Disclaimer- I do not own Wet, any associated characters or references to previous scenes from any media involving Wet. They are the property of Bethesda and a whole slew of other corporate entities I cannot readily name at the moment. Any situations or characters developed by me are strictly for expansion upon the existing media and for the entertainment value of the reader. This is a humble work of fanfiction, meant to be enjoyed on that level and no other. As always, comments and reviews are welcome. Please enjoy!
Wet, Chapter I- Neck Thai Party
Rubi strode through the dark streets of the Bangkok ghetto, ignoring the sheets of rain that pelted down around her. If her quarry knew that she was coming she had to admit she didn't really give a shit- her marks often panicked and made mistakes when they knew she was coming for them.
Barely working streetlights flickered erratically overhead, casting the entire street into fitful shadows. She scowled as she tried to focus through the darkness. Keeping her eyes up meant she risked night blindness thanks to the lights but the rain meant that lowering her eyes was not much better, with the illumination reflecting in the countless puddles. In her profession, acute peripheral vision was a must or you were dead.
Rubi Malone was feared in every corner of the globe as one of the best 'fixers' money could buy. If you had a problem that the law could simply not handle or you needed an illegal solution, she was who you went to. Loyal only to her pay and some personal ethics no one who knew her was stupid enough to inquire about, Rubi knew her business better than anyone.
She sneered as she thought of the flowery monikers she had been labelled with during her career- in Asia she was called the 'Tiger Orchid', feared as an assassin and mercenary for hire to the highest bidder. In Europe she was apparently known as 'Mams'elle de Sangue' or some crap. She didn't speak a lick of Italian and never planned to.
Or was that French?
Comparisons had been drawn between her and the notorious assassin Ilych Ramirez Sanchez, better known by his moniker of 'Carlos', an assassin who terrorized Europe, Asia and South America during the 60's and 70's. She had no clue why people bothered to make such idiotic assessments since she certainly wasn't an assassin- as far as she knew assassins were professional killers hired to be quick, clean and mysterious, leaving no trace of what had happened to the victim. That hardly sounded like her own MO. She simply waded in to find her assigned target, killed absolutely anyone who was so dumb as to get in her way and made sure that the trail of bodies discouraged those still living from pursuing her.
Sure as hell didn't sound like any assassin she had ever heard of. She was a fixer. There was a big difference.
Her head turned to look at some drunken local who staggered out of a storm drain, holding a bottle inside a greasy plastic bag. He was calling to her in the unintelligible local language, clearly wanting her attention. She had hoped he would simply fall over and drown in his own puke instead of following her, but she was not so lucky. He weaved and tottered on up to her, calling loudly for her to give him money (she assumed, based on his hand gestures). Realizing he was getting louder and might attract unwanted attention, she sighed and stopped to stare at him.
His bleary eyes tried to focus on her and they widened slightly when he realized she was white. He grinned a virtually toothless grin and laughed. His breath was beyond rancid.
"Pretty lady!" he drawled. "You… pretty…"
"Yeah, thanks, Romeo." Rubi said impatiently, wishing this fucktard would go away.
"I make you... feel good. We make feel good together…" he slurred in heavily accented English. We phukk… purrick in cunat… you like, yes?"
She scowled at the man while he pointed at her pants.
"Phukk…" he repeated. "Purrick in cunat. You take, you like. I phukk good…"
"Alright, that's it!" she growled as she grabbed him by the cheeks and shoved him up against the massive convex wall of the storm drain he had come out of. Her bottle green eyes glared balefully into his, but he was so drunk that he registered no fear, only confusion as to what was happening.
"Get this straight, purrick…" she hissed, her face close to his to make sure she had his attention. "You can fuck off with your nose or without it… your choice."
To make sure he understood his options, she drew her sword from her back and pressed the deadly point just inside his nostril. His eyes widened and then the expected fear flooded through him. She grimaced as she realized he was pissing himself.
He tried to recoil from her in his terror but was pinned against the massive concrete tunnel and the tip of her blade was still inside his nose. He began shaking so badly that he dropped his precious bottle to the ground, his body squirming in desperation to get away.
She let go of his cheeks and he lurched from the wall, staggering away whimpering. Luckily for him his pants were already coloured a dark brown naturally.
Rubi sighed and picked up the bottle he had left behind, examining it- Cobra Whiskey, with a real cobra pickled in the alcohol, which smelled like formaldehyde more than anything. She made a wry face and tossed the bottle away. Hadn't these people ever heard of bourbon?
Fucking rain. Fucking Thailand. She missed her boneyard and the dry heat of Texas. She couldn't wait to complete this job and get the hell out of here, if for no other reason than she hated flying and wanted this over with.
If it was ironic that she lived in the carcass of a World War II four-engine bomber then she really didn't give a shit. If people considered her a living contradiction, fuck 'em. She had a lot better things to concern herself with. Like getting paid.
Who the fuck was willing to pay this kind of money for a skull, anyways? She already knew her client had more money than God, but even for an eccentric billionaire crime lord, throwing half a mill down on retrieving his son's headbone was pretty cracked.
Well, whatever. As long as she got paid, he could do whatever he wanted with it.
She could not read the Thai scribbling on any of the street signs worth a damn and what few sign had English on them were mostly incomprehensible anyway, so she had memorized maps to lead her to the target. She was headed into Bangkok's seamy underground, a world of danger and excesses that made Hong Kong's crime syndicate look like Disneyland.
She had come here to Bangkok twice before, once for a simple parcel exchange and another time to retrieve a missing daughter. Both visits left her cold to the city, lauded by so many to be the jewel of the Far East; but to be fair she hated just about any urban environment with a passion. She even hated fucking Copenhagen, everyone was so damned pleasant.
She turned down a narrow alley, barely wide enough for one person to navigate. Wires and clothes lines hung overhead and the lights of the street were soon far behind her. In the near total dark, punctuated only by the flashes of lightning far overhead, she moved on, undeterred by an environment that would unnerve any normal person.
But Rubi wasn't a normal person and hadn't led a normal life. It was at moments like this that she was thankful for her rough upbringing. Fuck Bangkok, she had a job to do.
Voices.
The two men meandered slowly down the alleyway, talking to one another in the singsong language of the locals, all of which sounded like high-pitched gibberish to her. The one in front, the shorter of the two, was clearly telling some amusing anecdote, gesturing with his hands rather rudely while the one behind, clearly the stupider of the pair, guffawed. She could tell from the way they walked that both were carrying firearms in the small of their backs and just about their right shoe. Short push-daggers hung from their belts.
Fodder. Doubtless they thought they were important, but nobody important would be patrolling in the greasy rain on a pissy night like this.
Still, it was better to not be detected.
She watched as they passed beneath her, oblivious to the woman hanging directly above them from the bunched clothes lines and wires she gripped tightly in each hand, her legs spread and bracing her against the wall of the building on each side of the alley. She kept her breathing deep but slow, making sure no noise escaped her. She stayed rigid and straight, minimizing her body's effect on the rainfall below and no subsequent need to look up.
She almost wanted to take them down just for being stupid, to leave them choking in their own blood. But idiots like these were more useful to her alive, at least for now. She watched them carefully until they had disappeared from view, not likely to come back before she was further away.
She shimmied down the wall and stepped quietly onto the trash-riddled ground. Even the constant rain could not mask the reek of grease, rotting food and other smells she didn't care to think about. She continued moving down the alley, thinking about what her instructions had revealed to her, what she had yet to face.
She stepped over the body of some drunk that had sprawled in the alley but then realized that the man was actually dead, his face stricken with shock and fear, left, to die with his eyes wide. His neck was slit open from ear-to-ear, something she understood to be a form of gangland execution here in South Asia. His pale, wet skin was pulled tight against his bones, the rainwater pooling in his mouth tainted brown with old blood.
She could hear discordant music now, playing somewhere ahead of her. She pictured the rough map she had been presented, instructing her about how to find her way into the heart of Bangkok's criminal kingdom, a place the city and even national law enforcement authorities were smart enough to stay clear of.
Up ahead. The stairs down on the right, leading to a dingy door.
She pressed herself against the wall long enough to see what she was up against- there seemed to be only one guard, a wiry Thai youth wearing a t-shirt and gazing dully at the wall opposite the little unassuming landing he stood on. A cigarette hang loosely from his lips, a knife on his belt and a small pistol tucked into the back of his pants.
The lords of the Bangkok underground would pay dearly for fucking up tonight and relaxing their guard…
Chen sucked in a mouthful of acrid smoke and tried not to cough. These Chinese cigarettes burned like a prostitute's pussy. Blue Swallow brand his ass, they smelled and tasted like panda shit. However, they were what the bosses and their inner circle smoked, so if he was going to get noticed and be moved off guard detail and making routine parcel drops, he had to show them he was serious.
A peel of thunder and a flash of lightning lit up the alleyway. The cigarette in his mouth drooped further on his lower lip as he gaped at the white woman who had appeared out of nowhere and stood in front of him, her green eyes locked with his.
Her fingers struck him in the throat and the world burst into white light. He felt himself tumbling to his knees, retching and gasping for air. He could barely think, let alone breathe. Speckles of blurry colour swam in his vision until he saw a dark object coalesce into the definitive shape of a boot. He was dimly aware of someone standing over him.
Still on his hands and knees, he slow turned his head up to look at Rubi, who stared down unconcernedly. For all she cared, he might have been some piece of the alley's trash, stuck to the sole of her combat boot.
"Don't you know those things are killers?" she said as she kicked him in the head, smashing the cigarette through his lips and back into his mouth. Not that it mattered to Chen, because he was unconscious before his head bounced off the rough stone of the landing. Rubi stepped over the prostrate boy and headed down the short flight of stairs. The shoddy metal blue door gave way easily and she was officially inside Bangkok's underworld.
Timing and constant motion would be her ally now, subtlety a luxury she could not count on. Stealth had gotten her this far, it would now become an ace she would play as a last resort. Speed and ruthlessness became her weapons.
She strode down the hallway, her nostrils assaulted by the myriad smells of vices she cared not to guess at- opium, hashish, urine and worse, accompanied by strange music and mingled cries of pleasure and pain from rooms she could not yet see. A burly guard stepped in her way to stop her progress and she drew a pistol and pulled the trigger before he could react. The silencer on the muzzle worked admirably and little more than a loud 'pop' could be heard before he tumbled backwards, a .45 bullet in his forehead.
She advanced further down the hall, realizing she was doubtless beneath the buildings that made up the slum quarter of the city. Another guard, this one wearing a white t-shirt that clung to his torso, showing off his taut, lean muscles, staggered out of a room from which smoke billowed, his eyes bleary and red. She lunged in and rammed her elbow into his face before grabbing his arm, twisting it violently and snapping the radius bone in his forearm. Her own arm clamped over his mouth quickly before he could cry out in pain and she wrenched on his neck, hard. The sickening sound of vertebrae giving way was drowned out by the garish T-Rock blaring from the room. He sagged instantly and she shoved the body back into the small den. She was about to close the door when she paused, caught up in a wave of revulsion at what she saw…
A girl, seemingly half-Thai and possibly half-black, lay on a bunch of pillows inside the room. Her arms were missing below the elbow as were her legs below the knees. She was splayed submissively on the pillows, her legs spread and ready. What remained of her body was covered in piercings and coarse tattoos, her head shaven except for a single braid trailing from the middle. Her eyes were glazed as she sucked on a slender tube that led to an opium pipe, doubtless the one thing that made this existence tolerable. She seemed heedless of the corpse Rubi had just thrown to the floor.
Rubi's teeth clenched as she looked at the thing that might once have been human- it would have been mercy to put a bullet between its eyes, ending the pain forever. Instead she turned away and shut the door behind her, determined to not let Bangkok's sickness get the better of her.
The reddish lights of the long hallway did nothing to improve her mood. A rat scampered over her toe as she willed herself forward, knowing this den of iniquity would end and she would be closer to her target.
A young girl, completely naked, stumbled out of another room and leaned against Rubi, draping her arms around the foreigner's neck; Rubi caught her in surprise, grasping the girl's waist the keep them both from tumbling to the floor. The Thai girl giggled incoherently, her soft, café-coloured skin warm against the mercenary girl's.
"Pom yak yet kun..." she purred, her liquid brown eyes gazing up into Rubi's. Her breath carried the sickeningly sweet scent of hashish. The girl moved herself closer, rubbing her small breasts into Rubi's chest, heedless of the rough leather of her bandoliers, the sword strap or cold brass buckles of her jacket.
"Len phuuen siaw..." she mumbled in her language. Rubi composed herself and thrust the girl back into the room before closing the door. She had to get out of this hallway, the drugs in the air were impairing her reflexes and reaction time.
The cacophony of moans and garish music began to give way to tides of cheers. She turned a corner down another hall, this one lit by long rows of fluorescent lights. At the far end of the hallway she could see a set of double doors, dark metal with tiny windows. In front hulked two guards, glaring coldly down the hallway, their arms crossed.
She could hear the wailing pitch of ritual Thai music on the other side of the doors, competing to be heard over the cheers of the crowd. She recognized the music as the accompanying tune of a Muay Thai match, the arrhythmic beats and notes meant to keep the combatants in fighting form while they savaged one another in the ring. True Muay Thai was one of the most brutal forms of martial arts in the Far East, known for lots of blood, serious injuries and frequent deaths.
The two guards just waited silently as she approached, their eyes hidden by unusually expensive-looking shades. They uncrossed their arms and one made a gesture for her to stop but Rubi had drawn her pistols off her belt and shot them both dead. The noise of the crowd and music was all she could hear now, almost shaking the floor with their excitement.
She took half a second to remove the silencers from the muzzles of her pistols and tossed them aside- with as much noise as the crowd was generating, she doubted that a gunfight was likely to be heard. More than that, the silencers reduced the accuracy and strength of her bullets, an advantage she would doubtless need shortly. She stepped over the corpses of the men she had just killed and pushed the doors open…
No one was watching her enter because the fighting in the ring was intense. The fighters were covered in one another's blood, their hands wrapped in hemp ropes which had then been smeared with glue and covered in broken glass. Their knees were similarly adorned and both men wore deep gashes and contusions around their bodies as signs of their willingness to kill one another. The left arm of the man in the blue trunks hung limply, the shoulder and upper arm torn open, the bicep muscle spilling out of the skin. His foe, the man in red trunks, was missing half of his face, the skin and most of one eye replaced by terrible gashes of blood and gore.
Neither man seemed deterred from the fight though, and they lunged and clashed with an inhuman savagery. The man in red slammed his fist across his foe's jaw, opening it and sending teeth flying. The man in blue staggered and swayed drunkenly for a moment, which was all the time his opponent needed to dart in and finish him off- but it had been a ruse and the man in red's head snapped backward as blue leapt and rammed his knee up into his throat shattering his larynx.
The man in blue trunks fell to one knee, gasping for air as his foe died, blood spreading from his ruined throat and a dozen other lacerations. The crowd was going wild, cheering in delight or shouting in outrage. No one noticed Rubi making her way along the back wall; even the guards were intent on the results in the ring.
Then she saw a man across the arena, sitting ringside, applauding politely. He was a Thai, wearing a white suit with a chrysanthemum on the lapel. Surrounded by glowering guards, he seemed perfectly at ease in his surroundings.
Rubi had faced off against this man once before, one of Thailand's biggest crime lords. He had iron control of the drug trade south of Hong Kong and ran an international prostitution ring that the Russian mafia was envious of.
Sitting with him was a fat German man, his pinkish skin slick with sweat from the heat of the packed arena. The two of them were chattering on about the match and the results, which were clearly to the European man's liking and not that of his host. Beside the German sat a young Thai girl wearing a dog collar and a spare leather outfit that showed off her nubile body. Even from across the arena, Rubi could see the pain in the girl's eyes.
Bumsenbomber.
She debated for only a half second as to which of these men would be the better distraction if she shot one of them but her mind was made up by the time her pistol had come out and the report of the gun firing echoed around the arena…
The German pitched backward, blood spurting from his head as it came apart like a melon hit with a bat. Blood, brains and vitae showered everyone nearby, causing shock and panic. The Thai kingpin was instantly mobbed by his guards and hustled away, though they found themselves hampered by the stampeding crowd as everyone screamed and drove toward the exits.
The little Thai girl next to the headless German never moved.
Rubi dashed toward the back wall and ran up it, launching into the air and grabbing a ledge. She clenched the metal rail tightly and ran along the wall until she could reach the second level of the arena, scrambling nimbly over the ledge. She took off at a run, the upper levels clearing far more quickly than those below. She waded into the rear of the mass of churning humanity, despising the cattle around her for their unthinking panic and desperation to escape a situation they did not understand. She had no doubt dozens would die in the frenzied press to escape the scene. Good riddance.
She forced her way through the crowd and dashed down a side hallway, recalling that a service elevator was not far ahead. She would take it up into a building directly above, a hotel she had been told looked dilapidated and shoddy on the outside but within was the lair of her target.
After the death of the drug lord Pelham, her mark had returned to Thailand and was now re-establishing herself in the underworld, her services going to those who offered not necessarily the most money but the most opportunity to kill and inflict agony and pain.
Rubi came up against a metal door that would not open. Snarling, she whipped her sword off her back and jammed the point of the blade through the seal and then braced herself, beginning to pull. The muscles in her legs, core and shoulders flexed and rippled beneath her clothes as she exerted her will against that of her egress.
"C'mon, goddammit!"
With a groan and then a screech, the weary metal of the door buckled and then gave way. Sheathing her blade, she strode through and spied the elevator she needed to take. The hallway was dimly lit and lined with rooms. A door not far ahead of her burst open and a man brandishing a baseball bat sporting spikes charged at her. Rubi ducked his vicious swipe and slashed him across the torso with her blade, laying his ribcage wide open. She ignored his piteous screams as she began to run.
She kicked a wheeled serving station down the hall in front of her and it rammed into another man as he came out of a room, causing him to stumble. The echo of her pistol firing thundered in the hallway and the man dropped with a bullet in his gut. Rubi felt the haze coming over her as she sprang up onto the serving station and then leapt in the air, her pistols already out and she began firing as the henchmen who guarded her target and other crime leaders began to converge on her location, determined to stop her.
It all seemed so slow to her at moments like this. Her enemy's moves could have been preserved in amber. She could see and predict what they would do, the bullets trailing lazily away from her pistols and unerringly finding their way into her target's soft flesh. Even as she careened over their heads, many of them gaping in wonder, she twisted and rolled in mid-air, firing at them until the hallway was clear. They never stood a chance.
She landed easily, with the grace of a jungle cat and resumed her sprint. Not far ahead of her was the elevator and she scowled as the doors open and out spilled yet more lackeys, some carrying makeshift weapons while others sported pistol.
"Why bother, you're already dead!" Rubi shouted as she flung her sword forward, burying it in the skull of the first man to exit the elevator. Those behind paused in shock but by then she was on them like a tiger. She ducked the panicked swing of a machete and punched the assailant in the armpit, shattering bone and driving shards into his arteries and lungs. She ignored him while she drove the reinforced heel of her boot down onto the instep of another, the pain making him stumble before she rammed her knee into his midriff. The last one tried to escape the confines of the elevator but received a bullet to the back of his head for his cowardice. Rubi yanked her sword from the head of the first victim and shoved him out of the elevator with her toe, allowing the doors to close finally.
The wait was maddening. The elevator whirred, droned and vibrated as it made its way slowly upward. Rubi scowled at the control panel, thankful that at least the numbers on the button were in standard Western numerals, but still…
She glanced up and saw a camera fixed on her. She glared at it malevolently before sighing and pounding the button of the floor she wanted repeatedly.
I fucking hate Thailand!
The chime went off and the elevator juddered to a halt. The doors opened and Rubi stood beside them for a few seconds, wary of any hail of bullets that might greet her. When no barrage met her arrival, she peeked around the doors and then exited rapidly, knowing that time was of the essence.
The doors to the rooms of this once luxury hotel were painted different colours but only one was painted black…
She kicked the door in and stared into the suite- it was apparently empty but Rubi knew better than to trust the initial impression, given the nature of her target. In contrast to her foe's nature, the furnishings were opulent and lavish, mostly vermillion and gold. It was only on second glance that she realized that the deep red colouring of the walls was blood and skulls and other skeletal remains provided much of the décor.
"Where are you, you sick bitch?" she hissed as she strode into the room. "Haven't got the balls to face me?"
She felt a chill go up her spine and a draft behind her. She spun and slashed with her sword but cut thin air. Her eyes narrowed, angry that she had missed. It was a pattern she was used to now, this having been her third time fighting Lady Tarantula, possibly the deadliest woman in Asia and certainly the most feared.
During their first fight in London, Rubi had been convinced that she had killed the albino woman, nearly twisting her head off, snapping her neck and leaving her for dead in the courtyard of an English manor. Lady Tarantula seemingly disagreed and somehow lived on, more deadly than ever, seemingly. They had crossed blades again in Los Angeles and this fight had been a draw, the Thai assassin fleeing into the night once her employer had been killed.
This time, though, was rather personal for Rubi. Hired by William Ackers to retrieve the skull of his son Trevor from Lady Tarantula, Rubi was determined to make this their final fight. The senior Ackers had apparently been sent pictures of Tarantula with his son's remains and he was so incensed that he hired Rubi to get the skull whatever her asking price. Though the old man had never fully forgiven Rubi for her inadvertent part in his son's brutal death at the hands of Lady Tarantula, who was working for a rival crime lord named Pelham, he knew that she could be counted upon to get the job done, no matter what it took. This was Tarantula not only taunting Ackers but clearly challenging Rubi to come and finish what they had started. A trap? Certainly. Did Rubi care? Hell no.
Her price had been steep but Ackers agreed willingly paying half up front as a sign of good faith in their new working relationship. Rubi got her gear together, had a few stiff drinks, took several deep breaths and was on her way to Bangkok.
Pain flashed across the back of her shoulder and she knew Tarantula had tagged her. She hissed in pain and spun about, slashing angrily with her sword. She mastered her temper and remembered everything she had told herself about her foe- Tarantula was completely blind. However she did what she did, she did it unhampered by the vagaries of sight. Hearing, sense of smell, a taste in the air, changes in pressure or warmth… the assassin relied on other seemingly superhuman senses to pinpoint her prey and then she crippled them systematically before indulging in the business of cutting them to pieces, making sure they died very slowly.
Ruby bit her lip as she concentrated on facts she knew and conclusions she had drawn. Every time they had fought, Tarantula never attacked her from the front, always assailing Rubi from some oblique and unexpected angle, sometimes even from above. Unlike Pelham's other bodyguard, the German fencer known simply as 'Ze Doktor', Lady Tarantula cared not for a proper flourish or a coup-de-grace, only the pain she could inflict on her foe, something she was less likely to accomplish if she attacked from the front where she could be seen.
Rubi thrust a brutal kick out to her side and just behind, rewarded with a shocked wheeze as he boot impacted her foe's midriff. The reinforced block leather of Tarantula's outfit mitigated the damaged but she was still sent staggering back. Rubi cursed as she spun to face her foe, only to discover that she was gone in the split second it had taken her to turn around.
Was it sound? Could Tarantula pinpoint her location and facing based on her breathing and heartbeat?
She rolled forward and ignored the hissing sounds of twin daggers slicing the air where she had been a split second before. She grabbed a remote off a glass table and hit the power button, turning on the large flatscreen television that dominated the far wall. The program blared loudly, people babbling in what she assumed was Thai, filling the suite with its annoying din.
She dodged and zig-zagged through the large living room and into the kitchenette, where she switched on the blender and a small radio, adding further to the white noise that dominated the space. She rolled and dodged again, waiting to see how her foe would react to this tactic.
A pistol barked and the television exploded in a shower of sparks, hissing and fizzing angrily before going silent. Rubi smiled, knowing her target was disconcerted by the cacophony. Another shot rang out and the radio burst apart. All that remained was the high-pitched whining and grinding of the blender.
She nodded and closed her eyes as a third bullet destroyed the machine, bringing silence back to the suite. After the din she had created, the silence was so loud that Rubi was certain she could hear almost anything.
Eyes still closed, she subtly shifted one of her boots on the floor, creating the slightest rustle of noise.
To her left…
Rubi caught the dual strikes on her sword blade, hearing Tarantula hiss in frustration as her lethal assault was thwarted. She answered with a brutal punch aimed at Tarantula's throat, but the assassin twisted and took the blow on her shoulder, knocking her back. Unwilling to let the pale assassin out of her sight again, Rubi followed up closely, striking and slashing with all the speed she could muster.
Tarantula parried with her pistols, taking any opportunity she could to counterattack. Her unreal white, almost opaque skin gleamed in the wan light as the woman dueled for their lives.
Rubi's head snapped to the side as Tarantula slammed the butt of her pistol across her foe's jaw, but Rubi did not relent and her blade slashed open the front of Tarantula's dress, missing her torso by millimeters. The Thai assassin's alabaster breasts and midriff were now exposed and she hissed in fury.
"Nice tits, bitch!" Ruby sneered as her hand flashed out and grabbed a handful of Tarantula's hair, pulling her head back and exposing her throat.
"What a pity you've never known what they look like!"
Rubi gritted her teeth as she felt one of the blades that tipped Tarantula's pistols bite into her thigh. She kept pulling back on her hair until her foe's spine was curved and then she hooked a foot behind the Thai woman's knee and slammed her to the ground. Before Tarantula could react, Rubi had straddled her chest to pin her and punched down repeatedly, driving her fist into her foe's face savagely. Her arms pinned beneath Rubi's knees, Tarantula tried to use her long and impossibly flexible legs to unbalance Rubi but to no avail. Her strength ebbed as the American hammered merciless blows down repeatedly, her face becoming progressively spattered in her victim's blood.
Even through the bloody welter that had once been her face, Tarantula's sightless white eyes goggled up at Rubi, somehow flashing defiance. Sick of the mocking, Rubi finished their feud and pressed her sword to Tarantula's neck. With both hands she pushed down, tender flesh and bone giving way until the assassin's head rolled away from her twitching body, blood spurting from the lily-white neck stump and spreading in a crimson pool across the floor.
Panting, Rubi slowly rose and scowled as she noticed the severed head still staring at her, the tongue lolling obscenely out of the mouth.
"You never know when to let a joke go, do you, bitch?" she muttered. She limped away from the decapitated corpse and found a velvet sack on a table. She deposited the Thai assassin's head inside the sack and tied it tight, ignoring the dark, sticky spot that began to gather on the bottom.
Her foe disposed of (hopefully) once and for all, she began to cast about the suite, looking for signs of the skull of Trevor Ackers. The problem was that the more she searched, the more skulls she found. Tarantula had apparently souvenirs of her kills and the quantity spoke to the length of her gruesome career.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Rubi groused as she examined the small mountain of skulls she had collected in the middle of the floor some half-hour later. She pulled a pistol off her belt and shot a lackey who came bursting through the door, obviously late for the party but eager to earn his pay. She hadn't even turned her attention away from her grisly handiwork.
Fuckhead.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with all these goddamn skulls?" she complained loudly to the room.
"What the hell am I supposed to do with all these goddamn skulls?" William Ackers exclaimed as she examined the ghastly pile Rubi now presented him with.
"Why are you asking me?" Rubi replied simply.
"How do I even know that Trevor's skull is amongst your collection here?" he demanded.
"Oh, like I had the fucking resources or means to find out while I was in Bangkok's underworld," the raven-haired fixer sneered. "Use one of your endless spare millions of drug dollars to run a DNA test or check dental records or something. Given how stupid your son was, I'd start with the smaller heads first."
Ackers coloured at her disparaging of the size of his departed son's brainpan. He hated to admit it but the girl had a point. How was she supposed to identify Trevor's skull when Tarantula had made a habit of keeping the skull of all her victims?
"Here, I'll even throw in this one for free." Rubi said, tossing a velvet sack on the ground in front of the crime lord. The opening loosened and out rolled Tarantula's head, coming to rest at his feet, the pure white eyes staring up at him disconcertingly.
Ackers swallowed. "I… well, at least we know that the whore responsible had paid once and for all."
"Yeah, speaking of paying…" Rubi said testily.
Ackers nodded and cleared his throat. He gestured to a guard who now brought forward a metal briefcase. The man opened it for her perusal.
It was packed with thousand-dollar bills.
"The other half, as agreed, plus some extra for delivering Tarantula to me." Ackers said.
Rubi said nothing but merely closed the briefcase, took it from the guard and headed for the door, her business concluded.
"One more thing, Miss Malone." William Ackers called at her receding back. "I now consider all issues between us settled and we are on good terms."
"Whoopdi-fuckin-doo." Rubi replied as she kept walking.
"Perhaps you would care to examine the possibility of working directly for me?" the drug magnate suggested.
Rubi paused and turned slowly to look at the old man.
"The job security is excellent and your skills would be most valuable to me." Ackers pressed.
Rubi smirked. "Even I don't love money that much, old man. Takes a lot more than that to get me wet…"
And with that she was gone. Ackers sighed and shook his head.
"Mark my words, Miss Malone, we will meet again someday. Whether you will it or no, our destinies intertwine. Now I know what Trevor saw in you. You certainly are a prize."
He looked down at Tarantula's head and nudged it with his toe.
He repressed the urge to scream in terror when he thought he saw the head smile.
End Chapter I
Author's Notes: There's not a lot of Wet fanfiction out there and what there is of it is rather pathetic. While I would not go so far as to say that my own work defines the medium, I am pleased with my storytelling skills and thought I'd make a go of it.
The idea of writing the Wetfic (if I may call it such) came about after I finished the game and was displeased with the rather weak story ending. Maybe Bethesda ran out of money, maybe they were too busy developing Skyrim, maybe they were all hung over and asked the sober janitor to write the ending so they could meet the deadline or maybe they were inspired by the worst ending in video game history (Clive Barker's Jericho) and attempted to outdo it. If so, they failed, but I still do not appreciate their attempt.
Rubi is interesting to work with because she is not a likeable person. If you or I knew her in real life, we would no doubt harbour an active dislike for her, much as a person would for Kratos or any other sociopathic antihero turned out by our jaded and over privileged culture. Couple her winning personality with her 70's grindhouse skillset and you have a fic that makes for challenging writing. Considering that she can't do anything in the game unless she is flying through the air, running along a wall or skidding on her knees to activate her cool-ass acrobatic slo-mo combat repertoire, one must rely on heavy narration and plot in order to keep the story interesting. If she spent as much time on her knees in my story as she did in the game, this fic would need to be posted to aff instead. But I'll tackle that fic another time.
Anyhoo, this was also a good excuse for me to take a brief break from writing 'The Young Conqueror', my Dynasty Warriors fic, also to be found on this page. My life has fallen apart and changed radically recently, so my muse took a vacation for a while there. More than that, TYC has reached 60 chapters and is now close to 700,000 words so I decided to give Sun Ce and the gang a few weeks of peace. Rubi seems up to the challenge in the meantime and I have an entirely new plot to plunge her into all written up and looking to be fleshed out.
If you have not played Wet, I recommend giving it a shot. It's not for everyone, but if you like macho girls with guns and a colourful command of invective, I think you might just enjoy it, at least up until the ending.
And what's not to love about a game with an exclusively psychobilly soundtrack? Kinda strange that the Horrorpops were not among the bands enlisted for the game, if you ask me. A double bass playing girl with more tats than Rubi? Sweet!
Peace out and Happy Chinese New Year! Keep an eye out for Chapter II, coming up real soon, I promise!
Management