"The Big Fat Kill"
"The Long Drive"
I shove the dead cop's badge inside my coat. It hangs heavy against my chest. I check my watch. It's only been half an hour since Kitty was strutting and shaking it and showing it off, a total pro, sassy, seasoned, smiling as she lured five drunk slobs to their bloody deaths.
Half an hour. And now Kitty's shivering in the rain like a lost little orphan, her voice all quivery and cracking and hopeless.
Everything's gone straight to hell, and there isn't a woman in this alley-turned-slaughterhouse who doesn't know it. Kitty's just the first to say so.
"The cops. The mob…things are gonna go back to the way they used to be…" she whimpers.
All the other girls stare at Kitty, their faces grim and their eyes wallowing in despair. They all know she's completely right; they just don't want to admit it. The veterans, the seasoned pros, they still remember the old days, the bad old days. And all the younger, newer girls heard plenty of stories about them. Nobody wants to accept that they're back.
Especially Storm.
"The hell they will!" she growls as lightning dances across her fingertips. "We got guns. We got powers. We'll fight! We'll fight the cops and the mob and any other pricks who try to move in on us! We'll go to war!"
"Don't be stupid, Storm," I tell her, interrupting her call to arms. "Ya'll wouldn't stand a chance."
-X-
The dead cop's badge. Big Bishop's badge, pressing cold against my skin, right over the heart these girls jump-started back when I was full of bullets and about as down as a man can get.
They saved my life. They gave me a new face. They bought me a second chance. I owe them big.
"We got no time for hysterics," I say to Storm and the rest of the girls. "Get Gambit a car. Make sure it's a hardtop with a decent engine."
"Who do you think you are, giving orders?" Storm spits back at me. "You don't even live here! You got what you wanted out of us, you got what you wanted out of me, and then you were gone, off playing with that Southern white-trash barmaid! You were gone—until you dropped this unholy mess in our laps!" Storm yells at me, eyes flashing a dangerous cerulean blue—a precursor to them going white and her letting the fury of extreme weather loose on my face.
"YOU BROUGHT THEM HERE!" she shouts so everyone gathered can hear every word. "I SHOULD BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT RIGHT NOW!" She spins to her side and grabs an Uzi-hand cannon out of a girl named Siryn's hands and shoves it right in my face. I try to stay calm.
"Don't go pointing dat gun at me, Storm. Gambit mean it." I say as seriously as I can. "Put down de gun. Get me a car. Gambit'll hide de bodies."
"Hide the bodies! What, you forget that squad car that trailed them here? You think the cop driving it didn't bother to get their plate number?" she argues. "The cops know Bishop came here! They'll check the river! They'll check the sewer! They'll find him—they'll find him and they'll come gunning for us!" Storm shouts in my face and her gun comes even closer to my nose. I can smell the gunmetal and oil and it makes me sick.
"De pits. Gambit'll haul de bodies to de pits. De cops won't check de pits. Get dat gun out of my face or Gambit'll smack you," I order.
Psylocke moves to my back. I hear the snap-hiss of her sword materializing. One word from Storm and she'll cut me in half.
"You'll never make it to the pits!" Storm hisses at me. She steps even closer to me, until we're almost nose-to-nose, like a pair of lovers, like we once were. The gun hovers right besides my cheek and the rain falls harder than ever. "They'll be watching the roads! They'll catch you! They'll come gunning! It'll be the bad old days all over again! The pimps! The drugs! The beatings! The rapes!" She's damn near hysterical. And when a woman who can create hurricanes and tornados out of thin air because she's upset, hysterical is the last thing any of us need. If things get any worse, there won't be an Old Town left to fight over…
"You're talkin' crazy! Dey won't be watching the roads, not yet dey won't!" I shout right back in her face. "Get me a damn hardtop! Gambit'll hide de bodies at de pits! If Gambit don't make it, you can have your war! Get me a hardtop and get dat gun out of my face! Now!"
She doesn't move, just stands there, nose-to-nose with me, her whitening eyes just daring me to do something.
"Damn it, Gambit warned you!"
Faster than anyone could follow, I knock the gun away and, with my other hand, slap Storm hard across the face.
"YOU BASTARD!" she roars at me. Thunder booms and a bolt of lightning strikes the ground right behind me.
A dozen guns cock behind me and I hear the girls with powers bring them to bear. Every girl in Old Town is ready to end me. I remember the empty feeling you get when Psylocke slides those blades of hers into your guts. A dread thought tells me I might feel them again.
Then something softens in Storm's eyes; they fade from white back to their beautiful blue.
"You bastard," she calls me again, this time more of a purr than an insult. "I forgot how quick you are."
She almost yanks my head clean off, shoving my mouth into hers so hard it hurts, her kiss a savage thing, savage and endlessly angry, an explosion that blasts away all the dull gray years between the now and that one fiery night when she was mine.
Our tongues battle back and forth in a fury of passion, her gun clatters onto the ground, and sparks of lightning dances from her lips to mine. Like fire…
She'll always be mine.
My warrior woman, my Valkyrie. She'll always be mine; I'll always love her, even though I never will. Always and never.
The fire, baby. It'll burn us both. It'll kill us both. There's no place in this world for our kind of fire.
Always and never.
If I have to die for you tonight, I will.
I come up for air and break the kiss for just a moment, just long enough for me to turn around to Kitty and Psylocke.
"…A hardtop with a decent engine," I order them. "And make sure it's got a big trunk!"
I turn back to Storm, my warrior woman, my Valkyrie. She gazes into my red eyes with her baby blues and a part of me wants to melt into her arms and smother her with kisses.
"Gambit'll always love you, Ororo," I whisper her real name softly so the others won't hear.
"I know, Remy," she answers back, using my real name. I sounded nice, not as nice as when Rogue says it, but still nice. "Always and never."
-X-
A few minutes of slippery work, getting the corpses ready. We stretch them out next to each other, all in a row, like cigarettes in a pack. "Big Bishop's" badge slaps against my chest every time I move. It keeps reminding me:
Jackie-Boy. You son of a bitch. You got me good. You got me good.
The whole time I'm giving orders, Storm's eyes are burning into the back of my skull like a pair of laser beams. She doesn't say a word. If that kiss was our last goodbye it was a damn good one and we'd both just as soon leave it that way.
Just then, Siryn and Dani pulled up in a piece of shit jalopy T-Bird. It might have been a nice car, once upon a time. Like back in the Kennedy Administration. I'd rather take my Caddy; its trunk is more than big enough to stash Jackie-Boy and his pals. But the same cop who followed Bishop might have gotten my plate number, too. Besides, my Caddy's top is broken and I haven't had the cash to get the parts I need to fix it and I'd be sure to get pulled over, driving all the way to the puts in the rain with the top down.
"Where'd ya'll find dat heap?" I ask the girls. "Jus' look at dat trunk! We'll never fit dem all in!"
"It's the best we could do," protested Dani. "It's not like we had a lotta time."
Kitty walks up behind Storm, looking pale and frightened. "Um, Storm? Unless there's something you want me to do, you think, like, maybe I could go home? All this blood and stuff, it's got me feeling kinda like maybe I'm gonna hurl."
"Yeah sure, Kitty. Go on home," answers Storm. "But don't talk to anybody. Not even your mom. Got it?"
"I won't call my mom, Storm. I promise."
Meanwhile, I'm crouching down next to Jackie-boy and his buddies' corpses, trying to work some way to fit them all in the T-Bird's trunk. Every idea ends the same way…
"Nah. Dey'll never fit dat trunk. Not like dis dey won't. We gotta make dem easier to pack. Let me get my coat off, Psylocke. Gambit'll give you a hand.
Psylocke only answered with the snap-hiss of her psychic blade materializing.
Storm was still talking to Kitty when I shrugged off my duster and picked up Flock of Seagull's legs.
"And Kitty," she calls after the young girl hurrying away from the scene, "Dry your hair the second you get home. You'll catch cold if you don't."
SHAKK!
Storm turns just in time to see Psylocke slice through Flock of Seagull's thighs, just above the knees.
"Yeesh…" Storm mutters.
I try not to look or flinch asPsylocke cuts the rest up.
SHAKK! SHAKK! SHAKK!
-X-
In another alley, in another part of Old Town…
Kitty is freaking out. Sure, she had seen plenty of guys murdered in Old Town before. She had even seen Jean pistol whip the hell out of some ugly bum a little while back. But tonight…
They killed a cop. She helped kill a cop…
This is bad, really bad.
She is too young; she wasn't around for the bad old days, as Storm and the other veterans called them. She just heard about them and that was enough. She heard about how the pimps treated the girls; how the girls got beat and raped and hooked on drugs. They were going to happen again. And it is partially her fault…
Kitty is terrified. And there is only one person who could always make her feel safe, feel loved…
As soon as Storm was out of sight, Kitty runs for the nearest pay phone and frantically shoves quarters in the slot.
Tak, Tak, Tak…She pushes the familiar numbers rapidly and taps her foot impatiently as she waits for the call to connect.
Dani and Siryn were returning to their posts out on the main road and walk right past Kitty.
"Hey!" calls Dani, getting Kitty's attention. "Kitty—Storm said no calls!"
"I just wanna hear my mom's voice," Kitty explains defensively. "Like, I'm not going to tell her nothing. Please don't tell Storm. She'll get mad."
Dani and Siryn look at each other for a second and both understand where Kitty was coming from. They nod to the frightened girl and head back out towards the main streets of Old Town, just as the T-Bird rounds the corner and heads for the highway.
-X-
Dizzy Dames. What the hell were they thinking, sticking me with a beat-up bucket of bolts like this? Somebody oughtta take it out back and shoot it like Ol' Yeller. It'd be a mercy.
A few years before I was born, this T-Bird must've been a pretty sweet set of wheels. But it's been around a few too many blocks and whoever owned it obviously didn't indulge in luxuries like the occasional tune-up or oil change. The engine jerks and farts like an old man on a bad diet. The steering mechanism's got terminal arthritis. The suspension makes every pothole an adventure. The left rear tire is as soft as a rotten banana and if that's a slow leak I'm good and screwed. I had to chuck the spare to make room for all the neatly chopped body parts we packed in the truck.
Maybe five blocks out I happen to glance down at the gas gauge. What I see gets me pounding my fists against the steering wheel like some lunatic. I curse out every girl who ever worked Old Town and every relative any of them ever had.
How the hell am I supposed to make it all the way to the pits and back on less than an eighth of a tank?
Dizzy Dames! Dizzy, scared, stupid dames! You couldn't bother to fill the goddamn tank?
I drive a couple more blocks while my heart slows back down and I stop wishing terrible things onto the girls of Old Town.
Settle down. Get rattled and you're no use to anybody. Breathe steady. Breathe deep. All you need is luck. A lot of luck. Great, big, fat gobs of luck. An act of God wouldn't hurt a bit.
I go through my options. There isn't many and they all aren't very encouraging.
I can't stop for gas. I can't stop for anything. I can't get stopped for anything.
Not while I'm hauling hundreds of pounds of the wrong kind of meat.
Not with the passenger I've got riding shotgun.
My fellow traveler.
We ran out of room. We were barely able to get the truck to stay closed as it was; we'd packed it so tight. Two of the girls had to sit on the lid before I could get the lock to catch.
And there was Jackie-Boy, left over.
If this heap was a four-seater, we could've tossed him in the back. But no, that would have been too much to ask for. There wasn't anything we could to but pile him in right next to me, out where anybody who cares to look will see him.
I take a look at my co-pilot on this little adventure. The front of his shirt is coated in blood and the barrel of his gun is still sticking in his forehead.
Go ahead. Help yourself to one of his cigarettes. It'll help.
I fish into his coat pocket and pull out a pack of Marlboro Reds.
Go ahead. It'll help.
I light up and suck the smoke deep into my lungs.
"Gotcha smokin', huh, bud?" my co-pilot leers.
The gravelly voice only startles me for a minute. I take another long drag on my borrowed cigarette.
"Shut de 'ell up, Jackie-Boy. You're dead. Gambit's just imagining dis," I state the obvious. "So shut de 'ell up."
"Course I'm dead. Course your only imagining I'm talking. Tells ya something about your state of mind, doesn't it? Your nerves are shot. It's gotcha hearing things. It's gotcha smoking." Jackie-Boy leans his head back and starts laughing, Psylocke's cut stretching across his throat. It makes his voice faint and wheezy when he tilts his head back.
"You know it's true—nobody ever really quits. You just stop for a while. A smoker's a smoker," he tilts his head back down and his voice returns to his normal raspy tone, "When the chips are down. And your chips are down, pal. You're sucking sidewalk."
"Gambit's fine! You shut de 'ell up!
WWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOMMMMM!"
A sudden unholy roar. My teeth and every piece of the T-Bird rattle and dance like a college girl at Mardi Gras. It's a police chopper; passing so close it nearly bats us clean off the hill.
My heart starts to pound a mile a minute and I grip the steering wheel so hard it hurts. Jesus! If they'd had their landing gear down it would've made a convertible out of this heap. Why are they flying so low? Do they know?
I take a long drag off the cigarette. Relax. Don't get crazy. The pilot's just having fun with you. They do that all the time. Just to scare people.
Don't get crazy. Don't listen to Jackie-Boy. He's dead. You're hallucinating. It's just nerves. Don't listen. Have another one of his cigarettes. It'll help.
"You oughtta see the surveillance equipment our copters pack these days. It's right out of Star Wars. My buddies up there could count the freckles on your fanny." He laughs like a hyena. "If they checked us out just now, they know everything. You been made. So smoke 'em if you got 'em, sweetheart! It can't hurt! You're as good as dead as I am!"
Don't listen. It's just your own fear talking. Don't listen.
"Aw, will ya look at that? And here I thought we'd at least get a decent car chase outta you. But those hookers—they let you down, honey bunch!"
I check the gas gauge again. The needle is starting to slip towards the big red "E".
"What're gonna do when you run out of gas—call Triple A?" mocked Jackie-Boy. "You're a sucker, Gambino. A sucker for the babes. I bet their laughing their sweet little butts off at you right now! You ain't even gonna make it to the pits, you schmcuk!"
"Gambit'll make it!" I shout back at the corpse. "There's enough gas! Shut de 'ell up! Gambit always makes it!"
"Not unless you keep your eyes on the road, sugar pie." I turn back to the road just in time to see a pickup truck bearing down on me. I spin the steering wheel as hard as I can. I hear screaming metal as the heap tries to move out of the way. I barely make it back into my lane before the truck flies by. The driver flips me the finger as he passes. Jerk. Meanwhile, Jackie-Boy is having a ball.
"Man, this is great! Just like being in a buddy movie!" He leans his head on my shoulder like he was my date at the drive-in instead of a bloody asshole corpse.
"SHUT UP!" I shove him back over to the passenger side hard enough to knock his head off. It hangs off the side of his neck by the flap of skin Psylocke left when she cut him.
He reaches up and pulls his head back down to where it meets his neck and slides it around until it fits back in place.
"…I'm tellin' ya. Those cowboys got a good look at me. They'll have the cops on you in no time."
"SHUT UP!" I shout again. This whole bit is really getting on my nerves.
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
"Heh. Told you so," Jackie-Boy smirks. I check my rearview mirror and see flashing red and blue lights. A motorcycle cop.
"I may be dead," howls Jackie-Boy, "I may be dead, but you are screwed! You are down! You are out! You are finished! Stick a fork in ya! You're cooked! You're gone! You're dead! You're swirling around the bottom of the bowl and nose-diving down the pipe! It's over you're flushed!"
"Dis time Gambit can't bring myself to tell him to shut up," I think out loud. "Sure he's an asshole. Sure he's dead. Sure Gambit's just imagining that he's talking. None of dat stops de bastard from bein' absolutely right."
"Dis cop wants Gambit 'nd Gambit don't have a prayer of outrunning him. Not in dis heap."
"De only question left is whether Gambit gonna kill him or not. It's a tough call. For all Gambit knows, dis cop is as honest as de day is long. For all Gambit knows he's a prince among men, a saint in de makin'. Or maybe he's jus' a regular guy, a workin' stiff with a mortgage 'nd a wife 'nd a pile of kids."
"My hand's move all on der own, slidin' a couple of cards to my lap 'nd chargin' dem with energy."
"Gambit don't know what to do."
By now the cop has pulled up along side me and is motioning me to the side of the road.
"PULL OVER!"
"Gambit don't know what to do…"
"Oh, the angst! The torment! You're breaking my heart!" Jackie-Boy coos with excitement. "You're making him mad. You'd better stop."
Jackie-Boy, you son of a bitch. Thanks for the tip.
"Whatever you say."
I slam on the brakes as hard as I can. The car squeals and slides on the wet road.
SHOMFF!
The sudden change in momentum slams Jackie-Boy forward. His head smashes into the dashboard, driving the gun barrel even deeper into his head. Jackie-Boy doesn't move anymore, he just rests against the dash, his long hair covering up any trace of the gun barrel.
The cop walks up to the T-Bird. Poor guy, he's been riding that bike all night in the rain. Probably pissed off and looking to take it out on someone. I hide my glowing cards under the folds of my duster and silently pray to whoever might be listening.
The cop raps on the window and I roll it down. His flashlight peers at my face then at Jackie-Boy. He lingers on Jackie-Boy for a minute then turns the light back to me.
"Your friend—party a little too hard tonight?" he asks me.
"Yeah," I answer with the calmest tone of voice I can muster. I even suppress my accent just in case. "I'm the designated driver."
The cop looks at me then back at Jackie-Boy. "Well, you're driving with a busted tail light." He pauses for a moment and I start to pull the duster away from my cards.
"I'll let you off with a warning," he says and walks back to his motorcycle. I don't breathe until he's long gone back the way we came. Then I let it out in one big sigh of relief. I toss my cards out the window and they explode in harmless pops.
I check the fuel gauge again. The needle is even closer to the big "E".
I start the car back up and rub the kinks out of my neck.
What next?
-X-
The Pits.
A couple million years ago, the Santa Yolanda Tar Pits trapped some of the dumber residents of the neighborhood, preserving the skeletons of Cave Men and Wooly Mammoths and a Saber-Toothed Tiger or two. More recently, the county turned the pits into a theme park and found out the goop could suck in money, too. Turns out tourists didn't turn out in droves to see big black puddles and a bunch of old bones. They tried dressing up real animals, but watching drugged tigers stagger around wearing false teeth just made people feel depressed.
Then a big-budget dinosaur movie caused a sensation, so the county dumped a few million tax dollars more into the pits, putting up all these statues of Tyrannosaurs Rex and Triceratops and a dozen more lizards whose names you can't pronounce unless your six years old. Business picked up just swell—until a railing broke and somebody's grandmother fell in and had a heart attack before they could pull her out. A wanna-be photographer named Parker was in town with his gray old aunt and he took plenty of pictures. The next morning that thrashing old woman made the front page of every new paper in the country. There was nothing left to do but swallow the cost and shut the place down.
High-schoolers sneak in here all the time when the weather's good. There's no trouble finding a hole in the fence.
The tank goes dry a quarter mile from the pits. I shove the T-Bird the rest of the way.
I slip through one of the holes in the fence and open up the gate from the inside. A few more minutes work and it'll all be over. Jackie-Boy and his buddies will be at the bottom of the pits and I can catch a train out of Sacred Oaks and be back home before sunrise.
All of a sudden I remember I promised Rogue I'd call her. Almost makes me burst out laughing. Feels like it's been a month since we were making love in her bed, and here it's only been three hours. Three hours—and a lifetime's worth of bad calls and bad breaks and ugly, nasty business…
…But it'll all be over soon. This heap of a T-Bird and everyone in it will sink into the primordial muck of the tar pits and nobody's gonna know where they went. Nobody but me and the girls of Old Town and a bunch of concrete and plastic dinosaurs. "Big Bishop" will be preserved for all time, a somewhat damaged specimen of the early twenty-first century asshole.
Maybe Rogue will let me come back to her place if I'm nice when I call her. Can't remember ever pining for a girl after only being away for three hours. I push the T-Bird harder, the thoughts of Rogue urging me on.
I reach the edge of the pits. One more good push and it'll all be over.
BLAM!
"Gaaa!" Something white hot slams into my chest and knocks all the wind out of my lungs in a sudden rush. I sink to the wet ground behind the T-Bird as the world goes as black as the bubbling pools of tar behind me.
So close. I was so…close…
Reviewer Shout-Outs:
Johnny Be Good: Thanks for the support. I actually went to buy "Hell and Back" this past weekend at Waldenbooks, but they didn't have it in. Jerks. So I guess I'll have to wait a little bit longer to see what you've been talking about. Just keep reading and sending me these golden ideas in the meantime.
The Frog Prince of Crime: I'm glad you liked the roles of Kitty and Psylocke. To me, they were a perfect fit for the roles of Becky and Miho. I actually thought about using Lady Deathstrike as Miho, but the Miho has to be one of the good guys as well as someone who shish kabobs the bad guys. And I didn't want to have to explain the whole cyborg thing. I could have used the X2 version, but that was a little to similar to Wolverine for this fic and I didn't want to mix the two.
NoOoNoOo Lebeau: I'm glad you were finally able to review, I greatly appreciate them. I hope you liked the tar pits idea. Couldn't use a cliff, they would still be able to ID the bodies. Keep on reading and reviewing.
Darkwolfblade: You know, I've always wanted to be someone's hero. I'm glad you're enjoying my work so much. I'm glad you liked my choice in using Bishop and I hope you keep on reading/stalking me. LOL.
Retrimesuroth: Thanks for your concern about my balls, I think. Glad you like the updates. There's plenty more to come.
DJRyce: I'm always glad to find new audiences who love my work so much. I'm glad you liked Bishop so much. It was the role I spent the most time on casting and I've loved the response I've gotten from my readers about it. Although I didn't think of Deadpool or Punisher. They would have worked well. Ah, yes the Remy/Ororo hookup. I'm probably going to catch a bit of hell for that, especially from some of my hardcore ROMY fans, but I wanted to stay true to the Sin City story. I'm glad you think my story is engaging and good enough with the Remy/Ororo bits.
Emma Raven Moony Grimm: I'm glad you caught the Kitty X-Men: Evolution "likes" I threw in there. That version of Kitty was what I modeled my Kitty after. Hope I got her right. There's something big concerning her coming up in a little while. Keep reading and thinking of ideas for me.
Stefbug: Thanks for the review. Its ok if you start running out of new things to say, the things you've already said have all been very nice and appreciated darlin'. I'm glad you liked Storm as Gail and Psylocke as Miho, and I'm especially glad that I've somehow inspired you to post your own stuff. I look forward to reading some when I get the chance.
PoisonRogue: Come on down from the clouds and join the rest of us down here! I'm glad my fic has you soaring. Just remember to come on down to keep reading and reviewing for me.
A Pen and A Piece of Mind: Glad you like Gumbo as much as me. He's not my second or even third favorite, but he's still at least Top 10. Thanks for the support.