CHAPTER 3: IMMORTALS

You worry too much
You make yourself sad
You can't change fate
But don't feel so bad
Enjoy it while you can
It's just like the weather
So quit complaining, brother
No one lives forever!

Oingo Boingo, No One Lives Forever


She still remembers.

She can still feel the heat of the Texas sun in her dreams. She can still feel the sweat dripping from her brow. She still hears the screams. She still hears the saws. She still hears the laughter. She still sees the dinner table, the food, the bodies.

She still sees the blood.

As she wakes, she still screams. She still cries. She breaks mirrors, often, and welcomes the shards in her fists as a distraction from the ill fever dreams. When she looks down, the red on her hands sends her head reeling into another episode. On the better nights, she sits on the couch watching infomercials with a slack-jawed stare until daylight breaks. On the worse nights, she can feel the skin of another sliding over her face and the percussion blast of a grenade throbs in her skull. Those nights, she claws at the walls and sobs. She curls into a ball and cries herself to sleep.

On most nights, however, she hunts.

She studies maps and newspaper clippings. She frequents dives and alleyways for even the vaguest hints. She sharpens her bowie knife and cleans her guns. She packs her bags and moves for the nearest prey. She chases them, pins them, and she makes them fight and wail and beg and squeal.

At the end, she smiles. She laughs. She sleeps. She dreams, and the cycle continues.

For she still remembers, and she wishes, desperately, to be the only one left to remember. She wants only memories, not the latest gruesome tale on the news or the hottest gossip on the homicidal circuit. Current events are anathema. She wants no more victims, no more broken lives, no more needless bloodshed.

That family was a sickness to the world, and it was her duty to wipe them out.

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

"We're gonna die! WE'RE GONNA DIE! OH, GOD!" Jenny screeched. The blonde was quick to bury her head between her knees and covered the back of her head. Sawyer glared at her cousin for the lack of dignity.

"It do you no good to cry for God here," Shenhua murmured, looking over her shoulder at the accelerating tuk-tuk. "Buddha blind, and we too far to listen."

"What kind of fucking bullshit talk is that?" Jenny whined from between her quivering legs. Sawyer's expression reflected that of Jenny's tone, almost incredulous. The gothic cleaner wondered if Shenhua had been spending too much time with Lotton.

"She destroyed my tail light," Lotton said quietly, a small, simmering edge of anger hanging to his low voice. "It is unkind to wish death upon a lady, but she has forfeited her status with this heinous act. With my Mauser in hand, I will—"

"You focus on driving, crazy boy," Shenhua interrupted, dashing his fantasy of vengeance. She gazed lovingly into her khukri and smiled. "I take care of this. Sawyer, your leg hurt bad. You—"

Lotton's heart tore as his remaining tail light was taken out by a 12 gauge slug. Jenny curled further into a ball as Shenhua and Sawyer whipped their heads to face the attacker in pursuit.

"Sound familiar to ya'll?!" Stretch howled with music blaring over the speaker mounted inside the tuk-tuk. The woman had come upon the driver's side of the Mustang in an instant. "Stop making yourselves so sad! Like the tune says, 'No one lives forever!' Time to punch your tickets!"

Stretch aimed her shotgun at Jenny's head, intent on picking up where she left off. Stretch cursed as a dart attached to a length of rope snaked around the barrel and jerked the shot downward, hitting the road beneath. Shenhua proceeded to yank on her end of the rope, bringing Stretch flush with the vehicle and forcing the woman to hug the shotgun closer to her body to keep herself from losing it. Quickly, Shenhua lunged forward and came to the side of the firearm. She took control of the front of the barrel and simultaneously gripped the stock, using the weapon as a lever and turning the business end to Stretch's sternum, locking up the woman's wrists at the same time. It also didn't help that the former radio DJ's fingers were still feeling the cold nip of Shenhua's blade from back in the warehouse, where she had been disarmed of the same shotgun prior. Her grip on the weapon was far weaker than she would have liked.

"What kind of grudge do you have against a girl and her gun?" Vanita commented, snide and pensive at once.

Shenhua's response was to smile and take advantage of Stretch's compromised structure. With a violent motion, Shenhua twisted her body and wrenched the shotgun from Stretch's hands.

"No!" Stretch wailed.

"Yes!" Jenny cheered, peeking from her hands. "Now kill her!"

"I get to it," Shenhua hissed. Stretch made a motion to grab her Mossberg shotgun back from Shenhua, but the Taiwanese woman merely shrugged with a smirk and tossed the firearm behind her, leaving it to the street with a fading clatter as they sped along the road. The freelancer reveled in the dumbfounded expression on Stretch's face, which was reflected and amplified on Jenny's.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Jenny balked.

"It's not... her style..." Sawyer muttered, somewhat displeased herself that Shenhua didn't shoot Stretch and be done with it. However, she understood. Villains had a certain standard and form to follow. There was a specific way to do things, a personal protocol. A professional like Shenhua was not going to break it anytime soon.

"Her style is to die like a fucking moron!?" Jenny gasped, her hands gripping the air as though she had a tight hold on a pair of foam, stress-relieving balls. "Fred, you have the dumbest fucking fuck-buddy friends in the whole— OW!"

Shenhua dug the point of her red high heel into Jenny's hand and pinned it against the back seat, using it as a resting spot for her left foot as she comfortably settled the right on the head rest of the driver's seat. Without hesitation, Shenhua took hold of both her khukri and made an upward slashing motion aiming for Stretch's crotch with one of the blades. There was a loud clash as the thick Nepalese weapon met the edge of a large Bowie knife. Shenhua raised her brow in interest while she frowned.

"Pretty nasty to go straight for the goods when you haven't taken me on a proper date yet!" Stretch jeered. Shenhua did not entertain the banter and attempted to slash Stretch's throat with her other khukri, but that, too, did not land. Stretch leaned back and let the blow pass before she leaned forward and firmly pinned Shenhua's elbow to the freelancer's own body to keep the blade from whipping back. Shenhua winced. She was going to have bruises in the morning.

"Let me return the favor!" Stretch offered, sliding her own large knife along the length of Shenhua's and aimed to gut the Taiwanese woman. With a quiet gasp, Shenhua reactively hollowed out and bent over at the waist, avoiding the sharp point. Without the pressure of Stretch's knife on her own, Shenhua attempted to draw her knife back and came over her pinned arm to attack Stretch from the side, but it proved to be difficult with Stretch rendering one of her arms useless. Her movement had been read, and the former DJ was able to block that slash as well, clashing the knives together once again.

Shenhua exhaled. Stretch's grip on her was like a vice, but a vice's purpose was to hold something solid. She was far too tense, too much like the steel she so loved. She needed to be water in this moment, to flow. With the image in her head, the Taiwanese woman relaxed the muscles in her pinned arm. She slipped from the grasp, collapsing her elbow and forearm in a small circle. She snaked her forearm underneath Stretch's hand, then lashed out for her face.

However, Stretch also knew water from steel, and she reflected the motion of Shenhua's hand, bypassing the knife. She intertwined their arms together, closed the distance between herself and the Taiwanese woman, and locked Shenhua's elbow below her axillary region with her entire arm. Shenhua stared at Stretch's empty hand, in a proper prayer pose, in front of her face. Shenhua felt like biting that hand out of spite (it would certainly loosen up the hideous arm lock she had gotten into), but she instead settled for punching out her other hand toward Stretch's face. Shenhua snarled as that strike was countered with yet another block with the Bowie knife.

"Not too bad for white girl," Shenhua murmured, a mix of annoyance and ever-so-slight admiration. "You fight like you from Mindanao."

"Shucks, I'm so flattered," Stretch sneered. "Sotis would be so proud."

The two women settled back into their conflict. To an inexperienced eye, their combinations of strikes, parries, and blocks would have appeared to be frantic drill, a sloppy cat fight with neither side yielding. However, Shenhua and (apparently) Stretch, were not novices to fighting with knives. Each woman felt and fed into and against each other's motions, perfect textbook reactions and improvisation. Perhaps, if they had met in another life, they could have been training partners. Shenhua felt a heat rising in her cheeks from the frustration of it all, her immense scowl matched only by Stretch's Cheshire Cat grin. Stretch singing along with the music also didn't help.

"I'm so happy dancing while the Grim Reaper cuts, cuts, cuts but he can't get me!"

"Shenhua! Fruit cart!" Lotton warned. Both Shenhua and Stretch looked over and realized there was an idiot merchant on bicycle pulling a cartload of jackfruit in the middle of the street. It was a sign they were approaching Roanapur's floating markets. The tuk-tuk and the Mustang parted ways to avoid killing the fool. Lotton kept a mind to pull as far to the side as possible while keeping the speed. He wasn't sure what was going on in the tuk-tuk driver's head, but whatever convinced the individual must have been a very real threat for him to accompany a woman as unstable as Vanita Stretch.

"Fucker, you'd better keep up with 'em or I'll shove this knife straight down your pisser!" Stretch threatened her nondescript driver, affirming Lotton's suspicions.

"Sawyer, I sorry. I know you hurt, but I need help," Shenhua panted, ignoring Stretch's outburst, but keeping mind that the woman was closing in again. "When she come back, we get locked up at top. You go for legs."

Sawyer only nodded and pulled her chainsaw into her lap, gripping it unusually tight as the tuk-tuk accelerated and music pounded in her skull. Stretch had it on a loop.

"Let's have a party. There's a full moon in the sky. It's the hour of the wolf and I don't wanna die!"

As Shenhua predicted, Stretch came back for more. They clashed together with additional strikes and blocks, the friction from their knives causing sparks. Lotton worked tirelessly on crowd control, testing Shenhua's skills in balance with every twist, turn, and swerve. They had entered the water markets, now a mish-mash of vendors and customers alike. He was taking special care not to run into anybody. Most would have considered it to be due to Lotton's chivalrous nature, but in this instance, it was more out of worry not to dent the hood on the Mustang.

Melding with the sound of steel-on-steel and Oingo Boingo was Jenny's screaming about how they were going to become fish fillets in the river. Sawyer was intent on finding her opening through the chaos, looking for the best moment to pull the ripcord on her chainsaw and get to work, to end this madness. Then, that moment came, that ideal timing where everything slows down for that split-second and everything falls into place. The sparks from the knives floated, blended with the soft lights from the Thai markets. A bead of sweat glided down Shenhua's face, the Taiwanese woman's stunning blue eyes challenging Stretch with a predatory glare. Stretch's own eyes beamed back into Shenhua's. Instead of matching the freelancer's glower, the DJ's mouth had turned to biting her lip with a quivering grin, drawing her own blood, cackling. Another sound, low, a hum, came from Stretch's throat, the edges of her mouth twitching ever more so. For a second, she shifted her attention from Shenhua and eyed Sawyer with a knowing glance. She smiled at her.

Sawyer froze mid-pull on her ripcord. At the moment, gears in her mind turned, fell into place, clicked. Everything connected. She had seen that grin before, that dead, eagle eyed stare. She had seen that wide demon grin.

She saw hands reaching out in cells. She saw a shaft leading to a pit. She saw shackles, a needle, a table, a bolted door, an alleyway.

She saw the knife.

"You..." Sawyer croaked, shaking as she reached for her scarred neck. "You..."

Shenhua quickly realized her backup had been shot to hell.

"Lotton, Sawyer having napalm dreams again!" Shenhua declared. "Need help to shake off whore! Ram her!"

"But, my paint job—" Lotton complained.

"YOU CAN'T DRIVE CAR IF WE ALL DEAD!" Shenhua reasoned, her voice like that of nails on a chalkboard. With regret and anguish, "the Wizard" conceded to Shenhua's logic.

Ahead, he saw they were coming upon a bridge. The river would be the perfect ditching point.

"Get back in, Shenhua!" he said. Jenny sighed in brief relief as she felt the heel lift off of her hand, then hissed as the blood returned to the afflicted area. The Taiwanese woman attempted to disengage Stretch with a harsh shove.

"Oh, no you don't!" Stretch threatened. Shenhua let out a cry as Stretch leaned forward and slashed horizontally at her solar plexus. As she fell back, Shenhua kicked Stretch in the chest, sending the woman flying into the speakers, forcing the music to skip.

"No one, n-no o-one, no o—, —o one, no one lives forever!"

Lotton jerked the wheel of the Mustang, sending the tuk-tuk flying off the narrow bridge, crashing into the river with a large splash.

No one bothered to look back to see the damage. Time passed far too slowly for Lotton's liking by the time they made it out of the water market. "The Wizard" looked out of the corner of his eye as he felt confident he could lessen the speed to a cruising pace.

"Shenhua, are you—?"

"It look worse than really is," Shenhua said hoarsely, pulling her hand away and looking at the blood. She slowly parted the darkening red fabric of her dress and looked at her midsection. The flesh was a textbook butterfly wound, only revealing muscle, much to Shenhua's relief. "She not gut me like fish. I think tip only bite me. Gàn, hǎo tòng! Sawyer, what in hell happen with you?"

Yet Sawyer didn't respond. The young woman was clutching the chainsaw to her chest and huddled tightly into a ball. Her face had been buried between her arms and her shoulders moved, up and down, sporadically.

"Uh..." Jenny started, awkwardly rotating her wrist while making a pointing motion with her hand. "She always was kind of... emotional."

"Sawyer," Lotton asked, looking over his shoulder. "Is everything all right?"

Her body began to twitch, causing Shenhua and Lotton to exchange concerned glances with one another. It had been a very, very long time since Sawyer had an "episode". They thought they had rid the girl of them completely over their time together, brought her far enough from the broken shell.

"Sawyer..." Shenhua reached out, ignoring the blood on her hand and placing it on the girl's head. The Taiwanese freelancer recoiled immediately as a hideous electronic scream erupted from "the Cleaner". The sound cut through the air like a newly forged blade, screeching feedback, a static wail that tore at the ears and left excruciating ringing behind. The usually stoic blue eyes bulged and the head whipped about in paranoia.

"Sawyer, calm down! It us! Crazy lady dead in river!" Shenhua reassured (or attempted to do so).

"I think we only stalled for time," Lotton interjected. "I highly doubt that killed her."

"YOU NOT HELPING!" Shenhua clutched at her torso. The scolding had stretched her diaphragm and caused a jolt of pain. "We need pull over. She not thinking clear. Might jump out of car and hurt herself."

Lotton agreed with a silent nod and pulled off to the side of the road, reaching back to place his hands on the gothic cleaner to keep her steady. It didn't work.

"Aw, shit," Jenny moaned. "You made it worse. Fucking fuck, she hasn't changed a bit!"

Sawyer released her chainsaw completely and began to grab fistfuls of her hair, shaking her head wildly as tears streamed down her cheeks. She flopped gracelessly on her side in the backseat, kicking and screaming, numb to the bullet wound in her right thigh and deaf to her companion's attempts to quell her.

She remembered.

- 0 – 0 – 0 -

"...I'm telling you, Rock! This was a stellar deal!" Benny announced with fervor. "No where else could I find this processor at this low a price! I can't believe the guy would blindly trade this for a hacked disc!"

"Uh huh," Rock said, spectacularly numb to the tech geek's celebration. The G-Spot night club had been newly rebuilt after many moons of switching hands and funding difficulties with the renovations. Though time had passed from the explosive events that led to the demise of the first incarnation, Rock was still burdened with bitter memories. It also didn't help that Revy had given him a cold shoulder and colder stare upon finding out he was accompanying Benny to the newly re-opened bar to pick up yet another computer part. She had retreated to the Yellow Flag without a word, and he knew then that she was really pissed. He would prefer a fist to his jaw or the barrel of her Cutlass pressed against his forehead. Anything but silence. Silence was the killer, the unsettling unknown.

"... Megahertz at this speed! Now I just gotta make a way for it to work with my new graphics card. They're not designed to work with each other, but oh, I can make them work together. I'm getting the best of both worlds!"

"Uh huh," Rock repeated. The two men stumbled their way out of the club of garish green and blue laser lights and techno beats. Rock had to shake off a ladyboy trying to pull him into a booth. Rock wondered if Revy was as inebriated as he was right now. Yet he noticed that she hadn't been taking as much yaba as she used to. Should he have been worried?

"And what does Jane think of all this?" Rock asked, trying to take his mind off his own relationship issues. Benny sputtered something intelligible with a goofy grin. The blonde man with glasses continued, but Rock was finding it difficult to feel motivated to truly listen.

This was how low he had fallen, getting drunk while Benny scored tech bits in a ladyboy club. No wonder Revy was pissed with him. But Benny-boy wasn't stupid. He seldom went alone anywhere in Roanapur; it was just common knowledge. While Dutch favored building morale among the team, he never mixed personal business with his own, and Revy sure as hell wasn't going to go anywhere with Benny. What else could Rock do but go with him? He also knew, somewhere deep and dark in his head, they were the only two who could sympathize with one another in wicked city. They were on the same wavelength, men who chose to carry knowledge as their weaponry, and both hopelessly doomed to fates with women who proved ill to their health. Only they could understand each other in the latter manner, how they tolerated it all. Except, perhaps, that other fellow. The one with the sunglasses in the trenchcoat. What his name again? Maybe they could start a dysfunctional boyfriends club.

Rock shook his head and punched a nearby wall. He drank far too much to be having these stupid thoughts.

"You want me to take the keys, Rock? You look rough." Benny asked, holding the box that held the processor to his chest as though it were a baby. They exited the G-Spot with a "shoo" motion from the bouncer at the door. Rock fumbled with the keys in the parking lot, failing horribly at passing them along to his co-worker. They jingled and collapsed in a heap on the ground. Benny chuckled at the situation and shook his head, leaning over the pick them up.

"You're really not right tonight, my friend," Benny humored him. He stood up with the keys in hand and shook them lightly. "Let's get out of here."

They continued their walk to the '65 Pontiac GT, Rock's gait being more clumsy than Benny's. They were on the edge of the small lot, alone with a broken, flickering street lamp. It was dark, but as it was the only car at the end, it was simple to identify which vehicle was theirs. Benny fingered for the ignition key and placed it in the door.

Rock felt odd in that moment, a sudden clarity that only comes to the drunk. In the flickering light, a shadow made its way behind Benny.

"R... Revy?" Rock whispered, squinting. Benny looked over his shoulder with a bored hum, before his eyes widened and almost dropped his processor.

"Good evening, boys," Stretch drawled. "That's a mighty fine ride you got there."


N/A: So, uh... For those of you who are still following this... About this long-awaited update... In my defense, I did end up playing around in a desert for a little bit (not the one you'd think, though). Then, life happened. She's a hard bitch to deal with, but I pushed her back and now we have an understanding. Yeah. That's it.

For a more thorough explanation of my hiatus, I will leave a post in the Black Lagoon forums "From the Deck of the Lagoon" under the Welcome thread there. Also, it will have some commentary on this recent chapter, such as why "Rotton" will now be written as "Lotton" and I will hate my life when I have to back through every single one of my stories and fix it. Screw you, localization and official translations! Screw you for making me work more!

However, if there is a lesson to be learned here, it is this: When you have found a tale you love, a tale that reaches your soul, a tale that takes grip of your heart, and it doesn't let go, leaves you wanting for more, and more, and more, and times goes on, painfully slow, agonizingly slow, slower than the pace of a land slug bubbling on a trail of salt, fear not! Because, if you believe with all your heart, believe deeply within your soul, and don't lose all hope, maybe, just maybe, that lazy-ass author will update their story after a three-and-a-half year hiatus.

I'll try not to make you guys wait for the next update quite as long, mmkay? Mmkay.

Cheers.