Cyber Ninja: The Prequel
By Littlesilverstar, silverstar222b@yahoo.com
The story behind the world's deadliest female assassin


The girl stood on the far edge of the gym mat. Her outfit of skintight black
pants and a black sports bra left very little of her tall, slender, athletic,
5'10", 130-pound figure to the imagination. Her ass was round, muscular, and
the perfect size for maximum attractiveness. The bra outlined her small, firm,
perky 34B tits nicely, and her six-pack abs were on display between bra and
pants. Her arms were defined enough that muscle tone was visible even when she
wasn't flexing, yet not so big that they would give her a bulky look. Long
silky black hair, large brown eyes, and a high-cheekboned, model-like face
completed the stunning image.

She tensed her perfect body, preparing herself. She had been practicing her
gymnastics for the past two hours and this would be her final run of
backflips.

She threw herself into a powerful standing tumbling pass, starting with two
one-armed back handsprings, two regular back handsprings, four whipbacks, and
finishing with a double full twisting layout. She landed in a full 180 degree
split on the other end of the mat and pumped her fist in triumph. Using an
elegant kip-up to get back to her feet, the girl stood up and surveyed her
domain.

It was a large, brightly-lit room several hundred feet underground, in a
secret government facility. One half was a well-equipped private gym with
various weights and machines, punching bags, a balance beam, parallel and
uneven bars, a vault, and a big mat for her tumbling passes. The other part of
the room was divided into a living room, a bedroom and bathroom in the back,
and a dining room. There was no kitchen - all her meals were brought to her.
She had been living here for the past seven years, since she was eleven, her
trainers her only companions.

She still remembered the incident that had led her here like it was yesterday.
A dark night at her family's comfortable home in suburbia. A strange noise in
the house. She had grabbed the shotgun from her closet that her father had
given her, and gone to investigate.

And the sight she could never forget, the sight that haunted her dreams to
this very day. Her mother and father, dead in their own bed, blood everywhere,
while four black-clad men with silenced submachine guns stood over them. She
knew that her father worked for a secret government organization. She knew
that he had a dangerous job. But she had kept the thought of losing him and
her mother in this manner buried deep in the subconscious of her
eleven-year-old mind.

Then the rage had come. Opening fire with her shotgun, she had blown three
men's heads off before they could see what was attacking them, then simply
beat the last assassin to death with the butt of her weapon, something
snapping within her completely, laughing with sadistic glee as she continued
to stain the bedroom carpet with his blood and brain matter long after he was
dead. And finally, the tears.

They had come for her at the police station, two men in dark suits and
sunglasses. A quick flash of a badge and the police officers had immediately
stood aside and let them whisk her away. The men in suits had explained it all
to her in the limo on the way to the secret base. How her father had been
working undercover for them, how he had somehow been found out by the
terrorists he had infiltrated. They had given her the chance to train to get
revenge on the terrorists, and naturally she had jumped at the opportunity.

She was already blessed with extraordinary genetic gifts. Her father, a tall,
handsome, blond-haired man, had been a star football quarterback as well as a
great center fielder in baseball, and her mother, a stunning Filipina beauty,
had been a professional dancer and a world champion gymnast. She had inherited
both parents' athleticism, along with her father's height and her mother's
gorgeous dark brown tan. Her training was meant to develop her athletic gifts
to the fullest.

The training was not like anything ordinary people or even pro athletes ever
went through. It was specifically designed to make her into the perfect
killing machine. Already a talented markswoman, she practiced and practiced
until she could outshoot every man on the base with rifle, pistol, or
crossbow. She learned to defeat three skilled, grown men at once in the
kickboxing ring, and gained the ability to do back flips with the grace,
speed, and technical perfection of an Olympic gymnast. As she developed into a
great beauty, she also learned how to use her body for seduction and
infiltration - and, in an unintended lesson, how to manipulate her male
trainers for favors.

Her greatest physical asset, however, was her extraordinary speed and
reflexes, her natural talents taken to new heights by her intense training.
Within a few months of arriving at the facility, she learned how to catch
knives thrown at her and throw them back. She practiced for hours each day
with the throwing knives and the sword, which rapidly became her two favorite
weapons.

Offensively, she was a beautiful but deadly whirlwind of carnage with her
blades. Her defensive abilities were even more impressive, however. By age
fourteen, she was fast enough to deflect arrows with her sword. On her
sixteenth birthday, she shocked the whole base by using her blade to deflect a
handgun bullet for the first time. Repeats of that display proved that the
first time was no fluke. The sight of a teenage girl using only a sword to
defend herself against men firing pistols at her left memories that no man who
saw it could ever forget. Even the bulletproof vest she wore for safety
couldn't lessen the surrealism of the scene. She was now learning to deflect
rifle bullets, which were a lot harder because they were so much faster. But
she was getting better. She hadn't felt the sting of a bullet in her vest for
a couple of weeks now...

Her mind finally came back to the present. Opening an energy drink, she
chugged half of it, then set the bottle down and sat at her computer. Her
physical training done for the day, it was now time for her mental training.

"Hello, Natassia," said the mechanical voice of the computer. "What would you
like to work on today?"

Natassia. That was her real birth name, although some of the men joked that it
stood for New Advanced Tactical Agent for Secret Surveillance, Infiltration,
and Assassination. But she was most commonly known by her nickname of the
Cyber Ninja, after a female video game character who, armed with only a sword,
slaughtered entire armies of gun-toting men.

"Enter silent mode, please," she responded in her confident but feminine
voice. The computer beeped in obedience.

Natassia had been given a specially designed computer program filled with
puzzles, problems, and mysteries of all sorts to test and sharpen her mind. It
had been fun for the first few years, but now, even the hardest puzzles had
become too easy for her. She now developed her mental abilities through
hacking. Both of her parents had had IQs of over 140. She had been given many
IQ tests at the secret base, but had never been allowed to see the results of
any of them. It didn't matter, as she could easily hack into her own personnel
file. Her average IQ from the various tests was 178.

She smiled to herself as she began to type. Today she would attempt to kill
two birds with one stone by trying to hack into the heavily guarded, ultra-top
secret Database of Official Enemies of the Organization. This would provide a
real challenge to stimulate her mind, as well as give her a lead on the
terrorists she was going to take revenge on as soon as her handlers let her
loose. She was eighteen now, and in a couple of weeks they had promised to
unleash her on the mastermind behind her parents' assassination. But a little
early information never hurt...

Fifteen minutes later, she let out a shout of triumph. She was in. She began
going through the files...then stared in shock as a familiar name appeared on
the screen. It was that of her own father. Clicking on it, her mouth dropped
open in horror as she read the text.

The entire Organization she was being trained by was actually a group of
conspirators working to destroy constitutional government in the United States
and replace it with a totalitarian dictatorship. Her father, who had been
working for a different agency, had found out about the evil Organization and
had been planning to blow the whistle on them as soon as he had gathered
enough evidence. The last line in the file simply stated, 'Status:
Terminated.'

Natassia was trembling with rage. They had used her! They had lied to her and
manipulated her when they were the guilty ones all along. And worst of all,
they had just wiped away all the progress she had made slowly repairing her
psychological status. After all these years since her parents' murder, she had
finally felt like she could learn to trust again, that she could playfully
chat and banter with the men training her, that she could have some kind of a
normal life with normal friendships. Now, in a split second, all that had been
yanked away from her for the second time in her life.

The computer screen suddenly began flashing a bright red. "Firewall breach
detected! Security lockdown initiated." A moment later, the monitor went
black.

Natassia discovered that rather than being filled with adrenaline, she now
felt strangely calm. It was all so simple now. There was only one path left
for her to take, and it was the one she had been training for all her life.

She swiftly put on a pair of black leather gloves and knee-high black leather
boots with razor-sharp four-inch stiletto high heels. She then grabbed her
sword off the wall. It was the only weapon she was allowed to keep in her
quarters. She wasn't supposed to have any at all, but it had been one of the
favors she had gotten through her manipulation of her trainers. She gripped
the weapon tightly, causing the muscles in her slender but well-developed,
tanned brown forearms to ripple. Her arms looked thicker than usual thanks to
the wrist-length gloves covering their thinnest part. A determined look
appeared on her model-like face as she approached the door, high heels
clicking.

It was locked, of course. But it didn't matter. With the high-pitched female
scream of a martial arts expert, she unleashed a powerful kick that sent her
right boot straight through the sturdy oak door. The strength of her kick was
tremendous, as the door was four inches thick and had been custom-built in an
attempt to prevent just this sort of thing from happening. Withdrawing her
leg, she reached through the large boot-shaped hole and unlocked the door. She
quickly ran through the brightly lit corridor and around a corner.

Two scientists in white lab coats were standing about fifteen yards away. They
were't yet in the loop about the firewall breach, but they had heard the door
crashing, and now seeing Natassia appearing with her sword, they knew that
something was wrong. They began reaching for the walkie-talkies in their
pockets, but the athletic beauty was far too quick for them. She elegantly
backflipped to them, covering the full distance in less than three seconds,
knocked both walkie-talkies away with a backhanded blow from her
leather-gloved fist, and unleashed a cheerleader-style high kick on the man on
the right. Her razor-sharp stiletto heel drove straight through his skull bone
and into his brain. As she withdrew it with a squishing sound, blood and brown
goo ran down her long black leather boot.

The second scientist was staring in shock and horror at his friend's gruesome
death. He was about to get one that was even worse. Before he could even
react, she stabbed him in the groin, cruelly destroying his cock and testicles
and causing him to let out a howl of agony. As he began falling, she kneed him
in the face, breaking his nose and releasing a massive spray of blood. When he
hit the floor, she finished him by stomping repeatedly on his torso with her
lethal heels.

The next of the many men to die that day was an unfortunate soul who held the
low-ranking position of janitor. He simply had the bad luck to be cleaning an
area very close to Natassia's room when the incident happened. The poor man
didn't suspect danger from the gorgeous girl he watched in her training
sessions and sometimes masturbated to afterwards. He heard a scream, then all
he saw was the young woman storm around a corner, a quick movement of her
toned arm, and the next thing he knew he was on the floor, taking his last
breath as she withdrew her blade from his chest.

The next two men were big and burly, but unarmed. They had trained with the
girl in hand-to-hand combat in the past, before she had become too good for
them. When they heard a scream in the distance, they got up from the protein
shakes and energy bars they were enjoying in the break room and went to
investigate. She greeted them, slicing the first man in half at the waist. She
didn't even bother using her sword on his comrade. Instead, she simply
backflip kicked him, her booted foot striking underneath his jaw and breaking
his neck with a sickening CRACK. Landing perfectly despite her high heels, she
collected a pair of knives from the break room, tucked them into her boots,
and continued on her way. As she left, an alarm began blaring. She simply
smiled to herself. Fresh meat would be coming.

"Freeze!" said a male voice.

She turned. A lone security guard wearing a headset was pointing his pistol at
her. She looked at him coldly and saw him begin quivering, despite the fact
that he was the one with the gun.

"D...drop it right now!" he squeaked out. "I can kill you if you don't.
Management has authorized lethal force."

"Good, because I'm going to kill you," she said, advancing on him. He fired.

Too late, he remembered that she had the ability to deflect bullets with her
sword. She did just that. The bullet flew back into the guard's stomach. He
dropped to the floor, clutching his gut and writhing in agony. She finished
him by stomping on his throat with her ultra-sharp high heel.

Natassia picked up his weapon and looked at the black, mass-

produced, 9mm handgun distastefully. It would have its uses, though. She
tucked the pistol into the back of her pants and moved on.

She knew where the first big battle would be. There was only one way out from
this level located 600 feet underground. They would be waiting for her at the
choke point.

She counted a dozen of them, all armed, half with handguns, the others with
assault rifles. She would have to soften them up first.

The man in command of the platoon was the first to die. One moment, he was
shouting words of confidence to his men, reminding them that they outnumbered
her a dozen to one, that she would have to come through here if she wanted to
escape, that they were ready for her. The next, his speech was ended
permanently by the perfectly thrown knife that lodged in his throat.

Before any of the others could react, four lightning-quick shots rang out,
along with a whooshing sound. Four more men dropped dead with 9mm holes in the
centers of their foreheads, and another fell with a knife in his heart. The
six men with rifles were now all neutralized.

Then something was coming at the survivors with incredible speed. There was
long black hair, black leather, darkly tanned brown skin, and the glint of a
blade as Natassia charged them with a graceful series of one-armed front hand
springs and cart wheels, her sword in her other hand.

They opened fire. Some of the bullets she dodged by timing her cartwheels and
handsprings just right, others she deflected with her sword. Two men were hit
in the legs with deflected bullets and went down, clutching their wounded
limbs. A couple of the others dropped their pistols and reached for the
assault rifles on the floor, trying to increase their firepower. But the
teenage warrior maiden was simply too fast. By the time they had the rifles in
their hands she was on them, launching her body straight into her nearest
opponent in a missile kick, driving her lethal heel straight into his heart
and knocking down the man behind him. At the same time, her sword was in
motion, whirling almost 360 degrees, taking out the last two standing men,
decapitating one and ripping the other's throat wide open.

Two quick snap-kicks from her boots stunned the two guys who had been shot in
the legs and left them groaning and helpless. She looked over at the last man,
who was climbing to his feet. He was a small fellow, several inches shorter
than her in her heels and probably outweighing her by only 15 or 20 pounds. He
would be light enough for her next trick, she decided. She grabbed him and
hurled him straight up into the air. As his arms and legs flailed wildly, she
held up her sword. He landed hard right on her blade, impaled like a juicy
little piggy ready for the roast. Turning her weapon upside down, her
incredibly strong wrist able to support the weight, she watched his corpse
slide onto the floor, blood flowing.

One of the last two men tried to get up. She smashed her knee into his face
with such force that the blow shattered the front of his skull. He flopped
down dead like a sack of potatoes, brain matter oozing out. She jumped onto
the final guy and drew back her fist.

"Please," he begged. "I have a wife and kids. Don't leave them without their
father."

"Well, I had a father and a mother, until you people murdered them," she
responded simply. Then, without further ado, she punched him in the throat,
crushing his windpipe. She got off his corpse with a graceful back walkover.
Quickly going through the bodies, she pulled out her knives and tucked them
back into her boots, then looted a pair of assault rifles, spare ammo, and a
few other things she thought might prove useful in her escape. She knew that
now only a single long corridor lay between her and the elevator that led to
the surface and freedom. The guards usually manning the post at the bottom of
the elevator had come here to join the others in trying to stop her, and now
numbered among the dead at her booted feet.

Sword in hand and rifles slung over her shoulders, she began moving again. She
was still cautious. More men could be coming down at any time, and she knew
that there were still some personnel - non-combat - in the underground complex
behind her, who must have gone into hiding at her breakout. She wanted to go
clear the level room by room and finish them personally, but knew that she
didn't have the time. She knew a way to kill them later, anyway. The betrayal
had drained all the compassion from her now dark heart.

She turned the corner to the long hall - and stopped when she saw that it was
criscrossed with red laser beams. "Level 4 security activated," a mechanical
voice said. An unfortunate mouse that had been crawling in the hallway
scurried into the path of one of the lasers and was instantly vaporized.

Up on the surface, in the heavily guarded base control room, Major Riggins,
the second-in-command of the facility, nodded in satisfaction as he observed
the lasers on the security camera.

"Level 4 security active, target blocked in," he reported. "Shall I send our
stormtroopers in to finish her off, sir?"

Colonel Stein, the base commander, shook his head thoughtfully. "No," he said.
"That bitch slaughtered twelve armed men without breaking a sweat. I don't
want to take any more chances. Initiate Operation Deep Cleanse."

"Deep Cleanse?! The poison gas? Sir, may I remind you that some of our
clerical and administrative personnel are still down there?"

"I stand reminded. Initiate Operation Deep Cleanse. All essential personnel
are up here right now. Everyone down there is expendable. I want that cunt
dead, now."

"Yes, sir." Riggins nodded at a technician, who began pressing buttons.

Meanwhile, Natassia had been scanning the patterns of the lasers carefully,
making calculations in her mind. A smile suddenly appeared on her face.
Tucking her sword into her pants, she raised her arms like a gymnast about to
begin a tumbling run in her floor exercise.

"What the hell is she doing?" muttered Riggins as he continued to watch the
monitor.

Natassia executed a roundoff followed by a series of back handsprings,
elegantly backflipping like a pro-gymnast safely through the lasers, the
combination of her expert mental and physical abilities allowing her to avoid
the lethal red beams.

"Holy shit!" said a guard. "She's back flipping her way through them!"

"How can she do that?!" cried another. "I thought that only worked in the
movies!"

Despite their fear, they and several other men in the room began developing
erections at the sight of sexy Natassia flick-flacking her way to freedom,
female brains and brawn defeating male-developed technology. Colonel Stein,
however, was not so amused. "Hurry it up with the gas procedure! And you, shut
off that elevator!"

"Elevator shut down, sir!" a soldier reported as Natassia finished her
tumbling run, having done thirty back handsprings in less than ten seconds,
taking herself safely past the lasers. Not even bothering to check if the
elevator was working, she leapt into the emergency stairwell and slammed the
door shut behind her.

"Operation Deep Cleanse ready to go!" the technician reported. "Fingerprint
authorization from base commander and second-in-command required, sirs."

Colonel Stein and Major Riggins looked at each other and nodded, then placed
their hands on the screen. There was a beeping noise. "Deep Cleanse initiated.
Gas is flowing," said the technician. "It should get to her in about fifteen
seconds. She has such a long way to climb, we should find her corpse pretty
close to the bottom."

"Unless..." said Riggins.

"Unless what?" asked Stein.

"Unless she has a gas mask, and uses it. Some of our men that she killed down
there were issued them, and she did go through their packs. Her body was
covering the camera I was watching, so I couldn't see exactly what she took,
but she might have taken one."

"She wasn't wearing a mask when we saw her in the corridor," Stein pointed
out. "The gas acts so fast that she would have to have it on beforehand for it
to do any good. By the time she smelled it, it would be too late. And why
would she put it on? She has no idea that Operation Deep Cleanse even exists.
But I guess we can't be too careful." The colonel pointed at four men. "You
guys, go guard the manhole cover that marks the emergency exit. If anything
pops out of there, blast it to hell." The soldiers saluted and hurried off to
their new duty.

"Too bad we don't have security cameras in the stairwell," said Riggins.
"That's something we should install after this shit is over. How long before
it's safe to send men in there?"

"The gas will cover the whole facility in a couple more minutes. Then it'll
take about fifteen minutes to pump it out, sir," the technician answered. The
men nodded and settled down to wait.

Meanwhile, the four men assigned to guard the manhole cover were talking. "I
know she just slaughtered a whole bunch of our buddies, but that Natassia
chick is so fucking hot," said one.

"I know," another agreed. "A babe that can do back flips like that - can you
imagine how good she'd be in bed?"

"Too bad we had to gas her," said the third soldier. "If we'd captured her
alive, I bet Colonel Stein would have let us have our way with her before we
executed her. He's never been one to follow traditional rules and
regulations."

The fourth man, who had a secret fetish for girls who could do back flips,
girls with guns, and girls with swords, but was in denial about it, said, "I
can't believe you guys are talking like that. That bitch killed our friends,
and anyway she's not a normal woman, she's a freak."

"Aw, come on," said one of the others. "I bet you got a bigger hard-on than
any of us while watching her backflip through the lasers."

That led to an angry argument, until finally one soldier said, "Can we fucking
cool it already? Stein and Riggins will be on our asses if they catch us
fucking around like this. Anyway, I'm getting sick of just doing nothing.
Let's put our masks on and pop open the hole."

That stopped the fighting and led to a general agreement, as all of the guys
were young and impatient and not fond of sitting and waiting. They got their
masks on and one soldier slowly pulled the manhole cover open. Then he gasped.

He was staring directly into Natassia's face!

The soldier tried to close the cover, but she kicked it open, striking him in
the face with it and knocking him down. Then, with an explosive burst of
power, she launched herself upward, did an amazing-looking forward somersault
in midair, and landed right on another man, one lethal stiletto heel driving
into his heart and another into his brain. Withdrawing her high heels with a
squishing sound, a swift kick from her big black boot sent the third soldier
into the hole to plunge 600 feet to his death. Looking to the fourth man, the
one who had the secret backflip/gun/sword girl fetish, she saw that he was
already running away in terror, screaming to the others for help.

The soldier who had been hit with the manhole cover stirred and groaned. She
smiled down at him as she wrapped her slim but muscular thighs around his
neck. Then she gave a quick twist of her hips, snapping his neck.

Men began swarming out of the control room like ants. But Natassia was ready
for them. Firing an assault rifle in each hand, she shot them down with deadly
accuracy, really showing off her markswomanship, showing off her wrist
strength as well with her ability to shoot assault rifles one-handed. She
slaughtered fifteen men, pumping them full of holes, shredding male flesh into
paste, before they stopped coming. She swiftly dove behind the cover of a
large boulder to plan her next move.

Inside the control room, chaos reigned. Men were shouting at each other. "Peek
out and check if she's still there!"

"What, are you fucking nuts? YOU look out and check!"

"Where the hell's my spare ammo..."

"I should have volunteered for latrine cleaning duty! Even that would be
better than being stuck in here, waiting to be slaughtered by a superhuman
goddess of death..."

Meanwhile, Colonel Stein placed a call for his personal helicopter, then began
quietly sneaking out the back door. Major Riggins looked over at him. "What
are you doing, sir?"

Stein looked at his men, who were still too busy panicking and screaming to
notice what he was doing, and replied, "Do you want to get out of here with
me, or do you want to stay and become the next victim of the Cyber Ninja in
the name of 'honor'?"

Riggins, self-preservation winning out, nodded and followed the colonel out
the back door. The arguing in the room continued hotter than ever until it was
suddenly interrupted by an extremely loud shattering of glass.

Natassia dropped into the room, booted feet first through the skylight. There
were two quick flicks of her muscular wrists and two men, conveniently the two
least panicky and most ready with their guns, dropped dead with knives in
their eye sockets. Still in midair, she split her legs 180 degrees, kicking
two more men and breaking both of their necks with her lethal split kick.

Landing gracefully, she went to work with her sword. She decapitated three
soldiers who were standing close together with a single, incredibly fast swing
of her blade, then sliced and diced the next two nearest men into a total of
six pieces. Her sixth sense activated, detecting a man who was about to fire
on her. Getting her sword up, she deflected his two bullets back into his
chest, killing him.

Sixth sense still on, her brain registered an assault rifle pointed at her and
her body reacted on instinct, doing a cartwheel. The spray of bullets passed
safely between her legs as she was upside down. Snatching up a lamp as she
landed, she hurled it at the shooter, knocking him down. She danced right
behind a soldier as another man fired. She laughed at his accidental kill of
his comrade. The young man froze in grief and fear at what he had just done.

Natassia brutally disemboweled another victim, smirking as his guts spilled
everywhere and he fell to the floor, then leapt high into the air towards the
shell-shocked man. She swung her sword downwards in an incredibly powerful
blow, chopping him vertically in half from skull to crotch.

The soldier who had been hit with the lamp was now the last man alive in the
room. He recovered from his daze just in time to see the teenage girl
warrioress perform a front tuck somersault to take herself right in front of
him. He reached for his gun, but with two swift swings of her sword she cut
off both his hands. She looked down at him tauntingly as he screamed, staring
in horror at the blood pouring out.

"I'd love to extend playtime a little longer, but I have bigger fish to fry,"
she said. Then, without further ado, she cut off his head.

Natassia looked around the room, nodding in satisfaction at her handiwork, as
she waited for the sound of the helicopter. She knew it was coming. Colonel
Stein was so predictable. Noticing a crossbow on the wall, she smiled.

"Where to, sir?" the helicopter pilot asked as Stein and Riggins jumped on and
it lifted back into the air.

"Anywhere! Just get us away from here as fast as possible!" said the colonel.
The pilot nodded, increasing power.

Suddenly, there came the sound of glass shattering, followed by a loud whine
from the whirlybird as it lurched. Stein, in the copilot's seat, looked to his
left and saw with horror that the pilot had a steel crossbow bolt in his
skull. He began yanking wildly at the controls, having no idea what he was
doing. On the ground about 200 yards away, Natassia pumped her leather-gloved
fist in triumph at her perfect shot.

"Riggins! Can you fly a chopper?" shrieked Stein.

Riggins, in the back seat, groaned. "I'm a fucking infantry officer, sir! How
the fuck would I know how to fly a fucking helicopter?"

The two men screamed so loudly that their shouts were actually audible over
the sound of the wildly descending helicopter. A few seconds later, it crashed
with a spectacular orange fireball.

The man with the girls with gymnastics skills/guns/swords fetish saw the
fireball in the distance and shivered, increasing his pace. After giving the
warning about Natassia coming out from the manhole, in the ensuing panic no
one had noticed him running away like a coward. But he had gotten away. He was
the only one who had gotten away.

He began thinking about what to do next. He could go AWOL and find a new job
and a new life. Or he could make up a story and pretend to be a hero. After
all, who was alive to say he was full of shit? Maybe he'd even get a medal and
a promotion out of it. He'd take any little thing as some sort of salvage from
the horror he had gone through. All because he had chosen to become part of an
operation to take over the government and destroy civil liberties. It wasn't
like it was his fault, he thought. Higher-ranking men like Stein and Riggins
should be the ones held responsible. He was just following orders...

But first, before anything else, he needed a beer. And maybe some junk food,
like nachos or chili cheese fries. He remembered a pub in town that had really
good...

The pain in his left leg came so suddenly that it was only after he fell to
the ground that the scream came out. He looked over and saw with horror that a
wicked-looking steel bolt had pierced straight through his leg bone.
What...how...it couldn't be!

Sure enough, sexy Natassia appeared, a crossbow in her gloved hands. She stood
over him and winked. Despite the horrific pain he was in, he began to get an
erection. He had a fetish for girls with bows too.

"Is that a Snickers bar in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?" she
teased, snickering.

"That's impossible! How did you..." he squeaked out.

"Did you really think I didn't see you? I'm the Cyber Ninja. I see
everything."

"Please!" he begged. "I'll tell you everything about our operation!"

"I know you will," she said simply.

* * *

Natassia wiped the blood and human organ matter off her sword. Out of the
corner of her eye, she could see the vultures already beginning to descend.

She had a list of targets. People behind the conspiracy. People higher-ranking
than the likes of Stein and Riggins. Those she would do for herself, for free.
And when she was done with them, there were plenty of other targets out there
for money. She was fully trained for a career as a professional assassin. Only
now, she would be freelance instead of having to answer to a boss. No
ass-kissing, no "yes, sirs." No waiting for a paycheck to be handed out to her
while the big man kept most of the money for himself. Yes, she would be living
the real American dream.

But one thing she was never going to do again, she decided, was become
emotionally attached or trusting of anyone or anything. She had loved her
parents, and when they had been taken away from her, it had scarred her mind
so deeply that she had barely been able to recover. And just when she had
recovered by trusting people and thinking they were her friends, they had
betrayed her. She had had to go through so much mental pain twice. There would
not be a third time. Ever. She would make sure of that.

She looked over at the lights beginning to come on in the town in the
distance, then up at the stars beginning to come out. For the first time in
seven years, she felt truly at peace.

For the first time in seven years, she giggled like a little girl.

THE END...for now