Marksmaid

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note. I do not own Mello, or, sadly, any chocolate. Or leather.

…

The redheaded figure slipped down the alleyway, breathing raggedly. It wasn't used to running long distances. Panting and trying to catch its breath, the figure leaned against the wall. Maybe they wouldn't follow.

Footsteps pattered on the slightly wet cement. Normally, the pursuer was silent, but now they were in a hurry. Looking for me, the redhead thought, trying to ease the ragged breath entering their battered lungs.

But the pursuer heard the breath. Or maybe, it heard the heartbeat. It was not human, and the redheaded target certainly was no more than just that. The final words the redhead heard were these: "Targets are not but targets, and I am not even that." It sounded as though this not-so-silent pursuer was trying to reassure itself. The redhead quivered as a gun was raised by the pursuer.

The trigger was pulled, and the pursuer ran.

…

The Marksmaid was hiding; waiting for her target. She was silent, bent and contorted into a position that would cause anyone else to wince just glancing at her. She slid in and out of shadows, only her eyes shining with any sort of brightness. This was what she loved. She'd snuck into the hideout early this morning (quite a feat in itself) and wedged herself up in the first hiding spot she'd deemed suitable. The Marksmaid wasn't very picky. She'd been sent to kill a thief who'd been selling what he stole behind someone's back; that was all she had been told, but for a description of her target.

The Marksmaid didn't need to know. She didn't care. She locked away all curiosity, all emotion, and channeled it through one source: a long, black rifle. She was more of an assassin than a sniper, but preferred to go by the latter title; she was quite fond of guns. There had been other orders from her current employer, but she would consider them when the time came. After all, they were a bit risky. There was also the issue of the hostage downstairs, who she'd briefly seen when coming in, but she couldn't dwell on that. It seemed as though her target was in the building, but not in the room as she had hoped. The only person she could see was a blonde boy in full leather. He didn't strike her as the type to associate with the Mafia, but she wasn't one to judge. He seemed to be speaking to someone through some sort of one way radio, but she wasn't paying much attention. Where was her target?

Breathe, she told herself, More people are coming in. See? Wait… that's him! Okay… now I was supposed to watch him for about five minutes… no, he said six. She silently twisted around to get a better aim, everyone was facing away from her; she didn't have to worry much about being spotted.

The blonde (who seemed to be not only the youngest, but also some form of boss) spoke into the same microphone he had been a minute earlier, only switching channels. The Marksmaid slipped her finger over the trigger, silently taking aim at the target that would die in less than two minutes. She had stopped thinking about targets as people. In fact, she'd stopped thinking of herself as a human. She was an extension of the gun she held, and targets were naught but targets. If she hadn't thought this way, she would have died of sheer guilt.

One minute to go. Now only thirty seconds –the target collapsed, a choking gasp emanating from his lips. The Marksmaid only barely suppressed one herself, and she drew further back into the shadows as people began to turn. The boy, who couldn't be much older than she herself was, did not move. Oh God… what was that? It looked like… like… She couldn't even think about Kira. The murderer plagued her thoughts and dreams enough as it was, and she was sure that she was one of his more sought after targets. There was a small flurry of noise, throughout which the boy remained calm.

A moment later, he said: "Get that thing on the missile. Don't touch it." The Marksmaid decided that now was as good a time as any to literally 'drop in'. So, slipping her rifle onto her back, she dropped noiselessly to the floor.

At least, she would have dropped noiselessly to the floor if she hadn't landed on the hand of the now dead target. The sound of bones breaking was much too audible for her liking in the room, and this time, the boy glanced up. Almost instantly, there was a gun pointed toward her head. "Hey," she said brightly. She'd always been polite, especially when she was about to pull a knife on someone. She'd found that it was quite disarming to see a sweet, polite sixteen year old with a sniper's rifle strapped to her back.

Unfortunately, he didn't fall for it. "Who are you?"

Now her employer, a man with an odd mustache (and one of the few who had come to see her personally and left without being killed) spoke up. "Mello, this is the Marksmaid." The boy, 'Mello', didn't seem pleased.

"I've never been fond of assassins," he said.

"And I've never been fond of leather wearing, chocolate eating transsexuals, but you aren't hearing me complain, now are you?" Mello glared daggers at her, but she continued. "And I prefer not to be called an assassin. 'Assassin' is such a messy word, don't you think? I prefer the term 'sniper'; much cleaner. Oh, and please call me Laura, 'Marksmaid' is quite tiring." Laura had, while saying this, slid a knife out of its sheath on her arm and held it in a way that allowed it to be thrown at a seconds notice. But that notice never came.

"Laura, Mello, calm down." Laura recognized the voice of her employer and froze.

"Ross, who is this?" Mello snapped. "Don't tell me you hired her?"

"On the off chance that notebook was a fake, I still wanted him dead. And Laura will be an… interesting addition to those who are already here."

Laura grinned. "And, with me here, none of you have to worry about being killed. Because believe me, I have never failed to kill a target unless I was paid more to let them live." She slipped the knife back into its sheath and pulled off the mottled black floor length cloak she was wearing. She wore black gloves that extended past her elbows, loose black jeans, a black tank top and plain black boots. Her hair was black, but it looked as though it had been dyed, and brushed against her shoulders. Her skin was sickly pale and her eyes appeared to be slightly sunken in, lined with black-blue lines from lack of sleep.

"Get out," Mello said tiredly.

"I'll pass," she replied, a hint of laughter in her voice. "After all, I won't get paid if I don't stick around, and I haven't been particularly busy lately…" A note of sadness crept into her voice. "So, what say you? I'll stay, and I'll kill whoever you wish."

"No," Mello said. "I can't believe you even got in here. Now get out." Laura shrugged indifferently.

"Alright then… but don't be surprised if you're dead by morning, you're name's one of the most wanted around. Now that I know who you are…" She laughed gently, drawing a finger across her throat, before walking out the back door.

"Let her walk out," Mello said. "Now, it's a bit delayed, but we've got to get rid of the helicopter." It only took a moment for the switch to be pressed, and the helicopter to spin to the earth in a twisted chunk of burning metal.

The body on the floor lay forgotten.

…

Laura stepped out into the fresh air. Her attire often earned her strange glances, but she was used to posing as a Goth and people seemed to accept it. She lived nowhere and everywhere; never staying in the same place for too long, never sleeping for more than an hour at a time. She was slightly put out by Mello's blunt refusal for help, but she didn't dwell on it. She never did. What was a bit more pressing of a matter to her was when or if she'd get paid. Laura was not exactly poor, but she wasn't well-off either. She didn't have a dependable job, having yet to find a place that would hire an assassin (she hated the title, but she was just as adept with poison and knives as she was with guns) for a non-killing job, and, being a woman, she wasn't exactly in demand as a sniper, despite the facts that she was lithe, flexible and completely silent when she wanted to be. She had resisted torture, starvation, and other things that she refused to think about, including a very close brush with the CIA.

Needless to say, Laura was not a very popular person. She was constantly on the run. Until today, she had never been seen in front of a group of more than two people. And even now, she was regretting that choice. Mello hadn't even hesitated before pulling a gun on her. And you were careless, she chided herself. In the future, don't make fun of clients. But it was an old habit, one she was used to using as self-defense. If she could just distract a client for long enough, she would get out of a deal unscathed. She would befriend targets and put a blade between their ribs in a week; sometimes as little as a day. She was not sane; not in the way most people were. With a quiet chuckle, she slipped back into the place she had just left. The current headquarters of the Mafia would be a fun place to explore, especially if she wasn't welcome.

…

"Mello," Rod Ross's low voice echoed slightly when he spoke, making it impossible to comprehend what he was saying unless you were paying attention to only him. "She'll come back you know." There was a tiny, almost inaudible creak of a door in the background.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Mello replied, "But sometimes people are more persistent when it appears they aren't wanted." He nodded over towards the door. "Come in, please, and do note that I notice quite a bit more than most people."

"Sure you do," Laura snapped back sarcastically, sliding through the door like a shadow, "But how do you know I didn't just give you a warning that I was coming? I know where I'm headed after I die, and it doesn't sound too nice to me." Despite the heavy boots she wore, she made no noise. In fact, with her cloak on and the hood up, she looked a drifting shadow with the face of a corpse.

"So you're sticking around no matter what?" Mello asked. The girl nodded. "And you'll help us when we need you?" Another nod.

"I'll kill anyone you want so long as it isn't myself." She said, pulling the hood away from her face. "In fact, if you gave the order, I'd shoot you right now."

"That won't happen," Mello said.

"Well, I couldn't help but hope," Laura sighed. "Oh well. Anything for me to do now?" Mello's mind was already flying ahead to the next hideout, where he and the Death Note would probably be discovered.

"Yes," he said. "There is one thing… but you'll have to wait a few days."

"Sir?" She asked, glancing towards Ross.

"Follow Mello's orders," he said. "I trust him. In the years he's been here, he's never once been wrong." Laura nodded slightly.

…

"Marks," Mello snapped. Laura fell from the rafters as though they had dropped her, and landed on her toes.

"Yes Mels?" She asked; her head turned slightly to one side. "If you're wondering, it's finished, and there's only one safe spot." Laura had not changed a bit since Rod Ross had introduced her to Mello. Her eyes were still dead and sunken, her skin was still comparable to that of a corpse, and she hadn't grown an inch. But she'd been getting along quite well with Mello, and Mello had stopped shooting at her when she called him 'Mels'. She flatly refused to call him 'sir' like she did Ross, for the simple reason that Mello had not hired her.

"And you can guarantee this?"

"Not without setting them off, no, but I'm ninety-nine percent sure. Do you want me to show you?" Mello nodded, and Laura led him up a flight of stairs. He didn't let her see the bolt of pain that passed through him when she snapped out the percentage; he couldn't. She didn't know about Wammy's House, and she could never learn. He didn't fully trust her. He never would, nor she him. But they would come to develop a strange sort of partnership. Though Mello had a perfect aim (and he did not lie when he told others it was, quite literally, 'perfect'; he had never once missed a target) with just about any type of weapon you could give him, Laura was slightly more stealthy, just a bit smaller, and most certainly more calm.

She drifted up the stairs like a phantom, her infuriatingly calm aura punctuated with just a bit of pride of a job well done. "The surveillance room, just like you asked," she said as she walked. "Damn hard to rig around it, and you're going to want to have something on your face when it goes off. A helmet if you can get one, 'cause the roof is gonna come down." She spoke with a very orderly type of slang, occasionally flitting around as she spoke. Most people could only scamper, but Laura… this girl could literally 'flit'. It was annoying. "I've surrounded the entrance with small explosives, more like fireworks than bombs," she explained. "The other doors have higher powered explosives that won't be detonated by gunfire if all goes well."

That was the problem with Laura. She didn't plan everything to the end, and not everything she did was perfect. Oh, she would certainly finish whatever task was given to her, but she had many different ways of going about doing them. Once, when Mello had requested she get rid of several targets, she'd tracked them down in a day and a half and spent a week toying with their minds and pitting them against each other. In the end, they killed each other, which was quite convenient for Laura. She only killed more than one target for a job when it was personal or there was no other choice. And in that case, there had been a choice and a chance at a bit of fun. Laura loved playing with targets like a cat loves playing with a mouse. She'd chase them, stalk them, maim them, and then –just when they thought they'd get away –she'd pull the trigger one final time. She wasn't a professional assassin.

"If all goes well?" Mello asked. They were standing in the surveillance room, Laura sitting cross-legged on the table in front of the many screens.

"Well, I managed some bulletproof casing for the explosives on those two doors, and it should hold up. I can't picture anyone standing at point-blank range to shoot at a door, can you?"

"No. Good to see you're starting to think like me Marks," Mello said. He'd begun calling her Marks when they were talking on the phone, when she was sitting on a rooftop calmly twirling a knife between her fingers. He remembered that for some reason. She'd let him hear the metallic twirl of a knife over the phone before she'd put it into its sheath on her arm. He didn't really remember why he'd said it, but the words "Marks, you're going to kill yourself one day," had slipped out of his mouth.

Laura's answer had come after a long minute of silence. "You're probably right."

Now her voice rang out again. "You'll want to be standing at least in the center of the room. If you can, stay on the table here. The further from the door you are, the better." Mello nodded. If there was one thing Laura never used guesswork with, it was explosives. He trusted her as much as he could without completely trusting her. "Here's the switch," she said. "The first button is the warning; it'll seal off the entrances. The second one takes out the rest of the building and everyone in it. Needless to say, I'll be in here with you. I don't intend on dying."

"Right," Mello replied.

…

Two days later, Mello was sitting on the table in the surveillance room, the detonator (affectionately dubbed 'Switch' by Laura) held in one hand. He had just destroyed the only two entrances to the building. Laura was sitting in the rafters above his head. He was issuing orders to the police. She was double-checking her rifle's ammunition.

He was facing Deputy Director Yagami. She was taking aim at his neck. He was writing Mello's first name. Her index finger was tightening around the trigger. Jose miraculously was still alive. Two guns were aimed at the Deputy Director. One fired a continuous round, the other a single shot. Just one shot, which grazed the carotid artery on the man's neck. He wouldn't live to see the setting sun. She swore. He wasn't supposed to get out of the building alive.

And then the other policemen stormed into the room. Jose was killed.

Mello pressed the final button, and there was a rush of fire and then… nothing.

…

AN: Yes, this is the latest version of Marksmaid. I hope this one is better than its predecessor. Please leave a review!