Within Chinese society there was a group, an organization that controlled almost every illegal activity within its grasp.  And such a group was tolerated.  Why?  Because it provided a perverse sense of security.  No one dared cross this organization, which meant that every career criminal eventually set their sights of belonging to it.

It was called organized crime for a reason.  It wasn’t ad hoc, things weren’t done on a whim.  No, things were calculated, precise and failure was not tolerated.  Whether you choose to believe it or not, there were standards, expectations that all adhered to.  But that didn’t mean that all criminals belonged.  No, there were still the punks and thugs that lurked, hoping to catch the right black suit’s eye.  And it was an opportunistic kid who was all talk, that suddenly found himself holding the smoking gun.  He’d boasted that he’d killed quite a few people- men, women and children.  But this is where truth reared its ugly head.  He hadn’t killed anyone before; he was no killer, not yet.

If you wanted to kill someone cruelly, you shoot them in the gut, from a far enough distance away so that the bullet doesn’t make an exit wound.  That complicates things, as it provides no place for the pooling blood except within the wound, creating a painful, life-threatening pressure on nearby organs.  And with the way human beings are built, the torso is jam packed with all sort of organs, the odds are in your favor for hitting one.  But that kid didn’t know that, he didn’t know about clean shots that were instantly lethal and he also wasn’t experienced enough to know to finish the job.  Like the punk he was, he left it at the one shot that with the passing of time, would be fatal.

Anthony Hudson was a victim of fate.  A victim of rounding a corner to soon, surprising the robbery in progress and unfortunately not being able to say anything that would calm a punk kid high on the thrill of an adrenaline rush- everything was his first time, despite all his talk.  And Anthony was the punk kid’s first kill.  He was his baptismal into the criminal underbelly.  And it was karma that killed the kid’s criminal career before it had a chance to flourish.  Because that same punk kid hadn’t thought of the consequences, of what it entailed to kill someone.  He didn’t know the fuel that was seeking justice, he didn’t know that it lasted years, and he didn’t know at his tender age that it had the power to change..

Bai Zhi Na didn’t have contacts, she didn’t know people that could do what the police wouldn’t or couldn’t.  But she found them.  Knowing her parents would not approve of anything done in the name of vengeance she sent them ahead to Tachibana and promised in a couple of month’s time, she’d join them.  She got tired of waiting for the killer to be found.  She wanted him caught, put away, paying for what he did, for ruining not only Tony’s life, but also her’s as well.  It took some time, it took patience, but she managed to get the shopkeepers to talk to her, to tell her what they saw, what they heard, small details that they wouldn’t tell the police out of fear.  She haggled the lead investigator until he’d give her the latest development.  Laughably naïve, she shared her information at first, but when she saw the result was the same, she hoarded all new details.

Gui Lon owned a small shop, located across from where Tony was killed.  He was an elderly man with kind eyes and a grandfatherly presence.  He helped her as much as he could and debated for some days with helping her some more.  She was a bright girl with a bright future.  He called her in from the street and entreated her to join him in having some tea.  It was there that he told her he knew a way to find that man and to ensure justice would be served.

Nights later she met him at his shop.  From there they took a car to a part of the city she never dreamed to set foot in.  No one set foot in that part of the city unless they had business there.  Up until that point, she didn’t.  But this night, she did.  The Black Lion Triad had dealings with Gui Lon.  His business served as front for which the Triad’s earnings were laundered. In return, Gui Lon’s business survived and he and his family were protected.  It was a deal he sometimes wished he had never made, but it provided the means to send his boys to the best schools.  Every parent sacrifices so that their children have what they didn’t.  He would probably never forgive himself for exposing her to this.  But she had made her deal: her fiancé’s murderer in exchange for her services whenever they needed it.

And that was what brought her to this part of the city.  The man she met with was making good on their deal.  A lanky looking boy, who could have been no older than 19 was hooded and bound by his hands.  He was flanked by two men, each by his side when she and Gui Lon arrived.  The old man was at her side when she looked him in the face, the killer of her sweet Tony.  She looked to Gui Lon and he nodded.  The boy bore that same frightened look as he did when Tony slumped to the ground after he fired his gun.    She stood there in disbelief- he was just a boy.

“You,” she started shakily, “you killed my fiancé?”

The boy mustered some bravado

“I’ve killed a lot of people, you’ll have to be more specific.”

She turned to the man that she had made her deal with.

“This is him?  This..this boy?”

The kid, Hun Li Soa, spoke up again, although he was mostly being ignored,

“I’m all man honey, hung like a horse.”

“Yes.”

She looked away and back at the kid.  He was still spouting off at the mouth, slinging all sorts of leering comments about how he could show her how much of a boy he was.  When she said no more, the man nodded to a fourth man at her’s and Gui Lon’s immediate left, who cocked his weapon.

Li Soa immediately fell silent and her voice rang out.

“Don’t!”

The man held his hand up to pause the fourth and looked at her intently.

“Our agreement was-”

“Don’t kill him.  Turn him over to the police.  Our agreement will still stand.  You’ve done your part and I will fulfill mine.”

“This is the only favor you can call upon.  After this, you have no negotiating weight should you change your mind.”

“I understand.”

“Very well,”

Gui Lon came to her side and put his arm around her, tears had sprung in her eyes as relief washed over her.  She’d found him and justice was finally served.  He’d be put away and pay for what he’d done.  It was at that point that the boy recognized the shopkeeper, he had been sweeping when he saw what they were about to do, so he turned his back.  When the shot ran out, he had turned and saw him with the gun and the body of Tony on the ground.  He started laughing.

“Wait, all this trouble, for a gweilo?  You send the Triad after me for offing that foreign dog??? ”

He hurled another insult towards her.  Gui Lon’s hold on her tightened and urged her back to the car as she started to shake with anger.

“I should thank you.  The Imperial Tigers initiated me that night.  Gave me special recognition for getting rid of that western trash”

Li Soa’s head went back with more laughter.

BLAM!

“He was not entrance to a gang,” she spoke through clenched teeth, the gun she had torn from the Triad’s grasp now held shakily in her hands, tears running down her cheeks.  The bullet had ripped through his shoulder, shock on his features.  The two triads had moved to the sides, in order to protect themselves.  She took a step forward, and another, shots punctuating her movements.

“He was not a trophy..”

BLAM!

“He was not yangguizi”

BLAM!

“He was not yours to take!”

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

She pulled the trigger again and again, stopping when the man placed his hand on top of the weapon and gingerly took it from her.  Li Soa had long since stopped laughing.  She shook with anger, grief and anguish, reconciling herself to Gui Lon’s embrace, who held her to him as she cried.

“It’s over now child.  It’s over.  Your Tony is avenged.”

[Some months later]

The man that stood before her in a neat and well-manicured form was someone she had come to know on a first name business.  As Gui Lon had feared, the deal that she had made with the Black Lion had sucked her in deeper.  He worried for Zhi Na, there was only so far you could go before it was too late.

Ong Yai stood calmly before her.  Numerous months had passed since that rainy night they had met.  And as she had promised, she provided vital information in regards to those she was assigned to.  It had proved to be profitable for the Black Lion to have a liaison in their grasp.  She stood opposite of him, a determined look in her eye.  After some moment of silence had passed, she spoke

“I have a request.”

“Yes?”

“I want for the Black Lion to track down some people for me.”

“I will take it under consideration.”

“No, you will do as I ask.”

Ong Yai was amused by this.

“Oh?”

“Or I’m through.”

“There is one way you release yourself from the Black Lion, and it does not involve simply walking away.”

She produced a small tape recorder and tossed it to him.  He caught it deftly and raised a brow.

“Play it.”

He moved his thumb over the buttons and pressed.  Soon after he recognized her voice and that of his immediate subordinate discussing the interests of her last assignment.  He clicked it off, his eyes growing dark as he regarded her.

“I will simply walk away because if I don’t, there will be no one to stop those recordings from surfacing.  I knew what I was getting myself into when I entreated you to find Li Soa.  It would be in the interests of Black Lion to entreat me once more.”

“We will not be blackmailed-”

“You know how to contact me.  I suggest you do it quickly.”

She turned and left him there.

[hours later]

She sat drinking tea in Gui Lon’s shop.  He was busy attending to a customer.  Ong Yai came through the back and waited till the shop had emptied.  Then he walked and stood before her.  Gui Lon remained behind his counter.

“Your offer has been given consideration.  And we are not pleased, but will hear out your request.”

She stood and hooked her arm in his.

“It is a nice day.  Join me in a walk.”

They walked down the street to a park.  As they walked there, she spoke.

“I want for you to assign men to track the Imperial Tigers.”

“And that is not all I presume.”

“They report to me what they find.”

“And that is it?”

“No.  I need to learn how to shoot a gun.”

Ong Yai stopped and looked at her.

“The Black Lion is not yours to use for a personal vendetta-”

“They’re a gang of murders.”

“And your request is for us to hunt them down like we did for you before to secure your services.”

“You are a very smart man.”

“I understand your pain Zhi Na-”

“Save it for someone who cares about your understanding.  I have watched the papers and listened to your men.  They are in habit of overstepping their boundaries.  They’re tolerated because they provide scapegoats.  That is the Lion’s only hesitation and it should know that there will never be a shortage of punks looking to carve a name.”

“And if we agree to aid you in this endeavor, our agreement stands and you turnover the recordings.”

“I will turn over the recordings when they are no more and will provide the Lion the same services I have agreed to.”

“I will contact you shortly.”

[hours later, a cell phone rings]

“Wei?”

“The Lion requests a meeting.  9pm, the Dragon’s Gate.”

[9 pm, Dragon's Gate]

The Dragon’s Gate is an exclusive members- only club.  The Black Lion oversaw the running of the club, like many other businesses within the city.  She entered and waited in the VIP lounge.  There she met with Ong Yai and another man she had not met.  Ong Yai introduced her to the shan chu of the Black Lion.

“You have proposed an interesting offer.  And it has come to me it is an offer that is in our best interests not to refuse.  I am curious how it is that you managed to be so…persuasive.”

“If you don’t pay attention to history, you are doomed to repeat it.  I am sure you have tried to locate the recordings only to find that there are in fact more than one, each I assure you with enough to incriminate and expose the dealings of Black Lion.  I am in no business to let them ever reach prying ears should my offer be taken.”

“Hmm, I see.  You make a valid point.  For too long the Imperial Tigers have tested their limits.  We would have thought the execution of Li Soa would have been enough message.  Ong Yai has told me you wish to be involved?”

“More than that.”

“Oh?”

“I want to pull the trigger.”

[months later]

Some would argue that Bai Zhi Na had become a member of the Black Lion Triad.  Some would say she was hired out.  But the latter was something that was unheard of.  The triad did things, for the most part, in house.  She had a number of men that answered to her and they did their jobs well.  Each kept tabs on the Imperial Tigers.  In the months that passed since her new agreement with the Lion, she knew almost every facet of the majority of the members’ lives.

She stood behind the counter at a shooting range.  Her target yards away from her.  She held the weapon in her hand and fired.  A single shot meant for the heart and another for the head.  She had improved, but as she looked at the enlarged photograph of the Imperial Tiger, it became obvious that she would need to come up on him close range.  So be it.  Whatever it took to get them off the streets.  Hours later, she was home in quiet contemplation.

She never shared completely with Ong Yai or other higher ups in the Black Lion on the reasons behind her quest.  Few knew- just her and Gui Lon, who had become dearer to her than ever.  He did not completely approve, but he had said himself, he was hardly one to judge since he worked with the Lion as well.  He had also pointed out that there would be repercussions from this.  She was aware of that.  But in the months that followed the shooting of Li Soa, she felt hallow.  Even more so than when she lost Tony.  She looked more into the gang and everyday since wished she had left it alone.  Now knowing what she did about them, she could not, in good conscious, do nothing.

The Imperial Tigers were a gang that had run certain city blocks for years on end.  In fact, they had been active from even when Gui Lon was young.  They were almost a staple of the community.  The triad had always kept them in check, except in recent years it looked as if they were trying to take over.  She knew that she could use that threat to be able to use the triad’s resources.  Her life wasn’t the only one that was robbed.  There had been others.  They solicited protection money from businesses that the triad had little interest in or none at all.  Their initiations were brutal in the sense of requirements.  You had to prove yourself ruthless.  It often made her wonder how it was Li Soa was initiated.  But her research showed her that they also held little respect for foreigners.  She had been lucky and she realized her survival depended upon the triad’s protection.  She was certain she was on their list- even more so now that she had executed one of their own.

But her hate grew beneath the surface the more she looked into it.  She fought it, but had a hard time doing so.  Many murders that had gone unsolved could be attributed to them.  She began to look for victims and entreat them to talk with her.  Those she convinced spun horrible stories of brutality and senseless violence.  They were a gang of thugs and punks.  A stark contrast to the methodical operation of the Black Lion.  But when all was said and done, the city would fare better with the Imperial Tigers being no more.  Her quest started out as to have nothing to do with vengeance.

She picked up her phone and placed a phone call.  Soon after she met the men under her in a private room at the Dragon’s Gate and laid out to them her plans.  In a matter of hours, the Black Lion would be rid of the nuisance and threat that was the Imperial Tigers.

[the next night]

The shan chu had saw to it that his triad ran like a well oiled machine, all the way down to the lowest level of triad go-to guy.  Once her plan was laid out, her men began its execution.  She lured many of their targets with invitations into the Triad.  They all arrived that the Dragon’s Gate, the exclusive club and were ushered into a room underneath it.  There they waited.

The others were gathered by means of vices.

For those who sought out the pleasures of the flesh, they found themselves restrained in the brothel rooms they were supposed to be getting their money’s worth.  The prostitutes they favored had been paid handsomely and relocated into the Triad’s operations in some fashion, be it prostitution or the slave trade.  A majority would no doubt be shipped off to supply the brothels in the China Towns in the West.

For those who got their kicks in a drug-induced euphoria, they found themselves bound in the meeting places- their dealers paid handsomely for their cooperation.  And it continued during the course of the day, members of the Imperial Tigers were rounded up and detained at favorite dives and even their own homes.  The orchestrator behind it all knew that they needed to grab as many as possible on the first strike.  Luring anyone afterward would not be an easy task if possible at all.  When the calls flooded her phone confirming whom they had detained, it looked like all those months of planning paid off.  Everyone they’d watch had been accounted for.

She entered the Dragon’s Gate and gave a small nod of acknowledgment to Ong Yai and the shan chu, whom she did not expect to see.  She made a detour and joined their company briefly.

“Ahh, Zhi Na.  How are my men?”

“You should be very proud of them.  They are quick and very efficient.”

“I take it that this project is over then.”

“Almost.  Before the night’s over with, the formidable force in this city will once again be wholly associated with the Black Lion.”

“Ah, good.”

“If you will excuse me, I have a busy night ahead of me.”

“Of course.”

She walked into the room, by this time each Tiger had been restrained.  The room had been outfitted for easy clean up and seeing that they had a number of detainees, it would be quite the task.  She had requested extra men to ensure that everyone was watched and found little resistance to her request.

She stood before the first one, all of them lined up in chairs much like prisoners sentenced to the firing squad were lined up.  There were no blindfolds on any of them.  If they had half a brain, they knew that they’d never leave that room alive.  She got to see the hate in their eyes as she pointed her weapon at them.  Planning it had been easy in contrast to summoning the will to pull the trigger.  She stood a long time staring at the man before her.  She remembered the hospital room, the monitor announcing loudly his heart had arrested.  She remembered the night she made her first deal, the night she met the shan chu, she remember the night she shot Li Soa in a fit of rage.  Her Tony got him entrance.  What did the man before her do to get entrance?  Who did he brutalize, who did rob, beat, and terrorize in order to be deemed an Imperial Tiger.

He grinned at her; her hesitation told him she didn’t have it in her.  And he would have been right; she didn’t, until she saw that smile.  That smile had her hearing Li Soa’s laughter.  And her eyes grew dark as the face before her transformed to Li Soa’s youthful visage.

“The Imperial Tigers are a gangrenous wound tolerated far too long in this city.  Tonight ends your existence.”

And she fired.  Two shots to the chest, one to the head.   She continued down the line, and did as Ong Yai had told her- clean, lethal, and quick.  The room began to fill with the stench of human waste as she made it to the end of one row.  Another shot rang out and she looked to see one man correct her mistake.  Instead of berating him, she simply thanked him.  She continued up the row, the one that had faced the row she had just walked down.  Fear in the eyes she looked at had increased in frequency.  There was nothing said by her or the men that accompanied her.  They watched her shoot their compatriots and the men methodically begin to clean up.  By the time she reached the last one, she hardly hesitated pulling the trigger, the hate that had been born the night she killed Li Soa had swelled mightily in her and she wasn’t putting forth much effort to tame it.  She needed it, else she wouldn’t finish what she started.  And she owed it to a great many people to avenge the wrongs the Tigers had done against them, all of them.

She exited the building via a tunnel that came out at a liquor store across from the club.  She entered a car and was driven to various locations, each of them holding a Tiger, the men assigned to them waiting patiently for her arrival.

In the brothels, they had been cleared.  The owner paid for his losses, the building bearing a sign of closed for fogging.  The warehouses needed nothing more than a staged scene of a drug deal gone bad, money and drugs gone, only a body left in the wake.  During the course of the night, she called upon that growing hatred and fury to give her the strength to pull the trigger.  The men had been silent, quick and efficient.  Calls were placed to mobilize people and update information.  Every now and then Ong Yai nudged his boss to let him know that another section had been cleaned.  He smiled.

“I didn’t think she’d pull it off.”

Ong Yai almost looked sad as he looked at the cryptic text message on his cell phone indicating that the Tiger had been put to sleep.

“Neither did I.”

[Dock 29]

She stood there, absently wiping at blood that had long since been removed as she watched the container lifted high into the air and slowly lowered into the ship’s belly.  On the ship was everyone handsomely rewarded for his or her cooperation.  They were being shipped off to clients in the West in need of people.  It ensured that only those in Black Lion bore witness to what happened to the Imperial Tigers.  Another container held the bodies.  Mid trip they would be unloaded, the bodies burned, erasing the last trace of the IMperial Tigers.  Cong  stepped up and cleared his throat.  She turned.

“Yes?”

“We are waiting for a last minute addition to the cargo, then the ship will leave dock.

“And the Lodge is aware of this?”

“Yes.”

“Fine.  I’m done here.”

She turned to walk to the car that waited for her.

“Zhi Na?”

“Yes.”

“The Lion will be grateful to you.”

“I’m sure it will,” but by the sound of her tone, it lent him to believe otherwise.

“You had better tell me something good, because I’m tired of hearing what’s not looking good for me!” the thirty-five year old roared at her lawyer. Her name was Felicia Waters and she had had it up there and then some in regards to the case against her and what could be done for her.

“Felicia, this is almost air tight with the evidence against you, all of you. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s going to be near it to beat. Your late husband was a well liked man, the company has done a lot for the community under both of you. If what they say is true, you’ll be lucky they give you life without parole. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Felicia, as your lawyer it is my obligation to represent you to the extent of my ability. Whether I believe you or not has little to do with it. But as your lawyer, I will impress upon you the need for me to know everything. There can’t be any surprises. I have to be prepared for everything the Prosecution will throw our way. And no, I don’t believe you.”

The woman glared at the snot-nosed, well kept man before her. He was one of the best, that was why he was on their payroll. With the goverment keeping a closer eye on corporations due the numerous insider trading scandals and the like, better safe than sorry.

“They’ve called for another look at the autopsy and they’re bringing forensics in. They’ve pulled your home computer and the one from work. They’ve pulled phone records and Frederick’s prescription history. And as you’re aware, they’ve pulled finanical records of the company to verify the accusation of fraud on your three’s part. And from what I have looked over, they have a number of key points of their the case against you supported by evidence. One witness, a doctor, is to give an account on the high risk of overdose associated with the antidepressant your husband was on, not to mention to give account that it was you that urged your husband to wait it out before seeing her in regards to his medication not working. I take it from your expression you weren’t aware that your husband, by his doctor’s statement, talked with him on the phone and told him that you had persuaded him to hold off on future visits until things settled down. You know how serious this is? Dependant upon what the second autopsy has revealed, this will fortify the accusation that you in fact, murdered your husband”

“I loved Fred-”

“Mrs. Waters. You realize I am inclined to put in a motion for new counsul. This is all incredible and unless you can point me in the direction of evidence that would support your claims, you had best save your proclamation of love for you dearly departed and tell me the truth. I refuse to go in there and be made a fool of.”

“You know why I hired you?”

“Because I have kept your company out of the goverment’s witchhunt and for my charming personality.”

She glared at him again. Felicia Waters was not a fabulous looking woman, even in her youth. She was the type that was in between drop dead gorgous and homely- it was all in the beholder’s perspective. Frederick Waters had been one of those caught up in Felicia’s passion and firery personality. The vitality with which she lived practically consumed him. So it was her charisma that lured Frederick and many others in. And she knew it. She was made for the politics of business and did not lack the detatched ruthlessness needed to push your company to succeed. There was only one person in the way of that: Frederick himself.

“Now, please, from the beginning, I have a lot of work to do if I’m going to save your ass.”

Felicia’s nose wrinkled with a stifled laugh. It was funny to hear him curse.

“So everything I tell you is privelidged.”

“Oh for God’s sake woman, you know this. Now out with it, or shall I go prepare my motion?”

“Fine, fine,” she pulled out a cigarette, eyed him momentarily as he gave her a disgusted look, and lit it before continuting.

“Frederick was always foolishly optomistic…”

The DA couldn’t supress the urge to pinch herself. You couldn’t have asked for a more sealed victory than this. Of course steps had to be taken to assure that all the evidence the police had obtained would not be thrown out on technicalities. But it was remarkable. In fact the whole thing was astonishing. She’d been looking over the new forensics from Waters. Cause of death had been due to cardiac failure, which was attributed to an overdose of the antidepressant called Dothiepin. His recent behavior, testimony given by the three accused and other close friends and employees has verified Waters’ frail state of mind. His increased anxiety about the failure of his company had pushed him to depend on the antidepressant even more. Ironically, he had arranged a consult with his doctor about changing medications. But what really got her office’s attention and that of the police were the statements that accompanied the forensics report. Mr. Waters should not have suffered as adversely to the amount of drug in him, if he had taken the prescribed dosage for the amount of time he was on it. A tip, left in the anonymous package, said that there would be something located in the Water’s posh residence, specifically in a safe, that would shed some light on it. After the appropriate search warrant, police accessed the home safe that the Waters stored documents such as bonds, passports, wills and birth certificates. Also in the safe was an amber bottle filled with capsules- Mr. Water’s prescription. Analysis showed that the capsules were filled with nothing more than baking flour, small traces of the Dothiepin present. The medication had been switched.

Imagine that, five years later, and she had kept the one piece of evidence that would seal the case against her. But then again, that was usually the case, wasn’t it? Pride goes before the fall. The connections to Troy and Pendleton weren’t hard to trace. The three went on lunches several times a week. The doctor that treated Troy’s wife was the same one Mr. Waters saw. And, she was sure that it was by no coincidence that Mrs. Troy was on the same medication that Mr Waters had been placed on.

The financial records that they pulled showed small discrepancies between what came in and what went out. Added over time, this accounted for a large part in why WLHI had been doing poorly, despite the strong client base. New policies only let a small number access to hard copies of receipts and invoices, allowing the trio to manange their undermining of WLHI’s financial security. So why had none of this been scrutinized more? A well placed call to family by Felicia has displayed her mouting concern over Frederick. The company’s troubles had gone on for some time, prior to Mr. Water’s turn to Dothiepin. His behavior was exhibited to a good many people. His doctor’s statement said that such symptoms were conducive to withdrawal, if he was taken off the drug without doing it the proper way, which is what happened if his medication was switched out. The pieces were beginning to fall in place. But the one thing that remained unanswered was who knew all of this. Who knew where to point the police to gather incriminating evidence, who knew that Felicia Waters had kept a souvenir of her triumph? Who knew that they didn’t take precautions to efffectively destroy their incriminating emails to one another? And more importantly, why had they waited five years to come forth?

The DA, a Ms. Lilah Chase, shuffled papers of notes and looked over her opening argument. She also looked over the list of prospective jurors. The trial started tomorrow and she needed to focus on making sure that Waters, Troy and Pendleton were found guilty. Then she’d look into the anonymous source. Although she would have liked to have them testify, it seems that they had made sure enough would be found to ensure a conviction without their testimony. Sometimes, things did work out.

But she’s dead now, at least to this world, and very much around and about- so, so much for rules. Her accounts were held over by the state while someone of kin is being sought out. What a mess for the beaurocrats, she left a will stating that her ‘estate’ was to be left to Leopold. That was it, just Leopold. If there were anyone left from her group, they would have known what to do. But it seems that ‘Leopold’ had never shown. They were still looking for ‘him.’ It only fueled her rage more…all of them…gone. Her colleagues…her friends…her nocturnal family gone, destroyed. And for what? Because they became a threat? A cold sadistic smile crossed her bloodless lips- if they had done enough damage to be thought of as a threat, then that meant that it wasn’t all for nothing. But with all of them gone, the team that worked together almost flawlessly, she was back at square one when she first started hunting. It had been so long, where was it that she should start? She was back at square one – almost- so perhaps she’d find and old stoolie; maybe make a few new friends along the way. She couldn’t be the only one left, there had to someone out there fighting. She looked at the trashed grave on the mausoleum wall, it wasn’t like whomever was buried there was there anymore, and in effect she didn’t care that she had just trashed some resting place of a stranger’s family. How did they think she put her equipment in there in the first place, albeit the first time around was done a little more discretely. She didn’t have time for discrete. It was a spare, you could never be too safe, but it felt awkward; she had never needed it, she always had managed to keep a hold of the first one except the time passed had taken its toll on some of the things tucked away in the various compartments, she had to replace them and seeing that she was going solo, it didn’t hurt to have spare stuff. She had a feeling she didn’t need this hiding place for her shit anyway..

(3 nights later)

A cigarette hung loosely from her lips as her gaze focused on Jo. Good ole Jo, still kicking around making deals here and there and hustling every chance he got. She had watched him for the past two nights, looking for something akin to the days of old. That was the problem being gone like she was- things changed. A deal here, a fence there. Nothing, not a damn thing. It was as if she was the last supernatural in this fucking city.

‘That’s right, one city, one ruler. It would be a piece of cake babe, no one to fight for it, defend it. You could rule this place with a bloodied hand…’

‘Kelee, if you weren’t inside my head I would string you up on meat hooks and let you bleed to death…. slowly’

‘Come now Saris, is that anyway for you to speak to your only friend in the world?’

‘You are NOT my friend Kelee, you’re a disease.’

‘You can’t live without me-’

‘But I sure as hell can ‘live’ with you…remember who’s calling the shots bitch…. you’re just a backseat driver- so shut the fuck up.’

She shook her head – helluva a price to pay in order to exist beyond mortality, she thought to herself. That ‘shadow-bitch’ almost caused her to miss the opportunity she was waiting for-Jo just nabbed a bum off of the street- seems he hadn’t changed his services at all. She took the cig from her mouth and let it dangle loosely from her fingers- she couldn’t really smoke it anyway- something else that pissed her off- she loved her cigarettes. Hailing for a cab, she kept her eye on the diminishing profile of the car.

‘I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you can catch up to him’

Peeling out, the yellow beaten down car lunged forward. The cabbies hadn’t changed a damn bit either.

(30 minutes later)

The cab was leaving as Saris handed him the promised 100 bucks. Pity- the greedy bastard didn’t take the time to notice the money was nothing more than a twenty wrapped over three new one-dollar bills. His loss, she was where she wanted to be. She kept to the dark within hearing distance. The bum was so drunk that the leech he was intended for would be mellow for a few pleasurable hours. That would be a damn shame. She watched Jo enter an abandoned warehouse-looking piece of shit and followed. By the stench of the homeless man, the ‘lord of the manor’ would have been alerted to him the moment he was pulled from Jo’s car. If she could feel sensations, she was certain that she’d feel a shiver of anticipation. Now suddenly her return back was looking promising again.

“Hey Malox, you here? Yo, Antacid, dinner’s here man. Hey look you wanna make this quick, I got other deadlines to me- Jesus Fucking Christ man, you wanna give me some warning first?

“I’m sorry,” Mallox said slowly, “Did I frighten you?”

“Hey cut the Dracula shit. You want him or not? He’s buzzin hard man, like you asked.”

The vampire who called himself Mallox looked over his prospective meal.

“I guess he’ll do,” he said with an air of superiority.

“What’s with all the sophisticated shit?”

“Just trying to blend”

“Yeah well…you’re wiggin me out. How ’bout you blending when I’m not trying to play delivery boy here.”

“Whatever…what’s it gonna cost me?”

“Just your unbeating heart…annd…a few other body parts.”

She spoke as she came into view. Jo’s face was transformed in horror and Mallox’s was mix of rage and confusion. There she was, black pants, black halter tank, a black trench and her dammned ‘goody’ bags criss crossing her chest, or was she? It wasn’t possible, she died, and he saw her die.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“What the fuck?!?!”

“Good to see you too Jo. Do me a favor….” she lunged at him and grabbed him as he begun to turn to run. She practically dragged him to the side, drew a knife, slammed his hand hard against the wall and pinned it there, “stay put.”

The warehouse was filled with his howl of pain. She turned her attentions to her other target. The bum was passed out on the floor. Keeping an eye on the mark she lifted the bum, and moved him aside, out of the way- those vampire fucks were never a push over for being taken down- but then again, was any of them ever?

“So, what do they call you?”

“Death.”

“Uh huh. Tell you what, ‘they’ can call you that and I’ll just call you Leech. How’s that?”

“Very stupid of you.’

Mallox lunged at her, extending his claws in the process. She raised her arm to block the blow and landed a hard kidney punch with the other. The arm that was blocking his clawed hand moved to grab his arm so as to land and elbow to his face. Slightly recovering from a punch more powerful than he had anticipated, his free hand landed a hook, but her grip on his arm just tightened.

“Sonofabi,” was all he could say before her free hand grabbed his and head-butted him.

He staggered backward. She didn’t even give any indication of pain, and where the fuck was the blood? Who and what the fuck was she?

“Ok, looks like I’ll have to stop being too easy on you.”

The slow taunting grin that crept across her face made his undead skin crawl.

“Would you? Because I don’t handle disappointment easy, although you have it written all over your decaying corpse”

She put an emphasis on the latter of her statement and walked slowly toward him. He leapt in the air, claws extended on both hands. It was over in seconds as he landed on her and crashed hard onto the floor. She grinned at him as his face was frozen with an expression of surprise and horror.

“Go on, finish me,” she taunted, “wait, maybe I should remove this”

She referred to the stake he had landed on in the process of landing on her.

“Better yet, I’ll finish you,” she sneered.

She heaved him off and his body sounded with a resonant thud; she dusted herself off and looked around. She spied a chair and small table in the distance to the left, the darkness cloaking her. If she’d been alive, that might not have gone off without a hitch. In fact, she never went in solo. Before she met with Leopold, she had done things solo- but they were small-scale hunts in comparison. But after that, it was always a team hit- it had to be. The bigger the fish, more dangerous for them it got. They were faster, stronger, and could take you down before you even blinked. But they were gone now, there was no team to assemble, just her. And now she was stronger, faster…

“Mallox, man… Hey Mallox! Say something dammit. Mallox!”

“He’s a bit incapacitated Jo.”

“Who are you, how do you know me?”

“Oh Jo, you cut me deep. We go way back. Don’t you remember? You used to roll on your clients for me.”

“Naw bitch, you ain’t her. She got executed for that shit.”

“Yes I did, seems they forgot a thing or two- Joseph.”

His eyes widen with fear as she came closer to him, “It’s impossible…”

“Nothing’s impossible…..you’ll get your turn….later…”

She grabbed Mallox and put him in the chair as best as she could manage given his predicament. In a swift movement, her bags were unstrapped and the clinking of metal objects could be heard as they were tossed onto the table. She placed her cold hand on his cheek and concentrated. Her arms were badly slashed and barely useful.

(45 min later)

Mallox had now been molded into the chair. He was slightly weakened by her gaining pathos from him, but her arms were becoming more useful again. For the sake of making it easy on her, she had taken the liberty of pinning him down with metal stakes driven through his limbs and then bending them over so that he’d have to work to get free. She was all for a good round of ass kicking, but she was on a schedule of sorts, so playtime couldn’t be penciled in…at least not with this leech. Jo, well…technically she had forever, he only had till the rest of his life. But she was getting ahead of herself…now wasn’t she? She waited a moment more, and then spoke again.

“I bet you’re just telling yourself the next time I take that stake outta your heart, it’ll be my last, right? That you’re going to show this bitch what you’re made of? Keep dreaming. No, what you’re going to do is tell me what I want to know the next time I take out this stake.”

On her last words, she pulled the stake out enough to mobilize him, but it was still embedded far enough so that all she had to do was give it a little push to put it back in his heart. Mallox worked fiercely against the metal studs pinning him to the chair- he was making little progress and loosing that precious blood of his.

“How new to the game are you?”

There was nothing but silence. She grabbed him by the hair and he hissed at her.

“Good, you’re not as disappointing as I had expected,” she said as she gave the stake the push it needed.

He was now immobilized, his mouth agape, fangs drawn. Perfect. She reached over, unzipping and zipping could be heard. A moment later, she was holding a pair of pliers. Slightly widened eyes told her that a light bulb had just gone off.

“I would have been disappointed if you squealed right now- I wouldn’t get a chance to brush up on my interrogation skills”

She leaned closer to him, opened the pliers and wrapped them around one of his fangs, tugging, wrenching to loosen it. Then she gave it a swift yank, holding the tooth in front of his eyes. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was hate in his eyes. She set it on the table nearby.

“Now, let’s try this again, given that you should be getting an idea of how this game is played. How new are you?’

Once he was able to move again, pain swept across his face a moment before it was consumed with hate.

“Go fuck yoursel…”

She went to work on the other fang.

“My next question is gonna be if you can grow these back. Imagine how long I could keep you here. But first, how new did you say you were?”

He sneered at her. He didn’t give fuck how many she pulled out, he wasn’t talking.

“Go to hell.”

“Oh I’ve been there..got bored.”

She put the pliers aside, and returned the stake to its resting place. Another unzipping noise and his eyes looked over and saw a scalpel-like knife, then a box whose contents clanged around as it was handled.

“This has got to be my favorite part…aside from killing you.”

She opened the box and it revealed steel and iron crosses of various sizes. She also grabbed a small torch from her bag.

“Now I know that in general crosses don’t seem to do shit to you…but there have been known to be exceptions to the rule…”

She spoke as she took the knife in her hand and made in incision in his left cheek. Lighting the torch, she used the pliers to hold one of the smaller crosses. Soon it began to glow from the heat. Moments later, the sizzle of his undead flesh could be heard as she stuck it in the incision.

“Now, where were we?”

After his skin started to smoke, she pulled out the stake just enough.

“You are one fucked up bitch! When I get through with you you’ll be begging me to kill you.”

“Uh huh,” she said nonchalantly as pushed the stake back in and made a larger incision on his chest..

“Did I mention that I find stubbornness incredibly appealing,” she said as she finished the incision on his chest and began to heat up a larger cross. Again his undead flesh sizzled and smoked- she didn’t remove the cross until his skin almost caught fire. Once the stake was removed, he cracked.

“A year dammit! A lil over a fucking year. Goddamn crazy cu-”

“Goooood Leech. Now, why is it that you guys are few and far between in this shit hole? It used to be overrun.”

“Migration or some shit…they left.”

“Left?”

“Yeah, what are you, deaf? Left, gone, as in packed their shit and made some other place their shit hole.”

“Where?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Birds of a feather,” she said as she moved to push the stake in.

“San Diego…fucking Christ! I heard pals of mine say they was going there. I don’t know why, I don’t ask. You don’t front with fuckers who got a decade on you, not if you want to live.”

“I believe that’s the smartest thing you’ve said all night,” she said while moving to her bag and grabbing something outta it, concealing it in her right hand, “Newsflash, you’re not alive parasite. Oh…Congrats by the way, most leeches crack after the 2nd fang and definitely by the 1st cross.”

He looked pleased with himself.

“Actually no. I have to start maiming limbs.”

That just pissed him off.

“Fuck you, you crazy bitch! I’ll fucking make you a wall decoration, by the time I’m done fucking you up, you’ll be begging to go back to hell!”

“This coming from a leech who has a stinking human low life find him his meals. I’m suddenly overcome with fear,” she said with a sneer, and then her expression grew artic, “As for going to hell…save me a seat.”

She swiped with her right hand, revealing a small dagger, slicing his throat letting him bleed out as she retrieved her crosses and the metal stakes. The persistent bastard swiped at her. She took out a can of lighter fluid and sprayed him with it; there was no sense in wasting a perfectly good bottle of liquor on this one. It was a lil too soon to be displaying their old business card just yet. It took him a second to piece together what she was going to do, a second too late. She turned the torch full tilt heated the smaller of the crosses and flung it at him. The warehouse walls echoed with his dying screams. She then turned her attention on Jo, disregarding her charred fingers. She was nose to nose with him before he had a chance to blink, placing her hand on the knife’s hilt and pulled it out viciously.

“So Jo, where were we?”

(An abandoned bldg somewhere, 1 hr later)

Jo was tied to a chair, still knocked out. For all the bluster he spewed, he was such a pussy. She didn’t need her newfound strength to take him out; she had been quite capable of that before her death. She waited in the shadows just waiting. In fact, she had been replaying the events of beforehand in her mind- specifically Jo’s. She had leaned on him a bit much at times way back when, but she didn’t quite recall instilling that much fear in him. Maybe it was her appearance? She was noticeably paler since the last time he saw her. Oh and there was the small detail that she was supposed to be dead. She had been told of this, the reactions- or rather she heard stories. How sweet vengeance was because you were the ones to bring things in full circle. Being this…Risen that they called it. She leapt at the chance of going back. She owed someone a killing. Funny thing, she had never ran into what she is. In the end, the more she thought about, the more it made the way he reacted the way he did just logical. And that was stretching to put Jo and logical in the same thought. He was still out cold; maybe she should have kicked it down a notch.

In fact, she had to wait an hour more before he came to. She was sorry that she didn’t have any smelling salts of some kind- but in her line of work, the idea was to dispose, besides, those supernatural fucks seem to come around a whole lot faster anyway. Seems she was too used to that. She was still getting used to how much things change in five years. It gave her a lot of time to think as she stood there waiting, letting cigarette butt after cigarette butt fall to the floor.

(Five years earlier)

Leopold took down 3 leeches- having had surveillance on them for almost a year. The team was celebrating. If their intelligence was right, they had just knocked out one of many support beams of their kind in the city. The objective was to let them know that they knew about them. Of course, they usually ganged up on the one- so the fact that they came out of it alive, albeit pretty beaten up, and bloody, was an accomplishment. But it was short celebration because they had to get ready for the next night; there was always something to hunt down in this city.

3 nights, it took them 3 nights to reorganize and retaliate. The team had just completed a kill- from the ease of it, it might have been a newly made leech. And then they were flanked on the return back to the night’s HQ. 3 of them and they became a bonus of the night. They kept one for questioning- which meant Saris got an extra adrenaline kick for the night- she was the interrogator. It also meant that they had newer additions to their growing accumulations of battle scars. The team had begun using them as a diary of sorts- using it to recall particular kills. So Saris went to work, goody bags unstrapped and opened. And that’s when things buckled. He spilled his guts- quickly, too quickly. And the team began to pack it up- something wasn’t right. As they left, it laughed at them and called out a name. The team froze; the name was a real name, one of their real names. Jesus fucking Christ, they knew. They scrambled, deciding on a meeting up at an emergency rendezvous when their families had been accounted for. Saris never made it there, and she had a gut feeling that none of them did either. The thing was, she spent a great amount of time looking for them in the hell she was sent to. She never found any of them, none of her family, or theirs. But she was told that it was a big fucking place- guess hell had to be for all the twisted fucks the world housed.

Was she surprised that she was there? In a way yes- seemed like a pretty twisted way to thank someone who devoted her life to killing all those supernatural bastards. But she was never one to be characterized as religious. But the idea of there being something worse never seemed like a far-fetched idea. When she had come to, she was in a drab place, which oddly looked like the city she called home. She had been found by a sympathetic soul- someone who seemed to recognize her. She came to find out, that the man had fallen prey to the leeches that her crew had finished off- unfortunately too late for him, but they did save his family. As an act of repayment, he took her in and taught her the ins and outs of this place- at least all that he could tell her. It took her a long time to even get a chance to look at her old haunts. And she had put everyone that she roamed with in danger for that. There were rules- but she was never one for rules, until she saw what happened. And she was pissed off. She was a supernatural now, and this Hierarchy was just a bunch of BS as far as she was concerned. A lot of them didn’t see it that way. This was the way ‘life’ was now. Saris didn’t agree, once a hunter, always a hunter. She wasn’t ‘dead’ yet. But there was little she could do. So she went solo, she’d done it before, she could do it again. She didn’t know everything when she first started hunting, this was no different. Eventually she had run across Leopold, and history always had a penchant for repeating itself. She did find others who felt the same way she did. They were the ones who told her that she could go back, that it was possible- they had witnessed it. They offered to help in whatever way they could. At first, she was suspicious, why were they still here? Then they told her, not everyone gets to go back. They didn’t know exactly how it worked, but a select few could do it. It was worth a try, right? That was when she found out you could go back, be a ghost. It pissed her off, all that time wasted with those ‘people’ and she could have learned how to cross over. But she did have time, and it was time she was going to need. It took them a long time to discretely locate her body, not to mention hone in on certain skills. She had to be able to go back and forth to help in the search effort. Seems going back was against the rules too. It didn’t seem that she had been gone long, but she had been. And old newspaper that she picked up told her it had been almost five years. She had spent five years trying to get back and now she was, and she was dying to pick up where Leopold had left off. Moreover, she was dying to know if there was indeed a Leopold left- if not, she had not only her own demise to avenge, but theirs as well. They fought because they could, for those who couldn’t- nothing had changed, even if it had been five years. But first things first, she had to get the ball rolling, and with that she let a cigarette burn itself away while she waited for Jo to come around.

(Another hr later)

Jo started to moan as he was coming too. Guess she did hit him a little too hard, but then again she had five years of lost time to make up. She found it almost entertaining that he spent most of the time trying to convince himself that he must have gotten a hold of some bad shit. She smiled cruelly at him.

“Well you’ll get your money’s worth anyway Jo, cuz I ain’t going no where. You and me, we’re buddying up cuz I got five years of catch up to do and no time.”

“How can it be, I mean I saw you die, I saw them gang up on you and snap your neck like fucking twig! They killed you, they fucking killed you!”

“Yeah they killed me; but there’s a punishment worse than death for a hunter. Think Jo, if you were one of those leeches, what the cruelest thing you could do to a hunter who’s got no family or friends to use against her…”

Jo was silent for a moment and thought hard before his widening eyes told her that a light bulb had just turned on. She nodded and did an exaggerated curtsy.

“If you can’t beat em, join em. They just didn’t count one thing.”

“Yeah, an what’s that?”

“Loyalty. My crew before those fucks. “

“But you ain’t got no crew, they’re all dead. They hoisted your crew up and made a fucking parade outta it. Youda thought it was some sort of holiday. Shit Saris, if you’re still kicking that means…”

“Shit. That’s all it means because they’re gone, for good and it’s better for them that they were.”

“So what the fuck made you so special that they decided to spare you.”

“Who said they spared me?”

Jo looked at her stunned and confused.

“They didn’t make me on purpose. They don’t even know that they fucked up when it came to me, but they will and you’re going to help.”

Jo gulped, for all his bluster he was a pansy. The character that took credit for kicking some ass even though he was the one huddling in a corner outta the fray.

“What the fuck you mean I’m helping. You know I almost got skinned when they found out how you knew the shit you did.”

“And how come you’re not some suckhead’s new wallet?”

“Because of my service and the fact that I am a fucking lowlife who’ll turn against you for a pretty fucking penny.”

At least he was honest.

“And that was enough?”

“Yeah, that and some information, then we was square and I could get back to my shit.”

“Information?” she perked a brow and looked on with crossed arms.

He must have known he said something wrong because he paled, significantly.

“Yeah uh, you know, tying up loose ends and shit…”

He started tentatively, like he was walking on eggshells, gauging her reaction at every word. She stood there calmly, albeit it wasn’t easy. Kelee was having a field day and she was having trouble listening to him. She repeated his words slowly

“Loose ends..as in the ones that carry wooden stakes and lots of flammable liquids?”

“Fuck Saris, I was seeing my life flash before my fucking eyes alright. They’d already fucked up you and your crew, I figured there was no harm in it.”

“And I should believe self-confessed lowlife that would turn on me for a, how’d you put it? A pretty fucking penny?”

If it were possible for him to pale even more, he did.

“Life flashing before you eyes again?”

He nodded.

“So what’s it gonna be?”

“Hey look, I hustled em once to get some choice shit, I ain’t eager to do it again. No way in hell am I rolling on them. What? You being fucked over the first time not enough for you, have to do it again?”

She moved on him and all his bravdo slipped off as she grabbed his face, nails dragging down his cheeks, deeply, slowly.

“There’s a stark difference between that and now”

“Yea?”

“Nobody’s home.”

His eyes widen at the cryptic remark, most likely taking it in the sense that she might be a little touched after her ordeal whatever it was. But what she meant was that there was no family to threaten, no attachments, nothing..

“Shit….what the fuck did they do to you?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said, then changed the subject, “Now, about the last five years….”

“Hold up. If I risk my neck to get square with you all, what does it get me other than a fucking bull’s eye painted on my ass?”

“How about your life…because I should snap your neck like a fucking twig.”

“Hey, I ain’t picky, selfish, inconsiderate yes, picky no, not when my livelihood is in jeopardy.”

“You do for me, I do for you, ya remember those words?”

“Yea, how could I forget…I still have the fucking scar.”

“So you do for me, and I keep you from having any more flashbacks…got it?”

“If it’s gonna be that way, then you gotta give me my space, let me do my thing”

“I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could move you with a tenth of the effort”

“Yea, yea yea. All I’m sayin is that keep it low profile, kay? Because if buddies start dropping left and right, and I deal with them guess who’s getting manhandled..again. Me, not you. So low profile, street tatics.”

“I’m looking for someone in particular. Your dealings get in the way of that and it’s me manhandling you that you’ll have to worry about.”

He gulped because her expression grew cold, and there was a loathing in her eyes.

‘Holy mother of…’ Jo thought as he watched her.

He had known her, her and her crew. He got a sweet pay off for rollin’ on his clients for them- he got the spoils, minus a few things because it wasn’t like their organization was funded..well as far as he knew anyway. They were a dangerous lot when it came to their business. Hell, you wouldn’t have guessed they had families waiting somewhere for them. It took him a year or so to find that out. They were so tight-lipped you thought a million things about them and their silence. But if anything even remotely looked like it would threaten their operation, you struggled to distinguish which was the monster and which was the human. He had seen that aspect of each of them once or twice, it was like a collective fury and once he knew that there was family to come home to, it made more sense. The fuck he cared whether they were to be herded and taken to a slaughter house…that’s what happens to cows right? So there was something else up higher on the food chain….he didn’t give a damn…until it was his turn to face the cleaver. Funny how that changes things. When you’re number’s up it’s up, but the hell if he was going to push it. And like he said before, he’d turn on you in an instant for a buck. So the crew kept him paid, he kept the crew in the know- do for me I do for you. And dammit if he hadn’t come to understand and sympathize with what they did. Hell, he even found himself cheering them on when they brought one back for information. And it was because of his seeing the interrogations that went on that had him develop a healthy fear of her. He had always wondered how she got to be the way she was- hard, cold, determined- and for lack of more words, the epitome of a bitch, really. There wasn’t a man that had come her way that hadn’t been within inches of losing something. Maybe it was the job, because no one showed much of anything warm and fuzzy. They showed anger, frustration, out and out rage; only on occasion did he come to find out that they knew how to laugh- and seeing them smile he judged was damn near more frightening that one of those fanged bastards coming at you; it was that unnerving. They were all hardened, of course a lot of them had been street savvy all their lives, so that was just what came with the territory. And the few that weren’t, learned the ins and outs quickly. But one thing they never showed was fear, except once.

Yeah, he was there that night; all of ‘em had fear in their eyes and on their faces. And he knew it had to be bad because he couldn’t remember a single time that he had seen them scared and to a standstill at that. Shit, she even grabbed him on the way out and told him he needed to get the fuck outta Dodge- so why didn’t he? You do for me, I do for you. It was that damn winning him over that almost got him skinned alive- when it was all over, he was the only one standing, or so he thought. He was on his way towards the city limits before he turned around, I mean shit, they were all on foot. Damn them, you know, because if he hadn’t gotten a soft spot….

But he got there and what did he get for his brief moments of heroics…a bon fire at her joint. They lit that thing up as if the building was on a beach and she was there, outlined against the flamed background against them, three he counted. It would have been 7 total for the night, except she only managed to take down one. The other two didn’t walk away unscathed by no means…but it’s who’s left standing that gets as Sean Connery so elegantly put it, ‘..to go home and fuck the prom queen.’ Or in her case, the prom king. It was that damned soft spot that got him nabbed- too much of a coincidence that he was there. And they bragged, and hoisted the bodies up. He had seen some fucked up shit in his life…but nothing will ever top that night, nothing. In fact the only body not being paraded like a prize deer was hers, simply because he had caught their attention and they forgot about her. He assumed they went back for it, guess he was wrong.

But if it were possible, the look she bore was more frightening simply because he had seen hard looks on her before, and five years may have dulled the memory some, but this was colder in an unnatural way- like no one was supposed to be able to look that way, like it wasn’t possible for one person to hate so much and intensely.

She didn’t feel like she was walking, like she was moving but she was. Tired, so very tired. She wasn’t hurting now. Tick. Tock. Sai’s words polluted her thoughts, her vision switching from the bed she approached to the warning It had given her. A warning it didn’t look like she had heard. But she heard. She always heard. She listened. It was the others that didn’t listen, but she listened. She wouldn’t have come if she didn’t listen. Not to It…to Them . That’s how she found the white room. There was no silence in the white room, They killed it, slaughtered it with their warnings and whispers and cries and screams and roars. Her voice was small,

“Ben?”

“Yes Cassandra?”

“Did Kenji go..tell Corey about-”

“Yes child, he’s gone to let him know. Do not worry over it, there is still time. Rest now child…rest.”

She nodded absently as she crawled onto the bed, haphazardly tugging at the covers. Yes, first thing…first thing tomorrow she’d go to Corey and help him get that key, give it to his wife…

‘…Matti. She always hated Matilda…said it made her sound so old..’

A small smile tried to tug at her lips as the recollection of Corey’s story. Matti, she’d give her the security deposit box key for him, just like she promised. First thing, away from here, from the clock, safe. Safety was the white room. Safety was the brownstone. Safe..safe…tick…so…tock…tired.

He watched her with a pained expression as she collapsed on the bed. Knowing so from the way her body just gave. Something was not right. He remained, watching, waiting, thinking. His hand whispered over her forehead, the chilled air it created caused her form to snuggle her covers a bit as he whispered to her.

“Here Cassandra..always”

Seconds or hours later Mashin was no longer fully aware of times passing. She stood before him a fragment of Yomi itself. Her awesome power drifted around her like invisible mist. His left eye unable to open due to the blood that caked it, his right eye remained downcast, fearing final death was upon him.

The voice of the Ancestor ripped through him, felt rather than heard. The sharp barbs that accompanied her presence tore his skin, his mind’s eye saw only blood red.

::We are attacked and your students pursue their own worthless agendas. You as their Sifu will pay the price for each one of them that fails me.

Her clawed hand struck a blow across his face, his head bucked to one side before he fell to the cold floor. His cheek bled onto the icy tiles of the meat locker. His body cold, his will subdued and his spirit all but completely broken.

::Your suffering now redeems them for a further three nights. Acquire the information from them and bring it to me before dawn on the third evening. Faliure will receive due recompense..::

With her final word his head was stomped into the floor, renewing the flow of blood from his ear, mouth and face. He didn’t hear her move away though was fully aware that she was gone seconds later. Left to freeze and die, he managed to pull himself to the open doors of the meat locker. Crawling out onto the concrete, he closed his eyes fighting the raging demon within. It would be a long time before he moved again.
___________________

Vermillion Pearl

+Summer grass;
Along the path to the mountain temple
Stone images of buddha+

-High atop the mountain top the singular figure sat in lotus position medititation. The sharp jutting bones of her body hidden only by a thin layer of snow. The long ebony many hung loosely caressing her skin softly as the wind exterded it’s influence. VP had sat there so long that snow had settled comfortably upon her form. Without the need to breath she wasn’t troubled by the high altitute. She was, however, extremly bothered by her failure to extract any information of value. “We are the children of One”. What could it mean? Long fingers rose at last from the ground a moment later a second knife sat implanted within her body. Ignoring the sharp stabing pain, failure to discern information was one but failure to remain one with cold mind was something she would not tolerate a single wince would elicit death by her own hands, she returned once more to her meditation hoping to discern some new piece of information. For now she could only hope that others had had more success-

-”We are the children of One”…-

Broken inside, he sat completely still within the ceremony chamber. The daughter’s of the centipede and indeed his sons had been called forth if they have information, if not they were notified of the three night extension. None of them would be aware of the pain and hardship he had faced to prevent their slaughter. Wearing a ‘mask’ of serenity and a pure white ceremonial suit. He waited in silence. Once his duties were complete he would check on Rin, for she was sure to have suffered through the bond they shared. It was nights like the present one that caused him to reconsider leaving their bond intact. That however, would be dealt with in due time.

Candle light caused shadows to dance errily within the room. His blood ran rich with chi and two members of his herd lay dead in the room down the hall. The evening showed no signs of getting any better. Such was life or unlife as the case may be.

Rinny had had a busy day. She’d ran through the park, terrorized some old woman and her husband, then pranced to the resturant that fed her on a daily basis at Mashin’s command. Wan-Li was there as he always was. He smiled at her. He held her hand and made sure she got everything she wanted. Then he walked her down the street for ice cream before making sure she went straight home just before sunset.

It was sunset. And she was fed, and ready to spend her evening with Mashin. However, Mashin wasn’t there. There was no sign of him anywhere. It made her angry. Then it made her sad. Those strong feelings of being abandoned were almost overwhelming, even for the Khan.
____________________________________________
“Sweet dreams are made of these.
Who am I to disagree?
Travel the world and the seven seas.
Everybody’s looking for something.”
____________________________________________
She was standing before the bathroom mirror. Looking at her changing appearance. She had grown from a little girl into a young woman. And she didn’t know when it had happened. Suddenly she flew sideways across the room, slamming into the glass doors of the shower they shattered with the force and surprise of the ‘attack’. Splinters of glass embedded themselves into her face, her side, and neck. She didn’t even have time to pick herself up before she felt another blow send her reeling and against the counter. The back of her head connected to the mirror, shattering it as well. Rin growled, her form instantly shifting to her sokto form. The attacks didn’t stop there. There was a long pause as she tried to find her attacker, only to fail before her head was slammed litterally through the bathroom door. The child fell back, her head hitting the corner of the sink and the world went black. Her form shifted slowly back to it’s homid one as she lay in a pile of glass and pieces of mirror, not to mention her own blood.
____________________________________________
“Some of them want to use you
Some of them wanna get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused…”
____________________________________________
Her dreams were vivid. As if she was right there. But she knew, even in this dreamlike state she was not there. She heard the woman’s words. She saw the hanging meat. And she watched her beloved Mashin being whipped around – much like she had – like a ragdoll. And he just let it happen! The part of the child that was the beast raged within her dreamstate. While the child in the normal world wept within her unconsious state. She could not help her beloved Mashin. No more than he could help her. And if she stayed with him longer, he would surely be brought to death because of her very exsistance.

None, not even Mashin knew the pain that hit him then. Even the death they had shared so long ago. His first death – before his rebirth – felt the way it did right then, as he sat within the pristine white room. In the white robes. Hiden behind the ‘mask’ he wore so proudly not so long ago. However he was experiancing it now. As wounds slowly, very slowly seeped her lifesblood onto the white tiles of the bathroom in the ‘house’ he made for her, shared with her. Locked in a dreamstate she couldn’t get out of.
____________________________________________
“I’m gonna use you and abuse you.
I’m gonna know what’s inside.
Gonna use you and abuse you.
I’m gonna know what’s inside you.”
____________________________________________
She watched each and every one of the people she loved killed. Slaughtered before her very eyes. She held her baby brother trying to soothe his cries as he was shot in the back of the head in her arms. She mourned the passing of so many that wanted to help her, only to die because of her. The Little Flower had bloomed, only to fade, to wilt and wither..

She was a part of the Jina.

The Jina was a part of her.

Getting rid of her would be far more difficult that he’d led himself to believe. Though neither of them knew it yet. Both strived to protect the other. Mashin used her strength and rage to prove to the Ansector that she was an asset. While Rin only wanted to keep Mashin safe. To protect him. To love him.

Their love was bound in ways mortals would never experiance. And the dead would be loathe to understand…

And still Rin bled.

And wept.

And mourned…

It must have been cold there in my shadow,
to never have sunlight on your face.
You were content to let me shine, that’s your way.
You always walked a step behind.

So I was the one with all the glory,
while you were the one with all the strain.
A beautiful face without a name for so long.
A beautiful smile to hide the pain.
_______

Within the chamber he sat stoic, still like a statue hewn from the surrounding darkness. His mask did not faulter even as the pain raced through his mind. Visions clouding his mind Rin’s past. Rin’s suffering. The knowledge of the trauma that stained Rin’s life was more painful than any of the ‘feedback’ he received from their bond. Blood trickled from his left nostril, curled over his lips then down his chin before falling downwards. The tiny red sphere falling in slow motion illuminated by candle light before exploding upon the marble floor. A second and a third droplet followed in its wake. Each impact thunderous within the chamber. Mashin didn’t move. His pain bore in silence.

Rin was his strength, his light in the darkness and his achille’s heel. There was no doubt in his mind that she would be his downfall. He had sent her away once and failed to remain parted. Enlightenment was sacrificed because of his adoration of her. And he had no doubt that his salvation would too be sacrificed for the same reason. He had no regrets.

Blood continued to drip from his chin striking the emaculate white of his suit a thin crimson river trickled over his thigh.

_______
Did you ever know that you’re my hero?
You’re everything I wish I could be.
I could fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the Wind Beneath My Wings.

Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?
You’re everything, everything I wish I could be.
Oh, and I, I could fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the Wind Beneath My Wings,
’cause you are the Wind Beneath My Wings.

The jade bright multi-coloured jade amulet on the thread besides him shattered. Yamamoto was dead, that much the aged centipede knew from the sudden explosion within the chamber. Even that didn’t stir him from his stoic condition. He’d await each member of the Exalted Tao court if they came forth with nothing or simply didn’t heed his call, it would be their choice. And everyone must face the choices they made.

The better part of the night had rolled past, midnight fast approached. In agony, bleeding and now mourning the loss of the laughing rainbow, Mashin’s mask did not slip. He wanted to rush to rin and insure she was well, he wanted to find those who had harmed Yamamoto and tear them apart, he wanted to feast upon the hearts and souls of those who had attacked China-town and its districts. He wanted to set his demon free, to indulge his lust, anger and passion. Those wants were all denied.

After all, giving into base desires…showed no class.

The faint, whispy outlines of the monkey spirit adorned Navita’s neck, as it sat crouched upon her shoulder, its long tail wrapped around her neck and one arm resting upon her head. After the initial court gathering, it had not left her, opting to remain with the quiet and reserved Kuei-Jin for a while. Navita had not complained, either. With the spirit’s presence, she did not feel as much of a foreigner anymore, for the spirit translated everything that they heard into Punjabi for her, and translated her own words into whatever language the other person was speaking, so that she could better understand and converse when it was needed. Her English skills had improved, but everyone else was Oriental, and they did sometimes speak to each other in Chinese or Japanese. Navita knew there was no way she could possibly learn all that, so the monkey spirit’s presence was entirely welcome.

She walked through the dimly lit halls of the building, making her way towards where the Jina awaited all of them to report. Her stomach churned slightly, knowing that she had done absolutely nothing. Yet with her task of overseeing everyone else, she had not wished to appear like she was breathing down everyone’s necks.

‘Perhaps I should have done something, anything.’

Silly fool. You are lazy and stupid. And for that you’ll be punished. Just wait and see. No one has any use for a foolish slut like you.

Navita frowned slightly, swallowing her ire at her p’o. She knew its words were exaggerated, and that it sought nothing but her destruction. Yet the constant beast within her mind refused to be silent, and eventually its thoughts permeated and meshed with her own, so that by the time the Crane reached the doors, she was prepared to ask for forgiveness for her inaptitude and ask for a just punishment.

Mashin’s appearance caught her by surprise.

The surprise clearly showed upon her face, though the light that illuminated her from the back and into the dark room caused her features to be silhouetted into shadow. There was only one person that Navita knew, who could have done that to the Jina. Blinking, she lowered her gaze respectfully, and then walked over to where he sat, her silk sari swishing faintly as she walked, unmarred in its appearance except for the sword strap that ran from one shoulder to the opposite hip, holding her sword securely to her back.

Pressing her hands together, she kneeled in front of the Jina, keeping her head down. Her eyes followed the trickle of blood for a few moments, but she wisely kept her curiosity to herself.

“I have done nothing, Jina,” she said quietly in broken English, the spirit had helped her with that. It was true, she’d done nothing, finding no true fault in the others. It was a hard task. Yet she didn’t see that as an excuse for her own short-comings. The Jina had intended to see results by this night, and it had been her duty to make sure that the others focused upon their tasks and presented results.

- – - – -

Navita

Mashin didn’t react to the surprise that registered upon the Resplendant Ice Guardian’s face. His suffering was required and had been willingly under gone, he deserved no sympathy and certainly didn’t desire it. Cupping his fist he bowed a moment after Navita made ‘namaste’ before him.

“It is quite possible that your task is only just beginning. Yamamoto is dead.”

Mashin’s tone was flat and his tone cold. The young dragon had faltered on the road back. If he was slain his death would be avenged, if he died because of his own foolishness he only had himself to blame. The details mattered little at that moment. Turning his gaze upon Navita, he nodded slowly.

“If they all produce no results it will be your duty to punish them. We will await them and see if they prove their worth.”

Looking away to the chamber doors, he fixed his gaze upon them.

“I hope your blade isn’t simply for show, for this evening it may very well be put to use.”

Just what Mashin meant by that was left to her to decide.

She was tired, fatigued, physically, but more so mentally and emotionally.
Her head swam with words, pleas, testimonies, images, the information she had received. She saw them in her sleep, like panels of a gruesome comic, the sketches given life by her hand kept her company. Some years ago she might have cried out in the night. Instead, she simply woke, with wet eyes and curled the covers about her more, seeking some solace from them.

Night curtained the city and she was in the brownstone Mrs. Smokski had generously let her stay in. Her stomach rumbled a bit, but she didn’t seem to notice…or care. Her friends, her surrogate family were concerned. Ever since that night with the…thing, Cassie hasn’t really been the same. Well, if they were truthful, she hadn’t been the same since the bombings started. That other night, just amplified the truth. Indecision plagued her. She didn’t want to believe, but something in her
voiced a caution. She had ‘seen’ so much of the darker aspects of people.

Her gift paved the way for her to be aware of the things that stalked the night, so Mashin’s revelation hadn’t hit her hard. If anything, it had been a reaffirmation to what she already knew. But there were things she didn’t know. Specifics that had been omitted. Cassie knew that they existed, things that terrorized in the night. But Cassie also knew, perhaps too well, that regular people could and oft times were just as terrorizing, monstrous. What Cassie didn’t know were specifics, names beyond generealizations. Things to nurture a well planted lie.

And it hit her, in the middle of her troubled thoughts. Them. Yes, she listened to Them, helped Them by doing something. She did it for Frederick, helped police uncover the truth. Deep within her, she felt an obligation. Yes, she had done something, one request, in exchange for their help, their information. Perhaps because so many wanted justice, so many wanted to see those that took them from their lives punished, perhaps because payback appealed to her as a sense of justice being served…when it was all pulled away from it…her decision was for Them.

—

The single strap backpack she always wore, crossed her chest, painting her the college student, which wasn’t wholly a mis truth. Clutched to her chest was a black sketchbook. One of many Cassie had. This one, this one was a little more special than her others. Her gifted fingers were smudged with pastel colors. There was a color mixed smudge leading from the corner of her left cheek, from wiping something away. The black of the sketchbook itself was dusted from where her fingers held it in place…as if it was a very precious thing she clutched to her.

She made her way to the building, reading the large sign of Hanshii Corps, she stood a long while. Had her resolved left her? Fear was a cancerous thing you know. She kept seeing that stump waggled at her. Swallowing she walked through the open gate, a shaky voice whispered her purpose when she entered the building. Following, the voices of her companions faded and fear gripped her a bit more. Her knuckles long since been white from their increased grip and she stood just outside of the door, her resolved faltering thinking she should have just left her ‘report.’

Vermillion Pearl

+Summer grass;
Along the path to the mountain temple
Stone images of buddha+

-If the Jina’s appearance surprised her it didn’t show upon her face than again even a slight raise of her brow was like a scream compared to anyone else’s reaction. She didn’t even feel satisfaction or sadness. No. The hours spent in beautiful medidation had instilled cold mind within her. She felt it’s calming presence cacooning her in it’s armsWrapping herself in the shadows of the room she stepped from within dressed in her garment’s of pure white. A color of morning and one that seemed feeting-

-Her cryptic words would be explained should further inquire be needed. The bombing rocked the spirit world sending subtle screams to her fragile ears. She was needed once more and as soon as her verdict, her punishment, would be complete she would return to her duty under tian. What else could a boneflower do?-

The distant thunderous roar of the explosion, didn’t register upon the aged Jina’s features. ‘Children of the one true god’, their god would be subdued and sodomised for crimes against the one hundred corpse family. The information imparted by the bone flower was received in silence. The dark kingdom of sand wished to wage war on the yellow springs and kingdom of jade that was more than enough information. The dead had imparted very little though the yin flower had heeded and carried out her task to the best of her humble abilities. Mashin thus excused Vermilion pearl from any further interrogation or punishment.

Cassie’s presence was known even as she wandered through the building. Her ‘report’ was awaited, though it seemed she saw no reason to rush. That may be a fault in her education that needed remedy. Mashin had tried the ‘kid-gloves’ approach, he had been more than amicable and kinder than most in respect of the court’s youth. Their disobedience and failings were a direct insult, and one that would not go totally unanswered. Sitting there soaked in his own blood, he felt the effects of Rin’s rage, an unpleasant side effect of their bond. Just whom it would become unpleasant for or indeed how unpleasant it would become remained to be seen. Though trying Mashin’s patience was something most would surely advise against.

Silence. She didn’t like it. It hurt her…even though it was all in her mind, Cassie felt actual pain from it now. Why couldn’t they be with her? Why? Her fingers ached, reminding her of her ‘report.’ The one that led her had gone, and it felt like it had been forever. She closed her eyes and took a calming breath. Perhaps the clock still ticked. They were owed this much she had to remind herself. Almost all wanted some form of justice, something to be done- she’d be no better than the ones responsible for a great many evils if she said nothing.

Gathering up her fleeing resolve she entered, seeing him waiting at the far end. The blood caused her eyes to widen and paused her steps, without her realizing it. Had he not been wearing white, she might not have noticed until closer, assuming she appraoched close enough, but such was the stark contrast the colors provided. Realizing she’d stopped, and that her mouth was slightly open, she cast her eyes downward, forcing her lips together and her feet to movement, giving her achey fingers some reprieve but not much as she ventured in, her green flecked eyes looking up when she stopped.

She was noticebly thinner and fatigued. Standing there, curiosity couldn’t be denied as she let her gaze linger on the trickling blood, the crimson of it brutalizing to her artistic eyes, the sharp contrast eliciting a sense of pain just by the look. It gave her a brief focus instead of letting the thing’s words terrorize her, a small repreive if for but a moment, as the artist in her surfaced.

Mashin was growing increasingly agitated by those around him. Ti-lung had been giving precise instructions for his nature didn’t allow his decisions to be well thought out. The others had been given freedom to carry out their tasks as they saw fit. The Singer of Shadow’s brought information that was almost useless, the almost being the only reason she was allowed to walk away. Her near failure punishment enough for her cold heart to bare. Takuya had managed to get himself near killed, though he had provided interesting information about those that dwelt within the city. The false demons were in Jakku as they had been in Meridan, they would be dealt with in due time. Yamamoto had managed to get himself erased, it was in a way fortunate it would save the Jina himself killing him. Navita showed remorse that was something. Bai Zhi na and Jiang had proved thus far useless, and thus parasites upon the court. Sakura was yet to return, her and her strange artefacts and methods caused a great deal to be expected from her. Mashin hoped that she was not found wanting for killing her would be an undifficult task.

Those he awaited began to disgust him, Rin had proved to be a better Kuei-jin than any of those who had stood before him so far. Cassie wasn’t one of them she was an asset, though her failure would receive the same retribution as any of the others who had received the same task as her own.

Mashin closed his eyes, unsure whether his emotions were Rin’s or his own. It mattered very little for the end result was the same. The Jina felt like killing the useless fucks that had been placed under his charge. That fact was the kind of thing nightmares were made of. Though the members of the Exalted Tao court felt things were fine and doing their duties half-assed was just fine.

They were wrong.

Turning to Cassie he locked his gaze on her own.

“Speak”

It was all that needed to be said. If the girl had even the slightest self-preservation instinct she’d deliver her report immediately.

‘ Speak. ‘

Cotton-mouthed, her lips parted to suck in a calming breath. The words that breath would form would be ones that had fallen on his ears before…despite the voice that made them. Of all the things she had been told, as far as anything that would indicate who was responsible, almost all she had talked with could not say. They could say a great many things in relation to how they passed, but unlike so many she had talked with before, those that died in the fires and aftermath of the bombs couldn’t point an accusing finger. Except for one enigmatic fragment, ‘We are the children of One.’

She looked down at the sketchbook, letting it peel from her slightly, swallowing to moisten her throat before speaking.

“They…don’t know who to rage against. All they had was ‘We are the children of One.”

Her intent was to leave the book, a small feat because she never gave up a book, she hardly let them get away from her. Except the one in her hands wasn’t an original if you wanted to call it something. She didn’t know what to inculde, what to say, what not to, what would be considered relevant. So she thought to provide everything, including the pictures her talks with Them produced. The book she held was transcribed, redone. At that moment, after she spoke, she marked it as useless; filled with the recollections of the stories told to her, recreated through her artistic eye and her hands, it was tainted with bias anyway…theirs and hers when trying to recreate their last moments. Useless, she told herself. At that moment, the book was hugged back to her, finally looking up from it.

Hearing the Jina’s cold words, Navita nodded her head.

“As you wish, Jina,” was her murmured reply. Even the monkey spirit, who was normally very bouncy and in a state of constant chittering, was silent and still in the aged Centipede’s presence. Standing up, she took two steps backwards and then turned around, walking until she reached the far wall. There, the Crane stood within the shadows, hands folded almost demurely in front of her. If not for the sword upon her person, one might have thought that she was an attendant of some sort, waiting to be beckoned. Then again, given the circumstances, who was to say she wasn’t? The Indian woman had yet to socialize with the others of the Exalted Tao court and hardly ever left her rooms for any reason other than feeding, unless called upon in a situation like this.

Silently and patiently, Navita stood with her head bowed respectfully even as Vermillion Pearl and Cassie entered, awaiting any instructions that the Jina might have for her. The monkey spirit remained nestled snugly upon her shoulder, and it had its eyes upon the Jina and the others, curiosity getting the better of it. Needless to say, its chatterings of the words that passed and the events that took place this night would plague the demure crane for nights to come.

The combined might and intelligence of the Exalted Tao court used over a period of almost a complete week had discovered one statement: We are the children of the one. It would suffice to say that the Jina was not satisfied with the information or indeed proud of his people this evening. He had suffered for them and would need do so again. The Ancestor would not accept a single line of information and a vague group of those possibly responsible as sufficient performance from the court. Mashin was responsible for them, they answerable to him and him answerable to the Ancestor herself. He doubted she would be as benevolent as he had been.

Turning to Cassie, he bowed his head.

“Return to your room”

He would wait a further hour before retiring to heal and tend to Rin. Before dawn he would report to the Ancestor. The healing that would undoubtedly need doing after that encounter would need wait till the following evening. Both Jiang and Bai Zhi Na were expected their absence would be an insult to the court.

Oh the silence that assailed her ears. It hurt, prickling her skin from the inside out. And she was tired. She didn’t realize how much till now. Waiting, it seemed like forever as she waited, hoping that the clock the Thing had talked about still ticked. Still ticked and would tock.

‘Return to your room.’

Tock.

Another second had passed, the eternity over for now, though her instructions weren’t any comfort. She wanted to go back to the brownstone, to Mrs. Smolski’s, and then there was Corey. She said she’d help him tonight, that she’d uphold her end of their bargain. But she was tired, so very tired. And the brownstone felt like an ocean away in her thoughts…safety itself felt like an ocean away. Her eyes lingered as she backed away. Her own thoughts polluted with It’s warning, clutching the book as if to assure herself of the intactness of her appendages. Had it not been for that, the instruction woudln’t have been as weighted. She turned when she felt she was far enough away from him and contiued out, entering the comforting folds of her companion’s voices, shocking them when she didn’t leave the building but did as was told…returning to her room.

The faint swish of her ceremonial kimono was the only sound coming from the bone flower. Given the urgency of the situation, one might have expected her to be rushing, considering that she was late. But no, Sakura took her time. It was simply her way. If one was not patient like the aged trees, or calm like the late summer stream, then how could one ever listen to the dead, and appreciate them? Time did not mean the same to the spirits, and Sakura had had to re-build her own concepts of time and reality to fit with her dharma. The tall, willowy Japanese woman had her hands folded neatly in front of her, the silver-embroidered hems of her sleeves falling over pale, almost skeletal hands.

As she neared the chamber which contained the Jina, her sharp eyes focused upon the girl-child, and getting nearer, heard the whispering voices of her dead companions. Sakura herself stood about a foot taller than Cassie, with her black hair tied up in a tight bun at the back of her head. Had anyone ever seen her hair out? Did she even let it out? The once-aristocratic Japanese woman was so fully imbued within tradition and propriety that one could never be sure of what she was like underneath. Or indeed if there -was- something beneath her lifeless expression.

As Cassie neared, one of Sakura’s hands reached out, and with her thumb and index finger, grasped the girl’s smooth chin. Her flesh was icy cold and dead against the girl’s hot, living flesh. Holding her head up to her own, Sakura gazed deep into Cassie’s eyes, ignoring the girl’s spirit companions, if indeed that’s what they were.

“You are the girl-child, are you not?” came her smooth, but almost uncaring voice, flowing softly from richly painted blood-red lips. Awaiting her answer, for the Madame expected nothing else, Sakura continued after Cassie had spoken.

“I will attend to you soon. Be prepared.”

With that, Sakura’s hand once again returned to its prior position, folded politely within her sleeves. Nodding her head once to the child, she continued on, almost gliding on the ground like the wraiths she kept company with. Whether that was a threat or simply a promise, would remain to be seen.

Entering the chamber, she took note of all those present, nodding silently to each one, then kneeled before the Jina. She knew she was late, but nothing could be done about that. She’d simply had no other option. Especially since she did not like forcing or commanding the spirits that volunteered to serve her and aid her in her tasks.

“Honoured Jina,” she began, always with the proper formalities, of course. Sakura had been of ‘blue blood’ even before her death, and that aristocracy remained within her to this day. “May the Moon find you well and the Sun burn away those whom you would call enemies.” Was that a veiled insult at Mashin’s appearance and physical state, of which Sakura had made no comment or expression? Impossible… the bone flower was much too formal and polite to stoop so low.

“As we were once alive, our time was measured by the light of the sun, and now in our second breath, it is measured by the light of the moon. So too, do the spirits measure time in their own way, apart from your methods or mine. I have sent out messengers far and wide over Jakku to try and obtain information. I only hope that the court can make some use of this little information, although I am sure that they have found the same information, and more, than myself.”

Little did she know…

“Ten spirit eyes did I send to various parts of Jakku, to keep watch during the moon’s journey and the sun’s. Of these ten, seven returned. The three that I sent to the slums of Jakku, where respectable Kuei-Jin do not traverse, did not return. Of the remaining seven, two more did I send to the slums, and those two went missing as well. Of the remaining five, I sent two more, and up until this moment, none have made their presence known to me, either.”

“This much I can be certain of: there is no activity of bombings of any sort within Little Cairo, home to those whom most of the hypocritical world would call ‘terrorists’. Whether it is them or not, I do not know. The finger of suspicion could be pointed at them. Yet there is the matter of the missing spirits, of which seven have now disappeared in their quest for the Exalted Tao Court. The information is before you, Honoured Jina. Forgive me for not obtaining more.”

The bone flower bowed her head, the last remnants of her smooth, bland tone fading within the depths of the room.

The bloodied form of the naked girl shifted. Eyes fluttering open as the large white feline took control. Bounding through the bathroom door it toor from it’s hinges, shattering wood and paint chippings on the wall across for it. Growling it took a running leap for the window that was boarded at the end of the hall. Ducking it’s head low, it smashed through it, landing in the tended garden below. She as Rin, as the child had tended that garden. It gave her peace. It gave her home and a touch to her past. But his thoughts. Those thoughts. Tearing limb from limb. The sentence she didn’t fully understand ripping through her mind. ‘we are the children of the one..’ it varied once, but nothing more.

Mashin’s rage fueled her, thus would increase his as her’s grew. And heavy paws dug up dirt patches as it jumped the fence in the back. Soon, it wasn’t even in Chinatown anymore. The sleek feline moved carefully in the unknown streets, yet it knew them. Mashin had often scolded her for crossing the bounderies of such ‘powers’ and leaving ‘home’. Especially on nights when they were not together. But, the Feline hunted like any eastern vampire should have done. Like Mashin had from time to time. This time however it had a mission. It had made ‘friends’, the term used lightly with a small girl that ran the streets. And when Rin was feeling generous she brought her money and food. The girl had started calling her her guardian. Rin laughed in secret only smiling to the child. She was probably only 9 or 10.

Slipping into the building a block away, and unknown to Rin, from the Ghetto she heard several male voices and the terrified whimper of the child she had come to call.. friend. Snarling, black lips pulled back from sharp pointy teeth. Stalking ever closer to the area in the basement of the building the child slept. In blankets and warm linens that Rin had gotten for her. The stench of blood was rich on the air and made the Feline’s heart pound and it’s rage reborn. Two shadows towered over the small sleeping pallet and they made motions it could not understand at it’s distance. Taking the highground the old pipes in the building were more than sufficent to hold the huge creature and there it got a good look at the happenings below. The rage that bubbled, seemed to froth. To boil over and suddenly the feline lunged on the first warm body of one of the men there.

It’s sharp claws tore into his back, a sharp claw severed his spine and still it bit deeply into the side of his neck, the blood spurting wildly as it punctured the artial vein of the bastard. The other two men looked on in shock as their friend lay twitching in his last signs of life. The feline’s once pristine white fur, only touched here and there with streaks of black was now covered in the blood of it’s first victim. The child lay on the bed, hurt. Bleeding. And she crawled away as Rin attacked again. The second man went down as easily as the first. Not knowing exactly how that creature got out of the zoo – or away from it’s owner (as the feline always wore a collar and tag in all it’s forms, even her homid one) The second man died as quickly as the first, his throat torn out and spit at the third. However the third man, he stood tall. He shifted before the Khan’s eyes. The glowing green of his eyes alerted her right away to what he was and you would have sworn that the feline smiled.

Inching backwards, muscles taunt the feline lunged at the still shifting man – sending him backwards even as her own form shifted. The drastic change in weight pinning the dancer to the floor of the dirty basement. Well, it was sure dirty now. The child had kept it as clean as she could, normally, but Rin had gotten blood everywhere now.

His hideous claws slashed out, cutting a deep wound in Rin’s side. She didn’t seem to notice as she roared her rage and defiance into the mans face before her maw closed over his nose, and her claws dug into his shoulders. She tore his nose free, as he clawed at her wildly. Soon – both lay in a heap several paces from there the fight started. Admist broken boxes. Blood stained rags – the myrid of patterns on the floor and wall. Moments passed and the little girl watched with wide eyes ready to run if the man stood. And she did run a moment later when the man’s body lurched forward then fell. Rin, naked and covered in blood. Though no large wounds were left on her form by then stood. Looking down at the once dancer, slowly shifting back to his homid form. He wasn’t truely dead. Rin’s next actions changed that. Picking up piece of glass she cut at the man’s neck until his skin was severed, and then she sat down. Smiling in some manical way – she ripped his head from his shoulders. Looking to the girl who started screaming Rin frowned.

“You scream when I come to help?”

The girl blinked, her eyes were swollen from being beaten up, but she finally got a good look at Rin, then inched back.

“I did not know you were special, Rin.”

“I know. You weren’t supposed to. But it’s our secret..”

“yes. our secret.”

The hour would almost be up, when Rin’s naked bloodied form entered Hansii Corp’s hallowed halls. She needed to tour guide. She needed no one to tell her where her Mashin was. She could have found him a world away. But when she entered the room where the others had gathered, or were gone now from she kneeled in the center where the light shown lightly. Blood dripped from her nose as she bowed her head and she spoke softly to Mashin in Japanese as she often did. It was just easier for her.

“The one true god is the Unmaker..”

Her words were spoke with conviction, though why or just what else the girl had found out from her trek into unknown territory was her’s for the moment. Flooding Mashin with information was definately not a good idea at present. And most of the information was soiled. It wasn’t valid. Then again, information was like a rumor. It changed in denisty after so many lips had spoken it…

Tick

Tock.

Like a cruel taunt she was only privy too, her fatigue only dulled it’s true effects. Lost in her chaotic thoughts, she moved on, perhaps noticing the tall woman peripherally, but not registering her until her chin was in her very chilled grasp. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh as Cassie’s intense stare was caught with the woman’s, though fatigue traced it, her stare didn’t belong to a girl-child. In terms of age that is.

Surprised, frightened hearing that clock in her head, she could only nod as best she could given her chin was held. Her fingers clutching her book treating it, it would seem, like many a young child would treat a treasured stuffed aminal.

Being let go of, she stood a moment letting the woman’s next words sink in. Her pain was all but gone now, as her companions’ voices entered her ears, killing the silence. Only a few voiced the collective protest of her decision to remain within the building and not return to the brownstone. One left, for a cemetary where a newly made wraith lingered cliche like, a herald of news as Cassie moved to her room.

Mashin simply bowed his head slightly to Sakura when she arrived. If her words had been meant as a veiled insult the insult had been truly veiled. Mashin was in no mood or frame of mind to dance with such koans or indeed tolerate insolence on the young Kuei-jin’s part. The news that spirits had been sent and slain was new the rest was reiteration of the knowledge already delivered. Sakura’s report went someway to explain why the others had failed.

“You have done well.”

Mashin’s voice was a strong and majestic as always, though he faltered for a moment. He wanted to wince as he felt his side struck by invisible claws, he wanted to clutch his ribs as they threatened to break with the impact Rin was feeling almost half the city away. He did neither. Bearing the pain silently, the link between himself and Rin would not be disclosed in open court.

When Rin entered he wanted to stand, wanted to slay whoever had made her bleed again he did neither. Remaining seated he bowed his head to Rin. Her words struck him to the very core of his dual soul. The one responsible for the bombings and attacks was none over than his patron spirit the centipede. It made sense that the power behind the destructive force was destruction itself. It was almost amusing, though telling Saphire that the children of the centipede were destroying the city while standing as a follower of the centipede before her was sufficient to kill any form of amusement.

Standing Mashin bowed to Rin, cradling her cheek against his palm, he wiped the blood from her nose with the pad of his thumb.

“Wait for me in our chamber”

A hint of a smile touched his lips, turning to Navita he gestured to the space he had sat.

“Tend the other’s who arrive if they provide anything further to what we know, inform me. If they do not, punish them.”

The time for benevolence had past. Stepping back he bowed to those present before leaving the room. His report would be put before the Ancestor and the will of the court transmitted upon the following sunset. It looked very much like the Kuei-jin were going to war, while some may forgive attacks against them, the Exalted Tao court did not.

The wraith-like Bone Flower’s delicate ears caught the falter in the Jina’s voice. She knew that there were things happening simultaneously, parallel to what she could see. Yet she knew not what. Sakura gracefully ignored it, pretending like she knew nothing was amiss.

“I merely wish to serve the Exalted Tao Court, Honoured Jina,” she said quietly, her voice as bland and emotionless as ever. Dipping her head again, she flipped open her wooden fan with an expert twist of her wrist and stood up. Placing it against her face to hide everything but her eyes, Sakura left the room with a polite bow to everyone else within the room.

Just as silently an uneventfully as she had arrived, so did she leave.

- – - – -

Navita watched the proceedings, nothing moving save for her eyes, large soulful pools set in her delicate face. The Crane bowed to Mashin, finally moving from her place within the shadows, but said nothing. The girl’s arrival was cause for curiosity, and she could not help but wonder why she was here, or what it meant. Yet seeing the naked girl’s injuries, the Crane realized that they mirrored that of the Jina’s… Curious indeed.

Yet like any properly taught Kuei-Jin, Navita kept her questions to herself, knowing better than to question her superiors without their consent. As the Jina left the room, the monkey spirit began whispering and chittering excitedly into her ear, going over what they had witnessed and what it might mean. Navita did not speak back to it, but this the spirit expected. Even in private she was a quiet one, usually answering questions with a nod of her head or a shake. Her thoughts were always elsewhere, and even during this night, she had found them straying there occaisionally, before realizing what was happening and focusing upon the court once again.

If the others wished not to have severe punishments for being tardy, they had better arrive soon.

Meditating nearby in China Town, the string of small masks was not adequate in her eyes. Yet it was necessary before choosing her first. You must crawl before you could walk. And such devices had to wait. She must fullfill her duty to the court and as such, she had done just that. Perhaps it was nothing more that placing the mask of a filial ‘daughter’. Who was to truly know beyond Zhi Na herself?

Not pleased as she reflected on the scrapings, she told herself that success could only be truly savored when she tasted defeat. The idea had yet to settle comfortably within her. Yet, she had done as asked, venturing out and seeking what was there. It would be judged useful..or not. A lesson would result, and she would reflect upon that lesson, and then move on.

She entered the chamber as she had been bid. Perhaps an extension would have yielded more results, perhaps not. It was a choice that had been made, and now she would experience the consequences of that choice. And after that, yet another consequence would be experienced. Her demon chuckled darkly, and while irritated, it didn’t show.

The petite and decievingly willowy looking woman walked inside, dressed in a chinese suit, her hair pulled back in the severe bun that many were accustomed to seeing. The fabrics making a soft rustle from the movement she made. She stopped, placing her hands behind her back, clasping them together and remained standing, waiting. Usually she would have been ‘on time.’ And when she wasn’t, there was a good reason for it. Such was the case. She hoped that her lateness wouldn’t be misconstrued, but then again, her intentions…she did not wear them on her sleeve, or did she?

She expected to see her sifu waiting instead of Navita. Her reaction to that only threatened to show, almost like fighting to not be supressed. Zhi Na was afterall, just starting, though her reserved nature did help her in this respect. She was well aware of the late hour, but she did expect the Jina to be there. And perhaps that was where her folly was, expecting of her sifu. Then again, she simply could have been wearing the mask of a student. Who was to know? She bowed in respect, letting her hands reclasp behind her back and waited, her dark gaze fixated on the Crane.

Navita stepped forward from the shadows, making her way to stand in front of Zhi Na as the girl approached. When she bowed, Navita returned it with one of equal depth, her movements fluid and almost snake-like in action. The monkey spirit was barely visible upon her shoulder, faint blue whisps that outlined its form and facial features.

The Indian woman said nothing. Instead, the spirit focused upon Zhi Na and spoke Zhi Na’s native tongue in a deceptively smooth and low voice, not the usual high-pitched squealing that it plagued Navita with in private. This was, after all, not a time for games.

“Welcome, Zhi Na. The Jina has already left, and you are late. Present your information, if there is any.”

Both the monkey spirit and the crane’s eyes were fixed upon the young centipede, awaiting her response.

Zhi Na was well aware that she was ‘late’. She considered herself very late by her own conception of time. But she also did not expect the Ice Guardian to know her reasons why and thus made no correction or counter. If thought of being late and not wanting to know why, then it Navita’s consequence to her own choice. None of Zhi’s primary concern; all paled in relation to her courtly duties.

Eyes moving to the spirit, then back to Navita, a moment passed before she spoke starting her first sentence, a slight pause to gauge understanding. Seeing she was understood, she continued, not showing her own perplexed reaction to the information she had gathered. Perhaps fortune was with her, perhaps not, there was no way for her to know, only the person that would put all the puzzle pieces together and judge the outcome of the picture it painted would know. The pieces Zhi Na had to offer was such:

“The slums and the amplitheater is owned by Urbi LTD/Urbi Records. They hold the most stock in the power companies as well as land developments within most the high stakes sales in Jakku…”

Continuing on, she relayed her findings, then fell silent. Her hands had never moved from behind her back, they had never unclasped. Her eyes held firm their contact. In fact, the only part of her that moved was her mouth. As silence descended, she stood, awaiting the consequence she knew she would experience. All choices had consequences, all consequences had lessons, lessons awaiting someone to benefit from them. She would be afforded with a great many the remainder of the evening if fortune fancied it to be so.

The silence stretched for a long time, the monkey spirit quietly whispering what Zhi Na had said, translating it into Punjabi and relaying the information to Navita. The Crane’s unblinking gaze remained upon Zhi Na, and though her expression was formal, her eyes were much more warmer and welcoming when compared to the injured Jina. When the monkey spirit finished, it turned to sit quietly upon the Crane’s shoulder once again, looking at Zhi Na as well.

Navita dipped her head graciously, the faint tinkle of her gold jewellry reaching Zhi Na’s ears.

“Thank you,” she spoke in English, dismissing the other. Her voice sounded a bit hesitant as her tongue was forced to speak the unfamiliar words. She was not certain if the Jina knew of this information, yet she herself had not heard any of the others relay this, and so for that, Zhi Na was spared of any punishment.

Patiently, the crane waited for the remainder of the court. She would stand vigil until dawn, which was not far off.

Zhi Na did nit miss the juxtaposition of the Crane’s expression against that of her eyes. For a moment Zhi Wondered about duplicating that same thing. It would be something to try. And why not? Always a question.

The silence didn’t bother her. She did fill it with thoughts about what was to come. Mused about possible punishments, a guessing game perhaps as to what the Crane’s next move would be. Particularly challenging since Zhi did not know Navita.

Seeing the bowed head, Zhi mirrored the action. Formalities demanding so. Seeing her dismissal, it was time to move on to another consequence. Such was the budding structure of her unlife. Leaving the chamber and ultimately the bilding she ventured out into China Town. There was something left to be done before the night’s end.

It was a solemn day for the students of Alexandria High. Another mass memorial service was being held for yet another huge loss to the school’s student body. A great many young lives ended before they started not too long ago when yet another bomb went off at a very packed concert.

Present was a tall young man, looking quite smart in a black suit. Beside him was a smaller guy, at least compared to the football player. Danny’s suit was also black as he stood beside Gabe, looking onward to the large collection of pictures, cards, tokens and flowers for the deceased. Danny stepped forward, tears glossing his eyes as he placed a burned CD near the picture of Kevin. Moved onto a picture of Jackson and placed a chess piece next to it, the King.

They’d been best friends since he moved there, since forever it felt like and they were gone. And he would have been too. His parents and the remains of his friends would be doing what he was now, saying a final farewell. Except his parents were a little more strict about where he went nowadays. The bombing vindicated their actions.

There’d be a sepearate funeral for them, his pals. Right now this was something organized for the students; the counselors thought it would be good for them to have a place to gather and share their grief. The wall there was a harsh reminder for some of the students, faculty and staff of those they already had lost, dried flowers still lingered about the base of it, the plaque already there would have a twin in the coming days.

Danny stepped back, feeling the reassuring pressure on his shoulder as Gabe squeezed it. Gabe already had placed what he wanted to. It was a corsage, the one he wouldn’t get to place on Kelly’s wrist. But she had it now, Danny said. Their parents were in the background, watching on, talking with others. It was a cool day, comfortable with the suit on, and the sun shining upon them.

The mood was subdued indeed. Had this been any other school event, Ozzy would have had his camera out, snapping photographs and busily jotting down notes for ideas for the school Year Book. Today, he didn’t have the heart. And what was the point? He was the only surviving member of the yearbook committee…

Keeping his eyes on the memorial, he raised one hand and rubbed a finger under his nose, sniffing quietly, before placing it at the back of his head. He let it rest there, unsure of what to do with it. It felt so awkward, standing here with less than half of the school’s population. So many kids. So many possibilities… so much potential!! Gone, all of it. Gone forever.

With a small sigh, he took off the yearbook commitee’s camera that hung around his neck and placed it at the foot of the memorial. ‘This one’s for you, Jake,’ he thought in his head. Jake had been the yearbook editor, and his best friend. They’d grown up together, gone to elementary together. Dated girls together (at first anyway, when they’d both been 14). It was so hard to wake up every morning and know that Jake wasn’t there anymore, along with all of his other friends. Most of them hadn’t survived. He could still hear their tortured screams in his dreams.

Fighting back tears, he pursed his lips together and glanced up, looking around him. He wasn’t used to wearing suits, even if his girlfriend did say they looked good on him. Well, his ex-girlfriend anyway. They’d broken up after the bombings… it had been a mutual thing. Neither of them could stand being together. Too many painful memories that involved their dead friends. Noticing Danny and Gabe, he nodded to them, before placing his hands in his pockets and walking over to the two.

“Hey…” he said quietly. And nothing else. What was there to say, really? These two weren’t people that he’d normally hung out with. Oh, they knew each other, but their interests had always been elsewhere. Yet now, with so many people dead, the usual ‘cliques’ didn’t exist anymore, and students began to find comfort and companionship in each other, even if in the past their conversations hadn’t lasted more than a greeting in the hallway.

Clearing his throat, he continued, knowing he sounded quite lame, given the circumstances. But he didn’t know what to say and just leaving it like that sounded… lame.

“… how’s it going?”

Danny looked up and over, seeing Ozzy. He knew his face, saw him hanging around the games and stuff. Yearbook people, like all cliques in high school, tended to hang with themselves. But that was like that for the sports teams, the band, the haves, the have nots. Like banded with like just to get through stuff. Danny hadn’t cared, or he was lucky in that he seemed personable. Maybe it was cause he couldn’t talk. Who knew.

He had his own hands shoved into his pockets, just because he didn’t know what else to do with them. Well, except for when Ozzy said hi, Danny did his usual wave while mouthing Hi in return.

Gabe looks over as well. He knew Ozzy’s face; like Danny he’d see him at the games and the rallies. He offered up a small smile.

“It’s going”

He replied, his smile grew a little more on one side, giving Ozzy something of a usual reply. He probably wouldn’t know that, but it made Danny sorta smirk hearing it. It was a good sign. A bit of humor amidst the solemness, you could only take so much.

“Kinda nice setup, huh?”

Gabe didn’t know what to say really either. He kinda envied Danny for a moment, seeing him nod out the corner of his eye. Ok, he envied him a lot at the moment.

“Yea…” he paused, turning sideways a bit so he could glance back behind him, at the memorial that had every deceased student’s name inscribed on it, then turned back and said said more quietly, “yea.”

An awkward silence hung between them. There wasn’t anything they could say. Well, Danny excluded cause of what he was. So many of them had felt the devastation, the loss, the death. And not only once, but twice. What made it even worse was that no one had a lead. The cops had no clue. There wasn’t even a real motivation besides striking fear into people’s hearts, telling them that no one was safe. Not even the children. What sicko bombed a highschool??

It almost made him want to do something about it. If Jake had been here, he would have talked to him about his thoughts, and more than likely Jake would have smirked and said something in reply. Something smart, witty, and caring, that would have eased the mood, the tension. But for all the life of him, Ozzy couldn’t think of anything like that. Once again one of his hands reached up and rested against the back of his head, the other jammed into his pocket. He’d been hoping to wear a black suit to the prom, not to a mass memorial.

“Look I,” he stopped, unsure of what he wanted to say, or how to say it. “I guess I’ll see you around… or something,” he finished lamely. It was time to go away, stand by himself again. He could almost hear Jake’s voice behind him, whispering in his ear an old joke from grade five.

‘So this one time, a potato, a tomato and a frog go to a bar…’

Danny blinked. Course silence wasn’t ever really akward to him. Ok, yeah, he had his moments, but it wasn’t like he could contribute something to change that beyond a whistle. Danny’s eyes had been darting about, watching everyone. His eyes were still a bit moist, but drying now, the air was cool, yet crisp. Yeah, it was a good day, weather wise at least. Hearing Ozzy, Danny’s expression becamne thoughtful.

Nudging Gabe, he made a few gestures, not quite adept at understanding Danny’s impromptu sign language, but able to ge tthe gist.

“Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Hey uh, Ozzy. We were going to get together later, grab some drinks, pizza, at that one park, what’s its name. Maybe throw a ball around. Danny here, likes to wind up those old guys that sit at the chess tables. You wanna come…no suits required?”

Danny had shoved his hands in his pockets again, one of them fumbling for some paper. Yeah, yeah, call him post-it, those little things came in handy more than enough times for him, he wrote down the park’s name.

Ozzy swallowed, his nails digging slightly into the back of his head. Call it a nervous twitch. He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring a bit, then exhaled, letting the breath come out from slightly parted lips, savoring the warmth of the sun for a few moments.

“You know… I wouldn’t mind that.” Taking the offered post-it from Danny, he managed a small grin for the two boys. Guess you couldn’t really choose your friends anymore from now on. Not that it mattered really. Danny and Gabe were ok, as far as he knew. It was nice of them to offer. They’d all grown up since the bombings. The usual highschool attitudes weren’t around anymore. Who could really afford to be, anyway?

Looking past Gabe’s shoulder, Ozzy could easily see the devastation in the survivor’s faces. The cheerleaders were together, all four remaining ones. One chick had her arm broken, the other had a neck brace and some burn scars on her face. The different sports teams had aggregated together. Their total number was a pitiful sum. The ‘nerds’ and the ‘popular people’ were standing together, talking quietly. How horrible, that such a thing could bring such a bond between the few survivors… was it true that they only defined their reality through misery? That it was misery that made them better? That scene from the Matrix came to his mind…

Another figure caught his gaze, obviously walking towards the small group with the help of a crutch. He blinked slightly.

“Anna…”

His ex.

Danny gave him a smie that said ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ like very young man couldn’t resist the powah of a good game of ball. Gabe likewise smiled.

“Great. If you want a say in toppings and drink choices, you’ll have to speak now or forver hold your peace, guess that means your up shit’s creek, huh Danny?”

He nudged him, Danny pulled a face, like he knew something no one else did and pulled a post it from his inside pocket, though it looked reminiscent of a scene in any typical underworld, mafia film. Another post-it that he patted onto Gabe’s lapel. He would have made a flex move, but figured that was best saved till later, given the circumstances. Some people didn’t think humor was appropriate. Danny’s heritage was of different mind, and if he wasn’t mistaken, so was Gabe’s. Danny folded his arms in a ‘wise man’ manner, his body language said ‘grasshoppah.’

Gabe pulled it with a slight smirk as he read it. Smartass…

Off of Ozzy’s look he turned his head as Ozzy spoke, seeing the girl. Danny likewised turned around to see what got the mood back to somber again. Don’t say Danny didn’t try. His friends would have advocated that.

-Ellie for once didn’t feel like the outcast she had always been. The bombings seemed to, for a moment anyway, erace the cliques and social ladder. Shoving her hands deep within her ratted pockets she walked towards the memorial puffing on a ciggie. God she was fucking addicted to the shit but the stress was getting to her. The bombings for one thing. The irony being she had escaped seemly by the simple fact she had skipped school. The irony wasn’t lost on her. On top of all of that other weird shit was happening to her. She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t even know what was going on and frankly she didn’t want to. She had enough to deal with..all she needed know were strange nightmares…she couldn’t even find solace in her sleep-

-Taking one last drag she dropped the ciggie crushing it beneath her boot. Running her fingers through her slightly disheveled hair she walked towards the rest of “them”. She was only really interested in finding gregg. She hadn’t spoken to him in a while and she hoped he was o.k. He had to be she needed to talk to him. Needed to confinde him fuck. Staring across the crowd with her usual detached sort of look. Inside she felt like crying. Even though most of them were shitholes which had made her life miserable they didn’t deserve to die. In a way it brought her life into perspective. She had made a decision and she wanted to tell Gregg about it….where was he?-

“As long as there aren’t any anchovies or olives, I’m cool with it,” Ozzy replied, though he was obviously distracted by Anna-Rosa’s slowly approaching figure. He swallowed a bit, tugging at his collar with a finger. It was suddenly too tight. His palms were getting sweaty, the nervousness on his face clearly showing. Opening the first couple of buttons, he turned his attention back to Gabe and Danny, licking his lips.

Anna-Rosa approached them. She was dressed all in black, like almost everyone else there. A black Le Chateau tee with short, frilly sleeves that ended just beneath her shoulder and came down to about her bellybutton, and a pair of low-riding black Mod Robes. A black bandanna helped to keep her hair out of her eyes, and a jacket was wrapped loosely around her hips. After the heat of the explosions, she preferred the cold to anything. Her right leg was in a cast, and she had a crutch to help her walk.

“Ummm… hi Ozzy,” she said nervously, then glanced at the other two, and tilted her head up. “Yo,” she greeted them, not quite sure what their names were. Hadn’t that shorter one been in her English class though? She couldn’t remember.

“I just wanted to let you know,” she said quietly, leaning on her crutch as she looked at him, “that I still want to be friends. Not that cheesy shit that those blond chicks with big boobs talk about either. Real friends. I like you a lot, I don’t want to lose you like I did everyone else…” her voice caught here, thinking about her friends, all of them, how they’d died in the concert and been reduced to nothing but unidentifiable piles of gore and blood. She closed her eyes, burying the image, then looked at him.

Ozzy definately looked embarassed. This wasn’t the type of shit that you talked about in public! Well, not for teens anyway. He nodded, his hand furiously rubbing the back of his head and neck, then glanced down at his shoes. How they shone in the sunlight!

“I’m glad,” he finally said, quietly. “I was missing you too.”

Anna-Rosa nodded, the corner of her mouth hinting at a small shy smile.

“I’m going to be meeting up with Gabe and Danny here later on at the park. I know you don’t play ball, but maybe you could bring your skateboard and chill with us?” He paused here, eyes flickering to the other two, “That is, of course, if they want.”

Would it ever end?

Could it?

Madness. Oblivion. Darkness. Pain. Anger. Hatred. Vengeance. Horror. Judement. Imprisonment. Betrayal.

Redemption.

A new beginning for Habaiel. A new chance for Greg. Ever since he had allowed the whispering voice to enter his mind, to heal him, Greg had not been the same. No, he’d taken a back-burner to the events in what should have been HIS life. But he was glad. Oh so glad to let someone else take the reigns, someone else to deal with the hardships, the agony, the pain. It was a miracle.

Or was it?

Habaiel’s violent, horrible memories seeped into his mind, coated his soul with a thick, oily, viscous mass of filth. He woke up with the memories in his mind. Went through the day with them raping his thoughts, and went to sleep with their desperate prayers on his lips. At night, his dreams were racked with their screams of agony.

Visions of screaming angels, naked and kneeling in front of a cracked and defiled statue of the Virgin Mary, seething and crawling with serpents. Some had their wings torn off, partway or half way. Others were lost in the throes of the Stigmata, blood pouring down from the five wounds upon their bodies. Still others were kneeling and lost in prayer as tears of blood poured from their eyes to marr their perfect angellic visages.

Others were lost within the heated bloodlust of a fight, their swords of pure light clashing against others of burning flame. Their faces lit up by the thunderous clangs and clashes that resulted from their attacks. They were beautiful, they were horrible. They were the personification of God’s wrath. Mysterious and powerful. Beautiful and deadly.

More were strapped to torture benches, their arms and legs chained down by the unbreakable iron forged by the most terrifying and fear-inspiring of all the houses, the Malefactors. Their bodies twisted and turned, writhing as they SCREAMED for mercy, SCREAMED for death. Begged for it! Oh, most damned of days when angels would cry blood tears for death. Yet they did so as the hand continued to rape their bodies, continued to incite pain and agony that only the most divine could ever perform. And that hand belonged to him. Or had…

He didn’t know what to do. Neither did Habaiel. Both of them suffered in equal amounts. Both of them suffered for the Original Sin. For the War. For the Betrayal.

Gripping his head in his hands, Gregory collected his thoughts and gathered his wits. He was not deep within the bowels of the secret city of Isbaden. He was not in charge of acting out and performing the punishment that their war prisoners had been condemned with. Not anymore. He was here. He was Gregory, just like before. Habaiel agreed, not wanting to remember the terrible crimes that he had commited.

The demon reached the highschool, standing away from the crowds. Just another student come to pay his respects.

Ellie.

Where was she?

Did he dare even go to her? Talk to her? Knowing what he was now? Oh… he couldn’t bare to see her. Not like this. Not EVER. But what choice did he have? Habaiel knew the truth, even if Greg did not want to acknowledge it yet. It was hard for the demon, possessing a body that still contained its own soul, even if the soul had wanted, had welcomed his arrival. Without him, Greg would have died, and for that he was forever thankful of Habaiel.

Blocking out the constant screams of his tortured memories, Habaiel stepped forward, much to the relief of Gregory, and took a hold of the reigns. He began walking through the crowd of adults, further in to where most of the students were congregating.

There she was. Her back to him, walking towards a small group of others. Keeping silent as ever, Greg started in that direction, his hands stuffed in the black leather jacket that he wore.

-She knew he was behind. Something intangible told her it was him. Turning away idly chewing on her pierced lip as she allowed a slightly barely noticeble smile to touch her lips. They had never been boyfriend and girlfriend. They were more than that. He was her only true friend. The one person she could confinde within. He was the person she went to when her dad when psycho. The person that didn’t judge her. Didn’t impose some ideal upon her. It was impossible to dissapoint him and there was so much comfort in that. Brushing the long ebony strands from her face…a nervous gesture…he knew she didn’t like being around so many people-

Finally the dead rise…

-She chiding him for not having spoken to her the past week but in truth her words hit the mark so perfectly it might have hurt his feelings. She had no idea behind the mask of her friend was someone new. Something knew rather but what ‘it’ was didn’t really qualify as being human. Slipping the ciggie from behind her ear she placed it between her lips. She didn’t light it. It was forbidden on school grounds and she didn’t want to deal with the teachers today besides it was simply the feel of the ciggie that brought her comfort. Staring within his eyes her own seemed to drop their usual defence as she spoke somewhat softly…with a trace of fear..-

I’m glad you’re o.k..I didn’t hear from you afterwards..and I thought that maybe..well never mind…

Finally the dead rise…

The devils laughed in his ears, tormenting and taunting him. She knew! She knew! The icy cold hand of fear gripped his heart, squeezing, squeezing… fucking SQUEEZING.

‘Calm down!’ he yelled to himself in his head. ‘Stop over-reacting. She knows shit!’ Running his tongue over his teeth, Greg walked over to where Ellie was waiting for him, not ten feet from the other four.

“Yea well… I’m not Jesus, so it took me more than three days,” he coughed a bit, his eyebrows rising in a muted show of pale amusement, the double ring in the left one catching the sunlight and sparkling in her eyes. Stepping closer to her, he raised one hand and tapped the end of her nose.

“Ellie… did you think I’d leave you one last time without giving you another wedgie? C’mon… I’m not THAT insensitive…” he chuckled quietly, the sound fading away into a sigh. The demon stood there, simply enjoying being. Existing. When was the last time he had felt the sun’s warmth upon his body? Or the gentle kiss of a fading winter’s breeze? Too long had he been in the Abyss… too long had he been a prisoner outside and detached from the world that he’d so loved, once upon a time. Licking his lips, he plucked the ciggie from her mouth and tucked it behind his ear.

“Sorry I didn’t call… I couldn’t. Up until yesterday I was still in the hospital… doctors say it’s a miracle that I got out of my coma. They were about to pull the plug on me until I opened my eyes,” he paused, letting his quiet, morbid words sink in. “My mother almost had a heart attack when she saw me wake up…”

Another pause, as he glanced towards Danny, noting that it was the mute kid, then turned back to Ellie.

“And you? How’ve you been holding up?” he said quietly, his words barely above a whisper.

-Maybe it was just the memorial. Maybe it was the fact she’d missed him so much it hurt for her to even say anything. Whatever the reason Elizebeth “Ellie” May did something she hadn’t done since she was five years old. She hugged another human being. Wrapping her arms around him not caring the others were around. Pressing her forehead against his chest as she allowed her eyes to shut slightly enjoying the feeling. He was alive. He was there. Maybe she just wanted to make sure he was real. Looking up she allowed that crooked little smile to spread across her lips as she slipped the ciggie back behind her ear-

If you ever leave me I’ll come after you and kill you myself…

-Letting her arms loosen her hold she chuckled softly as she spoke the little “joke”. Though knowing Ellie she might just come after him for a stunt like that. Or that’s what anyone but Gregg would believe. She was the freak on the playground. The kid that no one wanted to play with cause something about her freaked them out. She’d always been like that. Something about her kept people aloof and then Gregg came along and looked past her bravado and show of detachment and saw a kid wanting a friend. Reaching out her hand she flicked his nose. She was still standing close enough to make sure her words would only be heard by him…than again who wanted to come close to her?-

I need to talk to you about something o.k….I saved up enough money my job to get a place..it’s dirt cheap and filled with rats and shit but I can make it work…it’ll be mine in a week or so..till than I think I’ll hang around our spot…I don’t want to go home…I got all my stuff packed before they woke up…

-Their “spot” was an abondoned building…a place that had been renovated but for one reason or another it stopped and got abandonded…they didn’t care..it was a place to chill without prying eyes…she often came and there and slept through the night..at least there her parents weren’t getting wasted or beating the shit out of her…she couldn’t stand being there any longer..she had to get out…she wasn’t going to end up like them. Determination sparkled within the depths of her black eyes..she meant every word…-

Danny grinned. Even a little more when Ozzy became distracted, seeing why. Well, Danny’d be distracted too. He was mute, not blind. He stuffed his hands back in his pockets, leaned back all suave like, painting a cool rico sauve expression in his face, or as best he could and mouthed ‘Yo Anna’ back to her. Funny his features weren’t Itialian, but still, the play on the reference made him silently chuckle.

Course he overheard, and made it like he didn’t. Actually Danny was the perfect confidant, wasn’t he? Who was he going to ‘tell?’ Just confiscate his post-its. When Ozzy talked about meeting up with them Danny made a motion of ‘yeah, join us.’

Gabe took the opportunity to speak up

“Nothing big, like your friend said. Just some drinks, pizza, and a place to just..well…breathe, you know. I don’t know about you guys, but my ‘rents have kinda been, well suffocating….”

They way his face fell momentarily spoke perhaps the same sentiment of others. He didn’t mind it, but he did, his parents loved him, it was only natural. But you could only take so much. He’d like to enjoy his time before having to be an full on out responsible adult, though life seemed to have given them a hard shove in that direction. What was it Danny was always chanting, ‘Damn the man.’ Gabe could see the ‘outraged’ shake of the fist he always did thinking that.

When Gabe spoke about breathing, Danny knew exactly how he felt….though it saved his life. He was beginning to wonder about that, he escaped twice now. Good thing Final Destination was just a movie. It was at that moment he caught Greg’s glance. Long enough to offer him a smile, kinda a cookie cutter one you gave everyone. Some people took it as an invite, some a polite gesture and others didn’t know what to make of it.

Habaiel blinked at wat Ellie did. The hug. It was totally unlike her (from what Greg told him), and it made him realize just how shook up she really was. He stood there for a few moments, unresponsive. Then, hesitating slightly, his arms slowly reached up and he patted her back awkwardly, before returning the hug with a gentle squeeze. He could smell her, a faint mix of shampoo, lotion, and last night’s weed. And… was that blood? He closed his eyes to think, and met with the image of a screaming, flayed angel, quickly opened them up again, instead looking down at the gently stirring grass.

“If you ever leave me I’ll come after you and kill you myself… “

“Knowing you, I think I’ll have to take that seriously,” he said lightly, forcing a half-grin on his face. All this talk of death was unnerving to Habaiel, for more reasons than one. Thankfully though, she changed the subject before he could, making him forget to return Danny’s smile as his eyes darted back to Ellie. Of course, whether it was for the better or worse…

“What?” he said quietly, placing his hands on her shoulders. His eyes narrowed slightly as he looked at her, his eyes almost boring into her soul. “You can’t expect to stay there for a week… ok, a night or two whatever. But an entire week? What are you going to do for a shower, or to go to the bathroom? Heat? Light? That’s stupid and you know it,” he gently chided her. “No, don’t even think about arguing with me, Ellie. You’ll stay at my place.” He lived in the basement of his parent’s house, and there was more than enough room for another person to chill there for a while. And Ellie knew it was infinitely better than their ‘spot’. “You’ll regret not staying with me… especially when I make my world-famous fries and served with a side order of weed.”

Habaiel heard the devils laughing in his head. Whispering about his degradation. About how worthless he was. ‘Look at him now!’, they taunted, ‘he was once beloved, but now he is reduced to nothing more than a comfort toy with a need for drugs…’

“Shut up,” he closed his eyes and whispered, not realizing that he’d spoken out loud. His grip tightened on Ellie’s shoulders. “Shut the fuck up.”

In the months since Jakku was so changed, so had she. Testing her adherence to the tenets of her chosen dharma, wrestling with the demon that made her existence what it was, exploring what exactly that was and exploring what comes of the Harmonious Storm as she had termed it. She studied herself amidst those she used to walk among. The infant kuei jin had come a ways since the night she dug herself out of her own grave. A ways indeed.

Her hair that had always been found in a tight severe bun flowed freely, as did the fabrics of the skirt on her black mid-length dress. Her petit form made her look frail in appearance, and it was that form that now moved like a blossom petal on the gentlest of breezes.

Falling, she could have been a flesh colored sliver wrapped in black silk, the fabrics of her dress flowing up in the wake of her descent, her ebon locks an inky flame, they fluttered against the descent made breeze. Her finger tips grace the building wall as the ground fast approaches. At the right moment, she grasps the ledge of the windowsill, only for them to scrape the abrasive exterior as her fall continued.

Her feet hit the ground first, the hand that failed to grab the ledge now upon the pavement, the blood seeping from the scrapes destroying the evidence of the folly, as the fabric of her dress settled about her form and her ebon locks obey gravity. She got up fluidly, her head looking upward as the hand that failed her fell to her side. A breeze disturbs the discarded paper hugging the sides of the alley, the dress flutters, as does her hair, locks of it wrap around her neck. Dying, it manages to push them back, her mane settles like a silken fabric with waning ripples of movement.

Her head remains still, only her dark eyes move to the behold ground so eager to have her back.

Change.

Nothing escaped it.

Hands at her sides, she walks towards the street, her heels soundless upon the pavement, she moves to enter the building a different way than she had planned.

Change. There was no escaping it.

Watching the sunrise, he smiled as the golden light touched his face. Walking along the empty sidewalk, he casually moved into an alleyway between buildings. Looking down at a smear of blood on the floor. He crouched dipping his finger into the tiny smear. Tasting the blood, a cruel smile caressed his features. He had found the place sooner than expected, it seemed luck was on his side. Producing a small jade figurine carved in his likeness, he set it down in the alleyway. A moment later the alleyway was empty but for the single jade figure.

The figure exploded in the alleyway below as he stepped out of the velvet shadow in the haven of the centipede’s. No wards fenced him out, no spirits came to guard her sleeping form. He had truly been lucky this morning and with such little exertion on his part. Looking down at the sleeping Centipede, a cruel smile touched his lips. Many of his past encounters had ended badly due to wards, retainers and worse standing guard over the ‘vulnerable dead’, as he liked to call them. Growing up in the halls of the damned had taught him much. He put that knowledge to the best of uses, his own personal gratification.

Looking down on Zhi she looked as he expected. Like many before her she appeared shy, demure and beautiful in her sleep that should have been eternal. Silently he stood over her, taking long seconds to admire her petite form. Taking the serrated machete from the sheath within his coat, the room was dark though what little light there was glinted off the blade.

“Don’t scream,”

He whispered with a smile to her sleeping form. Pressing the blade to her lips, he made a kissing sound with his own. Sliding the cold edge of the blade beneath the collar of her top, cutting the buttons of her Pj’s off one by one. Using the tip of the blade to part the material and expose her breasts to his hungry eyes. He smiled as he brought his lips to her naval placing a soft kiss there. Smiling as he lifted himself from her body, he cupped her breast, massaging her nipple with his thumb, before squeezing tenderly. Already feeling his erection swell within his shorts, he licked his lips moistening them.

Running the blade over the tigers embroidered on her shirt, he smiled. Leaning towards her he mimicked a growl. She wasn’t so scary now, very few of them were.

He kissed her nipples then licked them. Taking one gently between his teeth, he bit lightly. Finding amusement in the fact that he was biting her rather than the other way around as it had often been in the past and was sure to be in the future. Now who felt like they were food?

Cutting the elastic of her pants, he drew them down exposing her panty clad sex. Stroking her soft dead sex through the thin material, he pressed his lips to her own, raping her mouth with his tongue. Popping open the button of his trousers, he removed them, straddling her with the blade held high, it looked for a moment as if he intended on ending her second breath. Stabbing the bed besides her head, he smirked. Laying his erection between her breasts, the fun had just begun. Dusk was a several long hours away, he took his time enjoying her body’s delights.

When she’d awake the room would be empty her silk pj’s in tatters. Her body exposed and quite obviously used as a plaything. A small card jutted out of the knife rent in the mattress. It held the single kanji ‘Silence’ punctuated with a smiley face. Inspection of the room would reveal tiny shards of jade. No other sign other than the ‘damage’ done to her body was evident.

The Eye of Heaven no longer burned in the sky. Yet Zhi had not roused just yet. The lingering images of her sleep dissolving, she lay there. They had been of Yomi. Of both times she had been there, though the latter was what had opened her eyes to the steps taken that had her on her current path, having danced with Death so soon after having taken her Second Breath, the experience had left a impressionistic mark upon her.

Letting the images dissolve, she would see them once more as she had seen them many nights past. Feeling the chill of air against exposed damp skin, her dark eyes opened. Moving to a sitting position seeing the offerings she got out of the bed she laid in, she looked down upon her form before walking to a full-length mirror, she beheld her reflection. Her pajamas tattered, clinging to her barely and with the aid of the drying fluid that stained her body. Her expression void of any emotion despite that it was keenly obvious that an entity had been there while she slept. For a long while she gazed in the mirror, her dark eyes traveling over her form, her body telling her of what things it endured. They rested finally on an embroidered tiger that was still intact. A slow smile claimed her lips, the first sign of any expression since she woke, more importantly, the fact that it was a genuine smile on the lips of the Centipede that rarely emoted. Though argument would debate that even then, the expressionless visage was nothing more than another mask she slipped her others over.

The amount of time that passed mattered little to her. She finally moved from the mirror, back to the bed. Pulling the present embedded in her mattress, she cut away the tiger her eyes had rested upon. Placing those and the card on the dresser against the wall opposite of her, she pulled the bedding, and then stripped the stickied clothes from her. Zhi had a new a puzzle. But patience. She had other things to attend to. Everything in its place and a place for everything.

Dressed in a black mandarin suit of well-worn cotton, a size too big for her, she stood upon the ledge of her window. Pushing off she fell, the extra fabric fluttering, her loose locks an inky flame as she descended, landing with ease, near the same spot she had fallen just before the sun had rose that day. Shards near the bloody smear caught her eye and she retrieved them. Another puzzle piece that yet had a place. She would find one for it. But not now. Walking out to the street, she stood a moment, then hunched low. Her petit frame with the big clothes made her look like a starving wretch, but a starving wretch with a pretty face. Weaving her way to her destination. Change. Nothing escaped it.

In a warehouse near the docks there was a dilapidated office building in disrepair. Condemned, it had not yet been torn down, despite that its replacement a ways down now housed the office space for the shipping companies and customs that handled the goods brought into Jakku.

This was where Zhi was headed this night. Her baggy silhouette paused the pacing and muttering of a male’s voice, frozen in fear as he gazed upon it, before the closing of the door destroyed the outline.

“Who-who’s there?”

“I wish to hear of your master’s child.”

His form relaxed slightly. It was her. The thing that saved him, or so he thought. Months had passed. Treacherous months. Though he wasn’t chained or locked in. No, he stayed there of his own accord, well, once his restraints had been taken off. He’d been a fool, trying to cut through and escape from that bitch, and ended up in all places China Town. He’d been told of things about what ruled over China Town, and he’d been told things, heard things about that bitch that hunted. He never laid eyes on her, but he knew the moment he saw her over Kirsten’s body, he knew she was that bitch he’d been warned about. Afraid of her? No, she was of little consequence it seemed to his master and the others. But that didn’t mean she was to be taken lightly, she proved to be dangerous. Politics. His master didn’t care for them, or so he claimed. Nevertheless, he had one task and that was to protect his childe as she slept. And he had failed. He was dead either way. But he was also human and as the days passed in his capture, as the blood that held him in their sway weakened, he was more apt to live. Ironic. In exchange for this existence, he talked with her not sure what to make of her. And Zhi had offered very little.

Zhi smiled on the inside. His choice was only a guise. She had watched from above, clothes still tattered from her Big Brother’s lesson, the water from the rains causing them to cling even more. Watching as the corpse on the hood was prodded, her attentions fell to the groaning man. Until the corpse moved of its own accord. She watched the exchange with mild interest before descending upon the now unconscious man and stole him away. The next nights were filled with inquisitive questions. Honing her soul art all the more, she culled from him what he knew. His master, a kin jin, she listened with fascination, questioning about the kin jin’s kiss to verify what she had been told, about things she had read. The female corpse had no name to him, beyond bitch and the like. Why he fled from her, what he knew of her, what his duties were, what he’d been doing, his affiliation. In the time that past, it became all the more apparent that she could turn him over to those that would see he would be placed in his master’s fold once more. The prospect did not seem enticing to him.

“What part do you wish me to repeat this night?”

Both pleased and disappointed at his cooperation, she merely replied with ‘everything.’ And he told his story once more. Hearing the fatigue in his voice as he spoke, no expression on her face, though pleased and distraught at the same time. Her new puzzle the source. But now was not the time.

When she had heard all she wanted, she gave him a card. It was a business card for Mr. Woo’s Noodle bar, on the back a seal.

“Your meals awaits you there”

“I can’t go out..I could be seen-“

“Then I suggest you take great care.”

If Phillip wanted to eat, he would venture out. If he wanted to wait to see if she would have any mercy on him, he would simply starve. She was eager to see the result of either choice or what it would bring. Consequence and choice.

Leaving him with a decision to make, she moved on, allowing herself to embrace her new puzzle, she sought out her beloved books should nothing else change the course of the night.

Ying Mei’s Clinic
3:32pm

Two large men entered the clinic one was simply a monster of a man, thick set and muscualr the other was like a swollen pig ready for roasting plump but equally large. The fatter of the two had pimples and severe acne lining his face. Squeezing a pimple between his finger he examined the white thread of pus that spilt upon his fingertip. The muscular man moved towards the counter, tapping upon it in a ‘knock knock’ fashion.

“Tea money time”

The fat man chuckled, scratching his groin. He hoped that the old woman’s daughter was around. He’d maybe charge them interest and give the lovely doctor a taste of his party sausage. Who said work wasn’t fun?

The chimes by the door told those deep within the clinic that someone had entered. When the men entered, there was no one behind the counter weaving about the wall of drawers. There was, however, movement to their collective left in a room that was walled off by intricately carved wood work. The rustle of cloth and flesh was Ying Mei’s apprentice, being dutiful, or in Ying Mei’s eyes, trying to be.

Ying Mei herself was in the back; her semi-annoyed, irritated and abrasive voice filtering through.

“Stupid. A woman knows when she is with child, long before she shows it. You are not fit to be one. Poorly nourished…thankfully nature allows the child to be a parasite and gets what it needs and you second. Do not interrupt while I am speaking! Your mother will hear of this…because you will been seen everyday until I change my mind! Now…drink. Dreeking requires open mouth. Hmph! ‘I had no iiiidea.’ Next you will tell me you didn’t have sex! Boy!”

He came out of the room, at just the moment the man knocked on the counter. Frozen in place, Ying Mei had to shout for him again. The men would see him visibly swallow and give them a polite bow with a nervous smile before he ducked through the beaded curtain.

“Ye-ye-yes Master?”

A moment later he re-emerged, the short old woman not long after, her sleeves kept up on her arms by means of a slip of frabric that was held in place by a button, her own design. She appraised the two men with a scrutenizing gaze…then again, Ying Mei hardly looked upon anything without such a gaze or something similar.

“You are…on time. This is good news.”

Odd words perhaps. The old woman moved to the room where her apprentice had been previously. He was now behind the counter, obviously not wanting to be there solely because the men were only a few feet from him. Tea Time was not one of his most favored times. Though his master didn’t seem to be moved to anything.

“Things getting back to the way they should remain..”

Coming out, their tea money in hand, as she approached. Upstairs, feet movements were made, course the men might have heard them while they waited.

“Master Laio, Master Laio..I feel…ill”

Annoyance crept on the old woman’s features as she called back over her shoulder.

“Swallow it! You need the nutrition…foolish girl!”

Slight sobs permeated to the front, Ying Mei merely raised a brow as her lips pressed into a thin line, putting the money on the counter. Footfalls could be heard from the stairs in the back room as boards creaked and the sobs seemed to muffle then quiet. The old doctor didin’t seem too happy about that. Then without warning, the flat of her hand slammed down hard…well as hard for a woman her age, on the counter.

“Third drawer back, third!”

Her apprentice subsequently dropped the herbs he had as a result and the woman muttered under her breath.

“You have apprenticed how long? Do I need to label? Annd you want to be doctor…stupid! Those will be taken from your wages!”

Except…her apprentice wasn’t paid in wages.

“Mother..”

The tone was semi-scolding as Ying Mei’s daughter stepped from the back, her eyes seeing the two men, mainly the muscular one putting the money in his jacket. The slight look she had when she entered moved to a light frown. Mailan disapproved of this tea money her mother paid. No, she hadn’t grown up in Old China as her mother always referred to it, but that didn’t mean the cycle should go on. The police, not these brute thugs, were there to provide protection.

The only reason she didn’t say anything was because her mother wished it. That, and she wasn’t stupid. She didn’t want to do anything that would endanger her mother and her livlihood.

“Yuan’s already frightened, you didn’t have to scare her more.”

Ying Mei turned sharply after giving the muscular man a quick respectful bow..she was, afterall, busy scolding her stupid clumsy apprentice.

“Who is Master here! Hmm? HMMM?! She is baby having baby…and should have thought of that before opening her legs!”

The latter said with increased volume so the girl could hear. Ying Mei moved from the counter to Mailan

“You have prescriptions to fill, I suggest you do that.”

Watching her daughter move to the room to the fatter man’s left, her scrutenizing gaze watched her for a minute with a raised brow. Ying Mei had obviously taken great offense to her daughter questioning her. Still looking at Mailan, she spoke up once more, this time addressing her apprentice.

“Do not be clumsy with these…or else.”

Mailan had blinked at her mother’s words, clearly surprised. She knew her mother to be callous, her words not that much of a surprise despite the fact that they both knew Yuan was 23. No, she blinked to the ‘order’ she’d been given. Treating her like she was a newly taken apprentice. It wasn’t so much insulting as…hurtful. But she wouldn’t argue with her, at least not at that moment and she retreated to the room with the carved woodwork served as windows.

She couldn’t believe how clumsy she was, sometimes. She’d woken up, as usual. Gone to make her tea. For a few seconds, while she’d been standing in the kitchen, everything had suddenly started to spin. Fan lost her balance, and dropped the container that carried the herbal mixture for her tea, spilling half of it into the sink on the dirty dishes, the other half on the ground.

Fan grumbled, knowing she’d have to make a pit stop at Ying Mei’s clinic to get some more, if Ying Mei didn’t scold her to death, that was. She could almost hear the old woman’s voice now, in her head. Fan blinked, then let out a small amused chuckle, shaking her head. She was fond of the old woman, even though she’d only seen her twice. In a world filled with monsters, demons and criminals, a pure soul, any pure soul, was a welcome thing.

Gathering her things, she left the tiny apartment. Mickey knew that she was going out to job hunt. And hopefully, if things went well, by the time Fan got back Mickey would be all better. Her heart squeezed painfully at the thought of her sister’s suffering, knowing she’d been purposefully hard on Mickey.

Nearing the clinic, Ying Mei’s voice could easily be heard, even if the words were undecipherable. Brows furrowing in slight concentration, the shih quietly opened the door, making sure to remain quiet as she crept into the clinic. Leaning against one wall, her fingers idly stroked the long bamboo stick that was a good six feet in length and used to hang a curtain from its tip, creating a sort of ‘archway’ along the wall. She knew a good potential weapon when she saw one.

((stealth (4) + dexterity (4) @ diff 6 = 7,7,9,1,5,9,6,9 = five sux – witnessed by Chelle))

She saw the exchange between Ying Mei and the two men, the disrespectful way they treated the old woman. She would have blown it off, until she saw the exchange of the ‘Tea Money’. Fan was no idiot. Having lived most of her life in the darker societies of each city she’d gone to with Mickey and their sensei, well… she realized quickly what it was.

And she wasn’t about to let that happen.

((Jaw Hammer of DOOM!!! Strength (4) + martial arts (4) @ diff 7 (8 – 1 b/c it’s to a human, not shen) + 1 wp = 9,2,8,6,5,7,8,5 = five sux and unsoakable – witnessed by Chelle))

Without warning, as soon as the muscled man would turn around, he’d be met with what could be called a sucker punch, right to his jaw. But this was more than just that. The flows of chi directed and strengthened her fist, making her move and speeds that were almost impossible for a human. Her small fist met with his jaw, leaving her open for any sort of attack that he might do, if he could. For upon impact, the strength coming from her chi and her body’s weight would completely and utterly shatter his jawbone, leaving his mouth a useless, gory, bloody mess, his jaw only hanging and supported by the muscles and skin that wrapped the bone, and not by the hinges. Fan looked at her fist, then at ‘muscle man’s’ ruined face. She didn’t even blink, didn’t smile. Her face was as expressionless as a smooth board.

Fan was ready to fight.

Ying Mei had commented more than once on Fan’s ‘strong chi’.

She didn’t know the half of it.

The fatter of the two men felt like stroking his cock the moment he saw the young doctor. She had the kind of lips you could wiggle your goods between all night long. It seemed that their business was done there. A pity he would have liked to give the Doctor a good ‘seeing’ too. Had he be in charged they would have had a lot more fun, unfortunately he had to ‘bow’ to the larger man. Turning to leave, he witnessed Fan’s arrival or assumed arrival, as they had no idea she’d been there a while.

The larger man turned to see Fan lash out with her jaw strike. Darting to one side in an attempt to avoid it, he managed to take off the brunt of the attack though she still caught him.

(dodge: Dex 3+Dodge3))((diff:6))(( 2,10,8,2,8,9,))((4 succs))

The fat man witnessed the attack and his big blubbery ass sprang into action (same turn as Fan attacked), reaching out with his meaty palm, he didn’t actually grab his hand merely a distraction as he stepped forward with the ‘heavy blow’, his huge fist aimed directly at Fan’s face.

((heavy strike: Dex3+brawl3))((Diff:6))(( 8,7,8,5,8,3))((4 succs))
((Damage: str4+succs3))((+1 heavy strike))(( 10,1,4,2,7,3,5,10,))((rr:3))((2 hls bashing))

The strike connected full force though didn’t seem to do as much damage as he would have hoped to the little girl. Her weird martial art motion looked like some fancy exotic shit, no sense messing with a little bitch who could do that. The exaggerated motion seemed to leave Fan prone, the fat man took his moment of opportunity to tackle her.

((Tackle:Str4+Brawl3))((diff:6))(( 3,7,1,5,9,10,1,))((1 succs))

Hoping to knock Fan on her ass with the tackle, and slam her hard against the floor. The fat man would be a huge weight upon her. If his companion was still standing, the girl’s head would be stomped nice and hard into the floor. The world was a cruel place and heroes were punished for their heroics at least the 5 Venom’s liked to believe that was so.

Ying Mei was a lot of things. That was the only way to explain it, outside of her own mind. She, like the others didn’t notice Fan creep in and she had the better vantage point. Or..had she? Who knew beyond the old bat herself. Yet she didn’t say anything. Well, she was old, her vision proabaly wasn’t what it used to be.

Though it didn’t show on her face, seeing the muscular man meet Fan’s welcoming fist had Ying Mei raising a disapproving brow. Ying Mei was a lot of things. Mailan had moved from the doorway of the room she was in, then moved to the back room. Nohting had to be said as she ushered the pregnanat girl out the back through a back door of the clinic. Ying Mei’s form went rigid as her already loud voice resonated even louder

“Aiyah! Not in myyyy clinic! This is clinic, not ring! You take this foolishness outside! Get audience, ruin pavement, not my shop! No WWE here!”

The fat man had just made a rush for Fan, Ying Mei herself had moved behind the counter, drawers already being pulled and things gathered, she was scolding Fan’s foolishness and making seemingly idle threats about what would happen if onnnne thing was ruined in her shop. She was also being disparaging about heroics. Ying Mei was, afterall a good protectee when it came to tea money- she liked her protection.

Moving across from the counter to the enclosed room, water was put on to boil. She could guess the outcome, but there was only onnnne certainty here! Someone would need treatment, and performing such was her duty. Her wizened eyes, kept a close watch to see if she needed to once more demand that they take it outside..she’d throw Fan out herself to get the other two to follow if she had to…with a well placed poke to her ribs…hmph!

The blow to musle man didn’t quite get the effect she’d been aiming for. It didn’t hurt her, but damn… he seemed to be made out of stone! The shih wondered if he was more than what he seemed, but that could wait for a few moments. Especially when the fat one decided to play ‘unfair’ and hit her. He got her fair and square in the shoulder, but aside from taking a step back from the brunt of the weight, she didn’t get much damage.

‘Ah… what I’d give for a movie-type battle… where it’s one person against a whole bunch of bad men, and they all prance menacingly around him and fight him only one by one!’

That thought made her smirk as she more than easily dodged the fat man’s tackle. He might be overweight… but well, that was the only thing going for him. The slip of a girl was just as strong as him, and thrice as agile. At the same time as she stepped to the side, her arms reached up over her head and grasped the rock-hard bamboo stick that was leaning against the wall, part of some decoration within the clinic. In one fluid gesture, she tore it off from the rest of the design and pushed it behind her and down, diagonally, hitting the fat man (who had either fallen on the ground or was standing behind her, still trying to tackle her) right at the base of his spine. She turned her head as she did so, keeping an eye on muscle man. He’d be the harder one to put down, but Fan had no doubt that she’d do it.

Hearing Ying Mei’s words, her lips peeled back in a small smirk, eyes never leaving muscle man.

“You heard the old woman. Get your ass outside and I’ll finish you off in public.”

Fan half-expected him not to listen to her. It didn’t matter though, she was prepared for any more attacks. Already her heart was pumping, her blood was pounding in her head. She loved the thrill of a good, hard fight. Pain and violence were what usually brought her out of her dangerously quiet demeanour, if only for a little while.

She’d never understood why people had sex, when they could have a perfectly good fight…

The larger man shook his head, the stars that had accosted him cleared. It was then that he turned to see the half-assed belly flop fail to hit Fan. She was a nimble little bitch. He wondered if she’d move as fast with both legs broken he doubted it.
The fat man was struck hard with the stick falling forward, he almost fell to the floor. Bracing himself on the wall, he cried out with the pain raping his fat body. His spine practically cracked though his ribs had done just that. Bleeding internally, he spat blood along with the word.

“Bitch”

((stamina4))((soak:4,0,9,3))((rr:3))((2 succs))((5 hls bashing taken))

The larger man seized his moment of opportunity as Fan concentrated on the fat guy, he drew his colt .45 (split action, this turn.). Pressing the gun to the back of Fan’s head he fired point blank. The old lady could scream about the mess all she liked, they’d reimburse her for the in convinence. though this little girl had to be taught some manners, it was a shame it was a lesson she wouldn’t live to teach others.

((Dex3+Fa3))((-3 dice S.action))((diff:4‘point blank’))((5,5,9))((3 succs))
((dmg:3succs+5))((Diff:6))((6,9,2,4,6,7,5,0))((5 hls lethal))

((shih skillZ))

Fan felt the cold hard steel only seconds before the searing pain that let her know a bullet was fired into her head. Maybe it was luck, or maybe she was just that good, but the bullet entered and exited her head without causing serious damage. Except for the profusely bleeding blood. Instead of inhibiting her, the pain went straight to her mind, and everything turned red. Lips peeled back into a feral snarl and soundlessly, she turned around, at the same time removing two jagged blades from the inside of her jacket, each one five inches long.

She had planned on ‘teaching them a lesson’, but now she’d let the devils in HELL do that.

Blood poured down from the hole made in her head, right below her ear and dangerously close to the major veins and arteries. In a fluid gesture, she thrust forward with both of the blades, letting the metal slice cleanly and easily into muscle man’s body, one in his lung, the other in his stomach. Keeping her eyes on his, she sneered and then twisted the blades in his body, shredding bone and flesh, before using the blades to lift him up slightly and toss him to the ground. Blood splattered everywhere and pieces of flesh still clung to the blades. Fan didn’t see Ying Mei or the daughter or apprentice anymore. She didn’t see the clinic. All she saw was the blood, all she felt the pain, the bloodlust, the thrill of taking a life with her own hands.

Once again the muscled man decided to shoot her. She leapt up to attack him again as he did, and the bullet hit her in her hip, lodging nicely between the bones. Blood began to puddle in her clothes and start falling down her legs. Again, the almost demonic shih ignored it, focused only upon her dying victim. Even when that worthless fat man decided to punch her again, she ignored it. His flimsy strength was nothing compared to her.

Fan straddled the dying man, pressing her bloody groin almost seductively against his stomach. Lifting the bloody daggers, she shoved them deep into muscle man’s chest. Both of them in his heart, shredding the organ to useless bits. Enjoying his pain, his look, his knowledge that he only had a precious few seconds to be alive. Blood poured out of her wounds as she continued to stare at him, grinning in a most dangerous manner. Fan said nothing to him, he wasn’t worth talking to. He was soon going to be nothing but a piece of dead meat, anyway. With a final jab to his neck, crushing his vocal box, Fan turned around and saw…

‘Shit,’ she thought to herself.

Fat man had decided to use his cellphone. We couldn’t have that now, could we?

Without getting up from the dead man, Fan aimed, and tossed the daggers at Fat Man. One missed, but the other lodged nicely within his throat, gurgling his next words as blood poured from his mouth and throat. Snarling, she stood up then and leapt to him, hands outstretched. Gripping the blade, she shoved it in deeper before twisting it as well and then pulling it out, watching with satisfaction as the dead man dropped to the ground.

Picking up the cellphone, she held it to her ear, listening intently and trying to see if there was still anyone on the other end of the line or if they’d hung up.

‘Fuck!’

Taking a deep breath, the bloody and half-dead shih looked around her, assessing the damage done. It was, well… horrible. Blood everywhere, pooling out of the corpses and her own blood. Furniture broken, the floor ruined. Not to mention the discarded, broken curtain holder. Swallowing, she turned the cellphone off and stuffed it into her pocket. It could be sold, later. Gathering her wits about her, she took her daggers and placed them back into her jacket, not cleaning them of the bits of flesh and gore that still clung to the bloody blades. Kneeling beside the two, she quickly searched through the bodies, taking everything of note or value. Wallets, identification, rings, jewelry, any weapons, technology. Whatever she could find.

Standing up, Fan placed the money on Ying Mei’s table. Licking her bloody lips, she made an uncertain bow.

“I’m sorry it went so far. I won’t be coming back,” her quiet voice was a big deception to the potential for violence that she harboured within her troubled soul. “When they ask what happened, say that they tried to rape me. Say that I tried to kill them. Say anything. Make sure they understand that it was my fault, and my fault only.” Without waiting for Ying Mei to say anything else, she turned around and left the store, turning quickly into a back alley and making her way through the town in the back streets.

She knew more would arrive.

Hopefully, she could get to safety before things got even worse.

Fan coughed up some bloody phlegm, wiping it off with the back of her hand. She stumbled, her hand pressing against the wall as a wave of diziness passed through her. Home. That’s where she had to go.

Oh, wouldn’t Mickey be mad at her now?

Ying Mei’s clinic
3:47pm

The bloody battle had past. Fan would have got away with a couple of pocketknives a colt .45 and a .38 revolver. Unfortunately for her or to be more specific for Ying Mei the location had been given before she took the fat man down. The fact that both men would be found dead told them more than they needed to know. The first gang members to arrive, got on the cells and spread the word that some smart-ass fucker thought it was cool to cap them in their city. A couple of cars arrived moments later. Ying Mei’s clinic filled with gang members. First four then a further eight men entered the shop, scouts kept watch for the cops though they doubted they’d arrive anytime soon. At least not the cops who weren’t on their payroll.

Of those present now several were not human. A large man known only as ‘Potato’ stepped forward. Nobody asked what his nickname meant, in fact no body asked him much at all such was the fear he inspired in others. Pointing at Mailan, he hooked his thumb towards the car outside with a growl. Several men would grab Mailan, if she struggled they had no qualms about knocking her the fuck out and bundling her in the car unconscious.

Had the crime simply been that Ying Mei didn’t pay her tea money it was forgivable for a price. The crime was however, an accomplice to killing gang members. A crime that could only be forgiven by the dark lords themselves. That being the case Ying Mei was to come along for the ride. She too would be struck and over powered should she resist. Once the women were in the cars the shop would be burnt to the ground with the apprentice in it.

Fan should be proud of herself.

Had she not said get out of her shop? To say Ying Mei was irritated would be a silly observation, she was angered. Her clinic was a place of healing!

Though she once again voiced to take it outside, neither the foolish girl nor her protectors heeded her. And now, as Fan gave her a bow, her shop was no place to seek treatment. Ying Mei should have scolded, she should have let that annoyed and irritated voice ring out through her clinic. Instead, Fan got a very cold

“Get. Out.”

And nothing more, knowing full well that the bodies would not benefit from anything beyond a burial now. Mailan blinked at her mother’s coldness. It was something she had not witnessed, opening her mouth to protest, the withering look from her mother was the only reason she said nothing.

“Touch nothing.”

“What, will you tell them?”

“The truth.”

“But-”

“SI-LENCE!”

Mailan had not had her mother talk to her so since she was a little girl and had stolen candy from a store.

“See to the remaining prescriptions.”

Ying Mei went about her work. Knowing full well that someone would arrive, if not to see why hadn’t the two reported back. It was the way it was. When the men arrived, Ying Mei did nothing beyond her duties. When they grabbed Mailan, she didn’t even protest. She was not that upset with her daughter…was she?

When Mailan started to struggle, it was then her mother moved,

“Stupid girl!” she practically snarled as she felt her mother strike her, she went still, though the men stuffing her into the car would have some difficulty as Mailan’s limbs didn’t move quite so easily.

Ying Mei herself did not need any coaxing. With a last order to see the prescriptions taken care of, the old woman left the clinic. Her withering gaze was still upon her daughter and after some time, Ying Mei bent forward and ‘struck’ her daughter again.

“You are still my daughter, now act like it!”

And Ying Mei meant it. Her wizened face lingered on Mailan until Mailan lowered her eyes in respect. Ying Mei let a grin threaten to tug at her lips. Her own thoughts bearting and scloding both her daughter and Fan in her mind. Some things were to be born, even if you did not believe them to exist. Know your place, know your duty.