Forcibly United
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Rock's Little Sister
Chapter 7
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The young girl breathed lightly where she lay on the couch, and Balalaika tried to resolve the girl she'd recently met with the monster who'd helped to kill over a dozen gangsters in Roanapur. Several of her men were now securing the area immediately surrounding the Lagoon Company office, and making arrangements for Boris.
Some lesser gangsters, such as the Sicilians and the Columbians, would have been talking to Sawyer about those arrangements. Unlike them, she and Chang saw eye to eye on the fact that their own men deserved better. Boris had no family to notify, but he would have a funeral.
Gretel whimpered in her unconsciousness, and Balalaika's eyes went to the young girl's hair. Obviously the haircut had been a side effect of treating the gunshot. The tall Russian teenager had taken the time to check the girl after a doctor had examined and changed the bandages, and she'd noted the large scar which ran slightly to one side starting at the back of her scalp. She'd seen gunshot wounds to the head before and knew just how badly they could alter a person's mind and memories.
She didn't have to turn to know that it was Rock at the doorway. The approaching footsteps had been light and hesitant. Her men would have stepped quicker and more surely, and nobody else would have approached her at the moment.
"Tell me something, Rock... Why would you possibly risk my wrath for this girl?" Balalaika asked. She reached out and brushed an errant black hair from the girl's face. "She caused you and your company no end of grief. You knew precisely what I felt about her and her psychotic brother. So... Why?"
"We've gone over this once before, Balalaika," the young man's voice finally admitted, sounding heavy. He sighed. "I'm... I'm trying to do good, sometimes. Just like with Garcia and just like with Yukio. When I found her again, she had no memories except for me. She didn't know who she was and why I was the only thing she remembered.
"I..." His voice faltered and he fell silent for a moment before continuing. "I just couldn't leave her. I thought maybe she had a chance to start anew. I thought maybe she deserved a chance at a better life."
"She didn't know," Balalaika repeated, mulling it over. Amnesia wasn't exactly a rare side-effect of surviving a gunshot wound to the head.
"Not at all. It's the only reason I dared to bring her back here," the Japanese man admitted.
"Rock..." The tall Russian finally said, turning and giving him a stern look. He met the look with resignation. His eyes widened at the slight smile the woman wore. "Tell her when she wakes up that she and I still need to have words about her teasing me. I won't hold this one to blame for the actions of a dead girl... So long as that girl remains dead. Do I make myself clear?"
Balalaika was in no mood to laugh at the astonished look on the boy's face, though she felt the urge.
"Balalaika..." Rock began, only to be cut off as she taller girl brushed past him. She paused in the hallway.
"Look after her, Rock. It wouldn't do for my new shopping partner to die on me, would it?" Balalaika asked, leaving the room.
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Rock glanced down at the young girl, his mind racing.
Balalaika had just declared that the girl was safe from her retribution. He didn't have to spend every waking moment worrying about whether or not Balalaika would recognize the girl. She was safe from that, now.
Instead, he had to worry about the girl remembering her past.
Something she might have already begun, the Japanese man thought to himself as he remembered the bloody switchblade hidden in a grocery bag.
He didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
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It had been two days.
Two full days since Boris had died. Balalaika's eyes rebelliously teared up against her best efforts as she sat quietly in her chair, the pastor reading a pre-prepared eulogy to her dead comrade. She wondered at the emotion welling up inside her... She hadn't cried over any of her men before. Not once in the twenty years she'd commanded Desantniki. She knew she could blame a part of it on the hormones coursing through her body, but there was more to it than that.
She had a suspicion that she would have cried even without the damnable mushrooms playing havoc with her emotions.
Despite her attempts to keep things simple, keep things... clinical, Boris had become a fixture in her life. She hadn't realized it until the days after his death, but he was in many ways more than just a simple underling. He'd been the one who finished most of her thoughts, the one man whom she could speak with as something close to an equal.
It wasn't until he was gone that she realized how much he'd insulated her from the hero worship with which her men viewed her. To the men serving underneath her, she could do no wrong. To them, every word was law. She could have made the most tactically unsound order imaginable and the men below her would carry it out without hesitation.
Boris, her Sergeant, had always been there to temper her first impressions. He'd been the one man whom she could rely on to point out the flaws in her plans. The one man she could depend on to, if not challenge her, at least suggest that there was something she could fix.
He'd been the one man in the entire damned unit to recognize that she was human. The fact she had nobody to recognize those faults now was a blow against her entire force which could cripple it with just one false move.
She could not afford one false move.
Not in a city like Roanapur.
Balalaika knew her own nature. She knew that there were times when her blood was up and someone needed to die and damn the consequences, that person would die. She knew that without someone there to be her foil, without someone to counterbalance her own bloodthirsty instincts, it would not take much to lead her to her own downfall.
Her instincts made her a good commander, but she also knew it was Boris' moderating influence which had made her truly great. Without his calm hand to direct her commands through the rapids, Desantniki would have shattered on the rocks which tested them long ago. Without his calm hands now, her men faced the most perilous time they'd ever encountered since the war.
So, fighting her grief as the funeral ended, the Russian teenager made the most important phone call she would make in a long time.
Balalaika knew that nobody was perfect.
Yet she hoped that one person's imperfections would compliment her own.
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It had been several days since Boris' funeral. Dutch thought that, once that tragic ceremony was finished with, business would get back to normal.
His current meeting was proving that things would be anything but normal.
"You're resigning?" Dutch demanded, his eyes growing wide. The black man was not an easy man to surprise, yet his Japanese underling had just done exactly that. To be fair to the young man in question, he was looking fairly green about the decision himself. "Rock, can you explain what the fuck is going on here?"
"Balalaika needs someone who can moderate her. Someone who can stand up to her when she's being stupid," Rock finally said, quirking his eyebrow and flashing a wan grin at the incredulous look on his former employer's face. "She didn't quite phrase it that way. I get the impression that she's not used to her situation. I can't just let her deal with it without helping."
"And what situation is that, exactly?" Dutch grunted, cracking open a can of Heireken and quirking an eyebrow at the young man.
"Boris wasn't just an underling. He helped her plan most of her operations. As you've seen with me and Revy... Having someone to point out your flaws can help," Rock said with a shrug, taking a sip of his own drink. He sighed heavily. "Dutch, if anybody else could do this job..."
"...You'd pass it on to them," the Captain of the Black Lagoon finished sourly. "It's not like anyone in the whole damned city would point out her flaws except Chang..."
"...and for obvious reasons, she doesn't think Chang has her best interests at heart," Rock noted with a shrug. He spread his hands helplessly. "It's either I take this job and leave you, or I stand back and watch Hotel Moscow implode. And if they go, so does this city. All it'd take is Balalaika's death for Roanapur to have a couple hundred men nearly as good as Revy rampaging through it. It's not exactly a happy thought."
"Obviously we can't allow that to happen," Dutch noted sourly. He sighed heavily, gesturing vaguely to a bottle at the top of his bookshelf. "Grab that thing and two glasses, Rock."
"Dutch, that's your-" Rock began, only to be interrupted.
"Yeah, I know how damned expensive that shit is. Bring it down here, and bring two glasses with it, Rock," Dutch said with a grin, pushing his glasses up the brim of his nose. Once Rock settled the glasses onto his desk, Dutch poured a generous measure into each and deliberately threw the cork of the bottle out the window. "I always knew this day would come, Rock. You're way too damned smart for your own good, you know that?"
"It's been said," Rock admitted, taking the cup and slugging back the contents. The American grinned at the way the Japanese man coughed.
"Bourbon'll do it to you every time, I swear," Dutch grunted, pouring the young man another drink. Rock flashed his former employer a dirty look, which the sunglasses-clad man returned with a grin. "Hey, I can't send you off without giving you a proper goodbye. Drink up, man!"
"Damn!" The Japanese man coughed after draining his second glass, glaring at Dutch through watering eyes. "Are you trying to kill me or something?"
"I'll leave that to Revy, since I assume you haven't told her yet," Dutch said with a grin, though his voice was oddly serious.
"Yeah... Revy," Rock repeated, purposefully pushing his glass in Dutch's direction. The older man refilled it with a tip of his wrist. "I'm not sure what I'm going to tell her. What I can tell her, really..."
"Rock... Don't worry about it too much," Dutch said with a shrug. He took a casual sip of his own drink as he relaxed into his chair with a sigh. "If you just talk to Revy about it, I'm sure she'll be fine. It's not like you're moving halfway across the world or something. Just tell her you've decided to work for Balalaika and I'm sure things will work out fine."
"...You're right, Dutch," Rock declared, his third glass of bourbon finished. "I'm just going to go and tell Revy what I'm doing! She's got to respect that, right!?"
"Go for it," the black American encouraged, watching as the Japanese man left the office.
He relaxed into his chair, tipping the last ounce or two of bourbon into his own glass before lighting up a smoke.
And then he waited.
He heard the dull murmur of Rock talking in the next room.
"You're fucking QUITTING to work for Big Sis!?"
Revy's return shriek was quite a bit more distinguishable.
Ignoring the sounds of chaos in the next room, Dutch wondered if Rock would ever learn not to listen to his suggestions.
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Author's Notes:
I tawt I taw a status quo shattering! I did, I did! I did taw a status quo got shattering! It seemed to me to be a natural development. Like it or hate it, I've decided to distinguish myself from the Black Lagoon canon by not repeating future arcs. Some events may come into play, but their resolution will no doubt be altered by the rippling effect the rapidly changing canon has on them.
I don't credit Balalaika with being an absolutely vengeance-filled woman for any slight done to her men. If so, Dutch and the Black Lagoon crew would have been killed for daring to try to help Gretel escape in the first place. That, combined with Gretel's rather selfless defense of Balalaika, gives the little Romanian a pass as far as I can determine. We'll see how long this lasts as the dividing line between Greta and Gretel crumbles.
Well... The next chapter is going to be the beginning of the Eda arc. I've slightly chanced the focus (it's not going to be in San Francisco any longer), but the main intent is going to be the same: A more light-hearted arc which mainly focuses on Ranma, Ryouga, and Eda working together to stomp some criminals. However, I intend to at least try to work on other stories, so no promises about the update schedule.