So this is my first story on . I really love this movie and it deserves more love. Please let me know what you think.

I do not own Ninja Assassin or any of its characters.

Please enjoy.

8 years before

Mika stood across a face she knew very well, but the cold expression on it made her shudder to her core. "What do you mean?" she asked the person she once called boyfriend.

"What I said," he told her, rolling his eyes, "we're moving towards a new world. It's our job to erase the mistakes the pigs in charge made."

Mika shook her head. "No, this isn't right," she muttered, "I thought we were exposing the bad guys. We're hurting innocent people, Jack! People with families that have nothing to do with it."

Around them, the people started moving around. People Mika thought of as friends. They were ready to attack er. Jack sighed. "Be reasonable Mika," Jack said, "You can't make a better world without a few casualties."

"So those the patients were just collateral damage?" Mika hissed. Jack stepped closer, looming over her.

"You want out?" he asked, his voice so soft she could barely hear him. Around them, everyone was silent. One could hear a pin drop.

Mika took a deep breath. "I want out."

Mika read the case file Maslow had thrown away. She couldn't really focus, never mind how much she tried. In eight months, she hadn't been able to sleep. Her mind always shifted between romantic visions of the ninja who had saved her life and night terrors. Absent-mindedly, she let her finger caress the wound on her chest.

She hated herself for thinking that Raizo abandoned her. After all, they weren't even a couple. Bloody hell, she wasn't even sure if they were friends.

Her eye fell on a name in the file that made her heart jump. Amanda Carr, a name she hadn't heard in years. She quickly skimmed the page and cursed more colourful than she ever did. Carr had died, and by the looks of it, it had all the signs of a ninja assassination.

Razio came from the shadows. Maslow was already waiting for him, but still jumped slightly. "You are damn hard to find," Maslow remarked, masking his earlier scare well. Raizo smirked.

"Comes with the territory," he said, but soon turned serious. "Why have you contacted me?"

Maslow handed him a thick file. "A few days ago, we found a hacker named Amanda Carr dead in a loft in the London Docklands."

"How does this involve me?" Raizo asked, ready to leave again.

"The woman was found with her head sliced clean off. No signs of a struggle." Maslow leaned towards Raizo as if he was fearful of being eavesdropped. Nonsense, of course. If there was anything or anyone present in the room that shouldn't be present, Raizo would've noticed long before the conversation started. "The higher ups think I'm crazy. But I think it's an assassination." Raizo quirked up his eyebrow. "Like we've seen before."

That caught Raizo's attention, but he remained stone-faced. He flipped through the pages. It was executed remarkably well. Though it was the docklands, he understood that it happened in the middle of a room, during a party, but no one saw anything and no one else had died.

Deep down he knew he was going to do it, but not for the reason he should. While his head told him to aid from the shadows, his heart urged him to see Mika again.

Mika...

In all the time they were apart and after all that had happened, he couldn't get her out of his mind. In their short time together, she had become an unmissable part in his life. Sometimes, he could still hear her heart beating. It calmed him when his mind wandered to his time with the Ozunu clan.

"We could bring you in as a consultant," Maslow proposed.

"No records," he said, "I'll take an alias."

"Right," Maslow answered, "so I can count on you." Raizo just simply gazed at him. "Can I also count on you to stay distant from Mika?" For the first time that evening, Raizo betrayed some emotion and Maslow hurriedly threw up his hands. "Look, I've seen you that night on the monitor remember. When we caught you. There was definitely some tension there." Maslow sighed and lit a cigarette in frustration. "I want her to focus on her work and not kill you."

Raizo smiled, but it seemed empty. "She can't kill me."

Maslow laughed, his voice echoing through the entire room. "Obviously you've never seen a woman scorned."

Mika ran towards the briefing room. She was already late and it didn't help that she had a killer migraine. Suddenly she was stopped in her tracks. The bulky arms of agent Blumenthal obstructed her path in the door. "So, Coretti, I got a free Friday night that I think a night with you would fill up perfectly," he told her and she didn't fight the urge to roll her eyes.

"Blumenthal, I told you before and I'll keep telling you," she said, "I'm not going out with you, even if the sky falls down and the big man upstairs commands me to."

"Blumenthal, Coretti, keep your banter to yourself will you and pay attention," Maslow's voice boomed through the conference room. Mika looked gratefully at Maslow and quickly sat down. "So, as I was saying, before some fucking idiot's hormones got in the way," he continued, staring explicitly at agent Blumenthal, who coloured a fierce red. "To help with the Carr case, we brought in a consultant." Immediately all the agents present groaned, including Mika. Everyone at Europol has had bad experiences with consultants. They were often rude and unprofessional and Mika knew that more often than not, they got themselves in unnecessary danger trying to one-up the agents. "Yeah, yeah, settle down, you asses. I present Yamato Takeru."

It took a while before Mika recognised the man walking in the room. His hair was still as long as she remembered. He wore a suit that clung onto his his athletic body. His gaze examined the room, stopping briefly at her. Her breath got caught in her throat. She felt something filling up that pit in her stomach, but she couldn't decide whether it was happiness or rage. There was just one word on her mind.

Raizo.