A/N: Sorry, no founding Titans in this chapter. I will, however, cover what's happened to at least one other Titan in chapter four, and there will be a canon character in this post.

Disclaimer: I do not own the character of Shandrey, from whose point of view this chapter is told, nor do I own Arthur Reagan. The first belongs to Tsukikage1213, while the second is the property of ThSamurai. I also do not own the cartoon known as Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is referred to toward the end of the chapter.

Chapter Three: Third Friend

THEN

Eight years ago…

"So, tell me again who this girl is, to merit such protection?" Elm asked, after quietly knocking out a guard from behind—the twelfth one we'd encountered so far. He dragged the man to a nearby closet and hurriedly stuffed his body inside.

"And why did Gladio send four of us to kill her?" Lee added, confusion written in his azure eyes, an expression matched in Elm's mismatched set. The latter scratched his head, further disturbing his already disheveled, white-streaked bright red hair.

"Who cares?" Moira asked, as we started up the staircase. "It'll still be fun. And if we can find her quickly, we might have time to play around a little first." A cruel smile formed on her lips, accompanied by the usual chill of her icy blue eyes.

Moira put on a slight pout, but didn't argue. She couldn't—we needed to be silent once more, having reached the top of the stairs to find a lengthy hallway extending to either side of the landing. We had no way of knowing which doors had guards or servants behind them, and there were quite a few.

We split up, Moira and myself veering off to the left, while Elm and Lee went to the right. Each person slowly crept up to a door, then as one, we each yanked our respective portal open. All four rooms were unoccupied, and we repeated the procedure. Again, there was no one, but this time, in my room, there was a little pile of ashes next to the bed.

I almost turned away, but then it dawned on me. That was out of place. Everything else about the room indicated it was cleaned almost religiously, and there wasn't a fireplace, so where had it come from? I gestured quietly for the others to come take a look.

It took a moment for the incongruity to sink in to the others, but once it did, Elm's face lost all color. "No. It can't be," he whispered. Slowly, he approached it, as he would a cobra or viper that was preparing to strike.

His focus was on that pile of ashes, to the point where he saw nothing else, including the little closet on the wall to the left of the door. It nearly cost him his life.

As he was passing in front of the closet, a thin, short blade stabbed out at him from between the slats. The only thing that saved him were his excellent reflexes, honed from almost a year of assignments like this, as he tried to jump out of the way. The blade didn't impale him as its owner intended, but it still stabbed through his upper arm, drawing blood as it withdrew.

The only one not frozen by shock was Lee, who telekinetically threw open the closet doors to reveal the assailant. "All right, wh—" He cut off in mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. The assailant, a nearly ordinary-looking man except for the specks of white in his otherwise brown hair, also looked stunned, dropping his weapon to clatter on the wooden floor. The fingers of the right hand tightly gripped a hollow cane, going white from lack of circulation. The rest of us looked on, not sure what to make of this.

Moira wave her hand in front of Lee's face, snapping him out of his daze. "Arthur? Arthur Reagan?"

Shaking his head, the man slowly bent to pick up the sword, carefully bending his right leg. He jammed the weapon back into the cane, which to all appearances was now an ordinary length of wood. "That's my name, don't wear it out."

With a critical expression, he looked each of us up and down. He sneered. "Well, Leonidas, I see you've picked up some friends in low places. REALLY low," he added when Moira summoned fire to her hands, "if she can use hellfire." She snarled at the implication in his voice, and would have attacked if Lee hadn't firmly held her back with his telekinesis.

"Uh, Shandrey, a little help?" Elm called. He had his right hand clamped tightly over the wound near his left shoulder, which in turn was pressed firmly against his side.

"Sorry." I moved to stand next to him, drawing water from the air in preparation for healing, mentally chiding myself for forgetting his injury.

NOW

Time of takeover, year one, day one

I have had more than one name in my lifetime, but the one I go by, the one everyone calls me, is Shandrey. Shandrey Yen-Mah. As for the name I was born with, that's behind me, part of a past I have no need to relive.

And why would I? I have friends now, friends who've stood by me for years, and would trust with my very life (which is more than I could say about any remaining family members). Of course, I would never tell them that. They don't need their egos swollen any more than they already are, thank you very much—especially the samurai called Lee and his best buddy, Elm.

That friendship was what had me out late at night, when I could have been sleeping in a warm, comfortable bed, accompanied by what had to be the rudest, most obnoxious jerk on the face of the planet.

"So, tell me again why we're up in the middle of the night? I think your boyfriend sent us on a wild goose chase."

I gritted my teeth, then took a deep breath in an attempt to avoid screaming at him. "Lee is NOT my boyfriend," I stated, saying it slowly and clearly. "And it wasn't just him. Elm sensed something wrong, too. You know that when both a telepath and an empath start feeling like something is wrong, then there is most definitely something wrong."

He merely yawned. "Well, that changes things," he said sarcastically. "Your boyfriend and his mate together can never be wrong." Still, he did actually take the time to survey his surroundings—an area of desert and canyons far from the fault lines underneath the bay. Yet every seismic sensor in the city indicated that this was the origin of several recent, good-sized tremors.

"You know, Reagan, one of these days you're going to make the wrong person mad with that attitude of yours."

"Ooo, I'm quaking in my boots. See this look on my face? It's absolute terror at the thought."

I closed my eyes and mentally counted to ten, which only helped a little. I imagined taking him out to the woods and shooting him, which helped a bit more.

I opened my eyes. "All right, see anything out of the ordinary?"

"Perhaps those footprints leading into the cave don't fit?" He pointed off to the left. In the side of a particularly reddish cliff, there was a narrow opening, barely wide enough for one person to pass through.

Once we were closer, he examined the prints in more detail. "Whoever this person is, he or she does not weigh much. These footprints aren't very deep, despite the fact that they were running."

I frowned. "How do you know they were running?"

"See how far apart they are? Also, if you look more closely, you'll see two things. One, a fine spray of sand has been kicked up in front of each step. And two, the impression of the heel is just a little deeper than the toe."

"Oh," I said, after a lengthy pause. "Well, what were they running from?"

He sighed. "Undoubtedly a rock slide. There's every indication that pile of boulders sheered off the canyon wall recently, within the last day or so. Probably caused by all the tremors."

He turned back to where the footprints led. "It's reasonable to assume that this person is still here, because there's no set of prints leading away. As for whether or not they are still alive, that I couldn't say…"

Elm rotated his arm, stretching the shoulder muscle to make sure everything worked properly. While he was doing that, I turned to the samurai. "So…how did you two meet?" I indicated the newly introduced Arthur Reagan.

For only the second time since I'd met him, Lee looked highly uncomfortable. He wasn't actually shifting his feet, but he was visibly restraining himself from doing something like that. A slightly reddish tinge appeared on his cheeks. Finally he answered in a barely audible whisper, "He saved my life."

Elm shot him a quick look that was difficult to read. "So? Why are you so embarrassed by that? Everyone in this room has done that before, including myself. And you've returned the favor for each of us."

Lee shook his head and took a deep breath. "In your question lies part of the answer. I've saved you as well. I've never had a chance to repay my debt to him. However, it's not just that…on my first mission alone for Gladio, I made a very elementary mistake, one you would expect only a beginner to make. I won't tell you what I did, but I will tell you that I wouldn't be standing here if Arthur hadn't been there too."

Moira broke into the conversation, causing everyone else to jump a little. "That's nice." Her tone implied she thought it was anything but. "However, may I remind you three that we are here for a reason? Friend or not," here she gave Reagan a murderous glare, "he's not here to help you or us. I think it's highly suspicious that he's here at the same time we are."

Lee sighed. "She is right Arthur, and you know it. Why are you here?"

The man's face twisted in a slightly bitter smile. "To kill a mockingbird."

And that cryptic answer is all he would give us.

NOW

I called into the cave. "Whoever's in there, it's all right! You can come out now!"

There was a slight echo, then silence for a few seconds. A little shuffling noise further back in the cave was all that could be heard.

Finally, a tentative female voice answered. "Please go away. I don't want to hurt anyone."

I tried to be as reassuring as possible. "Don't worry. I can take care of myself. Come on out."

"Well…ok." More shuffling, then the cave's occupant moved toward the entrance. I backed off to make room.

Whoever it was stopped just short of the light, where the general outline was visible, but no details. I couldn't see the face. "It's all right, you can come on out," I reassured her.

Hesitantly, she took one more step forward, and I heard Reagan draw a sharp breath. I didn't blame him. Long, blond hair, blue eyes, and an almost anorexic figure—this was the girl my friends and I had been sent to kill eight years ago.

THEN

We heard light footsteps coming up the stairs, announcing the presence of our target. Evidently, our superiors were misinformed about her schedule—she should have been home an hour before. Quietly, we all took cover: Elm grabbed Lee on the shoulder and teleported to cover the other side of the stairs, Moira put her back against the wall bordering the hallway where the door would hide her from anyone who entered, I kneeled down behind the bed, and Reagan once again retreated to the closet.

All of this was accomplished in the space of a heartbeat, and without so much as a whisper of sound. The pace of the footsteps did not change, indicating we still remained undetected. Carefully, we listened, waiting for the right moment…but when she reached the landing, she turned the other way, toward Elm and Lee.

Moira carefully peeked out the door, just a moment before a loud crash echoed down the hallway. She rushed out the door, and I was right behind her. I could hear Reagan hobbling along behind us.

We needn't have bothered. The girl was either unconscious or dead. The crash had been a door Lee had ripped off its hinges with his telekinesis, and he had apparently hit her over the head with it.

I exchanged a glance with Lee, and he shook his head almost imperceptibly, telling me he hadn't been able to pick up any thoughts before he had ambushed her.

I ground my teeth in frustration. Why did Gladio want her dead so badly? There HAD to be a reason!

But there was no way to find out now without making Moira suspicious. I glanced briefly at the girl lying prone on the floor. Was that a flicker of black in the otherwise blond hair? I blinked once, but it was gone.

"Well, is she dead?" Moira asked. Elm knelt down and put his palm on her cheek, spreading out his fingers. Closing his eyes, he concentrated.

"No. But she won't wake for a long time. If we set the mansion on fire, she won't have time to escape." He removed his hand and looked to Moira, who grinned.

"My pleasure."

NOW

The girl, now a woman, did not seem to recognize either of us.

"Wh-who are you? What do you want with me?"

"My name is Shannon Chan, and this is Arthur Reagan. We no idea you were here. We were sent out here to find out why there have been so many minor earthquakes."

The woman bit her lip, looking down at the ground. "That was me."

"Oh?" Reagan replied. "I find that hard to believe."

Hs shook her head emphatically. "It was me. I've been practicing. I don't want to hurt anyone else by losing control of my powers."

This was growing more interesting by the second, and I turned away to think for a minute. I wondered if she could possibly be an earthbender. Now that I thought about it, I recalled that the book my sister Moira had made me read had mentioned that there had once been benders for each of the elements. It had also had a brief note about a person called the Avatar, who could bend all four elements to his or her will, and that person was always reincarnated the moment they died, ensuring that each generation had one. There were strong hints that Elm might be this mystical figure. True, he didn't have some of the abilities it was mentioned Airbenders had, but then again, he had had to learn that element all on his own.

I shook myself out of those musings, however. They weren't helping me at all. I turned back to the woman. "You now know our names. It would only be polite if you were to introduce yourself to us."

She looked back up. "Very well. My name is Tara Markov. But the Titan called Beast Boy told me I am also called Terra, and I think he was right."