I saw them coming and I ran, fast, hard. Everyone in the know knew those two. Or at least of them. Uchiha Itachi, Hoshigame Kisame. They were an unbeatable team, tracking down rogues and bringing them in was their calling. On sight I knew their business- and that I didn't have a prayer.
So I ran. I sped away through the streets at speeds no one but the Enhanced could follow, bounding roof to roof and awning to pavement. I ran. Out of my mind with fear and all logic lost. I ran, forcing my limbs to speeds that I had never reached before, had never before known was possible. The wind was my guide, where it blew, I followed. It had never steered me wrong before.
I ended on a street, the last running along the edge of town, a boundary between city and forest. The wind was confused. It blew west, I ran west. It switched east, I ran east. The cycle was repetitive until the winds converged together, no visible sign to follow. I halted, watching the trees toss restlessly, the limbs bewildered. And looking up I accepted my fate with a bittersweet smile. It had been a long run, and there were so many things I still wanted to do, see, experience. But my time was up.
Unsurprised I turned to meet Kisame's charge grabbing his wrist before the long charged, dagger clenched in his hand penetrated my abdomen. "Don't. I'll come peacefully." He eyed me, dark orbs boring into my own sapphire ones before nodding.
"Itachi?" The word drew a glorified grunt in response and I peered through the window to my one room apartment – it figures I'd run for home when danger loomed- to see the dark haired figure poring over my bookcase of all things. He pulled books off the shelf and oddly I didn't flush in embarrassment when I saw the covers as each one was dropped to the floor.
Kisame, impatient to the last grabbed my wrist and tugged, leaving his partner to catch up when he was finished.
The recycle plant was bare, all steel and bars and cold, so very cold, both in temperature and atmosphere. Kisame went down a hall to collect the bounty while Itachi waited with me, a small frown creasing his brow. As footsteps neared to take me toward my end, two slim, pale hands cupped my cheeks, turning my attention to deep, confused, sad, red eyes as a foreign forehead lay against mine.
"I love you." Moisture, if it could have, would no doubt have welled up in my slit orbs and I hoped to any higher power that my gratitude showed in them.
"Liar." Leaning up I stole a kiss from that blank face, a chaste, barely there touch of the lips. I pulled away and was already two steps across the lobby when my Charon arrived, wheeling a chair that would be my boat to the end. Accepting, blank, empty, lost, I sat in it inner lids blinking as we passed through sterile halls and doors to the plant.
I was suspended in liquid, the acid stripping synthetic flesh from my metal bones, turning green as the solution did what it was meant to. I didn't hurt, merely itched as I was stripped bare and withdrawn. I felt nothing as they harvested my W.A.R.T.S and placed the manmade organs in shiny metal trays. I watched, orbs empty as they scraped the limp gold strands that had always crowned my head and threw them away like trash.
And I died. Stripped and pillaged and raped for progress, research. Because I malfunctioned. Because I lived, thought, wanted, dreamed… I was defective.