Hello people! Chapter 3 is here! Once again, this is part of what I'd already come up with before actually publishing this story, so it'll be one of the last chapters coming so soon. I'll probably get roughly 1, MAYBE 2 more in before I'll have to step back and come up with more. Until then, enjoy!

Also please feel free to critique the story, since I do want to become a better writer while doing this.

I also updated my profile, so you guys can go check it out and use that information to decide whether you like or hate me! :D

Disclaimer: I DON'T OWN POKEMON

Chapter 3:

Shirona Corporation

"So you mean to tell me," the woman behind the desk asked in a low voice. "That a team from Stone Corporation came to the same location I sent you to, and during a fight that insured, one of the targets' grunts was awakened and alerted to your presence, allowing him to inform his boss and let Maxie escape with his life?"

"Yes ma'am," Jade muttered, staring at the ground.

"Don't forget the fact that he knew we were assassins, so he most likely ran off to a place we don't know, meaning it's gonna take a shit tonna time to track him down again," Serena mumbled, earning dirty looks from the rest of her team.

The five adolescents was standing in a spacious office-type room with chairs lined up against the walls and a single, huge wooden desk in the center that had papers stacked up all around the computer. And sitting in a tall chair behind the desk, staring at them with a menacing look in her eyes, was Cynthia Shirona, head of the Shirona Corporation.

Cynthia was, in simple terms, a dangerous beauty. With her long, sleek golden hair, stormy gray eyes, fair skin, and lithe figure, she was quick to catch the eye of anyone who passed her. And although her mainstream attire was all black, what it lacked in color was made up in style and beauty. She wore a long black coat over a simple black dress shirt, and her silky pants flowed down into wide bottoms that showed off sleek black heels. She decorated her hair with black ornaments, two on each side, and although they normally kept it in check, as of the moment the woman was running her hands through her hair so fiercely it was beginning to stick up at odd angles.

Of course, none of them would dare to tell her. They were in enough hot water as it was, they didn't need the added anger of her thinking that they were telling her she looked less than presentable.

"That little rat bastard," Cynthia suddenly hissed, making them all side eye each other in surprise. "I can't believe it…"

The team dared to look up and saw her staring down at her desk, chewing aggressively on her thumb while she curled her other hand into a fist.

"She's not yelling us out for failing the mission?" May muttered, confused.

"Shut up," Gary whispered back. "Don't remind her. I think she's too busy hating that Stone guy at the moment."

Steven Stone, head of the Stone Corporation, was their greatest rival. While Cynthia ran an organization of killers, he led people that would simply take the valuables of a bad person without killing them. To them, their methods were far less brutal while still immobilizing someone. But to those at Shirona Corporation, they simply viewed the opposing side as too weak to be efficient, so they had to make up their own morale to feel better about themselves.

"He needs to be taught a lesson," Cynthia murmured. She was practically talking to herself while the team stood there awkwardly, wondering if they'd been forgotten. "A lesson... but how..."

"Ma'am," Jade suddenly said, making her team flinch. "Permission to speak?"

"Great," Serena grunted, rolling her eyes. "She reminded her that we're standing here."

"Permission granted," Cynthia said, ignoring Serena's comment.

"Perhaps we could take one of their people hostage," Jade offered. "With one of them in danger, they're weak-minded folk would most likely surrender to whatever demands you make."

Cynthia's visible right eye twitched slightly at her words, though the team couldn't tell if it was because Jade was trying to tell her what to do or if it was something more. Fortunately, the moment didn't last long, because Cynthia gave Jade an approving smirk that made them all practically collapse in relief.

"Not a bad idea," she said. "How do you plan to pull this off, though?"

"Um, ma'am," Paul interrupted. "Did you just say 'you', as in us?"

"Of course," Cynthia replied without a hint of hesitation. "You got us into this, you better be wiling to be the ones to get us out."

"We haven't gotten into anything just yet though," May pointed out. "So far everything's been normal."

"You're 'so far' stretches as far as a few measly hours," Cynthia retorted. "There's no telling what will happen in a day, a week, a month, even a year. I, for one, won't take any chances, and if you all want to keep your rank, you'll share my sentiment."

"Is a downgrade all we can expect?" Gary asked. "Or can we look forward to some kind of reward if we do well?"

"Don't count on it," Cynthia replied curtly. "In any case, I expect you to get it done within the week. If you can manage that, I will consider lessening the punishment I have in mind for you all. That will be your reward. Until then, dismissed."

Jade nodded for their team, and they all turned to leave with their heads bowed. When they were finally in the safety of the next room, they all let out a collective sigh of relief, sinking down a foot from the height they'd been at in Cynthia's presence.

"I really thought she might bite our heads off," Gary muttered shakily.

"Same here," Serena agreed with a shudder.

"If you idiots were so worried, why did you keep testing the limits?" Paul asked, glaring at them in annoyance.

"Because in the heat of the moment, it seemed like a really good idea," Serena replied with 100% seriousness.

"Yeah, it's after you've escaped with your life that you realize how close you were to death," Gary said.

"Wise," Paul grunted with a roll of his eyes. "You guys should be grateful, since the only thing that saved us was her hate for that Steven guy."

The two nodded in unison, and they continued to talk as they made their way to the elevator on the other side of the waiting room.

Shirona Corporation, named after the founder Victoria Shirona, was a huge compound disguised from the first floor to the fifth as a normal office building. However, from the sixth floor and up to the 20th, it was a maze of offices, labs, and training rooms. They had scientists and engineers, office workers, and most importantly, the organization held on to dozens and dozens of teams of well-trained assassins.

The sixth through the eight floors were the offices where workers found and gathered information on targets. It was designed strategically so that should an outside client overshoot their floor they wouldn't be met with knife-throwing and karate practice. They were organized with 20 rooms on each floor connected by a single hallway, while the rooms themselves were large enough to house a small family.

Ninth through the thirteenth floors were used as labs for their surplus of scientists and engineers, where poisons as well as weapons were created and tested. Their labs were organized to be open concept and easy to walk through, with eight in total on each designated floor. The lab walls were constructed of polycarbonate sheets for high resistance as well as clarity, and the materials, appliances, and devices they worked with were all nothing less than state of the art.

Fourteenth through nineteenth floors were the training grounds for all assassins. Fourteen was used for new recruits as well as practicing with new creations from the labs, fifteen was used for solo practice and exercise, sixteen was used for sparring, and the rest had 30 rooms on each floor for each team to meet and plan for their missions, or simply work in peace. Every piece of equipment, from treadmills to combat knives to even their computers, was designed by and created within the walls of the compound, and it was always made clear that disrespecting anything within the walls of the training floors would result in a serious punishment.

Finally, the twentieth floor was used as the personal headquarters of the person who ran the company, and as of now, that person was Cynthia Shirona. It was split into four rooms: the first one you walked into when you arrived at her floor, simply her waiting room. The second was the room where she held all of her meetings with her subordinates, whether they worked in the offices, labs, or as assassins. The third was the room the team had just walked out of, her office, where she did all of her work as the head of the organization and occasionally chewed out her agents for poor performance. And the fourth acted as her personal training grounds, because she didn't get to the top through connections alone. Despite how prim and proper and elegant she seemed, Cynthia was a deadly opponent to face, not just because of her skill, but because she felt no remorse when her victim was someone who was a threat to her or her people.

"So we have to capture one of them," Paul muttered. "Alright, which one?"

The team was in their private office on the nineteenth floor, Serena sitting on the floor playing with her pet Fennekin while Jade occupied the desk, typing furiously at the computer. May was filling out the report of their latest mission using the log Gary had completed, while Gary himself was fiddling around with one of the newest creations the engineers had asked him to look over.

But since Paul didn't really have anything to do, to him, it just looked like they weren't paying attention to the dilemma at hand.

"Um, are any of you paying attention?" he asked, frowning.

"How about that grass head, Drew?" Serena suggested without taking her eyes off her Pokemon. "He's an overconfident prick, and I'd personally love to see the look on his face when he comes to in one of our cells."

"The suggestion would have been enough, thank you," Paul sighed. "But I agree. You guys wanna suggest anyone else?"

"I kinda wanna grab that Gladion guy, but that'll probably be more work than it's worth," Gary said. He sounded slightly disappointed, although Paul only had tone to go off of since he didn't tear his attention away from the invention. "So I'm good with Drew."

"Same here," Jade called, never taking her eyes off of the computer screen.

"I second that," May added, also staying focused on what she was working on.

"So then we're going to get Drew," Paul said, nodding. "Alright. Jade, what's the plan?"

"Well, if we're only grabbing one, we won't need too many of us," Jade said, finally stopping what she was doing and turning to gaze at the team. "Best to stay inconspicuous anyway. Who wants to go?"

"Well I need redemption after that blond bitch beat me to a pulp," Gary said, quickly raising his hand.

"And I wanna be the one to knock him out and drag his body back," Serena agreed, raising hers as well.

"So then the three of us will go," Jade decided, leaning back in her chair. "We'll scout around, and once we run into them, we'll just grab Drew and go. No reason to stick around for a fight anyways."

"We should head out at night and comb through a list of targets we have," Gary suggested. "They're most likely going to hit those people, and night is always just the logical time people like us show up."

"So then tomorrow night, we'll start searching," Serena squealed, clapping her hands excitedly.

Jade suddenly frowned. "Wait, tomorrow? I have that stupid leaders meeting though. Cynthia is going to be checking on the progress from sections A and B, and all of the leaders from those divisions will be there. I can't afford to miss it."

"Well I could just go in your place," May offered.

"And I'm just supposed to stay behind and do all the paperwork on my own?" Paul snapped. "Oh hell no. Not after I got this ball rolling while you guys fiddled around with your own things."

"Actually, we can't afford to waste any time," Jade told him sharply. "May, you'll go as leader in my place, since you're my second in command. Paul, get as much paperwork done as you can. I'll come and help you once the meeting is over."

Paul gritted his teeth, seething, but he didn't argue.

"But if we run into the whole team, there's only three of us," May pointed out. "Shouldn't Paul come with us?"

"No," Jade said firmly. "I have faith in all of you. Should it boil down to a fight, I trust that you three can handle it."

The team swelled with pride, all of them sitting up a little taller and their eyes shining a little brighter.

"Considering that she says that with Gary's current state, I think pulling this off will be a breeze," May decided, glancing at the band-aids and bruises on Gary's face.

"And when she puts it like that, I don't see how she could be wrong," Serena added mischievously.

"It'd be a shame to put that kind of faith to waste," Gary agreed, cracking his knuckles.

"So then it's settled," Jade announced, letting a small smirk play at her lips. "Tomorrow night, May, Gary, and Serena will go out and capture one of Stone's guys. And with any luck, we'll get more out of this than just another body."