Damian wobbled in his chair as he received another punch to the face.
"You're messing up the lines on purpose!" Accused the driver. (To be fair, he wasn't wrong.) "Get it right, or next time we'll aim for the goods!"
Damian spluttered, more blood pouring out from his nose. Pain blossomed across his face, and it was almost the only thing he could focus on. His entire face throbbed, blinding him.
Lance raised his arm up, ready to land another punch on Damian, when an explosion rocked the building.
Despite the pain, Damian's head snapped up. What the fuck was that?
"What the fuck was that?" shouted Lance.
"You morons, we've been compromised!" Adam called to the others. "Pack the equipment and let's get out of here!"
"The equipment? My arse! I'm saving my own skin!"
"You idiots! This stuff cost thousands, we can't just leave it here!"
"But if we stay we're dead!"
As they bickered, Damian's eyes strayed to the ground, where smoke seemed to pour in from all sides. "Uh," he stammered, but then stopped.
He suddenly had the distinct feeling that this had something to do with Anya.
The factory rapidly filled with the opaque smoke, and Damian accidentally gulped down some of it. He tried to hold his breath, but it filtered through his eyes and streamed through his nostrils.
"Ack!" Lance spluttered. "Is this gas? What the fuck!"
Damian couldnt see a thing, but he heard the men cough, and splutter, and then -
"Aaaarrghh!"
"Who was that? Whos' doing that? You don't scare me!"
"Lance where are - argh!
An ominous thump, and the sound of a body being dragged.
"Adam! Adam! Was that you?"
Damian, listening to all of this, shook his head from mirth and tried to hold in his laughter. Every time those idiots shout, they're giving away their location.
Proving his thoughts correct; another ominous slump.
"Guys! Guys where are you? What's going on? Why are you all getting silent-"
Thump, fwump, drag.
Damian held his breath as the fog and the smoke dissipated, to reveal a completely clear room. And every bad guy lay face-down on the floor.
Behind him, he heard the sound of shifting feet and heavy breathing. He was almost too afraid to turn.
He felt the ropes slide away from his wrists, and Damian rubbed at them before turning to see who his rescuer was.
"You okay Sy-on, boy?"
For some reason that he could not parse, it felt as though all of the wind was literally knocked out of his lungs. As he stared at Anya, he swore she had started to glow. All he could do was nod at her mutely as he rubbed the rope burn from his wrists.
"Then come on! We gotta get out of here before the other guards turn up."
"Wait, the other guards?"
Anya grabbed his wrist and turned towards the exit. "There's no time! Come on, Papa's waiting outside!"
"Mr Forger is…?"
Damian yanked his wrist back from Anya, forcing her to turn towards him.
"No! I - I need you to explain what just happened!" To his embarrassment, his eyes started burning, threatening to spill tears. "How the hell did you do that? What the fuck is going on? How are you here? How is it that you and your father are here? Did you follow me? Did you see an alert somewhere? And why aren't the police here? And how did you knock out three guys in under a minute?"
"Uh, Sy-on boy, the thing is, uh…" She glanced nervously around and started to feel the back of her neck prickling with sweat.
Damian groaned and rubbed his face with his hand. "Fine, I'll start with the simplest one. What are you doing here?"
"Well," Anya began. "I know what it's like to be kidnapped, so when I saw the bad guys come after you, I had to make sure you were okay!"
Damian felt his brain snag on the new and unexpected words in her sentence. "Did you… did you say that you've been kidnapped before?"
Anya scoffed and gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "Only three - maybe four times? But I was just a kid so I got away pretty easy. Oh, and I guess that second time didn't really count because Mama just kicked them in the face and they ran away."
This did not compute in Damian's mind. "Huh?"
Just then, a shadow blocked the exit, and both teens gasped.
"Get behind me," ordered Anya, and held her hand out in front of Damian.
A figure stepped forward from the light, casting a shadow across their faces. The shadow looked around at the fallen kidnappers who lay on the ground unconscious.
"Huh," said a deep bass voice. "Looks like now we got two kids from Eden. You've just doubled the price of your own ransom." A man with shoulders broader than Bill's stood silhouetted against the light of the corridor. "You shouldn't have come here, little girl."
Something glinted in the corner of Damian's vision, and he froze when he saw the gun, still in the hands of Lance - the same gun that was held against his own forehead less than twenty minutes ago. If only we could get that gun, maybe we could scare him off…
As if she had the same thoughts, Anya dived like a bullet towards the gun and snatched it from Lance's unconscious hands, then whipped back towards the guard at the entrance, holding it firmly with both hands.
"Let us pass," she ordered.
Damian didn't dare breathe. She sounded so firm, so confident. Had she done this before? Damian shook the thought away. People reacted differently in stressful situations, he knew, but he couldn't even move as he watched her press her fingers on the trigger.
How does she know how to hold a gun?
Anya took a deep breath before she repeated: "Let us go, or I will shoot."
She couldn't fake the conviction in her voice.
Damian glanced unmoving at the guard at the door, who also stared at Anya with the same look of awe, with just a touch of fear. The look flitted across his face, and for a brief, terrifying second, Damian thought that the guard might shoot first.
"Maximillian, right?" said Anya coolly, and the guard - probably Maximillian - hesitated. "I know you don't want to hurt us. I don't want to hurt you. We can just go on our way, and you can pretend you never saw us, and you can still get paid and go back to your family. Unharmed. Uninjured. Sounds good, right?"
She stood with her feet shoulder width apart, and her arms level, with her index finger resting lazily on the trigger.
She looked incredible.
She looked like something out of Bondman.
And one question reverberated through Damian's mind: How is she doing this?
Maximillian the guard snarled at her, displaying a row of gritted teeth.
"I am more than happy to let you go back to your home in the Bjorn area of the Eastern estate. But you have to let us pass, unharmed. Got that?"
Maximilian took a step back in surprise. "You know where I live?"
"I know lots of things."
Gods, her voice didn't even tremble.
And even more shocking to Damian, Maximilian's eyes blinked, and a sheer glaze of tears shone back at them. "I can't," the man shook his head. "They'll kill me."
A beat, and Anya cocked her head.
"They can't kill you if you're protected, right?"
After a few more seconds of silence, there was an unspoken shift in the air, and Maximilian relaxed.
Damian felt like his last breath was leaving his body. He watched, mesmerised and petrified, as Anya released the trigger, softened her gaze, then reached out a hand.
"Then we have an understanding?"
Maximilian nodded gruffly and shook her hand, then indicated his head towards the door. "Quickly."
Anya grabbed Damian's hand, and he followed her helplessly out of the door and into the light beyond.
Twilight had easily infiltrated the building from his position on the roof, but even as he crept through the corridors and looked out at every turn, it seemed that the kidnappers weren't nearly as well armed as they should be. Where were the guards? The snipers? The mission operators?
Twilight tsked. If he was in charge of the operation, he would have run it so much smoother than these amateurs.
Just as Twilight descended the next floor of steps, an explosion rocked the building.
What the fuck was that?
Anya did tell him that she would make a smoke bomb to distract the kidnappers and obscure their line of sight (and he was not going to question where she learned it from), but was it really supposed to be this loud?
He started to race down the steps, when a flash of movement from outside caught his eye - another armed guard had entered the building exactly where Anya had estimated Damian's location to be.
Shit! Twilight cursed to himself as he sprinted with his gun in his hands, ready to silence and take down any human in his path - breathing or otherwise. It took him all of twenty seconds to get to the factory's inside balcony, where he could scout and get a good view of the layout below.
The conveyor belts had all fallen apart, and there was an area in the back of the factory that had been cleared of any mechanical equipment, apart from a chair, and a camera recorder set up in the centre of the empty space.
Damian stood rubbing his wrists, while Anya had grabbed his hand and led him towards the exit.
As the smoke cleared from the floor, Twilight's gaze snagged on the bodies lying on the floor. His brows furrowed. He briefly wondered if Anya had taken them all down herself, but he quickly shot down the thought. She would have to be extremely talented to do something like that, even with all the fitness classes that she was taking with Yor.
So, that left him to wonder, did she fight them with Damian? Was there a fight that he hadn't seen? Judging by the way Damian rubbed at his wrists, he might have been tied up, but Loid wondered if there was still time for Damian to have knocked a few guys out while Twilight had been on one of the upper floors.
Conscious that he had left the car outside, Twilight turned away from the scene and opened up the stairwell, but then he remembered the incoming guard -
He gripped his gun in his fist and ran back to the balcony, intending to cut off the guard from there, but he was completely astounded at what he saw.
His daughter, Anya, held a gun to the guard's face.
He had to admire her posture. Her shooting arm was straight as an arrow, her spine upright and her feet steady. Where did she learn to do that?
Twilight! Stop being impressed! You're getting distracted!
Broken out of his train of thoughts, Twilight had only heard the last part of their conversation:
"They can't kill you if you're protected, right?"
And then, after another beat: "then we have an understanding?"
Twilight nearly shook with relief when he saw that the guard indicated to let the teens go, and they ran past him without another care.
Twilight finished tying up the last of the attempted kidnappers, not forgetting to put blindfolds and gags on all of them. Then, he made a call.
"Hey, it's Twilight. I've got a few bad guys in custody. The address? Yeah it's..." and he recited the name and address of the factory to them. "They just tried to kidnap Damian Desmond, but, uh…"
Twilight hesitated. Should he tell WISE about Anya's part in the mission?
What if they believed that her help in the mission compromised his identity as Twilight? They would force him to stop the mission, and reassign him somewhere else, and Anya and Yor would be left all alone… No, he couldn't risk it.
"I managed to intercept them and retrieve Damian, I'm taking him to the hospital now just to make sure he's okay. Also, there's some guy named Maximillian Butrecht here who helped with the escape, but he may be being targeted by the other kidnappers. Be sure to run a check and take precautions for him if necessary. He says he has family in Bjorn."
He waited to make sure that they had heard him, and dropped the call.
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I really wanted Anya to be a badass sooooo...
Thanks everyone for indulging me ahaha, thanks for bearing with me for such a long chapter!
But even more than that, I wanted Damian to see this side of her! He has no idea how much of a badass she really is!
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ALSO
I am SO BAD at figuring out how to use this site from the authors side and I ? JUST ? SAW ? THE ? REVIEWS ?
Thank you all so so so SO MUCH for leaving such kind comments and reviews! I'm still figuring out how to reply to them (gonna Google this shit) but seriously this has MADE MY YEAR just how many of you are enjoying this silly little thing I wrote!
I also want to take a moment to reassure readers; I am playing the long game with this story! the things you want to happen WILL happen at some point but it's definitely going to be a journey getting there! Sit tight and hang on to your seatbelts 3