts this Douglas person was intelligent." Giles smarmed at Sasha.

Sasha flushed and stood up aggressively. "Not something you'd know about, Mister second best!"

"Don't fight please-" Hina whimpered.

"STAY OUT OF IT!" Giles and Sasha shouted in perfect synch at poor Hina.

Ms. Barlow chose that moment to swoop down on us with her Toxicroak and Quagsire at her heels. "No shouting in the library, Celera and Fitzroy! All of you get out!"

"But-But Ms Barlow!"

"I SAID ALL, MISS MITARASHI!"

We got out. As we were leaving, I heard her sigh and mutter to her Pokemon. "Typhona, Manny, I swear they misbehave more every year…"

"Croak!"

"Sire-Quag!"

"I most certainly was not 'just as bad'!"

. . .

It was almost two when we were kicked out of the library. The lunch ladies might still have something left, or maybe if I was nice to Étienne he'd whip me up something…

"Right!" Giles ordered. "We have the day off from classes, so go get ready for the mission. We leave tomorrow, at five sharp!"

Giles wanted me to starve to death, clearly.

Sasha, not about to let Giles have a monopoly on ordering people around, chimed in with decrees of her own. "Hina! You're bringing Drake. Giles, you're bringing Ladybird! Nick, take Mora with you this time or I swear I will beat you up. I'm bringing Claw, so we should be able to handle any pokemon we come across."

"What about the quintuple ice weakness we'll have, Celera?" Giles sniffed.

"Claw and Drake can take on ice types all day long, Fitzroy. See you at five sharp, people! And bring Mora or else, Nick!"

We were going to fail this mission so hard it wasn't even funny.

. . .