The Lost Warrior Princess

So it begins

I woke up to my name being called “Luna come on we will be late.....we have a mission briefing in five minutes.” That was my best friend Alice, her voice had an undertone of excitement in it as she continued “come on. It’s the big day! we finally get to go out on our own again without having some newbies with us.”Ah yes, we had been on newbie training for the past three months now trying to make sure that they didn’t get themselves into any trouble that would cost them their lives. We were one of the longest serving teams so we were constantly going out as supervision for new teams.“I remember Ali, how could I forget when its all you have talked about for the last week?” She looked at me as she tied her short golden blonde hair back into a small pony tail and let out a sarcastic laugh as I gave her a mocking look. She was excited, I don’t blame her, hell I was excited as well. We were finally going to be back in the field doing more than just rogue clean up. I swung my legs over the side of my bed stretching out my arms and back as I sat up. I looked over to Alice who was still looking in the mirror at herself. She was fixing the black jacket she was wearing in an effort to hide the scar that ran from her right earlobe down to her right wrist. She had gotten it during one of our first few missions, we were out hunting down a rogue wolf that had rampaged through a small human town and killed half a dozen people in the process. We had just arrived and were setting up a perimeter when the wolf came out of the barn it was hiding in and went straight for Alice, we weren’t quick enough to put it down before it had scratched her up pretty badly. She normally didn’t care if I saw it but she always tried to hide it from everyone else because she didn’t like the looks people gave her. It made her uncomfortable. I sat on my bed while I put my feet in my boots and laced them up. “ you know you don’t have to keep hiding that, right?” I said as I finished lacing one of my boots “the only ones that notice it now are the newbies, and its not like you have any reason to hide it, it makes you look badass.” She smiled at me for a second, I knew I didn’t need to tell her that, she knew she looked badass but it still didn’t stop her from covering it up. “I know I look badass, but I still like to keep it covered, I hate being asked what happened and if I’m going to turn into a wolf on a full moon by the newbies, some of them clearly didn’t pay much attention during supernatural transformation lessons.” Yeah she was right on that one, not everyone liked to sit during the lectures about how a human becomes a werewolf or a vampire, it wasn’t as simple as being scratched by a werewolf. It had to be a mutual thing, you had to want to become a werewolf and then you would be bitten and their venom would then spread through your body but you had to be what supernaturals called mates for it to take and not just kill you. A vampire on the other hand well for them they had to drain you of most of your blood and then transfer their blood into your body by either you ingesting it or via an IV. Both transformations were said to be excruciating. I finished lacing my second boot and stood, I threw my jacket on and stood in front of the mirror, my long black hair was tied in a braid down my back, I finished zipping my jacket as I looked over the scar I had on my collarbone. It was from the last mission with a newbie team, one of the new graduates had gotten in the way of a rogue vampire and to stop him from being killed, I shoved him out of the way and coped the claws as the vampire tried to rip my throat out. To say I was lucky was an understatement, the newbie on the other hand got a serious tongue lashing from the commander and put on guard duty for the next two months. I wasn’t to worried about it though, I was still alive and so was the rest of my team. I finished getting ready and we headed out the door, locking it behind us. We were probably going to be gone a while with this mission. We walked down the hall, Ali banging on the door of our last two team members room, “come on you two we have to be in the briefing room ASAP!” Ali yelled, the door opened slowly to the tall thin red head boy named Max, his skin was pale and he has freckles all over his face and chest, I looked away as he pulled his shirt over his head, I don’t know why I found seeing half naked guys uncomfortable, or maybe it was just these two guys. “Hey Ali.... hey Luna, you pumped for our mission?” max asked. “Hell yeah I am, I’m so glad to be off of babysitting duty,” Ali responded with an enthusiastic smile. Max looked back in his room as a loud groan came from the bed behind him. “Seriously some of us are trying to sleep still.” Riley’s husky half asleep voice came from under the blankets he had pulled them over his face. “Come on man, you can’t say you aren’t keen to be on a mission without having to look after new graduates?” Max said with a smile as Riley slowly lowered the blankets from his face and shooting us a glare. He was always in a bad mood. I just looked back at Alice and Max with a serious look. They knew I hated when Riley couldn’t be bothered to get ready in time for our briefings. “Riley, get out of bed and get dressed or you will be riding b***h on the way to where ever it is we are heading.” I said with a stern voice. His head popped back out from under his blankets. “You can’t be serious, that’s not fair!” He quickly threw the sheets off and stretched his arms and legs out. I just gave him the most serious and commanding look I could. He rushed to grab a shirt off the end of his bed and put his boots on, hopping across the room as he tried pulling them on his feet. “If I have to keep threatening you with being stuck riding in the back with the bags every time we have a mission briefing, you will permanently be back there.” He just nodded at me. We all started heading to the briefing room. Max and Alice were talking about what our new mission could possibly be while Riley walked sluggishly behind them not making a sound except for the occasional yawn he would let out. We rounded the corner to the briefing room and I pushed the door open. It was buzzing with activity. I scanned the room for the commander taking in the many lit up maps of the different territories. In the middle of the room was a big table with a holographic map showing the locations of all the different teams with a little icon above them in either black, red, yellow or green. One of the first things we all learnt when we first came in here was the meaning of the different light colours. Green was to show successfully completed missions with teams still in the field preparing to return home, yellow showing that it was completed with minor injuries or complications, red was to show the team have sustained major injuries or casualties and black. . . black meant the mission had failed and the team were all dead. There were a lot of green and yellow icons on the map but only a handful of red. As we walked closer to the table to where the commander was standing one of the red icons turned black. A team had failed and were dead. The commander looked up as we got closer, a troubled look on her face. “Hello team Delta, glad you all could make it.” She said as she looked at Riley who was yawning yet again. God I wanted to punch him sometimes. I turned back to the commander, trying to compose myself to not show my annoyance of Riley’s lack of etiquette when it came to showing respect to our superiors. “Commander, we are sorry for our tardiness. It wont happen again.” Is all I said before she gave Riley one last look of disappointment. “Right, I hope you will make sure of that personally.” She said. “Yes commander.” God I hated that I was always the one that coped the talking to when Riley failed to show up presentable.“So, let’s get to briefing you on your mission.” She began “it has been requested by the Southern vampire kingdoms rulers that we send a team to accompany their son to the northern mountains pack for diplomatic purposes. There has been talk of the relationship between the two being..... strained. There is talk of the treaty not going ahead.” Well this wasn’t the mission I thought we would be going on, I could hear the huff of annoyance that Riley let out and see out of the corner of my eye that Max and Alice’s shoulders had hunched ever so slightly at the mention of yet another babysitting mission. I didn’t blame them, it wasn’t what I thought our next mission was going to be. I would have thought that we would have been going after some rogues and protection the small outlying human settlements but I guess the fact that we were one of the best meant that we got this mission. “When do we leave and when is the treaty signing meant to be happening?” I asked just so we could get this over and done with before Riley decided to let his temper fly. The commander looked at me with her dark brown eyes that normally held a hint of annoyance when ever my team was in the same room as her. She let out a bit of a huff as she pulled a strand of her grey hair back behind her ear. “You leave as soon as you’re team is packed and loaded, you wont be able to use the Jeep to travel to the pack but there has been other transport arrangements made by the royals. The meeting is meant to take place at the end of next week, that gives you nine days to travel to the clan and then on to the pack.” She seemed to be on edge a little more than usual. “Once you enter rogue territory you will be on you’re own, be alert and make sure that you have plenty of weapons and medical supplies.” The last thing she said seemed a little odd to me, why would we have to make sure to pack extra weapons and medical supplies if this was going to be a pretty straight forward mission. I guess Max had the same idea because the next thing I heard was him asking “if this is just a standard escort mission why would we need to make sure we have all these extra things?” The commander seemed to tense just a tiny bit at the question. Something didn’t seem right, this all seemed a little off. The commander let out a long breath before she stepped closer to all of us only stopping about a foot or two away from us. “This isn’t a standard escort mission.” She began “there has been reports of the rogue vampires and wolves forming a sort of alliance in order to stop this meeting from happening.... we have received intel that they are hunting together. The clan has already lost a dozen soldiers just on scouting missions alone in the past two weeks. The rogues are killing closer to the boarder and their groups are growing in number.” Okay that changes things. “Are we taking any of our own back up?” I asked looking her straight in the eye.“No, your team is the only ones going on this mission. We don’t have the numbers to send more teams with you that have the combat experience, all remaining teams have been redirected to protecting the outer settlements. I have been reassured that the royals will be sending guards with you.” She replied. Well I guess that was something. Even though I knew that Riley would have an issue with this, he managed to keep his mouth shut for now. I knew he would have something to say once we weren’t in this busy room full of eyes and ears though. I simply nodded to the commander and said “ We will ensure the prince arrives in one piece to the treaty signing and that the prince is returned to the southern kingdom safely.” She simply nods and waves to dismiss us. With that we took our leave, I told the guys to pack warm and to make sure that they had plenty of rations for the mission. Alice and I headed back to our room after arranging to meet Max and Riley in the garage in twenty minutes. Max seemed to still be excited a little bit with the possibility of killing some rogues. Riley on the other hand was tense, the entire way back to their room he was muttering and cursing about the mission. I was glad to get at least a little peace before we would be stuck in a vehicle with him for the next several hours. Alice unlocked our door, stepping in and going straight to the draws on the back wall. She grabbed out a couple of long black sleeved shirts and a couple sets of black combat pants and threw them in her duffle bag that she had grabbed from under her bed. I just sat on my bed for a little while thinking to myself, they were sending us on a mission that the commander didn’t think we would come back from. This was going to be either an epic success or a seriously big fail. I exhaled just as Alice turned to look at me, she looked a little confused. She stopped packing and came over to sit next to me. “Is everything ok?” She asked. I nodded, “yeah everything is fine, I just didn’t think our first mission back would be to make sure the vampire prince stayed alive long enough to have a peaceful meeting with the Alpha of the northern pack.” She let out a quiet chuckle. “Well if what I’ve heard is anything to go by the prince is pretty hot so at least we’ll have a nice view.” With that I looked at her with shock. “Alice! Seriously, keep it in your pants girl!” I couldn’t help but smile and laugh a little at her batting her eyelashes like she was as innocent as they come. We sit quietly for a few moments before Alice speaks again, “you think there is something more going on that the commander hasn’t told us about don’t you?” I look at her and sigh “yeah, it all seems a little off to me, like there is more to all this that we haven’t been told.” I have always had a good eye for when someone isn’t telling the truth or is holding information back. Alice nods her head, “ I agree, the commander wasn’t telling us everything but we don’t have the time to worry about it right now, we have some hot vampire prince and werewolf hunks to see.” She jumps up from my bed and gives me a cheeky smirk. I was glad that I had Alice, she always knew how to make me smile even if things were looking a little dull. I let out a sigh, grabbing my duffle bag from under my bed. I guess I had better start packing as well, last thing we needed was to leave late and end up having to stop somewhere in the middle of the night. Not that it was anything we hadn’t done before but even still I didn’t want to get caught out by the rogue vampires that liked to hunt around the outskirt settlements. I grabbed some long shirts and pants along with the medical pack I had on my shelf in the bathroom. Alice did the same, It was always safer to have one each instead of having one person carrying the only first aid equipment. I also grabbed my toothbrush and toothpaste and my hair brush. After double checking we had everything we grabbed our bags and headed to the garage. When we arrived there were two other teams prepping to leave but no sign of Riley or Max. We walked over to the desk in the middle of the back wall of the garage to where the register desk was. The man sitting behind the desk was facing away from us watching the little T.V he had sitting on his desk. I cleared my throat to let him know we were there. He spun around on his chair with wide eyes like he just got caught doing something he shouldn’t have been doing. I guess he was, he was supposed to be making sure no one took the vehicles without authorisation. Once he realised it was just us he relaxed a little. “Mission number and team identification?” He asked with a cough as he waited to type the number into his computer.

“ Mission number 15739 and team Delta 0021.” I replied as I waited for him to finish checking the mission authorisation. He didn’t take long, turning to get the key for the Jeep we would be taking for the duration of our mission. He handed the key to me along with a pen and a yellow piece of paper that we had to sign every time we had to take any kind of vehicle out on a mission. I signed it and took the key with a quiet thank you. Heading over to the Jeep that had the matching number painted on the back that was on the white tag attached to the key. Number thirteen, I placed my bag down as I unlocked the doors and opened the boot up. Alice jumped in and started checking that the Jeep had all the items we would be needing, she pulled out the paper with the information on it for the GPS that was mounted on the dash and started reading it before pressing buttons and loading our already plotted route to the clan. After she was finished and she was back in the back of the Jeep I started handing her the bags. I turned around after we had loaded our bags in to see if Riley and Max were here yet only to spot them just entering through the far door on the right wall. Max was carrying his bag along with another bag that looked like it had some bulky items in it. Riley on the other hand had three bags with his duffle swung over his back and an extra bag in each hand. As they got closer I noticed that the extra bags that they had were in fact loaded with weapons. I just let out a sign, Alice jumped down from the back of the Jeep and followed my gaze to where our two other team members were. “Wow, do they think that we are going on a year long mission or something?” Alice says to me hushed so they wouldn’t hear, “not that I would mind with all the sexy men we will get to see.” I roll my eyes at her and I just shrugged. “Who knew with those two, they always packed more stuff then we actually needed and Alice you seriously needed to focus.” She just laughs at me and doesn’t say anything as Max and Riley get closer. Max stopped just in front of us “we got those extra weapons we were told to get.” He said with a massive smile on his face. I couldn’t help but wonder what weapons they had grabbed that they would be so happy about. Riley stepped past Alice and I and put the bags in the back of the Jeep and took his duffle off of his back and threw it in as well. He turned with a smirk on his face. “We got the new explosives the tech guys have been working on and some other new toys we thought might come in handy.”

“Oh really and you don’t think that this is too much to be bringing?” I asked, feeling slightly annoyed that they had arrived fifteen minutes later than they should have and that they had apparently stopped to grab things that we probably wouldn’t even need. Sensing my annoyance Max put his bag down and opened it and grabbed out what looked like a regular bow, he held it out to me to have a closer look. Upon closer inspection the bow was in fact not an ordinary bow at all, it had a touch memory grip. Once I held it in my hand noticed that it seemed to pulse with energy..... wow this is weird. As I looked closer at it, I realised this wasn’t made from the same materials that all the other bows I had used in the past were made from, this was made from something far more light weight and flexible. It was almost too light for a bow. I realised that everyone was looking at me so I handed it back to Max to put back in the bag.

“So do you like it? The tech guys said that the bow is made to be sturdy but lightweight for the user.” He says as he smiles and puts it away and put the bag in the Jeep.

“I guess we will have to see how it holds up in action. Now are you both ready to leave? We are already behind because of your detour.” Max nodded and Riley just jumped in the driver seat. Alice and Max jumped in the back and strap in. I shut the back of the Jeep and went to jump in the front passenger seat. Looking over my shoulder to make sure that Alice and Max were ready, I turned back around to look at Riley and nodded to let him know we were ready to go and handed him the keys to the Jeep and strapped in. He put the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life.

We pulled out of the large garage and headed towards the South Gate of the city. In the side mirror I could see the large grey concrete building we had just exited, I always liked getting out of Head quarters, I enjoyed the fresh air. I turned my head to my right looking out my window at the city around us. The sun was shining brightly with a few clouds in the sky. The city looked almost white in the sunlight. At the centre of the city was the tallest building, it had large glass windows over looking the city. We knew it as The Beckon, it was mainly where all the human leaders of our government stayed. H.Q. was situated in the building right next to the tall building. It suited our government leaders to have us close by incase we were ever attacked. It was selfish if you ask me, they would protect themselves instead of the innocent citizens of the city that were closer to danger if we were ever attacked.I turned to look straight ahead and noticed the city was buzzing with activity, people were out enjoying the sunshine. Children were playing in the streets, they would stop and stare at us as we drove past. While their mothers would come and hold them or rush them inside. The parents knew what we did and yet they still looked at us like we were murderers. I guess we were, we killed to protect the innocent. I Could hear Alice and Max talking behind me but didn’t really care to much about what they were talking about. I felt Riley nudge my arm and turned to look at him noticing that he was looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “You alright boss?” He asked quietly so that the others wouldn’t hear him. He may have had an attitude problem but he was always able to notice when I was lost in my own thoughts. “ you look a little tense.”

“Yeah I’m fine.” Is all I say back in response. I didn’t want to think about the fact that we may not return from this mission if it was as dangerous as the commander implied. He looked at me again, he went to say something and then thought better of it. In the back Alice chirped up “its the South Gate, Finally we will be out of this boring place.” Yeah we all liked being out of this place. The fresh air helped us all focus and we didn’t have to worry about people watching our every move. We stopped at the gate checkpoint. The guards weren’t always friendly when we come through to go out on missions, something about sending kids to do an adults job. Riley handed the guard our authorisation passes. The guard took them and looked them over and handed them back, muttering something as he walked away to press the button to open the big concrete gates that separated the city from the outside world. “God I hate those guys.” Riley said as we drove past, giving the guard an angry look. “Riley, man chill. We don’t need to be getting into trouble before we have even left the city.” Max said from his seat behind me. “I know! But it doesn’t mean that they should be able to get away with treating us like kids.” He replied.“We are kids though.” Alice said in her usual tone of sarcasm. “No, we are warriors Alice. We hunt and kill the things those guys fear.” Riley seemed to be getting more and more annoyed now. His grip on the steering wheel was getting tighter. “Ok enough.” I say in a stern voice. Everyone stopped talking, Max and Alice looked at each other but don’t say anything about my sudden outburst. Riley just stared straight ahead like no one else was in the Jeep with him. He could go from being really kind and caring to a complete d**k in 0.1 of a second. He has always been like that, tough when others were around but one on one he could be very pleasant to be around. I turned to the radio in the Jeep, usually we would travel in silence but this was going to be a long drive so I figured some music wouldn’t hurt. I had come across a CD a couple weeks back when I had some free time to leave H.Q, it had a range of songs on it and so I asked Alice to grab it out of the front pocket In my duffle bag. She handed it to Me and I put it in the CD player. I turned the volume up just as the first song started playing. It was by a band called 21 Pilots, the song that started to play was called Heathens. I saw the corner of Rileys lips curve up in a little smile. Max seemed to like the song as well. Alice just rolled her eyes at me on my choice of music. She didn’t care much for the music I liked but this CD had twenty songs on it so I was sure there would be something that she would like. We drove listening to the CD until it had played through a couple times and we have changed to CD to something else. I turned it down so that I would be able to check the navigation system on the dash. We were about half way through our trip. It had taken us longer than expected to get out of H.Q and then to the South Gate then I had expected. It meant that we didn’t actually leave the city gates until after 8:00am. We still had a long way to go and it was going to take us all day and we would have to be inside the clan boarders before nightfall. Riley seemed to realise what I was thinking and started accelerating just a little more. Hopefully we arrive before Nightfall or we could be in serious trouble.