Chapter 3, a.k.a. introducing the actually sane people in this story. XD

It's kind of short, but that's because there's not as much bickering between them. Honestly it took me a while to write this. I had to put on super-serious music and everything. They're haard to write. But it'll all be worth it when they meet with the gang.

(Note- Lein is Vietnam)


A man stood in a large conference room, shuffling the papers he held in his hands. He sighed and ran a hand through his messy blonde hair. His green eyes glanced up at the clock hanging off the nearby wall where it declared that it was, in fact, 3:00 in bright red numbers.

He tilted his head, took a seat at the end of a long table and folded his hands on the table in front of him, waiting patiently for the others to arrive. He turned to look over his shoulder at the screen behind him, which brightly displayed the map he was proud of. He grinned wickedly, praising himself for his work. Whoever was responsible for the dots on that map would be sorry they messed with him.

His turned as he heard the door open and saw three men enter. He smiled brightly, as he already knew the two blondes and the dark-haired man. They were a part of is regular team, even if he was receiving a couple new recruits (new to him anyway) for this mission.

He nodded to them as they took their seats and patiently waited for the other agents to arrive. He looked down at the papers in front of him, some of them displaying the faces of his team. His eyes caught on the flashy symbols sitting happily on the top right corner of the paper. Each paper had one of three symbols on them, and an additional one that was on every single paper. The first three symbols were simple enough, they depicted either a wolf, snake or eagle all curled around a sphere which was the Earth. The fourth, universal, symbol was slightly more intricate. At first it just seemed like a bunch of scribbles, but on closer look, an intricate design could be seen. A good agent could recognize this pattern at a glance and immediately pick out when a false one was presented. A great agent could copy the pattern perfectly. They were all symbols of Iustitia.

His was broken out of his examination as two more people entered the room, the new recruits. A woman with long black hair strode in confidently, while the man with the slicked black golden hair walked in more cautiously.

It was at this point that he stood up to greet the two. He hadn't bothered with the three before, but these two were new, and he felt the need to act the gentleman part and introduce himself.

The two looked over at him. The man jumping at his movement and the woman simply walking over to grasp the hand that had been extended.

"Lein." She stated simply before walking away to take a seat next to the already seated Japanese man to his right.

His gaze followed the woman curiously before turning to the man, who had by this time wandered over.

"Ludwig Beilschmidt." The man said as he shook his hand.

The man nodded. "Arthur Kirkland." He replied, glad that this one had stayed long enough for him to return the greeting. He released the man's hand and took his seat again.

He did a headcount then. Five. He sighed and rubbed at his temples before glancing over at the pair of blondes sitting to his left. One was a small, weak looking man in a black blazer while the other was a rather large, rather intimidating, man wearing a light blue button up shirt and a thin pair of spectacles. "Tino, have you seen the idiot?" He asked, annoyed.

The small man raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He looked at the man beside him. "Nope. What about you Berwald?" The larger man just shook his head without speaking. "Uh- so that's a no from us." Tino finished.

Arthur turned to the Japanese man on his right then. "Kiku?"

The small man shook his head. "No I am sorry Arthur-san. I have not seen him today."

Arthur felt a headache coming on as he turned to the two newcomers. He wanted to make a good impression on the new agents, so he decided to start the meeting. He stood and walked over to the large touch screen that was at the back of the room. He gestured at the screen to attract everyone's attention.

"Hello. We've all been introduced so I'll start now. I am Arthur Kirkland, and I shall be your leader on this operation." He smiled widely, getting back into the excitement of what all this meant. His breakthrough. "As you well know, Iustitia is an agency that prides itself on stopping crime. That is why we are here today."

He pointed at the map, which was a zoomed in map of the North-Eastern United States. It spanned- north to south- from Maine down to Virginia and- east to west- from the Atlantic ocean to Illinois. The map was filled with glowing dots of various colors on a scale from blue to purple to red. Small, transparent text hovered over each dot, naming the time and date that the said 'dot' had occurred. In reality, each dot was a crime-scene, all sharing similar enough traits to be considered possibly connected in some way. In all, it looked like rubbish, just a scattering of multicolored dots that seemed to have no connection. Arthur, however, knew better.

He smiled as he briefly explained what the map was and what it meant. "Any questions yet?" He asked. Tino raised his hand. Arthur nodded at him.

"What kind of crimes are we talking about here?" He inquired.

Arthur nodded again, approving of the question. "All sorts. They range from robbing a bank, to stealing art from a museum. There is even-" he pointed to two separate dots on the screen, "a kidnapping and the ensuing ransom."

Tino nodded, giving Arthur leave to continue. "Yes, well it seems like a mess doesn't it? It's an impressive number of dots sure, but that's it right?" He turned his gaze back to the screen and tapped it a few times. After he lifted his hand, lines began to form- connecting the dots as they had before. Arthur grinned deviously again. He really did applaud himself for coming up with the code he had used to puzzle out the pattern. Soon, all the dots linked together to form a mix between a grid and stars. Well, all except for that one stupid bright red dot hovering up in Maine. Arthur glared at the dot as if it were the bane of his existence. It had caused him some trouble. He would have figured out the code a good two sleepless days earlier if the dot hadn't suddenly popped up and ruined all his data. He had decidedly chosen to ignore the stubborn point of data, and came up with his grid a day later.

"Ah- New York? I've always wanted to go there!" A voice called out from the doorway, causing Arthur to spin, taking the glare off the dot and fixing it on the man.

"Francis. You're late." He snarled.

The man shrugged and flipped his shoulder-length blonde hair over his shoulder with a single hand. "Sorry, I got caught in traffic." Arthur raised an impressive eyebrow at this rather unlikely story. He decided to drop it though, turning back to the screen.

"Just take a seat." He shot back. Francis smiled brightly when he spotted the Asian woman sitting next to Kiku. He walked over and made his way to sit in the empty chair beside her.

"Oh like hell you will." She said before sweeping a leg out gracefully, simultaneously kicking the chair, sending it rolling across the room until it slammed into the wall, and Francis. Francis, being a trained agent, rolled with the impact and jumped to his feet, looking no more disheveled than he had before.

"Aww, Lein I was hoping for a better reception than that." He said, doing the smart move and sitting down in a seat on the opposite side of the table next to Ludwig.

"Aww, Francis-" She mimicked, "I was hoping you had drowned in a well somewhere." She said all this with a fake smiled plastered across her face. However, afterwards her face returned to the impassive scowl she had worn since she arrived. "Be professional." She snarled at the man.

Arthur decided he'd have to question his agents later about this. He also decided he liked this Lein girl. "Anyway." He cut in, bringing all the attention back to him as he gestured to the map. "As you can see, there are numerous radical shapes formed by the grid." It was true. In fact, now what had seemed like a mess held numerous color-coded star-like patterns. Every star held points of the same color, or close to it. One blue star hovered near Boston, a purple near Pittsburgh, and others all centered on major cities. Arthur than smiled at what appeared to be the beginning of yet another star, this one in red, forming around New York City. He didn't need to explain the map to his fellow agents, they all understood immediately.

"Everybody understand? There is another star beginning around New York, so that is where we must go to catch these criminals. I say criminals because of the pure scope of these crimes. We actually have no information at all on the perpetrator other than they are clean. Every crime has been an in-and-out job. Whosoever been doing this is quick and efficient. They are obviously intelligent, organized and highly dangerous. We are assuming that it is some sort of organized group, and we don't know how many enemies we may face." He gave all the members of the room an appraising glance. "Does anyone have any problems with that?"

He received six shakes of the head and he smiled.

"Then that's it. We're going in practically blind, but you are all Iustitia agents, so I trust you to be able to handle yourselves in such a situation. We're leaving for New York tomorrow where we will stay at a Iustitia safe-house. Everyone understand?"

Six nods. Arthur's eyes brightened. "Great."


The very next day, the seven agents were making themselves home in their safe-house. Kiku was already hard at work on his laptop. Making faces occasionally without his knowledge.

Arthur sat next to Kiku on a new plush couch, flipping though papers. He paused as he spotted the files he had on his fellow agents. He pulled them out and began looking at them. He did a quick count- three wolves, two eagles, and two snakes. So the new recruits were an Eagle and a Wolf. He suddenly felt very bad for the young Asian woman who was apparently going to work on the Eagle position with Francis. He, himself, would be specializing as a Wolf with the blonde German, along with Berwald. He looked over at Kiku, who was typing furiously.

A little too furiously, Arthur thought. "Find something?" He asked the Japanese man.

Kiku held up and hand quickly, asking for silence. Arthur sat there for another good five minutes before Kiku finally spoke up.

"I think I found a lead." He stated. Getting an approving look from Arthur.

"Already? We just arrived here this morning." Arthur was impressed, but of course that's why Kiku was such a high rated Snake.

Kiku nodded. "Actually I've been sweeping since we talked yesterday. It took a good twenty hours to find anything."

Arthur laughed. "I don't know about you, but a lead after twenty hours still sounds good to me."

Kiku pursed his lips contemplating this. "I suppose." He answered, obviously still not convinced. "Anyway I found a bug. I very good bug."

Arthur leaned over and looked at Kiku's screen, code flashing across it. Arthur considered himself decent with coding, he had solved the puzzle of the map after all, but this was beyond him. "Translate please." He asked.

Kiku, grinning, pulled up a simple internet browser and typed in an address. The website for a famous art museum popped up. Arthur nodded, art museums were nothing new, the criminal(s) had robbed many of them already. "It fits the M.O."

Kiku nodded. "It was in the camera system. It was set to self-destruct to a specific code, leaving the camera system unusable for a time period close to two hours before the cameras would recover from the shock." He turned to Arthur. "I assume I should disable it? I can do it in a way that will make it appear as if it is still active to whomever is at the other end."

Arthur smiled at his teammate. "You're the best Kiku. I suppose that means we better start staking it out tonight, we don't know when they'll strike." He stood up as the Japanese man began typing furiously again. He walked to the common area of the safe-house and found the other members of his team sitting there.

He looked over his team. Ludwig was reading a book by himself over in the corner, choosing to ignore the bickering that was occurring between Lein and Francis, which looked about to break out into a full out fist fight. (Well, more like Lein beating up on Francis.) Tino and Berwald sat on the large black leather couch, and unlike Ludwig, Tino seemed more interested in the fight than anything.

"Eh-em." Arthur cleared his throat, calling the room's attention to him. Ludwig looked up right away, and as did Berwald. Tino reluctantly pulled his gaze away from the fighting pair, whom themselves bickered for a bit before realized Arthur had entered.

"Kiku has found a bug and a potential crime-scene that matches our M.O." Arthur stated simply. "We'll start the stakeout tonight. Any objections?" When no one spoke up Arthur's serious face disappeared and he shot his team a devious grin. "Let's catch ourselves some criminals."


OOC-

I love the idea that Alfred's already screwing with Arthur before they've even met. (With the whole Maine outlier thing.) Oh poor Arthur, just wait until you meet the guy.

So these guys are all boring sticks in the mud. ;3; Except for Francis. He's an obnoxious man with a large ego. (And kind of Tino. He's fun sometimes.)

Also a note now that pretty much everybody in this story has some sort of tragic backstory. I feel kind of bad for the poor babies.

Next chapter's the 'heist'. So it'll be nice and exciting, and longer than this one. It'll make up for this kind of short chapter.


Fun facts~

Iustitia- Iustitia is an agency that works with the government (it basically is part of the government, think FBI or MI5, just as a company) to stop crime. The agency is made up of highly skilled agents from all over the world, fit into one of three specifically skilled sections. They have an extremely high-success rate because of the extensive training. Meaning almost no one gets away when they are on the job. To top that off, Arthur's team is made up of some of the most skilled agents out there (and two rising stars). Better watch out Alfred.

(BTW Iustitia means 'justice' in Latin. I didn't just pick it because it looks kind of like Hetalia. I swear. XD)

Symbols-

Wolves- Wolves are field agents. They are usually highly skilled in either firearms or some form of close combat. Aside from being the ones to go in during missions, Wolves are required to know basic hacking and also psychology. It is their job to be able to take in a situation in a brief second and choose a course of action that will give the desired effect. Wolves are fast, intelligent, and skilled.

Eagles- Eagles are intelligence agents, along with being field agents of a different kind. Eagles' main jobs are spying and rooftop surveillance. They tend to be acrobats and need to be able to get themselves out of confrontational situations easily. As such, it is a requirement that Eagles be able to not only lift their own body weight but also scale buildings. Eagles are nimble, stealthy and sly.

Snakes- Snakes are either hackers or undercover agents, Kiku being the hacker of their group and Tino the undercover agent. Snakes must be highly intelligent and smooth-talkers. Snakes literally have to pass a written test, testing their I.Q. before they are allowed in the section. They tend to be rarer than Wolves and Eagles simply by their nature. Snakes are quick thinkers, alert and crafty.

While most agents work solo, Tino and Berwald are partner agents. In fact, they were nicknamed the 'Married Couple' because of how close they are and how well they work together, a name Tino highly resents. After all he is not (and in no way resembles) a 'wife'. Berwald disagrees and finds the name highly appropriate, no matter what Tino says.

Lein worked with Francis before, that's how she knows him. It is easy to say that he it on her the whole time, causing them to botch a job (which was promptly righted later with the apprehension of the suspect) Lein was not amused and did not appreciate dealing with Francis for a little under a month. She was not happy to see him on her team again.

Arthur and Francis actually are friends despite what they might say if questioned. They went through training together, and while they do not get along well, surprisingly they work well together in the field. They have a mutual mission to constantly take jabs at each others egos. (Both of which are a bit large.)

Kiku and Arthur are also good friends. They work well together on missions because they share a similar mindset most of the time. Arthur and Kiku go through training at the same time, however since Kiku was a Snake they didn't see each other much. Wolves and Eagles share a lot of training, Snakes not so much.

Why yes, Ludwig is still Gil's brother. Why do you ask? He didn't go through training with anyone since Lein went through it a bit before him.


Arthur- Wolf

Francis- Eagle

Kiku- Snake

Tino- Snake

Berwald- Wolf

Lien- Eagle

Ludwig- Wolf