Chapter Text
Ada Wong,
Unknown Location
Unknown Time
The last thing Ada remembered was the rush of wind that had swept her off her boots and into darkness that had seemed to open from something bigger than any bio hazard she had dealt with in her life.
There had been noise, ears ringing, pain in her lungs as oxygen seized. And then, she was gone.
She was on the helicopter back after the island on her current job was exploding behind her. After Raccoon City, and after this infected village, she was deciding on where the best place to rest for a long time would be.
The scar left on her side during her fall in Racoon City had never healed properly and the parasite from the village still gave her phantom aches even though it was no longer in her. It all just reminded her of Ada Wong. Of everything she had done.
The Amber. She had never given it to Wesker. The helicopter had taken her where she had set the new route.
Only—
What had exactly happened?
She had just left the helicopter, phoning someone when she had discovered the hidden button in the bottom cartridge of the vial. She had pressed it when everything had gone to shit. And when she opened her eyes, darkness had once again coveted her view. It didn’t take long for her to assess the situation now. She was gagged, blindfolded and tied.
Some sort of new bio weapon? New virus? Umbrella? Wesker upset she had betrayed him?
But she didn’t have much time to dwell on it as a door opened, a cold draft settling in, the air smelling odd. Different.
“Might as well take this one too—“ A low, grating voice.
“Where’d you find her-? A bar? We’re selling high quality items not people—“ An opposing voice shouted.
The lower tone grumbled. “No no. Listen. I found er’ during the geo magnetic storm yesterday, when the deep space tunnel warped. I think it spit her out.”
“That’s impossible—“
“But it ain’t! She was there. And I think she’s got an Aether core on er’ too. That’s money right there.”
A sigh. And then. “You better be right, Junior.”
The lower voice chuckled back. “I am right. You'll see.”
And before she could grasp a way to escape, a prick stung her neck.
Her gut caved in. The effects were immediate. Whatever they had done, it must’ve been some type of neurotoxin. Only, she had never had experienced one this powerful before—
Her mind began to try to run to catch up as she was hauled over a shoulder, her hands and feet obviously tied. And then, dropped roughly into a car trunk. A tarp settled over her. Then the trunk slammed shut.
The car started. It sounded different. Everything felt different.
And for the first time in her life, Ada Wong was unsure.
Unsure of where she was, who had her. An Aether core? What the hell was that? She had heard of plenty of terms for weapons in her line of work but this was new. Not only that, but what had they meant by a tunnel? A storm? She had been nowhere near any of those things when retrieving the object—
And suddenly her wrist ached. Not exactly like when the Las Plagas was in her but similar. The ride was short, but the neurotoxin made her feel like throwing up, she could hear the two male voices again. And then—a third.
A woman’s. Ada could barely make it out. But the woman must’ve been in the back seat.
“So you’re just…from the N109 Zone?” The female voice inquired.
N109-? She had never heard of it. The pit in her stomach was dangerously low, anxiety starting to mesh in with the drugs.
One of the men growled at the woman. “Where did you hide the Aether core?”
And she could hear the trunk being opened. The man with the deeper voice scowled “Maybe we could use this one here—“
There was a shift in energy. Ada practically heard the men freeze as a petulant tone called out.
The neurotoxin made it hard to hear. But there was aggression, she could hear a knife being thrown to the side, and one of the kidnappers wincing.
“Kidnapping…that’s not exactly polite.” The childish male voice tuned.
Then, a second voice with the same vigor.
“…we called dibs a long time ago.”
Ada could feel the two voices talking to someone as the man that had opened the trunk walked to the side of the car, away from her.
She tried to listen. The voices mixed together.
“…you’re pretty bold..”
“…why boss is interested…”
The men who she assumed had driven here are promptly taken care of, pushed away in struggle.
But one of them snickered.
“…so he sent you…figures. Sorry, but the Aether core is mine-!”
A click. Boom. The shot rang out. But she didn’t hear the bullet land anywhere, the gun dropped and there was wind, along with the woman gasping. It all happened fast. The men were suddenly choking for air, Ada could hear and feel some sort of energy…no…it was stronger then mere energy. Something in the air. The petulant male voices seemed to laugh as the wind erupted.
Ada couldn’t hear the kidnappers anymore. Through the neurotoxin’s warping effects, she could faintly hear bells. Church bells?
Then a low voice.
“Take out the vermin still running amok.” Even through the drug’s heavy weight, she knew whoever’s voice that was, it was a big deal. Which could be bad for her. A crow cawed and the petulant voices answered to the deeper voice in command.
She hadn’t felt threatened until now, despite being tied up and gagged. But now. She did. Ada Wong did not enjoy this feeling.
The crow cawed around the car, as the two male voices sauntered about, more focused on something else. They didn’t pay much attention, shutting the trunk. The woman’s voice came out in a struggle in the distance as the deeper one spoke once more.
“…at me..”
Ada felt her stomach finally drop, her wrist. It was burning. And her migraine was worse than ever. She wished she could move. Do anything. Anything at all.
The car started again. The deeper voice was closer.
“It’s empty?” He said.
The lighter male voice, one of them, responded “Yeah, not really anything, hey boss, did she remember? Did she?”
The deep voice paused and replied calmly. “Thats not any of your business, Luke.”
“Come on!! We just wanna know. She seems fun. Not at all like those stuck up other hunters!”
To this the deeper voice sighed, almost sounding partial as if the question was humored. “Later. For now. Scrap this at one of the junkyards, maybe near Charon.”
“Yes sir.” The two lighter bodies replied in unison. Then the car was off again. Energy dipped in the air, and an uneasy fatigue started to overtake Ada.
She tried to fight the sleep.
It didn’t work.
It smelled like grime, dirt and gasoline.
When she awoke again, her limbs didn’t feel like nothing, and she sucked in a breath, wiggling her fingers, feeling around in the cheap felt of the trunk
She was indeed in a scrap yard. She could hear distant clatters like animals moving through trash. The only good thing about this situation was that it didn’t seem to be in commission, meaning, she had time to escape.
Everything else was plainly abysmal. She took another breath.
She would be fine. This was Ada Wong. She had bested the best, out schemed, out performed, out killed and plain, out done many.
She maneuvered her fingers to the rope around her hands, twisting, pulling, twisting again, looking for any give.
She would be fine. She had been tied up plenty of times.
The rope was getting warm with the friction. She had to find leeway.
She would be fine. She was Ada Wong. Ada Wong wouldn’t panic. Ada would make it out and then complain, quip at the fact that the ropes weren’t tied tight enough—
She felt the give. And quickly twisted her clammy fingers through and around to the knot, nails digging into the rope as she undid it. Relief burned through her as her hands came free.
She didn’t acknowledge how they trembled as she moved on to her gag and blind fold.
She winced just slightly. It was night and this trunk…it was weird. She had never seen a car like this before.
After undoing the rope around her ankles, she climbed over to the passenger seat, her brows furrowed again.
Something was wrong. With this. With all of this. Her dark eyes caught light and she glanced outside the window.
She couldn’t have been on Earth.
Not her Earth.
Where the hell was she?
Her wrist burned again for a millisecond and she looked down.
Beneath her veins, she could’ve sworn there was a faint glow.
Ada Wong sat back down on the seat. And looked down. She ran a shaking hand through her hair. The neurotoxin’s effects had pretty much disappeared. And despite that, she couldn’t move.
Move. Please. Ada willed her legs. Her hands.
Her hand curled into a fist.
She cried out as she rammed it against the passenger window next to her. It shot through.
There had been smarter ways to get out than to cut up her hand, but nothing seemed smart anymore. Nothing made sense.
She couldn’t afford to feel this way. She found the door handle from outside and tried it.
Miraculously, it worked.
She stumbled outside, falling onto her knees onto dirt. She was still in her clothes from the mission earlier, boots, black tights, red sweater. Her holsters were gone and obviously, so were her gloves.
It was cold. There was a tender breeze in the air, and Ada shivered slightly. She looked up again.
Striking black towers, a red hue in the night sky, holograms around sky scrappers. A city.
Whatever this was, was far more advanced than her earth. She scooted back and sat against the car.
Ada Wong blinked. She was tired. She was hungry. Starving, actually.
God, when was the last time she had been hungry for this long?
She had promised herself she would never let herself go through that again.
She looked at her fist. The one she had used to punch through the window. Glass shards twinkled here and there with some cuts. She’d have to clean it.
Ada picked herself up. No time to waste. No time to feel.
Ada
Unknown Alley, N109 Zone
1:32 PM
Ada Wong’s entire body slammed against brick and she felt a tremor ripe down her head, blood pooled down her nose and she hastily wiped it.
“That’s not nice…” she quipped sarcastically and eyed the other party with a sharp look. It was a bar goer. The man spit at her feet. “Don’t come here to sell your damned services. This area’s already Brown Wolf territory.”
He rushed her and grabbed the collar of her sweater, to which she glared as he lowered his voice. “Now, if I see your face here again, I won’t even be this nice with that pretty face of yours.”
He wiped the blood around her nose with his thumb, earning him a swift kick to his groin from Ada. He growled in pain and swung his fist. Ada saw the movement, ready to dodge but her head spun. The hit landed, sending her to the ground as the man cursed at her and walked away from the alley.
The sun was bleak in the sky, barely there. And it had been her third day without food, she swallowed blood. The man’s punch had sent her jaw burning. Ada Wong pulled herself up and against the brick wall. She then wiped her bloody nose.
It had been her second day trying to find work. She had learned two things.
That first night, she had gotten herself to an inn when she had learned all the money she had hidden on her person was useless here. She had gone back to the car in the scrapyard, and slept in it.
The next morning, she had started going around, doing what she did best. Sell her services as a mercenary.
And the second thing she had learned came as a result of this.
This place—coined the N109 Zone, in a bigger city called Linkon City—had no need for independent mercenaries. They had shady groups running all different parts of the area. Anyone needing anyone was too afraid to even consider Ada’s services.
And now, here she was.
She chuckled and her jaw ached, causing a wince. It was just funny. Ada Wong. Homeless. Beat up. Hungry.
Wesker would never believe it. No one who had known her before would. Not even Leon, if she had ever met him again to tell him.
She didn’t think she would ever meet him again.
But she considered him. For the sake of her sanity, she imagined Leon S Kennedy here. Telling her to find someone who could help her, a shelter, a hospital, police.
Ada Wong didn’t need help. She swallowed, her throat was sand dry. That had been part of the reason. Of why she could never truly get along with Leon.
He had been kind. Too kind. Naive. Even after Las Plagas.
And Ada had no time for those things. She couldn’t afford the luxury of it. For that, she even hated him a little.
She dragged herself to her feet. Starving like this brought her back to when she had been younger, somehow right now, those memories were so much more vivid.
But she shrugged them off. Ada Wong wouldn’t let herself die here. She walked out of the alley, there were a couple more places she could still hit.
Anything. She could and would do anything to survive.
Like always.
By night, she was shivering more vapidly, her plan had taken a straight nose dive. The slums of the N109 Zone were practically border to border with rival gangs. No room for her. Just more bruises and threats. If only she hadn’t been so weak, if she had food, then these blights of dizziness would finally disappear. Then, she could think.
She was heading back to the scrap yard, when her senses shot through her and she paused, peering over the corner. She saw two masked figures standing over the car. They looked like twins, same get up, same build and height. Then, they looked at each other. Talking. She was too far to tell what.
They turned—
She whipped around the corner just in time, her heart was racing, blood pressure spiking. She waited a little. Then looked back over, the night wind sending her raven hair flying back. The two were gone.
But Ada Wong knew she couldn’t go back there. Her only shelter had been compromised.
She wandered the streets, earning looks and words that went through one ear and out the other. It wasn’t new.
Ada Wong could care less.
In the end, she found a seemingly abandoned grocery store, and walked in. Even their run down places had a futuristic look to them, the registers didn’t have buttons, the shelves all thick glass with old neon linings that blinked and flickered.
She found a corner near the back of the freezers. The doors had been ripped off most. She sat down inside one.
Her view was blurry.
Probably from hunger. She needed to assess the situation again.
Alright. She had somehow been sucked into a black hole or worm hole or whatever. Something similar. She had landed in a world far more futuristic than hers, and from what she had picked up, it was filled with super humans. She had been kidnapped after landing because someone had believed that she had an Aether core in her. Another unknown. She should’ve asked around about it today.
Why had she been so tunnel visioned?
Next. There’d been another woman being sold in the car with her. But clearly, she was taken by someone else.
And if she had to put two and two together, the twin looking masked men she had seen, could very likely be the same petulant toned voices she had heard before their superior had come to take the woman in the car with them.
That other woman seemed to also have an aether core in her. Maybe they were common?
Ada Wong wiped her eyes, her sweater had become dirt smudged over the past few days however and so she ended up just making things worse.
Her next order of business tomorrow was to ask about the aether cores and learn more about the world. And find food.
Find food no matter what she had do. Who she had talk to.
She had barely blinked.
But she was back.
Shanghai was loud enough to hide its poorest, but the little girl was seen every day. Ten years old and only her mother as her family, she scoured the slums endlessly, selling candy she made. The tourists that came to the slums adored her, so she appealed to them. Her smiles were saccharine and her jet black hair in pig tails.
The other kids despised her for this. But she didn’t care. She bought the bread with her crumbly bills and a big grin quirked at her cheeks as she walked back to their home. Her mom would be pleased today, and they could share the bread. The summer heat beat against her worn pink pastel shirt as she turned the alley into—
“Get out of my way, jerks..” she glared at the three boys that cut off her path as they folded their arms, the one with missing teeth speaking.
“Nuh uh! Give us that bread! Rat like you doesn’t deserve it!”
The girl held the small loaf close to herself.
“I earned this-! Now let me go!”
The boys all frowned with each other, the ring leader speaking again. “It’s not fair—all those grown ups that you’re selling your piece of shit candy with—they only buy it off you because of your face—Rat!” He yelled.
The girl growled “I don’t care-! Get out of my way, Cheng!” She wanted to cry; she had made the candy she sold everyday, by herself, burning her hands often in the process. She put so much work into it. That’s why they bought it. Despite this, the girl knew there was some truth to the boy’s words. But she didn’t want to cry in front of these assholes. She ran ahead, hoping to dodge them, but one of them grabbed her by the back of shirt and pulled her back into the frey.
It was sundown when she got back. “Mama.”
She called out and pulled the curtain over their makeshift home, an old tent. Her mother was sleeping, clothes and tarps over her. The girl fanned some flies away and sat next to her mother. She put her hand on her mother’s shoulder, to which the sleeping woman stirred and opened her eyes.
“My heart…your…your face…what happend...” the woman started up but the young girl shook her head.
“Nothing, mama, I just tripped, the soles of these slippers broke again.” The younger girl grinned aimlessly. The mother’s shoulders fell. The girl clicked her tongue. “But mama, guess what I have?”
Then she pulled out the loaf of bread from behind her, it was squished, somewhat ripped but still smelled deliciously of good flour and milk. The girl’s mother sighed.
“My heart…you shouldn’t be doing this on your own…next time…let me—“
The daughter cut her off. “We’ll worry about next time when we get there.”
The mother paused and then sighed, the faintest smile upon her cracked dry lips. “Well. Why doesn’t my heart try it first and tell me how it is?”
At this, this child shook her head. “No, mama you try it.”
The mother raised a brow. “You won’t take no for an answer, will you?” And her daughter shook her head again. The mother smiled fully now and kissed the top of her daughter’s head. “Where did you learn to be so good, my heart?”
The young girl grinned. “You, duh.”
The mother scrunched her nose in skepticism and ruffled her daughter’s dark hair. She pulled the smallest bit out of the loaf and lifted it to her mouth, chewing ever so gently and swallowing slowly.
The child was expecting praise, but the woman alll but squeezed the living lights out of her, pressing the little body to her. “Mama-! I can’t breathe-!”
The mother loosened just slightly, and stroked her daughter’s hair. “Thank you, my heart. As long as I have you, this world is still good.”
The girl groaned. “You’re so dramatic.”
But she liked it. This warmth. The hold. Like nothing could touch her, like the world outside that clawed and jeered her up and down didn’t matter in the slightest, it didn’t exist. The hole in her stomach was full, the hurt from all the bruises burned away. She was safe. She was loved.
Ada awoke. Her wrist was aching. The abandoned grocery store aisles whistled with the air coming in through the broken glass windows in the front. She had curled up on herself at some point.
The woman was cold again. Her vision grew bleary. Her body shivered, hairs standing on edge as she pulled her knees even closer to her chest. Ada glanced at her wrist, she could feel a pained pulse, beating in tandem with the scar on her side.
Why was this happening-? Why now? Why her? Ada Wong wanted to laugh at all this again. She had spent nearly fifteen years of her life to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.
And here she was. Here she was, goddamn it. And the thought wouldn’t leave her mind. It was there when she closed her eyes and when she slept.
Her left wrist wouldn’t stop aching. Her hands were in dire state, she then realized. She had patched up her right palm recklessly. She stood and glanced around for the restroom.
The faucet didn’t work, figures. And the mirror was cracked but she didn’t care to see herself, she knew her dark hair was growing past her neck again, a rat’s nest by now. Whatever was left of her makeup from earlier was smudged.Her lips were dry and chapped and her eyes had dark circles under them. She clasped her hands.
It was all for naught. The pseudonym, her mannerism, her looks.
She was still looking at the broken vanity when her wrist started to shake, the one that was aching.
She winced and held it up. Something was glowing underneath her veins. However, even in the dimly lit room, the glow was minimal.
It faded away as did the pain after a few seconds. She dropped her left hand and sighed. When she had initially woken up to the kidnappers, all the knives, guns and any smaller weapons on her had been gone, and clearly all her hidden money was useless. Her one cell phone was also gone.
Ada scoured the grocery store for food, she was growing extremely desperate, her mind was a jumble and she couldn't put her thoughts in a line and she needed to think if she was going to survive and get back to her world. At the near edge by the check out counters, she found something.
Her stomach grumbled as she pulled out the deflated packaged pastry. Chocolate flavored. It was near squished to inedible standards. Nearly.
She hastily opened it and bit into it.
Stale, the cream was slightly sour and the texture was abysmal.
But food was food. Her stomach didn’t seem to agree completely but it was better than starving further. Ada felt a modicum of herself return just as the sun rose outside cracked windows.
She decided to head out, a new plan in mind this time to try to conquer this awful place.
Ada Wong
Unknown Alley, N109 Zone
10:10 PM
The day passes like wind. By the end of it, Ada’s not sure the black jacket she picked up from one of the alleys is enough to keep suspicion off her.
She at least knows more now about the world. And from that, she could fill in gaps in what had happened to her.
It was 2048 in this world, explaining a lot of the tech that would be impossible in her’s. She was kidnapped because when she landed here from the “deep space tunnel” signs of an Aether core were spotted somewhere on her person.
An Aether core was harder to find out the descriptions or origins of. People got nervous when talking about them.
Her boot slammed in mud as she saw the sun setting. She wouldn’t be heading back to the grocery store. Those young masked boys she had seen would surely have caught her trail and trace her there. She didn’t know exactly how they were connected to all this. But she remembered back to that night.
They had promptly hijacked the sale, saved the other woman who had been in the car’s back seat. And most vitally? Their boss had killed the kidnappers on the spot, taking the woman.
Her brown eyes narrowed at some shadows as she continued down the alleyway, she connected the stream of memories.
The kidnappers had mentioned an Aether core then too. So the woman had been kidnapped for one, same as Ada.
But unlike Ada, that woman actually had one.
She stopped in the alleyway. Amateurs. Ada Wong turned on her heel. “If you’re going to follow me, be smart.”
A shadow detached from the corners, revealing themselves as a man with a black hood around his head, probably in his thirties, with a crude look on his face.
“This is Kupferkelch territory and we don’t like gossip, somethin you’ve been doing a lot. Who are you?”
Ada wished she could reach into her pocket and feel the safe cold metal of a gun. So in its stead, she simply noted the distance between them. Seven feet. A lot could happen in seven feet. She spoke with a reserved and bored air.
“Just new to the N109 Zone. I’m not looking for trouble.”
Seven feet was actually disadvantageous for this man. More disadvantageous than. her revealing she was new here. She thought this was her extending an olive branch. But then the man across from her laughed and her senses that had so been dulled by the aching hole in her stomach and painful throbbing in her head and wrist, suddenly set off alarm bells.
Her dark eyes narrowed. His lackeys. They were all in the shadows around this alley, she was surrounded. The man spoke.
“Not looking for trouble you say. Interesting…”
His mouth turned up in a snicker, almost invasively as he took in Ada’s hard set gaze.
Ada knew this game. “I’m only looking for work…Let me work for you.”
The man’s eyes lingered on her. His lackeys started to emerge from those designated corners, behind the trash, around the corner of the buildings and so. One of them gave Ada a dirty look and whispered loudly.
“What kinda work she want?”
Ada’s fists balled and she cut him off. “I can infiltrate, shoot guns, I know my way around knives. Just about anything.”
The main man raised a brow. “Anything?”
Ada Wong didn’t waver. “Anything.”
The man let the air between them settle as he thought on it. He then tossed her a small gun.
“See. Fine. Besides all these idiots? We’ve got a look
out, if you can find where he is, that gun is—“
Ada shot at her ten o’clock. “Two thousand feet away. The two story closed salon. It should’ve missed him by a hair.”
Murmurs among his lackeys , the main man stared at her with a surprise he was having a hard time concealing.
He made a non-committal shrug. “Alright. Kupferkelch owns you now. You don’t get pay. You get a cot and a meal a day. You do what I say, when I say, how I say it.”
She nodded, half distracted savoring the feel of the small yet capable weapon in her grip. The man walked up to her, passing her by to just mutter.
“Name’s Karl. And when I mean you do anything I say, I do mean anything, sweetheart.”
He nodded to some of the lackeys and just as quickly the gun was taken from her. Ada frowned but it was short lived.
Kupferkelch was once a more notable gang in the N109 zone, which Ada learned was on the outskirts of a larger city called Linkon. Though the N109 Zone; it seemed to her, was large enough to be its own city. The area ran rife with gangs and factions, lawless activity, and an overwhelming sense of danger mixed with luxury.
Ada sat down with a bowl of undetermined soup, with chunks of who knew what. The wooden benches were mainly filled with male gang members, the ones that were higher up had better food. But soup was better than nothing.
It was there where eavesdropping was easiest and where she found out that Kupferkelch’s fall from grace had been part due to another group called Onychinus.
That name seems familiar to her but it could’ve just been the fact that she had asked around so much about several things during the four ish days she had been here.
“Heya newbie. Hey, yeah you, the little whore with the short hair.”
Some intoxicated members called out, clapped and whistled for her attention. She didn’t look up. Nor was this new or anxiety inducing. Ada just needed to finish her meal and head to the building she had been stationed in.
The table rumbled as someone slammed their fist into it, and called out to her again. She could ignore it just fine.
But she couldn’t ignore it when a hand wrapped around her wrist, she pulled away and turned around.
Ten minutes later, she was chock full of bruises and probably other injuries, having left around seven members on the ground. Her eyes held no anger, she hated getting angry, and about something like this especially. She guessed her nerves had become fried ever since landing in this hellish place. Her knuckles were bloody. The room was rowdy with half of the people egging on the fallen gang members and the other half whistling and or booing Ada.
Karl shot an empty round into the air at the back of the hall. He yelled.
“Everyone fuck off right now or you’re workin double this week.”
There were groans and sighs but ultimately everyone started to shuffle out, Ada began to do the same when Karl crossed her path. “Not you.”
She softly narrowed her gaze and shrugged. As soon as the last person had left, Karl holstered his gun. The model of it was interesting now that she had a closer look. Karl snapped his fingers and her eyes shot up. “Yeah, eyes up here.”
“Am I in trouble-?” She asked with the about the same temperament of a rock. There was not a modicum of guilt or shame in her eyes. Karl noted it and chuckled dryly.
“No, girlie. But it’s time for you to prove you belong here.”
She crossed her arms. “Now?”
He walked past her, a nod for her to follow. “Now. We’ve got reports of Onychinus having just thrown its prey to the wolves. And we want to be the first to strike.”
She followed behind, leaving the canteen area to a cold night, the moon half behind clouds. She regretted having been so reckless with her punches earlier, blood on her knuckles burned in the raw wind. “We pick up Onychinus’ leftovers often?”
It was really an aimless question but one that earned her a harsh look from Karl. “Not for much longer, trust me. We’re gonna nip those bustards in the bud with this. Just throwing away their prey like this? It’s insane.”
Ada rose a brow but didn’t say anything. Something felt a little off about this. But hell if she cared. Money and power were what she needed and as long she did what she was told, she would have those things.
The prey ended up being a girl. Ada looked at her from a rooftop along with some lackeys. Some other gang’s men were already attacking her and apparently—losing.
She was good. That’s the first thing Ada noticed. The woman seemed to be in her twenties, younger than Ada likely. She had dark doe eyes and long brown hair, and she was managing her two guns with a certain trained modicum. A night breeze blew her overgrown hair around her face and she steadied her grip on her own gun. It was a child’s plaything. Made badly, the smallest pistol she had handled. The gear they had given her consisted of a switch blade, this baby ass gun and somehow, probably the most durable, a black tee shirt and cargo pants. She was glad to be rid of her clothes, she lived and breathed the color red but her sweater worn down decades these past few weeks.
Had it truly been weeks now?
She blinked back into earshot, as the team leader of the small group spoke hushed a plan that seemed sort of half assed.
The objective was simple enough though.
Capture the girl. She took a breath and it fogged up in front of her.
“What are we waiting for?” She glanced over at the “leader” of this “operation.
A boy with a buzz cut, eyes deepest and tattoos around his neck and arms. “Uh. For the right moment.”
Ada resisted the eye roll just barely. “Okay.”
She pressed one foot over onto the side of the building they were on, some of the others hissed as her gaze remained on the girl below on the alley streets.
“Next time, we can wait until they take her for themselves, right?”
She jumped off, catching the start of a petty growl from the buzz cut boy, but it was out of her reach as the wind rushed in her ear, and she landed onto the ground on worn boots.
The girl looked over, so did whatever gang had been attacking her. Her entrance was not expected.
Ada loaded the small chamber of the gun.
“What-? Is my beauty that jaw dropping?”
It’d been a while since she’d felt like herself, and while that remark wasn’t one of her best—not even close—her senses felt sharper, heightened. One of the gang members opened his mouth, aimed with his much larger rifle when a bullet landed in his throat.
“This really is a terrible gun.”
Chaos fell upon the streets. God, she had missed this. So, so much.
The Kupferkelch’s lackeys were evenly matched in strength with this gang but with Ada there, the advantage dribbled in like honey.
Nothing like fighting for survival, stomach empty, head light, hands shaking from a lack of sleep. Adrenaline came in petulant strikes. Her bullets didn’t miss—muscle memory. The switch blade grew dull with the amount of slashes she unleashed.
Fight. Kill. And survive. This had always been her bread and butter.
Even as stars grew whenever someone got a rare hit in. A man was thrown into a dumpster behind as she popped her left shoulder back into its joint.
A wince. Ada turned around.
The girl seemed to see her chance to also slip away as the Kupferkelch idiots focused on the other gang members. But she had stopped short as her eyes had fallen over Ada. Her doe eyes were focused on Ada’s shoulder and hand. Ada would not let her money slip away like this.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, princess—“ Ada said sardonically.
With her last bullet, she aimed at the girl.
“That’s what gets you killed in this world—“
She aimed for the girl’s thigh, non lethal. Enough to bring her to her knees and back to Kupferkelch’s base.
Clank
A motorcycle had come between them. Ada’s wrist burned and she growled to bite back on it, her umber eyes set down, her ears rang.
Why now? Of all times??
Kupferkelch’s people, even the buzz cut kid were suddenly rowdier. She heard yelling. Shooting. Lots of shooting.
“It’s him—“
“Don’t back down—“
It’s one versus all of us—“
“He can’t possibly—“
When she could finally look up, she saw the brown haired girl scowling, the motorcycle between Ada and her now without a driver. Ada glanced at where the shooting was going on in the street.
White hair. No, Silver hair?
Her wrist burned again. And she winced away. She could tell. By the way the Kupferkelch's idiots shot.
Silver hair was good. His shooting in return was quick, with all control the stupid lackeys were missing.
Ada looked up to see the girl staring too. But for some reason, Ada knew her wrist would ache again if she followed the girl’s eye line. Whatever.
It wasn’t the silver hair she wanted.
“You really are naive, princess.”
The doe eyed girl barely registered the woman as she staggered close and and the back of her neck was wacky with a palm.
Ada watched the girl’s eyes roll up and she hauled the unconscious body over her shoulder, moving back, just as Silver hair turned.
Ada started the bike. What kind of idiot leaves the keys in? Did it even have keys? It was a little more…sleek
looking then the ones in her world. But she roared the engine and gassed it around just as Silver hair turned.
Ada knew he wouldn’t shoot. Her wrist burned again, but she managed to look back once.
It was too far to tell his expression or even his face but she could swear she saw the edge of amusement in his sharp eyes.
And then, she turned the corner away from the alley.