The deserted island offered little decent cover, but luckily this woman was quite skilled at keeping herself hidden. Though it caused her to heat up like an oven and sweat like a fountain, the tan bodysuit she wore assisted her in blending in with the dry scenery. This mission is insulting, she thought wryly. Watching a little girl? This is the dullest assignment I've ever been on.
She pulled out her camera - a thin, sleek one. Silent, too, she thought. She took a couple of snapshots of the girl sitting on the hot ground, sweating and panting. The photograph was more like soft core porn than anything that could offer her employer "intelligence". What a bore.
She had received a profile on this girl, "Fox (Ling) Xiaoyu," which had proclaimed that she was a master fighter, "not to be taken lightly" it had said. Well, she didn't put much stock in that. This girl looks like she still belongs in middle school! Since when did my resume have "babysitter" on it?
This Fox Xiaoyu got up from her resting place and began stretching, preparing to complete her run, so she decided to get up from her hiding place (not that it was much of a hiding place, she was just crouched behind a tiny patch of dry bushes and a mini boulder) so she could trail the girl. She raised her head a little bit higher but still stayed low to the ground, exercising great caution.
Much of surveillance is talent, but there is at least a respectable amount of luck involved, and she realized this when she accidentally dropped her camera back into the brush. It made a small rustling noise. Shit, she thought, almost saying it out loud but restraining herself. She bent back down into the brush quickly, and thrust her hand into it. The branches were sharp and dry and scratched her skin as she reached around, trying to find the undersized camera as fast as she could without making any more noise. Finally, her nimble fingers made contact with the black plastic, and she retrieved the camera, but when she stood back up, the girl was nowhere to be seen. Shit.
"Stand up, and don't move," It was a female voice, inflected with an odd mix of both a Chinese and British accent. She felt a hand reach around her neck and hold the blade of a knife against it.
"Shit," was all she could say. She had been too cocky, and now she was paying for it. But really, shit, this was not good.
"Who are you?" the voice was cold, and each word was enunciated with particular force. The girl dug the small blade further into her neck, pressing hard against her windpipe and drawing some blood. She tried to answer, her choking and gagging made her answer impossible to understand, and the girl let up on the blade. So now she knew what kind of a girl her target-turned-attacker really was, and was able to plan her next move.
"I'm nobody! I was sent by the Tekkenshu! M-my name is Lilith. Please don't hurt me, I'm only following orders!" Lilith liked to think that guile was her best quality. She'd employed her most convincing pleading tone, and it had just the effect she had hoped for: Xiaoyu released the knife from her neck, not completely but just enough for Lilith to seize her opportunity. With all the angry power of her self-learned street-fighting technique, she swung away from the threat of the girl's blade, executed a swift about face, and planted a kick square in her lower torso. It sent the girl flying backwards, and she came down hard, smashing her head against a rock, knocking her out. Lilith figured the girl would be lucky if she didn't get a concussion.
Hmm, I really am good, she thought with a small laugh. Some people are so predictable!
Lilith walked over to where the girl lay unconscious on the ground, and pulled a compact spool of cord out of her utility belt. It was thin, but strongly woven; it could withstand two tons of force. She quickly and effectively tied up the girl's ankles and wrists (she had done this so many times now that it was second nature to her) and picked the girl up and swung her over her shoulder like a knapsack. The girl was only about 90 pounds, and it was no trying task to carry her. It was a wonder any girl so small could fight at all.
It was very late now. The sun was low down and sinking quickly into the ocean. Lilith didn't mind, she had excellent night vision, and was thankful for a little relief from the intolerable heat. Though she was a little miffed that she had to walk five miles, carrying a little Chinese girl, to get to her motor boat, she still felt quite pleased over with how the mission had gone down. It had been far too long since she had been in a face-to-face confrontation with one of her victims. The last time that had happened she'd been on a mission from the Syndicate.
That damned Lei Wulong! How he'd managed to take down the Syndicate, Lilith would never know, but she chalked it up to dumb luck more than anything else. Lilith missed her days with the Syndicate. They had recognized her talent and used her effectively, and she had been one of their top assassins and emissaries. Now she was trekking through the desert carrying a little girl on her back.
After many of the members of the Syndicate were prosecuted, Lilith had fled to rural Romania. While there, she had tried to go freelance as an assassin, but, (possibly because she didn't speak Romanian, or maybe nobody in Romania needed to be killed) it did not go too well.
One day she'd received an anonymous letter, asking her to come to Tokyo. When she'd arrived, she had been approached by the head of the Mishima Zaibatsu, a creepy Japanese guy that gave off some kind of Jack the Ripper aura. He'd offered her a job with his company's secret police, the "Tekken Force" he'd called it, but everybody else just called it the Tekkenshu. "Great Opportunities" she had been offered. Hah! The jobs she was sent on were kid stuff, the people she worked with were incompetent, and the entire setup of the organization was a convoluted mess.
The sun was down entirely now, and the only light she had to go by was the dim glow of the half moon. You'd think they would put a flashlight in these things, she thought while rummaging through her utility belt for anything that could help her see in this darkness. Lilith should have known better than to let herself be distracted, especially so late at night and in such poor visibility. It would have been in any assassin training book. Probably rule one. Lilith just didn't read instruction books.
In any case, it was too late now, as Steve Fox materialized out of the thick, dark abyss and grabbed the preoccupied Lilith by her neck with his gorilla-sized hands and squeezed tightly. He put his mouth very close to his ear and whispered something. She could feel his hot breath inside her ear, warm and moist. It was inhuman, almost demonic, whisper. The way he had said it… It was like he was either cursing or praying. But it had unmistakably said, "Put down my wife."
Lilith struggled against Steve's hands, clawing and tugging at them while gasping in terror, but it was no use, they were rock solid. She slid Xiao off her shoulder, dropping her hard on the ground with a painful-sounding thud. Her head felt lighter and her vision grew darker, but she kicked and clawed until the very end.
----
A gentle rocking motion and a loud roaring noise brought Xiao back to consciousness. She felt like somebody was squeezing her head between a giant vice, and she let out a terrible moan. She didn't remember where she was, or how she had gotten there or what had happened before she blacked out; at first she thought she was just extremely hung over. But slowly her memory returned to her, and she recalled bits and pieces of things that had happened before she'd blacked out. She had been going for a run… And… There was a woman, a really tall woman, with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes and that skintight bodysuit. And… That woman had knocked her against a rock, knocked her unconscious.
With a frightened shudder, Xiao deduced what must have happened, and where she undoubtedly was. She opened her eyes for the first time since she had come to consciousness. She glanced around, flicking her eyes from left to right but not wanting to draw attention to herself. She let out a silent gasp as she saw her kidnapper huddled in the corner on the other side of the boat, facing away. Xiao did not want to know what fearsome fate this "Lilith" had in store for her, so she decided to seize her chance. Lilith must not have been paying very close attention to her surroundings, for she didn't make a move as Xiao crept slowly over there, her fist raised in fighting stance. However, before she had the chance to make her move, a booming voice erupted behind her that caused her to jump almost two feet into the air.
"Xiao! What are you doing! She's already unconscious!" Xiao turned around frantically to see Steve sitting at the end of the boat next to the motor, flipping through a newspaper. Her first reaction was to wonder how he kept getting current newspapers out in the middle of nowhere. Her second reaction, however, was much more dramatic.
"STEVE!" She cried, as she leapt into his arms and kissed him full on the lips, so energetically it caused the boat to rock and sway. Xiao quickly pulled away, shocked at herself, and the two of them looked quite flushed. Xiao murmured a barely intelligible, "sorry," but truthfully neither minded the embrace.
"Glad to see you're conscious," he said, smiling and putting down his newspaper, "How does your head feel? You have quite a nasty bump and a large cut," Xiao noticed that he was no longer talking to her in that frustrating patronizing tone, something that he had formerly only accomplished when he was drunk. She was quite glad that he had stopped.
"Mm, it hurts but I think I'm okay," She reached up to her head and felt around with the palm of her hand until she found the bump he was talking about. She ran her fingers over it a few times, despite the fact that every time she touched it, a sickening shock of pain coursed through her body. Xiao wasn't sure if it was simply morbid curiosity, or if she liked the pain, but ran the tips of her fingers over it up she had committed every shape and contour to memory. When she took her hand down off her head, she saw that it was caked in blood, but she wasn't too worried about it. She had obtained much worse injuries in the King of Iron Fist Tournaments.
"Soooo," Xiao asked, getting back on topic, "Why is she unconscious over there?" She pointed to Lilith who was tied up and hunched over in the corner.
Steve sighed for a second and looked away from Xiao as if he was ashamed of something, but after a moment, he replied, "Because I strangled her," the regret in his voice came out loud and clear, and it baffled Xiao.
Steve was still angry that he had reacted so violently. He figured he had been acting for a good cause, but still he wondered: Am I a good person?
"Oh, well, thanks for saving me I guess," Xiao said tentatively. This was a side of Steve she hadn't seen before. Sure, he was a bit quiet, sometimes even a little introverted, but she had always considered Steve a mostly upbeat person, even kind of normal. But now she saw somebody deep in conflict. She saw him dealing with emotions that she had dealt with oh so many times in the past. She decided it would be best to let him alone.
She again focused her attentions back onto the unconscious Lilith. Xiao was still incensed at this woman who had played on her sympathies so cruelly. She grabbed Lilith by her collar and slapped her, hoping to wake her up, or at least give her a decent bruise.
Lilith stirred, opening her eyes, looking quite out of it and slightly glazed as she slowly came to full consciousness. "Aw, FUCK it ALL," she exclaimed, once she came to full realization of where she was and what had happened. She struggled against the bonds on her wrists but it was no use; Steve had tied her with the very cord she had used on Xiao earlier. Lilith knew it wasn't worth it but that didn't stop her from struggling like a rabid squirrel on speed. She hissed and spat expletives every once in a while, and tried her best to squirm her way over to Xiao and bite her. At that point Steve decided he would step in. He grabbed her by the throat again, and she stopped her struggling and went limp, glaring at him like an irritated cat.
"Will you listen to us?" He asked her, squeezing her throat a little harder, but not hard enough to choke her, yet. She nodded her head vigorously in response to his question and he released his hands
"Okay! Don't hurt me, please. And uh, don't kill me neither," She cringed now. Lilith often figured that she could have been an actress; acting is merely the art of lying quite convincingly, and hell, she did that every day of her life.
"You will come with us and tell us everything. As our prisoner. One wrong move and I will gut you myself," Steve growled, stabbing her with an icy glare and she cringed again and nodded her head even more vigorously.
"You don't have to make a wrong move. The next time you hiccup I'm going to SLIT YOUR THROAT!" Xiao, who had retrieved her knife, lunged at Lilith, brandishing it like a madwoman. At first, Lilith figured that Xiao would simply lunge and stop there but as she lunged, some kind of animal instinct took over and Xiao threw the knife down behind her and jumped on top of Lilith, and started clawing at her and pulling out her hair as Lilith, still tied up, bucked squirmed. It could have come right out of one of those cheesy soap operas that Steve's surrogate mother used to watch.
"AGHHH get off of me you crazy bitch!" Lilith screamed, trying her best to injure Xiao in any way she could – her teeth were quite formidable – but Steve pulled Xiao off before anybody got seriously injured.
"EVERYBODY PLAY NICELY!" Steve bellowed at the top of his lungs. Xiao and Lilith cringed and then froze, and stared up at him like attentive schoolchildren. "Okay then! We're headed back to Maui and we are taking the first plane to Great Britain. You there, you can either come with us and act like everything is perfectly fine, or try your luck swimming three miles back to land with your arms and legs tied together. It's your decision."
"Fine, kiddos, I guess we're going to old Mother England," She said the line in a terrible mock British accent and Steve glared at her again. Lilith smirked at him, but still decided to change the subject, "Don'tcha think people will wonder what the hell I'm wearing?" It was true, the sandy colored skin-tight bodysuit, while quite ideal for espionage, did not exactly blend in.
Steve chucked a suitcase at Lilith. Xiao's suitcase. Xiao wasn't exactly sure how he'd had time to grab their suitcases before hijacking Lilith's motorboat. He was just magical like that. The suitcase landed on top of Lilith's lap and Steve mumbled, "There you go, knock yourself out," before going back to his newspaper.
Xiao glared at him, and then glared at Lilith, angry at the both of them. She didn't much like the idea of that awful woman wearing her clothing, and she was angry that Steve had shown so little respect to her things (though she decided she would forgive him for doing it; he did look rather preoccupied).
And the entire time Lilith just sat there, staring at Xiao like she was a moron. Xiao kept staring back, and raised an eyebrow, until finally Lilith let out a frustrated sigh and said, "Hello? I'm still tied up!" Xiao just glared at her for a few moments longer, before she went over and started untying Lilith's limbs, scratching her with her fingernails whenever she got a chance.
The two of them did not break out into another fight, but instead glared coldly at each other and made a stab at the other whenever they could. Lilith, who was completely untied now and nursing scratched wrists, picked up Xiao's suitcase and started rummaging through its contents. She insisted on picking up, viewing, and critiquing every piece of clothing and then putting them back, unfolded and askew. Xiao decided she'd had enough of this after Lilith had picked up one of her bras, examined it closely, and mumbled "She's a B?" with a small laugh.
Xiao glared and retrieved her suitcase from Lilith, saying, "Here, I have something for you," with a devious smile. She reached in and pulled out a short red paisley spaghetti strap dress and threw it Lilith.
Lilith, who was not a bashful person, stripped down to her unmentionables, much to the chagrin of Xiao, and pulled on the dress. She stood up quickly to examine the dress, and Xiao burst out laughing.
"Agh! This thing doesn't cover my ass!" Lilith yelled, coming this close to jumping on Xiao. Lilith was 6'5", more than a foot taller than Xiao, and Xiao had pulled out the shortest dress she owned. Lilith grumbled at Xiao to give her a pair of shorts, but Xiao ignored her as she refolded her clothing.
Somehow, Steve had managed to completely block out the two of them as he stared pensively out across the water.
He wondered why he'd eloped with Xiao, this girl that he barely knew. Sure, she had some valid logical reasons for doing it: she needed help to escape the Zaibatsu, and if they were married they would be able to travel the world together more easily, and they would be able to pool their resources and they would be less suspicious when traveling together. Well, that was what she had said. But mostly he figured she was just a little crazy. Just like he was probably a little crazy for going along with her.
Steve had a choice to make, one that would decide how he was viewed by posterity, or history books or magazines or whatever the hell somebody decided to chronicle his life in. Hell, he could end up in a medical book, "In-Vitro Pregnancy during Cryogenic Sleep" or something like that.
He wanted to know if he was a good person, but reflecting back on his life, he could not honestly say yes.