Juri tapped her foot to the floor repeatedly as she sat cross-legged in the helicopter, which was flying over the cloudy skies over the Thai-Myanmar border. Directly opposite of her was Crimson Viper, who was nonchalantly tapping her fingers on the screen of a small device. Right next to each of them were three men fully equipped with helmets, gas masks, bulletproof vests and automatic weapons in each of their hands sitting in line extending to the loading ramp. Two of these men occasionally stole a few glances at the women, perhaps unable to ignore the tension surrouding the two.

"Mobilizing a chopper like this is rich..."

"What do you mean?" Viper responded, still with her eyes on the device.

"We're riding a God-damn Chinook MH-47D. You think I'm so ignorant as to take everything you bring in at face value?"

"If you know about it, you should know how good this chopper is and be grateful."

"You want to have a deal with me, yet you expect me to trust you?"

"I don't remember begging you for it." Viper's fingers stopped, and her eyes were looking straight into Juri's. "Instead, you look like you are the one so desperate. If Dear Leader Seth accepted this, you should too."

"Tch!"

She was going to scream foul of Viper, for the woman must have brought hints of her past with the obvious intention of luring her into whatever it was Viper was scheming. Her doubts are valid; the helicopter they were riding was a military-only model made for United States Army. Granted, the camo paint was changed but she remembered having to shoot down a similar kind with some mobile SAMs in the thick of Amazon forest to thwart a secret invasion plan of one of their secret labs.

Juri could not afford to let her tempers run loose at that time, however. After she recovered from her injuries enough for her to move around with minimal discomfort, she was immediately mobilized by Seth just an hour ago into a covert mission to destroy a rogue village somewhere within the Golden Triangle. Viper, who was appointed commander for the mission briefed that the village was one of Shadowlaw's main manufacturing hubs for heroin, and their population had begun causing disturbance in nearby areas, going as far as to murder and extort protection money from other villages close to the towns. It was previously blanketed by Shadowlaw's mind control schemes with all of its inhabitants removed of psychological contraints that determine regular human morality so that they would carry out any orders regardless of their brutal and violent nature. Since Shadowlaw went dormant, their minds have been slowly freed, but the inhibitions they used to have as normal human beings have not returned and were creating problems which could expose themselves and Shadowlaw to the world, which Seth found inconvenient for whatever it was he planned.

"Ma'am, we're now about a click away from target location."

The cargo space's speaker blared with the pilot's update. Viper turned off her device's display and kept them inside her pocket, before standing up, adjusting her glasses. She pulled her gloves back to make sure they are really tightly covering her hands and looked at the time displayed on her wristwatch.

"Alright, men. We have 7 minutes left so listen well because this is the last time I'll say it. I want everyone to be in their designated positions by two hundred hours. Eagle 5 and Eagle 6 are to come with me to the southwest and Juri will lead Eagle 9 and Eagle 10 to storm the eastern front. We are to take out every man and woman you see in this village but you must try to be covert. We don't want to be surrounded by the entire villagers in the worst times."

"Everyone?" Eagle 9 spoke. His voice was a bit muffled by the gas mask, but it was still loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Everyone. Remember that these people are very violent. They do not have reservations and are extremely dangerous, especially since many might be using automatic weapons. Kill them on sight before they get to you."

"...Should've just bombed the place clean and save the trouble." Juri shook her legs in dissatisfaction. Viper only smiled.

"So you were asleep during the briefing. I need to locate and retrieve some merchandise."

"Oh, so I have to expose myself to heavy fire and do the dirty work while you sneak in and take some stuff?"

"You like explosions anyway, so why complain?"

The loading hatch opens. The strong air current almost made Viper collapse, but she managed to get a grip on the handlebar. However, Juri simply walked calmly to the exit.

"I hate you and following your orders like a bitch." Juri looked back one more time. Strong winds were making ripples on her baggy jumpsuit which produced loud noise. "But I love explosions...!"

She smiled back at Viper, with her left eye shining a bright purple before dashing away and dropping herself out of the helicopter.

"What the..." Eagle 5 was still keeping himself belted to his seat. "We're still 140 feet high and she didn't take a parachute!"

Viper was anticipating that Juri would do something like this, but she was as much surprised as Eagle 5 to actually see her pull it off. She was not worried; Whatever crazy stunt Juri could be pulling, she will survive with the Feng-shui Engine buried in her left eye socket which was a gift from Seth.

"Well, change of plans. Eagle 9 and Eagle 10 are to take out whoever is trying to kill her outside her distance. Both of you are carrying SPRs anyway, right?"

Eagle 9 and Eagle 10 only looked at each other.

Meanwhile, Juri's body was spinning 3 times in the early morning sky before she landed her feet on the ground. The Feng-shui engine calculated the degree of bending her legs would need to help her absorb the force of the impact, and fortified her tendons by boosting her inner chi. As a result, Juri felt no different than falling from 15 feet. She took her time to lift her head high and take a deep breath of the otherwise refreshing jungle atmosphere. She opened her eyes when she noticed a faint smell of opium gum. That smell reminded her of the first few years out of the tragedy; losing her family and her home, and surviving on small-time drug dealing on the darker corners of Seoul's slums.

Those memories irritated her. She quickly ran towards the village entrance to the east. Her fortified sense of awareness enabled her to flip, climb and jump over any obstacles. Within 25 seconds from her fall, she was already standing out in the open, right in front of the huge bamboo gate of the village entrance. Two men, each at the wooden guard tower to the left and right of that gate could not believe their eyes when they snapped out of the sleepiness and saw a young woman standing in their plain sight without so much of a sound. Alarmed, they began to shout some words, which Juri only heard as gibberish to her ears. The shouts grew more and more hostile, and then she heard the sound of them pulling the bolts on their firearms, ready to shoot her at any moment.

"Oh... I'm getting wet...!"

Her next movement was so fast that the two men could not immediately track her. While they were thrown in confusion, they did not realize that Juri was standing right next to the tower on the right, outside of the other man's view. Lifting her right leg up, she charged the chi inside her for several seconds, which she then released into a fierce three jumping kicks burning with purple aura until that tower collapsed, taking down the man inside in and immediately killing him as he fell and got stabbed by crumbling sticks on his chest. When the whole tower has flattened, Juri could be seen standing on top and bending forward, signalling the other man with her fingers to come over to her.

Nervous, he began to fire his AK-47 frantically at her. Several of the bullets shot were heading right towards her head, but she could see them in motion as time slowed down around her. From the moment she turned her head out of the bullet's projection until she see them fly away, even being able to read the engravings on those bullets, her heart began to race. The rush of adrenalin from the danger, and the elevated blood circulation and heartbeats triggered by Feng-shui engine caused her to laugh from the excitement. The man eventually emptied the entire magazine of his weapon, but Juri only advanced towards him, slowly, creeping as if she was to be his impending death. Death it was for him; Juri had been cooking a grenade she took from the collapsed tower since the man started firing at her, and by the time it reached his face, he could no nothing else but watch as the sight of an exploding grenade would be his last.

Eagle 9 and Eagle 10 caught up to her by the time both towers have collapsed. They almost could not believe what they were seeing; a lone woman causing the destruction who jumped off 140 feet despite taking off with no weapons whatsoever. However, they were only getting increasingly nervous as the sound of it would alert villagers much earlier than they had planned or expected. When they noticed Juri standing in the middle of the gate, seemingly ready to take it down, they voiced out their concerns.

"Wait! There are probably already dozens gathering on the other side, aiming at us!"

"So?" Juri did not bother turning around to face them.

"We're only going to get killed!"

"Then piss off elsewhere!"

Eagle 9 and Eagle 10 looked at each other before taking cover in the bushes. What shocked them next is the sight of Juri exuding thick aura around her body. She took off her jumpsuit, revealing her usual spider breastplate and matching taekwondo pants. She only backed off a few steps before dashing against the large gate with one flying kick which shattered and snapped each of the tied up bamboos forming the gate. The center spot where she landed her foot snapped and form two sharp flying pieces which hit and immediately killed two of the mobs standing by while the rest of them fell into shock.

As soon as the gate collapsed and the debris cleared, Eagle 10 ignored his disbelief at the otherwise physically impossible feat and threw a grenade at a group of 7 men still standing in front of Juri, taking them out. Eagle 9 ran out of the bushes and began aiming through his scope and incapacitated dozens more. In the midst of the chaos, Juri noticed a man wearing a vest with blocks of C4s strapped on it, running towards Eagle 9 at full speed. Quickly after, she jumped and sped 50 yards into the suicide bomber, landing in front of him. She lifted him up with a knee attack under his jaw and delivered and reverse spinning kick that sent him flying to three groups of men guarding the front door to a two-storey wooden structure close by. The force was so strong that one of the men who was hit by the bomber also got thrown into the building. The structure then exploded and collapsed, killing the other two and three more gunmen who was firing at the rooftop.

Four men and five women armed with machetes and sickles tried to ambush her, but by then, her excitement has reached her peak. She continued to cackle hysterically as she easily evaded their deadly swings and gave them back fatal kicks to their necks and heads. They all then collapse on their last breaths in an almost perfect circle surrounding her.

"This is too easy... TOO EASY! KYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! !"

As Eagle 9 and Eagle 10 continued to take out other gunmen in the east section, trying to ignore Juri's lunatic burst of satisfaction, they were joined by Eagle 5 and Eagle 6 who themselves have been shooting at the other villagers. All four of them were then standing in front of a small shack which was the only remaining structure not yet searched by them as all the villagers around them have either died, or are dying.

"Boss secured the package, so let's just light it up."

Juri caught Eagle 9's talk through her own radio which she was going to ignore, but her heightened senses detected faint cries coming from the direction of the shack. When she saw Eagle 9 in the process of pulling the pin off a grenade, she hollered.

"HEY YOU. STOP."

Juri slowly walked past the four, and into the shack. There was only minimal light coming from the torch outside, and the swaying flames made the light unstable, but she could see a large clay pot on top of a thick square wood; The closer she approached it, the louder the cries sounded to her. Curious, she lifted the clay pot aside and kicked the square wood away, only to find a six-foot deep hole, with 3 boys and 2 girls who all could not be older than 4 years old, crying in the dark. Three of them were hugging each other and all their faces were covered in dirt. Juri's heart skipped a beat.

"Viper here. Eagle 6, where are you now, over."

"Eagle 6 here, over." He came closer to the hole and knelt down to look into the hole. He pressed a switch around his mask to turn on night vision, and confirm his findings. "We found 5 children in a deep hole in a shack. Proceeding to eliminate them, over."

Right when he was beginning to aim his M4, Juri's legs hit his hands and rifle so hard that he lost grip and the rifle flew through the roof. He collapsed on the floor, startled.

"...Spare them." Juri's voice was faint, almost unsure. Eagle 6 only looked up to her.

"But our orders are to kill everyone."

"Hold your fire, Eagle 6."

Viper was already standing at the door frame by then. She looked at Juri's back for a while with her hands wrapped under her breasts before going in and observing the children herself.

"Hmm... I guess the intel was not exactly accurate; they do retain some humanity."

Adjusting her gloves, Viper held her hand out in the hole and shot smoke going out from a tube under her arms. After 30 seconds, all five of them became silent and collapse to the ground.

"Eagle 5, take them up and leave them somewhere in the nearby village."

"But... boss... the closest village is like 7 miles away."

"Then you should move now. Take Eagle 6 with you." Viper stood up and adjusted her gloves again. "Leave them somewhere that people can easily notice, ALIVE. Our agents are in those villages to verify that you do it."

"...Understood."

20 minutes later, the whole village was engulfed in flames along with all the bodies. Juri continued to looked at the spot where the shack was, from inside their escape helicopter through the window. Viper, who was sitting across her, only looked on.

"I think I understand why you didn't set out to hit back at Ryu that morning."

Juri still stayed quiet. In her head, a mix of painful memories swirled continuously, and every attempt she made to put them away only served to amplify them.

"Speaking of Ryu, I think I can share a little info on his relationship with Ryu and Shadowlaw, along with your father."

Juri's eyes were then on Viper, although she still did not move.

"Shadowlaw wanted Ryu so they can speed up and complete their development of Psycho Drive using his Dark Hadou. The drugs they needed in the research used to be supplied by this village since the start of Vietnam War, which your father traced down to, 11 years ago. He named them in a testimony during the trial a year later, three months before he died."

"Hmph..."

"Blueprint for the core driver of Psycho Drive's accelerator add-in was also planned and worked on in this village even before they found that they would need Ryu. One of the villagers who had a grudge with Shadowlaw's paycheck botched the delivery and the blueprint ended up torn in half. I found a copy of one half and streamed them directly to Seth, but the other half is said to be in your father's possession."

"...What...!"