A little girl walking alone down the street in Roanapur should have been ludicrous.
If it wasn't a rapist that got them, then it most likely would have been either a cannibal, a human trafficker, or snuff film maker. That was the nature of the city. Even adults had to fear these same things, the only advantage they had being they might be large enough to fight someone off.
Yet this particular one seemed to hold herself in a way that made people, back off. It was strange, and in a way terrifying. No few people forgot the event a few years earlier, at least the ones that had somehow survived in the intervening years, when two European children had a go at Hotel Moscow and left the city in shambles. Somehow, this child seemed more dangerous than they had.
She seemed to be looking for something. Possibly even for someone. Nobody was willing to ask. Even the cops who should have had more reason to say something, didn't want to approach her. At this point though, it had ceased to be a novel thing for people like this to show up.
The girl herself seemed to pay little attention to the majority of the people she saw. They didn't match the description. He was a white male. 6' 3" tall, tanned skin, well muscled, and matching the face in the picture her grandfather had given her. She didn't even know his name.
Off to one side a pair of men watched her, "Huh, I don't see anyone with her. Nobody. Should be an easy payday," one said.
"Trust me man, when they look like that, you get fucked," his companion said.
"Bullshit. It's a little girl. She looks, like, maybe she is eight years old. What the hell could she possibly fucking do to us."
"The last time unaccompanied brats came here, a bunch of the big leagues from the commies got chopped up, and one of them tore the place up with a fifty year old machine gun. It ain't fucking worth messing with. Lets just stick to nabbing local girls. Hell, they bring good prices on the market, and it is a whole lot safer."
"The fuck are you talking about? Chopped up Russians? The fuck is with this place? Ever since I got here, half the fuckers like us seemed scared of their own fucking shadows when people talk about maids. There it is, you actually started looking around like the world was ending. This is supposed to be a haven for criminals, I feel like I have been lied to."
The second man just shook his head, "Roanapur attracts the worst shit you could imagine. In the last two or three years I don't know how we haven't had one of those lost commie nukes show up here and wipe us out. Look, it is fucking miserable out. I am fucking thirsty, and I am fucking horny. I don't want to die, so I am just going to the fucking flag and take care of that. If you want to play russian roulette with that little slut, be my guest. They probably won't ever find your body."
The girl had noticed them talking. She figured out what they meant pretty quickly, and had hidden and readied herself to fight. Her grandparents had made sure she could. It hadn't been pleasant, but it had been. As she realized it wouldn't be necessary she slipped the knife back into the sheath hidden up the back of her shirt.
Her grandparents had told her that an Israeli must always be ready to kill. You never knew when the bastards surrounding their hard won homeland would try to invade and wipe them out again. You never knew when another Nazi bastard would show his face again. Even a child must be ready to strike, because if there was any hesitation, they would be no Israel.
They said that was why her mother was gone, because she had not been ready. Not been ready for the man who killed her to return. The man who killed her mother, he was to die. She didn't know why he had to have hated her mother for him to kill her, but he was going to die for it. Even if it took her life.
"Look, dude, I hate doing shakedowns. They always take too long, and too much effort. Just give us what you can, so that I don't have to break anything that will keep you from earning the rest, ok," Ethan and Revy were not enjoying being freelance guns at the moment.
The man babbled away in Thai again, angering Revy to no end, "Oh you little cocksucker. We know you speak English. Every fuckwit in this city, speaks English. You had to speak English to get the fucking loan."
"It is eighty percent humidity today. I haven't been sleeping well lately, so I am tired. I am hot. I want a fucking beer. Right now, your little act is keeping me from that beer. I am not a nice person, I don't know how I am having this much patience right now. If it wasn't for the fact that the person holding your loan is smart enough to not want me to put a bullet between your eyes, or break your fucking knee caps, is the only reason I haven't resorted to full on violence yet. If you keep this up, I am going to go ahead, bend you over a fucking table, and castrate you with my fucking knife where everyone can see. Am I clear," Ethan held up a switchblade and opened it to drive home the threat.
"Here, take money, leave balls," the man pulled a wad of cash and threw at them as he sprinted away.
The last two or three days had been hard on them. Yes they were well known, but they didn't have a real reputation with the people that had the most amount of work. All the major players had plenty of people for full on violence in the day to day running of things. So they needed to work for the next level down. The local IRA, the Albanians, and other fairly large international crime groups. However to build up that reputation, they were currently working for a group of petty loan sharks. It was hell.
"For fuck sake. I don't know how many more of these limp dicks I can deal with. Lagoon Company is a cornerstone of this hellhole, why doesn't that get us in the fucking door. Hell, I'll even flash my tits at them if it would help," Revy almost threw herself into the cab of the truck that Ethan had managed to find.
"I was kind of hoping it would help too. Apparently though, they would only trust us to deliver the fucking mail. They know we can shoot, the whole fucking town does. It just seems like they don't think that we are fucking reliable on our own," Ethan replied as he slammed the driver's door.
"How much did we even get?"
"About a third of it. So, we are going to have to chase his punk ass down again in a few weeks. God damn it all, it wasn't even all that fucking much. I really wish I didn't have to dust off the whole mercenary thing. I liked working on the engines. It was peaceful. Don't give me that fucking look, you know what I mean. It was more peaceful than what ever is happening in fucking Somalia, or Bosnia, or any of those hellholes. I can't wait for this fucking meeting in a couple of days. Hopefully they talk, we get paid, and then we spend the rest of the night getting shitfaced."
Revy sat up a little straighter, "That is the kind of optimism I can get behind. You don't have to work, I mean , you are fucking richer than anyone else in this fucking shitheap apparently. So why the fuck?"
"Because I would die of boredom sitting on a beach with a bottle of rum, and some blonde bimbo's mouth on my cock. Even injured, if I could, I did something. I was telling Rock about some bodyguard work I did in Japan after I took a couple rounds a few years ago. Then the end of that conversation ended with him blowing a dude's brains out. Fuck, maybe I should retire again and die of boredom. At least I would be getting a blowjob."
"Yeah, you think that, but you drop your pants and any chick would run without a big bundle of cash," Revy snorted.
"What is this fucking obsession you have with making fun of my dick? Ok, it is bigger than most guys, I know this. It isn't a fucking horse cock. I have had sex without killing the woman. I'm starting to think you just want to take it for a fucking test drive," he shook his head as he turned the ignition.
"And be so fucking stretched out you could fly a plane up my babymaker, no thank you. So, what now? Look for another of the dead beats? Or call it quits and hit the Flag?"
Ethan thought for a moment. Technically he was the head of their little operation, and that was mostly because Revy couldn't be bothered to take on any more responsibility than shooting someone in the face nine times out of ten. Of course, they could do both.
"We will just call it a working lunch. I mean, there has to be some down on his luck fuckface that borrowed money he didn't plan to pay back there. We take the book in with us, and hope we don't get so drunk we lose it," he put the truck in drive as he spoke.
"That fucking works for me. Shit, we could always ask Sis for help getting us in," the woman let her head loll back again.
"Oh no. The last time work and her were involved, I was in a car wreck, and had to see my family again. While half of that wasn't that fucking bad, my head still has a little bit of a ring to it from that garbage truck. Besides, then we just look like little bitches who can't do anything on our own."
They rode in silence for a few minutes Neither one really liked wasting words. They didn't really do small talk, and they really didn't have anything else to talk about at that time. They usually knew what the other was up to, because they worked together, and lived a floor apart.
Rock at the least had been lucky enough that Balalaika had gotten him exclusively for the foreseeable future. From what he said, she was paying him around fifty five thousand a year American, for as long as he was willing to do any and all paperwork that came up. Plus provide translation services, and anything like that. Rock hadn't seemed as happy with the fact it was her employing him, but he seemed to be happy going back into the whole office boy routine again.
Revy wasn't happy with it either. Most of the time that Rock had been with Lagoon Company, they had been inseparable. Whether by choice or not. She rarely went drinking without him. Hell, he was the only person she had actually been able to cry over in as far as she could remember. He was the only person that she had been willing to let her guard down enough to try and comfort. It was straight up wrong for her to not be right beside him like now.
When they reached the bar and went inside Bao actually looked happy to see them, "Finally, two of my best customers finally decided to come dragassing back in here. Rum for Revy, and Tequila for Ethan?"
The two looked at him like he had grown another head before Ethan finally spoke, "Uh, Bao, it is like one o'clock. Tequila this early might finally be tough enough to do for my liver. Just Bacardi for both of us," he said cautiously as he looked for anyone that looked like they might try to kill them.
"Fine. Remember what they fucking drink, and they just say fuck you. At least they aren't doing it with fucking lead," the Vietnamese man grumbled as he walked off to get a fresh bottle.
"Ok, that was fucking weird. Uh, you starting to have second thoughts about drinking here right now," Revy was suspicious.
"I don't think he would want to kill us. I mean, we do down a lot of his stock. We also haven't shot the place up in a few months. But it's fucking Bao, he isn't ever happy to see anyone. Hell, I can't remember him even smiling looking at money. Wait, they may have finally finished the arrangements to use this place for that meeting. Fuck, he knows that we are going to have to sit there fucking stone sober, while we watch all of them talk, and drink. He is a fucking bastard," Ethan finally reasoned out.
His companion nodded, "Yeah, that actually sounds more like him. What a fucking time to be alive."
Where they were sitting at the bar their backs were to the door. In most places Ethan would have been against this seating arrangement. Of course he had also dove across that bar a few times, so he was willing to deal with it. That said, they couldn't see the door. Bao had stopped putting mirrors behind the bar, for the obvious point of they tended to attract bullets, and were expensive. So they couldn't see when the door opened.
The Yellow Flag was always fairly busy. Criminals, harried locals, and mercenaries tended to share the characteristic of varying degrees of alcoholism. That same alcohol tended to reduce the human ability of noticing shit in front of their face. Which included the little girl that was completely alone.
She looked around the room. There were plenty of tall men, but all of them were built to be either taller than 6' 3" tall, except for the one man at the bar. His skin was tanned fairly heavily, which matched the description. His arms filled up the sleeve of his shirt almost completely, so muscled.
She reached down into a satchel she was wearing. It had a few items in it, and enough money to get her lodgings and food. What she wanted though, was the photograph. It had a number of people in it, most crossed out with red ink, and a date next to them. In fact only two people weren't. She didn't know what Operation Auschwitz Crows referred to, but seeing her mother crossed out, hurt. She looked at the man next to her, and looked at the man siting at the bar when he turned his head to talk to the woman he was with. It was definitely him.
She had a momentary fit of doubt. Was this really the right thing to be doing? Why would he have wanted to hurt her mother? Her grandparents had been sure that this man was the one that did it. They tracked down where he was, and they trained her to be able to kill him. When they knew for sure, they sent her after him. She hadn't seen who did it herself, but she remembered her mother's last words, and they were sure this had to be him.
She walked up and then spoke, "Hey Mister, can you look at this?"
Ethan and Revy looked back at her, confused looks on their face, and then Revy turned to Ethan, "We have had all of one drink. I know we are not so drunk as to be hallucinating little girls in the bar."
"Right. Uh, little girl, this isn't exactly a place for children. Where are your parents," Ethan turned back to the girl with some hesitance.
"I don't have any. Look at this," she held the picture out to him.
Ethan took it cautiously, aware that this could be part of an unnecessarily elaborate trap by someone for some unknown reason. Looking down he saw the words, and his mind went back almost ten years. Back to the longest continuous contract he had held.
"I have no clue where you got this, but, I haven't thought about this in almost nine years. There were twelve of us mercenaries that had worked in South America, all could speak the language, and knew enough of the culture to fit in. The woman heading us up was Massod. We were hunting about a dozen high rankers from Auschwitz than managed to flee Germany before the end of the war. We managed to get all of them. God, I miss those days, and I miss...," his eyes ran over the sea of eleven red crossouts, and centered on one.
His mind blanked as he looked at the date. Just three months ago. His breathing started speeding up, not wanting to believe that it could be possible. Every part of him not wanting it to be true. He had almost given up what he was for her, she couldn't be gone, not without him having a chance to tell her a proper goodbye.
He was so focused that he almost didn't catch the flash of the knife as it cut through the air, aimed at where his kidney was. It was only the fact that he had been doing this for so long, and part of his mind and body had adapted to always watch for things like this, that he intercepted the child's wrist with ease.
"Who was Adira to you," was his only question.
"Ethan, what the fuck? Why is there a fucking runt trying to kill you, what the fuck were you doing with your life,"Revy's hand had already closed around the grip to one of her cutlasses.
He ignored her and asked the girl again, "Who was Adira to you?"
"My mother. You killed her, I don't know why. My grandfather knows it had to be you, and he made sure I could deal with you,"the poison on the girl's words didn't match the innocence of her age.
Ethan still just looked at the picture. Pain stabbed at his heart, and tears started to well in his eyes. He didn't know how to process this revelation. It was more than he had been prepared for at that moment.
"I was at sea on that date, in the South China Sea, I wasn't near Israel. I couldn't, I, just, I could never have harmed her. I would have killed myself first. I almost did when I left. I was willing to give up everything, to be with her. Her family though, somehow convinced her I was, wronging her somehow. I never found out why," he went from defending himself, to just talking without realizing it.
"My grandfather is...," the girl started.
"A fucking bastard who hates anything and anyone that isn't Jewish, and obsessed with protecting Israel. He hated me because I wasn't Jewish. He threatened me, he tried to have me killed, and he turned your mother against me. I loved her so much. I wanted to stay with her, and give up my guns. Give up this life. Have something I could live for. I...," his voice started cracking, and the people watching, many of them could sympathize with what he was going through.
"Ethan, are you ok," Revy sat a hand on his shoulder, worried with this unfamiliar side of him.
Yeah she had seen him cry, and had been responsible for the mental breakdown that had caused that. Right now though, even she could tell that this was complete and utter devastation and grief that was causing it.
When he calmed down enough he looked the girl in the eye, "What is your name, and how old are you?"
"I'm eight. You, didn't hate my mother, and you, didn't hurt her," the girl's doubt started peaking.
"What is your name," he asked again.
"My name is Hannah."
"Hannah, do you know your father," the question was a little strange to her.
"No, mama said that he had to leave, because she couldn't see through the wrongs of other's. I don't know what she meant by that," she didn't know where this was going.
"When is your birthday," was his next question.
"April 5th. "
That was eight years, and eight and a half months since he had last seen her. It was something that he couldn't believe, but it had to be. Given the propensity for outlandish things he had seemed to have picked up, there wasn't any other explanation. It simultaneously made him happier than he had ever been, and more worried and uncertain.
"Hannah, I know this may come as a shock, and you may not believe it, but I am pretty sure, that I am your father."