"Huh?"
Dylan seemed to be the only one who's heart was still beating after that question, as the three girls didn't keep their eyes off the brick-sized speakerphone for about a minute. None of them knew what to say - the whole idea seemed ridiculous, really - not even Natalie could think straight.
"What the hell do you take me for?" Dylan sprayed the question at the speakerphone, throwing her hands wildly.
"Now now, calm down..uh, Dylan." Bosley attempted, who was beginning to feel comfortable with his practically-invisible status in the room. Unfortunately, his interruption only provoked Dylan to yell at the box afterwards.
"Secret....Agents??" That was Natalie, with a face like she'd just won the Spelling Bee for the fourth year running. It took her a few seconds to do it, but she ran to the speaker, and when her mouth was just inches away, she said "Oh thank you, mister Charlie! Sir!"
"What?" Dylan turned to the scrawny blonde. "You actually BELIEVE this quack?"
"Well, um, yeah!" Natalie said nervously, mostly to herself, but as she turned back to glance at Alex (who was standing up), she could have sworn she saw a grin.
"You guys are insane," Dylan pushed her hair back to make her face breathe in air.
"Excuse me, girls, but I'm afraid I wasn't finished." The voice said once again, and Alex almost tripped on her boots from surprise. He was still there?
"Look, Mr. Voice-in-Box," Dylan approached the speaker like a new person: someone extremely fed up. "I don't know you who the hell you are - just the fact that we can't see you is creeping me out - but STAY out of my business or I'm calling the COPS!"
She headed towards the door.
"Well I suppose they'd be too busy investigating your records first, wouldn't they...Dylan." The elderly voice of Charlie had seemed to place emphasis on her name, and strangely enough, it made Dylan stop dead in her tracks.
The bleached-haired punk slowly turned her head around, showing a great rage that almost convinced Natalie and Alex she was going to smash the speaker phone with all her might. Bosley's hands fumbled nervously behind the desk.
"Are you trying to threaten me?" came her dangerously low pitch at the box. Alex shut her eyes tightly.
"Not at all," the voice spoke honestly, "but please, sit down. The three of you."
Natalie's face turned pale white then, and looked around the room as if lost and confused; could Charlie see them? Part of her was thinking that he was a ghost, whose only way of communicating was from that little box, but that couldn't be....
Yet Alex and Natalie obeyed the voice without question. Neither of them could imagine what sort of "records" he was talking about, but they gave another glance at Dylan, and left it at that.
"May I ask what it was that you meant by 'secret agents,' sir?" came Alex's clear voice as she sat, which made Dylan and Natalie turn their heads around in surprise.
So, they thought, Miss Sushi Girl spoke decent, proper English after all. Go figure.
"A very good subject to get into, Miss Shimamura," replied Charlie. "I must assure you that the agency I run here is top secret, and nobody except my close colleagues and now yourselves know about it."
The girls opened their ears once again to the speaker, and Dylan threw a blue gumball from the pocket of her jeanjacket into her mouth for something to chew on. Alex then became very interested in her shoes.
"I started this Agency over forty years ago, after my resignation from the war--" the voice began.
"You fought in World War II??" Natalie asked in such cheerful amazement, Dylan thought she was going to run up to the speaker and ask for its autograph.
"Well, yes Miss Brewster, I did. But that's besides the point," and so he continued.
He talked about the founding of his first investigations agency in 1945, previously called Townsend and Wardall, P.I. after himself and a close friend of his who had later died in special services to Vietnam. Charlie had also been assigned in Eastern Europe as a personal aide to Central Intelligence (the youngest in record) but a severe knee injury had left him permanently disabled to continue his work.
"I'm terribly sorry...." Natalie sobbed, wiping tears from her cheeks with her blouse sleeves.
"Oh, I'm all right, Miss Brewster....and since then, my secret services have expanded to over forty countries and dozens of languages, and has been of special aid to the White House, the Pentagon, as well as international relations."
"Well good for you!" Dylan clapped sarcastically. "But, how do we come into this?"
"You've got to understand, Miss Sanders, that the people I hire for my work are bright and skillful in many ways, but they also carry the one attribute that makes them entirely unsuspicious when called for duty."
"And what is that, sir?" Alex said curiously enough.
"They're women."
The girls blinked, exchanging glances to each other. James Bond....Superman....Captain Nemo.... Always the heroic figures were guys, Natalie thought, and of course the bad people would never ever suspect a teenage girl to fight over nuclear weapons of mass destruction and stuff. Such a simple idea, yet it made sense!
And there was a knock on the door.
Bosley scrambled over and opened it, and the girls watched a group of three tall, young-adult women in business suits walk in and stand next to the wall in a very synchronized manner. They had their hands at their sides, similar to a military inspection, yet very at ease.
"Dylan, Alex, Natalie, meet my former Angels: Carrie Apple, Madison Lee, and Ruth Wilkins."
The girls stared at the women, who nodded as their names were respectively said. They all looked to be close in age (probably in their mid-thirties) and if Madison's hair had been strawberry blonde instead of black, they could have been triplets.
"They will be helping you for the next few months in every aspect there is to becoming an Angel: gadget training, computer hacking, foreign languages....and yes, Alex, kung-fu."
In response, Alex smiled with her proud, glimmering almond eyes.
"This work will take years of commitment, roughly ten to fifteen of them dealing with onsite assignment to numerous parts of the world. There are drawbacks, I understand, and trust me, anything can be worked on. Carrie here found a young man during her time, and thus chose to be more of the 'computer hacker' of her group to stay in touch."
The blonde named Carrie then smiled at that statement, looking at the beige carpet and fighting off a giggle. Dylan couldn't tell whether this grown- up was actually more pathetic than the geek sitting right next to her, but she thought time would tell.
"Being a Angel will broaden your worlds as young people on service, and you can learn a lot from it....that is, should you all accept my proposition."
"I do! I do!" Natalie yelped with excitement to nobody in particular, her glasses sliding off her nose.
"I shall inform my parents as soon as possible," Alex said in a negotiable manner.
"Wait a sec - what about school? And where exactly am I supposed to sleep?" were Dylan's thoughts, and she looked at the three women to see if they could give her straight answers. Instead, they were observing her Dylan image with sincere interest.
"I promise you, Miss Sanders, that it will all be taken care of. Since I can't tell you anything further now, I'm giving you girls the rest of this morning to think it over, and Bosley will notify me of your decision afterwards. My former Angels will lead you from here."
The girls thought Charlie had hung up right then and there, but the static from the speaker had cleared up for a brief moment.
"And I wanted to remind you girls that this decision must be a unanimous one between the three of you - this isn't a one-woman show, I'm telling you all right now. Until then."
The speakerphone became static again, and finally disappeared altogether.
It was after that statement that Madison turned her head away from the girls and looked timidly towards the speaker. Alex had noticed it first, before Dylan gazed at her direction and thought the same thing: perhaps these women had not gotten along as well as Charlie had hoped.
They all looked alike, to the very least, so what could possibly have gone wrong between them? Dylan thought, as she looked at her own two potential teammates with a keen eye of judgement. One side had her dealing with a Miss-Perfect-Sushi-girl who would always find some way to show off her family history, the other had a scrawny Ugly Duckling with a flare for dumb trivia. Cleaning her brothers' messes seemed more like the wise way to go, but still, her wandering thoughts remained.
Natalie could hear the tension in Charlie's voice as he made that final statement, but nevertheless, she couldn't help but smile, thinking how great it would be to work with a team. Of course, she probably would have picked more fun-looking girls than Alex and Dylan (seriously, she thought, who would give a girl that name?), maybe someone with a taste for 80s pop like she did. Oh well, if it meant learning exotic languages, nothing could be that bad.
Alex was the more neutral of the three, which wasn't unusual. The girl sat straight on the couch, staring at her nails, and as she rubbed one finger over the smooth polish, she thought about home. This job seemed exciting, as if Charlie was rewarding her from all the excellent titles she'd received in her life. Yet this was strange, considering she had never been to the U.S. alone (her parents were at a press conference in London, discussing her autobiography), nor for something that dealt with her making her own, honest decision. It was a choice she had to share between two girls she didn't even know. Could she really split a reward for the first time ever? On the other hand, she thought, if she didn't count her manicure parties with her bodyguards, she never really knew what it was like to have sisters...
"Don't worry about it, kids."
The three girls then looked over at the desk, surprised to see Bosley open his mouth at a stressful time like this.
"Really," he continued, casually. "This is the best experience you'll ever have."
Ruth and Carrie nodded their heads instantly, while Madison's took a second too long.
"You girls might learn to like each other, after a year or so," Ruth encouraged wholeheartedly. "Trust me, it's all worth it. The travelling, going undercover, it's what I always wanted to do."
"We once scuba-dived with deadly manta rays to spy on this Russian submarine that was lurking near the West Indies, and I used to hate water!" Carrie described, with the familiar excitement of a certain teenager.
Natalie smiled her toothy smile and revealed her shiny retainer to everyone. There seemed to be nothing to lose, so she raised herself up from the couch and looked at Dylan, then Alex.
"Well, I think we can do this! What do you say, Alex?" She seemed all right with the tension that was going on between Alex and Dylan, but it was all up to them now.
Alex glared over at Dylan for a moment, remembering her previous fight with her. She remembered how her first look at Natalie gave her no doubt that she could take her blindfolded, but Dylan was more of the challenge.
So this punk took a few Karate 101 classes, Alex thought, big deal. She could easily jab her way around that.
But then Charlie's words echoed in her head, and she sighed; 'this is not a one-woman show.' She felt she had already broken that code of honor without even trying, so how could she possibly survive ten years with that conceited sense of herself? That was one question of many going through her head, and for once, she wanted to be around girls her own age. Surely, she could try and fix that competitive self and just have fun, maybe even like the girls. So really, what was there to lose?
"I am in too," Alex forced a smile to compete with Natalie's, but then realized her error and just let her lips relax.
So all heads turned towards Dylan then, who was chewing as loud as she possibly could to hide the strain. Great, she thought, now it's all up to me.
"You know," she chewed, holding out her invitation, "if it wasn't for this stupid postcard, I'd be living it big in Vegas with my brothers right about now."
Natalie quickly know that wasn't entirely true, since Dylan didn't even look past the age of gambling. Maybe her brothers forced her to come here, as a reasonable excuse to get rid of her, but Natalie didn't want to say anything.
Those knuckles looked way too sharp.
"But you decided to come here," Natalie cheerfully proposed. "I mean, that's gotta count for something, right?"
The scrawny blonde pushed her glasses up and looked deeply into the bleach- haired punk's eyes, as if trying to find her soul, and Dylan just raised an eyebrow. She looked away, and noticed everyone else was doing the same.
"Hmm? Come on, are you in this with us or what?" Natalie asked her, about half-a-foot away from Dylan's face, her blue eyes blooming.
Dylan sighed, because she didn't feel like punching this psycho in the face.
"Whatever."
And there was a huge yelping of praise and joy from Natalie at the very next second, jumping around her couch like she'd just won the Big Game lottery.
"SECRET AGENT! SECRET AGENT!! I'M GONNA BE A SECRET AGENT!!" she sang to herself, but her voice was so loud that everybody else was covering their ears.
Dylan and Alex looked at each other, with disbelief, not because they'd have to deal with each other, but they weren't sure if this crazy cheerleader was ever going to calm down.
If there was ever a time when these girls had second thoughts about what they were getting into, it was right then and there. Right as Natalie jumped off the couch in a dive (and was lucky enough to be caught by Bosley himself).
"Oookay, enough with the cheer, but now it's down to business," Madison came up and looked at each one of the girls as they regained themselves of that crazy scenario.
"I'll be honest with you, all right? Smart, beautiful, defensive...that's not even half the loot of being an Angel."
The tall brunette looked at her teammates for support, and Ruth spoke up.
"She's right, ladies. I mean, it's no doubt you are all really talented already, but we're here to train you on every aspect there is to being a Secret Agent for Charlie. And that's a mouthful."
Bosley was tapping something onto his cellular phone then, and looked up at all the girls.
"Okay, ladies. So are we ready to take this to Day 1 or what?"
"ALWAYS!!" The former Angels cheered in unison, if not involuntarily.
The Angels-to-be exchanged odd glances with one another. Everyone except Dylan had either laughed or smiled (she was too busy chewing her gum and asking herself what she had just gotten into.)
By the end of the meeting inside that office room, the Angels learned how their training days were to be structured. Fridays, between school classes, they had a Morning C++ Programming Class, an Afternoon Run, to end with an Evening International Dining Etiquette course.... it sounded no different than Military School, really, and for some reason Alex didn't think slightly of this.
They were carefully told how to break this news to their parents, saying that they were accepted into this prestigious academy for Math Whizzes, and that was the first moment when Dylan laughed at her fullest. They could only go home on the second weekend of each month, including holidays and such, and absolutely no visiting allowed (because 'it would distract students from calculating seventeen-digit prime numbers in their heads').
The girls were to share a room in this place called Heaven's Bliss (which looked like an undercover Holiday Inn for any of Charlie's business-related things) and they would go to a regular public school by the names of their first and semi-middle: Natalie Cook, Alex Munday, and Dylan Sanders.
Yes, they still had their math exams like all High School freshmen, and Natalie was not dreading that driving test so much anymore.
To her, at least, this all seemed like a huge after-school project - something to look forward to. As she went to sleep on that first day as a Pre-Angel, she couldn't stop thinking about scuba-diving with deadly manta rays, for some odd reason.
But what she failed to realize (behind her loud tossing and giggling) was that the two biggest challenges of her job were glaring at her right in the face.
*to be continued*
Dylan seemed to be the only one who's heart was still beating after that question, as the three girls didn't keep their eyes off the brick-sized speakerphone for about a minute. None of them knew what to say - the whole idea seemed ridiculous, really - not even Natalie could think straight.
"What the hell do you take me for?" Dylan sprayed the question at the speakerphone, throwing her hands wildly.
"Now now, calm down..uh, Dylan." Bosley attempted, who was beginning to feel comfortable with his practically-invisible status in the room. Unfortunately, his interruption only provoked Dylan to yell at the box afterwards.
"Secret....Agents??" That was Natalie, with a face like she'd just won the Spelling Bee for the fourth year running. It took her a few seconds to do it, but she ran to the speaker, and when her mouth was just inches away, she said "Oh thank you, mister Charlie! Sir!"
"What?" Dylan turned to the scrawny blonde. "You actually BELIEVE this quack?"
"Well, um, yeah!" Natalie said nervously, mostly to herself, but as she turned back to glance at Alex (who was standing up), she could have sworn she saw a grin.
"You guys are insane," Dylan pushed her hair back to make her face breathe in air.
"Excuse me, girls, but I'm afraid I wasn't finished." The voice said once again, and Alex almost tripped on her boots from surprise. He was still there?
"Look, Mr. Voice-in-Box," Dylan approached the speaker like a new person: someone extremely fed up. "I don't know you who the hell you are - just the fact that we can't see you is creeping me out - but STAY out of my business or I'm calling the COPS!"
She headed towards the door.
"Well I suppose they'd be too busy investigating your records first, wouldn't they...Dylan." The elderly voice of Charlie had seemed to place emphasis on her name, and strangely enough, it made Dylan stop dead in her tracks.
The bleached-haired punk slowly turned her head around, showing a great rage that almost convinced Natalie and Alex she was going to smash the speaker phone with all her might. Bosley's hands fumbled nervously behind the desk.
"Are you trying to threaten me?" came her dangerously low pitch at the box. Alex shut her eyes tightly.
"Not at all," the voice spoke honestly, "but please, sit down. The three of you."
Natalie's face turned pale white then, and looked around the room as if lost and confused; could Charlie see them? Part of her was thinking that he was a ghost, whose only way of communicating was from that little box, but that couldn't be....
Yet Alex and Natalie obeyed the voice without question. Neither of them could imagine what sort of "records" he was talking about, but they gave another glance at Dylan, and left it at that.
"May I ask what it was that you meant by 'secret agents,' sir?" came Alex's clear voice as she sat, which made Dylan and Natalie turn their heads around in surprise.
So, they thought, Miss Sushi Girl spoke decent, proper English after all. Go figure.
"A very good subject to get into, Miss Shimamura," replied Charlie. "I must assure you that the agency I run here is top secret, and nobody except my close colleagues and now yourselves know about it."
The girls opened their ears once again to the speaker, and Dylan threw a blue gumball from the pocket of her jeanjacket into her mouth for something to chew on. Alex then became very interested in her shoes.
"I started this Agency over forty years ago, after my resignation from the war--" the voice began.
"You fought in World War II??" Natalie asked in such cheerful amazement, Dylan thought she was going to run up to the speaker and ask for its autograph.
"Well, yes Miss Brewster, I did. But that's besides the point," and so he continued.
He talked about the founding of his first investigations agency in 1945, previously called Townsend and Wardall, P.I. after himself and a close friend of his who had later died in special services to Vietnam. Charlie had also been assigned in Eastern Europe as a personal aide to Central Intelligence (the youngest in record) but a severe knee injury had left him permanently disabled to continue his work.
"I'm terribly sorry...." Natalie sobbed, wiping tears from her cheeks with her blouse sleeves.
"Oh, I'm all right, Miss Brewster....and since then, my secret services have expanded to over forty countries and dozens of languages, and has been of special aid to the White House, the Pentagon, as well as international relations."
"Well good for you!" Dylan clapped sarcastically. "But, how do we come into this?"
"You've got to understand, Miss Sanders, that the people I hire for my work are bright and skillful in many ways, but they also carry the one attribute that makes them entirely unsuspicious when called for duty."
"And what is that, sir?" Alex said curiously enough.
"They're women."
The girls blinked, exchanging glances to each other. James Bond....Superman....Captain Nemo.... Always the heroic figures were guys, Natalie thought, and of course the bad people would never ever suspect a teenage girl to fight over nuclear weapons of mass destruction and stuff. Such a simple idea, yet it made sense!
And there was a knock on the door.
Bosley scrambled over and opened it, and the girls watched a group of three tall, young-adult women in business suits walk in and stand next to the wall in a very synchronized manner. They had their hands at their sides, similar to a military inspection, yet very at ease.
"Dylan, Alex, Natalie, meet my former Angels: Carrie Apple, Madison Lee, and Ruth Wilkins."
The girls stared at the women, who nodded as their names were respectively said. They all looked to be close in age (probably in their mid-thirties) and if Madison's hair had been strawberry blonde instead of black, they could have been triplets.
"They will be helping you for the next few months in every aspect there is to becoming an Angel: gadget training, computer hacking, foreign languages....and yes, Alex, kung-fu."
In response, Alex smiled with her proud, glimmering almond eyes.
"This work will take years of commitment, roughly ten to fifteen of them dealing with onsite assignment to numerous parts of the world. There are drawbacks, I understand, and trust me, anything can be worked on. Carrie here found a young man during her time, and thus chose to be more of the 'computer hacker' of her group to stay in touch."
The blonde named Carrie then smiled at that statement, looking at the beige carpet and fighting off a giggle. Dylan couldn't tell whether this grown- up was actually more pathetic than the geek sitting right next to her, but she thought time would tell.
"Being a Angel will broaden your worlds as young people on service, and you can learn a lot from it....that is, should you all accept my proposition."
"I do! I do!" Natalie yelped with excitement to nobody in particular, her glasses sliding off her nose.
"I shall inform my parents as soon as possible," Alex said in a negotiable manner.
"Wait a sec - what about school? And where exactly am I supposed to sleep?" were Dylan's thoughts, and she looked at the three women to see if they could give her straight answers. Instead, they were observing her Dylan image with sincere interest.
"I promise you, Miss Sanders, that it will all be taken care of. Since I can't tell you anything further now, I'm giving you girls the rest of this morning to think it over, and Bosley will notify me of your decision afterwards. My former Angels will lead you from here."
The girls thought Charlie had hung up right then and there, but the static from the speaker had cleared up for a brief moment.
"And I wanted to remind you girls that this decision must be a unanimous one between the three of you - this isn't a one-woman show, I'm telling you all right now. Until then."
The speakerphone became static again, and finally disappeared altogether.
It was after that statement that Madison turned her head away from the girls and looked timidly towards the speaker. Alex had noticed it first, before Dylan gazed at her direction and thought the same thing: perhaps these women had not gotten along as well as Charlie had hoped.
They all looked alike, to the very least, so what could possibly have gone wrong between them? Dylan thought, as she looked at her own two potential teammates with a keen eye of judgement. One side had her dealing with a Miss-Perfect-Sushi-girl who would always find some way to show off her family history, the other had a scrawny Ugly Duckling with a flare for dumb trivia. Cleaning her brothers' messes seemed more like the wise way to go, but still, her wandering thoughts remained.
Natalie could hear the tension in Charlie's voice as he made that final statement, but nevertheless, she couldn't help but smile, thinking how great it would be to work with a team. Of course, she probably would have picked more fun-looking girls than Alex and Dylan (seriously, she thought, who would give a girl that name?), maybe someone with a taste for 80s pop like she did. Oh well, if it meant learning exotic languages, nothing could be that bad.
Alex was the more neutral of the three, which wasn't unusual. The girl sat straight on the couch, staring at her nails, and as she rubbed one finger over the smooth polish, she thought about home. This job seemed exciting, as if Charlie was rewarding her from all the excellent titles she'd received in her life. Yet this was strange, considering she had never been to the U.S. alone (her parents were at a press conference in London, discussing her autobiography), nor for something that dealt with her making her own, honest decision. It was a choice she had to share between two girls she didn't even know. Could she really split a reward for the first time ever? On the other hand, she thought, if she didn't count her manicure parties with her bodyguards, she never really knew what it was like to have sisters...
"Don't worry about it, kids."
The three girls then looked over at the desk, surprised to see Bosley open his mouth at a stressful time like this.
"Really," he continued, casually. "This is the best experience you'll ever have."
Ruth and Carrie nodded their heads instantly, while Madison's took a second too long.
"You girls might learn to like each other, after a year or so," Ruth encouraged wholeheartedly. "Trust me, it's all worth it. The travelling, going undercover, it's what I always wanted to do."
"We once scuba-dived with deadly manta rays to spy on this Russian submarine that was lurking near the West Indies, and I used to hate water!" Carrie described, with the familiar excitement of a certain teenager.
Natalie smiled her toothy smile and revealed her shiny retainer to everyone. There seemed to be nothing to lose, so she raised herself up from the couch and looked at Dylan, then Alex.
"Well, I think we can do this! What do you say, Alex?" She seemed all right with the tension that was going on between Alex and Dylan, but it was all up to them now.
Alex glared over at Dylan for a moment, remembering her previous fight with her. She remembered how her first look at Natalie gave her no doubt that she could take her blindfolded, but Dylan was more of the challenge.
So this punk took a few Karate 101 classes, Alex thought, big deal. She could easily jab her way around that.
But then Charlie's words echoed in her head, and she sighed; 'this is not a one-woman show.' She felt she had already broken that code of honor without even trying, so how could she possibly survive ten years with that conceited sense of herself? That was one question of many going through her head, and for once, she wanted to be around girls her own age. Surely, she could try and fix that competitive self and just have fun, maybe even like the girls. So really, what was there to lose?
"I am in too," Alex forced a smile to compete with Natalie's, but then realized her error and just let her lips relax.
So all heads turned towards Dylan then, who was chewing as loud as she possibly could to hide the strain. Great, she thought, now it's all up to me.
"You know," she chewed, holding out her invitation, "if it wasn't for this stupid postcard, I'd be living it big in Vegas with my brothers right about now."
Natalie quickly know that wasn't entirely true, since Dylan didn't even look past the age of gambling. Maybe her brothers forced her to come here, as a reasonable excuse to get rid of her, but Natalie didn't want to say anything.
Those knuckles looked way too sharp.
"But you decided to come here," Natalie cheerfully proposed. "I mean, that's gotta count for something, right?"
The scrawny blonde pushed her glasses up and looked deeply into the bleach- haired punk's eyes, as if trying to find her soul, and Dylan just raised an eyebrow. She looked away, and noticed everyone else was doing the same.
"Hmm? Come on, are you in this with us or what?" Natalie asked her, about half-a-foot away from Dylan's face, her blue eyes blooming.
Dylan sighed, because she didn't feel like punching this psycho in the face.
"Whatever."
And there was a huge yelping of praise and joy from Natalie at the very next second, jumping around her couch like she'd just won the Big Game lottery.
"SECRET AGENT! SECRET AGENT!! I'M GONNA BE A SECRET AGENT!!" she sang to herself, but her voice was so loud that everybody else was covering their ears.
Dylan and Alex looked at each other, with disbelief, not because they'd have to deal with each other, but they weren't sure if this crazy cheerleader was ever going to calm down.
If there was ever a time when these girls had second thoughts about what they were getting into, it was right then and there. Right as Natalie jumped off the couch in a dive (and was lucky enough to be caught by Bosley himself).
"Oookay, enough with the cheer, but now it's down to business," Madison came up and looked at each one of the girls as they regained themselves of that crazy scenario.
"I'll be honest with you, all right? Smart, beautiful, defensive...that's not even half the loot of being an Angel."
The tall brunette looked at her teammates for support, and Ruth spoke up.
"She's right, ladies. I mean, it's no doubt you are all really talented already, but we're here to train you on every aspect there is to being a Secret Agent for Charlie. And that's a mouthful."
Bosley was tapping something onto his cellular phone then, and looked up at all the girls.
"Okay, ladies. So are we ready to take this to Day 1 or what?"
"ALWAYS!!" The former Angels cheered in unison, if not involuntarily.
The Angels-to-be exchanged odd glances with one another. Everyone except Dylan had either laughed or smiled (she was too busy chewing her gum and asking herself what she had just gotten into.)
By the end of the meeting inside that office room, the Angels learned how their training days were to be structured. Fridays, between school classes, they had a Morning C++ Programming Class, an Afternoon Run, to end with an Evening International Dining Etiquette course.... it sounded no different than Military School, really, and for some reason Alex didn't think slightly of this.
They were carefully told how to break this news to their parents, saying that they were accepted into this prestigious academy for Math Whizzes, and that was the first moment when Dylan laughed at her fullest. They could only go home on the second weekend of each month, including holidays and such, and absolutely no visiting allowed (because 'it would distract students from calculating seventeen-digit prime numbers in their heads').
The girls were to share a room in this place called Heaven's Bliss (which looked like an undercover Holiday Inn for any of Charlie's business-related things) and they would go to a regular public school by the names of their first and semi-middle: Natalie Cook, Alex Munday, and Dylan Sanders.
Yes, they still had their math exams like all High School freshmen, and Natalie was not dreading that driving test so much anymore.
To her, at least, this all seemed like a huge after-school project - something to look forward to. As she went to sleep on that first day as a Pre-Angel, she couldn't stop thinking about scuba-diving with deadly manta rays, for some odd reason.
But what she failed to realize (behind her loud tossing and giggling) was that the two biggest challenges of her job were glaring at her right in the face.
*to be continued*