Defenders

Defenders (3)

At first, I didn't know what headquarters meant. Obviously, I knew what the word was, but I didn't know where we were supposed to be. But once I exited the RV, I was pretty sure I figured it out.

In front of me were tall, grey buildings. It almost looked like a campus or a university of some kind. It made me wonder what was inside, and I wanted to know if I'd ever get to see everything that this place hid.

"Wow," Kristie gasped, even more amazed than I was. And that was sure saying something.

We were greeted by someone in all black, which freaked me out just a little bit. The man was huge, and he said nothing to us. He just bobbed his head a little in a way to tell us to follow him, and he turned away and made his way inside.

I stared at the floor more than anything else. The floor was made out of what looked like pure marble, while we were walking on a red carpet that made its way all the way down the hallway we were in. There were doors on either side of us, with paintings on the walls that looked too old for me to decipher the year.

The man in all black suddenly stopped, which almost resulted in Anthony ramming right into him. The man held his hand up against a pad, which quickly scanned it before opening the sliding door. Instead of stepping inside like I thought he would do, he stepped to the side and beckoned us in.

We stepped inside, and the door immediately closed once the five of us were inside. The room was huge, filled with machines and tables with what looked like maps and plans on them. The machines beeped all around us, and I knew that that would get seriously annoying after a while.

"Wow." Anthony was the first to speak. "It's even better than I imagined it would be."

I knew he would be the most excited about this room. He probably loved computers and machines that he could mess around and do whatever he wanted with.

We suddenly heard the door slide open and the clicking of heels, so we all turned to see who had now entered. In came a beautiful woman with straight blonde hair, her grey pantsuit looking exceptionally clean and precise. This woman hadn't even spoken to us yet and I could tell that she was a very down-to-business kind of person.

"Hello," the woman greeted, holding her hand out for Aiden to shake, then for Anthony, then Dex. "It's a pleasure to meet all of you."

She turned toward Kristie, and they shook hands. The perky redhead greeted, "It's nice to meet you!"

She then turned toward me and offered her hand, but I didn't take it. I just stared at it, as if I'd never seen something like this before.

"I expected as much," the blonde woman smirked, retracting her hand and turning back toward all of us. "I'm Nay Burns. I'm one of your mentors that will be guiding you through your training here at the DAU."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Dex interrupted before she could continue on. "Training? We have to train?"

Nay smiled at the dark boy innocently, but we all could tell that innocent was the last thing Nay Burns was. "How do you expect to do well out on the battlefield if you don't train yourselves? You're not all experts at your powers just yet."

Dex definitely did not look excited over the fact that we had to train instead of going right out to fight whoever we were supposed to fight. I wasn't exactly happy with this either; I would have much rather gone out and fought right away instead of staying inside and training for who knows how long.

"It will be worth it, I assure you," Nay nodded now, as if she could read all of our minds. Wait... Could she? "We have to make sure all five of you are ready before we send you out to fight. We don't want you dying right away."