O3。 a shooting star

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      THE NIGHT WAS QUIET. She surveyed the area around her, everything looked dead as the million other bodies she covered for the past ten years. The dark sky was clear of stars and the back alley was vacant and silent, except for the booming energy of the strip club nearby.

Perfect for a night of assassination.

As the car was parked, Winter grabbed her mask along with her monoscope and Æ-20 glock. The trek towards the firescape of the abandoned building she was planning to do the dirty work in was short and fast. She placed the monoscope gently on her eyes, and located for the big window of the strip club next door wherein her supposed target should be settling in about less than five minutes.

Winter takes out her phone, and takes a look if she already got the bag. She swears harshly under her breath and makes a call.

"What?"

She rolls her eyes. "Hey, Angelo. This is the exterminator you called for your rat problem." Winter takes another look at the phone. "My account's looking a little thin."

"No one gets paid until what needs to be done, gets done."

"Nope, that's not the rules. No money, no honey." She smirks.

Suddenly, at her peripheral vision, she sees her target and a group of men sitting on the couches with a tail of strippers through the big window. The holographic numbers on her monoscope overlaying her vision read 2:59 AM.

"Woah, here is your boy right now. With about twenty of his new best friends." Winter opens her phone. "I'm still seeing zeroes over here, Angie."

The static on the phonecall becomes louder. "Listen, stop acting cheeky and do your job!"

"Oh! The strippers are taking him outta my sight now." She sees through the window how demanding one of the girls are getting of leaving the room with her target. "In about thirty seconds your window is going to close forever."

"Okay, okay, okay. Relax. There was an accounting error." Winter's bank account suddenly got filled with 1 million æ-notes in an instant. "We sent it."

"Now double it for being a dickhead."

The other line on the call stayed silent.

"You got ten seconds." Winter responded again gruffly.

"We're not the kind of people you play with."

"Did you just... Did you threaten me?" She instantly flinches and hears something. It was a faint chant of what sounds like a screaming cat coming from the window. It was her target on the karaoke. Winter scoffed. "This dude's gonna get a sore throat from all the singing he's about to do."

"You son of a bitch."

The numbers on her bank account doubled to 2 million æ-notes, and she smiled in victory.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Angie."

Winter focused on her scope, and scanned her target meters away. She held her breath to focus and pulled the trigger.

His head practically exploded, sending blood flying all over the strippers he was with as his lifeless body dropped to the floor. All the security rushing towards him, frantically trying to grasp of what just happened.

Bullseye. She chuckled as her lips curved into a grin.

Winter grabbed her glock, and started packing it up. She dismantled her weapon in record time, and dusted herself off. She reached into her pants pocket, and pulled out a pack of lollipops. She picked one from a variety of flavours, before opening it and sliding one out. She lifted it to her mouth as she hummed to a song. She slid the pack back into her pocket, tied her hair in a ponytail, and made her way downstairs.

The vantage point she picked was an old warehouse building. Still humming, she quickly descended five flights of stairs of the firescape. Sirens screamed in the distance, knowing they were cleaning up the mess she made. Winter smiled in satisfaction as she took another lick of her lollipop.

She takes another step forward only to see another shadow coming towards her in her periphery. Reacting quickly, Winter ducked into a corner, and pulls out her device.

"Hello, Winter."

She takes another breath, and takes a peak at the man closing in on her. "Quick, æ-winter. Input facial recognition to individual on my far left." She whispers.

After a few seconds, æ-winter speaks into her ear. "Moving west. Facial recognition scan complete. Name―Na Jaemin."

"Who the fuck is that?"

"According to his profile, it seems he has affiliations with the NeoCircuit."

Winter's heart stops. She raises her glock.

She narrows her eyes, and takes aim.

A shot to the head should do it.

His eyes spot her. She fires.

The world slides backward as the bullet whistles towards him. He dodges and slides off the side of the alley. A hiss of pain leaves his gritted teeth as his fingers hook onto leftover searing glass on the pavement. Winter launches herself toward him―the full weight of her body plummets into his, slamming both through a window and inside the abandoned warehouse with such force the air leaves her lungs.

The boy swears under his breath and tries to leap, but she tackles him before he can. Limbs lash out at her. Grip her shoulders, neck, ribs. A fist slams into her jaw.

Sirens still screaming in the distance. Wind whips her face.

Winter tears off his cap, and jams the barrel on instinct toward his skin.

I am not getting paid to kill though.

She swallows. Her arm shakes. The barrel falters.

Disgusting murderer, her mind breathes. But that's practically who she is. She's murdered before. In fact, the plan, from the beginning, was always to slaughter.

Still, it should take barely a thought to jam the bullet to his temple. But his cap is gone, and with the peaking light of the moon baring the humanity of his face, it's difficult to be cruel.

He stares, hard, into her eyes. "You're making a mistake."

A memory of herself many years ago flashes through her mind. Her panic propelling her to fight back against those bad people as she watched her own parents get killed. Her teary vision. The silver glow of her first device with æ-winter, her only guiding light, keeping her company in the blurred dark.

She's trembling, but the answer is painfully clear. "No, I'm not."

But before she can make the final blow, a voice interrupts behind her.

"Fucking finally. It took ages for us to find you," it groans playfully.

Winter barely turned when neon green mist explodes in her face, making her vision turn black.

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『 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬 : if u stan aespa,
i immediately assume u
already stan nct or can
name at least four nct
members lol <33

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