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♞ This was the sort of business he had no desire to involve himself in. He was fortunate enough to have kept himself out of the Assassination Division of the MI6, certainly. He had his exceptional skills with the gun, and was credited as an agent who could complete his work in the cleanest fashion, but he had his qualms about ending life. Perhaps he didn't want the weight of blood on his hands. He didn't quite mind hunting someone down to apprehend them from ending other lives. He enjoyed the rush of that, but to kill? To end a life? He could never go that low. Perhaps it was his normally peaceful tendencies (if one could call Vash Alois Zwingli, one of the MI6's most gifted marksmen peaceful— but you could say he is a man of many contradictions) that kept him from doing such an act.

And so it sickened him so that today's order of business involved an assassin. Assassins, he believed, were tools. At least they tended to be when it came to those underworld empires. It was such a dishonor to use these assassins to end lives. He believed that if you were to kill someone, you had to give them the honor of looking them in the eye, long and hard, to read their stories before closing the book. The particular assassin that he was following the trail of was believed to be under the payroll of a local underworld empress by the name Estelle Bonnefoy, who perhaps shared the same qualms as Vash in the fact that she would not wish to get a single drop of blood on her perfectly manicured fingernails.

The reason why it was believed, or simply suspected, was because you could never be too sure. It was hard to be certain without proofs. The last assassin the MI6 had taken into custody and accepted his crime as something all on his own volition, without anyone pulling the strings or paying him. Attempting to write himself off as simply a murderer, really. However, with the resources he had to end his target, it was very unlikely that he wasn't getting a good sum for the murder. He confessed to being a "simple murderer" with such earnestness that the lie detectors didn't set themselves off. They were perhaps truly loyal to Bonnefoy's cause, or truly loyal to her money.

She knows how to make someone love her, that woman.

He was following a trail left by an assassin, who is suspected to have murdered Agent Moe Williamson in the last week. The MI6's Human Resources Department had to send a letter to his family, detailing his demise, and explaining that they would be given a sum of money every month from the British government in order to support them. Many agents lives ended that way. He truly hoped that Lili wouldn't have to receive one of those letters in the mail eventually.

And today won't be the day Human Resources will be drafting my letter.

The trail had come up a bit cold. He was dressed as a normal business man, a banker of a prestigious bank in Switzerland he played. He carried a pistol in his suit coat, his suitcase concealing a gun. The case was built with a trigger on the handle that allowed it to be fired without removing the weapon. His wristwatch, a Swatch, was his navigational system. Here he ended, at the Big Ben, the clock tower that happened to be the symbol of London, and arguably the United Kingdom. Big Ben was to the United Kingdom as the Eiffel Tower was to France, as they say.

He stood in front of a stand that sold coffee and newspapers.

"Dark, if you please," he said to the barrista. He paid for the amount and for a copy of The Crown Royale Gazette.

Political Unrest in Light of Upcoming Elections in Belarus. Serial Killer Loose on the Streets of London. Prince Lost at Sea.

He sat upon a bench as he drank his coffee and preoccupied himself with reading the newspaper. The trail would be cold unless he kept an eye out for anything suspicious. He would have to stake things out, and if needed, he would chase down anyone of suspicion. For here in the streets of London, the assassins walk amongst the people, and they're just as invisible as the agents they work against. Sometimes the best place to hide is in plain sight.