Vaas yawned and stretched his arms over his head. It was about eight, nine in the morning. He woke up an hour ago to the sound of Hoyt calling him over the radio.
"Vaas! Vaas!" The static had made the words almost indiscernible.
"Hermano, it's like seven in the morning. What do you want?" He had answered, still half-asleep.
"I got a new shipment coming in, along with a new recruit. I'll explain when you get here." The radio clicked off.
Vaas had groaned and rolled out of bed, wiping the sleep from his eyes. He remembered throwing on his clothes and grabbing a pistol before hopping on the back of one of the cars, telling the driver that they were going to Hoyt's place.
"But Vaas, we were supposed to-"
"Hermano, it is too early in the morning for me to fucking care. Just drive."
The door swung open, distracting Volker from his train of thought. The ever-loyal Rakyat-turned-pirate strolled in, rolling his shoulders with a 'good morning, Hermano.'
"Vaas, took you long enough," Hoyt seemed on edge. That certainly woke Vaas up.
"Something 'a matter, amigo?"
"Hmm? No, nothing big. What did I call you in her for? Ah, right, right. The new recruits."
Hoyt tossed Vaas a folder and continued to talk while the younger man looked over the papers inside. The first picture he came across was a black man built like a brick shithouse in military fatigues. "Cyrille Christoph Lefevre." He looked like the kind of guy who would fit in perfectly on Rook. Six two, ex-French military, typical soldier turned mercenary. Vaas turned the page and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Angele Sauvage"
Below the name was a mugshot of a twenty-something woman with black eyebrows and short blonde hair on the side of her head with a dark red faux hawk. Three barbel piercings ran the length of her nose, accompanied by two spike eyebrow piercings and snakebites curving over her lower lip. Five four, highschool dropout, stuck in the rebellious teenager phase. The type of woman who gets eaten alive on Rook.
"Did you get that all, Vaas?" Hoyt had been pacing.
"Nope,"
Hoyt sighed and repeated himself.
"These two are some of the top mercenaries in Europe, employed by a trusted friend of mine. Well, they were employed, before their boss's whole operation got shut down by the Russian government. The first person they turned to was me, knowing that Rook was the most stable employment they could hope to find. So I had them ride in with our latest shipment from the mainland. Your job is to show them their job, just like you would with anyone else,"
"Uh, Hoyt, in case you haven't realized, one of them's a woman, and we both know how that plays out," a shit-eating grin broke out on his face.
"You let them worry about that." Hoyt smirked.
"Je deteste le mer," Cyrille spat.
'I hate the sea,'
"Pis?" Angele laughed.
'What's new?'
"Je pense que nous y sommes presque," Cyrille craned his neck back to look past the small woman. A dark smudge appeared on the horizon.
'I think we're almost there.'
"Hourra, de nouveaux amis!" She shouted childishly. She adjusted her spiked collar choker. The spikes were all two inches long, just the way she liked them.
'Hooray, new friends!'
"Etes-vous fou?"
'Are you insane?'
"Oui."
Cyrille tilted his head back and laughed.
Men scrambled around the docks as a small, unassuming boat pulled in. Vaas looked up from his feet, straightening his back. He sat on a large wooden crate, and had been there for the past hour as he waited for the 'new recruits' as Volker had put it. A sudden herd of Hoyt's men blocked his view of the boat, and when they were gone, Angele and Cyrille were already off the boat and looking around.
"Ey! Hermanos!" Vaas jogged towards them, smiling amiably.
"Bonjour! I assume you err Vaas?" Cyrille smiled back. Angele tried not to giggle.
"Yep. I'm supposed to show you the ropes. Oh and hermana?" He turned slightly to face her, "I wouldn't hold it against you if you got back on the boat and went back to the mainland,"
Angele smiled at him, eyes crinkling.
"Va te faire foutre,"
"English, hermana," he raised his eyebrows, causing his scar to pull on his skin. Her eyes flicked to it briefly.
"I said, 'go fuck yourself,' mon homme,"
Vaas laughed silently, crossing his arms and looking at the ground. When he looked up, his hazel eyes glinted dangerously.
"You know what? I'm gonna let that one go, only because you're new. But let me tell you hermana," in the blink of an eye, the barrel of a pistol was pressed to her forehead.
"I will, blow your fucking head off." He let his hand drop to his side and holstered the gun.
"Put your gun down, Cyrille." The boulder of a man did not waiver in his aim. A shotgun -held in one hand- was aimed at Vaas's temple.
"You heard him, mon homme." Angele directed.
Cyrille let the barrel lower.
Vaas turned and led the new pirates toward a truck. A tanned man in an outfit similar to Vaas's lounged in the driver's seat, taking a drag on a cigarette. His hair was confined in short cornrows that shifted when he raised an eyebrow at the approaching party.
"Take us back to camp, Teo," Vaas ordered, climbing into the bed of the truck and plopping down on the hot metal, back against the cab of the truck. He stretched one leg in front of him and bent the other. The mercenaries followed, sitting against either side of the raised edges of the tray.
"So who are you two? Ain't never seen you before, 'n I know everyone on the island," Teo directed the question behind him.
"Big guy here is Cyrille, and the chica is Angel," Vaas answered.
"My name is Angele," 'Angel' pointed out.
"Same difference, no?" Vaas replied. She knew exactly what he was doing. He was testing her, trying to figure out what buttons he'd have to press to get her angry.
"Meme difference," Angele shrugged. Vaas narrowed his eyes at her quickly, it was almost a twitch.
Cyrille opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a burst of gunfire. Teo swore loudly as the car swerved towards a steep hill. Angele gripped the edges of the truck bed, knuckles turning white. Teo swore again, desperately tried to regain control, but the car flipped over before he could. It bounced once, and Angele was thrown out. It bounced again, and Vaas found himself sprawled across the thick grass. Angele gasped for breath. Her lungs wouldn't respond. The back of her head ached, blurring her vision.
"Angel!"
Her eyes tried to focus on the source of the noise. Vaas was yelling at her, laying chest-down on the sandy earth, covered in blood. His mohawk was pushed to the side, leaves sticking out comically. With his left hand, he clumsily tossed a pistol through the air. She wondered why he didn't use his right, until she saw that it was laying limply at his side. The gun landed next to her leg. Pain fogged her mind as she reached for the black metal, still wheezing for air. Shouting traveled down the embankment; her hand wrapped around the handle. She slipped her finger in front of the trigger and twisted around, firing. The body of a shirtless man covered in tattoos fell. His gun- a large, automatic shotgun, fell with him. The blonde/red-head ripped the weapon out of his hands and started firing blindly. With an automatic shotgun, she didn't need to aim.
Vaas rolled onto his back, clutching his right shoulder. "Fuck!" He shouted, in pain as much as anger. He tried to move his arm, but even trying to make a fist hurt like being stung by a colony of fire ants. His shoulder was dislocated. A round of loud bursts distracted him. He turned his head - even that caused pain - to see Angele firing an automatic ... shotgun?! at an advancing Rakyat. He didn't last very long. She dropped the weapon and grabbed at her chest, coughing. An acrid smell assaulted him.
Oh shit.
Hastily, Vaas pushed himself up and stumbled toward the kneeling woman. "Get up!" He yelled to her, seizing her upper arm and dragging her to her feet. They stumbled toward a shallow dip in the sand and grass. Angele tripped over a large rock and took Vaas down with her, just in time. The truck exploded in a towering fireball, sending a chunk of shrapnel through the air where Vaas's chest had been. She coughed, spitting out the white sand in her mouth. Her breaths came more slowly now, but it still was not enough. Suddenly, she became aware of a weight on her back and breath against her ear. Vaas had shielded her from the explosion, covering her torso with his. Grunting, he straightened his arm and pushed off of her. Angele curled into a ball and breathed deeply. Her eyes watched Vaas pull his shirt over his head with one hand - an admirable feat - and grit his teeth in pain as he maneuvered it off of his right arm. She couldn't help but follow the line of dark hair from his abs to the top of his pants.
"Hermana?"
She quickly snapped her attention back to his face. His smirk was triumphant and flirty at the same time. Angele rolled her eyes and pushed herself to her feet, breathing finally returned to normal.
"Who were those guys?" She furrowed her eyebrows.
"Shouldn't you be more concerned about your partner?"
She looked over her shoulder, noting that her choker was minus a few spikes. The husk of the truck lay on the beach, small flames still burning. A badly charred arm stuck out from the wreckage.
"He's dead," she stated matter-of-factly.
"What? No tears, no screams of grief?" He sounded disappointed.
Angele looked at him. She stood and offered her hand.
"People die."
He grinned, flashing the most perfectly straight and white teeth she had ever seen, even whiter than Cyrille's were.
Were.
Vaas looked at her chest.
"Mon homme?" She bent to the side to look up at his face.
"You have sand on your boobs."
Mon Homme = My man (The French like to call people mon/ma _ as a term of endearment, like Vaas says 'Hermano/a/s)
Yay, two character deaths in the first chapter! Now you won't be subjected to more boring French conversations! The reason why Cyrille spoke with a thicker accent than Angele will be explained in later chapters.
Review, tell me what you think of my interpretation of Vaas, and what you think of Angele.
Sand boobs.