Deadly Force [Jemima x Batman4560]

[Jemima]

Lara crouched in the shadowed hallway and watched her mark through the paneled glass. The CEO had claimed the offshoot of the 18th floor for his own extravagant office, walled by etched glass and overlooking downtown. Isolating his office on a straight hall made Lara’s job easier – not that it mattered. At close to midnight, everyone had abandoned their cubicles for the weekend. Alexander Hughes seemed close to doing the same. He knuckled his furrowed brow for the second time and tossed another stack of papers in the shred bin. Shrugging off his wrinkled suit jacket, Alexander cradled his head on his desk. He seemed a defeated man for such a large, successful company.

But most of her targets were: defeated men presenting a strong facade for their company, unknowingly drowning in the empire they created. It took Lara time to suppress her pity - her humanity, really - while on the job. Receiving a client order from her agency meant investing time in her target, getting to know them without being known herself, and although it helped to keep her job separate from "normal life" it had become more difficult lately. The city was falling to pieces around her and business was booming. Many of the mysterious deaths on the morning news were her own handiwork - and she imagined the ones that weren't belonged to rival agencies. With so much work to do, her own agency increased the pressure to do it quickly and clean up the mess later. It wasn't Lara's style but with competition growing (between businesses and assassins alike), you never knew what to expect on a mission.

With the man’s eyes closed and head lowered, Lara crept into the soft illumination from his office lights. The expensive glass door opened soundlessly under the pressure of her gloved fingers and Lara slipped into the office. Alexander certainly wasn’t her first target – but he may be the easiest. His oversized ego promised Lara little security around his person, and he always seemed arrogantly unaware of his surroundings. Lara had little trouble surveying him over the past week, mapping his habits and haunts. There was no need for an elaborate plan on this job and, according to Rayne, her client could care less about subtlety. Lara balanced her blade – a dark metal the length of her forearm – and began to sidestep around the large office, intending to slip behind her target to finish things. Alexander appeared to be drifting off, still ignorant of the open door and the threat that prowled across his office floor.​

 

[batman4560]

Aaron ran as fast as he could over a buildings rooftop while drawing a pair of long arrows from his back quiver and notching them into his bow. The arrows had a clawed head with a spike in the center of each one and a long cable hooked to the arrows ends. Anyone that looked hard at the arrows would have seen that the cables were strung up on the opposite end of the building tightly...
Over the past few weeks Aaron had been following one Alexander Hughes around on his daily life without letting him know. The sap had a very dull life outside of his job, hell the guy hadn't even cheated on his wife. Why anyone would want him dead was beyond Aaron but who the hell cared. So long as Aaron was getting paid, he would kill anyone that he was told to. To Aaron there was no other job.

Feet leap't up and off the building Aaron had been running across and the arrows flew fast and hooked to the wall of the building across from him. The job should have been easy...Aaron was going to slide in from the cables through Alex's office window, roll to the floor toss two knives at him then slash his throat with the larger blade on the back of Aaron's black combat vest. The cables pulled tightly as the arrows hit their marks and the bow Aaron had been using stuck between the cables and Aaron's hands grabbed either end of the bow. He slid across the cables and his dark blue eyes narrowed when he saw Alexander's office door open. Did he slip up and not hit the time he was supposed to? No the woman coming through the door had an impressive blade of her own...Someone else put a hit on this man's head.

Aaron swung his legs forward to increase his speed and slammed through the glass of Alex's window, the speed and force of the slide sending Aaron to the ground hard in a roll. Normally he would have went for the mark at this point but he knew that if he did then the woman would as well and possibly kill Alex first. Instead Aaron sprang up on both booted feet and tossed a single knife at the woman and one at Alex. The knife that went at Alex only grazed his arm and he wasn't sure if his blade would even hit the woman, but before he waited to see Aaron pulled his long machete from his back and looked at the woman incase of an attack...

 

[Jemima]

Lara had crept halfway around her target, like a lion encircling its prey, when she caught swift movement in her peripheral. On the 18th floor of a corporate building at almost midnight, she hardly expected to see anything outside of Alexander's office window. She turned and instinctively tensed seconds too late, as a dark figure shattered the window and almost simultaneously sent two blades flying across the dimly lit office. Lara side-stepped quite easily and nervously glanced at her target. The man had jumped to his feet, now fully aware, at the breaking glass and understandably panicked when a flying dagger grazed his arm. He now stumbled back against his luxurious desk, the wheels of his office chair still spinning as it toppled to the ground, and sputtered incoherently at the man who now stood in the office - staring right at Lara.

Lara cursed and hesitated for a heartbeat, considering dispatching Alexander before dealing with the new arrival, but quickly decided better of it. The man was clad in dark clothing much like herself and the machete he now wielded meant business, the same as her own. Targeting Alexander would leave her vulnerable to further attack or prompt him to strike first - and he was much closer, within range of the machete. Lara hoped that Alexander's fear would keep him paralyzed at his desk and swiftly moved toward the stranger.

Lowering her blade, Lara side-stepped off one foot to put her back to the broken window - and her foe's to the mark. She turned her wrist and swung the blade in an upwards stroke at the man. If he had any skill with the machete - and any speed - he would likely block her attack, but Lara's first intent was to distract from the target. She was suddenly grateful for the balaclava that hid the lower half of her face in such proximity of the two men she aimed to kill.

 

[batman4560]

This was truly new, Aaron had never need to deal with another killer before. He hadn't planned on needing to wear a mask or hood, but this woman seemed to be expecting something to go wrong. Now Aaron found himself regretting that he hadn't worn a face mask this time. His eyes grew wide with surprise when the woman moved to place him between the target and herself. She viewed him as the bigger threat and she needed to but she still kept her eye on the mark. This woman was skilled and would have most likely gotten away with the kill had he not shown up too. A blade came swinging up at his head and would have killed anyone not trained to block such a swift strike but Aaron was a blade fighter as well and knew how to counter such an attack.

With a flick of his off handed wrist Aaron produced a knife from a wrist sheath and slashed it in a downward stroke, pushing the blade enough that it missed Aaron and deflected off in a wide arc. He continued his attack by using his off handed elbow to lash out at the woman's face. He had no doubt that she would counter but it couldn't hurt to make the attempt. While his elbow came in at a high angle, his machete slashed at her legs in an attempt to force her out the window.