Last Voyages application
May. 27th, 2012 11:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deadliestviperUser Name/Nick: Shankill (call me Kill)
User DW:horrorwhore, though I rarely blog.
AIM/IM: mintyfreshevil on aim
E-mail: whiskeybythepint@gmail.com
Other Characters: None
Character Name: Beatrix "the Black Mamba" Kiddo, aka the Bride
Series: Kill Bill vol. 1&2
Age: 33.
From When?: From Vol. 2, after Budd has captured and drugged her. His attempt to kill her involves tying her up and burying her alive under another woman's headstone. Clawing her way out of the grave to find herself on the Barge may be interesting.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Beatrix was an assassin for many years, training hard to learn to overcome any feelings of humanity or mercy. She notes herself that "It's mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack, not rationality." While battling Bill, she admits herself: "I'm a bad person." There's a great deal about being human she still has left to learn, and a great many victims she can atone for.
Item:Not applicable.
Abilities/Powers: Beatrix has absolutely no supernatural or superhuman abilities. She has trained extensively in a mixture of Tiger (offensive) and Crane (evasive) style kung fu (with some Eagle's Claw in there), swordsmanship with a focus on the katana, and gunmanship, meaning that her abilities are notable; her training with the kung fu master Pai Mei gave her the ability to punch through boards from one inch away, while studying under her master Bill (who in turn studied under master swordsman Hattori Hanzo) taught her how to fight against many enemies at the same time – she has come out the victor in battles against over thirty opponents. She has extreme control over her body and knows how to use it with deadly efficiency. While entirely human, she's basically mastered the style of fighting described as "wire-fu". Due to the international nature of her work, Beatrix also speaks several languages fluently, including English, Japanese, Mandarin, and French. She appears to be knowledgeable about romance languages too, as she mentions she speaks some Spanish, and she has the ability of certain spies and assassins to make herself inconspicuous, thereby stealthily gaining access to her targets.
Personality: To begin with, Beatrix is a paradox. Her life has mainly been spent in pursuit of training and working, and she's spent over a decade honing her skills as a swordfighter, gunwoman and assassin. Although her emotions never atrophied, she is definitely a master of them – in nearly all cases she is able to keep them under control and do "what needs to be done," whether this is stealing a car or killing a mother in front of her toddler. She enjoys her work, too; during her final confrontation with Bill he asks her if killing the people in her way to him had felt good. "Every one." She also describes herself as entirely without compassion, and while she is hardly merciful this is definitely a lie.
During her years with the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, Beatrix was known as the deadliest woman in the world. Deeply in love with Bill, she viewed herself as a woman – his woman – and would have done nearly anything for him. She committed the most brutal murders and took on a complete action hero lifestyle, noting that she would have "jumped a motorcycle onto a speeding train" for Bill. Few professional killers were more dedicated or fearless about their work.
However, in 1999 as soon as she discovered she was pregnant she had a complete change of heart. She was no longer a killer; now, she was a mother, and her first and only instinct was to protect her baby. Going entirely against what she had believed in before, she turned down the hit she had been sent on and disappeared, turning her back on the Squad and getting engaged to a pleasant young man. She hoped to have a simple, violence-free life to raise her little girl in, but this was not to be.
Strangely, her demeanor changed again entirely after she was attacked by Bill and the rest of the Deadly Viper Squad; thinking her child was dead, all traces of her motherly and humane feelings went out the window, instantly replaced by a bitter need for revenge. Once again she was entirely a merciless killer, risking her life multiple times to destroy the people who had wronged her.
Aside from her assassin training, however, B is a fairly normal person. She is clever, easygoing, and fairly neutral; able to function in regular society just fine, she is capable of making friends unless you prove you're an enemy. At any given time she's as likely to be holding an Elvis CD as a shuriken, as likely to be mixing Kool-Aid as arsenic. A regular fan of shows like Star Trek and movies like Shogun Assassin, for all intents and purposes B is a geeky, hard-ass American woman making her way in the world.
Path to Redemption: At this point in her stay on the Barge, Beatrix has begun to see the benefit in living a more peaceful lifestyle and using her skills defensively. With the exception of the remaining Deadly Vipers or an extremely dangerous and psychotic enemy, she will aim to incapacitate instead of kill (as she recently did with Genocider Syo, despite Syo's several attempts to stab Beatrix). At this point she is basically a usually-peaceful woman who sometimes derives a great deal of pleasure from violence. She is generally happy to use her fighting ability as a means to an end to help the Barge. In terms of guidance, she needs someone who can teach her that there are things to live for apart from her revenge (which she will not be dissuaded from), that there are always goals to be achieved and lessons to be taught and people to be learned from. She needs a lesson in being slightly less cynical, and more accepting of the world around her and the circumstances it has to offer.
History: Born in 1970 in middle America (Tarantino's early draft of the script indicates in Missouri), Beatrix "B" Kiddo was from the beginning a scrappy, tough little girl. A bit of a tomboy as a child, she developed an interest in fighting and action movies at an early age, learning shooting, streetfighting and martial arts skills every opportunity she got. In her teens she attracted the attention of an international assassin named Bill, who gave her the opportunity to train under him. Under Bill's tutelage, B quickly grew from a simple tough thug into something more closely resembling his protegé. He taught her Crane and Tiger style kung fu as well as the art of the katana. Beatrix quickly became his favorite student, and despite the difference in their ages, became his lover as well. Bill's pride in Beatrix was so great he even sent her at the age of 20 to train with his ancient master, the infamous White Lotus Clan monk Pai Mei.
A deadly man who once decimated the entire Shaolin monastery single-handedly (with the use of his Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, a deadly form of dim mak/"death touch" fighting), Pai Mei was prejudiced against women, caucasians, and Americans when Beatrix became his student. While she eventually earned his respect, it took over a year of obedience and submission, following every order to the letter even when it nearly broke her bones. After three years training with him, Beatrix walked out of there with far greater strength and agility, an expansive knowledge of deadly fighting techniques, and a native speaker's mastery of Mandarin (as Pai Mei would have accepted nothing less from her).
After her return to America, Bill made Beatrix a member of his elite assassination team, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. He led as Snakecharmer; she was given the code name Black Mamba, working alongside Copperhead (Vernita Green), Cottonmouth (O-Ren Ishii), California Mountain Snake (Elle Driver) and Sidewinder (Budd, Bill's brother). Over the next six years, B became known as the deadliest woman in the world, lethal with a sword, blade, gun, or her hands, and was one of the globe's highest-paid assassins.
In 1999, however, her life took a dramatically different turn. While traveling for a hit on a Lisa Wong in California, Beatrix experienced morning sickness and took a test that determined she was pregnant. Seconds after making this discovery she was nearly killed by an assassin of Lisa Wong's, a shotgun-toting woman named Karen Kim. She managed to convince Kim to go home without completing the hit, explaining to her that she would do the same as she had just learned she was pregnant. Seeking a chance to raise her unborn daughter in a healthy setting, she assumed the name Arlene Machiavelli and ran away to El Paso, where she became the fiancée of a music store owner named Tommy Plympton. She settled down to live with Tommy, work in his record store, and began planning their upcoming wedding. It was a nice little life while it lasted.
During their wedding rehearsal, things soured. After months of looking for Beatrix and assuming her dead, Bill was furious to find that she had ran off to Texas and was heavily pregnant by (he assumed) another man, one she was about to marry. He led the rest of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad to the chapel Beatrix, her fiancé, and their small wedding party were in, ordering the Vipers to open fire on the civilians. Beatrix was spared from the first round of gunfire to endure a brutal beating from Budd, O-Ren, Elle, and Vernita. Once she had been knocked to the floor, Bill aimed a gun at her head and fired when she informed him that the baby was his.
The bullet didn't kill her, though; all it did was send her into a coma. After she had been taken to a hospital as a Jane Doe, Elle Driver did attempt to slip poison into her IV but was called off by Bill at the last second. "We're better than that," he reminded her, and Elle grudgingly left Beatrix alive. Perhaps she shouldn't have.
Beatrix remained comatose for four years. Waking up suddenly, she discovered she was no longer pregnant and had been in the care of a nurse who thought it was appropriate to pimp out his unconscious patients. She quickly killed him and a john using only her hands and mouth, as her legs had atrophied from not being used for years. She managed to steal the nurse's keys and escape to the hospital parking garage, where she located his car and hid in it for over thirteen hours, fuming over her mistreatment at the hands of her former friends and teaching herself to re-use her legs.
As soon as she was able to, she immediately began to seek her revenge. Arming herself with a Star Firestar .45, a small pistol strapped to her ankle, and a sheathed SOG knife, she set off to Okinawa for a real Japanese katana. Due to her connection with Bill, she convinced Bill's former master and Japan's greatest swordmaker, Hattori Hanzo, to create a priceless samurai sword for her. When the weapon is finished, she makes her way to her first and most easily found target, the new head of the Tokyo crime world, O-Ren "Cottonmouth" Ishii.
Now leader of the Yakuza, O-Ren was infamous and commanded an entourage of several close subordinates and many lackeys, known as the Crazy 88 (there were really about 35). Challenging O-Ren at a restaurant, Beatrix cut off the arm of Sofie Fatale, O-Ren's friend and Bill's former student, and cut through each of the Crazy 88 except for one very young man whom she commanded to go home. She faced off against O-Ren in the establishment's snowy garden, eventually earning back both her enemy's respect and her own honor. O-Ren fell after a rough battle in which both women were injured. B interrogated Sofie as to Bill and the other Vipers' whereabouts, making a "death list five" of her targets and leaving Sofie alive to tell their former master that the Black mamba was alive and coming for him. She crossed the first name off her Death List Five.
The next target was Copperhead, AKA Vernita Green. Now a Pasadena homemaker, B flew to California and met her at her door, their fight brutal and destructive until Vernita's daughter, Nikkia, arrived home from school. The two warriors agreed to postpone their battle, conversing easily until Vernita ambushed her with a gun. Beatrix fought back, killing Vernita, unfortunately right in front of little Nikki. While she did apologize for the action, she told Nikki that if the little girl ever wanted revenge, she would be waiting. The second name was crossed off.
The third name was Sidewinder's: Budd. The least illustrious of the Vipers, Budd had settled down in a trailer in Austin, Texas, where he worked not as an assassin or criminal but as a simple bouncer at a strip club. Bill warned Budd that Beatrix was coming for him, adding that he hoped Budd had kept up with his swordplay. He had not; Bill, Elle, and Beatrix all underestimated the man. Budd managed to shoot Beatrix full in the chest with two shotgun barrels full of rocksalt, immediately drugging her to keep her from resisting. He confiscated her sword, SOG, and Firestar, tied her up, and interred her in a coffin under the tombstone PAULA SCHULTZ. It's here, with Beatrix punching and fighting her way out of premature burial, where our adventure on the Barge begins.
Sample Journal Entry:
[The screen switches on, revealing a face caked in dirt, covered in dust, streaked with sweat, and smeared with blood. A pair of troubled, if clear, blue eyes look out from it, and then there's a shake of the head, followed by a swirl of long, messy blonde hair – underneath all the grime, the new arrival's a female. She gives a bright smile, the sight slightly disarming on such a gritty face.]
Hi. [Her voice cracks when she speaks and she coughs, then clears her throat.]
Sorry to bother you folks, but it appears I've got some new business to attend to and I'm a little out of sorts. [Her smile turns apologetic, a little self-deprecating. It might be cute if she didn't look like an adult female approximation of Peanuts' Pigpen.] If one of you would be so kind as to point me toward the showers, I'd be in your debt.
Sample RP: [Private journal roleplay example.]
Beatrix’s bound hands found the flashlight, wrapped around the cold steel, found the switch. In the hot, stagnant air, her breath came warm and fast as she pressed the switch, the little coffin suddenly bathed in light. She gasped.
Stop it. Turn it off.
No! No I can’t do that¬¬–
Yes you can. Turn it off, it will have a calming effect.
Her finger moved on the shaft, and once again she was surrounded by darkness. Her breathing began to slow, her heartbeat abating from a fast staccato to a calmer tick.
Better.
Once again she switched the flashlight on, holding it between her tied hands and awkwardly, painstakingly, sidled one cowboy boot up and off. Beatrix groped for the little straight razor she kept tucked into it, the one Budd hadn’t known about. The only one of her weapons he hadn’t taken. Fucker still has my Hanzo.
No. Not important. Forget the sword. She gritted her teeth, flicked the razor open and rubbed its sharp edge against the ropes, moving the handle awkwardly with her fingertips. The back-and-forth of the blade, the sound of the rope splitting, gave her a sudden rush of hope and as the final fiber broke she risked another deep breath of what little oxygen she had. That razor had never been more beautiful. She kissed it, closed it, dropped it beside her.
Fisting her hand around the flashlight, Beatrix shined the beam over the ceiling of the casket. Nailed shut, she’d seen Budd pound each one in herself and heard every shovelful of dirt fall on the lid. But at least she had her hands. That gave her a chance.
Pressing her fingertips against the casket lid, she checked the distance – three inches or so – and allowed herself one more breath. “Okay, Pai Mei,” she intoned, “let’s see how I do.” Her fist pounded against the wood with a dull thud, pounded again, pounded again. She saw the skin on her knuckles split before she felt it, leaving a smear of blood on the surface, and punched again.
The ceiling cracked above her. She took a deep breath, punched again, watched the broken wood strain under the weight of six feet of dirt. One more breath, filling her lungs to capacity, and she thrust her fist up and through the broken boards.
Dirt rained down on her and she moved eagerly into it, her movements a strange mix between clawing, digging, and swimming. One breath to do all of this. One single breath to get to the surface. Loose soil, she could do it. She hoped. Her lungs were already beginning to burn and if her eyes were open they would have blurred, urging the panic back and sending a jolt of adrenaline through her.
This time, she used it.
Minutes – seconds, what felt like hours – later, she felt the warm night air on her fingertips. She tunneled upward, drilled through the soil, finally felt her hand rise fully above the earth, finally pulled herself partway out of her grave.
The assassin sucked in a breath of air, ignoring the dirt in her mouth and eyes, threw herself on the ground, gasping like a fish out of water. She lay there, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. She opened her eyes; her vision was hazy, eyelashes caked with soil. Blinking the dirt away, she glanced around and her heart palpitated at what she saw.
Instead of the sleepy little cemetery she was expecting, B found herself squinting from a bright light. As her eyes adjusted, they traced the walls of a mostly-blank room. She sat up; even the ground she was on appeared to have changed, the grave she just dug herself out of conspicuously absent in the smooth floor.
“What the fuck?”
Either she was hallucinating from the lack of oxygen or she’d died after all. The two explanations occurred to her simultaneously and she accepted them without question. The situation was weird enough without her actually being transported to a closed room somewhere. She had to still be in the graveyard, lolling in a dream. Except graveyards weren't lit by interior light sources.
Fuck. Whatever happened, hallucination or fucking teleportation (no way), she really wished she hadn’t left that razor.
Special Notes: Beatrix will not back down from a challenge if one is extended to her, unless she has an exceptional reason (like pregnancy!) to turn it down. While she also rarely starts fights or loses her temper, it's possible both these things may happen if she's sufficiently angry; sexual violence/abuse is one of the few things that can get her into this mindset.
User DW:
horrorwhore, though I rarely blog.AIM/IM: mintyfreshevil on aim
E-mail: whiskeybythepint@gmail.com
Other Characters: None
Character Name: Beatrix "the Black Mamba" Kiddo, aka the Bride
Series: Kill Bill vol. 1&2
Age: 33.
From When?: From Vol. 2, after Budd has captured and drugged her. His attempt to kill her involves tying her up and burying her alive under another woman's headstone. Clawing her way out of the grave to find herself on the Barge may be interesting.
Inmate/Warden: Inmate. Beatrix was an assassin for many years, training hard to learn to overcome any feelings of humanity or mercy. She notes herself that "It's mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack, not rationality." While battling Bill, she admits herself: "I'm a bad person." There's a great deal about being human she still has left to learn, and a great many victims she can atone for.
Item:Not applicable.
Abilities/Powers: Beatrix has absolutely no supernatural or superhuman abilities. She has trained extensively in a mixture of Tiger (offensive) and Crane (evasive) style kung fu (with some Eagle's Claw in there), swordsmanship with a focus on the katana, and gunmanship, meaning that her abilities are notable; her training with the kung fu master Pai Mei gave her the ability to punch through boards from one inch away, while studying under her master Bill (who in turn studied under master swordsman Hattori Hanzo) taught her how to fight against many enemies at the same time – she has come out the victor in battles against over thirty opponents. She has extreme control over her body and knows how to use it with deadly efficiency. While entirely human, she's basically mastered the style of fighting described as "wire-fu". Due to the international nature of her work, Beatrix also speaks several languages fluently, including English, Japanese, Mandarin, and French. She appears to be knowledgeable about romance languages too, as she mentions she speaks some Spanish, and she has the ability of certain spies and assassins to make herself inconspicuous, thereby stealthily gaining access to her targets.
Personality: To begin with, Beatrix is a paradox. Her life has mainly been spent in pursuit of training and working, and she's spent over a decade honing her skills as a swordfighter, gunwoman and assassin. Although her emotions never atrophied, she is definitely a master of them – in nearly all cases she is able to keep them under control and do "what needs to be done," whether this is stealing a car or killing a mother in front of her toddler. She enjoys her work, too; during her final confrontation with Bill he asks her if killing the people in her way to him had felt good. "Every one." She also describes herself as entirely without compassion, and while she is hardly merciful this is definitely a lie.
During her years with the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, Beatrix was known as the deadliest woman in the world. Deeply in love with Bill, she viewed herself as a woman – his woman – and would have done nearly anything for him. She committed the most brutal murders and took on a complete action hero lifestyle, noting that she would have "jumped a motorcycle onto a speeding train" for Bill. Few professional killers were more dedicated or fearless about their work.
However, in 1999 as soon as she discovered she was pregnant she had a complete change of heart. She was no longer a killer; now, she was a mother, and her first and only instinct was to protect her baby. Going entirely against what she had believed in before, she turned down the hit she had been sent on and disappeared, turning her back on the Squad and getting engaged to a pleasant young man. She hoped to have a simple, violence-free life to raise her little girl in, but this was not to be.
Strangely, her demeanor changed again entirely after she was attacked by Bill and the rest of the Deadly Viper Squad; thinking her child was dead, all traces of her motherly and humane feelings went out the window, instantly replaced by a bitter need for revenge. Once again she was entirely a merciless killer, risking her life multiple times to destroy the people who had wronged her.
Aside from her assassin training, however, B is a fairly normal person. She is clever, easygoing, and fairly neutral; able to function in regular society just fine, she is capable of making friends unless you prove you're an enemy. At any given time she's as likely to be holding an Elvis CD as a shuriken, as likely to be mixing Kool-Aid as arsenic. A regular fan of shows like Star Trek and movies like Shogun Assassin, for all intents and purposes B is a geeky, hard-ass American woman making her way in the world.
Path to Redemption: At this point in her stay on the Barge, Beatrix has begun to see the benefit in living a more peaceful lifestyle and using her skills defensively. With the exception of the remaining Deadly Vipers or an extremely dangerous and psychotic enemy, she will aim to incapacitate instead of kill (as she recently did with Genocider Syo, despite Syo's several attempts to stab Beatrix). At this point she is basically a usually-peaceful woman who sometimes derives a great deal of pleasure from violence. She is generally happy to use her fighting ability as a means to an end to help the Barge. In terms of guidance, she needs someone who can teach her that there are things to live for apart from her revenge (which she will not be dissuaded from), that there are always goals to be achieved and lessons to be taught and people to be learned from. She needs a lesson in being slightly less cynical, and more accepting of the world around her and the circumstances it has to offer.
History: Born in 1970 in middle America (Tarantino's early draft of the script indicates in Missouri), Beatrix "B" Kiddo was from the beginning a scrappy, tough little girl. A bit of a tomboy as a child, she developed an interest in fighting and action movies at an early age, learning shooting, streetfighting and martial arts skills every opportunity she got. In her teens she attracted the attention of an international assassin named Bill, who gave her the opportunity to train under him. Under Bill's tutelage, B quickly grew from a simple tough thug into something more closely resembling his protegé. He taught her Crane and Tiger style kung fu as well as the art of the katana. Beatrix quickly became his favorite student, and despite the difference in their ages, became his lover as well. Bill's pride in Beatrix was so great he even sent her at the age of 20 to train with his ancient master, the infamous White Lotus Clan monk Pai Mei.
A deadly man who once decimated the entire Shaolin monastery single-handedly (with the use of his Five-Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique, a deadly form of dim mak/"death touch" fighting), Pai Mei was prejudiced against women, caucasians, and Americans when Beatrix became his student. While she eventually earned his respect, it took over a year of obedience and submission, following every order to the letter even when it nearly broke her bones. After three years training with him, Beatrix walked out of there with far greater strength and agility, an expansive knowledge of deadly fighting techniques, and a native speaker's mastery of Mandarin (as Pai Mei would have accepted nothing less from her).
After her return to America, Bill made Beatrix a member of his elite assassination team, the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. He led as Snakecharmer; she was given the code name Black Mamba, working alongside Copperhead (Vernita Green), Cottonmouth (O-Ren Ishii), California Mountain Snake (Elle Driver) and Sidewinder (Budd, Bill's brother). Over the next six years, B became known as the deadliest woman in the world, lethal with a sword, blade, gun, or her hands, and was one of the globe's highest-paid assassins.
In 1999, however, her life took a dramatically different turn. While traveling for a hit on a Lisa Wong in California, Beatrix experienced morning sickness and took a test that determined she was pregnant. Seconds after making this discovery she was nearly killed by an assassin of Lisa Wong's, a shotgun-toting woman named Karen Kim. She managed to convince Kim to go home without completing the hit, explaining to her that she would do the same as she had just learned she was pregnant. Seeking a chance to raise her unborn daughter in a healthy setting, she assumed the name Arlene Machiavelli and ran away to El Paso, where she became the fiancée of a music store owner named Tommy Plympton. She settled down to live with Tommy, work in his record store, and began planning their upcoming wedding. It was a nice little life while it lasted.
During their wedding rehearsal, things soured. After months of looking for Beatrix and assuming her dead, Bill was furious to find that she had ran off to Texas and was heavily pregnant by (he assumed) another man, one she was about to marry. He led the rest of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad to the chapel Beatrix, her fiancé, and their small wedding party were in, ordering the Vipers to open fire on the civilians. Beatrix was spared from the first round of gunfire to endure a brutal beating from Budd, O-Ren, Elle, and Vernita. Once she had been knocked to the floor, Bill aimed a gun at her head and fired when she informed him that the baby was his.
The bullet didn't kill her, though; all it did was send her into a coma. After she had been taken to a hospital as a Jane Doe, Elle Driver did attempt to slip poison into her IV but was called off by Bill at the last second. "We're better than that," he reminded her, and Elle grudgingly left Beatrix alive. Perhaps she shouldn't have.
Beatrix remained comatose for four years. Waking up suddenly, she discovered she was no longer pregnant and had been in the care of a nurse who thought it was appropriate to pimp out his unconscious patients. She quickly killed him and a john using only her hands and mouth, as her legs had atrophied from not being used for years. She managed to steal the nurse's keys and escape to the hospital parking garage, where she located his car and hid in it for over thirteen hours, fuming over her mistreatment at the hands of her former friends and teaching herself to re-use her legs.
As soon as she was able to, she immediately began to seek her revenge. Arming herself with a Star Firestar .45, a small pistol strapped to her ankle, and a sheathed SOG knife, she set off to Okinawa for a real Japanese katana. Due to her connection with Bill, she convinced Bill's former master and Japan's greatest swordmaker, Hattori Hanzo, to create a priceless samurai sword for her. When the weapon is finished, she makes her way to her first and most easily found target, the new head of the Tokyo crime world, O-Ren "Cottonmouth" Ishii.
Now leader of the Yakuza, O-Ren was infamous and commanded an entourage of several close subordinates and many lackeys, known as the Crazy 88 (there were really about 35). Challenging O-Ren at a restaurant, Beatrix cut off the arm of Sofie Fatale, O-Ren's friend and Bill's former student, and cut through each of the Crazy 88 except for one very young man whom she commanded to go home. She faced off against O-Ren in the establishment's snowy garden, eventually earning back both her enemy's respect and her own honor. O-Ren fell after a rough battle in which both women were injured. B interrogated Sofie as to Bill and the other Vipers' whereabouts, making a "death list five" of her targets and leaving Sofie alive to tell their former master that the Black mamba was alive and coming for him. She crossed the first name off her Death List Five.
The next target was Copperhead, AKA Vernita Green. Now a Pasadena homemaker, B flew to California and met her at her door, their fight brutal and destructive until Vernita's daughter, Nikkia, arrived home from school. The two warriors agreed to postpone their battle, conversing easily until Vernita ambushed her with a gun. Beatrix fought back, killing Vernita, unfortunately right in front of little Nikki. While she did apologize for the action, she told Nikki that if the little girl ever wanted revenge, she would be waiting. The second name was crossed off.
The third name was Sidewinder's: Budd. The least illustrious of the Vipers, Budd had settled down in a trailer in Austin, Texas, where he worked not as an assassin or criminal but as a simple bouncer at a strip club. Bill warned Budd that Beatrix was coming for him, adding that he hoped Budd had kept up with his swordplay. He had not; Bill, Elle, and Beatrix all underestimated the man. Budd managed to shoot Beatrix full in the chest with two shotgun barrels full of rocksalt, immediately drugging her to keep her from resisting. He confiscated her sword, SOG, and Firestar, tied her up, and interred her in a coffin under the tombstone PAULA SCHULTZ. It's here, with Beatrix punching and fighting her way out of premature burial, where our adventure on the Barge begins.
Sample Journal Entry:
[The screen switches on, revealing a face caked in dirt, covered in dust, streaked with sweat, and smeared with blood. A pair of troubled, if clear, blue eyes look out from it, and then there's a shake of the head, followed by a swirl of long, messy blonde hair – underneath all the grime, the new arrival's a female. She gives a bright smile, the sight slightly disarming on such a gritty face.]
Hi. [Her voice cracks when she speaks and she coughs, then clears her throat.]
Sorry to bother you folks, but it appears I've got some new business to attend to and I'm a little out of sorts. [Her smile turns apologetic, a little self-deprecating. It might be cute if she didn't look like an adult female approximation of Peanuts' Pigpen.] If one of you would be so kind as to point me toward the showers, I'd be in your debt.
Sample RP: [Private journal roleplay example.]
Beatrix’s bound hands found the flashlight, wrapped around the cold steel, found the switch. In the hot, stagnant air, her breath came warm and fast as she pressed the switch, the little coffin suddenly bathed in light. She gasped.
Stop it. Turn it off.
No! No I can’t do that¬¬–
Yes you can. Turn it off, it will have a calming effect.
Her finger moved on the shaft, and once again she was surrounded by darkness. Her breathing began to slow, her heartbeat abating from a fast staccato to a calmer tick.
Better.
Once again she switched the flashlight on, holding it between her tied hands and awkwardly, painstakingly, sidled one cowboy boot up and off. Beatrix groped for the little straight razor she kept tucked into it, the one Budd hadn’t known about. The only one of her weapons he hadn’t taken. Fucker still has my Hanzo.
No. Not important. Forget the sword. She gritted her teeth, flicked the razor open and rubbed its sharp edge against the ropes, moving the handle awkwardly with her fingertips. The back-and-forth of the blade, the sound of the rope splitting, gave her a sudden rush of hope and as the final fiber broke she risked another deep breath of what little oxygen she had. That razor had never been more beautiful. She kissed it, closed it, dropped it beside her.
Fisting her hand around the flashlight, Beatrix shined the beam over the ceiling of the casket. Nailed shut, she’d seen Budd pound each one in herself and heard every shovelful of dirt fall on the lid. But at least she had her hands. That gave her a chance.
Pressing her fingertips against the casket lid, she checked the distance – three inches or so – and allowed herself one more breath. “Okay, Pai Mei,” she intoned, “let’s see how I do.” Her fist pounded against the wood with a dull thud, pounded again, pounded again. She saw the skin on her knuckles split before she felt it, leaving a smear of blood on the surface, and punched again.
The ceiling cracked above her. She took a deep breath, punched again, watched the broken wood strain under the weight of six feet of dirt. One more breath, filling her lungs to capacity, and she thrust her fist up and through the broken boards.
Dirt rained down on her and she moved eagerly into it, her movements a strange mix between clawing, digging, and swimming. One breath to do all of this. One single breath to get to the surface. Loose soil, she could do it. She hoped. Her lungs were already beginning to burn and if her eyes were open they would have blurred, urging the panic back and sending a jolt of adrenaline through her.
This time, she used it.
Minutes – seconds, what felt like hours – later, she felt the warm night air on her fingertips. She tunneled upward, drilled through the soil, finally felt her hand rise fully above the earth, finally pulled herself partway out of her grave.
The assassin sucked in a breath of air, ignoring the dirt in her mouth and eyes, threw herself on the ground, gasping like a fish out of water. She lay there, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. She opened her eyes; her vision was hazy, eyelashes caked with soil. Blinking the dirt away, she glanced around and her heart palpitated at what she saw.
Instead of the sleepy little cemetery she was expecting, B found herself squinting from a bright light. As her eyes adjusted, they traced the walls of a mostly-blank room. She sat up; even the ground she was on appeared to have changed, the grave she just dug herself out of conspicuously absent in the smooth floor.
“What the fuck?”
Either she was hallucinating from the lack of oxygen or she’d died after all. The two explanations occurred to her simultaneously and she accepted them without question. The situation was weird enough without her actually being transported to a closed room somewhere. She had to still be in the graveyard, lolling in a dream. Except graveyards weren't lit by interior light sources.
Fuck. Whatever happened, hallucination or fucking teleportation (no way), she really wished she hadn’t left that razor.
Special Notes: Beatrix will not back down from a challenge if one is extended to her, unless she has an exceptional reason (like pregnancy!) to turn it down. While she also rarely starts fights or loses her temper, it's possible both these things may happen if she's sufficiently angry; sexual violence/abuse is one of the few things that can get her into this mindset.
