One Down.
DEATH LIST FIVE.
O-REN ISHII.
VERNITA GREEN.
BUDD.
ELLE DRIVER.
BILL.
The first name on the list had already been crossed off, but it still left four more. Leaning back in her chair after she had struck off the name of O-Ren, the Bride looked thoughtfully at the list, unable to take her eyes off of the names. Two months ago, the Bride had been in a comatose state after being attacked at the dress rehearsal for the wedding with Tommy. She had found four years of her life had passed, infuriating her, but then again the Bride would have been filled with rage if it had been only 4 days.
The Bride tried to get comfortable - she decided to order something to eat and drink when she could, but for now, she just wanted to get herself comfortable on the long flight back to the USA - and she thought to herself.
Ever since the massacre at Two Pines and her subsequent coma, the Bride had been surprised by how much the world had changed in a relatively short amount of time. The Bride could have done without the revelation the orderly had been prostituting her and other comatose patients out, and she had taken pleasure in killing the bastard trucker who'd tried to kiss her. She didn't normally use the five-point palm exploding heart technique Pai-Mei had taught her after she had won over his respect by refusing to give in to the pain of the brutal training regime he pushed her into, but its knowledge kept her safe even if her skills made her more vicious than a truck driver could ever be.
Killing Buck had also been simple enough, although she had been stunned to discover nobody had visited her over the past 4 years. She had checked after her escape because she had wanted to know if any of the Vipers had tried to kill her. Escaping the hospital had been easy enough and she had simply found Buck's home and moved into it until she could put her plans into operation. The moment she discovered her deflated abdomen only one thing had gone through her mind.
Revenge.
Once she had recovered enough, the Bride had checked her old networks to find out what her former colleagues in the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad had been up to for the last few years so then she could track them down and make them pay for what they had done to her child. What she had found had surprised her. The Deadly Vipers had split up according to her networks, but while she had found some vague rumour of where Vernita and Budd were, the clearest location for a member of the old squad was O-ren, who was now in Tokyo bringing the Yakuza members under her leadership, with Bill's financial and philosophical support.
The Bride had been watching her old colleague and former friend for the past month, using her Asian contacts to keep her appraised on what O-Ren was doing. While she had been in Hattori Hanzo in Okinawa while he had forged a sword for her to kill Bill and the others, she had been watching O-Ren. As she did, the Bride learnt about the things O-Ren had been doing. Aside from the beheading of Boss Tanaka to make it clear to the others that she was not going to tolerate any talk of her Chinese and American heritage, O-Ren was a good, thoughtful leader who listened to the others with great respect; where Elle had sickened the Bride with her sadistic cruelty, using underhanded methods to win a fight because she was too cowardly although the Bride knew better than to underestimate her, O-Ren was one of the Vipers whom she had gotten on well with; while her past was horrific, O-Ren had always been professional and kinder but she was reasonable. Sometimes the Bride wondered what had let O-Ren come with Bill and the others to Two-Pines, but it didn't matter now.
O-Ren had been complacent and her sudden high rise of infamy following the beheading of that Yakuza boss had made her virtually untouchable. Even now, the surprise on her face when she had called her name out in the club had been worth it, but the Bride wasn't bothered about the massacre she had inflicted on the Crazy 88 even though deep down it felt good to prove that some of her skills were still as sharp as they had been. The past two months she had spent in hiding and with Hanzo had been well spent, and some of the techniques she had been taught by Pai-Mei had certainly helped.
The Bride had known it wouldn't take long for Bill to discover she was alive. Like herself, Bill had contacts in every single country, and he had likely been told off the brutal way O-Ren and the rest of the Crazy88 were massacred. She had known that the moment she had cut off Sofie's arm the first time around the woman would be a treasure trove of knowledge, and she had wondered if she should just kill the woman after keeping her alive so she could discover what the rest of the Vipers were doing.
There were benefits to such a plan; it would give her the element of surprise if she just killed Sofie and O-Ren and the Crazy88, and although Bill would launch an investigation into what happened to one of his top assassins, he would ultimately conclude that one of O-Ren's enemies had found a way to kill them all, or an assassin had gotten the drop on O-Ren because she had become complacent.
With Bill unaware of her return, it would be easy for her to get the drop on them.
The Bride had gone over the plan in her mind more than once; shortly after cutting off Sofie's arm and watching her writhe around on the ground after she had killed the Crazy88s, and after she had killed O-Ren, and then during the drive with Sofie in the trunk of the car. And then the Bride had decided to leave Sofie alive. She decided she wanted the other Vipers to know she was back and she wanted to kill them for what they had done to her.
One down, four to go.
The Bride knew it wasn't going to be easy, but she would get there, and she was going to kill Bill.
