Assassination Part 1 Chapter 4

'Boss.' Angela greeted, nodding to the thin man with the spider tattooed onto this neck. She slid one of her hands behind her back, sticking out two fingers then making a fist, opening her hand then closing it once. Some distance away, Jaye took the binoculars away from his eyes.

'That's the signal.' He said, getting to his feet where he had concealed himself atop a stack of cargo containers. Indigo got up as well from her spot across from him, readying herself for the coming confrontation. 'Ready on your end?'

'Ready.' She said curtly, clearly still angry with him from the events of the previous day. He thought they'd worked it out, but evidently being reminded that the two were still alive had set her back into her bad mood. Jaye sighed internally, drawing the silenced pistol from inside his jacket. He checked the bolt, letting it snap back into place and load the bullet into the chamber. He peered around the corner, reaching behind his back for one of the long knives he'd strapped underneath his jacket. Watching the guard approach, shielded from sight by the shadows, he averted his gaze to the floor until he saw the shoes march past him. One of the key components of stealth was not to stare at your quarry directly until it was too late for them to react; a weird instinct of human beings is to know when you were being watched. It wouldn't matter in a massive crowd of people where there could be a hundred and one eyes on you for any reason or the other, but subtle variables such as those could mean getting caught during an assassination. And a good assassin wouldn't leave anything to chance.

Seeing the shoes canter past, Jaye glanced around the corner again to verify no one else was coming their way, creeping back up behind the guard and seizing him. He covering the man's mouth, he clenched his fist, extending the hidden blade out from under his wrist, drawing it across the man's neck cleanly and lowering him to the ground in complete silence. He slid the man quickly across the floor, dragging him into the shadows and out of sight of anyone passing by. Someone was bound to notice when the guards didn't return, but it would buy them uninterrupted movement for a few minutes and that was more than enough. He moved on quickly to the other guards, picking off the isolated ones with brutal efficiency while Indigo worked on the other end. A guard rounded the corner, making a noise of shock as he spotted the bodies in the corner, dropping heavily to the ground as a bullet caved through his head. Jaye flicked the safety back on his pistol, kicking the body into the corner and out of sight. He brushed off his jacket with a huff, peering around the corner at the two women who were still talking to the Spider officer. Having cleared out most of the guards, the remaining ones wouldn't offer much in the way of resistance, meaning it was time to move on to the officer himself. In spite of his lanky frame, Jaye had the feeling that he wouldn't be giving up without a fight, if the blades strapped to his waist was any indication of that. Dusting himself off, he rounded the corner with a smirk plastered across his face.

'Hey what are you doing here?!' A guard yelled, reaching behind himself for his weapon as the boy advanced. Raising his handgun with barely a glance in his direction, he shot the man square through the head and dropped him to the floor. The two women screamed, like they'd rehearsed, running immediately for cover and drawing their weapons in response. The rest of the relatively sparse guard around him immediately went for their guns, and the boy tapped them all in quick succession with repeated patterns of two bullets to the chest and one in the head. The Mozambique drill.

Guards fell like flies around him, and he ducked a wild swing from one. Shooting the man through his thigh, he elbowed him in the face and sent him sprawling across the floor as he ejected his last bullet into the man in front of him. He flicked the empty clip out, hurling it into the face of the man across from him and sliding a full clip into the chamber. Cocking the gun, he promptly shot the man trying to get up from the ground with his bleeding leg, laying out the one who'd eaten the empty mag to the face with a well-placed shot to the head. Across from him, Indigo had already dispatched her quarries, reloading her pistol with something akin to indifference at the bodies surrounding her. The lanky officer raised an eyebrow at the scene of carnage around them, and he raised an eyebrow as the boy raised an ice wall with his semblance as the women fired on him. He jumped the wall, closing the distance in a heartbeat and forcing them out of cover. Disarming them, he cracked Angela across the face with a gauntleted fist, kicking Khylia over the nearby containers and onto the floor. He seized Angela by the collar, tossing her over the wooden box and into her companion, he thrust his pistol at the two as the officer continued to watch with an almost uninterested look on his face.

'Wassup?' He greeted, the grin breaking across his features as he channeled his best friend. 'Sorry for dropping in.'

'No need to apologize.' The officer said, dusting off his shoulder where a piece of lint had alighted on the fabric. 'It made for something slightly less than a dull evening. And on the bright side, it has the potential to be more eventful still.'

'I don't think you want to go there man.' Jaye said, wiggling his pistol. 'Now you're going to tell me what I want to know or I'm going to kill these two. They seem rather important to you.'

'They really aren't.' The officer said, almost offended that he could suggest such a thing. 'Please be my guest.'

The two went silent for a long moment, staring at each other as if waiting for the other to react. Jaye cleared his throat again.

'I'll do it man, don't test me.'

'Please go ahead. You've already killed all my other colleagues, why should these two be any different?'

'Wow really? You really don't care if they live or die?'

'Hardly. If anything, their deaths would please me.' The man turned a curt nose onto the women. 'After all, any traitor isn't worth keeping alive.'

'Traitor?'

'Well they must be. How else would you have known about this meeting?'

Jaye lowered his gun quietly, glancing at the pair on the floor as they watched him. Khylia covered her terrified face with her hands, and Angela mouthed a thank you shielded behind her arm. The boy glanced at his partner across from him, and Indigo somehow managed to express her disappointment in him in every way imaginable using only her face and eyes. The boy turned his gun instead on the officer, heaving a slow sigh.

'Well I guess that's out of the bag now. Sorry about that.' He gave the two women a sheepish grin. 'On the bright side you'll either walk free once I kill the Spider, or we'll all be too dead to care.'

'I rather think the second option seems more likely.' The officer said, deflecting the bullet aimed for his leg. He spun the sword clutched in his hand down, raising an eyebrow at the boy.

'No one asked for your opinion dickface.' The boy snorted, firing off several more shots which were deflected with relative ease. 'Guess you've got some skill after all.'

'I wonder how the Council will feel when I deliver your body to them in pieces?' The officer mused, spinning the blade in his hand. Jaye drew a knife from his back quietly, approaching the officer warily.

'They'll be equal parts amused and annoyed. Mostly amused I should think.' The boy snorted. 'And I'm not going to give them the satisfaction.'

'Quite.' The officer said. 'Kingston.'

'Is that supposed to mean something to me?'

'It's the name of the man who's going to kill you.' The officer, Kingston, raised his blade in hand, drawing a second blade from his waist. Raising both his blades in a classic two heavens stance, he breathed out with a slow dramatism that earned himself an eyeroll from the boy.

'Niten-ichi ryu huh. As if that's going to make a difference.' Jaye snorted. 'Too bad I don't have my blades with me, or you'd really be regretting this fight right now.'

'I doubt it.'

'Honestly why are we even still talking?' Jaye charged the man, firing his pistol at his blade wielding assailant. 'On your left!'

The man actually turned his head to the left in surprise, as if not expecting someone to pull such a cheap trick during a fight, and promptly ate a kick from Indigo who had charged him from the right. He skidded across the floor, deflecting their shots as the two assassins circled him slowly. Hissing in annoyance, Kingston charged the raven-haired boy with a battle cry, as if hyping himself up for the fight ahead, and Jaye deflected his blows with the knife in his hand. At a serious reach disadvantage, the boy fired at the man's feet and thighs to distract him, helping to occupy one blade and leaving only the longer katana to deal with. He hissed in pain as the blade clipped his shoulder, his aura fizzing in response to the glancing blow and thankfully saving his jacket from damage. Sparks flew as bullets were repeatedly deflected by the wakizashi, and Jaye had to admit the man had more skill than he'd given him credit for. The three traded blows, and Kingston was doing a surprising job of dealing with the both of them at once. Ducking a swing, Jaye fired into the ground where the man's foot was, making him flinch away from the spot and throwing off his balance. Leading with his combat knife, Jaye stepped way past the man's effective sword range, slashing upwards along his body and forcing him to arc his body to the side to narrowly avoid the blow. Kingston backed up rapidly, smirking as if the assault had failed, and coughed hard as a bullet impacted his stomach. He swore at the boy, who had fired from the hip at the retreating man, deflecting the rest of the shots as they came. Jaye flicked the empty mag out of his gun with a smirk, reloading it with something close to contempt, and wiggled his eyebrows at the man as several more shots collided with his back. Having forgotten about Indigo in the spur of dealing with the boy's onslaught, Kingston could do nothing but roll desperately out of the way as she continued to track and fire at his prone figure. Several more shots collided with his person, his aura crying out in response, and he got to his feet with no small amount of anger. He swore as Jaye appeared in front of his face, rolling backwards in a desperate attempt to avoid the onslaught from the boy. He felt yet another bullet collide with his back as he rolled to his feet, ducking the knife as the raven-haired boy slashed at his face. He felt a hand on his wrist, and Jaye appeared before his visage with a shit-eating grin plastered across his features. A knee drove itself into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him in spite of his aura fortification, and he felt a fist crack across his face and send his head spinning. He wrestled with the boy for a moment, feeling the knife rake across his arm, and he attempted to slash back with his wakizashi. Standing too close together, the blow had no force and Jaye shrugged it off with indifference. He elbowed the man in his face, finally managing to wrest the katana from his grip and spinning it in his hand. Kingston backed away rapidly, tossing his wakizashi into his master hand and eyeing the boy with a new level of apprehension. Jaye grinned at the man, pointing sarcastically behind him.

'Behind you!'

'I'm not going to look.' Kingston snorted. 'You fooled me the first time, I'll give you that.'

'The second time too.' A feminine voice rang out from behind him, and Kingston almost cursed himself as he realized he'd once more forgotten about the woman. Indigo shot him in the back of the head, earning a heavy curse from the man as his aura fortification finally fizzled out with a pop, and she promptly drove the butt of her pistol into the back of his neck. Kingston dropped to his knees in pain, dropping the sword and barely managing to stay conscious. Indigo kicked the blade over to the boy, who picked it up with a smirk.

'You're not a bad fighter man, but you forgot that this fight was a two on one.' Jaye snorted, spinning the swords in his hands. Kingston groaned from his spot on the floor, glaring up defiantly at the raven-haired boy. 'Still, not like I'm saying you could've taken me one on one, but I'm not saying you could've either.'

'You literally just said the same thing twice.'

'I know. Just reinforcing the point that you never stood a chance in the first place.' The boy knelt down to the man, tapping the swords against his cheeks playfully. 'So, you going to tell me what I want to know or am I going to have to start disfiguring you?'

'You'll never get anything from me.' The man hissed, pushing himself off the floor and earning himself a foot to the face. 'The spiders are loyal to a fault; you'll never find the Spider. Never!'

'You know it's really confusing when you call yourselves the Spiders and your leader is the Spider; I never have any idea whether you're referring to just him or the bigger whole.' Jaye shook his head, pushing the man's head to the side. 'Seriously, you'd think it's clear because one's plural but when you're talking fast it just gets confusing.'

He riffled through the man's pockets, pulling out a few choice items and peering at them. He made a sound of surprise as he found a few credit chips, checking them and whistling at the amount. 'Damn you're doing good for yourself.'

'Jaye, stay focused.'

'Don't worry sweetheart, I got it.' The boy held up a scroll in his hand, wiggling it at the man still pressed into the ground. 'I bet this will have some juicy tidbits for us to dig through. Shouldn't be too hard to get in, considering these things have biometrics.' He seized the man's hand, forcing his finger onto the surface of the device. 'There we go, see that wasn't so hard.'

Kingston cursed at the boy from underneath, and Indigo stepped on the back of his head to muffle his incessant rambling. The boy whistled candidly as he scrolled through the data, raising an eyebrow at a few contacts that caught his eye.

'Well I doubted you'd have the Spider's contact but at the very least it looks like we can go the next rung up the ladder with this.' He copied the data onto his own scroll, tossing aside the now useless device and getting to his feet. 'Thanks for the help, we really appreciate it.'

'We will hunt you down!' Kingston screamed, thrashing against the woman as she held him down. 'You will die screaming!'

'I doubt it.' Jaye said, and Indigo flicked the safety off her pistol. The gunshot reverberated through the pier, and a silence fell over the place save for the slow movement of the waves in the moonlight. Indigo put the gun away in her jacket, taking her foot off the now unmoving man.

'That went well.' Jaye mused, pocketing his scroll. Indigo rolled her eyes.

'If by well you meant shit show then sure, I guess that went alright.'

'Are you still mad?'

'Yes.'

'Right.' Jaye scratched the back of his head, glancing down at the dead guy at her feet. 'But at least we killed him, right?'

Indigo wordlessly gestured to the pair of women still crouched behind the pile of barrels nearby. Jaye turned to them, surprised they were still there.

'Oh, shit, you're still here. Why?' He raised an eyebrow at the pair. Angela and Khylia paced towards them slowly, and he raised his eyebrow even higher at the gun aimed to his head. 'Really?'

'I know your aura's low from that fight before, so we can kill you both and get away with it.' Khylia said, though her shaking knees didn't quite match up with the confidence she was trying to convey in her voice. 'If we do that, maybe the Spider will forgive us.'

'The Spider will know we betrayed him if we're the only ones to survive this.' Angela said, raising her own pistol at the auburn-haired woman. Indigo narrowed her eyes at the woman, grip tightening on her lowered pistol. 'But if we kill you, he'll be none the wiser.'

'Are you done talking or are you going to shoot me?' Jaye scoffed, folding his arms across his chest. 'I give you a chance at life and this is how you repay me? The Faction wants you dead, and I was meant to give that to them.'

'And that was your mistake. I kill you; we get to live without being hunted.' Khylia hissed, hand shaking a little on her firearm, and she grabbed it with her other hand to steady it. She gestured to the pistol in Indigo's hand. 'Drop it.'

The woman tossed aside the pistol with a measure of contempt, touching a hand to the knife strapped to her thigh out of sight. She glanced at the boy, who acknowledged with an imperceptible nod. The women glanced across each other, opening their mouths to issue a warning, but anything they tried to say was cut short as the boy moved. A pillar of ice shot up under Khylia's hand, knocking the pistol out of her grip and sending her shot askew. Jaye closed the distance in a breath, seizing the woman as she pulled a second pistol from her belt and wrestling it from her grip. Angela made a sound of alarm, turning her firearm on the pair in an attempt to help her best friend, and gasped as Indigo's knife collided with her barrel. She managed to keep her grip on the weapon, turning it on the auburn-haired woman as she covered the distance between them. She felt Indigo seize her wrist, forcing her shot harmlessly up into the sky. A bright light flashed before her eyes, and she gasped in horror as she spotted the blade of pure aura in Indigo's hand. Jaye spotted her signature weapon in her hand, reaching out in a vain attempt to stop it from happening.

'No!' He yelled, but he was too far away to do anything. Indigo thrust the blade through Angela's neck, drawing it across the length of her throat to confirm the kill, before letting the limp body fall to the ground. She reabsorbed the aura, staring down at the lifeless woman beneath her with undisguised indifference, turning to the boy who was now furiously storming up to her.

'INDIGO!' He hissed, seizing her by the shoulders. 'Why did you do that!'

'They betrayed and tried to kill us.' Indigo gave him an equally confused look, cocking the pistol she'd taken from the now still woman. 'I'd say this is a fair response.'

'They did it out of desperation! They didn't deserve to die!'

'She was supposed to die.' Indigo crossed her arms under her chest, raising an eyebrow at the boy. 'If we'd killed Khylia like we were supposed to, we would've had to kill her either way since she's a witness!' She leveled the firearm with the faunus girl now crawling to her still companion. 'I'm solving the problem.'

'No!' Jaye swatted her hand down, keeping his grip on the barrel of the pistol. Indigo shot him a death glare, grip tightening on the gun.

'Let me kill her, and we can continue on this ridiculous mission of yours to leave me.' Indigo said, her words stinging the boy inside. He held her glare, finally breaking away to glance at the cat girl now cradling the broken body of her best friend in her arms.

'You monsters!' She cried, hugging the empty husk close as tears ran unabashed down her face. 'You're dead! If it's the last thing I do!'

The boy pulled the gun out of Indigo's grip, gritting his teeth in fury as he turned away from the scene of carnage before him. He tossed the gun aside, watching it clatter away into the darkness, pacing angrily down the pier. Indigo glared at his back, glancing briefly at the still sobbing faunus before making her way after the boy. He ignored her as he walked, busying himself with checking his weapons for any damages suffered during the battle.

'You're just going to let her go?!' Indigo yelled, gesturing back at the woman kneeling on the floor, growing ever smaller as they grew further and further away. 'You're going to let the one woman we HAD to kill live?! You killed everyone else, what makes her any different?'

'She reminds me of Mina okay!'

'So she's got furry ears! How does that make her anything like Mina!' Indigo kicked a nearby container, leaving a dent in the thick metal. 'Losing Mina was painful for me too you know, but I'm not balking at every faunus that's got a pair of ears sticking out the top of their head!'

'I can't help it!' Jaye swore, finally halting in his tracks. Indigo stopped abruptly, almost running into him. 'She's trying to get out just like me, and she's suffering for it. I know you can't just leave the Faction, but I get why she can't kill her best friend. I couldn't possibly kill you or Mina, no matter what.' He breathed a heavy sigh, placing his hands on his hips. 'And she's being hunted for that. Doesn't that sicken you?'

'It's what you signed up for! Or are you telling me you forgot the oaths you swore back then?' The assassin took a step backwards, shaking her head at her partner. 'You swore to serve as long as you drew breath. You swore on your life.'

'This isn't living.' Jaye muttered. 'There are fates worse than death and this is one of them. I just can't believe we didn't realize till now.' He took a shaky breath. 'When I look at her I see him, somewhere, dying alone because we couldn't be there for him. Because I failed to be there when he needed me the most.'

'It's not your fault and you know it.'

'You talked about our oaths just now. I swore an oath to him; that we would be there for each other when we needed help. That we'd always stick together, no matter what happened. Brothers. Family.' The sullen boy shook his head. 'And he was always there when I needed him, but the one time he needed my help I was too late.'

The pair went silent for a long moment, biting down on their lips to stifle the retorts rising on their tongues. Indigo kicked the container again, deepening the dent, but still didn't say a word. Jaye tried and failed to take another shaky breath, and Indigo finally spoke.

'You're trying to get out because you can't bear to be where you're reminded of him any longer.' She said shortly. 'Then you'd better do what you need to do to get out. If that means biting the bullet and killing people you don't want to, then you're going to have to do it.'

'I know.' He muttered, finally continuing down the path out of the pier. Indigo watched him pace away quietly, hugging her arm as she stood on her own, watching the man she loved walk away.

'Do you?'

End of chapter 4. I wanted to do this in just a few chapters, but clearly I am incapable of writing short stories I gotta overcomplicate things all the time lmao.