InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ The Source of Solace ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )
[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]
By: YoukaiFate 
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Romance / Drama | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 09.04.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 411 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: InuYasha Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Romance / Drama | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 09.04.2005 | Pages: 2 | Words: 3.1K | Visits: 411 | Status: Completed
Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, etc. Rumiko Takahashi has that singular privilege. This story is for entertainment purposes only.
THE SOURCE OF SOLACE
Bred as a weapon, and betrayed by her own kind, Sango's true identity was erased by Alteration. But it just left the way open for manipulation by those who would use her for their own ends. Assassination and Love collide in a star-crossing AU universe. K/S I/K
WARNING! Dark imagery and lime, adult situations and issues. Foul language omitted on ff dot net.
CHAPTER ONE
The music pounded incessantly in and around and over her, beating through her skull and tearing at her mind with a terrible tattoo of steel-tipped fangs. She clutched at the side of a small table with white knuckles and numb fingers, trying to regain her balance in a world that was tilting wildly. Lights flashed across her already blurred vision, leaving multi-colored streamers of acidic brightness against the inner darkness of her eyelids as she closed them tightly in a vain attempt to ward off the faint that was threatening to envelop her. She gasped for air in a last, desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, struggling to draw herself out of a drowning world, a drowning world awash with the color of fresh blood…
*~*~*~*~*
She woke, sweat-drenched and sobbing out her lost breath in dry heaves of fear. Tightening her fingers in the heavy blankets that surrounded her, Sango threw them off with a desperate, almost panicked cry as she realized that she was not THERE, but HERE, in her bedroom, in her apartment, with the lights dimmed into darkness and the deep quiet of the velvety night only broken by her own harsh gasps for air.
~Damn it!~
The dreams...the nightmares...still plagued her. Loud music. Flashing lights.
~A world gone crazy...~
It wasn't the world that was crazy. Just her.
Cursing softly under her breath, Sango pushed back the entangling blankets, damp with the sweat of her night-terrors, and fumbled her way in the dark to the small sanitary unit that abutted her bedroom in the tiny apartment she called home---for now.
She cursed louder when her bare toes struck against the clothing cubicle kept along the wall. Pain stabbed through her foot, and she clenched her teeth as her hand smacked the wall to open the san-unit's door. She stumbled inside as the door slid aside with a faint whoosh of escaping air and mechanized parts, slapping on the light panel with one hand even as she fumbled at the flat-fronted mirror with the other. Pushing aside various tubes and bottles and sending them spilling into the oval basin below in a jarring clatter of bouncing plastic, Sango gritted her teeth. She didn't care, she WOULDN'T care in a matter of moments. She had tried, really tried, not to use the sleeping pills that she was so anxious now to take. She hated the dry mouth and numbed daze they kept her in.
But it was the only thing that kept the nightmares at bay...
Her hands shook as she wrestled open the top to the bottle, and small white pills spilled across the cup of her palm as she shook them out. She brought the pile to her mouth, but only swallowed two. Maybe one day she might have the courage---or lack of it---to swallow more, and bring the numbness, the lack of pain and caring, and allow herself to sleep forever, but she wouldn't now.
She couldn't. They wouldn't let her.
Dry-swallowing the pills, she shoved the rest back into the bottle. She almost choked as they went down, her throat was so parched. She forced them down, throat muscles working convulsively, and coughed weakly as she swallowed them past the constriction in her chest. She could almost feel them taking immediate effect---a mere figment of her imagination. The pills took a few minutes to do their work, but she could pretend that the pain in her stubbed toes was already receding, that the night-terrors that still had her shaking in reaction were diminishing and fading away…
Carefully placing the re-capped bottle back into the medicine cabinet, she ignored the spillage of various minutia in the wash basin below to close the mirrored door on the recessed cabinet. She blinked at the image revealed on the reflective surface, and for a single moment of mental clarity, she was surprised at the face that stared back at her.
Pale...so pale, with brown eyes widened into fright amid dark circles that gave testimony to her sleepless nights. The delicate, high-bones of her cheeks stood out, and she was almost surprised at how thin she had become. How wasted and drained. It was almost as if a hollow-eyed skull stared back at her, with the long length of her tangling back hair sweeping around her face in sweaty tangles. Her lips were almost bloodless, and looked bitten in nervous habit.
She looked like a drug-addict, like one of those people who sat sunken-eyed in the filth of the street, uncaring and unknowing, the fearful hunger in their eyes echoing at a deep pain and need unfulfilled...
~What have I become?~
Her father would be so ashamed of her...
She stared in horror at the face that stared back at her, as the pills dissolved into her system, and swirled through her body, starting to take effect. Her fingers felt numb and her painful toes no longer touched her empty consciousness. She focused her fading awareness on the red tattoo outlining the upper part of her eyelids---a tattoo given her by her father, as a rank among warriors, almost forgotten now since her Alteration. The scarlet tattoo stood out in the white pallor of her features like lines of blood, and she shuddered.
~Blood...~
It was the last thought before the numbing blackness overtook her mind, and she fell to the floor amongst the discarded bottles and various plastic litter, lying curled in the fetal position on the cold, uncaring tile of the bathroom floor.
*~*~*~*~*
A long, tapered claw tapped the data-disk with almost absent-minded habit, but the small man who waited on the Taiyoukai knew that the Lord Sesshoumaru never did anything absently. Instead, it was a deliberate move on the Lord's part to deceive the smaller man into thinking that he might be dealing with someone other than who he was.
A deadly player of the Game.
But Gyorg Laveshi had not survived his years as a secrets man by taking anything at face value, and he could feel the cold calculation in the remote, golden eyes that studied his every reaction. He kept his bland features still; he had been trained to fade into the background, and he knew that barely a twitch of reaction would betray the inner thoughts that circled through his mind.
Although who knew what these youkai could do, what they were capable of. The old ones, the pure-bred of the noble line, were devious, ruthless, and cold. It was the rumors of old grannies and fearful colonists who whispered that the Taiyoukai, the nobles of the old line, could read the mind of a man as easily as a man could read the data on a scan-reader or vid-disk. Gyorg had scoffed at the idea, but he wasn't as sure now that he was faced with one of them.
The Taiyoukai abruptly left off his idle tapping and steepled his clawed hands in front of him. Gyorg could not hide the faint flinch that twitched across his shoulders at the sudden movement, and the golden eyes narrowed the slightest bit as a faint smile hovered across the cold mouth and was gone like a whispered promise in the night.
Lord Sesshoumaru sank back into the plush leather of his seat, truly relaxing for the first time now that they both understood who was in charge and in total control of this meeting. Gyorg allowed wry amusement to flicker across his rather unremarkable features before donning the bland façade of his chosen profession once more.
"You assure me, Mr. Laveshi, that this operative is the best you have available for my...purposes." The pause before the Lord's meaning was perfectly clear to both of them.
Gyorg nodded sharply, hating these games of finesse that the youkai enjoyed. He was not usually so impatient, but there was something in the Lord's eyes that made a shaft of ice shoot straight down his spine in instinctive fear. He was not usually one to allow his pride to come into play, but, damn it, he loathed how this powerful noble made him feel as if he were as insignificant as a microbial worm.
"She is." He coughed, and stirred uneasily. Could that coldly beautiful face know the inner doubts that haunted his thoughts?
The golden eyes narrowed. "She is not what I expected from your company's bio. I thought your people were professionals. This girl hardly seems stable, and from what I understand, she has not worked her particular talents in many months."
Gyorg remained silent.
"This...situation...requires delicate handling, Mr. Laveshi. I hope you understand that fact. Implicitly."
"Your wishes in the matter are fully considered, my lord." Gyorg bowed slightly.
The Lord allowed another of those cold smiles to pass across his lips. "And the people you represent believe that this mere onna, this broken taijiya, who failed in her last mission and was caught by station authorities and forced into Identity Alteration to save her sanity and allow her some small modicum of life in a "normal" society would be the perfect operative for the mission in which I have commissioned you?"
Gyorg did not dare to show his personal reservations about the decision of his superiors; the Taiyoukai would know it immediately and exploit it to the detriment of his associates. "That is my superiors' belief, yes."
"Ah." The Taiyoukai's mouth quirked, and Gyorg could not help but feel that his own doubts on the matter had been laid bare for the cold Lord to see. He cursed silently as the golden eyes continued to study him for a long moment, before the Taiyoukai leaned forward and picked up the small data-disk that contained all the information currently available on the former operative, Sango Jennar.
"And how, exactly, is this mere girl to prove herself a benefit to me?" The Lord asked him, watching closely for his reaction.
Gyorg kept his features still, though his palms were damp with sudden, nervous fear. The Taiyoukai could probably smell the fear on him, and he cursed the superior senses of the inu Lord who affected him like no other had before, as if he were a junior on his first mission and not the seasoned veteran and negotiator that he was. He wondered, suddenly, why his associates had sent him, and the only thought that could come to him was that he was getting past his prime, and thus expendable. That thought was not comforting. At all.
"Miss Jennar's Alteration makes her an ideal candidate for this mission, my lord. You need someone who has been trained in assassination, who knows how to handle herself in...delicate...situations, who is able, also, to get past the strict security that surrounds one of the Taiyoukai, and who, to use your very words, is ‘unknowing and innocent of malice thought’, so that she might be able to get INTO close enough proximity to the particular target so that he will know nothing, expect nothing." Gyorg's damp hands clenched as the golden eyes bored into his throughout his long speech. He coughed slightly, and hated himself for the weakness of it.
"Miss Jennar is the perfect candidate for this mission, my Lord. The very Alteration that you question allows us to use her, unknowing, to infiltrate the target's location, and too further use her skills as we deem fit. Her skills are inbred into her. She is one of only a few who has been genetically engineered to do what she was trained to do from birth."
"You tout the skills of your 'bred' assassins, Mr. Laveshi. You demand quite a fee for their services. And yet you ignore one very important fact. You speak of this girl's skills, this girl's trustworthiness. And yet, in her last mission, she did not live up to your expectations. Even with all of your touted 'genetic' training, she was not skilled enough to succeed in her last mission, and was caught by the very authorities your company claims to avoid."
"That will not happen again." Gyorg replied with a firm confidence he did not at all feel.
"And why is that, Mr. Laveshi?" A thin brow raised in mocking question. Why should I trust you?, it said to him.
"For the very fact that she is expendable, my lord Taiyoukai." Gyorg kept his face still, even though his thoughts circled like mad dogs. ~As am I.~
The tong did not suffer failures, and if he proved unsuccessful in his own mission of persuasion, and failed to close the deal that had been started so many months before among people he did not know and would never know of, he would become as Miss Sango Jennar was.
Expendable.
"You do little to reassure me, Mr. Laveshi. I am certain that the Company you represent would not be very pleased with your current performance right now."
How had that evil bastard been able to tell what scared him the most? Gyorg cursed soundlessly, but forced himself to nod thoughtfully. "There is not much more reassurance I can give you, my lord, except to say that the men I represent, or the ‘Company’ as you so put it, do not take your offer of monetary compensation lightly. The sum, in itself, is enough to ensure that we would do our utmost to fulfill the commission you do us the honor to bestow. The very Alteration that you question as to make Miss Jennar unfit is the very tool that allows the party I represent to manipulate the taijiya in any way we deem necessary to complete the mission."
"And what reassurance do I have, Mr. Laveshi, that this mission will be carried out and that this is not merely a scam in order to collect the sizeable fee I'm offering for your Company's services?" The Taiyoukai was a sharp one, but why should he be surprised? This demon was one cold bastard, and Gyorg knew that his life was worth less than the air he breathed right now.
But his superiors had been prepared for the Taiyoukai's reticence, and had given him leave to do the extraordinary. There was more than one party who wished this particular target---a Taiyoukai like this inu Lord---dead. And if the ‘Company’ could earn a commission alongside their own wishes, than it was just frosting on the cake.
"Our reassurance is this, my lord. We will not request payment of the fees we require until the assignment is completed. We will refuse any financial obligation on your part until we have fulfilled our end of the bargain."
The thin brows rose at that, and there was a golden glint in the cold eyes. "Ah." A faint smile hovered over the cold mouth. A terrible smile. "I am pleased that our desires align each other's. I understand, Mr. Laveshi. Perfectly."
Gyorg wanted to lick the dryness from his lips, but dared not show any such weakness. He walked a knife's edge of danger, more danger than he had ever tread in any of his days as an on-hand operative in the Company's more direct confrontations. He knew, suddenly, that his days were numbered as a clawed hand waved airily at him and the pale-golden eyes looked past him with courteous acknowledgment.
"You have yourself a bargain, then, Mr. Laveshi."
Gyorg jumped up, purely on instinct, his pale eyes widening as he saw the grim-faced man clad in black behind him. He tried desperately to avoid the silent dart-gun that faced him, and knew that it was his own Company who had betrayed him. He jerked as the dart thudded home, square in his throat, cutting off his weak cry to a gurgle of choking gasps. The pale eyes blanked even as he fell to the floor, to spasm out his life in silent agony.
The man in black bowed stiffly. He knew nothing of what had passed between the unearthly beautiful Taiyoukai and the small man who had sat across from him. His directive had been clear. As soon as the man had sealed the bargain, he was to be silenced. Forever.
He was, after all, expendable.
The Taiyoukai picked up the data-disk with a thoughtful air, before grinding it to dust between his powerful claws. Shaking the dust off of his white fingers with distaste, he stood up. He did not ask how the black-clad man had gotten through his own tight security, or how the Company had managed to infiltrate his defenses to destroy one of their own. It was a mere demonstration of their abilities. They were worth every mini-credit of their reputation, and they were more than adequate for the purpose in which he had commissioned them.
He addressed the black-clad man with a cold smile. "Tell your superiors that we are agreed, and that I shall leave the matter in their capable hands." With that, he left the room to the black-clad assassin and the dead corpse once called Gyorg Laveshi.
THE SOURCE OF SOLACE
Bred as a weapon, and betrayed by her own kind, Sango's true identity was erased by Alteration. But it just left the way open for manipulation by those who would use her for their own ends. Assassination and Love collide in a star-crossing AU universe. K/S I/K
WARNING! Dark imagery and lime, adult situations and issues. Foul language omitted on ff dot net.
CHAPTER ONE
The music pounded incessantly in and around and over her, beating through her skull and tearing at her mind with a terrible tattoo of steel-tipped fangs. She clutched at the side of a small table with white knuckles and numb fingers, trying to regain her balance in a world that was tilting wildly. Lights flashed across her already blurred vision, leaving multi-colored streamers of acidic brightness against the inner darkness of her eyelids as she closed them tightly in a vain attempt to ward off the faint that was threatening to envelop her. She gasped for air in a last, desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable, struggling to draw herself out of a drowning world, a drowning world awash with the color of fresh blood…
*~*~*~*~*
She woke, sweat-drenched and sobbing out her lost breath in dry heaves of fear. Tightening her fingers in the heavy blankets that surrounded her, Sango threw them off with a desperate, almost panicked cry as she realized that she was not THERE, but HERE, in her bedroom, in her apartment, with the lights dimmed into darkness and the deep quiet of the velvety night only broken by her own harsh gasps for air.
~Damn it!~
The dreams...the nightmares...still plagued her. Loud music. Flashing lights.
~A world gone crazy...~
It wasn't the world that was crazy. Just her.
Cursing softly under her breath, Sango pushed back the entangling blankets, damp with the sweat of her night-terrors, and fumbled her way in the dark to the small sanitary unit that abutted her bedroom in the tiny apartment she called home---for now.
She cursed louder when her bare toes struck against the clothing cubicle kept along the wall. Pain stabbed through her foot, and she clenched her teeth as her hand smacked the wall to open the san-unit's door. She stumbled inside as the door slid aside with a faint whoosh of escaping air and mechanized parts, slapping on the light panel with one hand even as she fumbled at the flat-fronted mirror with the other. Pushing aside various tubes and bottles and sending them spilling into the oval basin below in a jarring clatter of bouncing plastic, Sango gritted her teeth. She didn't care, she WOULDN'T care in a matter of moments. She had tried, really tried, not to use the sleeping pills that she was so anxious now to take. She hated the dry mouth and numbed daze they kept her in.
But it was the only thing that kept the nightmares at bay...
Her hands shook as she wrestled open the top to the bottle, and small white pills spilled across the cup of her palm as she shook them out. She brought the pile to her mouth, but only swallowed two. Maybe one day she might have the courage---or lack of it---to swallow more, and bring the numbness, the lack of pain and caring, and allow herself to sleep forever, but she wouldn't now.
She couldn't. They wouldn't let her.
Dry-swallowing the pills, she shoved the rest back into the bottle. She almost choked as they went down, her throat was so parched. She forced them down, throat muscles working convulsively, and coughed weakly as she swallowed them past the constriction in her chest. She could almost feel them taking immediate effect---a mere figment of her imagination. The pills took a few minutes to do their work, but she could pretend that the pain in her stubbed toes was already receding, that the night-terrors that still had her shaking in reaction were diminishing and fading away…
Carefully placing the re-capped bottle back into the medicine cabinet, she ignored the spillage of various minutia in the wash basin below to close the mirrored door on the recessed cabinet. She blinked at the image revealed on the reflective surface, and for a single moment of mental clarity, she was surprised at the face that stared back at her.
Pale...so pale, with brown eyes widened into fright amid dark circles that gave testimony to her sleepless nights. The delicate, high-bones of her cheeks stood out, and she was almost surprised at how thin she had become. How wasted and drained. It was almost as if a hollow-eyed skull stared back at her, with the long length of her tangling back hair sweeping around her face in sweaty tangles. Her lips were almost bloodless, and looked bitten in nervous habit.
She looked like a drug-addict, like one of those people who sat sunken-eyed in the filth of the street, uncaring and unknowing, the fearful hunger in their eyes echoing at a deep pain and need unfulfilled...
~What have I become?~
Her father would be so ashamed of her...
She stared in horror at the face that stared back at her, as the pills dissolved into her system, and swirled through her body, starting to take effect. Her fingers felt numb and her painful toes no longer touched her empty consciousness. She focused her fading awareness on the red tattoo outlining the upper part of her eyelids---a tattoo given her by her father, as a rank among warriors, almost forgotten now since her Alteration. The scarlet tattoo stood out in the white pallor of her features like lines of blood, and she shuddered.
~Blood...~
It was the last thought before the numbing blackness overtook her mind, and she fell to the floor amongst the discarded bottles and various plastic litter, lying curled in the fetal position on the cold, uncaring tile of the bathroom floor.
*~*~*~*~*
A long, tapered claw tapped the data-disk with almost absent-minded habit, but the small man who waited on the Taiyoukai knew that the Lord Sesshoumaru never did anything absently. Instead, it was a deliberate move on the Lord's part to deceive the smaller man into thinking that he might be dealing with someone other than who he was.
A deadly player of the Game.
But Gyorg Laveshi had not survived his years as a secrets man by taking anything at face value, and he could feel the cold calculation in the remote, golden eyes that studied his every reaction. He kept his bland features still; he had been trained to fade into the background, and he knew that barely a twitch of reaction would betray the inner thoughts that circled through his mind.
Although who knew what these youkai could do, what they were capable of. The old ones, the pure-bred of the noble line, were devious, ruthless, and cold. It was the rumors of old grannies and fearful colonists who whispered that the Taiyoukai, the nobles of the old line, could read the mind of a man as easily as a man could read the data on a scan-reader or vid-disk. Gyorg had scoffed at the idea, but he wasn't as sure now that he was faced with one of them.
The Taiyoukai abruptly left off his idle tapping and steepled his clawed hands in front of him. Gyorg could not hide the faint flinch that twitched across his shoulders at the sudden movement, and the golden eyes narrowed the slightest bit as a faint smile hovered across the cold mouth and was gone like a whispered promise in the night.
Lord Sesshoumaru sank back into the plush leather of his seat, truly relaxing for the first time now that they both understood who was in charge and in total control of this meeting. Gyorg allowed wry amusement to flicker across his rather unremarkable features before donning the bland façade of his chosen profession once more.
"You assure me, Mr. Laveshi, that this operative is the best you have available for my...purposes." The pause before the Lord's meaning was perfectly clear to both of them.
Gyorg nodded sharply, hating these games of finesse that the youkai enjoyed. He was not usually so impatient, but there was something in the Lord's eyes that made a shaft of ice shoot straight down his spine in instinctive fear. He was not usually one to allow his pride to come into play, but, damn it, he loathed how this powerful noble made him feel as if he were as insignificant as a microbial worm.
"She is." He coughed, and stirred uneasily. Could that coldly beautiful face know the inner doubts that haunted his thoughts?
The golden eyes narrowed. "She is not what I expected from your company's bio. I thought your people were professionals. This girl hardly seems stable, and from what I understand, she has not worked her particular talents in many months."
Gyorg remained silent.
"This...situation...requires delicate handling, Mr. Laveshi. I hope you understand that fact. Implicitly."
"Your wishes in the matter are fully considered, my lord." Gyorg bowed slightly.
The Lord allowed another of those cold smiles to pass across his lips. "And the people you represent believe that this mere onna, this broken taijiya, who failed in her last mission and was caught by station authorities and forced into Identity Alteration to save her sanity and allow her some small modicum of life in a "normal" society would be the perfect operative for the mission in which I have commissioned you?"
Gyorg did not dare to show his personal reservations about the decision of his superiors; the Taiyoukai would know it immediately and exploit it to the detriment of his associates. "That is my superiors' belief, yes."
"Ah." The Taiyoukai's mouth quirked, and Gyorg could not help but feel that his own doubts on the matter had been laid bare for the cold Lord to see. He cursed silently as the golden eyes continued to study him for a long moment, before the Taiyoukai leaned forward and picked up the small data-disk that contained all the information currently available on the former operative, Sango Jennar.
"And how, exactly, is this mere girl to prove herself a benefit to me?" The Lord asked him, watching closely for his reaction.
Gyorg kept his features still, though his palms were damp with sudden, nervous fear. The Taiyoukai could probably smell the fear on him, and he cursed the superior senses of the inu Lord who affected him like no other had before, as if he were a junior on his first mission and not the seasoned veteran and negotiator that he was. He wondered, suddenly, why his associates had sent him, and the only thought that could come to him was that he was getting past his prime, and thus expendable. That thought was not comforting. At all.
"Miss Jennar's Alteration makes her an ideal candidate for this mission, my lord. You need someone who has been trained in assassination, who knows how to handle herself in...delicate...situations, who is able, also, to get past the strict security that surrounds one of the Taiyoukai, and who, to use your very words, is ‘unknowing and innocent of malice thought’, so that she might be able to get INTO close enough proximity to the particular target so that he will know nothing, expect nothing." Gyorg's damp hands clenched as the golden eyes bored into his throughout his long speech. He coughed slightly, and hated himself for the weakness of it.
"Miss Jennar is the perfect candidate for this mission, my Lord. The very Alteration that you question allows us to use her, unknowing, to infiltrate the target's location, and too further use her skills as we deem fit. Her skills are inbred into her. She is one of only a few who has been genetically engineered to do what she was trained to do from birth."
"You tout the skills of your 'bred' assassins, Mr. Laveshi. You demand quite a fee for their services. And yet you ignore one very important fact. You speak of this girl's skills, this girl's trustworthiness. And yet, in her last mission, she did not live up to your expectations. Even with all of your touted 'genetic' training, she was not skilled enough to succeed in her last mission, and was caught by the very authorities your company claims to avoid."
"That will not happen again." Gyorg replied with a firm confidence he did not at all feel.
"And why is that, Mr. Laveshi?" A thin brow raised in mocking question. Why should I trust you?, it said to him.
"For the very fact that she is expendable, my lord Taiyoukai." Gyorg kept his face still, even though his thoughts circled like mad dogs. ~As am I.~
The tong did not suffer failures, and if he proved unsuccessful in his own mission of persuasion, and failed to close the deal that had been started so many months before among people he did not know and would never know of, he would become as Miss Sango Jennar was.
Expendable.
"You do little to reassure me, Mr. Laveshi. I am certain that the Company you represent would not be very pleased with your current performance right now."
How had that evil bastard been able to tell what scared him the most? Gyorg cursed soundlessly, but forced himself to nod thoughtfully. "There is not much more reassurance I can give you, my lord, except to say that the men I represent, or the ‘Company’ as you so put it, do not take your offer of monetary compensation lightly. The sum, in itself, is enough to ensure that we would do our utmost to fulfill the commission you do us the honor to bestow. The very Alteration that you question as to make Miss Jennar unfit is the very tool that allows the party I represent to manipulate the taijiya in any way we deem necessary to complete the mission."
"And what reassurance do I have, Mr. Laveshi, that this mission will be carried out and that this is not merely a scam in order to collect the sizeable fee I'm offering for your Company's services?" The Taiyoukai was a sharp one, but why should he be surprised? This demon was one cold bastard, and Gyorg knew that his life was worth less than the air he breathed right now.
But his superiors had been prepared for the Taiyoukai's reticence, and had given him leave to do the extraordinary. There was more than one party who wished this particular target---a Taiyoukai like this inu Lord---dead. And if the ‘Company’ could earn a commission alongside their own wishes, than it was just frosting on the cake.
"Our reassurance is this, my lord. We will not request payment of the fees we require until the assignment is completed. We will refuse any financial obligation on your part until we have fulfilled our end of the bargain."
The thin brows rose at that, and there was a golden glint in the cold eyes. "Ah." A faint smile hovered over the cold mouth. A terrible smile. "I am pleased that our desires align each other's. I understand, Mr. Laveshi. Perfectly."
Gyorg wanted to lick the dryness from his lips, but dared not show any such weakness. He walked a knife's edge of danger, more danger than he had ever tread in any of his days as an on-hand operative in the Company's more direct confrontations. He knew, suddenly, that his days were numbered as a clawed hand waved airily at him and the pale-golden eyes looked past him with courteous acknowledgment.
"You have yourself a bargain, then, Mr. Laveshi."
Gyorg jumped up, purely on instinct, his pale eyes widening as he saw the grim-faced man clad in black behind him. He tried desperately to avoid the silent dart-gun that faced him, and knew that it was his own Company who had betrayed him. He jerked as the dart thudded home, square in his throat, cutting off his weak cry to a gurgle of choking gasps. The pale eyes blanked even as he fell to the floor, to spasm out his life in silent agony.
The man in black bowed stiffly. He knew nothing of what had passed between the unearthly beautiful Taiyoukai and the small man who had sat across from him. His directive had been clear. As soon as the man had sealed the bargain, he was to be silenced. Forever.
He was, after all, expendable.
The Taiyoukai picked up the data-disk with a thoughtful air, before grinding it to dust between his powerful claws. Shaking the dust off of his white fingers with distaste, he stood up. He did not ask how the black-clad man had gotten through his own tight security, or how the Company had managed to infiltrate his defenses to destroy one of their own. It was a mere demonstration of their abilities. They were worth every mini-credit of their reputation, and they were more than adequate for the purpose in which he had commissioned them.
He addressed the black-clad man with a cold smile. "Tell your superiors that we are agreed, and that I shall leave the matter in their capable hands." With that, he left the room to the black-clad assassin and the dead corpse once called Gyorg Laveshi.