“According to an old nursery rhyme (and a children’s cartoon), girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice. I agree, but we do have to remember that everyone has their own definition of what ‘nice’ is.”

Serena Liu

I was about halfway through my Marvel movie marathon when I realized that my vacation was over and I had to head over to headquarters to see Ace. I very begrudgingly paused the second Thor movie and prepared to head out. After I applied my makeup and fixed my hair, I threw on a light pink sweatshirt and my most comfortable pair of running shorts. I checked myself in the mirror one last time before headed out the door.

My favorite part of living where I did was the fact that I only had to walk around twenty minutes to get to headquarters. I was still annoyed at Ace for masquarding headquarters as an exclusive gym near the center of the city, I knew that one day one of these hollywood celebrities would throw a big enough fit that we would have give them access to the actual gym section of the building. Sooner or later we would probably end up getting exposed but until then, Ace was adamant about his decisions. That decision also lead us to operate under the name of Club Movement which was slathered on top of the building in big purple letters.

I entered the building using my i.d card and was immediately hit with the high powered air conditioner and the hum of all the machinery that was currently . As soon as I moved away from the door I sensed something. I quickly brought up my hand and caught the throwing knife that was headed directly for my left eye. I looked over and saw Lucian leaning against a pillar with a rather sheepish look on his face.

“You need to add more of a spin when you throw so that it makes it harder for the target to catch,” I said as I threw the knife back. He ducked and the knife hit the pillar with a rather satisfying ‘thunk’.

“One of these days I’m going to catch you off guard, and I told you to call me Mask from now on!” Lucian said as he stood back up. He was a couple of years younger than I was and was always trying to prove his worth as an agent. He only recently received an official nickname and he hasn’t stopped talking about it ever since.

“You know we only call each other with our nicknames when we are out on missions.” I already told him the same thing over twenty times but I knew that I was going to have to repeat myself even more in the future. He had turned away from me and was very invested in trying to get the knife out of the pillar but it had been embedded very deeply and he was getting red in the face as he pulled on the handle.

“Michelle is going to be so mad when she sees this.” He mumbled more to himself more than to me. I walked over and pushed him slightly to the side so I could get a good grip on the knife, with a quick yank I had freed it from the pillar and handed it back to him.

“Do you even do any upper arm exercises?” I asked as I turned and walked toward the elevator. I heard a vague sound that resembled the word ‘monster’ but I decided to ignore it.

Ace’s office was located on the third floor of the building. In front of the door to his office sat Mazy behind her desk. She was officially his secretary but I was sure that she viewed herself as more of his caretaker. Most of us treated her like a mom and she in turn treated most of us like her grandchildren.

“Hi Mazy, is Ace free right now? He wanted to see me today,” I said just before I was engulfed in a hug that was probably tight enough to knock the air out of someone else.

“Serena darling, I haven’t seen you in so long. Did you enjoy your vacation? You didn’t spend all of your time watching movies again did you?” She asked as she let me out of her hug.

“Of course not,” I denied even though she had been quite right. I really didn’t need a half hour lecture at the moment. “Anyway can I go in?” I asked as I took one step toward the doors that lead to Ace’s office.

“Let me just check.” Mazy picked up the phone and told Ace that I had arrived. After she put the phone down she told me, “you can go in now but I want full details on how you spent your vacation when you’re done talking with Ace. Also make sure that he’s working will you?” Mazy gave me a smile as I opened the door and walked into Ace’s office.

The office had not changed during my week long vacation, it still looked like it came out of a gothic magazine that did a special on vampire offices. The floor was covered in black tiles while the walls were a dark crimson red that actually paired well with the black chairs and the black desk. Sitting behind the desk was Ace who looked as much like a vampire as the room would suggest. He wore a black button down with a crimson red tie and finished the look with a pair of spiked cufflinks. His black hair was as dark as the desk and those that didn’t know better would have wondered if he dyed his hair.  I ignored the paper that was everywhere and sat down on one of the chairs facing his desk.

“I’m here, now tell me about my next mission,” I said to him as soon as he met my eyes.

“Would it kill you to ask how my day was? We haven’t seen each other for a whole week and this is how you treat me, like I’m some sort of machine that only knows how to give out missions?” Ace dropped the pen he was writing with, placed his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on his hands.

“I’m sure that you don’t have time to be joking around with me.”

“But I have all the time in the world.”

“Mazy will come in here and shoot at you again if you don’t get back to working soon.”

Ace sighed and I knew that I had won our little back and forth. Mazy had once been a very distinguished field agent and still probably the best gun woman in the organization. The last time that Ace had been slacking off she had shot ten shots around him  and made it clear that she would put a bullet in his foot if he slacked off too much.

“Fine,” Ace said as he opened the top drawer of the desked and took out a dark red binder. “I usually would let you leave and read this on your own but I actually want you to read the first page right now.”

Ace handed me the binder and I almost didn’t want to grab it. Something was not right and in our line of business that usually meant more danger and higher chances of death. I glared at Ace as I took the binder but he simply gave me one of his half smiles and leaned back into his chair once I had the binder in my hands. The binder was a lot thinner than I was used to holding. That couldn’t have been a good thing. The last time I had a binder this thin I ended up having to do two months of my own researched and in the end I lost three pints of blood because I had missed an important detail about my target.

“It’s going to be fine, now hurry up and read the first page before Mazy enters with a gun,” Ace said in what I guess was his kindest tone of voice

I gave Ace another glare before I finally opened the binder. On the first page was a photograph of a young asian looking man. This was my target this time. I quickly scanned over the rest over the page and the more I read the more confused I got. I reread the page multiple times just to make sure that I was not in fact going crazy and making all of this up in my head. I looked up to see that Ace had his classic cheshire cat-like grin on his face.

“So what do you think?” Ace asked as I continued to just stare at him.

“I think that you clearly forgotten what my job is.”

“Oh come on I think that you’ll have fun with this mission.”

“Ace, I’m a secret agent...not a babysitter.”

“Well you’ll actually be working more as a translator and bodyguard.”

“Again...I am a secret agent. Why do I have to be a translator for this random korean celebrity?” I was very confused about this whole situation. We all knew that Ace was rather eccentric but he usually didn’t fool around with his missions. Why on earth would he send me to be the bodyguard of a korean celebrity?

“Taemin is not just a random korean celebrity, he’s a huge kpop star and one of the best dancers that I’ve ever seen.” Ace said with so much sincerity that I really wanted to punch him in the face.

“If you don’t tell me what this is really about I will tell Mazy that you’ve been watching kpop videos instead of working.”

“Do you constantly have to use Mazy to threaten me like this?”

“It’s the only thing that seems to work.”

“Fine,” Ace said as he suddenly switched into his serious mode. He stopped smiling and his eyes seemed even darker than they originally were. “There’s been a few rumors in the underground world he is in danger of getting kidnapped while he is in the states. I was not able to find any reliable sources on who wants to kidnap him or why, but I have the rather unpleasant feeling that this might have to do with the increase in the amount of influential people that have gone missing. You’ll take this chance to be by his side and see what you can find out about why and how people have gone missing recently.”

One thing you learn when you are in the organization is that whenever Ace got a feeling about something, he was usually right which mean that this simple mission was not as simple as it seemed.

“You know that I’m not the best at protection missions, why don’t you have Michelle on this mission?” I asked knowing fully well that I was not going to get Ace to change his mind but I was still not comfortable taking on a mission that I had not confidence in.

“Your Korean is best out of the rest of the agents and I think that you and Taemin would probably get along the best. Getting along with with the target is an important part of a protection mission.” Ace had already drifted out of his serious mode and I knew that I would not be able to get a straight answer out of him.

“I understand.” I said rather unenthusiastically as I stood up and headed toward the door.

“Rena, remember to stay safe,” Ace said just as I reached the doors. I opened the door and left without replying to him.

Hiya everyone! I'm so excited for this story and hope you all enjoyed the first chapter. Please leave plenty of comments about your thoughts on the story. 

All that might be confusing might be revealed in furture chapters.