MAIZE

Maize stared up at the tall creaking building in front of her. Looking at it more closely, she figured it once used to be a storehouse, probably belonging to one of the top shipping companies—she guessed—based on the half faded logo resting on the side. But the place had fallen into a disarrayed state. The gray walls were chipped, the windows to each of the three floors had been either cracked or shattered, and the hinges of the metal door screeched with protest as Maize pushed it open—a sign that it had been sitting closed collecting rust for quite some time. However, none of that mattered to her. It wouldn't matter what the place had looked like. Not after she was done with it.

Maize quickly checked the sleek black watch on her wrist—another thing she had 'borrowed' from Ryder when she left. In truth, if he knew exactly what she had taken from him, he would save Azeal the trouble and come kill her himself. But Maize wouldn't worry about that now, she only had one thing set in her mind.

The digital time flashed 11:52 PM.

She walked in. And she walked in alone.

She did what she had to. At least that was what she told herself to ease the nagging in her mind. She did what she needed to do to make sure things went according to plan.

Her plan.

Alec will get over it, she unconvincingly told herself.

Right. The chances of him throwing anything short of a hissy-fit about it once this was over were slim. Very slim.

Maize sighed and stopped in the centre of the wide room. One thing at a time. Deal with one thing at a time...

She checked her wristwatch routinely in the following minutes that passed. Each one felt like double the last. She was not impatient, yet, but she was anxious. She knew better than to plan for flawless execution of how she wanted things to play out, but still, waiting was hell.

Footsteps caught her attention some few minutes later. Calm and slow as they ascended the stone steps that lead to the front door.

Azeal's sole figure came striding in, hands shoved in the pockets of his coat. His body language was guarded as he walked forth. She could see even from where she stood the flicker of clear surprise on his face at seeing her before him before it quickly turned to something like dry amusement. He stopped just a few meters across from her, meeting her eyes with a calculated look.

"And here I half expected you to be hiding in the ceiling ready to sent a knife in my back the moment I turned," he drawled with a slow smile spread of anything but friendliness.

Maize, arms crossed, waited for him to finish his set of opening jabs until the question she was waiting for surfaced as she expected.

"So what's your plan here? Ambush? Hidden explosives?" He mused with a twisted flash of a smile. "Will you take us both down together in a blaze of glory?"

She watched him while taking a slow drawing breath from her slightly parted lips as she forced herself to appear as relaxed as possible—which she found was much harder to do under the piercing stare of someone she had once cared so much about turned against her.

"I wanted to apologize," she said. There was a long stretch of silence.

Then Azeal laughed.

"Apologize?" He repeated like the word should have been a foreign concept to her. Or a joke. His scarred eye closed as the other gave her a tantalizing stare of focus. "You'll have to be more specific," he told her.

"I don't." Her hands were bunched into fists to keep her composure. "You know exactly what I'm talking about." Stop playing around. Was what she really wanted to say.

He shook his head, still somewhat laughing. "Just what do you think your petty 'apology' is worth to me? Have you really grown so naive these past few years? There is no 'apologizing' for this. There is no version of this story where I don't want to take my revenge on you," he stated as his voice snapped at her with a fierce edge. "You left me to die, and there's nothing you can do to change that."

The words struck her like frozen iron. Her chest clenched.

I never wanted... "I never meant for what happened," Maize said, her voice not soft, but not harsh either. She was trying to plead with him without actually having to get down on her knees and beg for him to listen to her, to spare the hurt that would follow. She would not show weakness.

She was not the only one who had betrayed the other—that night he too had made a choice; her or the gang. And he had chosen the gang. And yet, even as her anger for what he had done to the people around her and the lies he had committed, the things he had twisted, the acts he had tried to commit—if there was a chance they could resolve this without having to kill...

She owed it not to him but to herself to try. For the person she was now versus who she used to be.

"Z—" she said, but he snapped at her, eyes suddenly flashing violently.

"Don't. You don't get to call me that."

In turn she retracted her outstretched hand. She lowered her head ever so slightly, but never did she drop her gaze from his. There was one last thing she just had to know first, "If I told you the truth then, would you have listened?"

He stared at her, studied her with narrowing eyes. Then he scoffed, "Again with that? After everything you still claim to be innocent?"

Innocent.

Her gaze hardened with her of ferocity. "No. I don't," she stated plainly. "But what I tried to tell you back then is the same thing I'm going to try and tell you now. The gang turned on me long before I ever chose to turn on them. You can't stand there and tell me that for these past two years you haven't looked back and figured that out—"

"I don't care," he snarled, cutting her off completely with a vicious look. She opened her mouth but he snapped quickly to shut her down. He repeated louder this time, "I don't care! I don't care what excuses you think you had!"

She flinched ever so slightly as he lowered his voice to a deadly whisper. "It doesn't change what happened."

He was right...it didn't. The left of his blue eyes stood out drastically in comparison to its copy, enough of a reminder of the lasting marks they both bore. Her shoulder itched as his eyes glowered at her with nothing but loathing hatred.

Still she was caught off guard when he suddenly attacked.

He advanced on her with the lethal speed of a snake, all poised and coiled before launching forth with the intent to strike. As Maize quickly sidestepped his right hook, she swung her leg back and swept his legs out from under him. However, instead of getting tripped up by her sweep, he leaped out of the way and managed to catch her off guard to strike her across the side of the head.

Maize stumbled from the mere shock of the forceful blow and caught herself in her elbows before her face could meet the ground. But Azeal was fast and didn't miss the opportunity to kick her in the side and send her sprawling on her back, winded and aching as he stepped over her chest with the sole of his boot. The pressure of his weight and the absence of air in her lungs made her feel like she was suffocating.

Despite the bad position she found herself in now, the only thought she could conger up in her mind was a snappy; so much for peaceful resolve.

That left her with the improvised plan B; try not to let him kill you.

"You were always one of the best hand-to-hand fighters we had," Azeal said as he continued to press down on the space just under her throat with his black heavy weighted boots. His eyes glowered down at her with a discriminating look, as if she were no more than a piece of trash under his soles. "But even so, in the many years we spared against one another, you were never able to best me were you?" he taunted.

"I'm not the same person I was before," Maize managed to say through the lack of air getting through to her lungs and brain. "You should do best to remember that," she snapped as she slide out the miniature metal spike of a blade from her left sleeve and jabbed it into his calf.

In an instant the pressure was off her chest and Azeal was launching back, growling and snarling his anger and pain as a trickle of blood began to deep through his dark toned pants. Maize didn't waste the opportunity she had while he was off his guard. She launched herself up and forward in a flash of movement, shooting her leg out to strike Azeal across the face and then again straight to the chest. He skidded back a few steps, catching himself on the forth and bringing a single hand up to dab at the trickle of blood that had begun to pool at the split of his now busted lower lip.

Maize stared him down with the eyes of a fire empress. "It was your mistake to underestimate me."

Lowering his hand, she could see the new damage she had inflicted. What she hadn't expected was the smile.

"I didn't underestimate you." The words were spoken quietly, perhaps the first thing he said to her that sounded genuine, no taunting that she could detect. Maize barely had a second to comprehend the meaning before a sudden force crashed into her from behind, tackling her straight down to the floor while the body on top fought to pin her down.

Her teeth gritted tightly as her shoulder strained in the locked position her arms were yanked behind her back. She jerked, but the arms holding her were strong—definitely male from the size and weight she felt weighing on her. And if the low accented chuckle was anything to go by.

It took a second to recognize the accent. Their accents.

Still struggling stomach down and arms pinned to her back, the most she could do was strain her neck to catch a glimpse over her shoulder at the pale sharp face and ashen light hair. And then the second, slimmer figure standing just behind with the same looks and crossed arms.

Then her eyes flashed over to Azeal while she glared murderously and tried to rock her body lose from the hold so tight she was sure any jerk of movement would dislocated her shoulder completely. He ran a tongue over his bloodied lip and gazed down at her grinningly. "I'll say—though it is rather surprisingly honourable that you stuck to your word—you never accounted that I had to show up alone." A strained hiss of pain escaped Maize's lips as she thrashed again in and glared with venom in her eyes as he looked behind and over her, "I'm sure you remember the twins?"

Unfortunately.

And, unfortunately, she had not planned for them. She had not taken them into account. At all.

She had assumed that since they hadn't been present at the factory site that whatever contract they had with Azeal had already ended. They weren't supposed to be here.

Fucking hell Maize!

Her subconscious was beginning to sound like a certain detective who would most definitely snap at her for her stupidity at letting herself wind up caught like this. She couldn't shake off nor deny the sudden daunting feeling that she was currently outnumbered.

Three on one.

In different circumstances, these odds wouldn't have bothered that much, but considering who each of them were...she was definitely bothered.

She racked her brain for an escape plan as she continued to squirm, her struggling movements attempting to conceal the sleeve she was trying to pull over her palm enough to slip out the only weapon she could currently reach in her predicament. The efforts made her shoulder muscles scream at the strain that was Luke Sokolov's hands still keeping them locked, but she didn't stop.

She was close. So close to getting it.

"Freeze right there, Ember."

Her body stopped moving upon the press of cold metal to the back of her head. She barely had time to blink before more pressure was applied and her face had been turned sideways and pressed cheek down in the chilly concrete.

"Now don't go trying to pull anything funny," Luke purred. She could imagine the smile he must have been wearing just from the sickly amused tone he used, as well as picture the devilish gleam in his eye. "We were just getting reacquainted."

"Yeah well, reunion's over, you can return back to hell now," Maize retorted bluntly. On second thought—probably not the smartest idea given her position.

She was trapped. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she realized with a sinking feeling that she had nowhere to go.

"Hold on—" Either Azeal or Silan tried to say, but Maize could barely differentiate between the two anymore. Not when all the heard was the quiet screech of metal the Luke's finger began to pull on the trigger.

Maize flinched and squeezed her eyes shut just as the gunshot echoed through the walls.

But she didn't feel any pain.

Instead, the sound of Milan's outraged scream sounded out as Maize felt the pressure on her arms and head slacken before the body over her suddenly slumped to the side off of her. Instinct was what made her roll away as quick as possible and back roll into a crouch on her feet.

It was all she could do in that moment to stare incredulously, just as everyone else in the room seemed to be doing, at the limp body now bleeding out on the floor. The gun had been dropped, and was now beginning to turn red where the handle rested in the way of the stream of blood pooling from the single circular hole in the assassin's chest.

His sibling was dropped down by his side in an instant, fingers dragging down the side of his neck for a pulse. But Maize could already tell just from one look she wouldn't find one.

That left the shooter themselves. The new drag of each of their attentions as the line figure stood in the open doorway.

Silan's eyes were flooded with cold rage in seconds.

Maize's eyes widened and she could feel the clench of panic tightening in her chest.

Azeal looked the most uncaring, or rather, composed was the correct word as his mouth turned up in an unwelcoming smile. "And here I thought I was the only one who knew how to make an entrance," he bantered as he licked the blood from his lip again. "So nice of you to join us, Detective West."

The death-glaring detective seemed to completely ignore the statement as he marched in with deliberate steps and gun-pair still poised down the length of his outstretched arms, aiming at the remaining two as he moved between them and where Maize crouched on her feet.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she hissed without turned her gaze away from the opposing two. Alec didn't spare a glance back at her and also kept his eyes locked on Azeal and Silan as he spoke.

"Evening out the odds," he stated.

"You're early."

At that he turned his head back just enough to shoot her a deadly look. "If you ask me I barely made it on time. You made me patrol the entire fucking perimeter. For what?" He snapped agitatedly.

"You were supposed to wait until I said so," Maize gritted, ignoring the latter statement. Apparently that little farce hadn't worked enough to keep his busy and away—she should have guessed he wouldn't have bothered to followed her damn instructions.

Alec turned his gaze back to the others and shrugged noncommittally. "Was I? Oops."

Damn life-saving asshole didn't even sound sorry.

Maize smirked.

Until Azeal spoke again, lonesome and dry-toned. "If your detective's arrival is any indication, it seems I misspoke. Looks like neither of us kept our word." Even from behind him, Maize could picture the piercing murderous glare Azeal was receiving from 'her detective' as he smiled coldly, "I suppose it saves me the trouble of having to hunt him down later."

He didn't seem too fazed by the twin barrels staring both him and his second hired-gun down, in the very hands of the man he was threatening. Alec let out a tsk sound as his eyes zeroed in on Azeal, blazing with loathsome fire.

"It's nice that you think that, it really is," he replied with an edge of dry sarcasm.

Silan had rage burning in her eyes as she stared solely at Alec. Azeal still paid no attention to her or the body of her brother, but that didn't seem to matter to her. Her sole focus was on the gun that had been responsible for the shot the ended her brother's life. Records upon records Maize was sure they had stacked on the number of people that they had contract killed and those who had wanted to pay the same favour in turn, and yet in all the years they had been active, not one person had successfully managed to bring either one of them down—until now.

There was no doubt in Maize's mind that Silan had anything less than murder on her mind the way she glared loathsomely at Alec—but even through the burning anger of grief her senses were not clouded enough to charge at a figure holding them at gun point. But still, the look in her eyes spoke volumes of hatred.

She didn't speak, but the audible grinding of her teeth made it known that she was struggling to hold back.

Maize saw the way Alec glanced down at her and the form of her brother. His eyes lost a hint of their hostility for something else, something like an apology. It was not regret, not quite, but close enough. Because had Alec been any second later, Maize would have most likely been the one dead on the ground instead of Luke. She doubted he had stopped to think about it when he arrived.

It had been him or her. And he had chosen her.

However, Maize wasn't ready for when Silan suddenly seemed to disregard her sensibility and ripped out a gun from behind her back.

"Shit—don't do it!" Alec said as he narrowed his eyes in a flash of desperate warning. He outgunned her—they all knew that.

Silan said nothing and her finger tightened on the trigger just a bark echoed from a distance away.

Just as it seemed she was about to pull the trigger a large dark mass of fur and snarls leaped forth from the behind a stack of crates, slamming into her from the side and causing the gun to skid out of her hand and across the floor.

Teeth found their way into the fabric of her black sleeves, tearing through a drawing scrapes of blood until Silan ripped her arm away, her sleeve tearing away to show the new scratches in her arm. She kicked the black shadow until she was free and scrambled back onto her feet staggeringly, grasping her wrist with an expression of pain and rage twisted across her face as she back away from the hunched down canine.

"Damn, dog has good timing," Alec muttered as he breathed out a quick breath.

"You were supposed to keep him in the car," Maize hissed.

Alec shot her a quick look, "I refuse to be the one to make that dog do anything he doesn't want to—and he didn't want to."

Maize rolled her eyes, but Alec was certainly right about one thing—Kota had stupendous timing. The black shepherd was growling in a hunched position until both Silan and Azeal had taken another subtle step back.

Silan made a complete run for it.

Kota growled and looked like he wanted to give chase, but Alec moved first.

"It's alright Kujo, I got this one." Kota surprisingly seemed to listen.

Alec started forward but Maize was quick to shoot him a look and was standing upright in a flash as she grabbed his arm, holding him back for just a split instant. But it was enough.

Be careful, her eyes said. He nodded, the same message written on his own.

As Alec ran in the directing of Silan, Kota turned and bounded off in the direction of the exit. Maize wondered where he was going, but she knew she wouldn't need to worry. That dog was way more intelligent than she would ever be able to comprehend, and she was just glad that he had shown up when he did.

Now it was just her and Azeal.

It happened without words, verbal exchanges were all but over. Maize could sense it in the air and taste it on her tongue; the aura that appeared as two people geared for a fight.

Azeal was the first to move, striking forth with the speed of a cobra, but instead of standing still to received it, Maize struck forth at the same time and met him head on. It was a flurry of flashes, blues of movement, and the scrap of boots against concrete and hard flesh as they fought for the advantage over the other.

Maize had once's enjoyed her spars with the man before her—each of them pushing the other to get better in a place no one else did for them.

She had grown over two years, and she had by far improved from when they had known each other last. But so had he.

It was an even match. He may have held more strength on his side, but she was faster, and in that sense, now that they were both fighting to their fullest, the opening for an advantage was hard to find.

As they moved across the floor in a flurry, one of their boots scuffed over the gun that had belonged to Silan.

In a flash Azeal had kicked in up in the air between them and caught it in his grip, but in that time Maize had already side stepped to the outside of his extended arm and brought her elbow down over his wrist to weaken his grip. Then she spun in front as her back leg tripped up his own and her fist struck him in the chest.

As he fell backwards unable to stop himself, she surged forth with an air of finality and pinned him down, using her boots to pin his arms, rendering him immobile as the gun was held between them in her hands aimed at him.

Finally it was as if time had slowed back down and they could catch their breath, simply staring at one another.

It was the same situation all over again.

Her face was an emotionless mask, portraying nothing but fiery anger in her eyes. She kept moving, hoping that if she did, it wouldn't give Azeal the chance to see how bad her hands were shaking.

"Brings back memories doesn't it?"

Physically she was the one in control. But mentally they both knew she was far from it.

"So...here we are again," he said. Though he was the one at her mercy, it didn't feel like it, not in the slightest. His pale eyes glowed with a kind of calm madness and there was a smile edges across his face that shook her to her core along with his next words. "Are you going to do it, Daiyu?" He questioned softly. "Are you going to kill me again?"

Everything in his eyes, his face, his smile, was mocking her. He knew how being in this same position had affected her—was affecting her, and he was going to exploit it without remorse. What else did he have to lose if he thought he was going to die anyway?

But I won't.

He won't.

The intense raging in her body—every vessel that had been lit on fire with her desire to carry out this fight and win—slowly began to ebb away. Bit by bit. Until there were no traces of anything left within her but an almost eerie calmness. A blank canvas.

She—for the first time since she had watched him walk up to her in this place—felt in total control. Of herself and that which was around her.

She had bested the chest master, he couldn't play his games with her anymore. The game was over.

"I'm not going to kill you, Z," she said quietly, not missing the way his eyes flashed angrily at the old name, but she did not flinch.

"You don't have any other option," he snarled the statement with a frown before his eyes furrowed threateningly. "You let me go and I will just come back again until you're dead." No threats, only promises.

Maize was silent.

If she decided to kill him, he didn't win. But neither did she and he knew that.

He believed enough of her regret over their past that he knew to kill him, again—as he put it, would hurt her. More than hurt her. It would tear her apart and everything she worked to push away of her old self. And she wouldn't ever forgive herself for it.

The way he saw it; if he was going to go down, he would take her with him whatever way her could.

She stayed that way, staring down at him with the gun still placed between them.

But this time, she reminded herself—she was in control.

"Whoever said anything about letting you go?" she responded slowly, the corner of her lips flicking back in a way to caused Azeal's eyes to change from smug potentness to wavered confusion.

She. Was in. Control.

Just then Alec came running back into the room, but his attention didn't fall onto them two right away. His head was turned in the direction of the nearest window with a look of bewilderment as he muttered confusedly, "What the hell?"

Police sirens were going off around the property. And somewhere close by, a familiar canine was barking.

Azeal had seized up the moment the sirens had sounded, and now even more so that the flashing red and blue lights could be seen through the glass window.

His head snapped up to her as his teeth gritted ragingly, "What did you do?!"

"Nothing," Maize responded, "You chose to meet me out in the open. All I did was make sure I distracted you long enough."

"You—you tricked me!" He snarled, writhering again beneath her boots, but he could not break free.

Maize was absolutely calm. "I didn't. Not a word I said was a lie—if you took it into literal meaning that is," she added with a smidgen of a smirk. As in, she had shown up alone, just as she promised. Those who followed were only half accountable on her part.

Azeal opened his mouth but nothing but an escaping breath escaped him.

It's over, she thought.

"Congratulations. You played this big masterful game to try and bring me to you—but guess what," she said as she leaned in close, looking him right in the eyes as she spoke. "This time, I outplayed you."

Azeal glared at her, but while she could feel the tension in his arms as if preparing to attempt to spring forth, he didn't. He didn't move. Only continued to look deep in her eyes with her frigid pale gaze.

"This is not the end," he promised, stating it as easily as an unavoidable fact. She had not expected any less.

"I know," she answered quietly.

Their eyes were locked, volumes of the unspoken threatening to spill over the edge of the invisible glasses they held themselves in, threatening to keep up their stare until the last possible moment.

A victory was only ever truly clear when the opposer recognized who reigned triumphant—that was something he had once told her.

Finally, Azeal let his head dropped back and looked to the ceiling as a thwarted smirk made its way onto his face. He sighed, closing his scarred eye.

"Well played, Maize Ember. Well played."

I'm sorry, this chapter was so lazily written and so messy—in my opinion just skimming it anyway. I've had a bit of a writers block since I haven't had any good inspiration in a long time so I deeply apologize for the unedited—and unrevised—thing I just posted here.