Forcibly United
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Rock's Little Sister
Chapter 5
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Preface: No other to way to put this, I used a really offensive word in this chapter. Yes, even for the rating I gave this story and considering the sort of language used in Black Lagoon. And yes, it is that word and it is used rather offensively.
Read the Author's Notes before you judge me on it.
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Sitting in the black sedan in front of Hotel Moscow's headquarters, a tall man pondered fate and the road which had lead to the circumstances he now found himself facing.
Boris was a well-trained professional. He was a veteran soldier, de-facto leader of the Desatniki's day-to-day activities thanks to Balalaika's other interests, and above all, the last line of defense between the woman's life and anything which might threaten it. His devotion wasn't hard to question, given the hell he'd lived through for the decade he'd spent in Afghanistan.
His scar was the reason Balalaika still lived. He considered it a personal shame that the scars she currently bore weren't his own.
Pondering the war, the Russian man saw a rather perverse irony in the United States' current invasion of the country. He'd routinely fought against United States-trained foes during the war. He presumed that at least a few of the same United States troops who'd trained the Afghan rebels as grunts had now advanced far enough in the military that they were forced to plan strategies around the very same men they'd once taught.
He idly scratched the scar tissue on his nose as he waited. His Capitan was late. Then again, she'd been rather... different, of late. She was certainly more emotional than the girl he'd seen rise above him. The young sniper who'd come to his unit had been a rather terrified creature at the outset of the war. Terrified, like all of the new recruits were terrified, but otherwise she'd been somewhat detached from it all.
It was that detachment which eventually made her a good commander.
This emotional Balalaika was new to him. Not that it caused his devotion to her to wavered one iota, of course. She'd more than proven herself in the years since she'd risen to command first her squad, then her unit, then her own small army. Each and every man under her command was willing to gladly die for her for a very good reason.
Yet these days... Half the time she was like a spoiled young woman, not the capable military leader he was familiar with. Never before had she thrown tantrums over being bested intellectually. Even when her foes had outmanouvered her and cost her the lives of her men in the Afghan war, she'd merely clamped down on her anger and done her best to fix the mistake.
She had never needed to go "shoot something repeatedly" in the past, like she'd had to after dealing with Rokuro Okajima. Rock, as his compatriots called him. He was surprised that his superior's passionate reactions to the boy hadn't provoked a more jealous response from him. He considered it a moment before realizing that their own relationship, as long as it had lasted, was filled with ritual and boundaries.
There were certain lines they did and did not cross. Rock, however, either did not recognize those lines or purposefully chose to step across them.
Rock did something that the tall Russian knew few men had ever done: He challenged her. Not behind her back, or using trickery, but openly besting her in every arena over which he'd ever claimed any sort of control. The tall Russian man himself had known Balalaika for over two decades, and even he would never have dared consciously pushed the woman's temper the way the young Japanese man did time and time again.
Truth be told, he couldn't work up the anger to be dismayed about Gretel's apparent return, given the circumstances. One of their own had been shot in the head and survived during the Afghanistan conflict, and he'd undergone a complete shift in personality... He was pretty much a new man. He'd lost old friends, gained new ones, and had had to be reintegrated into the unit like he was a new recruit.
A new recruit wearing an old friend's face, but war had bred that sort of sentimentality out of Desatniki long before it had belonged to Balalaika. That sort of sentimentality had died when the unit had still belonged to the motherland. Boris found it hard to hold someone accountable for the mistakes they'd made when they'd never remember and were too busy being a different, and in some ways, a better person.
In fact, Ruslan had been a much better man after his first death. Boris wondered if Fate were having a laugh at the fact that the girl who'd killed Ruslan in her first "life" was now facing a similar situation.
Yet unlike Ruslan, this girl Gretel didn't have the might of the Soviet army behind her recovery. She had no armed comrades to support her and help her through this trial. She only had a young Japanese man and, perhaps, the support of three others who would probably fold as soon as pressure was applied.
As Balalaika climbed into the car, checking her gun, Boris schooled his face into a passive frown. Much as he might wish to sympathize with the Romanian hiding with the Lagoon Company, his own priorities were perfectly clear: If the blond teenager sitting in the car behind him ordered the girl's death, he'd shoot her himself without hesitation.
Regardless of how much she'd changed recently, it didn't invalidate the miracles she'd performed in the past. Each and every one of the men in Desatniki owed their lives to her, and thus, they were hers to command.
Even now.
He turned the keys in the ignition. Hotel Moscow Intelligence had placed Rock at the Lagoon Company's office, and Balalaika wanted answers. It was his duty to ensure she got them.
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Tsung knew what he needed to do. The driver pulled the car up to the rear of the Lagoon Company office quiety at precisely the same time as three cars pulled up front.
His AK47-SU was a comforting weight at his side, the shoulder strap pulling slightly on the slate-grey suit jacket he wore as he got out of the car. In the front, some psycho bitch was shooting up the office, which only helped aid their attack. Tsung knew that the fourteen men in the front would keep Dutch pinned until he and his bodyguards could shoot the stupid nigger from behind.
He had the Caucasians hitting the front alongside the more foolhardy members of his gang, where the casualties would be the heaviest. The white-faced pricks and the morons would absorb the heaviest casualities, and he and the rest of his men would sneak in the back and rid Roanapur of that bastard Dutch.
That would get them in good with Chang. It would show the Triad leader just what sort of men Tsung and his fellows were. Chang would know that Tsung and his brothers were worthy candidates, that they belonged to that elite body and needed to be integrated.
He clicked off the safety, motioning one of the men up the stairs first.
Maybe they'd even get to take care of that arrogant Japanese prick in the bargain.
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Balalaika flashed her Sergeant a concerned look as they pulled up behind the Lagoon Company offices. The lot wasn't anything special, and more than once the blond Russian had heard Dutch complain about the rates the building manager charged to secure a parking space at the rear. Especially since he'd secured three parking spaces, despite the fact that Benny was the only one who maintained a car.
Dutch knew that both Chang and Balalaika felt the urge to drop by occasionally, but he'd made it rather plain that both criminal heads were given one spot apiece, in the interest of fairness. One spot for Benny's classic car, one spot for her limo, and one spot for Chang's car.
That, and nothing else, was the deal. Dutch had made it very clear that Chang parking in her spot should be considered an insult, and had told Chang that if she ever dared park in his spot he should construe it the same. Each spot belonged to only one person, someone almost nobody in Roanapur was stupid enough to fuck with.
Police patrols were paid very handsomely to make certain that any cars which parked in the three spaces which did not belong were removed within twenty minutes. That told the Hotel Moscow leader that the men who'd lurched their cars to a stop in those spots had been there for considerably less time, as no officers were staring blankly at the cars and wondering what they should do.
She drew her weapon and checked the chamber, making sure that a round was secured therein.
"Boris," she began, then grinned, feral, at the dark look on her compatriot's face. Instead of continuing, she said, "I do hope you've been practicing at the range."
Despite the strict level of professionalism he'd maintained between them for nearly two decades, the tall man allowed a snort to escape as he glanced up at the rear view mirror.
"Capitan, we both know I'm the better shot without a scope," the man noted, earning a smile from the teenager.
"Perhaps you'll get to prove it, then," the young girl noted, stepping out of the car.
Both Russians advanced up the back stairs.
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A formerly-blond Romanian girl had followed her brother when he left their apartment. He'd been rather secretive about his reason for leaving, and the girl had decided that she was sick of the people in her life deciding she was 'too young' to hear certain facts.
After all, her brother was a pirate, just like that nice young police officer in her foster village had feared. That didn't make him a bad person. Yet despite that fact, he was the best thing to happen to the girl. He'd been straining to hold back his tears when he'd finally hugged her once more.
The feeling had been burned into her, like she'd never been hugged before.
And so, she'd followed Rock to the Lagoon Company's office. She'd held back for five minutes, worrying that maybe she'd be discovered... but she'd slowly crept up the hall. A noise in the hallway had prompted her to dive into an unused stock room.
A stock room where she was quickly joined several men, notably a young Chinese man with an AK-47-SU. He glanced nervously at the doorway to her big brother's office with a calculating look, and it was then that the Romanian girl knew fear. This man was here to try to hurt her big brother.
All she had to do was stop him: Yet her hands found no weapon when she reached for them. She had no machinegun nor axe at her side to end his life. So the dark-haired girl hesitated for just a moment, fearing, for once, for her own life.
It was enough to further complicate matters.
The nice Russian girl with the unfortunate scars was slowly advancing down the hallway, her tall driver at her side. The young Chinese man was aiming his assault rifle at the woman, a manic grin on his face. And despite the fact she was unarmed, Greta knew she couldn't let him harm the girl who'd flirted with her big brother.
Despite their pretensions, she'd read more in their interactions.
Thuis, Greta took a deep breath... And Gretel ran.
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Balalaika had taken one step off the stairs when she saw a short-haired Chinese man tackled out of a side room, his AK-47-SU clattering to the ground by the short-haired brunette who'd hit him. A young girl that Balalaika recognized instantly. Gretel ran towards the Russian teen, spinning and aiming the gun she'd torn from the chinese man as she ran.
Another rifle flashed from the door and fired blindly. Balalaika only had time to widen her eyes in surprise. Her Sergeant had time for considerably more.
Balalaika could only assume that Boris had known he was a dead man as soon as the rifle appeared, because two shots struck the tackled man in the temple and the third blasted the hand appearing from the room, loosing the rifle from its grasp and forever ridding it of two fingers.
It didn't stop the rifle from spitting five bullets. Those five bullets were enough to end a twenty-year partnership.
Boris fell, his face surprised at his own death. His gun clattered to the ground with a disturbing finality.
In that same time... Gretel never managed to fire a shot from her gun, the thuds of two bullets stricking flesh sounding oddly muted as the girl put herself between the gun and the Russian teen. Balalaika slumped, holding the bleeding young girl in her arms. A girl she'd wanted to kill herself, barely seconds ago.
"I couldn't live with myself if I just let them shoot you..." the hateful girl muttered, her eyes fluttering closed. She continued to speak, her voice growing weak. "Big brother would... hate to... lose... you..."
The Russian teen aimed her gun at the doorway, knowing more men were coming... and feeling more conflicted than she had ever felt before, as a mortal enemy clutched her desperately for protection.
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Author's Notes, which are long for obvious reasons:
I used the N-bomb. I'll man up and admit that I'm white.
Here's the thing: I write a lot of crap from the perspective of the person in question, not from my own. A very good friend of mine is Black (not that bullshit term African-American, since she's a) ancestrally from Cuba and b) is a born Canadian so she is neither African nor American), and believe me, I don't like using the N-bomb like that. But let's face it... Black Lagoon is a mixed cast of a lot of foul-mouthed people, and somebody SHOULD have called Dutch it by now. Given the language displayed in the series, it's actually a rather telling that it's that term that's been left out, beside bitch, fucker, bastard, etc. Criminals aren't the most politically correct people, after all.
Could I have used another term? Probably. But people don't tend to think of enemies in any terms other than the obvious physical differences, generally. Dutch is, first and foremost, that damned black bastard to his enemies. And let's face it... "black bastard" isn't the most offensive term his enemies can think of, so it's not the term they're going to use.
The character who used it in his narrative scene is an offensive person and you're supposed to hate him because he's a horrible person. He is exactly the sort of person who would use that word in exactly that sort of fashion. Just understand that I knew full well that I knew exactly how terrible the word is, and I purposefully chose to use it in his narrative instead of as a part of his dialogue because it probably struck you a lot more forcefully that way.
Ignoring a word doesn't erase it from existence or change the horror attached to it. I'd rather it be kept in use and that people understood exactly how fucked up it is.
It's rather ironic at this point that I wrote this story to get away from thought-provoking shit. On the bright side, I really fucking doubt I'll use that word again. I mean, I wrote the mini-essay above just to justify it once, which should say how serious I am about it.
No promises that I'll be revisiting my psychoticupdate schedule when I first started to write this story. I wish I could. I'll hope I can. But let's face it... 63,000 words in a little over a month? NaNoWriMo is a challenge for a reason, kids. We'll see how things go.
Anyway, this story needs to stop making me learn crap. I actually looked up some information on the Soviet war in Afghanistan just to flesh out those first scene with Boris. Keep in mind that I was writing from the perspective of a Russian Afghan war-vet there, which is why it might be kinda anti-America.
P.S.: All of you who PMed me over my break, I'll be getting back to you shortly.