Burnt Out {A Hero!AU Sheith Fanfiction}

Meeting The Deadline

Two weeks. That was how long Zarkon had given Keith to kill Shiro.

Fourteen days of pushing it off and making excuses and still having to do his job while trying desperately to avoid being punished for being unable to kill Shiro. It had been thirteen days since then and Keith knew that he was pushing his luck. Zarkon wasn't going to believe that Shiro just 'wasn't showing up' for much longer.

All until he was called to Sendak's office- a nice change, he had to say- and told him that they'd had someone in their system again. That they'd found some information and they'd set something up to catch whoever this was off-guard. That Sendak thought it was the Black Paladin resurfacing and was going to be sending Keith out to deal with it.

As a gift for the occasion- or as a threat, it wasn't clear- Keith was handed a case containing a flamethrower. An adept little thing, one that Sendak said could be assembled in a matter of seconds with enough practice. One that he called the Red Lion, claiming that it fit his name. He then chose to insist that if Keith was successful he could keep it and that if he wasn't, he could be executed with it 'for no extra charge'. Sendak had found his own joke quite funny. Keith hadn't.

But the point was that he was currently sitting on the second floor of an abandoned factory, assembling and disassembling the flamethrower that he'd been given to try and get used to it. To get ot the same speed as Sendak had been able to assemble it in while he killed time. Killing time and waiting to kill Shiro.

He only stopped when he heard footsteps approaching from outside, clipping the last few mechanisms back into place before he fell silent, staying deadly still, awaiting the hint that this was Shiro or that he could move without being spotted. He wasn't going to risk doing something stupid and getting killed for it. He didn't want that to be how Shiro found out who he was. He didn't want Shiro to ever find that out and hopefully tonight would prevent that.

"This can't be the place," Shiro had whispered into his mask as he crept along the perimeter of the building -- peeking into each grimy, cracked windows and surveying the large, empty space. "It's deserted. There's nothing here."

Shiro couldn't shake the feeling that there had been something terribly wrong with the building Matt had sent him to. It was nothing like the others -- no, the others had all been crawling with Galran foot soldiers and lower class crime lords like drug dealers and thieves. They were all equal in regards to the disgust factor, of course. Every Galran safe house or whatever the hell they were had to have been coated in disease on top of disease, every place filthy and mold ridden and covered with all sorts of graffiti and old blood stains. The factory Shiro had been surveying then was no different in that aspect -- it was dark and dreary. All of the old machinery was rusted and old, the slow creaking groan of ancient metal eerie and chill inspiring each time the wind would blow through the broken doorways or windows. However, it had been completely empty.

No one was there. Only the creaks of machinery and the drips of broken water pipes. Maybe the scuttle of rats or roaches somewhere. The place was just a dump -- an old, deserted dump, left to rot on the outskirts of Voltropolis.

There was the familiar crunch of cereal in his ears, and a soft little sigh from Shiro's rather bored right hand man. "This is one of the addresses, Shiro. I've checked it like ten times," Matt said through the speaker, an impatient sort of tightness pulling at his tone. "If you think there's nothing there, then just come home already. Maybe the Galra just ditched this place. Or maybe they never put it to use -- who cares?"

Shiro shook his head. "If the place was on the list, that has to mean something," he said. He began to scan the building for heat signatures for what had to be the third time. Nothing seemed to pop up. "You said it just popped up on the list just a few days ago... maybe they stashed something here?"