taty|noir

[tatufreak]

I haven’t posted a fanfic on this forum before, so here’s my first. It’s basically the anime Noir rewritten and crossed with Tatu, and I must hasten to add I don’t own either. (worse luck!) The first chapter will conform quite a lot to the Noir storyline, but it'll become a lot different in later installments. Hope you enjoy.

taty|noir
Chapter One - The Beginning

Paris, France, early twenty-first century.
As the new morning sunlight scythed through the misty morning air above the stirring city, it flowed across the buildings and cut through the spaces in a half-closed venetian blind. This particular blind was hanging in a large bay window in a penthouse apartment, situated in one of the more fashionable districts of the city. The light cast a slatted shadow onto the bed below the window, falling in gentle bands across the face of the pretty girl sleeping there.
She stirred faintly, a dreamy smile flitting across her lips. Opening one misty grey eye, she tested the world as a swimmer dips a toe into cold water – not quite sure whether to plunge forward or draw back. Finally she pushed herself up and rubbed her eyes sleepily, yawning as she did so. Sitting on the bed in the slatted half-light, she glanced around her apartment to check everything was in order before swinging her legs out of the side of the bed and falling back asleep.
Ten minutes later she was in the modern steel-and-glass kitchen that ran down one side of the living room, making a cup of coffee and humming softly to herself. She was dressed in nothing other than an oversized shirt, her tussled strawberry-blonde curls of hair clustering around her birdlike face. Even in her trancelike morning state she was enchanting, and as she began to water her plants in the sunlight anyone alive would have sworn she was beautiful.
How lovely to be alive, she thought, taking her coffee cup to her settee. I’m lucky, I really am.
As she settled down on the elegant sofa, her grey eyes fell on a copy of Vogue that lay strewn carelessly across the glass table. Picking it up, she tucked her feet beneath her and flicked through the pages idly. She had a dress sense all her own but prided herself on playing with fashion as she saw fit.
Nothing caught her wandering interest, so she put the magazine back down and drained her coffee.
“What am I going to do today?” she wondered aloud. “Maybe I have a client.”
Stretching like a cat in the sunshine, she pondered for a second before pushing herself up and walking to her pool table. It was situated in the middle of the open-plan apartment, and she occasionally used it as a computer desk. The rest of the apartment was mostly white, with minimalist furnishings and neutral tones. She conformed to the stylish, timeless theme of steel and glass, sparing no expense on the quality and beauty of her surroundings.
Placing the coffee cup on the pool table next to her computer, she switched the machine on before leaving it to boot up as she dressed. Clothes didn’t really interest Lena – she found them fleetingly interesting, just like the boyfriends she changed weekly. They were all the same; rich, stylish, strikingly good-looking and completely boring.
Slipping into her preferred outfit, she ran a brush through her hair and surveyed herself critically in one of the apartment’s many wall-length mirrors.
Her figure was certainly a breathtaking one. She was wearing a tight-fitting sleeveless red rollneck, which she knew emphasized her admirable proportions. Slightly below her waist she had tied a classic belt, and her hips gave way into a striking, short black skirt. With these clothes she always wore black boots to accent her perfect legs. Her curls were falling out into a slightly-waved classic style, dyed from her natural red to a Parisian ash blonde.
The finishing look was that of a feminine young girl, just tipping the dark side of innocence with large grey eyes and an enchanting smile.
The truth was very different.
Settling lightly on a chair placed against the pool table, the young woman tapped a key and waited for her email to load up. Her eyes quickly scanned the inbox, mentally sorting through the junk mail and unpromising letters. One email caught her eye, but she took the time to delete the useless ones before opening it to read.
Instantly a picture loaded up on the computer screen, causing Lena to blink in bemusement. It was only a small photo, but as she stared at it she found herself captivated. It was simply the head and shoulders of a young girl; a girl who could have been no older than eighteen. She had enormous dark eyes and a beautiful bone structure, her hair was short and black and it flicked out at the ends. She looked like nothing more than a schoolgirl, but her face held a tragic and old expression that Lena couldn’t quite put her finger on. Nevertheless, the openness with which the girl faced the screen disturbed her.
Underneath the picture a single line of words scrolled out, reading:
Come on a voyage with me. Yulia Volkova.
Lena read and reread the sentence. Finally she shrugged and moved her mouse to tap the delete button, but just before she could something happened. Her computer speakers began to play a melody. It was a soft, haunting tune that echoed through Lena’s past and brought hidden memories to the surface.
She paused, her eyes narrowing. What was this? Some sort of sick joke?
The melody repeated itself softly before fading away into the still sunlit air. The young woman was utterly unable to move, frozen in thought. Her eyes never left the screen, but finally and very slowly she reached under the edge of the pool table to withdraw a sleek gun with her questing fingers. Tucking it neatly into her belt, she took her wallet from beside the computer and glanced at the email address that gave her all the information she needed to know.
“Right,” she said softly, eyes cold and sinister, “I guess I’ll be going to Moscow then.”
With this she left the computer and walked out of the apartment, pausing for nothing more than to grab a well-cut black jacket and sling it over her shoulder. She let the door shut with a quiet click behind her, and peace returned to the apartment once more.
In the calm, sunlit air filled with a million dancing specks of dust, everything echoed silently as the melody began to play once more.
_________

The graphic title for this chapter is located here:Click
*TF*

[Ann t..A.T.u.]

hey ur postin here to i love this fic n now i actually wanna c the real show!1

keep it up

[Veggie Delite]

hmm... i really like this.

very nice descriptions

[denial]

ohh I'm going to like this one too!! she got a gun!!!

[tatufreak]

Ann T..a.t.u - thanks for noticing! I'm glad you want to see the show, I can only recommend it.

$in - I'm pleased you like it so far, I do try quite hard with descriptions in taty|noir so I'm really pleased you approve.

Denial - glad you like it, and well done for noticing!

Chapter Two - In the Air

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. On behalf of myself and the cabin crew I’d like to welcome you aboard this flight to Moscow, Russia. Our flying time will be quite considerable, so we’d like to take this opportunity to invite you to make full use of our inflight facilities. The cabin crew will begin to serve drinks and snacks shortly after takeoff, with the evening meal following soon after. As you know this is an overnight flight, so the main lights will be dimmed at ten o’clock local time, when our inflight entertainment system and movie choices become available. If you have any problems please ask any member of the cabin crew and they will be glad to assist you. The main stewardess tonight will be Sophie, and for first class the chaperone tonight is Andre. We wish you a safe and comfortable flight with us, and we shall be taking off shortly.”
Lena handed her jacket to the chaperone, who took it with a courteous nod. As a regular traveller, she never bothered to save money on flights and always flew first-class. Besides, long-run flights in economy would be hell.
Settling back into her large seat, she adjusted the cushions behind her head and unzipped her boots. Plucking the inflight entertainment magazine from the seat pocket next to her, she scanned the movies that were available for the flight, and with a slight sigh of distaste realised she’d already seen all of them.
“I fly too much.”
To her brief surprise, a hand appeared on the curtained parting between her seat and the adjoining, and the screen was pushed back to reveal the owner of the hand – a smiling old woman.
“Do you, dear?” she asked, amiably.
Lena sat back and stared coldly at her. She hated being talked to, especially on flights when her thoughts were her own. In an extremely deadpan voice, she replied.
“Yes, it’s one of the reasons why I fly first class.”
“Oh yes?” asked the woman, genuinely interested, “what’s the other reason?”
Lena looked at her through half-closed eyes, her long eyelashes setting off her classically dark features. “To be alone.”
The old woman went on unperturbed. “Why would you want to be alone, dear? I would have thought a pretty young girl like you would want company…?”
Lena sighed angrily. “Yes, but not of the old woman variety! Goodnight!” With this she yanked at the screen and slid it back, a cold smile creasing her lips at the harrumphing emerging from the other side of the curtain.
She really hated being talked to.
The takeoff was smooth, and the airplane quickly settled into the calm, quiet murmur of a happy plane-load of travellers. Ten o’clock came and went, and took the lights with it. Still Lena was reclining in her seat, having not visibly moved. Her dinner had been delivered and spirited away uneaten half an hour later, and a glass of complementary Champagne bubbled by her right hand.
Her eyes remained half-shut, focusing on nothing really. Lena let her mind drift to wherever it wanted to, and was quietly furious when it returned to the one subject she seemed destined to dwell on – her family.
“Lena!” her father cried, his large grey eyes smiling. His strong arms were spread out in a wide embrace as the child ran towards her gentle, loving Papa. The little girl rushed towards him, her hair tied up with a pink ribbon and the full pink skirt of her child’s dress flying out behind her.
“Papa!” She threw herself into his embrace, closing her eyes and breathing in the deep summer scent of the Corsican sea-meadows. They were covered in yellow flowers and kissed by the light, set high on the cliffs above the aquamarine waves. A few birds circled lazily in the clear blue sky high above, and the sun shone down with the smiling benevolence that can only exist in childhood memories.
Little Lena was so happy then; so carefree. She knew nothing, only the endless summer days with her parents and younger brother in their Corsican mansion, their calm and immortal faces beautiful in her memory – beautiful and eternally young. Her parents had been quiet and very wise, and always gentle and loving towards their two treasured children. The little ones were growing strong and golden in the warm sea air and the ever-present sunshine, their eyes were clear and they were healthy and energetic.
Their father was so proud of them. He worshipped his elder daughter, and had very high hopes for his intelligent little boy, his six-year-old son. They were to carry on the line of the noble Corsican Katins, beheld in the highest circles as both an ancient and noble family.
Lena began to rub her temples, a headache beginning to throb through her head.
This was where her memory became sketchy. All she knew was that tiled pattern of their floor, those wide black-and-yellow tiles. She was walking slowly towards the large double-doors at the end of a corridor, her big grey eyes troubled and wide. Something was calling her towards and beyond the doors, into the large sitting room that lay beyond – the sitting room where her beloved family was relaxing.
Clutching her teddy bear to her heart, she took hesitant steps towards those doors. Something was desperately wrong, and dread was beginning to lay its icy grip on her heart. Placing a tiny hand against the cold, hard wood, she pushed it aside gently and moved slowly into the room. Suddenly her teddy bear fell from her hands as her grey eyes took in the scene revealed to her; the sight that met her gaze was…
…utterly gone.
Lena shoved the bases of her palms into her eyes and rubbed them hard, frustration building into anxiety. She’d blocked out almost the entirety of her childhood memories, with only half-formed and extremely disturbing flashbacks to remind her that she’d ever been young at all.
The next thing she’d known, she was boarding at a Finishing school in the English countryside, shivering as the unnaturally cold drizzle soaked through her rapidly paling skin, crying as the trauma of her blocked out memories washed over her again and again. She had no friends; she preferred the soliditude of her anguish to their menial, cheery gossiping. Working her pain out into her studies, Lena left the school under protection of an unknown guardian with superb grades, and still no idea where her family had so abruptly vanished to. She’d been provided for, and once she reached the age of eighteen had come into an unexpected fortune of undisclosed millions. With this she’d uprooted herself and left for the sophistication and aloofness of the young city of Paris, where she could forget about forgetting and get on with her new life. She had worked long and hard to try and make sense of her fragmented life, and had acquired discipline and ruthlessness, becoming a cold, elegant and distant beauty with a heart of absolute ice. However, this was not the end of her story so far, not even a part of it.
Lena had another skill.
She was inexplicably, extremely and unflinchingly good at killing. From the very earliest England days, her guardian had anonymously provided for her, with stipulations about classes she must attend. From the first the broken child was trained studiously in the arts of fencing, gymnastics, athletics and duelling. Upon reaching the age of ten, she was drilled furiously in martial arts, quickly acquiring knowledge of Taekwondo, Karate, Kung fu, White Tiger, and the darker art of Jeet Kwan Do. She was encouraged to spend her time in exercise and fitness, practising – always practising.
When she turned twelve, Lena was taken to her first shooting lesson. Instantly taking to it with an inexplicable avarice, she began to dedicate her studying time to learning about weapons, guns in particular. Something within her seemed to stir and awaken with the tremors of firing, with the soft clink of empty shells falling, with the acrid smell of gunpowder. As she progressed in years, the Corsican child became sleek and sharp, excelling her tutors’ wildest expectations. She handled guns with the beauty and simplicity of a born natural, prompting no end of strange looks and whispered conversations among her teachers. Fighting came naturally to her, and when by the end of her formal education she had mastered Judo and unprotected Fencing, she was renowned as a prominent future success in the field of combat sports. In an obscure way, Lena felt tied to her ability to kill. It wasn’t that she liked it – it was just that she was very good at it. Terminally so.
Seeing as how it seemed to be something she could do far better than anyone else, she began to invest interest in it, emerging with a career clear in her mind.
Lena Katin was to be a private Assassin, paid for death. She knew the price of life to a penny, but it was never the money that interested her or drew her to her job; she didn’t need it. It was simply something deeper than that, but she had never been able to work out exactly what…or maybe she was afraid to.
She hadn’t delved too deeply into the issue, enjoying instead her time in Paris among the young and rich. She was not a socialite, but she attended certain parties and ran in certain circles, and was occasionally contacted by anonymous clients requesting formally that a certain contact of theirs be “eliminated”. In these cases the requested man or woman simply disappeared from society, quietly and without fuss a few days later. Lena was extremely good at her life – by day she was a rich, elegant Parisian plaything with a penthouse apartment – by night an invisible Assassin, cloaked in the shadows. Everything was, up to an extent, fine.
Or it had been, up to that morning.
How could an email from a Moscow school address, a simple play of a few soft notes and the honest and open picture of a young girl shake Lena’s carefully built up world to its foundations?
Sitting now in the warm airplane, gazing out of a hazy window at the oceans below, the young Assassin’s eyebrows furrowed and her eyes became cold and determined.
Whatever it is, she vowed silently, I’ll find out.

[Veggie Delite]

i already read the story written so far on the other forum, and i must say it's excellent

maybe u could post everything here too

now i'm interested in that noir anim too...

[denial]

She's an assassin!! OMG! where is prostrel?? *looks around* ..
PROSTREL!!! YOU SHOULD READ THIS!!!

thanks for update tatufreak! update soon!

[denial]

By: tatufreak

Thank you so much for the comments! Hope you enjoy C3, I know it's moving quite slowly so far but setting the scene's important, hope you guys agree...and don't worry, it's gonna get very cool soon, I promise.

Chapter three - Surveillance

Banner:
http://img13.photobucket.com/albums/...apterthree.jpg

Whirrrrrp. Whirrrrrrp. Whirrrrrp.
Lena sighed in complete apathy as she played with her electric window. Sitting in a long red convertible, she had the hood down and the heating at full blast.
“Cold little hole,” she muttered, tapping the dashboard dials. Pulling her jacket closer around her small frame, she shivered in the Moscow winter air, finding herself completely unprepared for the bitter temperatures. Her hired car was drawn alongside a curb near a school. It was a local city school, just one of many, but Lena had done some fast detective work and located its position from the email address the mysterious Yulia Volkova had used.
Now, sitting outside the building itself, Lena pursed her lips with an inscrutable expression. The school was one of the city’s many state-supported educational establishments, battling to teach a few hundred children on a tiny budget and fighting against recessions and over-jealous cost cutting. It reeked of Communism and discipline, echoing lifelessly into the dull streets. In the distance a bell rang, signalling the end of the day. Within moments children and young adults appeared from nowhere, milling around and chatting.
The scene was a dismal one. Slabs of broken and dusty concrete were creased with mud and people. They stood around and shouted at each other, heavy backpacks pulling them down while they talked aimless babble in a language Lena couldn’t understand. Behind them rose the school building, grey and unwelcoming. Mostly prefabricated, it had the bitter taste of disappointment about it that brought one thought to the watching Assassin’s mind – This is where dreams are broken by reality.
The school building sat like a watching animal with windows for eyes, greedily sucking in the life of the unconscious students that milled around inside it. The dismal scene was overhung ominously by a heavy black sky; rain was beginning to sleet the ground as the wind chilled the skinny bare legs of the girls wearing their strictly compulsory uniforms.
One girl in particular caught Lena’s eye instantly. She was standing in the centre of the crowd with her back to the Assassin, surrounded by chattering friends. Something about her fearless posture and brave stance gave her a quaintly herolike attitude, and when Lena caught a glimpse of her short black hair she knew she’d found her mysterious contact.
So, the Parisian said to herself, what now?
As if in response to her question, the younger girl suddenly looked round. The wind whipped a frenzy around Lena’s car and strange shouts seemed to echo through the air as dark crashed into grey. The hunter and the hunted locked gaze, the former suspicious and angry, the latter honest and sad.
“Who are you?” Lena whispered, and found in surprise and shock that she was unable to hold the girl’s open stare. Her eyes dropped of their own accord in front of the purity evident in the dark child’s face. In a flash the young Parisian was ashamed – terribly ashamed…but of what?
Lena frowned. She had no idea, and this was stupid. She lifted her eyes again, and with the truth dawned on her with slow horror.
The girl was gone.
As her eyes quickly searched for the student in the crowd, Lena cursed in fury. How could she have lost her? She had been right there, among the busy crowd, right there next to the walkway…
Quickly the Assassin revved her car and threw her arm across the back of the passenger seat, twisting round to see behind her as she backed up. Students parted around the red car as it reversed, conscious that the driver was in a hurry. Indeed she was, and as Lena twisted the steering wheel to execute a perfect three point turn she was almost ready to plough right through the crowd to find the dark-haired girl. She didn’t have to however, and soon found herself cruising grimly along the street perpendicular to the school, eyes firmly locked on the little figure that was calmly walking along in front of her. Lena was sure the girl knew she was there, but it was obvious that she didn’t care or simply wasn’t afraid.
Crawling along at walking pace only served to aggravate the young Assassin’s already-tense mood, but it was not for nothing that she’d been drilled in the calm of martial arts to combat her flashing natural temper. She could wait just as long as this young Yulia could.
Yulia Volkova. The name rang a bell – it was achingly faint and distant, but it certainly touched a memory buried deep in the locked off part of Lena’s mind. The sight of the girl had incapacitated her briefly as the swirling depths had temporarily parted to reveal something terrible, tragic, beautiful…
Lena suddenly snapped herself out of her reverie. They seemed to have reached a destination – a dilapidated and abandoned building painted in drab shades of grey where the brown bricks didn’t show through the cracks. Without hesitation or slowing the girl continued to walk towards the ancient office block, drawing Lena tantalisingly in, drawing ever closer.
The young student quietly paused in her stride, causing the Assassin to draw in her breath silently. With a quick glance to the left, the dark child turned into a doorway in the side of the building and disappeared from sight.
Back in the car, Lena forced herself to count to five slowly.
One…two…three…here’s my gun…let’s go.
Snapping back the door handle, she slid from the convertible and loaded her weapon with the speed and confidence of a master. She didn’t think that she’d need it to face a young girl, but as Lena leaned against the side of the car her eyes dropped to study the ground with an unexpected twinge of regret. She was ruthless, heartless and completely merciless, trained that way since childhood. With a feeling of guilt that she felt none at all, she knew that if this pursuit was for nothing more productive than a sick joke, there would be one less student attending the decrepit Moscow school in the morning.
A twisted smile creased her pretty face as a dark expression infused her blue-grey eyes with determination, chasing away the fleeting moment of innocence. Lena wasn’t cruel really, she was just terribly good, both at her job and at chasing away her self-destructive seconds of humanity. She had to be a ruthless machine or she would never survive in the world she had created for herself.
After judging a suitable amount of time to have passed the Assassin shrugged off momentary feelings of hesitation at the pursuit of the young Yulia, busying instead herself with the preparation of her gun and checking the scene for possible exits and escape routes, just in case anything went wrong.
Taking a deep breath, Lena slid her gun into her purse and began strolling towards the building, Assassin senses on high alert.
She was ready for anything that came at her, and her spine tingled in anticipation of a chase.
"Let the game begin."

[denial]

By: tatufreak

As if by magic...

Chapter four – Intrigue
http://img13.photobucket.com/albums/...hapterfour.jpg


Footsteps echoed through the empty halls, retreating into distant obscurity.
Rats scuttled in consternation, their quivering whiskers and paws frozen in mid-activity.
Darkness pervaded every corner of the abandoned building; sinister doors and twisting staircases ricocheting loneliness as they watched the still intruder with malicious silence. Here in the stillness Lena waited patiently, straining her ears for any subtle noise that might betray the position of her young target.
Above and far away she could hear footfalls, but as she twisted her head upwards she couldn’t pinpoint the direction. The empty walls and corridors of the building echoed the tiniest sounds, completely distorting any noises and their location.
Lena fought the urge to curse before she began to move. She skirted a fallen beam and ducked under a low-hanging cobweb, brushing it aside with annoyance as she started to mount the stairs. Taking them two at a time with her gun now in her hands and ready for action, she sighted at shadows and mentally admonished herself for her jumpiness.
“An Assassin is always completely calm. We are masters of killing, the glorious perpetrators of remunerated justice. We hold the keys to the door of the Reaper; to be Assassinated is to be privileged - you will meet your Maker at the hands of an artiste. We are a silent assembly of shadows, our minds are always crystal clear and we know no fear. We are deadly, precise, and above all we act with sophistication and composure. We are the elite, and nothing can challenge us. We are the Enigma.”
Lena repeated the words of her Mentor in her head. He had been a mysterious man, engaged for one session when her overall fighting tutor had fallen briefly ill. The impressionable teenager had enquired about Assassination, and the man had replied with that exact speech. Lena had memorised it thoroughly and could recall it at any time. It usually calmed her down, but right now her edginess was more due to the surreality of stalking a little girl than to any fear.
Let’s get this over with.
On the second floor all was still. Ancient beams and exposed bricks lay strewn over the uneven floor, dusty cobwebs hung over piles of rubble and debris. In some places distorted squares of light filtered through the windows, but the majority of the level was bathed in darkness.
Suddenly a little blonde girl turned a somersault and appeared on the other side of a large debris pile, gun extended and eyes searching for movement. Upon seeing nothing, she turned to the left and regarded the scene for any traces of her target, ears open for any noises.
Lena’s head whipped around as footsteps echoed high above her. Without pausing she was on her feet, making her way towards the stairs. Once she’d reached them however, the Assassin was briefly annoyed at finding the third flight entirely missing.
Right then.
Sliding her gun into her belt, she braced herself against the still-present balustrade of the staircase. The marble top was about ten inches wide, completely smooth, and sloped at a forty-degree angle. With a sudden burst of speed Lena pulled herself up, relying on the power of her arms and the sturdy-looking banister support pillars. In no time she’d reached the third floor, and was pleased at finding the next staircase present and correct. Once on the fourth floor however, Lena’s eyes widened as she began to understand exactly what was so strange about the building.
Don’t be stupid, it’s not weird - it was just never built. Not an ancient building, an ancient building site. It’s just a little change of scenario, don’t get thrown off the course.
Overcoming her momentary disconcertion, the gun-weilding Parisian surveyed the scene with trained eyes, assessing her possible routes. The entire fourth level was floor and ceilingless, instead exposed iron and steel beams snaked across the the storey, connecting and twisting around each other.
So that’s why her footsteps echoed like that. How many floors can there be?Let’s see…the building is ten windows high, so not counting ground floor, that’s six to go from now. Surely if I can get past this level the going will be easier…
Fate slipped its icy fingers under Lena’s chin and pulled her head upwards.
Most of the rest of the building was constructed of those same beams and bars.
Suddenly a shadow appeared momentarily far above, catching the corner of Lena’s eye. When she’d turned it was gone, but the Assassin’s senses were stimulated with a thrill, and in no time she was tackling the beams with alacrity.
Swinging herself upwards and along, she reflected that it was probably a good idea that she’d been forced to run obstacle courses in her childhood training days. She was pleased with her muscles and strength, it was obviously not for nothing that she spent most of her days at the gym and the climbing wall. Lena worked hard, and she most definitely got places.
Suddenly she froze, eyes searching up and above. A mechanical noise echoed down the shaft, like a metallic crunch. It was not the noise that had made her pause, it was the proximity. Whatever it was, it had been very, very close.
Now she was two floors higher than she had been, and found to her surprise that at the six storey parts of the floor had been reintroduced. She heaved herself up onto a platform overlooking the central empty space, taking her gun in her hands and quickly sighting to make sure her target wasn’t on that particular level.
That was when she saw it.
Tucked behind a fallen beam, almost completely hidden from sight was a doorway. The door swung from its hinges, and Lena figured the mechanical sound she’d heard earlier was when Yulia Volkova had opened and gone through it.
Here we go.
There was a pause. The building watched, the rats stopped scuttling, and in the sunset sky high above the wheeling birds glanced down to see two figures; one, a small dark child, sitting on an extending beam high above the city, back turned to the other - a blonde girl who was holding a gun to her dark head.
Lena remained in that position for just a second, before she snapped into sense and forced herself to slip her gun back into her purse, nevertheless keeping her hand firmly fixed on it.
“Now,” she said in a hard voice, “you know I’ve been following you.”
The faintest of breezes blew over the two girls, ruffling their hair. Silence filled the air, and the black-haired student gave no idication of having heard the blonde, who tried again.
“What I want to know is, who are you? Why did you contact me?”
Frustration built up in her, and she moved quickly. Grabbing a handful of Yulia’s short dark hair, she pulled her head backwards while she leaned forwards, forcing the child to comply.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” she whispered through gritted teeth, fingering her gun, “tell me exactly who you are and why you contacted me. I’ll count to three…”
Very, very slowly, the dark haired child reached down into her skirt pocket. Her slender fingers quested for an object, which she found and withdrew with a fragile sense of calm. Lena craned forward to see that it was a round silver watch, ornate and decorated with strange figures.
As the younger girl pressed a tiny button, the lid flipped open and the Assassin pulled back, shocked. She let go of the student’s dark hair and stepped away, eyes wide with horror and tears.
The simple melody that echoed in the still air brought half-formed memories flooding back to her, fragmented and broken. They stirred in her mind and threatened to break down her carefully constructed barriers, boiling and angry. She knew the melody, she knew the watch, she knew the girl, but how? As tears rolled down her cheeks, Lena stared at the child sitting in front of her.
“Who am I?” she whispered, and that was when the first bullet struck her.[/quote]

[denial]

By: tatufreak

Chapter five – Battle
http://img13.photobucket.com/albums/...hapterfive.jpg

Time slowed.
Lena was heavily conscious of her slow breathing, of the rip of the bullet through her skin. In a funny way, she was also distinctly aware of a sense of reason. It couldn’t have been the girl who had shot her – she was still sitting demurely in front of her. Who was it then? And how did her highly trained senses overlook them?
As she watched the slowed bullet spiral through her arm and out the other side, Lena cracked a faint, ironic smile. She’d been shot. She was never shot. They’d pay for this.
Acting before the pain reached her, the blonde whipped her gun out of her purse with her unhurt left arm and brought it round so that her wrist was pressing down on her bicep shot-wound. With this pressure she briefly stemmed the instant bleeding, while at the same time getting herself ready for her shot. As she turned her head to target the enemy, she was shocked to find not one but two attackers. They were suited men, with uniform buzz-cuts and heavy muscles. Lena took in no more than this, because with two single shots she had killed both of them.
“Bastards! Who are they?” she hissed, but as she turned around all thought of her assailants was banished from her mind, probably due to the fact that the black-haired girl had disappeared into thin air. Lena was left standing on the single beam stretching out six storeys above the street below, utterly confused and alone.
A movement caught her eye beneath her, giving her an idea of how the girl had disappeared. She’d swung herself down onto a rickety scaffold platform three floors below, somehow surviving the long drop and managing to get the hard jump perfectly aimed.
“You set me up! Now you’re gonna pay, just the same way they did!” Lena sprinted back inside the doorway, knowing that attempting the jump with one seriously injured arm was stupid and unrealistic. The moment she got inside shots rang out through the building, confusing her. She threw herself behind a pile of rubble and winced as her arm took the impact. She still had her left wrist pressed against the wound to stem the bleeding, so she’d have to fire over her shoulder – tricky, but by no means impossible.
How many are there? Six? And one upstairs…Yes. First target, the one on the beam near the window. The instantaneous thought flashed through her mind as Lena levelled her weapon and shot at him. She was precise, but it still took two shots to hit him. Then she turned herself around and shot furiously at the other visible attackers, before the terrible moment when she knew she had to reload.
Lena stared at her gun in absolute horror, realising that with her one incapacited arm, reloading was almost impossible. If only she could reach her prepared cartridge in time…
Strong arms gripped her back as a hand snaked around her neck. One of the men knocked her gun out of her hand while the other twisted her left arm painfully behind her back.
“Got her!” he grunted, and the other men made their way towards the girl, smiles on their hard faces.
“Little tiger,” Lena heard, and her eyes ignited with twin sparks of fire.
“Put up quite a fight,” another attacker said, and the fourth nodded. “Shame about Tony, though.”
Suddenly their chatter ceased as the fifth and final member of the squad approached them. Lena guessed correctly that he was the team leader. He had the same suit and haircut, but his hair was greying slightly and his eyes were a dull shade of blue.
“Hold her,” he said brusquely, and the squad members responded by crouching by Lena, pushing her to the floor. She struggled briefly, but realised it was of no use. Four enormous men were too much even for her, there was no doubt that she was trapped. The team leader stood at her feet. He stared down at her without a trace of regret or humanity, and Lena shivered as she sensed the cruelty present in the man’s heart. He withdrew a silver gun from its holster, the blonde was unable to see the make or type. It was simply her last view at a gun, the anonymous weapon with which the young Assassin was to be so crudely executed.
The team leader stared down at her, his pale eyes radiating contempt. Levelling the gun at her horizontal head, his lips parted in a final cruel smile.
In the air far above, birds scattered in surprise as below them a loud shot rang out.

Lena’s eyes flickered open; she was only vaguely aware of what happened next.
On her left one of the men began to spiral backwards slowly, his flailing arms flying behind him and smacking against the body of his fellow soldier. His head was thrown back by the impact of the shot, and as the other three crouching men stared at him in horror, three more shots rang out with deadly accuracy, accompanied by the faint and unexplained sound of glass shattering up above. The four men collapsed to the ground as the squad leader stared at a figure moving above Lena’s head.
What happened to the guy upstairs?
A dark shadow appeared outside the seventh storey window, viewed through a large hole in the ceiling above. It became a muscled shape flying through the air, propelled by a spectacular flip. The heavy man slammed down onto a platform just outside, and a smaller figure was thrown through the air by his momentum. It was holding the man’s neck by the tie, and Yulia Volkova’s slender figure could be recognised by the school uniform and fluttering skirt. She flipped neatly over the man’s head and dropped down below him, still hanging onto the man’s tie. From this she was suspended above the exterior beam of the sixth storey for just a moment, choking the man above her, silhouetted vibrantly against the sunset-crimson sky outside. When she was certain he was dead, she dropped and rolled along the beam, emerging from the doorway. Walking confidently towards Lena, she paused just above her head.
The blonde fought unconsciousness from shock, blood loss and low blood sugar levels. She was growing faint, her vision was fading and growing darker. With a last effort she twisted her head to see the figure standing just above her.
In the last moment she took in the figure of a young student, achingly fragile and slender. Her one arm rested by her side while the other was outstretched, aiming an unfamiliar gun straight at the squadron leader’s heart. With her last bolts of sense, Lena found herself awed by the young Yulia’s perfect accuracy and gun control. She couldn’t be younger than eighteen; no one with that sort of training could possibly be younger than the Assassin herself. She was standing straight and fearlessly, a brave pure figure of retribution. Her eyes were filled with sadness, but also a faint look of inevitability.
At Lena’s feet the squadron leader was standing motionless, his gun resting at his side and his pale eyes locked onto those of the young student. A faint smile remained frozen onto his thin lips, and very slowly he inclined his head in a nod of twisted respect.
Lena had no more strength left in her fragile body. She finally slipped from consciousness, but just before the world faded into complete darkness, up above her…desperately far away…she heard a single shot - and then the quiet sound of a man falling to the ground at her feet.
She knew nothing more.

[denial]

By: tatufreak


Chapter six - Healing
http://img13.photobucket.com/albums/...Chaptersix.jpg

“More soup?”
Lena glanced up at the gentle figure hovering above her.
“No.”
The student settled herself down on the floor, sitting the opposite side of the coffee table to her guest.
The blonde surveyed the apartment. It was done in a simple Japanese style. There were no chairs, just a soft rug on the floor where they were currently reclining.
Lena winced at her arm. It had been well bandaged and cleaned by her obliging host, after a brief checkup in a local hospital. It had been carefully examined, an IV had been provided, and Lena sighed at the thought of the long period of rest and recuperation she knew she'd need.
Now she was given her first real opportunity to examine her contact in the flesh. The student sat across from her, willingly complying with her guest’s careful scrutiny as she demurely ate her soup.
She was a pretty little thing, in a fragile way. An observer’s first instinct was to protect her; she looked achingly sad and regretful. Her black hair was soft and flicky, surrounding her face to set off her dark features and perfect complexion. Her eyes were enormous and soulful, holding the same look of poignant gentleness that had been portrayed in the photo.
Now the two girls were face-to-face, there was no doubt in Lena’s mind that her host was eighteen or less. She was tiny.
“So,” she said, breaking the silence, “are you going to tell me who you are, finally? Or do I have to get shot again?”
The student froze in her eating. She didn’t lift her eyes, studying the soup with something like regret. At last she responded, reaching down again into her pocket and withdrawing a another item, which she placed upon the table in front of her.
Lena reached forward and slid what looked like a credit card towards her. On closer inspection it was revealed to be a student ID card, laminated with the picture of the girl sitting in front of her. She scanned the unfamiliar Russian text before glancing up.
“What does it say?” she demanded.
Instantly the girl answered, half-closing her eyes in a way that showed Lena she had obviously studied the card many, many times.
“Yulia Volkova, student of the Moscow school of literature and art, student number three-oh-eight-one-six, class number four-oh-five, age eighteen, member of the advanced class.”
There was an ominous pause, and then Yulia lifted her red-brown eyes to meet those of her guest.
“No,” the latter replied. “Who are you really?”
Another dangerous pause, then the dark-haired girl smiled faintly.
“Ta.”
“Ta?”
“It’s a Russian word. It means ‘she’.”
Lena considered this. Finally she shrugged, eyes still narrowed and suspicious.
“It’s as good a name as any, I guess. So, you gonna tell me anything else about you?”
Yulia stared down at the table, hands folded quietly in her lap.
“I…I don’t know about myself. I don’t even know who I am, apart from what it says on the student card. I’m quite short and slender, I seem to have strong muscles, I have red eyes and short dark hair, I go to a Moscow school and have this apartment in the downtown city, I sometimes go to a building site not far from here to think, I have this,” she pointed at a smooth little scar running down her inner arm, “and this,” to a smaller scarline above her right eyebrow, “otherwise I have no other distinguishing features. I have this gun.”
Yulia produced the weapon from below the table, laying down on the tabletop. Lena started, watching the girl suspiciously for any sign of an attack. Her fears were unfounded as the demure student begun to unload the gun swiftly and with competence.
“I woke up two days ago, with two things in my mind. The first – that I was Ta, and the second, that I must contact Lena Katin in Corsica, Professional Assassin.”
Lena watched the girl as she spoke, assessing her for signs of untruthfulness. Either she was an extremely good actress, or she was genuinely telling the truth. Somehow, catching her light brown eyes, Lena seriously doubted she could be lying.
“I can cook. Only a little really, but I can make food. I…”
Yulia stared down at the completely disassembled parts of her gun lying on the table in front of her. Each piece was carefully laid out perpendicular to its neighbour, cleaned and ready for reassembling. Glancing up to meet Lena’s gaze, the blonde saw her eyes were filled with dismayed tears.
“How do I know how to do this?”
The Parisian ignored the question, examining her long nails with a bored yawn, only the technical side interesting her.
“That’s a point,” she said, half to herself, “how do you know how to do that? Not that I care, but your gun-handling skills are quite advanced for your age.” Although she wouldn’t let it be shown, in truth Lena was furiously jealous of the younger girl’s seemingly far superior ability with weapons and fighting. Whereas she had had to work and push her entire life to get where she was, the little Russian girl seemed to be absolutely natural with everything the blonde could do, and perhaps with even more. Either she was a born phenomenon, or she had had training so unbelievably good, that…
Lena shivered and changed the subject.
“So,” she said, almost casually, “what’s with the watch?”
Yulia glanced down at the bulge in her pocket.
“I found it with the gun and the ID card when I woke up.”
“And you have no memory about your previous life?”
“None at all.”
“How about the ID card? Is it real?”
Yulia stared down at the square, shiny piece of plastic. She picked it up between her slim fingers and toyed with it, an inexplicable expression on her face.
“I…I don’t know. It’s the only link I have, but it could so easily be fake…”
Lena rolled her eyes. Enough with the mush already.
“So until you find out, remember or have some sort of flashback, you’re Yulia Volkova, Moscow student who for some weird reason has a way with guns. And doesn’t mind killing,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
Yulia’s eyes travelled up to meet hers, and instantly became cloudy with regret and confusion.
“It’s not that I don’t mind it. I…it…I don’t know. It’s just a part of my life, like sleeping and eating. But I feel bad about not caring. Why don’t I care, Tu?”
“Tu?” questioned Lena, pulling back.
Yulia gave a tiny, self-conscious laugh. “Sorry…it’s just…tu means ‘her’ in Russian. And if I’m not mistaken, it means ‘you’ in French. I linked them, and I guess I’ve been calling you Tu all along in my mind. Sometimes things that are locked inside have a way of coming out.”
Lena chose to ignore the hidden meaning behind the last phrase.
“Tu,” she murmured, “Tu. It has a ring. Tu – you – her. I like that.”
Now she became conscious that Yulia was watching her with her big brown eyes, something like fragile, hopeless affection beginning to grow in her face for her new Assassin friend.
Very slowly the dark-haired girl leaned forward on the table, never breaking their locked gaze. She coloured with a delightful blush at the next question, but it had to be asked. Very shyly, the younger girl began the speech that would define the next few vital months of her life.
“Tu…Lena…I have no knowledge of my life. I’m a stranger to my own skin. I don’t know my own face, nor my body. It’s as if up to this time I existed in nothing but two facts; I am Ta, and I must contact you. I have done the latter, but just to this moment I had no idea why. Now I think I’m starting to guess.” She glanced down at her hands, where her gun lay perfectly reassembled. “We’re both extremely competent at killing; it doesn’t matter why. I can tell you like to work alone, but now I have something to ask you.”
Lena gave no signal, sitting silently across from Yulia. Her steel blue eyes searched the younger girl, suspecting the question but waiting for the words.
“If I had to guess, I’d say you were a professional Assassin. Generally you prefer to work on your own, but sometimes, rarely, two killers of the same calibre meet under not unfriendly circumstances,” here Yulia held up a hand as Lena opened her mouth. “Don’t speak. I need you to listen to me. We’re not at each other’s throats,”
“…yet…” muttered Lena, darkly.
“Yet,” amended Yulia amiably, “and you have to admit that in situations like the one today it helps having someone to watch your back. I think if you learned to trust me we could get along, and if we collaborated on an Assassination team…there’d never be anyone to match us. No, don’t protest, listen to my terms.”
Lena, surprised by the dark girl’s forceful streak, subsided.
“We’d work as a team. I’d follow your orders, help you on missions and do menial scout work. You can take all the glory, you can take all the prizes. I want no payment, the only help I require from you is your aid in helping me remember where I’m from and who I am.”
Yulia lapsed back into her sad shyness, shocked and exhausted at her own outburst. Lena sat opposite her, hard eyes shining in the gentle light. A pause followed, probably only a minute long but seeming like an eternity. The blonde’s mind was racing furiously as she considered the brunette’s timid proposal.
Is she lying? Is she telling the truth? How could someone that good at killing really need my help? If I say yes, I could lose my freedom…she’d be hard to get rid of, she could hang around my neck if she gets too emotional. And yet; if I say no, I might possibly lose the greatest partner I could ever hope for, and then there’s that watch. I’m sure she holds a key to my past, and I guess she could prove really useful.
Lena glanced up and caught Yulia’s desperately hopeful gaze. For a second a lump hovered in her throat as a warm feeling stirred her heart from deep inside. It was almost as if the ice had melted – her heart had defrosted a little from the dark-haired, fragile girl’s proposal of partnership. Then the lump went away and she froze again. This would be a strict business relationship, nothing more…or would it? She could already feel herself warming to this girl, even if it was in the tiniest, most inconspicuous amount possible. Any friendships could potentially destroy an Assassin – specially a friendship with someone she didn’t know or trust.
Lena knew what she had to do. Glancing into those deep brown eyes she found it hard, but then again she had never been one to back down from hard tasks. This she would find harder than forgetting, harder than fighting, harder even than killing…but she had to do it. There was simply no alternative.
She took a deep breath and stared right into Yulia’s eyes, locking their gaze in a mix of dark and light.
“Yulia,” she said, softly, “I hereby accept your proposal.”
As the dark girl’s eyes slowly began to fill with an expression of thankfulness, Lena shook her head, frowning.
“We will live in Paris, in my apartment. We will work together, you will follow my leads and you will not question any of my judgements or decisions. Our partnership will be formal, no unnecessary communication will be welcome. In return I will do my best to help you find out about who you are and where you’re from.”
Now Lena leaned forward, deadly serious. Her tone dropped slightly, and the next words she spoke were not unkind, but brutally honest.
“I want you to know something, Yulia. I work alone. I will always be alone, you are just a disposable part of this stage of my life. I will fulfil my agreement with you, but I want you to remember this.”
Now she took a deep breath. The sad, dark-haired girl remained fixed on every word she said, waiting for the final statement, staring down at her hands clasped so desperately together in her lap. Lena paused briefly, then continued.
“When the time comes that we know everything about you; when the day comes that we have discovered every detail to your past; when the hour comes that we finally know who you really are…you know that will be when I will have to kill you.”
Lena said this quietly and honestly, and when she’d finished, Yulia looked up and met her gaze unflinchingly. With a slow light her eyes flooded with secret joy as she leaned forward to reply.
“I shall look forward to that day,” she answered, softly.
Lena nodded, having received an answer to her affirmation. Not, perhaps, the one she’d been expecting – but an answer nevertheless. She extended her hand, which Yulia took seriously.
They shook, before Lena permitted herself to crack the tiniest smile.
“Welcome,” she said, “to TaTu.”

End of Part One

[denial]

oh hell .. this is lots to read !!

BRB..

[Veggie Delite]

this is gonna be so fun!

*jumps all around*

they working together, wheee...! maybe yulia will manage to loosen up that uptight ass of lena's...

[tatufreak]

Oh!...

[denial]

Originally Posted by tatufreak

Oh!...

TatuFreak!! welcome to tatysite!! .....

[denial]

okay .. I just finished reading this whole chapters.

“When the time comes that we know everything about you; when the day comes that we have discovered every detail to your past; when the hour comes that we finally know who you really are…you know that will be when I will have to kill you.”

WOAH!! so stylish!! I love it! hmm.. *is thinking to put this as her signature* ...

:::is in assassin mood:::


$in .. you think I should continue to update this one or not?

[Veggie Delite]

hmm... i'm not shure... maybe tatufreak should? but tatufreak isn't updating... i think we should wait a little and see what happens

we can play hide&seek in the meantime. with guns

[tatufreak]

You can update if you want, Denial - I was sort of keeping the suspense in the other forum's posting realtime, but nevermind. Thanks for updating, when you're finished I promise I'll post the new chapters on both at the same time.

[denial]

Thanks Tatufreak . Okay I will update this ... been having fun actually .. urr .. beside I am desperate to know what's next now. Thanks again ..


$in <--- denial the assassin.

[Veggie Delite]

ok, no more playing assassin dee. lotsa work to be done.

give me the gun thingy...ok, good!... now go and update *taps denial's head*