SUPERNOVA
DISCLAIMER: Realized I forgot to put this in last chappie. My bad. In any case, I'm not Anthony Horowitz...duh.
CHAPTER TWO
ANGER MANAGEMENT
Alex saw the gunman when it was almost too late. He dived to the floor as fifteen rounds emptied themselves into his door, right where his head had been a microsecond ago. The cracks resonated through his skull, and he silently willed Jack not to come upstairs. She'd be hurt for sure.
"Face meh loike a man, boy!" grunted the assassin, firing again. Alex rolled to the side and sprang to his feet.
"That's a paradox. Obviously, they didn't choose you for your brains," Alex wanted to say, but didn't. Instead, he dived behind his bed at such an angle that the killer couldn't see he was reaching under it for something he'd thrown under there when he was small, a toy that might save his life. He found it and was relieved to see it hadn't broken.
He jumped up swiftly, moving towards the window, zigzagging back and forth to make it harder for the man to hit him. He kicked the glass aside and leaped onto the tree, dropping in a controlled fall until he hit one of the lowest branches, taking the impact on the balls of his feet. Yes, he had the angle he needed now.
He brought up his old BB gun and fired.
But not at the assassin.
He emptied the old toy onto the thick branch the masked man was standing on, perforating it through. He waited for a second, dodging the killer's now-sporadic bullets. The branch, however, didn't seem to be breaking…
It must need some extra weight.
Alex jumped up, using stray branches to give himself momentum, until he landed powerfully on the limb, startling the man so much he didn't even shoot him. The branch broke, but Alex was forewarned. He grabbed onto the tree trunk as the assassin fell, yelling loudly.
Alex dropped onto a stable branch and grinned down at the unconscious gunman. "If I said I was just going out on a limb here, would you write me off as cliché?"
Jack chose that moment to rush upstairs, a boning knife held high above her head in a hurriedly assumed, rather cheesy karate pose. When she got to the window and saw Alex climbing casually back up to his room, and the assassin lying insensate in her garden, she nearly fainted, but recovered when her uninjured friend made it back through the window.
"Alex!" she cried, dusting him off in a frenzy. "You could have been killed!"
"Like that works on me anymore," replied the teenager somewhat bitterly. So some gang—probably Scorpia—had tried to kill him for a reason that would surely be linked to MI6 or one of the other merciless, rival secret services of the world. If past experiences were any evidence, this would surely lead to some new mission from one of the aforementioned top-secret agencies. So much for a quiet birthday.
"Tell you what. I'll phone the police, and then we'll go to Nike like I promised—"
"No, we won't. Someone from MI6 will come with the police once they hear that this situation involved me, and I'll be spirited away to the Royal & General and be blackmailed into some new, practically impossible assignment, during which I will have to stay alive, kill the bad guys, and save the world, all without a weapon," yelled Alex angrily, stalking towards the door.
"Alex, do this, Alex, do that! I wonder what Alan Blunt does every morning when he wakes up. Does he ask himself, How will I manipulate Alex Rider today? Does he ever wonder why I seriously considered joining Scorpia? Because of them! All they do is try and force me to do what they want, even as they lie through their teeth to me, even if it's supposed to be too dangerous! I was shot and nearly killed a few months ago, and what's their new mission for me? Go into freaking space! Just you wait; they'll want me to stop the apocalypse single-handedly soon. It's all because of my stupid family! My dad and uncle were spies, so I get forced to do all sorts of crap when they're killed! And do I ever get a choice? Could I choose whether I wanted to investigate the Stormbreakers? No! They'd have deported you, imprisoned you, if I hadn't done what they wanted! And—"
"Alex," interrupted Jack.
Alex continued his rant without stopping. "—and I save thousands of British schoolchildren, earning myself a pat on the back, and nothing more! When I was trying to convince Sabina I was a spy, they kept up the stupid Royal & General act and made me look like a fool! I may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, but when I'm really in danger at Point Blanc, do they come and take me? Nope! I have to escape myself! When I think Damian Cray is up to something? I'm thrown out onto the street! When—"
"Alex," inserted Jack, more urgently this time. "Behind you."
Alex turned around to see Mrs. Jones and Alan Blunt standing in the doorway. They both looked rather shell-shocked. Blunt was the first to recover.
"Well, my boy, I never knew you had such angst in you," he remarked thoughtfully.
"I'm not your boy, and I never will be your agent," said Alex vehemently, still furious. "I'll leave the country if that's what it takes to get away from you people."
"Alex!" Jack interjected, horrified, but everyone ignored her—the MI6 agents because she was a mundane not worthy of their attentions, Alex because he was concentrating on working out the precise angle of a kick that would break Blunt's nose, and the K.O.'ed guy because, well, he had been K.O.'ed.
"Is there a reason you're in our house? Isn't there a law against trespassing? Or does that not apply to super-special agents like you?"
Blunt pointed to the window, where several police cars were visible. "I think our reason is quite apparent."
"I don't give a damn what you think," muttered Alex, and crossed his arms.
"So it seems you've had another attempt on your life," stated Mrs. Jones, speaking for the first time as she unwrapped a peppermint.
"Thanks, Captain Obvious, for that sagacious observation. And guess what? It's your fault again. You remember the time I was shot on your freaking doorstep—"
"I never said it wasn't our fault," she said coolly, examining the bullet holes in his closet door. "The man used an AK-47?"
"Yes," replied Alex tersely.
"He seemed to have wanted to kill you the same way Gregorovich did your uncle in," she remarked, cold and businesslike.
Alex did not like the way Mrs. Jones talked about the late Ian Rider—so unfeelingly, insensitively. "Yeah, well, he could've been from Scorpia. They train them all with the same techniques."
"He could have been," was her only reply.
"Okay, so you've figured out someone is trying to kill me. Are you going to bail on me for, what, the third time, and leave me to fend for myself?"
"Of course not," Blunt grunted. "We've got an assignment for you. Come with us to the Royal & General."
Alex turned to Jack. "See? I told you they would do this." He spoke to the agents. "I don't want your assignment. You can take it back and go to hell with it."
"Alex," chided Jack in a whisper.
"That's a shame. I heard that your friend Sabina Pleasure has been traveling back and forth between here and the States quite often. Such a shame if something rather incriminating—drugs, perhaps—were to turn up in her luggage when she comes here next. Her reputation shattered forever. Thrown out on the street by her parents. Perhaps she really would turn to drugs to escape from such a hell. And it'd all be your fault, my dear boy."
"Who do you think you are?" asked Alex dangerously, walking closer to Blunt. "How dare you even think about ruining her life like that?"
"I—"
Alex punched Blunt square in the face before he could reply. He stepped over the fallen man and closed his eyes briefly, running his hand over his face. They'd forced him yet again into some desperate mission. There was no end to it, was there? There was no choice. They wouldn't let him stop. He'd keep working for these ruthless people until the day he died—and what with the missions they were giving him, that date probably wasn't too far off. He had to take their stupid assignment, or else they'd shatter Sabina's life to pieces. And when the next evil mastermind decided to destroy the world, they'd blackmail him into stopping the conspiracy. It was a deadly loop of lies, deceit, and defeat.
He turned to Mrs. Jones, who had a look of knowing smugness on her face.
"I'll take the job."
A/N: -sigh- Poor Alex. Those MI6 buttholes are just so dang manipulative. I had fun with the rant though…third chapter will be up real soon. It involves Alex acting conceited and sarcastic as well as kicking a security guard in the balls and telling Mrs. Jones to screw herself as well as some fun foreshadowing :)
REVIEW REPLY TIME! HOORAY!
(I love reviews. Hint hint.)
Slytherite: Hey there! Why thank you. Nope, this time, the assassination failed epically. Yeah, the Wikipedia isn't that great…so read the books! They're awesome! (And drool-worthy Alex Pettyfer in the movie! :D) Um, yeah…he's a teenage British orphan spy…that is, MI6, the CIA, and the Australian Secret Service forced him to work for them six or seven times, following the murder of his spy!Uncle Ian and his spy!Dad and his…nurse!Mom, Helen. His parents, actually, were killed when he was a baby, by his godfather, spy!evil!Ash, who's basically Sirius, minus the whole wizard thing and the fact that he works for Da Ebil Organization of Death…AKA Scorpia, who nearly killed Alex several times, might I add. Sabina Pleasure, who is mentioned here a couple times, is his girlfriend who, sadly, moved to 'Frisco. I'm not a big shipper of AxS, but it's practically the only canon pairing, besides Wolf (an SAS soldier) and Jack (who called him hunky in the movie). Anyway, Jack isn't quite the mother figure…she's twenty-eight or something, but they're more like siblings or best friend. She used to be his housekeeper/babysitter, but became his guardian when his uncle was killed by the Scorpiaminion!Russian!assassin!Yassen Gregorovich, or "Assassin Yassen" as I like to say :P And then, of course, Yassen goes and saves Alex's life, like, a million times, before an evil pop star blows up Air Force One and shoots Yassen dead because Yassen didn't kill Alex, because Yassen and Alex's dad John were BFFs when John infiltrated Scorpia and was commanded to train Yassen…and John saved Yassen's life on a mission, too. In any case, Yassen didn't kill Alex because, like I said, Yassen and John were best friends, and because John saved Yassen's life, so he felt he owed it to Alex to save his life…albeit several times. Some people feel this warrants Alex/Yassen shipping, but that's…no. Just no. You know I support a lot of canon slash/femmeslash ships -pokes A Great and Terrible Beauty, HP, and Tamora Pierce- and some noncanon –cough-Rodolphus/Rabastan, Morzan/Galbatorix -cough- ANYWAY, that Twilight fandom rant…um…the first chappie is ten pages long, and it isn't done…so…yeah. READ THESE BOOKS (AND WATCH THE MOVIE)!
ToiletFacility: -cackles evilly- I would give a lot to see Alex Pettyfer without a shirt XD JKJK.
TheNotedMusician: Yes, I am. Thank you for noticing :)
Eric J. Alderson: Ha ha, yes. Well…it won't all be Scorpia…there's a new faction on the rise…and Blunt, boy oh boy, was he fun to write.
R&R!
Sienna