A/N Hey guys, I'm here with another story just to keep myself a little bit occupied. Just so you all know, I'm trying out something new in the way of style. I would love to hear your feedback be it critical or just to know what you think.

Thanks for reading!

"Think about what you're doing. We went to school together," The leader said arrogantly, placing his hand on the girl - or woman's - shoulder. It has been nearly five years since then, definitely too long for her to still be called a girl.

The dark haired woman brushed his hand off her shoulder and unsheathed her weapon. The sound metallic as it brushed along the edge of her scabbard. "Cardin, this is the way it has to be," she took a menacing step forward, loading Gambol Shroud with a dust clip, "my organization requires that I do this."

"But what about Ruby? Yang? What'll they do when they hear about this?" Cardin replied, slowly reaching into a pouch on his belt with his free hand. Unlike her, however, stealth wasn't Cardin's strong suit. She saw the whole thing.

What happened next was a blur; Cardin pulled a knife on her and lunged forward with the intent to kill. Unfortunately, the training that he received at Beacon would mean less than nothing to her. Her years spent outside the kingdoms after graduation saw to that. Her instincts kicked into overdrive, survival and finesse mixing together in a deadly cocktail. The woman's arm shot forward, intercepting Cardin's strike and deflecting the blade just to the right of her head. Using the rest of his momentum, she grabbed his arm and swung him into the wall. The resulting crash sounded throughout the building and probably alerted any of the on duty guards.

She would have to get what she came for quickly.

"Where is she? Tell me now," the operative said in a monotonous voice, the routineness of the operation familiar and strangely calming. She cocked her weapon and leveled it just at his head.

Cardin spat blood, looking defiantly up at the woman. He would never bow to anyone, let alone a nonhuman freak like her. "I'm not telling you a damn thing, faunus scum," he replied, staring straight up the barrel of the weapon, "if you're going to kill me, just do it."

The faunus felt anger rising in her, the cause of which dated back to her turmoil rife childhood. She had a flashback to a peace rally that she attended with most of Vale's faunus population. She remembered the pain of prejudice. In truth, she had never really forgotten. "Cardin, I can hurt you before you die. You know that I can. Tell. Me. Where. She. Is."

She was met with only silence. As easily as it was to swat a fly off of her shoulder, she fired a round into his chest. With the surgical precision that was required of this trade, she made sure not to damage any of Cardin's organs, at least not any of the vital ones.

"Where is she?" The woman asked, aiming the still smoking gun at his head. She knew that she really needed to hurry up, but this was the closest that she had been for the past year. Her mark was just out of reach.

"Die," he replied, this time spitting blood into her face.

That was her last straw; she got to her knees in front of him and plunged her thumb into the open wound, pressing the dust round deeper into him. Reverberating off of the walls in a cacophonous opera, his screams pierced her skull, but had no effect.

"Cardin, do you know what this is?" She asked, channeling some of her aura in the tip of her thumb.

He didn't reply, but looked up at her, the pain muddying his vision and bringing him to the brink of consciousness. She knew this and cursed, wiping her thumb on his shirt.

The next thing she knew, what sounded like a battalion was charging up the stairs, towards the office. Without thinking, she fired three rounds in a triangle formation at the nearest window and leapt through it head first. As the ground rushed to meet her, she used her semblance to make a shadow clone, jumping to the side, tucking and rolling.

The sound of footsteps from the top floor of the building was punctuated by an explosion, and then replaced by screaming. Cardin was a loose end and Blake couldn't have him alerting her.

The dust round that she had used was a powerful timed explosive: an invention of a friend that she needed to visit.

Soon.