The mission is simple, just a protection detail. It's probably more for show than anything, considering who she is. Just another stage. She's done a dozen like this since being let out of her sandbox to play with others. They don't give her anything too dangerous because they know that she'll likely do something they won't like. These filler missions aren't that bad though. At least they're something and they keep her occupied. If she's busy with the job, with the future, then she can't think about the past.
Jyn quietly begins to rebuild a life outside of the job, though it's still a relatively empty one. She doesn't have a group of friends that she goes out with for drinks on down time. No hobbies outside of learning new weapons and tech and sparring to speak of. There aren't any photos hanging on the walls of her small apartment, no personal decorations to give away a personality, no potted plants to take care of, nothing to suggest that the place is anything more than somewhere to sleep and eat.
News on the television drones on in the background, like she's waiting to hear something that S.H.I.E.L.D. won't alert her to first. What, she isn't sure. It tires her to be honest, all the death and unrest that she can't fix, all the people she can't save in a country far away that her own doesn't seem to care about. She thinks about asking questions - demanding to be deployed - but there is no simple answer for these problems. It makes her wonder if her sacrifice did any good at all. There's always another war to be fought.
She's standing silently to the side of the stage, Shara's humored voice crackling in the earpiece as she wanders through the crowd. The senator's speech isn't the most radical thing out of this new era, but it's enough to cause some waves and apparently waves are dangerous these days. Jyn glances at her watch the check how much longer the speech is due to last. When she looks back up, a shiny reflection in the distance glares back at her from one of the adjacent buildings.
It could be nothing. Any other agent might've dismissed it as the sun shining against one of the windows, but Jyn gets rocked back to her time in the military. She remembers the all-too familiar glint coming from Cassian's sniper rifle, his weapon of choice, always letting her know that she wasn't alone even if it looked like it. And so she reacts like it is very much something.
Screaming out a warning would be foolish, so Jyn rattles off, "Sniper, blue building, twelfth floor, fourth window to the left," to alert Shara and the other agents stationed in the area as she rushes onto the stage. Before anyone or even the senator can say anything, Jyn hears a crack in the air and throws her shield up. The bullet smashes into the vibranium and falls to the ground, the vibrations rippling down her arm, but she grits her teeth and ignores it.
The senator gapes down at the bullet and whispers a horrified, "Oh my god," before Jyn shoves her off the stage and more obvious bullets begin to pepper around them. The crowd, now fully aware of what is going on, goes wild and breaks into utter chaos. Screaming drowns out the warning sounds of sniper fire as Jyn rolls off the stage and out of the line of sight. Her heart hasn't started racing yet.
Catching sight of three agents grouping around the senator while a black SUV speeds their way, Jyn snaps a hand at them. "Get the senator out of-" One agent topples over due to a precise bullet to the head and she whips around to see where it came from. Either there's multiple snipers or the one out there is exceptionally talented and is packing some serious high tech heat. "Shara, do you have a visual?"
"No!" Shara's voice is breathless, probably from running at full speed. "I-"
The line gets cut off and Jyn's blood goes cold. There aren't many people left alive in this new world that Jyn likes, much less cares about, but Shara is one of them.
"Shit," Jyn hisses and then turns back to the agents covering the senator. There isn't anymore sniper fire. Either they're dead, running, or otherwise engaged. "Get her out of here!"
Without looking back, Jyn takes off in the direction where she saw the sniper glare. She leaps onto the stage and then jumps off of it into the crowd. People push at her in a manic, unorganized, and fruitless attempt to escape the sights of a sniper, all of them doing excellent imitations of flailing targets, but Jyn shoves her way through them, not caring if she has to knock people out of her way. When she finally breaks free of the crowd, she jumps on top the hood of a car and runs over it before leaping onto an SUV where she leaps to grab the railing of a third floor balcony and jerks herself over the bars to land solidly on the concrete.
The couple safely watching the scene unfold from inside gawk at her and she gives them an awkward grin as she opens the sliding screen door. "Pardon me." She squeezes past them and bolts out of their apartment without looking back. Once she reaches the stairs, she takes them by two, her enhanced muscles singing at finally being used properly, her heart thumping in her chest, and her mind focused on reaching Shara, who is hopefully still alive to be giving the sniper hell.
At the twelfth floor, Jyn bursts through the door and catches sight of a body being thrown through a door and slamming into the adjacent wall in the hallway. Her breath hitches when she recognizes Shara's wild hair and signature jacket and she dashes towards her. When Jyn reaches the other woman, she's relieved to see that Shara is alive, battered and exhausted with some obvious difficulty breathing, but alive.
Still, this is no ordinary beating. Shara's particular skills include fighting using multiple techniques. For someone to take her down this badly, they would have to be equally or even more dangerous, something that Jyn honestly didn't think possible.
"I'm okay," Shara wheezes, "but the assassin-"
"I've got it."
When Jyn goes to stand up, Shara snatches her by the wrist and stares her in the eyes. "This isn't a normal assassin."
"Good thing I'm not a normal agent," Jyn responds before rising. She darts into the room just in time to catch a glimpse of a man leaping out of the window. Twelve stories up. Without a rope or means of slowing their fall. No kidding. Definitely not a normal assassin. Jyn follows without hesitation, launching herself over the balcony even though she hears Shara shouting in the background, and flies in the air. For a few seconds, it feels a lot like freedom and Jyn can actually breathe.
She lands on her toes on a building only five stories down, absorbing most of the shock, but it's still hard and she has to roll foward to recover and keep from injuring herself. She has to throw herself to the ground almost immediately to miss being shot and rolls behind a brick wall to gain some cover. Instinctively, she goes to reach for her gun, but then remembers that she doesn't have one. Captain America doesn't carry guns. Seems kind of ironic consider how gun crazy this damn country is. She had one during the war, even used a few Hydra guns on their own men.
Instead, all she has is her shield, which she trusts more than most people, and she spins around the corner and launches it as hard as she can at the assassin. It's light, but made of a metal that is stronger than any other metal known in existence. No one is capable of withstanding its impact except for her and that's only because she was modified and learned to make it an extension of herself. It's the last thing remaining from her old life to exist. In a way, it is her and she is it. No one else can compare to it.
And then the running assassin skids to a halt and catches the shield one-handed. She hears the unmistakable metal thud of vibranium impact, the sound ringing in her ears, as she stands wide out in the open and stares in shock and confusion at the sight. They connect eyes and she's overwhelmed by the strange mixture of intensity and blankness in his dark eyes not covered by the mask hiding most of his face. Half of her mind locks onto those eyes; the other half is too alarmed to think about it.
He caught it. The asshole caught her shield. That...isn't possible. It isn't right. It's hers. It's her . It feels strangely like a violation and a violent desire to get her shield back burns inside of her. She hasn't felt this furious since she found out that Cassian was dead and everyone at S.H.I.E.L.D. had kept it from her.
For the first time, Jyn doesn't think of her opponent as just another would-be assassin, but something far else. She doesn't know what to think except, Who the hell is this guy? Because he is not playing around. If he wasn't holding onto her shield like it was just a frisbee, she might've been impressed.
Without warning, he spins, just as she did, and launches it back. She catches it hard in her gut, unable and unwilling to dodge it, but the throw is so hard that it forces her to skid back a few feet. By the time she looks up, the assassin is gone, like a ghost, nothing but a memory, and her mind spins wildly at the implications. An impossible shooter, deadly in hand-to-hand combat, dropped five stories without concern, caught her damn shield. This is something new.
And a little part of her, a part that she tries very hard to hide, is excited.