Thread: Natural Born Loser -- The Chronicles of Troy Badeaux.

Only a fool gambles when desperate, son. He remembered his daddy telling him that, he remembered the way the old man's face looked, every line carved in those stubble-ridden cheeks, a strong jaw and a once handsome face with skin that had turned to leather from the sun and the Louisiana heat, with a head of thick, black, hair that was painted with long streaks of gray that came to the old man long before his time from the stress of putting food on the table for a family as a single father. His father, had been a good man.. His father, would have never found need to be in the place he was now a place that held no sanctuary for good men who'd break their backs for their families before ever pocketing money that they didn't earn. The humid air that filtered in from the outside of that hotel bar reeked of sex and stale cigarette air, of booze and dried over blood thrown in with the rest of the chaos that came in through those streets it hit his nostrils like a slap in the face, bringing him back from the thoughts of the man who raised him to be a honest man a man that he never could have been in his wildest dreams Honest men didn't wind up in a place where he didn't belong, with a smuggled pistol tucked into the back of his pants with the hammer rolled back and the safety flicked to off. He wasn't an honest man, he was a necessary man, and that made all the difference as to why he was in the position he was in now the position where a gamble was all he had left to make a play on. He was a desperate man, and a fool by the accounting of his beloved father. Not that it mattered, because whatever happened in the next minutes was going to decide if he bucked the tiger and came out on top, or wound up folding before the house like so many other damned fools they sent chasing the white rabbit down the hole, a hole that turned out to be a viper's nest each and every time. The sounds of the street outside were noticeably absent and for that held dear, he couldn't shake the old adage of ' silent as the grave ' from his head to save his own life. None of the night life that usually crowded that street was present, and that told him all that he needed to know his mark was coming up the street. A hand, made nerveless by those necessary acts that he was so proud of at his darkest moments, the very reasons he knew he was going to hell, pushed back and slid that calloused palm over the checkered grip of that old Browning High Power. Those fingers of his, made off angled from old breaks caused by past fights and other misadventures smoothed along the checkered grip, feeling the wood and steel made warm by his own body heat, grasping it the same way a catholic gripped their cross from comfort except for the fact that no prayers to Mother Mary left his chapped lips. He made a show, acting like he was just rubbing along the small of his back to relieve the tension that came to it, only to tug down that old, olive drab, military jacket before letting it rest along his lean frame as he turned around the moment that he saw those men approaching the side doors of that hotel bar. He made them, or made one of them, the only damned one that mattered, the one that made this mess personal for him the reason that he was sent across a continent to a shit hole bar in Bogota, Colombia. Those gunmetal gray eyes of his watched them as they headed up those stairs on the wall opposite of the bar, letting his fingers circle the rim of the tumbler that held his coke and rum, pushing his thumb and forefinger in tandem as he waited for the last one to head around the bend to go up the stairs in tow with the one that led them through that hotel's bar. The fingers that'd played around the rim of his glass slid down and gripped the sides of it as he knocked back his warm coke and rum, feeling the massaging burn of the sugar and alcohol and phosphoric acid sizzle down his throat and sink to his chest as he let the glass hit the bar, bottom first with a hard clink. A single look through the black rimmed glasses settled on the bridge of his nose to the bartender, and a tight, grim, line in what could have been a smile at some point were given to the aging Colombian in his white apron before a set of folded bills were slipped on the bartop and pushed over to him. Whatever's fidna happen upstairs pod'na, you were in th'back, an' you didn't see nothin'. He made a motion, pushin' those folded bills forward to him. A bon couer, mon ami. Speaking towards the other man who finally went to take those folded bills and move to head into the back room, either under the pretense of doing inventory, or to actually do it. Either way, those gunmetal gray eyes of the Cajun were slipping towards the stair well and that steady right hand was movin' to pull that beat up, old, Browning High Power from its place at the back of his pants as his left pulled out that home made suppressor from his jacket pocket. Funny how metal barely scraping metal could sound so dulcet to his ears as he screwed that metaphorical can to the edge of his browning's threaded barrel, cinching it as his left hand rose to brace his right as he kept that index finger stretched along the steel trigger guard, keepin' his barrel pointed down as he moved of the balls of his feet, walking with a predatory gait that was more like a wolf's than a man's as he crept up those stairs with an ill regard for those he was bound to find at the end of them. He could have uttered a prayer to Saint Michael, but he wasn't too sure that the same Lord who said vengeance was his would be too fond of him taking it for himself, but that was at the bottom of that long list for the reasons he was goin' to hell. He'd tracked Ruis de Silva all across Colombia for two years, and out of all this time, he'd only found one constant, that Ruis liked to visit a woman at a suite in the hotel, something that he'd kept hidden, someone that he kept hidden from them all, and for the life of him? He never could prove it, never could find the hotel, never could find the woman, all they had to go on was the word of a drug mule turned informant, and that wasn't enough to convince the company to waste resources, but it was enough to drive Troy in search of it, it was enough to drive him mad for the normally desk ridden agent, it was a puzzle piece that had been dropped in his lap that he couldn't figure out, and for the resources he'd burned through? The Company wouldn't let him, at least not until he heard rumors of a little neighborhood in Bogota that Ruis passed through every other month, on the seventh. Call it superstition, but if he was forcing himself into the shoes of a gambling man, then he might as well look at signs. Troy didn't know the hows of what he was even going to do when he came face to face with the man that most people were called El Lobo Rabiar, a wolf so rabid that he tore through whatever threw at him, and yet..? Troy found himself with the greatest gift god could have bestowed on him the gift of no other alternative. Too much time invested, too many lives lost, he'd put that dog down even if he wasn't walking alive from it. He didn't have a damn chance, or a prayer, but in the words of the shortest prayer he'd ever heard from a parish priest Fuck it, it's in god's hands now. He was up the stairs, and coming around the corner. Green fatigues and automatic weapons, they didn't serve for anything but target markers in a maelstrom of applied violence, a two step of triplicated suppressed death knells exploded into duo of christening thuds that came right before leather top boots brought him over the first two guards as a pair of hands lowered to liberate that beat up AKM from the secondary gunman that never had a prayer. He already heard the foot falls of the other two who were coming to respond to something that even they couldn't have predicted despite being prepared for. Click. A thumb swept the selector switch down a notch, throwing her into just the right position to let her empty the contents of what was in that magazine straight ahead as they came forward. There was no turning back, no walking away. What was done was done, and by the time he'd emptied half of that thirty round stamped steel magazine into the two cartel boys? He was already walking over them, that shrill sound of his ears ringing from firin' that rifle in his hands ahead like he was in a warzone instead of a hallway. He could already hear the shuffling on the otherside of that door as he lifted a boot and slammed the bottom of it against the doorframe, right next to the knob, and sending the damn doorjamb flying off in splinters. There he was except for the fact that Ruis wasn't with some whore, he'd been sittin' down at a table with a young woman who looked like the spitting image of the woman they'd pegged to be his former mistress, with her dragon's fire green eyes and her wavy black hair.. She was a looker, a drop dead gorgeous young woman, who under different circumstances could have had the pick of any man, or woman, that she so chose. The one she wanted most though, he was already choosing her over himself as he stood, practically flinging himself in the view of Troy's rifle, screaming at him in Spanish, words that Troy couldn't even make out because of the ringing in his ears.. He understood one thing though that Ruis was making a go for the pistol at his side. He understood that he couldn't let that happen, and so he squeezed the trigger of that AKM one last time, cutting the cartel lieutenant turned boss down in a spray lead as brass casings littered the floor, mulching the broad chest that was hidden behind those olive drab colored fatigues. He had to hand it to Ruis, he supposed the man fancied himself a soldier to the last.. Though, the woman to the side, the one that was standing instead of cowering, the one that was lifting her own gun instead of running away like a mistress might. He understood a second thing, in the moment that his blue eyes met her furious ones, with her pistol leveled at his chest. That wasn't Ruis de Silva's new mistress. It was his daughter. Fair trade, he supposed, the moment that she gave him a hollow tip kiss that left a bloom of red across his chest, sending him into the door frame as he responded with deafening click-clicks from the mouth of that AKM in response. Not a damn sound came from that muzzle. ..Ain't I just a fuckin' de'pouille? Askin' in that Bayou accent as he leaned his head back and let it drop against the plaster of the wall behind his head. He felt the burn, and he already knew what was comin' as he lifted that pack of Lucky Strikes from his hip pocket with a shaky, blood covered hand, flipping the hard top cover of it, he tried to pull one loose to no avail, 'least not before she strolled on over and squatted infront of him, crouching over his legs. Maybe it was sympathy, maybe it was respect for the dead and dying, but she was pulling out his cigarette for him, taking that beat up zippo from the package along with that last cigarette and placing it between his lips for him, igniting it so he could have his last few breaths, filled with carcinogens and euphoria.. Except for the fact, that his last few breaths didn't add up to just that. En d'oeille, Boo. As he tapped above his brow in an almost mock salute to the woman who's brows drew up in confusion. She didn't have a damn clue, she might have even chalked it up to the hysterics of a dying man if she would have had the type. But, she didn't. Mostly because when those five men entered that building, a sixth person had trailed behind them. A sixth person, a woman, with bronzed over skin and satin black hair with cheekbones so sharp that they could have cut glass. She was his coffee skinned guardian angel, and she was the reason that de Silva's poor daughter had her mind blown out sideways as she crumpled to the side in a heap before a woman with buckshot brown eyes was moving in to press a charge card over the sucking chest wound in the center of Troy's chest, putting a piece of cloth she tore from the bottom of his shirt to keep it there while she gave him a disapproving look. Fuckin' Pendejo. T'Wha' too' you s'long, Esme? Didn't think you were stupid enough to actually go after him by yourself. Now hold still, an extraction team's coming to haul your dumb, swamp rat ass, outta here. Came that Puerto Rican by way of Brooklyn accent as her plump lips curled up into a 'fuck you' grin, cutting her eyes over his face as Troy looked back up to her before murmuring.. Ain't that th'story of my fuckin' life.