"I'm Bishop," said the guy with his somewhat poofy hair colored like a checkerboard. He wore a white leather jacket and a black shirt underneath it, as well as white pants and shoes. You didn't have to glance twice at his characteristic smirk to know that he was trouble.

"Kayson," said a ninja-esque boy with dark green hair. He was dressed similarly to the Phantom Wind, but wore his clothing a looser, and had a signature green scarf. When I later asked why he wore a scarf, he said it was "to compliment his gorgeous green eyes." He does realize that he has green hair too right?

"And the one who has to keep an eye on these two numbskulls is me, Marion." A shorter female figure stood off to the side of the taller boys. She wore a slightly frilly pink skirt, but balanced it out with purple jacket that showed that she meant business. She crossed her arms over a few locks of her long silver hair, disapproving of but putting up with her teammates' shenanigans, but underneath her straight face I had no doubt that she was enjoying herself.

"Ariel."

"Buddy."

"Neuman."

"Alright, let's get this show on the road," proclaimed Bishop. "Are powers allowed?"

Marion shot him a scornful, but he just ignored it.

"Sure, why not?!" Ariel agreed.

This is going to be a terrible disadvantage for me...

We all piled into the two sides of the warzone, which I feared would soon earn its title, and got ready to pounce. Buddy started us off with his serve and sent the ball flying over the internet with his nose. Yes, at this point I was completely comfortable with the terminology and rules of the crazy game. The ball was over at the other side and met the nose of the fellow called Kayson. And it stuck there, right on the tip of his nose.

He just kind of waited there with the ball stuck to his face. "Hey Bishop, does this look good on me?"

"I'd say 5 out of 7. If it was smaller and a red ball instead it would be a perfect 7 out of 7."

"Don't clown around with me!"

"Both of you stop clowning around! We're in the middle of a game!" shrieked Marion.

That Marion girl... She seems to be the sensible one of the group.

"Fine. Hey Bishop, I'm passing it to you. You ready?"

"The board is set. Pass it already man!"

Kayson tossed his head forward and the ball finally detached itself from his nose. It went straight for Bishop, who simply tapped it with his nose, without even trying for the right direction, yet the ball short forward at us in a straight line, as if not affected by gravity, then fell from its trajectory.

Ariel skillfully hit it back, but after the ball was just a few feet from her face, it came back and hit her square in the face, then fell to the ground.

Marion walked over and slapped the back of Bishop's head. "Hey now, don't you think that was a little too cheap of a shot?!"

"Don't you think the back of my head it too cheap of a shot?! Seriously though, that hurt."

Her eyes all but closed into a scowl. "You don't have any right to say that! Apologize!"

"No need," said Ariel, rubbing her nose. "If that's how we're going to play then I don't mind. I'll serve this time." She winked at Buddy, who somehow seemed to understand the hint, and sent the ball flying over.

"Dread Lock!"

The opposing team froze up on the spot, the clothes visibly contracting and twisting to confine them.

"Pawn Shot!" yelled Bishop back, and the ball once again changed direction mid air in a straight line.

"Tower of Bubble!" Ariel threw her hands in the air and a wall made up of hundreds of small bubbles in front of us, stopping the ball. We were at an impasse: the bubbles wouldn't pop and the ball would quit pressing forward. "Hehe, I've started naming my moves too! Neuman! You have to finish it!"

"How?!"

"I don't know, just push it over to their side or something!"

So much for a plan. I calmly walked over to the ball and with all of my strength plied it off of the rubber-like wall, like pulling a magnet off of a fridge. I managed to just barely push it over the board, but then I didn't know what to do. "What should I do now?! Just wait until they get bored?!"

"Push it below the board!" suggested Buddy.

"Crep," said Kayson to his colleagues. "I know I can break out of this, but I don't want to risk tearing up my clothes."

"Yeah," agreed Bishop. "It's their point now."

I forced it below the top of the board and released. It shot into the board and pushed it towards us, but after I dodged behind Ariel's bubble wall it stopped it in its tracks. The ball seemed to reluctantly fall to the ground. Buddy relinquished his hold on the opposing team.

"One to One!"

"This is what you guys get for using your powers!" scolded Marion. "Can we just play a normal game of Earball now?"

Is there such a thing as "normal Earball?" "Yeah, let's just do that."

"You're just saying that because you don't have your power yet!" sassed Ariel.

"You don't have your ability yet?" asked Kayson. "Why didn't you say so?! We can play normally if you want to. I don't really care."

"Yes please," I said, a little embarrassed to be the inconvenience. Ariel looked disappointed that she couldn't play the game even more strangely than it was intended, but went along with it anyways. These guys seem pretty cool after all.

-----

"Seventeen to Zero!" announced Marion to the world. She had lightened up since the other two buffoons stopped horsing around as much, and was actually quite the Earball player with her light frame.

Suddenly, Masamba burst into the room. "Sorry I took so long! Things have finally died down enough for me to come up here." We all stopped playing and looked at him. "Oh, the Defenestrators are here too! Well that saves me the time of hunting you all down."

Our two groups looked at each other and silently agreed to put off the game for now. We all gathered around him like a litter of puppies to their mom.

"Ahem, yes," Masamba said clearing his throat. "So you six have officially been instated into the Squadron Squad! Congratulations new members!"

We shot glances at each other.

"Wait, you guys just joined too?!"

"Yeah man!"

"Oh cool, what a coincidence!"

We refocused on our superior. "Yes, Defenestrator Squad, Odd Squad, you both passed the requirements to be a part of this group. Unfortunately, a little bit of a mishap happened before I could properly introduce you into the group, so we'll just do that now! Come with me!"

We followed him to the same room that we had our written aptitude tests taken in and took our seats. He dimmed the lights and projected onto the wall with a sort of slide projector. He put up a slide that had a sort of spider like diagram on it.

He pointed to the middle. "This is the Squadron Squad as a whole. It only works the way that it does because of each of the legs supporting it." He now pointed to a different "leg." "This is you guys, the adventurous groups who go out and handle the problems that are thrown at the world. You guys are the ones who actually carry out the missions that we receive, and generally do it as a way of seeking adventure or as a way of keeping the world safe." He moved his hand. "This is the informants. They make up the largest portion of the organization and their job is simply to report suspicious or dangerous activity, which they volunteer to do in exchange for peace of mind. It's thanks to their sheer numbers that the organization boasted almost 20% membership of Insomnia Wake's population! Well, at least before the incident, now it's closer to 18% probably." He walked to the machine and switched slides.

Arrows were now all over the wall haphazardly. "The informants have a system of checks in place, as you can see, that normally serves to filter out wrong or misleading information. As you can see it's a little complicated, pairing people of different personalities together so that is it less likely that they will work together to change the information as it trickles up the information ladder."

Sure, a little complicated.

Bishop raised his voice instead of his hand. "How did that recent leak happen if the system is so good?"

Masamba definitely looked nervous to answer the question. "Well... No system is perfect, that's for sure. I think it's pretty safe to assume that a group of people that would normally not associate with each other banded together under some unknown force."

I was confused, then raised my hand.

Masamba looked strangely at me. "Are you stretching? That's a weird way to stretch."

I quickly put my hand down. Oh right... Not everyone would understand that gesture... Embarrassed, I proceeded with my question. "What does that initial 'compatibility' test that we took at the begin serve to do then if it doesn't filter out these unsavory types?"

"While our personality test is probably near flawless, that doesn't change the fact that people change over time. They might meet the requirements for a 'good person' at the beginning, but somewhere along the line they change."

"Why not just test them again every once in awhile?"

"We do, which is what worries me." He rested his chin in his hands and thought. "I guess something is changing people pretty fast..." He struck his cheesy smile and thumbs up pose. "Don't worry about that though! I'm sure it will be fine, and it's definitely not something you need to worry about as adventurers! Anyways..." He switched to a new slide with a pyramid diagram on it. "The last major group is the administration. Brook down there at the front desk is an example of the bottom of the ladder of the administration, and our three leading Sentinels are at the top. Their job is to use their brains to keep to wheels of this thing rolling, and do it generally because they're control freaks. Oh wait, don't tell Brook that please."

He cleared his throat. "I think that's all that I need to tell you at the moment actually. We don't expect our adventurers to really know the nitty gritty of how it works, just to do the missions. Now let's go--"

"I have one more question," I said. "Do you really think that so many people would drop out just because of one mistake? It sounds a little fishy to me."

Ariel popped a small bubble right next to my ear and made me jolt forward. She shot me a raspy whisper. "He was about to let us go do stuff! Why'd you have to go asking more questions?!" I tried to ignore her.

"Let's face it, people are inherently lazy. They were just looking for an excuse to get out. Gah, the kids of today don't understand the importance of a group like us!" He took a deep breath. "Any more questions Neuman?"

"Nope." Well, not for him anyways.

"Alright, let's send you off to the next mission." We exited the room and started walking down the stairs. "I think you guys get the City level task of handling a loose pet dragon."

"City? Isn't that a bit much for us?" Marion asked worriedly.

"Na, with the six of you you'll be fine."

"The six of us?!" We collectively exclaimed, some of us aghast and some excited.

We reached the bottom floor and Masamba got a paper from the girl who we now knew as Brook. "Yeah, this is a joint mission! How exciting! You guys will get to know each other and it should be great! I'm personally headed out for my own mission, otherwise I would probably handle the dragon myself." He handed me the papers, probably thinking I was responsible.

Soon as the papers reached my hand the Bishop and Kayson took off running towards a window. "We've got the information, let's get this show on the road!" The two of them burst through the window and escaped outside, breaking it to pieces but not seeming to injure themselves.

Their name... They got it for a reason!

Brook stood up angrily from her seat. "Watch it will you?!"

Buddy and Ariel took off after them, waving back to Masamba and Brook as a way of saying farewell. Marion and I's glances met, and I think we exchanged the same thoughts.

This is going to be a long mission...

***

A/N: Defenestrate: To throw someone out of a window

Sorry that this chapter was a bit of an information dump... I got a little carried away :3 Btw, Marion, Kayson, and Bishop are based off of some of my real life friends. I tried to match their speech patterns and stuff as close as I could, but I think I made Marion too serious :P Now what will happen when this ragtag team of defenestrators and others try to fight a dragon?! Find out next week on Insomnia Wake :P