21st Century Ninja

By: Bunny

Rated: T

Genres: Sci-fi / Action / Romance

Summary: Kira Yamato is a modern day shadow warrior that uses his exceptional hacking and combat skills to save the lives of the average person in trouble. When Lacus Clyne's number comes up, he goes to save her too, only to find that Miss Lacus Clyne is anything but average. Lacus/Kira.

Important Author's Note: I want to make a point of giving credit where credit is due. Gundam SEED is a fantastic anime series written by Chiaki Morosawa. Also that this story was partly inspired by the American TV show Person of Interest created by Jonathan Nolan.

Chapter One - Another Number

Ring. Ring. Ring. The all too familiar feeling of dread in my stomach which accompanied every ring that ever came out of this particular phone manifested itself deep in my gut.

Someone's number was up.

I picked up the phone and listened as several recorded voices; a mix of male and female went through a nine digit number sequence. I quickly scribbled out the numbers on the notepad in front of me.

It was a social security number. Someone was either in trouble, or about to be the cause of it. I never knew. All I knew was Haro had found another number for me and I needed to stop a murder from happening.

I typed the social security number into my laptop to search for the person Haro had sent to me.

Haro was special. A super computer surveillance system AI that had the eyes and ears of the entire world at it's fingertips. Haro had been programmed with next generation complex algorithms to search out terrorist threats. His very existence was beyond top secret.

The only reason I knew about Haro was because...I made him.

I go by many names, in order to protect my identity. If you happened to look up my birth name, the world would tell you I'm dead. No-one I come into contact with now knows my true name. For I above almost all other people know how much personal information of each person is truly out there for the complete taking away of our privacy. I also know how completely dangerous and vulnerable that makes us.

For now, I go by Kira. Kira Yamato. I suppose you could say I'm a 21st century ninja. A shadow warrior. If your number is up, I come to find you. Good guy or bad guy, I'll be there.

Well...well...my eyes widened a bit in surprise at the picture of the beautiful woman's image showing up on my laptop screen.

Lacus Clyne.

She had long wavy pink hair and pale sky blue eyes with a sweet smile. I instantly wanted to judge that she was the victim and not the perpetrator of the impending murder, but I held back. I'd been burned before by the innocent looking faces of beautiful women. Miss Lacus Clyne could easily be another one of those beautiful women that were so gorgeous they could literally get away with murder.

Still, something deep within me wanted to believe there was no way such a sweet smile could have some kind of darkness lurking anywhere underneath it. I sent the basic research information that was out there for the taking about Miss Clyne from my laptop into my cell phone and made my way out of my penthouse apartment building and down into the streets of Upper Manhattan. It was time to go find Miss Clyne and see what she was up to and why Haro had sent me her number.

It wasn't unheard of, but it was unusual for one of the numbers sent to me by Haro to be someone whom was practically my neighbor in this city packed full of people, but nevertheless this Miss Clyne was practically my neighbor. Her address was listed as only 3 buildings down from mine. Not that being my neighbor really mattered. I avoided making connections with anybody. I was a shadow warrior for a reason. Many would consider me a vigilante. If I got the attention of the wrong people, the results could be disastrous at worst, and very troublesome at the least. Making a point of not making connections with others was essential for keeping people safe.

Keeping people safe was my business. It all came down to Haro. As much as the idea and concept of Haro terrified me, that is, the knowledge that there was a supercomputer AI out there watching all of us, and that privacy was more of a joke than a reality; Haro was necessary. Haro kept us safe. Haro prevented terrorism. It's why I agreed to make Haro for the government in the first place.

It's also because of my desire to try to preserve some semblance of privacy that Haro only gave social security numbers. The oddity of Haro's existence is actually what I do now.

Haro was designed to look for lethal intent in order to catch terrorists, but because Haro sees everything, Haro sees all premeditated murders. I had to teach Haro the difference between mass-murdering intent such as terrorist attacks aka 'relevant' and a commonplace murder aka 'non relevant.' At first, these extra 'non-relevant' numbers of non-terrorists threats were discarded everyday when Haro would reset at midnight. After all, Haro existed and was created to protect us from terrorists, not from everyday crimes.

As the time went by though, I couldn't live with it. Really...how could I live with it? Knowing that someone out there needed help and that I could help them? I didn't build Haro to save some people, I built him to save everybody! I couldn't live any longer without doing something. Haro was giving me numbers of murder victims or murderers, and that knowledge if put to good use could save the lives of countless people.

So after the program for terrorism was completed with the government I'd gone underground. I'd reprogrammed Haro to send all 'irrelevant' numbers to me before they would be erased at reset and all 'relevant' numbers to the secret government agency that would handle the terrorists. Even the government couldn't be aware that I was receiving these 'irrelevant' numbers. If caught, they would shut him down. So Haro and I continued to fight for the safety of average people in secret. It wasn't supposed to be part of his programming, but AIs are like that...doing things you never intended for them to do. I could only be proud that the extra data Haro did something with was to save all those other people that the government felt were irrelevant.

Nobody was irrelevant to me. All life was precious. So I made it my business to save them. If someone's number was up. I would find them. Together, Haro and I would stop as many murders as we possibly could.

It was a tough and lonely life, but it had it's rewards.

Such as meeting beautiful women. Speaking of….

Reaching the building Miss Clyne lived in, I opened the door and entered into the lobby. There were secure elevators going up to the apartments, and a large reception desk with some comfortable chairs. I scanned my eyes around the ceiling, looking for the closest security camera. After all...they were everywhere.

"A little help here," I said to the first camera I spotted.

Walking up to the desk I said to the security guard sitting at the desk, "I'm the IT guy Miss Clyne called."

The security guard gave me a surprised look, "We have no scheduled IT visits for today."

"Can you check again?" I replied calmly.

"Well, I'll be. I guess it was added in late. It is on here," The security guard replied with a note of amazement in his voice.

Unlike the poor security guard, I wasn't amazed in the slightest. I knew it would take Haro less than 2 seconds to hack into the building's security system and put me on the schedule. After all Haro was the best hacker in the world. He learned everything from me. Before I made Haro, I was the best hacker in the world. Haro had a distinct advantage over me though. He was a supercomputer AI that could hack a million times faster than I could ever dream of being capable of. All in all, it made us quite the formidable team.

The security guard picked up a phone and dialed a short number, "Miss Clyne, your IT guy is here." I watched as the man shook his head and whatever Lacus Clyne was saying to him. He looked up at me and said, "Miss Clyne says she didn't call for you."

I turned to look up at the security camera again, "Haro." Then turning back to the security guard I said, "Can you ask Miss Clyne to check her system again for errors? Someone called me to come fix her system, and I would hate for it to be a wasted trip."

I turned around and glared at the camera knowing Haro would be watching me while I waited...and 3...2...1….

"Oh, Sir. It appears that Miss Clyne does need your assistance after all. Please wait a moment."

"Yes, Miss Clyne I'll send him right up," I heard the man say into the phone.

A few minutes later, the security guard escorted me into an elevator where he input the access for Miss Clyne's apartment. The security guard left the elevator and I watched the doors close behind him before I was zooming upwards into the skyscraper Miss Clyne called home.

Miss Clyne had a penthouse apartment similiar to my own, that is, the elevator opened directly into her apartment instead of into a hallway leading to a door. So Miss Clyne was waiting for me as I stepped off the lift.

She held out a hand to me, "Hello. I'm Lacus Clyne."

I took her delicately soft hand and shook it in my rough one.

"Nice to meet you Miss Clyne. Please, call me Kira," I said it without thinking. It was hard to think around her. She was even prettier in person than the pictures I'd seen when I'd done my first quick search on her in my apartment. Why did I tell her my name was Kira? I never told anyone my real alias that I lived by. I always used some other name so they couldn't track me down later. I fought off a frown of disappointment in myself. She was just too pretty and sweet looking. I was slipping.

"Well, Kira. I don't know what's happened to my network. It was working just fine this morning, but it was as if as soon as I got the call from the lobby that you were here to fix it that it went and broke itself!" She gave a cute giggle.

"I'm a dead man," I muttered under my breath.

"Pardon? I didn't hear you," Lacus said.

"Yes...well, Miss Clyne if you could show me to your main computer? I can get started on running diagnostics."

"Oh, yes, of course, right this way please," She replied as she turned and began walking deeper into the large apartment.

I followed after her grimacing. This case was going to be a problem. I could feel it deep in my bones. After so many of these people that Haro and I had run into, it was almost a sixth sense for me at this point. The really troublesome cases, I somehow knew in advance which ones would be the worst.

Miss Clyne tapped the back of a plush office chair before waving her delicate arms in the direction of a large computer monitor sitting on top of a huge corner desk in a large studio like room.

Entering the room, I turned around in a circle a few times, taking the room in, trying to figure out why it was the way it was. The walls were covered with foam panels on top of some type of suede that had been bolted into the drywall. There were speakers everywhere as well as a microphone, a piano keyboard, and a few other instruments.

"Is this…?"

"A recording studio? Yes, yes it is," Miss Clyne replied.

I pointed to the monitor, "And this is your primary network computer?"

She nodded, "Sorry about the mess of the studio, I do most of my recording work here at home," She explained.

I pulled the chair out from the desk, and took a seat on the edge of it, feeling rather uncomfortable despite the fact that I always felt the most at home behind a computer screen. I just couldn't put my finger on it. Was it just because Miss Clyne was so beautiful? Or was there something more that was setting me on edge? Was I missing something important?

"So you're…?"

"A singer, yes. I apologize, I thought you knew already," she replied. Her face seemed puzzled.

Damn. I should have done more research on her before coming over. Her close proximity and her pretty pictures had made me sloppier than ever before. Was she some kind of famous diva or something? Feeling embarrassed by the whole situation, I coughed into my hand awkwardly for a moment to catch my out of control thoughts. I could feel a blush spreading across my cheeks and once again worried frantically that Miss Lacus Clyne could very well be the death of me.

"Sorry Miss Clyne, I don't get out much," I said lamely.

She turned a pretty pink shade before she clasped her hands together in front of herself and said, "Oh no! I must apologize. I shouldn't have assumed! It's just been such a long time since I met someone that didn't know."

Aww...I embarassed her. I instantly felt bad about it too. She seemed to be as sweet and genuinely nice as her smile lead me to believe when I'd first laid my eyes on her picture. That only meant one thing though. Someone out there had something against Miss Lacus Clyne and was intending to kill her and it was now up to me to save her.

I turned towards the computer monitor with a determined look and woke the machine up. Glancing briefly over my shoulder I said with a new confidence, "Don't worry Miss Clyne, I'm going to take the best care of you."

She giggled again, and I swore it sounded like what the beautiful tinkling of an angel's laughter must sound like, "Oh Kira, you make it sound as if you're saving my life." She reached out and touched my shoulder with the lightest touch before she added, "I'll leave you to it."

I watched her leave the room as a shiver of pleasure ran from my shoulder where she'd touched me all the way through my body to my toes. I shook myself to clear my head from her intoxicating presence and then began typing away furiously on her computer searching for clues as to why anybody could possibly want to kill the sweetest creature I'd ever had the pleasure of encountering.

"Now now...let's see who's trying to kill you, Miss Clyne," I muttered under my breath.

As I scoured through Lacus' personal data on her computer I found that there were several possibilities. She was actually a very famous talent. On top of that her father was a powerful politician that was currently serving as a New York state senator, which pretty much doubled the amount of enemies Lacus could have. Politicians and gangsters in my experience seemed to always have the most enemies that were out to kill them. Famous talented people like Lacus tended towards having more stalkers than people out there that sincerely wanted them dead. Lacus certainly had her fair share of stalkers. Going through her email was like walking through a field of landmines. It was no wonder she had so many unread messages. Her Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels were filled with plenty of fans, stalkers, and haters alike as well. For not the first time since undertaking Haro's irrelevant numbers, I wished Haro was able to give me more than just a social security number.

After all, Haro knew who the killer was. Haro saw everything, so Haro knew everything. Unfortunately for me I'd programmed Haro in such a way that it was also Haro's job to keep all the details private and force the government's anti-terrorist agency to do some of their own work instead of giving them unlimited access to all they could possibly want to know on any person on the planet. Having that power was bad enough for Haro to have, but in the hands of any government or human being it would be corrupted completely. As it was it had taken me tons of time to program Haro in a way that Haro wouldn't become corrupted by all the power he had. Needless to say, there had been many failed attempts at making Haro that had needed to be destroyed.

I had even restricted myself from accessing Haro once the programming was completed. Otherwise, the temptation could be too great for me at times to know everything there is to know about something or someone. So Haro gave me numbers, and he helped me as much as I allowed him to, but there were a lot of necessary restrictions on how much Haro could help me.

I gave a sigh and looked directly into the webcam of the monitor as I said, "I really wish you could tell me who it is."

"Tell you who what is?"

I almost jumped. I wasn't expecting anybody to overhear me talking to Haro after all. Not that anyone would understand that I was talking to Haro. There was no way for anyone to know it. The webcam didn't need to be active for Haro to be able to see me and hear me. He had unlimited access into every camera connected to any network in the world. Webcams, cellphone cams, street cameras, security cameras, airport cameras, you name it, Haro was watching everything 24/7/365 and processing all of that incoming data simultaneously, not to mention he was sending both myself the irrelevant numbers and the government those deemed relevant, aka terrorists.

Additionally, even if I did tell someone I was speaking with an all-knowing supercomputer surveillance AI system, they would never believe me. I would be labeled as crazy, and possibly committed into an insane asylum. Not that talking out loud to cameras wouldn't be considered crazy even without my explanation.

I cleared my throat for a moment, "Well Miss Clyne...it appears that you were the target of an extremely malicious hacker that crippled your entire network, well...rather quickly."

Lacus tilted her head for a moment in thought, "Oh...I see...so you're trying to figure out who hacked my system?"

I nodded.

"But...why would you need to know who did it?" She asked. "Isn't it enough to fix it?"

"If I knew who your attacker was, it would be easier for me to set up security parameters to protect you from future attacks."

"Wow. I had no idea it could be so complex. Are you telling me that each hacker has a certain way they do things?"

I shook my head quickly, "Not exactly...it's more like...the higher level hackers have a way they do things."

"Oh…"

She was quiet in thought for a few minutes processing the load of crap I'd just made up. If it wasn't to save her life, I would feel bad about feeding her all these ridiculous tales, but…

"Oh I get it. So Kira...you must be on some high level to know these things. But if you're so high how in the world did you end up in my apartment for a simple IT fix?" Her eyes widened and she took a step back from me, suddenly looking very uneasy, "I don't want to believe it, but could it be...you're some kind of stalker? Or did...did someone send you? Someone like Meer?"

"Who's Meer?" I asked, not missing a beat. Maybe this Meer was a real clue as to who was after Lacus.

"She didn't hire you? To come sabotage me?" Lacus seemed quite distressed and I instantly wanted to comfort her. But...what could I do? I was a nobody to her.

As my mouth was open to interrogate her further on Meer, we both froze for moment at the sound of glass breaking. My senses went into hyper-alert as I jumped up from the desk chair and pushed Laucs behind me. I started inching towards the door while pulling my handgun from my belt.

As I peered around the edge of the doorway trying to see who had invaded the apartment, Lacus breathed into my ear, "Why do you have a gun, Kira?"

"I don't leave home without it," I mumbled distractedly as I peered further around the edge of the doorway. There still wasn't anyone in sight, and I couldn't hear footsteps. Was the intruder waiting or really so quiet that I couldn't hear them?

"I think someone broke into my apartment, but I don't know how. I'm on the 55th floor," Lacus whispered quietly.

"Someone is definitely here," I said under my breath back.

"What are we going to do?" She whispered slowly into my ear.

"Get out of here," I answered. We really were talking too much about it, I thought in the back of my mind. We were turning into sitting ducks. "Do you have stairs?"

Lacus moved around me and started walking down the hallway. Did she have a death wish? Or was she really not afraid? I ran backwards after her as quietly as possible, keeping both eyes on the entrance to the hallway.

"Oh my!" Lacus exclaimed. I spun around quickly. There was a big man with a gun pointed at Lacus' chest. Without a second thought I shot him in the kneecap just as his own gun went off. The bullet from his gun flew up into the ceiling's direction instead of towards Lacus as he fell to the floor. Debris from the ceiling scattered around us.

"Are you alright?" Lacus asked the big guy as she rushed towards him. He was grabbing his bleeding knee and re-aiming his gun back on Lacus. I grabbed her arm and yanked her back into my chest forcefully just before a second bullet whizzed past us and hit the wall.

I shot the bicep of the guy's arm that was holding the gun. The gun dropped from his grip, "YOU BASTARD!" He yelled angrily.

"Kira! You're hurting him!" Lacus fussed.

"He's trying to kill you!?" I replied almost dumbfounded at her lack of concern for her own life.

She moved towards the man writhing on the floor yet again, but I held fast to her arm, instead pulling her towards the doorway that inevitably would lead to the stairway. I opened the door with force, causing it to slam into the wall, making an overly loud banging sound reverberate through the thick concrete walls of the stairway.

"But Kira...what if he dies?" Lacus asked as I dragged her reluctant form up the steps.

"Miss Clyne, we have bigger problems," I replied as calmly as possible. I was still in my hyper-awareness mode, all my senses on edge as my mind buzzed with exit strategies. Finally I glared up at the closest security camera and said, "Send a helicopter to the roof!"

"I can't send a helicopter to the roof without my phone to call for one," Lacus replied.

"I'm not talking to you," I answered back quickly.

Since she was in the penthouse it was only about a flight and a half before we were exiting the stairwell onto the rooftop. Thankfully, a helicopter was about to land on the helipad.

"Wow," Lacus said, I could barely hear her over the blades of the chopper.

"Get in the helicopter," I instructed as I pushed her forward from the arm I still hadn't let go of.

"Where are we going?" She asked as I climbed into the helicopter quickly behind her, pulling the door closed tightly behind me.

"I don't know," I said as the pilot took off, taking us up into the sky.

I could only imagine Haro had hacked some kind of directions into whatever helicopter company he'd sent to us. Since Haro has eyes and ears everywhere, he would know which company had pilots on standby that could have arrived so quickly, and what companies had pilots were discreet enough to not ask questions.

About 35 minutes later, our helicopter was landing at the Southampton heliport. Southampton is a beachside community outside of New York city located on Long Island. It's well known as a popular tourist destination for the rich and famous and included some of the most expensive homes in the country. I found myself wondering why it was Haro had programmed for the pilot to bring us to this heliport as I handed the pilot a large bill and muttered, "Thank you for your discretion."

"Have a good evening sir," The pilot replied as I practically pushed Lacus out of the helicopter door and down to the helipad. I couldn't get out of that helicopter fast enough. We needed to make tracks as fast as possible. I didn't know who was after Lacus yet, but she'd been shot at twice today. I wasn't going to take any chances.

Lacus seemed to handle my pushiness with a practiced grace that I frustratingly found all the more endearing. Most people would be yelling at me by now with how much pushing and pulling I'd been doing to her person.

As we walked briskly away from the helipad and were met by a limousine that Haro must have also had the foresight to charter for us, Lacus looked at me with her big beautiful pale blue eyes and asked, "Kira...who are you really?"