Oblivious

ob·liv·i·ous

–adjective

1. unmindful; unconscious; unaware
2. forgetful; without remembrance or memory

Disclaimer: Black Lagoon and its characters © Rei Hiroe

Many thought Rotton was a poser. He's not. Well, the only other explanation for his behavior was that he was oblivious. He's not. Not completely...

Rotton knew that quite a few in the wretched community of Roanapur didn't think too highly of him. The first strike against him was when he made his debut in the Yellow Flag and admitted he didn't drink alcohol. The groans and snide expressions were a clear indication that he probably wouldn't be too popular with a majority of the people in the city. That and being called "pansy-assed" was a rather obvious hint of their distaste for him, too. He paid it no mind. It wasn't his fault he was allergic to alcoholic beverages. Milk had better nutritional value, anyway.

The second strike against him was his manner of dress. He didn't look, by any means, like a villain. With a black trench coat flowing behind him whilst wearing a long sleeved collared shirt over a flak jacket with black pants, accessorized with a few rings on his fingers, several silver chains around his wrists and neck, ears with multiple piercings, eyes covered with sunglasses regardless of what time of day –or night– it was, along with the fact his well groomed hair was a powdery silver tone, Rotton resembled one of those clichéd "bishounen" protagonists one would see so much on an animated Japanese television show. And it didn't help that he had to strike a pose and make an ultimatum –and get knocked off his feet in the process– every time he went out bounty hunting either.

No, not like a villain. Not very much like a villain at all.

However, despite the "odd" manner of dress and alleged "carelessness" during a hunt, Rotton was a lot more aware of his surroundings than most people gave him credit for. He was aware of the turmoil. He was well aware of the chaos. And he was damn well aware of the evil aura that radiated from Roanapur. Regardless of the potentially life threatening slip-ups in relation to his inconvenient "soliloquy complex," (Sawyer had come up with the term a little while after meeting him) Rotton paid close attention to the details of a situation. He noted the somewhat fresh blood stains along alleyway walls that hinted at a recent murder only a few hours before. He noted the dreary atmosphere whenever a high-priced hunt was under way and the anxious tension of the mercenaries who participated.

He also noted a more depressing aspect of the Roanapur lifestyle. A multitude of individuals in the city were empty. No, it wasn't the "ruthless" empty that enabled so many citizens to kill one another without a second thought. It also wasn't the "enraged" empty that left people thinking that the person in question was a psychopath that wanted to watch the world burn to the ground. No, it wasn't those. Those kind of "empties" didn't really bother Rotton in the slightest. It was more of a "sorrowful" empty that he noted. One look at a "sorrowfully empty" person's eyes and you could just tell they no longer wanted whatever glory or reputation Roanapur had to offer them. They no longer had a "goal" to accomplish or had the motivation to do a job. They were simply waiting for death to claim them while they binged on cheap booze and slept in their own waste in a dark alleyway. They didn't even have a desire to live. They were just existing.

Those were the people that truly disgusted Rotton.

He observed that Roanapur was filled with the walking dead. The world had rejected its citizens, discarded them away and thought of them as nothing but hollow corpses, but Roanapur was the one place that accepted them. It was indeed a place of sin and a place of death, but it was also a place of rebirth. Roanapur was a chance for the "dead" to make a second life for themselves. It was a final and last resort for those with tainted souls to flourish where they would have decayed elsewhere. Which is why it annoyed Rotton whenever he caught a glance of a sorrowful empty soul. Roanapur was city of sin. It was a city with no rules and no boundaries. If a person wanted to simply rot in the streets, they could have done that anywhere in the world.

The sorrowfully empty souls were considered the lowest class. They were the ones who were not valued in the slightest. Whatever they did –or more likely, didn't do– never left an impact on any single individual they encountered. And since nobody really noticed them to begin with, it was no surprise that nobody cared when they died. It was worse than being forgotten. In order to be forgotten, a person had to have been remembered at one time. Since the sorrowful souls had the value of plastic fruit –having no real, practical purpose and just taking up space–, nobody ever remembered them, therefore, they never really "existed" to begin with. The person might as well have never been born.

A part of this contributed to why Rotton willingly chose to do, as Shenhua called it once, "a fancy entrance." Yes, he realized it took up time. Yes, he knew it gave away whatever element of surprise he may have had. Yes, it did seem like a very stupid thing to do in a fast paced city like Roanapur where the nearest gunman would pop a bullet into you like it was a natural reflex. He did it anyway. Despite the impracticality of the long-winded introductions, it gave him a small sense of security. Even if he were to die in the process, he at least did something that made his opponent (or other passersby) remember him. Even if he would probably be remembered as the idiot who took his sweet time to take a shot at his target and the memory of the encounter would most likely only be brought up in drunken bar chat, he would still, at least, be remembered. And that was a hell of a lot better than never having "existed."

Rotton was aware that this line of thinking probably wouldn't be too favorable amongst other citizens, but their opinions didn't matter. It was a mindset that worked for him and that was good enough to keep him motivated. Even if most other people in the city would've given him a hard time for his thoughts, given if he ever shared them with other people he barely knew openly in public (which he didn't), he knew there were two people that wouldn't quite be so harsh.

He never dared tell them aloud due to slight embarrassment, but the silver haired man enjoyed being with Sawyer and Shenhua. Though the two women sometimes poked fun at him for making his short-lived soliloquies, they never mocked the reason he did them. They were surprisingly two of the more open minded citizens in Roanapur. It was comforting to be around people who didn't judge him so harshly.

However, despite the comfort of being in their company, Rotton couldn't help but feel somewhat out of place whenever the three of them got together and he ended up observing their "social habits" for long intervals at a time.

As much as Rotton hated the thought of associating a stereotype with another human being, Shenhua seemed to be the epitome of the so-called "Dragon Lady." She was not quite as quick tempered as the girl from the Lagoon Company, but she was still capable of being ruthlessly malevolent. Rotton had seen her kill before. Her apathy showed greatly in the manner she cut through her opponents. Shenhua might as well have been slashing up plants in the jungle with a machete. And not only was Shenhua ruthless in combat, but "trash talking" also seemed to be one of her fortes as well. Having someone tell you your ass will be split into four was not a very pleasant thought, much less having it actually being done to you. Shenhua also tended to be vain from time to time. Not that she didn't have a reason to be. Even a blind man could tell you that Shenhua was beautiful. It just didn't make a lot of sense to Rotton to apply makeup between killings if she was going to be covered with blood and wiping it off of her face five minutes later. Then again, his soliloquy complex probably didn't make too much sense to Shenhua in return, so he never really expressed his thoughts on her supposed vanity.

In addition to Shenhua's looks, her choice of weaponry was quite unique as well. Aside from Sawyer, Shenhua was the only other person in Roanapur that didn't use a gun. She hated them, in fact. The only reason Rotton could think that the assassin preferred blades over bullets was because she probably appreciated the detail and finesse that went into wielding them. Though he never handled them himself, Rotton could see it took quite a considerable amount of skill to be able to use a blade properly and effectively. The simplicity of loading a chamber and pulling a trigger wouldn't appeal to a woman with Shenhua's desire for detail. So he thought. Rotton never really bothered with asking Shenhua why she loved blades so much. If there was one thing he was aware of in Roanapur, it was that asking questions that didn't concern you would get you in a great deal of unwanted trouble. Besides, it was common courtesy. Alongside Rock, Rotton was probably one of the more polite men within the city.

However, Shenhua in turn seemed to be more confident and open with asking certain questions. He remembered that shortly after the Taiwanese assassin had gotten out of the hospital, she asked him why he had chosen the moniker "The Wizard." In all honesty, Rotton answered that he didn't really want to share the reason for it since it was a detail from his past that he preferred not to discuss. Shenhua had tilted her head to the side and her eyes expressed slight understanding regarding Rotton's answer, before she formed a mischievous smile and blatantly exclaimed:

"Oh, let me guess! You used to be actor in porn and that your film name, yes?"

Unsurprisingly, Rotton couldn't help but blush and deadpan a bit at the false accusation. He knew it was intended to be a joke on Shenhua's part, but it was still embarrassing that she said it aloud. That and the fact that Sawyer was also with them and giggling at Shenhua's suggestion just made the situation even more uncomfortable.

Well, "giggling" was a rather relative term. If Rotton was being strict with his description, a giggle from Sawyer sounded more like a series of short, incongruent hisses from her Ultravoice.

Sawyer the Cleaner... She was a definite enigma. It was quite ironic that most everyone in Roanapur had heard of Sawyer, yet most everyone knew very little about her. The closest most people got to knowing about Sawyer was that she's the city's best cleaner and that she frequently did jobs for Mr. Chang. A choice few knew what she looked like under the mask and goggles, but that was as far as the choice few ever got. Then there was Rotton and Shenhua. It was safe to assume that the two mercenaries knew more about Sawyer than everyone else in the city, if not the world. Then again, though the knowledge they had was great compared to what everyone else knew, whatever details they knew about Sawyer were still pretty vague compared to the bigger picture.

Sawyer was a difficult person to analyze, but Rotton still managed to observe a few things about her behavior. For one, Sawyer was about as amoral as they come. She was completely apathetic and indifferent during a hunt, cutting through everything and everyone in her path until she trapped her desired target and cut him or her up to pieces while the victim's agonizing screams fell on the ears of a callous body disposal expert. There was also no doubt that Sawyer's apathy was also exercised while she was "cleaning up" after the other factions in Roanapur. Albeit at certain intervals, Rotton noticed that Sawyer would abandon the blank apathetic expression and smiled every now and again when she went out on a hunt, but it wasn't a "happy" smile, per se. It was more of a classic slasher smile. It was a cruel and brutal smile. It was a smile that was void of any genuine happiness and joy. There was no love, no kindness, no sweetness. It was a very dark smile. It was smile that reflected her eyes.

Despite the scar on her neck and the gothic appearance, the first thing Rotton noticed about Sawyer was her eyes. At a first glance, people would describe them as "dead." However, Rotton saw something more than that. He saw bitterness, rage, cruelty, and a great deal of revulsion and hatred, but behind all those dark emotions, he also saw suffering. The cruelty and hatred were more visible of course, but he looked into them long enough to see the suffering. It was like Sawyer was thinking of something... searching for something, but she couldn't quite find it and it resulted in a great deal of frustration that manifested itself into rage.

The suffering became extremely visible whenever Sawyer went into one of her melancholic episodes when she lost her Ultravoice. First, her pupils would contract to the point where it looked like someone used a needle to poke a hole into her irises. Second, all of the hatred, rage, and cruelty would fade and it would be replaced with panic, fear, and helplessness. Third, she would break out into a cold sweat and tears would make their way down her face. Fourth, Sawyer would throw a tantrum and toss whatever she was holding or whatever she could get her hands on across the room (or off of a roof, such was the case when they were going after Greenback Jane). She also moved her mouth in a shouting, cursing motion, but nothing would come out since a massive throat injury from the past left her without a larynx. Finally, she would go catatonic and fall into the fetal position, locking out the rest of the world around her.

It was a pitiful thing to see and Rotton couldn't help but feel a slight twinge in his chest whenever he saw Sawyer in such a helpless state. He knew she was a very capable person. She was skilled with her chainsaw to the point she could block bullets with it and killing with her trademark weapon came to her as naturally as breathing. Which was exactly why it was so agonizing to see her go down so easily whenever she lost her Ultravoice. She was one of the most efficient killers in Roanapur, yet she relied on that mechanical larynx so heavily that it became her Achilles' heel. Rotton figured something that happened at some point in Sawyer's past, most likely linked to the scar on her neck, traumatized her so badly that she formed a reliance on her ability to communicate with others.

However, that was as far as the thought went. He didn't know what caused Sawyer to be so dependent on her Ultravoice, or why she had an extreme case of melancholia, because he never asked her, and that was for good reason. Another thing he learned from hanging around Sawyer was that she was very... private. She didn't like giving away information that concerned her personal life, and one slip up could make the violator in question end up in a bloody wooden box. Albeit, Rotton doubted at this point Sawyer would kill him, but he had a feeling the cleaner wouldn't have any qualms about cutting out his tongue and pickling it inside of a mason jar.

Another thing Rotton observed from the morbid cleaner of Roanapur was that she was... odd. Not that it was a particularly bad trait. It was just that Sawyer's taste for certain things seemed to be extremely macabre, even for a cleaner.

Rotton got a slight feel for Sawyer's oddness when he was invited over to her place to play video games for the first time. The outside of it looked "normal" enough. It was when he got inside of the place that he noticed Sawyer's personal taste in decor. The lack of light was the first thing he noticed. Blackout curtains were over every window in the living room, and it was likely there were more of them throughout the place. The only source of light he saw, in fact, was from the screen of Sawyer's television while the game they had agreed to play was loading. The second thing Rotton noticed was the color scheme Sawyer had picked out. Black; there was a lot of black. There were a few shades of red and a gray-ish blue here and there, and the decorative cross and skull ornaments were either a pale white or silver, but there was still quite a lot of black. Not that it bothered Rotton. The color did go with everything...

The third thing that Rotton noticed was the detail of Sawyer's taste that truly disturbed him. In the corner of the room, there was an armless, life-sized mannequin hanging from the ceiling by a noose with a myriad of six-inch nails driven into its head. It looked like Sawyer had dismembered Pinhead's long-lost sister and hung her up as a trophy in her living room. Why Sawyer had a dismembered, mutilated mannequin hanging in her living room, he didn't really know. And in all honesty, he didn't want to know. Rotton had tried his best to shrug it off. It was Sawyer's living residence. If she wanted to have a deformed mannequin literally hanging around in a corner, that was her business. Besides, the game had already loaded and it was the perfect opportunity to get his mind off of the cleaner's creepy decoration.

... He really wished he hadn't agreed to play a game from the Doom series.

Rotton was slightly shocked when Sawyer offered to make him a snack if he was hungry afterwards. Though he certainly didn't think of Sawyer as discourteous or anything of the sort, he didn't expect her to offer him something to eat either. Initial shock aside, Rotton admitted his appetite and she led him into the kitchen. He got another shock as the kitchen had a completely different color scheme from the living room. It looked... well, it looked a lot like Shenhua's kitchen; blue and white. There was a counter, a few drawers, some cupboards, a fridge, a dishwasher, a microwave, a sink with a garbage disposal, a stove, and an... oven...

Again, Rotton was disturbed. It didn't look like the conventional, contemporary, modern oven that Shenhua had back at her place. No, not at all like that. Good God, it looked just like something straight out of Sweeney Todd. Rotton vaguely remembered something about a woman named Mrs. Lovett who disposed of the barber's victims by baking them into pies using a device similar to what was occupying Sawyer's kitchen. Surely, she didn't take some of the bodies from her disposal jobs and...? Rotton inwardly shuddered at the thought, before mentally slapping himself back to reality. That was just absurd thinking, no matter how far he stretched it. Sawyer may have been a tad gruesome with her disposal techniques, but that had nothing to do with her eating habits. Rotton was sure of that.

...However, he couldn't help but add a mental note to stay away from any meat products within Sawyer's residence.

The male-bounty-hunter-with-the-soliloquy-complex could only imagine the female-cleaner-with-melancholia's confusion when he asked her to just put lettuce and tomatoes on his sandwich.

Shenhua had a good laugh at Rotton's expense when she asked how his video game experience with Sawyer went. Apparently, the mannequin Sawyer had was given to her as a gift from Shenhua to contribute to the creepy décor of her home. The oven was completely overlooked since Rotton refused to mention it, so Shenhua didn't know anything about it. Or so he thought. Little did he know, Shenhua was already informed of Sawyer's oven well before he was invited over to play video games from a previous trip of her own. Shortly after Shenhua talked to him about his visit, she quickly went over to Sawyer's to get her side of the story. Shenhua wasn't surprised when Sawyer said she already knew all too well about Rotton's "suspicions" about the oven and what was baked inside of it.

"I wish... you were there, Shenhua. The moment he saw it, his face froze up... and he looked at me... like I baked the bodies from my work. He didn't do very well... when he tried to hide it, either. He was so freaked out... he actually ate a sandwich with nothing... but lettuce and tomatoes." Sawyer snickered a bit after remembering Rotton's five minutes of vegetarianism.

"My, such active imagination. Even you not type to do that," Shenhua pointed out. Sawyer rolled her eyes at the thought.

"Of course... I wouldn't do that. I'm supposed to get rid of the bodies... in the fastest and most efficient way... so I can get to work on... the next job. Why would I waste time... trying to eat them?" Both Shenhua and Sawyer shared a laugh at this. The Taiwanese woman then got the same mischievous glint in her eyes she had when she jokingly accused Rotton of formerly having a career in pornography.

"Hey Sawyer, I have good idea."

"I'm listening."

"How about we invite Rotton over here next week? You make meat pie out of cow from your plant and we serve to him. Tell him it your special "mystery meat" pie. He going to freak out and think it human."

"Is it only going to be... one pie? Seems... an awful waste. Can't I... just kill a chicken?"

"But it not be convincing if we not use red meat."

"... I see. Alright, I'll use... cow meat. Just to see the look... on his face when I force him... to eat it."

One week later, Rotton discovered and noted another aspect about Sawyer and Shenhua's personalities:

They were both cruel, twisted women that shared a sick sense of humor.

Alright, so he didn't see the meat pie prank coming. It was just one slip-up. He wasn't totally oblivious to everything that was happening around him. Rotton was still aware of Roanapur's ominous atmosphere, he was still aware of the potential death that awaited him with every "entrance" he made, and he was now very wary of any antics Sawyer and Shenhua planned for their amusement at his expense.

Many thought Rotton was a poser. He's not. Well, the only other explanation for his behavior was that he was oblivious. He's not. Not completely...

THE END

A/N: Holy friggin' crap. I can't believe it. It's been two years since I wrote a fanfic. Honestly, after I deleted all of my previous fics about a year and a half ago, I didn't think I was going to write another one again. But... Black Lagoon is such an amazing anime/manga. I had to do something related to the series. Besides, the Black Lagoon section was beginning to nauseate me with all the abundant Rock and Revy centered fics floating around. I mean, I like them as much as the next fan, but damn it, supporting characters need love too!

Now that I have my "support the supporting characters" mini-rant aside... Jeez, Rotton was such a hard character to write for. I don't think he has more than eight minutes of screen time, and regardless of his flashy introductions, his monologues only leave so much to work with. I had a bit of a difficult time with giving his character depth. I'm... not quite sure I succeeded.

Also, I was torn between using "Lotton" or "Rotton" due to the differences in the Japanese and English spellings, so I flipped a coin to decide which version to use. So... don't blame me if the spelling I used wasn't the one you preferred. Blame the phenomenon of probability.

Yes, despite her body chopping services, I also think that Sawyer's "front" as a meatpacking plant owner is legitimate, and therefore, has actual animals that are butchered inside of it. Hence the cow and chicken that are mentioned in the scheming of the meat pie prank.

Whether the "relationships" Rotton has with Sawyer and Shenhua are romantic or platonic is completely up to you.

Personally, I like to think of them as a trio with "benefits."

Kudos to the people who spotted Mrs. Lovett's second line in "A Little Priest" in Sawyer's dialogue with Shenhua.

Cheers.