Reborn
Chapter V
Cyanide
Tigress padded silently across the rooftops of the eastern district of Gongmen, the lights of her destination growing ever closer. She grew tense as she grew nearer to the place, it's stone floors stained with the blood of many an unfortunate worker, and the blood of someone else. Someone much more important to her.
Po.
The Dragon Warrior, the one she had come to call friend, had died there, taking a cannonball to the chest. Tigress had arrived just in time to see the massive orb of lead launch him into the air, and send him flying. She remembered reaching out, calling his name, cursing herself for not arriving sooner, for not ensuring somehow that he would stay out of the fight. She remembered the crushing guilt, and the dark, fiery, blinding rage that had consumed her once the grief had subsided.
But what stood out, was the regret. She regretted every hateful word, every envious glare, and each spiteful feeling and deed that she had directed at Po, during his initial time at the Jade Palace. She had come to regret that she had never truly apologized, and that she had wasted time on such things.
You should not dwell on such things.
Tigress looked up into the sky, to see the crow circling above her. "You know I can't. It's my fault he's dead. I didn't anticipate his actions, when it was obvious what he would do. I was leading the team, it was my responsibility..."
You are indulging in needless self-pity, and distracting yourself from your purpose.
"I know my purpose," the martial artist hissed, snarling at the feathered creature. "and I pity no one, least of all myself."
You are deluding yourself.
"My purpose is to avenge my friends," Tigress said, leaping over the gap between two builings, and landing gracefully on the other side of the divide. "If I were to forget them, how am I to avenge them?"
The crow was silent.
"That's what I thought, you wretch," Tigress muttered, stepping off of the edge of the roof on which she stood, landing in a darkened corner of the sidewalk. Stepping out into the lantern-lit street, she walked calmly, if with purpose, across the cobbled road, heading directly for the factory entrance, only to be stopped by the armed guards waiting on either side.
"And where do you think you're going, freakshow?" one of them, this one a boar, said derisively, barring her entry with a long, cruel-looking spear.
Tigress looked at him, with cold, empty eyes. "I'd recommend putting that away. You could get hurt."
"The only person getting hurt around here is gonna be you," the boar sneered, and jabbed at her with the spear.
Unnaturally fast, Tigress grasped the spear just behind the head, and wrenched it from the guards grasp. Flipping the spear so that the blade faced her opponent, she ran him through, pinning him to the wall.
The other guard, a crocodile, panicked at the sight of his companion being killed within the span a few seconds, lashed out with his mace.
Tigress, calm and composed, blocked the blow with her hand, and grabbed the mace away from him with her right hand, while landing an unforgiving blow to his stomach. When the croc doubled over, she brought the mace down on the back of his skull, shattering it.
"I told you," Tigress said, stepping over the corpse and through the gate. "But you just didn't listen."
"Where do you want this, boss?" the wolf said, motioning to the large wooden barrel of gunpowder.
Chun , broadswords strapped to his back, stared down at the worker from the catwalk. "With the bolts and cannon barrels, of course. With the gunpowder, you idiot!"
The worker flinched, and began rolling the barrel to where Chun had gestured.
Chun sighed. "It's so hard to find good help these days."
Chun enjoyed his job. He presided over the whole of the eastern quarter of Gongmen, reporting only to Shen, and was given free reign to do most anything that he felt needed doing. All these liberties, and all he needed to do was make sure the factory, and it's warehouse division, stayed stocked, and the supplies held within were shipped out at the required dates.
To him, it was a good life, far better than what he had known during his formative years in the Mongolian Steppes.
The room suddenly darkened, the torches hanging from the walls guttering, and turning a deep shade of blue.
While the blue flame was, in and of itself, not an uncommon thing, the hue was wrong. The torches burned a light, icy shade of blue, and they cast cold and unforgiving light.
"Tides of sin draw tighter and brighter, hours become heavier and weighted, and the shadows smile dark and wild," a feminine voice said, from somewhere in the darkness.
Chun, as well as the workers, twisted there heads in the general direction of the voice. Out of the shadows came a tigress, dressed in dark clothing, half of her face bathed in shadow.
"Who the hell are you?" Chun asked, unimpressed.
"Hell," Tigress said, contemplatively, smiling."The black void. Funny you should mention it, I've booked you a spot there."
At that, Chun laughed, before looking down at the wolves gathered below. "Dispatch her."
One of them, this one armed with a bow, nocked an arrow, and took aim.
Tigress looked at him contemptuously. "If you shoot, it'll just...kill me."
The wolf let the arrow fly, the projectile burying itself deep into Tigress's midsection.
Tigress doubled over, still looking at the wolf with a sardonic look on her face. "You wound me, sir. Wound me. I am wounded."
She stood, pulling the arrow out, holding it between her thumb and forefinger mockingly. "Huh, what do you know. I got better."
"How- what- you should be dead!" the wolf shrieked, his voice rising several octaves.
"It's not death if you refuse it," Tigress replied, shrugging.
Chu looked at her passively. She must have caught the arrow, and was attempting to psyche out his men, he reasoned. "Kill her."
Ever the loyal servents, the wolves, those carrying swords at least, charged, blades bared.
Tigress dropped the first three with a blow to the torso, ducking in time to avoid the fourth's dao.
The wolf snarled and swun at her again.
Tigress returned the snarl, blocking the strike with the palm of her hand, ignoring the gash that healed seconds later, and tore the wolf's throat out. Stepping over the gurgling corpse, she looked at the original wolf who had shot her.
"Last chance," she said, knowing that he would understand.
The wolf hesitated, before sprinting at full speed past her and to the exit, only to drop dead as he reached the doorway, a quarrel buried in his head.
Chun loaded another quarrel into the hand-crossbow. "I do not tolerate desertion."
Tigress looked up at Chun, grinning in a way that would have made a shark nervous.
"I played with all your little friends," she said, pointing at him. "Now I wanna play with you."
"Mmhmm, yeah, ok," Chun said, unimpressed, before aiming the hand-crossbow and burying the loaded quarrel deep into her chest cavity.
Tigress, equally unimpressed, plucked out the quarrel and sighed in relief as the wound closed.
Chun stood, stunned. "What the hell are you?"
"Death without parole," Tigress replied leaping into the air, and landing on the catwalk.
Chun jumped, frightened, but he refused to run, especially from a woman. That was a level of humiliation he would not accept. So, instead, he drew his broadswords, saying, "I take it you know how to fight?"
"Do you know how to die?" Tigress replied, dropping into a crouch.
Chun came at her, his blades whirling in an elegant figure-8 pattern.
Tigress ducked and dodged the blades, closing the distance between them, making it impossible for him to strike. She took grip of his wrists, in an attempt to make him drop the swords.
Chun resisted, managing to throw her to the ground. He brought his blades down in an effort to end the conflict.
Tigress, thinking on her feet, rolled behind him, and got to her feet.
Whirling, he swung his blades horizontally, hoping to separate her head from her shoulders.
Tigress ducked, and slammed her head into his stomach, sending him to the floor, the broadswords falling from his grip. She grabbed him, and slammed him into the railing.
"You remember your home, Chun?" Tigress hissed, gripping him by the front of his tunic. "Remember how you used to plan family dinners shortly after a battle, or a death, when there was food?"
"T-that's not me anymore," Chun replied, scared out of his mind.
"Oh, but it was two years ago," Tigress said. "Remember? A mantis? You roasted him. Ate him."
"Why do you care?" Chun replied, struggling against her vice-like grip.
"He was my friend," she snarled. "He was a brother to me. And you fucking ate him."
"What're you gonna do?" he sneered. "My men are replaceable. I'm not. Shen would have your bent little head!"
"Shen's not my problem-yet," Tigress replied. "Right now, you are."
Tigress drew the knife she had kept from her encounter with Lu, and waved it in front of Chun's face. "Your friend Lu shouldn't have played with knives."
She tore open his tunice, placing the edge of the blade on his left breast. "One crow, sorrow."
She cut deeply, and watched in perverse satisfaction as blood poured from the wound, and Chun screamed. "Two crows, blood."
She cut him again, a sharp, angular line, smiling toothily as Chun screamed out again. "Three crows, a brother."
Another cut, another scream. "Four crows, a boy."
A fifth cut. "Five crows, silver."
Another. "Six crows, gold!"
And another. "Seven crows, a secret never to be told!"
Weak from loss of blood, Chun's words were indecipherable, and his movements were weak and sluggish.
Tigress looked at the arrangement of her cuts, and was satisfied that they resembled a bird. Wedging her fingers into the cuts, she tore the flesh away, much to Chun's agony, to reveal a faintly beating heart. Her eyes cold as ice, she tore it from his chest, and savored his scream. She looked at him, and watched the light begin to fade from his eyes, and said one last thing to him, as she took a bite from the muscle she held in her hand.
"Eat your heart out, Chun."
When she had finished what she her grisly meal, she made her way back down to the floor of the warehouse, taking Chun's broadswords with her. Seeing the cannon parts, she frowned in disgust. Upon further investigation she found barrels of oil, presumably for torches, and cleaning the cannons. Dumping over the barrels, she made sure to douse the barrels of gunpowder with the flammable liquid.
On the way out, she grabbed one of the torches, and hurled it into the massive, if shallow, lake of oil upon the floor, smiling as it ignited. The crow, having disappeared into the rafters, flew past her, guiding her as she calmly walked out of the burning building.
Outside, Zhēnlǐ wandered his usual beat, watching for the typical thugs and muggers. However, what caught his notice was something far bigger.
The factory was on fire.
He stood there, awestruck. He knew the discontent, crime, and violence that filled the city like a brother, but this was something he had never seen the likes of.
He saw a robed figure exiting the gate of the factory, and drew his hand-crossbow. "Hold it!"
The figure responded dryly, "I thought patrolmen always said "freeze"."
"Well I'm a patrolmen," Zhēnlǐ replied to the obviously feminine voice. "And I said hold it."
The woman kept moving.
"Move and you're dead," Zhēnlǐ warned, holding the crossbow as steady as he could.
"I say I'm dead," she said, now coming into full view, hands raised. "And I move."
Now that Zhēnlǐ was able to see her face, he was slightly perturbed. The right side of her face was monochrome, but the rest was the typical orange and black of a tiger. "What are you, nuts? Walking into a crossbow? You high?"
"Don't recognize me?" Tigress asked, somewhat disappointed. "Huh. Two years off the scene, and I'm nobody. Talk about gratitude."
"What are you on about?" Zhēnlǐ said, growing more confused by the second.
"How about Po Ping?" Tigress pressed, taking another step, just to taunt the wolf. "Do you remember the Dragon Warrior?"
"He's dead, my friend," Zhēnlǐ replied, keeping his weapon trained on her. "Now, I want you to move over to the curb there. C'mon, real nice and easy. Go on! Now, I'm gonna wait for back-up. This is too friggin' weird for me."
Tigress, seeing no real reason to refuse, went to the curb. "Just wait- it get's better. Do you know someone named Zhen? He should've treated his bedmates with a little more respect."
"You're the one that murdered Zhen in the western quarter," Zhēnlǐ whispered, stunned.
"Murdered?" Tigress echoed, somewhat indignantly, before softly adding, "Murdered?"
"He was already dead," Tigress said, looking away. "He died the moment he touched her. They're all dead. They just haven't realized it yet."
"Her?" Zhēnlǐ repeated, not following. "Who? What- you're not making any sense, lady. None."
Tigress looked up at him, a faint glimmer of recognition in her scarlet eyes. "You...you were there. Two years ago. You were there."
"What? I-" Zhēnlǐ started, before he noticed the crowd growing in front of the burning factory as another series of explosions ripped through it. "Hey! Hey! Get away from there! Go on, scram!"
Zhēnlǐ turned back to the tigress, only to find her gone. He looked around wildly, frightened. "Oh, great. Great! A girl shows up looking like a half-painted geisha, and you lose her right out in the open...Well, at least she didn't do that dancing shit. I hate that."
So many Crow references:
The "tides of sin" line comes from The Crow: Stairway to Heaven
The "It'll just...kill me" line comes from The Crow: Stairway to Heaven
"Death without parole" comes from The Crow: Stairway to Heaven
"Not death if you refuse it" = The Crow: Stairway to Heaven
"Booked you a spot in Hell" comes from (who'da thunk?) The Crow: Stairway to Heaven.
The dialogue (most of it) between Zhēnlǐ and Tigress comes from The Crow( 1994). Again, if you haven't seen it, you are not legally a human being. So go watch it.
I'm pretty sure the "counting crows" poem is public domain. Fairly certain.
Also, you'll notice the Monty Python reference. Why? Because I like me some Monty Python.
So, so , so many references.
Remember, guys: Reviews are my meat,bread, and butter. I don't know what I'm doing right/wrong if you don't tell me.