I AM NOT DEAD! Yay! Summer was really crazy for me, with trips and friends coming over and visiting Germany with my mum for two weeks (It was weird to hear English when I got back) so writing fell by the wayside for a while. But, school is here again, and I have returned to give you this chapter.

And my friends also found out about this story, so I'm mildly worried, but I won't stop posting.

Lika and Dilloi showed up half an hour later, entering the tower right as we were finishing our game of Destroy All Of Our Friendships, or, as you might know it, Uno. Right now, it was Davide's turn, and he had three cards left. I had one, as did Maloia. My card was a red 3, and the current card was a red 3.

Davide put down a reverse card, deflecting the turn from me onto poor Ezra, who had sixteen cards in his hand. Ezra put down another reverse card. Davide put down a Green 4 for the reverse card.

I was crestfallen as I took a card from the pile. Red 5. Another: Yellow 9. Another: Blue 9. Another: Red 8.

Six cards later, I got a Green 4 and had run out of curses. Maloia put down a Red 4 and everyone promptly began to hate everyone involved with the game. (Twenty minutes later, we forgot about it for the rest of our lives. Well, most of us, at least: If I forgot about it, I wouldn't be writing this, would I?)

"Ah, so the late ones finally showed up early," Dilloi said, laughing. "I'm assuming you finished your game?"

"What, the game of Destroy All Friendships? Yeah," I said, leaning back into my chair.

"So, commander, why are we here?" Lika asked. "I'm assuming you and your new boyfriend aren't simply feeling lonely."

"No, we're not feeling lonely. We actually need to do Lothal a favor by hunting down some prick named Josh Vanderblied. You may know him."

As soon as I said Josh, I noticed everybody's face hardened.

"Do you know where he is?" Davide asked.

"Not currently, but we do have some kidnappings to take care of in the meantime. We think it may be connected to him." I hit a button on the table, which brought up a holo display of the house. "Policia have blocked all exit routes, but these guys are threatening death to the hostages if they aren't allowed to leave. Negotiators are stalling for time. Lika, do you have your drones?"

"Yes, I do," Lika responded, bringing out a small, remote controlled camera with a propeller on top. It was tiny enough to fit through basically any door.

"Alright, so, we have EE-ONE-D do a scan-" EE-ONE-D was a drone that told us the location of any enemy- "And then we breach in." I pointed to a room on the top floor. "Right here. Davide, Maloia, you're assigned to the North window. Dilloi, Lika, you do the same for the South. Ezra and I will breach East. There are no windows to the West, so we don't need to worry about escapes."

"Seems good to me, Commander," Davide said. "But we need to know what to do once we're inside. I recommend having Maloia and I head down the West stairs while you and Bridger head down the East. One team on each floor of the house. The East stairs head all the way to the basement."

"Seems good. I'll leave you guys to prepare yourselves and figure out your plans for your floors. Make sure you cover all factors," I ordered. Then, I brought up a map of the basement of the house as the rest of SpecTeam 4 left, leaving just Ezra and I.

"You seem tense," Ezra observed.

"Never handled a hostage situation before," I responded. "These walls are simple drywall. We can break them open with charges and shoot through them. I'm thinking move in a clockwise sweep?"

There were four rooms: the room where the stairwell ended, with a training room to the left and a storage room to the right. Then, there were two garages, one slightly smaller than the other. The training room was separated from the smaller garage by drywall. This would be difficult, but manageable… hopefully.

The supplies we needed for this were obvious: breaching charges, guns, ammo. Others were fairly new: charges that could fire grenades through windows, drones with stunners mounted on them, grenades with eight mini-grenades inside them. To get these, we had a one-stop-shop known as "Mandalore."

I pushed the Lightjay into hyperspace with Mandalore's coordinates put in. We had almost everything we needed, but we needed to get the few remaining necessities from professional warriors because they were not exactly what you would find on your normal police force. Actually, they were borderline illegal in many situations, but we have a few laws revolving around what you can use in certain situations on Lothal. For instance, for a holdup, only stunners and passive drones were allowed; for a military uprising or major terrorist attack, anything was justified. We had been through one near-disaster, and we had learned from that.

I got up from the pilot's chair and retreated to the bunks, taking off my shirt as I went. Ezra was laying in one bunk, asleep, so I decided to join him.

He woke up almost immediately. So much for him being asleep.

"Hey, 'Bine," he said, speaking softly.

"Hey, Ez," I responded. I pressed myself up against him. He was really, really warm. I liked that.

"Worried?" he asked, after a few seconds. The question was purely rhetorical: if he asked, he was asking how he could help. I nodded. He wrapped one hand around my back, making me shudder as his hand passed a sensitive spot. His hand lingered.

"Cyar'ika," he said, almost alarmed, "Turn around."

I obliged.

"Oh, god, cyar'ika, what happened?" he stammered. "You're really burnt!"

"What?" I asked, genuinely surprised. "Where?"

"Your lower back, to the left."

I felt the area where my supposed burn was. As soon as I touched it, I felt a flaring, searing pain. Gritting my teeth, I pulled my hand away. "I know what that's from."

"Where is it from? It seems like it would hurt if it's being touched by your armor."

"It's a long story."

"Tell me."

"Are you sure?"

Ezra looked me in the eyes with absolute conviction. "Yes. I am."

And so began another trip down Memory Lane, if Memory Lane was full of muggers, murderers, and terrorists.

Fire was everywhere. In buildings, outside, over, under, in and out, up and down, all churning together to create one gigantic mass of flame that picked you up and slapped you in it's heat and blinded you with it's light. My inadequate squad of EMTs was desperately trying to extract any survivors from the doomed campus, but we were quickly running out of time as the roof supports weakened and the blaze began to worsen. Everyone was burnt, even rescuers. A few were expected to die of their wounds.

I ran through the hallways of the university, willing the fire to stay back and away from myself. One room, on my left, was sealed shut. Some sixth sense told me that people were in there, so I took a blaster and shot the lock on the door. Stepping back and falling into a guard, I threw a kick, turning on one foot so I could hit with the flat of my foot easier and break down the thin barrier.

The door's hinges shattered and it rocketed backwards, broken into two halves. Inside the room were strangers, but they were panicked and had been trapped so I pointed to an exit and told them to run! I would have followed them but something occurred to me as they rushed out and I checked a counter to find a small scroll, made of paper, that was important to the campus so I grabbed it and sprinted down the hallway towards the exit point where I knew there was safety and as I was running a beam detached from the ceiling and began to fall and I didn't know what to do but run faster, harder, like the wind had picked up beneath my feet and MAYBE I could reach the door before the building fell apart but my window of opportunity was closing rapidly and cinders were scorching my hands and feet but I barely noticed as adrenaline coursed through my veins and I began to near the cutoff point but the beam was also weakening and my opportunity was closing and dimly I registered pain as a bit of wood burnt my back but I would be able to make it if I didn't falter but I was running out of breath and my back began to hurt more but my legs couldn't stop moving as I ran as fast as I had in my life and the beam fell but I still had half a second so I rolled and somehow I got out of the burning building.

My clothes were torn apart, my shirt ripped down the front and my trousers badly burnt in several places. Everything hurt. My new hair color was charcoal black. Everyone was looking at me like I was an oddity, but from my perspective nothing seemed off. Slowly, I walked over to an officer, gave him the scroll, and collapsed.

Ezra just stared at me, his jaw unhinged.

A/N: Look up Rainbow Six: Siege House Map to see what I'm describing. I'm just taking that map and using it in this story because I'm not able to come up with a good one on my own.