Eyo! A little late, but it's still Thursday here in Texas.

I'm peeling back a little ore of Kateri's past in here, one of the first obvious things to nudge her and Rex together.

*evil cackle because I know what's coming*

Not gonna say anything else, just read and see.

Sweat dripped off the blond boy's face as he concentrated on the tiny white ball as it flew back and forth across the table, each swing hitting the plastic sphere with a little bit more vigor than the last.

At least, it did until a shrill ringing filled the air, causing Noah to miss the ball completely. It bounced with hollow taps across the laminate floor.

"Noah!" hissed his opponent.

"Sorry, sorry…" he grumbled, pulling out the ringing device. Stepping off to the side, he answered the call. "Hello?" he asked irritably.

"Where is Rex?"

Noah's heart skipped a beat at the cold, accusing voice. "Oh, hey Six. Um, Rex is with me. He's kinda been overwhelmed lately and needed a break, so I told him he could crash at my place."

"Why would he do that without informing Holiday or I, and why isn't he answering his phone?" the mercenary questioned.

"I have no idea." he answered honestly. "But I'm pretty sure he turned his phone off. Said he's just gonna take what's coming for that." His words were a half truth, Rex had shut off his phone with those exact words.

"Let me speak to him."

Well shit. By this point, Noah was more than ready to strangle his friend for putting him in this position.

"Uh, he's not right here right now, he went to get food." Noah told him hastily, hoping it didn't sound too rushed. There was an almost painful moment of silence before Six spoke again.

"Make sure he calls when he gets back."

Noah let out a breath he had been holding when the line went dead.

"Damnit Rex, you've only been gone for one day." he cursed. "I might be the one Six kills at this rate."

(*)

Two Days Left

It was early in the morning once more, Kateri perched on the roof on the motel as she watched the sun rise. Steam floated away from the rim of a styrofoam cup in her hand in thick curls, dancing away into the cold air of the October morning, the warm aroma of fresh coffee saturating the immediate area.

Salem was also already awake, hence the coffee, but the arsonist wasn't in the mood to sit in the cold wind, leaving Kateri alone on the building.

Another gust of freezing wind hit her body, making her long black hair swirl around her body in a fierce tangle. She hadn't bothered brushing it, so she allowed it to remain loose instead of braiding it as she usually did.

She took a sip of the hot coffee, slightly burning her tongue in doing so, but she didn't seem to notice.

Groaning a bit she leaned back until she was simply lying on the roof, her legs bent and her arms tucked around her torso to preserve some semblance of heat. Her hair ended over her face almost immediately, so instead of moving it, she simply closed her eyes.

Two days. She had two days to make sure that her friends and Rex could get in and out of the building without being caught or killed, and she wasn't even going to be with them. If they failed, she knew her chance would be missed and she'd likely never see her parents again, should they be alive now. This was her last ray of hope, so should it fail, she had no reason to keep fighting as she did. The archer idly wondered what she would do if that happened.

Probably fall into the wrong crowd and get herself killed over something stupid.

Shivering, she wished that she hadn't come up there in just a T-shirt, but the room was vastly too hot for her liking and she didn't think to grab one.

She began humming tunelessly under her breath, bringing her wrist in front of her face.

She wore a watch that Ema had altered for her some months ago, it working similar to a smartwatch meant to sync up to a phone, but hers didn't require a bluetooth connection to anything to function, and it had vastly more storage space on it. It was the equivalent of a separate phone, save for actually making calls.

She scrolled through a small section of messages between her and her employer as they set up a time to meet. After a few minutes, she hissed in frustration and shut the device off. She didn't have a name or even a gender for the person she was meeting(mentally dubbing them Unsub), and the terms and reason of the meeting had been infuriatingly vague for their part. The only only reason she was going at all was because she was supposedly being updated on her parents. In the past, they would occasionally let her know 'how they were doing', or essentially saying they were alive and they wanted something from her. More than once they had held the information over her head to get her to do things she didn't want to.

It wasn't something she was proud of.

She took another swig of the coffee, the cold air having cooled it enough that it no longer burned her. She leaned forward again, resting her head on her knees as she shivered again.

"Kateri?"

The Navajo girl jumped at the voice, on her feet at once in a defensive stance. "Who the f-Rex?"

Rex's head and arms were visible, and she figured his legs were awkwardly dangling by the side of the building. He hoisted the rest of his body up easily, making little noise. "What are you doing up here?"

She sat back down where she'd been before, bringing her legs back to her chest. "Nothing. I couldn't sleep. Why are you up here?"

"Salem told me you were up here and Abe's asleep. Kinda felt weird to stay in either place." he admitted. "Salem is not a nice person without caffeine and she already doesn't like me."

"Mh, so coming up here was the better option." she mused, resting her chin on her knees. Her hair covered most of her body.

Rex wisely chose not to answer, instead sitting next to her.

There were a few long moments of silence, but it was a somehow comfortable silence.

"So, what were you doing to the arrows yesterday?" he asked.

"I was messing with the voltage. It's been a long time since I've put them here, so the voltage was lower and it had longer bursts. But I've learned that sometimes they get knocked off before it incapacitates my target, so I upped the voltage and set it to release almost all its power immediately. It's not something I recommend doing if you don't know exactly how to do it, because I've electrocuted the shit out of myself a couple times." she answered, taking a drink of her coffee.

Rex glanced over at her scrunched form, much of it obscured from view because of her long hair, but after a moment, he noticed something on the back of her arm.

"What is this?" he asked, pointing to a cluster of horizontal lines.

She glanced back at was he asked about, and Rex caught a flash of panic in her eyes. She tugged the material of her shirt down quickly.

"It's nothing, just old scars. I have a lot of them" she said.

Rex didn't buy that for a second. "They're all perfectly spaced apart and going the same direction. Those aren't a bunch of chance scars."

"Just drop it, Rex." she said in a low warning tone.

"What's the big deal? It's not like I'm gonna incriminate you for something you did!" Rex pressed, almost suspicious that she'd be trying so hard to hide it. Something in the back of his mind told him that he shouldn't care as much as he did, but he ignored it.

"I got them from being tortured, Rex!" she spat hotly, and he fell silent, shocked. That had certainly escalated quickly. "I didn't cut myself, I'm not an idiot. They're old, from where I'd just been figuring things out. I slipped up and I got caught."

Rex was quiet for a moment, before hesitantly asking, "What happened to you?"

"I don't really want to talk about it." she murmured. "Not something I really love to remember."

"Sorry, I was just curious. I don't know a lot about that sort of thing in a more traditional sense. Most torturers aren't stabbing you with some freaky glove to suck the life out of you." he said offhandedly.

She didn't respond, considering for a moment before she unwrapped her arms from around her legs and tucked them closer to her body.

"It was one of my first assignments." she began, not sure why she was telling him. "I honestly don't really remember what it was for, I've blocked out a majority of it. But I do remember that I was hiding out in some old factory building, basically spying on some… gang, or something, don't really remember, when I got caught by a guard. I don't know how I did, because guards don't usually patrol rafters, but it didn't matter. I was caught."

She involuntarily shivered again, and Rex seemed to notice for the first time that she didn't have any sort of jacket. Sighing, he slipped his off and draped it around her shoulders, mentally grumbling at Holiday for drilling manners into him she way she did.

She gave him a look that was a mix of curious and surprised, but did not complain.

"Anyways, I woke up some time later. I didn't know if I'd been out hours or days or what, it's not like they keep a clock handy for prisoners." She pulled his jacket closer, and her eyes were fixed to the roof, a dark look on her face. "They were creative. Branding, cutting, whips… not much was held back."

Her tone implied that those weren't all they did, and Rex didn't want to think what else they could've done. His chest tightened at the notion, and he couldn't help but feel a frustrating amount of sympathy for her.

"Um, can I ask a weird question?" His voice was quiet after her sobering explanation.

She shrugged. "I guess. Doesn't mean I'll answer."

Rex paused, hesitating a moment. "Can… can I see the scars?"

Her eyes widened at this, clearly not having expected that. "Uh, why?"

"I...don't know. I'm just kinda curious is all." he admitted. "Like I said, I've never really met someone who's experienced that first hand, that I knew about. Just forget it."

She was silent as she considered his words, eventually shrugging off the jacket and turning around so her back faced him. She had told him that she wanted him to be able to trust her word, so hiding things wouldn't be helping her case. She also hoped that it would give him more incentive to help her.

"What you saw on the back of my arms is literally nothing."

She pulled up the back of her shirt, tucking it around her shoulders so her entire back was exposed.

There was literally nothing Rex could say in that moment, his brain had all but stopped.

The flesh in front of him was gnarled over with shiny scar tissue, some edges ragged from what he'd assume was a whip, some thin and clean from a blade. There were a couple of symbols etched in as well from branding, all of them partially broken from overlapping scars. They wrapped around her sides a bit, thinning out to leave her stomach and lower back mostly bare, the majority of them concentrated at the top of her back. The racer back of her sports bra covered a chunk of them, but the surrounding scars were more than enough for his imagination to fill in the gaps.

"Holy shit..." he murmured, horrified. It made him sick to his stomach to see how badly her skin had been ravaged. The thin lines on her arms really were nothing. "I-I'm sorry. I really don't have anything to say."

"It's fine. It happened, it's in the past, I can't change it now." she told him, her voice detached. She dropped her shirt, letting it cover the damaged skin.

She stood, handing him his jacket. "I should probably go back, or else Salem's never gonna let us hear the end of disappearing at the same time."

With that, she jumped nimbly off the edge of the low roof, Rex not hearing her hit the ground as she left him alone on the cold rooftop.

(*)

Six checked the surveillance footage from the previous day, finding little on them. He knew Noah was lying for Rex, he wanted to know why.

Going back further, he found him leading the girl through the halls, taking care not to get caught. Six's eyes narrowed, following their path until they came to the boy's old room.

Clever. The room was difficult to access, which is why it had been given to Rex in the first place since the teen could open it with his nanites. It had been a storage closet before then and no one really knew where the access card for it was, and no one would think to check in there for a random detainee anyhow.

He watched as Rex would bring food and water every few hours for a day or two until… he let her out?

"What are you up to, Kid?" he murmured. He also saw him slip a tracking dot into her pocket, but he knew it wouldn't last long on her. Once they left range of cameras, he didn't find the girl on any more footage.

He might could accept that Rex chose to let her go, but that would then require tracking her down again at some don't just release someone who tried to shoot you.

But now that Rex had also gone off the grid, he suspected the girl had gotten Rex involved in something and Rex asked Noah to cover for him. The green suited man couldn't fathom why he would do such a thing, but he had come to learn that the boy rarely acted on such impulse without a good reason.

"I'm going to trust you, Rex." he muttered. "Don't make me regret it."

(*)

Kateri slipped quietly back into the room, Salem still being the only one awake while holding a cup that she assumed was coffee. The archer was fairly certain that pure caffeine ran through her veins by that point.

"Did Grumpy Ass find you?" she asked once the door was closed, drinking from the cup. Her eyes shone eerily in the dim light.

Kateri pulled a hoodie over her head, kicking off her boots before sitting on the edge of Salem's bed, the sheets currently a large tangle in the middle of the mattress. "Yeah, he did. Thanks so much for telling him where I was."

"Well, if he'd stayed in here, we'd be short one Mexican, because he irritates the fuck out of me." Salem said bluntly. "Also, though you probably know this, we're gonna need to go for supplies soon. Like, real supplies for weapons and shit."

"Yeah, I know. There's a hunting store a few miles away that we can go to, but I'm pretty sure it's closed today." she said, standing to get a cup of coffee for herself. She only filled the cup halfway, seeing the way Salem watched the liquid move like an animal.

"Even better." Salem drained the rest of the cup, refilling it immediately.

Kateri deadpanned at her. "We are not raiding the store and stealing stuff."

Salem raised a defiant eyebrow. "Is that a challenge? Fine, I'll just take Ema and Abe with me, they're not gonna complain."

Kateri mentally slapped herself. And that's what you get for telling Salem what to do.

"I'm not gonna get out of this, am I?" she asked.

"Nope." The cup tipped back.

"How do you drink it when it's that hot?" Kateri asked, changing the subject to idle small talk. "I've burned the shit out of myself when it was like that."

The pyromaniac shrugged. "I dunno, I guess I'm just used to it. Never really noticed."

"Y'know, not everyone gets up at sunrise." Ema complained in a slightly slurred voice.

"Sorry Sideeffects." Salem murmured, tipping back the cup again. It was already half gone. "I'm gonna go huff seven minutes off my life."

When she opened the door, she was face to face(give or take a few inches, let's get real) with Rex.

"Uh, sorry." he said hastily, stepping out of her way. She didn't say anything, merely stepping around him with a cigarette already between her lips.

Rex closed the door behind the auburn haired girl, before turning back to the other occupants of the room. "So, what's gonna happen today?"

"Apparently we're going shopping."

(*)

In hindsight, perhaps going into the abandoned building had been a poor choice. The walls were covered in vegetation and wildlife flitted in and out of broken windows. There were faint howling sounds, but the wind had picked up, so everyone had brushed it off, which had also been a significant lapse in judgement.

Spoiler, it wasn't the wind.

Within minutes, they were surrounded by a pack of coyotes about as tall as Salem(which wasn't particularly tall, but for a snarling mutated canine, it was definitely tall enough), their numbers probably hovering around the thirty mark.

"Rex, I thought all the Evos had been cured." Kateri hissed.

"So did I, for about a week. I… only EVOs that had already changed were cured, it only fried active nanites." he replied, eyes scanning for a gap in the pack. It was times like this he really wished he'd thought about that before completely shutting down all the other control nanites...

"So you mean this many of these dogs went EVO?" Salem growled, pulling out a switchblade.

"Uh, I think similar species set each other off or something, I don't know." he answered oh so helpfully. Thanks for nothing Rex, you useless reptile.

"Alright, on three split off and everyone go a different direction." Abe instructed. "They should still have that pack instinct, so if we all move fast enough they'll all charge at once and hit each other, which should buy us a little time."

"How do you know that's going to work?" Rex asked, kicking back an EVO that had gotten a little too close for comfort.

"Just do it." Salem told him. "Abe knows what he's talking about, it'll work."

Rex didn't argue further. Kateri had told him previously that the lanky blond was excellent strategist and often got them out of difficult situations. It was better than their current predicament.

"One, two, three, go!"

Rex's hoverboard sprang to life and he went straight up. Kateri lept onto a display, jumping higher until she was on top of a shelf, still favoring her right leg. Abe had disappeared entirely, and Salem snarled loudly and simply charged through the mutated coyotes, most of them moving to follow her, but the girl was surprisingly fast and leapt up on a railing, climbing up until she was perched in the rafters. Ema had simply ducked down in the confusion, sprinting the opposite direction once the EVOs began to pursue Salem. She was now standing on a shelf as well.

"Everyone alive?" Abe called, now revealing himself to have been in the rafters as well, though no one could really recall seeing him get there.

A murmured chorus of acknowledgement bounced lightly off the walls, but it was quickly drowned out by all the violent snarling of the EVOs below.

"Somebody needs to get Sideeffects out." Salem called, her voice low and commanding. "There's too many for blood not to fly."

"Pyra I'm fine." Ema said, sounding exasperated. "It would likely make the odds much more in our favor, seeing as how I would have a large number of targets."

"Then what? You're in a huge," she paused and looked around for a sign. "Trout Pro-Trout Pro? th' fuck names their hunting store Trout Pro? Anyways, you'd be completely surrounded by blood then."

"Hey, you two can argue about this later." Kateri cut in. "Ema, just stay up there for now, you're not much of a fighter, Salem'll cover you. Rex, can you cure them?"

"I should be able to, but there's a chance some will just change back because they're surrounded by so many other active nanites." he answered, now crouched on a cross beam.

"Okay, so that's out. Can you get Ema out of here first, then? I can't see this really going down well unless we kill them, which involves blood." she asked next.

"No, I'm not gonna just sit and wait to see who gets out." Ema spoke. "You're not all going to stand here and decide for me what happens to me."

"Guys, we don't need to-" Rex started.

Kateri then yelped in surprise when one of the EVOs heads popped up beside her. Her right leg swung out, deftly kicking it back to the ground.

"Goddamnit!" hissed Salem. "We don't have time for this shit, they're figuring out how to climb. Just stay put, Sideeffects."

Ema tried to protest, but Salem wasn't listening.

Instead, she dropped from her place only the back of one of the EVOs, wrapping her legs around its neck. Twisting her body sharply, there was a sickening crack, and the creature fell motionless to the ground.

Rex stunned in shock at this, but the others wasted no time. Kateri grabbed onto a hanging light fixture, kicking one sharply in the jaw as she swung down, while Abe grabbed the pole of a net off a display, swinging it with more force than his lanky frame suggested.

"Wait, you don't need to…" Rex tried again, but his voice was drowned out by the fighting. Growling to himself, his Smack Hands sprang to life and he dropped from the support beam, clearing four EVOs from his path in one sweep.

He looked over at a sharp whine and wished he hadn't. He saw Salem with her legs wrapped around another creature, but this time they were secured around the mutated coyote' middle, her hands clamped firmly at either side of its mouth.

Rex stomach lurched when he saw her jerk her body back, bringing the top half of its jaw with her, effectively killing the beast.

"Stop, you don't need to kill them!" he yelled as Kateri caught one around the throat with a cable, hauling it off the ground over another support beam, her bow and quiver still on her shoulder. She chose not to use them, partially because half of them would draw blood, and partially because she didn't want to waste them. The EVO struggled violently, gagging at its windpipe was crushed.

"What the hell do you wanna do, then?" Abe called, ducking as one animal leapt at him, while swinging at another.

"Just...give me a sec!" Rex was knocked to the ground by a pouncing EVO, the Latino quickly reaching out and curing the beast. Then, there was a snarling coyote in his face. He kicked the thing off, sending it into a wall to knock it out.

"We don't have time, just kill the fuckers!" Salem yelled, knocking over a shelf onto one. Its back legs kicked a moment before stilling. Another one leapt at her and she jumped straight up, her body twisting in the air to grab onto its back, quickly breaking its neck as well.

The way the girl was killing them so quickly frightened Rex a bit. The girl displayed well honed fighting skills, as well as much more speed and agility than he would've given her credit for, though it was clunky and not exactly graceful.

It was terrifying.

Rex began to protest again, but was cut off by an attacking EVO before he had the chance.

"There's too many to just fight off!" Kateri shouted, bracing her legs on a table and kicking them out to either side in a near split, before flipping forward and landing on right leg as her ankle suffered another jarring blow. Rex noticed that both she and Salem tended to fight more with their legs for brute strength, lacking it in their upper bodies. Kateri was better off than Salem because of years of archery, but her strength was primarily in her lower body.

"Guys, we need to get supplies." Ema's voice echoed through the building, and Rex glanced over to see her perched on a different shelf with the intercom in her hand, amazed that it worked at all. "Grab supplies as you go, we're gonna have to bail. I'll get what I can, Pyra and Rioter grab what you can. Arrow and Rex, keep them in the main area as much as you can."

Everyone complied, Kateri moving closer to Rex who was already in the center area of the main floor, which was mainly a number of shelves of tacky T-shirts. The archer whistled loudly, drawing the attention of the majority of them, Salem and Abe taking care of the few it didn't.

The both of them grabbed a shopping cart and began clearing shelves, and Rex could hear them arguing over who would get the most.

"Not the most mature lot, are they?" Rex questioned, grunting as one EVO threw its weight into his mechanized hands, forcing him to slide back a few inches.

"Yeah, no. Especially when it's those two." Kateri answered, ducking to let two creatures slam into one another head on while sending a hard roundhouse kick to the side of the head of another. It dropped like a sack of bricks with a sharp cracking sound. She stumbled a bit when she righted herself, having stood on her injured leg when kicking.

"Can you not just kill them?" Rex asked, furrowing his brows.

She raised an eyebrow at him, swinging her bow at an oncoming beast. "Rex, they're just wild dogs, no one's gonna miss a bunch of rabid animals."

"It doesn't matter, they're still alive!" he protested, pointedly reaching out and curing one springing at him.

The look on her face became cold and detached as she spoke.

"So was everything else we've killed."

Her tone sent chills down Rex's back, slapping him with the reality that, while she seemed like a girl who just wanted to do the right thing, she was still a contracted mercenary with friends she had made doing her job as one. They may be a group of teenagers, but that didn't change the fact that most, if not all, of them had killed people doing those jobs.

He did not try to convince her further to leave the EVOs alive. Realistically, it would have been a simpler, safer route to just kill them, but Rex had spent years being the alternative that kept them alive. It felt wrong.

He did his best to ignore the harsh cracking and snapping, but it was as cold and bluntly there as the girl who dealt the blows.

Funny thing, this is based on a real thing from the original story for Abe, Sale and Ema. They don't go shopping, they go shopping like a badass.

Also, if you haven't noticed yet, I'm a terrible, horrible author. I put my characters through the seven circles of hell, and any romance story is guaranteed some heartbreaking angst. Feel free to back out while you can, because you're gonna need a factory of tissues when I'm done with you all.

That's all for now. There's a few more in between chapters(I think it's 14 where the actual mission starts), but I've got some super interesting character development in between that I'm confident won't disappoint!

Please drop a review if you want this story to keep its momentum! It really does matter! Every last one counts!