Part One: The Emergence of Fate
I used to sit up here, on the rooftop of my apartment, just watching people scurry about in the streets below and thinking about things that could have and/or should have been. It was a wholly depressing part of my daily routine.
Lately I find myself sitting up here watching him, sitting with his feet dangling over the ledge and plucking a guitar he lifted from a grunge punk we caught beating his girlfriend. Wolf has a natural talent for the thing, although he couldn't for the life of him tell me where he learned it. It's just something I've learned to cope with. Things pop up with no explanation and you just have to go with the flow. I guess that's true for all things.
It's been a month and a half since Wolf and I hooked up and it's been going great. We haven't said the three little words, and don't intend to, because those three little words can really fuck a relationship over. We spend most of our time together, day and night, and where that would usually threaten a companionship, it's strengthened it. He got a job at the telecommunications place I work at(he's a janitor-the only thing they'd hire him for without a diploma or any ID), and we make my old rounds together. At first I thought it would be cramping my style to have a partner, I mean I'm not Batman or anything and he's certainly not Robin, but it's really worked out well. He fights with a style that I've come to understand is something like Bruce Lee's "Jeet Kune Do," which roughly translated means "hitch up your pants and kill the fucker." No joke.
By the way, we caught "the Mutilator," if you care. I cut off the guy's fingers, toes, ears, and penis and stuffed them all in a very delicate area, in homage to what the pervert did to those little girls. I called it poetic justice. Wolf called it twisted. Still, the sinful get what they deserve, right?
I never got too close to Wolf, though. I never let him in on all my secrets. How would he have reacted? I mean, I don't want anything to do with myself, why would he if he knew? It's been my experience that guys aren't usually attracted to former chinese assasins, unless, of course, they themselves are chinese assasins too. No, I had no intention of letting him in on every sordid little detail.
Untill I was forced to.
It looked like just another gang had surfaced in "the Murder City" that night, when we rolled up on that double murder just five minutes too late. Two gay men in expensive armani suits had laid dead with two bullets each in their skulls before us in the alley made famous for its drug dealings and gangsta bangs. The men were laid out in a lewd expression, and at first, I wondered if they were actually gay in life or if the killer or killers just posed them for his/hers/their own personal enjoyment. One was a black man, mid twenties, and had a slender build. This one had a gay pride pin on, so I concluded that the homosexuality had been pre-mortem. The other was a chinese man, no older than me. At first I thought armed robbery gone sour, but upon inspection, Wolf and I found their wallets completely untouched.
"What do you make of it?" he asked, handing me the worn leather wallet.
"It's a wallet full of cash," I said, flipping through three hundred dollars worth of twenties and fifties. I quickly removed the bills and placed them in my back pocket.
"What are you doing?" Wolf said under a raised eyebrow. "That's called stealing, you know."
"He's not gonna need it anymore," I mused, flipping through the pictures of the chinese man. I looked up and smiled. "Besides, how do you think we fund this organization?"
"You mean we're not Jerry's kids?" Wolf quipped, which I chose to ignore.
I flipped to his driver's liscense, and froze when I saw the name. Tan Shokonama. Why did that sound familiar? And that face. I had seen that face before. I pulled the driver's license from it's pocket in the wallet, and kept that too.
"And why did you take that?"
"Don't ask so many questions, Wolf. I have a feeling about this," I muttered as my eyes wandered up the wall to the fire escape. A piece of paper was stuck to the stairwell, spattered with blood. "What is that?"
I hopped up on the stairwell with one fluid motion and picked up the worn paper. Wolf looked up with his arms crossed over his chest. I held the paper for him to see, smirked, and then hopped back down to the ground.
"The police might want that at some time...they call it evidence, I think," he smiled.
"Oh, hush. Why make their job easier? Make 'em earn them donuts," I said, carefully unrolling the paper. Chinese symbols and a picture of a black tribal-esque scorpion adorned the fine parchment. I was able to translate it. "All...who...witness the black scorpion's wrath...are laid to waste."
"How the hell did you get that from that?" he said, looking over the symbols.
"I'm chinese, Wolf, I can read chinese," I replied, stuffing the paper into my pocket with the driver's liscense. Sirens started screaming over the hill. "Let's go, there's nothing more we can do for these guys now."
We escaped the scene just in time to see the red and blue lights of the squad cars, and I stood at the edge of the rooftop for a moment to watch the inept force immediately slap "turf hit" on the case file and run away with the bodies.
Something kept bothering me about that double murder, even into the week afterwards. I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had seen the dead man before. I knew I'd seen him in mother China, but other than that, zip.
It was a Saturday morning. Wolf was plucking at that damned guitar while sitting out on the fire escape, and I was just finishing wiping down my bowie knife and placed it back in my sheath. It was getting stuffy in the tiny apartment, and so I decided to step out for a breath of fresh air. I crawled out the window onto the fire escape where Wolf sat, kissed his head softly and told him I'd be back in about ten minutes or so. He nodded, half listening.
"Bring back munchies, babe," he mumbled, strumming at the worn strings.
I reentered the apartment just long enough to throw my leather jacket on and put my bowie knife in my shoe, just in case. You never know what kind of whackos roam the streets in the daylight, let alone what goes on after the sun goes down. I took the freight elevator down to the ground floor of the complex, as I always do. I don't particularly like the idea of having my neighbors know when I'm in and when I'm not in my apartment; it's not paranoia, it's realism. Sometimes, you'll end up with less in your apartment when you get back.
As I walked down the street toward the Kwik-Stop, my mind wandered back to the mystery of the dead man in the alley. I really shouldn't have worried so much about it, new gangs roll up on this block every three days...and this "Black Scorpion," probably wouldn't have lasted five minutes up against the Bleeding Dragon or Laughing Coyote, the two biggest and rival gangs of this part of town.
What bothered me most was the victim. Shokonama was a business man. What would a gangsta want with a business man, if not the money? And the paper(hell, let's call it what it was. A scroll). Perhaps Shokonama saw something he wasn't supposed to see, or perhaps as a kid he was a part of this gang, and they were just weeding out the unfaithful. I mentally kick myself for not checking the body for gang tattoos. I'm convinced the other dead man was Shokonama's lover who just got caught in the crossfire.
I was walking accrossed the street when something caught my eye. Just ahead of me an asian man, dressed in black dragged a heavy trash bag into the alley. Normally, it would mean it was trash day. But the trash doesn't come on Saturdays in this neck of the woods. Suspicious? Not really. He could have forgotten it the night before, or this could be a new bag, but I had another wierd feeling about it. I don't know why. I scanned for his thoughts, but suprisingly, found nothing. So I ignored it.
I entered the Kwik-Stop, grabbed a couple of beers and a bag of Funyuns, and made my way to the front counter. A punk girl with a hot pink mowhawk carded me, took my money, bagged my items and sent me on my way. Friendly little freak.
When I exited the store, reds and blues were flashing around like it was a figgin' light show. I swear, the whole precinct was at the very alley I had just walked by five minutes before. I knew something was up, but for some reason, I ignored my urges.
I slowly walked by the crime scene, picking up the spare thoughts of the detective on the case. At first they almost overwhelmed me, but after a minute, I went with the cerebral flow and just listened intently to them.
[Jesus H. Christ, not another one. Another fuckin' rich chink in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some fucking nutball bags this guy, suffocates him slowly, then throws 'im in the dumpster with some oriental shit on the bag? Fuck, I wish these guys'd stop getting their ideas from "Seven;" and if they're gonna off someone, stop fuckin' with the cops. I gotta call a fucking translator to figure out this fucking backwards shit.]
Another dick with a badge.
Still, another victim of this Black Scorpion. I soon concluded that these guys(or this guy, for all I knew) weren't simple gangstas...they were methodical. Serial killer(s), perhaps. I wondered if the message on the note was the same as the one I grabbed off of Shokonama. Again, I mentally kick myself for not investigating this before the pork arrived.
I made my way back home to find Wolf watching Saturday morning cartoons. He's got one hell of an inner child. I've never seen any adult with the same kind of anticipation that he has with that sort of thing. He's the only one I know that still thinks that eventually, one of the coyote's plans will work. I peeled off my leather jacket, tossed the Funyons to Wolf, popped the tops to the brewskies, and sat down beside him.
"We got work to do tonight, pretty boy," I said, watching the coyote plummet from a cliff. "The Black Scorpion hit again, but the cops got to the scene before I got a chance to investigate."
"So I guess we're not going to the movies," he said, throwing back a swig.
"Nope. I didn't want to see it anyway."
Being a Saturday night, we had a few setbacks before we actually started investigating the Black Scorpion. Every monster of humanity converges on this night and it's really hard for a vigilante to get much done. While you're breaking up a beating on fifth street, you're missing a rape on the upper west side. While you're shooting out a drive by, you're oblivious to a murder. I hate Saturdays. I hate them like most people hate Mondays.
Anyway, after deciding to give up on the onslaught of lowlifes and focused on the Scorpion, the Pit was the first place we were to hit if we were going to get any answers. The Pit is just what it sounds like, a dive bar for the chinese and korean gangs to throw back a few. When in Rome, right?
I told Wolf to stay at the door and make sure nobody entered while I went in. Yeah, I know it was childish, but I wanted this one all to myself. For some reason, I sensed it was for me alone. As if, though not completely unfolded, this case had ties into my past.
The bar was filled with Bleeding Dragon and other assorted allied asian gangstas, drinking themselves in stupors, mauling over chinese whores, and flashing their nines. I looked over these stupid shits and began to feel a true hatred for this enemy. Any one of these gang members might know where I might find some answers about this Black Scorpion.
I approached the bartender, who was polishing a shotglass, leaned up against the bar, and smiled condescendingly.
"I'm looking for someone," I said flatly as I ran my fingers down the bar.
"Are you one of Chin's new girls?" slurred the bartender, stepping closer to me. He put his hand to my face and began to run his middle and index finger down my cheek. "I'm sure you go for what, one-fifty? One-seventy-five?"
Oh, that was it. So much for diplomacy. I grabbed his wrist, twisted it behind his back as he turned, slammed his hand to the bar, pulled my knife from my boot, and pushed the blade through his hand and the wood of the bar. After I pinned the bartender, I grabbed a handful of black greasy hair and yanked back. Yelping in pain, I believed I had the bartender's complete attention. The other restaurateurs, however, took little notice.
"More than you could ever afford, trust me," I whispered into his ear. "Now as I was saying, I'm looking for someone. And I think..."
I pulled my glock from my holster, aimed for the ceiling, and fired. Suddenly, the room went quiet and everyone turned their attention to me.
"...Someone here can help me."
"W-what do you want to know?" whimpered the bartender, his blood beginning to drip down on to a barstool.
Murmurs and quiet whispers echoed throughout the bar, mostly people finally realizing that the KnightShade was very real, not just some ghost story they tell to scare
each other. I love to see the terrible moment of clarity in a lowlife's eyes when he finds out that the boogeyman, or in this case boogeywoman, exists and has come for him.
"I'm looking for a new gang in town called the Black Scorpion. Now, I figure at least one of you has some information as to where I might find them. Anyone?" I said, waving the gun in front of the crowd.
A Bleeding Dragon got up and ran for the door. I aimed and fired dead on, and the man's right leg went out from under him. I then shot the left one out, just in case.
"No one leaves untill I get some information. Unless of course you want to end up like Stumpy over there," I smiled. "Now, who will cast the first stone?"
Not one peep.
"Come on," I said. "God punishes the reluctant."
Finally, a whore stood up. I aimed at her, just in case she wanted to run.
"W-w-wait. Don't shoot. I have information you want. Just...just don't shoot me."
I read the girl's thoughts. Pure. She knew something, she wasn't bluffing.
"There you go. See? Now that wasn't so painful, was it?"
I holstered the glock and pulled the knife from the bartender's hand. I motioned for her to come to me, and when she did, I placed my hand on her shoulder.
"We'll talk outside. Come on."
I led her out the door, slowly, watching the patrons of the bar, making sure they weren't following. Some eyes were glowering at the whore, as if to castigate her for speaking to me, or to rat someone out. I exited the bar with the young girl, nodded to Wolf, and stood with him by the door.
"What do you know?" he said, smiling at me. "You can get positive results."
"Who are the Black Scorpion, Ming?" I said.
"They kill me if I tell you, but I think maybe you kill them first?"
I nodded. Her english wasn't very good, but the basic idea was conveyed.
"The Black Scorpion...they no gang. They assasins. About five of them. They killing off old enemy of theirs."
"Where are they from? New York? L.A.?" Wolf asked.
"China. The Black Scorpion are ninja."
Ninja. What the fuck? I turned away for a moment, contemplating. It all came together. Shokonama...he was a colleague of mine in the dojo where I trained years ago, when I was just eight years old. If what this girl was saying was true, and I wasn't reading any deception in her mind, then that meant that the ninja were back, and they might be after me. The lin kuei might have made many enemies, but none were as dangerous as these guys.
Wolf sensed that this had effected me, and put his hand on my arm.
"Something wrong?"
"No," I said, moving his arm away and re-focusing my attention. "Ming, where are they hiding?"
"I no know. No one does. But they next target is member of Red Blade gang. He in hiding, but I know where he is. I turn trick for him sometime."
"Where is he?" I asked.
"In hotel just outside of city. Motor City Lodge. His name Tanaka. He be there untill Black Scorpion give up on him."
"Thank you, Ming," I said, patting her on the shoulder. "You're okay to go now. And if I can suggest something, clean up your act. You're better than what you've become. Clean yourself up or I might come after you someday."
"Okay, KnightShade, I clean up act, you see. I go now, but what about boy in there? They tell Scorpion I talk to you and bam! I dead!"
"Don't worry about it, Ming. You did something for me, and now I'll do something for you. Go on and don't look back," I looked into the seventeen year old girl's eyes, and with a new clarity, she nodded and ran away. I looked at Wolf, who had a sly glint in his eyes. "Well, Wolf...feel up to a little liquidation?"
I turned toward the bar's doorway and smiled. This was gonna be fun.
As the Pit burned to the ground and the firemen rushed to the scene, I sat atop the building accross the street, watching intently. Wolf kicked his legs back and forth against the ledge, holding a small bag of microwave popcorn. The firefighters pulled thirty bullet riddled and charred corpses from the blackened rubble as the police labeled it another turf hit and went on their way.
"If only we had marshmallows," I mused, plucking a few popcorn kernels from my teeth.
I was still deep in thought about the whole ninja thing. If they were killing off former members of the lin kuei, were they after me? It's difficult to tell, this is a big city. Shokonama was a member longer than I. He stayed, even after the rebellion. When our small group of renegades left, he stuck by Oniro. Why would he be in Detroit now? I had no idea that he was gay, but that's unimportant. Just an interesting tidbit of information. Tanaka was a real asshole, though. He was the one who came to me and told me my husband was dead. Didn't sugar coat it at all, just "hey, Anna, how are ya? By the way, your husband's been mutilated." He stayed too. If this ninja clan was after disbanded lin kuei members, it's possible they might not have been after the renegades. I knew nothing at this point, and I was just writing symbols in the sand. I knew one thing, though. The Black Scorpion, whether or not they're after me, were going to square off against me. The question was, would I be able to take on five at once?
"There's something you're not telling me, isn't there, Anna?" Wolf said, pulling me back to reality. "What do you know about this case?"
"Nothing, Wolf," I said quietly as I wiped the congealing blood from my knife.
"That's bullshit," he said, looking into my eyes again. "Tell me."
"Okay, okay," I said. I had to throw something at him to shut him up. I was determined to keep my skeletons in my closet. After all, my baggage was my baggage, no matter how much I cared about Wolf. "I have heard of the ninja before. They're a band of honorless assasins. I also knew Shokonama, the first victim," Truth. "He...was in business with me back in mother China," Truth. Kind of. "But I don't know why they'd be after him or anything else for that matter," Bullshit.
He bought it for the time being. "Okay, then. What's the plan?"
"The plan is we get home and get some sleep. We'll deal with this tomorrow night," I said with a yawn and a stretch.
I stood, turned, and headed for home, with Wolf right behind me. When we got there, I unarmed myself, peeled off my clothes, and slid under the covers. After a few minutes of the Home Shopping Network, Wolf followed suit and joined me in the bed. We would deal with this later when we had clear heads.
End of Part One
I used to sit up here, on the rooftop of my apartment, just watching people scurry about in the streets below and thinking about things that could have and/or should have been. It was a wholly depressing part of my daily routine.
Lately I find myself sitting up here watching him, sitting with his feet dangling over the ledge and plucking a guitar he lifted from a grunge punk we caught beating his girlfriend. Wolf has a natural talent for the thing, although he couldn't for the life of him tell me where he learned it. It's just something I've learned to cope with. Things pop up with no explanation and you just have to go with the flow. I guess that's true for all things.
It's been a month and a half since Wolf and I hooked up and it's been going great. We haven't said the three little words, and don't intend to, because those three little words can really fuck a relationship over. We spend most of our time together, day and night, and where that would usually threaten a companionship, it's strengthened it. He got a job at the telecommunications place I work at(he's a janitor-the only thing they'd hire him for without a diploma or any ID), and we make my old rounds together. At first I thought it would be cramping my style to have a partner, I mean I'm not Batman or anything and he's certainly not Robin, but it's really worked out well. He fights with a style that I've come to understand is something like Bruce Lee's "Jeet Kune Do," which roughly translated means "hitch up your pants and kill the fucker." No joke.
By the way, we caught "the Mutilator," if you care. I cut off the guy's fingers, toes, ears, and penis and stuffed them all in a very delicate area, in homage to what the pervert did to those little girls. I called it poetic justice. Wolf called it twisted. Still, the sinful get what they deserve, right?
I never got too close to Wolf, though. I never let him in on all my secrets. How would he have reacted? I mean, I don't want anything to do with myself, why would he if he knew? It's been my experience that guys aren't usually attracted to former chinese assasins, unless, of course, they themselves are chinese assasins too. No, I had no intention of letting him in on every sordid little detail.
Untill I was forced to.
It looked like just another gang had surfaced in "the Murder City" that night, when we rolled up on that double murder just five minutes too late. Two gay men in expensive armani suits had laid dead with two bullets each in their skulls before us in the alley made famous for its drug dealings and gangsta bangs. The men were laid out in a lewd expression, and at first, I wondered if they were actually gay in life or if the killer or killers just posed them for his/hers/their own personal enjoyment. One was a black man, mid twenties, and had a slender build. This one had a gay pride pin on, so I concluded that the homosexuality had been pre-mortem. The other was a chinese man, no older than me. At first I thought armed robbery gone sour, but upon inspection, Wolf and I found their wallets completely untouched.
"What do you make of it?" he asked, handing me the worn leather wallet.
"It's a wallet full of cash," I said, flipping through three hundred dollars worth of twenties and fifties. I quickly removed the bills and placed them in my back pocket.
"What are you doing?" Wolf said under a raised eyebrow. "That's called stealing, you know."
"He's not gonna need it anymore," I mused, flipping through the pictures of the chinese man. I looked up and smiled. "Besides, how do you think we fund this organization?"
"You mean we're not Jerry's kids?" Wolf quipped, which I chose to ignore.
I flipped to his driver's liscense, and froze when I saw the name. Tan Shokonama. Why did that sound familiar? And that face. I had seen that face before. I pulled the driver's license from it's pocket in the wallet, and kept that too.
"And why did you take that?"
"Don't ask so many questions, Wolf. I have a feeling about this," I muttered as my eyes wandered up the wall to the fire escape. A piece of paper was stuck to the stairwell, spattered with blood. "What is that?"
I hopped up on the stairwell with one fluid motion and picked up the worn paper. Wolf looked up with his arms crossed over his chest. I held the paper for him to see, smirked, and then hopped back down to the ground.
"The police might want that at some time...they call it evidence, I think," he smiled.
"Oh, hush. Why make their job easier? Make 'em earn them donuts," I said, carefully unrolling the paper. Chinese symbols and a picture of a black tribal-esque scorpion adorned the fine parchment. I was able to translate it. "All...who...witness the black scorpion's wrath...are laid to waste."
"How the hell did you get that from that?" he said, looking over the symbols.
"I'm chinese, Wolf, I can read chinese," I replied, stuffing the paper into my pocket with the driver's liscense. Sirens started screaming over the hill. "Let's go, there's nothing more we can do for these guys now."
We escaped the scene just in time to see the red and blue lights of the squad cars, and I stood at the edge of the rooftop for a moment to watch the inept force immediately slap "turf hit" on the case file and run away with the bodies.
Something kept bothering me about that double murder, even into the week afterwards. I couldn't for the life of me remember where I had seen the dead man before. I knew I'd seen him in mother China, but other than that, zip.
It was a Saturday morning. Wolf was plucking at that damned guitar while sitting out on the fire escape, and I was just finishing wiping down my bowie knife and placed it back in my sheath. It was getting stuffy in the tiny apartment, and so I decided to step out for a breath of fresh air. I crawled out the window onto the fire escape where Wolf sat, kissed his head softly and told him I'd be back in about ten minutes or so. He nodded, half listening.
"Bring back munchies, babe," he mumbled, strumming at the worn strings.
I reentered the apartment just long enough to throw my leather jacket on and put my bowie knife in my shoe, just in case. You never know what kind of whackos roam the streets in the daylight, let alone what goes on after the sun goes down. I took the freight elevator down to the ground floor of the complex, as I always do. I don't particularly like the idea of having my neighbors know when I'm in and when I'm not in my apartment; it's not paranoia, it's realism. Sometimes, you'll end up with less in your apartment when you get back.
As I walked down the street toward the Kwik-Stop, my mind wandered back to the mystery of the dead man in the alley. I really shouldn't have worried so much about it, new gangs roll up on this block every three days...and this "Black Scorpion," probably wouldn't have lasted five minutes up against the Bleeding Dragon or Laughing Coyote, the two biggest and rival gangs of this part of town.
What bothered me most was the victim. Shokonama was a business man. What would a gangsta want with a business man, if not the money? And the paper(hell, let's call it what it was. A scroll). Perhaps Shokonama saw something he wasn't supposed to see, or perhaps as a kid he was a part of this gang, and they were just weeding out the unfaithful. I mentally kick myself for not checking the body for gang tattoos. I'm convinced the other dead man was Shokonama's lover who just got caught in the crossfire.
I was walking accrossed the street when something caught my eye. Just ahead of me an asian man, dressed in black dragged a heavy trash bag into the alley. Normally, it would mean it was trash day. But the trash doesn't come on Saturdays in this neck of the woods. Suspicious? Not really. He could have forgotten it the night before, or this could be a new bag, but I had another wierd feeling about it. I don't know why. I scanned for his thoughts, but suprisingly, found nothing. So I ignored it.
I entered the Kwik-Stop, grabbed a couple of beers and a bag of Funyuns, and made my way to the front counter. A punk girl with a hot pink mowhawk carded me, took my money, bagged my items and sent me on my way. Friendly little freak.
When I exited the store, reds and blues were flashing around like it was a figgin' light show. I swear, the whole precinct was at the very alley I had just walked by five minutes before. I knew something was up, but for some reason, I ignored my urges.
I slowly walked by the crime scene, picking up the spare thoughts of the detective on the case. At first they almost overwhelmed me, but after a minute, I went with the cerebral flow and just listened intently to them.
[Jesus H. Christ, not another one. Another fuckin' rich chink in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some fucking nutball bags this guy, suffocates him slowly, then throws 'im in the dumpster with some oriental shit on the bag? Fuck, I wish these guys'd stop getting their ideas from "Seven;" and if they're gonna off someone, stop fuckin' with the cops. I gotta call a fucking translator to figure out this fucking backwards shit.]
Another dick with a badge.
Still, another victim of this Black Scorpion. I soon concluded that these guys(or this guy, for all I knew) weren't simple gangstas...they were methodical. Serial killer(s), perhaps. I wondered if the message on the note was the same as the one I grabbed off of Shokonama. Again, I mentally kick myself for not investigating this before the pork arrived.
I made my way back home to find Wolf watching Saturday morning cartoons. He's got one hell of an inner child. I've never seen any adult with the same kind of anticipation that he has with that sort of thing. He's the only one I know that still thinks that eventually, one of the coyote's plans will work. I peeled off my leather jacket, tossed the Funyons to Wolf, popped the tops to the brewskies, and sat down beside him.
"We got work to do tonight, pretty boy," I said, watching the coyote plummet from a cliff. "The Black Scorpion hit again, but the cops got to the scene before I got a chance to investigate."
"So I guess we're not going to the movies," he said, throwing back a swig.
"Nope. I didn't want to see it anyway."
Being a Saturday night, we had a few setbacks before we actually started investigating the Black Scorpion. Every monster of humanity converges on this night and it's really hard for a vigilante to get much done. While you're breaking up a beating on fifth street, you're missing a rape on the upper west side. While you're shooting out a drive by, you're oblivious to a murder. I hate Saturdays. I hate them like most people hate Mondays.
Anyway, after deciding to give up on the onslaught of lowlifes and focused on the Scorpion, the Pit was the first place we were to hit if we were going to get any answers. The Pit is just what it sounds like, a dive bar for the chinese and korean gangs to throw back a few. When in Rome, right?
I told Wolf to stay at the door and make sure nobody entered while I went in. Yeah, I know it was childish, but I wanted this one all to myself. For some reason, I sensed it was for me alone. As if, though not completely unfolded, this case had ties into my past.
The bar was filled with Bleeding Dragon and other assorted allied asian gangstas, drinking themselves in stupors, mauling over chinese whores, and flashing their nines. I looked over these stupid shits and began to feel a true hatred for this enemy. Any one of these gang members might know where I might find some answers about this Black Scorpion.
I approached the bartender, who was polishing a shotglass, leaned up against the bar, and smiled condescendingly.
"I'm looking for someone," I said flatly as I ran my fingers down the bar.
"Are you one of Chin's new girls?" slurred the bartender, stepping closer to me. He put his hand to my face and began to run his middle and index finger down my cheek. "I'm sure you go for what, one-fifty? One-seventy-five?"
Oh, that was it. So much for diplomacy. I grabbed his wrist, twisted it behind his back as he turned, slammed his hand to the bar, pulled my knife from my boot, and pushed the blade through his hand and the wood of the bar. After I pinned the bartender, I grabbed a handful of black greasy hair and yanked back. Yelping in pain, I believed I had the bartender's complete attention. The other restaurateurs, however, took little notice.
"More than you could ever afford, trust me," I whispered into his ear. "Now as I was saying, I'm looking for someone. And I think..."
I pulled my glock from my holster, aimed for the ceiling, and fired. Suddenly, the room went quiet and everyone turned their attention to me.
"...Someone here can help me."
"W-what do you want to know?" whimpered the bartender, his blood beginning to drip down on to a barstool.
Murmurs and quiet whispers echoed throughout the bar, mostly people finally realizing that the KnightShade was very real, not just some ghost story they tell to scare
each other. I love to see the terrible moment of clarity in a lowlife's eyes when he finds out that the boogeyman, or in this case boogeywoman, exists and has come for him.
"I'm looking for a new gang in town called the Black Scorpion. Now, I figure at least one of you has some information as to where I might find them. Anyone?" I said, waving the gun in front of the crowd.
A Bleeding Dragon got up and ran for the door. I aimed and fired dead on, and the man's right leg went out from under him. I then shot the left one out, just in case.
"No one leaves untill I get some information. Unless of course you want to end up like Stumpy over there," I smiled. "Now, who will cast the first stone?"
Not one peep.
"Come on," I said. "God punishes the reluctant."
Finally, a whore stood up. I aimed at her, just in case she wanted to run.
"W-w-wait. Don't shoot. I have information you want. Just...just don't shoot me."
I read the girl's thoughts. Pure. She knew something, she wasn't bluffing.
"There you go. See? Now that wasn't so painful, was it?"
I holstered the glock and pulled the knife from the bartender's hand. I motioned for her to come to me, and when she did, I placed my hand on her shoulder.
"We'll talk outside. Come on."
I led her out the door, slowly, watching the patrons of the bar, making sure they weren't following. Some eyes were glowering at the whore, as if to castigate her for speaking to me, or to rat someone out. I exited the bar with the young girl, nodded to Wolf, and stood with him by the door.
"What do you know?" he said, smiling at me. "You can get positive results."
"Who are the Black Scorpion, Ming?" I said.
"They kill me if I tell you, but I think maybe you kill them first?"
I nodded. Her english wasn't very good, but the basic idea was conveyed.
"The Black Scorpion...they no gang. They assasins. About five of them. They killing off old enemy of theirs."
"Where are they from? New York? L.A.?" Wolf asked.
"China. The Black Scorpion are ninja."
Ninja. What the fuck? I turned away for a moment, contemplating. It all came together. Shokonama...he was a colleague of mine in the dojo where I trained years ago, when I was just eight years old. If what this girl was saying was true, and I wasn't reading any deception in her mind, then that meant that the ninja were back, and they might be after me. The lin kuei might have made many enemies, but none were as dangerous as these guys.
Wolf sensed that this had effected me, and put his hand on my arm.
"Something wrong?"
"No," I said, moving his arm away and re-focusing my attention. "Ming, where are they hiding?"
"I no know. No one does. But they next target is member of Red Blade gang. He in hiding, but I know where he is. I turn trick for him sometime."
"Where is he?" I asked.
"In hotel just outside of city. Motor City Lodge. His name Tanaka. He be there untill Black Scorpion give up on him."
"Thank you, Ming," I said, patting her on the shoulder. "You're okay to go now. And if I can suggest something, clean up your act. You're better than what you've become. Clean yourself up or I might come after you someday."
"Okay, KnightShade, I clean up act, you see. I go now, but what about boy in there? They tell Scorpion I talk to you and bam! I dead!"
"Don't worry about it, Ming. You did something for me, and now I'll do something for you. Go on and don't look back," I looked into the seventeen year old girl's eyes, and with a new clarity, she nodded and ran away. I looked at Wolf, who had a sly glint in his eyes. "Well, Wolf...feel up to a little liquidation?"
I turned toward the bar's doorway and smiled. This was gonna be fun.
As the Pit burned to the ground and the firemen rushed to the scene, I sat atop the building accross the street, watching intently. Wolf kicked his legs back and forth against the ledge, holding a small bag of microwave popcorn. The firefighters pulled thirty bullet riddled and charred corpses from the blackened rubble as the police labeled it another turf hit and went on their way.
"If only we had marshmallows," I mused, plucking a few popcorn kernels from my teeth.
I was still deep in thought about the whole ninja thing. If they were killing off former members of the lin kuei, were they after me? It's difficult to tell, this is a big city. Shokonama was a member longer than I. He stayed, even after the rebellion. When our small group of renegades left, he stuck by Oniro. Why would he be in Detroit now? I had no idea that he was gay, but that's unimportant. Just an interesting tidbit of information. Tanaka was a real asshole, though. He was the one who came to me and told me my husband was dead. Didn't sugar coat it at all, just "hey, Anna, how are ya? By the way, your husband's been mutilated." He stayed too. If this ninja clan was after disbanded lin kuei members, it's possible they might not have been after the renegades. I knew nothing at this point, and I was just writing symbols in the sand. I knew one thing, though. The Black Scorpion, whether or not they're after me, were going to square off against me. The question was, would I be able to take on five at once?
"There's something you're not telling me, isn't there, Anna?" Wolf said, pulling me back to reality. "What do you know about this case?"
"Nothing, Wolf," I said quietly as I wiped the congealing blood from my knife.
"That's bullshit," he said, looking into my eyes again. "Tell me."
"Okay, okay," I said. I had to throw something at him to shut him up. I was determined to keep my skeletons in my closet. After all, my baggage was my baggage, no matter how much I cared about Wolf. "I have heard of the ninja before. They're a band of honorless assasins. I also knew Shokonama, the first victim," Truth. "He...was in business with me back in mother China," Truth. Kind of. "But I don't know why they'd be after him or anything else for that matter," Bullshit.
He bought it for the time being. "Okay, then. What's the plan?"
"The plan is we get home and get some sleep. We'll deal with this tomorrow night," I said with a yawn and a stretch.
I stood, turned, and headed for home, with Wolf right behind me. When we got there, I unarmed myself, peeled off my clothes, and slid under the covers. After a few minutes of the Home Shopping Network, Wolf followed suit and joined me in the bed. We would deal with this later when we had clear heads.
End of Part One