(Pardon my French.)

Part 3 – Merde et Imbéciles

"Are you sure we're at the right place?"

"This is the address she gave me." Oosawa Maria craned her neck. "It looks kind of creepy, doesn't it?"

"Mm..." 'Creepy' was too mild a word for Minorikawa Minoru. 'Foreboding' or 'sinister' seemed more fitting for this neighborhood. He hadn't imagined it possible for the likes of it to exist in Paris, even on the outskirts.

"Well, since we're here..." Maria advanced to the front door of the drab little house and prodded the doorbell.

There was a pause of several seconds. "Oui?"

Maria cleared her throat. "Erm... Good afternoon, we're here to see Canaan."

"Aha... Just a moment." There was a sharp clack as a heavy bolt was drawn back, then the door opened. "Come in."

"Pardon the intrusion," said Minoru automatically. The inside of the house was surprisingly affluent compared to its exterior, with ornate light fixtures and a carpet so fine that to tread on it would be a prosecutable offense in some regions of the world. There was even an elephant-foot stand with three umbrellas in it. No, he amended after a closer look, two umbrellas and a shotgun.

"Canaan's in the living room," said the woman who'd let them in as she relocked the door. She had red hair and wore a chef's hat and a badly stained apron. "The right-hand door at the end of the hall."

"Thank you," Maria called after her as she disappeared back into the presumed kitchen. "Come on, Mino-san!"

Enthusiastic as ever, Minoru complained to himself. Maria might be a renowned photographer now, but her behavior was no less bubbly than it was when the perpetually scruffy journalist had first encountered her... and the enigmatic Canaan, soon after that.

He was still ruminating over this when Maria reached the designated door and threw it open. "Canaan, we're – waaaaa!"

"Eh?" Minoru rushed into the room. "Uwaaaaaah!"

The living room was no less fancy than the entry, with an especially opulent couch placed against the far wall. Alphard reclined upon it, utterly and unabashedly nude. Canaan knelt beside her, one hand on Alphard's hip, the darker-skinned woman's outstretched fingers caressing her chin.

"C-C-Canaan..!" Maria stammered. "What are you – ? Why is she – ? What is this?"

"Art."

"Huh?"

"Art." Canaan spoke without motion. "We're modeling."

"I'm very sorry." Minoru and Maria turned to find a fair, thin woman in a maid's uniform sitting in the armchair beside the door, a tray laid across her knees. "Mistress Alphard and Miss Canaan very kindly agreed to pose for me, but it seems I'm not as fast as I once was... I think this is enough for today, ma'am."

"Oh?" Alphard lowered her arm. "Well, suit yourself."

Canaan rose, hastily retrieving a khaki bathrobe from the foot of the couch and donning it with flushed cheeks. Alphard contrarily made no effort to cover herself. Minoru noted that she had lain in such a way as to conceal her missing arm, ditto the bandage around her left calf. She now stood with that leg slightly bent, resting her weight on the other foot and – quite deliberately, he was sure – drawing the observing eye towards places mortal man was never meant to gaze upon. Feeling a sharp pressure building in his sinuses, he quickly pinched his nose and focused his attention on the maid's drawing. It had been made with an ordinary pencil on ordinary paper, but the shading and attention to detail were exquisite.

"You draw very well," he said earnestly, "Miss..?"

"Boxer." The maid set the tray aside and stood up, offering the guests a curtsy. "Is there anything I can get for you? Tea or coffee perhaps?"

"Uh, not now, thanks." Minoru warily glanced to his left and found Maria confronting Alphard as Canaan draped a second robe over her well-defined shoulders.

"What do you want with Canaan?"

Alphard smirked. "I could tell you... but then you'd have to stay for dinner."

Canaan herself looked far more enthused about that notion than Minoru would have thought possible. "Yes, please stay."

"But..."

"Do you have other plans for tonight?"

"Well, no... Mino-san?"

Minoru shrugged. "Dare I refuse?" he asked rhetorically.

"Excellent." Alphard's smirk turned to a pleased smile. "Make yourselves comfortable," she went on. "Excuse us while we dress."

Minoru's nasal discomfort finally subsided as the mastermind of the escapade left the room, Canaan and Boxer in tow. "Dinner, huh..?"

"That's right," said the redhead, stealthily coming up behind him. "And while we're on the subject, I need a big, strong guy to grate some coconuts for me."

A powerful hand clamped around Minoru's upper arm and suddenly he was being inexorably drawn backwards. "Eh..? Eeeeeeeeeh?"

Next thing he knew, he was in a compact and very neat kitchen. "Right," his abductor announced, "hop to it!"

What the hell? the reporter thought, but he did her bidding anyway. "So you're the cook?"

"Cook, captain, pilot and bodyguard. Name's Berdan." She lifted the lid of a large pot and stirred its contents, filling the room with a delicious smell. "Boxer will tell you I'm a trigger-happy psycho who snorts powdered Altoids for kicks, but don't believe her."

Minoru knew of Alphard's previous lieutenants only from second and third-hand sources, but he was pretty sure neither of them had been anything quite like this one.

"Wow!" Maria exclaimed. "This is really good... What is it?"

"I can't pronounce the name," Berdan admitted, shaking salt on her own plate of whatever it was. "But I'm glad you approve."

Minoru snuck a glance to either side of himself. This is totally surreal, he decided. I'm eating in the company of a superhuman assassin, a notorious mercenary and goodness knows who else, and they expect me to act like it's perfectly ordinary?

Alphard, at any rate, seemed to find nothing unusual about those with whom she shared the round table. "We saw your new photograph gallery yesterday," she said to Maria. "Congratulations on the award."

"Oh!" Maria blushed. "Erm, thank you!"

"We saw also Yunyun," Canaan volunteered.

"Really? Yunyun is here too?"

The synesthete nodded. "She's working at a restaurant, a small one next to the river."

"How is she?"

"She fainted when she saw me," said Alphard, unconcernedly stabbing a slice of sausage. "I don't think I'll use that mascara again."

"She's all right," Canaan hurriedly assured Maria. "She really likes her work."

"That's wonderful! Isn't it, Mino-san?"

Minoru would have much preferred that Maria let him eat undisturbed and as inconspicuously as possible. "Uh... Yeah, that's great."

The photographer remained happily oblivious to his unease. "Have you been in Paris long, Canaan?"

"Ah, no – just a few days... We were in the Bahamas before this."

"The Bahamas? Wow! What was it like?"

"It was all islands," Canaan reflected. "Islands with white beaches and long reefs... The water was clear and shallow. We spent a whole day sailing across a sandbank where we could always see the bottom."

Maria was listening raptly. "Amazing," she breathed. "I wish I could have been there."

"Too dangerous," Canaan replied bluntly. "There were idiots shooting at us."

"Shooting!?" Maria's indignantly rounded on Alphard. "What have you gotten Canaan mixed up in?"

"Nothing intentionally." Alphard offered a lopsided shrug. "In any case, it's quite trivial. Canaan's in no great danger... Speaking of that," she added, "is everything prepared, Berdan?"

"Yeah, boss. We can go any time you're ready... More potatoes, anyone?"

"Yes, please." Canaan passed her plate, then looked at Alphard. "Where are we going?"

"Berdan and I are going to visit a person who might know something about the opposition."

"Then I should come – "

"That won't be necessary," Alphard interrupted smoothly. "Our target is a petty distributor for the western European drug networks. Berdan can handle his guards."

Berdan flexed an arm dramatically. "Arr!"

"What about me?"

"I'm sure you and Miss Oosawa have a lot of catching up to do," Alphard chuckled. "Don't you?"

"She's not hurting you, is she?" It was the first thing Maria asked once Alphard and Berdan were out of the house and Boxer had entrenched herself in the kitchen.

"No." Canaan was blushing again. "She only... likes to do things in bed."

"In bed..?"

"Canaan." Minoru loomed over the assassin, fixing her with a keen gaze. "Are you in an adult relationship with Alphard?"

His forwardness earned him a punch in the ribs. "Mino-san, you pervert!"

"Ow – ! Stop that!"

"Pervert, pervert, pervert!"

"...I guess it is."

Maria froze, fist cocked. "Eh?"

"I guess it is an adult relationship." Canaan shrugged. "Alphard knows more about these things than I do."

"But why would you..." Maria shook her head. "No, before that, how is it possible for two women..?"

"I don't really understand," the slender woman confessed, "but I think Alphard is in love with me."

One statement did not compute and two jaws dropped. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!?"

"There's someone... No, it's not him." Berdan scrutinized the length of the street. "The asshole sure is taking his time."

"As is his habit at this time of night," Alphard pointed out.

"Yeah." Berdan briefly looked around the bare interior of the unfinished building in which she and her employer lurked. "This part of town hasn't changed at all. There's nothing here but shit... Shit and idiots."

Alphard walked from one end of the long room to the other. It would be a cubicle maze someday, assuming it survived its builders' bankruptcy. "What's bothering you?" she asked quietly.

"Nothing, boss."

"You aren't bothered by 'nothing'." Dark, predatory eyes roamed over the line of decaying warehouses across the road, intermittently painted unhealthy shades of yellow by streetlights. "If there's something on your mind, I want to hear it before we go in."

"It's none of my business, boss."

"Ah." Alphard sat down beside her lieutenant. "This is about Canaan."

"Yeah," Berdan admitted. "Was it really a good idea to leave her alone with the ditz?"

"It's for the best," said the Arabic enchantress philosophically. "That girl is to Canaan what Canaan is to me."

"I don't get that," the underling groaned. "I don't get it at all. You and the shrimp went from being at each other's throats to having rough noisy sex every damn night, and it just doesn't make any sense... If you're so willing to get sweaty with her now, why did you ever want her dead in the first place?"

"I didn't." Alphard's ponytail quietly rustled against the collar of her trench coat as she looked up at the skeletal ceiling. "I taunted her, chased her, sparred with her... but I never intended to kill her." There was a long sigh. "You would understand if you'd been there."

"Not much I can do about that, boss."

"Indeed." Alphard reached into her coat and pulled out a Browning Hi-Power with smooth-worn edges and a blotchy patina on its flanks. "One day a wandering mercenary took a walk through a recently razed Lebanese village," she recalled, dropping the magazine into her lap. "He found a little girl with a remarkable power in the ruins, took her in and taught her everything he knew... He made her into a perfect killer, and he called her 'Canaan'."

Berdan blinked a few times. In the time it had taken for Alphard to summarize Canaan's past, she'd simultaneously field stripped the pistol literally single-handed. "What about you?" she prompted, turning her eyes back to the street.

"That's where the problem lay." Alphard turned the slide over and fitted the barrel into it. "The fool had taken on that same task once already, when he was hired to train an unwanted brat from a well-off Jordanian family." Her thumb seated the tail of the recoil spring under the barrel. "He'd even given her the same name."

"There were originally two Canaans?"

"Not for long." Slide met frame with a metallic scraping. "Consumed by bitter resentment, the first Canaan lured the mercenary into a trap and forced her usurper to watch as she killed him." The one-armed woman fitted the magazine into the grip, seated it with a push against her knee and thumbed the slide catch. "There, at the very end, he called her by a new name... 'Alphard'."

"..."

"There's more, but it'll have to wait." Alphard rose. "Charles is coming."

Berdan followed her lead and saw a balding man hurrying down the street, followed at a distance by a larger figure in a long overcoat. "Yeah, that's him," she muttered. "Just the one guard, but he's got something big under there."

The mastermind watched as the marked man turned and entered one of the warehouses, leaving his escort standing at the door. "All right," she said finally, turning away. "Let's go."

"Finally... And boss?"

"What?"

"Sorry to pry."

"My old subordinates never cared," Alphard remarked as she led the way down rough stairs with no handrail. "Why do you?"

"Do you remember how we first met, boss?"

"As I recall, you were being thrown out of a bar in Johannesburg."

"That's right," Berdan laughed softly. "I was completely tanked, with no more to my name than the clothes on my back and the change in my pockets, and you took me in... Can you blame me for being worried about you?"

Sentry duty is one of the most onerous tasks known to humankind. It is either mind-numbingly monotonous or nail-bitingly dangerous, with no appreciable middle ground, and it is frequently required in the presence of the most unfavorable environmental variables. It was in such circumstances that the Italian guard of Monsieur Charles found himself assigned the miserable post of door watchman outside his master's decrepit place of business, his person and his stilted command of the French language on show for any and all passers by to gawk upon... Or so he told himself. He hadn't actually seen anyone, and at this late hour he wasn't likely to.

He was debating the pros and cons of sneaking off for a quick smoke when his perfect score of naught was rudely incremented to one. The stranger was a short-haired woman in a flight jacket, jeans and leather boots. "Excusez-moi," she said hesitantly, "savez-vous où je peux trouver Sarah Connor?"

"Non," the guard grunted, biting back the urge to say something far nastier. "Laissez-moi tranquille!"

"Ah..." She looked around for a few moments. "Je reviendrai."

He saw the dull gleam of metal too late. "Que fais – " Pschht!

"The world never runs out of suckers," Berdan snickered, tucking away the silenced P7 and dragging the corpse behind the dumpster at the corner of the building. "Right, boss?"

"Right."

The redhead opened the man's coat and loosed the black rifle which hung under his arm. "What have we here?" she mused, easing out the takedown pin and pivoting the upper and lower halves apart. "A Colt SP-One with a Lightning Link knockoff? Classy." She snapped the AR-15 shut and appropriated its magazines with quiet glee. "Now I can kick off the party with a real bang..."

"...She says that one feels the best, but using it hurts my back."

Maria, Minoru thought wearily, how can you call her a normal girl now? The reporter was sprawled on the carpet, feebly clutching a handkerchief to his nose while Maria and Canaan carried on their conversation above. I swear, Canaan's learned enough about this stuff to write an advice column...

"Wow... I had no idea such toys existed."

"Me neither. There are some other ones that we haven't tried yet, with ropes and things..."

"Eeeeeeeh? So Alphard is into that kind of play too?"

"Play..?"

"Er, well... That's what I heard it's called..."

Scratch that, Minoru amended. You two can write the column together.

He was trying to sit up when he heard a muffled thumping from the direction of the front door. Boxer must have gone to open it, because the commotion escalated into a frenzied rushing. "Canaaaaaan!" a voice cried dramatically. "We have big problems!"

Minoru blinked. Upside down or not, he knew that freckled face and the loop of hair on either side of it. "Yunyun..?"

"What problems?" Canaan demanded, jumping to her feet. "What's happened?"

"Alphard is... She's..." The pint-sized Chinese girl ran back into the hallway. "You gotta help her!"

Canaan took off without another word. Minoru caught just a flash of maroon and khaki as she vanished, leaving him alone with Maria. "What's – "

A strangled cry of pain and a loud thud in the hall sent both of them dashing out of the living room. Canaan lay in a heap just inside the front entrance, a pair of long wires running from the darts caught in her pants leg to a chunky device in Yunyun's hands.

"Yunyun!" Maria shouted reproachfully. "What are you doing?"

"S-sorry," the girl stammered, her grip on the Taser unsteady. "It's sort of an emergency, so..."

"That's enough." Boxer reentered the house, drawing the shotgun from the umbrella stand. "You two stay where you are. Come on, Yunyun... Yasmin! Rania!"

Yunyun obeyed the command, casting one last regretful look behind herself as she ran out. A pair of figures dressed all in black scurried past her, scooped up Canaan and bundled the synesthete out into the night before the witnesses could react.

"I'm sorry about this," Boxer said as she made to follow them, "I really am." A white envelope fluttered to the floor. "When Mistress Alphard gets back, please make sure she reads that."

"ALLEY-OOP, MOTHERFUCKERS!" Ratatatatatatatat!

Alphard had to smile at that. She'd asked for a distraction, and Berdan was certainly giving her one. Her coat flared, cool air flowing over her bare midriff as she double-timed it up the flights of stairs to the manager's office.

The office's two guards were still at their posts: "Halte! Lâchez votre – "

Pakka! Pakka-pakka!

One kick knocked the door half off its thin hinges. "Hello, Charles," Alphard intoned dryly, training the Browning on the trembling man behind the rickety desk. "Do tell me, what is dear Fatima up to?"