Bunker, December 24th, 2027.
She was fast, his human eye only saw a blur when she both made her move and activated her body armor, but he now pined to the steel wall behind him, her grip very strong on his pectoral plate, and she was looking at him, her face covered with scales, and her green eyes, locked on his in a terrifying glare.
"WHAT... DID... YOU... SAY...?"
"They died..." He answered. "I'm sorry, Jade... look, we can talk this through."
Not paying attention but calming a little."Mom... She said she would be fine... I should have stayed, we could have beat him..."
He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that there was nothing she could have done but his cybernetic brain had already calculated all the possible incomes of an encounter between her and her mother against the General. And found that the odds were fairly even, they had a 32% chance to defeat him, but since this General was a SwordsMan and had a thicker built than the others, their chance of winning without any casualties or injuries was under 3%. Not giving any importance to the number on his HUD, he says.
"You don't know that..."
He was still in her solid grasp while they were talking, but he could see that she was calming down now.
"And... what about dad?" He eyes showing so much sadness at the moment.
"The General got to us before we could leave the mall. Your dad, he... he stayed behind to give me the time to escape." It was what happened but he knew he made a mistake saying that like that.
"YOU LEFT HIM BEHIND!"
"That's not how it went, you have to calm down Jade, we need to talk about this."
"IT'S YOUR FAULT... IT WAS YOUR PLAN!"
"You need to keep it together, Jade, you..."
"OH! YOU WON'T BE KEPT TOGETHER WHEN I'LL BE FINISHED WITH YOU!"
Ok, he thought, talking wouldn't work anymore now, so he had to calm her before she hurt herself more than she already was or him for that matter. She let go of one of her hands and readied her fist for a direct attack. Wade used that small amount of time to grab her wrist with both his hand and applied as much pressure as he could until he heard the scales crack.
She let go of him because of the sudden pain but still sent a very powerful blow straight to his head as he fell to the ground. Luckily for him the drug she was on, affected her precision and speed, so he could avoid the punch, but it still connected with the wall where his head was a second earlier, and left a very neat fist shape dent in the wall.
He then used the opening she gave him by body slamming her to the ground, and prepared for anything she would throw at him, but wasn't prepared for what he saw. She was crying, and he thought he overdid himself with this attack, but she wasn't injured, on top of her, he saw the scales melt within her skin and left the young woman naked on the floor, the gown had been shred to bits when she "transformed".
He got up and helped her to her feet, tears dropping relentlessly from her face. He covered her in her blanket, sat her on the bed and held her tightly in silence, while she was crying.
"I am sorry..." Was all he could say.
It was now past midnight, and his HUD inner calendar chimed, but he didn't look at it, he already knew, what day it was. It was the day, he had learned to like the most before all this mess, the day that brought joy back to team Possible after the "Accident", that day was the reason why they had nicknamed Jade "the Present". Because today... it was her birthday, her seventeenth birthday...
He looked at her and saw that she was now asleep. He could have left her there, and go back to all the work he had, but decided that the "here and now" was more important than anything, and so he stayed like that, holding her in his arm.
"I am so Sorry..."
