"Gunslinger Girl" series property of Yu Aida.
Original Characters property of Author "Person With Many Aliases"
A/N: Listened to Sintendo's advice. Compiled the previous two one-shots along with the new third one.
Handsome Purple looks like a particularly tough one to write. Lack of inspiration?
Eitherway, here I am again writing One-shots. I suppose they're easier to write or something. One more time: Not a gun nut. We'll see what the future brings.
Finally, about the "Jose" question posed by certain reviewers of Playing God, if you read the conversation between Matilda and Jihad carefully, you'll see it. If you can't see it, I'll just stick an answer at the bottom of this story.
She was never really sure where she came from.
From the dawn of time, she was the wheel chair bound girl in the forgotten corner of the forgotten orphanage of somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
No family, no friends. Just some caretakers that made sure she was alive when they came by the next time.
She sat, and she sat.
Until that glorious day she was adopted into medical agency that needed volunteering children to try out their new "Rehabilitative Conditioning."
She cried tears of Joy.
She was Reborn…
Janie's got a gun… Whole world's come Undone…
Person With Many Aliases Presents:
"Super Hero"
A Gunslinger Girl Fanfiction
She wished for Liam to look at her more. But he always seemed more concerned about the smoking mess she made at the far end of the field. She'd always work harder, shoot faster, kill better, but it never got her any closer to Liam.
She knew almost everything about her Handler. Just standing around him long enough, all the little details came out.
Liam was a man who came from the southern states of America. Around him, he was jokingly named "The War Veteran". It was true, he was probably the oldest of the Handlers, but the thick gray beard and packed muscles, plus his knowledge proved him a quickly respected senior. He was a front-line war hero, though. He wasn't exactly happy when he was put in Handsome Purple, a team whose weapons primarily put them on the second line for support. Past that, the other thing was the name he gave her, Janie. Apparently he was uninspired and picked a name from an Aerosmith Song one day.
For the most part, Janie was the most normally dressed and plainest looking of the "Original Handsome Three". She was the classic cherub: blonde haired, blue eyed, pink sundress, and white shoes. Of course, most adorable children came with teddy bears or the like, not grenade launchers.
"Liam! I got all the targets!" She grinned. Each was dead on! How about that?
"Hmph. Am I supposed to be impressed? Bah! Need I remind you where my medals are from! Those Guerillas were everywhere, unlike your targets sticking their paper asses out in the air! Damn Vietcong… everywhere… either way, what is the government thinking? Like children with guns… absurd. Janie, go through the machine gun drills.
"Yes!"
"Yes, sir." He corrected.
"Yes, sir!"
After the targets were recycled, Liam watched blankly at the girl rip through the paperboards perfectly as always. He eventually got bored, and knew there was a debriefing soon.
"Janie. Keep shooting. I'll be back."
"Yes, sir!"
Standing up, he smoothed out his white suit before grabbing his cane, which had a handle shaped exactly like Walther gun. He wasn't disabled or anything like that, but it went with the suit.
Liam was amused at the speed the Handsome Men were being armed. It only felt like yesterday that Leon, Joseph and himself were the only ones. Now they had a fully outfitted Attack Unit like they wanted (Handsome Blue, Gold, and Light Brown), and they were already training another two for Covert Ops.
Hmph, all this money being poured in to make super soldiers with state of the art weapons. That will never be a substitute for real soldiers-
"Good looks like everyone's here." The final man entered the conference room. He was bald, a little younger than Liam himself, but he was named "Mr. Superior" for a reason.
"So, what's it this time?" Somebody asked. Mr. Superior nodded to a man next to a laptop and projector.
"Unfortunately, it appears the rumors are true. Over time, the trail made by money laundering activities from various organized crime groups show that several of these criminal elements are funding large amounts of money to build a high-tech mercenary organization that leases their hitmen to buyers across the world."
There were murmurs of concern around the table, before the slide moved again to show a symbol. It appeared to be two geometric shapes reminiscent to a side view of a grinning bat, the to figures joining together to form a single four-winged creature.
"From what we've gathered, this new organization is calling itself "kNIGHTS", and is working under this logo. Apart from that, we're not sure how far they're along. We do know that for the past several weeks, there have been transactions of seed money from mafia patrons to the kNIGHTs at various places around the country. In fact, I believe that Handsome White Pearl is tailing one of patrons right now…"
In perfect timing, the phone rang. Mr. Superior put it on speaker.
"Superior. This is White Pearl." Leon's sneering voice came through.
"Yes?"
"Looks like we found the meeting place. They scoped it out, and left, but I think they'll be back at night. It's at a warehouse by an airstrip."
"Do you know the address?"
"Of course."
"Janie, you can stop now."
The girl did as she was told, and as the noise stopped, she turned a curious eye to her Handler.
"Suit up. We're going out to kill bad guys."
"Yay!"
"Yes, Sir." He corrected once more.
"I mean- Yes, Sir!"
Handsome Purple for the most part, was only concerned with softening up the targets. Keeping the money intact and a person alive to interrogate was somebody else's problem. Toss a few grenades in to stun them, then secure the outside of the warehouse, ensuring to "give any runners extra assholes", as Liam so clearly put it.
"Um… Liam?"
"Yes?"
"I… uh… I just wanted to say I'll do my best!"
"I expect nothing from the best from you all the time anyways. You don't need to remind me."
Janie drooped at the comment. Liam didn't bother noticing. "Just do your job."
"Yes, Sir…"
The clouds covered the moon that night, leaving the only illumination from the lamps that ringed the large warehouse. Good thing for the gift of night vision. The Handsome Men had already scoured the perimeter and were slowly approaching the warehouse. For Handsome Purple, they were already on the roof of a building on the opposite side of the airstrip, and commanded the entire surrounding with Handsome Red. Janie's weaponry came in two tonight. On one hand, she carried the classic "Thumper", the M79 Grenade Launcher, with several rounds to boot. However, what she was setting on the edge of the building was a real pride and joy: the M240G. The word "machine gun" and "100 rounds per minute" did not require much more for the imagination. After pulling the belt of ammo into the feed, Janie quietly turned to her Handler.
"Done."
"Don't shoot yet. I'm waiting for a go ahead."
"Wow… that's a lot of cars for a meeting."
"Leave those to Handsome Red… wait… Janie, showtime."
The girl quickly pulled out the grenade launcher, and with a loud flash, the round fly and smashed into a window. By the time there was an explosion, shattering glass, and disappearing lights, Janie was already reloaded and had already fired a second into the building, scoring more screams. Jihad on her rifle beside her helped add to the chaos by firing into each car's gas tank, creating more large explosions. All the while, the others were entering the building, with sounds of gunfire, and some staggered retaliation. The fight seemed one-sided though, as Liam watched through the binoculars and saw something.
"Janie. Runners. Give them extra assholes."
The girl immediately dropped her first weapon and rushed to shoulder her larger instrument of death. In moments, she was making the ground explode around the escaping men, leaving them to launch through the air in every which way. More bad guys seemed to be escaping with every second, and Janie was always there to enact justice with her amazing night vision and long-range projectiles, putting them all down.
It wasn't long before a cease-fire was shouted through a radio.
Mark another one down for the good guys.
After a quick once over, the Handsome Men left, their work done. Other departments would handle the investigation after the clean up.
For Janie, she was simply told to clean up and go to bed. There she lay in her bunk in the dark, untied hair left to stream out underneath her. Her mind was always the most restless at night.
Why did he never look back? What must she do to be good enough?
"Danny?" Janie spoke upwards. On the bunk above her, Danielle, from Handsome Blue stirred slightly.
"Hmmm…?"
"Does your Handler like you?"
"…Think so… probably not used to the idea of a Mechanical Body yet…something the matter?"
"Why doesn't Liam pay more attention to me? I don't like it…"
"He's probably too used to you."
"What… too used to me?"
"He probably thinks you'll be around forever… that's why he doesn't count his blessings."
"Really?"
"Yeah… like that Spiderman movie… after Spiderman quit, then everybody felt sorry… don't worry, he'll come around one day. Just don't do anything stupid."
"Like what?"
"I suppose you haven't heard that story about that girl in Italy? Elsa de Sica?"
The good things are never missed, until they're gone.
Super Hero: End
A/N: Seems weaker this time. The strength of the characters doesn't seem as great as the earlier too. Oh well. As you can see, I figured I needed at least one dysfunctional Team Relationship. Though Handsome White Peal seems to still take the cake in "Weirdest Relationship".
Trivial Trivia:
-All Handlers carry false aliases that they teach their Mechanical Body to recognize them by. Handsome Red seems to have taken this to a further level, as Jihad likes to identify "Joseph" with the nickname of the shorter "Jose".
