AN: Hey guys! Thank you so much for all the favorites, alerts, and reviews I've gotten for this story, they're all really appreciated! My time line is going to be a little bit skewed because I was having problems with everything making sense, I'm also making it so Alex knew Yassen better, as such Eagle Strike canon has changed, not sure whether Yassen's coming back or not, that might be too many people coming back to life... tell me what you think in the reviews. Anyway enjoy!

N-Unit walked in to find K-Unit pushing all of the cots together on the far wall except for one where Panther was sitting being examined by Snake, not looking pleased at all. Owl bristled slightly, as much as he didn't mind that his teammate had once had another team, another medic looking after him rubbed him the wrong, it was like the other man thought he couldn't take care of his team properly, something which Owl took great pride in.

In several quick strides he covered the room, "If he's hurt I assure you I can handle it, why don't you help your unit move cots?" Owl ground out, eyes flashing angrily at the Scotsman who glared right back.

Panther sighed in annoyance, "Guys seriously lay off, I'm fine."

Both of them turned in unison towards him, directing their glares on him instead of each other.

"No you are bloody well not-"

"If I know you at all you've been hiding injuries for weeks-"

"You shouldn't even be here, the most strenuous thing you should be doing is physical therapy-"

"I'm fine is Panther talk for, "Don't examine me I've got loads of injuries I don't want you to know about even though I'm unequipped to deal with them on my own."

"I haven't forgotten that time in Peru-"

"Don't think I don't remember Panama-"

"So you'll stay right where you are damn it." They both finished with a fierce growl.

There was silence in the room for a moment before Lemur whispered in horror, "Sweet Jesus, there's two Owls...Panther my paranoid friend, please tell me you have an escape strategy for this."

Panther nodded seriously, "You run, I'll sit still and distract them as long as I can; rendezvous in the woods in forty minutes, if I'm not there within a five minute window get out of there and enlist the help of the Japanese for they've surely got me tied to a bed and are shoving unnecessary pills down my throats."

Lemur nodded just as seriously, "I will do what needs to be done, may I ask why the Japanese?"

"They owe me a favor or ten and they've expressed their disgust in MI6 using me; I've only saved their asses indirectly and they've offered me a reward for it every time as opposed to about half of the major nations of the world who have no reservations about using a fourteen year old as much as they want."

Lemur looked confused, "I thought you said you were fifteen?"

Panther scowled, "Yeah but I "died" two days after my fifteenth birthday, they had been using me for a little over a year before that...You know I was really holding out for a normal birthday this year; my fourteenth I was pretending to be a nerd named Felix to prevent every school child in Britain from being killed by a literal computer virus, my fifteenth I spent being tortured by a terrorist organization, and now that you're all here MI6 definitely knows I'm alive. I'd bet my gun that they'll have me on a mission by the end of next week."

Falcon clenched his jaw, "You're not going."

Panther snorted, "I can say no all I want, they have ways of getting what they want."

Falcon shook his head fiercely, "Not this time Pan, they're going to have to get through us if they want you."

Panther turned pale, "That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

Eagle's face turned bitter and annoyed, "When Cub moved in with us when Ben was on missions they called non stop for three days and he kept saying no. Then one day in the middle of the night the bastards break open our door, shove us in handcuffs and start talking about how easy it would be to drag us off to jail on charges of terrorism and dump Cub in a juvenile detention facility. We were yelling at them and Wolf got loose of the people holding him and I'm pretty sure he almost broke Blunt's nose with the handcuffs still on." Eagle stopped for a moment with a dreamy smile as if caught in a fond memory, "Well Cub's just been quiet this whole time then he just gets this exhausted look in his eyes and he goes, "I thought we were done with this." And walks out with the son of a bitch! For two weeks we try to figure out where the hell he is and what was going on then out of nowhere he shows up in the middle of the night with a broken arm, dislocated shoulder, and a black eye refusing to talk about what happened."

Wolf scowled, "I'm still mad about that Cub."

Panther rolled his eyes, "Oh come on Wolf it was a year and a half ago, let it go already!"

He shook his head angrily, "Maybe I would have except the same thing happened a week later minus us getting handcuffs slapped on us and this time he comes back with his hair dyed black and burns and cuts that definitely came from an explosion all over him."

Panther started to look a little edgy, "As I said, year and a half ago."

Viper laughed, "Yeah but it's been almost non-stop, they left you alone for what was it, a month? After Fox got back then you were both gone for almost three weeks."

Ben snorted, "Welcome to the oh so glamorous life of a spy- minimal time off, little to no recovery time, assassins around every corner-"

Panther grinned at him, "Paperwork when you do get back from missions-"

"Bosses that might actually work for the devil-"

"Inability to resign-"

"But at least there's excellent dental." They finished together laughing.

Snake rolled his eyes, "You two are bloody mental."

"Comes with the territory." Panther said with a shrug, "When you get chased around by nutters trying to kill you all the time eventually you develop a huge amount of paranoia and a weird sense of humor-what are you doing with our beds?"

Eagle smirked, "Fist of all, they're our beds now and if you must know we're making a couch."

Panther blinked, "A...couch?"

"Well yeah, you never told us the whole story with how you ended up in MI6, neither of you ever tell us about your missions, and you have a lot of explaining to do about the last year so we figure we're gong to be here a while; might as well be comfortable you know?"

Panther scowled as K and N-Units climbed on top of the makeshift couch, leaving him sitting on the other bed staring back at them.

"Well get on with it them." Owl said with a mocking grin, cheerfully ignoring his team mate's death glare.

Wolf wasn't quite sure how he felt about N-Unit. On one hand they seemed to have taken relatively good care of Cub, he was healthier than Wolf had ever seen him and he was far less paranoid than he had been in the time leading up to...well any way they seemed to have done wonders for the usually solemn boy.

On the other hand he didn't like the idea of losing Cub to another team and his change in demeanor could easily be chalked up to MI6's lack of interference in his life the past year. Add that to the fact that he had jumped from being a spy to being a soldier, not a teenager didn't increase Wolf's approval of the situation at all. He shook his head impatiently to clear it, he would make his decision after he heard about how his youngest team member had spent the last year, it would do no one any good to have him jumping to conclusions right now.

Cub made himself comfortable on his cot and ran a hand over his hair, "I had a relatively normal life until a few days before my fourteenth birthday, well, as normal as things can get for me. I lived with my uncle, Ian, and our housekeeper, Jack, because my parents had died in a plane crash when I was a baby. Ian (he didn't like being called Uncle Ian) started teaching me French when I was three so we could go on holiday together and I started karate a little while after that, by the time I was eight I was fluent in French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. I lived my entire life thinking Ian had taught me all this so I could go on holiday with him and learn about the world. I didn't think anything of our hobbies while in the other countries; rifle shooting, mountain climbing, scuba diving, abseiling, snowboarding, BASE jumping, anything and everything you could think of. "

K-Unit exchanged glances, that was normal?

Cub continued, "When I was fourteen my uncle died in what I was told was a car crash and through a weird series of events I ended up at MI6 headquarters. Jack was an american, here with a student visa that had expired ages ago. They told me my uncle was a spy killed on mission and gave me a choice; finish his mission for him or Jack would be deported and I would be put in an orphanage."

Snake looked at him in shock, "That's almost exactly what they did to you with us."
Cub nodded bitterly, "Because they knew it would work. Anyway, I agreed and they sent me to train with this horrible SAS unit who called me mean names and threw me into trip wires-"

"Hey I apologized for that!" Wolf objected much to N-Unit's amusement.

"They were horrible, especially the unit leader who was afraid of-"

"Finish that sentence Cub and I'll set Nathan on you the second we get off base."

Cub blanched and Snake leaned over to N-Unit, "Nathan is Eagle's twin brother, they're exactly alike except Eagle is way more disciplined and has more common sense hard as that is to believe."

"Moving right along." Cub said quickly, eyeing Wolf with a healthy amount of trepidation, "I got back from training and they suited me up with gadgets-"

Fox snorted, "Knowing Smithers they either exploded or were so awesome you had to resist playing with them."

Cub sighed nostalgically, "Only thing I miss about MI6, those gadgets. That first time I didn't get anything too explosive, just a gameboy that sent information and let off smoke bombs and some zit cream that ate through metal."

Lemur's jaw dropped, "That's all? Panther that's like James Bond levels of cool!"

Cub shook his head, "Those ones honestly weren't Smithers' best work, well I take that back the zit cream was one of the best I've gotten, saved my ass several times; but we usually get cooler stuff than that. Remember your tie and cuff links Ben?"

Fox grinned, "Those were so cool! Nothing tops the umbrella though."

Cub smiled, "Very true. Anyway back to the story, I got sent in as Felix, a computer geek, to infiltrate Herod Sayle's organization and see what was going on with the Stormbreaker computers. Long story short the computers had a virus in them that would kill all the school children in Britain, I ended up getting caught towards the end of the mission handcuffed me to a radiator informed me they would torture me in the morning-"

N-Unit stiffened, jaws and fists clenched tight.

"Left me alone, in the morning I managed to get myself thrown into a man of war tank-"

"Wait isn't that those really big jelly fish?" Falcon demanded, fixing the boy with a fierce glare.

He shifted a bit uncomfortably before straightening up again, "Yep. Got out of the tank with the zit cream, harpooned a plane, hijacked it, had the pilot (the man they were going to have torture me) fly me to London, parachuted into the Science Museum, shot the Prime Minister's hand before he could unknowingly activate the virus, got kidnapped by Sayle, tells me he's going to kill me then get picked up by this helicopter, pilot shoots him, turns out to be Yassen-"

All of them bar Ben froze, "Yassen? Wait you don't mean Yassen Gregorovitch do you?" Owl demanded, looking horrified.

Cub smiled, "He really wasn't all that bad, he was friends with my dad, saved my life a couple of times. He was a good man who got mixed up in an awful business when he was younger. He told me once that he wished he could quit but it was hardwired into him, kind of like me."

"But you got away from MI6," Snake reminded him looking shaken up, "and Gregorovitch was an assassin, he killed people for money Cub."

Cub shrugged, "I couldn't go back to normal life after MI6, that's why I'm here, and anyway I'm not stupid, I know Yassen killed people he was hired to, I'm not stupid. But the people I'm sent in after have an alarming tendency to drop dead and I don't even get paid, how is that different from him?"

"Pan-"

"Look I don't want to talk about it okay? He was a good man, he was my friend, that's enough for me. So anyway, Yassen shot Sayle, I told him I would kill him for killing my uncle-"

"So this guy killed your uncle and you still like him?" Lemur demanded, looking shocked.

Cub sighed, "It's complicated. He told me this business was for adults, told me to go back to school, that he didn't kill children but you were never too young to die, then flew away. A little while later I got called in to investigate this boarding school that turned out to be replacing these rich problem kids with altered clones of their nutso Headmaster, got caught at the end again, only this time the Headmaster told me his clones had been asking him to show them a human dissection and he informed me that it would interesting to see how long it took before my heart gave out from the pain-"

Wolf and Falcon both shot to their feet, "That son of a bitch!"
"That man should be very thankful he's dead-"

"If I ever get a hold of him-"

"If he so much as laid a hand on you I swear to God-"

"Guys!" Cub yelled, "I appreciate the concern but I'd like to get through this sometime this year."

Both of them slowly sank back into their seats, still silently seething.

"Where was I? Oh yeah, I had called MI6 to pick me up but no one came and I eventually resorted to snowboarding down the mountain on an ironing board getting shot at and thanking the deity known as Smithers for my bullet proof snowsuit-"

Wolf scowled, "I saw you at the bottom of the mountain, there was a ridiculous amount of bullets stuck in that thing."

Cub nodded cheerfully, "That was definitely up there with the more useful gadgets. So I snowboarded down the mountain, got hit by a train at the bottom-"

"You got hit by a what?"

Cub plowed over Snake as if he had never heard him, "Got taken to a hospital, met up with Wolf, had to go back up to the school, almost got killed again, got Wolf shot-"

"I've told you a thousand times brat that wasn't your fault." Wolf said in exasperation, Cub just shrugged.

"Killed the crazy Headmaster with a snow mobile, went home and blew up my school's science building. The next one I got sent to Cuba, my two mission partners died, a Russian madman tried to initiate a nuclear war and adopt me, I refused and he shot himself right in front of me, the next one I was on holiday when there was an assassination attempt on my friend's father, I saw Yassen again, we caught up, he offered me a place to stay for a while, a colleague of his stopped by while he was gone, I ended up in a bullring, found Damien Cray's number on the guy's cell phone, I went to the launch of his new game console, the one that came with that "Feathered Serpent" game."

K-Unit looked excited, "That's our favorite game!" Eagle cried happily, "We play it at my flat whenever we get leave, isn't it gre-"

"No." Cub said shortly, suddenly looking haunted, "It's terrible, worst game ever created, put me off of video games for the rest of my life. Well Cray wanted to do what all the other kids were doing and start a nuclear war, when he found out I knew he trapped me in a life sized version of the game; I barely survived."
K-Unit looked horrified and Cub shook his head as if clearing away bad memories and continued, "I escaped, Cray kidnapped my friend Sabina, hijacked Air Force One, and threatened to shoot her if I didn't give him the part of his plan I had stolen, Yassen was there and Cray ordered him to shoot me, he refused and tried to fight off Cray but Cray had the advantage. He shot Yassen, we fought, I ended up pushing him out of the plane with a drink cart and he flew into the engine. Not pretty. When I got back to Yassen he was dying, he told me to go to Venice where I would find Scorpia and my destiny-"

Ben sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, "And in one of your Alex moments you decided that nothing could go wrong with finding a ruthless terrorist organization because your dying assassin friend told you to."

Cub shrugged guiltily, "So I ended up in Scorpia, they told me that my father had been one of their best assassins and MI6 had killed him, that I had been lied to about the plane crash. I joined their assassin school, they trained me, my first mission was to kill Mrs. Jones, deputy head of MI6 and the person who shot my father, I failed. I shot to the side of her, I just couldn't kill her and even if I had been able to there was bullet proof glass in the way, then MI6 captured me."

By now everyone but Ben's jaws were hanging down in shock, "You-you joined Scorpia?" Eagle asked weakly, staring at Cub with a hurt expression. Cub kept his eyes level with the floor.

"I'm not proud of it. I was a kid and I made a stupid mistake, I wasn't a kid after that training though, they made sure of that." He said bitterly, looking as if he was caught in horrible memories. "Blunt called a COBRA meeting, I helped them figure out that there was a disease in the school kids' vaccinations, I went back into Scorpia with a tracking device, I killed the woman who told me about my father's death, later on I figured out he was a double agent for MI6, that his initial "death" was faked-"

"Runs in the family doesn't it?" Wolf muttered in annoyance, fixing Cub with a half hearted glare.

"Scorpia blew up the plane he and my mother were on, so the plane story was true after all. I was walking out of MI6 headquarters after finding that out, I just wanted to get home, see Jack and sleep, but as I was stepping off of the curb I got this incredible pain in my chest and fell to the ground. Everyone was screaming, there was blood everywhere and I saw my parents." Cub smiled dreamily, remembering how wonderful that had been, "I had gotten shot by a sniper in the chest."

It was eerily silent for a moment before all hell broke loose.