Between the Shadows

Chapter 5

"Is he trying to anger us? What's taking him so long?"

"Stop being so impatient, it's only been a day"

"Yes, but still that is way to long for him, he cannot just take his time like this"

"Give him a chance. This is a hard one, he might need a little more time"

"I don't care about that. We need the target dead NOW!"

"Calm down... Calm down..."

"Don't tell me to calm down!"

"Shadow will get his target, stop being so hard on him"

"Shut up... That boy better finish this one of I'll have him killed"

"Yes, yes... If he doesn't finish it you can do what you want with him"

The day was cold. Shadow's breath formed a white cloud as he stood outside. The wind bit through his coat, chilling him to the bone. He pulled of his gloves and blew on his fingers. They were stiff with cold. After his hands warmed a little, he flexed his hands and pulled on the gloves. He checked his weapons before jumping down to the street. The hunt was about to start.

This was WRONG!

Shadow ran through the streets. It was different this time. He felt like he didn't know what he was doing. The target was one of them. They said that he went rouge, but that couldn't be true. It was wrong. Everything about the mission was wrong. The red head wasn't his enemy. Ace wasn't his enemy!

It took Shadow longer than he thought to find the target. The first shot fired was a miss, for the first time he was glad that he wasn't able to kill the target that easily. It would give him a chance to fight the target face to face. That was what he wanted.

Ace Ursula was the target.

He kept on bumping into people as he ran. Shouts followed Shadow and Ace through the streets. It was strange to chase somebody through the streets in broad daylight. The worst part of the entire mission was that the target was his friend, one of his only friends in the guild. Shadow didn't want to do it but it was the only thing that he could do that wouldn't cause him to hate himself any more than he already did.

"Ewan stop this!" Ace shouted over his shoulder at Shadow, but he knew that Shadow wouldn't listen to him. This was his mission and there was no way that Shadow would just abandon his duty because Ace asked it of him.

Shadow shut away all his emotions, not reacting to Ace. He couldn't let Ace mess with his head on this mission, so he just kept on running. The mission was going to be hard enough without Ace making it harder.

Without warning Ace jumped onto the nearest roof.  Shadow cursed softly before following after him. They were making quite a scene, attracting too much attention. He hated the attention. It made his job just to much harder. Swearing again Shadow continued to follow Ace over the rooftops. Ace was just as fast as Shadow remembered. he was one of the few in the guild that could keep up with Shadow. Ace was leading him somewhere, Shadow was sure of that.

There was no way that Ace would want a fight where people would get injured.  It went against his nature.

After a while Ace jumped down into an alley. Shadow followed him for a while longer on the roof, before jumping down into the alley with Ace. Ace stopped running the moment he heard Shadow in the alley behind him. The moment he turned around one of his swords were in his hand.

The first sword flashed through the air. Shadow hissed as he ran at Ace.

There was no stopping them now.