Chapter 4: To Find A Cat
After following Revy outside, the group had all piled into a white pickup, with Cletus and Daisy sitting in the cargo bed. Wolf proceeded to drive around the area, veering nearer to the docks as he did so should the Cat Lady make her way back in that direction. The competition had all but fallen away, as Revy had pointed out, but now a much more daunting task had presented itself; killing the Cat Lady. They assumed she would be formidable, but she was shaping up to be quite the resilient opponent. None of them particularly wanted to take her on alone, though Revy would presumably relish the chance to test out her gun-slinging talents against Chang's would be assassin with little to no regard for her own safety, as was typical of her.
There was no sign of their quarry for quite a while, although they did spot some of the thugs and killers from the Yellowflag in the street. More than likely, they were doing their best to avoid the woman they now all feared. Wolf took that as a sign that she wouldn't be in this area and turned off towards the other side of Roanapur, still keeping to the coast. It didn't take long for them to attract unwanted attention. A dull green sedan with no licence plate pulled up beside them, matching their speed for almost a minute. Revy eyed them suspiciously.
"Looks like company," Lotton grumbled sullenly from the back seat.
"You don't say," Revy replied sarcastically. She readied her Cutlasses to be on the safe side, all the while keeping a close eye on the sedan. Cletus tapped on the rear windshield as if to warn them about the sedan. "Only took Hillbilly Jack twice as long as everyone else to spot these assholes."
"You think bounty hunters, no?" Shenhua suggested. "Maybe stragglers from Yelowflag?"
"Maybe," Revy said quietly, never taking her attention from the car. "But why are they following us? Cat Lady ain't in here, dipshits!"
Without warning, the window rolled down and a hand emerged with an MP5K gripped tightly. Revy instantly shoved Wolf down below the rim of the door, ducking herself as she did so. The others in the back followed suit and the windows shattered to pieces as the mystery man unloaded the magazine into the pickup. They heard Cletus and Daisy roar in surprise, taking cover as best they could in the confines of the cargo bed.
"What the fuck is this?!" Wolf screamed, doing his best not to crash. As soon as the shooting ceased, he popped his head back up over the dashboard so he could see where they were going.
Revy stuck her arm out the window. Now it was her time to do some damage. She riddled the shooter with five shots and his MP5K fell into the road, crunching under the weight of the sedan. A second car, a silver SUV, pulled up behind the sedan and two strangers in that vehicle began shooting also. Daisy started returning their fire and Wolf pulled over closer to the sedan so Cletus could pulverise another shooter in the back seat with his baseball bat. Revy hopped out through the broken window without a word and latched onto the door of the sedan, clambering up onto the roof before the driver could retaliate. She left him alive for now, crouching down on the car's roof and facing the SUV. She firstly sunk several bullets into the sedan's roof, killing anyone who might have remained in the back. Then, she stood upright and leaped across the gap to land on the SUV's hood, the force of the impact slightly cracking the windscreen. She could see the fear in the driver's eyes as she riddled him with lead, sending fragments of glass into the back and distracting the two assailants sitting there. With their attention divided, Revy jumped up to the roof and gave them the same treatment as their allies in the sedan. Daisy's shooting ceased when she realised it was futile to even try and assist Two-Hands. Only one of the newcomers remained now; the driver of the first car. Revy abandoned the SUV as it began to wobble and skid off-road. She hopped back over to the sedan and fell onto her belly, her head popping down to face the driver, upside down. The man looked at her quizzically before her Cutlasses appeared and ended his life. With her work done, she returned to the pickup through the window and plopped herself down into the seat with a soft. Wolf looked at her for a few moments but said nothing, offering silent and unsaid approval rather than anything else.
"Maybe I was wrong about you," Cletus called from the back, wiping blood from his baseball bat with one hand. "'Cos that was fucking awesome!" Revy smirked, satisfied with herself. After thirty seconds of silence, the Wolf spoke up.
"So, nobody else wondering who the fuck they were?"
"They guns for hire," Shenhua said, certain. "Scared of a little competition, that all."
"Nah," Revy disagreed. "Wolfy's right. They ain't no bounty hunters. Maybe this bitch brought some gangsters with her from Hong Kong?"
"I don't think so," Wolf answered. "She doesn't seem the type. If anything, they're here to kill her. But I get the feeling they're not looking for that bounty." This whole situation was becoming stranger and stranger. Once all was said and done, the hunting party in the pickup had several questions for Mister Chang.
Wolf turned a corner and proceeded to head further inland, away from the coast, but something caught his eye that stopped him. The headlights of the stolen pickup flashed over something blue, then red. The assassin pulled over and rolled down the window. As it happened, there were multiple bodies scattered around the entrance to a dockyard, gored to death as if by a wolverine. The Cat Lady was here, alright. What was more, this was the same place Revy and Wolf had been fighting earlier, the same dockyard Revy and Roberta had beaten one another senseless when the maid first came to Roanapur. And, if Revy had her way, she would get to send the Cat Lady to oblivion tonight and walk back home a rich woman. They all saved their complaints about the fact that they had already been here not two hours ago for later and exited the pickup, readying their weapons.
"You right after all, Wolf," Shenhua said quietly, bending down and examining the body. They were all Chinese, like the woman that had killed them, and they wore different variations of formal suits, minus any ties. They were gangsters, for certain.
On their guard, they pressed on and headed further into the dockyard. For the next sixty feet or so, they were narrowly boxed in by shipping containers on either side, like two high walls. If any of these men were waiting up at the top, the hunting party would be caught unawares and at a serious disadvantage. Wolf inhaled a couple of times, sniffing the air and looking forward. There was more blood up ahead, but no bodies this time. They heard something move to the right, all of them pointing their guns in that direction, expecting to see someone sneaking up on them. There was nothing, no one. Only silence. Not even the breeze coming in off the sea made any noise. It was as quiet as a graveyard. Revy was walking forward when something briefly caught her eye to the left, near the gap between two containers. It took not even three seconds for several men to emerge and begin shooting. The fighting well and truly began.
Cletus was the first to attack, cracking the skull of one of the men against the shipping container with a measured swing of his bat and clocking another across the back of the legs, knocking him to the ground. Daisy and Revy began moving to avoid the gunfire, letting off shots of their own. Sawyer hung back until some of the gangsters became preoccupied with the fighting, which was when she came upon them and used her chainsaw to massacre them mercilessly. One of the men pointed two Glock 17s at both Daisy and Lotton as he prepared to kill them. Shenhua took one of his arms off at the elbow with her kukri. Wolf then unsheathed the blade strapped to his back and buried it deep into the man's gut, killing him. Shenhua caught his eye, giving him a wink of approval. She could appreciate skill with a blade.
A car pulled up behind the pickup and more men showed themselves as they joined the fighting. The situation became a bit hairier all of a sudden. It was dark tonight and it had become quite difficult to make anything out that wasn't immediately apparent, but Revy thought she spotted something move up on the shipping containers. There she was, the Cat Lady, bolting it away with impressive speed in the direction the group had been walking before the fighting started. Three of the gangsters started running first, their attention now firmly ripped from their opponents and placed on the Chinese woman. Revy took off quickly after them. The others all followed shortly, shooting and running at the same time. The Cat Lady seemed to be running out of containers to run on and would soon be forced to fall to ground level, but she surprised all of them by coming to a halt and leaping down in front of the gangsters that had been following her. All three of them had their throats slit with the woman's nekote, too slow to comprehend what was happening. Unexpectedly, the lights of several cars all came on behind the Cat Lady and the group of killers who had been running came to a stop. The remainder of the gangsters were gunned down swiftly by the members of the Hong Kong Triad who all stood by the vehicles. And they weren't alone. Accompanying them was Mister Chang himself, Lexi, the American woman from the cruise ship, and none other than Rock. None of the confused killers had any idea what was happening.
"Rock?!" Revy asked, bewildered. "The fuck are you doing here?"
"As it happens, he came here looking for you," Chang explained. "What a stroke of luck he came upon us instead." The Cat Lady was still standing in the same spot, her arm outstretched as if frozen in place after killing those men. Her eyes were fixed on the killers before her. It was almost like she was protecting Chang.
"Thank you, Mister Chang," Rock told the Triad's leader. "If not for you…well, I don't want to think what might have happened."
"Indeed," Chang agreed. If the Triad hadn't given him protection, the gangsters would have killed him, no question. Then again, perhaps the Cat Lady would have, too, intent on eliminating anyone in her path to Chang. "Run along, now, Rock. I get the feeling your friends have some questions." That was the understatement of the century.
Rock sheepishly went to Revy's side, keeping his eyes on the statuesque Cat Lady the entire time, right up until the palm of Revy's hand met the back of his head and the noise of the slap rang out across the dockyard.
"The fuck were you thinking coming out here?!" Revy scolded him, her voice just quiet enough so that nobody would hear them speak. The others continued to talk over them, anyway, as they sought answers from Chang.
"I…wanted to make sure you were alright, Revy," Rock explained. "I remembered you saying you were coming here to find the Cat Lady."
"Ah, so ya were listening. Nice to know."
"But I figured something out, Revy. When the Triad found me, Lexi was with them. It didn't make sense at first, just like it didn't make sense for her to be working for Abrego. That's when it hit me."
Revy's eyes wandered over to Chang, then Lexi. Content they were not listening, she returned her attention to Rock.
"Abrego said she was loaned to him from someone else. I think it's obvious now that someone was Chang. And who do we know that works for Chang who also employs Americans?" Revy raised an eyebrow and placed her hand on her chin.
"Uh…you got me, partner. I'm drawing a blank."
"Revy…after everything that happened with Lucille, I transferred the services of Major Landis's security to the Triad. Lexi works for Major Landis." That did make sense to Revy. Not only did it add up, it downright sent shivers down her spine when she realised. The mystery of where Lexi had come from was solved. Revy deduced she had been a soldier back on the cruise ship, and this confirmed it. Major Landis had given Lexi to the Triad to oversee his men while they worked for Chang, his own commander-in-chief until their services were no longer paid for.
"You can understand how none of this is making sense to us, Chang," the Wolf said aloud as Rock was quietly explaining what he had learned about Lexi. "Last I heard, this lunatic was after your blood. And when I say 'last I heard' I mean from the horse's mouth." Chang chuckled to himself proudly.
"A little deception every now and then goes a long way," the Chinese man began. "But I assure you, it was completely necessary."
"That so, huh?" Shenhua asked, not convinced. She fell in beside Wolf and placed her hands on her hips. "I suppose reward just a 'deception' too? We spend whole night on wild goose chase!"
"I wouldn't put it like that," Chang argued.
Revy and Rock finally finished speaking privately and they lent their ears to this conversation, eager to know what was going on. Revy came over and joined Wolf and Shenhua, folding her arms and giving Chang a none-too-friendly glare.
"Alright, Chang, spill it! What the fuck was your plan here?"
"You deserve an explanation, I know," he relented. "And so you'll get one. As I'm sure you've figured out by now, Yanmei here wasn't sent to kill me, like I had you all believe. She was sent to protect me." He said something to her in flawless Chinese and she finally relaxed, standing over on the opposite side of Chang to Lexi. "She is a trusted friend of mine, and my people back home know that. I rescued her from the streets some years back. No one better to watch my back, if you ask me."
"But why did you need protecting?" Rock asked. Chang became serious.
"Suffice it to say, some of the smaller gangs back home are starting to revolt. I've never had much trouble with them because most of them keep to their own region of the city. But lately there's been chatter of conflict back home. I got word from Hong Kong that they were sending some of their people after me." That explained the gangsters. They had been the real would be assassins, coming for Chang, while the Cat Lady, or Yanmei, had only ever been out to keep him from harm. "I hoped," Chang continued, "that if I put the word out about a bounty, you could all provide cover and help our dear Yanmei keep me from harm's reach. I knew she could handle herself. I must say, though…there are considerably less of you than I'd hoped."
"You can thank your friend," Revy told him. "She butchered one of 'em in the Yellowflag and the rest turned tail and ran."
"Ah," Chang said quaintly. "That's unfortunate. But I digress." One of Chang's men handed him a duffle bag, which he threw towards the killers arranged before him. "I promised a reward, and I follow through on my promises. Try to split it evenly, won't you?" It was at this point that he entered one of the cars with Yanmei and Lexi, while the rest of the Triad members all hopped back into their own vehicles and the Triad all left the area without another word.