A solid swooshing noise announced my arrival at my new home, and I nodded appreciatively. A good noise is essential to making a good entrance, and the automatic doors that lead into the training centre certainly met the bill. It was a modern, fancy building with an equally fancy reception area. Lots of white tiles, glass, plants which were probably real and a large curved desk with a large curved woman behind it. There was no sign saying that it was the reception desk, but I felt pretty safe in assuming that it was, so I swaggered over to it.

"Hi!" I said brightly, causing the woman to look away from whatever she was doing on her computer. Judging by the amount of people I had seen since I arrived here, three, counting my own reflection and my cabbie, she was probably playing Minesweeper.

"Can I help you?" She asked, in the unfriendly drawl I had come to expect from people behind desks. Something about me just ticked them off, even when I was behaving, like I am now. I wasn't even drinking.

"Yeah." I said, "My name’s Anna Throndson. I had an appointment with a Mr Renfield, but I've missed it. Do you think we could..."

"You're late." Came a curt voice from my right. I looked over to see a dude in a suit, probably around 30, looking and sounding even more pissed off than the receptionist. I looked at him for a few seconds, attempting, and apparently achieving a look of blank disinterest, if his own steadily growing anger was any indicator. I then turned back to the woman behind the counter.

"Do you think we could possibly reschedule at all?" I finished, pointedly ignoring this new asshole.

"How about right now?" Said said asshole who seemed to be getting grumpier.

"Next week sometime would be ideal." I continued, still ignoring the guy. The lump behind the counter didn't seem to know how to respond to this, probably something to do with her boss now stalking over angrily.

"My office. Now." He said, grabbing my shoulder to turn me around and drag me with him. I didn't budge. Instead I gently, but firmly removed his hand, then slowly rotated to look at him.

"Two things." I said, looking him directly in the eyes.

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"First, if this is going to work, then you're going to have to take that stick out and treat me with respect. I'm not the best person, I'll admit that, but you either treat me with the same god damn courtesy you'd give your mailman, or there'll be a problem. I'm late, yeah. But I just came off a transpacific flight, one that took 14 hours just for travel time." I moved in as a spoke, and to his credit, he didn't step back, which was actually impressive, considering my reputation.

"Then, when I land" I continued, staring up at him, "I got arrested. Some asshole doesn't do his fucking paperwork, so I'm still wanted. Queue two days in gaol while that shit gets sorted out. You ever sat in a cell for two days? It's boring as fuck. I can't even sleep through it."

I paused, and as he opened his mouth to reply, I cut back in again.

"Then I finally get here, what's the first god damn thing anyone says to me? Not "How are you?" or "Nice to see you", or even "How was your flight?". No, it's "You're late." Well I'm fucking here now, and I'm ready to do whatever the hell it is you want me for."

Again, I waited just long enough for him to be about to say something, before I continued on with my little rant.

"Second," I said, holding up two fingers, "You have beautiful eyes. That green is really nice"

It was nice. Green's not my favourite colour, that would be Royal Purple, but I could appreciate a nice green. His were a fantastic bright shade that really went well with his dark hair. I stared into his eyes for a few more seconds, which was more like 20 in my accelerated world, then began to move past him to his door.

"Sorry Edith." I said back over my shoulder. "Looks like I don't need to reschedule after all."

The dude waited a few seconds, clearly trying to process what had just happened. It was a fairly common occurrence when I met with some authority figure, they never seemed quite able to work out how to deal with me. He did recover however, and soon followed me into the room

What followed was an awkward, boring ass meeting that I can't be bothered describing. Bunch of contracts, explanations and judgmental glares. The gist was that I was part of a six person team. We'd all live and train here, food and housing was obviously free, and I wasn't to misbehave, all standard, boring shit. It was long and largely pointless, and I was glad for it to finish. He handed me off to a perky young brunette who was to give me a quick tour of the place before the team meeting that would be happening this afternoon, where I would get to meet the other poor sods who had been dragged into this.

The brunette, who was named Jeannette, led me around happily. The place was actually kinda nice. There were dorms, with seperate rooms, a kitchen, all sorts of gym equipment, and a zen garden. This was in addition to the few offices at the front of the tour, which thankfully were not part of the tour. All in all, there were worse places to be stuck in. Like prison. Or Queanbeyan. Seriously, fuck Queanbeyan.

"And this," she babbled happily, showing me into an enormous empty field "Is the training yard. The coach and the rest of the team should be here shortly. I gotta go, but you can just wait here for them. Have a nice day!”

With that, she was off, and I was left on my own. The idea of standing around waiting for a pack of strangers to show up didn’t exactly appeal to me, so instead, I wandered over to a set of benches and sat down to wait. Much better. I leant back, stared up at the clouds, and pondered the question that had been filling my mind for a while now. What would my new teammates be like? With any luck, it wouldn’t be too long until I found out.