Blade of Bones

This story is based of the Feng Shui game by Atlas Games. This story is not a challenge to any of their copyrights and I am earning no money for it publication.

Jason Masters, Kwan Loo and the rest of the troupe of players (except where noted in later chapters) are of my creation.

For those who are not familiar with Feng Shui, it is a game of Hong Style Kung, gun and wire fu, mixed with sorcery, demons and pretty much whatever else looks good in a movie. If you have seen any Jackie Chan or Jet Li or even Bruce Lee films, you'll understand the concepts here. Even if you've never watched such films, most of the main concepts of the game will be explained in story.

As this is my first independently published fan fiction, comments and criticisms are welcomed and encouraged. Feel free to send them to wynterfyre2002@yahoo.com as well as listing them here.

Chapter One

The evening was balmy, seemingly more humid than had been forecast throughout the day. Wilder Bay was having one of the warmest springs anyone could remember, as well as one of its wettest; the prediction of another possible inch of rain for the evening was confirmation of that.

For Jason Masters, the possible rain could be both bad and good. It was certainly good in the sense that rain would encourage most people to get off the streets. The heavy, charcoal-gray clouds seemed to have driven some on the otherwise crowded street to find shelter, though no raindrops had yet fallen. And yet it was possibly a problem for him, in that he had chosen that particular evening to finally do the particular job had spent the last week in preparation for.

Jason narrowed his eyes as he looked through the tinted windows of his specially designed van at the two-story house he had watched clinically. He also looked at the floor plans of the building he had obtained of it (with surprising easy and completely legally). He had marked it with his own shorthand, though anyone looking at it long enough would realize that he intended to enter the home (completely illegally). He had memorized the layout so that in the complete dark he would know which room in which he stood at any time. Granted, he could not predict furniture placement or other obstacles. That was why he also had night-vision goggles sitting in one of the many hidden compartments of the van.

His weapons were already chosen for the mission and currently lay in the back of the van underneath a hidden floorboard. Among them was his favorite weapon, a Colt .45 Silenced pistol, which was also his preferred weapon for missions like this. He would also be carrying a few others: a Glock 18, an H&K MP5K submachine gun and a Beretta Model 21 Bobcat in an ankle holster. Part of him felt odd being so heavily armed for what seemed to be such a simple assignment. Then again, given the fact that the Caponiti family came to him because they felt that he was the only one that could succeed when all of the hit men that been sent to eliminate this Kwan Loo had ended up dead (and most in several pieces at that) told him he should expect trouble.

Still, it seemed odd that such an individual would be looking to move in on the various operations of the local Mafia family. All of Jason's research placed this man as being as nearly reclusive as Howard Hughes. None of his underworld or law enforcement contacts had been able to tell him anything. This man had apparently come out of the blue, but in the span of less than half a dozen months, Kwan Loo had managed to infiltrate his way into several of the rackets of the Caponiti family. Apparently, he had started small, competing on the street level with minor drugs. The Caponiti had not minded that too much, as along as he had kept his operations small. However, when several of their street-level dealers had started showing up dead, decapitated at that, the Caponiti began to get suspicious on what the seemingly invisible Kwan Loo had in mind.

When Loo started to step up his attempts to oust the Mafia family from their position at the top of the criminal food chain, he didn't bother to be very subtle about it. He hit the Caponiti where they were most likely going to feel pain. He began to go after some of the more profitable enterprises: illegal gambling, protection rackets, manipulation of the various unions (something Loo apparently was pulling off with relative ease) and drugs, though the ones that he sold were apparently very potent and very addictive. What made it worse for the police as well as the Caponiti was the fact that the drugs were nearly undetectable once their effect had worn off, making it damn hard for anyone to discover what was in them. All the attempts of the family to obtain a sample had come to naught.

Then Kwan himself simply appeared at a 'board meeting' for the Caponiti leadership. Accompanied by several very attractive women of various races, Jason had been told that many of the 'board members' had been awestruck. However, it took them only a few seconds to recognize the literal blood on the ladies' hands to come to terms with what had happened to the outside guards. The first man who attempted to pull his weapon had his trachea crushed in a single blow from one of the women, while Loo had apparently stood unflinchingly. The combination of everything made them pause before ordering any other action.

Then Kwan Loo spoke.

The fact that he was effectively ordering the Caponiti leadership to surrender control of the entire Family to him had been lost behind the high-pitched, effeminate voice, as if someone had kicked Loo in the balls but he had somehow remained out of pain afterwards. He had also taken exception to the howls of laughter that resulted. The family leaders had stopped laughing when one of the women killed a minor member with a blindingly fast kick to the back of his skull at the base of the neck. Nevertheless, Jason was told that no one moved.

Loo repeated his demand: they were to give him absolute control of the family and all its businesses- both legal and criminal. The members of the Caponiti leadership would recognize him as their 'master' (that was Loo's exact phrasing, it seemed), or he would eliminate them one by one until the family was quite literally 'erased from all time' (again, apparently his precise words). They had ten days to make arrangements.

Chaos had erupted in the room, though at least one member had the presence of mind to order an underling to follow Loo and his entourage. The man managed to follow him to the very house Jason observed. The man reported where he was but had been cut off before giving anything else. The man's head was delivered to the leader of the Caponiti; his horrified visage bore witness to whoever had killed him.

Naturally, the Caponiti had sent their hit men to remove Loo. None had survived, and each was returned in two separate containers: one for the head and the other containing the other remains each dismembered in a more grisly method than the ones before. After the fifth one, which had made even some of the hardened members of the Board wretch, it was decided that they needed to get a specialist.

And that was why Jason Masters sat before the seemingly innocent multi-storied house on a humid spring evening.

Jason's stakeout took about a week, using a different vehicle for each day. He had picked various positions from which to monitor the house. Although he never saw Loo himself, he definitely could see a number of the women. Kwan Loo apparently had quite a harem, if Jason judged correctly. Throughout his stakeout, Jason counted no less than half a dozen different women, all of different races, but all absolutely gorgeous. The fact that at least some were skilled assassins did not detract from that beauty. Still, to a professional assassin like Jason, they were more the problem then a distraction. Anyone capable of crushing a man's windpipe barehanded was not to be taken lightly. Nevertheless, he found it odd that none of them had ever been seen with any kind of firearm. Even the best martial artist could not dodge a bullet fired from a sniper rifle over half a mile away, and Jason had been informed that one of the failed hit men had been a crack shot with one. Assuming he had used it, how had the target escaped having her head blown off?

The evening slipped silently into night. The clouds already thick overhead seemed to be waiting to rain when everyone least expected it. It did help Jason in another way, though. By making the dark night even darker, his chances of slipping to the house unseen were improved considerably. His plan was to make a quick, up-close recon of the perimeter of the house, looking for any open or unlocked windows. He assumed that there would not be any, but it would give him an idea of how secure the house probably was. Then, he would look for a window that he could unlatch with the help of a glasscutter he would be carrying. Otherwise, he would look for some other quiet method of entry. Once inside, he would basically shoot anything that moved. He could sort out the other bodies later, assuming that he was able to take out his target. If not, he would try to escape and attempt again at a later date. Of course, the target would be aware that someone had gotten very close to killing him, making it that much harder to take him out the next time. That was why he wanted to make sure that the job got done right the first time.

Jason climbed into the back of his van. He had done maneuvers such as this so frequently that he did not need a light to find his way around. He also moved lightly enough to minimize any shaking of the van. Jason did turn on a small dim light, however, as he did still need to do a final weapons' check. After pulling back the rug on floor in the back (which was secured with Velcro tm for quick removal), Jason began to remove the various weapons secured snugly in various depressions. After checking their condition and ammo status, he then proceeded to place extra clips for the weapons in various pockets and belts on his person. Then, after turning off the light, he returned to the front to grab his night-sight goggles. He tested them inside the vehicle first, making certain that there were no problems with the amplifiers. Then, while still wearing them, he lowered the driver's side window to see if the sensitivity needed to be adjusted.

The world became a field of green and black, with the brightness of the former differing according to the light sources around him. Though infrared would have worked to some extent, it would not have granted Jason the ease of maneuvering through the dark as light amplification did. Still, a sudden brightening of the lights, such as a flash-bang grenade, would quickly blind him, if he were not careful.

A rapid scan of his immediate area showed no problems with the goggles. However, as he panned back across the house, he stopped. There was movement, though not from inside the building. A figure had just made a run across the short distance between a row of low bushes surrounding the house and the structure. Jason paused, hoping to catch a glimpse of the source. Instead, he saw another shorter figure cross the distance. Then another. He counted seven total before no more seemed to present themselves.

"They can't be a SWAT team," he murmured quietly. "Most of them were too clumsy in their movements." In addition, he remembered that according to his sources inside the police, law enforcement had no idea where Kwan Loo actually was. Also, there had been no other telltale signs of a SWAT team or even an FBI force. No, it had to be something else, and only one thing came to Jason's mind: they were another group of assassins. However, that did not make much sense either. The Caponiti family would not have hired another group to remove Loo, not before giving Jason a chance to strike first. Mafia or not, the Caponiti had always recognized the value of a contract. However, that might not have prevented another group from going after him. The Tong or Triads might not have taken well to Kwan Loo's trying to become an Asian kingpin.

Yet only a couple of the individuals moved as if they had any training by those groups. There was definitely something odd about the group in general. Jason had not been able to make out facial features, but it seemed to be a fairly mixed group gender-wise, if he was good judge of female forms. Most hit teams for would not be so large, and among the Tong or Triads, they would have been more likely of a single gender, usually male.

Whatever their purpose, however, it was clear that they represented a threat to all the hard work and planning Jason had done. His professional side screamed that he should simply pack up, leave them to whatever fate had in store for them, and call this attempt a bust. Yet, his less rational side called just a little more loudly, reminding him that this was his job, and that he was damned if he was going to let some bunch of amateurs steal it from him.

With a low feral snarl, he flipped up the goggles, grabbed the black leather trench coat he had laying on the passenger seat, and made ready to leave his van. Admittedly, it was a rather heavy coat for the weather, but he rarely wore any kind of body armor on assignment. He found it too bulky and rarely allowed him the freedom he needed for stealthy movements. The coat gave him a bit more freedom, covered most of his weapons, gave at least a little protection, and looked rather stylish in the process. Besides, in the dark, it could be easily mistaken for a raincoat.

Jason eased open the van's side door. With a quick look up and down the street, he moved out. The door closed rather silently behind him, triggered by a remote he carried on him. The run across the street would not provide any cover until he reached the edge of Kwan Loo's property. Jason frowned. Originally, he had hoped to cross the space more casually, as if he had been out on an evening stroll. That did not seem to be an option currently.

His mind quickly changed on that, however, as the first raindrop struck his face. That was followed immediately by countless others, as the sky seemingly unleashed its contents all at once. More out of instinct than any need to seem casual, Jason sprinted across the street, moving to tree right inside the yard area of Loo's house. The tree was not that much more protection against the downpour, but it allowed him to assess where he was. The tree was just to the left side of the house, if one faced out to the street from its front porch. In fact, it seemed, from the footprints he found underneath the tree, that whoever had used it had tried to sneak in before Jason. He looked over toward where the forms had run when he had spotted them minutes prior. He suspected that they were around the back, since going through the front door was likely to be suicidal to stealth, if not their lives.

Jason made another sprint toward the back of the house and stopped short of where he had planned to end up when he noticed an opened rectangular window. Unlike him, however, whoever had opened it had neither cut a portion out as Jason had intended nor broken the window in general. It was opened inward, with a small amount of rain and mud draining down into the house. It was definitely large enough for an average human to pass through it. Naturally, given his over 6 feet, broad-shoulder frame- not to mention the various weapons and equipment he carried- Jason's attempt to enter was more problematic. It took him nearly two minutes for him to wiggle his way through, even though it was a silent entry.

He landed on a plush surface, probably an oriental rug from the design he could make out between lightning flashes. Jason stood absolutely still for several seconds after entering. He held his breath during that time, willing his heart to slow down. He heard the sounds of movement ahead, though they were muffled apparently by distance. Though his H&K was strapped across his back, he chose to bring out his Silenced Colt. If he needed to eliminate any guards, he wanted it done quickly and quietly.

There were no more sounds for several more seconds, so he decided that it was probably safe enough to continue. He then brought down his light-amplification goggles. The lightning flashes were thankfully minimal; too much of it would risk a bad flare across his vision, blinding him. As he looked around the room, he found that it was barely furnished, but what furniture it did have seemed to be mostly Oriental in nature.  Given the owner of the house, that wasn't much of a surprise. However, what did surprise him was the appearance of some of the items. Jason was not an expert on Chinese furnishings, but the odd thing about them was the styling seemed much older than what he had ever seen. Yet the pieces also seemed new. Nevertheless, he was not there to be a home design critic. With a mental shrug, he moved on.

There was the sound of creaking ahead of Jason. A stairway spiraled upwards, though they seemed to be unoccupied at the moment. For such a large group, they had apparently moved surprisingly fast and quiet, even with the lack of skill some had seemed to possess. Jason started very slowly up the stairs. They were metal and not carpeted; a perfect recipe for metallic echoes if he wasn't careful. Each footstep was painfully slow in its placement. However, he never heard any echoes, so it was doubtful anyone else did either.

The stairs ended at a short landing before a closed door. As he had approached the top, Jason had spotted a line of light at the bottom. It was dim even in the goggles, so it was probably not that bright on the other side. However, he was not about to risk being blinded with the goggles on. Instead, he set them on his forehead and let his eyes adjust slightly before he continued. He tried the door with a slow turn of the knob and found it unlocked. Keeping his hand on the knob, he pushed out the door, moving it very slowly.

Unfortunately, he had not gotten very far when he heard a voice.

"You do realize that this not the public library?" it said in a very high pitch. Despite that pitch, it did not sound naturally feminine, which meant that it was probably Kwan Loo. Jason stopped moving immediately.

'Damn it' he swore to himself.

"Would you mind explaining why you all are here?"

'You all?' Loo must have spotted the other group that had entered before Jason. That might work to his advantage. For now, he would wait to see what happened, before he gave himself away.

"Well, you know what it's like. It's one of those nights where you really just want to curl up with a good book." The voice responding was definitely female. Its casual tone, however, was obviously forced. Jason could hear several other bodies moving. From what he could figure, they were spread through the room, though he could not make out anything else from where he stood. "We just thought that we would help ourselves to one of yours," the woman continued.

There was a light chuckle, which made Loo sound a bit like a tittering young girl. "Ahh, so you thought that I would simply not notice that a scroll from my desk was missing? If you truly wish, I could simply let you have some of my collection instead." It sounded as if he began moving around the room, and the footsteps of several other individuals followed almost immediately behind him. "Let me see…How about 'The Ten Thousand Immortals Codex'? No? Then maybe 'The Three Mountains of Wisdom'? You all certainly could use some lessons in what is wise. Hmm." The footsteps stopped. "Here we are. Something that should keep all of you occupied for the next few years. 'The Foreign Philosophers of the Frontier'. Maybe you can make some sense out of it. The thinking of the West"-the last word seemed spoken with some distain- "has always confused me. Still, it is useful to understand how your future subjects think, if only to ensure that they do not rise up against you."

There was the sound of something heavy landing on a carpeted floor with a muffled 'thud'. "Please take it. It's yours. However, leave the scroll."

"No thanks." There was the sound of something being kicked across the floor. "We were hoping for some lighter reading. Now if you don't mind…" This voice was male, relatively deep. The footsteps were heavy, even through the carpet. Whoever it was seemed rather large.

"Actually, I do mind," Loo responded. Even though his voice was effeminate in tone, the hint of menace in it was still all two apparent. "Since you did not deem my trade to be an equitable one, you have left me no choice but to let my guards remove you from my house. My pets, they are all yours."

Jason did not wait for any other amount of conversation. He shouldered open the door. All it would take was one shot to finish off the mission…

Instead, the sight he observed caught him off guard.

The room was very much a private library, with a single, large crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling. The room itself was a giant and circular one, domed in a mosaic depicting a number of constellations in blue and gold tiles. The books ran all around the room, covering two floors. However, impressive as it all was, it was not the library by which he was shocked.

That honor was reserved for the gathering of people in the room. The first was the size of the person who had most likely kicked the book, given where he was standing in relation to it. He was not even five feet tall. But Jason could see why he had made such a solid sound in movement. He must have been nearly 3 feet wide and all solid muscle at that. His forearms must have been nearly as thick as Jason's calves. It was also pretty safe to say that he had little to no neck.

Spread across the library, his friends were an eclectic mix. There seemed to be six others, three of which were women. Only two seemed to be dressed for any kind of work involving an illegal entry, including one of the women.

The biggest surprise was saved for Kwan Loo and his guards. As Jason had known, Kwan Loo was male, though he suspected Loo to be a slightly effeminate man. Instead, he found a solidly built man, probably in his mid- to late-fifties. His hair was a sleek, black mane that streamed freely down his back. He was dressed in a crimson floor-length robe, embroidered in gold Chinese dragons. He wore a thin mustache, which trailed down the sides of his mouth, which currently held in a very wry smile.

Loo's guards were, as Jason had been informed, all female. They were, also as reported, astonishing beautiful, all twelve of them. They were pretty much a multiracial group, though there seemed to be more Asian women than any other.

All this Jason took in with just a quick scan of the room, which took no more than two seconds. On second number three, Jason fired at Kwan Loo's head.

One of the female enforcers, a redhead, dove in front of Loo. She did not even cry out as the bullet struck her in the left eye. The back of her skull blew out, spraying Loo with pieces of the woman's skull and brains, and soaking the robe in her blood. Jason's next shock was that the color of the blood was not red. In fact, it seemed almost multicolored. What was left of her head snapped back from the impact of the round and took her off her feet. The body fell limply at Loo's feet.

Jason was only given about a second to realize what had happened. After that, Loo screamed at the top of his lungs, a sound that turned into more of a screech. "Kill them! Kill them all!"

After that, everything hit the proverbial fan.

The female guards charged at the group that had entered before Jason; two split off to come for Jason. He fired again, aiming for the first of the two. But now that they were aware of the assassin's skill, they seemed to be capable of moving faster than he could fire, even as they closed the distance between them. He actually emptied the clip firing at them but hit nothing but the carpeted floor.

The sound of his Colt, muffled by the built-in silencer, was drowned out by the shots that accompanied it from several other guns being fired by the other group. The bodyguards had yet to pull out any kind of weapon, even as they closed with Jason. Submachine guns and a shotgun barked out their presence, with a blast from the latter weapon ripping into one woman from what Jason could make out. She fell to the ground, with most of her abdomen missing.

What happened next was something Jason would never forget. All of the women, including the one that had just been shot, began to change. Their legs appeared to merge and disappear, and then elongate into what seemed a snake-like tail. Their clothes- which were not the most practical for their job, as they looked to belong on a runway model- seemed to be absorbed into their bodies. But instead of being nude, they seemed to gain snake-like scales across the whole of their forms, now tinted a sickly green color. Tentacles shot forth from their backs, two writhing pairs on each side, a darker green than their trunks. Their long hair fanned out to the sides, but turned into a solid membrane that reminded Jason of the hood of a cobra. Their faces lost all semblance of their former beauty. Yellow eyes with vertically slitted pupils replaced the innocent eyes that had been there moments before. Large snake-like fangs appeared in their mouths, and at least one flicked a forked tongue toward Jason.

"Nagas!" cried a woman's voice, which seemed to have a slight British accent.

The two charging Jason brought their arms backward momentarily, as they slithered on their tails like reptilian centaurs. From their forearms, just beyond their wrists, a single, long bony appendage darted out. In a single blurred motion as the pair came before Jason, the closest one thrust her arms forward. At first, Jason did not realize the spurs had impaled him. His hearing seemed to stop momentarily, as if he had been smothered in a blanket of silence. He could see the others firing off weapon and screaming various things, but he could not hear them at all.

Then a volcano went off in his guts and his hearing returned. However, it was incredibly brief, as all he heard was the gurgle of his own blood, coughed up from his punctured lungs. The creature withdrew the spurs, and the nightmare sight of her ophidian face was the last thing he recognized as he blacked out.