The heels of her shoes clicked sharply on the tiled floor as she strode down a corridor, reflecting her irritation. Her brother had always told her that he could tell when she was angry, just by the sound of her walk, and had he been with her now, he surely would have realized just how true his observation had been. The flight from Madrid to Hiroshima had been long and tiring, but that was not the source of her displeasure. No, the source was staying right here in this hotel, and Aryn was angry because he shouldn't have been.

It must be that Noir. He had no other business here. Wilkes warned us against her, and my brother, you should know better than to involve yourself with that shade.

Her steps ceased for as she paused to wait for the elevator, and it was only a moment before the door slid open and she entered. When she reached the top floor and stepped into the penthouse suite, she had to give grudging approbation. At least Ejan knew how to choose comfortable accomodations.

She set her case down on the large dining table, her gaze flicking around the room in hopes of finding any indication of his business here. Trust him to remain discreet, even in his own suite. She was just emerging from one of the bedrooms when the sound of the door opening caught her attention, and she stopped in the doorway, eyeing the new arrival with undisguised disapproval.

The elevator reached his floor, and he stopped to examine the door before entering. No scratches, no marks, no sign of forced entry. That fit in with the profile; it would have been out of character for her to leave anything that...sloppy. Adrenaline emptied into his veins in silken strands, opened his eyes and ears and made his fingers tingle, and he opened the door calmly, with a barely contained smile on his features.

The smile had no trouble staying hidden when he saw who was waiting for him. She stood with her arms crossed and that dangerous calm on her face that always precluded a storm. Her flashes of anger that had shaped his existence in childhood had not departed, only grown more subtle as she learned to mask her true feelings in front of strangers.

He received no such dispensation.

"Well?" She asked, with venom in her voice. "Well? You hope I'm well?! I don't know what your definition of 'well' is, but I do not call finding my brother in league with Noir TO BE ANYTHING LIKE WELL!" The volume of her tirade raised higher and higher as she lost the last remnants of calm and showed just how displeased she was. "Do you have any idea what she is? Do you know what she does? Because if you really did, YOU WOULD NOT BE HERE!"

Ejan continued to stand there with infuriating disinterest masking his features, but she could see the tension beneath the facade. She hastily dug into the bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out a handful of papers, which she shook angrily at him with smug discovery on her face. "Do you know what these are? Oh, let's see." She began to rifle through them, reading one by one. "Look here, your phone conversation with her. What were you thinking, helping that traitor? She has the Legion! And this, you sending her flowers?!"

"So they might." He looked down at the papers at his feet to avoid staring into her eyes and tried to calm down. "I sent her flowers, not a damned wedding proposal. I did what I could to counter a bad situation and salvage a valuable contact." He looked up into her eyes then, his anger silent against her outburst. "What would you have done differently, sister? Let her little companion die and watch her escape into the ether for some other faction to secure her services?"

"No right? Don't you say such things, you... you ungrateful bastard! You wouldn't have gotten to where you are today if it wasn't for me, and now you're trying to throw that back into my face? How dare you! And it is not our duty to care what that little puta does; our obligation is to the Wolves. Don't forget that, you with your flowers and obsession with Noir!"

She paced furiously before stepping close, right up and face to face, but still he refused to meet her eyes. His avoidance angered her further, and throwing her hands in the air, she stalked away across the room to stare out the window. Behind her Ejan was silent, and as always, she couldn't leave well enough alone. Aryn had to have the last word.

"If the council is shortsighted enough to sacrifice the best assassin the Wolves have ever contracted with to satisfy their pride, that is their business. I was acting in the best interest of the council, however ungrateful they may be now, when I saved her ex-Legion friend and let them go their way. You didn't see them together. That little Legion girl trusted Riya. I would go so far as to call them friends. That means that if we contract through Riya again, we have two Legion-trained agents to call upon, not just one. I'd say that was worth a half hour of Dr. Salazar's time, wouldn't you?"

As commanding and controlling and completely smotheringly overprotective as Aryn was, she did indeed care for her younger brother's well-being... at least, in her somewhat rational moments. Which, depending upon the circumstances, could be few and far between.

Now was one of those moments. The council member that she and Ejan worked under had been involved in Noir's initial contracting, and Aryn had seen the files on Kuniyo Kinoshita. She did not like the girl. If Kinoshita had betrayed Legion-- the most well-kept secret the IF possessed-- then what was to say she wouldn't do the same to the Wolves? If she had until now killed every person who had displeased or irritated or injured her, then what was to stop her from doing the same to one of them?

This calm line of contemplation was, unfortunately, not reflected in her demeanor. Instead of voicing her worries quietly, she shouted them, and Ejan continued to glare at her as she strode over to the table, clicked open the briefcase she had left there, and pointed demandingly at its contents. "You know what those papers are? Noir's files. And you're going to read them, every single last one of those reports, and then you're going to tell me how fucking sorry you are for not listening to me, because you'll see how right I am about that backstabbing bitch. I don't care about that little Legion plaything or if she trusts Noir, because I don't, and you shouldn't, and when I leave this town you'd better be pretty damn close behind me, because I'm not going to sit around at home and wonder if you're lying dead in an alley somewhere as a result of pissing off that sociopathic girlfriend of yours. Now I'm leaving!"

Ejan was more interested in doing than believing, and he liked doing what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. Aryn's hysterics weren't going to work this time. He'd only sent the woman a flower. He'd abandon his little diversion when he was tired of it, and not until then.

He strode over to the briefcase, intending to close it and ship it back to their home address, but a picture of Riya at the top of the pile arrested his movement. It wasn't Riya, the inscrutable assassin he'd met in the little apartment in Hong Kong. It was a little girl, a tiny girl, really, with white hair and great, empty blueblack eyes, staring at the camera without surprise or interest. She looked vulnerable, as only a child can, and Ejan was at a loss to reconcile the image with the self-assured, implacable killer she'd become.

His eyes drifted to the text to the left of the photo, and locked to the words Parents Killed in Car Crash. His brows drew together slightly, and he was just beginning to pity her when he reached the next paragraph, describing the death of the other driver and his family, and the conjectures drawn by the admissions staff concerning her involvement. There were more recent notes from a Captain Hale in the Special Operations division along the same lines, and any pity Ejan had been feeling was replaced with a subdued sense of awe, and a despicable little thought whispered itself into his ear.

Maybe Aryn was right.

He read for the next three hours, separating the photos and making a line of them on the desk in order of ascending age as he went. Her years at the school were those of a model student; she was never implicated in any wrongdoing or altercation. Her aptitudes displayed themselves early on. Her teachers marked her for the special ops division just after she entered Command School, and this Captain Hale took over her instruction when she was transferred there. His notes were far more detailed than those before him. He saw all the marks of a methodical and efficient killer in her and praised them, picked them out and polished them and made her into the perfect shade.

And then she slipped away and took their precious plans for the Excalibur, killing a couple of personnel and stealing a ship, out of their range before they knew they'd been had, on her way back to Earth to have some fun. She'd been contracting since she'd arrived, and the Wolves had begun offering her jobs after she sold them the plans she'd stolen at a premium price; Ejan and Aryn had been the money behind that purchase. She was expensive, but she always got the job done.

He finished the information his sister had left him and looked at the line of pictures he'd made. The teenage Riya stared back at him just as the six year old had, as she had when he'd brought the doctor to save her friend - without fear, without emotion of any kind. He closed the file and looked out the window, the picture of Riya as a young girl under his fingertips. His unsettling feeling of concern was diminishing, and the feel of a deliciously dangerous challenge was taking its place. As far as he could tell from her file, she'd never had a lover, unless it was that Thoth girl, and Riya simply didn't seem like the type. He began to wonder what sort of finesse would be required to win her affection. If Thoth hadn't been in the picture, he would have wondered if she had affection to win, but he'd seen it when Salazar was treating her. If Thoth could have it, he could have it...and he wanted it.

A flower? How inappropriate. I'll send her something she wants. What does one buy the assassin with everything?

The first, as her eyes blinked open to notice the bedside display, was that nearly a month had passed since she and Thoth had arrived in Hiroshima. That thought led her to stretch and roll over in bed, intent on waking Thoth, but the girl was not beside her. She frowned at this for a moment, wondering if everything was alright, and eventually rolled out of bed and peered from the room. What met her eyes was, this time, not an entirely pleasant find.

Thoth had, apparently, decided to take it upon herself to cook breakfast. Normally Riya was the early riser, always up by sunrise while Thoth snored away happily until nudged, kicked, or a few times, forcibly removed from bed. Today, however, did not appear to be such a fortunate day, and Riya visibly cringed at the flour that dusted the counters, the egg yolk that decorated the floor, and the pancake, attached to the ceiling, that threatened to fall on Thoth's head at any second. The obsessively organized part of her jabbed at her, made her want to reprimand Thoth, but as her partner turned to smile broadly at her, Riya could only shake her head and manage a blank face, which was almost as good as a smile.

"Look! I made breakfast!" Thoth crowed triumphantly, and Riya threw up her hands in disgust and tried to cross the kitchen to the dining room without stepping in any of the puddles. She sidestepped a particularly disgusting pile whose contents she couldn't identify, and finally with a sigh sat down heavily in her chair and made a face. "Baka."

That was another discovery; that no matter how irritating or amusing or irresponsible Thoth was, Riya could not find it in herself to be anything but tolerant. And that was not altogether a bad discovery.

Eventually they ate, and Riya made Thoth clean up her mess, barely avoiding a repeat of the little food fight incident in Scorpion that had cost them a night's guard duty. There was no one to punish them this time, but as Riya grew more fond of Thoth, so did Thoth grow more understanding of Riya, and they both knew what was acceptable between them. This morning, a food fight was not. But still, they managed to enjoy themselves, and happily settled in to waste away the hours with gun-swapping and dossier reading and reminiscing.

They were both engrossed in watching "The World's Greatest Assassins" on the history channel and arguing over which one of them should have been number one when there came a knock on the door. Riya was instantly up and alert, with Thoth peering over her shoulder, but she motioned for the girl to stay where she was as she moved to the study to look at the surveillance camera set over the front door.

No. That couldn't be.

A sinking feeling of deja vu hit Riya as she stared dumbstruck at the single white lily that lay on the tile of the entryway. Beside it lay a wrapped box, adorned with ribbon, and a tiny card. Riya could not understand, and anger began to replace her surprise, warming her dark eyes and bringing irritation to her voice as she called out to Thoth.

"Thoth. Answer the door." She could hear muffled grumbling from the adjoining room, but from the sound of movement Thoth must have complied. The door creaked open, and if she had been expecting anger from Thoth too, then she was mistaken, because laughter rang out.

A moment later and Thoth came prancing in, cheerily waving the gift and the flower. "Ooooh, someone has a secret admirer, I was right! I wonder who it could beeeeeeeeeee!"

Riya snatched the items from Thoth, shoved the girl out of the doorway, and slammed the door.

"Riiiiya, c'mon, let me see, I'll stop teasing." Riya ignored the other girl and gave the lock a snap, before setting the present down on the floor and eyeing it from a distance. It wasn't ticking. It wasn't moving. Cautiously, she nudged it with the toe of her boot, repeating the gesture to the lily, before crushing the flower under her heel and sitting down on the floor. She poked the ribbon experimentally, tilting her head to examine the box more closely, but as it didn't appear to be ready to explode, she finally gave up and opened it.

Her breath caught as she noticed what was inside, and her dark eyes lit hotter with something akin to pleasure. Hastily she snatched up the note, read it, blinked, read it again, shook her head and tried to block the words Until next time... from her thoughts, and finally reached into the box and withdrew what had to be one of the most gorgeous pistols she had ever held.

It was beautiful, she had to give him that, although her acknowledgement of his appropriate gift was grudging and tinged with suspicion. The grip was perfectly molded for her small hands, the weight delicately balanced, the sight precise and straight, and Riya was finding herself very hard put to be really, truly angry at his stealthy surprise. Still. He was a Wolf, and she was, well, herself... and he had been too insolent the last time they met, she reminded herself. This was merely a tactic to gain favor that she would never give. She decided that she was angry, which was true, considering that he had dared to approach her house and intrude upon her sanctuary, and that anger reasserted itself quickly and brought a tiny, cold smile to her face.

Thoth was still sulking in the living room when Riya re-entered, and she hopped to her feet and tried to ask questions, but Riya would have none of it as she waved in dismissal and slipped out the front door. The pistol was securely fastened in an underarm holster as she slid into her long duster coat, climbed onto the Ninja streetbike, and ducked her head against the wind as she gunned the engine and sped away.

Four hours later, Riya was not at the Kouketsu Hotel.

She'd only made it as far as the teahouse she patronized before she skidded to a halt and dismounted, barely getting into the privacy of her reserved room before beginning to pace around. The audacity of his gesture, the sheer stupidity and arrogance and insolence, it all irritated her, brought her comfortable routine to a grinding halt, and made her lose the mask and frown to herself where no one else could see.

Until next time. I did not want there to be a next time. No good can come of this gesture. He is a Wolf. I do not associate with them, except for money. If he believes this will favor himself with me, then he is greatly mistaken.

It occurred to her, very belatedly, that this situation could be amusing, if twisted right. I have never killed a Wolf before. It must not be very difficult.

That brought a smile to her face, and she blinked happily, settled down and ordered tea and sat contemplating her approach for the next few hours, until night had fallen and she had finally convinced herself that this meeting might be worth some fun. When she left the teahouse, she held up the little card, memorized the address, examined the cursive signature of Alejandro Serafin de Altamira, and then crumpled the paper and left it to melt in the gutter as rain began to fall and she remounted her bike.

She was very damp, close to soaking wet, even, when she finally reached the hotel. In the bowels of the underground parking garage she stashed her streetbike and helmet, ignored the bellhop and desk clerk as they tried to intercept her, and rode the elevator to the penthouse suite with a blankly amused expression on her face. Great wooden doors blocked her next, and after rubbing the crest on her wrist apprehensively, Riya knocked.

The little Japanese boy he'd paid to drop the parcels on her doorstep was cheerful enough to do it, just like any child would be to assist one adult in playing a prank on another. He had stayed long enough to see if she'd come out to get it, but was disappointed when Thoth came and retrieved it instead. He'd wanted to see her reaction, not Thoth's, and it reminded him of how inconvenient Thoth was going to be. Maybe he could arrange to have her removed from the equation...but he didn't want Riya upset. It was going to be hard enough as it was.

When he returned to the hotel, he shut the drapes. He was going to have his meeting with Riya face to face. If she wanted to kill him for bringing her a present, she'd have to do it in person. He moved to his computer and set about making contact with the small contingent of Wolves resident near Hiroshima to justify his presence, while pointedly ignoring a newly arrived email from Aryn. He'd been corresponding rather blandly with the woman in charge for almost four hours when the room phone rang. He reached to his left and lifted it to his ear, expecting to hear Aryn screeching.

"Mr. Altamira?" The desk clerk from downstairs sounded a little nervous.

"Yes?"

"Sir, I think the lady in question has arrived."

Ejan smiled, stood and walked over to the window, pushing the curtains open and grinning at the rainy street below. It would never do to let her think he was afraid of her. Emotional weakness was not something Riya appeared to appreciate, and in a lesser way, Ejan understood that; displays of emotion like the ones Aryn was capable of producing were disturbing to him. For once, the girl he was trying to impress wanted less of the emotional sideshow than he was normally required to give, and that would be interesting.

The knock on the door was light, two raps only, and he stood at the window a moment longer before erasing his smile and crossing the room to open the door.

Riya was wet. Her clothes had not suffered much, protected as they were by her leather duster, but her hair was damp and clung to her cheeks, and Ejan smiled briefly and moved aside to let her in, purposely turning his back to her as he entered his bathroom and brought back a plush towel for her to dry herself with.

You do not turn your back to me.

He offered her a towel in an outstretched hand and she pointedly ignored it, instead brushing her hair from her face and back, in one smooth motion, to knot it quickly at the nape of her neck. She looked flatly at the towel until he withdrew it, and she blinked at him, shaded azure eyes warm and bemused.

A stray drop of water dripped from the collar of her coat and tickled her neck, and she remembered that she was wet. Without a word she shrugged the duster from her shoulders and let it crumple to the floor, before stepping over it and further into the room. Riya glanced around idly, noting the computer, a locked briefcase on the table, and the distinct lack of weapons. He must be armed, she thought, and turned slowly to eye him, as if she could see where he might have secreted his guns.

The thought of guns reminded her of his gift, and her eyes narrowed imperceptibly, her expression still lacking any hint of what she was contemplating, and her voice was flat and cold and utterly devoid of anything when she finally tapped a finger against the butt of her new pistol and spoke.

He glanced at her crumpled jacket. He'd really figured her to fall more on the obsessively neat side, but Riya was exactly status quo for...well, for anything, really.

"What do you want?" Her tone indicated that she thought nothing of what he could possibly want from her, and that she was merely asking because it would be impolite to kill him without inquiring first. He'd intended to perhaps parley with her, to feel her out and try to find her weakness, but it was now apparent to him that any such course of action would probably result in the negation of any future relationship with Riya, or indeed, any future at all.

He cleared this throat. "We have a contract for you. A French senator. His security is pretty formidable, but it shouldn't be anything you can't handle. I'm the one who's financing it, so I requested to be your contact point. I have the dossier with me, if you'd like to look at it."

It has been nearly a month. Surely Thoth has healed by now. Even if she has not, then I can certainly complete this contract alone. That was, for the first time, and unwelcome notion. Riya had grown some very vague and very lofty dreams of having someone to share the kill with, and the realization that Thoth might not yet be capable of fulfilling that brought the tiniest hint of her struggle to the surface. It was then she understood what her internal conflict was. I do not wish to go alone.

Ejan was still watching her. Riya didn't like to be watched, and met his gaze square on, hoping that perhaps he would look down or away, and give her the satisfaction of exerting dominance over him. He didn't do either of those things, and she was instantly annoyed again, almost angry, even. She had the sudden urge to leave, but didn't allow herself to indulge it, and instead blinked at him in acknowledgement.

"I'm sorry," Ejan said curiously, "but I was not aware I was contracting with someone other than you. This deviates from our past arrangements, and isn't a contingency I had anticipated." He paused, as if recalculating. "The price does not alter, no matter how many people it takes to get the job done. Your methods for fulfilling a contract are, of course, your own, but you understand my concern. You are known to be reliable and discreet. Will you vouch the same for your partner?"

He approached the main desk, producing identification, and smiled beneficently as the concierge apologized profusely. The hotel was an extended-stay establishment, the concierge explained, and the hotel had no free rooms to offer him but those of lesser value. The man informed the concierge that he would accept a downgrade, so long as his payment was adjusted accordingly. The concierge apologized again and thanked him for his understanding.

The black leather briefcase was the man's only luggage, and he assured the concierge that he would handle it himself. With a final apology, the concierge gave him his room's keycard. The man stepped into the elevator, and the doors closed.

He did not get off at six, his room's floor. He rode the elevator to the top floor, the eleventh. He stepped out of the elevator and wandered the halls, passing the door labeled ROOF ACCESS twice. Eventually he found a bellhop, and asked for directions to the elevator. The bellhop gave them, and the man thanked him as he lifted the keycard from the bellhop's pocket and replaced it with his own.

He followed the bellhop's directions to the elevator, but strode past. He walked to the door marked ROOF ACCESS, which the keycard unlocked. The man closed the door behind him.

At 1947 hours, a man in a dark coat with wire-rimmed glasses emerged from a stairwell and strode across the rooftop of the Hotel Kamisori, leather briefcase in hand. Sheets of rain fell upon him, obscuring visibility, but he moved as if his perception of the surrounding environment did not depend upon sight at all. Through the downpour, he could see the sign of the Kouketsu Hotel, across the street. He moved over the concrete rooftop toward the corner nearest the Kouketsu, and knelt down, stripping off his coat. He removed his clothing methodically, folding each item and placing it inside the sleeve created by his doubled-over coat. Beneath he wore a form-fitting sneak suit, its material a very dark shade of grey and similar in texture to rubber or vinyl. There were several buttons on his hip; he pressed one.

The sneak suits developed for the SOTF featured photosensitive mimetic polycarbon, allowing the user to blend with the colors of the surrounding area, provided that s/he held very still. However, the suits were still in their early stages, and the chameleon effect was only convincing from a distance. At night, however, the effect would attempt to copy the chaotic barrage of light coming from the city around him, and make him more visible. The weather, also, would make him more visible; rain did not pelt the head and shoulders of a man who was not there. However, the weather was his ally as well, a curtain to shroud him from his target.

Nevertheless, he switched on the suit's thermal imaging compensation. While it would not make him invisible to someone with tech goggles and sharp eyes, at least he would not glow in the dark.

Many agents had died attempting to eliminate Kuniyo Kinoshita. The man kneeling atop the roof of the Hotel Kamisori did not intend to underestimate her.

The man with the wire-rimmed glasses opened his briefcase. He lifted the laptop facade, and with practiced precision and perfect calm, assembled his rifle from its component pieces. The briefcase lid's backing came away to reveal two rows of bullets and a small Walther, all secured with strips of black electrical tape. He loaded the rifle's magazine, and slotted it. He then switched on the safety.

He seated the butt of the rifle comfortably against his shoulder. He removed his glasses, folded them, and set them under his coat. He sighted down the scope, zooming to 12x, and adjusted the focus to clarity, and then a few degrees back, to soften the image.

The man had learned to shoot long before his family could afford to buy him glasses. Habit was a hard thing to shake.

He looked out across the concrete chasm, toward the Kouketsu Hotel. Riya was visiting someone in the penthouse suite, he knew. He moved the crosshairs over the glow of one of the large windows. And he waited, still as stone under the sheets of falling rain.

She was angry enough to decide to ignore him rather than debate, for she did not know what she might say or if he would live, if he questioned her again. Her expression did not change, but the arrogance was in her gaze, and she was beginning to move toward his briefcase, ready to demand to see the dossier, when a flicker of light out of the corner of her eye caught her attention.

The window drapes were open, and the city lights bright, but there should not have been a reflection off of anything on the top of the hotel across the way. Reflection...? her mind questioned in confusion, and while she pondered over who in the world might be standing on the roof of a hotel in the pouring rain, her body knew exactly what the hell was going on. Her hand dug into the holster, her arm pointed itself steadily, and moments after glass exploded as she took her shot, something struck her shoulder and brought disbelief to her eyes.

They. Shot. ME.

Without a pause she continued to fire, over and over again until the gun clicked empty and suddenly she felt the pain. Her arm dropped to her side, but her other hand reached up, touched her shoulder, and Riya tore her gaze away from the window and looked to her bloody fingertips.

How dare they shoot me.

Anger lit her eyes, made them warm and drowning blue, and for the first time, Riya was really, truly furious. She had never been injured before, not by another's hand. She had never been shot. No one had ever drawn blood from her, and her careful facade slipped, narrowed her eyes and turned down her lips, and Riya could do nothing but show her absolute fury.

They will die for this.

She stared at her fingertips like she wasn't sure what she was looking at. Her face went from blank to something else, something bad, but it wasn't something Ejan could decipher before she slotted a fresh clip into her pistol and walked towards the door. Ejan had never seen someone who'd just been shot walk so calmly. He stood up, skirted the viewing area of the window a bit nervously, and followed her down the hallway, bemused. She passed the entrance to the stairs, and he walked ahead of her and summoned the elevator, his initial fear turning into curiosity.

She paid him no attention when he got into the elevator behind her, and he watched her stare at the doors all the way down to the first floor. The doors opened, and they moved across the lobby and left, Ejan walking between her injured shoulder and the front desk. Hotels were picky about blood on their carpet.

Once they were outside, he expected her to slow her pace, but she kept moving at the same rate, that strange expression of fury and disbelief still on her face. As far as he could tell, she wasn't badly injured; he considered trying to stop her to help her out, but a deep sense of self-preservation born of a long-term familiarity with Aryn's rages kept him silent and at her side.

And then the impossible happened. Kinoshita's eyes flicked toward him.

"Oh my."

He squeezed the trigger, but he knew it was too late. Poor vision necessitated a sense for things, and he watched as Riya moved faster than he'd have thought possible. Her weapon seemed to rise in slow motion, and she emptied the clip.

After that things got hazy.

A bullet hit him in the chest, which was the reason why the others missed him; a good thing, he supposed, but he wasn't thinking at top form. He hit the concrete, and lay on his back, rain pouring down on him, holding him to the ground.

Get up.

He rolled over onto his stomach, and planted his palms against the concrete beneath him. Whether the rain was falling harder or his own body was failing him, he did not know. But when he pushed himself up to his hands and knees, and saw the pink-tinged water flowing toward the rain gutters, he decided that it was probably the latter.

He sat back on his heals, and looked down at his chest. There was a hole in his suit above the left breast, just below the clavicle. He didn't think it had hit his lungs; he could breathe, if painfully. Something was pulling at his mind, but he was finding it hard to focus through the pain. Kinoshita. The target was coming to kill him.

If you're going to shoot at the queen, you had better make certain you hit her.

She did not notice the rain.

She did not notice the pedestrians and cars and lights of the city.

All she saw was the trail of pink that marked the flight of her prey, and she began to follow.

Her pace did not increase, but neither did she hesitate as she stalked him through the crowds, knowing by the sight of blood and the movement of passersby where he was going. People quickly got out of her way when they noticed the wound and the weapon, but Riya could not have cared less, and was rapidly losing her patience with this chase when he dodged down a side street, and the fury snickered.

You cannot escape.

As soon as the way was clear she raised her pistol and shot him in the shoulder, right where she had been injured, albeit much deeper into the muscle than he had scored on her. He faltered, but she did not, and shot him again in the back of the knee. This time he fell.

She strode closer and kicked his side to turn him over, before shooting him in the shin. Bone shattered and blood spattered, and he went pale, muting a scream to a hiss between clenched teeth.

Amusement began to flicker.

Riya stood over him and blinked. She did not have an expression.

When sentient thought did return to him, he forced his eyes open. The rain pouring down on him was obscuring his vision as heavy droplets bounced off the lenses covering his eyes, and he could only vaguely make out the shape standing over him.

His angel of death had given him a command. To speak. He did not know what she wanted. He doubted he had the information at all.

However, it did amuse her, just a little. How could she give him the death she might want for herself, when she did not wish for death at all? Having him under the sight of her pistol began to reassure her, reasserted her illusion of invincibility and brought back her pleasure, and she shook her head, let the angry smile flicker across her lips, and shot him in the hip.

Under other circumstances, Riya might have granted his request. She liked to think of herself as a rather honorable sort; if killing for money could be considered honorable in any sort of way. From one professional to another she could, if not sympathize, at least understand his position.

But these were not other circumstances. She had been injured, and she did not like that.

He was not a threat to her any longer, and so she squatted beside him, tapped the gun reproachfully against his temple and blinked. "I said, talk." When he looked at her as if he didn't comprehend her question, she tapped him again, harder this time, and narrowed her eyes. "Who knows?"

He was trying to regain control of his hands. If he could just reach his belt, there was a button that would prick his finger with a poison so potent that he would be dead in a matter of seconds.

When she looked back, pain had drawn his face even further into harsh relief, and it brought further amusement out, giving her eyes a happy azure shine that nearly glowed in the lights that reflected from her face. She asked again, because she was rapidly running out of non-lethal areas in which to shoot him when he refused to answer, and seeing what was left of his bloodied hands was enough to make her confident that he would tell her what she wanted to know.

"You die well," was all she said, but she stood slowly and gave him what he had first asked for. The bullet to his temple did its damage, and he died at her feet, his blood washed by the rain to pool around her boots and slide past her down the concrete. Riya stared at him for a long moment, angry, amused, and still furious, before turning around to realize that Ejan was still standing there behind her.

She gave him a tight, tiny smile, more of a grimace, really, and let her expression fall into its old, blank lines. When she reholstered her pistol and began to walk, he followed her, and she moved along the streets for awhile before touching her shoulder again. Still bleeding.

He'd seen people die before. He'd even killed a few of them, and not all in the heat of combat. Ejan was no sniper, but he understood the necessity of killing the other person from a distance, before they had a chance to kill you.

This had been up close, and needlessly bloody, and Ejan grimaced at the image of the bloody corpse that refused to clear itself from his mind. She didn't have to do it like that. He was already down. She didn't have to make it so...messy...

Yet it wasn't Ejan that had been shot; it was Riya. He'd been shot before, very much like Riya had; a grazing wound without too much lasting damage. It hadn't really even slowed him down much, but it had made him angry. Very, very angry. Unwillingly, Ejan acknowledged that to an extent, he understood her reaction. The urge to berserk, to wreak havoc upon the attacker, was something he understood, even if it wasn't something he indulged in.

Riya had, and that puzzled him. He hadn't thought she would react emotionally to being shot. It was almost like she'd never been wounded before, and that didn't seem terribly likely, considering her line of work.

Wounded.

Ejan put his hand on her uninjured arm to stop her, and she gave him the same blank, cold look she'd had on her arrival. He wasn't sure how close he was to ending up like the man on the roof, but he did know she was hurt, and he wanted to help her. He knew basic field first aid, and he had a good kit in the trunk of his car. He just had to get her to come to the garage of the hotel so he could use it.

I am... I am bleeding. I am injured. It... it hurts.

When the entrance to the hotel came into view, she had to fight a sudden urge to run, a desire to secure herself in her home once more with her guns and her defenses and Thoth's pampering, just so that she could feel invincible and invisible once more. But when she paused, Ejan stopped and turned to motion to her, and she reprimanded herself harshly. There was no danger any longer. Hadn't she killed-- nay, tortured even-- the Legion who had wounded her? If the deaths of the other Agents of Legion hadn't been enough to frighten them, then surely this would, and perhaps they would leave her alone.

"This way," he directed her, and she grit her teeth and let him guide her. The basement garage was dim enough to make her comfortable, she who liked the dark and silence, and it was only a moment before they reached his vehicle. He opened the trunk of his sleek BMW 631R, and withdrew a small medical kit. She stared at him while he unlatched the lid and sorted through the gauze and bandages, because she had never used such things before and did not know how he could manage to soothe her wound, and finally he had to speak her name to get her attention.

She looked up to meet his eyes with a start. "Riya. I can't..." he blinked at her, and then continued. "I can't look at your wound if you're... wearing the sweater."

It was her turn to blink at him, because it took her a few moments to understand what he was saying, and then she nodded. She managed to tug her sweater over her head, which made her shoulder protest fiercely, and that pain drew her gaze like a magnet and left her staring at the blood and torn flesh that marked the sniper's score on her.

Studiously keeping his eyes away from the rest of her torso became unnecessary when he saw the wound. The sniper's bullet had made a small furrow in the top of her shoulder between her neck and the arm joint; two inches to the right, and it would have hit her in the throat. It might have grazed the bone, but he couldn't be sure. In summary, it was ugly and probably painful, but it wasn't endangering. Just the same, he wished Aryn were here. She knew field medicine far better than he did.

When she turned away from her own survey of the wound to look up at him, he became aware that he'd been staring, and shifted uncomfortably. She appeared not to notice, her eyes fastening on his with childlike incomprehension.

"It hurts," was all she said.

Ejan was speechless. Of course it hurts. You've been shot. You're bleeding. Why are you surprised? His first impulse was to smile and offer a sarcastic comment, but there was a strange innocence in her eyes that made him bite back his first response and nod slowly, seriously. "I know," he replied gently. "I'm going to clean it for you, and then I will bind it so you can go home." He said this as he was reaching into the kit for the small cannister of antiseptic foam. He looked away only briefly to do so; he got the impression that if he looked away long enough, she would be gone when he looked back.

The foam dispersed itself evenly over the wound. It would clean it and bring any small debris to the surface, though he doubted there was any. He let the foam set and brought out a sterile gauze pad to place over it. Once it was bandaged, the foam would dissolve slowly and assist the healing process. She didn't move when he taped it down, and she didn't wince when he wiped the excess foam away, but he could tell she was still in considerable pain.

I could give her something for the pain, but she's got to ride her that damned motorcycle home. She would never let me drive her. Maybe something weak. It wouldn't eliminate it, but it might help. He rummaged quickly into his kit, produce a mini-hypospray and held it up for her gaze. "This is for the pain," he said shortly, and then placed it against her arm and pressed the button, not waiting for her to object. There was a small hiss, and he threw the expired hypo back into the kit and started to wrap the wound with gauze.

Wrapping it around her wounded shoulder only didn't give it enough stability, so he made a couple of circuits across her chest and under the other arm to keep it in place. She was slender and fragile this way, and he became more gentle and less cursory as he finished, finally taping the end of the gauze and surveying his work. It looked durable, anyway; it wasn't as nice as Aryn's would have been, and he had a feeling he'd used too much gauze, but it would do.

One of her hands still clung to her sweater, and he took it from her and found the left armhole, bunched it up and slipped it up her arm so she wouldn't have to lift it. He fit it over her head and she pushed her other arm into the sweater herself, and he straightened it, and then hesitated a moment before sliding his hands behind her head and lifting her hair free. It was softer than it looked, and wet, and he mentally kicked himself and removed his jacket to drape it over her slim frame. It was loose, but it would keep her warm and dry until she got home to change her sodden clothing.

She was still silent, and he made a point of closing his kit and putting it back into his car. When he was done, he didn't step in close again. He'd already courted death enough tonight. Now it was time to send her home.

He was standing away from her when she looked to him. He seemed taken aback when she almost beamed at him, blue eyes great and wide, and nodded a few times in satisfaction. "Does not hurt," she said approvingly, and tucked herself into the coat that had appeared on her shoulders, zipped it up and flung her hair back and walked away. Her streetbike was not much further into the garage, and she climbed onto it carefully, hugged her injured shoulder to herself and started the engine with one hand. She wobbled a little, but was managing quite well, and he was still beside his car when she pulled up and stopped beside him.

She gave him what amounted to a smile and patted her side. "It is a nice pistol."

It had been an interesting night. Riya's arrival had been an expected pleasure, but his carefully planned interview had been interrupted by the Legion sniper. He wondered how many they'd sent out after her, and how many had come back. He wondered how many times she'd been shot like she had today. Not many; if being shot reduced her to that condition every time, she wouldn't have survived. On the other hand, as soon as he'd dressed her wound, she'd been almost...cheerful. He wondered also what her reaction would be tomorrow when he brought her the dossier and the jacket she'd dropped on his floor.

Most of all, however, he wondered what to make of the words she'd left him with, and came up with only one stunning conclusion.