“So how do you suppose we take out the snipers?” Ambrose inquired. 

            “Well, we don’t want to kill them, right?” I turn to Aurora to see if maybe she can come up with a plan that can incapacitate them without ‘taking care’ of them. 

            “Ambrose, do you have any poppy seeds?”

            “Well, I do, but the pollen that can make them sleep would need to get into the air and it’s not particularly windy enough today.”

            “I suppose it isn’t very windy, but there still is wind,” the wind easily crawls through her hair making it slightly sway left and right, “If we increase the temperature from above, the atmospheric pressure in the area will change causing the wind to pick up.”
            “That will cause the wind problem, but how should we get the seeds close enough to the snipers?” I asked.

            “I’ll just toss them.”

            “That’s easily a 300-meter toss,” Ambrose said doubting if she would be able to. She’s fast, but can she really be that strong too? Her special ability isn’t strength either, I had already asked before.

            “It’ll be fine, trust me.” And of course we do. She’s never let us down. 

            Ambrose hands her a handful of poppy seeds and she walks to the edge of the building. She takes her time calculating the distance, wind, and air resistance. After a few moments, she gently tosses the seeds up. Although the toss didn’t seem like it much effort or force put into it, the seeds fell exactly where they needed to. The snipers must have heard them dropping because they all turned to face the center of the floor where they had fallen. They were small enough no one noticed, and after a quick nod from each other, they went back to scoping the area. 

            Ambrose made the poppies bloom, and I began creating a small and hot flame. Just as Aurora had planned, the wind became strong enough to spread the poppy pollen and within a few moments, the snipers fell asleep. 

            “I’ve been working on modifying the plants as they grow. I made the pollen far more potent than wild poppies,” Ambrose proudly stated.

            “Wonderful! You both did a fantastic job. I’m so glad we got to work together,” she smiled brightly.

            We all made it over to the building without grabbing anyone’s attention. Ambrose took the uniforms from two of the men and bound them all together with vines. Aurora and I changed into them in case we ran into anyone in the staircase. We turned and looked at each other. We looked each other up and down and began to laugh. They were a little baggy, but when we folded the sleeves, it didn’t make it too obvious. I’m sure we still looked silly because when Ambrose saw us, he tried hard not to laugh.

            “Well, we’ll head to the first floor to look for the briefcase. If you take up the position the sniper here,” I point to the spot where the snipers would have the perfect view of the people on the ground and far in front to give a warning if anyone was coming, “You’ll be able to see if anything about their behaviors change.”

            “If they become aware of you?”

            “Then we’re counting on you to come save us,” Aurora smiled at him. Saying these simple words gave Ambrose’s worried face to a bright and proud smile. 

            “Of course! I’ll be glad if you make it back safe, but if you don’t, I won’t mind having some fun with these fools.”

            “Right! We’ll be on our way the,” I say as I grab Aurora’s hand and began to take her down the stairs. I get that Ambrose needs a boost of confidence, but we have a mission to complete! I can’t waste more time having Aurora make him feel more comfortable. He needs to build himself up. Not just talk the talk but walk the walk.

            After we made it to the first floor, I let go of her hand. I had forgotten I was holding it. She is so nice she just let me lead her around instead of letting go herself. I turn to look at her and she is looking at her hand. I cock my head, wondering what she is thinking about. What an odd expression. It’s different kind of smile than what she usually shows around us.

            “Are you ready?” I ask while holding the door handle to the first floor.

            She looks up and nods, “Mhm.” 

I open the door and we quickly find a place to hide. We are behind a lip in the wall with doors on the opposite side. It’s not as busy as we expected; however, there is a couple of guards that are guarding the left turn at the end of the hallway. That must be where the briefcase is. We make eye contact and nod at each other. It sometimes feels like we don’t need to say anything to understand each other. I wish I could have been one of her sparring partners during training, I bet we could take on all of the others at once together. 

Aurora and I make our way down the hall, going one door at a time until we reach that turning point. She signals me to stay put. I’m not exactly sure what she might be planning, but I listen to her. Her plans have been accurate and has gotten us this far. 

She makes the left turn. I hear two thumps and begin to worry about her, so I quickly turn the corner. I can’t let anything happen to her. But what I see immediately after making that sharp left is Aurora standing in between two bodies of grown men in uniforms on the floor. 

“They’re not dead, just sleeping,” she says to me calmly with a smile, “Let’s continue. There’s a safe behind that door. It’s made of metal; think you can melt it.”
            I look at her, the unconscious bodies, and back to her. She’s grown a lot since we first met, but she is still so small and delicate. I often forget how strong she is. She’s not ranked one for nothing. It inspires me to become better and get to rank one myself. 

“Of course! It won’t even be a challenge.”

We open the door to where the safe is and before I take a step in, she put her arm out, stopping me in my tacks. 

“What’s wrong?”

She leans over and unbuttons the uniform shirt. She has her Institution uniform underneath, but my face gets a little warm. She pulls out a small dagger from her uniform. I had not noticed there were any weapons in the uniform when we originally put them on. She uses that dagger to cut a small, invisible string. 

“A trip wire.”
            Following the wire, an alarm and an axe. One would alert our presence while the other would have killed me. 

“Thanks, I will be more cautious next time.”
            “We should also be cautious of any other tricks and traps they have. There are not many guards here, maybe it is because they don’t want their own to fall into any.” We. Such a meek word—but somehow makes you feel better coming from her. I’m the one who messed up, but she doesn’t make me feel guilty about it. I’m glad she’s the one with me, not Ambrose.

“Mmm,” I say in agreement.

We slowly make our way to the safe. There are a few more things that we run into, but luckily Aurora saw right past all of them. When we reach the safe, I light a finger and begin to trace the edge of the safe. It’s a technique I mastered during training; small, controlled, and exceptionally hot. Perfect for delicate jobs like this. The front of the safe falls into Aurora’s hands. I reach into the safe and pull out two identical briefcases. The ones we saw in the conference room earlier that morning. 

Suddenly a loud alarm begins to boom. We know that there are more mercenaries coming directly for us. All the traps leading toward the safe had been disabled on our way in, but the main staircase will undoubtedly be filling with guards coming for us. We ran to where we came from, but instead of making that right to take us back, Aurora grabbed my hand and pulled me to go straight instead. 

Down this hallway, that I didn’t care to look down, Ambrose popped out and led us to a side staircase. We run up to the top floor where the snipers were still bound and struggling to unbind the vines around them. 

“We’ve got to hurry! I already alerted the Institution we were headed to the drop off point when the alarms started,” Ambrose informed us. 

“I’ve got… both the briefcases,” I told him. He looked at me curiously, “yes, both. We didn’t have time to check which one was real.” 

“We can do that at the drop off point. The mercenaries are almost here,” Aurora said to us seconds before the doors to the floor burst open with dozens of gruff looking soldiers came in. 

Ambrose threw up some seeds that attached themselves to the building behind us, and grew into his hand, grabbed Aurora’s waist, and swung to the next building. That asshole! How could he just grab her like that?

Following their lead, I used my flames to fly over to them. We were too quick for the enemy to follow, and we made it to the drop off point safely. Before we got into the car, Aurora grabbed one of the briefcases from me tore it open and smashed it against the ground. 

“What are you doing? We were told not to open the briefcase, let alone destroy it!” Ambrose exclaimed. 

My eyes must have been mistaken. Aurora would never disobey the Institution or endanger Ambrose or me. We did not know what the punishment would be for not following the Institution’s instructions or not completing our mission… our first mission, but all six of us were aware it would not be pleasant. “W-what’s going on?” I asked her. We couldn’t see her face—the way she was looking down at the briefcase made her bangs cover her face. She stood there for what felt like hours, staring at the destroyed briefcase.

Finally, she looked up at us with her usual smile and explained, “This briefcase was the fake one. It had a tracker inside. We couldn’t take it back to the Institution’s secret facility. It would be too compromising.”
            “How could you be sure; you didn’t even check with your watch?” Ambrose questioned but with less fear in his voice.

“This briefcase was beeping after we left the warehouse.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said in disbelief. After all, I was the one carrying them while she and Ambrose were ahead of me.

Neither of us wanted to doubt her, so he put his watch to the briefcase to confirm what the Institution was after had indeed been in this one. Sure enough, the watch confirmed they had successfully completed their mission.

            Ambrose and I shared a guilty look. We had both doubted Aurora, the one who had saved us and the one responsible for the mission being a success.

            We were about to apologize when Aurora stopped us before we could begin, “Oh look, the car’s here.” She didn’t sound upset or offended. I would have been furious if roles were reversed. 

We felt the dark atmosphere set in once we were in the car, back to the Institution, back to the tiny hallway we all were kept—where we would have to bear the dreadfulness of the doubt we had expressed. Suddenly, a gentle and kind voice cut through any awkwardness between us and asked, “So do you think you can guess my ability now?” I don’t know if she just doesn’t care what we think or if she is in fact so kind, she could forgive our ignorance. 

With the mood brightened, and a riddle no one has been able to solve, Ambrose purposed, “Super hearing?”

“Guess again.”

I joined in as well, “Reading minds?” and we continued to guess until we were back at the institution. 

We had to report to the conference room we were originally assigned the mission and hand the briefcase over to the director. “You have completed your first mission,” she said as she placed the briefcase on the podium. Wow not even a congrats. It may have been fake, but at least the other guy acknowledged our achievement. “Now it is time for you to complete the paperwork.”

“Uhhh, what paperwork?” Ambrose asked, diligently lazy as usual. 

And so, the director handed us a stack of papers we had to fill out and explained in detail what to do. By the end of the mission and the lecture I was so exhausted. It was the evening, so it should’ve been our free time, but we got stuck doing this.