Location: MID Building, ARA Office

Time: 9:08 AM, January 2nd 2108

After introducing me to everyone Deputy Chief Kaldsen told me to wait at her desk. It seemed to be the exact same as everyone else's. I couldn’t decide if it was noble or inappropriate for someone in her position to be working alongside her subordinates.

Not that any of them were working anyway.

It took a few minutes for the missing member to show up. Given the down time, let me address the downward spiral of some characters.

Spending an unproportional amount of time describing a cute girl, becoming overly passionate and losing all sense of reason, even forgetting to describe anything else? What kind of one dimensional unreliable narrator are we talking about here?

Ah, yeah, that was me.

My apologies to anyone who had high hopes for me.

When Alec finally showed up I couldn’t help thinking that he wasn’t worth the unintentional build up.

I’d like to say that he looked annoyed with the situation, but that really wasn’t the case. He just had this kind of expressionless look. No, that’s not really the right way to put it. Vier, or even Hana, they had an expressionless look. Alec was expressing something, but if I had to say what it was I would say he was expressing nothingness.

Other than the look on his face the rest of him was alright. I mean, appearance-wise he didn’t hold a candle to the others, but that’s a tough hurdle to clear. I’d say the two of us were comparable. Although anyone would certainly rate me over him, purely because of my more positive attitude.

He had a stigma that was fairly obvious if you looked closely. His irises were hexagonal and bright purple.

I was introduced to him, just like the others, but nothing interesting happened. His name was Alec. . . Alec. . . Well, I don’t remember his last name. We might have talked about something, or maybe we didn’t. I’m not trying to be cryptic or anything, it’s just, in a rather eventful day he was a forgettable part.

Eventually Deputy Chief Kaldsen sat down across from me and decided it was time to ask the question I’d been expecting.

“Want a drink?”

No, not that question.

“Um, alright?”

After hearing my vague confirmation Deputy Chief Kaldsen tossed me a bottle of water.

Cold.

“Hey, ah, this is frozen.” I wasn’t a little kid packing his lunch for a field trip. What was I supposed to do with a frozen bottle of water?

“You’ll get used to it.” Emelia answered my query from her position behind Deputy Chief Kaldsen.

“So is it true? Emelia told me you’re a nullifier, but I don’t know much about that kind of stuff.”

That’s the question I was expecting.

“I am, everything should be in my file.”

“Your file?” Deputy Chief Kaldsen tilted her head as she spoke.

“Not reading it is one thing, but please don’t be surprised by the very idea of me having a file.”

“Eh? I never bother with things like that. I’m interested in the practical.”

She lifted up her arm and pointed her finger at me. Not in a normal fashion, but the way you do it when you’re pretending your hand is a gun. The water vapor in the air started to freeze; forming a shard of ice positioned in front of her outstretched finger.

“No, wait!”

Without wasting any time listening to me, she snapped her thumb down like the hammer of a pistol. I ducked in time to watch the icy projectile fly over my head and pierce through the far wall.

“Hey! Why’d you move?”

“Because you tried to kill me!” Based on the state of the wall, she wasn’t holding back.

“What happened to being a nullifier? Can’t you cancel my augmentation?”

“Yes, but no. Abilities like yours are a problem. I can cancel your augmentation, but I can’t magically undo physical changes you’ve already made.” A lesson Hana retaught me. “It looks like your augmentation lets you freeze water vapor to form ice, and then to control its movement. The ice is real though. I could have nullified your control over its movement, but since it was already moving forward its own momentum would have been dangerous.”

“Seems like an excuse. I didn’t realize you were such a useless person.”

“So you skipped right over my ability and decided my entire being was useless?”

“For now. Although I’m sure you’ll find some purpose in ara.”

“Ara?”

“Yeah, ara. That’s this agency.”

“And that stands for. . .?”

“It’s an anagram. It stands for Augmented Regulation Agency. That’s what we do here. We hunt down anyone whose augmentation is deemed a risk to the city.”

“That’s not right, Chief.” Oliver was talking from across the room, eyes still glued to the movie he was watching. “It’s not an anagram. It’s an acronym.”

“Well, um, actually, it’s supposed to be an initialism.” Nora must have woken up at some point, but she was talking louder in her sleep. The words were barely audible. “That, ah, means that you are supposed to pronounce the individual letters.” Deputy Chief Kaldsen was glaring. She was clearly glaring at Nora.

I mean, I was definitely glaring too, but for completely different reasons.

“Um, it’s, sorry.” Nora looked down and pretended to shuffle papers around an empty desk.

“Something has been bothering me.” Honestly it was bothering me since I first ran into Oliver. “Why does the MID have an agency like the ARA that specializes in augmenteds? Doesn’t the Bureau of Augmented Affairs handle issues regarding augementeds?”

There’s hardly a reason to have two groups focusing on such a specific issue. Augmented crimes are almost nonexistent in this city.

At the time I should have put more thought into why.

“No, don’t worry. We butt heads on occasion, but there’s no overlap in our duties. Like you said, baa handles issues and crimes involving an augmented. We deal with anyone whose augmentation is dangerous. We can’t have people who can cause explosions walking around downtown.” There was no hesitation in Deputy Chief Kaldsen’s voice.

“Aren’t you just saying the same thing two different ways?”

“Naive, Jaxon. If you want to be a successful part of ara I’d suggest spending some time thinking about the difference in our objectives.” I should have taken her more seriously.

After she was done with me, I was directed toward my new desk. She never told me what I was supposed to be doing, and there wasn’t any kind of work on the desk, so I just sat there for a few hours. I was starting to think I’d spend the rest of my career looking at a hole in the wall that could have been a hole in my head, but eventually things got interesting when Nora approached Deputy Chief Kaldsen.