Authors Note: Happy 2007! I am sorry my prediction that this chapter would come out on Dec 20 was wrong. See, it was the last day of school, and like a fool I believed that all my problems of Spanish, math, and history would vanish and be replaced by a new chapter, all shiny and new and ready for updating. Instead, I spent two solid days doing math so I wouldn't get a C. but now it's done, and so is this chapter, with the correct spelling, punctuation, and dialogue included. (On a related note, I get A's in English.)

Disclaimer: I don't own what Quentin owns. If I did, it would probably be one of his samurai swords, and not the rights to Kill Bill. I recently got to hold a samurai sword, and it was one of the coolest things I've ever held. Then someone threw a baseball at me and I sliced it in half. I was happy…until I realized Quentin owned that action as well. But enough of my banter. ON WITH THE FANFIC!

Kill Kiddo: Chapter Four

"I turn my eyes away, from this whole world. I run so far away from me—this girl."--Nana/Yaya: Othello Vol. 7

Well, I guess you could say I've been puttin' it off, but the rest of the story isn't going to make much sense unless you know a little bit more about me. The story of my life isn't one I like to reminisce about. There are so many things I missed out on, so much I regret. I could easily write fifty pages, and I still wouldn't have scratched the surface of what made me what I am now, but I can't afford the time. So you'll just have to settle for a summarization, and I'll get back to the important parts when the time comes. So…Deep Breath…here it goes.

After the painful death of my mother, my dear old daddy thought it best to not only remove me from the home of the traumatizing experience, but to move us from Pasadena all together. He had no problem affording this, because someone had taken out a huge life-insurance policy on my mom about three days before she died. So he moved us to LA.

Okay. You can stop laughing now.

We scored a cozy Condo in Beverly Hills. My dad brought home gold-digger after gold-digger, eager to try to find me a new mommy while I was so young. Instead, he isolated me at the time I need a parent the most.

I didn't talk very much, and when I did, I would only say a few words at a time. I had a private tutor for a whiles, but I drove her nuts. Seriously. She ran out of the house screaming.

I thought that was funny.

I was finally enrolled in a private school at age six. Not wanting to make any relationships (only to be later ripped away) I buried myself in schoolwork. I struggled to learn to read better then everyone else. When I completed that task, I set forth and read every book in the class library. I was the smartest kid in the class, and man did it feel great. I was friendless, I had no mommy, I never saw my daddy, and I was perfectly content with being numb.

When I was eight, they upped me to fifth grade. My dad got married, and step momma Sara insisted on enrolling me in an extra curriculum. Having a choice between baton and cheerleading, I took baton. There were fewer kids in that. I felt a certain weight lift when I started doing baton, so I took up gymnastics and fencing as well. I stuck with all of them for four years, but I loved fencing. I channeled all my emotion—hate, rage, sadness, and loneliness into stabbing away at the faceless people in front of me. For some reason, I had no trouble placing a face on them. This, these harmless sports were to become the foundation for a killer.

When I was eleven, my dog Barney died.

The next day, a boy made fun of my eyebrows in homeroom. I stabbed him with my scissors and sent him to the ER.

They sent me to a million shrinks. Each one costing a fortune, and each one said the same thing—that I had buried my emotions when my mother died, and they were starting to violently resurface.

I said I wanted my Barney back.

I scared everyone around me. I spoke quietly and slowly and I would stare everyone in the eye like I was a snake. I would hiss at people. I scared away my dads' wife. I scared my dad. So much, he took up longer hours at the hospital. Tried to postpone coming home.

I saved him the trouble and ran away.

I caught a bus and went north to Oakland. Using a mix of what I learned from fencing, gymnastics, and baton (yes, baton) I was accepted into a gang. I didn't get along with a bunch of them, but there were a few truly nice girls who let me stay at their house.

I was twelve when I heard the name Black Mamba again after eight years.

Black Mamba had been the prize of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. The best of the best, top of the line. When I heard her name used with that Bill's, I new it was the same. Lucky for me, I had been struck with a case of being in the right place at the right time: in the underworld, even just petty street gangs, Black Mamba was a name on the hearts and tongues of every street urchin and villain.

Unfortunately, someone had recognized me, and I was brought back to my father.

But I wasn't upset. I was ecstatic. Old memories came flooding back, and one in particular seemed to resurface over and over.

"If you grow up, and you still feel raw about it…I'll be waiting."

I won't leave you waiting, Beatrix Kiddo. You need to pay for what you did to my mom. For what you did to me.

I put on a fake smile and acted well adjusted for daddy's sake. But I silently researched and interviewed and used everything I could find to learn about Black Mamba.

The other snakes in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad included Cottonmouth, California Mountain Snake, River Sidewinder, and Copperhead. They were infamous, known for their knowledge in martial arts, well-executed moves, and lack of mercy. They dismantled in 1999, when Black Mamba went missing. Three months later, Copperhead and River Sidewinder resigned. Cottonmouth stuck around for a while, but then departed to Tokyo, and as for California Mountain Snake she retired, but a lot of records show she still did the occasional job for Bill. It occurred to me one of these could very well be my mother, so I did a background check.

I finally came up with a hit. Verneda Green—aka Copperhead. A teen runaway herself, she was proficient in Ju Jit Su, Kung Fu, and was also noted to be extremely proficient with rifles and edge weapons.

I had found her. My mom, the superhero…a killer. Somehow, it didn't register in my head. My mom was the good guy, Black Mamba was the bad guy, and I was to continue in my mothers' footsteps and avenge her death.

I went crazy, and asked to be enrolled in a martial art. The only one my dad could find was karate. Goju-Ryu to be exact. I was disappointed a little—karate was such a common martial art. But once again, I felt the weight of every pent up emotion I had lift, and after five years of intense training, I got my black belt. I celebrated by getting a yin-yang tattooed on my ankle. My dad celebrated by buying me a car. I didn't complain about that.

During school, I was oblivious to the peer pressure around me. I could very well have been swept up in all the sex drugs and tears in the midst of my depression, but my depression was over baby. I was regarded as a tough-girl, a smart-girl, and a loner. O the first day of high school, I stabbed a girl who was giving me shit to a desk with my pen. I wasn't kicked out because I had perfect scores on my PSAT, and the girl I had stabbed hadn't even taken them, so we were both sent to three weeks suspension, and I was referred to the school shrink. I learned that day that some people's lives are worth more then others.

Senior year I got into another fight. A boy spread a rumor he got lucky with me. The boys came to confront me after school on the football field. Whatever his name was, he was all laughing at me, calling me a slut and a bitch, and everyone was laughing. I closed my eyes, and breathed in deeply, trying to find my center.

"Gonna cry?" the boy teased.

I pulled out my car keys and jammed them into his eye.

"Fucken bitch!!!!!" his friend yelled, trying to grab me.

Then, I did something most people go their whole lives without doing. I grabbed his neck in my hands and twisted. I didn't kill him, but I sent him to the hospital for almost a year. He ended up in a wheel chair. His buddy lost his eye.

I had pretty much outgrown Beverley Hills, so I left. My dad didn't bother to look for me.

Black mamba had reemerged in 2003. She went on a noisy killing spree, and didn't bother to cover her tracks. She disappeared along with Bill, 2004. Vanished, after killing more then a hundred people.

I took more martial arts, but I never stuck to them for long. I did meet up with a former male gang member from Oakland, and together we rented out a crummy apartment. I was seventeen, I was 5'8 and I weighed one hundred and thirty-two pounds. I got a job as a cashier at Macy's, and after work I took kickboxing for a while. I took my first paycheck and got a tattoo of a copperhead on my neck.

I went into silent despair when I was fired for showing up late. I started thinking, who was I kidding? Beatrix took Tiger Crane, Kung Fu, five other martial arts I couldn't even begin to pronounce, and worked a Samurai Sword through a person like a knife through butter. What had I done? Four years of gymnastics, fencing, baton, a black belt in Goju-Ryu, a purple belt in Ju-Jitsu and six months of Kick Boxing. Beatrix Kiddo would snap me in half like a toothpick. I thought about calling it a quits. My roomy, (who had changed his name from I-don't-know-what to Ka-Boom at my suggestion) was into some pretty bad shit, and after having the police show up again and again and again, I finally moved out.

When I was living in my car in front of the kickboxing studio, I befriended my kickboxing instructor Pete Marsters. Pete found me sleeping in my car one night, said if I had nowhere to go, I could sleep at his place. Put politely, we did everything but. However, Pete was a truly nice guy, and helped me get back on my feet. While living with Pete, I did manage to catch the eye of several Hollywood moviemakers with my tall, muscular frame and martial arts expertise. I did some stunt-double work under the name Nicole Gray. When I was offered a lead part in a martial-arts sci-fi production, I quickly retreated. I couldn't afford to show my face.

Pete and I left LA and moved to New York, where he was getting a bigger studio. He showed me some new moves, and introduced me to some pals of his, including Sensei Asakawa, an expert on martial arts. Asakawa had moved from Japan. She taught me a lot, and I gained some valuable information from her.

Her brother, Minoru had been crippled by the Black Mamba during a fight at The House Of Blue Leaves.

I was nineteen then, and on the eve of the New Year, I flew out with Asakawa to Osaka to meet her brother. Her brother had trained as a ninja until his arm had been severed fifteen years prior to our encounter, while he was part of a gang called the Crazy 88. He was delighted in meeting me, and directed me to someone named Ozu, who theoretically was the greatest martial arts master alive. I trained for three years and six months. With Ozu teaching me, I became almost fluent in Japanese, as well as some moves that I once thought were impossible. Already nimble-fingered from my years of baton, I trained with double broadsword, shorter and blunter then samurai swords. I never liked samurai swords that much.

When I came back to New York, Pete asked me to marry him. I said no. We stayed friends. Good friends. But I was not comfortable in New York. I entered an ultimate fighting ring and emerged the champion, defeating over twenty champion fighters and winning over two hundred thousand dollars.

But I scared Pete. I scared him too much. Not just how I took down every five hundred pound male that I went up against. He was afraid of the power I had, and how I used it so recklessly. He told me to stop fighting, because he didn't want to see me hurt.

I left him. I'd been hurting all my life, and if he couldn't see that physical pain is nothing compared to the kind inside you, he didn't know jack shit.

I was ready to begin my search for Beatrix, and I thought what better way then to follow my mom's lead? After all, if I'm gonna kill Beatrix, then I might as well get some practice. So I moved to Tokyo. Minoru directed me to an agent he knew. Richard. Richard didn't have anything organized like Bill did, but he did have people he could call up when some millionaire or politician wanted a job done quick, and a job done right. So I tracked him down, and showed up right when he was in a tough spot. I helped him out, and he gave me a chance under the code name Baby Cobra.

Within months, I was Ricky's number one. Over the next year, I proved myself to Ricky and a lot of other people. Look up the top twenty most dangerous female assassins. I'm somewhere between fourteen and eighteen. Needless to say, with skills like mine, I had a few people lining up to get me to work for them. I ended up becoming the private bodyguard of Boss Hikuru, who held the position that Cottonmouth held nineteen years prior. I took that job for one reason, and one reason only—to find out more about Beatrix.

In the spring of 2024, I had felt as if I met a dead end. I didn't have any lead on where Beatrix Kiddo was, and neither Minoru, Boss Hikuru, or Ricky knew anything. Also, after working for Ricky for almost a year and a half (and sleeping with him once) I learned what a pain in the ass that guy could be. Seriously. I could be in a private meeting with Boss Hikuru, and the guy would just walk in like he owned the place (and let me assure you, walking in on a meeting with key ringleaders of the Tokyo Underworld is not an easy thing to do). So I decided to quit working with Boss Hikuru after making two million dollars. Ricky still called me every once in a while to help him out, and sometimes when Boss Hikuru's current bodyguards showed up dead, I would do a substitution until he could get a replacement.

One day, on the streets of Tokyo, I met up with a legend called The Samurai. After twenty years of merciless killing, he was ready to call a quits, and decided to pass on his weapon less he be tempted to pick up his old habits. I received from him the most valuable thing I could ever have. It wasn't just the two sharp edged sai swords he gave me. It was something to hope for.

The hope that I might one day sink these swords into Beatrix Kiddos heart.

Or brain or liver or any other major internal organ. Believe me, after the shit Ricky had me doing, I really wasn't picky.

This hope snapped me into a sensible idea—while virtually nothing was known about Beatrix, her master The Snake Charmer was infamous. I studied up on Bill, and found one name that linked them together.

Hattori Honzo. Bills Sensei. After Hanzo passed on all his worldly knowledge, Bill pulled an Anakin and went to the dark side. He started out a gopher for Boss something-or-other, and eventually became the leader of the most feared assassin squad in the world.

Beatrix Kiddo had gotten Honzo to make her a sword when he had not made one in 28 years.

I figured it was worth a shot to check this guy out. And turns out, I was right.

Oh man, was I right.

I would like to dedicate this chapter to my good friend, Claire. She's in New Zealand, visiting some people she's related to or something, and due to this, was not able to witness the update of my fanfic, as well as the viewing of many movies at the mall (most of them with Robin Williams, many through the TV's at Suncoast), the consumption of a block of cheese and jar of peanut butter, and the hatching of a chicken egg I was incubating with a heating pad.

I hope you all enjoyed the look into Nikki's past (I hope it sounded realistic. And by that, I mean as realistic as a movie where people can kill people by poking them in the heart five times). I was going to post it at a later time, but realized a shit-load of stuff wouldn't make sense if I didn't post it now. Stay tuned for my upcoming chapter: A Pimp Named Vihaio.

P.S.- has anyone watched Afro Samurai? It is incredibly Kill-Billish. Like, this guy has a samurai sword, and all these other people are attacking him, and someone on the other side of him fires a gun, and he used his sword and cut the bullet into a bunch of pieces and they all shot the guys who were attacking him. It was cool.

Okay—I'm done. Here it is, your moment of Zen. See ya!