Hi! Are you all surprised to see that I am back so soon? I am. (even though it isn't that soon), I figure that I will be done with this story at around 25 chapters because of how long they are, so probably around spring break. Just to give you super advance warning, although I am going to write another story for TMI, maybe I will finally write the one about the crew in spy school...? I don't really know yet because you know how things go when you get an idea. If you can't tell, I love AU's! Also, if you are a fan of Warriors, definitely check out TaleofUrban's one shot Light's Victory, it's one of my favorites from that fandom! Okay, I'm done with the mostly irrelevant talking now. Enjoy!
Jace:
Ever since Clary basically broke during our late night training session she has been acting normal, but that almost worried me more. We hadn't had any jobs, so we were all dedicating any free time to training for the impending battle.
Clary didn't seem to need sleep, so she was teaching us all day, and then I could hear her training herself to death all night, determined to be ready for when Valentine and Jocelyn come back.
After all of the training she had been doing I wouldn't want to fight her, but she insisted that it wasn't enough, that it was never enough.
I don't know how she thought that, considering that I was a Warrior, someone literally born to never be beaten, and I wasn't, until she came along and whooped me. She could beat me, and she was convinced that she wasn't good enough yet to beat her dad or mother, who were both not Warriors, so I couldn't even imagine how good they were.
Seb wasn't much better though, constantly in his and Clary's room. Apparently he had never been a good hand to hand fighter, so he was looking for the more strategic approach to this, seeing if he could find them before they found us. I didn't know how either of them stayed up all night and worked all day and didn't fall down with exhaustion. I had a feeling it was a side effect of the experimentation Clary had told em that her mother and father did on them.
The worst thing about this entire situation, as selfish as it was, was that I had been hoping to use our downtime from a job as time to get closer to her. I don't know, I probably never would, but I was inexplicably drawn to her. I liked her, and I wanted to figure that out, and now we had to prepare for a fight to the death. Just another day in the Nerd Brigade (although I was still very much against the name).
BING! BING! BING!
From the main room a familiar alarm went off, signaling a message from Senator Lewis, Simon's dad.
I honestly half expected Clary to ignore it, considering there were much more pressing matters to attend to than a job, but then I thought about that and realized that it wasn't at all true.
Sure, this was the most important thing to us right now, but in the larger picture, the conflict would hurt very few people, where as whatever Senator Lewis was calling for might be a huge thing that is extinction level, and it is very important, otherwise he would have called someone else.
So yeah, that was a no go on Clary ignoring it, although she looked like she had a few things in particular she wanted to say to Raziel about his timing on this mission.
There I go again, calling them missions like I'm some kind of damn spy. Which I was not. Those guys were jerkwads.
I walked into the main rom after hearing Clary actually accept the call. She stood in front of the screen, almost everyone else already gathered, minus Simon, who was refusing to say hello to his dad for some reason.
"Senator," Clary greeted, too stressed to add emotion (because you know how she is, always getting the most stone cold when she is stressed).
"Clary!" The Senator greeted Clary like she was his best friend. "I have a very special job for your team!" he announced.
This made me uneasy, because no one should sound this happy about the kind of jobs that we were given. All of our jobs sucked.
"Details Senator," Clary told him, letting him know that we would do it.
"Of course. There is a team of Special Ops being held hostage in an Afghan terrorist base. We need you to recover them before they are executed. Can you do it?" He asked us all, for once acknowledging that we were all here.
"Of course we can do it," Clary said through gritted teeth, although I sensed it was not for any reason I would have guessed.
"Wonderful. Maximum casualties lies at three," the Senator informed us.
"We don't deal in casualties. Everyone lives," Clary snapped at him, something obviously grating on her nerves.
"Good luck," Lewis said before ending the video conference.
Clary turned towards all of us. "It's about time I showed you all something Magnus and I have been working on," she said, gesturing for us to follow her.
We walked into the hallway where all of our rooms where, and Clary led us up to a closest that was always kept locked. I had assumed it was where she held the finances and paperwork for this place and the payment for the missions we went on, but she pulled a key from a necklace around her neck and unlocked the door.
Inside was a large room, about as big as the training room, and it was filled to the brim with clothes and changing screens. Lining the walls in niches were shoes upon shoes in all different styles, and there were large racks next to them all filled with what almost looked like gear. It basically looked like the wardrobe department of an action movie set.
"This is mostly Magnus' doing, but the two of us together have designed special team gear for every occasion that we would need it for. This one," Clary held up a somewhat loose thick materialed set of gear with light blue accents and the Nerd Brigade insignia on the front, "This one is of cold climates, like our first mission. And this one," she picked out another one that was made for one of the men, and it was a suit that she told us had kevlar padding all under it, " is forgoing undercover in a formal setting."
And finally, skipping over many different options of gear, she held up a kevlar padded gear set that was almost gauzy it was so thin, with sandy orange finishes, "This one is for here we will be going now, in sandy, hot climates."
Magnus looked very pleased with his work, everyone else looked slightly confused about how they had had time to do all of this, and I was honestly just super impressed.
"Get changed everyone, and get stretched. We have a lot of work ahead of us if a special ops unit could be taken down by these guys," she ordered us and everyone grabbed the gear set from their own rack, along with the pair of shoes Magnus pointed out for them, but I didn't get changed yet. Neither did Clary.
"Why do you look so pissed to be going somewhere hot?" I asked her, finally pinpointing her source of irritation.
"Because heat works the same way that coldness does for me. I don't feel it, and it doesn't affect me, but I absorb it and it affects those around me. Like, I spend more than a little while in the extreme heat and my core temperature rises and my skin gets so hot that I burn anyone I touch, or anything. It makes it hard to wear clothing or gear, which is why I avoid it," she told me, opening up honestly for the first time in a while to me.
"I'm sorry Clare. We'll get in and out quick enough that nothing too bad happens," I promised her, and I meant it completely, much to my surprise.
"Thanks Jace. It means a lot. Now go get changed," Clary responded and I gave her a small smile and nodded before disappearing behind a changing screen.
This would be an interesting job. We better be getting paid a lot of money for this one.
Alec:
I hated warm weather. I hated it with a burning passion. Oh no, I just made a bad pun. Let's restart. I hated it so much that I wanted to die whenever I was in it. And this weather was a lot more than just warm. This was scalding.
And I wasn't the only one who felt it and hated it. Clary had been cursing creatively since we got here, saying that she could feel her core temperature rising already.
I stayed far away.
We trekked through the desert landscape, having to be dropped off a few miles from the base so they didn't know we were coming. Isabel would race ahead and scout out before reporting back to us, and now we were within seeing distance of the base.
The plan was to get close enough for me to read someone's mind, and figure out where the special ops team was being held, and then Isabel would run around disarming the men, and after that we would storm the base, hopefully rescuing the men without any casualties.
And you know, there was always the fact that if anyone got too close or a door got in our way Clary could just melt the skin or metal off of them.
Always fun.
Magnus readjusted his headscarf, and caught me watching. He winked at me. I looked away, blushing from something other than the heat.
Magnus had made it very clear to me that he was Bi, and interested, and I was too. He was smart, talented, funny, and not afraid to show his mind. I liked those traits in a man, and he was just so, intriguing. I sensed some kind of dark past in him, and I wanted to be there for him when it came out.
I was honestly just waiting for an appropriate time to talk to him, but that hadn't really happened yet, what with all of the mercenaries, oil spills, and looming threats.
Just then a thought that definitely wasn't mine came through my brain. "Stop. I'm close enough," I announced.
Everyone halted their progress and Isabel came running back. I honed in a one specific stream of though, trying to pick through it for the information that I wanted.
"The special ops are in basement," I told the team, finally finding the information wanted from the guard.
"Alright then. I guess it's my turn now," Izzy said before speeding away to begin disarming the men in the compound.
And now we wait. I hate waiting.
Hey everyone! Show me some love, and drop a review! Also, during the course of writing this chapter I have decided that my next story will not be spy school, but instead it will be about Clary having an inner voice that tells her when people are going to die and she has to make some hard choices. (Yes, it is dark. Yes, it will be rated M.) I am going to publish that once I get to around chapter 15 or so, so I don't have to worry about both of them for too long, but keep an eye out for Until The Dawn!
