The room was silent when Anya woke up, she groggily got up and gave out a chittering groan.

  "Ahh, you are finally awake" Anya heard a voice next to her, followed by a rustle from a nearby lounge chair.

  Anya's heart pumped off-beat for a single second, energy thrumming through her defensive matrix, flooding her senses with information around her. Noticing only a single woman standing in front of a lounge chair, Anya relaxed. "[Why does this keep happening?]" she mumbled under her breath.

  The woman, brown hair, short stature, neat clothes and stylish sun glasses gave Anya the feelings of seeing someone from an 80's mafia movies.

  "Apologies for taking so long, there was an altercation between different teams." she gave Anya a formal bow of apology and kept at it.

  "Rise." Anya typed embarrassed, she still wasn't used to people bowing at her.

  "I believe the plan was to have our first meeting in a month or so" Said the woman.

  "But, no matter, this should work out fine, as long as no one knows who you truly are. Isn't that right Icarus" she whispered the last half of the sentence and gave Anya an unsettling smile.

  "You. Must. Be. The. Chief. Of. Staff." Anya typed fast, trying to conceal her surprise whilst acting more professional, she envied Giovanni and his ability to instantly switch his presence effortlessly, she had seen it happen every now and then, but only when she had actually paid attention to it specifically. She was sure that such a technique would be really hard to spot without experience or Pokémon's abilities.

  "Indeed, you are well informed. As much as I like the comfortable chairs of the library, we should take this to a more secure place, how about my office, to keep privacy from curious individuals" she said the last part of the sentence a lot louder. A sudden sounds of footsteps was heard from the other side of the door, Anya with her enhanced senses heard footsteps retracing from above.

  the chief of staff gave out a sigh "shall we" she said as she led Anya up another two flights of stairs and into a quiet office.

  Anya followed the chief of staff into the office, she was surprised about the personalization of the place, stylized paintings of Pokémon hanging from the walls, a couple of Ekans in a pile, a Koffing mid smokescreen and lastly a Beedrill versus a Venomoth battling it out in the skies above. Anya took a note of the Pokémon in these painting.

  "Here we are" said the chief of staff, She then hold out a hand to Anya, "I am Marié, but you may call me by my codename, Pandora."

  "Pleasure. To. Meet. You. Marie." Anya grimaced, the synthesized voice couldn't pronounce Marié's name correctly as it lacked the feature to make proper intonations. "Pandora. Works. Better. With. This. Device." she corrected.

  "I have worked with Pokémon before, but this is the first time I have worked under one, if you know what I mean" Marié said some doubt clear in her voice.

  "Understandable." Anya said after a moment of thinking.

  Marié sighed, "Please, have a seat" she motioned Anya to one of the sofas, while sitting down on the sofa on the opposite side. It felt wrong of her to sit on her office chair, to be the boss of the room when her direct superior is with her.

  There was a long pause, where Anya was deep in thought and Marié waited patiently for Anya to begin the conversation.

  A moment passed before Anya looked at Marié "I. Presume. This. Place. Is. Training. Facility. For. Field. Operatives."

  Marié body straightened, her professionalism gave to surface to competence. "Yes, you are correct. We use this place, the Boot camp to temper our recruits to a more professional standard"

  "Everything. Going. Well?"

  "The latest wave of recruits have shown promising talents, but there have been some." she paused for a while before continuing "complications in recent times."

  "Please. Elaborate." Anya asked while gesturing Marié to continue.

  Marié's gaze met Anya's red orb like eyes "Honestly, we are running out of servile Pokémon to give the trainees to bond with along with getting new recruits have been increasingly more difficult year after a year. Right now, we only have two batches of trainees working here at the moment."

  The corners of Marié's mouth twitched upward in what Anya could call a hesitant smile as she started talking about the whole operation proudly. "The striped ones are the older teams while the singles are new ones, some of them show exemplary promise to be fantastic field teams that have never been seen before." Her hands animated as Marié told Anya about some of her favorite mock operations she had invented for the teams to compete each other against.

  "One time, Black got to the objective, a flag with a capital letter R planted to the ground and they were supposed to grab the flag and bring it back to base..."

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  In the middle of explanation all of a sudden, Marié quieted down. Her cheeks blushed red in embarrassment.

  She sheepishly added "I apologize, I have gone overboard"

  "No. That. Was. Great." Anya added, now sporting a smile.

  "I. Like. Hearing. About. These. Kind. Of. Things." she continued. "It. Gives. Me. Perspective. About. The. Internal. Workings. Of. The. Facility. Of. The. Recruits." She gave it a dramatic pause while continuing to type. "And. Most. Importantly. Of. You."

  Marié cleared her throat "What I would like to hear. What were you doing in the forest. You know how odd it was to get an urgent message that saying along the lines 'Hey, Your new boss got abducted by a Pidgeot go find her'."

  "I had to call off a morning training for the recruits as they were the only teams available to send of in a moments notice. Well more like reassign the morning exercise to be about personnel retrieval."

  It was Anya's turn to cringe, it was one of the things she did not like and found it distasteful to waste other people's time.

  "Well." Anya hesitated for a moment, she wasn't sure how much she should share about the whole meeting, but she had to say something.

  "I. Had. Forgotten. Meeting. With. Friends. They. Were. Upset. And. Asked. Pidgeot. To. Pick. Me. Up."

  "Friends you say?" Marié questioned leaning forward.

  "Yes. Friends. Pokémon. Who. Live. Nearby." Anya gave a glare at Marié, to deter further questioning.

  "Let's leave it at that." a single drop of sweat rolled down on Marié back. Something about Anya's glare made her skin tingle and she rigidly leaned back to the sofa.

  "Well, on another topic, what did you like about the training, how did the teams behave?"

  Anya pondered a moment, thinking on the morning activities after the talk with Absence of Obligation and Sparks of Dawn. Her mind focused on the escort and chase sequence, the name, Miko was something she remembered.

  "Miko. And. Her. Teammate. Were. Quite. Resourceful."

  Marié frowned at the statement.

  "Seems like they forgot to mention such an error, they are to never use names during mission or tasks, the whole nameless mook persona is part of the training."

  She gave a pause before continuing. "Still, Purple Team as eccentric as they are, are still one of the best scouting team we have ever got. Their out of the box thinking has surprised me and every other instructor, their coordination with their Pokémon are actually on high level, the one thing they actually differ from the other groups but, it is their ability to know their place which gives them an advantage over others, they know that the teams Black and White are the strongest in combat and they are no match to them in combat, so they improvise, make White and Black fight each other and snag the prize underneath them."

  Even if the Purple Team made some mistakes that Marié did not like, her eyes and voice still sparkled with pride when she animatedly talked about the specifics of the teams and what they had done in the past.

  The conversation went forward, Anya was happy to listen to Marié tell stories about the teams she had instructed in the past. All of this information gave Anya a sense of how the facility actually worked and was surprised that the Boot Camp was less of a military training camp instead, it felt more like a more hardcore version of a competitive summer camp designed with missions and tasks to earn credits.

  Something happened in the middle of explaining about the latest wave of recruits, as Marié suddenly quieted down, Anya noticed that Marié's look had darkened a bit, her brows furrowed in what Anya though was annoyance.

  Marié rose from the sofa, she silently walked at the end of her desk with purpose, as if remembering something she had forgotten, she rummaged through the desktop and the drawers looking for something, Anya turned towards her.

  It took a while but, Marié seemed to have found what she was looking for, she returned to the sofa with a folder in her hands and started browsing. Anya did not say anything she wanted to wait for Marié to get back to the proper headspace.

  "Yes, this is it. Here" she said as she pulled a piece of paper from the folder. "Here is the record of resources given to the Boot Camp, this year, recent" then she pulled out a stack of another few papers. "And these are the ones before, during Madame's era of running the company." Anya took the papers and noticed a huge drops in monetary allocation after Giovanni had taken over.

  "What. Seems. To. Be. The. Problem. Money?"

  "Yes, we have less money allocated to the boot camp recently to run efficiently." Marié said exasperated.

  "Did. You. Know. That. The. Change. In. Leadership. Caused. Rift. Between. Madame. Loyalists. And. Us." Anya waited a moment for the message to properly sink in.

  "Many. Deserters. Lots. Of. Revenue. Lost." another pause "Have. To. Compensate. From. Somewhere."

  "Enter. League. Our. New. Benefactor."

  "With. The. Support. From. The. League. We. Have. More. Resources. To. Use."

  "More. People. More. Money." Anya continued

  Anya could see Marié's mind running at high speed, trying to calculate something that Anya had no idea about.

  She asked quickly "That takes care of the people problem, then what about the Pokémon problem? We can't ask our recruits to bring their own"

  "Would. You. Believe." a pause "I. Have. Potential. Solution. To. That. Problem." Anya gave Marié a smirk.

  "Please elaborate?"

  "I. Hope. You. Have. Read. The. Material. Boss. Had. Given. Us." Anya said while pointing at the pile of books left on top of Marié's table.

  "What. Do. You. Think. About. Abandoned. Pokémon."

  "To be honest, they are sorry little things and the brats who left them should be punished. But what do those weaklings have to do with our operations."

  "More. Specifically. Where. Can. We. Get. Those."

  "No!, You can't mean" Marié gasped in horror when she realized what Anya was saying.

  Anya slowly rose from the sofa.

  "Yes. We. Raid. The. Pokémon. Center." A devilish smile rose on Anya's lips.