Showdown
Angelina
I glared at her, but sat on the edge of the table. “What do we have to discuss?” I made a show of looking at my watch. “I’m rather hungry, you see.”
Fa C simply stared. “How much do you know?”
“Errrr....” Sandy looked around in mock confusion. “What do you mean by that?”
She looked coolly at him. “I know your little ‘spy activities’. Seems to me, some people have developed juvenile hero complexes.”
“How lovely for them,” I said blandly.
Fa C ignored me. “What do you know about the Black Snowflake?”
Vincent
“Fine,” said Sandy. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Fa C casually raised her eyebrows. Sandy began talking.
“We know that Black Snowflake isn’t training us to work with any government. You are training a bunch of children to be your, your-”
“Army of powerful mindless robots,” supplied Fizz.
“A bit more crude than I was going for,” amended Sandy, “But yes. That.”
“You have scouts everywhere looking out for talented kids.” I put in. I didn’t want to mention the fact that we knew that our families were affiliated with Black Snowflake. We weren't even sure about that ourselves, and that was something we had to sort out with our families first.
Cho
I noticed Snowy’s reluctance to talk about our families. Small wonder, since it involved his parents’ deaths.
“Then why did you steal my phone?” asked Fa C.
My blood ran cold. To my horror, Fizz spoke up. “We were, well, we were..” she trailed off with a faint blush on her cheeks. Wait. Why was she blush-
“We had to check if your phone had ‘Candy Crush’. I made a bet that it did. ‘Punzel here bet against it. So we had to check.”
Fa C’s lip twitched. “And who won the bet?”
Zacharias
Curses! Fizz had done a fantastic job with riffing so far! But we hadn’t actually checked for the so-called ‘dare’. Fizz fell silent, but ‘Punzel softly spoke up, “I’m not sure, we got sidetracked by your high score on Subway Surfers.”
Fa C radiated smugness.
Now that ‘Punzel mentioned it, I did remember a pop-up from the game regarding her first prize for a high score, well I don’t remember the number exactly, but it had a lot of zeroes. Fa C didn’t enquire further about the bet.
Fizz continued, “We assumed that Black Snowflake was behind the Naldavya emeralds case, because your bank account had transferred roughly the same amount to a personal account of Shrai A Upa.”
Angelina
‘Punzel spoke up, “Shrai A Upa owns a not-for-profit organization, which has become very popular. She doesn’t make any money from it, but she lives well. Her money is from her divorce with Julio Martìnez, which entitled her to a 50-50 split, which was quite a lot, considering Julio was remarkably well off.”
I piped up, “Julio was well off because he owned a successful company along with his brother, Jose. Jose is a famous womanizer, and often his bad conduct with his wives, as well as other women, put the company in trouble with the papers, but it is said that Julio covered up the worst of it.”
Vincent
Something clicked in my head. “Jose was the brother of Julio, which made him Shrai’s brother in law. Shrai’s own daughter had been hurt, but no name was reported in any of the papers. The only thing Shrai said to identify the culprit was that he was related to her estranged husband. That was probably Jose, because the police investigation didn’t go any further, and no one was prosecuted; probably due to Julio’s interference.”
Fizz nodded, “So that’s why Shrai A. Upa had a grudge against Jose Martìnez, or rather, a thirst for revenge. Jose Martìnez bought the Naldavya emeralds as a gift for his fifth wife for like, their, six day anniversary or whatever.”
Cho
Sandy grinned, “Wedding, Fizz. But if you think about it, it’s not a great gift for a wedding. Those jewels are said to be cursed to change hands within a year. So that really doesn’t say much for their marriage. Anyway, because of the so-called curse, the price of the emeralds has gone down. It could be worth 5 million, or even more, but it doesn’t sell for more than 3 million in the market. It's also really easy to steal, because nobody would question it if they magically resurfaced on the market a year later, what with the curse and all.”
Snowy grinned confidently, “So, Shrai contacted you to avenge her daughter. And Black Snowflake acted as the Robin Hood in the situation. The money ended up going to a charity anyway, with a small cut for maintenance costs, I guess.”
Zacharias
“It must cost a lot to run a school of this size and technological advancement..” Snowy trailed off thoughtfully.
‘Punzel stepped on his foot. “Focus,” she hissed.
Fa C smiled. So don’t you see what we’re doing here?” It’s genuinely just good work! There’s so many horrible things done in the world, and many times the perpetrators never have consequences! They’re too rich, or too powerful. That’s what we do here. We use our power to negate others. And run a school, of course.”
We stood there stunned.
Angelina
“Now here’s my offer. You know a lot, and I can’t jeopardize this operation for anybody, even a couple of kids. You must know that the things we do aren’t exactly, well, within the realm of the law. I can make sure you guys go to remote places, so far away from each other and anyone else that you’ll start questioning yourself. You’ll have a completely different life, and it will be comfortable. Or you can stay on, and become one of our youngest team of operatives. The choice is yours.”
We looked at each other, but there wasn’t a moment of hesitation.
“We’ll do it.”
Vincent
Fa C handed us some kind of contract. “This is a non disclosure agreement. You have to sign this if you want to continue here at this school. It's just a formality, but we do it with every operative when they’re formally inducted.”
We all took turns to sign the paper.
Fa C’s face became serious. “Welcome operatives, now for your first mission....…”