The Devil's 5'5

Chapter 15 - Deal With It

February 11th, 2:04 PM - HYENA HQ - Chicago, IL Azura's POV

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"Mano come on!"

"I believe I already told you my answer Agent 69. It hasn't changed in the last 30 seconds."

Azura gritted her teeth as she clasped her hands together to refrain from yanking Mano by his hair so that he could at least look at her when he spoke.

"And why the fuck not?! I just told you that he's got this phobia where keeping me assigned to him may very well cost you the entire mission. He's scared of me. He almost ran away from me." But no matter how many times she stressed this point it didn't seem to get through Mano's thick skull.

After forcing herself to sit through the movie after Preston's intervention, she had thought long and hard about what she had learned. Sure, she could just ignore his words and continue to stay on like planned. But given all that had happened in the span of two weeks it simply made more sense to hand this over to someone who wouldn't give her a target a heart attack. The agency wasn't short of male agents in the slightest, so why Mano was not allowing for the change in the first place was beyond her.

Azura stood there, right up in front of her handler's desk, refusing to move.

Eventually, the older man sighed and look up from his paperwork. "Agent 69, why must you always make things difficult?"

She couldn't tell anyone why, but his words made her flinch. He continued. "You had boasted about your abilities saying that you had a perfect track record. Are you now telling me that such a minuscule factor is enough to disengage you from your mission? That too, because of a phobia towards an entire gender? Being the feminist that you are, it sounds like you got yourself an extreme sexist. I'm not sure if I should be amused or confused with how you easily believed this boy."

She rolled her eyes. "Look, I don't get the phobia either okay? It's absurd but he literally seems to have panic attacks when I'm near him!"

He sighed as he placed his pen down neatly in front of him. "Then should I remind you that you were awarded this highly sensitive mission instead of dozens of other capable agents?"

"It's not that I'm not capable, I just had the mission's best interests at heart."

But Mano was not listening because he kept up with his relentless attacks. "You were a sleeper agent before this, for two years, in the same environment your target is currently in. Are you telling us that all the time, finance and resources we had poured into having you there have been wasted? And that too because you're ego took a hit after the fact that a boy didn't fall for your charms?"

"Mano--"

"If you really had the mission's, the FBI's or even HYENA's best interest at heart, you would have realized the difficulties we would have to face on our end. To find another suitable agent, to bring them up to speed with the mission and place them in an unknown environment is not something we can do merely to satisfy your personal insecurities."

She hung her head, allowing her hair to act as a curtain around her. She felt like she was being suffocated as she stood there silently, taking his words, hit after hit.

"If you want a solution, it's very simple at least from what I've gathered. Stop throwing yourself at him. Maybe if such a concept is hard to comprehend, I'm sure our newest addition, Agent 13 could help you." It was Mano's way of stomping on her pride by bringing up Johnny. Having been apart of a rival agency, she managed to easily gain an offer from HYENA after her mission with Amir.