{Faster than a bullet train; She's like bang bang}
Blake had shot people through the head enough times to know that it was not something that was easy or even remotely possible to survive. Yet here she stood, gun pointed at the blonde in front of her, a thin trail of smoke snaking from the end of the silencer on her pistol as evidence of a bullet having just been fired. The same bullet that had sliced through the woman's head like butter and embedded itself somewhere deep in the polished wood of her desk. The one that should have killed her.
But the woman, Yang Xiao Long as her sources had told her when she had first taken on this mission, was sitting there in her chair, still upright, rolling her neck on her shoulders, unfazed by the bullet Blake had sent flying through her brain.
This was….a first.
Yang finally looked up at her, rubbing across the back of her neck. The corners of her mouth twitched, dancing on the line between smirking and smiling, her teeth peeking out from behind pink lips. Blake glanced up at her forehead, where the bullet should've exited in a bloody, gory mess.
There was no wound there.
Blake took a tentative step back, gun still raised, steadily leveled with lilac eyes, aimed for the space right between them. Her confusion and panic aside, Blake remained cool and collected. She couldn't allow her target to see her falter because she still had a chance to carry out her task. That is, whenever she figured out what the fuck was going on.
Well one thing was for certain. This wasn't in the file.
"Man. Almost forgot how much a bullet in your head jerks your neck around," Yang said, still massaging her neck. Her shoulders were lax and her slouched form lazy - she didn't see Blake as a threat, even in the face of eating another bullet. Blake pulled her thumb down on the hammer, purposefully letting her hear the click. It was meant as a warning, to maybe alert the blonde or make her stiffen in fear. It was an intimidation tactic she used more for prying information out of the tight-lipped rats and less on those she was meant to assassinate. But this situation seemed to be an exception and right now, Blake wanted answers.
"I shot you."
"I know. It's kind of hard to ignore a bullet tearing through your head."
Blake sneered and lunged forward, pressing the barrel to the mechanic's forehead. "You should be dead."
Even with the cold metal of the gun biting into her skin, Yang only smirked up at her, lilac eyes playful and shining. It irked her; she could feel her muscles tensing and her trigger finger twitching. A vein in her forehead was straining against her skin, protruding rather noticeably if Yang's delight was any indication. She had been ordered to kill her anyway, so shooting her wasn't the problem. Well, it was technically, but more of a "she doesn't drop dead when I pop a bullet in her skull" rather than the actual shooting part.
Her day had gone from routinely dull to frustratingly insane in a flash and a bang, and to top it all off she couldn't seem to wipe that irritating smirk off this bitch's face.
The dark-haired assassin shoved Yang away from her, knocking her chair back against the desk and sending stacks of paper all over the floor. Yang, who hadn't been anticipating the sudden motion, dropped her triumphant stance in favor of a more disoriented glazed over look. Blake smirked and let her gun fall to her side. It was a small victory.
"Mind telling me how you're still alive when I very clearly shot you fatally in the head? You know, something most people die from?"
She didn't receive an immediate answer. Not that she necessarily expected one, with her target still seeming dazed and out of focus. Even still, her question hanging unanswered in the still air bothered her, and out of habit she leveled her gun with the blonde, finger safely off the trigger but still close enough that, with her fast reflexes, she'd be able to shoot if called for. None of her missions had ever lasted as long as this one. She was renowned by her employers as a quick and silent assassin - in and out with no hassle or issues. To still be here, not only with her target still very much alive but also taunting her while she grew increasingly annoyed would surely tarnish her reputation and even possibly bring in less requests. Something she most definitely didn't want to happen, for it would not only mean less income, but it would be a hit to her pride.
"Answer me."
"Give a girl a break. Getting shot may not kill me, but it sure as hell scrambles some brain cells," she snapped, lilac eyes - which Blake noted with her keen eyes were tinted red now - narrowed up at her, all hints of jest gone. Good. It was about time she took this seriously.
"I'm about to scramble some more if you don't tell me what's going on."
Yang let out a sigh and leaned back in her chair, comfortably slouching like before. The red tint, Blake noticed, had faded away, leaving a lighter, more jaded look in her eyes. She raised her arms up, locking her hands behind her head before opening her mouth to speak. However, before even one utter of a sound passed her lips, her brow furrowed. She closed her mouth and straightened up, hands falling to her lap. Her gaze dropped to the floor for a split second before raising up to meet her own golden gaze.
"Who sent you to kill me?"
Blake raised an eyebrow. "Come again?"
"Well….I don't know you. So I don't see why you would have any real motive to want me dead; you just don't seem the type." She nodded to her gun. "And that silencer. Most people who are rather inexperienced with killing don't normally think about taking such precautions. So you gotta be a...what is it….an assassin right?"
The girl was observant, more so than Blake had previously thought. Her eyes narrowed, lips pressing together as resolve for staying silent. But Yang had taken her silence as the answer to her question and that irritating smirk found its way to her lips once more.
"Thought so. So if you're an assassin, who hired you to kill me? Who ain't man enough to come off me himself?"
"I'm afraid I can't disclose that information with you."
Yang nodded understandingly, probably having expected to be shut down. But then she snapped her fingers and her eyes lit up. "It's Charles isn't it?"
Blake blinked. "Pardon?"
But the blonde didn't seem to hear her, leaning back in her chair again and rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "Jeez, I let my dog poop in his yard a few times and suddenly he wants my head on a stick? What a prick."
Caught off guard, Blake lowered her gun again, letting it hang limply at her side. Not being in total control of her weapon went against all her training and she could almost feel her body reacting negatively. But currently she was too stunned to care. Just….who was this girl? Her grip tightened on her gun again as she regained her composure. Maybe she really had scrambled a few brain cells…
By now Yang had gone off into a tangent, listing names Blake didn't recognize nor cared to know about people who could've possibly wanted her dead, all for petty reasons. The lady next door for hitting her mailbox that one time, that one guy at the supermarket she punched in the face for looking at her chest for one second too long, that kid from eighth grade that she gave a wedgie….It was endless. Their conversation had turned a complete 180 and, frankly, Blake was getting a little sick of all the nonsense that was currently going on. Right now she should be at home, taking a bath after phoning her employer (and long-time friend to boot) about how she had completed the job. She should be getting ready to crawl into bed with a good book and not dealing with some blonde buffoon who didn't care to notice the severity of danger her life was in...or would have been if not for the freaky undead shit she was pulling.
Something in Blake snapped.
"Weiss Schnee!"
Her outburst resonated off the plaster walls of the small office they were in and echoed in the large garage connected to it by the open doorway. Yang had halted in her babbling and was blinking lazily up at Blake. The two stared each other down, silence hanging between them with the only sound the soft whirring of Yang's desktop computer.
Blake's shoulders trembled with unbriddled anger, her breathing irregular and her heart pounding. She had finally lost her composure, the stress and insanity of the situation too much to bear, and had completely ditched protocol and her training. Tossed it in the trash. Shot it off in a rocketship to space. Because right now she just did not care. She was confused, frustrated, and frankly just flat out exhausted from having to deal with any of this in the first place.
However, she noticed that once she had shouted her employer's name, recognition flashed across those lilac eyes before they had dulled with her impassive expression. So Weiss was someone that Yang knew for sure, but before tonight her friend had never mentioned the mechanic. Surely Weiss would've told her...well, something about her? A new flash of annoyance heated up within her at being kept in the dark about something by someone she considered close to her. Weiss had some explaining to do.
"Weiss...Schnee?"
Blake nodded.
The tension in the air deflated when Yang released a loud sigh, hand reaching up to casually fluff her hair. "Is this for last week?"
Blake tilted her head. Last week?
Without any prompt from her, Yang continued. "Man I know she's a total prude but holy shit she can't get pissed every single time I catch her smooching my sister. I mean, fucking hell they're getting married in a few weeks...it's honestly nothing new at this point." Yang shook her head and although her tone conveyed annoyance and disdain there was a fond smile on her face. "That halfpint dork."
And there goes the last bit of sense in the evening.
"I'm….lost," admitted Blake, deflating in defeat. "What the hell is going on?"
Instead of answering, Yang shoved some more papers aside, a few scraps sliding to the floor with the papers from earlier, and tapped the clear space. When Blake didn't move, she tapped the desk more urgently, inclining her head toward Blake.
"You might wanna sit down for this one."
"So you're….immortal?"
Yang puckered her lips before shrugging. "Ehhhh….in the most simplified terms, yes."
They were both still in Yang's office, Yang seated in her desk chair leaning back with her feet propped up on her desk, right beside where Blake was sitting cross-legged. The room was still rather dim, it still being night with only a meager desk lamp to provide any sort of light. The whir of the the computer had softened, the monitor black with sleep. Outside Blake could pick up the quiet chirps of summer crickets and the shift of leaves in the warm night breeze.
But right here, inside this office, her mind was reeling. Part of it could be pinned on sleep deprivation, but she was absolutely sure that a majority of it had to do with the information she had just been given. Something that had very conveniently been left out of the file.
The woman in front of her could not die.
Or…..so she said. The reasonable part of her denied such insanity, saying immortality was something saved for fiction and fantasy because they couldn't actually exist. Yet the more open (and admittedly very tired) part of her accepted this without question. It would certainly explain the lack of a gaping hole in the blonde's head and her ability to still speak and move after being shot point blank.
The conflicting sides of her own argument angrily clashed within her, her logic desperately trying to defend itself against what she had actually seen and experienced. Immortality, something that many wished to achieve but knew to be impossible in practice, was sitting right in front of her in the form of a impish, busty blonde, dressed in dirty coveralls. If there was a picture of what a stereotypical immortal looked like, this girl missed it by a longshot.
Blake leaned back on the desk, using her hands to prop her up. "'Simplified terms'? You mean it gets even more complicated?"
"A little bit." Great. Exactly what her night needed.
Pinching the bridge of her nose she left out a long, weary sigh. When she had asked for answers this was not what she was expecting. "Lay it on me."
"Okay….Well to start off I'm not totally immortal. It's just a bit difficult to die in certain ways. I haven't been living for centuries surviving on the blood of virgins or anything." Yang cracked a smile and looked expectantly at Blake, but the assassin only returned her grin with an impassive expression. Yang immediately dropped her smile. "Right. Not funny. What I mean is, I can die of old age….at least I'm pretty sure I can. I was born twenty-two years ago. I'm not some kind of undead movie monster."
"So then," cut in Blake, "You're….not….immortal?"
"Jeez. For some trained ninja you really have a hard time paying attention."
Blake frowned. "I am not a ninja."
"Whatever you say," the blonde sing-songed. "But anyways, no, I'm not immortal. At least that's what the scientists told me. I can still die of old age and choice other ways, but getting shot in the head? Nope."
She lamely traced her finger down the barrel of her gun. Well this job was definitely a bust. Her target couldn't even die. Out of all the abnormalities and strangeness that came with her career, this one surely took the cake before piledriving it into a brick wall. Meeting an immortal is something she had never imagined doing in all her years, much less being ordered to kill one. This wouldn't count against her, right?
"Does Weiss know about...you know...whatever this is?"
"The whole 'can't die' thing? Oh yeah, of course. I don't think it'd bode well for her and my sister's marriage if she had me killed." A sudden thought occurred to the blonde and she slid her feet off the desk, leaning forward. "Although I gotta admit, even for Weiss this is...strange."
The only thing Blake saw strange about this situation was how Weiss seemed to love wasting her time. Why send her after a target that clearly can't die? And on top of that, her future sister-in-law? Weiss Schnee was an odd woman sometimes with a short temper to boot, but she'd never would waste Blake's time like this. They were friends first and foremost, but Weiss wasn't the type of girl to play pranks on her friends, and especially not in such a dire way as compromising her sanity and job. Plus, Weiss wasn't petty. Getting half-hearted revenge using someone else to do the work for her just wasn't her style.
"Are you saying that she…?" she trailed off, frowning at the revelation.
"Had a motive? Yeah, probably." Yang put her fingers on her chin, tapping thoughtfully. "But what kind of motive drives her to hire some strange assassin chick to come and try and murder me when she knows I…" She halted in her mutterings, blinking once, twice, thrice before shaking her head. Her eyes drifted up to meet Blake's, scrutinizing her, mouth twisted in contemplation. They dipped down, running down her body, all the way to her crossed legs and back up, examining her in full as if seeing her in a new light.
Blake squirmed. She wasn't used to being the one analyzed. The role reversal made her feel open and vulnerable, something she hadn't felt in a long time.
Eventually Yang settled back on her face, eyebrows hidden beneath her bangs and teeth gnawing on her lip.
"She. Did. Not."
A slender dark eyebrow quirked at the disbelief spread across Yang's face. "She didn't what?"
Grumbling to herself, Yang stood up, pushing the chair away from her with such force that it hit the wall, the soft leather making a rather pathetic thump against the plaster. The sudden movement kicked up Blake's instincts and her hand was wrapped around her gun, pointed at the blonde's chest. She knew at this point it wouldn't do her much good, but it would definitely stun her if Blake needed to make a quick getaway. Her legs unfolded and she jumped into a crouch on the desk, ready to push off to make a break for it.
It wouldn't be necessary. Yang was too absorbed in her mumbled soliloquies, her tone inflecting with the occasional curse word. Blake watched her quietly, analyzing her movements - the way the muscles in her forearms moved with each clench of her fists, her golden threads of hair ensnaring her fingers when she ran them through their curls, how her jaw became taut and her brows furrowed with each uttered curse. Just from what she had observed from tonight, Yang seemed a very easy-going person, the type who could talk easily and even jest with someone who had attempted to kill her. Yet her fuse seemed rather short when it came to the Schnee heiress. She didn't show blatant anger, but more of a mild annoyance and, right now, frustration.
If anything, Blake would categorize this as a temper tantrum.
Finally, Yang stopped in her frantic cursing and twitchy movements, releasing a large breath. Lilac eyes lifted to meet melted gold and in them was...an apology? Not moving an inch and gun still raised, Blake tentatively asked what was going on.
Yang scratched the back of her head and smiled sheepishly. "So, uh...you're gonna laugh about this I swear." One look at Blake's guarded expression dashed that hope in a heartbeat. Dropping her hand to her side, Yang sighed. "Okay look. So my sister's wedding is in a couple weeks, right? And she's been really upset 'cause, well….I don't have a date. And of course Ms. Fucking-Shortstack-Who-Appeases-Her-Girlfriend-24/7 doesn't want Ruby being upset on what's supposed to be their perfect day so...she's been setting me up on a bunch of blind dates. Which, ya know, I refuse to even go to because it's all ridiculous and I guess Weiss got fed up with me and…" She trailed off, looking even more sheepish and, for the first time since Blake had walked in that room, her boastful demeanor seemed to be missing.
The pieces clicked in Blake's head and she felt a heat bubbling in her stomach and rising to her face. "Are you insinuating that Weiss set us up?"
Yang crossed her arms and turned to face the side wall in a poor attempt to hide her blush. The red tips of her ears poked out from her mass of yellow hair regardless. Blake felt the heat travel to her own ears and realized only when she heard the clatter of her gun that she had dropped it on the ground.
There was a short pause as both seemed to stew in their own thoughts in regards to this new revelation, both blushing profusely. It was one thing to be set up on a blind date but this? This was a whole new level of ridiculous.
Her training did not prepare her for this. Any of this.
Finally Yang glanced at her from the corner of her eye. Her gaze was contemplative, lips puckered in thought. "Hey...what are your rates?"
Blake straightened up and slid down to the floor. "This for Weiss?"
A curt nod. Bending down, Blake picked up her gun, adjusting the silencer. With a smirk and mischievous glint in her eyes, she raised it next to her face, tip pointed at the ceiling.
"I'll do it for free."
A/N: I had a really random idea one night where I thought "What if Blake was hired to kill Yang but Yang is like 'Surprise bitch I can't die'". So this happened.
I may or may not write more for this later depending on the feedback I get for this one. If people like it I'll do a few more oneshots. If not, oh well.
Also, just to be clear they are not really going to kill Weiss. Just to be sure.