Mercenary

by whitetigerwolf

She is more than the ruthless mercenary her children believe her to be, she knows it. Still, to convince her children, Mystique must first convince herself. And in Roanapur, that's harder and harder to do. One-Shot. COMPLETE. No pairings.

I Do Not Own Black Lagoon or X-Men:Evolution

This story was inspired by the fact that Brad Swaile voices both Nightcrawler and Rock.

For the purposes of this story, Mutants are not common knowledge

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Rokuro 'Rock; Okajima took a drag of his cigarette as he looked over Roanapur's harbor.

He kept many secrets from his crewmates. Perhaps the two biggest were that Rokuro Okajima was not his actual name, and he was actually a she.

To be honest, even Rock didn't remember her birth name. It had been long abandoned, and countless other identities assumed. Some so briefly they were never remembered, and some for so long they became a part of her identity.

Rock was quickly becoming as much a part of her identity as Raven Darkholme and Mystique.

But the most important secret she kept from her crew-mates were her children. Kurt and Anna Marie were...well, she knew she had disappointed the both of them.

They were actually the reason she had become Rokuro, even basing her voice on her son.

She wanted to prove to herself that she could survive without being the ruthless mercenary they thought of her as.

At first, she did good. As much as she hated the mundane job of a salary-man, she had made a decent living. Then she'd been kidnapped, and remarkably stayed in character.

Then that damn shootout happened at the Yellowflag. It would have been so easy to abandon her new character and pick up a gun, but she had stayed in character.

Up until she told her boss she quit, and then joined the Lagoon Company.

Still, she had been able to stay in character. But over time, parts of her real self slipped through.

Gradually, she was finding her children were right. Every day, every job, she found herself slipping closer and closer to her old self.

It was why she was so resistant to carry a gun.

She knew, once she pulled the trigger, once she crossed that fine line she toyed with by choosing to remain in Roanapur, she would have proven her children right...

….That she was nothing more than a ruthless mercenary.

And that scared her more than anything she had seen in her more than a century of life.

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