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This alarm business was depraved cruelty, even for PROM.

Horrendous beeping awoke Carmen from her three hours of sleep. [color=b62b41]“Nooo…”[/color] she groaned, a long and pained sound. She had absolutely not set an alarm for 7:00 AM on a Saturday morning, so why oh why was one going off? She had studied nearly all night, and was [i]so[/i] tired. Sluggishly, and with her head still buried in her pillow, Carmen pawed around her nightstand for the source of the horrible, horrible sound. Her hand closed around her phone, but that wasn’t it! Weird. She didn’t own anything else that beeped, unless…

Yup, it was her AP Watch. Carmen’s hand closed around the offending device and drew it onto the bed. It had only been three months since her tenure with PROM had begun, so she hadn’t really gotten used to the device yet. It was like an Apple Watch, but… better? Hers was pastel blue and came with an advanced translation app. Was this something it did? Was there anything important? Carmen drew herself up to investigate and squinted at the bright orange lettering.

It read “EMERGENCY”. Carmen gasped, her lethargy suddenly gone, and scrambled up from her bed to her wardrobe. She wasn’t entirely sure what was emergency appropriate wear, so she wrestled herself into a pair of boot-cut jeans, a green-blue graphic tee with a small, white turtle sewn into a pocket near the upper left neckline, and tennis shoes. Once she was what she thought was appropriately dressed, she scoured her backpack for her earpiece and clipped it into her ear. 

[color=b62b41]“What’s wrong, Hiram?”[/color] she whispered, careful not to wake any of her sleeping family members. She played with her hands, anxious.

A pre-recorded message sounded, and Carmen waited with ramping up anxiety through static. [color=aqua]"Good morning, agent. Mandatory training exercise at 1700 Coolidge Road in Swindon in exactly 27 minutes. Failure to attend will result in significant consequences."[/color]

Her anxious expression turned into a peeved frown. [color=b62b41]“That’s it?!”[/color] So much for an [i]emergency[/i]. Hopefully this wasn't a waste of a morning. She groaned, picked up her backpack, and looked around her bedroom for anything she might need. Carmen’s room was an organizer’s paradise. Her desk, nightstand, and dresser didn’t have much clutter. Her desk had a laptop, some (normal) pastel pens all lined up in a row, and countless boxes of flashcards piled up on it. There was a small bookshelf right next to it, which had plenty of foreign literature stacked in it. Her one concession to a break in her aesthetic was the terrarium. It sat in the back corner of her room, in which a heat lamp shone onto two large red-eared slider turtles. Carmen cooed at her turtles as she went over to grab her phone from her nightstand. On a normal day, she would’ve made her bed, but she had only 25 minutes to get coffee and get to Coolidge Road. Wherever that was. Her bed was twin-sized, with a pink quilt bedspread and a mass of stuffed animals spread over it. It was a lot of stuffed animals for a teenage girl, certainly, but they brought Carmen joy. 

Carmen wasn’t entirely sure what to bring for a surprise training exercise at 7 AM, so she just dropped her phone, a water bottle (it was purple!), a white scrunchie, and a case of her special pens into a mini backpack. Was she supposed to bring other things? Was there some sort of unwritten rule as to what to do in this situation? Would everybody laugh at her for doing something wrong? Oh God, she hoped she wasn’t doing something wrong. Carmen slung her mini backpack onto her back and rushed to the kitchen to pour herself a travel mug of black coffee. Only her mother was awake, watching telenovelas in the living room, but Carmen just offered a short explanation about having to go to the park for a club meeting. And then, once she hopped onto her bicycle, she was off. 

At this time of the morning, the sun hadn’t quite yet risen. The sky was a dusky grey, but the sun could be seen barely peeking out from over the horizon. It was also quite chilly- or what Carmen would just call [i]cold[/i]. Maybe she should’ve brought a jacket. Carmen pumped her bike pedals with urgency. According to Google Maps, it would take her 25 minutes to get there on a bike. But being late would only incur the wrath of Mrs. Sokolova, which never ended well, so she should definitely go fast. The suburb where Carmen lived flew by on her bike, and then she was riding along the main street. 

Exactly 18 minutes and 46 seconds after she had left her house, Carmen pulled up in front of the construction site with a squeal as she pumped the brakes. She got off her bike, opened the gate (was this where she was supposed to go in?), parked her bike on the inside, and then headed to where she saw everybody else. She wasn’t last to arrive, thank God. It was never a good idea to be late- it just drew attention to yourself. 

Although she had about a million things on her mind, Carmen tried to keep her mouth shut as she approached everyone else. [color=b62b41]“Morning, ma’am,”[/color] she said to Nadia, who just gave her a curt nod and gave her the same directions she had given everyone else. 

Oh no. [color=b62b41][i]This is a combat exercise?![/i][/color]. Carmen gulped and felt her eyes widen. The last time she had had to engage in combat… well, that was in Timbuktu, and she shot a car with a bullet instead of her target. No one had gotten hurt, but it had set off a car alarm! [color=b62b41][i]Well… practice is perfect.[/i][/color] A resigned sigh. She picked a pistol and a nightstick out of the bin, fastened one of the vests onto herself, and went to join the group.

Director Sokolova was, as Carmen had learned in some arduous ways over the past year, well-known to be a hardass. So, despite the mass of questions were brewing in her head, she elected to remain silent as Nadia explained the exercise. It was better to not have your questions answered than have an irritable ex-KGB Russian woman with a paintball gun be mad at you. But this exercise did leave a lot of questions to be answered, and against her better judgment, Carmen found herself raising her hand… right before Ben got shot. [color=b62b41][i]Ow.[/i][/color] Her hand went right back down to her side in a hurry not to be noticed. That must’ve hurt. Poor Ben.

Once Nadia was done explaining the exercise, Carmen went to go join the rest of the responders' team. As she plodded over, she thought. Erik, Ben, Oliver, Vanessa, and her, hm… it wasn’t a horrible mix. She hadn’t looked into most of her teammates’ strengths and weaknesses, but she knew the basics. A plan started to formulate in her head.

While they were walking over to the group, Carmen glanced at Ben and jammed her hands in her pockets. [color=b62b41]“Are you alright?”[/color] she asked, low enough to not let anyone else hear. He had become a fast friend to Carmen in the past few months, and friends checked on each other when one of them was in pain.

Carmen had opened her mouth to start talking just before Oliver did, but closed it shut when he started speaking. She listened along to his plan and nodded along. That was pretty much what she was going to suggest but in far fewer words. [color=b62b41] “That’s a good plan, Oli- I-I mean, Agent Static.”[/color] She really needed to stop calling people their real names. [color=b62b41]“I was thinking along the same lines, but you definitely know everyone way better than I do! I manage okay in combat, but I’m probably better as a distraction. I don’t have any suggestions. I don’t really want to spend my Saturday cleaning paint with a toothbrush, though. I have studying to do.”[/color] 

[color=b62b41][i]Well, that was a lame finish, Carmen! Couldn’t have picked something cooler?[/i][/color] She winced and pulled her hair up into a ponytail with her scrunchie. She waved a goodbye to Erik and kept an eye on the building. 

It looked like she was getting shot today.[/center]