Mikyo-

Sign here, or else.  Okay, they put it a bit nicer than that, but in a nutshell, I was forced to sign a contract binding me to be a spy, forever.  Training was, how to put it, intense.  Gym for two hours, current events for one, and more gym for the rest of the day.  For what?  I asked. We haven't gotten an assignment, and what is our main goal?  To try and beat Russia in a Nuclear War?  Whatever it is, I should have stayed in Korea.

Uh... Isn't out main goal to do something about Evil Overlord, I mean Evil Mastermind?

Evan~

 I couldn't believe my luck. Whether it was bad or good, I wasn't sure. 

One month ago, after people have realized that I never got less than ninety-five percent on tests (and, honestly, how could I have gotten that ninety-five!?) I had been pulled out of school and told I was to be a spy and could you please sign here. Being a day-dreamer and having read a lot of books, I did it immediately.

 But nothing could have been further from my daydreams. Not only were classes much harder, we had to do physical activity as well, which I wasn't too good at. And let's forget weapons.

 I never got to meet anyone more than people from my district, which reminded me of The Hunger Games but was actually just the area where I lived. But I knew that, of course.

And one message had been driven into our minds: you can always be replaced. No matter how smart or fast or amazing you are, there's always someone as good as you, or better. 

 They pushed hard if you were a spy. They had to.  

  The next day, I was assigned a mission. 

Ophelia

My grandmother always said with a name like mine, I should go into acting.  I didn't.  Instead, I did something that made her proud: I followed in her footsteps and became a ballerina.  I got so good at it, I was one of the youngest people to ever perform with the New York City Ballet. I was jetéing through life.  That is, until the e-mail.

In my free time, I broke codes.  I would have my grandmother set a new code on the security system at my house.  Then, I would come inside and break the thirteen-digit code before the lasers went up.  That's a thirty second limit.  I never told anyone what I could do.  I never showed anyone. It was a secret only my grandma and I knew.  Yet, someone thought I was a worthy adversary.  Someone planted a bomb in my dressing room.  

I didn't notice it at all at first.  The villain was smart enough to hide it.  I was going about my daily preperations for the nine o'clock show.  Then I heard a tiny little beeping in the background.  Living in NYC, I had been taught what a bomb sounds like.  I scattered all my make-up.  I looked everywhere, and it just wasn't anywhere there was a hiding place.  Curious, I looked at my make-up  again.  I picked up the lipstick and held it to my ear.  The beeping became deafening.  I quickly twisted the cap off. Where the actual make-up would normally go was a tiny key-pad.  In the cap was a note:"Crack the code or the theater blows down." My eyes widened.  I grabbed a safety pin and used the tiny tip to punch in the letters.  I figured out pretty quickly it was a twenty-letter code.  I searched the tube for a timer.  On the bottom, there was a countdown.  Five minutes left.  I smiled.  That was a pretty generous time for only twenty numbers.  Within a minute, I had stopped the beeping.

Two men ran into the room.  Their bald heads glistened as they took out pistols.  "You solved it?" one grunted. "You are the one we're looking for." He put the gun up to my head.  I panicked.  What could one ballerina do?  Ballerina.  I could dance.   I soubresauted right into one man.  He fell back.  I took his gun and chaîné turned until I was right in front of the other one.  Then I pulled the trigger.  

It didn't hit me what I had done until I got home.  I had killed two men.  Using ballet.  At that moment, I vowed to never dance or hurt someone ever again.  What if I lost control and started hurting innocent people?  

As I was e-mailing the NYC Ballet that night, telling them I wasn't going to dance anymore, an e-mail popped up.  I played with the bun in my hair nervously.  I didn't click on this e-mail!  What is it was from a hacker?  I read through it wearily.  By the end I was smiling.  It was from a spy agency.  Apparently, they saw what happened over the theater security cameras and wanted me to become a spy.  This could give me a new life, where I wouldn't have to dance all day.  I replied back that I would love to join, though I did make a note saying I would not, under any circumstances, fight.  I was a brain, nothing more.

That's when my life became hard. 

I didn't realize we were doing first person. DX It will be rather difficult for my person...

-=Jamie=-

Another piece of paper. I seem to be having bad luck with paper.

I scowled at the woman. She smiled back innocently, but it was hard for her to look innocent. She held out the paper. "Here you go, Jamie. Sign here, please."

"What if I don't want to?" I'm stalling.

The woman raised her eyebrows. "You have signed a contract, James. You are legally obliged to do whatever we want. We can make you do it, or you can do it yourself. Either way you're going to have to and there's nothing you can do about that."

"I have to sign it."

"Yes, you do."

"What does it say?"

"It says that you won't tell anyone anything about us, and in return, we'll pay all expenses caused directly by the mission."

"Since I don't seem to have a choice." I signed it.

"Excellent," said the woman and picked up the page, tucking it into her briefcase. She pulled out a formidable packet of papers. "This is a briefing on your mission. Consider it bedtime reading."

"I don't usually read at bedtime."

"Well, unless you think you can read it tomorrow . . ."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine then. I'll start now."

I opened the packet to the first page, entitled Mission Briefing 1867A. Around me, my fellow child spies were signing contracts and settling down in chairs, opening the packet.

I began to read.

Come on people, post!

Mikyo-

How did I get myself into this?  I must have asked this a hundred times as I read the packet, painfully (it was in English) but steadily.  I'll tell you how you did this, Mikyo.  You went home with a stranger.  It was like a conversation inside my head, confirming my sheer stupidness.

But the school bus broke down. There's the city bus.  I didn't have my bus card.  You don't go home with strangers... ever.  He seemed all right, he said he knew dad.  From where, he might have been a follower on Facebook.  My dad doesn't have a Facebook.  Have you ever heard of lies?  I backed myself into a corner in this fashion, meantime trying to read an introductary packet of papers.  This is what normally happens when I see a Korean.

Ophelia~

"Welcome, Miss Ophelia Winters," the woman said. "To become a part of the agency, just sign here."

After I had replied "yes" to the e-mail, I had barely had enough time to say good-bye to Grandma and tell her to feed the guinea pig before a bulletproof limo had shown up to take me away to the agency.  

The ride in the limo was really boring.  There was no way to entertain myself, and the windows were so tinted, I couldn't look outside.  All I could think about was how I had killed the men.  It was eating me up inside.  After what seemed like an excruciatingly long ride, we were at the agency.  I was instantly whisked inside a clean white room.

I read through the packet the woman gave me carefully.  My grandma always told me to read every little bit of a contract, or I'd be tricked out of everything I owned.  It seemed fine.  I was promised here for a year at a time, they'd pay all expenses, everything had to be kept confidential.  Normal spy stuff.  I was about to sign when I got an idea.

"Who were those men and who planted the bomb?" I asked the woman.

"The agency is looking into that," she answered, straight faced.

"Until I get an answer, I'm not signing."

She looked unsettled.  "Sign."

I got up.

"Okay, we have no idea.  Stuff like this has been happening to many of our potential agents lately, but there's always no way for us to find out who it is."

Reasonable answer.  "You know I'm not to be involved in combat, right?"

"Page 7, Section VIII."

I read it.  It basically said that the agent this contract pertains to will not go into combat.  Using huge, curly letters, I signed my name. 

-=Jamie=-

The packet is so thick I end up staying up late reading it. Not that it's suspensful. I just want to be finished with it by the time we get sent out tomorrow.

Dear Young Spy,

You have been sent on a mission to infiltrate...

Yadda yadda yadda. It went on like that for the first page, trying to convince me I was being a true patriot and fulfilling my destiny by participating in the mission. Bleh. I don't care. Earth to Boss, I signed a contract. You forced me to do this. Then it told me who I was spying on. Well, not who. Just what. Hyperion Industries recently receieved a large shipment of...

Hyperion Industries. Famous company. Makes computers and androids, mostly. Very expensive and fancy. High-end. Only the rich get the Hyperion products. Then they get on commercials so they can talk about how because they bought this or that computer for a bargain price (Yeah. A million bucks. Get real.) their work goes about fifty times faster and the graphics are amazing and its processing is great and blah, blah, blah, until the cameramen get too tired to keep filming the rich snob and end the commercial.

So, yeah. I really hate rich people. Not because I'm poor or anything, but because they're like, I'm so much better than you poor people who wallow in the filth of little suburban towns and because you're so pathetic I'm going to reward you by allowing you to see my face while I brag about my new computer on an infomercial. And then these people, the people who have enough money to do whatever they want, whenever they want, get paid to do this. How stupid is that?

I chuck the packet on the floor, resisting the urge to tear it up. For some reason, the mere mention of Hyperion Industries is enough to make me too upset to read the rest of it. Why? I don't even know. I only know I suddenly really, really regret signing that piece of paper. More than ever.

"Why'd I sign the contract?" I say aloud, then wince. Talking to myself. Not a good sign. Blame Hyperion Industries. 

I go to sleep. I dream of a spy movie ending with a Hyperion commercial that goes on and on and on. The face of the rich person talking keeps changing. It's the President, then some Italian software designer, then a famous movie star, then me---

I sit bolt upright in bed, sweating. 

-==-