Kuai Liang watched the light crack open the horizon like a newly broken egg. It's yolk spilled into a waiting bed of soft cloud still soaked in the shades of night. He inched the shutter up a fraction higher to see a little more of that glory. A moan grumbled from next to him. The raised shutter had splashed a bar of sunlight over his companion's sleeping face. He sighed and tugged it back down. The grumbling ceased.

Most of the plane's other occupants were sleeping as well. The long night flight had sent most into languid states of disarray, where half open mouths and comically aligned heads drooled and tilted respectively. In the middle of the row on the other side of the aisle, he could see a small boy kneeling on his seat, trying to drop a ball of tissue paper into the mouth of the sleeping woman next to him. The boy froze when he caught his eye. The child stared at him, then turned back to his task. Kuai Liang somehow now felt both complicit and invested in the act. The boy screwed up his face in concentration. Small pudgy fingers quivered as he slowly lowered the paper in. The woman gave a sudden snore. The boy and Kuai Liang froze, sharing a moment of suspended breath as their eyes locked again. The woman resettled and her breathing deepened. The boy let go and sat back into his chair quickly. The woman gave a stifled shriek and paddled violently in the air. She spat out the offending tissue paper, turned to the child next to her and began berating him animatedly with a wagging finger. Between the stirring limbs of disrupted passengers being rudely awakened all along the nearby rows, Kuai Liang saw the child grin at him from under his mother's admonition.

"Something funny, Kuai?"

"What? No." Kuai leaned back in his seat. He remembered why he had been trying to distract himself before. On the back of the airline chair in front of him was a particularly blaring advert picked out in primary colours. A family all in swimwear held hands and jumped simultaneously on a generic beach before a generic sunset; their open mouths of joy forever bombarding his head with their silent shout. He tore his eyes away.

His companion was a tough, muscled man with wispy, flyaway hair prematurely grey, and a grin to match the criminal boy opposite.

"Ah, misspent youth, how I miss it," His companion sighed.

"I didn't notice you outgrowing it."

His friend punched him on the arm. Kuai ground his teeth and turned away. He nudged the window shutter wide open and watched the clouds sift to mulled golds and flaming oranges under the bright eye of the sun.

"Come on... you can't be grouchy forever. China is miles behind us. It's just me and you now. The world is ours for the taking!"

Kuai shrugged off his friend's hand from where it had settled on his shoulder.

"China may be miles behind us, but the Lin Kuei are always with us. We cannot afford to mess this up, Tomas. They will expect perfection from us. We must not disappoint."

His companion sat back with a loud exhale of air, finally giving up on his jovial spirit,

"We'll get the job done. Stop worrying. Worrying never made anything go smoother. And stop saying the clan name. Half the people on this flight can understand you, by the way. Ungh, are you like this before all your solo missions too?"

Kuai Liang turned away from the dawn to glower over his shoulder at Tomas.

"This is nothing like other solo missions, Tomas. Why can't you take anything seriously? This is a full scale investigation – it might take weeks to close this off. And all the while they'll be judging us, assessing us-"

"Just like normal. A little bigger, a little longer... but otherwise just like normal."

Kuai Liang glanced away. A play of light cast his own reflection at a strange angle in the window. His looked tired from the sleepless night; a look not improved by a young scar that slit through his left eye.

"Bi-Han will be assessing us."

"What? Really?" His companion sounded fully awake for the first time. "How do you know?"

"He as good as told me."

"Shit."

An old Chinese woman tutted on the other side of Tomas.

"You'd swear too if you knew what I know!" He quipped at her,

"Leave her be, Tomas."

"Why didn't you tell me before? I'd have packed my no-nonsense face."

Kuai frowned at him,

"I still can't tell if you're taking this seriously."

"Nothing gets more serious than Sub-fucking-Zero."

The old woman tutted again.

"Stop swearing." Kuai balled his fist on his knee, "And stop... irritating me! Just let me watch this fucking sunrise!"

"Really! Young men today!" The old woman got up and tottered her way to the toilet cubicle.

"Now you've upset the bábuška, Kuai. Day one: dear big brother, I swore at an old lady and she tried to flush the memory of my rudeness down a toilet-"

"I'll flush the memory of you forty thousand feet out this window if you don't shut up."

A peaceful moment returned at that. It lasted until Kuai's eyes wandered for the hundredth time back to the happy smiling family screaming at him from the advert on the back of the chair. As his mind screamed back at them. Tomas' butted in again,

"Hey, maybe Bi-Han will cut us some slack... cut a few corners, put some things in a good light. For an old friend and his own little broth-"

"He will not cut us some slack. He will expect perfection. I told you I don't want to talk about this any more! This place is driving me crazy! How much longer do we have to stay on this ridiculous machine!"

He saw a few faces in the row in front turn to glance at his raised voice.

"Woah there, my friend. Someone needs to chill."

Kuai swung a punch full force towards his friend's head. Tomas caught the punch with both hands and held it with difficulty.

"Sorry," Tomas gave a grin that did bear some resemblance to apology, "I couldn't resist. But seriously, you need to calm down and stop getting so anxious about this. We're another hour off Belgrade and your going to freeze the engines if you keep going this way. Just... try and meditate."

"I can't meditate with those faces looking at me!"

Kuai looked at the sticker on the back of the chair. It was framed by his taught, strained hand as he indicated at it in exasperation. Tomas reached into his satchel and pulled out a thin tunic. He draped it over the back of the chair so that it hid the advert, then turned on his side and closed his eyes. Kuai steadied his breathing and acknowledged his own foolishness to himself. He needed to be more levelled headed about this. The confines of the plane, a form of transport he had never used before, were fraying at nerves that should be steel by now. He settled back down and started to steady his breathing into a meditative pattern. The tunic set right in front of him had the perfect circle and triangle of the Lin Kuei embroidered in silver upon it. Kuai's jaw set rigid and he spent the next hour dreading that he might fall short of everything that emblem represented.

Author Note: This is gonna be short chapters and lots of fun interspersed with crippling guilt and tragic drama. Because that's mostly all I can write. I promise there will be good antics along the road though. Warning for occasional reference to real world politics (no names and sensitivity taken into consideration), violence, and torture.