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"No! Stop! Please, I’ll tell you anything you want to know!” The young man tied to the table cries out in agony. He’s been tied there for hours, slowly being tortured. He thinks he’s being tortured for information. He couldn’t be more wrong. His being torn apart alive is purely for entertainment. Not hers, of course, but for those sadists watching from the sidelines. They pay her a ridiculous amount of money to watch her carve into the man. Her skills in such things would never be used in such an awful way if she didn’t need the money so badly. It is bad enough that she has to cast away any morals or humanity she has just to get the money. However, she only carves those who she knows deserve it. This man particularly, no matter how young he looks, is a serial rapist and murderer. Such a sad little thing he is, crying like that for hours. It almost makes her feel sorry for him. Almost. After the sad display of the man begging, she offers him the only mercy she’s been taught to offer, death. The man's sobs finally stop, as does his heart.The people watching from afar leave the girl alone in the underground chamber. The room's stone floor is coated in blood and the walls are stained with the scent of burned flesh. Without any windows, the smell will stick for days, possibly weeks. The drains beneath the wooden table that the man was strapped to will help with mopping the blood away. The girl won't have to deal with cleaning, she deals with making the mess.The horrible people leave cash tips on the small wooden table by the iron door for her. No one else in this line of work has her electric power, so she always gets the best tips. Electric power is highly coveted because it can cause the desired pain without major damage. The pain can last for hours, if done right, with no worry of stopping the heart. The girl sighs, tired of torturing that man longer than she wanted. She leaves the room and tells her subordinates waiting outside the door to take care of the body. Trusting that they’ll do the work right by sending The Shield his heart, she leaves without another word. More hearts will be delivered to her enemies tonight.
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One inch away, death looms in front of June. The wind speeds past her, almost as if encouraging her to take the step, to freefall in what would be her last moments. June takes a deep breath and steps away from the ledge. The wind calms, like it's disappointed she didn't fall into it. The door to the roof opens behind June.“I see you still have the habit of hanging out on the roof, like a crazy person.” Eve, June’s best friend, walks up to June and stands next to her, watching the city below. There’s no railing up there so one mistake, one misstep, and you're falling from 30 floors up. Ordinarily, a railing would be added for safety. But that’s only if the people allowed up there were ordinary. Everyone in and around this building has special abilities. Almost all unique and almost all deadly. Those with special abilities are called Supernaturals. They are born with an extra ‘life force’ they call aura. The aura they have takes on a color when they are born but the abilities only manifest when they are around the ages of 18 to 20. Every living thing has some aura, Supernaturals just have more and can control it. The color aura they have determines what sort of power they have. But while many may share aura colors with others, the powers are based on the soul. It is extremely rare to have the same ability as someone, but not impossible.“I am completely sane, thank you. Okay, well, as sane as one with my job can be.” June shrugs her shoulders, acting like she isn’t the craziest person Eve has met. And Eve has met her fair share of crazy people.“Whether you’re sane or not isn’t my job. So feel free to be as insane as you feel. Just please try not to break anything, that is my job. Well, I guess with you’re power, you can’t help it. You break enough things to have me working for the rest of my life.” Eve says. “Speaking of work, the boss called for you. New assignment. This one seems pretty big. James called your entire unit in, my entire team too.”“Well, shit. That is a pretty big deal. We better get going then. Would hate to keep bossman waiting.” June heads downstairs without waiting for Eve.June and Eve walk into the conference room together and look for a seat. The room is full of other officers from the investigators unit and legal affairs division. June swears under her breath when she sees the only two open seats. Right in the front. Eve grabs June’s hand and leads her to the seats, still holding her hand as they sit. James, the bossman, walks in the door from the right and takes his place at the head of the table. The room, once loud from chatter, is now quieter than a morgue.“We have been commissioned by The Academy to teach the students. The investigators unit will be the ones leading the courses and, depending on what course you teach, will be taking on shadows from the 3rd year squads to show them the work life. The legal affairs division will handle writing the waivers and working with The Academy to make sure everything runs smoothly. The official work begins tomorrow but I want everyone to be prepared for their duties by tonight. Don’t let our title of the most efficient branch be taken. I expect nothing but perfection.” James uses his telekinesis to bring out and pass around packets of information for the assignment. Once everyone has received their papers James speaks once more. “Read over these and memorize them. Every letter and detail is vital to this operation. Do not disappoint me.” James walks out, leaving the groups to stay and look over the papers together.“I was hoping for some cool mission but this is all I get. I wish it was something cool, like taking down an Outlanders base. Killing some bastards would do wonders for my mood right now,” June whispers to Eve.Eve sighs, “I know, right? I mean I wouldn’t kill anyone. I don’t have the guts for that, but I was hoping for something cool. The most we get around here are petty thieves. They’re not worth the amount of paperwork I have to do to process them.”“I pity you and the work you have to do. I much prefer fighting and physical things.”Eve winks. “I know you do.” June wacks Eve on the arm. “But seriously, June, don’t pity me. My work may not be glamorous or exciting but it’s important. I learn so many useful things in my division. You do your work and I’ll do mine. And we’ll support each other no matter what.” Eve gives June what she hopes is a reassuring smile. June smiles back and they fall into silence as they read the papers.June finishes reading with a sigh. “This is going to be so much work. I have another meeting with my unit in a few minutes to discuss roles and other such things. I want to be early so I can get a good one so I’m going to leave now.” June stands and turns to leave. “I’ll see you after the meeting, Eve. I wish you the best of luck with your division work.” June follows other members of her unit out of this conference room and into another across the hall.“Everyone take a seat. We have a lot to discuss and roles to assign,” Sophia, the unit leader, says to everyone while they all find a seat at the long table. With everyone in their seats, Sophia continues. “There are three courses our unit will be teaching. With fifteen of us, there will be five of us for each course. The courses are basic training, mentoring, and active duty. Basic training will include physical training, fighting maneuvers, and power manipulation. I want our best fighters to teach that, but you will decide that amongst yourselves. Mentoring will cover showing older students how we work as a unit and how we identify criminals. You may also take on promising students as shadows to improve their in-field fighting and experience. Active duty will be similar to mentoring. Active duty is to show the new graduates the dangers of working in an investigator unit and how they must be ready for a battle at any time and place. Those teaching the active duty course will take the students on patrols. If you encounter any dangers, keep the students at a safe distance while you deal with them. The students need to see you fighting and use that to help themselves learn to fight. Figure out who is teaching what and report to me the second you’re done.” Sophia leaves the room without waiting for confirmation they understood. If they didn’t understand they aren’t good enough to be in her unit.“I will take Hazel, Florence, Levi, and Fawn with me to do basic training. Their powers will be the most useful for teaching young students. They’re also in our top 5, like how Miss Sophia wished.” June says, claiming her team and course before anyone can.Aaron claims his team and course next. “That works out fine. I’ll take Will, Violet, Elliot, and Alex with me to mentoring. That’ll leave Terran, Percy, Kayden, Brendon, and Josh for active duty. I wish you guys the best of luck.” He salutes everyone, pretending they're going off to war.June ends the meeting saying, “So that settles that. Good work everyone. Meet with your groups privately to discuss what lessons and skills you will be teaching. Remember, some of your students will be no older than 18 or 19. They are still kids, take it easy on them. The older ones, however, beat the crap out of them. They need to know what they’re going to be getting themselves into if they join the investigators. Don’t let them forget how strong we are.” A few members clap when June finishes speaking, proud of the strength and power they hold. This unit, Unit 4, has held the title of strongest unit for two years. They got the title a year after June joined the unit and have held it since.“You’ll have four groups of students to teach daily. Make sure all of them are good enough to pass the graduation ceremony before signing off on their grades. Going too easy on these kids will do nothing for them. Make sure they live to join us,” Hazel says making sure everyone heard and understood before leaving with her group. The other group follows suit, leaving June and her group in the conference room.The next two hours are spent planning how they are going to teach these kids and who is teaching when. They decided to split the kids into two teams. One team learns offensive skills while the other team learns defensive skills. They’ll switch after an hour for a total of two hours each class. This will repeat for two weeks, half of the time they’ll be teaching. The last two weeks will be spent doing skirmishes between the students' teams. There are four squads they will be teaching daily. This means eight hours of teaching. June and Florence have the first day. June will be teaching offensive skills with her electricity abilities, and Florence teaching defensive skills with her psychic shield abilities. The following day will be Hazel and Fawn. Hazel teaches offensive with her power to summon a pistol while Fawn teaches defensive with her plant growth and manipulation. The last rotation has Levi teaching offensive and Florence again with defensive. For the last two weeks, all five of them will be watching and teaching for the skirmishes.The next four weeks are going to be a different kind of hard for this unit. They have faced things worse than death, but nothing can quite compare to children who think that they own the world just because of a few good grades.“Great work everyone. We now have everything planned out. Continue to work on memorizing the schedule, we must be perfect. Don’t forget to write an evaluation of each student after each week to track their progress. Now, good night and go home,” June says as she stands up and leaves. She’s not going home quite yet though. She was assigned to write a summary of the meeting for Sophia. June sits at her desk and begins writing. June knows Eve is there before she taps on her shoulder.“Still hard at work I see. I swear you’re always working,” Eve says while she pulls a chair from someone else's desk and sits down.“Well, the work does good so why would I ever take a break? And I’m just going to finish writing this and then go home for the night. I am not going to pull another all-nighter. I’ve learned better than that from you nagging me like my mother,” June sighs.“Well someone’s got to teach you it’s not good to stay up all night. Who knows what could happen to your aura if you kept on treating your body badly,” Eve pokes at June’s head.June swats away Eve’s hand. “Yes, Mother,” June says sarcastically. “Anyway, did you get everything ready for tomorrow? If it’s not ready, leave it for tomorrow. If I can’t pull an all-nighter, neither can you.”‘Yes, I can. Just because I’m not allowing you to stay up all night doesn’t mean I can’t”“That’s exactly what that means! If you try to work late I swear I’m going to forcibly take you home and make you sleep.”“Why is it that you care if I sleep but don’t care if you do?”“I do care if I sleep, I just know when I can go without it. My body is a temple and I would never do anything that would be seriously irreversible.”“Oh, yes, I know how you think you’re a goddess and whatnot.” Eve stands up and moves to put the chair back in its original place. “I’m going home now. Don’t stay too late and don’t do anything that gives me more work.”June mocks a laugh as Eve walks away. But no matter how much June pretends to hate that goodbye, she loves it. Eve has been saying that for three years, since the day they met. June had become used to hearing it and learned to love it.June first hated that goodbye because it was something her twin brother would say. He was a very sarcastic and loving person, just like Eve. James would pretend to complain about helping June with things but he would help her and do everything he could for her. James was always doing everything he could for the greater good. He was such a pure soul, he didn’t deserve to be taken from those who love him. He was taken at such a young age too, only 19. Eve, who only met him twice before attending The Academy with June, loved him too. He was killed in a horrible car crash. The worst part is that he could’ve survived if he had been born a Supernatural. But he wasn’t, only June, his twin, was born with that power. The one regret June has ever had was being a Supernatural while James wasn’t. She would trade her life for his without a second thought. She would give anything just for a moment with him. A moment may be asking too much of the world, just a letter would do. A chance to tell him how much she loves and misses him.June finishes her work barely past midnight and decides to waste some time. June isn’t even close to being tired enough to sleep. She pulls up The Shields file system and finesses the security system a bit before it gives way and allows her into the hidden files. Each file contains a secret The Shield doesn’t want the public to know. Each file hides the shame and mistakes of The Shield. June would be arrested if the higher-ups knew she was breaking into the files but she’s been doing this since the day she was hired. If they haven’t caught her now, they never will. Junes scrolls through the files looking for any updates on old cases or something new. There’s nothing new. After scrolling through the files for a bit she lands on an old but interesting case. June has read and reread this case more times than she can count but hasn’t figured out how to solve it. This case is one of two unsolved cases in the entirety of The Shield.The case is a simple gunpoint robbery. The entire case is your standard desperate criminal in need of quick and easy cash. Four officers were assigned to take them down but all ended up in the ICU. The assistant disappeared for two weeks and was found passed out at a bar and was immediately arrested. This case is simple but the deeper you go the less it makes sense. The assailant took down four powerful, trained officers while having no power or training to speak of. They went missing for two whole weeks without so much as a security camera appearance. And to top it all off, when they were found at the bar they simply appeared as if summoned out of thin air. There were also signs of torture covering their body when the battle reports say the battle was quick, with no chance of injuries like that. Nothing in the entire case connects. The only other case similar to this has fewer holes but still doesn’t make sense. The Shield runs on facts and details, but why is it that two hidden cases don’t have either?June leans forward and smacks her head on the desk. No matter how much she thinks these cases over it doesn’t make sense. She wants to know why these cases exist so badly. No other cases in existence are like these, so why do these exist? She needs to be promoted. Since June first found out about these cases, she’s done everything she can to be promoted to a high enough clearance to know. She is willing to do anything to get what she wants.