Chapter 2: Leave

"Hoo boy, look at that sun!" Revy's shrill voice was the first thing to reach Rock's ears as he emerged from below deck. The second was that familiar click as she cocked one of her Cutlasses and pointed it forward. A row of empty beer cans had been put in a line at the end of the Lagoon. "You ready to get your ass whooped, Dutch?" The leader of Lagoon Company looked far less enthusiastic about this than Revy, but he played along without protest. His Magnum in one hand and a beer in the other, he cocked the hammer and waited for her to begin.

"You're in a hell of a mood, I'll give you that," he told her blithely. "Fire away, then." Revy smiled from ear to ear and extended her arm, shutting one eye and looking down the length of the weapon with the other.

"Alright. You're about to see how real shooting is done." Rock had been momentarily blinded by the sunlight and almost walked right past the others. He stopped himself just in time, but Revy had apparently noticed him. She subtly cocked her head to the side before letting off a shot. The bullet crunched through the side of the can but hadn't hit it head on. The majority of it remained unharmed. "Ah, shit!" Dutch seemed far too pleased.

"Well, that's too bad."

"Bullshit! Rock distracted me. Nice going, dickwad!" Rock wasn't sure why exactly he was even remotely surprised by this outburst. He just shrugged his shoulders and brushed it off. Dutch, on the other hand, pointed his Magnum forward and blew the can directly in front of him to smithereens before taking a long sip of his beer.

"I believe you were about to show me how 'real' shooting was done?" He couldn't have been smugger if he tried. Revy elbowed him in the stomach, though that did not seem to bother him at all. He barely flinched. While the other two half-heartedly wrestled with one another, Rock made his way over to Benny. Considering he was never one to bear weapons, he seemed content to simply sit and watch, though even on a day like this, Benny probably would have rathered be down with his computers.

"You took your time crawling out of bed this morning," he told the jaded Rock. Indeed, he had only been awake ten minutes, having been roused by the commotion up on deck. Emerging to the display he had seen made him question whether it was worth waking at all. "Late night?"

"Not particularly," Rock answered. That was a lie, of course. The rest of them didn't know this, or at least they had never told him otherwise, but Rock hadn't been sleeping that well during the last three weeks. His nights were restless and far more difficult than they probably should have been, and when he did finally sleep, his mind would not rest. If it wasn't bad dreams that woke him, the slightest commotion in the surrounding area did. It had been three weeks and two days, to be exact, since the beginning of these restless nights. Rock hadn't been keeping track, but his mind had seen fit to remind him occasionally how long it had been since he orchestrated the death of one of the deadliest individuals to ever step foot in Roanapur.

Hunter Woods was dead, his body rotting more and more each day. But Rock had come to learn that even in death, people who leave their mark on you never truly let you be. The crime lord had been in Rock's thoughts a lot since his death. Rock's part in it did not necessarily bother him, at least not like it had when it first happened. He had made his peace with what he did. There was no other way out of that situation. Hunter was far too dangerous, not to mention the fact that if he had been allowed to live, it would be Rock's body rotting instead. But that hadn't stopped visions of the man haunting Rock as he slept, causing his guilt he thought had been buried to resurface. It would not eat away at him like it might have had he not worked through it. Revy had helped in that regard. She made him see that he did the right thing, no matter what way he looked at it. But his conscience was a fickle, unpredictable thing. That guilt, no matter how unwarranted, would always be there. It would just take time to fully process it. When that time came, Hunter Woods would haunt him no more. But for now, he would just have to put up with it.

Benny gestured to the other two with a movement of his head. Rock turned to see Revy caught in a headlock. She had apparently tried to take Dutch down, an ambitious goal, truth be told. She struggled against his arms energetically before relenting. A throaty laugh escaped her, then. Revy's temperament had noticeably improved since the fall of the Dead Men. To Rock, she was pretty much the same old volatile gunslinger he had come to know and love, but she was far less irritable than she used to be. Questions that would have once been met with scorn or backlash now received genuine, if somewhat sarcastic, answers. Situations that once brought out her aggressive side now failed to set her off. And altercations like the one she found herself in now that, before, provoked and encouraged Revy's less than desirable behaviour more than anything, would now cause laughter. She was a changed woman, at least to a point. It was still her, unmistakeably, but evolved, perhaps. Rock was happy to see her this way. His relationship with her was almost symbiotic. Though he had never really contemplated it before, the fact remained that their moods had a correlation with one another. When Revy became upset, so did Rock. When he was in pain, so was she. And now that her mood had more or less been improved in a permanent fashion, so had his.

"Can't say I've seen Revy like this too often," Benny piped up, possibly noticing Rock's silence. "She's had one hell of a year and a half. I half expected her to just crack and shoot the whole place to shit."

"I'd be lying if I wasn't expecting a meltdown at some point," Rock agreed. "It's nice to see her actually enjoying herself for once." That, too, was a very apparent change that had taken place. Before, Revy was capable of enjoying herself, but that hopeless, overhanging, pervading sense of bleakness and sorrow always tainted each moment. No good thing could ever last for long. That did not seem to be the case anymore. There was peace now. Peace. That had long been a foreign concept to Roanapur. Even before the unending string of conflicts that began with Wolf Pack, the city had been the choice warring grounds for many a criminal. This was the city where some of the most powerful crime syndicates in the world were born, where countless wannabe criminals had come to die, where the Bloodhound of Florencia had caused outright mayhem, where a young pair of Romanian twins met their end after the brutal slaughter of countless victims. And yet, it seemed the city had finally built a reputation within specific circles of lawbreakers without drawing unwanted attention to itself. People did not trifle with Roanapur anymore. They knew better, Rock could tell that much. There would always be death and the daily grind would continue. There was business to be done, after all. The cartels and ruling factions still had their own personal ventures to see to. But as for those special individuals who thought themselves savvy enough to take on the Triad or Hotel Moscow? They did not exist anymore. Those who had were now dead or elsewhere.

Dutch finally released Revy, who responded by punching him in the chest. She then grabbed a beer from the cooler and sat herself down on one of four lawn chairs, propping her feet up on the side of the boat. Rock made his way over to her as Dutch headed back inside, presumably to check the radar. Regardless of the current state of the city, Lagoon were still as cautious as ever. Revy grew quiet as her eyes fell on the ocean around them. The city itself was not in view, but it was less than a half hour away. Occasionally, Lagoon would come out here just to relax. As quiet as the city was, it was still a lot of noise they grew tiresome of every so often. This spot out on the sea was their little refuge when they needed to get away. Ironic, in some ways, fitting in others. They were pirates, through and through. It was almost perfect that the vastness of the waters so near the city served as their escape when they needed it.

"Could almost just stay out here, huh?" Revy mused, slowly taking a drink of her beer, never taking her eyes from the water. "Hear that?"

"What?" asked Rock, glancing around him for some source of whatever it was Revy had apparently heard.

"Nothing," she answered. "Whole lot of it, too. It's dead silent out here." Rock looked abashed, then, considering he must have looked quite foolish scanning the area around him wildly. He was glad Revy had been facing away from him. "No gunfire, no car engines. Not a damn thing. Silence like this is hard to pass up." Rock grunted.

"I don't know," he began gleefully. "It would be pretty hard to get a pizza delivered out here. You sure you'd be able to live like that?" Revy got a good chuckle out of that.

"You've got me there. Still, you gotta admit…this is pretty good, partner."

"Yeah, it is." Dutch emerged then with his cell in hand. Rock wasn't aware he had been taking a call.

"I hope you ain't expecting a call, Dutch." The voice was Benny's, a little more concern than he probably intended.

"Don't you worry, Benny-Boy," Dutch reassured him. "Just a precaution. I doubt we'll be getting any personal calls, but you never know."

"Well, I'll be glad if we never get any calls again," Benny told him. "With the way the last few have gone, you can understand why I'd rather you chucked that phone into the water."

"I second that," Rock concurred. Lagoon never received jobs over their personal cell phones, but Rock shared Benny's sentiment. They were glad to be taking some well-earned leave from working.

"So do I," Revy chirped mischievously. Rock suspected she had more desire to see Dutch toss his phone than anything else. Dutch smirked.

"You three realise I'm not actually getting rid of the cell?"

"Pity," Benny muttered. "If I have to hear a phone go off one more time, I might throw myself in the ocean."