IM BACK AT SCHOOL NOW I CRI AHHHHH

GCSE's WHYYYYYYYY

And oh I guess this answers someone's question about where I'm from. I'm from Surrey whoop whoop! I'm English.

but how are u my frens. u all good? hydrated? fed? rested? Well u better be! (Pls look after yourselves I know school's haRD but you just gotta keep going strong)

It's the moment you've been waiting for...

MY PRECIOUS RUSSIAN IS HERE!eeeeeeEEEEEEP! IVE BEEN DEBATING WITH MYSELF HOW HE SHOULD BE INTRODUCED BUT THEN I GAVE BIRTH TO THIS GEM IN A DRAFT AND I JUST LURVE IT AHHH

also

Alex is so precious,, and and he's just. precious. He needs a hug. (Yassen. This is your que.)

-ur main bro

Alex wishes that the jittery feeling coiling around his body like barbed wire doesn't relax him. Biologically, adrenaline should be doing the opposite, getting him tense and ready for this fuckpot of all missions B-Unit had been slapped with with literally an hour or two's notice. But, Alex is used to this feeling. It's always pumping around him just a little bit, always making his muscles strain and his senses hurt but Alex is used to this feeling of always being ready for shit to go down that he feels ever so slightly more prepared for this mission.

Slightly.

Because no one is really that excited to be thrown into a hostage situation for a man, unnamed and faceless in Croc's brief, that apparently had a favour owed to him by Her Majesty. Whatever he'd done to swing that deal, Alex is sure must be a great story. It's no wonder these... Americans, are they? Yes, probably. It's no wonder these American mercenaries had kidnapped him. Alex is certain that from the only scrap of info that they've got, that the ransom for whoever this bastard is (that had the Queen demanding him rescued by 'The best the British have to offer!'), is most likely extremely high.

And because Alex is a horrible person, he wishes that someone would just pay the ransom instead. Save them a messy job. Because of course, it's just as his burnt shoulder starts to hurt less and his bruises fade to yellow that he's got to go on a dangerous mission with a Unit he's never worked with in the field before.

Well, at least he gets (the best!) guns this time, right?

"Lynx. Get out." It's just a bit of whispery static in his ear, but Alex is immediately on knifes edge and screaming internally. Nothing comes through the comms after that. Alex is dreading moving from his perfectly angled (his maths teacher would be shocked!) and secluded spot to go after B-Unit. (Because there is no way he's just up and leaving them when he's perfectly capable of kicking these Yankee's arse's.)

As soon as they'd been dropped down in the remote, dense forests of...whatever hovel their hostage had been dragged to, Alex had been sent to set his scope on their planned escape entrance, and keep a report going of everything going on in his birds-eye view.

Basically, he'd been sent out of the way.

With an exasperated and slightly hysterical huff, Alex disassembles and folds his gun up into its case. He'll leave it here as he infiltrates the industrial-looking building that B-Unit had managed to get themselves trapped in.

Because of course, the American mercenaries know they're here. And of course, B-Unit are being held with the hostage.

And of course, Alex has to pull an impossible stunt to rescue them all.

Really, Alex thinks to himself as he pulls his standard handgun out of its holster. He should've expected it would end like this.

****linebreak whoop*****

When Croc had woken up that morning to their Unit Supervisor practically ripping the door off its hinges to get inside their hut, it was a pretty big clue as to how the rest of his day was gonna go.

Even he didn't expect it to be quite so bad. A mission with no prep? That just never happened.

Well, it has now. Or more accurately, is happening, because Croc is currently being chucked unmercifully into a cell along with the rest of his Unit - bar Lynx, because there is no way in any layer of Hell that Croc is going to put an injured rookie in the field.

This. This is why they never get missions without prep.

He sits stunned, slumped against the wall and checking his face to see if his nose is broken. It's not. It just hurts like it is.

"I don't suppose this is part of your genius rescue plan?" A perfect English accent, the kind that Croc only hears on TV or in movies, drawls from the corner of the room. Croc doesn't jump, but he tenses, and he clearly hears Panther's yelp of surprise. He'd been leaning against the wall just a foot away from the man and never noticed him, after all.

Croc sizes him up. Trim, dancers build (reminded him almost of Lynx, except Lynx was a little more bony), with white-blonde hair, shocking blue eyes and pale skin. His presence and muscles make him seem taller than he probably is, so Croc estimates he's between 5'9 - again, around Lynx's height - and 6'0.

Making a pretty easy inference, Croc deducts that this is the supposedly helpless hostage. Croc thinks the man could probably get himself out if he really wants to, and that there really is no reason for B-Unit to be there so urgently, and-

Oh. Right. The Queen. The man knew the Queen, personally. Of course they need to pitch in. The Queen had asked them to. You can't say no to the Queen.

"I don't suppose you'd believe us if we said yes?" He answers back, and the man chuckles silently. For a hostage, he looks fairly at ease.

Bear groans as he stretches his arms out, popping his shoulders to soothe the unpleasant ache in them. Panther flops over his legs, using them as a pillow. Croc just stares around the cell, noticing the cliché prison bars and the drab stone walls. The man offers a half-drunken bottle of water to him, and Croc uses a few capfuls to clean the blood off his face, considerate that this is possibly their only bottle. He almost chokes on a sip when he hears gunshots down the hall.

Lynx. Shit.

"Shit, is that Lynx?!" Panther nearly squeaks out, bursting upright and standing stupidly close to the bars of the cell. Bear pulls him back, but Croc knows that they all want to stick their heads out and see if the little arsehole is really stupid enough to try and take down the 14 fully grown mercenaries that had kicked all of their arse's.

Panther looks like he might cry when everything goes silent.

Lynx reminds Panther of his son, Jessie. They've all talked about this before. Panther's paternal instincts telling him something is severely wrong with Lynx, the rest of them telling him not to pry, that sort of thing.

Jessie is only 6 and Lynx has to be... How old? Croc doesn't even want to think about it. It makes him feel queasy.

There are slow footsteps then, a bit of heavy breathing, and even the man falls quiet, understanding this would either reveal that their other Unit member is dead or had managed to take down all of the American thugs - which is unlikely.

But despite his fear and dread that he'd have to go back to camp, tell A-Unit that they'd lost 'Little Lynx'. That he'd have to tell the kid's family that they'd lost their little spy protégé, or whatever he was. They'd barely known him, and-

No fucking way.

"So," with blood running from a worryingly deep cut in his hairline, a dark red bruise on his cheek, and something haunted in his cheeky grin, Lynx twirls some cliché keys in his hand. They were clinking, large, and on a ring. "We going now, or what?"

Panther whoops, Bear grins, Croc stares because he can't do anything much more than that, and Lynx looks almost flushed at their cheering. And also, a bit dizzy.

In the darker corner of the cell, Yassen recognises his Little Alex - older, taller, thinner, more bruised, more broken, and different - and his fists clench. Alex is in pain. It made Yassen furious. Guilty. Regretful.

MI6 would pay for ever having anything to do with Hunter's boy. Really, they should've better, should've known that Yassen would come for them eventually. Yassen won't let them hurt Alex Rider, or whoever he's pretending to be now, anymore. Alan Blunt is going to pay for his crimes.

Yassen would make sure of it.

Ayyyy,, be sure to drop a review my frens it will be much appreciated.

ILYSM