?'s POV
I am waiting patiently for my target to pass the alley I am hiding in, trying to stay quiet. Lopunny beside me is similarly on edge. The man we are waiting for is taking forever to exit the lab. I waste a few minutes playing with Lopunny's fur, making sure it doesn't have any dirt in it or any other filth. Lopunny always reminds me of my sister, but I can't think about her now, I have a job to do. I watch the lab for another half hour before my target leaves the lab and starts walking in our direction.
"All right Lopunny, get ready. Remember, get as tangled up as you can." Lopunny gives me a nod and prepares herself. We wait until the footsteps of our target are close as can be. Lopunny darts out of the alley, tangling herself up with the old man, making him spill the contents of his bag.
"What- what is this?!" The man yells and I run out of the alley looking breathless.
"Lopunny! There you are! What have you done now?!" I yell, trying to untangle the two, discreetly pocketing various papers into my messenger bag and grabbing a light blue jump drive.
"I am so sorry Sir," I say in a disgustingly apologetic manner, "I was trying to get Lopunny to see if she could find the nearest Department Store and she dashed down this alleyway." I gather the rest of his papers and substitute the light blue flash drive with a blank, identical one of my own. I help the man up when Lopunny stops squirming and untangles herself from the man's legs.
"That's quite alright son, as long as my papers didn't get lost," He smiles at me when I hand them back to him with the decoy flash drive on top.
"Sorry for the trouble, hope you have a nice rest of the day," I say before Lopunny pretends to drag me off. I look back at the old man, seeing him fall for the decoy and walk on, probably going home.
"Good job, Lopunny," I congratulate my pokémon, "Though next time try not to scatter the papers so far." She just pouts at me and I hand over her favorite type of Poffin. She devours it with glee and continues back to base with me. We reach the Jakko Skyscraper and enter through the front door, heading straight for the elevator. Once we enter, it's a long ride to the twentieth floor. The familiar pang of guilt attacks my stomach before fading away. I don't like being a thief, but it's what I'm good at. Besides, Theo and Hammond expect it of me, especially if I want to help them make the world better. I think back to my childhood, something I do regularly when I have too much time on my hands. I reminisce about my sister and our days at the orphanage.
My sister and I run through the forest, me pulling her along. She trips on a tree root and twists her ankle, immediately she starts to cry. We don't have time for this so I grab her and set her on my back so I can carry her. I continue to run through the trees, dodging all the flying Bug pokémon. The sun is setting by the time we reach a city. I head to the nearest building, hoping for a bed for the night or at least directions to the nearest place we could. My sister has fallen asleep on my shoulder and I enter the brightly lit building. A kind older woman with pink hair and a pink and cream colored pokémon approaches and asks me where my parents are. I don't give an answer, not wanting to be sent back to that horrible house of terrors. She looks at me sadly.
"Do you not have a home?" she asks. I jump at this opportunity and nod quickly, "Well you can stay here for the night, but you'll have to sleep in the lobby. All our rooms are taken at the moment." I nod anyways, just glad for a roof over our heads. Nurse Joy (that's her name, she tells me) sets up two beds on the benches in the lobby.
"We'll see about bringing you to the orphanage on the morning." She smiles before leaving my sister and me alone.
I think about that Nurse Joy. To this day, she is one of the few people who ever sees my smile. Not the fake, "I'm just doing this to rob you," smile, the real one with actual feeling. She and my pokémon are the only ones who ever receive a real smile from me anymore. Thinking about smiles sends me into another flashback with my sister.
My sister comes running around the corner of the yard, crying. I try to comfort her, but the bullies at this orphanage won't leave her alone. They know she's an easy target and so they always go after her. I ask her who did it this time and she tells me it was Neil. That bully never leaves us alone. He's the one who bullied us about our eyes in the first place.
Since my sister and I are twins, we have pretty unusual eye color pairings. My right eye is green while my left eye is blue, and my sister's eyes are the opposite, green left and blue right.
I track him down and give him a good punch in the face, even though I'm younger than him by two years. He cries to the headmistress and I get my playground and TV privileges revoked, but I don't care, I got revenge. I return to my sister outside who's stopped crying. She's holding something and petting it. I peek around her shoulder and see a Buneary. I sit down next to her and the small brown pokémon. She smiles and tells me about how Buneary came to comfort her. I grunt and sit back and watch the two of them play. I'm glad my sister found a friend. She doesn't have very many here, and I have none whatsoever. A small furry head butts my elbow and I turn to see a Shinx sitting by me. I give him a roll I stole this morning and he happily devours it.
"Aregin you're smiling!" my sister says as she runs up to me, "Did you make a new friend?" I look down at the Shinx, who's fallen asleep at my side.
"I think so, Sayuri, I think so," I say quietly, smiling at my sister as well. We may be twins, but she has always acted younger.
The elevator ding snaps me out of my reverie with my sister. I exit the small box and head straight down the hallway. The employees know who I am, or at least know I am allowed here, because they stay out of my way. I step through the door at the end of the hallway and enter a lavish office. Art from respected artists decorates the walls and a fire crackles in the marble fireplace near a sitting area with a couple of large leather chairs. Across from the sitting area is a large mahogany desk, riddled with papers and various pieces of unfinished trinkets. I set the papers I grabbed from my target on the solid oak coffee table in a neat stack with the jump drive on top. I sit in one of the leather chairs, knowing my boss will show up any second. Lopunny sits beside me on the floor. I hear the door open behind me and I turn to see Theo walking in, his brown, grey-streaked hair mussed up and dark circles under his dark brown eyes. He's about thirty-something, tall as a tree and built just as solidly, which I find funny since he's the resident tinkerer. He loves to make different tools and gadgets for our organization. He takes off his leather trench coat and hangs it by the door, revealing a white turtle-neck underneath. He comes to sit next to me in the other armchair, his brown slacks wrinkling slightly.
"Stay up too late?" I ask in a deadpan. He sends a glare at me and just picks up the notes I stole and reads them. His eyes scan the pages behind his glasses, and I see them do the same to the pages behind them. Despite being such a rash and hasty man, Theo is very thorough. He doesn't like to let anything slip through. When he finishes, he sets the notes back on the table and looks at me.
"You couldn't get anymore?" he asks.
"Not without him noticing," I reply. Theo rubs his eyes, obviously tired out from moving the organization into the Jakko City Skyscraper. It's the tallest building in Alamar, and it was built specifically for our organization. It doubles as a wireless tower, providing communications for most of the wireless transceivers in the region.
"Hammond wants to see you, probably to give you another mission," Theo says, walking over to his desk, bringing the notes and jump drive to scan them into his laptop. Why does he want to see me? He usually just sends me a text message on my pokénav. I simply get out of the chair and exit the lavish office. I take the elevator to the top of the building, once again thinking about my sister. I wonder how she's doing. I haven't seen her since January. I wonder if she's really happy. I think about the day we were separated. She was adopted and I wasn't. I was always the black Mareep. Never fitting in, never making friends. I was always the loner type. The only friend I ever made at that orphanage was Shinx. He loved to hang around me and since he was the only thing that suffered my rough edges, I liked to play with him as well. He often got into trouble with me, not always being the quietest when we were stealing food from the kitchen. We got better, though, and it got to the point where we could steal a few rolls right from under the cook's nose. When my sister left, we traded our pokémon friends, wanting to keep a piece of each other with us. Buneary became my other best friend and I'm sure Shinx kept my sister out of trouble for the most part. Buneary eventually evolved into Lopunny and the last time I saw my sister, Shinx had evolved into Luxio. The elevator dings, opening straight into Hammond's office. It's just as lavish as Theo's office. It has many paintings hanging on the walls, a few coming from a Gym Leader in the Unova region. The carpet is deep and soft, my brown shoes sinking into it. The furniture is all in dark shades of brown and blue, with very few cream colored accents. Hammond is sitting behind his desk, reviewing various papers and marking things with a red marker. His shaggy light brown hair could really use a cut, but I guess he's got better things to do than take care of his image. His tall stature makes him look like a Mandibuzz, leaning over the desk like that. He clenches his jaw in frustration at whatever he's reading, making the vein on his forehead stand out. I clear my throat, making sure he knows I'm here. He looks up, startling me. One of his amber eyes is milky white, like he's gone blind. He gestures towards the chair in front of the desk. I sit, staring at his blind eye.
"Quit staring," Hammond says gruffly, "It's rude you know."
"I know, but what happened?" I say, for once genuinely curious.
"I was injured," he simply replies, "I have a mission for you. A big one, not like the petty thievery Theo's got you doing." I raise my eyebrows, thinking about the last things I stole.
"Speaking of, why do you need notes on the histories and habits of Legendaries? Everyone knows there are none in Alamar," I say, wanting to know why I had to rob a researcher.
"You don't need to know," Hammond says tersely, making me a little peeved at being left out of the loop, "I want you to travel north, to Kentil. I need you to find and follow a Target. She's got information vital to our organization and I need it back. I want you to befriend her, follow her around if necessary, and get it back. She was last seen in Eira and we are assuming she's gone south, through Kentil and maybe Marn, on the run. Here's you mission facts, and make sure to stop by Theo's gadget vault, you may need some of his trinkets. Don't let your guard down, she's as dangerous as any criminal." Hammond hands me a folder and I open it up to find a picture of a young girl, about my age maybe younger, with raven dark hair that flows down to her small waist and piercing icy blue eyes. Her skin is tan, but not dark and her teeth are white, her canines maybe a bit longer than the average human's. This isn't the usual surveillance camera photo I'm used to, she's smiling and it's in color, making me think it was taken from a photo album or a frame. She's also very tiny, thin, and almost waif-like. I scoff. She's dangerous? Her? I think to myself.
"She's a dangerous target that I need to use Theo's gadgets to find? This girl?" I ask Hammond and see his non-blind eye twitch, "What, is she the one that blinded you?" I ask as a joke giving a sarcastic wolf's grin, but Hammond's face gets even more serious, if that's possible.
"Yes, now go," he says simply before returning to studying the papers on his desk. I can feel my expression turn from casual teasing to surprise, Hammond stunning me. I grab the folder and exit his office, riding the elevator to the fifteenth level to grab a few of Theo's trinkets before continuing on to the ground floor. I read the rest of the information on the girl. Apparently she's the daughter of David and Rebbekah Amsel, two researchers that deserted our organization, taking important data with them. They were working on the "Zeta Project" when they ran, apparently moving to the tiny, frostbitten village of Eira to live out their lives in hiding. They got jobs helping the local people with anything and everything. Hammond must have tracked them down and killed them, because it lists them as deceased. My heart feels a single jab of remorse. This organization may be a little extreme at times, but I know they are doing the right thing. I just wish they didn't have to hurt so many people in the process. I suck it up and wipe my face blank of any expression. Emotions like pity and empathy will get me nowhere. I've got to find this girl and get her to tell me where this data is. Maybe if I pose as a friend for a while? Or maybe I can just pressure the information out of her with blackmail. She running from us for some reason right? Maybe we can come to a compromise. She tells me where the data is and I don't sell her out to Hammond and Theo. Lopunny and I exit the elevator at the ground floor and we head outside. I return Lopunny to her pokéball and release Salamence.
"Salamence, we've got a long flight ahead of us. Hope you're up to it, 'cause we aren't going to stop." I say. Salamence lets out a roar to show his confidence and I climb onto his back. We take off into the air, heading towards Kentil and my next target.
Hey all you lovely readers! This wonderfully blunt and slightly rude character comes from the fascinating mind of Silentshadow011. I forgot to give him credit before, but now i'm fixing that little mistake! hope you all enjoy this character as i write with him in the future!