Holding on too tight.
Breath the breath of life,
So I can leave this world behind.
It only hurts just once.
They're only broken bones
Hide the hate inside
So I can leave this world behind.
Holding on too tight.
Breathe the breath of life,
So I can leave this world behind.
She was in a dress, solid black with nothing else, her hair pulled back into a tight bun and dressed in very small heels. Black eyeliner and a blank expression showed the seriousness of the situation. She was going to the funeral that was held for the nine agents that had died just a few days ago. She hated these, and had only been to a handful of them, and each time she would once again vow that she would never allow one of her own to be the ones resting in the casket in front of her.
Only a few selected were there to attend the funeral since the entire base would just fill up the entire cemetery. Mr. Ogatami, Carter and Jason were almost necessities, they were of the highest ranks in the place. Then you had team Commanders. Shade, Zack Fair, a solid comrade of hers, then of course there was Sephiroth. He was cold, emotionless, and cruel, but one of the best leaders she had ever seen and had a strong respect for in the work field. He was the one that had taught her how to cope with killing someone, in his harder way of course. She didn't see much of him, since he worked more along side the international federals around the world when they were called upon, she was a freelancer, not caring for the rules they brought to the game. Finally with the higher ranks there were a few others, so there was only a total of about twenty or so people.
She walked up to the caskets, nine of them lined in a neat row, and looked at each picture, studying the faces, they weren't close, but they were people, ones that she knew were working to help the world and make up for their mistakes in the past.
A soft sigh escaped her lips and she walked past each casket, leaving a black rose on each one before going back and standing to watch the others. No words were said, no depressing music played, just people who came to say their goodbyes and acknowledge the fact that nine good men were now dead. Shade saw out of the corner of her eye someone come up next to her, and from the deep black hair he had she recognized him as Zack. "It never gets easier." He said quietly, his normal cheerful voice morbid.
"And it never will." She replied. "I'm sorry about Josh's death."
"He was a helluva agent." Zack said. "I'm gonna miss having him on my team." She just nodded and they both watched as the group finished walking by the caskets, now witnessing as they were slowly lowered one by one into the deep holes made specifically for them.
The time spent at the cemetery was a solid half hour before they started to disburse. Shadow walked towards her truck with her heals in her hands, her bare feet being encased by the soft green grass. "So what did you find on your infiltration mission?" Zack asked.
She scowled. "Bastards have been planning it for a while. Don't know how but they found out the rough estimate on when I was going to take my vacation and planned it in that time frame. They had addresses, some of my more recent jobs that I took, even a couple of my usual suppliers. I called them yesterday, and they said no one knew has come up or inquired about me. It sounds like they planned on making a second attack a few weeks from now, but our little stunt on their territory has them scrambling."
"But all you did was take some information, how would that kill them? Wait, don't bother. Let me guess, you blew the system or something." He chuckled at her grin.
"Just wiped out their entire database and screwed with the security system." She said casually. "That should keep them occupied for a while."
"So you doing anything this Sunday? Couple of Commanders are heading out to do some hunting if you're interested."
"We'll see, got a lot going for me at the moment." She made a face as she opened up her door and tossed her shoes in. "You want a ride?"
"I'm good, Sephiroth gave me a ride and we'll just end up following you back to base." She nodded at this and climbed in. "See you when we get there then."
"Hey! Hitting the bar tonight, so be ready by six!" He called, walking away. She smirked and nodded her head as she started up the engine.
She was on a long stretch of road with the window rolled down, hair out of it's confinement, and Three Days Grace blasting, her thoughts on how she was going to proceed with the current situation. So it was because of these that she didn't notice the jeep that moved over from behind Zack and Sephiroth and started driving on the road next to her, quickly catching up.
When she glanced over she found herself looking into a car with its window rolled down and a gun pointed right at her. Her feet slammed on the gas and she swerved to the inner lane, hearing the gunshots as they made holes into her vehicle. They picked up speed as well and swung around, however this time when they caught up she returned fire, the wind still whipping in her face. Neither of the opponents realized that they were coming up along a cliff edge.
A honking from Sephiroth brought her out of her battle and she looked ahead, saw the cliff, and slammed on the brakes, both hands quickly turning the wheel to the right and into the turn, but it wasn't enough as the truck slid off the cliff sideways, followed by the jeep into the ravine below.
XXXXXX
"Shade!" Zack stared wide eyed at the destroyed guard rail that had just had his friend's truck crash through it. Sephiroth quickly pulled over and they got out, going to the edge to cautiously glance over, the silver haired Commander already having a cellphone at his side. "We've got an accident twelve miles south of the cemetery, agent's car has rolled over a cliff and we need back up along with a medical team." He stayed on the phone while Zack started climbing down the steep hill, his feet sliding underneath him but managing to stay upright.
The truck was currently on it's side, the drivers window face down in the dirt, and filled with bullet holes. Dust was settling around the area and he didn't see any smoke, a good sign. The jeep was on it's roof a few yards away, and grudgingly he pulled out a gun and quickly went over, glancing inside. Two men, one driver and one shooter, were in the seats, the gun nowhere to be found. He reached in and felt for a pulse of the shooter, and found one, it was faint, but he probably didn't have long considering he was bleeding heavily, one from the gunshot in his side and from the other deep cuts from when the car flipped. "No serious loss." He muttered, running over to the truck. "Shade!"
He climbed on top and opened up the passengers door. "Shade." He said, carefully lowering himself in. The said girl was currently somewhat laying on top of broken glass, blood covering a good amount of her body and her eyes were closed. He reached down and found a pulse, steadier than the last ones but her wounds were worrying him. He heard something on top of the truck and found Sephiroth there. "How is she?"
"Alive, but seriously hurt. Think you can flip the truck back on it's wheels?" The man nodded and he disappeared. Zack went back and pushed her hair back to reveal the gash she had received. "Shade, come on, wake up." But there still was no response.
He braced himself in an awkward position to hold Shade steady as he felt the truck slowly start arching back on all four wheels, before it landed with a harsh jolt. Sephiroth opened up the door and carefully picked her up and out of the car.
The sound of sirens came from the mountain top to alert them that help was there.
XXXXXX
Cloud was one of the first to hear about the accident. Him and Yuffie had been going over some of the files that Shadow had requested when the call came in that a car with one of their agents had flipped over a cliff edge in a fire fight. While this was surprising enough, when a call came in from Zack, a good friend of his, he was alerted that it was Shade that had been in the truck, and was currently being rushed to their emergency room.
That explained how he was here now, standing back with the two Commanders as they watched the doctors start working to stop Shadow's bleeding. She held up a lot better than her attackers, who were currently in body bags, but the damage was still heavy. He glanced over at Zack, his gaze questioning and relaying the message. "We were on our way back from the funeral when those two jackasses pulled up next to her and shot out her car. She returned fire but both didn't notice the sharp turn or the cliff edge before they went straight through the railing." He shut up when a doctor walked up to them.
"She's stable, and should be fine, but currently unconscious, she took a hard blow to the head but we don't think anything could result from it, however we will be keeping an eye out for any brain trauma. A few deep cuts and a piece of glass was able to embed itself in between her ribs, by some miracle missing any organs, but she'll recover completely."
They said their thanks before hearing the door slam in behind them, and saw something they rather wouldn't have, Shadow's two twin sisters, with horror struck faces. They quickly went up to their sister and the nurses gave them room before Kairi was the one to ask what had happened.
Sephiroth stepped forward to relay the incident, and could see they were both fighting to hold themselves together, and doing a decent job at it as well. He then informed them of her wounds and they nodded their thanks, quickly looking back at her. "Do you know when she'll wake up?"
"She just needs rest, but she should be conscious soon." He confirmed, his emotionless voice not having the normal terrifying effect it did on others, the two were too preoccupied at the moment.
"Thank you sir." Namine said quietly, a small smile on her lips. "For helping her get out of that ditch." She smiled her thanks at Zack too, who bowed his head.
"Who else knows?" He asked his blond friend.
"News is spreading fast, so give it about fifteen more minutes at the entire base will." He sighed and shook his head.
"This is not good timing at all. If the Devil's Harvesters take a chance to attack now it's going to be harder to take the offense like last time. We're nine men and one Commander short."
Cloud frowned slightly. "That's probably what they wanted. I'm going to go check the patrol schedule and see if any alterations need to be made." Zack nodded as he left the room looking back at Shade. You gotta get back in the game soon Shade, or else we're in trouble.
XXXXXX
Axel, Carter, Zack, and Tifa were currently sitting around one of the gathering tables, the information scattered around it as they stared at the center. "She is not going to be happy." Tifa said worriedly.
"But it's the only solid plan we have. And I'm sure if she agreed to it she could work out the final kinks and make it full proof." Axel replied.
"When should we try to get this plan into action?" Carter said.
"At least within three days of Shade waking up without falling unconscious three minutes later." Zack said. "You're only real problem is getting her to agree. If you do, which I'm still not entirely sure about, then she'll be ready to go in no time, we all know her." This got him agreements from the others.
"And we still have to ask them if they want to, I mean they're just teenagers." Carter commented. "They weren't raised like we were."
"There's only one way to find out." Zack said with a sigh, grabbing his phone and ringing up one of the agents with the request.
A solid five minutes later Riku, Sora, Roxas, Kairi, and Namine found themselves standing before the group. "Is something wrong guys?" Sora asked.
"Depends how you define it." Axel said. "So how about we just jump right into things?" When he received nods from everyone Carter motioned for him to continue. "We were able to gain valuable information from Shade's infiltration job a few days ago. Turns out there is a drug dealer that has codes were could use to get into their main base for a final attack that she's no doubt going to want to do."
"That's great." Namine said.
"It is." Tifa agreed. "But he's also one of the most elusive as well. Only a rare few know his actual whereabouts, but we've found out how to locate him."
The teenagers stayed silent so Carter continued. "Unfortunately they are also known for being able to pull off successful kidnappings, normal of people ages thirteen to their low twenties. No one has been able to find where they have been gone."
Riku wasn't stupid, and he caught on quickly. "What can we do." He said.
Zack grinned, "Smart. You guys are pretty much the only candidates that could pull off being their victims, however, we would be tracking you, and would be able to follow you straight back to their hideout. A team would meet up with you shortly after you've been introduced to the head honcho. We'd get the codes from him and move onto the next step of whatever plan is going through her head. So, what do you guys say?"
"We're in." The chorus was almost freaky as the five of them said it at once. "When can we go?"
The adults glanced at each other. "Well, first we have to run it by the boss, but he's pretty close to a definite yes if you agreed to ago like you just did. So that leaves only one obstacle. Shadow isn't going to be easy to talk into letting you guys do this. Sephiroth is one of our best strategic planners, but she's the normally the only one that can carry them out his way, and that normally results in absolutely nothing going wrong."
"So when would we do it if she says yes?" Roxas asked.
"Probably within two days of her recovering." Carter said. "So if she says yes, then you guys still in?"
"Definitely." Kairi said. "If we can help out, then we will."
XXXXXX
A day and a half later she woke up, fully conscious, and recovering nicely. She could feel the soreness in her limbs, more specifically somewhere between one of her ribs. Lifting the loose white shirt she saw the bandages wrapped around her stomach. A few smaller ones were throughout her body and she cursed softly before pushing off the sheets and swinging her legs over, seeing she was glad in loose white shorts as well.
OK, she hated doctors, and with a passion. She understood all the good things they could do, but she didn't like the idea of them injecting her with various medicines, there were so many things a syringe could hold inside it. So she had no problem leaving without their consent.
But apparently someone else did.
"And where do you think you are going Missy?" Yuffie said, arms on her hips and feet planted apart.
"Getting the hell out of here." She said with a smirk, pulling Yuffie by the arm with her. "So fill me in. What's been going on?"
So you had the agent that claimed she was a ninja, and one of the most well known Commanders, walking through the hallways to the mess hall, one of them with a shuriken, while the other was in loose white hospital clothes. Definitely a sight to see. "Well, the other two guys that shot at you are dead. The place has been chaos but doing good since we've had loads of Intel coming in, we've got a plan to get you the codes to the Devil's main playground."
Shade raised her eyebrows at this. "Oh really."
"Yep." She said happily. "There's a drug dealer that has them all and we figured out how to get to him using bait."
"What's the bait."
"Well, turns out he's part time kidnapper as well. So we found where they most likely can occur and figured we'd be able to track the bait back to the their base and capture him."
"So who's the bait?" She asked. "Larxen and Tifa?"
"Actually, we were thinking your friends. They already decided to help and-" Her happy talking continued on for a solid minute before she realized Shade had stopped following her. "Something wrong?" She asked innocently.
"So, who thought of the idea?" She asked.
"Eh, mostly Axel and Zack, but they were kinda nervous about how you would...react." She looked back to see she had disappeared. "Uh oh."
It was Axel who took the blunt of it.
The five of them were listening as the adults spoke about the few flaws in their plan. Were they a little freaked out? Of course. But then this was a chance where they could actually help their sister, and that feeling was starting to overcome the fear. "So now we just have to tell Shade." Axel said with a sigh. "Any idea how the hell we're going to convince her?"
"Well, it is the only plan so far that is basically solid. And knowing Shade if she went along with it she would make sure it was full proof, especially with those five in the picture." Carter replied.
"So anyone know where she is right now?" Yuffie asked. Just then Tifa walked into the conference room. "Guys, we have a problem."
"What's wrong?" Roxas asked, but there was no need for an answer, it walked straight through the door.
The door slammed open, and the room seemed to freeze over. Shadow was there, her hair falling around her and still in the clothes that exposed her various bandages, but from the way she was looking at Axel and Zack you could tell she wasn't happy. She walked up to Axel, glaring at him before he felt a hand grip his neck and slam him into the wall, staring into what seemed like the eyes of death in human form.
"I left a funeral, got shot at, fell off the edge of a cliff in my truck, let me remind you one of my favorites, and was stuck in the medical ward for almost two days. Then I get told casually about my sisters and their friends going on the front lines to deal with a drug lord. I'm in a very pissed off mood Axel, choose you're words wisely."
There were many times in Namine's life where she thought she was scared. But after seeing Shadow like this, she truly realized what fear along these lines felt like. She opened her mouth but felt a hand clamp over it, and looked over to see Yuffie shaking her head, casting a warning glance at Kairi as well.
"Turns out the drug dealer could get us the codes we need to infiltrate their base a lot easier than what we had previously planned. Problem is he's never seen, his group has been tracked to the kidnappings of many of the local teenagers though, but his whereabouts are unknown. If we could get your friends in and track them then we'd be able to gain an advantage and work something out, most likely clearing out a few charges pressed against him in the past month or so." It didn't fall short of his notice that her grip had tightened bit by bit, the reason being it was getting harder to breath.
"Wrong answer." She growled, before he found his throat released and she was walking away, the door slamming shut behind her. Yuffie frowned and looked at Axel. "Where do you think she's going?"
"I've only seen her like this a hand full of times." He said, rubbing his neck. "And during those times she locked the gym down, turned up the band Insane Clown Posse, and ignored everyone for probably the next two days."
"But we don't have two days." Tifa pointed out.
"I know, and she does too, so this is not going to be pretty."
XXXXXX
It was more like a guilty pleasure song. She normally never listened to that kind of music that had continuous cussing and talked about inappropriate subjects, so of course she didn't have any of the bands CD's. However, there was one song that gave her a scary sense of calm. Of course, the name 'Chop Chop Slide' wasn't the most cheerful of things while the song was cheerful in a morbid kind of way, and the cuss words were plentiful, but she always had it on replay for these types of situations.
Uh Oh!
And here we go
Yea
She had her hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed in some loose cargo pants and a t-shirt, her feet actually barefoot and her dog tags currently resting on top of the gym bag. The entire room was empty save for her, and the lights were dimmed slightly, casting an eery glow. In front of her was one of her most challenging rock wall obstacles that she had come up with in her ten years of being here. This was normally how the routine worked, then she would continue on to the weight bench, followed by the tread mill, then the punching bag, and normally she didn't get any farther because the rest of her hours would be spent there.
But some of ya'll just need to loosen up, just loosen up,
Oh she needed to loosen up all right. She actually had to mentally tell herself to let go of Axel or else she probably would have choked him right then and there. Honestly, it was like the day was out to get her. She must have ticked off a Greek god or something to be getting all of this thrown at her at once. She sighed and lightly bounced on her feet, trying to shake the feeling of impatience off as she stared at the wall, not wearing any gear but taking in the course, mentally setting a path.
But you know,
It wouldn't be a Juggalo party if somebody didn't get shot. Now right about now, I want you to picture you got two nine millimeters
One in each hand, and here is what you gunna do Juggalos you gunna take those guns
Right?
Her hand grasped the first rock, and she slowly started to pull herself up, her feet taking their place below her before she started to move up, the speakers in the corner of the room filling the entire space with sound. The doors were locked but she knew that her normally two day stress workout was going to be just a few hours this time. There was work that had to get done, and choices to be made.
That of course drew her back to her current situation, and unfortunately she already knew her answer. Her mercenary side knew how lucky she got with the fact that the plan was pretty solid, and already had willing participants. However, there was the problem of her emotions, and that was letting the group of teenagers get dropped into that kind of situation, something that she detested. But Sephiroth would do the planning, I would be there right behind them and ready to kill a person who even threatens them, and no problems would occur.
Logical thinking sucks.
And how is this new?
XXXXXX
Sephiroth was currently in a room he spent almost most of his time in when he wasn't on missions, the operations room. His long silver hair hung over his well known coat and his shoes made little to no sound as he walked around the room, looking down at the papers in his hands. Masamune currently rested in the corner as he worked. Even though he was currently on a break he was curious about the information Shade had gathered on her last mission. She was one of the only few that he took an interest in when it came to work, and the even fewer who he would trust to carry out one of his well thought-out plans.
When the door opened he only glanced over to see Shade standing there, smirking with her arms crossed over her chest and a file in her hands. "Hello Sephiroth."
"Miss Shade." He nodded in greeting. "Feeling well?"
"I'm feeling annoyed, but that could be taken care of quickly if you're willing to help." Ah, he knew where this was going.
"What's the issue?"
"I'm sending five teenagers on the front line to be kidnapped by a drug dealer that I need to track down, then proceed to break into his surrounding where I have no idea where it is and what its defense is like." The file in her hand landed with a small 'thump' on the metal table in the center of the room.
A small smirk came across his face, a very rare sight, as he picked up the file. "And the pay?"
"The usual, three large pizza's with everything on it and a couple of beers." She grinned. "Probably going to be a late night."
He continued to look down as she said the warning. "Isn't it always."
"Good point."