CHAPTER ONE
It was a dark, snowy night when Christine slipped out of the alley. She paused after three steps and kneeled down, picking up a fistful of snow. She breathed in deeply.

Up on the rooftops, Rose found her target. She aimed carefully, aiming for dead center. The target began to stand up - and she pulled the trigger.

“AHH! HOLY - HOLY MOLYCAKES! WHAT THE HECK?”

“Oh crap!” whispered Rose. She slid off the roof and sprinted to Christine. “Ohmigosh, I am so sorry, I thought you were the target, why didn't you tell me you were going to come out of the alley, I thought only the-”

Christine, her breath coming in short gasps, pulled Rose down so they were eye-to-eye by her collar.

“If you don't get Jane right now, I swear, you are going to die a most painful death.”

She released Rose. As the latter straightened up, a dark blur sped out of the alley.

“Oh great,” said Christine sarcastically. “There goes the target.”

Rose put the radio up to her mouth.

“Seal 27 to Seal 44,” she said, speaking into the radio.

“Copy that Seal 27,” said a voice from the radio. “Is the target down?”

“Well...” said Rose, glancing down at her fallen comrade. “Almost.”

“Oh wow,” the voice responded. “Did you hear that, Rene? Almost. Almost. Rose, didn't you learn from the Lincoln incident?”

“Hey, anyone could have made that mistake. Besides, that William Booth dude took the blame for that one.”

“So who did you hit?” asked a second voice from the radio.

Christine ripped the radio from Rose’s hands.

“Me,” she breathed. “And, just so you know, I’m dying right here, because of our best sniper.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Christine, please. I hit you in the arm, you won’t die. You might lose movement in that arm, but you definitely won’t die.”

There was faint laughter from the radio.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” said the first voice grumpily.

A moment later, a figure wrapped in a trench coat strode out of the large and conveniently empty building across the street.

“Alright, Christine,” said the figure, once it reached the two girls. “Which band-aid would you prefer? Hello Kitty or Scooby Doo?”

“No mermaids?” asked Christine sadly.

The girl with the band-aids shook her head. “No mermaids.”

“Hello Kitty,” Christine said with a sigh.

Band-aid girl went to work.

“Phew, good thing our hideout is that conveniently placed abandoned warehouse across the street,” said Rose, wiping her brow. “Thanks for eliminating the previous owners, Jane.”

Jane, who was continuing to patch up Christine, glanced at Rose and nodded. “No problem. I’ll get them unfrozen when we’re done.”

After a while, the radio on Rose’s hip buzzed. “Where are you?” hissed a voice. “The target might come back.”

“No,” said Christine, as Jane helped her stand up. “They won’t come back. They got what they needed.”

Rose’s face paled. Jane let go of Christine, as if she had been burned.

“What do you mean?” demanded Jane. “What do you mean they got what they needed? They can’t have! You said you would die before letting them have it!”

Christine and Rose looked at Jane, puzzled.

After a moment, Jane’s expression lightened and she laughed.

“Sorry, I just have always wanted to say that.”

The voice on the radio continued. “Right, Jane. Whatever. Anyways, are you sure, Christine? Are you absolutely positive?”

“Yes, you can check for yourself,” said Christine. “All the snow. All gone.”

There was a moment of silence for the failed mission.

“It’s okay,” began Rose as the trio entered the warehouse. “It’s fine, there are plenty more places in town. We can get them.”

“No, we can’t,” said another girl; the voice on the radio. “We have to be back before daybreak.”

“Dang it,” murmured Jane, leaving Christine on a cushioned chair. “This is bad, girls. Who knows where they’ll strike next?”

Suddenly, a loud riiiing resounded through the empty halls.

“Oh, the pizza’s here!” said another girl, who had just entered the room. She was wearing a large pair of glasses, but the glasses had no actual lenses.

“Victoria, you ordered pizza?” asked Jane incredulously. As Victoria nodded, Jane buried her head in her hands.

Victoria skipped to the door and opened it happily.

“Victoria,” said the girl who had been on the radio. “I told you, never open that door without checking who it is first!”

“Rene, relax. No one’s even here. It was probably a ding dong ditcher. East coast kids…” Victoria trailed off, smiling.

“What’s that?” asked Rose, pointing at a sheet of paper on the doorstep. Victoria knelt to pick it up.

“Company,” she read aloud. “I have succeeded in procuring what I desired. Every speck of unblemished snow shall be mine with the week. And, my friends, there is simply nothing you can do to stop me. Luv ya baybes, the Dood.”

It was silent for a moment, then Jane said, “Luv ya baybes? What, do they think we’re in an Austin Powers movie?”

Christine burst out laughing.

“Girls, please,” said Rene seriously. “We can’t waste time here. We have to be back at home, three thousand miles away, within ten hours.”

The girls nodded.

The Next Morning

Seal44 (10:16:04am): Wooo, that was a great ride home last night.

Seal11 (10:16:09am): Yeah, totally. I thought we were dead when the giant bats came at us.

Seal44 (10:16:14am): lol, the giant bats were nothing compared to the government missiles.

Seal11 (10:16:19am): Yeah, why does the gov. always do that to us? I mean, we’re trying to save the world, not destroy it.

Seal44 (10:16:23am): They are such idiots.

Seal11 (10:16:25am): WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT WE LOVE THE GOVERNMENT

Seal44 (10:16:29am): OH YEAH I WAS MISTAKEN WE TOTALLY LOVE THE GOVERNMENT

Seal11 (10:16:34am): YEAH, OH TOTES.

(Seal11 has signed off)

(Seal44 has signed off)

Jane leaned back in her chair and readjusted her new glasses, pondering the conversation she had just had with Christine. Maybe they shouldn’t have used their codenames as their usernames…

She shrugged it off. No one would ever guess. No, the Company was too smart for that. One could call them the Anti-Company, in fact.

They fit in by sticking out. No one would guess that the girls who loudly boasted of their plans to hide their stashes of snock and crow actually used those plans to stash their snock and crow. No one would guess that the girls who decorated their myspace pages in large letters proclaiming ‘WE ARE THE COMPANY’ actually were the company.

Except, perhaps, the Dood. The Dood seemed to know everything about them. Where they slept, where they ate, where they went to school. They began to receive the notes signed the Dood about six months ago. The Dood’s mission was to collect as much pure snow as he could; because, of course, pure snow is the key ingredient in both crow and snock.

Jane sipped her apple juice up through her Chuck E Cheese straw. This Dood was going down.

At the same moment Jane was thinking that, Rene was at her house, mastermind-ing.

“And then,” she whispered to herself. “Then we shall attack from behind and above and below and right and left and in front! Muaha! Muahahaha! This is my best plan yet!”

“Rene,” called her mother. “Cookies are ready!”

“Ooh, cookies!” She raced to the kitchen. Cookies were yummy.

After a few cookies, Rene noticed that the trampoline in her backyard had several bullet-sized holes in them.

Bang – another hole.

Rene sighed and rolled her eyes, opening the window to her backyard.

“Rose!” she yelled. “Go practice at Christine’s, doesn’t she have actual targets?”

Rose swooped down from the roof of Rene’s house.

“Aw, come on. Christine doesn’t have a trampoline.”

“Well Victoria and Jane do, so go and… I don’t know, have fun with them.”

Rose glared at Rene and departed, using a special enhancement she had had installed on her gun to swing her from house to house.

Victoria, at her house, was playing on the piano.

Or, at least her family thought she was playing.

She was actually trying to detonate a bomb at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. A drop of sweat rolled down her face.

Come on Vicky, she thought. You can do this. Think Beethoven, think Beethoven…

Christine, on the other hand, had left her house the minute she was done having her conversation with Jane. She was heaving along a heavy bag that Rene had given her, with instructions to leave it in the second slide on the large play structure.

She thought it rather odd that a quiet ticking sound was coming from the bag, but ignored it. Rene often gave her these sorts of missions.

Unfortunately, the person Rene had hoped would be at the slide was not there that night. Christine was horrified when she saw, the next morning, that the whole play structure had been completely destroyed.

That evening, all the girls received the same IM from Rene.

Seal12 (6:38:57pm): Tonight, girls. We meet tonight.

Victoria was still playing on her piano. She didn’t get the message. That was why, at nearly midnight, Rene stood in front of Christine, Jane and Rose, pacing up and down. “Where is she?” she asked impatiently. “We can’t go on without her!”

“Come on, Rene,” said Jane grumpily (she hadn’t gotten enough sleep). “Any one of us could do Victoria’s job. Lighten up.”

“No!” hissed Rene. “I doubt any of you have the skill and precision it requires to do Victoria’s job. She is the ninja of our work; I thought you all knew that!”

Jane nodded sourly. She had to admit, Victoria was the most advanced ninja. Rose and Christine worked together, mainly; Christine would stake out a target, and Rose would stay at one of the places where the target went often, and bang – taken care of.

Unless, of course, the target had to simply… disappear. Whether it was for questioning, or for freezing, Jane was the only one who was ever asked. She was the Company’s best hit man – well, hit woman.

Rene was the mastermind. She told the rest when to go out, who to target, and everything always fit into her plan. If something didn’t fit – well, Jane could always take care of that.

Rose yawned, fingering her rifle. She had polished it last night; it shone like a star. If the stars were black, that is.

They waited for ten more minutes. Finally, Rene gave an exasperated sigh and shook her head. “Alright, we’ll just have to go on without her, so get out your-”

“WAIT!”

A dark figure fell from the ceiling. Victoria let out a quiet grunt when she hit the floor, then jumped up to her feet. “I’m here!”

“What took you so long?” asked Jane, annoyed, but she couldn’t hide that she was glad to see her friend.

“Yeah, did you run into trouble?” asked Christine concernedly.

Rose mumbled something incomprehensible, almost asleep.

“No,” said Victoria. “I just didn’t get the message. Good thing I had a gut feeling Rene wanted to see me!” She resumed her seat.

“Okay, girls,” began Rene again. “Now that everyone is here, I would like to start. Everyone get out their questions.”

Jane’s hand plunged into her pocket; Christine’s hand disappeared into her purse. Victoria pulled a piece of paper from her ear (ninjas have great hiding places), but Rose did not move.

“Rose,” said Rene, already holding her own paper. “Where are your questions?”

“I memorized them,” she said with a shrug. Rene narrowed her eyes.

“OR DID YOU?” she accused. “Everyone, ask Rose your questions – now!”

Jane went first. “Which person in my house forgot that there were fish in the toilet?”

Rose giggled. “You.”

Christine burst out laughing. Jane glared at her. “I was five, okay?”

But they never got around to the rest of the questions. Instead, there was a knock on the door. Victoria dashed to open it. There was another note.

“Company,” she read. “I can see you. – the Dood.”

The girls were silent. Rose shivered and Jane glanced suspiciously around the room.

“That is so creepy,” whispered Christine, leaning over to Victoria. Victoria nodded, her eyes widened.

“Well,” said Rene, after a moment of silence. “We can’t discuss anything here. Everyone burn your questions. They might know. Goodnight.”

The girls nodded and, one by one, left the building, the darkness swallowing them into the night.

Four girls went straight home that night.

There were five girls in the Company.

Instead of going home, one girl took a road down to the old elementary school. She sat in one of the swings, staring at the slide that had been obliterated sometime before.

After several minutes, someone else appeared.

“Good work,” said the boy. “You’ve done well.”

The girl nodded curtly. “Thank you. Do you have it?”

“What? The goods?” asked the boy casually. “Oh, I have them. But, unfortunately, I can’t give you anything yet.”

The girl stiffened. “What do you mean? Why?”

“You haven’t done what I asked,” replied the boy, his voice lowering. “You know what I need.”

She stared at him.

He pulled his hood farther down over his face.

“I. Want. That. Bear.”

He disappeared, just as silently as he had come.