Okay first of all, I'm so sorry that this chapter took so long. It's been a rough month and a bunch of really dumb things happened that have caused me way more trouble than they should have. One of my friends from army collapsed and we had to rush him to a hospital, for now he seems to be okay but that could have ended badly for various reasons. It's one thing to tend to an emergency patient that came in, but it's another thing to IV your friend. My hands were literally shaking, and I can't believe I managed to keep as calm as I did when tending to him. That's just one thing that happened, but it's the biggest one I guess.

There were some good things that happened. I got Final Fantasy XIV for real cheap and I have to say it's a game that I absolutely love and I wish I'd bought it earlier. now i'm waiting for Shadowbringers in July so that I can get Heavensward and Stormblood for free along with it. Anyone who plays is welcome to play with me too, I think you can guess what my character name is haha. I'm in Kujata in the Elemental Data Centre.

I also sent in a short story to the biggest international writing competition, and although I didn't win I got an honorable mention for my work. That was a massive ego booster for me, because we do see a lot of haters up here on Fanfiction and I was worried that I wasn't living up to what I wanted to be. I've submitted entries for the next quarter already, and I'm writing a new one for the June quarter. So that's one of the reasons why this chapter has been a little slow.

Now that that's all out of the way, here's an extra long chapter for you all as my apology for making you guys wait nearly a month.

Chapter 48

'Are you okay?' The soft voice crept into his ears and soothed him like a wash of warm air. 'Can you stand?'

He felt a pair of hands underneath him, strong hands, that lifted him off the cold, wet ground and through a door he made out through his eyelids. He felt the warmth of the house pour into his shivering body, and he let out a quivering sigh. He felt his back touch something soft, a sofa maybe, and a large hand rested itself on his forehead.

'He's so terribly cold.' A woman's voice gushed worriedly, and he felt her hands on his arm. 'He could have died out there!'

'It makes me sick to think that there are kids out there suffering like him.' The soft voice spoke again. 'This is exactly what I've been fighting against.'

'Mommy, daddy? Is he gonna be okay?' A pair of nearly identical voices rang out, and the teen peered through his eyelids at the twins that had appeared in front of him.

'Sweethearts go back upstairs. Go to bed, alright? He's going to be fine.' The soft voice said, getting to his feet, and the boy realized that it belonged to the father. He studied the man out of the corner of his eye, taking in his sharp features and slightly greying hair. He seemed every bit what a "father" should look like, and he spotted his wife just a little behind him. Her eyes were fixed on the boy on the couch, watching him with a mixture of trepidation and worry plastered across her face, and the boy's heart ached a little at the motherly sight. He sealed the gap in his eyelids, electing not to look anymore at the happy family before him, knowing what was coming next.

The Next Morning

'Do you remember your name? How old are you?' The man asked, and the boy shook his head. He sat quietly, seemingly terrified, hands glued to his knees on the couch. A little way away, hiding behind the legs of their mother, the twins stared at him as he continued to stare at the floor. He met their gazes by accident, and they immediately ducked behind their mother once more. The boy returned his gaze to the floor.

'I don't have one.' He mumbled, and the man's face immediately melted into a face of pity.

'Well that means we'll just have to give you one.' He said, placing his hand on the boy's head. 'Well, Christmas is coming soon, so how does Matthias sound? It means gift.'

The boy's face lit up brighter than the fireplace, and the man chuckled, ruffling his dark hair. He gestured at the twins still hiding behind their mother.

'Artemis! Apollo! Come over here and say hi to Matthias.' He grinned. 'I guess for now, he's going to be your new brother.'

'What do you want to play?' Artemis gushed. She was the first to warm up to him, and the few years difference between them hardly mattered to the ecstatic girl. She thrust a stuffed rabbit into the boy's arms, and he hugged it quietly. 'I know, let's play cops and robbers!' She raised a teddy bear in her hands. 'The is Ted the beat cop. He's super good at his job, and one day he gets a call from a terrified stranger.' Apollo raised a small stuffed penguin in his hands. 'Help! My house is being robbed by a rabbit!'

Matthias raised the rabbit in his hands, smiling at the twins.

'Mwa-ha-ha-ha! I'm here to steal all the things!' He growled, and the twins erupted with laughter. The three of them tumbled around the play-room, laughing their heads off, and Artemis hugged Matthias tight. She grinned up at the boy, and he hugged her back gently.

'I suppose I should have realized it sooner huh?' The father said, placing a protective hand across his wife. He glared down at Matthias who was currently standing in their study room, knife in hand, and a leather pouch clutched in the other. In the corner, a massive safe had been cracked open, its lock frozen off, and the man narrowed his eyes at the boy.

'Thomas Milton Blackwood, and his wife Anna Fay. The figureheads of the anti-poverty act. What you're doing is going to bring a lot of good into the world.' Matthias sighed, slinging the pouch over his shoulder. 'It's a damned shame that it won't come to pass. If it did, then people like me would almost cease to exist. There would be far less kids out there scrounging in trash cans for something to eat.'

'I save your life, and this is how you repay me?' Thomas spat at the teenager. 'My children love you, and you're going to do this to them?'

'It's my job. You were meant to find me on that night, frozen on your door. It was a ploy to play on your bleeding heart, and everything went exactly according to plan. Although, I'd intended for it only to take one night, but you really put a lot of work into hiding this thing.' Matthias shrugged, patting the pouch now slung against his side. 'And it's really your fault that this is happening you know. We wouldn't have touched you before, we had no reason to care about your anti-poverty movement. We'd still have no shortage of manpower regardless if your movement actually bore fruit or not.'

'But that pouch changes things, doesn't it?' The man swore, making a somewhat defeated gesture at the leather object. 'Can't you just take it and leave?'

'Afraid not. Just think of it as bad luck that the evidence you dug up leads back to us, but the fact that you know we exist now makes you a potential threat. And threats must be eliminated.' Matthias scratched his head, waving the knife at the couple. 'For the Faction, I'm going to need you to die.'

'You can try.' The man raised his fists, beckoning on the teen, and Matthias shook his head.

'I won't have to. As a favor to a man whose life is about to end, let me tell you my name.' Matthias spun the knife in his hand, lowering himself into a crouch. 'The name's Jaye, but I'm more widely known as Niflheim. My friends call me Nif.'

'Nice to meet you Nif.'

'Likewise.'

'I know that name.'

'Yes, you do.'

'I thought you'd be taller.'

'Most people do.'

'So, this is what you look like huh? The entire time you were here the possibility of you being an assassin never even crossed my mind. I suppose you really are the best at what you do.'

'I've been told. It's a rather endearing trait of mine.'

'Isn't it a little annoying, to be the most feared assassin in all the kingdoms and yet no one has any idea what you look like?'

'It's more of an ego booster really. Not many have seen my face and lived to tell the tale. Plus, all the wanted posters are just huge blank portraits, which is hilarious to say the least.'

'Well then, I guess were dead then. At least spare my children.' The man said, fists still raised. 'Or don't. Either way we're not going down without a fight.'

'Honestly I wish it didn't have to be this way, but a job's a job.' Niflheim said, readying himself. 'If it's any consolation, I don't want to have to do this. And you have my word the children will be spared, they're of no threat nor consequence to the Faction.'

'I'm not going to thank you.'

'No, you shouldn't. And I'm sorry.'

He darted towards the man, and his wife let out a bloodcurdling scream. His knife flashed, and red painted the room. The scream was cut off with a gurgle, followed by two meaty thumps, and the room was silent once more. Niflheim tossed the knife into the corner, rubbing his gloved hands on his pants and opening the window. He leapt out into the storm, not the least bit bothered by the biting cold, and vanished into the inky whiteness.

Little did he know, in the crack of the door, two identical eyes were plastered to the gap, frozen, staring at the remains of their parents lying unmoving on the ground. Too terrified to speak, too frightened to move, staring at the window where the boy had vanished, taking their entire lives with him as he went.

Jaye woke with a start, pushing his head off his pillow with a groan. He blinked blearily at the wall, feeling exhausted, and wondered why on earth he had to remember that of all things. He heard a noise from behind him and remembered why. Still huddled into the corner, the twins were snoozing quietly against the pillow he'd thrown to them, and Kamina had fallen asleep against the wall. He swore coarsely at the furry bastard who'd promised to watch them, and the fox boy responded by rolling over. Jaye darted into the bathroom first, celebrating his victory at the two still-sleeping teammates, to which they responded with tired and completely uncaring moans. The twins had woken up at this point and were glaring at the three with nearly impossible levels of contempt but were met with nothing but gentle snores and the sound of running water. Jaye heard them shift around outside the bathroom, figuring that they were still trying to plan a way to escape and stuck his head out of the bathroom as a warning. The twins stifled a laugh at his messy bedhead, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, as he made an "I'm watching you gesture" at them. The girl tried to flip him off before remembering that her hands were bound behind her back and settled for swearing at him instead. The boy narrowed his eyes at her, retracting his head slowly back into the bathroom. They watched him go with raised eyebrows, and rolled their eyes as the sound of running water started up again.

In A Random Alley Far From The Port

'Ow!' Artemis swore as her butt hit the floor. She struggled to her feet, glaring down the boy who had just tossed her, and yelped as her brother was promptly thrown onto her as well. Jaye dusted his hands off with a flourish, grinning at the two in the moonlight.

'Well now, you lot just sit there quiet-like until we get on that boat. Here's to hoping we never see each other again.' He said, waving at the still-bound twins as the three made their way out of the alleyway. Artemis grimaced in humiliation.

'You son of a bitch!' She screamed. 'I'll kill you! I swear, I'll find you and kill you! You haven't seen the last of us!'

'Lalala, I can't hear you!' Jaye sang, covering his ears with his hands and skipping away from the alley. Kamina and Indigo exchanged skeptical glances as the boy pranced away from the pair, raising their eyebrows at the weirdo as they made their way down the street. Kamina cleared his throat loudly.

'Hey, do you think it's a good idea to leave them like that?' The fox boy scratched his ears. 'They might wind up coming back to haunt us, and I hate to say it but if we didn't know they were coming to assassinate us, we might not have actually caught them. We can't afford to be looking over our shoulders all day just because we didn't want to deal with them when we could.'

'You're right.' Jaye said, running his hands through his hair and heaving a deep sigh. 'You're right and we all know it. Nothing would have made more sense in that situation. Killing them was the obvious and most practical choice, but for some reason I just can't do it.' He locked eyes with the fox boy, and Kamina raised an eyebrow at him. 'I don't think I can kill them and not regret it for the rest of my life.'

In A Random Restaurant

'I don't think I can NOT kill them and not regret it for the rest of my life.' Indigo said, leaning back in her chair. 'I have no idea what's going on with you, Jaye, but I get the feeling that this is going to come back to haunt us sooner rather than later.'

'Can we please drop this subject already? What's done is done. I mean, what do you want me to do? Go right back to that alleyway and kill them? If they're still there after all this time, then there's no way in hell they're going to be a threat.'

'And yet they nearly pulled off a high-level assassination against us, that I doubt we would have survived if we weren't looking for them.' Kamina pointed out. 'Runners trained to pull off a perfect assassination that have no other skills other than that. How is that even possible, and who the hell had the free time to train them?' He crossed his arms with a skeptical look on his face. 'I don't think letting them go free was the best idea, and I stand by that one.'

'Seriously guys? Before this, we all silently, mutually agreed that we weren't going to deal with them unless it was absolutely necessary. I don't see how killing them is absolutely necessary.' Jaye said, glaring at his teammates across the table. 'Why the sudden change in stance?'

'Yeah we did.' Indigo said, scratching her head. 'But that was before they pulled off a high-level, near perfect assassination on us. We thought they were amateurs; last night proves otherwise.'

'What's done is done.' Jaye repeated, picking up his chopsticks with a flourish and turning his attention to the bowl of noodles sitting before him. He delved his chopsticks into the flat yellow noodles, mixing them thoroughly with the ground chili and vinegar underneath. He shoveled them into his mouth appreciatively, ignoring the annoyed stares from his teammates across the table. Giving in to the smell of their untouched food, the other two resumed their dinner, and soon the three were lost once more in appreciation for the wonderful Mirean cuisine available in the portside restaurant they were at.

Despite their absorption in their meal, the three were immediately aware of someone approaching them from behind. They eyed the pair as they approached, wrapped in familiar cloaks, and Jaye sighed as they came to a halt.

'Well I have to applaud you for finding us so quickly, but is this really necessary?' He rolled his eyes at the twins. 'It's a losing battle right now, and you've got no hope of winning.'

'But we do.' The voice that came out from under the cloak was wholly unfamiliar, and Jaye sat up a little straighter in his seat. Indigo slid her knife under her arm, concealing it, and Kamina shifted his legs out from under the table. The two figures threw their hoods back, revealing two nearly identical faces underneath, and Jaye raised an eyebrow at them. The two were clearly siblings and close in age; they didn't look more than a year or two apart. They cleared their throats and raised their hands in a gesture of surrender.

'We're not here to fight.' One of the two said, her short blonde hair curling around her face. 'We're just here to deliver a message.'

The girl removed a small envelope from her cloak, moving slowly and deliberately as Jaye trained his eyes on her hands. She placed it down on the table slight, making a motion towards it, and Jaye picked it gingerly off the table. He weighed it in his hands, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the girls, and ripped the top off. He pulled out its contents, eyes widening, and he shot to his feet in a fury. His chair tipped over in the process, and the other sister caught it as it fell, standing it back up on its feet. He tossed the envelope onto the table, and its contents, a small pile of photographs, scattered across the tabletop.

'What's the meaning of this?' He hissed, taking a confrontational step towards the pair, and they backed away immediately out of his reach. The girls raised their hands once more.

'Just a gift. And a message.' The girl said, taking a breath as she recited the message off a card in her hand. 'Since you seem to want to kill them so much to hide your tracks, but don't have the balls to do it, I'm considering taking the liberty of doing it for you, Jaye bird.' She lowered the card. 'That was from my employer. I'm not at liberty to reveal his name, but if you want to see those two alive again, you're going to come to this location by midnight.' She extended the card to the boy, her other hand still raised in the air, and Jaye narrowed his eyes at the address scrawled on the back. He immediately recognized the handwriting, and evidently so did the other two as they exchanged worried glances across the table. He snatched the card out of her hand, and the messenger once more retreated to a safe distance away from the seething boy.

'Fine. Tell him I'm coming for his traitorous ass. And I'm coming for blood.' He spat, tossing the card onto the table. 'He'd better be ready.'

The girls bowed to him, turning tail and darting straight out the door of the restaurant. Jaye watched them leave, his eyes fixed on the two girls until they rounded a corner and disappeared from sight, before finally returning his attention to the table. He realized that the people around him were staring, and he gave them a dismissive wave before sitting down again. The three exchanged a silent argument across the table, and Jaye crossed his arms at the two who were now glaring him down with a passion.

Sitting between the three was the envelope, its contents still spread out across the tabletop. Frozen in the photo was two people, two very familiar people, bound and laying in a corner, glaring defiantly at the camera. The girl's ears were flared against her skull, and her tail was standing on edge as her brother lay on the metal floor. Jaye picked up the photograph again, studying it quietly, and raised an eyebrow as a waiter approached their table.

'Is uh…everything okay sir?' The lady asked, her fingers trembling a little against the tray she held against her thighs, a forced smile plastered across her face. Jaye flashed her a reassuring smile.

'Yes, everything's just fine. Can we get the bill please?'

In Their Room On A Ship

'They were runners, no doubt about it.' Kamina said, running a whetstone against the edge of his claws. 'Looks like what Ray told us about the Faction presence in this country being neutral is turning into a load of bull.'

'It's entirely possible that they changed allegiances recently, and everyone has yet to hear about it.' Indigo pointed out, placing her hands on the bed and crossing her legs with a flourish. 'Or a certain someone has become big enough that The Faction here doesn't care what he does. Ray's been on boats for months, unsurprisingly his information isn't exactly the most updated. We should know better than anyone that loyalty doesn't mean jack to Faction members. They'll pat you on the back one day and stab you in the back tomorrow. We've experienced that first hand.'

'Either way this ends badly.' Jaye said, turning his attention to the card in his hand. He eyes the scrawled address with contempt. 'We need to move.'

The handwriting was Damian's. The three recognized it immediately when they saw it; Damian always had the most beautiful handwriting, ironic for his character since he found beauty in nothing about the world except in killing. It was clear that he'd kidnapped the twins; he evidently was aware that the twins seemed to matter to Jaye quite a bit. It made sense if he knew who they were; they'd all been on that job together. However, considering how Damian was, it was hard to believe that he still remembered who those kids were after all this time. Jaye had hardly recognized them even after they'd revealed who they were, and Kamina and Indigo were hardly any different. Go through a few hundred jobs, and all your targets' faces start to look the same in your head.

'Still, I wonder how on earth he knew where to find us. Or how he knew that we'd made contact with the twins.' Jaye said, crossing his arms. 'It seems a bit strange for him to decide to kidnap them out of nowhere just because we dumped them in a random back alley to get them off our tail.'

'I agree. There was no guarantee that we would come for them in the first place.' Indigo said. 'Just because we decided not to kill them doesn't mean that we're averse to leaving them for dead.'

'There has to be a reason but thinking about it now isn't going to help.' Kamina scratched his ears, flicking the appendages back and forth. 'Our first priority is getting on one of those ships and getting the hell out of here.'

Jaye stared at his two teammates. He raised an eyebrow in disbelief as they nodded to each other in agreement, and he pushed himself off the wall he was leaning on.

'We're just going to leave them to die?' He said incredulously, shaking his head in disbelief. 'I know they're out to kill us, but they're just kids!'

'And so were we when we started.' Indigo said, crossing her arms. 'It wasn't any different for us; get caught and things were clear, no one was coming to save you. If they've been living out there like we have, and even underwent assassination or runner training, then they must be prepared for this to happen.'

'Going to save them does nothing for us at all.' Kamina sighed, making an off-handed gesture at the ocean through the window embedded in the wall. 'We'd be better off just making our way to Mistral as fast as possible so we can catch up with little red and her band of merry trouble-makers.'

'Mina, we're leaving kids to die. We're leaving a faunus kid to die! You fought so hard to free faunus from slavery and torture, and you're just going to leave this kid to die?'

'That's different. Those people couldn't stand up for themselves. They needed someone to save them, to pave the way for them to survive on their own. Those kids, they became assassins. They must have accepted the consequences before they even began.' The fox boy sat down heavily on his bed. 'We should treat them with the honor we give to our fellow assassins. Let them live by the cause they swore to and die to the vows they made, just like everyone else.'

Jaye stared at his teammates with a mixture of horror and disgust, and he turned his gaze to the floor. Kamina heaved a heavy sigh, kicking his feet up onto the bed with a groan.

'Let's get some rest, okay? We've got a long journey ahead of us.' Kamina rolled over on his bed, making a sound of satisfaction as the pillow was softer than he thought it would be. Jaye shook his head, sitting down on his bed and turning to face the wall. Indigo did the same, trying her best to ignore the tension thick in the room between them, wading her way instead to as neutral of a zone as she could. She glanced back once more at the sullen boy, still staring and brooding at the wall, but she couldn't shake the sinking feeling in her chest as she watched him quietly ponder to himself. She decided to ignore it, electing instead to trust the boy's better judgement, and laid down on the bed. She let here eyelids flutter shut, pushing thoughts of the boy out of her mind, and focusing instead on the steady breathing of the fox boy behind her.

One Hour Before Midnight

'I suppose I saw this coming. Even so, I really was hoping it wouldn't have to come to this.' Kamina folded his arms crossly at the raven-haired boy across from him, raising an eyebrow at the scowling assassin. 'What the hell is wrong with you?'

'I can't just let them die Mina. I can't.' Jaye rubbed a hand across his face with a groan. 'No matter what I do, I can't get them our of my head. Ever since they came to us, I keep dreaming of that night. When I took Thomas's life. When I took Anna's life. When I took away everything that they held dear to them.' He rubbed his eyes roughly. 'I lost my parents too, in one night, in just an instant. I did the exact same thing that turned my life upside down to them and broke their lives in two.'

'It was a job. You had no choice. It was kill or be killed.'

'Convenient excuse isn't it? An easy way to justify all the things that we've done wrong.'

'It's true. You know better than anyone what happens to those that fail their missions.' Kamina said. 'You can't blame yourself for what happened. If you didn't kill them, you would be dead now.'

'Maybe so. Or maybe I could have lived an entirely different life from the one we've been living up until now.' Jaye shook his head slowly. 'I never really thought about what I was leaving behind when I killed people; I never have. But meeting them has made that clear to me. Killing is such a horrifying thing; you haven't just taken a life, you've destroyed the lives of everyone who ever knew your victim. You break so much more people than just the one, all in the few seconds it takes me to draw my blade across his throat.'

The two boys glared at each other for a few moments, until Jaye finally dragged his eyes away from the fox boy. He grimaced at the floor, balling his hands into fists as he steeled his resolve.

'I know you're probably right.' He breathed, letting his hands fall limply to his sides. 'It makes so much sense to just leave them behind and get rid of pursuers and throw Damian off our trail until we gain a stronger foothold. But I can't do it, Mina, I can't. I'm going to save them, whether you like it or not. Please don't try to stop me.'

He stalked past the fox boy, bracing himself, but Kamina let him pass him by without a word. He released the breath he didn't know he had been holding, placing a hand on his chest to steady his breathing. He caught a flash of orange out of the corner of his eye.

'I'm coming with you.' Kamina grinned, appearing out of nowhere as he teleported to the boy's side. 'We were together at the beginning, might as well end it together too.'

Jaye returned his grin, clapping the boy on the shoulder appreciatively, and they flinched as another voice rang out from behind them.

'I hope you don't think you're leaving me behind.' Indigo raised an eyebrow, hands on her hips, as she sashayed her way over to the two boys. 'Don't forget you two idiots are completely lost without me, so don't think you morons can go doing things on your own.'

Jaye grinned at the girl, grabbing her by the shoulder, and glanced towards the road where their bikes were waiting. He pulled the card out of his jacket, checking the address again, and grinned a cocky grin at the moon.

'Alright Damian, time's up. It's time to count your sins.'

'Don't steal my lines you midget bastard.'

'Kiss my fabulous ass fox boy.'

Chapter 48 end!