#Said woman could probably talk Caesar into shooting himself in the foot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dragonrajafanfiction · 3 years

Text

Genji Heavy Industries (Part 4) Elevators

I had a lot of fun with this. I hope you enjoy it.

Ahead of you was the low, narrow passage, no windows as far as the eye could see. Ventilation fans are spinning slowly behind grates. The walls are spray painted a heavy rusty red. Walking directions are written in white paint that you couldn't read. This was the Inner district, a place that felt mildly suffocating, with an element of unease in the air. Caesar walked in front with a Desert Eagle in each hand, fully focused on the possible danger at any time. Chu Zihang held a sword at the rear, you and Lu Mingfei walked between the two, passing one white light after another. The institute felt mysterious here, like an infinitely extended maze that secretly held a minotaur.

You fall into step with Caesar, matching him stride for stride. It was known as “Wolf Walking”. When traveling through snow, you used the foot falls of another as a pathway. Not only did this ease the exertion of trudging through the snow yourself, it also created a minimal disturbance in the snow. It concealed the numbers of the people following through the area. Even though you were one of dozens of children, the actual population at the port was hidden this way. You would see a single trail of footprints where dozens of children had passed.

In this case, even if someone could hear your footsteps, they would think that there were three men in this passageway. Your presence wouldn’t be noticed until it was too late.

You crossed the walkway without incident. There was nothing odd at the end of the walkway, just an elevator, and, surprisingly there were no special security measures in the inner area, probably because the Hydra thought it was impossible to invade the inner area. So they didn't add a cumbersome access control system here. The elevator door opens right up and lets you inside.

"Boss, which floor should we go to?" Lu Mingfei looked at the densely packed floor buttons.

You take Chu Zihang’s advice and bite your tongue. There was no need to ask any questions. Caesar would figure things out. Your job was just to do what he told you. But Lu Mingfei thought with his mouth. Every thought bubble was, for him, a speech bubble. It was like trying to perform a covert operation with a large tropical parrot. You just wanted to turn around, shoot it into a cloud of feathers and move on. But Caesar was far more generous and patient, not paying it much mind, and scolding you for doing so.

On reflection, your impatient attitude was a product of your upbringing. You were brutal because the environment and the people around you were brutal. There was no need to viciously swear at Mingfei and punish him. You did it on impulse because that was how it was always done. Once again, Caesar was showing you another way to be.

Every time you worked with him in dangerous situations that goodness was like light to penetrate the dark, but now your mind dove elsewhere, back into the memory of his opening the door wearing nearly nothing. You feel the heat rise to your face involuntarily. You blink rapidly to clear your head, mentally swearing at yourself for your lack of focus and glancing around to make sure that no one saw.

A new problem emerged. This skyscraper had more than fifty floors. Some were garage floors. Some were equipment floors. Others were mezzanine floors, half floors that didn't need to be named by numbers. Typically, in a modern high-rise, an elevator can only reach certain parts of the building. The ground level general office elevator would not reach Hydra level. A cargo elevator would not need to access every floor, only the floors where the cargo needed to go. But the elevator in the inner district can lead to the majority of floors. It was all accessible.

"Wow! Didn't think about it." Caesar frowned.

And just like that, the light was switched off. What did he mean he didn’t think about which floor in a one hundred floor highrise was going to be the right one?!

“Truth be told, I didn’t think that it was absolutely necessary to go straight to Kaguya tonight. I just wanted to feel my way in and see how it went. If it weren’t for that submarine, I would have gone back, but it blocked our path.”

Your mental rifle now swung from the ‘Tropical Parrot’ to put Captain Underpants in the crosshairs!

"So, brother, do you have the structural diagram of this building?" Lu Mingfei asked Chu Zihang.

Chu Zihang shook his head: "Do you think there will be such information on the Internet? Even if there is, the information of the inner district will not be included in it."

God.

You hang your head, your hair falling over your eyes to shroud your face in shadow.

You feel a soft pat on your shoulder and look up again. Chu Zihang, stoic, was taking a page from Caesar’s book and trying to comfort you. You needed it. It took everything in you not to fall into his arms, have him offer you champagne, and give you permission to cry if you’re sad!

They had actually walked all the way to the inner district, but now their minds were blank. The last time they came as VIPs. There were uniformed high-heeled secretaries to guide them, and they were quick to press the floor button. You were so overwhelmed by the amazing things around you that you never thought to pay attention to which floor you were on, having never been in such a magnificent highrise in your life.

You let out a soft breath of air. “Permission to speak sir?”

Caesar gives you an odd look. “Oh… right. No one’s around so it’s okay to talk.”

You look up at him. “Such a large pumping station requires adequate ventilation, not only for the staff inside but to avoid creating vacuums that might collapse the pipes. Now that we’re inside we see a lot of ventilation fans. Those vents are likely part of a larger network. You can use your Speech Spirit to follow the noise of the guards in the Iron Dome Temple and get back out.”

Caesar beamed at you. “Excellent observation, MC. I’ll keep that in mind. But since we’ve made it this far, it would be a shame to go back now. Why not go straight to the source of the issue? The most important floor must be the top floor! Let’s go to the top and take a look!"

What? Wasn’t he just now talking about wanting to go back? He looked dumbfounded and confused but his mind was actually running a mile per second and he’d arrived at the conclusion of, ‘Screw it, let’s go.’ before you could collect your thoughts. If you had been faster on the uptake, perhaps you could have slipped the suggestion in, but now his mind was locked in place and it was impossible to change it.

"Damn, the most important floor is also the most heavily guarded, right? I say go to the 12th floor first! I remember that the 12th floor seems to be the floor with all those phone operators. Even if they recognize us, once we pull out our guns, the girls will be scared! We still have time to escape!" Lu Mingfei hurriedly objected, "Right, brother?”

Both you and Mingfei turn and look desperately at Chu Zihang. Perhaps if you had his backing you would be able to avoid going along with Caesar’s harebrained decision.

"The operator room is located on the 14th floor, you are remembering wrongly." Chu Zihang said, expressionless, "but I agree with Caesar's idea. Since we don't know which floor to start from, might as well go straight to the yellow dragon!"

Now you just want to kill all of them.

“You want to go back home right, MC?” Chu Zihang glanced down at you again.

“My home is gone.” You grumble bitterly, crossing your arms.

"Hey hey hey hey! Listen to me! Listen to me! Although the top floor is important, Hydra would not use a top tier place as a machine room, right? The main purpose of our visit is to blow up the core of Kaguya, right?" Lu Mingfei hurriedly made up excuses not to go there, flapping his arms in desperate parrot-like gestures while you watched, sullen. "First, the main quest then the side quests, right? Let's blow up the Kaguya computer system first, and then go to the top floor to sweep, okay?"

You drop your arms in impatience. “Just stop talking, Mingfei. We can’t see the top floor if we blow up the computer, d- ” You barely manage to avoid ending that sentence with ‘dumbass’, because the elevator cut you off with ‘ding!’ And you suddenly feel a strange vertigo as the elevator stops! It was rising up and you were all too busy arguing to notice!

Lu Mingfei freezes, his face going pale. You, Caesar and Chu Zihang, however, put your hands on your guns and as one form a wall between the door and Mingfei Lu.

You’re on the 21st floor but you have no idea what it was and there was no guide on the side of the elevator to tell you. But the elevator rose because someone called it. So someone had to be on the other side of the door! Your eyes sweep upward to the ceiling. You might be able to find an escape through those tiles, but more likely you would be shot trying.

The door opened. A woman appeared, looking like a secretary and wearing a white shirt and A-line skirt. She was in such a hurry to get in that she ran into Caesar chest to chest. They are both tense for a moment, like tigers who caught each other unawares. The secretary slowly looked up, and Caesar, a head taller than her, coldly stared at her.

This was not a young girl, but a mature woman of nearly 30 years. Though she had a hot, curvy body, with a beautiful face, you recognized the cold in those eyes. This wasn’t the first time you’d seen her. She was Nanami Sakurai and was one of the important people of Hydra. You met her briefly on your tour and introduction to the Japan Branch. You quickly lower your eyes, but she was already face to face with Caesar. Caesar had his dark makeup on and was dressed differently, but he was still himself and he was hard to forget.

At this moment, her eyes were sweeping Caesar from bottom to top, her gaze sharp as a knife, as if she wanted to cut Caesar apart inch by inch. You wished you had a telepathic link to Caesar’s brain to tell him to move! Your fundamental understanding of cruel leadership instinctively clued you in to her expectation. She expected him to know what to do. If people like her ever had to tell you what to do, then they would make sure they wouldn’t have to repeat themselves ever again!

Sakurai Nanami's eyes were suddenly murderous!

"Bakayarou!” A loud slap hit Caesar's face.

Caesar froze. A clear palm mark quickly appeared on his face despite the make up.

You remembered being slapped like this. You had been carrying a stack of dishes. You couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old. You stepped in something wet and the plates fell to the concrete floor and broke, every single one. You still remember the eyes of the nurse who was bearing down on you while you stood rooted to the spot. They were cold and completely black, like a shark’s. She took your wrist in her hand and slapped you so hard that your vision flashed white and your whole head went numb.

She slapped you like you had wanted to slap Lu Mingfei back at the entrance of Genji Heavy Industries.

She screamed at you the way Sakurai Nanami was screaming now. It was all in Japanese and you couldn’t understand the exact words, but the exact words didn’t matter. You grabbed Caesar’s hand and pulled him out of the elevator.

You get several steps away before Caesar digs his heels in. “Hey, stop, stop…” He whispers.

Several Executive Board officers running to and fro, each carrying boxes of documents. The floor was divided by rows of large bookshelves that went up to the roof on which stood bound files covered with plain white leather cases. Except for Sakurai Nanami, who was in a white uniform dress, everyone on this floor was wearing a very similar dress to yours, and everyone was doing their own job. Some were responsible for boxing up the documents on the shelves, others were counting and filling out spreadsheets, and the moving team was responsible for carrying the sealed boxes of documents to the freight elevator; only a few people were not involved in this intense and orderly move. They patrolled around with their hands on the handles of their guns, and it was obvious that the value of these documents was extraordinary.

“Quick, act natural and not like a scared rabbit!” Caesar hissed, shoving you forward.

You snap into form and grab a box. Your hands are trembling. You couldn’t remember the last time you were scared like this. Usually, when faced with danger, you went ice cold or got angry. However, when faced with Nanami Sakurai you felt the terror of being seven years old again.

You take a breath and school yourself to stay calm. Your hair and eyes were dark and you wouldn’t stand out here at all. It was fine.

You were fine.

You imitated the people in front of you as you put the file box in front of the elevator. Someone was responsible for recording and checking the number on the file box, then the box was covered by a black cloth and sent into the elevator.

The person in charge of taking notes waved a pencil in his hand and the people behind him paused, the Executive Board officer who remained in the elevator nodded and said "HAI", and the elevator took him with the stacked boxes up the elevator shaft.

All the entry and exit routes were guarded by Board officers. With the vast amount of paperwork here, you couldn’t stay here to wait too long or you would be discovered.

"They are counting. Each time the elevator is loaded with fifty boxes of documents, the person who moves the last box in is responsible for escorting the documents upstairs, and the fiftieth person who moves the boxes in can leave." Chu Zihang whispered as he passed.

The Japanese Hydra are very organized. Each time the number of boxes of documents transported in the elevator reached fifty boxes, the fiftieth porter naturally acted as an escort. All this was, was the efficient division of labor, as precise as an automated machine. It was no wonder you were familiar with it immediately without even understanding the language. You realize that -- from your penchant towards violence, to your immediate and rigid obedience to leadership -- you probably would fit in more with Hydra then you would with Cassell Academy.

It makes you wonder how Chu Zihang got in with the Academy to be able to notice something like this so quickly. His degree of precision is just like yours. He also seemed to agree with you more often than not about deadly force. You look at him and observe that he’s controlling the speed of his work. You need to position yourselves to make sure that each of you is the fiftieth person on the elevator each time. And you need to do this three times in a row. Even if you do it perfectly, because each elevator takes ten minutes to fill, it will take you thirty minutes to get out.

Unfortunately, perfection is not Lu Mingfei’s strong suit. It wasn’t even in his vocabulary. Without a glance or word, both you and Chu Zihang tacitly agree that Mingfei should get on the elevator first for the best result.

But you’re overruled just as fast.

Caesar passes you. “I’m first. Chu Zihang, you’re second, MC, third, Mingfei last.”

Every expletive you’ve ever learned in your entire life passes through your mind in a flash.

“Boss!” Mingfei squeaked. “Haven’t you heard of women and children first?!”

“If anyone’s going to be caught here, it’s going to be me.”

You then notice. The enclosed space was hot. Caesar was starting to sweat, and once he started sweating his make up would be really noticeable.

"Since this building was built, this is the first time the police department has issued a search warrant for us, right? What are they looking for?" A familiar voice suddenly sounded behind Caesar's head.

Caesar's body shook slightly, and the Director of the Executive Board, Gen Chisei, the leader of the entire Hydra Clan, the man that Caesar had made a statement of friendship with - only for him to leave Caesar to die at the bottom of the Japanese Trench - was standing behind him!

Chu Zihang keenly perceived the killing aura, not Gen Chisei's killing aura but Caesar's. The muscles on the side of Caesar's face involuntarily pulled tight, revealing the sharp lines of light skin.

He is not afraid ...... he is angry!

#Dragon Raja

14 notes · View notes

sunmoonandeddie · 5 years

Text

little ballerina (6/16)

pairing: peter parker x reader

word count: 2,435

summary: After The Snap was reversed and the world went back to normal, Natasha Romanov had one request of her team: to infiltrate and destroy the Red Room.

chapter warnings: Dirty words, violence

masterlist

a/n: Let me know what you think!

The first of the nightmares came after Wanda's little intrusion. You had spent hours in the training room with Bucky, both working with the punching bag and doing hand-to-hand combat. Even with his metal arm, you found that he was having trouble subduing you.

You found it amusing. Bucky ended up getting so frustrated and flustered that by the end, you were winning almost every match.

Training with Bucky had been nice. For one, he didn't judge you. With the others (excluding Natasha), you had felt like they were watching you like some sort of experiment. Like you were a volcano about to erupt. Granted, they weren't exactly wrong, and you knew that after what happened with Wanda earlier that day, they'd be watching even closer. But Bucky wasn't like that. He understood exactly where you were coming from and he treated you like you were more than just a prisoner.

The others might say they had rescued you, but the locked doors and cuffs that they had only taken off that morning in the lab said otherwise. You hadn't even been outside since you had tried to run.

You had eaten dinner with the group that night, though Wanda kept a wide berth. It wasn't hard to since you stuck to a little corner in the kitchen while the others mostly chose to eat on the couches on the other side of the communal area. You had picked at your Caesar salad, not having much of an appetite.

You had headed to your room immediately after, leaning against the door and sinking down to the ground. You felt so overwhelmed and all you wanted to do was curl up under the covers of that stupid bed and never come out. Pushing your hair back away from your face, you tried to ignore the burning behind your eyes that threatened tears. "Don't cry. You don't fucking cry," you muttered to yourself. "You don't cry. You're better than that."

You jumped as you heard—and felt—a knock on the door.

"Y/N?"

Fighting back a groan, you pressed the palm of your hands into your eyes, still fighting back tears. "Yeah?"

"You okay?"

Fucking Peter. Fucking Peter and his naive, happy-go-lucky, "everything's gonna be great" attitude. As much as you appreciated him checking up on you and bringing you your Chinese the night before, you didn't need a babysitter. In the back of your head, you knew that it wasn't fair for you to be hating on Peter (if only in your mind), but you needed an enemy at this very moment that you could be angry at. If you were angry, you could keep yourself from crying.

You let your head fall into your palms. "Yes, Peter, I'm fine."

There was a pause, but you knew he was still standing on the other side of the door. "... Are you sure?"

"I'm fucking fine," you bit out.

You felt a soft vibration as he let his hand fall against the door. "Okay... I'm, uh... I, I'm here if you need to talk." You bit your lip, waiting for him to walk away. "My room is the one with the MIT sticker on it."

You don't know how long you sat there before he finally walked away. Once he was gone, you found yourself crawling under the covers. You tossed and turned for what felt like forever before eventually falling asleep.

You were in the dance studio with Miss Claudia. "Again," she ordered, and you launched into an allégro.

But nothing felt right.

It felt like needles were shooting into your feet with every jump.

"Wrong!" Miss Claudia was walking in a circle around you, the concerto that was playing changing into a minor key. It took on a dark, foreboding turn as she continued to yell at you. "Wrong!"

You kept your eyes on the mirror, your arms held in a first. Miss Claudia walked behind you and you jumped as she came back around as Madame B. Her voice became much harsher as she scolded you.

"Wrong!" You yelped as she yanked on your arms, pushing it into a position that hurt like hell. You were already trying to ignore the pain in your feet.

The older woman suddenly grabbed you and threw you to the ground. As you lay there, she grabbed one of your feet, pulling a hammer and nails out of nowhere. Tears were streaming down your face as she placed a nail against the platform of your pointe shoe. She ignored your pleas as she raised the hammer, slamming it down so that the nail drove through the box and into your toes.

It took you almost thirty seconds to realize that the bloodcurdling scream that was ringing through the air was coming from you.

You clawed at the floor, desperately trying to get away as she grabbed the other foot. Tears were falling uncontrollably now and you let out another scream as she pounded a nail into your other foot. Once she let go, you crawled desperately towards the door, getting up on your hands and knees.

You could hear her coming towards you, her heels clicking menacingly on the floor. She dragged you backwards by your ankle. "Get up." When you shook your head and didn't move, Madame B yanked on your hair and pulled you to your feet. "Again."

The music started again from the radio in the corner as you tried to do the allégro. Your cheeks were stained with tears as searing pain shot up from your feet to your legs. In the mirror, you could see the blood soaking the formerly pristine, pink pointe shoes. You felt it squishing between your toes.

"Wrong!"

Her voice continued to ring in your ears as she circled around you. You danced for what felt like hours before she stopped in front of you. She raised a lighter in front of you, flicking it open so that the flame was right in front of your nose. "Again." Your heart was racing as you went through the allégro again and again and again.

But it didn't stop her from taking the lighter and setting your leotard alight. The flames engulfed you as you sobbed, but you couldn't stop dancing. Smoke was filling your lungs, and you still couldn't stop.

You jolted awake, a scream still on your lips as you felt someone shaking you. You thrashed violently against their grip until the person let you go. Trying to catch your breath, you backed up against the headboard as your vision adjusted to the darkness of your room.

Peter was sitting at the end of the bed. He was trying to catch his breath, just like you, his puppy dog eyes wide. "Y/N... Are you okay?"

"What are you doing in here?" You swallowed the lump in your throat, grimacing as you felt just how sweaty you were. You had been wearing Peter's sweatshirt for the last two days and all the sweat made it even more disgusting. Looks like you were actually going to have to wash it.

He settled down onto the bed, realizing you were okay enough to question him. "I could hear you screaming from my room."

You pushed your hair back from your face, closing your eyes. "How did you hear me and no one else did?"

Peter shrugged a little as he sat there. "Most people here are on some form of sleep meds. The only time we're supposed to wake each other is if there's an emergency—like, a, a world's gonna end type of emergency—or if someone's having a nightmare."

"So why aren't you on medication like the rest of them?" Pulling your knees up to your chest, you watched him closely. He didn't seem tired in the least bit.

"I usually am. I was just working on some new tech."

"I thought Stark was the tech genius here."

He smirked a little at you, scooting to be a little closer. You were giving him an inch and he was going to take a mile, if he could. "I, I was his intern for three years before going to college. I made all the webbing for Spider-Man myself."

Your head cocked to the side. "Spider-Man? Is that your superhero thing?"

Peter seemed shocked when he realized that you had no idea who he was, and probably didn't know much about the others either. "You, you don't know who I am?"

You felt yourself get a little defensive as you sat up, a scowl on your lips. "I've been at the Academy for eight years. There's not much communication or news coming from the outside."

He reached out to you, as though trying to get you to not shut him out again. "No, no! I'm sorry. I forgot." He rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment as you relaxed once again. "I didn't become Spider-Man until about seven years ago and I wasn't an official member of the Avengers until, like, a year later."

"Oh. What do you do?"

Surprised, Peter pointed at himself. "What... What do I do?"

Nodding slowly, you waved your hand towards him. "Yeah. You're a superhero. What do you do? Captain America has the whole super soldier thing. Iron Man has the suit. The Hulk is, well, you know. What do you do?"

You could see him debating with himself as he stood up off the bed, rubbing his hands on his sweatpants. "Uh... I..." He looked around your room, glancing at the different walls. You were about to ask him what exactly he was looking for when he suddenly walked over to your wall and just... started climbing it? You watched with wide eyes, pulling your knees up against your chest again. He crawled across the ceiling and to the other wall, before standing back on his feet. "I don't have my, my, my web shooters on me, but I can, uh, I can swing myself from building to building."

"You don't strike me as the superhero type."

It wasn't meant to be mean or condescending in any way, but you realized how it must've sounded as soon as Peter's cheeks flushed a dark red. "Why, uh... Why not?"

You scooted more towards the end of the bed, briefly noting that your sheets were soaked with your sweat. "I didn't mean it that way. I just thought... You seem like the type to be in the lab, not throwing yourself into danger all the time like the others."

He looked down at his feet, his arms crossing over his chest. "What can I, What can I say? I'm the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

"But you started all this when you were fifteen?"

Peter nodded, letting out a long huff of air. "Yeah, yeah, I did."

You just looked at him for a long moment. Just looked. Your eyes took all of him in as you processed all this new information. "Why?"

"Why what?"

Rolling your eyes, you sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed. "Why did you become a superhero at fifteen? That's a lot of responsibility and danger for a teenager."

He didn't even really have to think. He shrugged nonchalantly, his eyes meeting yours. "I was bitten by a radioactive spider in a lab. I don't know why it was me, of everyone that was there in the lab that day, but it was. The universe chose me." He sat on the bed next to you, looking down at the ground. "I'm from New York City. It's a rough place, to say the least, and, and one day I... I, I, I had a way to do something about it. So I've never looked back."

"So you just decided that you were going to spend the rest of your life saving other people?"

All he did was nod.

You hadn't expected that from him. Hell, earlier you had just been bashing him in your head for being happy-go-lucky, and you had no idea that he was carrying such a huge weight on his shoulders.

He was your age and was saving people without a second thought for his own life or safety while you had spent eight years training to be an assassin. You had killed fourteen of your friends. On purpose. Your heart-to-heart with Bucky came back to mind as the gravity of it all suddenly hit you.

You felt that stinging behind your eyes as your hands fiddled in your lap. Clearing your throat, you glanced over at him and then back at your hands. "You're a good person, Peter."

The weight of the conversation hung in the air. It was a long moment before Peter stood, motioning to the bed. "Do, Do you wanna take a shower? I can, uh, I can change your sheets for you while you're in there."

Nodding, you stood up and padded over to the bathroom after grabbing an extra change of clothes, taking a last glance at him before heading inside and shutting the door. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., can you turn the shower on?" Your voice was no louder than a whisper, but the A.I. heard you, and turned on the shower.

"What temperature would you like, Y/N?"

"As hot as it can go," you murmured, tugging off the sweaty clothing and pulling your hair out of the loose bun it had been thrown into. Steam was already rising from the shower as you opened the glass door. Wincing as the scalding water hit your skin, you turned your face up to the water and just let it soak over you. You sat there for a few minutes before asking, "Is there anyway it can go hotter?"

"Are you sure, Y/N?" F.R.I.D.A.Y. asked, and you knew that if an A.I. could hesitate, she would be.

She? Since when is F.R.I.D.A.Y. her own person? You thought, before replying, "Yeah. I'm sure."

Your body felt like it was on fire as the temperature of the water raised another few degrees. Grabbing the soap, you tried to scrub yourself of the anxiety that your nightmare had given you.

You took so long in the shower that by the time you got out, Peter had changed the sheets and fallen asleep on the bed while waiting for you to come out. There was a glass of water on the bed and a small bottle of melatonin.

Not wanting to wake him up after all he had done for you, you popped two of the melatonin before crawling into the bed and falling asleep to the sound of Peter's soft snores.

#peter parker x you #peter parker x reader #peter parker imagine #peter parker fic

531 notes · View notes

fuckyeslilkim · 7 years

Photo

Throwback Interview: The Mask Of Lil’ Kim

In a nondescript warehouse in Manhattan's Chelsea district, the rapper Lil' Kim is being primed for yet another fashion shoot. The theme of the day is baby-doll innocence, and the 4-foot-11 celebrity is appropriately undressed in a sheer blue and pink negligee and high-heeled sandals. With the final touches of turquoise eye shadow, pink lips and, of course, her trademark blond wig and blue contact lenses in place, the picture is complete. Sex symbol. Feminist icon. Freak mama.

Change the circumstances only slightly and you could imagine a porn shoot happening in this warehouse. The final products--the photographs that will sell Kim's raunchy lyrics and persona to the world--often come close to that. A full-page advertisement for her new album, "The Notorious K.I.M.," shows the star in the back seat of a limousine, naked except for black spike-heel boots and a safari-style hat. It's like the kind of pinup men find useful in prison cells and toilets.

But nobody seems bothered by the actual work of this shoot--least of all Kim, who patiently strips down. Quite the contrary: She considers herself a good role model--an empowered, independent woman in the highly misogynistic world of rap. Her fans include many young women who find in her an enviable example of personal strength.

To cash in on the marketing moment, corporate America has come running, showering her with endorsement offers--from Candie's shoes to Viva Glam lipstick. She earns cover treatments from mainstream and edgy magazines alike: The Source, XXXL, Vibe, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Jet, Interview (on which she appeared wearing nothing but head-to-toe Louis Vuitton body tattoos). And now, Atlantic Records has provided the 25-year-old with her own label, Queen Bee.

From the moment she was discovered by rapper Christopher Wallace (a k a Notorious B.I.G., a k a Biggie Smalls) as a round-the-way girl roaming the streets of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Kimberly Jones has set new standards for female rappers. Her 1996 solo debut, "Hardcore," made the highest-ever debut on the Billboard charts for a female rap artist. An unparalleled fusion of hip-hop and pornography, the album opens with a scene in which we hear a fan buy a ticket to a triple-X flick, and then loudly pleasure himself while watching Kim onscreen.

At last year's MTV Music Awards, her outfit spawned a media frenzy fueled by the shocked response of presenter Diana Ross, who reached out and jiggled Kim's exposed breast on national television. (Ross later offered a public apology, noting that she thought Kim "was beautiful and . . . didn't need to dress in that manner.") The incident solidified Kim's image of sexual fearlessness--and her career as a fashion trendsetter.

We've seen so much of her, and yet nothing at all. Who is Lil' Kim, really?

Talking to her, you're taken by any number of contradictions. She considers herself a devoted child of God, for example. "I'm not perfect," she explains. "I mess up. I'm not Miss Sanctified, but I believe in my Father. We have a really good relationship."

She has allowed powerful men to shape and exploit her sexpot image, but touts her own brand of feminism. "If you look at me, no man has really given me anything," she contends. "I got my own money."

She raps about the joys of fellatio, but likens herself to Queen Elizabeth, the so-called Virgin Queen of England. ("I watch that movie over and over again," she says.) Like Elizabeth, she has had an unhappy love life. "I had a lot of guys betray me," Kim says, "and she reminds me of myself because, toward the end, she really wanted a man. She was lonely. She didn't wanna be this strong woman that everybody portrayed her to be, but she had to be."

On one point the star is adamant: Lil' Kim is not Kimberly Jones.

Except: "Most of the things that I talk about [in my lyrics], yeah, they're true." In the song "Hold On," for example, "I talk about the pain of being pregnant and having an abortion."

"I talk about the things that women have gone through that they don't think I've gone through," she says. "Like fightin' with your man or losin' a man to death. Being alone. I talk about just bein' in the streets having no money and having to do illegal things to get the money."

All of which happened, too.

So, after one spends many hours with both Lil' Kim the rapper and Kimberly Jones the woman, the similarities between the two become as apparent as the differences. "We wear the mask that grins and lies," wrote Paul Laurence Dunbar, "with torn and bleeding hearts we smile."

It is not easy to remove the mask of Lil' Kim, which she wears as a brilliant defense against full disclosure. She doesn't want to show us all of the damage that lies underneath. Like many other black women, she has become so good at conjuring the mask--signifying at a moment's notice, for hire--that we no longer know where it ends. Or where Kimberly Jones begins.

In the June issue of Vibe magazine, there is a photograph of young Kim dressed in a neat school uniform: plaid dress, white blouse, knee socks. She is brown-skinned, with brown eyes and nappy hair, neatly pulled into a bun. She sits like a proper schoolgirl with her hands folded in her lap and legs crossed at the ankles, smiling and polite.

But inside, she feels ugly. She thinks of herself as too dark and too short. She has just moved to an all-white neighborhood in suburban New Rochelle, N.Y., where little blond girls tease her and confirm her monstrosity.

Her mother, Ruby Mae Jones, brought her to live there, at age 8, fleeing the ruins of a marriage. But Kim wants to go back to Brooklyn. She wants to go home, to her old neighborhood where little girls look like her. Even if it means going back to the home of her father, Linwood Jones, a former military man who enforced a brutal discipline on wife and children.

"There was a great deal of verbal abuse," she recalls. "And there was times . . . when my mother had black eyes. My father told people she had fallen."

Linwood Jones could not be reached for comment, and there is no record of his having spoken publicly about his daughter's career or her allegations of physical abuse. According to Kim, he did comment privately on her overtly sexual image, asking that she "tone it down."

After her parents' separation in 1983, Kim's life became increasingly unstable. At first she and older brother Christopher stayed with their mother, who relied on the kindness of friends for shelter--including the time spent in New Rochelle. But when options ran out, Ruby Mae Jones granted custody of her children to her husband.

"I was basically living out of the trunk of my car," Kim's mother explains over a posh dinner in a New York restaurant--a contrast made all the more striking by her fur coat and her gold-and-diamond-spangled hands. "And I didn't feel it was appropriate for [the children]. So I let Kim go to live with her father."

When he was away--sometimes for weeks, for reserve duty--the children were deposited with an aunt who was raising several sons of her own. "I grew up around . . . maybe eight guys in my family," says Kim. "I stayed with my cousins when my father went away. They lived in the projects."

"Kim had no sisters," adds Ruby Mae Jones. "She was surrounded by boys all the time. But she had such a strong personality, I never had to worry about her taking care of herself. I knew that she would be able to do that. From when she was like 2."

Despite the frequent absences, father and daughter remained on good terms during Kim's prepubescent years.

"We were very close," she recalls, "until I was about 13." Which is when Kim committed an egregious offense in her father's eyes: She liked a boy and agreed to be his girlfriend. Although the circumstances seemed innocent enough by Kim's account--the boy was 15, a schoolmate--Linwood Jones was outraged. Kim says he called her a bitch and a whore, "just like your mother."

The words had a devastating effect. "If he hadn't said what he said to me," speculates Kim, allowing the idea to play in her head for a moment, "I probably would have stayed a virgin until I was 21. But after that I rebelled."

Fights between father and daughter became more frequent--and violent, she says. On at least one occasion, Kim remembers, her morning wake-up call was a fist crashing into her face. At the age of 14, she packed a bag and hit the streets, wandering in and out of neighbors' homes. Lil' Kim has often described her life during those years as a procession of doing "whatever I had to do to survive."

She peddled drugs for boyfriends. Worked odd jobs in department stores. And had sex with the men who housed and fed her. By the time she met up-and-coming rapper Biggie Smalls at the age of 17, Kim was, by her own admission, desperately in need of protection.

Biggie, who at age 19 was a 6-foot-3, 300-pound drug dealer who had already done nine months in jail, signed on for the job--bringing Kim into the fold of what everyone called the "B.I.G. family." There was Sean "Puffy" Combs, who had been working day and night to launch Biggie on his emerging label, Bad Boy Entertainment; Mary J. Blige, whose success as an R&B artist had also been strongly influenced by Puffy's hand; Damion "D-Roc" Butler, Biggie's friend and security guard; and "the boys"--James "Lil' Caesar" Lloyd, Antoine "Banga" Spain, and Money-L, who would later become members of Junior M.A.F.I.A. (Masters at Finding Intelligent Attitudes), a rap group Biggie hoped to launch on the momentum of his own success.

"She came from the streets," says 22-year-old Spain, who lives today, along with several of the other "boys," in Kim's New Jersey mansion. "I could relate to her 'cause my mom sent me to the city when I was, like, 13."

It was at Wallace's behest that Kimberly Jones assumed the role of Lil' Kim--a vulgar-mouthed emblem of what had been dubbed "porno rap." Following Biggie's lead, the young protege exploded onto the hip-hop scene as the lone female member of Junior M.A.F.I.A. at the age of 20.

Almost immediately, Kim became the showcase of the act. They were like "peanut butter and jelly," says Voletta Wallace, Biggie's mother. "Kim and Christopher were the same voice."

And that voice was determined to push the limits of gangsta rap, a genre whose biggest selling points were unabashed violence and uncensored sex.

By the mid-1990s Biggie Smalls and his crew were at the top of their game. Biggie's second album, "Life After Death," would eventually sell eight times platinum, and with the release of her 1995 solo debut, "Hardcore," Kim arrived in her own right. But the good times were not to last. Kim loved Biggie and hoped to be his wife, but he married and then quickly separated from R&B artist Faith Evans (who would also become the mother of his son, Christopher). There were rumors that Evans had been having an affair with rapper and longtime Biggie rival Tupac Shakur. One Biggie music video co-starred Kim as the defiant and loyal mistress.

Amid the lovers' quarrels and sexual betrayals, tragedy struck in the early hours of March 9, 1997. Following a Soul Train Music Awards party in Los Angeles, a still-unknown killer approached the passenger side of Biggie's GMC Suburban and unloaded seven rounds into the rapper's head and body at close range. Both Lil' Caesar and Damion Butler were unharmed as they ducked down in the back seat. Puffy, who was driving his own Suburban in front of the target vehicle, rushed to Biggie's side reciting psalms. But Christopher Wallace was dead at age 24.

Since the loss of her mentor, Kim's allegiance has remained eerily well preserved. In the immediate aftermath, she and the Junior M.A.F.I.A. boys stayed in Big's New Jersey condominium--where, according to Kim, she shared her slain lover's bedroom with her would-be mother-in-law, Voletta Wallace, and T'yanna, Biggie's daughter from a previous relationship.

In an article for People magazine, a mourning Kim posed for the camera draped in Biggie's shirt, coat and hat. Even today, more than three years after his death, she often refers to her "big poppa" in conversation and lyrics, and even credits the rapper as a posthumous producer on her new album. The bond seems unhealthy, as even Kim's friend Blige noted in an interview: a "kind of co-dependency with someone who just isn't here anymore."

It took Kim four years to release her second album, which had been held up due to conflicts with her label, the theft of material by bootleggers and her own creative process. Meanwhile, Kim's marketing machine hummed along, patiently building her image despite a lack of new releases.

"She's brilliant," says Michael Elliot, president of Source Entertainment. "I mean, here's a woman who [hadn't] had an album out in years and she's a presenter at award shows, and a successful model. She's found a way to market herself and, at the end of the day, she's a businesswoman."

"I think she's a feminist in a funny sort of way," says John Dempsey, president of MAC cosmetics, one of many packagers that hold up the Kim image as a bold new form of sexual expression. "She speaks like a man would speak."

Her fans agree. "She doesn't care what anybody has to say," says 19-year-old Teena Marie Schexnayder, a Los Angeles psychology student and aspiring singer. "She's a bad girl . . . doing whatever she has to do to survive. She's deep. I love the stuff she talks about."

While '80s female rappers like Queen Latifah and MC Lyte embraced "womanist" images, combining ancestral and gender consciousness, Kim provides a very different social commentary for young black women and men. The message behind Lil' Kim is, in fact, heartbreakingly feeble.

Sex, she believes, is a commodity. It is a way for a woman to earn money--and, in her view, respect. She learned that lesson on the streets. As for the women selling their bodies, "I don't see anything wrong with that."

"Money is power," says Kim, and "a lot of women out there are just givin' it away." Kim aims to change that. As she raps in her new single "Diamonds" (sung to the tune of Diana Ross's "I Want Muscle"):

"She says she wants a man / To buy her a Lexus Land/ Well that's all right for her / Still it ain't enough for me / I don't care if he's young or old / Just make him very rich / I want diamonds / This p---- ain't for free."

Is this really feminism?

"I'm a feminist because I love women," she ventures, graciously asking her interviewer to correct her if she misunderstands the term. "And I feel like, in this rapping game, men have been bashing women for years. But some women overemphasize that feminism word. And some of them are very male-bashing. I'm not a male basher."

In her collection of images titled "Women," photographer Annie Leibovitz captures something of the inner sorrow of Kimberly Jones, a black girl who covets blue eyes and blond hair. Juxtaposed with the image of a gloriously dreadlocked Toni Morrison, who is seen looking into a wide expanse of clouds and possibility, Kim appears small and helpless against a wall of color that threatens to engulf her--her nipples visible beneath a trashy net T-shirt. In this image, we see more of Kimberly Jones than Lil' Kim: the real woman who has masked private suffering as public defiance.

"She's just like every little abused girl that I knew growing up," asserts Asha Bandele, a poet, author and critic who is attuned to hip-hop culture. "I do not believe that Kim is in control of her image because there's nothing powerful about it, nothing rounded, nothing human. It's a caricature. Just like when you see a male presenting himself as only a gangsta. . . . We're so much more complicated than that."

But if it is icon status we're shooting for, Kimberly Jones is the real deal. Closer in spirit to Monroe than Madonna, she is a genuine enigma, which is precisely why she intrigues us. The same little girl who remembers jumping into the middle of a fight between her father and older brother (taking a chair across her stomach in the process) became the grown-up Lil' Kim, who prefers "big poppa" lovers because daddies "don't let nothin' happen to their baby girl."

"Kim needs to ask herself what she's selling," says Voletta Wallace in her Jamaican-accented, no-nonsense way. "When my son was here, that's all you would hear: Kim and Christopher [saying], 'Sex sells, sex sells.'

"But . . . when you look at Kim, the strength is there. The beauty is there. The talent is there. And she needs to let [the world] know . . . they need to see a human being. She needs to find her inner self and see what she has to offer."

At the Gazelle Beauty Center and Day Spa in Manhattan, I have requested a private room in which to interview Kim. I am trying to get closer to the real woman, to get behind the mask. But it is a busy day and there are constant interruptions from other clients (who include guests on "The Montel Williams Show"). Nevertheless, Kim and I enjoy a lunch of Caesar salads, as well as joint manicures, pedicures, massages and facials.

We are two sisters drinking herbal tea now, and Kim is relaxed, makeup-less and wearing a cozy white robe and paper slippers.

Unanswered questions have been nagging at me. Kim is like so many other women, it seems to me, who have grown up with trauma. And yet there is no talk of the long-term effects. I decide to put the question of sexual abuse to her plainly. She tells me that yes, something did happen in the home of a relative when she was a girl, but she doesn't want to get into the details. She has never talked about this before. She doesn't want to dwell on the pain. I am saddened by her admission, and the fact that so many years later, she is still so clearly devastated.

And I am saddened that even here, in a place for relaxation and nurturing, she is unable to divest herself, even for a few hours, of the blue contact lenses and blond wig.

"Think about it," she confesses when I ask her to talk about her experience of skin color. "The girls that [men] dated when I was younger were light-skinned and tall. I'm short and brown-skinned. And I always wondered . . . how do I fit in?"

Did she ever overcome the feeling of being ugly?

"I really haven't," she admits. "Honestly, though, I think being Lil' Kim the rapper helped me deal with it better. Because I got to dress up in expensive clothes, and I got to look like a movie star or whatever. I think doing photo shoots and seeing all the people respond to me has helped. [But] I still don't see what they see."

can't help but think of Kim as standing on a precipice, making a great leap toward transformation. In recent years, she has expressed a desire to tone down the raunch and express more of "who I really am." There are rumors that she was wary about spreading her legs for the photo shoot for "Hardcore," and she herself has said she would have rather done four sexual songs instead of seven. "You get tired of certain images," she explains.

So what's stopping Lil' Kim from showing us more of Kimberly Jones? "It's hard," she says. "Because in our world, the rap world, you have this thing called selling out. You don't want people who liked you for doing a certain thing on your first album to not like you for not doing it on the second album. So I have to stay in that realm."

Yes, there are market forces pushing her to stay in the same place, but the market is also a fickle lover and people tire of what is too easy to predict. "Notorious K.I.M." started out at No. 4 on the Billboard album chart, but has slipped to No. 35.

"How much more of her body can she show?" asks Ramon Hervey, manager for R&B artist Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds. "From Madonna to Prince, everybody has to re-create themselves at some point."

"I see the strength in her," Mary J. Blige says of her friend. "All she's gotta do is let go of the fear."

Source: The Washington Post

#A must read #lil kim #lil' kim #rap #rapper #hiphop #hip hop #female rap #female rapper #washington post #queen bee #queen of rap #fashion #real life #interview

310 notes · View notes