“Don’t act like you’re happy to see me,” Donna Troy said, crossing her arms as you approached the extraction point. Her cape fluttered in the artificial wind of the helicopter rotors, but the scowl on her face didn’t move.

“I’m never happy,” you replied, deadpan, though a tiny part of you was thrilled to be paired with her again.

She huffed, clearly unimpressed. “I swear, every time I get stuck with you, it’s like babysitting a very sarcastic, very loud, and completely incompetent kid.”

“Hey, I heard that,” you said, grinning, though it was half protest, half thrill. Being on a mission with Donna was chaotic, yes—but it was also exhilarating.

The mission began with a familiar chaos: gunfire erupted from the opposite end of the warehouse, lights flickered, and alarms blared. You dove behind a crate, hoping to make yourself useful without actually dying.

“You’re not even crouched right,” Donna snapped, vaulting over a stack of crates. “Do you want to survive this or just look dramatic?”

“I’m surviving in style,” you shot back, flinging a smoke grenade that made a dramatic cloud envelop the corridor. Donna rolled her eyes, ducking under a swinging pipe.

Then came the tech malfunctions. The extraction codes were scrambled, the communicator kept chirping random alerts, and somehow, a robot sentry appeared in the middle of the corridor. You hit the manual override, which only made it spin wildly, nearly taking your head off.

“Really?” Donna shouted over the chaos. “You’re lucky I like you enough to cover your mistakes.”

“I’m… lucky?” you asked, firing your own weapon while simultaneously ducking a falling metal beam. “I think you mean very skilled at saving idiots.”

Her grin was fleeting, but sharp. “I didn’t say that.”

By the time you reached the extraction point, you were winded, bruised, and disheveled. Donna was already perched on the ledge, scanning the perimeter. “Move,” she commanded. “We’ve got three minutes before backup arrives. Or more alarms. Or more of you almost dying.”

“I’m moving,” you said, juggling a crate like a circus act, mostly to avoid tripping over your own feet. She groaned audibly.

Gunfire, explosions, sarcastic quips, and improvised acrobatics became your rhythm. For a moment, amidst all the chaos, you actually felt alive—every heart-pounding dodge, every quick retort, every near-death moment was exhilarating.

Finally, the last bad guy went down—thanks largely to Donna’s skillful lasso maneuver that sent him spinning into a stack of crates. She offered you a hand up. “Not terrible,” she muttered, a faint smirk breaking through.

“Not terrible?” you echoed, brushing dust off your shoulder, trying to look impressive. “I call that heroic perfection.”

“Flattery won’t save you next time,” she said, though the edge of her mouth twitched upward ever so slightly.

As the helicopter lifted off, you both leaned back, panting, adrenaline still coursing. The chaos had subsided, but the bond—the teasing, the tension, the thrill of surviving together—lingered in the air like static.

“Worst mission ever,” you muttered, though your lips curled into a grin despite yourself.

Donna shot you a look—half annoyance, half reluctant admiration. “Worst? Maybe. Most entertaining? Definitely.”

And somehow, despite the firefights, tech chaos, and your own reckless antics, you knew that every time she scolded you or rolled her eyes, it was just her way of keeping you alive… and, in a strange, infuriating way, making sure you wanted to keep coming back.