NOTES: HUNK's first mission! Let's see how the baby rookie grew up to become the big bad Mr. Death. Technically, this was the fourth chapter of Death Twitch until I was finished with it, and upon reading it over, I got the feeling that this would also be a really neat stand-alone fic. It'll still serve as the fourth chapter for Death Twitch, though, and I'm posting it up here as a new story because of this damn needling urge of mine insisting that YES, this IS good enough to stand on its own, so go frickin' do it! Well, you'll tell me if you agree or not, right?

Of course you will.

And now, without further ado...

TOP PRIORITY
The Birth of Mr. Death

By Jeremy Urbano Rosete (Bad Ronald)

The uniform was uncomfortable against my body as the gas mask choked me slightly. My breath curled up from the filter, restricting my breathing. The damn uniform felt a couple sizes too tight as I sat in the USS helicopter with the rest of the team, but I wasn't complaining. Only rookies complained, and I was determined to prove that although I was the new guy on my first mission, I was still a permanent valuable addition to the USS Alpha Team, not some useless rookie. I've went through the grueling military training program at Rockfort and worked hard enough to become one out of the top five trainee operatives to actually achieve the fabled S-Ranking in all scenario sessions. I utilized all of my wits and all of my training to the best of my ability, to ensure that I wouldn't be shelved aside as second-best.

I shook my head, willing myself to stop reminiscing about Rockfort. Those were just artificially engineered scenarios that I passed, but I was still untested in real-life situations. This mission would be the deciding point if I was cut out for the job or not.

So I recalled the mission objective perfectly in my mind: Infiltrate BioJect Corporations stationed in Bluecreek and retrieve particular indispensable files of viral research, all of them located in the BioJect mainframe computer labeled Queen-01. Extraction method would be the computer disk our team leader held. Use any and all force necessary to clear out obstacles and witnesses. My first mission and I would accomplish the task without hesitation. I would not be the typical new guy, slowing the rest of the team down. No, I knew deep inside in my heart that I would ascend the ranks and become the best. Not one of the best. The best.

I went over my gear, checking over the USS standard-issue MP5 and patting each of my pockets to ensure each had at least one clip safely nestled inside. My combat knife, securely fashioned to the front of my vest, was a sobering reassurance.

As soon as the chopper touched down on the BioJect helipad, our team leader, codenamed agent SWEET, slid open the chopper door with a bang, taking up his MP5 and sighting the BioJect security guards quickly scrambling from their positions, converging towards our chopper. With casual ease, agent SWEET gunned them down, every one of them falling dead and sprawling on the floor in spreading pools of their own blood.

Agent SWEET looked at all of us and ordered, "What're you girls waiting for? Move out!"

We did so, jumping out of the chopper and following SWEET as he paused by the helipad door leading into the BioJect facility, forming up into position with me taking up the rear guard. As I reached the end of the line, almost all of the agents were staring at me, their crimson lenses gazing at me blankly. Even agent SWEET stared along with them, and when I heard the loud thud a couple yards behind me, I finally figured out why.

Ahh shit. You've got to be kidding me. I cursed soundlessly into my mask filter, realizing I fucked up right at the start. Some of the agents snickered at my glaring mistake. Most of them shook their heads in pity. Poor new guy, their body movements relayed to me. Looks like he just can't handle it, their gestures seemed to say. Looks like he's just going to slow us down.

One of them, a cocky operative codenamed Bell, crossed his arms and chuckled. He said, "Hey, new boy. Ya wanna get the ram sometime this year?"

I turned back, running to the waiting chopper to do my job, tugging out the specialized battering ram assigned for the mission. It was thin and smoothly cylinder-shaped, but heavy, too heavy, and thumped loudly next to me as I tried to drag it back to the team. The three latching pronged arms closed in on the body of the ram, giving it the foreboding appearance of a missile, as it screeched on the floor, gaining me a few more chuckles. One of the operatives, a female agent with the codename Toph, broke off from the rest and jogged over to me.

"Don't worry about them, rookie," she said jovially. "They always razz the new guys to shit anyway. You'll get used to it. Here, I'll help you out."

Humiliated beyond belief, I refused to accept further embarrassment. I gave her the cold shoulder, yanking the battering ram forcibly away from her grasp. Toph stepped back, clearly surprised.

I wasn't so pathetic as to need help lugging the stupid thing around and said, "Leave me alone. I don't need your help." I blinked in spite of myself. My voice had sounded so unexpectedly cold.

"What the…" she said, sounding hurt and betrayed. "Who the hell do you think you are, you snotnosed new boy? Fine, then! Have it your way, prick."

She shoved the battering ram away, visibly fuming under her gas mask, and stomped her way back to the rest of the agents. At least I managed to bring back the battering ram without grunting in effort. I was sure they heard my clipped, heavy breathing, but this time none of them said anything. Two other agents hefted up the ram easily, making my effort to bring the ram to the team feel even more humiliating.

Agent SWEET slowly stepped up to me, and I heard everyone suck in their breath, every one of their gas masks swiveling to face us.

SWEET was silent for a moment, looked over to the rest of the team, then back to me. His voice exuded grim authority through his mask as he said, "You gonna fuck up again, rookie?"

I stared him right in his red eye-pieces and, once more surprising myself again with the frigidity of my voice, "No, sir. I'm not planning to, sir."

It looked like my voice got to SWEET too, because he paused visibly before nodding.

"Good. Now get your shit together, and let's go."

SWEET kicked down the door, sending it flying off the hinges and clattering down the stairways below. A noisy entrance, but no one was around to hear. According to the mission parameters, all personnel were working at the labs at this hour, and the hallways were empty.

We trooped down the stairs, finally making our way into an empty corridor. Again, SWEET stopped, ordering us to synchronize our watches for the upcoming takeover. We did as ordered, then two of the agents picked up the battering ram again with SWEET taking up the front as the rest of the agents followed behind them, our weapons at the ready.

Skimming the halls, we found the main lab, a title above the high-tech sliding door reading Research & Development. It was key-card activated and couldn't be punted down like the helipad door. But the battering ram we brought along with us was a specially-engineered one, designed to be utilized on doors such as these.

Agent Toph, still smarting from my rebuke, shouldered me aside, setting up the machinery of the ram. She pressed the ram down onto the key-card door, the other two agents unfurling the pneumatic powered arm-prongs to latch them on the surface, magnetically grafting the ends of each prong as the ram reared back, suspended in the middle.

One of the agents switched it on, revealing a tug-lever for him to pull with one hand. He did so, and stepped back with the rest as a loud humming sound reverberated through the hall, electrical currents flashing from the door to the ram.

Toph, stubbornly keeping herself in front of me, forced me to take position behind her. I clutched my MP5 as the pneumatic ram shot forward on its iron prongs, impacting heavy, electrical sparks zapping out and emitting from the door as it shuddered under the weight of the blow.

Inside, surprised gasps and murmuring voices uttering curses could be heard.

"The hell was that?"

"Dammit, my coffee! Shit. Dr. Iverson, I need help cleaning this up…"

"I'm serious, guys, I saw that fucking door flash lightning or some shit—"

Again, the agent pulled back the tug-lever, charging the ram briefly before it slammed it against the door once more. This time, the door buckled in its frame, the bruised center now charred and smoking.

The voices inside the lab dialed up an octave, now panicked, screaming, realizing the seriousness of the situation. Quick, stumbling footsteps, discordant sounds of glass smashing, of chairs being knocked over.

Third time was the charm. The door crumpled in completely at the final impact, flying into the room with an electrical current visibly trailing with the ram attached to it, smashing a fleeing researcher flat to a bloody paste behind a file cabinet. The door and now-useless battering ram clanged to the ground with the remnants of the researcher clumped over and dripping down the cabinet.

The agents around me brought their submachine guns up to lever, a dizzying array of clicks echoing behind my ears. They stepped past me, their guns blasting out bullet by bullet, cutting the scientists down with ease.

I blinked, hesitated, and cocked my head curiously at the sight of the scientists, these men and women with families, caught in the grip of total fear, doing their best to run away only to be mowed down by the MP5s. Their blood coughed into the air and stained their white lab coats, spraying onto the desks, the floor, the walls.

I blinked again. They were screaming. The scientists were screaming… For some reason, that was the damndest thing. The bio-creations and virus carriers we were trained to shoot in Rockfort never screamed like this. They always went down silently, or if they emitted a sound, it was always almost an outworldly pitch, not the bellowing, sobbing wails assailing my eardrums.

I was the only one not shooting, watching the carnage from behind my red eye-pieces, seeing for the first time the brittle fragility of human life, how quickly and brutally it could be snatched away by the easy pull of a trigger. Just like that. The bio-weapons in Rockfort took longer than this to die, but these people were dying so fast…

One of the operatives elbowed me out of my daze. I turned, shaking, and it was agent Bell, who said gleefully, "C'mon, new boy. Quit jerkin' off and join in on the fun!"

Snapped out of my initial shock, I fired my MP5 randomly into the screaming throng of scientists, my heart beating double-time and throwing off my aim even further, stacks of research papers, and files, and books fluttering into the air, coffee mugs and laptops shattering into fragments, shit what the hell am I doing—

"Hey, rookie, stop the spray n' pray!" Agent SWEET's voice rang out to me in the gunfire. "Localize your shots and group up your kills, the mainframe computer's straight ahead in the back wall, we don't want to damage it…"

With that, I sighted the mainframe computer, Queen-01— big, almost enough to encompass the entire top-half of the back wall, with a sprawling keyboard console stationed before it, it was hard to miss.

Then agent Bell fell over, crashing over a desk, his gas mask leaking blood from an exit wound between his red eye-pieces. The rest of us turned to the sight of smoke canisters clattering through the doorway into the labs. With a loud, popping sound, smoke fizzed out from the canisters, no doubt composed of incapacitating gas. Sure enough, the room became swathed with clumps of greenish-yellow fog, and the scientists who still managed to stay alive slumped to the floor, completely blacked out. My standard-issue mask filter worked perfectly, easily blocking out the gas, but my visibility dropped down to a near-zero. And from the sounds of the surprised squawks of my team members, it seemed that I wasn't the only one thrust in the dark.

I caught a glimpse of a man in green tactical armor, wearing a gas mask with a radically different design, an orange faceplate with two filters on both sides of the mask. The gun nestled in his hand looked like a military-issue M16, but I couldn't be sure because he disappeared into the smoke before I could bead on him.

The BioJect Heavy Security Force had reacted much faster than the mission briefing had assured us— we were told to expect, at the very least, a five minute window to complete our mission while BHSF troops kitted up for battle. But they were here now, and they were extremely well-trained.

Fleeting images of murky figures and flashes of gunfire strobed out into the smoke, ghosting away the positions but not the identities of the shooter. The gurgling shouts and wails of the USS agents made it clear that the BHSF troops knew how to use the smoke to their advantage, that somehow they were able to see through the fog and pick us off at their leisure.

The fog enshrouded me as the gunfire got closer and closer, riddling the desks nearby. One of the USS agents fell over me, knocking my MP5 out of my hands and bowling me over into a clumsy tangle as he cried out in agony, his stomach exploding in a torrent of shredded guts. I hurriedly pushed him away, scrambling away from the line of fire, and felt my skin burst out in a cold sweat as the poisonous grip of panic slowly enveloped my senses. Everything I had done in life seemed unmercifully pointless and hopelessly short in this place of errant death.

"No. I don't wanna die," my voice murmured out, crackling through the filter of my gas mask. "I don't wanna die."

Through the yellow haze, the pale skull of death glared back at me. The piercing sting of pure, primal fear jolted through me as I backpedaled on the blood-slicked floor, hyperventilating in my mask, groping for my weapon, for any weapon, because I didn't want to die. It was my first mission. I couldn't die here, not in this place, not now.

"I don't wanna die," I said, spinning it into a harried mantra. "I don't wanna die."

Pain. Like a grenade explosion rocking through my mind, murderous sparks of pain shot from my shoulder up to my skull, two bullets shearing my arm, another landing solidly in my right shoulder. I uttered a high shriek, more in surprise than hurt, and fired back crazily, the stock of my MP5 jarring my injured shoulder further into a whirling pit of agony.

It caught the oncoming BHSF troop right in his orange facemask, shattering it inwards, and he crumpled to a heap, his weapon clattering uselessly to the floor. I scrambled to my feet and shot at every vague form in the smoke, shot towards every flash of gunfire, plugging holes into the haze with total abandon, watching them fall to the floor in a flurry of wheezing groans and breathless screams. Whether they were BHSF or Umbrella, I didn't know. I didn't care. I was too scared to even think of anything except survival.

"I'm not gonna die!" I shouted out into the smoke, still shooting, dimly aware that I was running out of ammo. "You're gonna die, but I'm not gonna die!"

My gun, the traitor in my hands, clicked empty, the dry rattling sound blatting loud enough among the gunfire to actually stop the fight for a tense moment, the hidden remaining BHSF troopers no doubt catching on to my dire predicament. Knowing that my lifetime was trickling away by the second, I crammed my working hand into my vest pocket, yanking out a fresh clip just as a BHSF troop emerged from the smoke, bringing up his M16 to mow me down, and the fresh clip clicked home into my MP5, but it was too late, the BHSF troop was already firing— no, his gun bucked and jittered in his hands, but that was because he was shaking, as if in a seizure, the whole top of his head missing…

"Get a grip, rookie!" Agent Toph yelled out as she reloaded her weapon, taking position besides me. She shot me a glance, "Still think you don't need my help?"

I heard the seriousness in her voice, yet her concern for me rang out the most. She saved my life. Although I was grateful to her, it still made me feel guilty. I opened my mouth to speak, wanting to apologize for my earlier behavior, to say sorry for acting like such a dick, to at least make amends to my savior, but my voice cracked when I tried, and she waved me off, signaling for me to cover her back. I shakily did so, my aim completely shot with the stress of the situation.

"SWEET's dead," Toph said, her solemn voice punctuating the reality of it all. "They blew out his knees, then gunned him down like a dog. I saw it, I was the closest one to him. But I paid them back, shot them down right after. The rest of the team… it's just you and me now, rookie. Here, take this."

I quickly looked over my shoulder to see her holding a case containing a computer disk over hers, and gingerly took it, my thumb smearing the spatters of red on the label.

"You know what to do with this, right?" she demanded as I palmed the disk tightly. "Just put it in the mainframe and it'll do all the work."

I nodded to her, remembering that I had drilled myself over the mission a hundred times over before I even took the job— because the mission objective had to be completed at all costs. The mission objective had top priority over everything else.

"Go to the mainframe!" Agent Toph said. "I'll cover you, rookie. Don't die on me, huh?"

I went, then turned to say thanks because it was the least I could do for her, but she shoved me back and said, "No, there's no time. C'mon, move your ass!"

My shoulder burned incessantly and I glanced down at the wound, seeing that the bullet had made a clean exit into the front and out the back… it could be easily patched up. But I didn't have time and I could stand the pain for now. So I ran, stumbling twice over the dead corpses of my fellow agents littering the floor, and threw myself onto the mainframe computer, slipping my fingers around the sides to feel for the disk slot, and felt the metal slit to insert the disk. Cracking open the case, I slid the disk in, waiting for it to work. The seeking program in the disk automatically started up with a cheery ping noise, quickly locating and opening hundreds of files simultaneously.

By now, the smoke started to thin out into wisps, and I could make out agent Toph ducking under cover behind the desks, returning fire as the BHSF troops retreated to the hallway, shooting back at her. Office supplies launched up around her, propelled by the enemy bullet barrage kicking up a storm in a fruitless attempt to hit the agent.

I looked back at the computer screen and saw that the program had completed its work in record time, barely a few seconds, and tapped the eject option, reaching out to pull out the disk and replace it back into its tray. But Toph's sudden scream snared my attention, forcing me to turn back to see her hit the wall, slouching down with a red stain tracking behind her from the wall to the ground, her chest gouting blood. She clutched madly at the leaking wound, looked back at me. Her sudden, astonished, helpless laughter was as ghastly as the wound, emphasized by the wet, sobbing coughs that trailed after.

"Ow… Shit! They got me. Actually got me," she said. I could barely hear her through her high-pitched wheezing. "With their shitty aim? Heh. Who would've thought, r-right?"

She reached out to me with one shaking hand. I couldn't help but bring up a trembling hand to signal her to keep her cover. Or maybe I was reaching back to her.

"Rookie. Hey, c-c'mon… Help…" she croaked, accompanied by a sickeningly dry whistling sound timing along with her own frantic breaths. "Please… h-help!"

Toph… she needed me. She saved my life before, I would've been dead without her. And now, she needed my help. It wasn't too late, maybe she could be saved. It was my turn to return the favor. I moved forward to do just that, my hand drifting towards the med-kit fashioned to the back of my utility belt, but a pinging noise from the mainframe prompted me to snap my head around to look once more, the text display on the screen telling me that the disk drive was ejected, but still contained the disk.

I held the empty disk case in my hands, swiveling my frustrated gaze from the valuable disk to agent Toph, her proud form crumpled inwards into a fetal position, shuddering as she tipped over to her side, grasping her crimson-stained chest, her gas mask and helmet lying next to her feet— the agent had ripped it away to try and get more oxygen in her deteriorating system, to try and survive.

Toph's black pixie-cut hair, drenched with sweat, swathed the sides of her face which, if not currently contorted in a tortured expression of pain, could have been quite strikingly pretty in other, more peaceful circumstances. My savior reached out at me once more, hot tears spilling from her wide, beautiful pale-green eyes, her crimson-sprayed lips pursing in a silent cry for help.

"Rook… ie…" she wheezed, the lethal whistling sound now prevalent in her voice. "Pleeeease..."

I reached out towards her again, this was terrible, she couldn't die like this, not like this, then I saw the BHSF troops silently filing in from the corridors into the front doorway, spreading into attack formation. Against my will, instead of going to her, I snatched the disk out of the mainframe, pressing it into its case, and snapped the case shut. I stared at it, incredulous.

I had just completed mission objective 1: To secure the files into the disk. Now I had to complete the second mission: To get the file back to Umbrella.

But what about agent Toph? What about my team? Toph wasn't dead yet, but she was mortally wounded and God, her face was so pale, she was definitely fading. The rest of my team, some of the agents scattered on the floor and the tables could have been still alive, could've been breathing, but there was no time to check. There was no time to help anymore. There was no time left at all.

The mission objective. It had to be completed. I had to finish it. If I didn't, this would all be for nothing. The mission objective had top priority over everything else. Including my team. And Toph.

"Ohh…" Toph croaked out, her unfocused eyes trained on me. With her vitality seeping from those eyes, her last act in life was to watch as I made my decision. I took one step back, paused, then took another, slinking away from her, away from the line of fire of the BHSF.

I almost, but not quite, missed Toph closing her eyes for the last time as her life drained completely away, her pale, bloody, cracked lips silently mouthing her final words: "…You selfish bastard."

I ran full-tilt out the back entrance and into the hallway, scanning for the door to the stairs, agent Toph's final words, her curse, digging deep into my soul, wrenching hold of my heart. As I barreled through the stair doors and sprinted my way up the stairs, the smattering footsteps of the BHSF troops hot on my tracks, I tried to reassure myself that there was no other way, that there had been no time, that there was nothing I could have possibly done for her. They were casualties of war, and Toph, though she fought her best, was just a casualty now. If I tried to help, if I tried to be a hero, if I stayed any longer than I did, I would've joined them in that blood-slicked room. I would've been just another casualty.

The assurances felt like hollow, false, flimsy excuses, but it was all I had in my defense. I ran through the helipad doorway, staggering out into the open, the Umbrella chopper shining in the sunlight like a miracle of God. At that moment, I had never seen something so beautiful. I ran towards it, heard the shouts of the BHSF troops behind me, and turned in an exhausted circle to face my enemies.

"I'm not gonna die," I coughed out breathlessly as my injured hand rifled through one of my pockets, taking out a fragment grenade. "You are."

I leveled my MP5 towards the cluster of the troops, and with great effort, I threw the grenade as the troops got into a firing rifle line, all of them hastily pointing their M16s my way.

But I was quicker, the muzzle of my gun following the arc of the frag grenade until it sank into their midst, and ignoring the throbbing pain in my shoulder, I pulled the trigger, hitting it directly, detonating the grenade. The BHSF even didn't stand a chance, every one of them were wiped out in the blast, all of the troops blown out of their smoking boots and landing on the floor in smoking, shredded heaps.

I stayed there as the chopper droned on behind me, hyperventilating in my mask. I moved to take it off, but ran my fingers over it instead, feeling the smooth black leather and the cold metal frames of the red lenses, and tried my best to slow my breathing down with deep breaths.

Aching, bleeding, and moving like a zombie, I hauled myself into the chopper, throwing myself bodily into the seats as I thrust my MP5 into the Alpha Team gun rack, ignoring it as it fell off and clanged solidly to the floor.

The pilot Night Hawk spared me a casual glance as he asked, "Anyone else coming?"

It took me a while to muster out, "No. It's just me. I'm the only one left in Alpha Team."

Night Hawk blinked slowly, tsk-tsking gently to himself, and said, "Is that so? How unfortunate."

The co-pilot, codenamed Boxer 3, regarded me with incredulous awe. He blurted out, "My God, man, I saw it. I saw it all. You took 'em down with one shot. An entire army, just like that, you just wasted 'em like they were nothin'. You ain't a rookie, man, you gotta be a ringer. I mean, you were like— you were channelin' the Grim Reaper out there or some shit… You were just like Death personified!"

Night Hawk turned in his seat and looked me over as he started the chopper, the chopper lifting into the air in a flourish.

"Just like Death, hmm? And you're the only one who survived? Just you, out of all those men," he said, slowly scanning me from head to toe.

Night Hawk's smile was dark and grim as he added, with a slight mocking tone, "Well, then. Welcome to Alpha Team, or what's left of it. It will be quite interesting to work with you… Mr. Death."

FIN.

NOTE: Shout-out to Chojutsuka for reading over this chapter--err, story. Thanks, yo!

So how was it, guys? Liked it? Hated it? Am I a total doddering idiot for posting it as a new story instead of a new chapter? Lemme know!

Er, why yes, I am indeed a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender... why do you ask?

Anyway... review, and thanks for reading!

PS. Thanks to Bio-Major Agent85 for his helpful criticism and ideas that I implemented on the revision. You're right, man, the battering ram was way too clunky, so I tried streamlining and modifying the ram so it had a bit more of a realistic, more mechanical use. This is way back then, they didn't have the nifty stuff we have now to precisely blow up shit...

As for backstory, I thought it might've been better to go into it like the standard Umbrella agent would... without much information, just a location, an item to retrieve, targets, etc. As you'd recall in Code Veronica, there was one memo from HUNK where he was a bit pissed that Alfred Ashford never told him the info of the stuff his team was retrieving for him, and wanting more info. I tried to play into that. Guess it didn't really work out that well.

And this is HUNK's FIRST mission. He hasn't had on-the-job training yet... just trained among the bioweapons in Rockfort, hence he's used to killing brainless undead minions, not live screaming humans. So I had HUNK comparing the moment with his training experiences in Rockfort to clear that up.

All in all, thanks for your review!