Author's Note: Yay. Fourth chapter in, and I finally start intro'ing the boys. Just so you know, this is going to be a long fic. Even if the chapters are rather short. Anyway. Please R&R. Thanks to my beta Storm.
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or associated characters. Anyway, I don't have any money to be sued for.
Heero looked at the message. It detailed his latest target. Location, habits, security measures. He memorized it, and then burned the message. "Mission Accepted."
The target would be in a fairly well-guarded position. He assumed that was why he had been given the assignment. He knew there were other assassins, but he got the most important or the most difficult. He didn't really care one way or the other.
There was one of two ways to go about this. Either he could sneak in and take care of it quietly, or he could make a lot of noise and make it obvious what was going on. Both alternatives had their benefits. If he was quiet, then obviously no one would know it was an assassination, and he would run a minimal risk. However, if he was noisy, he would make an example of the target and demoralize any soldiers who happened to hear about it.
Sometimes he wished that the masters didn't leave so much up to his judgment. It took him several minutes to decide on his course of action, after carefully analyzing the state of security. The loud approach could be accomplished without an inordinate amount of risk. So that's what he would do.
Of course, the major problem with the blatant approach was that it inevitably created more incidental victims. Any who saw an Assassin at work had to die. But that would also demoralize the enemy. So it was an acceptable trade-off.
Heero started walking towards the enemy encampment. He had work to do.
Several hours later, he made his way back to his campsite. All things considered, that had gone well enough. The target was dead, as well as the witnesses. Granted, Heero had had to kill most of the soldiers there. But it was warfare, and collateral damage was unavoidable. He doubted his superiors would mind. "Mission Accomplished."
Now that the mission was over, he had things to tend to. The gaping sword wound in his left side, for instance. It was his own carelessness that had resulted in it; one of the target's bodyguards hadn't been quite dead when he'd turned his back. He cleaned and bandaged the wound, and took stock of his position.
The wound would slow him down a little and would make using his left arm annoyingly painful, both things to keep in mind. He was a fast healer; it wouldn't take him long to be back to prime condition. Meanwhile, he had stayed here too long, and it was time to move on. Besides, he was a little too close to civilization here. It was getting annoying, eliminating those who found him. Next time, he'd know better.
There was little he valued enough to take with him, and the rest did not take long to destroy. After eliminating his traces, he headed out, making his way to his next assigned region and his next mission.