by:
Branw3nDisclaimer:
This came to me while I was viewing MTV and happened to come upon an ad for that A. Banderas and L. Lui movie, 'Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever'. This is loosely based on that flick and since I've never seen it, I can't possibly own it. All characters that seem familiar are not in any way mine. It all belongs to J.K. Rowling and the creator of Ecks vs. Sever.Summary:
She was an assassin, a cold, heartless, menacing killer. He was an Auror, enlisted to subdue her before she executes her mission; destroy the most influential and important man in the Wizarding World. (l/j, AU-ish)AU
-because although this is an l/j fic, it will be set in 2002 or sometime in the now. And also because the Wizarding World has incorporated Muggle technology into their system, especially used by the Aurors.Prologue
The incessant waiting disturbed him to no end. The suffocatingly strong scent of artificially manufactured fragrance of lemon worsened his migraine. Office buildings were all alike. The steel walls and framework exuded a hostility that the rich oak doors and exotic tapestries tried so desperately to ensconce.
He tugged at his tie, nervous, his azure robes uncomfortable. It was scalding, though he knew that the air conditioning was turned on high. He glanced nervously at the three surrounding people beside him; two men and a woman.
They wore matching robes, their uniform. All dark black. The men were cousins, tall muscular, dark hair and eyes, sinister. The woman, though, was the complete opposite. Lean, petite with enormous sapphire eyes, pouty lips and platinum blonde hair which she wore in a short bob with bangs long enough to cover her eyes.
They were his bodyguards, the female seemed out of place and unsuitable yet he had seen what she could do. She could take out an armed man in less time than it took to blink.
Ding.
He sighed, relieved, the more he stayed in one place, the easier a target he was for those lunatics who wanted him dead.
J. Elliot Sheridan was an important and rich man. He had appeared from nowhere and quickly rose in standing in the Wizarding Society, his money talked and anyone who was anyone bowed down to it.
Sure, his Galleons were made from the blood of innocents and through swindling big time crime lords and the like, but he didn't care. He deserved it. With his smarts, he actually cornered the black market and those pretentious and self-assured rats in the underground had never even suspected him.
They boarded the elevator and he felt the claustrophobia he had tried so hard to suppress consume him. He had this eternal fear of elevators since he was a child. He had seen this one movie and he had from then on feared that the cable that held the car up would sever and he would drop to his death.
The doors closed and John pressed the cold metal button that would take them to the twenty-fifth floor.
He unconsciously held his breath and directed his smarmy gaze on his tiny bodyguard.
What was her name again?
People like him were just not supposed to speak to stock under their employ. It was a general unspoken rule, but this one was different, beautiful. And he loved gorgeous women. He took them to his bed nightly. This one would be no different.
He could sense her urge to squirm beneath his gaze but she kept her professionalism and disregarded his wanton gaze.
Then it happened.
The cart abruptly stopped then blacked out, engulfing them in a sucking veil of darkness. His eyes widened. What more would go wrong?
Henry incessantly pressed the emergency button as his relative grasped at the fire engine red telephone, yelling into it.
"The line's cut, sir," John finally concluded, setting the phone down with no less asperity when he picked it up.
He glared at the simpleton. As if he didn't know that. He gave Henry a sharp glance and received a helpless shrug in response. He whipped his head towards the security camera located above their heads and glared. It was not functioning as could be expected.
He heard a soft cry of pain from one of the men at his side and he nearly expected Henry to suck at his finger in pain from pushing that damn button too much.
What he saw frightened him, yet did not surprise him at the very least. He only wondered why it hadn't happen any sooner.
Henry fell face forward onto the floor and he could hear a sickening crack as the man's nose broke as it impacted with the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the cause of the bulky man's fall. A bullet hole at the back of head, directly opposite his forehead.
"Oh, God."
He spun and saw John grab furiously at the pistol attached to a holster on his hip but it was too late. A bullet hit him squarely on his forehead, right between his eyes.
"Shit," he redirected his gaze towards the direction from where the bullet came and his countenance paled as the slip of a girl who was his bodyguard lowered the pistol and regarded him with an expressionless stare.
She pocketed the gun and he saw this as an opportunity to bargain. "Look, I don't know what you want but I know you want me dead. But whatever your employer's offering you, I'll pay twice the amount. You know I can, you've seen my accounts. I'll triple it, even."
He was frantic and she could smell the fear on him. Yet, she was unfazed. Money was not an option, never was. Even if she was what he thought all of her kind were, she knew he'd never fulfil his promise. He'd hand her over to the Aurors the moment they exited the cart, that is if she didn't kill him first.
But that would cause to much of a commotion, she'd be caught in seconds. She wasn't as stupid as he would like to think she was.
"So, what about it?"
She conventionally removed the scimitar and cinquedea as if she had done this before, he could see the casualness in her movements, her expertise, an aptitude that her seraphic features belied.
And then he knew it. He was dead. Destined to die in this cart by her hands. The entire thing was planned. The meeting, the blackout, the disconnected emergency systems, her job application…
And he could think no more for fear paralyzed him.
Then she moved, her actions graceful and choreographed, like a dance. Her tiny frame was an advantage in the limited room that the elevator cart allotted. She was fast, her speed was inhuman and borne of years of training.
When she rammed the cinquedea into his heart, he could not have tracked her movements if he had even tried. The last thing he saw before his death was her face, placid as ever. It frightened him, added even more to his fear of his death.
She was human, he could feel the heat emanating off of her, she was no android nor a genetically altered human, not even under the Imperius curse. She was a cold, unfeeling bitch, trained in the art of death and surrounded by it.
She stared down at him, her face blank, there was no contempt, pity nor did she revel in his agony. She did not care and that made her the best assassin he had ever encountered. She would tell no one of her employer nor back out.
She was the perfect killer.
She pulled the sword from his heart and brought it down sideways across his neck, decapitating him. She would rather have not, too gory and suspicious, but it was what was called for.
Orders.
She took the head by the hair and placed it in a canvas bag she had hid in her trench coat. The coppery scent of blood did not unnerve her, the smell was too constant a presence in her life that she was as accustomed to it as she was to the moon.
Strapping the bag across her chest, she pressed her back to one side of the cart and ran, fast, kicking her leg out and using her momentum to propel herself up the small square chute that led out of the cart and on top of it.
She grasped at its edges with both gloved hands, falling just short of completely escaping the tiny room. Without so much as a huff, she pulled herself up and onto the steel roof.
Grasping at the small rubber ball in her pocket, she drew back her arm and threw it, aiming for the small hatch which was rarely used and if so, only utilized by elevator technicians and led to the building's roof.
She waited patiently, hoping the soft yet resonating sound the ball made while bouncing off the walls wouldn't be detected from outside. A few seconds passed and she deftly captured the tiny sphere, pocketing it.
A moment or two later, the hatch opened with an irritating noise borne only of unused and unoiled hinges. A shaft of light poured through the gap and she squinted, momentarily blinded, yet anxious.
Then she could see it. An unassuming and ordinary in any sense of the word leather backpack. It fell towards her and she adroitly caught it, hugging it to her chest as she rummaged through it, searching its contents.
She found them buried under a pile of armory. Red metal rope clamps, just large enough for her hands to slip through. Palming the pair, she jammed in her own bag into it, taking care not to break the decapitated head's skull. It would be too messy and she had no time to clean up the evidence.
Shouldering the pack she aptly locked the clamps in place, ritualistically extending her right arm, locking the right clamp in place, releasing the left, shimmying up the length of cable and locking it in place, all the while releasing the right one to move up another foot.
She did this without thinking. She didn't have to. She had been trained to do all this as a child. Her trade was part of a family legacy, she knew nothing else and would never know better. She was the youngest of a brood of three. Her only brother the oldest and the only one apart from her father and sister who thought of the vocation as horrendous, though, unlike Petunia, he had never backed out of his obligation.
He had been the only person brave enough to even attempt to contradict her father's teachings, his, all of their, principles.
He lost, yet he had tried, which was more than she could ever do. She had been taught never to talk back to her parents, but if she could, she would not have known what to say, and still did not know the error of her ways.
Killing was natural for her, she was the cold-blooded wretched excuse of a human being to most she had met. Yet their thoughts were not entirely wrong and she did not blame them for the curses they threw at her, she killed all of her casual acquaintances. She never had friends and those she wished to accept she was unsure she could trust.
Ridding her mind of all of her fanciful thoughts, she unhooked one clamp from the thick cable and dug her fingers into the opening on the roof above her head. She grasped at the cable with her thighs and released the other clamp then having her other hand follow first.
She pulled herself up and was not surprised to feel larger albeit leather sheathed fingers grab onto her wrists and aid her in pulling herself completely out of the shaft.
She looked into strange golden brown eyes and nodded appreciatively at him. He quickly slid the duct close and stood, turning towards a tiny cement shack that stood to their right.
She placed the clamps back into the bag and turned to face the corrugated metal roofed shack and breathed a sigh of relief as their other associate exited the shed, slamming the door in her wake, nearly causing the door to separate from its hinges.
She afforded the pair a grin that suited her flushed cheeks, which she had attained from hastening up the forty-floor building without causing a sound in less than five minutes.
They both nodded at her and turned around, anticipating their getaway vehicle to arrive any second from now.
A strong gust of wind blew over the building's rooftop as the trio stood directly at the heart of the edifice's heliport. That same gale knocked off her companion's long, wavy auburn wig to reveal lustrous light blonde hair tied up in a complicated updo to prevent tendrils of hair to give her away.
She decided to take the advice from her cohort as she took the two-inch hairpins from her hair and shook it out in the wind, her straight blonde hair a golden trail behind her.
She removed her blonde wig, taking care to undo the bobby pins that held the wig in place. She did not tie her hair beneath the wig, and as soon as she removed the wig, her crimson locks tumbled to her shoulder blades.
Simultaneously, they both removed the contact lenses from their eyes. An azure color to hide her emerald pair and for her associate a dark chestnut that concealed her verdant orbs. They threw the lenses to the floor and crushed the glass with the heel of their boots, leaving no trace of what had once been.
The wigs were of no concern, they left no traces on them, unlike the optical glass, they would not leave any DNA traces for the law to gather and convict them for.
Though, it was a precautionary measure for they both didn't exist.
The humming resonance of a helicopter's mechanism alerted them of the arrival of their escape vehicle. All three watched in silence as it neared them, a cable-roped ladder with wooden steps tumbling from the chopper's door.
Her comrade mounted first as it reached their position, its pilot assaying to keep the ungraceful and difficult to pilot conveyance steady. Her blonde accomplice climbed up twelve steps, leaving room for her and her male companion to board.
He went first, imitating their confederate's actions. Then she boarded, leaving two steps below her, securing her hold on the cordage. The helicopter continued forward, taking them from the scene of the crime.
She reveled in the wind's presence in her hair and face because for once, she was not required to be ruthless here. In the air, she could relive her childhood notions of sprouting her own wings and take flight, soaring with the birds over the clouds.
Because in that moment, she was not the savage assassin who was named 'the Slayer'. She was just Lily Evans.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A/N: Okay, so a pretty boring read at the start, but I promise it'll get interesting! I'm trying to experiment with a more serious fic and hey, I hope this turns out all right. Kinda irritating, isn't it? Me never saying who her two companions are. Well, if you've read my Lily, the Vampire Slayer fic, you'd know these two guys pretty well.
James' part is coming next. I'm still unsure as to where I should place Peter. I don't hate the character, though. IN my little head, I've developed this grudging liking towards him. STUPID!
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