Lieutenant Ryuka "Red Dragon" Algren

Task Force 141

Caucasus Mountains , Five-Finger Mountain – Azerbaijan

Three months after their first meetings in the land-base, the Task Force 141 was already on its first mission, having gone through sufficient training in every single scenario possible. These trainings were crucial, not only because they were the first batch of operatives, but because they came from a complicated mix of military backgrounds, and needed to be retrained on Special Operations tactics far beyond what they were used to.

Shepherd was watching them from above a helicopter, and his reports would determine the success of their unit. If they failed, it would be the end of the Task Force 141 as they knew it, and they knew that they could not let it happen.

They had received Intel that there was an Ultranationalist outpost illegally built in Azerbaijan, and the government had been unable to coax them out of their land. Their mission this time was to retrieve whatever they could find in there, and to destroy the outpost.

It was a two-fold mission, whereby Ryuka herself had already infiltrated the outpost in the cover of darkness. Her job was to get all the data that they had into an external hard drive before the rest of the team cut the power out and unleashed hell upon earth.

"I am in," she proclaimed in Russian after locating the resident female Ultranationalist soldier, and taking her uniform as so the blend in with the rest. She was not the only one in the 141 who already had a Special Operations background (so did the Captain, Ghost, and several others), but she was the only one who could fluently converse in Russian at that moment, and hence, the only one able to infiltrate the outpost.

She met two men on her way to the control room, both of whom gave her appreciative looks, even when she kept her head down. The woman she temporarily displaced must have been a live-wire indeed in that secluded little outpost.

"Reddie," it was MacTavish. She could recognize that Scottish accent from anywhere in the world. "You're doing a good job, just keep going to the control room." And no matter how infuriating it was, and no matter how much she would like to have thought herself to be utterly fearless in the field, it brought her comfort, knowing that somebody had her back.

She did not respond to his words, she did not need to. Once in the control room, she took the AK-47 that she was armed with and shot the operators there. Wasting no time at all, she quickly took the external hard-drive and copied everything within it. "We have three minutes, Captain," she reported back, preparing herself to kill anyone who would storm through the doors of the control room.

MacTavish heard her words, and was highly grateful. Perhaps they would not need more than sheer luck to get through this mission any more. Her katana was kept with him, for they could not afford her to lose her cover, and he hoped that they would not be moved to use it in any way possible.

"You heard Reddie," he told the rest of the ten-man team that came with them. "Let's go, boys, we have three minutes to burn this place down to the ground!"

The walls of the outpost were low, and they were made of wood. They had not enough resources there to keep that many Ultranationalist troops at the Azerbaijani borders in structured walls, for they would have to move them out quickly as well. It would be only a matter of time before the United States should have discovered it, or so, the Ultranationalists deemed it to be. The Intel came from their very own eyes and ears, and if they succeeded, the Task Force 141 would have another branch to consider expanding into…

They quickly scaled the walls, near where Ryuka had entered, while some slipped through the open back-door of the warehouse. Some fool must have left it open, and the warehouse was soon cleared of any enemy personnel. It almost seemed too easy, with silenced weapons and with night-vision, but then again, the Ultranationalists outnumbered them three to one. And this outpost was the smallest in the Caucasus Mountains.

"Warehouse cleared," Ozone reported, and MacTavish nodded.

"Reddie, how much time left?" the Captain asked Ryuka after hearing a gunshot from her side.

"One minute, and you can blow this place up," she replied, amusement slightly lacing her voice. 'I know that you boys cannot wait, but you must be patient."

A smile quickly ran through MacTavish's face, but he knew that there were more serious matters at hand. "Cut the chatter, Reddie," he chastised, and the comms were kept clear. At that moment, several guards had come out from the inner areas of the of the outpost, after finding that there had been no response from those at the warehouse, and the back doors.

"Three…"

MacTavish pressed a finger to his lips, signifying that he wanted silence.

"Two…"

The doors to the warehouse opened, the shutter doors that seemed to rise so God-damned slowly that they could have died of anticipation.

"One."

More than just bullets were exchanged at that precious moment when Ryuka disconnected the hard drive after all the files had been transferred. It was the celebration of their first victory in their field. In truth, it was the proof that they could function as one team, and a single unit.

"Now, now, people," Shepherd said to the thirty men and one woman in the mess hall, celebrating their first successful mission. "I know that you're all happy that this worked out, but this is only your first mission." Most of them were young, almost prodigies in the various armed forces of the world. Ryuka and Ghost were in their early twenties, while MacTavish, only one or two years older than the two of them. They would have much to learn, and much to sacrifice. "You'll have harder, tougher missions to carry out, and if you want to survive them, you'll have to stop being so cocky about it."

His words caught their attention. All eyes rested upon him, and silence caught into the formerly noisy mess hall. "Now that I have your attention… Yes, you've all done a good job, you've shown them that you could do it, bringing all kinds of soldiers together to work as a team. But we're gonna need better results than that for us to continue. I'll give it to you straight: Your results generate our funding, boys and girl, and our funding ensures that we keep the world safe."

In this world where money leads to everything, and everything led to money, there was no doubt that each and every one of them knew what they needed to do, and that what Shepherd said was absolutely right. One small victory amounted to nothing, and every single one of them had handled operations similar to this in their own ways. But with only eleven mobile in the field, five medical officers, five pilots and four drivers, they were a military branch too small to even achieve anything.

The months after this mission would be hard and arduous, as they would begin to receive greater demands of their skills and abilities, but, now was not that time. It was their time to rejoice, and to collect their feelings of doubt that they might have had before, and throw them away to make way for the confidence that will come.

And with that in mind, Ryuka knew that it did not do her any good that she would continue her silent enmity with the Captain. "MacTavish, can I have a word with you?" she asked MacTavish when she found him sitting by himself, smoking. The Scotsman took a look at her, and nodded, ushering her outside. It was cold outside, when they came in, it had been autumn, and now, they were in the early days of winter. Seeing that she was rubbing her hands together, MacTavish took them in his, and breathed upon them. "Arigato… Thank you," she said, and withdrew her hands back into the pockets of her uniform.

MacTavish could see that she was blushing greatly from his gesture, and he knew that he acted without even thinking properly. "So, what is it?" he asked her, clearing the awkward air. The distance between them was dangerously close, and the memory of what had happened three months ago was still fresh in his mind, at the very least.

"I have been ungracious about what happened back then in the game-room," she answered, "I should have carried myself more professionally, and I apologize, Captain." Once again, she bowed to him, in true Japanese fashion. "If we are to work together in the long term, we cannot let this become a bone of contention between us."

MacTavish looked into her dark eyes and nodded. "I think I have to apologize too, for… the… um…"

However, Ryuka stopped him in mid-sentence. All of a sudden, her finger was on his lips, silencing him. "If I had not consented to it, it would not have happened," she told him, returning his gaze... Those eyes, those clear, vivid blue eyes that he had, they electrified her, the more and more she thought about the kiss that they had shared… She held her hand to the side of his cheek, but said nothing further.

He could have sworn that he felt small jolts of electricity where she had touched him. "Reddie…" he murmured, and took that hand in his. At that point of time, his will was no longer his own, and he was… stunned at how such a simple touch could affect him so.

"My name is Ryuka," she whispered to him, her lips almost brushing the skin of his ears.

"John," he replied, in the same manner, and led her away from the mess hall. The rest of the boys would be too drunk to notice that they were gone, any ways. It was an agreement, that futile exchange of names, that they were to use them in moments like this, if any moment like this were to come.

When they were alone, Ryuka held his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his, bringing to them a repeat of their second kiss, which had haunted them for three months on end. This time, she was the one who held him to the wall, and she was the one who left him bereft of breath when it ended.

"We should stop," she told him, pulling away from him slightly. She knew the dangers of continuing anything with that man. For one, she barely knew him, and secondly, they would jeopardize the entire structure of the 141…

However, MacTavish did not let go of her. On the contrary, he pulled her closer and kissed her jawline. "Do you want to?" he asked her, the golden question that tested her. And she knew that if he spoke to her in such a manner, she would not give a damn about anything at all. "Ryuka…"

"To hell with you," she cursed, scoring her lips on his neck, where she could only reach without going on the tips of her toes, or without him bending down. She was not a woman of tall stature, but he was the utter embodiment of tall, dark and handsome. "To hell with everything else, for that matter…" Another kiss ensued, this time, less fervent, but by no means less passionate, and when it broke, MacTavish kissed her on the forehead, and took her hands in his. "What becomes of us, if we should continue?" she asked him, leaning her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, and it was beating fast.

"I don't know," he told her, nibbling on her earlobe. He needed this, he knew he did. Three months of agonizing waiting and tension… He knew that they were not mere teenagers that they would think that one night of passion would change anything between them, but he also knew that if they were to work together so closely in the future, in situations far more dangerous than the one before, it could change everything between them, and that change could be fatal.

Ryuka caressed his cheek with her thumb, and nodded. "Then so be it…"