The Return of Margarita Sue
Prologue
It was a dark and stormy night. In the back alleyway of the Yellow Flag, a notorious bar filled with villainous human scum of the worst sort, stood a young girl. Her long, lustrous hair blew in the still air, ripe with the scents of the bordello and week old trash.
She had come to Thailand to find her long, lost seventh-cousin and flower arranging mentor Rokuro Okajima, and her name was Ecchi… Echi Sashimi.
Ecchi wore the same school uniform she had worn all those memorable days long ago in the Sixth Education District. It was as equally ripe as the air outside the Yellow Flag, she had not changed in weeks. But she would not, could not change into something more presentable as it reminded her of those nostalgic memories of lockers closing shut with a clang and the choking gasps of her fellow students as she pummeled them unmercifully with her katana in home economics. They should never have spoken so poorly of her attempts to boil water.
Her fresh heart burned with a sputtering rage, like a 100 watt bulb screwed into a faulty socket only certified for a 12-watt fluorescent. How could Rokuro have done this to her?
That day, so long ago it was misted with sentimental sepia color in her memory – three years, two months, six days and 36 minutes, she may have missed a minute at least - when Rokuro had not come to her coming of age day. Hadn't he realized how important the seijin no hi was to have been? At last she could come out and declare her forbidden love… for co-ed flower arranging. They could have done an ikebana bouquet together and drank sake together till it ran down their chins and trickled down to puddle in her belly button.
But, but… instead he had vanished. Disappeared into thin air, somewhere in the Sea of Paradise as his manager at Asahi Industries had told her. She had cornered the drunken old pervert in a bathroom stall in the Shinjuku district and forced him to tell the truth. Rokuru Okajima had deserted her for some foul-mouthed gunslinger tramp in Thailand. Oh, and some little detail about a nuclear bomb schematics, but that wasn't even remotely important.
"Why do you hate me so?" Ecchi screeched as loudly as she could. She drooped from the effort and stood panting like a cat being bathed. "I came all this way, and here I am. I stand in the back alley of a refuse filled bar and I declare my undying, fortitudinal love for you only. Why? Why can't you read my mind and know I am here…"
Ecchi whipped out a bundle and unrolled it there. Her family was poor, so poor – her father and mother had died in a tragic honey comb gathering accident, but she had been saved by the butterflies and been taken in by her blind old aunt – so all she had were cheap imitation katanas made in China for American tourists. They would do.
"Aaaagh!" she gasped as she jammed the first one between her ribs on the left side. "Ow!" the next was stuck straight through her leg. Soon she resembled a pincushion.
"Will you shut the fuck up already?" Bao the Bartender stuck his head out the back door. "He's not here. And you're scaring away the cats."
It was the final blow. Ecchi tried to shove the last katana through her mouth and failed miserably from loss of blood. She fell down and began to bleed bright red blood in the darkness.
"Oh fuckin' fuckin' hell!" Bao bawled "Cleaner! I need a Cleaner!"
This is not Ecchi Sashimi's story…
0 – 0 – 0
"I hate… my life…"
A small, pale woman in gothic attire looked down at her drink as she sat in a well- lit corner. Bao had finally fixed the light bulb after three years of being broken and ruined her usual hiding spot. Beside her, a Taiwanese woman in a red qipao and white jacket eyed the bottle of absinthe sitting in the center of the table, pushing strands of silky black hair behind her ear.
"Sawyer, I not like you drunk on this stuff. Last time you drink bottle, you bite Mutton the Magician over here," Shenhua gestured to Lotton (who had frowned at her mocking his moniker). "Had to get stitches on his butt because you think he pancakes."
Sitting on the other side of Sawyer, the silver haired man in a black trenchcoat grimaced at the memory and gulped down what little was left of his milk.
Sawyer snapped her head up with tears streaming down her face and lower lip trembling.
"My life... my existence… is all a lie."
Shenhua and Lotton cocked their eyebrows.
"You getting existential again?" Shenhua asked, crossing her arms. "It not fitting you. Go back to crying about light bulb and listen to that cross-dressing bride brand you like."
"I concur with our most gracious compatriot," Lotton said. "The civilized and tidy circumstance in the Yellow Flag is a kind of enjoyment for us. Your intoxicated state is interrupting the jovial mood."
"Please, you spit too loud!" Shenhua scoffed. "Too much fancy talk from you. We just want you to tone down, Sawyer."
"DON'T CALL ME SAWYER," the gothic woman cried.
Shenhua and Lotton looked at each other, perplexed.
"Then, you want us to call you like that Elm Street guy?" Shenhua scratched the side of her head. "Freddy? Thought you not like first name in public."
"No... no... no..." Sawyer buried her head in her hands. "My name... is a lie! I am not... Sawyer... That is not... my birth name..."
"So? I doubt Cotton the Conjurer is his real name." The Taiwanese woman pointed at the silver-haired man, who adjusted his sunglasses in embarrassment and slumped in his seat.
"The Wizard," Lotton pouted.
"I was never... a Sawyer," the woman-who-was-apparently-not-Sawyer choked. "The Sawyers were... the cool family that lived... down the street from me. My family name... my real name... is really... really..."
"Not really care that much, Sawyer, or whoever you are," Shenhua confessed, preparing to take out a sewing kit in the event that "Sawyer" thought she was in an IHOP again.
"HEWITT!" Hewitt sobbed, unable to look into the eyes of her companions. "My family name... is really Hewitt! I'm sorry! I'm... so... so sorry! I just... didn't want... to go through life... being from the knockoff family... of the franchise! Call me... Hewie... I'm Hewie!"
The blade woman and the Wizard looked at the gothic woman, bemused and beside themselves.
"If it makes you feel better, I personally thought the remake was not that bad," Lotton commented, breaking the awkward sobs and chokes of Hewie's electronic bawling. Shenhua felt like crying herself, wondering just how horribly she had screwed up in life to be friends with these idiots.
Then, as sudden as a butterfly landing on the ridge of a volcano and evaporating in to a haze of liquid turquoise, a large, hulking fist smashed the table and shattered Sawyer's absinthe bottle. The Freelance Trio beheld the sight of a man who looked to be 300 pounds of pure, gristly, unadulterated muscle. His biceps rippled in the poor lighting of the Yellow Flag as he struck a pose, holding his fists over his head as he flexed.
"Behold, patrons, the presence of the grandest bounty hunter to ever walk through these doors!" his voice boomed and he lowered his hands to the small of his back to grab two platinum engraved desert eagles that bore the letters "YOLO". He raised them to the ceiling and began to shoot.
"Are you not all impressed? I, the grand Yolo Santiago, come from afar to challenge the best fighter in all of Roanapur! For I, the only man capable of wielding desert eagles in tandem with no wrist fatigue from recoil, deserves your utmost attention and recognition. Surely, a man of my caliber would make all in this godforsaken city tremble in fear and awe. For it is I, and only I, the greatest hunter alive, who need no introduction, for my aura of sheer badassery is unchallenged and unmatched! I, Yolo Santiago, declare myself the most fantastic hunter in all the land!"
A massive patch of the ceiling and a bed carrying one of Madame Flora's prostitutes fell from above due to Yolo's onslaught of bullets, but it did not harm him. Somehow, he jerked at the very last possible second and missed all of the damage. An obese blonde woman in a sparkling red dress looked out over the hole in the ceiling with her hand over her mouth.
"Oh, my! Mindy, are you all right?" the fat madame asked. The scraggly looking hooker on the bed threw dyed red hair over her shoulder, looking back up at her boss.
"Y'know, I'm happy we have such fantastic health and dental insurance or else all the crap we go through in this bar wouldn't be worth it."
Yolo Santiago took his attention away from the prostitute, inwardly wondering why she wasn't throwing herself at his feet and demanding to sleep with him at that instant, and looked at the mercenaries surrounding him.
Shenhua drew out her khukri and Lotton held his Mausers at angles that would have served to injure everyone except the Bane wannabe standing in from of them. Hewie ripped out a floorboard and took out one of the seventy-three chainsaws she had hidden around Roanapur. She yanked the ripcord and savored the roar of the engine.
"This bar has dress code. It's not open to people who be sloppily garmented," Shenhua quipped.
Yolo smirked in response.
"Oh, I see I already have challengers. Ha! I see no use in using these against you," Yolo said as he holstered his platinum desert eagles. "As you have all just signed the warrant for your humiliation, I shall use my ultimate weapon! Beware, you inferior hunters, for your demise!"
Shenhua, Lotton, and Hewie braced themselves. Yolo Santiago reached into the tight waistband of his black and white spandex pants and pulled out a three-inch kubaton keychain with a small, pink pony toy with three balloons on its rump. He struck a ninja stance and crouched.
The jaws of the Freelance Trio dropped.
"Well? Are you not impressed? Are you trembling with fear? Come at me, bro!" Yolo curled his fingers inward and grinned.
Shenhua's left eye twitched and she stood up straight. She put away her khukri and took a deep breath.
"Lotton, Hewie, we go now. I can only handle so much stupid in one night."
Her companions followed without argument. They turned on their heels and sprinted for the exit of the Yellow Flag. Conveniently, it parted for them.
"All right, Rock, if I hear one more thing about- Hey!" Revy cursed as Hewie stepped on her boot on her way out. The gunslinger didn't have much time to react as Lotton's trench coat brushed her leg as he followed "the Cleaner". Revy gathered her reflexes when she saw Shenhua and grabbed her arm.
"Chinglish, the fuck are you all in a rush for?"
Shenhua managed to pry Revy's hand off of her arm and continued to run.
"Trust me, Twinkie, tonight not good night to be here. Carve you later, bye!" The Taiwanese woman had spoken so fast, Revy hardly deciphered the words.
"Ah ha!" Yolo screamed. "Another challenger? You must be the infamous Two Hand that I read about on Jake's Blog before it was taken down and replaced by a macramé gimp suit fansite."
"I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. By the way, Bao's got a shotgun to your head." Revy pointed nonchalantly as everyone else in the bar sat and watched the show. Without looking behind him, Yolo gripped the barrel and twisted it upward before knocking Bao unconscious with his pretty pink pony keychain in one blow to his head. Revy blinked and shook her head.
"The fuck?"
"Uh, am I dreaming?" Rock asked behind Revy. "There is no feasible way that is possible. That keychain is made of hollow plastic."
"Bet you're impressed, huh? I am that fucking badass!" Yolo beamed. Revy swiped a shot off a table, drank it, and wiped her lip before pulling out her Berettas.
"All right, fuckhead, I don't know what kind of drugs you're on, but I got the fuckin' rehab pills right here."
"Ha! I implore you to give me your best shot! For I, the greatest bounty hunter to have ever lived, will reign down upon you-!"
Yolo didn't get to finish his ultimatum. Not because Revy squeezed the triggers, but because as Yolo was speaking, an entirely different scenario was going on above the Yellow Flag.
0 – 0 – 0
Many miles in the air, a stewardess with alabaster skin and bright red hair with purple highlights, in a pillbox hat and navy blue attire with five inch heels that have crushed the balls of many an errant airline passenger, opened the hatch in the first class wing of the plane. Many of the passengers were sucked into the void. The stewardess then flipped a ruby and amethyst lock over her shoulder and proceeded to serve herself a drink before flinging herself out of the open, whistling hatch, alcohol still in hand.
There was no need for a parachute, for she had trained many years with Army Sappers and Special Forces. She also held first place in parkour in the European and Southeast Asian divisions. A landing from 6,000 feet in the air was nothing her internal organs couldn't handle on impact, for she also contained a skeleton of adamantium steel due to her power to control continuity errors.
Sadly, Yolo Santiago did not have a skeleton of adamantium when the stewardess plummeted gracefully straight through the hole he had shot in the roof and landed atop him with her shiny tall heels, but he did have a dime in his pocket. So as his internal organs, skin, bone and what little brain he had splattered across the patrons of the Yellow Flag, the dime that was in his pocket flinged itself up into the air and the mystery stewardess caught it in her teeth. She proceeded to chew on the dime and swallow before proclaiming:
"Revy! I am your long-lost sister!"
As the Yellow Flag patrons vomited en masse into their cups at the odious odor of Yolo's innards, Revy flicked a speck of intestines out of her hair and scoffed. Rock slipped on a kidney.
"Might wanna get your eyes checked, bitch," Revy commented while aiming the unfriendly ends of the guns in the stewardess' direction. "You're white as cream cheese. Last I checked, I'm Chinese."
The stewardess swooned and sipped the rest of her drink before shattering the glass under her foot.
"You mean you really don't remember your sweet sis, Margarita Sue?"
"Uh... What?" Revy bawked. Rock was still having trouble with the kidney, but he persevered and intervened.
"Revy, what's going on? You sure you don't know her?"
The dwarf Russian hamster in Revy's head began to run in its wheel. The Chinese gunslinger squinted hard in thought. Margarita sighed and shook her head.
"C'mon! You don't remember me at all? Revy, I've searched high and low for my wonderful, talented, gorgeous, sexy-as-all-get-out big sis and you don't even remember me? I've dreamed so long and spent so many nights beside myself, fantasizing about your lithe arms wrapping around me in a tight embrace and—"
"Hold on there, Vodka Vicky, that's some fucked up shit for a sister to say right there," Revy started, grimacing at the imagery.
"Revy! Search your heart! It's me! Margarita! Don't you remember at all when you showed up on my doorstep and my family took you in in Scottsdale after you escaped from Texas?"
The dwarf Russian hamster expired and crashed and burned in its wheel. Revy felt like throwing up.
"No, no," Revy moaned, almost dropping her guns in horror. "Not you! You're that creepy little bitch that followed me around everywhere and touched me at night!"
"YOU TAUGHT ME HOW TO FLY A KITE!" Margarita bawled. "Did that mean nothing to you all these years?"
"Bitch, I burned your house down and locked you all inside. How the fuck did you get outta there?"
"The kite!" Margarita said imperiously. "You were my family for those short two weeks you were with us, but you were just so cool, and brash, and... and... just so hot. I couldn't get you out of my head! So I made it my sole mission in life to reunite with my big sis and marry you!"
"Wait, so Revy's your adopted sister?" Rock interjected meekly, trying to stay current. "Well... as long as you're not related, I guess its okay. Can I watch?"
"SHUT THE FUCK UP, ROCK!" Revy bellowed. She raised her guns once more and took aim at Margarita. "I should have put a hole in your head before I turned your house into an oven!"
"All these years!" Margarita cried, taking a step towards Revy. "Do you know what I have been through to see you again? Once I escaped on the kite, I spent countless months conquering every major gang syndicate in the Western United States to get a strong foothold in the respectable criminal community! I linked up with the Moldavian mafia and trained on Cypress in the long-forgotten art of pankration! I SPENT THREE YEARS IN FRANCE TRAINING PIGS HOW TO SEARCH FOR TRUFFLES TO PAY MY WATER BILLS!"
"Bitch, you are fucking mental," Revy drawled. Margarita began to hyperventilate and her skin started to glow as a small electric current formed around her.
"You will marry me, big sis," Margarita Sue said as a small ball of light appeared in her right hand, winding up for a mighty throw. "My Chi-Love ball technique from the mountains of Tibet will set you straight!"
But Margarita Sue never did get to throw the Chi-Love Ball, because she blew up.
Revy dropped her guns and angels sang as rays of light came from the hole in the roof of the Yellow Flag. Rock rubbed his eyes.
"M-Miss Balalaika?" he stuttered in disbelief.
Balalaika floated down from the heavens with two half-naked men with bow ties flanking her as her eyes displayed a stunning shade of cerulean blue. She settled airily on the black cinder star of Margarita Sue's remains and tilted her chin up at Revy.
"You're welcome."
"B-Big sis," Revy gawked. "H-How... What... the fuck?"
"I vaporized her with my laser beam eyes, my dear," Balalaika proclaimed calmly. "You never noticed their odd glow?"
Revy's mouth twitched, but no words came out.
"It is no matter. My work is done here."
And with that, Balalaika floated back out of the Yellow Flag with her man candy.
0 – 0 – 0
"Sounds like we missed another action packed night at the Yellow Flag," commented Benny staring dreamily, but with apathy, at the full moon. "Good thing we've been downgraded to minor characters in this ensemble."
"Don't you know?" Dutch rumbled and loosened the mooring knots, letting the Black Lagoon slide away on the ebbing tide. Benny looked up suddenly uneasy.
"Uh, Dutch? We left Jane back at the dock-"
"Yes... Yes, we did." Dutch put his hand on Benny's shoulder and gave him a tight squeeze, drawing him close in a loving embrace. "I was getting really tired of watching."
"Uh... Dutch?"
THE END
A/N: Anyone who takes this story seriously should realize it was written by a pair of twits on Irish stout.
Not everything Amigo and I push out is a masterpiece. Not even close.
Cheers.