Disclaimer: I do not own/associate with Criminal Minds nor any of the fictional characters. This is merely just a fanfiction.

- Chapter One -

The Star of the Night

This was my third year studying in the FBI Academy. Located not very far from the academy, was the FBI NCAVC (National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime), where usually we, the undergraduates of the academy would go for visits, for interviews and lectures. Majoring in Criminology and minoring in Psychology were the minimum requirements to become a profiler. Physical fitness was also an essential requirement (just in case we need to chase after criminals).

My family against to it when I told them I was determined to study this field, partly because it doesn't assure a very bright future and is a dangerous yet risky job, especially for a girl. But, they did not know the reason behind my determination.

"Since we're going for our internships soon, let's celebrate before we get into our own separate ways!" Laura suggested while grabbing her ice blended coffee and cheered. Laura Charles, always cheerful and was a clubbing-lover.

"Don't talk like as though we're leaving each other! It's just an internship," I could see Camie's eyes were getting teary, but immediately she rubbed them off. Camie Crescent was a girl who was timid and gentle, pretty much of an introvert. Nonetheless, she was tough in the inside, tougher than every one of us. "We're still going to live in the same apartment!"

"But I don't think we'll be meeting each other that often even we're living in the same apartment," Camie explained. "We've been told that we might need to go to other states for cases."

It was weird to be rather intimate with these two girls here, especially when we just knew each other as we joined the FBI Academy, but our friendship was as though remained for more than a decade.

"Hey, I just got a message from Jason," Laura suddenly spattered out from her mouth while reading a message from her cell phone. Jason McAdams, was one of our course mates, who held parties very often, for any kinds of celebrations. Since the day I joined the academy, he had held almost 100 parties, if I was not mistaken. "He said he'll be throwing a party at Starnight Club tonight. Good, now we need not hold a boring party for just the three of us!"

Camie applauded excitingly. "I hope he does get some new boys to come. As you know, the boys in the academy are really..." she sighed. She did not need to continue with any elaboration, as the three of us knew very well what kind of boys lived in the academy. We once thought that the boys there were awesome, but instead, it wasn't as much as what we expected of. They were stinky, dirty, and unhygienic. They were exactly like those high school boys who did not clean themselves after an exaggerating soccer match or basketball match. They would only clean theirselves when they had outings, probably to impress girls whom they would be meeting. Oddly, they never try to impress girls in the academy, at least not from what I had experienced.

"Shh," Laura pointed to an object behind of me, eventually she was pointing towards a girl. "Look! The weird girl is coming towards us."

Weird girl, as described so, was named Julianna Annah Robes. Julianna was indeed a weirdo, a geek. It was not like we were to discrimate or ridicules her, but there was just this weird personality that she possessed that made everyone disliked her. She never talked to anyone in the academy like a friend, she despised people. Despite of her not-so-lovable personalities, she was known to be the top scorer in the academy. She was walking towards me and immediately knocked my shoulder with her books intentionally.

I moaned softly after the knock, and began to massage my shoulder slowly.

"What is wrong with her?" Laura bellowed, so that Julianna could hear her, but obviously she ignored it. She continued walking away without any words coming from her mouth, or any look of remourse.

"Are you OK?" Camie asked while helping me to massage my shoulder.

"Yeah," I nodded while stretching my arms. "I think."

"Congratulations, Jean!" Amy opened her arms to hug me.

"Uhm... pardon me?" I asked confusingly while getting hugged without knowing the reason.

"You got the highest GPA this term! Overtaking Julianna's place!" She answered while again, shaking my right hand.

No wonder Julianna seemed so angry just now. To her, overtaking her top-scorer place was synonymic to murdering her whole family.

"What? Me? Are you sure?" I asked to reassure. I knew I was not that terrible in tests, but I did not expect to be that excel, for this term.

"This causes for another celebration!" Laura roared once more.

...

"Welcome to the Starnight Club!" A few ladies wearing with the minimal clothing on their bodies, greeted in front of the entrance.

"Told you it isn't a good idea to come. Look," I whispered to Laura, who was exactly having the opposite thought I was having. She seemed to enjoy it.

"What? It's cool! Look! Those flashing colourful lights," Laura went into the night club without a second thought.

"Since we're here, might as well have a look inside," Camie said while grabbing me into the club.

It was like a basement, the night club. We went down a few steps from the stairs that was covered by darkness which led to another door. There were some faint lights hanging on the wall. The door was wide opened. From where we were standing, we could see clearly everything in the night club. There were a huge crowd inside the room. Colourful lights were beaming every second. The people were so into their own dancing, as though they were hopping in their own places while shaking their heads (that's the way they were dancing).

It was horrid inside the club, for me. We tried to squeeze into the crowd. I could feel their sweaty bodies that glided between our shoulders, I could smell the pungent odour released from their bodies. There was barely enough oxygen for everyone there, I could hardly get any oxygen.

"Phew, finally!" Camie hissed strongly while sitting down beside the bartender.

The music was playing so loud (and the bass of the music was extremely strong, too) so we had to almost yell to each other just so we could hear what we were talking. We could barely hear ourselves.

"Hey, I'm joining the crowd for a dance, wanna join?" Laura asked while grinning. I shook my head abruptly. Camie joined her after she took a massive sip of an alcoholic drink (it was some kind of tequila, I thought, but I do admit that I am a real idiot in cocktails or anything related to alcohols).

Before joining the crowd, Laura was spying around the crowd. Then she advised, "Don't just sit down here and get silent. Go out there and get wild. Talk to somebody you're interested with. Who knows? You might meet your future husband."

"Right, what an advice," I rolled my eyes. She gave me a chuckle, and that was the last thing I saw her doing. She and Camie were disappeared through the crowd as they walked into the dance floor to join the crowd.

"Meet my future husband? Here? I don't think so," I spoke to myself. From my definition of "clubbers" were people that were not serious on relationships and will not commit themselves on relationships. I might be wrong, but that was the idea I had. Indeed, I did not enjoy clubbing nor did I enjoy loud music. Suddenly, I had no idea why I attended this party.

"Hey, pretty," the bartender suddenly spoke, which gave me a shock, causing a slight jump from the seat. I turned my face towards him. "What drinks would pretty girls like you want?"

"Apple juice," I replied. He started laughing, thinking I was joking. For another second, I felt like such an idiot for replying such answer and was embarrassed with it. Hence, I pretended that I was joking.

"What would you recommend?" I quickly changed the topic before he starts his laughter.

Without hesitation, the bartender started preparing a drink by adding a few bottles of different alcohols (or whatsoever) into a bottle and stared shaking it. After that, a red liquid was poured into a glass.

"Here you go, the 'Sea Breeze'. Gotta make something to cool down the hotness you possess," the bartender beamed.

"Uh," I grinned uneasily while grabbing the glass of liquor. I placed my lips on the straw, gave a small and cautious sip on the Sea Breeze. Immediately, I shrugged automatically as it was cold, with a little sense of sweetness and sourness.

When I finally felt like discovering my surrounding, I realised there was a man (he looked young, but I wouldn't call him a boy), sitting beside of me. He was wearing very tidily, with a brown shirt, a pair black pants and a red tie on his neck. He had this wavy dark hair which was pretty long and messy, a pair of dark circles circling his eyes, a well shaped lip. He was pretty skinny and timid, but no doubt he was tall. He seemed to be searching for someone in the club. His eyes were staring (and squinting his eyes) much further away and I was pretty sure he did not realise my presence.

Recalling the advice Laura gave me just now, (somehow, I believed this man here was not the type of men who visits nightclubs often) I tried talking to him. It wouldn't harm me to have a new friend, I thought.

"Hi," I greeted him nervously.

"Hey," he replied, but his eyes did not stay long at staring at me.

"You come here often?"

"No, I... I don't," he replied while biting his lips.

It was not easy to talk to him because his answers were simple and short, I could not think of any related topics to talk about at that moment.

"You know-" before I could finish my line, a lady who was dancing hysterically, interrupted by throwing her body to me. The liquor from my glass immediately spattered on his shirt.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" The lady apologised.

"Sorry!" I shouted without giving any concentration on that particular lady. Trying to fix the situation, I tried to wipe his clothes with tissues taken from my bag.

"It's OK," he was wiping his shirt with his own hands. "Uhm, I have to go now. See you... next time." He gave this awkward expression as though he was annoyed and left without any further explanation.

I smacked my forehead, for another embarrassment. He must have annoyed by me, was the only thing I could think of. Everything seemed to go rather uncomfortably for me. Maybe I should leave, I told myself. I walked out of the club to refresh myself and get some fresh air. It was really stuffy inside.

I exhaled and sighed heavily. Staring at the moon, I realised it was full moon that night. The moon looked larger and brighter than usual. It had been long I saw moon such like this.

"How pretty," I continued to stare into the night sky, where stars were twinkling and glittering one by one.

"Hey," a familiar voice called. I turned to him, and he was the guy I met in the club just now.

"Oh, hey," I replied awkwardly. The reunion did not send me any comfortable signs.

He seemed like he was in a dilemma to what he was about to say. "Do you drive?"

"Huh?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Uhm, I'm an FBI agent, I need to go to a certain places immediately," he took out his FBI badge and ID card from his wallet. He also showed me his FBI credential. "Can you give me a ride?"

"Uhhh..." He did not, with any physical appearance, look like an FBI agent. I did doubt about it.

"Don't worry, it's not far at all from here," he continued to explain, trying to persuade. Perhaps, I did look doubtful about what he just said.

"S...Sure," I replied without any further questions. I took out my car key and headed towards an old and worn, rented Ford. He followed behind.

As soon we got into the car, he took out his phone and turned on his GPS. Then he gave some directions. "Turn right, and then go straight, then turn left."

Very swiftly, even driving with an antique car, we reached to his destination. He stepped off the car very quickly, without even saying a "thank you" to me. The last thing I heard him saying was to the phone, "Hotch, I've gone into the alley. Morgan has traced the unsub. I'm meeting him now." I stared at his shadow as it disappeared through the thin air when he entered a dark alley. There were lights, but they were very faded and dimmed lights.

Later, I heard the police sirens, where police cars were arriving. I quickly made way for the police cars while reversing my car to park at the other side. Policemen came out from their cars respectively and had guns and pistols, all readily on their hands. It must be a serious crime. I stared quietly through my car's window.

Bang! Bang! A few gunshots were heard, followed by two figures rushing out from the alley. Another car reached and parked beside the police cars. A man and a woman came out from the car, they headed towards the two figures. The man had black hair; he seemed to be in his 40s. He seemed familiar. Of course, he's Aaron Hotchner!

I came out from the car, having an extreme excitement and joy in my heart. He started talking with the two figures, eventually one of them was the wavy hair man I met earlier, and another one was a black guy with a well-built body figure. A few blinks later, he was nowhere to be seen. He left silently.

"Jean, where are you?" Camie asked through the phone.

"Uhh, I'm coming," I knew I wasn't giving the right answer, but all of the sudden, I had no idea what to say, or what to reply.

As I got back into the car, I saw something left on the passenger seat. It was a brown leather wallet. I examined the wallet, including checking the cards and cash inside the wallet. I glanced through the credential. There were 2 pages in the credential, one with a photo attached to it, the other with wordings as below:

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Dr. Spencer Reid

Supervisory Secret Agent

Code: 1201-XXXX-XXXX

Spencer Reid... he's from the B.A.U.?