CHINA DOLL I-- MUSINGS OVER COFFEE
Remus was through.
He was through with all of it, the constant bickering the inbred arrogance, the unstoppable prejudice. He had been pushed to his limit and steadfastly refused to be pushed any further.
He was through with the wizarding world.
Reciting this firmly to himself in his head, Remus slowly approached the main desk of Atlas Travel "we carry a world of flights on our shoulders!" His resolve, which had stood so firmly on the train from Hogsmeade to London, was slowly beginning to crumble as a formidable woman in an Atlas travel uniform fixed him with a steel glare. He was not even quite sure how Muggle travel worked...
"Can I help you?" she snapped mechanically, pounding her fingers on a plastic object he vaguely recognized as a "coputer" or something of the sort...
"Ah... yes," he said, transfixed by her threatening stare. "Do you have any flights that leave today for under seventy... pounds?" The word felt unfamiliar on his tongue, but he had sworn off Knuts and sickles forever. Remus had to learn Muggle money eventually.
She gave him a disapproving look as if silently commenting on how anyone who wanted a flight for less than seventy pounds was not worth much. "You should consider booking your trips in advance, sir," she sneered, pounding away on the coputer. "There's one flight."
"How much--" Remus began.
"69.99," she squinted at him through her tinted glasses. "We're having specials on flights to Asia."
"Asia?" He blinked, rather taken aback.
"That's what I said," she snapped. "The flight is to Hong Kong."
Remus hesitated for a moment, silently weighing the pros and cons, but then he realized what he had come here for... escape. Hong Kong seemed as likely a place as any. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the thin crisp bills, already missing the cool feel of bronze, silver, and gold. "I'll take it," he muttered, before his rationality kicked in and he would be forced to reconsider. For better of for worse, he had no way of knowing... at least it would be interesting.
----
To the unenlightened, coffee was somewhat highly regarded for a rather unappetizing murky dark brownish liquid. But for those that saw the true path, coffee was pure magic-- a twingling fire that expanded through the central chest cavity, biting all who lurked nearby with its white hot zings of flame, causing such a complete and total singular buzz that for one brief instant, one tiny speck in the great web of time, one little breath in the turning of the great wheel of life-- you were filled with the immortal spirit of the Energizer Bunny, the bitter sweet lust to keep going and going and going...
----
Remus's mind was far from its transcendental benefits as he half-heartily stared at his coffee; to be completely exact, in a literal and not at all euphemistic sense, he was trying to figure out the best way to drown himself in it. Alas, for Remus, not the coffee, which would rather not have its perfectly good morning ruined by suddenly means of the world's most unusual suicide, the cup was a good 3 inches across and his head a standard 18.4 centimeters, which would allow the completion of this most unusual suicide an award such as the likes of immortality, not was Remus was lusting over at the moment. Sighing, he picked up a guidebook, which was perfectly delighted at the prospect of being in use. Two-eighths through the first sentence, Remus realized it was completely in Chinese. Though Remus knew it not, the sentence was about how fewer than five percent of the general population spoke fluent English. It was going to be a very long day. He took a swig of coffee.
----
Sirius had never liked coffee, and hence coffee, being a strangely emphatic liquid, had never really liked him-- always making itself extra bitter for his consumption or a few degrees below lukewarm when he took a sip. But now, after twelve years of prison food, Sirius could have cleaned out every Starbucks chain in Madrid-- in the world, which alarmingly enough was now an option, for unbeknownst to any of our protagonists and totally irrelevant to the plot of this story, a small painstakingly disguised wing of Lord Voldemort's empire had attacked the task of world domination in a whole new light... by addicting the entire world population to mocha lattes. For being under funded and totally irrational, the tiny Seattle based coffee shop was doing quite well. However, all of this was far from Sirius's mind as he took a swig of coffee.
----
With a shock, the coffee felt itself becoming diluted. Vix crushed the small carton of marva-maid half 'n' half vienna-cream-flavoured milk. What was Vienna cream anyway? Irish cream she knew Vienna sausages yeah-- but the two combined seemed a little too specialized for anything but the likes of a garbage disposal. Not feeling very garbage-disposal-ly at the moment, she set in aside and in a sudden subconscious leap of thought, decided to reflect on all recent developments in the great wheel Taoists would call her life. A sudden lack of any such developments made her release it was 3:19 in the morning. More out necessity than any aesthetic pleasure, she took a swig of coffee.
----
Black like his coffee.
Black like his prowler.
Black like his leather.
Black like his soul.
Orien blended into the night so completely that even a flash of lightening would take a job to illuminate him. He pulled himself up so tightly against the wall that he became one with the brick, stone still. A shower of gravel from the roof above-- a hand touched his shoulder.
She nodded at him, and whatever this sign may portend, it portended more to him than it portends to the readers present ignorance.
Orien ran on the gravel, leaping over a dumpster, landing with an inaudible crunch. He pulled out his gun (black), from his indispensable (black) leather jacket.
The man walking on the street fell in the night, a heathen red staining its immortal black, pierced by a bullet from an assailant he didn't even know he had. The prince of cats slipped into the abyss of city night.
----
Nsia had the prowler ready by the time he got back. She turned on the ignition as he leapt in the roof, Bond style. The corvette looked out of place in the dark alley, if you even noticed it-- the blackness indistinguishable from the night around them. 3:19 AM read the radio clock, in angry green fluorescent glory. 3 AM was the hour when anything was possible, a rift in the fabric of time when the all-nighters and early worms coexisted, an hour so obscure and underrepresented that everything important was fabricated in its realm. 3 AM brought out the poet in Nsia. She turned the ignition, the black car roared to like, her black hair streaming into the black night, the prince of cats's lips kissing her black neck.
----
On the sweet serenades of "California Dreaming' " the clock painstakingly progressed its digital tabulator to 3:19 AM, a small step towards habitability. The diner embraced the small step for mankind for the prospect of being customered seemed, literally, more likely by the second. The diner was really a grubby place its only modern conveyance a gleaming digital clock daring to blink out the heinous time in angry red. Everything else was 50s retro, retro-ed so convincingly that it looked as if had been installed in the 50s, and aged tremendously since then. No great Parisian interior decorator could have set foot in the brilliantly named "24 Hour Diner" without automatically suffering spontaneous combustion. The colour scheme or lack thereof, varied shades of brown ranging from an "alternating speckled rawhide and burnt sienna" counter, to the "chocolate moose" ceiling tiles.
----
The arrival of 3:19 warranted no blanging bells in Isaac's apartment, maybe all the attention it got was a quick snore from Isaac, who, like the majority of the population, spend 3: 19 in bed. Nothing got much attention in Isaac's place of residence, so there was no need for 3: 19 to feel left out. His floor was littered with clothes, various turtlenecks and underwear, books ranging from: The space-time Continuum: Opposing Viewpoints, to the best thing to come out of Ancient Rome, The Art of Love. A few months ago, he had put up a movie poster for Casablanca, a desperate move to hole onto American culture, but, as if these foreign walls rejected America itself, the poster had almost fallen off. If one could see through the darkness, they could tell his room DID have a colour scheme-- Blue, the cerulean blue carpeting, baby blue paint, and not-quite greenish-blue aquarium (home to three fish-- Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail) all which have resuscitated out spontaneous combusted Parisian Fashion designer.
---
Sirius would have put him out of his mind, faculties, and other general whatnot involved in sustaining life. His room-- or rather subway station-- consisted of a bench, serving as a bed, whose only sheet was a ragged cloak trailing onto the floor, which's color will now remain a mystery due to the excessive piles of magazines, fliers, and dead rodents that made up the litter that was as much a part of city life as the skyscrapers. An ancient clock hung from the decrepit cement ceiling was stopped permanently at 3:19 AM thanks to the large hippogriff snacking on the live electrical wires that a lazy builder had forgotten to cover to cement. Color scheme was certainly not an issue.
----
Colour scheme was not Remus's forte. Browny-Orangish carpet and a faded red velvet blanket half-heartedly spread halfway across his bed, whose mattress had an alarming frequency of loose springs. With this wonderful sleeping condition, one may choose to wonder why Remus was not occupying his bed when 3:19 arrived. The one remarkable thing about Remus's room was its walls. They could have been covered in original artwork; but instead, painstakingly pasted with glow in the dark stars, a moonless night sky.
----
Orien's room was black. Four Chinese scrolls lay on his wall, one for each season, winter, spring, summer, fall. Next to the scrolls was a black stereo, which seemed to grow out of the black painted wall and into the black covered bed. He had a hardwood floor, which along with the green potted plant in the corner was the only colour in the room. The plant was Nsia's influence; she was Orien's colour.
----
Vix had always thought that you could tell the most about people by who an what they had surrounded themselves with, it was an unconscious projection of the soul.
----
The phone rang.
He turned over.
The phone rang again.
A light turned on.
His hand flopped onto the dresser and fumbled for the cause of the noise.
A third ring.
He got it, picked up the phone and pulled it to the sheets.
"Hello?" He mumbled the murmur a mixture of half-baked sleep and half-wakened sentience.
"Isaac," it was Jonathan- his uncle, his boss, brisk businesslike very much awake, but Jonathan had paused uncharacteristically, let time pass by. Isaac heard him take a breath.
"Uncle Jonathan," he said, for the first time wondering why he was calling at 3:19 in the morning. "What is it?"
There was another pause; "Your Uncle Scott is dead."
A thousand feelings in one heartbeat, all met by the inevitable denial, it had not sunk in yet, and he was alive still. He tried to say a thousand words, but none came out, none came close to expressing anything. Isaac managed three letters, "How..."
"Shot to death, in an alley, Naoto." More surefooted now Jonathan knew the facts, he could cope worth the facts.
"I'm sorry," Isaac said, only because it was the first thing that came to his mind, the logical cliche to choke out on autopilot. Scott was Jonathan's brother, imagine what he must have been going through.
"It's not your fault, Isaac." He was gruff, more so than usual. "I'm going to ask you a favor, I know its 4 AM and I know you're in shock, but I really need your help."
Jonathan never made justification for what he did never any apology, he just did it. It was hard to have feelings in their line of work; this instead of reassuring him only serviced to worry Isaac more. "Whatever you need," he said, feeling Jonathan's anxiety.
"Come in to my office, now." He hesitated for the briefest of seconds, "We have allot to talk about." With a click, the phone went dead.
----
"Coffee?"
"No. Had enough of that," Remus Lupin muttered as his head fell onto the annoyingly brown countertop. 24 hour diner, not a very creative name but blatantly functional.
The waitress tipped her pot away from his lolling head. "You look like you could use some caffeine, mister." The mister was perfect, perfectly cliche. The woman had her act down to a tee, mirroring the exact smoky waitress voice used in all Muggle movies, either she was an actress or a walking stereotype.
"No... I'll have... tang," He said, vaguely remembering the drink from his one other experience in a Muggle restaurant. Talk about random, but it was four in the morning, his right to make sense could be put on hold.
She didn't bat an eyelash, "One tang coming up."
Two seconds later, give or take a few due to sleep loss, the disgusting powdered water was pressed into his face, he'd forgotten how much he hated tang.
"I really hate tang," she said in her obviously fake waitress voice of hers, "My dad used to stuff the stuff down my throat when I was little, said it was good for me."
Remus suppressed a yawn, "I didn't know you could get tang in Hong Kong-" he released how dumb that was when it had finally made its way out of his mouth. Damn.
"It is four AM, mister, I'll cut you some slack," there was a long hold-your-breath pause as he pretended to sip his tang. "So..." She wrung the rag out on the table, "When's your birthday?"
"January 28th... why?" Any excuse to leave the tang was welcome.
"I don't know you," she gave him a friendly grin as she gave the bar another wipe, "I wanna learn some stuff."
"Alright," he tapped his fingers, "When's yours?"
"August 14. Do you have any pets?"
He began to wake up in spite of himself, "No, do you have any pets?"
"I have a cat and think of your own questions."
"What's your favorite colour?"
"Purple. What do you do on Saturday morning?"
"Sleep. Do you listen to music?"
"All the time. What's your favorite movie?"
He groped around futile for the title of a Muggle movie, "Er... Silence of the Lambs. Do-"
She was giving him one of those uniquely female looks, "that's disgusting. Continue."
Remus did not really understand what she was talking about but he frankly did not care, "There goes the mood, all your fault," he smiled as he picked up his tang again.
"What kind of underwear do you wear?"
Remus leaned over towards her, suddenly feeling as if he was possessed by Sirius "I don't."
She started to laugh, like a bell, laughter so light he knew for sure that the smoky voice was an act.
He sat back, "I'm just kidding, you know that right?"
"Sure," she giggled, "sure. Ok here's a serious one-What's your greatest wish in all the world?" Ending masterfully as she set her rag down.
"To get rid of my tang," He could feel her breath on his forehead, smell her sticky scent of perfume mixed with coffee. "Yours?"
She stood up, instantly intrigued in the bar, "I don't know, ask me later."
Remus knew his audience was over, staring at her, the short Chinese waitress with the perfect English and the fake voice, retreating into the grubby overly-retro kitchen he began to grasp that he had just had one of the most bizarre conversations of his life. The tang was gone. Remus left 5 pounds and walked out of the diner.
----
Vix was half-sorry to see him leave. As she cleared away the half-eaten pancakes, he has ordered she tried to absorb every detail just in case she never saw him again. He was obviously a foreigner-- not American, he didn't have the accent, maybe he was from one of those big British companies that were beginning to move in-but on the other hand, he didn't seem the corporate type. No, defiantly not, so self-preserving CEO would walk into the diner in the first place, but not wearing a striped scarf, blue velvet jacket and ratty sneakers. So far, the only definite thing she could decide on was that he could not match... why had she talked to him anyway? There was something about him... something that she couldn't quite put her finger on... Vix released she was confusing herself, she gave a half-hearted swipe at the already clean bar. "He's probably just a tourist," she said aloud.
----
"You did it?" The old man's head was turned away from his one man audience as he sat in a rolling chair, staring out a plate glass window that overlooked the city, still dark with the vestiges of late night slumber.
Orien bowed his head, even from the back, Naoto commanded respect "Yes."
The old man spun his chair around until his eyes were locked dead straight with Orien's; "Will they trace it?"
"No."
Su Naoto was a man of power, every inch of his tiny withered frame radiated it, dynamically so that it was impossible to turn your eyes away from everything but him, the 65 year old bomb, ticking-ticking, calculating, measuring for his next move, his next quarry to crush. Though no more than five and a half feet tall, Naoto was the very embodiment of a hunter. If Naoto was a hunter, than Orien was his hound. Brushing his silver hair out of his eyes, the old man turned to Orien, "What do you think of Sho Seiji?"
Orien could have been taken aback, but Naoto never said anything idly, "He's a rich fool."
"He made 10 billion American dollars in three years, is that the work of a fool?" Naoto's voice sounded innocent, but he was playing a devils advocate.
"Money is not the measure of all things. He is a rich fool." The anger simmering just beneath the surface of Orien's voice, dangerous, gave the feeling that it would burst soon through.
"If he is a fool, he can be manipulated to our advantage." Naoto smiled, or gave an attempt, happiness, even superficially, being too much a trial.
"He is too friendly toward foreigners, no. Seiji is a mistake." Orien had to work to keep the tone of his voice level.
"The problem with you, Orien, is that you are too angry. You let it cloud your judgement." Naoto announced this as if he was greeting him good morning. "You cannot see long term benefit."
"Which is? Foreign domination? Whimsy winning out?" Not being able to keep still, Orien paced across the room with a cat's grace, ready to claw the walls if denied any further.
"10 billion dollars," Orien stopped moving, and looked up, comprehending. Naoto knew he had won. Naoto always won. "Seiji wants to marry my daughter, your cousin. As you know this is no longer the eighteenth century and I cannot conveniently order her to marry, but I may strongly encourage obedience."
"Why is he interested in Vix?"
"She's a pretty girl, for once, my nephew, think. Who would not want the protection of the Su family, Orien? Seiji is finally taking a side and I am not going to give him any reason to think he has made the wrong choice. The man is 28, but he has tremendous influence, and political weight. 10 million dollars in the family is not great trial either. When Seiji dies, the money will either be left to his wife, or children both which tremendously benefit us."
"What do you want me to do?" Orien was a man of action, and Naoto knew this.
"Talk to Vix, make her understand the benefits, etceteras. Strongly encourage, Orien. I have full faith in you."
He bowed his head, and left the room, the door slamming behind him, locking in the silence in the office behind.