"Good day, Dr. Yamoto.  I hope I'm not interrupting you."  Juli stepped into the laboratory and saluted.  "Congratulations on your recent promotion, by the way.  It looks like your latest project was at least somewhat successful."

"Oh, Agent Juli."  The scientist quickly turned around.  "Ah yes, thanks.  I couldn't have gotten it without your help, and of course Juni's, since her high efficiency rating is the official reason why I got it.  Where is Juni, anyway?"

The short-haired brunette brushed aside one of her long bangs, looked around, then shrugged.  "I haven't been able to find her recently.  She probably just went off to that nearby village.  She says she's been hanging around the bar there for a while now when she gets really bored.  But it's okay, since I have something private I need to talk about with you, anyway."

"Hmm?"  Yamoto put away a test tube he was holding and put his hand to his chin for a moment.  "Ah yes, I believe I know what it is.  But of course we shouldn't be talking under these conditions."

The doctor walked over to his computer system and pressed some buttons, put his hand into the palm reader, then entered a password, revealing a door that opened up.  He then motioned to Juli and the two entered into a darkened room with a fine table in the middle and several wine cabinets.

"I still wonder what prompted you to make this place, Bremare."  Juli comented as she looked around and Yamoto turned on a dim light.  "I know that Sir Bison's a little strict for your tastes, but making a room free from any possible sorts of monitoring just seems a bit paranoid, doesn't it?  And I'm sure it must have been a lot of work."

"Now now,"  Yamoto commented as he removed a wine bottle from the cabinet and put two glasses on the table.  "You know I don't like to talk about it.  It brings back memories... memories which I'd rather forget."

Juli sat down as Yamoto poured her a glass of wine.  "Memories are a pretty funny thing that way, I guess.  Believing a truth so much that it becomes real... by the way, thanks for making Juni dislike Cammy.  I was surprised that she agreed with me when I was in one of my rant modes.  Nice touch."

"Oh, you're welcome.  I wanted to make sure you two could get along well.  Care for some wine?"

"Yea, thanks."  Juli took a sip from her glass, then sighed.  "I would have preferred that you not have given her that Avelle worshipping quirk, though."

"Erm..."  Yamoto replied, a tad bit perplexed.  "She actually picked that up, herself.  I didn't know that her personality would be conducive to her really envying someone like Avelle."

"Hmm... can't be perfect, I guess."  The wine glass was put back down on the table.  "Anyway, I'm sorry if this seems a bit... exploitive, but is there anything new you could find out about the doll project?  Though she learned really quickly and doesn't make those silly mistakes anymore, I wouldn't want Juni to... erm, malfunction on me at a really bad moment."

"Oh, I don't think you need to worry about that."  Yamoto commented as he drank from his glass.  "So far, most of the previous doll attempts seem to be functioning fine."

"There were others?"

"Yea, but I don't know how many exactly.  It's really hard to find anything out from some of the kooks in the higher tiers of Shadowlaw's scientists. It's as if they aren't even speaking English!  I heard that their speech has something to do with birds.  It's wierd."

Juli blinked, trying to make sure what she just heard was what she thought she heard, then finally blurted out, "Birds?!?"

"Yep.  Really isn't much more I can say at the moment until I can figure out the rest of that gibberish."  Bremare shrugged.  "All I know for sure right now is that the dolls are supposed to be much more... metaphysical than just enhanced agents."

"If you don't know anything about the project, why did they put you in charge of Juni's... creation?"

"A test or something, I believe."  The doctor replied, glancing off to the side.  "Juni was actually kind of an incomplete project because the scientist previously working on her kinda got killed in a series of Interpol raids.  I wonder how they keep managing to discover our secret labs, anyway.  But I couldn't just leave her cryogenically frozen and with no chance to live like that so I took it upon myself to finish the job.  Actually, making her your partner was sort of my idea.  Kind of like a gift of thanks, I guess.  She's doing okay, I hope?  I worry about her too much sometimes."

"A gift?  That's a pretty strange way of putting it."  Juli put the glass of wine down on the table.  "Er... well, I appreciate it, I guess."

"I'm sorry."  There was a twinge of guilt in Bremare's voice.  "That was a stupid thing of me to say.  I shouldn't talk about Juni like that.  It doesn't do her justice to refer to her like that.  She's much more than just a simple experiment."

Juli hesitated for a moment before slowly replying.  "Yea... actually, nowadays I tend to get pretty depressed whenever she runs off like this.  Maybe I should go with her someday, if at least to see what the heck she does there."

Bremare put away the wine glasses and bottle back in the cabinet, then turned to Juli as he and Juli exitted the room.  "Well, at any rate, if I get some info that I can actually understand, I'll make sure to tell you about it."

With a couple password entries and button presses on the computer in the laboratory, the private room was sealed away again.  Just as the wall finished closing over the opening, an agent's voice blared across the lab in a loudspeaker announcement, causing Juli and Bremare to both nearly have heart attacks.  "AGENT JULI!  Agent Juli, report over to lab room number two twenty-five immediately!"

"Damn, I HATE that stupid annoying girl..."  Juli muttered.  "I wish I could take that microphone she uses to scream those dumb announcements and shove it down her throat."

The girl's voice boomed across the room again.  "That wasn't a very nice thing to say!!!"

"Wha?  What?"  Yamoto looked around.  "Did you say something, Juli?  I think that announcement has made me temporarily deaf..."

Behind the female scientist, Marzche monitored her vid screen where a dark skinned agent with a golden lion tamarin riding on her arm was waiting for Janet to finish her conversation.  Janet continued to slowly walk back and forth without saying a word, until she finally turned to look at the girl who had just recently entered the room.  "Ah, Agent Juli.  Do you know where your partner is right now?"

Juli blinked, wondering what was going on.  "She's in the bar at the nearby village, isn't she?"

"She's in Brazil."

"Eh?"  Her eyes grew wide with surprise.  "What the hell is she doing all the way over there?  How could she have gotten there in the first place?"

The look on Janet's face darkened.  "She took a Shadaloo Jet plane to get there."

"That's ridiculous."  Juli replied.  "You can't even get close to a Shadaloo vehicle without authorization, especially one of their high technology flying craft.  The only one out there that doesn't belong to Shadaloo is the one Avelle managed to con us out of when Shadaloo couldn't afford to pay her stupid fee."

Janet glared at Juli, even more anger becoming apparent on her face.  She angrily pointed to the vid screen, where the black agent was waiting patiently for Janet to finish.  "Agent Olvere spotted her tracking down a certain freak of nature.  She was doing a freelancing hunter job for Shadaloo in a party which appeared to be led by one Agent Avelle."

Juli blinked.  "Huh....?"

"It appears that Shadaloo wasn't just being paranoid when they sent Agent Olvere to make sure that YOUR job was done.  You realize that Shadaloo does not tolerate failures, Agent Juli.  You had better pray that Sir Bison doesn't find out about this..."  Janet stared at Juli straight in the eye for a moment.

Oddly enough, for that moment, Juli thought that the anger Janet was showing was just a tad bit fake, but she couldn't figure out any reason why that could be.

Janet's words after saying that seemed to verify that thought.  "Seriously though, Juli, we'd better be careful.  You know this is a lot more serious than that time Juni destroyed our entire marijuana crop with a lawnmower."

There was a nervous glance to the side from Agent Juli.  "Erm, yea.  But what are we supposed to do?  Dammit, Avelle reappears AND my partner runs off with her.  Sigh, when it rains, it pours."

Janet picked up a piece of paper from the table, looked at it, then crumpled it up and threw it to the ground.  "I despise it.  It managed to break out of its cage before our troops could get it into the plane, yet she delivered the beast and extracted the data so we still had to pay her!  There's a reason we had Avelle targetted by the Shadaloo hit squad in the first place."

The agent in the computer screen, Olvere, continued to listen to Janet's gripes as her pet monkey climbed onto her shoulder, then finally continued her inquiry about the girl she saw.  "So that agent was Agent Juni, then?"

"Yes.  I'm worried because it would appear that she has some serious flaws in her personality."  Janet replied, giving Juli another quick sharp glare.  "We all know what happened with Avelle.  I don't want it to happen with yet another agent."

In the darkened room, Bremare slowly cut off some of the fillet and put it on his plate.  It was kind of odd how he always had dinner with the two agents here, but he couldn't bear to think of either of them being poisoned by that god-awful mess-hall food.  Besides, it reminded him of the good memories.  The ones he didn't want to forget.

"Okay, tell me what's wrong."

"Wrong?  Nothing's wrong.  What makes you say that?"  Immediately, Juli knew that her reply did little to erase Bremare's suspicions.

"Juni's still not here and you're obviously not very happy about it, but there's something else."  Yamoto calmly stated as he poured himself some sparkling cider.

"......"  Juli paused, took a deep breath.  "She went to Brazil while working with Agent Avelle, and is heading for New York.  Janet wanted to commission some agents to bring her back safely but couldn't do that without letting the higher-ups, mainly M. Bison, know about it, which wouldn't bode well for either Juni, Janet, or even you since you are the ones in charge of her."

Yamoto had just swallowed another bite before he paused to listen the the sudden news.

With another breath, the synopsis continued.  "She ended up having to choose the lesser of two evils and hire random Shadaloo goons and thugs like that big dumb oaf, Birdie, to get Juni back here.  Knowing them, Juni will probably end up needing medical attention by the time she gets back here despite her self-healing ability."

Dr. Yamoto choked on his dinner.  He coughed a lot before Juli hit him on the back in an attempt to help him then did the heimlic maneuver on him.

Bremare quickly put the food and dishes away, then put on his coat.  "I'm going after her."

"Huh?"  Juli stared at him in surprise.  "How?"

"I have a private Shadaloo jet now.  It was another fringe benefit of the promotion.  I'll just say that I needed to get something in one of Shadaloo's labs in New York."

"You're crazy, you know that?  I never could understand you."  Juli yelled, running after him.  She caught up to him at the elevator.  As the elevator reached it's destination and the door began to open.  Juli slowly looked at him.  "Oh, and by the way, thanks.  Of course I'd rather have you get her back here instead of those idiots that Janet will be hiring."

Bremare and Juli were about to exit the elevator and head to the transportation sector when Janet, with Marzche and the fluffy long pink-haired agent behind her, stepped in their way.  "Where do you think you're going, Dr. Yamoto?  Get her back?  You know that Bison has been calling several important meetings for his upper-tier scientists and you can't really afford to be gone when he wants to talk to you, even if it is to find your missing doll."

"I don't think it's really right to have to go all the way over to New York just to get a missing dollie."  The pink-haired agent peeped up.  "But it's really sweet that Mr. Yamoto would be in so touch with his femine side.  Boys usually don't like dolls and all and to see a grown man going through so much trouble just to get one is really wierd and whatnot but then again I guess Yamoto always did seem like a somewhat odd person to me but it's okay since you do what you have to."

Juli gritted her teeth.  Even when that girl's voice wasn't exploding from a loudspeaker destroying your ears, she was extremely annoying.

"It's a very special doll." was all that she answered with.

Marzche was nonchalant as always despite her reply.  "For sex?"

The pink-haired agent blinked. "That... that's just wrong!  That's sooooo wrong that you can't even begin to comprehend how wrong that is!  The proportions to which that is wrong is just scary!  SCAAAAAAAARY!!!!!!"

Yamoto glanced at the three agents, taking quick note of the agents' bodysuit uniforms that Bison chose, but then quickly turned away, looked at Janet, and just shook his head.

Janet motioned to the two agents accompanying her.  "Marzche, Serina, I have an important meeting with someone now.  Make sure Juli doesn't leave the premises.  Unlike Yamoto, we can't have all of you running all over the place or else we might end up with problems like the one a certain aquaintance of Juli's is causing right now."

"What?!?"  Juli quickly yelled, starting the two scientists.  "Please don't stick me with Marzche and the damn microphone girl!  Marzche is the most boring person on the planet and as for Serina, everyone hates her!"

"Well that's too bad, because you're stuck with them now.  You'll have to make due."  Janet replied.  She turned and walked away.  Yamoto glanced back at Juli before heading for the transportation sector.

The unfortunate brunette turned to look at her temporary companions.  Marzche and Serina weren't particularly happy with her recent remarks.

Juli leaned against the wall and looked at them.  "So, read any good books lately?"

"That wasn't a very nice thing to say."  Serina commented.  "I always felt that if you didn't have a good thing to say about someone, then you shouldn't say it.  Unless of course it was constructive criticism, in which case the intent was at least good so I guess it'd be okay to say the not-so-good thing then since you're only trying to be helpful and nice as opposed to not being..."

"So Marzche, how's life going?"  Juli quickly interrupted, frantically grabbing the closest subject she could think of to get Serina to shut up.  Serina's extreme over-hyperactiveness made her appreciate Juni's only semi-hyperactiveness even more.

Caught off guard by the question, Marzche, who was sitting against the other wall looking at her laptop, simply looked up at Juli with a confused look.  She then said "Fine." before turning to her computer again.

"Trying to beat Cammy's best time on Minesweeper?"  Juli assumed.  "My partner got pretty close but was still off by a good amount."

She glanced over Marzche's shoulder, but the screen didn't have Minesweeper on it.  It was a shot of the door to Bison's office, and someone had just come into view before Marzche quickly noticed Juli and pressed a button, changing the screen to a minesweeper game.

Juli stared at the screen.  "Wait, what the hell was that?"

"Screen saver."  Marzche quickly stated.  The fact that the timer on the minesweeper game in the monitor wasn't even moving indicated otherwise, though.

"Give me that!"  A quick swipe sent the laptap into Juli's arms and the laptop's headphones that Marzche was wearing flying with it.  This had the nasty side effect of sending Marzche crashing headfirst into the ground.  Juli pressed a few keys on the keyboard, causing the screen to revert back to the camera monitoring the entrance to Bison's office.  "Hmm... I must say this interface is pretty intuitive, Marzche.  It looks like Dr. Yamoto's paranoia about being constantly monitored was really just smart thinking."

Serina sighed and shook her head.  "Why does the world always have to be so violent?"

Marzche and Serina looked over Juli's shoulder as Cammy with her long blonde pigtails and her customized agent uniform came onto the screen and waited at Bison's door.  She looked around, looked pretty annoyed, then in a flash of her fists, all the three spies saw was static.

"Somehow, she always knows."  Marzche shrugged as Juli stuttered back with surprise.

"I hope that camera wasn't very expensive."  Juli commented as she pressed a few more key presses.  She cycled through a few empty storage rooms, some different views of the messhall, and the kitchen before reaching a camera which was stationed in the men's bathroom.

Juli and Marzche stared at the screen wide-eyed before Serina quickly changed the channel.  "I can't believe you too!!!  Why are you spying on everyone now anyway?  That's just wrong!!!  Isn't this an abuse of power or something?  I don't recall either of you getting authorization to randomly go flipping through all the cameras in the building!!  What would Sir Bison say?  He'd probably be pretty angry and would say something like 'Agents Juli and Marzche!!!  You two have been very naughty!  It is time for your spanking!' and then he'd punish you and why are you looking at me like that?"

Even Marzche was giving Serina the awkward look until Juli flipped through a few more cameras and the latest camera view caught the attention of all three of the girls.

"Ooooooo,"  Serina commented.  "That's the place where Dr. Janet is having her meeting!  And that guy she's with is Professor Irvine, but he's really wierd and doesn't speak coherent English.  And spying on Janet is WRONG.  You really should turn that off right now and... nevermind."

Satisfied that her angry glare got Serina to quiet down, Juli focused her attention back to the scene going on before her.  Things had just gotten much more interesting.  It looked like Juli would be getting that information on the doll project, after all.