Chapter 12

The other reason my mind can't wander when I'm flying a jetpack is that they're so noisy I can't hear myself think. I usually find that a good thing but tonight, it's definitely a problem. I'm expecting to be followed eventually, but I can't tell whether I already am or not, and if someone shoots at me, I won't hear the projectiles until it's too late to avoid them. I can only hope the Joes wouldn't shoot me while I'm carrying one of their own.

I shut down the jet pack the second I'm close enough to the rooftop of the fortress to land comfortably and I pick up the sound of an airplane, still very distant. I take Scarlett and myself out of the harness, leave it there with the jetpack for someone else to pick up and bring the girl to Destro's office.

Destro is not there, but the commander is. Oddly, he looks puzzled to see me with a prisoner.

"Destro did not tell you why he was borrowing me?" I ask.

He shakes his head, frowning. He points to the wrapped up prisoner with his chin.

"Who is it?" he asks.

Rather than tell him, I cut the sheet off her. I want to know whether he'll recognize her – I don't need to know, not really, but I'm curious. Destro not telling him what he was up to is very unusual, and the Commander's reaction to Scarlett just might shed some light on the mystery.

As it turns out, his reaction is completely uninformative.

"Scarlett," he hisses. "Why does Destro want her?"

"He didn't say. He sounded as though he intended to keep her for a while."

The Commander looks thoughtful for a moment before he shrugs the matter off.

"Just put her in one of the dungeons," he instructs me.

I nod, pick her back up and head for the dungeons.

I get my first good luck at her while securing the dungeon chains around her wrists. My breath catches and for a moment, I'm literally stunned. As disgusting as his offer was, at least now I know why Destro thought he was being nice.

I reach out to her face before I know what I'm doing and she snaps awake at my touch. She whips her head around and bites my finger so hard it feels like she broke a chunk of the bone.

I scream and without thinking, take out my katana, ready to strike back. Luckily for her, my head catches up to my blood before I actually strike and I content myself with glaring at her and sheathing my katana back. If anything, she did me a favour: my silly crush is completely gone.

I leave her in the dungeon and go back to the roof to check on the airplane. It's on its way out and on the other side of the building, a parachute lands. I can hear the rescuer's breathing and heart beats, and my eyes widen in surprise: Scarlett's rescuer is that traitor of an ex-brother, Chatterbox. Obviously, he did go back to the military, even without me to share the head of the clan with.

I clench my teeth and run towards him, unsheathing my katana as I go. Judging by his calm, he hasn't recognized me yet or he knew who had kidnapped Scarlett before he arrived. Once I'm close enough to him, I make a point of adopting the clan's usual dual stance and glare at him.

His heart rate picks up slightly as he recognizes me and he charges towards me, unsheathing his own weapon. I can't see his expression – his face is completely covered by a mask and a dark visor – but I'm guessing he's glaring right back at me. If it were anyone else, I'd be surprised by the absence of yelling.

I block his attack and the shock echoes painfully through the finger Scarlett bit. I curse under my breath: she really did break something.

Speaking of Little Miss Bite-y, she's already managed to get free of her chains and to exit the dungeon, and she's running towards us, yelling. I can't help being impressed.

"Snake Eyes!" she calls out. "Watch it, he's dangerous! I think…"

I tune her out to concentrate on preventing "Snake Eyes" from cutting me in half. I scowl at the name: that was the expression he'd use in the war when everything was going wrong. His calling himself that is like calling himself the most unfortunate man alive.

"Snake Eyes, is it?" I snarl. "You think you have it rough, do you? You poor baby! Did you have everyone you ever cared for try to kill you lately?"

He stays mute and attacks again. What little calm I had left upon seeing him again evaporates.

"Answer me!" I scream. "You and the Soft Master… this is all your fault! The least you can do is TALK TO ME!"

He continues to say nothing and just keeps fighting. I haven't been able to do anything but block since we've started, but on the other hand, I have been able to block everything with relative ease. The Hard Master was right: he has started to regress. He is still better than me, but not by as much as he used to.

Just as I decide I actually have a small chance of winning this fight, Scarlett catches up to us and decides to join in. She proves Destro right about her abilities: she's not in the same league as a ninja, but between her and Snake Eyes, my defences quickly start failing and things get worse as I get angrier and angrier.

I'm furious at the whole situation. I didn't want to kidnap Scarlet in the first place. Moralities put aside, it's a stupid move. It's like kicking a hornets nest: it doesn't make the hornets go away, it just makes them mad. I only did it because I was ordered to, and I have to follow orders.

Ever since I came back from the war, I've been a slave. First to my own family, and for the past eight years, to an organization I despise. I've trained myself not to care about the blood on my hands, to detach myself from what I was doing; I've turned myself into a senseless puppet, or rather, I've tried. The only thing that keeps me going is that I can't give up: I want revenge. My uncle needs it and I deserve it.

Taking advantage of the fact most of my attention is on Snake Eyes, Scarlett manages to slap me right on the ear, making it pop painfully. That only reminds me that the man I'm working for got my eardrums injured before, and that injury was the reason I couldn't hear the arrow that killed my uncle in time to stop it and save him, and the reason I couldn't hear the murderer before he escaped.

Snake Eyes suddenly stops attacking me to get into a defensive position between her and myself. I stare at him in surprise: he thought I was going to kill her for the slap. It's visible in his stance, it's audible in his accelerated heart rate.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. After all, he also believes I killed the Hard Master and he thinks killing rodents is just as bad as killing humans. Still, I'm insulted.

"If I needed her dead, she would be already!" I shout angrily. "I wouldn't have dragged her all the way here!"

He responds by attacking again. I've had enough. I can't win a fight against him unless I seriously hurt him or kill him, and as angry as I am with him, I can't do that to my own brother. With Scarlett involved, it's not even an option anyway: they have already demonstrated that I can't win against both of them.

I jump back and sheath my weapon. A thousand snarky, angry and flippant remarks run through my head but I shut them all down.

He thinks I'd kill a girl for slapping me. He knows I've just kidnapped her and he knows I work for Cobra. Whatever low opinion he's had of me since my uncle was murdered, he's just cemented it and what's worse, proving I was not the killer will not undo everything else I've done since. I'm ready to bet he won't understand I didn't have a choice. I won't have the luxury of forgiving him or not when I find out who framed me: he won't forgive ME, and neither will the Soft Master or anyone else.

I idly wonder whether he'll attack again and finally do what he didn't eight years ago, when he found me asleep in the street. I hate myself for it, but right now, I wouldn't mind if he did.

He doesn't. He spots my jet pack and heads there with Scarlett, turning away from me and still not saying anything.

"What, that's it? Aren't you going to take me prisoner?" I call out.

I wouldn't let him if he tried. I may not be able to win a fight against the two of them, but I can certainly run inside, lock them out and send troops after them to force them to retreat.

He says nothing. Under my mask, my lips curl in a snarl.

"Say something!" I scream. I don't know what I want him to say; I just want him to stop ignoring me.

Scarlett is the one to answer, although she's not addressing me.

"You know him," she tells him, not quite as a question. "From long ago, that's why he doesn't know you're…"

The sound of the jet-pack drowns the rest, but I can guess from context that the next word was "mute". Something happened to him since I saw him last, something that made him lose his voice. It's clearly karma: he couldn't be bothered to talk, he lost the ability to. I'd still feel sorry for him if not for the fact I'd happily trade places with him.

I watch him go for a while, trying to guess what he's thinking. He didn't try very hard to kill me, that much I'm sure of. While I was fighting them, Scarlett was mostly aiming at my throat and other vital spots, but he was all over the place, as if he couldn't decide where he wanted to strike. I'm guessing he couldn't decide whether he wanted to dispose of me himself or bring me to the Soft Master alive and let him do the job. Not wanting to get his hands dirty IS just like him: it's the same personality flaw that made him refuse to earn wages and that got him so worked up over my seeing-ear training.

A wave of nostalgia hits me. That I can feel nostalgic about a life I hated makes me wish 'Snake Eyes' had had the guts to kill me. Failing to avenge my uncle wouldn't be my fault, then. I would have had tried my best, and simply fallen victim to my misguided and superior fighter of a brother.

I scowl at myself. If I keep at this, I'm liable to build up enough self pity to start calling myself Snake Eyes too. I have a duty to my father's brother, and making excuses to fail will not do him any good. As for the fact that my actions since I've joined Cobra are unforgivable, I can deal with that afterward. Maybe I'll turn myself in to the Soft Master and let him kill me without revealing I'm innocent – it would spare everyone the trouble of switching from hating me for a murder I did not commit to hating me for everything I've done since.

I take a deep breath and go back to Destro's office to report that his prisoner has been rescued. I pick up on his and the Commander's voices some distance from the door and walk the rest of the way silently, curious.

"…HIM?" the Commander screeches.

"He is from the same clan, I have established that much. And yes, I think it's your old friend. We should get confirmation tonight."

"That's why you had Storm Shadow kidnap Scarlett?" the Commander asks. "You hoped Snake Eyes would come to the rescue and you'd find out how he compares to him?"

"Yes. If Snake Eyes is who I think he is, Scarlett is gone. If he's not, GI Joe is short one ninja."

I don't need to hear the rest. I trust the door open and glare at Destro.

"It's him," I confirm. "And yes, Scarlett is gone. I could have identified him for you if you'd only asked. There was no need for this kidnapping."

Destro shrugs and smirks.

"But this was so much more fun," he says.

I shrug too and carefully keep my tone calm. I hate being played like this, and I hate that Destro just casually assumed that my brother was still better than me and worse, that he was right. Most of all, I'm furious that he thought I'd kill a member of my own clan.

"For future reference," I say, choosing to not even dignify his comment on all this being fun with a response, "I will NOT kill my own kin. Not for you, not for anyone."

The Commander cocks his head. I stare at his mask until he looks elsewhere before I turn my back on them and stalk off to the next bend in the hallway. I then start eavesdropping again: Destro is up to something, I'm sure of it – he never does anything just for fun. Hopefully, the Commander will make him admit whatever his real intentions were.

"I spoil you, sometimes," Destro says after a few minutes.

"Spoil me?" the Commander hisses. "You could have gotten him killed! And I did NOT need him to confront me about whether he'd kill members of his clan or not!"

"Yes, you did. Now you know he won't kill Snake Eyes, even if he somehow gets the upper hand on him."

I roll my eyes and stop listening. It's just like Destro to go through all that just to establish an obvious fact. I go back to my quarters, fuming and frustrated.

Author's notes

There was obviously no way for me to make this actually silent, so I decided not to go out of my way to avoid dialogues. I also had to change the part where Storm Shadow tries to shoot Snake Eyes with an arrow, since he recognized him already. And he had to recognize him right away because of the hearing thing…

I have to say, it's no wonder the comic book does not make a point of consistently pointing out Storm Shadow can hear well enough to be assumed to have shot a man from a fair distance, beyond closed walls, guided only by that man's heart rate and breathing pattern. This faculty gets annoying, sometimes. Another example and a mild spoiler for a possible future flashback: he can't very well walk into an ambush.

Reviews are, as always, much appreciated. So much so that I've been playing with the idea of rewarding them… yes, I'm that starved for attention.