Alright, finally the plot will thicken in this chapter as far as the main plot goes! Anyway, if you've kept up this far, I hope you like it. I own nothing, please R&R!

P.S.- There will be translation sequences in this chapter. I would like to apologize beforehand for the lack of detail put into them. I don't actually know Chinese and I don't have any way of translating English to the actual Chinese word rather than the written characters.

Ch. 3: Chang Under Fire

"Well, that was a fuckin' bust." Revy deadpanned lightly once she and Rock were standing on the Lagoon's bridge.

Revy was angry about the apparent double-cross of the triad on the boat, but this was one of those rare cases where her anger was over shadowed by her joy at getting to shoot someone or something. Rock noticed that she was in a much better mood now than she had been all day and guessed that the brief gunfight had indeed done wonders for her hangover.

"So, whaddaya think, Dutch? Set-up?" The ever cynical gunslinger asked while her mind jumped to the worst possible conclusion for them.

Dutch knew what was on his employee's mind, and, while he wouldn't completely discount it in a place like Roanapur, he still found it quite unlikely in this situation. However, there was the matter of the dead boat that bothered him, although it could just turn out to be nothing. He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose and lit a cigarette.

"Oh, I think it's a set-up, alright. But, I think its Chang that's being set-up. We're just the poor bastards that got ourselves stuck in the middle of this clusterfuck."

It was Rock's turn to add his two cents to the conversation at hand, "If that's the case, then wouldn't it be in our best interest to warn Chang?"

While Rock had come quite a long way in understanding how things worked in Roanapur, the fact that he could often get worried about his own well-being made him blind to certain details. He was confused when the only response he got from his boss was for Dutch to throw back his head and laugh.

"What?" Rock asked, looking from Dutch to his partner as she opened a beer that she'd retrieved from the cooler.

Revy snorted in response. "Dumbass," She teased, resting an elbow on Rock's shoulder, "The triad has intelligence on almost every damn continent on this fuckin' rock." Revy paused to take a swig of her beer and finished her statement, "If someone wipes their ass within a fuckin' mile of a head of the triad; Chang will know. And, if someone is fuckin' stupid enough to try and set Chang up or assassinate him, they'll regret all the fuckin' time their mama spent drinkin' and smokin' while she was pregnant to make 'em so fuckin' stupid."

Rock laughed uncomfortably at Revy's colorful metaphor and nodded in understanding. "Got it. Chang probably already knows, but I just have one more question. If he knows, then why wouldn't he tell us about the situation?"

Again Revy snorted before passing Rock the beer can and answering while he took a swig. "Because, if he makes it seem like he's in the dark, then he can flush whoevers after him into the open and kill 'em."

"I suppose you're right," Rock conceded, passing the beer back to Revy again, "Still, I don't like this. That man on the boat was too familiar for my liking."

"You noticed it, too, huh partner?" Revy spoke absently as she toyed with the half empty beer can. It couldn't have been a good thing if they both thought that the man looked familiar. She just shook the thought off and decided to chase it away with some alcohol as she chugged the remains of the Heineken.

"Any sign of the boat yet, Dutchy?" Revy asked, apparently loudly enough for Benny to hear.

"We should be comin' up on it in a couple minutes at our current speed." Came the muffled response from the navigation room several feet behind the bridge.

As promised, they came up on the dead boat shortly after Revy had asked the question. It was a small vessel, although it was slightly larger than the Black Lagoon; just like the other boat. Upon closer inspection, it had Chinese characters painted on its hull. That was something that the other boat had been missing. They noticed that the boat was eerily quiet, no doubt because the boat was dead, but there was also another silence. It was a silence that only lingered when death was in the air.

"Hear that, partner?" Revy asked Rock as they stood once again on deck; ready to cross over to the other boat.

Rock merely shook his head and shivered as an unusual cold gust of wind blew past him. He did hear it, he felt it too; he just didn't want to acknowledge the disturbing atmosphere any more than he had to.

They stood there in silence for a few short minutes before Dutch joined them on deck.

"I'm goin' with, this time. I'd like to find out for myself just what the fuck we've found ourselves in the middle of here." He said as he and Revy continued to move forward while Rock remained glued to the spot.

Revy turned around when she noticed that Rock wasn't following and smiled slightly before tugging roughly by his tie for the second time that day.

"Come on, dipshit! You don't expect me to leave my partner behind, do ya?"

Rock returned the smile with a somewhat forced one of his own and willed his feet to move across the PT boat's deck towards the short ladder of the Chinese boat.

Dutch was the first one up, and he motioned for Rock to stay back until Revy head cleared the deck so that they could make sure that everything was safe. After a brief wait, the boss gave Rock the cue to continue onto the deck and he braced himself for whatever horrible sight might be waiting for him when he made it onto the deck.

To Rock's surprise, the only overt sign of anything amiss from their perspective was the presence of a few minor blood spatters here and there, along with several empty shell casings lying on the deck.

Revy took a step forward and knelt in front of a spot with several spent casings laying around. Being the experienced gunman that she was, it was easy for her to pinpoint exactly where the target had been based on the position of the casings alone. She looked out in front of her and noticed a significant, but not fatal, amount of blood trailing back into the hallway from underneath a short staircase. If the shooters hadn't gone to finish their prey off, then there was a possibility that whoever left that blood trail was still alive.

She put that bit of information aside for a moment and picked up one of the spent shells, examining it closely. Revy knew that it was the same caliber that would've been used in those uzis that the men on the other boat were using; that fact ensured an almost one hundred percent possibility that the people who had attacked this boat were the same as the people that they had attempted to do the trade with.

"See somethin' you like, Two-hands?" Dutch asked as he watched her scan the boat and analyze the empty shells with curiosity. He hadn't actually seen the guns on the other boat, but he could guess by her interest in the shells at her feet that they must've come from the same gun.

"Not really." She answered simply, turning her attention to the blood trail and getting back to her feet.

"Hey Rock," Her voice snapped him from his own grim assessment of their surroundings and he quickly turned his attention to her. "Follow me."

Rock paled a little when he noticed that her gaze was pointing toward a blood trail as she spoke. He really didn't know why this boat was affecting him so much. He'd been in Roanapur long enough that he ought to be used to seeing dead bodies. He was partners with the woman responsible for a large chunk of the death rate in the city—if not the vast majority of it—and, he fell asleep to the sound of murder on a nightly basis. So, why then was the atmosphere on this ship bothering him so much? Maybe it was just that the dead on the boat had been gone just long enough to be cold, but not long enough for their souls to leave. Maybe, it was the fact that he was reminded of the U-boat incident, and if he was, then Revy must be too.

Rock shook his head to clear his thoughts as he followed Revy closer and closer to the dimly lit hallway.

'Or, maybe I just need to stop thinking.' He thought as they approached the first door in the hall; the room that the blood trail continued into.

Suddenly, there was a loud crash from one of the rooms on the starboard side of the corridor. In an instant, Rock had jumped so that he was behind Revy, and Revy had drawn both cutlasses.

After several moments of waiting, Rock wondered "What the hell was that?" to which Revy simply shrugged and replied, "Beats the shit outta me."

Then, just as Revy made a move to holster her guns, there was scraping noise, followed by angered shouts in a language that Rock recognized as Mandarin. A thin, middle-aged, Chinese man in a ruffled business suit came charging out of the room that they'd heard the noise in brandishing some kind of metal rod over his head.

The man stopped when he was met with one of Revy's cutlasses literally being pressed into his face. Luckily, she had sense enough not to fire since he was likely able to provide them with more information.

"Back off, old man. We ain't here to waste our bullets on low level delivery pisants."

Despite Revy's "reassurance", the man didn't move an inch other than to lower the metal rod he held, and he appeared to be confused.

Rock couldn't resist teasing his partner, "You know you're actually making a convincing argument to the contrary, right."

"Hey, Rock," Revy began calmly as she redirected the cutlass to his face instead and questioned, "you wanna find out what a bullet tastes like?"

In spite of the cool demeanor that she had displayed this whole time, the debate between human and walking dead was still raging inside of her. As a result, her patience was on a shorter leash than usual and Rock had just pushed his luck a tad too far.

"No," Rock sighed, "I think I'll pass." Her eyes widened when he grabbed the stainless steel barrel of her cutlass and pushed it away from his face. A lot of people may have feared the sight of Revy's unholstered guns, but Rock found it rather boring, actually. He had come to the conclusion months ago that there was no real threat behind the action of her pulling her guns on him. It just didn't make sense that she would go out of her way to keep him alive so many times if she actually intended to kill him.

"Fuckin' dipshit." Revy scoffed, holstering her weapon as Rock proceeded to interrogate the perplexed and frightened Chinese man standing before them while Dutch entered the cabin where the blood trail ended.

Meanwhile, Revy just watched on as Rock appeared to argue with the man in front of them. The man would occasionally transition between anger, fear, and looks of skepticism that Revy could only guess indicated changes in the direction of the interrogation. At any rate, she lacked patience enough to give a shit. As the gunwoman stood against the wall in her brooding pose with arms crossed over her chest, she began to tap her fingers impatiently against her forearms. This went on for several minutes until Revy could no longer stand being left in the dark.

"Yo, Rock, what the fuck is this guy saying?" She barked, causing the man to flinch at her harsh tone and Rock to hang his head and let out an irritated sigh.

"Will you please try and restrain yourself?" Rock requested, realizing immediately that what he was asking was absolutely absurd, especially given his partner's less-than-ideal mood.

"He's shaken enough as it is, Revy." Rock lapsed into mandarin briefly before addressing Revy's question.

"He's confirmed that the other men are not affiliated with the triad, at least not to his knowledge. He said that they were approached by those other guys who claimed to be here to pick up the triad's drugs. They knew from Chang that they were to make the drop with a PT boat, so they knew it was a lie." Rock paused and removed his cigarette packet, extracting three and offering the other two to Revy and the triad member, respectively.

In the time he had paused, Revy picked up on where he was going and continued. "So, the assholes crippled the ship, killed a few guys for good measure, and took the drugs?"

"Actually," The Black Lagoon captain's voice sounded from the doorway next to Revy, "The drugs are still here."

Dutch pushed his sunglasses up onto the bridge of his nose as he took a moment to assess the sole survivor of the attack.

"Rock, tell the man to get on our boat. We're taking him back to Roanapur with us." Dutch turned his attention to Revy and addressed her next, watching her crush the life out of her cigarette underneath her jungle comabat boots.

"You can both help me with the drugs. We'd still get paid for our trouble if we showed up without 'em, but since they're here, I'd hate to leave a job half done."

With that statement, Revy and Dutch entered the room that held the drugs while Rock escorted their survivor to the PT boat.

Once inside the room, Revy saw where most of the small crew had died. The blood trail that ended just outside the door continued a short distance from the room's threshold. It's end point was at the body of an oriental man who lay in a sprawled out supine position about ten feet from the door. He appeared to have suffered from the position of his body and the expression on his face. Blood poured out of his mouth in copious amounts via an entry wound in the soft pallet of his mouth. The gun that he'd used to take his life still rested in the palm of his limp left hand.

Revy just looked at the poor bastard with a grimace of disgust. She wasn't at all disgusted at the sight; she was disgusted by his actions. He took the coward's way out because he was too afraid to die a painful death.

'Well, at least those bastards did something right.' Revy mused to herself as she picked up two cases of drugs. In her mind, it was a good thing that Chang was now short one spineless pussy.

Just as Rock, Revy, and Dutch had picked up all of the cases and started their walk back to the boat, Benny's voice came in over the headsets.

"You might wanna walk a little faster there, Dutch. It looks like our friends are coming back."

Dutch, ever the calm one, gave little outward reaction, but on the inside he was cursing their luck.

"You sure about that, Benny boy?" He asked as all three of them began to run towards the boat to make sure that they didn't get caught in a bad position if this truly was their enemy or a patrol ship.

"I'm pretty sure, Dutch." Benny affirmed "They're headed straight for us at a pretty good speed."

The trio landed awkwardly on their feet from the jump off the deck and promptly hurried for the cargo hold. Neither Dutch nor Rock had to look at Revy to know that she was excited at the prospect of another gun fight with their "friends". She was practically radiating with sadistic glee as her feet beat a quick pattern against the metal floor. She really needed an outlet for all the frustration and inner conflict that Rock seemed to be causing her today, and since she couldn't go starting a fight with him today then she might as well put some insignificant fucks out of their misery.

Alright, that's three. I know you probably expected more violence from Revy given her conflicted state of mind, and I promise it is coming next chapter. However, I also believe that she's come a long way since the U-boat incident and the fight in the market with Rock and I don't think that a fight between the two would be as violent as the one in the market. I don't think she'd point a gun at Rock with the intention of actually killing him anymore either. I promise, the conflict will come to a head and they will confront each other. I'm just working out how its going to happen and when. They've got a ways to go.