Raimundo the Detective

by darroth

Years have passed since the world settled down. Wuya was sealed away, no darkness seems to loom, so the monks all went their seperate ways. They stay in touch, but only Raimundo went to new york, only Raimundo found himself settling into the role of Detective.

There was no falling out, no portent of coming darkness; There had been no arguments, they were honestly still on excellent terms - They were all a part of a group chat, they talked all the time, in fact! But all the same, over time, Kimiko, Clay, Raimundo and Omi had found themselves in different portions of the world, called to different things. Kimiko returned to Japan to run her fathers company, Omi taught in the peacefully departed stead of his teacher, Master Fung. Clay had simply tossed a small - to him - bag over his shoulder and hugged each of his companions and walked away, and somehow it just never came up as to where he'd found himself. But Raimundo... Raimundo had never learned how to resist the call of the city, had never found the urge to settle down; He was living happily and quietly in New York City, adopting the attitudes of the locals - Manhattan was TOO a continent! - and worked as a private eye to pay the bills, and had earned the reputation as an honest, hardworking, skilled smartass in his little corner of the world.

He felt no real guilt or shame in not noticing everything, even though some said nothing escaped him. New York had never been the safest place, and as unfortunate as it was, life happened, and life stopped happening. Not everybody in New York answered calls for help from alleyways, and the people who do quickly grow jaded, wind up in deeper trouble, or are either incredibly lucky or greatly skilled; Raimundo had wound up where he had by no accident, and on a good day he'd consider him both of the latter, Trained well enough that a simple thug with a gun was no real threat - especially after some of the more ridiculously threatening shen-gong-wu he'd had to deal with in the past - and more than a handful of residents near his office of operations owed him their lives, many would-be killers calmly and firmly led to a different reality than the one they'd known before. Raimundo had a couch in his office and it had known more than a few "Apprentices" over the years, people who he'd taught the basics of how to live life in a city that didn't care, largely, and how to resist becoming uncaring themselves, not to mention a number of skills they could use to support themselves with. For all these victories, unfortunately, Rai had failed as well. There had been bullet wounds, people who'd been unwilling to compromise, nights where he wouldn't sleep because of the violence he'd had to inflict, where he wept for the men and women he'd had to drop off at a jail because they wouldn't help themselves, couldn't stop long enough to consider that once one went bad, there was still a way bad - a lesson he'd learned the hard way, the hardest ways.

He still walked, though. Everywhere he went he made sure he wasn't in too much of a hurry to help someone, remembering Master Fung's words clearly: "Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little." It had seemed unclear, and perhaps even a little cruel at the time, but the lessons Fung had meant to pass on rang in his ears every day, and he'd never known his master to have meant harm with his words, and many things he had dismissed had come to be poignant and meaningful in his days in the world. He assumed the meaning of this quote would become clear some day as well.

And then the murders started.

The first corpse was just another discard of the city, a too-young, too-skinny man with track marks up his arm. Raimundo had paused a moment to silently regard the man, and he so nearly missed the bruises and scrapes on his knuckles. With narrowed eyes, the Brazilian pulled a pen from a pocket and gently lifted the digits of the man, examining them closer. Unmistakably defensive wounds; this addict hadn't busted his hands against a stone wall, there were days where raimundo had done precisely this: he could also identify the difference between knuckles blooded by jade vases and these, knuckles marred in hand-to-hand combat. He pressed a finger near the man's nose, felt no wind from the mans lungs, and stood with a heavy heart as he called the appropriate authorities. He asked the EMT who answered his call to examine the man, wondered as to the cause of death. Emt said he didn't know right away, which was odd because he wasn't "new" to the game. Live in new york as long as he had, he claimed, and one would never be surprised. Probably a heart attack, he had said. Rai had shaken his head, shaken the hand of the transporter, moved on; the explanation hadn't sat well, and Rai'd begun to look into things. He was between jobs, and He hadn't any reason to deny his curiosity, after all. But this average, just-anyone man grew into morte and more of a problem for Raimundo, and he found himself somewhere between nonplussed and concerned. No next of kin. No love interests. No employment history. No criminal record. This man had, apparently, come from nowhere, done nothing, and left without making an impact on anyone. Nobody but nobody lived without touching the lives of somebody, Raimundo knew this to be fact. He called the morgue he'd known the corpse had been taken to, no dental records, nothing. He'd taken a picture of the man, shown it to his friends, to other private eyes he knew, even calling up Jermaine - who had since started a shelter for the downtrodden in his recent years - and confirming that neither he nor anyone he knew had ever met or seen the man before. Jermaine never forgot a face, never dismissed a shadow in a hall, his people, his wards. The picture wound up posted on Raimundo's wall, a quiet nagging in his passed face that needled at Raimundo, stewing in his mind as he moved on to other jobs; he was no less sharp, no less observant, still sharp-tongued, still clever and quick. But for all his victories, somehow, the forgotten man felt like a loss to Rai. His friends told him through the chat that it wasn't fair to himself, it wasn't even reasonable, and over a months time, with his friends now-wise counsel, he let himself stop obsessing over one lost soul in a city full of loss.

But then he'd found another.

A woman bundled from head-to-toe in what looked to be a single long scarf. She was thin, but not unhealthily so. Her skin was a similar bronze to Raimundo's glossy sheen, her hair graying, the only thing betraying a hard life. She had similar marks on her hands, bruised knuckles, scrapes on her palms, red on her nails that betrayed the violence of her life before it'd been taken from her, the only sign. Her face was unmarred, suspicious in its innocuous appearance. Despite the lack of any clear connection, from somewhere deep came a quiet certainty. This woman and his forgotten man were common, were similar, in some way he couldn't yet confirm. He called the same EMT, got the same shake of his head, the same shrug. Bundled like that to hide something, maybe from herself, he said. Some people just stop living, even if they were fighters, he said. Best to let it go. Raimundo wasn't always known for his listening skills. He began the same process, a process that had succeeded time and time before. Numbers, contacts, individuals with sharp eyes and sound-weary ears, over and over again he came up dry; Again, here was a woman who simply hadn't existed. No wallet, again. No dental records, no criminal record, again, not even a parking ticket, not even a citation for loitering, a common occurance for anyone who wandered the streets all their life, or even some of their life. He found himself returning to the little alley he'd found her in, chillingly still. Sorrow welled in his heart for the fallen, but more than grief came bitter anger, grief tinged with both frustration and outrage. Nobody, he reasoned, should be unnoticed entirely, especially not with as much to offer as he knew each could be. But for all his emotion, his eyes missed little, and they caught on the camera across the street; a little thing, simply watching the entrance of its own shop, but with the lights, there was always a chance, however slim, that she'd wandered past, that she would give some indication of where she was from, of where she was heading. It took him a day to find the owner a reason to check his security footage, but in time the windborne monk and his silver tongue won the day, and the owner left him with her cameras footage.

What Raimundo found caught him by surprise, though he might not ever admit it. The woman's death had been recent, so he'd started the day before yesterday, watching the shadows of passersby as they marched in an endless stream, as even here in the less destination-bound parts of new-york, the less clean and pristine portion of the city, time waited for no man or woman, and all had someone to see, somewhere to go. But Rai's sharp eyes caught a shadow along the upper left corner of the cameras edge; a shadow he'd thought was, perhaps, a trashcan? A barrel? But no, it moved, ever so slightly. It shifted its weight, the edge of the shadow moved and twitched, not unlike someone who watched the crowd, unwilling to be spotted would. Could this be his mystery woman? Why would anyone simply stand in one place an entire day, how could anyone? Years with Clay and he still had a hard time wrapping his mind around the concept of someone who could simply be doing… nothing, nothing at all, for hours at a time. Sounded like torture to him. But as the camera wound forward, he found himself watching the edge of the shade closer than any of the other passerbys, more and more convinced this was she, his bundled mystery woman. Time wore on, and night fell, the traffic ceasing as the sun waned. After all, this was not a part of town one sauntered down the street in; But no sooner had he thought this was it that precisely this was shown; a figure, nothing clear but their long white sweater and their simple loose pants, Instantly recognizable as Gi pants, designed to be loose enough for kicks and swift jumps and the like, attire Raimundo was no stranger to; The figure stopped, facing the shadow that hadn't moved, their posture somehow arrogant, even though they stood with their hands at their sides. Without audio, Raimundo could only assume what was said, but fast as a cat can wink the figure was gone, and he'd had to rewind to see that the screen showed the figure jumping, high as you like, a silver chain striking the concrete where they'd stood only a half-second before. A chain that came from the woman, which Rai could confirm as the shadow moved into the street, and he saw his mystery woman, bundled as you like, moving swift to her side into the view of the camera, a shred of her scarf in her hand extended out in front of her, her other hand holding another edge of her scarf wrapped around it, it too giving the silvery sheen of solidity. Her movements were precise, and Raimundo recognized the style, though how another would was beyond him; This woman was engaged in combat, using some sort of either magic or technology unkown to him that rendered her bundles and bundles of scarf more solid than the third-arm sash once had been under his stone-bound friends ministrations, her whipcord fighting style the traditional Caci art of the manggarai people. Raimundo marveled at her smooth parries, whatever she shielded herself from frustratingly out of sight, her movements precise, powerful, her face passive but proud, her style elegant, strong. He wondered how he'd fare against her; he was no slouch, and brought more than the average martial artist to the table, but Caci lent itself to both offense and defense beautifully, and she was clearly a master of more than met the eye. A crack appeared in the earth beneath her, and raimundo was forced to guess that her next movement wrapped her steel scarf - perhaps she'd knitted it from steel wool? - around a light-post to evade the tremor. With narrowed eyes he watch flickers of shadows in the night, glancing towards the door; this couldn't be right, the street was unmarred, unbroken, yet the camera insisted the crumbled asphalt was left destroyed under the ministrations of the masters engaged here. Rai ached for sound, for some symbol of what happened next, but for minutes more he stood - not knowing when he'd found his feet beneath him - uncertain, until with a golden flash, the camera no longer showed wounded streets, nor crushed sidewalks, fallen lampposts nor neither fighter. With a confused grunt, raimundo rewound the tape, but he'd not been mistaken; destruction, a golden flash, and there might as well have been crickets serenading the evening. There was nothing else on the tape worth seeing. He ejected the tape and pocketed it, idling wondering where he could find a VCR of his own; He was certain the owner of the shop wouldn't miss it, given the fuss she'd thrown over showing him the video in the first place and the dust on the console, and well honed instincts warned him of the danger this would pose. Who was this woman? He sent a little text over the group chat, did anyone know any Caci masters, at all, much less any in new york? Kimiko responded right away, only the one and he was in her lobby, working security. Omi took longer, stating that as of now he didn't know any, but given a year he'd know one intimately, and Clay mentioned that he only know of a few, and they were all in Indonesia, the birthplace of the sport. Unsure whether or not it counted as a sport or not, but unwilling to start a dialogue about it, Raimundo settled himself to the legwork this would take. There weren't many martial artists he didn't know, fewer still that none of the other dragons knew. Finally, a place to start looking. Raimundo stretched and headed out into the world, knowing little about his prey, but knowing she'd gotten into trouble, and he was certain only that he was heading for more of the same.

But hey, Trouble's his middle name, after all. And his middle name was killing people in his town. Two was too many already.