"Here are the reports for today, Sir Kryuger." A young girl of orange hair and blue eyes placed a stack of papers atop a desk. Her outfit consisted of a crimson coat with a white undershirt and a black necktie. Her black heeled boots reached all the way to her knees and an emblazoned company logo acted as a stylish kneepad.

"Thanks, Kalina." The man named Kryuger sat behind the desk, his work uninterrupted. He was old and grizzled, clearly a man who has seen years of fighting. His hair had begun to whiten but only a small part and has certainly not reached his facial goatee yet. He wore a crimson coat like the girl but his had expensive fur on the collar. Underneath the coat was a black outfit.

Kalina's eyes wandered around the office a bit before she found a magazine on a glass case. The cover consisted of Kryuger himself standing in front of the headquarters of their company. "Grifon and Kryuger." Kalina whispered to herself, the company's name. Then, a thought came to her mind and she was not one to hide thoughts. "Sir, if I may…"

"What is it, Kalina?"

"Why did you name our PMC 'Grifon & Kryuger'?" She curiously asked. "Where'd the 'Grifon' part come from?"

The question made the man himself stop writing and raise his head to look at Kalina. "Do you really want to know?" He asked the girl back.

"Uh, well, if it's classified information or something personal…" Kalina realized that her curiosity may be going too far.

"No, no. I can tell you if you want to." Kryuger assured. "It's personal, yes, but I trust you. Do you have time though? This'll be a long one."

"Uh, yes. I'm off after I deliver the reports so…" Kalina replied.

Kryuger put his pen down, assumed a more comfortable position in his chair, closed his eyes, inhaled…

…then exhaled.

"We're doing this again because we need to polish our moves and maneuvers. You almost shot a hostage!"

"Hey no. I shot at the target behind him. A well-placed chest shot too."

"In a real situation, a hostage will not be struggling in a fixed set of movements. Which means he could be moving around randomly. Which means you could've hit or even just grazed him. Which means our shots must be true with wide safety margins, so we don't fail or compromise the mission."

"That's not… Ugh, fine. Let's just get this over with."

Barry can be such tight ass about these things. I reload my submachine gun and place myself next to Barry at the starting position. "Ready when you are." I told my partner. Barry then pressed a button on the side and two blares of the siren followed before a louder, longer blare that indicated the start of the exercise.

The training course came to life. Me and Barry took our positions on the first door. I kick open the door while my partner tossed a flashbang inside. I was the first to enter and took down the holographic images of blinded and stunned hostiles. "Room clear!"

Barry was the next to enter and immediately went to the stairs that led to the lower floor. I followed behind. The stairs led to an open entryway to the next room. A holographic hostile emerged to greet the two of us with his holographic rifle, but Barry took him down with a well-placed shot with his own, real rifle.

We cleared the downstairs room after throwing another flashbang in there and formed up at the door that led to the next and final room. But things here a little different, I kick down the door but me and Barry enter the room simply storm in with our weapons at the ready. In the room were several men tied up and bound. All holographic, of course.

A hostile emerged from some crates holding a struggling hostage. The former's got a pistol on the latter's head and this is the part where I shoot the hostile through the hole between the hostage's arm and rib. But Barry doesn't like that, so we have to handle this 'professionally'.

Usually, me and Barry try to beat each other on who gets the first shot on Mister Holographic Hostile's head. But I'm not feeling competitive today, so I instead moved slowly to the side to provoke a reaction from the hostile. It had indeed and the hostile turned to face me, exposing his back to Barry and with one more gunshot, the simulation was done.

"Hostages secured. Good." Barry muttered. "Wanna go another round?"

I looked at him incredulously. "What do you think?"

Barry snickered before the PA system in the room lit up. "Berezovich Kryuger. Please report to the briefing room." A stern female voice ordered.

Yep, that was my partner, Berezovich Kryuger. I call him "Barry" because both his names are too damn long. In his twenties, looks rough, pretty nice combed hair though. I never found out if he was actually Russian or from somewhere in Eastern Europe but since he's working for the Russian internal affairs faithfully, I guess it didn't really matter.

"You too, John Griffin." The PA system added.