It was a nice, warm summer evening at about half past seven. I was out for a walk, simply just to enjoy the refreshing breeze and the feel of the sun's gentle rays. It had just set a little while ago, though, and I was on my way home. The wind blew softly through my light brown hair, messing about my bangs and noticeably cooler now that the sun had gone down. I blinked my amber eyes slowly, enjoying the surroundings and ambled through the streets casually, feeling at peace and happy that the day so far had been good, nothing gone wrong. Life was a little boring though.

Suddenly, just as that thought crossed my mind, my sharp ears picked up the sound of a muffled scream about 2 blocks away and my body immediately jumped to alert mode.

Jeez, how ironic was the timing of that?

I started running towards the source of the noise, my hair flying wildly with the speed I was going at, and I only slowed down once I was within 10 metres of where I estimated the distressed person should be.

I flattened myself to a wall adjacent to a dark, grungy looking alleyway. The lighting was dim, as streetlights did not appear here. Nevertheless, I could still see quite well, with my night vision being as good as a cat's, but I opted to figure things out with my hearing.

I could make out two distinct voices, one being of a drunk man, and one of a person crying, most likely a lady. I also heard other movement, but decided not to dwell on it. The woman seemed to be pleading with the man, and I could easily guess what kind of situation she had gotten herself into.

"P-please, leave me alone…"

"I think we could have sooo much fun together, don't ya think?" His reply was noticeably slurred.

Her breaths were coming out in short rapid bursts, as if she was hyperventilating. I could hear her praying for help under her breath for an angel to save her, while the man stood over her, laughing drunkenly.

Ironic yet again, that I, an angel of death, should be the one to save her.

I sprinted into the alleyway with amazing speed and shoved the man away with one hand before he knew what hit him. He crashed hard into the wall, expelling all the breath out of his lungs with a massive grunt. In the same moment, I hooked my arm around the lady's waist and jumped a few metres away in one bound.

There was silence for a few seconds as both sides tried to process what had just happened. The lady tightened her hold on me and buried her head into my shoulder, crying quietly and shaking tremendously. I stood there, giving the man a livid death glare while he tried to regain his balance, staring at me dumbly.

When a few seconds passed from there, he suddenly threw his head back and started laughing.

"HAHAHA! Girl, what do you think you're doing?" he half yelled out, the alcohol influencing his voice level.

"What do you think YOU'RE doing?" I threw back, with a trace of venom in my voice.

"Oh, just havin' some fun, ya know? Nice night out for it."

"Ah, well, why don't you leave this pretty lady alone and scamper on home back to your wife? I'm sure she'd enjoy your scumbag company."

His eye twitched and suddenly he looked sober. Or maybe not.

"Alright guys, let's show them how we do shit around here. Two is better than one, and the more the merrier, huh?" he said, seemingly to no one. The way he talked disgusted me, and I stood there, repulsed at the clear implications of what he had just said.

Four extra guys emerged from the shadows, explaining the noises I heard before. They leered at me and started cracking their knuckles. I wasn't fazed at all as I momentarily focused on the newcomers. They looked like nothing, compared to me anyway. Meh.

I looked at the frightened girl, who tensed even more when she realised we were surrounded.

"Hey, I've got business to take care of. You stay right here, okay?" I told her soothingly, patting her shoulder as I pulled away.

She stared at me, and her teary eyes widened. "But… it's five against one!"

I chuckled to myself and whispered to her, "Don't worry."

"Five is nothing."

There was a collective intake of breath as the guys heard me, which were my intentions. "Five is nothing…?" muttered the first guy, followed by hisses from the others.

I slowly took a protective stance in front of her, half crouching as I assessed the situation. The four new guys all pulled out knives and started advancing toward me while the first guy stood back, waiting for them to take me out. Fat chance. They weren't even remotely muscular or fit looking.

The first of the four suddenly jumped in front of me, shouting and swinging down the knife in his right hand as he tried to go for my shoulder. I quickly threw my left arm up, intercepting his knife-arm and avoiding the knife as it flew out of his slackened grip. I heard the girl shriek, probably from the sight of a flying knife. I slid my arm backwards as I grabbed his wrist with my left hand, pulling him towards me and throwing a hard right uppercut into his stomach. He groaned and doubled up in pain, screwing up his eyes and coughing up blood on me as he did so. Oh, gross.
I resisted the urge to look disgusted as I took the opportunity to grasp the side of his shirt with my right hand, and using mostly my left arm strength, did a 360 degree twirl to my left, throwing him into his friends.

They all gave involuntary yells of pain as his body collided with two of them. I think one of the two may have stabbed the flying guy while holding their hands up in defence. While the three of them were busy disentangling themselves from each other, the fourth guy ran towards me. I'm not sure if it was the adrenaline or something, but they all seemed really slow. It looked like he was going for a straight stab to the chest, so I turned my body to the side at the last second. Not wanting to give him any chance to stab her, I chopped his neck with my right hand and struck downwards with my left so as to direct his knife hand away. After successfully halting his movement, I pushed his neck back and swept the back of his leg using my foot so he would fall over. He gave a choked gurgle from the neck injury before his head cracked on the concrete, knocking him out.

I turned my attention back towards the other guys. I was right; the guy I threw seemed to be bleeding profusely because of a knife stuck in his side. He lay on the ground, motionless while the other two gave roars of outrage and ran towards me at the same time.

"Move out of the way!" I yelled to her when I realised one was going for her instead. She had her eyes wide and whimpered, but didn't show any signs of moving. Aargh, I hate it when this happens in the movies! Frickin people just stand there and await their death…

I turned ran back towards her, sweeping her up newlywed style. She gasped as I ran forward towards the wall. She closed her eyes and seemed to be bracing herself for the impact, and I suddenly felt an urge to burst out laughing. Who said I was going to run into the wall?

I planted a foot on the wall and ran two steps up before pushing off, gracefully doing a backflip in mid-air and landing on the ground a few metres back while the two guys ran headfirst into the wall with a loud crunch. They both fell over, unconscious. Come on, that was stupid even for drunk guys, but I guess you really can't see the world clearly in that state.

I knew that all the guys were out cold, save for one, so I set her down gently and turned around to face him, before slowly strutting up to him. He was frozen in place, fear and disbelief being the dominant emotions in his wide open eyes.

"Any last words?" I breathed into his ear, almost seductively as I trailed my hands over his chest.

Understandably, he was slow in processing the words while looking down at his friends, all out cold. "W-w-whaaat?" he finally managed to stutter.

"…'What' is a strange choice, but so be it," I said calmly.

I took a step back, drew my right fist back and let it snap forward into the centre of his face with an abundance of power. He barely had any time to react, much less defend, before flying backwards into the wall, his head making contact with the wall, producing a sickeningly loud crunch.

"Man, they should really toughen up around here," I muttered to myself, brushing off my clothes as if they were contaminated by the man's filth. It probably was, 'cause that dude had a lot of saliva in his mouth.

I straightened up and turned around to face her. She was squatting on the ground as her hands covered her ears. She seemed to be mumbling to herself, something along the lines of, "I didn't see that, nothing happened…"

I was wary that she would be afraid of me because of the scene that had just unfolded in front of her eyes, and that was obviously happening right now, so I slowly walked forward and crouched down in front of her.

She looked up fearfully into my eyes and I was startled.

Now that I was able to get a better look at her, I could see that she was quite pretty and not a lady at all. At least, not an old one. She looked to be about 17, and had long, soft, smooth looking black hair that stretched all the way to her lower back. She was wearing a black cardigan with a short pleated skirt. However, the feature that got me the most was her eyes. They were an astonishing grey colour, and extremely pleasant to look at. All in all, she was quite beautiful, and breathtakingly so.

She held my gaze and stammered while taking deep breaths, "Th-thank you f-for saving me…"

"Aw shucks, it was nothing," I said, sweeping my hand through my hair and scratching the back of my head in embarrassment. "Ah, but are you okay?" I asked concernedly, trying to see if she was hurt at all. From what I could see, she was perfectly fine, apart from the crying bit.

"Um, yes. You saved me before he could do anything…worse to me," she said quietly, closing her eyes as if he would appear and hurt her again.

I was thankful that I had arrived in time, so I took her hands and helped her up, saying, "Ah, that's good then. You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm completely fine. B-by the way, I'm Akiyama Mio," she stuttered softly, blushing and looking down as she did so.

"Ehehe, hey, I'm Ritsu. Tainaka Ritsu. Nice to meet you," I said, sticking out my hand. She moved her hand towards mine before looking down and after letting out an ear piercing scream of terror she promptly fainted on the spot.

What the heck?

My ears were still ringing as I looked down to see that my hand was covered in dripping red blood. Wow, how did that get there? It must have been from when the guy hacked up blood on me. Aww, scared of blood, how cute.

I pulled out my cellphone and dialled the ambulance. I gave them the location and stated that I noticed several unconscious guys in an alleyway before I hung up and put it away. I could have left her there because the ambulance could just pick her up as well, but I decided to bring her to the local clinic myself. I propped her on my back in a piggyback position and walked ahead, leaning forward so she wouldn't fall off.

I guess now would be a good time to tell you about myself, huh?

My name's Tainaka Ritsu. I'm 17 years old, about 160cm tall. My athletic skills and keen senses I owe to the fact that I grew up in an assassin's family with my loveable brother, Satoshi, who's a few years younger than me. It's weird though, my parents were murdered in our own home while Satoshi and I were out at the park, back when I was 8. Wow.

We don't exactly have to worry about money, since our parents left behind massive funds earned from their job, but we both agreed that it was just shit to be born in an assassin's family and let ourselves grow up to be fat slobs. Hence, we pretty much picked up where they left off, and continued our family service.

We didn't have to worry about education either, as that just seemed like a waste of time. I mean, what use is mathematics or physics to an assassin? Was I really going to calculate the negative gradient of a downward slope that's made while I swing my katana down into my victim's head? How about the velocity made when I deliver an excruciating roundhouse into an opponent's stomach? Nah, didn't think so. We were well taught by our parents, anyway.

Satoshi, my younger brother. He's innocent looking, with short dark brown hair, and charismatic to those who look up to him. He can be popular with the ladies when he wants to, as he's actually kinda effeminate, but he can be hella manly when he has to be. Having grown up together and for the majority of our life without parents, we've grown pretty close as siblings.

Still, being an assassin might have sounded like an adventurous life, but it wasn't that good. Killing day after day, week after week made things boring. And so I lived a boring life.

Until I met Mio for the first time today.

A/N: Rewritten while I had a massive migraine. Probably wasn't a good idea.