Disclaimer: Quentin Tarantino is the proud owner of the Kill Bill franchise; Namco Bandai retains the rights to Tales of Symphonia. We are but sad, brilliant chumps only in possession of what we write. Rating is subject to change.

This tale is brought to you by mandrakefunnyjuice & EarlyMorningFreak, and the letter F!

Chapter I: Ring Out, Wild Bell
MFJ

Her codename Angel hadn't been an accident – Axman coined it deliberately out of a sense of irony; they had all approved because they agreed that whatever Angel's endeavors, she somehow looked angelic. She had always been and always would be his little angel, whether fighting or crying or killing or smiling or apologizing, as she always did. There was a thin, dividing line between your average person's psychology and the psyche of the psychopath, and it was a line that most people would never do so much as nod to, let alone seriously consider crossing. It follows that most of his associates at some point crossed that threshold riding in a flaming ELV (1) over eight school buses, never once looking back. Some of his associates had become demented and deranged by the experience while others acted as if it were lucid dream, too surreal for reality. It made for an interesting experience, but it always became dull after a time – it turns out that, surprisingly, being constantly surrounded by bloodthirsty killers can lose its charm. She, however, had managed to traverse that divisive line with what can only be described as the elegance of an angel. A contract killer, cold and reptilian, with eyes and a smile that rivaled the sun. The apologetic assassin, naïve and smart, clumsy but graceful – a walking paradox, a lucid dream, too surreal.

His little angel of death. To see her now, blood-spattered and beaten to a pulp, it made him more irascible and despondent than he'd ever been, or ever remember being for a very long time. It wasn't very often someone managed to upset him so much. Never, now that he thought about it. He could admit clinically that it was fascinating how angry she made him. Now she was panting erratically, frantically, bruised blue eyes roving and searching the room for something she wouldn't find. Perhaps something friendly or familiar, he couldn't be certain – her mind always had been an enigmatic black box.

He knelt over her; her breathing escalated as she made a last fearful attempt to cringe away. It was absurd; she had absolutely no strength left. A simple, quiet question: "Do you think me sadistic?"

She didn't answer, which wasn't unexpected. He pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and wiped away at some of the blood on her neck. It was such a mess they'd all made. She flinched away, whimpering at the touch of the cloth and of his hand, but he paid it no mind. He stared as tears began to fall slowly and silently down her cheeks, wondering absently how it was she still had any left. He cleaned the blood from her jaw and chin, fingers caressing her skin briefly. Despite the blood loss she managed to be warm, too warm for a natural human, which was likely a case of her Exsphere fighting to preserve what little life was left in her. A brief smile, because it was so like her to fight to the last.

He crouched back and observed the handiwork. "I can see it in your eyes," he murmured softly. "You do." He turned his head away briefly but the dark eyes never left her terrified, seraphic face for an instant. "I should like to think that you are aware enough, even now in this state … to realize there is nothing sadistic in my actions." He continued gently wiping away at the blood – there was no reason she had to die so messily, it just wasn't couth. "Perhaps towards these other fools," he told her, gesturing briefly towards the scattered bodies throughout the darkened chapel, and then back to her in her formerly white wedding gown, "but never to you."

He put the bloodied handkerchief away and stood up, studying her carefully one last time. Her cerulean eyes attempted to study his, he could see that, wondering in her last frightened moments when it would happen and how soon. He felt that it was only cruel to leave her hanging, and he was not an unusually cruel man, except when he was. He cocked the gun and aimed expertly at her battered golden head.

"No, Colette, I assure you, this is me at my most masochistic," he said sadly, the finger hardly, if at all, hovering over the trigger.

"K-Kr-Kratos," she rasped, barely able to force the words past her bloodied and swollen lips. "It's y-your b—"

A single shot rang out into the wild night followed by a heavy, gnashing silence that swallowed all other night-noises whole. And then, a soft and sweet darkness.

Don't worry – that one shot didn't kill me. I know I ruined it, woops! I'm sorry. I just thought you should know so you wouldn't be scared, so no worries. I guess it takes more than a shot in the head to put me down. Well, I suppose maybe I might've died there for a few seconds but it wasn't like it was permanent! I like to think that I was just 'mostly' dead, because the other way means that I'm technically a zombie and that's not good.

I'm not really sure why I didn't die, to be honest, but I don't question it. Maybe the bullet just didn't hit anything really vital. Maybe it was a miracle … I think I've seen too much in my life to believe in miracles anymore. Things happened, and sometimes fantastical things happened, but there were always reasons behind those things. I never saw any of those reasons as divine, but I've never judged others for thinking that they were. To me, it seemed that the world, which was made up of people, was kept constantly running and spinning in order by those people. People floated in circles, going around in patterns – and when one single thing disrupted that circle or that pattern, the others got caught up in it flew apart like shrapnel from an explosion. It used to be my job to catch those pieces as they fell, but as you just saw, that job kinda didn't end well.

Kratos. My boss and mentor. There were reasons why people did certain things. In fact there are two reasons why people do anything and everything that they do – there was the good reason, and then there was the real reason. The good reason was what you heard my former boss say before he shot me in the head. As for the real reason, I don't think I'll ever care enough to find out. There would never be a satisfying answer for what he did, what they all did to me. It was the breaking point, I guess. Gone was the pretty Angel, hello New Colette! There was only one thing I knew during after that shot: if I survived this, I was going to kill Kratos. I was going to kill them all for this. And for once, I wasn't going to be sorry.

See, Kratos' shot was the ultimate betrayal, and it almost became the final betrayal. But you just have to trust me: my story didn't end there, not by any means. Sometimes I think that it might've been simpler if it had ended there, but I've learned the hard way that life has a way of making other plans when you're not looking. Life finds a way.

No, that shot didn't kill me, but it did change everything. It was the beginning. By the end, they wouldn't know what hit 'em.

I was going to have my revenge if it was the last thing I ever did.

It was exactly three in the morning when Detective Botta got the call and he had responded as quickly as he could, arriving at the crime scene at exactly ten minutes later. There were three ambulances on standby parked outside of the old Trietan chapel and over three squad cars with their lights still on. Everything was still fresh, as the emergency call had apparently only been made little under a half-hour ago. It struck three-eleven A.M. the precise second the half-elf arrived at the scene, flashed his badge, and took in the sights.

Only one word came to mind, and it was "massacre." He breathed in deeply, counting backwards from five as was ritual and let his analytical half take over. It was the only side he could count on when one of the more gruesome crimes (such as this one) were sprung upon him without warning. One could not afford any qualms or queasiness in his line of work. It most certainly didn't help, however, that a bad feeling welled in his stomach the very second that he entered the church, a feeling that slowly grew the more and more information he took in. Botta didn't like it. He didn't like it at all.

Bullet-holes lined every surface (and there were even a few strange mana scorch-marks along the walls which suggested some magic may have been at work, however, as a half-elf Botta could sense mana and had detected no traceable signatures, which was very unfortunate) – the bodies were clustered around the altar and primarily on one side of the pews. Not a single person appeared to be missed, everyone had been shot to death before they could run or get very far. Whoever (or whatever, had to be open-minded) had done this had been either extremely thorough, or extremely insane.

He spied the green-haired Dr. Ferris in the corner of the chapel bent over one of the bodies with a strange look on her face; this meant that the forensic team was already at work, which didn't spell something well in the detective's mind. Forensics usually had to wait until the subjects were taken back to the station, so either they had all been called in too late and the case was cold, or there had been too few witnesses to determine suspects of any kind. Both were options Botta didn't want to consider. "What's the situation?" The detective asked the nearest man with a notepad.

"Bad, sir," Notepad-boy answered dutifully, barely glancing up to gesture vaguely around the destroyed chapel.

Botta felt like groaning but restrained himself. "You're ability to discern the obvious is to be commended, Jameson. Now answer my question properly – what have we gathered so far?"

Jameson sighed lightly and scratched at his left arm. "Call was made 'bout a half-hour ago – apparently there wasn't anyone close enough in the area to hear the racket. I doubt that but it's not my place. Either way, someone, or several someone's decided to crash this wedding and shoot up the entire party. Evidently, there was a large objection to the union and someone just couldn't hold their peace. Bride and groom both shot dead in the head, and what we assume to be the groom's family and friends dead as well. Bride's side is mainly empty, and she appears to have been beaten a bit before being shot in the head like the others. We're busy identifying most of 'em right now. "

"Number?"

"Eleven."

"Hmm. Where's the bride?" Botta asked.

Jameson grumbled and gestured lamely off to the left of the chapel and wandered off towards Dr. Ferris and her crew. Botta frowned at the subordinate's attitude (he made a mental note to discipline Jameson later) and headed towards a vaguely white figure lying on the ground where one of Ferris' assistants, one of the photographers, and a half-elven officer Botta knew as Margot Schulz were clustered around. Margot saw the detective coming and waved the other two off, who were talking about something or other in hushed undertones.

Botta crouched down over the corpse in the white dress and pulled out a pair of blue rubber gloves from his pocket. The woman was the only figure in the room in a white dress, so she was obviously the bride, and in addition she was the only body in the room that appeared to have been severely beaten before being put out of her misery. Yet one part was more disturbing – the bulge of her belly, suggesting she had been heavily pregnant at the time of death. He quirked an eyebrow and looked to Margot. "Is there any identification on this woman?" He asked lightly.

The officer shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably and then nodded. "The marriage certificate lists her as 'Etta Place.'"

Botta frowned and glanced down at the corpse and rubbed at his eyebrow compulsively, sighing. This just made things more complicated, if that were at all possible. "That's obviously a fake name."

"I know, sir," Margot nodded sharply. "No identity or records of any other kind, just the certificate. We've just been calling her 'The Bride.'" She glanced down the length of the chapel. "Even her side of the pews was empty of guests – all of these people are, or were, the friends and family of the groom."

After determining that there really wasn't anything for him to examine, Botta stood up and straightened his jacket. "She's not a ghost, officer – find some kind of identification. Failing that, we'll let forensics have their turn. Speaking of Dr. Ferris," he muttered and stomped over to said doctor on the other side of the chapel who was still staring at the same body she'd been staring at earlier, enraptured or fascinated by something she saw.

Meanwhile, Margot looked to the photographer and the assistant who remained silent throughout the entire exchange, and shrugged. The photographer and assistant looked to each other, shrugged, and clustered back around the corpse.

"Hey, Jen," the photographer said with a nudge at the assistant next to him. She frowned and pushed the photographer away gruffly.

"Nate, if you're about to say another one of your morbid, inappropriate jokes," Jen the assistant spat, "then do me a favor and shut up. Right now. Permanently."

Nate looked slightly offended. "No, not at all. It's just…" he looked between the corpse and the officer to his right and back. "I don't get it, that's all."

Margot nodded, apparently getting 'it.' "I know what you mean. This is all just, so…"

Nate crouched down and took another picture of the dead bride, frowning. He didn't know why he kept taking pictures since he'd been done a few minutes ago, but at this point, he figured it was a coping mechanism – taking pictures at scenes was a comfortable ritual. "Maybe we're not on the same page. I mean, look at her."

Margot nodded again, firmly. "This woman was pregnant."

Jen shuddered briefly and looked away. "I wonder if it counts as a second murder," she murmured. "Not that it will matter. Whatever monster did this…"

"My guess is it was several monsters," the half-elven officer supplied unhelpfully. "This is the work of a squad of three or more people. The carnage is just too precise - not one but several steadied hands did this. There are far too many bullets here for just one man or woman with one gun. It was definitely a collaborative effort. I just know it."

"Thanks… for that, Marge … yeah."

"No, no, no," Nate shook his head and stared down pensively at the bride from his crouched position. "Not what I mean. Well, I mean, that too, yeah she was pregnant, but it's just … look at her," he mumbled helplessly. "Golden hair, pale skin, full lips, big eyes … maybe you two can't tell what 'Etta' must've looked like before she shuffled the mortal coil, so to speak, but I can tell. She was definitely something. I just don't get what kind of sick bastard would shoot a pretty girl like her in the head, you know?" Nate didn't need to see the twin glares from Jen and Officer Schulz to know that know, they did not know. He could feel their glaring eyes boring into the back of his skull and he sighed, snapping a few more pictures. It really was the only thing he could do at that point.

"Ferris," Botta called. The doctor didn't budge, still staring down at the corpse she was hunched over with a confused little expression on her face. He said her full name and when that didn't snap her out of her stupor he knelt down to her level and tried to figure out exactly what it was she was looking at. All he saw was a handsome, well-built young man with spiky brown hair whom, judging from the bloodied attire, had likely been the groom at this union. He glanced at Ferris who seemed to be seeing something else and nudged her. She didn't respond with anything but a grunt.

"Judging from the positioning and the dress, it's likely this was the groom," he reported in a clipped, professional tone. Dr. Ferris didn't seem to be listening. "Cannot rule out the possibility that this was not the father, however unlikely," he murmured more to himself than anything as he recalled that the Bride had been pregnant. It gave entirely new meaning to the phrase 'shotgun wedding.'

Dr. Ferris' vivid green eyes snapped up to his face, wide-eyed and slightly blurry. It occurred to Botta for the first time that the look on the doctor's face wasn't one of clinical fascination or of professional interest, it was of a fixated horror. He frowned and looked to the body as a realization came over him.

"Kate, did you know this man?" Botta decided using her first name would keep her attention and assure her that this wasn't some kind of professional evaluation.

Kate blinked a few times and returned to her old, more rational doctor-self. She cleared her throat and nodded, her expression returning to its characteristic deadpan blankness. "Ah, yes, yes, I know him. Knew him, rather. I grew up with him in Iselia. His name is Lloyd Irving. We were childhood friends."

"Hmm. Iselia's a small town, isn't it?"

"Yes, he's fairly well known back there. I haven't kept in contact with him by any means," she snapped abruptly before the detective could open his mouth and ask the question, "Childhood friendships don't last forever. Still, I'd hear about him every now and then and send an email. Nothing special. I had no idea he was getting married."

"Seems like you should've received an invite," Botta said wryly.

Dr. Ferris looked around the room, her frown deepening and she stood up, unfolding slowly. "I'm rather glad I didn't, in this case. I just had no idea…"

An uncomfortable silence between the two subsumed and Botta shifted uncomfortable. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said vaguely, as he wasn't exactly the type for condolences.

Dr. Katherine Ferris just grunted in response. "It wasn't my loss, but thank you all the same, Detective. From the looks of this, this was a murder."

Botta stood up with the forensic specialist and brushed off his coat. "I doubt this was entirely random," he uneasily confirmed. Kate gave him a sharp look. "It's definitely within the realm of possibility that this massacre was deliberate," he grudgingly corrected. She glared at him, adjusting her glasses and tucking a stray green lock of hair back into her bun. "Well, in my professional opinion, everything about this screams homicide," he finally consented.

"Glad we're on the same page, Detective."

Botta rubbed his eyebrow and looked back to the corpse between them. "I assume you identified him earlier?"

Kate nodded. "And his family, yes," she added quietly and pointed to the other bodies nearby. She gestured to a younger man a little distance away from the body they were standing at. His spiky silver hair had a horrid brownish color staining its ends, from the blood. "Genis Sage," she said slowly. "Best friends with the groom. I grew up with him too. He was a good kid, intelligent and sarcastic."

A few moments passed in awkward silence and Botta grunted a goodbye, but as he started to leave Kate stopped him. "It's just …" She looked to the body that was once Lloyd Irving and closed her eyes, a conflicted expression creeping across her face. "I knew them. Him. We used to play in his yard, I had dinner with his family, we had every class together in school. He'd bribe me with cookies to do his homework for him. I always did. I have absolutely no idea why anyone would do this, because I know for a fact that Lloyd Irving would have never done anything to warrant … his violent murder. I can vouch for that."

Botta paused, eyeing her, and asked slowly, "And you're sure of that?"

Dr. Katherine Ferris opened her eyes and glared at him with all the irritation her emerald eyes could muster. "Absolutely. There's no way."

He patted her awkwardly on the arm. "It's your job to be objective," he told her quietly. "That said, I don't doubt you – all logic says that he and his family were just casualties in a firefight."

Kate nodded harshly and tucked another piece of her green hair behind her pointed ear. "The Bride, yes. I did arrive here some time before you did, Detective, and I've had plenty of time to analyze the scene; on the spot readings from the scanners estimate the time of death as around two to three hours ago, possibly around midnight; as for Etta Place, I can confirm that her death was at least one hour ago, possibly a time even sooner. Her injuries were also suffered pre mortem, which likely suggests that she was a specific target in this endeavor. I can't rule out any other possibilities, but I'm afraid that's your job." She paused after her little speech and folded her arms, adjusting her glasses.

Botta snorted. "Glad we're on the same page, Ferris," he smirked. "I—"

A startled cry from the other side of the room cut the conversation off. Dr. Ferris and Detective Botta snapped to attention as Officer Margot became a blue blur heading to the other end of the room screaming something about ambulances and medics at the top of her lungs, and forensic technician Jen barreled over to the twosome breathlessly. "What?" Ferris demanded. "What is it?"

"She's alive!" The assistant gaped, and the detective and the doctor were stunned into silence. "The Bride! She's not dead! She's alive!"

The photographer was hunched over the former corpse of the pregnant Bride, who, sure enough, was spitting out blood and coughing erratically – and was very much alive. Her hand, which Nate the photographer was clutching desperately, clenched and unclenched sporadically, as the bullet hole in her head slowly started to bleed anew. Nate was nervously babbling off a series of grand reassurances that the Bride probably couldn't hear anyway, but that didn't stop him from telling her over and over again that she was going to be 'okay' and that it was all going to be 'all right' and 'help was on the way.'

Several medics rushed into the room at that moment on Officer Schulz' heels and rush to the aide of the suddenly-alive Bride 'Etta Place' while Kate and Botta stared at the scene, and then at each other with wordless, baffled glances.

"She was dead," Ferris reported, completely deadpan.

Botta said absolutely nothing and watched the scene unfold with a dark look on his face, as the bloody Bride was loaded onto a stretcher and into an ambulance, which then rushed off to the hospital in the faint pre-dawn light.

The solemn detective still said nothing when Kate began to ramble on about how it wasn't possible Ms. Place was alive, she'd been shot in the head, and even if she was alive and didn't die again she'd been in some kind of life-long coma, she shouldn't be alive, it was illogical, miracles didn't happen, etc. He simply went back to work, mentally filing the Bride's survival as something he could deal with later, after he dealt with whoever had shot her in the head and dismantled her wedding.

He didn't want to let on that he was secretly infuriated about the whole ordeal. Not the sudden resurrection of the Bride, oh no – not that. He had no reason to be angry about that. It was a miracle, truly. He was infuriated about the whole crime in general. Anyone with a right mind would be infuriated by it all, anyone with any sense would want to hunt down those responsible and make them pay, but certainly not Detective Botta; he was angry because there had been something he'd forgotten, something that he had just realized as he watched the Bride tied down to a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance.

You see, Botta knew, deep down, that he was going to have to be the one to make this report their Captain, Yuan Ka-Fai, and that was easily the most hated part of his job.

As if his day hadn't started off horribly enough, somehow it had just gotten worse. He groaned and counted backwards from five. This wasn't going to be pretty. And it helped even less that from the moment that he'd arrived on the scene there had been a sinking sensation in his stomach that he couldn't quite seem to pinpoint or sate. An oddly specific gut feeling that told him no matter how many resources and in-depth investigations they poured into this mess, it was a fruitless endeavor. Unsolvable. Looking back at the bullet-peppered chapel, the feeling intensified.

Although it was a slightly oxymoronic thing to say given the whole scene, it was all clean. It was all too clean. This had been an effort on behalf of several trained professionals and he'd be damned if he knew why. He hadn't given Ferris his suspicions because it was the last thing Kate had needed at that moment, especially after the revelation that she had known the majority of the deceased. Detective Botta's instincts were never wrong, which is why he was trying to deny them and fool them into believing that this wouldn't become a cold case. But there was just too little evidence, too little of a trace. No reason, no rhyme, no anything. He couldn't help the itching feeling that even with the Bride's miraculous survival, this was beyond him.

Botta hated that feeling. He hated that he'd have to include it in his report to Captain Yuan even more.

(1) ELV: elemental land vehicle, equivalent to elemental cargo

THIS WARNING WILL ONLY APPEAR MAYBE ONCE:

This tale is complete AU. Kill Bill is a movie primarily focused on action and entertainment, not depth or realism; it is a theoretical translation of past film genres organized into a tribute by the fantastic Quentin Tarantino (spaghetti western, kung fu, samurai, anime, rape-and-revenge, girls-with-guns, etc.). In contrast, Tales of Symphonia is a videogame whose only similarity to Kill Bill is the fact that both have origins in Japan. ToS is focused on plot and character development, not action, which is the total opposite of what Kill Bill stands for. Any potentially emotional or meaningful parts of the movie were pure, simple, and uncompounded, probably because they were mirroring Greek theater; by contrast, ToS did its best to be as layered as a malformed onion and reasonably complex without pissing all over us. To combine these two so-obviously-alien-to-each-other mediums, sacrifices had to be made, hence the heavy AU – to wit, some parts of this great film and this cherished game will cease being recognizable. They may have been warped in service of our brilliant brainchild, or they may have been removed entirely. (Throw a funeral and cry? -MFJ)(Or just get over it. -EMF)

In conclusion, you will need to put aside all your preconceptions about the Symphonia's world and laws, as well as characters and their dynamics. The characters you know and love will essentially have the same basic personality traits we all recognize, i.e. Regal is well-spoken and polite, Presea is quiet and literal-minded, Zelos is an obnoxious philanderer, Sheena's a brash and well-meaning ninja, Raine is a talented researcher, Colette's somewhat ditzy and overly apologetic … but their relationships have been altered for the sake of the story. Not to mention some of the extreme elements of their personalities will become dramatically warped. Also, plot elements that were previously integral to the game have been removed for convenience's sake, so expect the natural changes to the world and people as a result of their absentia. There is no Alicia, Genis and Raine aren't siblings, there is no Mithos, there is no magical fairy-tree, Regal's not some prodigal monk-CEO, there's no Chosen Jesus, and there is no Cruxis. More importantly, Lloyd is not Kratos' son. No. This is kind of important to remember, which is why we totally bolded it. In addition, because a certain someone is our pick in this quest for bloody revenge, you may find that the dumb-but-pretty girl you know and love has very little in common with the dark, vengeful creature she will soon become. Rest assured, however, that this transformation was necessary and you will find that she will have plenty of reason to adapt and change into this new persona we've developed. In short, everything we have done here we have done for a reason, and that reason was not to spite the bitchy, menopausal fandom. And just to prove we're not complete a-holes, some former elements from the game will make brief cameo appearances (such as holy-goat-sniffing-Jehovah-Botta's-the-detective, and Kate-what-the-hell's-she-doing, and oh-my-god-Genis-and-Lloyd-are-dead-what-the-shit).

So, essentially: You're either going to love us, or kick our asses by the time we're done. Keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, hang on firmly to your buttockses, and enjoy the show.

-EMFJ