Sorry, Marc. This is all I can do for you. Not without getting myself killed.


Going back to Rolito's is a no-no right now. I can't face Marc's buddies. Not yet, not now.

Not ever?

Instead I pick the fifth coffee shop I randomly come across. (UCC. Thank God for some small favors.) A cup of one of their stronger alcohol-coffee blends soon finds its way into my hands and then my gut and from there my bloodstream. Amply fortified, I mentally reconstructed the scene from the beginning.

Marc seduced Triela. He brought her to Rolito's Pasta for a date last night. There he got her drunk. He then brought her to the motel and had his way with her. The next morning, when Triela woke up, she was horrified or pissed. She killed Marc. Left in a hurry.

Simple. Too simple. Occam's Razor is a nice tool, but I'm partial to the Holmesian principle. Eliminate all the discrepancies, and what you have left, however improbable, is the truth.

I'm missing something. Something important. Something I've overlooked.

The gun. Triela had to have a gun on her. She was drunk as Bacchus (what a metaphor!), so Marc probably undressed her. He couldn't have missed the gun or mistaken it for something else.

Shouldn't that have warned him? It probably did. Not every thirteen-year-old girl in Italy carries a gun on her person.

But he badly wanted to fuck her. So, he did.

At this point I began swearing to myself in all the languages I know.


Gunslinger Girl

Crossover


Inspired by The Oddity's fan fiction "Showdown" and Colonel Marksman/G.D. Wallez's fan fiction "Innocence". Happens at around the same time.

Not linked to my usual GSG fanon.


Death/Life


So who woke up first? Marc? But he's back there, dead, on the bed. (Damn rhyme)

So Triela wakes up first. She discovers she had been raped– or does it count as rape if you don't resist? What did my good ole Theology teacher say on the matter? Ah, fuck it. I got a D in his course, anyway.

Anyway, she wakes up, finds her maidenhood defiled (Damn it, Rolito! Get serious!) and turns her anger on Marc. She tortures him and then kills him.

No. Drop the torture. Triela is smart and well-trained. Angry or not, as soon as she realizes the mess she's in, she knows she has to get out ASAP.

Drop the killing, too. She's an assassin, but not a cold-blooded murderer. She wouldn't have killed Marc while he was asleep. She would have just left. So Marc awoke at some point shortly after she did.

Even so, he was a civilian and unarmed. She wouldn't kill him. Slap or punch him for taking advantage of her, sure. His cheek was bruised. Yeah, she slapped him, all right. But she wouldn't kill him. Not the guy she agreed to date, the guy she liked. So he did something to provoke her.

The gun. Her gun. Marc found it on her.

Of course! The gun told him she was dangerous, so he turned it on her. Maybe Marc isn't as stupid as I made him out to be. But he wasn't smart enough, either.

Triela somehow turned the tables on him. Marc had a crushed finger and broken wrists. He was holding the gun when Triela disarmed him. There was probably a struggle, which explains the extensive bruising on Marc's hand.

There were signs of struggling on Marc's body. No spent casings –though Triela might have picked them up– and no holes in the floor or walls or bed. A gunshot would have been heard despite the cheap soundproofing. Hell, the nice soundproofing in my expensive apartment didn't keep out the gunshots in the room overhead. (Crazy cyborgs.) Plus the smell. It's the hardest thing to mask the smell of cordite.

No. There wasn't any shooting. The gun wasn't needed. Not by a cyborg.

Triela disarmed Marc, grabbed him by the throat, choked him, and then snapped his neck.

Why didn't she kill him outright? Why bother choking him? She had more than enough strength and the right kind of training. It doesn't take much to break a person's neck. You just had to know where to grip.

So she was panicking. A trained killer losing her cool? Possible. I do it most of the time, and I'm pretty hard myself. And, mechanical body or not, she was still a thirteen-year-old girl. She liked this bastard despite his raping her, despite his pointing a gun at her.

Did she cry? Just what did she see in Marc? He was a player. He knew how to bend women to his whims. Triela learned it too late for her virginity, but not too late to wreak some bloody justice. Yet she still ended up in bed with him before that Bad Ending.

He'd been playing her for a while, then. Maybe a week. Time enough to get to know her. To insinuate himself in her heart. To make her believe he loved her.

How can people do that? Deceive others into becoming their playthings? I can understand deception as a standard defensive tactic. I mislead everyone as best as I can to protect myself and the people I care for. I do this knowing that lying always risks the chance of discovery later. And the first thing the truth does to you once it comes out is bite you in the ass. And the bigger the lie, the harder the truth bites. That's why I never lie unless it's necessary. Certainly not for a quick sexual fling.

Marc, Marc, why couldn't you have just proclaimed undying love to her instead of pointing her gun at her face? Then you could have had at least one more round of fun instead of being dead and then dragging me into this shit.

Cool off, Rolito. You're getting too cynical.

Why should I? I spent years building up myself as Sheo Darren. It was wonderful having an identity that didn't require you to watch your back or cut someone's throat in the middle of the night. I had everything I could want: peace, money, friends, surrogate parents, happiness and a future. And now they're gone thanks to some hormone-driven teen with a prick too big for his pants.

Putang-ina! PUTANG-INA!!!

Jessica, why do I bother with this madding crowd? Tell me, my sweetness. Kuya wishes to know.

But you wouldn't know. You were my angel from Heaven. You are innocent and unknowing of this.

And I lost you.

And now I'm losing even myself.


"Excuse me."

I look up. The speaker is a European guy who is taller and broader than I am. (Then again, almost everyone my age here is bigger than my 5'6, seventy-plus kilos.) His spoken English has a slight German accent that automatically reminds me of Schwarzenegger, despite the fact that this man doesn't sound like the Governator. Definitely it's different from Hobbes's cultured British English or my Filipino-American English. (Example: we Filipinos use the word "crispy"; the Americans use "crisp".)

"Mr. Sheo Darren?"

Uh, oh. How does he know my name?

"Yes…" I do not bother to hide my suspicion. What I do conceal is my body going into Battle Condition Yellow. This guy might need killing. "Why?"

"I'd like to ask you some questions regarding the murder at the hotel earlier."

Another cop. Great. First Vien, then the local Polizia, then Section Two and the Americans, and now a German. I must be a magnet for the troops in blue.

Wait a minute. He's in plainclothes. No partner. And I've already given my official statement. Suspicious…

"May I see an ID?" I ask.

He pulls his wallet out and flips it open. His badge says he's Interpol. But the ID kind of looks old…


Hartman, Victor


Oh, shit.


To Be Continued…