Rodney is the one who gives her her first gun.
"For your protection," he says, faded fake-blonde hair falling into his dark eyes as he nonchalantly hands it over. "A lot of bad people in the world, Taki."
She accepts it, feels the smooth contours of plastic and metal molded together in the small handgun. She doesn't know where Rodney could have possibly gotten it—guns are every bit as illegal in Britain as they are in Japan, but maybe that's the answer. The mere fact that guns are illegal in Japan haven't made the yakuza any weaker, and they haven't made them any less prevalent among the London gangs, either.
"Are you sure?" she asks, English tasting awkward in her mouth. The sounds are all wrong, twisted with too many vowels, as twisted and strange as the fact that she is standing here, a black-metal handgun in her hands. "You could—you might need it more."
"I can get another." Rodney shrugs, and he smiles in a bright way that doesn't fool Taki even for a second. He can't get another, or even if he could, he wouldn't. Guns don't bode well for London rent boys. He's giving this weapon up to her, whether because he thinks she needs it more, or because he thinks she can put it to some good use.
Taki can put it to some good use.
"Thank you," she says, popping out the clip and taking apart the gun to examine as she's seen her father do so many times with his state-issued gun at the kitchen table. It's a good weapon, recently cleaned, though the clip only has four shots remaining in it.
That's fine. Taki can always get more bullets.
The first time she kills, it's for Rodney.
Sometimes, she wonders if Rodney is her brother from another mother, because they have a stunning amount in common. They're both gay. They're both smart, they're both tenacious, and they've both been burned by the world around them. That's where the differences seem to end.
Rodney lets himself get beat up by his clients more than Taki likes. He laughs and he shakes it off while his eye is black and his lip is split, and he tells her not to worry about it as he presses a tepid bottle of water against his face.
Taki doesn't worry about it. Worrying is a waste of time, so instead Taki goes hunting.
She finds the man responsible half in his cups, in a dirty, stinking pub four streets over. He has big shoulders and Rodney's blood on his knuckles. His hair is wheat-blonde, and he reeks of sour beer and body odor as if he hasn't showered in at least a week. He's disgusting.
"Well, what do we have here?" the man slurs, and through his accent and her own language barrier, Taki barely understands him. "You lost, little girl?"
She doesn't answer. She shoots him, and she walks away as he chokes, gurgles and drowns in his own blood.
No one tries to stop her. They're too busy staring.
The second time she kills, it's for her family. She loves her family, of course she does, and her father is a highly ranked detective in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. It's understandable that he comes into situations of danger, especially since he's the police expert on the yakuza.
But when the bullets come flying for him, Taki cannot and will not sit still. She still has her gun, carefully hidden in a box away from prying eyes, and she retrieves it without hesitation. Bullets are a little harder to get in Japan than they were in Britain, but she manages.
The hunt is much more difficult this time, and altogether more satisfying when she finds the hitman tasked with her father's pending murder. He is a good-looking boy, she thinks, which hides the rot underneath all the better.
She takes pleasure in shooting him before he realizes she's even there. Just like with her first murder, half a world away, she leaves him choking on his own blood, bleeding out onto the warm wooden floors around him, and she walks away. She doesn't clean up after herself.
It takes the Metropolitan Police too long to catch up to her. She's already gone, her gun smuggled away, and in Russia when the arrest warrants come out for her.
Years pass. Taki doesn't count them.
She upgrades her weaponry—handguns turn into rifles, which turn into the best sniper rifles available on the black market. She buys scopes, stabilizers, every useful addition under the sun that can help her in her mission to rid the world of evil. She gains a name—or, rather, she gains a multitude of names.
In Japan, they call her Sadako, after the Ring movies. There, she is universally loathed—Japanese culture could not have it any other way. She exists outside of the law, outside of the social structure provided by both their culture and their state, and therefore both the victims under her protection and the evil that she punishes view her the same way. In America, she is the Silent Bullet, a colourless appellation that reflects only the fact that she rarely speaks when about her work, that she kills without a word. There, she is both respected and feared, and the subject of far too many conspiracy theories. In Russia and throughout Eastern Europe, however, they call her Vila—a mostly positive moniker, probably reflecting the inherent instability of the region. There, the police are more corrupt than not, and her work is more appreciated than elsewhere.
There is only one thing that they all have in common: under whatever name they use, Taki is legend. Taki will go down in history, and she will be remembered for centuries.