Eclipse - Starting over

Eclipse looked at the woman's name tag warrily, then looked in her eyes. 'Face is wrong,' he told himself, but one look in the eyes, the expression in them, he knew it was Janis. He'd seen the same look in her eyes the night they'd watched over Ezra. 'Michaels, that pig-headed bastard, had vowed he'd see us all dead.' he reminded himself.

'Sure he'd tried it before, but each time we sent his wet-team back with their tails between their legs. But this time he'd hit Ezra, at his girlfriend's place. We'd managed to take them out, but not before the killed Denise and tried to give our partner a blood eagle. This time we sent the home in body bags...'

He surveyed the area. If she was alive, he knew that meant that somebody might go after the bounty on her. It was a mighty fine bounty too. He got her bustled into the van and got the team rolling. He knew she'd never be safe out here again.

'Davy,' he thought, knowing that it was Davy's dad, that had pulled her out of the wreckage that was her last mission. He had mourned her loss, and damned himself for not being there. Never mind the fact that he was in the middle of recovering from their previous mission, and the face change, and the id change. Odd he never thought about Janis being 'killed' the same way they had killed him.

He looked in the rear-view mirror. 'No,' he told himself, 'I got out in one piece, more or less.'

He remained silent, watchful. He'd been unable to cover her then, he was going to be damned if he lost her now. Once he was sure she was safe, Eclipse retreated to his room. 'The Wilson's will take care of her,' he told himself. 'I'll see her later.'

He wasn't sure how he ended up in the Armory, but there he was. He knew Boomer was still out of it, so he let himself in and began modifying the Predators he pulled from the shelves. He adjusted the balance and attached the bottom mounted flashligh and the night sites Janis had always been fond of.

As he worked, he thought about their time in the service. They were the three musketeers to his D'Artagnan . Janis Ezra and Kieffer had served together for quite a while. Ecslipse was known as Christian then, first a raw recruit, then sniper, then lead sniper when Kieffer was taken out by enemy fire. Kieffer always told him that he would die that way, Eclipse never believed him, until the day it happened. Then he found out that Kieffer, for all his boistressness and competition with the young man, had been grooming him to take over.

They were three again, until the hit on Ezra. We both went a little ballistic after that, Ezra couldn't keep up with the physicals and was forced into retirement. That's when he took on his new business. Little did I know, another friend had started grooming me to take over his business when he 'got retired'

Only thing Ezra was good at was wetwork. Eclipse knew he had tried to get Janis to do some side work for him, but she refused. 'Line of duty is one thing,' she'd tell him, and he could still her saying it. 'Profit's another.'

She ended up taking a few, not for money, or the just cause she told everybody else. She did it to save his life. One thing most of the folks at BB OPS didn't know, was that Christian, now Eclipse, was an Elf. Back then it was obvious, before the name change, before the surgery, before 'Christian's untimely death.' He had been Shanghaied by a bueatiful woman, promised the pleasures of heaven, she'd delivered him to the depths of hell.

And Ezra, his demented little buddy, wouldn't tell Janis where thay had him was until she agreed to accept his assignment. She'd seen the morgue photos of this crew's work, band of Elf-hating Satist bastards, and Eclipse was finding out just how much they hated 'them thar pointy-eared freaks' in a very up-close and personal way.

The one thing he had going for him, was the fact that these boys liked to take their time, and they told him everything they were going to do to him. Even now Eclipse suddered to think about it. What made it worse was knowing they were getting off on what they were doing to him. They used stim patches to keep him from passing out, and the pain...Eclipse forced himself to move on...

Then Ezra and Janis stormed in. One of the boys tried to take him out while the others faced of against Janis and Ezra, as if they had a chance. When they'd untied him, he looked at them like they were angels.

"You ready to go?" Janis asked him gently.

Eclipse had tried to nod, then puked at her feet.

"I'll take that as a yes," she stated, and they carried him from that place.

"Glad to have you back," Eclipse told the empty air. "Still look like an Angel!"