Say what, raspberry pancake was good after all. Frederica was enjoying the way the flavor seemed to linger in her mouth even after she paid the bill and was walking down the street. Next time she would leave a more sizable tip for the waitress that kept on telling her that she should try her special pancakes.
She had been going like this for three days already. Get up early, eat breakfast at that cafeteria across the street, explore the streets, get lunch, check her things hadn´t vanished while she was gone, explore the streets again, get dinner, dismantle and check her chainsaw and go to sleep. Rinse and repeat. She had been able to keep her mind distracted and the bad memories weren´t haunting her. For now she was handling pretty well, but she had come to Gotham in order to get some work, and it was time she started doing some. By now she knew the entire East End like the back of her hand. She had also driven around town in a rented van so she had a rudimentary knowledge of the city´s general layout as well. But she had treaded this city´s streets only by day, she had never stayed outside when the night fell on the city.
That had to change. By now she knew the bars and places where this city´s scum met. The place where she belonged. It only would be a matter of going to one of such places and...establishing a "business relationship". With those thoughts occupying her mind, she walked the streets until darkness began to fall again upon the city. She always had dinner quite early to avoid being out on the streets when the night fell down. She made her way to the hotel she was staying at.
- Welcome back Miss Franklin! - Chirped the receptionist. - How are going you going with your rehearsal?
- ...It´s going well...I´ll soon be...playing in the...band... - Said Frederica. The use of her Ultravoice made her unable to speak long phrases and she often had to stop mid-sentence, making her speech somewhat faltering.
- It´s nice to see someone so young actually put effort into something. But how come I never hear you play your violoncello? - Asked with a hint of sarcasm on his voice. It wouldn´t take a MENSA member to notice that someone who had bribed her way into a room on Gotham´s East End had something to hide.
- ...I play with a cloth...on the strings, that...way I don´t disturb...the rest of the guests... - Said the little goth, pocketing the small metallic device that allowed her to talk, clearly telling the receptionist that the conversation was over. She went upstairs to her room. She stopped before her room and inspected it. On the lock there was a single black hair. It was a rather crude alarm system, but it worked. It looked like the receptionist was still too scared to try and ransack her room while she was gone. Good. She entered the room locking the door behind her.
Everything was undisturbed, just as she left it. She had had to resist the temptation of cleaning the room herself and leave it immaculate, but she couldn´t afford to give the receptionist/hotel manager even more reasons to be suspicious about her. She closed the curtains of her room and started undressing to take a shower. She neatly folded her clothes and put them on a chair. She went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked like a ghost from some kind of terror movie that for a strange twist of fate, still walked the earth. Frederica wondered how could she ever had survived an attack that had dealt such massive injury to the mayor arteries in the human body as she unclasped the handful of necklaces and pendants she always had around her neck. It was certainly a miracle. One she hadn´t wanted either. She had welcomed the wound as it had signified the end of her nightmare. But then she awoke in a hospital, her neck stitched and one of the most human attributes of all, her voice, lost forever. She went mad and ripped the stitches out of her own throat, causing the doctors to put her in straps to avoid her going berserk again...
Frederica shook her head to drive the bad memories away. She needed to start working soon. She left her hatchet within hand reach just in case and entered the shower. A cold stream of water greeted her, washing her lithe body, leaving her immaculate once again. Once she finished showering she dried herself with a towel and got dressed in her usual outfit. She slipped a white shirt with maroon stripes and put on her black skirt and stockings. She adjusted the harness that holstered her hatchet and put on a loose black t-shirt with a big silver cross over the harness and the shirt. She took her boots and put them on. They covered up until the knees and still creaked from being recently bought. She checked herself in the mirror. Nothing stuck out where it shouldn´t. She underlined her eyes and polished her nails black. She calmly waited for her nails to dry and looked at the clock. 10:12 PM. This time she would wander into the night to get what her heart most desired. She put the finishing touches to her make up and picked up the cello case that hid her weapon. She came out of her room and went downstairs. The receptionist waved her goodbye and she did the same out of courtesy.
- Are you leaving this late? The city is dangerous at night miss.
- What else can...I do? I´m not the...one who decided the tryouts...should be at night.... - Answered casually the teen. - ...Don´t worry I´ll...be careful... - She walked to her rented van, dropped the case on the passenger´s seat and turned on the engine. She had inverted quite some money on the vehicle, most specifically on false plates and a special layer of green paint would peel with a pressurized stream of water, revealing the original white. She had to pay almost two grand, but if someone followed her she would just drive into a car-wash and throw them off completely, not to mention the false plates. She had barely two hundred dollars left, so getting started with the job was a necessity, both emotionally and economically. She started driving and quickly made her way through the city. Normal people had been substituted by thugs and hookers that now dominated the streets. She saw many drug dealers trying to sell their addictive poison to their desperate customers. She also noticed some cops giving a couple persons a beating for not paying the tribute. She felt at home in this city. Frederica kept on driving until she reached a certain part of town. She parked her van and walked with her hidden chainsaw to a bar. Carlos´. Thugs usually hung around here looking for a job. She pushed the front door and entered the place. Many men were inside, playing billiards, talking in whispers in small groups or just drinking themselves to death. She came inside while the men shot suspicious glances at her or just leered at the female that just entered the wolf´s den. She sat by the bar counter and the barman came to take her order.
- What it´ll be? - Asked the barman in a mix of confusion and bewilderment at the strange girl before him.
- ...Lukewarm tea, please... - At this point the barman could not hold his laughter anymore.
- HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Wo-would you like some crumpets with that?
- ...No, I just asked for...tea... - Replied calmly the goth. The laughter just got louder and more of the drunkards were joining in now. Frederica hoped they would quickly mind their own business and leave her alone. The barman brought some tea to the inexpressive girl. She tasted it. It burned and was leafy. She complained to the barman but he paid her no attention. What kind of unprofessional service was this? Frederica waited for her tea to cool down. She couldn´t drink anything very hot or very cold with her damaged throat. Was that too much to ask? Lukewarm tea was something of a taboo here? She did not drink any alcohol and even if she did, she wouldn´t drink anything that could mess with her senses knowing a fight was coming. She wondered if those men had a deathwish, or they just didn´t realize the fact that a missed shot, tripping on something or just doing something stupid like rushing head on would mean your end. She waited and eavesdropped on the thugs conversations to see if she could find any work. They were mainly talking about how the Tobias Whale had taken over the business, now that Black mask was dead and Great White Shark was out of business. Rumors about the disappearance of many "capes" and "freaks" within the city and so on. Drug deals, stealing cars...she was not interested in any of that.
She sipped her tea now that it was at a less painful temperature. It seemed like it was going to be a quiet night. Not good. She was about to leave and look in another place when she noticed two persons sitting in a table and a third coming in, and they in talked in whispers about how they needed muscle. She picked her cello case and her tea cup and sat on their table.
- What the hell? Get the fuck out of here! - Spat at her the third man, a hulking man in a Grey hoodie with a pistol on his pants. She ignored him and looked at the one that looked like he was the boss.
- You said you were willing...to hire people...May I inquire what...is the nature...of this job? - Asked the lithe killer. The first man, about thirty years old, with a ponytail and a stubble, raised an eyebrow at the strange sight before him.
- You look slightly out of place here kid. You a new face here right? - Frederica just nodded. - Well kid, I´d step back if I were you, this is too big for a novice.
- Just tell me what...do you need the muscle for...and I´ll decide whether it´s too big of a job for...me... - Answered Frederica. The man sighed.
- It will include icing people, between twenty and thirty people. It´s kind of a deserted place, by the docks. We´re looking for about six toughs for this. - Said the man trying to scare the girl away from this and keep on doing his job.
- ...I´m interested...How big is our payment...going to be?... - Asked the girl in a mechanical hiss. The man shrugged. If she wanted to die it was her problem, besides when they shot at her they wouldn´t be shooting at him, would they? The other man, a black man dressed in a somewhat elegant manner answered for him.
- One grand each, you´ll get the mon...
- Hey! You´re telling me the disabled squirt rolls with us?! - Roared the man in the hoodie, rising up from his chair and attracting a lot of attention. Frederica didn´t even flinch, her ever present apathetic expression plastered on her face.
- ...I´m sorry if I offended you, but...I´d greatly appreciate if from...now on you refrain...from calling...me "disabled squirt"... - This commentary seemed to anger the man even more.
- "I´d greatly appreciate..." - Mocked the thug. - You think I´d go easy on you just because you´re a mute bi...- The man didn´t even finish talking when Frederica kicked her cello case, striking the man in his shins and making him hit the ground face first with a painful thud. Most of the bar turned in her direction. The humiliated man quickly rose to his feet, pulling his gun from his pants but was stopped cold when the black man nonchalantly put a silver .45 in the table while shooting him an ice cold glare. The man in the hoodie calmed down and sat on the chair again.
- You got sand kid. That´s the kind of shit we´re looking for. - Said the hit man with the ponytail. His partner continued with the explanation in a professional tone.
- As I was saying, it will be one thousand each, on the spot, as soon as we finish the job. - Frederica sipped again from her tea. It was quite a high risk job with very little reward, but she needed the money, and if her hunch was correct, she could get her cleaning business started, aside from gaining a little reputation.
- ...I´m okay with it. You can count me in... - This was her chance to start working in Gotham, she couldn´t let it slip between her fingers now. They spent another hour recruiting people for their cause. Four more persons completed their group, persons as amoral as Frederica was. Gunmen that valued life in numbers, the money they would receive upon ending another human´s life. They were ready and discreetly left the bar. Eight street toughs looking to spill some blood tonight. Not a particularly rare sight in Gotham city. The two contractors and three of the men rode in a blue American sedan and Frederica and the rest of the thugs rode her van. She watched them joke and brag about their guns. Typical cannon fodder. Joking, comparing guns and telling each other how they would kill all those suckers to try and hide under their bravado the fear they felt. Frederica idly wondered who would survive this skirmish. Her money certainly wasn´t on any of these macho-men. At least they took the clue when she didn´t laugh at their jokes and left her drive in peace. She followed the blue sedan until it stopped at a section of the docks that looked particularly deserted. She parked her van and walked up to the two contractors, the rest of the thugs following suit. The man in the ponytail pulled a shotgun out of the car and started explaining the plan to the makeshift army.
- Alright, here´s the deal. A biker gang named the "Street Demonz" has set up their hideout at the warehouse up ahead. - Said the man pointing to a lighted warehouse. From the noise coming from it it looked like they were celebrating from a night of pillaging. - We don´t want them there and they laughed at us when we told them to scram. So we´re gonna make sure they take a permanent leave from life. Five of you and I will enter through the back door. My partner and one of you will cover the front door in case they try to run away. You got it? - The men nodded and readied their guns. - Hey kid! Ready your gun we´re goi... - The man trailed off when she opened her case and took her chainsaw out. The rest of the thugs just stood there in awe.
- Holy Shit, sister! What the hell do you plan to do with that?! - Shouted an African American man, looking dumbstruck at the sight of Frederica holding her weapon. The rest of the men shouted similar exclamations.
- You from the Sawyer family or what? Now you´re gonna pull a mask made out o´skin of the people you killed?! - Exclaimed the man in the hoodie that insulted her back in the bar, now not so willing to offend the girl.
- Well this doesn´t change a thing. We´ll stick with the plan. "Sawyer", you go with them since you don´t have a gun. - Said solemnly the elegant man. Frederica heard her new nickname and nodded it was better than "kid" or using her real name for this. The men moved out in silence. "Ponytail", Frederica and four thugs moved around an abandoned building with serious symptoms of urban decay and reached the back door of the warehouse. They crowded around it and Ponytail started giving instructions.
- Well, I´ll blow the lock, you kick it open, - Said pointing at Hoodie. - And the rest of you quickly barge in, got that? Well, lets do this. - He pointed his shotgun and blew the lock apart. Hoodie quickly kicked the door and they entered the warehouse. Sawyer pulled the cord that started the engine and her tool purred in return. She loved this moment, when the terror had overtaken her victims for a second or two, while the new situation made way into the brain of the poor souls that confronted her. She made her best work during those seconds. About twenty-three bikers looked surprised at having their party crashed. Her allies started shooting and downed a biker as he turned around to see what happened. She quickly ran up to a biker that still held a beer bottle in his hands, her chainsaw revved up and roaring like a hellhound and brought it down on the sorry bastard. Blood and gore sprayed everywhere as tungsten carbide teeth tore through flesh and bone, the biker´s chilling screams drowned out in the raging sound the chainsaw made as it quickly (and messily) sawed him in two, from the left shoulder to his right hip. Sawyer´s soft and pale lips were now slightly twisted in a sadistic smile, one of the few emotions that ever surfaced on the lithe killer´s face. She had missed the feeling of ending a man´s life in such a cruel and sadistic way. It was so much better than guns, more...intimate, like a kiss between lovers. It was cruel, it was brutal, and unnecessarily messy but she loved it. It was an act of pure sadism laced with zeal. She quickly looked at her next victim, the coldness of her glare making him stagger back. She charged at him while the rest of the bikers snapped out of their initial stupor and pulled out their weapons. He was in the middle of pulling his gun when she ran him through and held him like a human shield, moving aside to make easier for her allies to open fire. A quick look confirmed her that two of the bikers had already died. Four if you included the ones Sawyer killed. She kicked the mangled corpse out of her saw and hid behind some crates. One of the bikers passed by, shooting his gun at her allies and she brought her weapon down on his arms, severing them in a moment´s notice. She used the saw´s guiding bar as shield and charged at a pair of bikers further away. The one closest to her panicked and shot without aiming a barrage of lead at her. She felt the bullets ricochet on her chainsaw and kept on advancing swiftly. The biker farthest from her dropped to the floor when he took a shotgun blast to the chest, probably from Ponytail. The biker took a step back and tripped on a bike, falling to the floor where the goth girl mercilessly gored him. She ducked and hid behind the mass of bikes that were parked inside the warehouse, bullets hitting the metal vehicles that protected her. She revved up her chainsaw to take some of the biker´s attention while her "friends" advanced. She looked at them. Three of them were missing. Hoodie and and Blackie were screaming obscenities and firing blindly from behind some bikes. Ponytail was reloading his shotgun behind some crates.
The bikers were firing with all they had behind a knocked over steel table and some scattered boxes and bikes. The bikers had a pretty good cover. There were about ten bikers left shouting threats and firing wildly calculated the goth girl. They had to take them down before they decided to use the catwalks to get the higher position and easily gun them down. Ponytail shouted her nickname. Sawyer looked at him and nodded. He came out of his cover firing quickly, Hoodie and Blackie mimicking him, making the bikers lower their heads. Sawyer took this as her cue and made an impossibly quick dash to the steel table jumping over it and wildly slashing with her chainsaw, severing some limbs and a head with a terror expression forever etched on his bloodied face. One of the men jumped out of her range to be gunned down, again by Ponytail. Quite probably he was a professional killer, not like those thugs that had made the brunt of their team. When will people learn that they put the sights on the top of the gun for a reason...firing your gun sideways might look cool but it was terribly inaccurate, and if the caliber was weak, chances were that the gun would jam. She would never understand why people didn´t use blades more frequently in combat.
Sawyer was finishing cutting one of the entrenched men when one of the men from the last group of bikers trained his gun on her. She couldn´t get her chainsaw out of her victim fast enough to use it as a shield, so she had to jump behind the table to save herself, leaving her weapon of choice lodged in the gut of a dead biker. She peeked over the table and had to duck when a hail of bullets whizzed past her. Ponytail slided on the floor and took cover alongside her.
- Holy shit, Sawyer! You have gored almost half of these shitheads! Leave some for us! - Praised Ponytail as she took her hatchet out of her holster. - There are about six of these suckers left! - He looked as four of them tried to flee through the front door. Sharp detonations could be heard from the outside. - Well more like two of them now that Jimmy has gunned those cowardly punks... You ready Sawyer? - The girl nodded, getting a firmer grip on her hatchet. He turned to Blackie and Hoodie. - YOU TWO? - Shouted Ponytail above the shootout noise. He got an affirmative shout from behind a crate. - GO!! - The hired killers raised their weapons and fired towards the final survivors, gunning them down before she could do anything.
- Alright, we´re done here right? - Asked Hoodie, clearly trembling from all the tension of the fight bleeding out of him. Ponytail nodded while taking of his jacket and dangling it in front of the killzone of his friend.
- Don´t shoot, it´s me. - The elegant man, apparently named Jimmy came out of his cover, holstering his gun, accompanied by another of the thugs.
- Done?
- Yeah. - Sawyer recovered her chainsaw from the still warm corpse and approached the two men. Jimmy looked at her and reached for his pocket, drawing a bundle of bills and handing it to the girl. She weighed it on her hand and pocketed it and drew her ultravoice.
- You want this...place to smuggle drugs...in, right? - She asked the men which looked at her puzzled.
- Look girl, you´ve been a real helper, but that is none of your business.
- I can clean...this mess for...a price and you...could start using it right away. Not attracting cops or...the bat... - The last word made the grown men squirm in place. Jimmy looked confused for a moment and drew a cellphone and called his boss. About two minutes later Jimmy looked at her and conceded. Sawyer threw her keys at Ponytail man and instructed him to bring her van. She looked at the battleground, and sighed. It was going to be a looong night.
