Akane walked up to the table. There was Zander, a boy, and two girls she didn't recognize sitting. This is the last place I want to be right now! She thought keeping an expression on her face that plainly said, 'I'm so unbelievably annoyed at you,' in the nicest way possible. Akane sat down next to Zander feeling insecure and out of place.

"So you finally decided to show your face around here again?" He asked

"Yeah, that's kind of why I'm here. You have a problem with that?" Akane was getting increasingly madder by the second.

"Right now I don't. We'll see as the day goes on," He smiled trying to act cool.

Dork, Akane thought.

"Hi, I'm Pix," a girl with lavender hair, bright blue eyes, and fair skin from the other side of the table said.

There was a pause as Pix looked at her friends sitting next to her, then sighed.

"Well, since the rest of them are being anti-social, I'll just introduce them for you. This is Tameron," she said pointing to the other girl sitting on her right. She was the opposite of Pix. She had royal blue hair, olive skin, and soft amber eyes. Then she pointed to the boy on her left, "and this is Render." He was mostly zoned out and didn't hear anything before Pix said his name. He turned around to try to find out why his name was said, but when he found no reason, he looked back out the window and went back into his own little world. Render had spiky golden hair, emerald eyes, and his skin tone was half way between Pix and Tameron's.

"So you're the new kid we've been hearing about?" Pix said smiling.

Akane nodded.

God, this is the quietest I've heard this girl since I've met her, Zander thought.

"Well were your parents in this guild?"

"My mom was," Akane said.

"What about your dad?" Tameron joined the conversation.

Akane swallowed and looked at her feet, "I don't know. My dad was always a touchy subject with my mom so I never asked." Thankfully for Akane none of them picked up on the fact that she was trying to avoid saying something.

Zander felt bad for her, he had no idea that she was carrying such baggage.

Render turned to face Akane, "You look like someone."

Does everyone here have the attention span of a piece of wood? Akane thought.

"Yeah," Pix said. She paused to think for a moment. "But not someone we know," she finally said. "Someone that we've only seen pictures of. Like we never met her in real life but we've seen her all over the place."

As Pix and Render thought about whom Akane looked like, Tameron stood up and said, "Well, we have a job to do. We'll see you two around I guess." The other two saw that they had to go and stood up, said goodbye and left Zander and Akane alone at the table.

"Akane, I have something to talk to you about," he said after a moment of silence.

Akane didn't respond; she just looked at him, waiting for him to continue.

"You're living on your own right now right?"

Akane nodded. She wasn't in the mood for talking that day.

"Well, you need money, and I need money, so how about we make a team? That way we can do difficult jobs and get more money for each of us," Zander said hopefully.

Akane just sat in her seat staring at Zander, wondering if it was a good idea. We'll probably wind up fighting all the time, Akane thought.

"Sure, why not? I'll give it a try. But if this doesn't work out I'm taking jobs on my own okay?"

Zander nodded. He couldn't care less if they hated each other, but there was no denying the fact that she was strong and she would help him get more money. He was selfish, true, but she needed the money just as much as he did.

Zander reached into his pocket and took out a crumpled up piece of paper that said: EXTERMINATE MONSTER TERRORIZING THE TOWN.

Akane sat at the table looking at the piece of paper, and then she looked at Zander. He was proud of the job he had picked to be their first as a team. After a moment of silence she stood up. "Meet me at the bridge where we had our last fight in 1 hour. And bring whatever you would need. Pack for a day or two," Akane said as she walked away from him to go get everything together.

She left Zander sitting at the table by himself. Something's different about her today. I'm not sure what, but something is different, he thought.

XC

CX

Akane sat where she was before on the ledge waiting for Zander.

"How long have you been here?" he asked as he approached her.

Akane shrugged, "'bout five minutes."

"Oh," Zander didn't know how to respond to her so he let the conversation slip into an awkward silence. "Should we be on our way?" he asked trying to be cool.

Akane stood up staring at him. She was quiet for about a minute when she finally said, "Dork…" then she walked toward the train station to go their job.

Zander stood in his place twitching. This SO was a bad idea! He thought. I should have gone by myself!

Once he was done ranting to himself in his mind, he followed the red-haired preteen to the train station.

XC CX

The train ride was nice and quiet. Akane spent most of the ride looking out the window in her own little world until Zander broke her out of it. "Hey put this in your hair would ya?" He pulled a stark white ribbon out of his pocket and held it in his outstretched hand for Akane to take.

Akane took it. "Why?" she asked.

"Because," was the only response she got.

"Okay then, let me see the sheet."

"Why?"

"Because," she said smirking while she mocked him. Zander dug into his pocket and pulled out the folded beige sheet of crumpled up paper. Akane placed it on her lap as she put the ribbon in her hair. When she was finished she unfolded the paper and read it carefully this time. As a result, she saw a line she hadn't seen before: "Attracted to red and white."

Akane looked up, ready to kill Zander. "That's why you're making me wear this ribbon? Wait that's the only reason you asked me to come too isn't it?" she asked, her voice rising in volume from fury every second.

"What?" Zander asked, pretending to be oblivious to the situation.

" 'Attracted to red and white'? That's why you asked me to come?"

Zander continued his charade, "what? No I would never. I asked you to come because I can't defeat a monster like this by myself." Then his tone changed from fake to embarrassment. "I've always needed my dad to do things like this… This is the first job I've gone on without him."

"You know I don't believe you right? If this so called monster is shorter than five feet then you're a dead man," Akane threatened.

Zander scoffed, "Ha, whatever."

After that, the rest of the train ride was in silence.