Disclaimer: Even though the characters from MR and Artemis Fowl aren't in this story I do not own them or the books written about them, sadly however I am the creater of the characters in this story and request you ask for my permission before 'borrowing' them. Thanks!

Anyway hope you enjoy! Please review!

Code name: Firefly

Chapter one: Getting to know you

The flames danced in my eyes, beautiful amber tongues of pure destruction. Poetry. Another job well done. I swept a soot covered hand across my face, brushing a lock of unruly hair out of my amber eyes. I gazed at my work. The warehouse was burning brilliantly, a signal that I had done my job well. More on that later. This was what I was born to do, created for. And boy did I love it.

I caught sight of my reflection in an office window, to the left of the building I was standing on. I was a good thirty feet above the burning warehouse. My reflection showed a girl of about 5ft 6, with messy blonde hair with amber streaks, in a brown cropped leather jacket and torn jeans with scarlet baseball boots. My left cheek had a gash underneath the bone and there was a purple bruise forming underneath my hair line. A patch of my hair had been singed slightly and overall I looked like I had been dragged to the gates of hell and back. Still, it could have been worse.

BRRR! BRRR! My left ear vibrated and I pressed the button completing the circuit allowing me to hear my comrade's commands.

'Firefly. Come in Firefly. Mission was successful?' my bosses metallic tones barked in my ear. The communicator was only a basic model and made every word sound like it was being said by a robot. I pressed an invisible button on the skin coloured transmitter on my throat to reply. The transmitter picked up vocal vibrations which it then sent to the recipient's ear piece and came out as words. Simple but effective.

'Mission was successful. Returning to base. Over and out.'

Firefly was my code name for security reasons. It pretty much sums up what I do. Let me explain. There is a bunch of us working for this company which takes care of rival companies, people's enemies and other major annoyances. We do people's dirty work for them and in exchange they pay us money. Lots of money. We do what we have to do and this is what keeps us in leather and sneakers. And a big bonus is that the person who we are working for doesn't get caught and neither do we. 'Cause we are super smart that way. So the customer is happy and rival free and we get paid. Everyone wins.

We're not all bad. We sometimes help the police, crime fighters, environmentalists and other like them, but anonymously of course. Can't have the good guys knowing who we are, can we? Our job however can lead to danger, naturally, but we can take care of ourselves.

How can we do these wonders I hear you ask? Well, let's just say we each have our own talents that provide very useful in this line of work. When we were created, we were given special abilities. Yes, you read right, created. As in experiments. There are six of us in total, two boys and four girls, including me. We don't have families, just each other. That way, there is no-one to be used against us emotionally so we have no weaknesses. Or, at least none which are obvious. This makes us pretty powerful. So we are experiments that went right. And now we are weapons of mass destruction. Apparently.

'Time to get out of here,' I thought. I activated the mechanical wings on my back. They hummed and whirred into action as I walked over to the edge of the roof and jumped off. I was only falling for a 10th of a second before the wings lifted me upwards. I rose until I was fifty feet high and then angled the wings North-east towards home. When I say home I mean my living facilities where I stay with my team, not my brother wearing out his thumbs playing video games while mum makes dinner and dad is coming home from work to dote upon his family. 'Cause I've never known that and probably never will. But I don't care. Really. Honest.

The wings were like mechanical insect wings and moved so fast that you could only see a blur of colour. Gloves on my hands had built in sensors which allowed me to control the wings as if they were my own. With just a slight twitch of my fingers, I could change direction, speed and height if I wanted. This was as close as it got to being a bird unless you wanted to amalgamate. No way was I having a scientist add bits of bird DNA to me. I loved flying but I had limits.

BRRR! My ear vibrated again.

'Hey Firefly! How's it going?' a voice chatted in my ear.

No way was that my boss. It was far too cheerful and laid back. There was only one person it could be. Ringo, my crazy best guy friend. He must have hacked into my communicator again. No surprise there. Told you we were smart.

'Not bad', I answered, 'Just blowing up a couple of warehouses, dodging the bad guys, screwing up my hair. All in a day's work.'

I could just see him wrinkling his nose in distaste. His masculine part of the brain didn't approve of girls going out blowing things up and getting into fist fights. I think he would be happier if I just stayed at home and did baking instead. Sexist pig.

'Anyway, these wings are amazing!'

'My latest creation', he said proudly, 'you like?'

'I love!'

Ringo is our science geek. He spends his time making gadgets and other technological wonders while the others and I go out and blow stuff up, steal stuff and generally get up the nose of society. He hates getting his hands dirty and, between you and me, is a bit of a wimp, but he's my wimp and a great friend once he stops talking in equations.

'So what have you been up to?'

'I have been working on my latest project. Microscopic robots which can eat rubbish and turn it into fuel for cars. It's also eco friendly'

'Cool. Can they do anything else?'

'They can dig tunnels, excavate ten metres of dirt in three minutes and cut through anything.'

'Wow that's impressive.'

'Totally. Oops got to go. The big boss man needs to see me working and fast. Also he wants to see you when you get in.'

'That blows. Okay I'll see you soon.'

Click! Static buzzed in my ear and I was left talking to silence. I could understand Ringo's rude departure. You don't keep the boss waiting if you value your life.

His face is smooth and hard like it has been carved in marble and his eyes are pale grey and cold. He is to be feared and not underestimated. He rarely shows any emotion and when he does it is usually anger and it takes a lot to make him angry, believe me. He has short, stiff grey hair and he reminds me of an army general in so many ways from his perfect posture to his firm expression. I wouldn't be surprised if he was one once. I don't think I'll ever know. There is a lot I don't know about him and I don't expect he will tell me. Everything about him is angular from his nose and flint-like cheek bones to his crisp British accent.

It's not just his appearance which is statue-like, it's his manner as well. He could reduce the world's toughest man to a crying sap missing his mummy in under a minute. Want my advice? Don't get on his bad side.

I glided through the air wondering what the others were doing. Their various jobs and assignments I guess. I really should tell you about them and what they do.

First there's Ringo who you just met. He is fifteen years old, same as me. His special talent is that he is a genius. When I say genius I mean he is a super genius. He has the highest IQ ever recorded. It was so high that it was off the scale and they had to guess how high his intelligence was. Since then, in his spare time, Ringo has been making a new intelligence test for other off-the-scale geniuses, of which there are very few. When he was a developing embryo, the scientists who made us added some growth formula to his DNA to try and create a giant. Why I have no idea. However they got something wrong and ended up with an über-geek instead. They were delighted until they realised that the formula was on the computer which had exploded that very morning and had been sent for scrap. They found the computer but the memory was wiped and the equation gone so Ringo is the first (and last) super genius. Since then they have backed up everything after they save it just in case.

Then there is Krystal who is thirteen. She has beautiful glossy, almost white blonde hair and ice blue eyes which go with her ivory coloured skin. Her code name is Cloudy to suit her talent. Krystal has the unusual talent of being able to control the weather. Rain, hail, snow, sleet, wind you name it, she does it. The scientists aren't sure how Krystal happened. They were trying to give her invisibility but put the decimal point in the wrong place and got a weather monger instead. They thought that Krystal would die due to their mistake but she lived, and then some. She was about three weeks old when they noticed that she could control water. Delighted they encouraged her and her gift flourished. By the time she was one year old she could make rain, snow and hail if she wanted. One day when she was two years old, she looked out of the window and said to a scientist,

'I don't like that cloud. It messes up the pretty view. I make it go away.' And she did. Just like that. The scientists nick-named her Cloudy because of her talent which they called her until she chose her own name. She chose Krystal when she was five because she wanted a proper name and it was one of her favourite words but mostly we still call her Cloudy. She is a sweet-natured kid and is a bit of a dreamer. Unfortunately, she is a motor mouth and never shuts up. I love her loads but she could turn Mother Teresa into an axe murderer.

Then there is Electra. She is fourteen and is half white and half Hispanic. She has cropped black hair and almond shaped brown eyes and looks just like a fallen angel. She is nearly as tall as me which is kind of weird. Her special skill is she is able to absorb electricity and use it to create force fields and she can give wicked electric shocks. You don't want to catch her in a bad mood. When she is mad you can feel the air become charged and the hair on your neck standing on end. When she doesn't concentrate her energy it comes out like lightning bolts. She can make her stored energy mesh together forming her force fields. It comes in handy when we have no choice but to fight. There was a thunder storm when she was developing and somehow she managed to become charged with electricity and, bam, one power absorber is born. I don't know exactly how it happened; the scientists used a lot big words that sound like nonsense to me. If you want to get technical ask Ringo and he will explain somehow. All round though, she is a great kid and has a wicked sense of humour.

Then there is Tallulah who is ten years old. She is a bit of a tom-boy with scruffy brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He powers are mind blowing as if the others weren't already. She can turn herself invisible, walk through solid objects and control minds. The scientists finally figured out how to create invisibility by moving the decimal point one space to the left but how she got her other talents is a mystery. The scientists guessed that she mutated herself. As if she wasn't freaky enough. Her talents allow her to be the perfect cat burglar which is a very useful skill when it comes to helping antique artefact collectors get their hearts desire, a priceless Monet or whatever. Tallie is upbeat and is a bit of a cheeky monkey. She is like my little sister and I love her to bits.

After her there is Liam who is sixteen. He like Krystal controls one of the elements. His is earth. He can control anything that grows in the earth such as plants, trees and so on. He is one of the strong, silent types and definitely isn't a motor mouth like Krystal. He happens to be very patient, something I'm not and is a great listener. He can hold out longer than the rest of us can when Krystal gets on her soapbox about something. He would be the leader if he hadn't nominated me to be the leader-like figure. Apparently I have leader-like qualities which he lacks and this makes me the leader. The others quickly followed suit with this argument, despite my protests. Did I get I say in this? No. Did anyone ask me did I want this job? No. Did anyone care? No. So now I'm stuck with this leader job I didn't want but what are you gonna do? I do my best for these guys, I really do. This brings me to my talent.

I, like Krystal and Liam, have an element power. And not just any power. The power of fire. I can create it, manipulate it and use it to the extreme. The warehouse we were looking at earlier? I did that with my fire power. The scientists don't know how they created Liam and me. We were accidents but cool accidents at any rate. I am fifteen years old and, like Liam, Krystal, Ringo and Tallie, I am white. My code name as you know is Firefly and my real name is Amber. Which is short for my full name, Amber Lyra Inferno. All of our full names are long except Liam. He's just Liam. Like I said I'm the leader of this motley crew and I do my best to look after us all with help from Liam of course. I am definitely not a girly-girl and I hate pink, hardly ever brush my hair and have never worn make-up in my life.

Now you know who we are and what we do.

By this time I had arrived back at base. I landed on the flat roof of the twenty story building and opened the small door which led down to our headquarters. To the workers, the building is just an office building where they work helping people with their insurance while their reclusive boss lives on the top floor and isn't to be disturbed under any circumstances. This cover-up allows me and my team to live in well-paid, luxurious peace. I walked down a narrow corridor and opened the door to our living room. It is nice as far as living rooms go, with a leather corner sofa, coffee table and satellite TV. I stepped through into the kitchen and got myself a drink of orange juice. Starting fires made me thirsty. I put the glass in the sink and slowly made my way to the boss's room. I paused just outside the door wondering if he was busy and I could escape a grilling about whatever today.

As if sensing my presence, a deep voice boomed out,

'Enter!'

I jumped, and then once my heart stopped hammering slightly, I turned the shiny brass doorknob and entered.