Disclaimer: Guess who doesn't own Alex Rider?

Alex sighed as he took Sahar by the hand and led her over to the Aston Martin. He opened the door for her and she stepped into the passenger seat. He pulled out of the gated lot next to Wolf and couldn't help but smile at the contrast.

Wolf was driving a beat to shit Toyota, with a bullet wound in his thigh and probably some broken ribs.

Alex on the other hand was driving his MI-6 provided Aston Martin, with a beautiful girl in the passenger seat. Even his injuries were better, just a couple of bruises on the chest from where his body armor had taken the bullets and probably a black eye from where Wolf had punched him.

For a brief second he thought Wolf was going to try and ram him. He thought about the armor Smithers had built into this thing and wondered if Wolf's Toyota would even scratch the paint.

They spent the majority of the car ride to Alex's house at a lazy 90 miles an hour. He pulled into his driveway to see Tom knocking on the door.

Everyday Alex was on assignment Tom would knock on Jack's door just to make sure his friend wasn't killed in the line of duty. Normally Jack would offer him something to eat and tell him there was no news.

Today was different, while he was there Alex pulled into the driveway in what Tom called Alex's overcompensation mobile. Alex stepped out of the car without a shirt on and instead of walking over to Tom like he suspected he would, Alex moved over to the passenger side door and pulled out a gorgeous Arabian girl.

Tom didn't miss the bruises the size of baseballs on Alex's chest nor the gorgeously forming shiner on his eye. He wouldn't trade lives with Alex ever, but Alex sure as hell made his life look glorious.

Alex stuck his hand out and when Tom grabbed it they pulled each other into a masculine hug. The three of them walked into the house and Tom wanted to know about Alex's mission.

"So what happened, Agent 0016?" Tom asked using the nickname he had given Alex when he turned 16

"It was pretty normal, break in, grab what you need, blow up the building, and get the fuck out of the Devil's sandbox." Alex explained deadpanning.

Tom shook his head in disbelief, "The fact that you feel that that's normal is a sad statement about your life. Anything interesting happen?"

Alex struggled to keep the emotionless mask on his face, "Let me think a second, Yeah some interesting stuff happened. Wolf and I got into a fight. I won. Wolf got shot, just in the leg, and I met the Prime Minister who invited me to Downing Street. He's a nice guy completely forgave me for the whole shooting him thing."

Tom's mouth had fallen open, and he was shaking his head. "Your life is just way too damn exciting Alex." He nodded at Sahar, who was watching the two boys trying to figure out what they were saying. "What's her story? Did you finally bring me a souvenir from a mission, or are you bringing your work home with you."

"She was in the building we were raiding. We couldn't have her telling the Iranians she saw us so it was either put a bullet in her head or take her with us. No one wanted to shoot her so we brought her with us." Alex explained

"Why is she staying with you?" Tom asked

"MI-6 needs some time to set up some place for her to live. The way Ms. Jones explained it to me was that I brought the stray home, and now I have to feed it and water it and take care of it." Alex said, his disgust with the organization showing through

Jack walked through the front door with groceries in her arms. She dropped the groceries onto the table and gave Alex a big hug. Alex winced as she crushed his bruises against her.

He then went up to his room and collapsed. The only thing on his mind was, 'I have to go to school tomorrow.'

School sucked like usual. Mr. Griffin had taken his excuse note like it was a piece of gold. He couldn't stop staring it and Alex almost felt like telling him there was nothing special about it. It was just a piece of paper that Ms. Jones had signed with a regular Uni-Ball pen.

His heart fell as he realized they would be swimming in gym. That would include going without a shirt and letting his classmates check out his scars and bruises.

He stepped out of the locker room and was embarrassed as his classmates gawked. There were seven small circular scars that looked oddly like cigarette burns, those were from small arms fire. He had a couple of long lines running across his chest from stabbings, and there were even a couple of triangular scars from when he'd been in the casualty zone (1) of a frag grenade.

The class continued to stare at him except for one girl who stood up and slipped a five euro note into the band of his shorts.

He flushed and said, "I'm not a male stripper."

She continued to look and said, "Well you should be."

There wasn't much Alex could say to that so he got up, grabbed a towel from the set of shelves and wrapped it around his waist so people would stop staring. Mary saved him.

She didn't mean to but she did. She walked out of the girl's locker room in a revealing red one piece. Guys gawked or leered, girls glared in jealousy and Alex managed to not let out a sigh of relief.

He'd been late to school so she didn't see him in any of the earlier classes. She saw him from across the pool and ran across the pool deck and grabbed him in a hug. Alex hugged her back enjoying the feeling of her pressed up again, even if his bruises didn't.

She pulled back to get a better look at him and a look of concern crossed her face as she stared at his black eye.

She gently touched the bruises and when he winced, she said all concernedly, "You're hurt."

He shrugged. He'd been hurt much worse before, and hadn't complained, he wasn't going to start now.

"You should see the other guy." He said with a cocky smile.

The moment was ruined when the gym teacher showed up and told everyone to start swimming laps.

The entire class jumped up in and Alex started swimming. The rest of the class stood near the edge complaining that the water was cold. Alex just shrugged. Water wasn't cold unless you were in danger of getting frost bite. The Baltic Sea off the beach of Russia was cold. The school pool was balmy in comparison.

The day went pretty normally up until lunch. Then the rumor mill went to work. Alex was sitting at his normal table when he noticed the girls at the table pointing and giggling at him. He shrugged it off, people did weird stuff around him.

He noticed several more people looking at him and he began to feel uncomfortable. Howard Thomas was the one who broke the news and almost got his head taken off by result. Howard had come over to the table looked at Alex and said, "I hear you're sleeping with that whore Mary."

Thomas Harris knew something really bad was about to happen. In his experience when Alex Rider got mad he would get still and silent, while plotting your demise with a clear and calm mind.

Alex's eyes vanished into slits of rage locked onto Howard. His face clenched like a snarling wolf and his upper lip twisted into a snarl showing off his canine teeth in a way that made him look bestial. Tom shivered, people died when Alex looked like that.

Tom grabbed Alex's right arm preventing him from pulling the gun with his shooting hand, but Alex didn't go for the gun. He shook Tom off like he weighed nothing and advanced on Howard like a predator stalking a trapped animal.

Howard Thomas might not have been the smartest kid at Brookland comprehensive but even Howard knew when he'd really fucked up, and if the look of murderous rage on Alex's face was anything to go by he'd really fucked up. He looked towards his friends for help, but if the way they were sitting was any indication help wasn't coming from that avenue.

Not that it would have mattered any. Alex had never been so pissed in his life, and the entirety of MI-6 and the SAS wasn't going to stop him from eviscerating Howard Thomas like the frightened rabbit he was.

A small part of Tom Harris was cheering for Alex to beat Howard like a rented mule, but a larger part was thinking that Alex was going to go beyond appropriate measures and get in trouble. He realized there was only one hope of stopping 0016.

Mr. Griffin was supervising the cafeteria when it went silent as a church. He followed people's eyes and felt his heart drop to somewhere around his naval. Alex Rider was advancing on another student with murder in his eyes.

Mr. Griffin's instincts begged him to turn around and act like he hadn't seen anything but he knew his duty and he would do it to the best of his abilities. He moved through the cafeteria in an attempt to preemptively stop the fight. He grabbed Alex and found himself on the ground struggling to breathe.

Alex shook off Mr. Griffin like it was nothing and continued to advance on Howard. Howard's back hit the wall and he raised his hands in a futile effort to defend himself. Alex was within arms reach of Howard and he shifted his weight back, ready to deliver a crippling blow.

He felt someone grab his arm. He whirled around ready to fight anyone and everyone at this point.

Tom watched as Mary grabbed Alex's arm. He thought for a second Alex was going to hit her but their eyes met and the blaze gradually left Alex's eyes. He lowered his arm and took a deep breath.

Howard slipped away. Mary had put out the fire but Alex was still smoldering. If he did something he could be the swift breeze that rekindled the inferno.

Mary had never seen Alex act like that before. Even when he'd been killing people he was cold and emotionally distant, but whatever Howard Thomas had done was enough to send Alex into a burning rage.

She was scared but she knew she was the only one Alex would stop for. They weren't as good a friends as Alex and Tom were but they shared a special connection. They'd both seen people die and had seen what the world outside the civilized parts was like.

She grabbed the fist ready to destroy Howard. He whirled around so fast she was scared he was going to hurt her. His eyes were wild and burning and she wasn't sure he recognized her for a moment but gradually he calmed down.

She pulled him into a hug trying to calm down the guy who saved her life. She held him for several minutes in the crowded silent cafeteria. He then pulled away and walked out the door.

He drove like a man possessed until he pulled into the parking lot of Breacon Beacons. Emotions pounded away at him desperate to escape. Anger fear irritation sadness and grief, they all wanted to come out. He marched to the firing range and grabbed a G3 from the marshal on duty.

He zeroed the gun and started the pop up target program. He sighted down the scope of the assault rifle and began firing. He was in another zone and each target that popped up wasn't the red training target, it was the Scorpia targets, the one with the faces of people on them.

Ms. Jones went down with three rounds in her chest, Mr. Blunt died with six in his forehead. Mr. Prime Minister was hit nine times in the neck and Alex was pleased to watch the head of the dummy/Prime Minister fall to the ground detached from the body.

Herod Sayle and Dr. Grief died next. Bullets in the sniper triangle put both in the ground. Alexi Sarov bought the farm next. Two bullets right in his eyes brought him down painfully. Ash and Damian Cray he didn't even care where he shot them. He just pounded as much lead into them as possible. Drevin, McCain, and Rothman all died similarly, victims of Alex's murderous rage.

He didn't stop there. Dan, Ben, and Brad died next, then all the kids at school who had mocked him. Everyone he'd ever hated lined up for him to mow down with the weapon. He shot for hours and went through a thousand euros of ammunition. His hearing was shot to shit and it wouldn't return that night.

He was too numb to care, which had been the goal. He was too numb to care that he'd almost killed a kid. He was too numb to be angry, too numb to be sad that he could never date or get married without putting the girl in terrible danger. Unfortunately for him, he was not too numb to know that he'd almost hurt Mary when she'd stopped him, and fortunately for him, he wasn't too numb to realize he'd come to like the girl in a romantic sort of way.

He would need alcohol to make himself forget that, so that was his next target. Unfortunately for him Breacon Beacons was a dry camp so he couldn't buy any. He went to the kitchen and snatched some grain liquor form a cabinet. It wasn't for drinking, but for cooking, and thus it needed to be strong so it didn't all evaporate.

It was perfect for Alex. It tasted horrible but it was strong enough that he had a nice buzz going after his first swallow and was blitzed after his third.

Snake found him early in the morning passed out leaning against the mess hall with the empty bottle in his hand. He picked the young man up and brought him over to the bunk where he normally slept. He prepared a hangover remedy for when the boy woke up because if he drank even half the bottle of grain liquor he was going to need it badly.

Technically he should have reported that one of the people in his team had been drinking but he'd been a kid once to, and it wasn't fair for the kid to miss out on being young because other adults made him act older than his age.

Alex woke the next morning feeling like his tongue was made of cat hair and a hedgehog had crawled into his head. He felt like hell and he promised himself he'd never drink again. Then he remembered yesterday and he was tempted to start over.

As he drove back to school he thought about what he was going to do. He thought about how it was irresponsible for him to put her in danger like that.

He pulled into the school parking lot and got out of his car. It was ten o'clock and he was tragically late for school. He waited outside the French classroom. He thought to himself over and over again going through the arguments in his head trying to convince himself.

The bell rang and Mary walked out of the classroom. He grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her towards him. He looked her in the eye, and opened his mouth to tell her why they couldn't be together. Teenage hormones saved him and instead he leaned down and kissed her.

The area around a grenade is set into zones. If you're within five meters, you're in what's called the kill zone. Like the name suggests, you're dead. If you're within fifteen meters you're in the casualty zone. The casualty zone means you're for sure injured, usually pretty badly, or dead.

Author's notes:

1. I absolutely hate the first 70% of this chapter. I rewrote it about 9 times and I just couldn't make it right so I published my best.

2. I refuse to write an emo character. Alex may be somewhat depressed but I'm not going to make him cut himself over a girl. It needed to happen, they were going to get together from the beginning.

3. For the record they're not done yet. They're teenagers, those couples last about a week, and don't argue with me, I know I am one. There are still plenty of emotional pitfalls.

4. Either the next chapter or the one after it will be the one I've been dying to write since I first read Stormbreaker. HALO (not the game) (High Altitude Low Opening) jumping on prom night

5. To anyone who tells me that the shooting range is not a good form of therapy, you're wrong. I've been to a shrink and I've been to the range. I know which one makes feel me saner. If ammo wasn't so damn expensive I'd probably update much less frequently.

6. What does it take to get some reviews? Thank you to those that have reviewed but those that haven't come on guys. Let me know what you think. It takes ten seconds. I'll even take flames at this point.