A/N: I have no idea what possessed me to write this, nobody even put me up to it, ahahaha. I'll blame it on the alignment of the planets. What made me think, "Mercedes should totally be in the Mafia?" anyway? I think I've been playing too much of that Mafia Wars game on Facebook. (Although this obviously means there needs to be a chapter named "In Which Mercedes Robs a Pimp," because that is the most hilarious job.)

Still waffling on whether or not it's a good idea to upload this.

Fairyland Mafia

It was only within the past month that Mercedes had officially learned how to use a gun. In reality, she had been using them since she was able to hold herself upright, and she wasn't quite sure why her mother was just now condoning her use of them. After all, she was still below the legal age limit for such things.

In any case, her mother smiled and said she looked darling with her braids and her gun holster strapped onto her belt. And she did, if one ignored the cognitive dissonance of seeing a thirteen-year-old girl so close to a firearm and be completely comfortable with it.

This gun had been a gift, Mercedes remembered, that she had received for no particular reason from her mother. This was always the gun that she had stolen from her mother's store of them, and one day, she decided to simply give her the weapon. That was also when Mercedes official training had begun.

When her mother asked to see how well she was honing her ability to handle her gun, Mercedes didn't spare any time before flipping the latch on her holster and holding her arms out to fire at the target across the room. Though the kickback was nothing to scoff at, and the weapon felt heavy in her hands, her aim was flawless, three rounds into the center of the target.

With just as much efficiency, she put her gun back in its holster, and turned to face her mother, whose finger was placed to her lips in an expression of solemn concentration. This didn't seem to stop Mercedes from immediately questioning her, "So? I'm ready to go."

"No, my dear, you cannot, not yet."

Mercedes looked genuinely shocked by this information, immediately retorting with, "Mother, I can fight! If you're on the front lines, then I want to be by your side!"

Her mother simply shook her head and bent down on her knees to be at eye level with her daughter, "Mercedes, you know why that is impossible," but her daughter's pouting face showed that she would be forced to explain again. Not that her mother particularly minded, even after all this time.

"I'm better than your goons!" Mercedes protested before another word could escape past her mother's lips, "You know I am! So why..."

"Because, my child, you're the one who's been trusted to carry on after I'm gone. It can only be you, Mercedes."

But the task of carrying on the family legacy wasn't quite what Mercedes had in mind. And at the next raid, Mercedes was not at all prepared for what she was about to see.

***

Ingway's life had ceased to be interesting.

Not that it was ever particularly interesting to begin with. He still lived with his sister out in the boonies, working as a doctor at an infrequently visited hospital. There were quite a lot of tiny towns in the surrounding area that depended on the place in extreme emergencies, but it was hardly a booming business. This particular hospital, however, got some compensation from the government for taking care of such a wide area. That didn't change much of anything, though.

Even now, there was likely not more than a grand total of seven people in the entirety of the building, including Inway himself.

One was Mr. Fairaway, who had broken his leg the other day, along with his wife, sobbing next to him though the procedure of realigning the bone and applying the cast had long since been finished successfully. Even Mr. Fairaway himself was starting to look a bit embarrassed.

The other couple was of course, his sister and her boyfriend. What was his name, Cornelius? Ingway did make a point of not being amused by the names of others, considering his own, but not so deep in the back of his mind, he felt that "Cornelius" was an even more ridiculous name than Ingway.

In any case, the man was still trying to get into his sister's metaphorical pants. Metaphorical in the sense that he hadn't seen his sister wear anything that wasn't a skirt that came so far up her thighs that he sometimes wondered if she simply forgot to get dressed on that particular day.

They had come to tell him that they were getting married, and that was simply fantastic.

The last two were quite a confusing case, and something Ingway was far more willing to think about than the prospect of his sister actually marrying the foreign-born casanova (because while Cornelius didn't see himself that way, of course Ingway viewed him like that), was a little girl, surely not older than thirteen, who had still not woken up. The other man, her grandfather, if his words were to be trusted, had brought the girl in the night, just before shifts were about to change, wailing that she needed to be saved.

Ingway had removed ten bullets from the little girl's body.

After the operation was complete and it was certain that the girl would pull through, he looked to the old man for answers as to how such a thing had happened, but the man simply pulled his hat further down over his eyes, saying that he would explain once the girl woke up, and money was no object, if that was what the issue was.

So nobody knew that they were there, and the girl had stayed asleep for two days now. Nobody knew, especially the two lovebirds in front of him.

"And so, we may be gone for a long time, but I didn't want you to be worried," Velvet explained. He was very much aware of the situation, though, he didn't need it explained to him again. In fact, he was wondering when something like this would happen. While he didn't approve, he had already had tried to get Cornelius to kindly get the hell away from his sister, and it was not to be. He finally accepted defeat, and his sister was all the more joyous for it, and sometimes it was hard to hate the guy after realizing how happy he made his sister.

He was still as insufferable as the day he had met him, though.

"My father still does not approve, you see," Cornelius continued, "but Velvet and I are very much in love, and not even my father will be able to prevent me from doing this." The, 'neither will you, Ingway,' part was implied.

Ingway merely sighed and gave them little more than an, "I wish you well," before coaxing them out of the hospital. He was certain that he'd see them again soon enough.

He used the same only slightly rude farewell on the Fairaway couple, who really did need to get going already. But he stopped as he reached the door of the girl, wondering if there really had been complications to the procedure. If hadn't seemed like it at the time, but they didn't get too many gunshot wounds this far out into the country (they were practically living in the woods, after all) so simply out of lack of experience, he wondered if two days was really a reasonable timeframe for healing after so many bullet wounds and subsequent surgery.

So, as he opened the door, he expected to see a sad, pathetic sight; a poor girl, still practically comatose, with only the steady rise and fall of her chest to indicate that she was still alive. Her grandfather would be there too, looking as solemn as ever.

What he had not expected to see was this same girl, who was half-dead when he checked on her this morning, huffing and puffing and gripping her IV stand like a cane, giving him a face full of gun.

"What…" she wheezed, still somehow managing to look fearsome despite her size, "Did you do."