Here we have the first chapter of this story. Calling it a crossover would be too much. Rather think of it as a "what if" Frederica, or rather Sawyer the Cleaner from Black Lagoon worked in Gotham instead of Roanapur.
Note: I changed her surname from Sawyer to Langlois. I intend to make Sawyer a nickname for her, given her trademark weapon. And besides, the world needs more badass French characters.
Disclaimer: I do not own Sawyer or anything from the DCU. Rei Hiroe and DC comics do.
Please read and review!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The train made it into the city, taking it´s time, as if wanting to show it´s passengers all of Gotham´s decadent glory. People from all paths of life came to this city looking for something. Love, fame, a better tomorrow, acceptance...not that these desperate people were going to make it big here. Gotham City was a lady with a really nasty temper. Tread carefully it´s streets and you will be alright, maybe even find happiness. Take a wrong turn somewhere along the road and you will be in for quite a wild ride, and more often than not, it will probably be your last. People described Gotham as "A piece of hell that came sprouting out of the concrete and kept right on growing". And in line with that analogy this Pandemonium had quite a share of demons roaming it´s darkest corners. Creatures of the dark that preyed on themselves and on the blood of the innocent.
Nevertheless the city managed to keep advancing without breaking stride for there were a handful of...people that kept the demons at bay. Those "people", or "monsters" depending on who you asked, prowled on the dark, fighting the demons, keeping them at bay the best they could. The press, never one to miss on such a chance labeled them "superheros" placing such beings above the old mythical heroes. Frederica never really understood what made them "superheros" instead of "vigilantes" or just plain "heroes". The teenage goth girl supposed it would look better on the headlines. Some of the passengers were eying her with suspiciousness as if the little girl before them clutching a cello case was an eyesore that should be removed. She had been sitting there without moving, looking at the ground for the entirety of the trip. She startled a Latin woman that was holding a baby in her arms when she lifted her head and looked through the window at the chaotic skyline of the nearing city. Sunlight poured on the seedy city as the sun came down on the city. It was near dusk when the train finally entered the station.
- The train coming from Star City has made it´s entrance in platform 6. - Said a deadpan female voice through the PA system. Frederica paid it no attention and maneuvered her way across the mass of dreams, hope, and desperation that were the waves of immigrants that accompanied her on the train. She exited out of the decayed station and tried to stop a taxi, failing several attempts until finally managing to get a taxi driver´s attention. She hauled her bag with her things and her cello case inside the cab and entered the car. A fat man in his late forties turned to her.
- Where are we going darli...? - His voice trailing off when he saw his client up close. A girl in her teens, no older than seventeen with jet black hair cut at neck length and skin so white it resembled chalk. The petite form seated in the back of the car was dressed in a goth garb consisting of a dark maroon t-shirt with a big silver cross on it and a black skirt with boots and black stockings. Her arms were covered by striped black and dark maroon gloves. Her hands where small and delicate, with her fingers adorned by various silver rings and her fingernails polished in black. However, what made the man stutter wasn´t anything of that. The girl had an horrific scar that crossed her slender neck, as if someone had tore her head off and sewn it back. Her eyes were not very assuring either. They cast off no feelings, only apathy and an immense emptiness. It looked as if a ghost had entered the car. The taxi driver was staring dumbfounded at her while she fumbled for a moment with a pocket on the side of the skirt and produced a tiny metallic object, which she pressed against her throat.
- Palmer street...number 24... - Said the Gothic girl with a mechanic and haunting hiss, produced by the artificial larynx the wound on her neck forced her to use. The driver focused his attention on driving rather than keep on thinking about his passenger. Frederica pocketed her Ultravoice and sighed inwardly. The taxi driver would no doubt take her through the longest route possible to her destiny. Frederica looked through the window at the landscape of the city. Lots of bridges over the streets, impossibly tall buildings that seemed to be cantilevered towards the streets rather than away, giving the city an omnipresent sensation of darkness and claustrophobia. Frederica watched powerlessly as her chauffeur "accidentally" got into a traffic jam and the taximeter entered the double digits. To avoid her mind reminiscing unpleasant memories she focused her attention at the buildings around, absorbing every little detail. Passion for detail was what made her so good at her job. She was sure someone of her chosen trade wouldn´t have any problems searching for a job here in Gotham City. The teenage goth had heard many stories about this city, and it seemed to her the best place to set up and start working. But before she started working seriously she needed a place to crash at. The taxi sloppily zipped through Gotham´s streets and after half an hour it reached it´s destination. She came out of the car and paid the scam disguised as a taxi fee. She crossed the street carrying her things and entered a run-down hotel.
The receptionist watched her approach warily, only being used to see local thugs use the establishment, not what looked like a young musician wandering helpless this dangerous neighborhood. The girl leaned her cello against the counter and asked for a room. The receptionist lazily handed her a sheet of paper.
- Do I have...to fill this...up? - The receptionist nodded.
- It´s the law, miss. To ask for a room I need proof of you being at least 18 years old and I need a name to put in the register. - Frederica picked the paper the man handed to her and looked at it, while the man resumed cleaning the counter with a greasy rag.
- ...Done... - Said the petite girl, folding the sheet and giving it back to the man. The man unfolded it. There was nothing written on it but inside there were tucked three fifty dollar bills. The man looked at Frederica and back at the money and shrugged.
- Welcome to the Liberty Hotel Miss Sarah Franklin! Your room is room 102 – Said the man while giving her a key with her room number on the key ring. - Here, let me help you with your bags, young ladies shouldn´t carry that much weight.
- It´s...fine... - Answered Frederica taking the key and heading to the stairs with her things. She was not very fond of places that had such...lax rules about cleanliness, much less a hotel with a couple cockroaches roaming the corridor that led to her room but it would have to do. It was discreet, cheap and while the receptionist could not be trusted it was way better than sleeping in the streets. She inserted her key in the lock and opened her room. A typical hotel room. Bed done quickly, cheap furniture and tell-tale signs of rushed cleaning. She sighed and entered the room, locking the door behind her. She dropped the bag with her things on the top of her bed and leaned her cello case against the wall.
Diligently, she started to scan the room and the bathroom for any cameras or peeping-holes. After a good ten minutes she was sure that no one would spy on her. She closed the curtains of the room´s only window and started to make inventory. She took her clothes out of the bag and carefully put them in the small wardrobe the room had. She counted the money she had left. She still had three thousand dollars, good. She made a wad with the money and hid it behind the same wardrobe. Frederica would start looking soon for a more...permanent location, but until then she would have to put up with this place. She checked her nightstand´s drawers, only finding a pack of matches and a bible. She left them there and turned to her cello case. She put it atop the small wardrobe, now doubling as an impromptu table and opened it.
Inside the cello case was her tool of the trade, the one and only thing she trusted her life to. An industrial sized modified chainsaw that had a blade almost as large as she was. It was Frederica´s pride. She never understood why some hit men gave names to their guns (Female names at that!) and showed a bizarre form of affection for them. But she could understand the bond someone made with their favorite tool.
Frederica worked as a cleaner for the mafias. As body disposal was an absolutely vital function within any criminal syndicate, the business of "cleaning" was a most profitable one, but certainly not the most coveted. Ending a person´s life was one thing, but having to deal with the actual dead body and find a proper means of getting rid of it was a job that rarely anyone would want.
As amoral as murderers could get, they rarely wanted to take care of the remains of the person. Maybe the longer they spent around the still warm corpse the best they realized the depth of the act they just committed, maybe they became more aware of they own mortality. And so, they depended on cleaners to erase the aftermath of their performances. Thus, a good cleaner was a valuable asset to the society. Great was considered even better than good, so naturally, a great cleaner was valued more. Then of course, above great, there were the elite. Out of the very few that chose this profession, the elite had earned the reputation as the most adept, the most skilled, the most efficient and therefore, the most wanted.
Frederica Langlois was the best.
At a first glance, the little girl appeared to be rather frail. A fragile girl that somehow had stumbled upon the darkness of the city, but on closer inspection one would notice how her empty blue eyes affirmed quite the contrary. Saying that her eyes were as cold as ice was an euphemism. She was the best at her line of work because she didn´t think anything when she looked at the corpses. She did not think things such as "Maybe he had a family waiting for him", or "Maybe she just was in the wrong place at the wrong time". No, she did not think any of those things. Frederica did not even think of the corpses as the remains of a person who had lived, and would not cry, smile, talk, laugh or feel anything anymore. To her they were just lumps of meat, blood and tissue that had to be disposed of quickly, efficiently and without leaving any traces behind.
What made this line of thinking even more gruesomely twisted was that aside to being a cleaner, she was also a killer herself, and she enjoyed her work. Frederica was unique as a cleaner, as she didn't just offered her services for the dead, but she also volunteered to..."deal" with the living. She absolutely loved disposing of a live subject. She loved to see the panic and desperation in the eyes of the poor soul that had angered the powers that be. She loved the cries of pain and the sound of a person´s last breath leaving its body. The mafias usually turned to her when they wanted to make an example out of somebody. Then she could get really creative. Disposing of someone was a just some quick chopping but making an example out of the poor bastard required butchering him with such cruelty than even the most seasoned war veterans would feel their stomaches churn. Usually receiving a box containing the chopped and severed remains of a person made you think twice about double-crossing someone.
However, Frederica was not a totally heartless being. She would usually tape a note to the inside of the box with a smiley and a note telling the friends of the recently (and quite gorily) deceased man to have a nice day.
She wasn´t just apathetic and immune to her victims´ screams, she was totally, completely and absolutely twisted.
Frederica was a strange woman. She was very professional and cold about disposing of a person´s remains, but rather cruel and sadistic about the process of turning them into corpses. She disposed of those unwanted bodies with an incredible amount of dexterity and skill and her love for detail made sure that never remained any proof of anything. That made her notorious for the amazing work she did, but her tool of choice was...odd, just like it´s wielder.
As scarring and emotionally harmful the profession of a cleaner could be, it was a form of therapy for the young girl.
Frederica had severe psychological and emotional issues. She had been hurt to the point that even thinking about the memories of the event that made her lose her voice hurt so much that it was an impossible task, much less even confronting her issues. And so she did what she did not to earn money, she wouldn´t deny that it put food on her plate, but rather to drown her emotions and the searing pain that came with them.
So she decided to take "cleaning" as her therapy. A rather crude method but it worked for her. It was a profession that required a great deal of stoicism, apathy and a complete and utter lack of feelings. The more she worked, the more she distanced herself from her feelings and her memories and thus, she shielded herself against the pain. A spirit without emotions was a perfect one, free of any kind of pain, sadness or regret.
However, sometimes, when she hadn´t enough work, or if she saw something that reminded her of the past, sadness and grief caught up with her. And it wasn´t pretty. Her wrists were covered in scars from previous suicide attempts. It was either that or she felt like making someone feel her sadness and pain.
Frederica occasionally partook on bounty hunting jobs, not for the money, but for the excitement of the hunt and the chance of making someone share some of her pain. It was when she first took part in such activity when she realized that she needed a weapon. But she hated guns, for they were too...impersonal and quick so she picked what others would think too impractical and risky...for a novice.
Besides, she disliked "common" things, and a chainsaw being used as an actual murder weapon was a something she didn't see anywhere at all. Yes, the appearance and use of chainsaws in such a brutal and inhuman manner was frequent in movies and video games, but she had never really seen it done in real life. So, she decided to use a "tool" that no one in their right state of mind would have thought of and claimed the chainsaw as her own.
The extravagance of the weapon was not the only reason for her election. The goth teen had a great deal of trouble showing her feelings so she chose a weapon that helped conveying the emotion she felt more comfortable with. Rage. And few things spelled rage like the roar of a chainsaw grinding through flesh and bone. And she found a twisted form of enjoyment in using the mechanism in such a brutal way, dehumanizing her victims not using an actual weapon made to kill people, but an industrial tool made for cutting down trees, spitting on their dignity even as they were slaughtered.
However, this choice wasn't made without making some adjustments. Frederica wasn't an idiot. She knew that a brand new chainsaw right off the assembly line wouldn't be enough to become a fully functional and practical weapon. A regular, industrial sized chainsaw would be a better option, but it still had a fair share of weak points and disadvantages. She had modified it herself, to try and minimalize the weaknesses and problems such a tool presented and she was very pleased with the improvements she made and the technical problems she overcame. The most important one would be the incredibly high risk of kickback. It was a problem that had to be tackled urgently as not even she would want to be on the wrong end of a chainsaw. If she had a regular chainsaw and was in a situation where she ended up jamming it into a substance made out of metal, the chain would snag and end up with the rest of the unit flying towards her making a huge mess out the cleaner. So, she had a saw chain with teeth specially modified to prevent such a thing from happening.
Other problem would be that in this era, almost anyone eschewed melee combat and stuck to firearms, putting her at a severe disadvantage. A flak vest would be a good option but it restrained greatly her movement and one of her priorities in combat was to move quickly to get as fast as possible into melee range. Instead, she reinforced the saw´s guide to the point that even bullets barely put a scratch unto the metal. So she could use the wide bulletproof guide bar to cover her small frame and block bullets for a few precious seconds she could use to close up distances with her target or get behind some cover. Her legs were still vulnerable and a skilled gunman could probably find more weak points in her defenses. But under the pressure of such a bizarre scenario (How often did people get attacked by a gothic lolita with a chainsaw?), people lost their edge and in their panic they shot at the center of whatever has attacking them, which in this case it was protected by the chainsaw.
There were a few more concerns such as being able to start the engine easily and being able to keep the air intake filter from clogging up with blood and gore, but those were also dealt with and modified to suit the cleaner's needs. Other combat related concerns such as fuel intake and noise were overcome by the use of a backup weapon. Beneath her clothes she had a harness designed by her, holstering a wicked-looking hatchet. It was a very practical weapon as she could throw it to fleeing enemies and defend herself quickly if she had been surprised with the chainsaw´s engine dead or out of fuel. Besides, it doubled as a nice cleaning tool for more...covert cleaning jobs where she couldn´t afford to risk anyone hearing the noise of the engine of the chainsaw.
She slid her hand under her t-shirt to her back and pulled her hatchet from the specially made holster and held it between her eyes. More than a hatchet it looked more like a small one-handed battle Axe. She tried the weight of it throwing it to the air and catching it on it´s way down a couple of times. It was perfectly balanced. The blade was rather impressive and it had been expressly designed and sharpened to the point that mutilation was a very definite possibility upon connecting a hit with it. It was fitted with an stainless steel handle (She would hate having a wood handle splintering or breaking in the middle of a job) and a good grip to ensure it wouldn´t slip from her hand in a difficult situation. She gave an small approving nod and put the hatchet aside.
The girl took a small tool box from the case that held the chainsaw. She put it gently on the wardrobe which was doubling as a table now and took some of it´s contents out. She ordered and inspected the tools she was going to need and started disassembling the chainsaw with the kind of confidence and speed that only came with practice.
She always felt a small pang of pride when she thought of her resourcefulness. She was the best cleaner there was, a very skilled bounty hunter, she had a good grasp of engineering and mechanics and well...years and years of experience with human anatomy had made a remarkable medic out of her, although that branch of her business offer never got much demand. Probably had to do with people not wanting to put their health in the hands of such an amoral person, just in case Frederica got curious about the inner workings of nerve endings or something like that in the middle of the process of extracting a bullet from your body.
The goth put down the screwdriver and started arranging the dismantled pieces of the chainsaw in order of size. She strongly enforced order and cleanliness. To the frail girl it was a kind of mantra that gave her chaotic life some sense of normalcy. It also helped quite a lot in her job. Then she proceeded to carefully scan each and every piece of the murderous tool for any rests of blood and gore that could incriminate her, rust that could affect her weapon´s performance in battle or any piece that needed to be lubricated. When she was satisfied, Frederica continued her work, checking the engine start system for any flaws, and then the rest of the engine. Everything was in tip-top condition. She produced a small sharpening stone from the tool box and started sharpening the teeth of the cutting chain. When she had finished the maintenance of her weapon, she lovingly put it back together and stored it in her cello case. At first she scoffed at the idea of using an instrument case to carry her weapon around, it all seemed so...clichéd. Like a noir movie with gangsters carrying their machine guns in violin cases. But it worked out great until now and she had been quite satisfied with the results. She closed the case and looked at the cheap alarm clock that rested on the nightstand. 9:28 PM. Had she just spent two hours checking out her chainsaw? She opened the curtains and was greeted by the sounds of the night. It was already dark in the city. Some sirens and gunshots could be heard as background noises in this part of Gotham. Frederica bit her lower lip, she had expected to come out before it was dark, but now it was too late. She would have to wait until tomorrow. Darkness and those who dwelt there did not scare her in the least. But the chances of getting into trouble multiplied in the dark of the night, and without any knowledge of the city landscape or escape routes planned, even being defending herself from muggers could end with a nice visit to the police station, not to mention the reputation of the cops themselves in this city.
Frederica took from her bag some sandwiches she had bought at the train station and started eating them. She looked at the darkness outside of her window and listened at the sounds of the night. Soon she would be part that world, but for now she would have to wait.
Well, here is it! Please read and review! (And be as harsh as possible, I really need criticism to grow as a writer!)
On a side note, I decided to give Sawyer (Now rechristened Langlois :p ) a back up weapon in the form of an axe. A chainsaw would be too cumbersome and impractical as a stand alone weapon. If you need a mental image of it think something along the lines of the one BL Hansel had.
Well now it´s time for our heroine (I would really think it twice before calling her that) to start up climbing on Gotham´s underworld until finally working with (and against) Gotham´s elite.
See you on the next chapter!