Language warning.  If you are insanely hypersensitive to certain words, 
don't read.
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Condor Joe was dead.

For the moment with no one watching, there was no need to keep the mask 
of leadership up, so I take advantage of the first privacy I'd had since 
returning from the mission and sink down into my swivel chair.  My 
"bird-style", the skintight winged armour that makes me the Eagle, 
vanishes, leaving just me, alone with my feelings.

In some ways Joe Asakura had been a major pain.  Insubordinate, insanely 
reckless, a revenge crazed thug looking for a way to get himself killed, 
and take as many of the opposition with him as he could in the process. 
And that was exactly what he did.  His medical condition might have been 
treated successfully with brain surgery if he'd reported the first 
symptoms immediately.  With luck, he would have been out of action for a 
few months.  But, oh no, he had to hide it, keep going even when his 
headaches and vision problems endangered himself and the rest of the 
team.  By the time he let himself, he had a week to live anyway.  He 
wasn't even Japanese, but he went kamikaze anyway, led us to Cross 
Karakorum.  And...he saved the world.  

Oh well.  I supposed he went out the way he wanted to.  Damn him.  How 
could he do this to us?  To me?  He was MY pain in the ass!  He couldn't
follow orders worth a damn, was always trying to rewrite the mission, 
kept going off solo so we'd have to rescue him...  That bastard.  God 
I'll miss him.  Nobody could fight better than him.  Nobody 
could...could...

I have to pull myself together.  Father already has a replacement in the 
wings.  His sister, of all people.  If she's anything like Joe, I can't 
show any weakness or she'll eat me alive.  She's got at least as much of 
a revenge motive as he did.  But there's no way she can be as bad as Joe 
was.  Nobody was like Joe.  With her addition, the girls in the Ninja 
Team now outnumber the boys and that might even make my leadership role 
easier.  Still, I wipe the tears out of my eyes, and start fixing my 
makeup.  Put on my game face.  The team depends on me.  Morale's too 
fragile to continue to indulge myself.  

I finish pulling myself together just in time.  As I put my compact back 
in my purse, Father comes in with our newest recruit.  She probably 
won't be that bad.  After all, how much trouble can a girl named 
Priscilla be?  

"Sylia?" he says.  "I'd like you to meet the teams newest member, 
Priscilla Asakura.  Priscilla, I'd like you to meet G-1, Sylia Nambu."

She looks at me with no sign of being impressed.  "So...are you any 
good, or are you in charge because you're Daddy's Little Girl?"

I have a sinking sensation that I'm going to be hearing that expression 
way too often...
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Characters and situations in this piece belong to Tatsunoko and Artmic.