Mounting Words

Run, far away from here. I’ll come soon enough. Please, they’ll kill you if you stay. Rayven, go!

“GAH!” Rayven erupts from her half-slumber, cold, in pain, and, oddly enough, wet. Her eyes aren’t in favor of opening fully, and all she can manage is getting them ajar. What she sees is... really nothing. Because of her watery eyes, it's just a blob of black, brown, and white. The illuminance of the white stands out, and is a little strange, but from what Rayven remembers white would make sense.

Snow, of course. She and her newbie boyfriend, Everest, had been in the Japanese mountains and were enjoying their stay at Fuji. Before they were so rudely interrupted by the Middle-Eastern force that seemed very determined to kill them both. And she gets it, no one from there is too fond of the spies overseas. 

I.E. Them.

Actually, out of all the colors, white only makes sense.

Rayven, being scared of where she could possibly be, forces her eyelids to stand. And then her fear goes away.

She's in a cabin. A normal safe cabin. Well, safe might just be a hopeful guess. In her past, safeness is a rarity.

She groans trying to sit up, as she still has that odd pain. And is very, very cold. Standing is going to be an issue. Let alone walking. But she's going to have to if she doesn't want to die alone on a cabin floor.

She tentatively stands up, whilst realizing there was a blanket on her this whole time. And as it unravels back to the ground she holds on to it with a great grip, knowing she'd definitely die without it.

Someone put me here... but who?

Rayven could take an educated guess at 'who', but she'd rather not point out the obvious suspects.

But if it was him, she'd fall in love all over again.

Her face gets randomly warmer, and Rayven concludes that even the thought of Everest makes her blush.

Great, now she's even more basic.

A thud at a nearby window throws Rayven off her lovey-dovey mental train. And looking out that said window re-installs that fear she lost earlier.

Dogs. Why did it have to be dogs?          

With Rayven's cynophobia, this was going to be a struggle. Well, she doesn't really have to do anything with the dogs. As long as they don't-

ROUGH. ROUGH ROUGH. So, they're barking. And with every noise Rayven inched back in fear, this was fine. All her years of military-like training weren’t building up to the climax of her getting scared off by a dog. 

She was going to stand it. Even if that means standing very far away from it. 

Rayven begins to think, to wonder, why would dogs be outside of a cabin in the middle of the Fuji mountains… 

With her line of work, it’d definitely be to protect something. And with her recent mission, she should definitely go over there and see what that something is.

Definitely.

Rayven moves slowly. Turtle-speed. Even slower than a turtle. Their repetitive, loud barking isn’t much help either. It’d be so nice if they could stay quiet. 

She reaches the window, wanting to cover her ears with her hands, but her hands are busy looking through the chaos on the ground.

Granted, whatever the dogs are protecting is probably outside, where they are. 

But it’s worth the shot.

The floors are surprisingly messy, cluttered with incohesive papers and files. They all pile up surprisingly high, as well. Leaving no room for the actual cabin grounds. Nothing revealing comes to Rayven’s eye, so she uses another sense of hers.

Smell. And, frankly, this whole space smells extremely bad. A weird moth-ball scent mixed with body odor, in which Rayven may or may not have checked if that last scent was her. And, from anonymous research, she can say no. Pretty much. 

Some other smells start to mix in. More of that having to do with a body. And then, Rayven theorizes that she may not be alone. Well, she will always have Fido 1 and Fido 2. But there’s definitely a human about. She looks behind her, keeping a keen eye out for any human activity. But it’s just an empty cabin. Maybe it’s just the age of the building making all the weird smells.

“Unless…” Rayven turns her head back toward the ground. Getting her nose closer and closer. And the smells become eerily stronger.

She doesn't want to, knowing of the only possibility that could be found under these papers, but she digs through them fast. The layer isn’t as thick as she thought, so she finds what she wishes she didn’t.

A bag. A long, black, body bag. The normal person in her would really like to run right now, but the spy is screaming to open the bag. And the spy’s voice is much more powerful. She slowly unzips the case. 

And not only is it a body. It’s Morino Kinji’s dead body. 

The leader’s husband of the side that attacked Rayven and Everest. Probably the only other person who knew what the leader’s aim was. 

Why was he dead here?

“Everest has to see this.” Rayven reaches into her back pocket, for her phone. Well, it is a company-owned phone but it’s still hers. But instead of finding her mobile, she touches multiple small papers. And they’re sticky. A note? Notes plural?

If it was it had to be from Everest. And once she pulls out the notes, she knows it is. As they read:

Hey Rayven, 

` The cabin’s cold, I know. But it’s still much, much warmer than the outside. I had to bring you here to save your life, since you couldn’t do that yourself. And, before you get mad, you have to remember that you did pass out immediately when I told you to run. 

But I am coming soon, don’t worry about that. (with warmness)

I loooove you, and if the frostbite on my hand wasn’t as severe, I'd put more o’s.

Everest.

Blush. Obviously. This really needs to stop.

Besides that, the note explains the memory problem and how trusty she should be in her knight-in-shining armor. Rayven smiles stupidly at the note, reads it over and over, and then stuffs it back in her back pocket. She checks her other pocket for a phone, but this one’s even emptier than the first.

Rayven shoves that problem off, and focuses more on the problem below her. Well, actually, with the leader’s spouse dead, the enemies become singly ruled and thus more vulnerable. So this might help their issue.

Until she notices the chest. That is moving very fluently. Is he? No, he couldn’t be, he was just-

The white air that suddenly surrounds Morino’s mouth says otherwise. Rayven hesitatingly reaches two fingers out for the man’s neck, just to make her 99% surety 100% sure. 

Her fingers reach him. She feels the pulse. 

And that’s when his eyes open. 

His pupils dart to Rayven, probably seeing how petrified she is. But that doesn’t stop him from taking her fingers, and twisting them in the worst way possible. He, somehow, gets a grasp on her whole hand, using the same twisting technique. He pulls her to a stand as he does too.

And while Rayven gasps in pain, he asks, “Who are you?”.

Rayven hesitates halfly because of the pain, and halfly because she’s surprised at the fact that he can speak English, because of the previous screaming and yelling in Turkish she and Everest got earlier. “I can’t tell you that-” She gets cut off by Morino twisting her arm even further, and her own screams. Something’s definitely broken.

“Your clothes have an American look to them. Are you a spy?”

“I… can’t… tell you.” Rayven struggles. Morino lets go of her arm, which stops the immediate pain but something in there still feels off.

“You're stubborn. You have to be one. They’re all the same.” Morino storms past Rayven, walking towards what looked like the door out of here.

She turns, and confirms that fact. And then, a plan forms. “You know it’s below freezing out there. All you're wearing is pants, you’d die faster than I would.”

He turns sharply. “Why are you concerned for my survival?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m concerned, I’m only telling you that if you want to live, that’s not the way to go.” Morino only stares at Rayven. Like he’s checking for a sign, something that would tell him about her and her values. Rayven continues, “Freezing to death is a pretty awful and painful way to die. But it seems you were already doing that on the ground.”

“I didn’t die from the cold, a man tried to poison me. I have my mithridatism to thank for my liveliness.” His eyes are colder than the air. “And my men will save me before I die in that hellish blizza-”

Morino gets cut off by the door opening. In fact, the door probably cut him open, it hit his face so hard. Rayven would love to see that cut on his face but someone distracts her from that.

She doesn’t even feel the frigidness that just got introduced to the cabin, she’s so happy.

“Hey.” Is all Everest says.

“Hi.” Rayven replies with a smile.

The two only stare at each other. The only noise being made coming from the windy outside and Rayven’s beating heart. She wants to hug him, kiss him, at least touch him, but it all seems too soon in a weird way. Maybe, he feels the same way.

Maybe.

“Did you know about the dogs?” Rayven gets out. 

“Oh, right.” He subtly steps closer, somehow not noticing Morino on the ground. Well, he is only looking at Rayven and hasn’t looked anywhere else since his arrival. 

He is only looking at Rayven and hasn’t looked anywhere else since his arrival.

“Sorry about that.” Everest apologizes, cordially. Still inching closer. 

“It’s alright, they just barked for some time.” She gets a little closer too. “Oh, and, I found something really interesting.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Morino Kinji’s dead body.”

“Oh? Wow.”

“Well, he wasn’t fully dead, it turns out. He actually proceeded to twist my arm into displacement once I found him so,”

“Oh, I noticed that. Does it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” He smiles and Rayven does with him. “I could always pop it back in.” Everest puts two hands on her left arm. One on the shoulder and the other on the lower half. Having her realize that they are now close enough for touch.

“Wouldn’t that make it hurt even more?”

“I’ll try to make it as painless as possible.”

They smile together. Again. But something is different about this time is different. Maybe the tenseness. How they both know that their faces are relaxing, their smiles are fading. But for no reason that is negative. 

“Is Morino still here?” Everest speaks at a whisper, because from the distance their faces are right now, Rayven can hear that.

“I’d think so.”

“I’m pretty sure I heard the door squeak, felt the cabin get colder, and could guess why Morino would choose now to make his escape.”

“Why? Because we’re so distracted with ourselves and are both pro-kissing-each-other right now?”

“Exactly. So we should stop this right now and go look for Morino.”

“Right now. We should. Definitely, definitely right now.”

So, they may or may not have done the opposite of what they said they should have done and, after ten to fifteen seconds, confirmed that Morino had flown the coop. Sending them into panic but also a realization. That their boss, while he may be mad, had sent them to Fuji for a reason. That maybe, just maybe, they are good at what they do.

Even if they sometimes get caught up in the fact that they are dating, which is pretty understandable.

She wouldn’t do this any other way.

Well, knowing where Morino was right now would be pretty helpful, but it’s fine. It will be fine.