Who: Revy, Midna & Henry, with the worst NPC debt collectors in the world What: Getting Henry back with a side of murder When: Tonight Where: Where the Frisky Business sex shop once stood Rating/Warnings: High for language, violence, Midna impales people with her hair, nbd Status: Complete!
It was surprising there was shit left standing, after a certain dancer of shadows went beast form and did a spazz dance on this part of town. Structures and beams remained, inhabitable and typically abandoned - aside from your occasional squatters, really, but it’d made a good location for shady exchanges and meetings of the not so fucking legal variety. Frisky Business was one of them, the large lettering hanging from broken wires and metal, hazardly dangling in the air.
Seemed like a legit place for all this shit to go down. It’d been looted for the most part (whoever the fuck went out of there way to loot a sex shop probably had problems), and the remaining rubble had mannequin pieces lying around that had once worn racy lingerie.
It was night. Street lights were dim and buzzing, and Revy arrived seemingly solo. Rugged combat boots that weren’t tied very securely, jeans that had seen better days and shirt she didn’t care for. There was a black bag in her hand that looked stuffed, presumably the thirty grand she owed these fuckers, but she couldn’t wait to get this over with - she wasn’t fucking kosher with one of her friends being roped into her shit, and if Henry was in bad shape, well.
There were some skulls to break.
Now, she wasn’t a moron. She was armed, and they’d probably tell her to drop her guns while they investigated shit. Revy had been on the other side of an exchange like this when she’d held someone hostage, but she had a weapon hidden in literal darkness to help with this.
A mix of moonlight, flashlights, and street lamps helped give some illumination, and Lady Mohawk (her real name was Patricia, but she now remembered more of her nickname of Tish, which wasn’t any better) and the few fuckwit pals were there.
With Henry.
“Hey, you fucks. Let’s get this over with.”
Oh, Frisky Business (everything was burnt out, not just the ‘y’). It held such fond memories for the Twilight Princess, who - in her panicky arachnid state - had climbed up to cling to the very structure itself, until she was literally forced via mind link to change back to her human form. Ended up with her being naked and carried home by vampires and her girlfriend, but you know. Just another day in the life of a Twili magic-wielding shapeshifter.
Now she had the Triforce of Power and was decidedly more confident in her abilities - the triangle mark on her hand gave her a lot of extra oomph; too much, in her view, so she tried to keep a tight lid on it and basically not rain actual hell down onto the OC because of an ‘accident.’ In this life, she wanted to respect the choice of the Goddesses to trust her with this much power, as a peace offering to her people with her as the representative - and not screw it up in any way.
She could feel such power coursing through her veins - it was a soothing lullaby, easy to get falsely comforted by. But she would remain focused, she promised herself. The ability to hide in shadows and blend with others was the first she’d learned in this world - and it was how she traveled with Link, in Hyrule, when she couldn’t be exposed to light. Here, she remained hidden and close to Revy, unseen by human eyes. But she was still taking everything in, and observing from her (literal) shadowy perspective.
It had been a weird couple of days and Henry hadn’t even gotten the chance to see or hear about anything else that had been going on in the county since the tidal waves and blood rain had started. He’d been a guest of Lady Mohawk and her flunkies, though the term “guest” could be applied in the loosest of terms. He hadn’t been subjected to torture unless you count being fed a constant diet of cheap tacos and listening to a certain woman’s shrill voice as torture. He hadn’t exactly been handled with kid gloves, either. Lady Mohawk’s hired help didn’t exactly have the gentlest of hands whenever it was decided that “Hank” had to be moved, either to hide him from hotel management or let him take a piss or shit. As far as vacations went, this one had really kind of sucked. A lot.
He was surprised that he was standing in the trashed remains of the adult entertainment shop. Not so much for the venue – the destroyed seedy store seemed to lend a clichéd atmosphere to the entire ordeal. What surprised him was that Revy had actually given in to Lady Mohawk’s demands. There she was on the other side of the store holding a bulky looking sack.
He’d never doubted for a second that she would come for him. She always had. He felt bad, even guilty, that she had to fork over $30k just to save his sorry ass. He had no idea where she’d gotten it, but it was probably not through any sort of legal means.
Still gagged, Henry stood behind Lady Mohawk and her lead flunky and watched the exchange. His arms were bound behind his back and he was still clad in the clothes he’d been wearing when he’d left work a few days ago. That loud Hawaiian shirt, now unbuttoned to reveal the t-shirt underneath, stained in several places with taco grease. A few days worth of growth on his face and shaggy dirty hair over his eyes, hiding a shiner that was still a little tender to the touch.
Amber eyes darted from Lady Mohawk to Revy and back again. He didn’t want her to do this. He didn’t want her to cow-tow to this pterodactyl bitch. She was better than that. So much better.
“‘Bout fuckin’ time, Becca,” Madame Mohawk, with that spiked hair dyed some new blinding color - a bright bubblegum pink tonight - spat. “Figured snatching the boyfriend would make you cough up the cash.” Hank was given a rough pat on the back.
Becca (fuck did she hate that shortening of her name) blinked. A couple times, confused as shit, because what the hell did - ? “Oh my fuck, are you kidding me? Who the hell did you get that intel from? I’m not dating Henry.”
“Wait, who’s Henry?” That brilliant quip came from one of the rugged muscle. His brain size was nothing (literally) in comparison to his biceps. “I thought his name was Hank?”
Revy sighed. Irritably. And refrained from pulling the cutlasses from the holsters to shoot their fucking brains out, but she figured it’d be best not to risk Henry’s safety - his face looked a bit smashed up, they fed the poor kid Taco Bell, his ass was either on fire or plugged up. “You’re officially the worst group of debt collectors in fucking existence. Are we doing this or not?”
For a second they exchanged awkward, somewhat embarrassed glances before Tish Lady Mohawk rolled her eyes, pulled out her pistol and pointed it at Henry. “Drop the guns, Becks, and toss the bag. We confirm the trade, he goes back to doing whatever, we’ll drive our happy asses back to Chinatown. If you’d given us the goddamn money before your buddy here wouldn’t have been holed up the way he has, y’know?”
Without resistance she did as instructed, smiling sardonically, and carefully set her jolly roger firearms to the ground. Her fingers waved to show them that they were free, spun around, and then picked up the black bag to hurl it at them.
It was caught, hastily unzipped because the ringleading bitch wanted to come face to face with all the green paper she’d gone out for all these years, except…
“What the fuck?”
All the contents were dumped out. It wasn’t money.
Literally, they were given a bag of dicks. Rubber dicks. And a couple jellybeans.
Money was green, but there wasn’t any of that. However, if these dumbshits wanted green, then Midna would give them green. She appeared quite literally out of nowhere, in between Revy and the lame-o debt collectors, a tall and imposing figure with wild orange hair. Hair that seemingly came alive, shooting forward to grab Hank, wrapped securely around him, and yoinked him back over to their side.
She tried to be as gentle about it as possible, considering how disheveled he looked. Just a little simple courtesy.
But here came the green. Using her hair left her hands free, to fire searing, bright lime-colored energy blasts from both palms - and they weren’t exactly set to ‘stun’ either. She relished the thought of fucking them up a little, what of it. “That’s for dragging your sorry ass into my club and interrupting the chicken fingers, Mohawk!”
Henry was aware of the gun aimed at him and he eyed it sidelong. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but it was probably the same weapon Lady Mohawk (there was no way he was calling her Tish so long as she insisted on calling him Hank despite the only thing he said to her was that his name was fucking Henry) had made sure he’d been in constant awareness of during his time with her.
He was not at all intimidated by either the gun or the fact that she could shoot him at was essentially point blank range. That was kind of funny, actually. But when compared to having a monster’s hand literally in your chest and squeezing your heart only a few weeks ago, getting shot seemed like a rather mundane and boring way to die.
Oh, don’t misunderstand. Henry was well aware of the clear and present danger he was in. One wrong move from either Revy or himself and he was going to end up bleeding from a hole in his head. That would be a really crappy way to end a sucktastic vacation.
Without so much as moving his head, Henry’s eyes slid from the muzzle of the gun towards Revy. He watched her fling her bulky sack over to them. He watched Lady Mohawk grab at it with all the glee of a child on Christmas Day, open it up and dump it out. He watched as a bunch of rubber dicks and jelly beans tumbled out onto the floor.
It was too bad Henry was gagged, otherwise the sound of his laughter would have been ringing off what remained of the shop’s walls. He should have known! Of course Revy wouldn’t have simply walked in and handed over $30k to this crazy bitch. This was probably the best thing Henry’d ever seen. The look on Lady Mohawk’s face just made the whole scene that much better. He was practically doubled over from muffled laughing.
Then things went…kind of weird, even for Orange County standards.
Suddenly Revy wasn’t alone anymore. Henry hadn’t seen her come in with anyone, and he was pretty sure Lady Mohawk the Pterodactyl would have made a big stink if she had. He had exactly zero time to wonder where the hell this Amazon with fire-bright hair had even come from. Said hair whipped out from the woman’s head, wrapped around him and pulled him bodily out of harm’s way. Nope, not processing this – oh, we’re on the other side of the shop now? Ok that was unexpected. At least he was safe now….right?
Dangling and really unable to move at this point, Henry watched Lady Lime Fire as she proceeded to blast Lady Mohawk and her goons like some superhero straight out of a Saturday Morning Cartoon and shouting something about chicken fingers. The mere mention of food made Henry’s stomach roll.
Holy fuck, did Revy had to take a couple of moments to appreciate Midna’s entrance into the fray. She’d gotten a glimpse of things here and there, and considering her dreams didn’t have a magical edge she was always fascinated when she saw weird shit like this. At least she’d expected some kind of grand, impressive pop-up - the assholes across from them didn’t, and it rendered them fucking stupid.
Well, extra stupid, considering their information was pretty off the mark, but these weren’t criminal masterminds. Just ballsy fuckbags with peas for brains. Miss Mohawk had sharper reflexes to dive out of the way from those beams, but the idiot muscle wasn’t so lucky - he’d been slammed into the rubble and the air had been robbed from his lungs, because what the fuck?
Shock still sinking in for them Revy snatched up the twin guns, aimed and fired several rounds to the third shithead that’d been standing there dumbfounded (again, useless, who the fuck hired you?) until his body fell limp to the ground, riddled with holes. After this was all said and done she’d release Henry from his binds, but she couldn’t get distracted now.
“Like my friend, Pattycakes?” Bitch, she’d throw out all the embarrassing nicknames from their youth right back at her - now that she fully remembered who this cunt was anyway. It’d taken her awhile. Every person she’d ever fucked over intentionally or unintentionally tended to blur together and to be fair, it’d been several years. Revy sneered, teeth like rows of razors in the moonlight, and she nonchalantly spun a gun around her finger. “You remember her, don’t you?”
Princess Bubblegum Mohawk clutched her gun tight, but she didn’t look anything intimidating being right on her ass with rounded eyes of sheer horror, because Midna didn’t look human. Didn’t act human. Did shit that was distinctly not human, with hair that seemed like it had its own consciousness and alien beams coming from her hand.
“The fuck are you?” Her gun was pointed, a trembling finger close to the trigger.
Oh, oh, oh. “Do the hair thing again, do the fucking hair thing again.”
Midna smiled too, her teeth gleaming, such a Cheshire cat grin that almost looked creepy in the dim light of nature’s moonbeams and the artificial street glow. Very impish, no? “What, you mean you don’t know?” she sneered, and too bad that Pattycakes wouldn’t ever be privy to that information. But at the very least, she wished for her to be aware of one thing.
“I’m the Twilight Princess, bitch.”
And if Revy wanted the hair thing, the hair thing she would get. Not just anyone appreciated the nuances of murdering someone with long, luscious locks. It took a special person - Dracula was one, she definitely impaled Zant with her hair in front of Vlad. May have even given him a proud smile. Midna did it now too, magic aglow and there was a flash of light as her hair twisted and coiled like a snake; the speed and force it was going meant it was more like a sword than anything else. That blade of fiery orange pierced Pattycakes, dead center, running her through.
She’d have a few seconds to think about it, before she croaked.
Henry should have been scared. Hell, he should have been terrified of the Amazon who’d stepped out of shadows, threw green fire from her hands and impaled a bitch with her hair. Maybe it was because she had used those very same tresses to pull him to saftey in a way that hadn’t upset his already tender body that kept him from losing his shit. Or maybe it was because of everything he’d gone through recently: his Dreams, the fog that had seeped in from them to cause havoc around the county, facing down a monster that Silent Hill had made special just for him and coming through cold, but alive. It was possible all of that had just desensitized him to seeing an orange hair sword tear through a woman as though she were made of paper.
It was also quite possible Henry was so sick of being called Hank and eager for Revy to be able to put all of this bullshit behind her, that he just really didn’t care what happened to the harpy with the Mohawk (who Henry now knew as Pattycakes - oddly appropriate). Also, it was a little bit of satisfying karma for making him choke down all those fucking cheap tacos, bitch. His guts were never going to be the same.
There is a difference between fear and shock, however, and Henry was feeling quite a bit of the latter. He remained where Revy’s secret weapon had deposited him and just stared, taking in everything with wide unblinking amber eyes behind loose shaggy hair. The gag had been digging uncomfortably into the corners of his mouth and his arms were so frigging tired of being bound behind his back, but he forgot about that and the other miscellaneous aches and pains throughout his body in favor of just being fascinated by everything that was going on around him.
Something like that bitch’s death would have been hogged by Revy, but she’d also been looking forward to see Midna’s tricks in action - and fuck, she was impressed. How often did you get to see someone impaled by fucking hair? The job was done, fuckers were dead, Henry was alive, and the princess of shadows got to witness the life slip from Lady Mohawk’s eyes.
None of them could have expected things to go down the way it did. It went south, way south, and she carried not a single drop of remorse. Best part to was Midna could double as some kind of sorcery cleaner - people in the business used chemicals to rid the bodies and other evidence.
But she had fucking portals.
“You could almost turn me into a lesbian,” she chuckled roughly, removing a pocket knife from her pocket to free Henry. Let his hands go, rip the tape and pull the gag from his mouth. He looked like shit, and the pat on his cheek was as tender as she could muster. “You okay, dickcheese?”
Midna snorted a laugh, and tossed a flirtatious wink in Revy’s direction, meant for her. “I mean, I’m not technically a lesbian - I like it all.” But the smooshy feelings were reserved for the yin to her yang, the Ruler of Hyrule - yeah, she’d probably marry Zelda someday. Hell, they were about to move in together she thought - that was a discussion that needed to be broached, but anyway. There was obviously business to attend to, and she’d consider their job done here.
When it came to the murder portion of the evening. For disposing of the bodies? While Revy untied Henry, Midna called upon her magic, very easy now with the Triforce, the connection to it practically golden. The portal, also glowing green dimly, opened to reveal a swirl of hollow black. That’s where the corpses went, never to be seen again and lost to shadows and darkness.
“We could always take him to Zellie if he needs some healing right away,” she added, dusting her hands off. “Oh, hey, Henry - I’m Midna, by the way. Good to meet you.”
Having the tape ripped off his face hurt and Henry winced. Hips lips were chapped and cracked and his mouth and throat felt dry as sand, but good, god, he never thought he’d be so happy to be called ‘dickcheese’. Waaaay better than ‘Hank’ any day of the week. “Yeah,” he croaked. “I’m okay. Sore, but okay.”
He rubbed at the red marks around his wrists as he looked over at Midna. He was a little weary of her at first, not because of the teal skin, orange hair or the ability to kill people and throw them into what Henry assumed was some kind of bottomless abyss. Henry was weary of all new people at first, especially when he didn’t have his camera to hide behind. Midna seemed alright though. Apparently, she was a friend of Revy’s - a friend willing to come to a ransom exchange and commit murder in the name of a rescue- so he figured her to be an okay sort.
“Hi,” he greeted her in that same croaky voice. It had been a hell of an introduction. “Thank you for coming out and yanking me away from the gun and for killing pattycakes with your hair - kind of...well didn’t really expect that. I kind of wasn’t expecting any of this. It’s my first kidnapping so I’m new to this whole being rescued thing…” he looked at Revy when he realized he was babbling like an idiot. “Uh, yeah, it’s good to meet you too, Midna.”
Sore was good. Talking was good. Henry was tough - she’d seen the kid (it was a term of endearment from her) get his chest fisted by a monster claw and live. Compared that, this was sort of child’s play. “Sorry about those fuckwads,” she apologized, and looked sheepish while doing so. Maybe a little. Revy wasn’t exactly used to having people someone could use against her as leverage. Being on the other side of it was fuckin’ weird, even if she’d been going through similar motions like that with Rock in the shit-smeared hellhole that was Roanapur.
“Tish showed up at Midna’s club to collect,” she elaborated, jabbing a thumb over at the exotic princess of shadows. It was the first time she’d seen Midna like this; the look suited her. “Plus it was a chance to see this bitch in action. The hair thing didn’t disappoint, eh?” Neither did disposing the bodies through portals of darkness. Wherever the hell those bodies were taken to she hoped someone was either taking a dump on them, or they were donated to a cannibalistic tribe somewhere in South America.
“Hey, you’re welcome,” Midna chuckled, hands on her hips. The triangle piece glowed faintly, since she was still buzzing from tapping into magic and power, and she took deep breaths to calm herself since that piece of the Triforce didn’t really need to be activated anymore. “It was a fun girls night too, we don’t get to have those very often.” Besides, neither her or Revy were the ‘braid each other’s hair, gossip about boys’ type. They clearly preferred shooting things and riding into battle on the back of a giant spider types of bonding activities.
There was still one thing left to do, though. “I can make another portal to take us out of here? We should probably go. Sex toy shop remnants are kind of not the best place to hang out.” Just saying.
It hadn’t been a great experience, being ambushed at his apartment, tied up and made to eat nothing but Taco Bell for a few days, but all things considered it could have been worse. It wasn’t as if Revy had asked for it all to happen. Henry gave her a lopsided smile and a shrug. “Not the best vacation I’ve ever been on,” he said. “The service was shit and the food sucked. Like...really sucked. If I ever have to see another taco again, I think I’ll puke. I think though…” he cast a glance over to where the bodies of the debt collectors had been earlier, “maybe I should learn how to fight? Fighting a couple of guys in the dark is different than swinging an ax at a monster. That, and I don’t own any axes.” Not saying that something like this was going to happen again, but you never knew. He wasn’t about to be turned into some kind of damsel in distress to be used against Revy in the future. She was his best friend, he’d much rather join her in kicking the butt of any other dickwaffles looking to make trouble for her in the future.
He looked back at Midna. Really, she looked just like a superhero standing there with the destroyed sex shop as some kind of gritty backdrop - straight out of a comic book. The photographer in him was dying to get a picture of her. The thought was quickly pushed aside when Midna mentioned using her portals to leave. That kind of alarmed him a little. Portals sounded a little like the hole in his bathroom that transported him to creepy fog filled destinations. “Uh…” he glanced at Revy again.
“We’ll work on guns again,” Revy promised - they’d been doing some of that before the OC got devoured by a psychological mindfuck fog anyway, and this whole thing just cemented that it wouldn’t hurt for him to have more experience in shooting the shit out of people (to put it crudely). Axes too, though all she knew about a melee weapon like that was to swing it around hard and hope you cut something.
But Midna was right, they needed to get the hell out of these pornographic ruins. Those several rubber penises with jellybeans could stay behind - might be an interesting find for a squatter, who knew. Not her problem anymore. The gunslinger gave Henry a pat on the shoulder, cracking a wolfish grin. “Trust me, it’ll be cool. Don’t lose your pants in between the very brief travels through dimensions and space or the fuck ever it tunnels us through.”
She canted her chin towards her friend’s direction. Portal away, princess.
“Yeah, it’ll be fine. I’m a good taxi driver,” Midna promised, and she flexed her fingers, hands outstretched over the ground - the magic rippled around them, warped and buzzing, then the greenish, shadowy hole began to open. It became bigger and bigger, until finally it was large enough to transport them - their ticket away from all the nasty shit out here.
She glanced at her companions. “We jump, together, at the count of three?” Because she wouldn’t leave them hanging - as promised, on three, she dove right in.
Instead of taking them to the abyss (or a cannibalistic tribe in South America), it would take them home.