Okay! Here is chapter two. I'm letting you guys know now, I usually wait until I've basically completed a story before I begin posting, but this one is a complete WIP, so it may take a day or so longer than usual for me to get the chapters out to you.

Let me know if you think it needs anything else!

I don't own the show *eye roll*

MacGyver turned to his boss, a question on his lips. Matty seemed to guess what he was going to ask though, because she answered his question before he even voiced it.

"This was sent out twelve hours ago. We just barely got it from the army, and I called you as soon as I saw it."

"Mac, what is this?" Jack asked. "You know who those guys are?"

"Yeah, I uh...I know them from back in my army days," Mac explained, still reeling slightly from the revelation of the prisoner. The blond turned to his boss, knowing that she was going to tell him that there was no way he was going to risk sacrificing himself for the kid. "Matty, look, I know that we have a strict 'no negotiating with terrorists' policy, but that kid helped me when no one else would. I can't let him die because of me."

"I understand, Mac," Matty replied. "I really do. I just can't risk losing you because of this; you're too important to the team."

"All due respect, Matty," Jack cut in. "There wouldn't really be a team if there weren't people like this kid out there for us to save. Sure, there would probably still be bad guys needing to be put away, drug lords to bust, presidents to save-"

"I can't tell if you're trying to argue against my point, or if you're trying to agree with me," Matty interrupted, raising one eyebrow.

"What I'm saying is," Jack continued, giving Matty a small stink eye. "Little people matter too, and wouldn't we want someone to do the same for us if one of us got captured?"

Matty didn't look convinced.

"Matty," Mac continued. "I won't use Phoenix resources, but please. Can I just have a few days to go out and get him back safely?"

Matty stared at the blond, and she could tell from his expression, as well as his posture that he wasn't going to take no for an answer. "Mac, I can't sanction this," she said. The agent's face fell and he opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand to stop him. "I think you need a break. I'm giving you two days of leave, and I don't want you coming into work at all during those two days," she added. "In fact, I want all three of you to take a break; I have no control over what you do in your spare time."

Mac nodded in understanding. "Thank you, Matty," he said as Jack lightly slugged him on the shoulder.

"For what? All I did was tell you to take a few days off."

Mac let a small, grateful grin flit across his face, though Matty wasn't finished talking. "Just realize that if something happens, whatever you do is unsanctioned, so if you get caught, there isn't much I can do from here," she warned.

"Relax," Jack drawled. "We got plenty'a time to get over there and come up with a plan to-"

"Stop," Matty said, raising her hand. "I can't have any part in planning this, nor can I know what you're planning on doing." She gestured for the three agents to exit the room, which they did, heading off to prepare for their impromptu trip.

0-0-0

"So who is this kid again?" Jack asked about thirty minutes into their flight to Afghanistan. Riley was just a few rows behind them, but she had her headphones on and was busy hacking the airplane's wifi, so Jack and Mac had time to themselves.

Since they were technically not on Phoenix business, the three of them had to fly commercially to Afghanistan, but Matty had managed to pull a few strings and was able to get them on the next possible flight out. The flight wasn't all that full, which meant Mac could speak a little more freely than he could have otherwise.

"It was back when I was in the service," Mac began. "My team and I had been sent by Pena to check out different potential potential hotspots for known or rumoured bombers and their base of site I was at was the smallest, and there were uneven numbers in our group, so I volunteered to go alone; it was dumb, and Pena didn't want to let me do it, but I insisted so that everyone else could have a partner. Our intel had said that the base was going to be empty, but as usual, things didn't go as planned."

0-0-0

Four Years Ago

It was dark outside as MacGyver snuck through the building, with no weapons on him except his brain and his Swiss Army knife. The hallways inside the building were cold, which MacGyver found odd. The temperature outside was bordering close to sixty degrees outside, so the fact that it felt like less than fifty in the building alerted Mac that whoever used this base was trying to keep the place cool for a reason. He searched room by room, trying to find the source of the cold air. Many of the materials that the terrorists used to make their bombs used had parts that were extremely heat-sensitive, and they became useless if they were exposed to a certain temperature before the bomb was set, so Mac knew that the materials would be stored in the coolest place in the building.

After a few more minutes of careful searching, Mac finally opened a door to a room and felt the cold, chilly air hit him like a wall when he entered the room. He stepped inside, and sure enough, there were several tables around the room with all the supplies one would need to make an IED, complete with vests to strap the bomb to someone. Mac spared a moment to take inventory of everything he could see, then hurried back to the door, checking both sides of the hallway to make sure he was alone before he quietly closed the door and got on his radio.

"This is Section 64, and I have a hotspot; repeat, Section 64 is a hotspot. Awaiting orders, over."

Mac released the button on his radio, waiting for the response with orders telling him what to do. After a few moments, the radio crackled to life, and Pena's voice came over the equipment. "Section 64, can you describe how hot the hotspot is?"

"Well sir, if our metaphorical fires suddenly became real, this place would be gone in seconds, along with about half a mile in every direction."

There was another moment of silence, then Pena delivered his command. "Section 64, there's not enough time to transport the heat out; neutralize hotspot and return to base."

"Understood," Mac replied. "Section 64 out." With that, the blond slung his backpack off his shoulder as he glanced around, trying to decide the best way to neutralize the bomb materials without setting them off and destroying a half mile radius around the compound. He spotted a tank of gasoline in the corner. The blond stuck his radio into the main pocket of his pack, and he also reached in and pulled out a box of matches that he kept on him at all times. Once he had the necessary items, he stood up and swung his backpack back over his shoulders as he strode over to the gasoline.

As he approached the metal tank, Mac took notice of a window on the other side of the room, and decided that was his best chance at getting out of the burning building quickly. Since they were at ground level, he wasn't worried at all about the fall.

He reached the gas tank, grabbed the handle and lifted, happy to feel that the container was more than half full. Taking another moment to look at the materials on the table again, Mac felt confident that if he lit the place on fire, nothing would explode. The C4 caused him a little worry, but he knew that without a detonator, many of the materials were fairly tame on their own, including the C4, so he wasn't too worried about the plastic explosive material.

Realizing that it was the best way to get rid of all the materials without causing an explosion, Mac uncapped the lid of the gas tank and began to spread the flammable liquid around. While he was an EOD and was trained in disarming bombs, Mac figured it was better to stop the bombs from being built at all.

Finally all the gas had been dumped around the room, and Mac set the tank down as he pulled his matches out of his pocket where he'd stuck it once he decided to spread the gas, seeing as how he needed both hands for the task. He pulled one of the matches out to strike and light it as he began to walk over to the window, but before he had gone five steps, the blond felt like something was off.

His instincts screamed at him to get out of the way, and it was a good thing he did. Right as he began to move, Mac heard the crack of a firing weapon, but instead of hitting flesh, the bullet was stopped by the backpack and vest he was wearing; it still hurt, and for a moment all the blond saw was black, but he was able to push past the pressure and the pain the bullet caused, and continue moving. He could hear a man yelling behind him, but Mac's hearing was a little off thanks to being hit by a bullet, so he couldn't tell if there was only one gunman or if there were more.

Suddenly there was another crack as a gun was discharged again, and this time Mac let out a cry of pain when the bullet entered his shoulder, just to the right of his shoulder blade. He was so close to the window though, and the force of the bullet propelled him the rest of the way to his escape. He heard the man behind him yelling again, but Mac didn't speak Arabic, and he didn't care to listen to what the tone was implying; he figured it meant something like "Kill him," or "Don't let him get away," or something else along those lines.

Thankfully, the window unlocked and Mac opened it easily. Before he dove out the window though, he turned and tossed a lit match onto a part of the gasoline that he'd spread around the room, which immediately began burning. Mac heard the man behind him yelling something else that Mac assumed was cursing, but he didn't stick around to try and figure out what it was the man was saying exactly. Instead, the blond turned and dove out the open window, accidentally leading with his injured shoulder as he fell into a roll. When he hit the ground, his weight was put on the injured limb and caused the pain to flare up, and black spots began to dance in his vision again.

He knew he didn't have time to mollycoddle his shoulder though, so Mac pushed himself to his feet and started running, the adrenaline in his body keeping him going. He could hear the man in the building behind him yelling, though the blond didn't know if the man was yelling at him or yelling for backup to help put out the flames. Mac glanced behind him for a second at the burning building and found that the flames were already beginning to lick the frame of the window he'd leapt out of, the blaze growing bigger by the second as it continued to feed on the ample amounts of gasoline.

MacGyver continued running, doing his best to ignore the pain in his shoulder and the raggedness of his breath as he put as much distance between him and the building. Finally after almost ten minutes of flat out sprinting, MacGyver came across a stream, and he felt a sense of relief. While it was still dark outside, Mac thought he could see the opposite side of the river about twenty feet across. The EOD slowed to a jog, and then a walk as he reached the body of water, and he breathed in deep, slow breaths, trying to calm his racing heart and uneven breaths.

His lungs were burning, as was his shoulder, and Mac knew that if he didn't get help soon, the wound would become infected, and that was the last thing he needed. His back where the first bullet had hit him was also throbbing, and he felt like he had a great big rock sitting on his back; he figured he'd bruised a few ribs at least thanks to that bullet, but there wasn't much he could do about it at the moment.

Mac forced himself to slow his breathing down even more, knowing that the more quick and shallow his breathing was, the more chance he had of passing out. He stepped towards the river, knowing his shoulder needed to be cleaned. He didn't know how dirty the water was though, and he didn't want to risk giving his wound an even nastier infection if there was something in the water. Slinging his backpack off his back again proved to be more painful and difficult the second time around, but the blond finally dropped the bag on the ground and pulled out his knife from his pocket.

He began to cut the mesh away from the straps on his pack, figuring he could make a filter to clean the water, at least a little bit, but before he could begin creating said filter, Mac heard something from a little ways downstream. He glanced in the direction the sound had come from, grimacing as the pain in his shoulder began to increase. After a few moments, Mac was able to make out the shape of a smaller person, probably a teenager, and next to him, there was the shape of a large animal that Mac realized was a horse. The horse's shape looked slightly lopsided, and Mac realized that the animal probably had packs of some sort slung across the saddlebags, though whether they were full of water or food, Mac had no idea. Every now and then, the boy had to tug on the horse's lead to get the animal to stop bending down to eat the grass at the side of the riverbank.

MacGyver didn't know who to trust, so he tried to back away as quietly as he could to avoid getting attention drawn to himself, but he didn't pay attention to where he was moving, and he accidentally stepped back onto a round rock. MacGyver fell with a grunt, rolling his eyes at himself as his ankle began to throb as well. Mac put the pain his body was alerting him to aside though as he stared at the boy, who had heard the noise and looked over.

Mac couldn't see much in the dark, but he could almost feel how tense the boy was, and before the EOD specialist could say or do anything, the boy turned and began yelling at the top of his lungs in Arabic. Mac didn't understand what was being said, but he knew that if the boy's yelling drew the attention of the bombers, he was a dead man, and he debated on what to do. He could either run after the boy and try to get him to stop screaming, or he could just run the opposite direction and try to put distance between the loud child and himself. After only a few seconds of calculating the odds, Mac opted for the second choice, pushing himself to his feet and running the opposite direction of the boy.

He barely made it three steps though before his ankle reminded him that it was also injured now, and he fell to the ground, landing rather hard on his injured shoulder. That pain, paired with his quickened breathing caused Mac to start seeing spots dance in front of his vision, and this time he couldn't blink them away. He started to feel his grip on reality slipping away from him, but before he completely lost consciousness, Mac heard the clop, clop, clop of a horse coming his way, and he wondered what the boy was going to do.

Once more, the young EOD officer tried to get away from the teenager, but he barely moved an inch before his spinning head made him stop, and it was only a few seconds after that that the encroaching blackness finally took over, and he fell into unconsciousness.

Okiedokie! Thoughts?