Description: Kira returns with some of her mercenaries from shooting people for fun and profit, but is not happy with Shirow because he didn't shoot a kid, and due to that, she got shot. Zhenya arrives with medical equipment, and sees the future in which she kills Shirow. However, she doesn't like how that goes, so she instead just says vague all-knowy stuff. Kira dismisses the rest of the mercenaries, and Zhenya treats her wounds and comforts her.
AFRICA, SOMEWHERE IN THE CONGO
THE DRAGON'S LAIR
The doors to the large gathering area burst open with a resounding crash that threatens to tear the already abused metal slab off their hinges as they give way to the rather forceful application of a military issue boot. Kira appears after it within a few heartbeats but the harsh gutteral swears that spew from her bloody mouth slip through first making it abundantly clear who is responsible for the racket.
The mercenary captain marches into the den of her base with a look that could melt steel, randomly pausing to kick pieces of furniture and sections of the wall that happen to be nearby as she makes her way towards one of the center of the room. Half a dozen plush couches are arranged in something of a semi-circle around a smaller but much nicer looking easy chair.
The well worn leather creaks softly as she flops down with a grunt. A handful of strapping young men and one woman shuffle in after the irrate blonde with looks that range from embarassed to disinterested beneath layers of grime, mud, and smeared camoflage paint. All of them sport injuries but none of them look serious; infact the only person who seems to be hurt beyond a few scrapes and bruises is Kira herself.
Leaning back in her throne of cushions, the angry woman peels off her tactical armor with a hiss of pain and a few grunts, tossing the heavy slab of kevlar and cermamic plates onto the ground. A blossom of red stains the pale flesh on her side where a long ragged gash runs the length of her ribs. It looks ugly but not life-threatening, which is probably why Kira has enough energy to pissed off.
"Goddamnit, Shirow!" A large man of Asian descent flinches upon being called by name but remains silent, staring at the far wall. "What part of 'clean fucking sweep' didn't you understand?! That means every piece of shit that has a pulse gets turned into a corpse! I don't care if he was a kid, your fucking sympathy put a bullet in my side!"
Zhenya stands outside the door, in her usual paramilitary getup, a tower over her shoulder, holding a yellow plastic tub of warm soapy water with a few rags in it. She hears Kira yelling at Shirow, and her eyes narrow, then close.
~~~~~~
She opens her eyes, opens the door, walks through. "Allowing security risks because of sentimentality is something only fools do."
With her free hand, she throws a couple of knives - one into Shirow's eye, one into his heart. His eyes widen momentarily, and his body convulses, a half-articulated scream emerging from his mouth, then he slumps to the ground, bleeding. The rest of the group is staring at her.
She looks over to Kira. She does not seem pleased with this particular course of action.
~~~Let's not follow that vision.~~~
Zhenya's eyes open, to see the door into the large gathering room before her. Her visions aren't always right, but they're a decent guide. One that's stopped her from needing things like 'common sense' or 'social skills' to some extent, because she can see what might be bigger errors before they happen.
She walks out into the gathering area with a yellow plastic tub of warm soapy water with a few rags in it held up with one hand, a clean dry towel draped over her shoulder, a medical kit in her other hand.
She looks over to Shirow as she walks in, remembering how she saw him die by her hand. "...Maybe you aren't cut out for this work, Shirow." She sounds less enraged, more dissapointed. "Allowing security risks because of sentimentality is unwise." Her eyes shift over to Kira as she says this.
She kneels down next to Kira, sets down the medical kit and tub of water, and picks up the towel, moving to press it against her side and apply pressure until she's sure the bloodflow has ceased. She furrows her brow. "I'm sorry, Kira. I should've seen that coming." She sounds like she's confessing a sin.
For the most part, the Asian man just stands there looking thoroughly chastized until Zhenya enters and gives him her cold emotionless stare. A visible shudder runs down the man's spine but he remains silent and tries to look small and uninteresting. It's not an unusual response towards the seer's presence, atleast for the newer members who aren't used to her matter-of-fact attitude and creepy propensity to be right about things she could't possibly know.
At the moment, however, his discomfort isn't particularly high on Kira's list of things that are relevant to her interests. When her second steps into begin treating the wound, the blonde bites her stream of curses off with a click of her tongue and motions vehemently towards the doors.
"Piss off, all of you. Shirow! You and me are gonna have a talk later."
Refusing to look at source of her ire any longer, Kira turns to glower at the far wall until the shuffle of boots and the clang of a closing door signals the egress of her subordinates. The touch of the cloth against her wound causes her to hiss through clenches teeth but she doesn't flinch away from it, her fingers digging into the pads of her armrests as an outlet instead.
"Don't be stupid, Zhenechka," she says, using the familiar nickname for her childhood friend.
She sighs and tries to relax, peeling off her shirt with a bit of effort to get it out of the way so the other girl can work. Covered in blood it's not going to see much more use at this point anyways except maybe as a training tool for the dogs. Kira wears no bra - such things are just a hinderance when combined with her already restrictive armor and the heat in Africa is more than unpleasant enough without extra layers of fabric sweating her into dehydration.
There's no reason for her to be ashamed though. Both of them are women and professionals who have seen far worse things in their lives. Neither of them are immature children to be embarassed about such a thing, particularly when there are medical reasons behind it. And, more purtinently, both of them have already gone far further than showing each other a little skin.
Kira reaches out to carass the side of her lover's face with an uncharacteristically gently touch and gives her a reassuring smile, her angular features twisting into an amused mask that most people would find either exotic or frightening, depending on what kind of a mood she is in.
"I can't expect you to catch everything. It's my fault, I should have been more thorough when I ran him through the basics."
Zhenya stops paying attention to the others as she applies pressure, her eyes solely focused on the task at hand. She'd probably see some random murder attempt towards her or Kira coming, after all, and she wants to treat this wound as perfectly as possible. Scar tissue is slightly weaker than normal tissue, so the less scarring the better. She doesn't mind how it looks - she already finds each little scar on Kira's body beautiful. They're a reminder of her own little failures, a warning to do better next time, perhaps. She glances up to Kira as the rest of them leave.
"Being able to kill isn't something you can just do through normal training. This is why the Kaibiles have their trainees raise a puppy, then kill and eat it. If he can't handle killing, he shouldn't be with us - both for our sake and for his." She closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them. "I'd suggest giving him the option of enough of a severance package to go live somewhere a little more his speed, or doing the cruellest tasks we have to perform at the moment for the next month."
She removes the towel as Kira strips off her shirt, then reapplies it again, still more focused on treating the wound then Kira's body for the moment. She smiles up at Zhenya at the caress, as she says she can't catch everything. "I wonder if you'd get stronger if you killed me."
Kira's hand pauses its slow stroking of the raven haired beauty's face for a moment. Her hesitation is brief, one eyebrow quirking upwards at the suggestion, but her aggressive smile never falters.
Zhenya's love for morbid jokes is something that took a bit of getting used to when they first met. Caught in a war that was both horrific and brutal, neither of them possessing either a home or a family, it had been shocking to hear the young girl speak so casually about death as if it had been something no more upsetting than a bit of spilled milk. Eventually though she came to find a strange sort of comfort in the way that her friend could ignore the things that would drive most people mad. It was one of the only escapes she had at the time, a way to bring levity in times when every day was a new attrocity.
To see her reactions to those sorts of things now it might be argued that she /had/ gone mad and Zhenya was simply the one who had made the transition a little more functional. Whatever the case may be, her lover's joke is taken for what it is, and Kira just lets out a throaty laugh that never quite makes it to her eyes.
"I suppose I might. Perhaps when the day comes that we find an opponent who actually gives me trouble, we can test that theory." Her hand drifts down to cup the back of Zhenya's neck and she pulls her closer, bringing their faces within a few inches as she leans down and smirks through half-lidded eyes. "Until then you're stuck having to put up with me."
Zhenya stares into Kira's eyes for a long moment, lips slightly parted, just a trace of a smile.
"Guess so."
She then looks away, covering her upper cheeks and partially her eyes up with her hand as if she's trying to conceal a blush. But she's definitely not blushing. "Don't get me wrong. It's not like I'm binding your wounds because I care about you or anything. I'd do this for anyone." When she was younger she was super blushy and awkward around Kira, but over a couple of years it faded as her infatuation turned into more of an obsession. But she finds it amusing to play the tsundere role, among other things, although she doesn't go to any particular effort with anything but the gestures. After a moment, she lowers her hand, and looks back into her goddess's eyes, leans her forehead against hers.
"We should finish up with treatment as soon as possible to lower chances of infection." Her tone is gentle and loving. Feeling it's been long enough to staunch the flow of blood, she removes the bloody towel, folding it and placing it carefully on the floor, then lowers her hands to pick up the soapy water-soaked rag, but waits for Kira to release her neck before she gets to actually cleaning the wound.
Zhenya's games don't fool her in the least but she plays along anyways giving the young woman the attention she wants. Her gaze never waivers as her companion looks away in mock embarassment, making excuses for the direct medical attention being provided despite the handful of competant doctors they keep on staff. That none of them have come to check on her yet is a pretty solid indication that Zhenya intercepted them even before the mercenary captain returned from the field.
"Is that so? Careful, keep that up and you might make me jealous."
Kira's tone remains soft and playful but there's a hint of truth hiding in the words that dances through the narrow spheres of her piercing eyes. Jealous and over protective have been two of her traits ever since the day she was able to admit that her feelings for her long-time partner were more than just friendship. More than one of her recruits have earned themselves quick trips to unpleasant places by making moves on her woman; usually the doctor's office, sometimes the morgue when she's in a particularly foul mood.
Fortunately, Zhenya knows how to handle her violent temper so the casualties have been kept to a mininum, but that doesn't stop her from teasing about it, in her own way. But there is the actual matter of attending to the wound and as much as she likes to brag about her scars, Kira isn't keen on potential infection when it comes to gut wounds. She's seen what kind of nasty things that can do to a person.
"Mmm, I love it when you talk dirty."
Grinning at her own joke, Kira withdraws her arm and leans back, giving easier access to the site of the injury. A small circular hole is present on the right side of her abdomen. Now that most of the blood has been cleared away it's obvious that the wound isn't too deep and since there's no exit puncture on the back that means the bullet's still in there. That's going to be fun to deal with.
"Can't believe that little fucker managed to hit me in the one spot where my damn plates were already broken."
Zhenya, for her part, largely attempted to dissuade people from flirting with her, unless she didn't like them much and it seemed like their death or injury seemed like it would be particularly useful to Kira or the company.
She laughs softly at Kira's jealousy, and kneels back down to look at the wound, tracing a finger around it as she looks at the entry wound. "The difference is I'd bind up your wounds with everyone else's entrails, if that's what it took." She opens up the medical kit, and removes a pair of sanitized tongs. She closes her eyes for a moment, running over various likely futures. "There's no major artery or organ damage. Taking it out should be safe."
She slides the tongs inside of Kira, gently sliding them around that bullet deep inside her, although even that movement neccessarily opens Kira up inside just a little bit more. She grips the bullet, and pulls it out slowly, renewing the blood flow. She picks up the towel, and presses the side that didn't touch the floor back against Kira's wound, looking back up into Kira's eyes.
"That's interesting. He must have had a touch of some kind of talent." Because Zhenya does not believe in luck. 'Getting lucky' is a talent. A slight shrug of her shoulders. "Guessing it's a bit of a dead line of inquiry at this point, though."
Kira grunts as the cold metal slides into her flesh but once again doesn't flinch. She trusts the instincts of the woman at her feet more than the measured judgement of most of the people she's ever met. It took a long time for her to admit that the claims of being able to see the future were more than strange delusions. Now she basically takes it as gospel when Zhenya speaks confidently about something.
The bullet proves easy enough to find despite the time it's had to slither about in her guts. Kira's abdominal muscles were spared, likely thanks to the protection offered by her tactical armor even in its damaged state, which means that the little piece of lead wasn't able to get much deeper than an inch or two and thus is little more than an annoyance at this point. It comes free with only minor provocation earning a sigh of relief from the mercenary.
"Damn right it is," she mutters in a tone that is almost sulky.
Unlike Shirow and the vast majority of recuits that come to her doors looking for employment, Kira has no problems killing children. Or the elderly, or invalids, or godamn puppies with her bare hands if that's what needs to happen. She learned a long time ago that everyone can be dangerous and death comes from the most unexpected sources for the unwary. Kill em all, let their gods sort em out. She gets paid either way.
"Fortunately," she says, knowing damn well that the word is one of Zhenya's pet peeves, "the rest of the operation was a success. We cleared out the warehouse guards, torched the contraband, and got out before the locals could muster anything worthy of being called a counter offensive."
Which is something Zhenya admires about Kira - if you can't see the odds, destroy every possible thing that would lower them - she can respect that. She tends to be a little more merciful, but when in doubt, it's often better to kill someone. It's not like dying is as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
She washes out the wound, gently squeezing a rag to fill Kira's wound with water, sopping up the bloody water with a clean corner of the towel. Seeing no debris coming out - it's a relatively clean wound - she smiles. Even Kira saying 'fortunately' can't dim her spirits too much right now, although she furrows her eyebrows up at her out of habit. "That's good." She looks down at the armor, and her eyes narrow a little. "...Were you wearing damaged armor into the field?"
She takes out a bottle of antibiotic ointment, swaps some up with her little finger, and gently slides it inside Kira's wound, coating it with the substance. Which probably burns, but causing pain to her lover isn't something that particularly perturbs her.
"How did the other recruits do?"
The soap is like fire introduced to the wound and Kira clenches her jaw tightly, tilting her head back into the cushions. If it were anyone else she might have punched them square in the face but there are some benefits to being the significant other and long-time friend of this particular hardcase so she just gets a glare.
"Fuuuuuck!"
Kira makes other noises and comments to similar effect while the cleansing substance does its job. It's better than letting it get infected by a longshot but not particularly pleasant which is one of the reasons she wears armor. She /hates/ getting shot. Most people would tend to agree but for the average citizen of the world stray bullets are not a daily concern in their lives.
The question about her armor almost earns a look of real annoyance from Kira. "What, no, you should know better than that." She leans back again and tries to ignore how much her stomach hurts right now. "Those guards were better armed than we expected. I guess the brother of that guerilla leader we sacked last month must have been funneling resources to our competition. Almost lost my head when they opened up with modern assault rifles and not those shitty Cold War hold overs that have been circling around lately."
She gestures at the armor on the ground. "Caught one in the side while we were adjusting our approach. Then Shirow let some street rat run right past him. Kid had a gun under his shirt. Came right for me too, must have been given my picture or something."
Kira shrugs and continues with her report, though it's obvious she doesn't care about it too much. A little small talk can't hurt though. "The others did just fine but we lost that cute French girl... um... Naomi? Stepped into a cross fire. Shame. She had a nice ass."
The mercenary makes a devious face when Zhenya starts to apply the ointment, grinning despite the fact that the pain practically forces her eyes shut against her will.
"Nrrgh... speaking of, if you want to play around with your fingers, there's better places to put them."
Zhenya dislikes getting shot, but tends to rely on her visions of the future to avoid it as much as possible rather than armor that would weigh her down and slow her by a fraction of a second. She dislikes Kira getting shot more, however, and frowns as she hears of these other dangers.
"Someone's actively gunning for you? We can't gauge which missions are safe like this. I should be at your side more often." She pulls out a small bandage pad, and tapes it onto Kira's side over the wound.
"...Too bad about Naomi. She was funny."
Zhenya is not very jealous, although sometimes her concern for Kira's welfare can come off of jealousy if seriously unstable or dangerous people are interested in her. She figures in general the closer people are to Kira, the more they will love her as she does, and the more people that love her, the safer she will be. But if she feels like she's not getting enough attention, she does start following Kira around all the time, like she did when they were kids.
She closes her eyes again, furrowing her brow slightly, then opens them.
"We can play in a bit, but you should have a little food and water and painkillers first. And you have to stay relaxed. The important thing is to heal." She kisses Kira's stomach, and rises up. "I'll go get something to eat and drink for you."
"Maybe," she shrugs. "Can't be sure, kid might have just gone for me because I was screaming a lot."
Giving orders on the battlefield tends to be a hectic affair. The more people you have to coordinate the more troublesome it becomes to keep tabs on everyone which is one of the primary reasons why her hiring policy has been so strict. It's easy enough to put a gun in someone's hands and call them a merceny but when the shit hits the fan it becomes clear who the soldiers are.
Ofcourse they have more modern methods of communication than Kira's lungs. Head sets and radios make up their standard gear but growing up among rebel forces with nothing but salvaged equipment has left her with some bad habits. Could be she just made herself an obvious target.
Zhenya's concern doesn't escape her notice, nor the edge in her voice that usually indicates she's starting to feel ignored. Naturally, Kira has no intentions of purposely avoiding her lover, but in her line of work they don't always have the luxury of free time. There's shipments to handle, orders to fill, contracts to be carried out, recruits to train, all of which require her supervision in some capacity.
Kira nods, running a hand through her frazzled blonde hair, still sticky with sweat and blood. Now that the bandaging is dealt with she doesn't have anything left to distract her from how worn out she is. Some food and a little recreational time could be just what the doctor ordered.
"Sounds good to me, love."
Log created on 18:44:46 02/08/2015 by Zhenya, and last modified on 01:13:07 02/09/2015.