[i]Ninjas of the past invented special techniques for espionage. Then agents found more use in technology for spying on their quarries.

	You're using both.

	Every assassin who ever came Cavala's way? One or the other. Maybe they used a little bit of whichever facet they neglected, but they never sought balance. No one technique, fighting style, strategy, physical attribute… no singular thing is invincible. That's what makes you special. You're not just… you're not just one or the other. You're both. And… that's a… good thing…[/i]

	Ryuko sighed. This self-prep-talking affirmation bullshit didn't feel like it was working. It felt schlocky, really. Schlocky, overly prideful, and cringeworthy. She really needed to stop taking the advice of random girl friends who didn't know she killed people for a living.

	[i]But why does it irk me?[/i] she thought.

	It was self-deception. That's why. She had spent far too long escaping her own biggest lie; She wasn't about to—[i]couldn't[/i]—allow herself to fall into another mental trap of that type again.

	Even this realization didn't make the thought of infiltrating that mansion any less… [i]frightening[/i] is the word, if she was being honest with herself. Hundreds of guards in this location alone. Biometrical security systems, robotic defenses, sensory fields, and if the rumors held true, a gun he carried on his person at all times. She doubted that last one, though. But one could never be too sure about what defenses someone did or did not employ.

	Her ship hovered silently in the air, held aloft by anti-gravity. She knew she couldn't ride too close or else she'd set off alarms, but she'd spent the better part of a week preparing and researching the layout of his property—what records were publicly available, of course. She pushed and pushed and pushed until her gut told her to stop. Some part of her mind told her to keep going, to push further in.

	She stopped. Better safe than sorry... and better to trust her gut. It was what beckoned her for all those years to get out of the situation with her father, after all. It was about time she started truly listening to it.

	The black HawkHead, shaped according to its namesake, was now sideways, aiming its door at the main building. She was thousands of feet above ground—perfect for hang gliding. These kinds of airfield sensors, she was led to believe, were tuned to much larger things; spacecraft and planes. The hope was that the resolution hadn't been tuned in enough to alert its owners to airborne [i]persons[/i]. If it was, she assured herself, she had a contingency plan.

	She forced herself from her comfy pilot seat and strutted over to the locker, undressed, then slipped over her athletic body a suit made of some special fiber that blah blah, she didn't really care, she just knew that this strange material was silvery in daylight but black enough at night and absorbed whatever IR and X-ray signals the sensors might've used. It was a bit poofy for her liking; It seemed like a large layer of polyester meant for someone many sizes larger than her, secured by wrist and ankle straps meant for only regular-sized humans. She supposed she appeared somewhat like the shinobi of ancient times. The mask certainly added to that effect. She just seemed to have an additional hood to go over her head to hide all her kinky blonde hair.

	She pulled on a pair of hi-fi NVs in swimming-goggles form—none of that silly giant headset-looking gear that petty officers the galaxy over have to contend with. She drew a cable out from the wall; On it, a pre-attached harness she secured around her pelvis. Instant spy, just add wirework. Only, this wirework would remain slack unless and until she hit a button on the belt of the harness. Then she'd be puled back to safety, and she could just fly off. Minimalized failure; That was her main principle when cooking up a strategy.

	Finally, she grabbed and unfolded her hang glider. She'd made it herself; Layered onto the bottom surface was a similar material to the one she wore, albeit flush with the fabric as opposed to loose and poofy.

	When she reached for the door, some part of her mind warned against it. Why? She thought for a moment. A sort of pre-play, an organic simulation, in her mind… [i]I'll open the door—no one would be able to hear that—then line it up and jump—I blend in perfectly with the night sky—flying on cool wind with my-[/i]

	Cool wind. The inside of her ship was warm. Worries of long-distance IR technology, heat vision cameras, and heat-seeking weaponry got to her. A sensor might not catch her or her hang glider, but a camera might. It's why she used anti-gravity, not VTOL thrusters.

	A puppet to her mind, she acquiesced to this fear and flicked a few switches, shutting off the ship's heat. She let it cool down over a few minutes. Gut be damned.

	Same temperature as the air outside. Dead as a vampire.

	Pre-play became play; Simulation begot reality. She gripped the handle with her right hand—sleek black metal met matte gray rubber, kept separate by the glove of her suit—and yanked, and the door slid open on racks whose lubrication lessened its apparent weight. Air was now alive in the poofy hi-tech fabric of her getup. Perfectly aligned to the building. Showtime.

	She jumped. Her hang glider caught the wind and she soared. Her flight path was an initial swoop, but it leveled out into a straight line whose vector put a bullseye right on the roof of Cavala's office. No guards on the ground would see a thing, not with this fog into which she was edging.

	She swerved up at the last moment to intentionally stall, the right amount of deceleration needed to land on that part of the roof without overshooting or scraping against it.

	She then ditched the hang glider, and considered ditching the suit as well. At least the poofy thing on top. But there were likely similar kinds of sensors inside that she'd need it for. She had no other ways of defeating that sort of tech. Reluctantly, she kept it on. Going up to the ledge, she rummaged through a bag on her belt—a "swallow bag", so named for the mix of technologies and design that kept things stuck inside yet easy to retrieve and even easier to slip something back inside. An alternative was the "spider web hiking bag", but she disliked it. Too kitschy, and… [color=bdcf47]pickle[/color][color=484e23]-[/color][color=6e823a]green[/color] for no good reason. She pulled out some espionage-oriented climbing equipment. Again, instant spy, just add wirework. Once she'd secured the wire to her harness and the other end to the ledge itself—a smart-grapnel, articulated claws closing around the ledge like bird's talons—she then dove all of five feet, five inches, her full height. Instantly, the line became taut. Just as she'd orchestrated over that week of preparation.

	From there, she scaled the surface of the wall with careful hands and feet, lowering herself by the precise grip of her robotic digits. She didn't want to slip or trip anything. Hence going face-first rather than foot-first. [i]The better to see traps with, my dear[/i], she thought to herself. Her chuckle was stifled by some other part of herself speaking up, shouting, drowning out the whimsy. [i]No, don't be silly. This is serious. You need to [u]focus[/u]. Joking around is not going to make this any less stressful. Just take it.[/i]

	She resolved to just take the stress. It's what she was used to. She'd been specialized for it, she felt.

	The top of the window sill scrolled into view. She pinched the line tighter. Then, slowly, she lowered herself enough to peek inside.

	This… wasn't the office. This was a kid's room. A girl laid on the bed, fast asleep she hoped. She looked around the room. No cameras. Good for the both of them. She debated whether to slip in through this window or through anoth-

	[i]What the fuck is that glow!?[/i]

	Panic quelling her heartrate, she looked "down" and saw a moon growing. No, a massive spaceship. It descended upon the scene like a bird of prey on the carcass of a sleeping animal.

	Abandoning her gear, her dignity, her higher respects for innocent bystanders, she slipped inside the window and dropped onto the bed to spoon the child in the hopes that if they used any beaming technology, she might meld into her on scanners, or at least they wouldn't target it at the girl who had nothing to do with it—and thereby the woman who had yet to do anything with it. She covered the girl's mouth so she wouldn't be caught, if the beam spared her.

	It didn't spare her. The room was [b]alight[/b], and then it was [color=000000][b]lightless…[/b][/color]