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Pressure. The feeling of it

bearing down on me was overwhelming. It focused around my chest, the

force of it all made it hard to breath. The silhouette of a figure

was seen for a second before I shut my eyes in pain. Instincts that I

had just accepted were now being overrun by new found fears. "Stop.

Please..." I barely managed to wheeze out. Struggling for air, I

sunk into submission once I realized how helpless the situation had

become... ...I awoke, sitting up and

gasping for oxygen. The fire on my tail flickered sporadically in the

dark room, which was spinning as I clutched my aching head. Chilled

sweat rubbed off into my paws and I shuddered after finding that I

was drenched in it. Doing my best to clean the stuff off my scales,

my thoughts drifted back to my strange nightmare. For a dream, it

felt eerily real. Like something was actually pushing into my chest

with the intent of doing permanent damage. As I was thinking through

all of the possibilities that could have caused that pressure,

eventually the events from yesterday came back to mind and it

immediately made my heart beat faster. "You want me to do what?" I

yelled out of surprise. Around me, the various chiefs and captains of

Sofeda were murmuring to each other about the dragonite's proposal.

Landus the salamance roared with anger and shut everybody up in an

instant. Rubbing the veins that popped up on her forehead, she closed

her eyes and took deep breaths in order to calm down. "Give me a

moment so that I can try to understand this absurd scheme of yours,"

she finally said after a long silence. "You want to create a group

that consists of members from each of our divisions. I was against

that idea at first, but it makes sense to combine forces in order to

become stronger. However, what I don't understand is why you plan on

letting that whelp over there take charge of the team." Haless

merely sighed and shook his head. "You were right Ulfor," he said

to the slaking, "maybe we should have talked about this privately." "Don't you ignore me!"

Landus growled. Stomping her way up to meet Haless face to face, she

stood like a wall built out of irritation. "Didn't we already

establish how amazing that so called whelp is?" Haless stated

boldly. "Strong and capable, she's a natural born leader who is new

and untainted by our rules and regulations. This purity will be the

most crucial part of this operation and it will absolutely guarantee

success." The room fell quiet again and the two dragons stared off

at one another. Landus searched within the dragonite's eyes for any

sign of deception and scoffed after finding none. "Tch, have it

your way. This meeting is over." Pushing past the others, she left

the area in a hurry with a strange bounce in her steps. With Landus gone, the meeting

came to a close and I was left speechless. The responsibility of a

team now rested on my shoulders and the pressure of success had

already started to wear me down. A pat on my back knocked my thoughts

away and I turned to see Truce and Haless smiling at me. "Jeez,

it's been about a week and you already get assigned something as huge

as this," Truce chuckled merrily. "And you were knocked out for

almost half of it," Haless said with a giant grin. "I look

forward to the results of this little experiment! Get some rest

tonight and report to my office in the morning so that we can get the

team up and running. Oh, and if you have any pokemon in mind that

you'd like to recruit, I'm open to your suggestions." Breaking out of the flashback, I

yawned and laid back down on the stiff mattress. I was happy that

they moved me into Liru's room. It was a large area made for holding

at least three inhabitants. Once you got used to the beds, the place

had a homey feel to it. Looking over to my friend's sleeping form,

her calm and relaxed breathing reminded me of my own tiredness. Even

though daylight would come in a few short hours, I wanted to sleep

off the grogginess still lingering in my head. A bit wary at first, I

shut my eyes and hoped that the pressure didn't come back. I came to feeling refreshed in

both mind and body. The sun shone brightly, invigorating my mood and

erasing away the uneasiness caused by last night's episode.

Stretching my limbs, the excitement of what today had in store

bubbled through my veins and my tail wagged around in joy. "Whoa,

you're in a great mood today," Liru yawned from across the room. I

froze in embarrassment, not expecting her to still be in bed. "Just

getting up sleepyhead?" I giggled, bending down to touch my toes. A

dangerous aura was sensed from behind but before I could react to it,

the totodile sped forward and playfully tackled me. We tumbled around

on the ground together for about five seconds until she grabbed me by

the shoulders and pinned me down. "Who are you calling a

sleepyhead?" she laughed. "You just got up a couple of minutes

earlier then me." Caught red handed, I blushed and started to

squirm underneath her. After rolling off me and brushing away the

dust from her scales, she offered a paw which I gratefully accepted.

Once up, the room was filled with the sound of rumbling and Liru's

face heated up. Before I could laugh, my own stomach growled. "That's

right, we kinda missed dinner last night since the meeting was so

long," Liru chuckled while rubbing the back of her neck. "Let's

go get some breakfast before we do anything else." Grinning

mischievously, I took off and yelled, "Bet I can get there first!"

Racing down to the mess hall should have been a simple contest.

However, in my haste I quickly realized that I had no idea where to

go. Couple this with the fact that Liru was extremely fast on her

feet and all you have left is one slow charmander who's lost and

hungry. Wandering the halls in my

pitiful state, a low buzzing echoed from somewhere close by.

Curiosity pulled me towards the source of the sound, leading me to

the end of the hallway. A strange scent lingered in the air as I got

closer to the door. It had a pleasant fruitiness to it, yet at the

same time irritated my senses. Without a second thought, I threw the

door open and felt my nostrils become overwhelmed by the stench.

Blinded and choking on the fumes, I managed to find the wall and

followed it to an area clear from the gas. Wiping my watering eyes, I

could barely see someone slowly approaching. "Salutations, friend,"

they said in a semi-robotic voice. I recognized it to be Cykoria, a

porygon who happens to be the chief of research. Still feeling a

tickling in my throat, I waved at it(?) and smiled. "Hey Cyko! How

are you today?" I asked. "Doing fine, but please refer to me by

my full name" it replied. I shrugged. "Okay Cykoria. By the way,

even though we've met only yesterday, I've been wondering if you're a

boy or a girl." Staring at me with unblinking

eyes, they just floated there in silence. "Uh, hello?" I

questioned, waving a paw back and forth in front of his face. "Are

you alright? You don't have to answer if you don't want to." "No,

it's fine,"they suddenly said. "Being curious builds

intelligence. Sorry for being inactive for the past couple of minutes

but I needed to download the data of my latest experiment. To answer

your question, I don't associate myself to either gender. Rather, I

am genderless and have no need to trouble myself with something that

is not important to me. Getting back on topic, I would like to know

about why you tried to enter my lab." I told them about how I got

lost and saw something weird in the porygon's eyes. "Strange.

Something within my databanks appears to be corrupted. I must return

to my lab at once." Giving me directions to the mess hall, he sped

back to his room and somehow slammed the door. Another growl from my

stomach was all I needed to get moving.Chattering and laughter appeared

to get louder with every step that I took. The aroma of soup and the

sound of frying only added to my hunger and I broke out into a

sprint. Turning the corner, this tunnel vision of mine made me run

into the cream colored belly that belonged to Haless. "Whoa! What

the- Hey, there you are!" he said as I bounced off his pudgy tummy.

Landing on my rump with a soft thump, I stared up with an apologetic

look in my eyes. He held in a chuckle and waved his paw to signal

forgiveness. "I was just looking for you, Winta. Come on, lets go

talk about recruiting some members for our team." Forced to go

along with him, I whimpered, glanced back at the mess hall, and

clutched my stomach. Entering the dragonite's

chambers, I noticed it was pretty spacious. It makes sense since he

is a huge pokemon compared to most of the others. The walls were

plain gray, to symbolize his connection as the captain of the

intelligence branch of Sofeda. Unknown lettering covered the floor

and roof, giving it a creepy sense of being watched. His desk was

stuck in a corner and on it were several stacks of folders. He

motioned for me to sit down and I obeyed out of politeness. Tossing a

small stack of papers to me, Haless looked at me and his demeanor

changed drastically. "Okay, serious time. Souna

gave me his files on all current members of this organization and

I've already gone through them. From this stack of over two hundred,

I've narrowed it down to about twenty-five potential recruits to

start off with. I give you the power to choose up to five. You must

try to get at least one from each of the three branches, otherwise

there wouldn't be a point in calling this the unity project. Now

we're gonna tackle small operations at first to test the waters. When

the team starts to build up more and more recognition through

success, we'll be able to add on more members and take on riskier

missions. Got all that?" I didn't know if it was the

hunger or the uneasiness of his persona, but somehow I was simply

stuck in a daze. I managed to make out the important parts of his

speech and looked at the files in my paws. Out of these twenty-five

profiles, five of them will get the honor of becoming a founding

member of a team that I get to lead. I smiled seeing Liru's file

being included and knew that she would be a major asset. With me and

Liru representing Intelligence Central, I decided that the remaining

four should come from the other branches. No matter who I pick, I

just hope that we could all get along.