"Alright, count off gang."
"God I love it when you call us gang unironically, Joonie." Hobi said into his ear piece which caused you and a few others to chuckle over the line.
Without missing a beat after Namjoon's fifth count off request, Jin started with, "One."
Over the minor static you heard the rest count off, sitting next to Tae who had his elbows prop up to hold binoculars as he laid chest down on the roof. Watching the main road he held pressed a finger to his ear as he said "Six." Before moving his hand back to it's original spot. After Jungkook said 'Seven', you pressed your own ear piece saying, "Eight." To finish the count off.
Readjusting the threaded black strap buckle that had a small pack on the back with a black and white bandana like material tied to it that went diagonally over your chest. You tapped Tae's shoulder to get his attention, who handed the binoculars over to you so you could take a look.
"How are you feeling?" Tae asked as he pushed himself off his laying position to sit next to you.
Surveilling the area through the small sleek design of the binoculars, you hummed as the answer was on the tip of your tongue before telling him, "Honestly, surprised, usually Rm doesn't tell me everything. In fact the more I talk about it, the more I realize how he hasn't tried some bullshit karma to get back at me for going MIA this past week. As if he... actually listened to me." Your eyes widening a bit, you pulled the binoculars away and look at Tae, "Tae, I think Rm's possessed, he's not being a complete asshole to me, and I'm scared."
Tae let out a deep laugh at your exaggerated expression before leaning back onto his stretched out arms. "Careful he might hear you." He teased with as he gestured towards the black micro-sized earpiece lodged into his left ear. Rolling your eyes you handed the binoculars back over to him.
"Very funny, Hobi already explained how they work, you need to hold it down with your finger to speak since the microphones sensitive." You carefully checked to make sure your own earpiece was still secured in your own ear. Using your nails to adjust the angle of the small Hobi engineered devices.
"Actually [Y/n], I meant how are you feeling you know, wound wise?" Tae asked, with worry laced into his voice.
Meeting eyes with him, you felt your previous smile falter as you were under his intense gaze, "Yeah, it was just a flesh wound, a week off to take care of it practically healed it over and the stitches weren't too bad. It's definitely gonna leave a pretty gnarly scar, but it's also badass looking, so win-win I guess." You swallowed thickly as Tae's facial expression didn't crack at your shit attempt of a joke.
There were a million ways you could possibly describe how Tae looked right now, but the best way to put it simply was intimidatingly hot. Somewhat in awe of how effortless he looked as the wind blew against his bangs gently, with his sharps feature contrasting it. Catching yourself staring you quickly dropped your gaze and averted your eyes back in front of you. Feeling the back of your neck burn up under his eyes still, you were thinking about something else to say to distract from his sudden serious interest in you.
"Can I see it?"
"Huh?" His request threw you off as you looked back over at him, mostly just confused at what he was asking to see. The fact that his face was still unwavering caused you to be more awkward than you wanted to sound. "See what exactly?"
Tae glanced down to your side while clarifying with, "The scar."
"Yeah sure, I guess." You hesitantly answered with as you unzipped your jacket. Lifting the hem of your gray long sleeved tee up enough to only show the healing scar that was the result of the cut. Finding yourself questioning far too late as to why he asked to see it, you flinched a bit as he suddenly reach out to touch it.
Retracting his hand back urgently, he mumbled a quick apology as if he acted out of his subconscious. "I'm sorry."
Zipping your jacket back up after you put your shirt back down, you even more awkwardly started fidgeting with your fingers. "It's fine, it's not like you were the one that cut me." I mean I did technically crash the car and to some degree getting cut was my fault- you know what, that is not of relevance anymore.
"But still," Glancing to your side you could see Tae drop his face down to his hands, at this point you told yourself to just keep expecting surprises from him. The expression written across his face was guilt, or some soft form of regret. Either way, he was clearly distraught over your scar for more than sympathetic reasons. "You shouldn't have gotten hurt in the first place. Especially when we could've done something to prevent or at least figure out Eunbi's plan faster."
"Tae."
"I never wanted you to get hurt, if we just did something, or if I went with you guys instead. Maybe something would've been different, you wouldn't have been kidnapped or hurt, or scarred. You shouldn't have been alone and scared like that in the first place, or I should've-"
"Taehyung." Your voice rung out clear as you cupped his face with your freezing cold hands, forcing him to look at you. "It's not your fault. Me getting hurt is on me, and just me alone."
"You do so much for us, but it always feels like I can't give you back anything in return, I can't even protect you from getting hurt. Hearing from Suga hyung on how bad it was when he found you, I just don't want to imagine it let alone see you in a hurt state." Tae confessed, trading his last expression for a more sadden one filled with self-made guilt.
Brushing the wind blown bangs back neatly, you reassured him, "I do things for you guys because I want too, I'm never forced to or expecting anything in return. Plus, you guys do a lot for me than you already know. Also no more solo acts that involve me getting hurt, as long as I have you guys around, I know I'll be okay." Patting his cheek softly you pulled your hands away from him as static broke out over from inside the earpiece.
"Security cameras are showing me movement, look alive... gang." You could heard the suppressed surge of laughter from Hobi as he spoke.
Tae instantly glued his eyes back into looking through the binoculars before touching his earpiece, "Incoming convoy, I'm seeing two compacts in the front and back, with a van in the middle."
"Everyone in position." Namjoon buzzed over the line. Causing you to get up and walk over to the water pipe sticking out of the roof. Unclasping a coil of carbon fiber rope from your belt you started to tie it around the painted chipped rustic pipe.
Slipping on a pair of burn resistant gloves, you began walking back over to the ledge where Tae was now perched on. Undoing the rope as you stood on the edge, you wrapped the last few feet of rope around your hand securely. Tugging on the rope a bit for a durability test, you felt confident the rope wasn't going to snap or that the water pipe would unbolt and break.
Pulling a face mask up to cover the lower half of your face, you also tucked your ponytail inside your jacket as you put the hoodie on. Looking over at Tae, who also pulled a similar mask over his nose and mouth, he gave you a thumbs up. Nodding in response, you turned around as you stood on the ledge.
"[Y/n] wait." Tae called out suddenly as the wind started picking up again, looking over at him you watched as he pulled the masked down a bit. "Be safe okay?"
"I always am with you." You told him, causing the two of you to smile a bit as he pulled his mask back on.
Namjoon's voice spoke up again over the line, "Alright, whenever Ace makes the first move."
Grabbing the rope with your other hand you started to lower yourself down the side of the wall. Once your feet were planted off right above a dusted over window. You bent your legs down against the aged pale white building exterior before kicking yourself away. Using your weight and swing of the rope, you kicked through the glass, sailing into the dimly light hallway.
Gracefully undoing the rope around your wrists to safely stick a landing on one knee. Cautiously standing up, you pressed your left hand to your ear piece, "It's play time boys." Somehow a burst of energy lighting up every fiber of your being, probably from the fact that you haven't been Ace for a whole week. Feeling like that of a caged animal being released back into their natural habitat.
Becoming Ace in a heartbeat, never switching over that fast before tonight.
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Rule #1 each group has one flag bearer, the flag must be visible at all times, and can't be hidden or duplicated.
Rule #2 no side transactions, aka no selling or buying or trading flags during the game.
Rule #3 there is no flag limit, but there is a time limit. Which is set between sunset and sunrise of the following day.
Rule #4 weapons are allowed, but it is a game, so killing is prohibited and punishable by a fate worst than death.
Rule #5 don't forget to have fun! the following night will also be the bragging hour at Sweet Sin, make sure you bring the flags you captured to show up the others!
"Someone's having fun." You heard a voice chirped at you as you finished tying up two rival gang members together, after you knocked them out of course.
Making sure the knot was impossible to undo, you turned your attention over to a faint Cheshire cat smile playing on Jungkook's bunny lips, "Could you blame me? I felt like a cat that was cooped up inside for way too long, in weird way I guess I missed this. I mean not being Ace but.. hm it's hard to explain."
"Maybe it's the same way I feel when I'm not with the hyungs or you for a while, I end up feeling something like being homesick? I just end up missing you guys even if it's just for a day I don't see you all. If I'm being honest, even when I saw you at school, I still wanted to be with you outside of school. Maybe I was having [Y/n]-withdrawals, but a lot of the other members missed you too." Jungkook told you confidently, his eyes doing an innocent smile of it's own.
Was I missing them? "I guess I could see it that way, but I'm also just not cut out for normal girly things anymore. As if I feel like I'm at my best here- as Ace, doing underground stuff." You shared while carefully tiptoeing around saying anything that would suggest you missed them. You couldn't have miss them, the past week was just you not burning enough energy, even though you felt zombie like for the majority of your vacation time. Missing them would mean that they meant more than just members to you, it would mean that they were becoming, Like family?
Freezing up suddenly, your shoulders tensed upwards as the cursed thought projected itself in your head. Noticing your sudden mood shift, Jungkook hesitantly reached out to touch your arm in worry, "[Y/n], you okay? It looked like you glitched or something."
"What? No I'm just," Happy to be with you guys again, "Relieved to be curing my boredom from the past week." You gave a forced chuckle at the end, but your words still cause the boy's eyes to waver. A small ping of sadness shooting through him at the idea that you'd still rather be anywhere else still. Maybe it was unfair of you to be dishonest after Jungkook openly, and quite happily at that, confessed to how much he missed you. Whereas you can't even get yourself to admit that you see them as friends now, let alone tell him directly that you missed everyone too.
"Let's get going before the others have to call us over." You told him as you began walking. Him catching up to walk by your side like he usually does. You both had to cover the same floor and then meet in the middle before regrouping with the other pairs. Once you guys cleared your floor and took out, not the killing type of take out, you were suppose to check for the gang's flag bearer and if none of them were it, you had to move on.
You couldn't help but noticed that during the floor clearing, even with Jungkook being somewhere else on the floor before running into you, you couldn't help but noticed attention on you. As if the other gang was targeting you, but you couldn't place your finger on why just yet, but something wasn't adding up and it was setting off your emergency lights. Maybe it was just your pet peeve of having attention on you that was making your skin crawl, but you weren't ready to write off your gut feeling just yet.
"This is Ace, Jungkook and I didn't find the flag bearer on our end." You spoke as you had a finger holding down your ear piece as you walked down a flight of stairs with Jungkook. You heard Hobi over the line telling you to meet up with the rest of them, which you were already doing.
As a silence grew a bit unbearable between you and Jungkook, he suddenly chirps up with, "Told you it'd be fun for you to come along."
Catching a small glimpse at him you nodded in somewhat of a reluctant agreement, "Yeah, I have to admit it is kind of fun. Even if we don't get any flags, we'll still do good if we just protect ours in the end. Whose our flag bearer anyways?" You asked once you scrunched your brows when you struggled to fill in that blank. Trying to remember if and when you saw one of the boys running around with a flag.
Noticing a sudden absence of presence from him, you halted mid step down to look back at Jungkook who was frozen in his spot at he looked at you with bewilderment. "[Y/n], didn't you know you had the flag on your back this whole time?"