A light sheen of sweat covered Billy Shen's exposed skin, his synthcotton A-shirt darkening just slightly from a mixture of perspiration and a hint of a Seattle drizzle in the night air. The top layers of his usual working clothes -- cream-yellow silk shirt, black silk tie, red suit jacket, and his slate grey longcoat -- were variously folded atop or hanging from the handlebars of his Suzuki. He was only fully dressed from the waist down; black leather shoes, synthcotton socks, red suit pants, black leather belt. Even so, he was positively bundled up compared to his opponent.

The Blue Dragon Go-Gang apparently though that ritual champion combat required that you be well-nigh naked. Tony Kwan, the Octagon Triad's on-site wu jen and referee, had humored them. It wasn't every day Billy squared off against a crazy man in boxer shorts, and Billy was glad of that. On the other hand, he didn't mind his own top layer of clothing going missing (much as he might wish his opponent would cover up a bit more) since blood was such a pain to get out of that yellow shirt.

Of course, Billy grins to himself as he dances to his left, both fists working to send out an experimental, probing, flurry of punches, I could've always just work the body and stay away from his face, to keep blood splatter down.

The thug -- for the life of him, Billy can't remember the gang leader's name -- puts his forearms up in a classic half-trained boxer's pose, and the Triad soldier's knuckles bash against meaty forearm and sturdy bone instead of chin or cheek or nose. Billy's white-toothed grin flashes despite the lack of damage; he'd gotten a feel for the man's speed. He's not bad...

One tattooed and knife-scarred arm cocks back, one meaty fist goes roaring at Billy like a freight train. Billy sways backwards and lets the right hook miss his face by a hair's breadth, lurches to one side to avoid the follow-up left jab. The big right fist comes back around in a would-be haymaker, and this time Shen actually reacts by more than a shift of balance and a lean. His own left hand comes up, open, and brushes at the incoming arm's wrist to simply guide and angle it away from his face, altering the gang leader's momentum. Opponent off balance, Billy's right hand comes up in a straight-punch to the throat, a sharp cry escaping his lips.

Shen's grin turns wolfish as the man's eyes bug out, he lets out a little croak, his hands grab for his throat, he stumbles backwards three steps. Billy's feet work in a quick one-two, he chases, gets the momentum he needs for power, keeps the distance he needs for his leg to reach; a side-kick crashes into the other fighter's solar plexus and Shen fights to keep his mana from making the power of it cave in ribs. The scarred Go-Ganger folds in half around Shen's long elven leg, flies backwards towards his booing, shouting, cheering, catching, gang members.

Not bad... Billy's foot snaps back to the ground, balanced on the balls of his feet and ready to see how they'll take the four-second title match. ...but he's no me.

Yes, Tony had humored the two combatants. However, it wasn't for a lack of interest in refereeing fights. It was in the matter of not being one of the combatants. Even though he was pretty scrawny for a human (and especially for a Triad hitter), he always relished a fight. Fuck that. He loved fighting. Being magically-active probably didn't help keep his natural aggression in check any, especially as it gave him the ability to punch as hard as men literally twice, or more, his size while putting holes through anything short of a ceramic trauma plate so that when he did hit someone, they felt it for a good, long time.

Watching Shen wipe the pavement with the go-ganger was plenty entertaining for Tony, though. Standing off to the side with the two combatants separating him from the street tough's gang, he was partly focused on them, and partly focused on the gangers. More than once when judging these grudge matches, some smartass thought that they could get away with a spell to aid a fighter who was getting the shit knocked out of him. Others weren't even that clever. If Tony was feeling kind, he'd only zap the spell and bind the interloper for the duration of the match. But most of the time, the interloper got fried with a manabolt. Those were the rules, and he was quite clear at the on-set.

People fucked with those rules at their peril.

That was the other thing about Tony that didn't curb his aggressive tendencies much. He was also a spellcaster. That's what he does. The mojo-slingers almost never had a chance because of it. But at least they'd have a chance at a chance against his wrath. The mundanes never knew what the fuck hit them before he turned their brains into liquid shit.

Billy's feet work in a quick one-two, he chases, gets the momentum he needs for power, keeps the distance he needs for his leg to reach; a side-kick crashes into the other fighter's solar plexus and Shen fights to keep his mana from making the power of it cave in ribs. The scarred Go-Ganger folds in half around Shen's long elven leg, flies backwards towards his booing, shouting, cheering, catching, gang members.

Watching the spectacle, he eyes the crowd. Perhaps it was instinct to help out a fallen comrade. It wasn't exactly uncommon with gangers. One could even say that it was their leitmotif. The tough's chica starts to kneel down. Shen had been kind enough to deposit his body at her feet.

"Don't you fucking touch him!" Tony bellowed out. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps it was rep. But someone stopped her before she could do so. Tony watched the man's body, extending his left arm out towards Billy as he stopped to make sure that the ganger wasn't moving. He then stepped forward, waving Shen off as he knelt down over the unconscious ganger. He made sure the man was breathing, and placed a hand on his neck. He was alive, but slightly injured beyond how most combatants are when they lose. He channeled threads of mana as he chanted something in Cantonese , letting the mana flow through him and into the ganger to relieve some of the stress. After all, he may have been a aggro bastard, but he wasn't a asshole of a referee. As the spell wove torn muscle tissue and tendon back together, a bit of text appeared in his glasses.

From: Incense Master Chen Kwan-Ti
Re: Urgent

Oh, good. Real work.

Standing up, Tony looks over the crowd to the loser's second-in-command. "Shen wins. Now, then. Who has my money?"

Billy gives it one more heartbeat after Kwan's decree before he relaxes. That's all it takes for him to be sure -- really sure -- that nothing sour's about to go down. The trial by combat had been the Blue Dragons' idea, but you couldn't know how they'd take a loss 'till, well, you handed them one. Billy's good with body language, though; he reads the tension in shoulders, watches a few clenched fists relax, sees the small crowd let out a held sigh of relief.

Things'd be fine. Billy just knew. In the same way he'd read the other fighter's stance and shifting weight to know when the assault was coming, he was able to read the Blue Dragons' and know that no assault was coming. He runs a hand through his rain-dampened hair, slicking it back. No reason not to hit the message home.

Normally the ref handles the official proclamation, but Kwan's busy collecting his fifty noo (along with the actual backpay owed the Octagon Triad), and Billy can respect that. He raises his voice, even as he ambles towards his bike to grab his clothes.

"Your stakes, your idea. Fight's over. You guys go back to a fufty-percent kick to the Octagons." He doesn't bother with Cantonese. Half these kids looked like they wouldn't understand him, anyways. "You tried your little games, and stole by keeping too much. By the rules, I could've snapped him in fucking half. I didn't because he's helping 'Dragons' turn a profit."

"Once he wakes up, slate's clean and you guys are back in. Business as usual. All's forgotten and forgiven." Billy's shirt's buttoned by then, but his sleeves are rolled up. His fists clench, "Don't make the boss send us back here to renegotiate."

Tony pockets the brand-new certified credsticks from the lieutenant and smiles. He doesn't really talk much. He's never really had to. Either Billy did all the talking, or he did not. "Pleasure doing business with you," he says in parting.

Going back to the now-blinking message indicator that is trying its damndest to burn his retinas with an ungodly shade of neon red, Tony moves his eye over the text, letting the array of tiny infrared tracking lasts around the frame feed information into the glasses and onto the commlink that he wants to read the message. It also registers a slight dialation in the pupil, which the lasers pick up as a signal that he is fixed on on object and demands action. For text message alerts, the default action is "Open."

A message appears in a translucent purple window over his right eye as the adept walks over towards Shen. "I just got a message. Business is going down."

"Oh?" By then, Billy's working on his tie -- guns get holstered first, of course -- and he arches a curious brow. Postures and intentions read and analyzed, it's like he's forgotten about the Blue Dragons. They're beaten, and he knows it, and they know it; he can worry about things like tying a tie with his back turned to them.

"Business business?"

"Indeed. Seems Master Chen wants me to take care of something magical." He says it like it's a fucking accident that the Incense Master contacted the mage for a magic job. "I should bring along ... O... kay. Wanna come with me? Assuming you're not going to be busy washing your dainties."

Like Tony's one to talk. His suit is almost exactly like Shen's, and he takes great pride in being fashionable. If he was supposed to be stealth, he wouldn't know how to cast an invisibility spell.

"My dainties should be fine, thanks. I barely got warmed up." By that point the jacket's being shrugged on, longcoat over it, holsters adjusted, and one hand runs back through his hair to re-slick it. Shen withdraws his own smartglasses from an interior jacket pocket, settles them into place and snuggles an earbud onto his right ear. The small, sleek, saddlebags on his Suzuki already have his stock-folded Remington wedged into one side; what else does he need?

Nothing. "I'm set, then. Oh, wait."

"Hey." He turns, hands slipping into coat pockets, to address the gang again. The second in command looks his way, the boss-man's girlfriend favors him with a pout. Billy's flicks his hand out of his pocket, a little foil-wrapped square flutters through the air vaguely towards the assembled Blue Dragons. One of them flinches at the motion, Billy smiles. "Stim him up on his feet, and clear out. And remember. Fifty-fifty from here out, kids."

He gives them a get-the-fuck-out-of-here nod, then turns back to Kwan. "So. What's the job?"

Tony blinks the message away, and stands next to his own Suzuki.

"We're supposed to pick a statue and transport it to another location so it helps with the feng shui of a new safehouse. I suspect there is a reason why he wanted me to go." That suspicion is, of course, that something needs to be killed or threatened with great (permanent) bodily harm. Tony and Master Chen had conversations about the adept's temperament and nature on several ocassions, and the master had settled on focusing the mage on the path he was obviously destined to follow. "Same with you, I guess."

Billy sighs, but doesn't comment. Of the entire Octagon Triad, he's probably the one that takes feng shui the least seriously. Maybe it's because he doesn't take much of anything seriously any more, but he just doesn't understand how so many of his erstwhile comrades can worry so damned much about where the couch is, which direction the tridscreen is facing, and what corner a statue's in.

"Fine. So, allright." Billy swings a leg over his bike, forces himself to act like he gives a fuck. They weren't even stealing to be stealing. What was organized crime coming to? The Octagons needed to get a real boss put in place; this Incense Master calling the shots bullshit was getting old. Be rolls his thumb over the scanner near his bike's ignition, the engine purrs to life. "Where to? And who're we stealin' it from, anyways?"

"The SeaTac neighborhood. The couriers have got it stashed in a safehouse with some Yellow Lotus fucks until one of their wujen can pick it up. Needless to say, Master Chen wants it before they can taint it with their presence."

Tony straddles his own Suzuki, and thumbs the ignition. The motorcycle purrs to life, and with it comes the AR overlay onto his glasses of all of the controls and displays like the speedometer, odometer, tachometer, and a thermometer for his testicles as they vibrate to the rhythm of the Suzuki's idling engine. He then slips on a black skull cap over his head. Inside the cap are thousands of short-range electrodes in an array to read his thoughts and translate them into machine code so that he can operate his commlink and communicate with anyone who needs to be communicated with while he's driving down the Five at a speed that makes verbal and audio interaction problematic at best (seeing as though he does not believe in helmets).

Once the cap is on and activated, it's a simple matter of inputing the address into the autonav, and IMing the info the Shen for him to utilize. The autonav takes note of GridGuide traffic updates for the fastest, most efficient route and then maps the path to the Yellow Lotus safehouse in under three milliseconds. From their spot in Little Asia, Tony figures they should take at least twenty minutes at the autonav's default speed of 20% faster than the speed limit. Before he can even put his bike into gear though, he hears a screeching of tires and watches as Shen peels out into the distance.

Fine, then. If it's a race you want...

Shen leans forward, helmet in place and longcoat whipping behind him like a tridshow superhero's cape. All he'd been waiting on was the GridGuide; he hadn't moved from job to job with Kwan yet, and there was nothing like a street race to see the nerve of the man who'd watch your back in a firefight.

The Suzuki Mirage is, quite simply, made for this. Billy's elf-lean form is bent nearly double, body hugging the slim frame of the bike, engine snarling as it upshifts. A kilometer's behind him before he cares to glance backwards, gaze flicking to his mirror and seeing the sharp-bright headlight of Kwan's own Mirage roaring after him.

Billy leans into a turn, wrist working on the accelerator. His left knee almost scrapes the ground, tires whine but don't quite skid, and he shifts his balance back for the straightaway. An Americar is slipped past to the left as though it were standing still, an oncoming Spirit whips Shen back to the right side of the road.

Shen's gaze snaps back to his mirror, and he sees Kwan -- only just barely -- keeping pace. Billy smiles, and upshifts again.

Tony follows Shen through the streets of Tacoma, but it's the interstates where they really get to let loose. I-5 was fairly straight as it went eastbound through the heart of Tacoma, turning left near Milton before becoming a fair straightaway as it headed north through the rest of Tacoma and into the heart of Seattle.

Unfortunately, the damn elf never gives up his lead as they speed north up the Five until cutting across three lanes to exit into the SeaTac city/neighborhood. Tony's racing bike bounces as the muffler scrapes the pavement at the bottom of the exit as he makes a hard right turn that nearly tosses him off the bike before he recovers, scraping his knee against the ground to keep himself from flipping the bike sideways (thank god for Armor spells).

The two men eventually reach the neighborhood, surrounded by numerous high-rise apartments and condos. Following the elf, Tony drives his bike much slower as they circle the neighborhoood, getting a good view of the target building. Checking his Matrix browser, Tony recognizes the area as the same in the satellite photo/map that he picked up when GridGuide calculated the route. The bikes finally stop down the block near a strip mall.

"They're on the fourth floor.... That... window," the adept says as he circles one and sends the image to Shen's commlink.

Billy has the good grace not to gloat over his victory -- he did cheat, after all -- and is, instead, all business. All business, that is, except his irritated frown at his new helmet. It's supposed to accomodate glasses and earbuds, but there'd been a pinch at his right ear for most of the drive; half the reason, truth be told, he'd gone as fast as he had. Nevertheless, the awkward fit doesn't interfere with reception (as the advertisements had promised), and the faintest flicker of light is visible to Han on Billy's glasses, as images dance across the lens.

"Any word on how many of 'em to expect?" Billy's feet are off the pedals, long legs stretched out and leather shoes on the sidewalk. "Or anything fun like that?"

My guess is the courier, plus a standard crew to hold it. I suspect we're still ahead of the rest, so it should be five to six. When the wujen gets here, he'll have anohter four or five with him."

Tony slides off his bike, his balls only slightly warmed by the ride over, and focuses his eyes, and enhanced glasses, toward the fourth floor. The sensor displays over only over one eye when they have to be since he cannot cast spells when they are both active. However, this is not one of those times when he's in Combat Mode. He focuses the electronic visual magnification into the window, letting the enhancers do their job of clearing up the image for him as he uplinks the feed to Shen, letting the elf see what he sees. In this case, Tony sees two men in Mandarin-style suits pacing past the balcony window through the tinting. He can also see the head of a third person with black hair peeking up just beyond his field of vision.

Well, that's three. He could almost just sit here and snipe at them from here. But the tinting would hinder him when he used the monocular in his saddle bag instead of the glasses, and that would just defeat the whole purpose. Otherwise it'd be a good plan to blast as many as he could from back here while Shen sleazes his way in and then takes out the survivors before leaving with the jade tiger. Oh, well.

"Good thing I've got the endoscope." Turning around, Tony scans the strip mall behind them, wondering how the elf is going to scam his way inside the building as he tries to decide if this is a decent neighborhood. As he does, though, a massive suborbital roars overhead of them as it approaches the runway at Sea-Tac International. Nah... Fuck that shit.

Billy's ear-pinching helmet gets magnet-o-locked back in place over what passes for a dashboard on his bike, but he reaches into a coat pocket before standing up. A mint-smelling cigarette gets jauntily flipped up between his lips while he thinks, half-smile revealed by his chrome-silver lighter as he lights it up.

After a single long drag, he shrugs and swings his leg back over his bike, standing and stretching. He pulls his short-barelled Remington from the hard-case saddlebag, keeps the stock folded, and tucks it under his coat. The shotgun -- longcoat or not -- wouldn't be hidden forever under there, nor was it the most comfortable way to carry it. But it would do, to walk half a block and then commence to murdering.

"Su Chen, isn't it?" Billy tosses his head towards the not-quite-safe safehouse, wanting Kwan to follow, starting in that direction. The question's idle, almost, chit-chatty. He asks like it's not the lynchpin of his devious master plan. "He's still their 438, isn't he?"

"He is." As Tony tucks a small pouch into the small of his back between his trousers and shirt, he tries to figure out what Shen has planned. He then checks his Viper, and buttons his coat.

Oh...

Shen nods. Billy's left hand stays deep in his coat pocket, arm tight to his side and shotgun wedged in place. His right, though, is free to roam, wander, gesture, and occasionally fiddle with the tooth-whitening cigarette he's puffing away on. One such merry hand-adventure leads it up to Billy's smartglasses, working a little dial on the side that turns the lenses mirror hard and makes his eyes unreadable. His collar gets flipped up, shoulders hunch, elf-height vanishes as bad posture takes over. Every little bit would help.

"Just hang out behind me, looking inscrutable." It's the only advice he gives as they finish the walk, and the Seattle drizzle starts up again. Before long, they're outside the safehouse, and Billy reaches up to knock on the door.

When he speaks again it's loud, an impatient thug's impatient bark, matched by his pounding fist. His Cantonese comes out angrily, "[Open the fucking door! It's raining!]"

Inside the lobby, one of the Yellow Lotus thugs looks through the monitor. He was expecting company, but these two didn't look right.

"No! Who the fuck are you?"

Turning away from the monitor, he looks at his co-ganster buddy and shrugs.

"I'm 'Soaking' and this is my buddy 'Wet,' idiot!" Billy switches to English, since that's what Fuckstick The Ever-Vigilant is using, but doesn't stop his hammering of the door -- in fact, the polymer-reinforced toe of one shoe adds to the cacaphony, now. He lets an accent slip into his voice as he continues, "Who do you think it is? Su Chen sent us to pick up the tiger! You gonna make a wu jen stand outside in the rain all night? What's your name?"

Uh... Uh... Oh shit!

"Oh... OH... I'm so sorry!" Pushing himself out of the doorman's chair he so conveniently "borrowed" Jin opens the door for the two men. The loud talker doesn't seem like the kind, so he turns to look at "Wet."

"I am so sorry, sir," he says to Tony as the two strangers enter.

As they walk in, Tony fires off the message to his teammate:
When I touch this one, kill his buddy.

Tony begins to weave mana around himself, drawing as much as he is comfortable with at the moment as a surge of mana wraps around his right hand in astral space. His own little jade and ivory tiger focus/talisman glows in astral space beneath his shirt next to his heart as he walks towards the Yellow Lotus member who had let them in.

"It's okay," he says as Tony reaches out to touch the man on the shoulder. As soon as he makes contact, that surge of mana moves from Tony to the stranger, frying his internal organs to within an inch of his life in a fraction of a second.

Billy shakes his head, hair flipping into a spikey mess and droplets spattering everywhere; distraction. His right hand dips inside his longcoat, and he tosses a short-barelled Remington shotgun towards the face of the other Yellow Lotus guard with a "Catch!" called out after it; feint. His left fist comes out of his pocket, a fingerless black metal-mesh glove wrapped around his knuckles, high-pitched battery whine coming from it, and snaps into the man's ribcage as the Triad guard juggles at the shotgun out of reflex, guard high; assault. His right arm snaps out as he lunges forward, elbow-first, towards the man's face; finisher.

Kwan helps the man he just blasted with mana down... By tripping his falling form with a leg sweep from behind as he elbows the man in the chest, and then brings his left fist down on the guard's face with the bottom of Kwan's hand, followed by the near-simultaneous hammering down on the guard's face when Tony's right hand comes down on top of his balled fist, adding to the power of his magically-enhanced blow and caving in the guard's left cheek and nose, as well as the back of his skull as heis head is caught between Tony's fists and the faux marble floor.

Getting up from his kneeling position, Tony grabs the man's jacket and pulls it under the dead man's form to wrap the head. "Let's just slip them over here behind the booth."

Billy lets his own hapless target tumble to the floor unassisted -- his hands are full of shotgun right that second. The body crumples with a thud, but Shen grabs it by the collar a moment later and drags it out of casual sight. A dedicated search, even just a lucky glance, will reveal the corpses; but the pair should be gone before it's an issue.

He pauses for a moment, all the same. His second shock glove is pulled on, the fastenings of the first one adjusted and properly tightened. From another deep coat pocket he pulls out a blocky spherical grenade, painted a drab grey color. While Kwan puts the finishing touches on the corpses -- a casual kick that clears a limb of the hallway proper -- Shen syncs up his commlink with the grenade's detonator. He gives the explosive one casual toss-and-catch as he eyeballs the hallway, then he just settles for putting it in the corner to one side of the door.

The stock on his Remington extends, all wire-frame, polymer pads, and springs for recoil assistance. With one last glance around the entryway, he shrugs -- can't think of any other preparations to make -- and starts up the stairs.

As they walk, Tony draws a sheathing of mana around himself and the elf, surrounding them in mana as an invisibility spell covers them, leaving them invisible to all visual means. The focus does its job of focusing the mana out of astral space and into a shroud of transparency, while the wujen easily shrugs off the effect of channelling all of the mana. After they reach the first landing Tony pulls the pouch out from behind his back. Keeping his gun in mind, he would prefer not to have to resort to such crude measures. Instead, he would rather just rely on his magic. The elf takes the lead up the stairs as Tony is unraveling his endoscope and checking the silent drill. As it happens, no one takes the stairs anymore, so they are hardly noticed as they walk up the stairs.

Once they get into the hall, Tony checks the apartment number, and then takes his glasses off and slides them into an inside jacket pocket as they make their way towards the apartment. The two men stand outside the door as Tony kneels down in front of it. Listening on the other side, he can hear the men speaking on the other side in Cantonese as they nervously discuss the fate of the jade tiger.

With the trode net still on his head, Tony can't see any messages, but he can "hear" and send them.

Targeting. Get ready.

Billy hums quietly to himself -- that damned song from Matchstick's is still stuck in his head -- as he holds the muzzle of his shotgun a centimeter or two from the door; just to the frame's side of the doorknob, so the explosive round will blast out the lock. He squints his eyes shut and turns his face away.

No way he was gettin' a face full of splinters out of this gig.

As Tony slips the scope in the crack between the door and the carpet, He twists and turns the end of the lens to get a good impression of the room. Staring through the viewfinder, he has a good view of the four men in the room. He counts them out to himself as they stand around a table near the window, hovering around the wooden box and speaking to each other.

In his mind's eye, Tony calls forth a number of bands of mana--six, in particular--and wraps them into a golden dragon form as the dragon wraps itself around his body, filling him with its energy and wrapping around the jade tiger around his own neck as the dragon suddenly bursts forth through the focus and past the door, through the apartment until it centers on one man gesturing emphatically. The dragon fills his own aura in astral space, and wraps around the three other men as well as the energy is released.

Back out in the hall, Tony leaps to his feet as the two men hear the rather audible thump of four bodies hitting the carpeted floor.

"Go."

Billy's Remington pushes against his shoulder, roaring and spitting fire. The door between knob and frame ceases to exist in an explosion of synthwood and electronics -- "Yup, still got those EX slugs loaded," -- and Shen shoulder-checks the door open and dives forward.

From his right, he hears an answering thunder blast. Buckshot whizzes over his head, but the angle's all funny. Shen gets his shoulder under him and turns his dive into a roll, turning; a grizzled silver-temped Yellow Lotus killer lays prone, sawed-off Roomsweeper tracking Billy as he tumbles and fresh blood pouring out of his nose. Time slows, Billy twists and gets his feet under him. The man's impossible large muzzle keeps compensating for Shen's movement, but by the tight his finger tightens on the trigger the elf's stopped moving. Leather dress shoes skid for two inches on the shitty apartment's carpeted floor, but forward momentum ceases as Billy gets his balance.

The older Triad's shotgun roars again, the pellets hit the apartment's opposite wall in a fist-sized pattern.

Fuck, he screams to himself in his head as he runs inside the apartment about a meter behind Shen (because they teach you things on the streets, like not to bunch up when your oppo is packing shotguns) as he watches the elf twist and roll and not get a shot off at the Triad laying sprawled on his back across from the couch.

Tony extends his free left hand, and lets rip a messy formula of spell design that he barely manages to get out as the mana ripples from his fingers in astral space and lock onto the man's aura. As the adept slams up against the wall, he watches the last man "standing" writhe and scream in agony as the spell rips his aura into confetti. As soon as he gets his bearings, Tony shakes his head a bit in disbelief. "Wow. That's the damndest thing. I fried him with a really nasty spell, and I didn't feel a thing."

Billy straightens from his low crouch, shotgun shouldered and sweeping the downed foursome, all tinged pink by the red-dot scope he views them through. Each one lies in a pool of blood, the last one -- the one with the sawed-off -- has horrible facial bruising to go along with it. None are moving. He turns, muzzle dropping-then-raising at one point in his circle to avoid Kwan, and checks the rest of the room. Then he shrugs.

The elf lets out a sigh, lowers his weapon. "Yeah. I just got shot at, didn't feel anything, either."

He whistles that catchy little jazz tune to himself as he saunters over to the table, where a cardboard box rests, polyfoam spilling out from it and onto the green plastic table itself. The box is big. Too big. "At least I only wasted one slug, though. Nice mojo, there. You believe these slugs are five noo each?"

Billy pokes at the popcorn-stuffing, rifling through it with a sinking feeling in his gut. There is a jade tiger statue in that giant-ass box. "You believe that shit? Five noo a shot, man."

Billy's arm droops to his side. "Thing's gonna be a bitch to get down the stairs."

"Yeah, and me without my power armor. As for the bullets... Don't start. The price for spell formula is a bitch."

Tony sighs, looking at the box. "Why'd Master Chen send us two scrawny fucks to drag this back? Fuck... If the big one was still alive, we could force him to carry it down for us. Anyway..."

Billy tilts his head a bit to one side, considering. The box is about the size of the one his micro-nuker'd come in, now resting imbedded in the kitchen countertop back home. That had been full of ultralight black plastics and had, of course, been hollow (the entire purpose of a micro-nuker being to put food inside of it, to be cooked). This multicycled cardboard box was full of jade fucking statue.

"Why'd he send us two scrawny fucks and our bikes?"

He gives Kwan a look, "Can you, like, magic it downstairs? Or, shit, all the way to the new place? Through the, y'know, astral or whatever?"

Walking over to the box, Tony digs through the packaging until he digs out the jade tiger statue. It's about the same size as a small dog, with a curled-up tail. It is two shades of jade, light and dark to indicate the stripes of this particular tiger. He can feel the power of the statue coursing through him. Looking around, he realizes that this whole room is pretty bad feng shui--well, bad for the former occupants.

"Well, regardless. This thing needs to get out of here ASAP. And, no... I can't magic it away. I'm only good at killing."

Tapping his fingers along the top of the statue, Tony looks around. "Let's call someone. Anyone."

"Right. Call someone. Like the cops." Billy bobs his head in apparently-manic agreement with Tony's plan, and his free hand double-taps the button on the side of his commlink-wired earbud. "Place call: Detective Michael Shen."

He flashes an everything-will-be-fine grin to Kwan, as the commlink on the other end buzzes and waits for a pick-up. As soon as the line is open, Billy lets fly with some rapid-fire Cantonese. "[Mikey. Bing Lei. Emergency laundry pick-up. Yeah, a big mess. Some stains. No, don't let any other laundry guys swing by 'till you've had a chance to try and clean it up. Yeah. Yellow stains. I thought you might want first crack at them. Yeah. Waving you with the location now. Later.]"

Satisfied, he switches back to English, takes on the slower-paced monotone people use to give commands to voice-response electronics, "End call: erase from memory."

Then he flashes that bright smile again, and plops down in a graceless spawl onto one of the now-vacant chairs near the table, shotgun in his lap. One hand slips inside his jacket for another smoke, and his gaze actually flicks around the room to the small fridge, like he's thinking about fishing for grub and has all the time in the world. "Don't worry. Lone Star's on the way. Everything'll be fine."

Individually, each word is recognizable. Coming from the mouth of a Triad killer in a room full of rival-Syndicate corpses, strung together in the order Billy's put them, however, they don't make any sense.

"Well, since you're that good... How about this? You sweet-talk a couple of neighbors into helping us carry this thing downstairs. We can even play undercover cops."

He shakes his head, "S'not what Lone Star would do. Mussying up a crime scene an' all that. Don't worry, Mikey and I'll manage to get it down there. These dead fucks got it up the stairs, right?"

"That reminds me, though," Shen stands, shotgun swung muzzle-up to rest it's barrel on his shoulder, like a duck hunter. He whistles to himself as he saunters across the room and scoops up the spent shell casing near the door, and pockets it. "There we go. No need to make the cover up difficult, is there?"

"The less crap we leave behind, the easier it'll be for Detective Shen to get this shit just written off as syndicate violence, and call it a day."

"Agreed." As he rolls up the endoscope and places it back into the pouch, he has a burning desire to initiate so that he could cleanse the astral space of his
signature. "But I can't do anything about my signature, unless we shoot them all again to throw the cops off. Seeing as though the spell made their heads explode from the inside-out."

"Well, can't erase a signature, huh" Shen grins, as if not in a room of six men (with one more at the bottom of the building) Kwan had just killed. "What the hell are you good for, then?"

He ambles over to look out the window, waiting for the lights. "Mike only lives a few blocks away. Lone Star is lucky he happened to hear gunfire while on his way to the corner store, then come investigate."

Billy scowls, "I wouldn't mind if he hurried his ass up a little bit, though. 'Star's gotta have calls about this by now, and him being first on-scene only keeps the beat cops away if he actually is first on-scene."

"Dude... It's the middle of the day on a work day. I'd be surprised if there were half a dozen residents in the entire building, any of whom are more likely than not to not hear us. Plus," he adds as he clears his throat, "Did you happen to notice we're under the semiballistic and suborbital landing path?"

"Three shotgun blasts are three shotgun blasts, there's two corpses in the entryway, and considering our line of work," and the magical oaths we've sworn to never, ever, talk about that line of work, or we die, Billy doesn't add, "I'd just as soon get this shit done with just in case."

"Of course. But unless you can turn into a three-meter tall green formori and jump off the balcony with the package, hoping your way across the plex, we're metty much fucked here until he comes."

"I...." Billy's eyes narrow a bit, his head cocks to one side. "I've got nothin'. What's the reference? Some song or something?"

"Ah!" He perks up, "Nevermind, don't care. Here he is."

Shen nods out the window, towards a tinted-window sedan hurtling it's way down the street. The car bear no Lone Star markings, but the no-profile lights flashing blue and red give it away.

"It's, yeah, something from a long time ago.

"Anyway, this is good news." Looking out the window, he admires the fact that Shen has legitimate contacts.

Walking back to the table, Tony begins to repack the statue for transit. While they may have been getting assistance, there's no reason for Michael to know what they were transporting.

"Lone Star! I'm opening the door!" At the holler from out in the hallway, Billy grins and flips off the door. Ruger Thunderbolt in hand (to appease anyone who might be watching), barking out ten-codes into a headware radio, Detective Michael Shen comes walking into the room. He is, for all intents and purposes, a heavyset, middle aged, human, version of Billy. With a badge.

He shoots Billy a wink, even while his no-nonsense voice continues on the radio, directing a pair of en-route cruisers to chase a wholly made up getaway van headed towards the interstate. It's safe to assume his radio connection's dead when he punches elf-lean Billy in the shoulder, then gives him a hug. In rapid fire Cantonese, the younger brother is half-heartedly chastised for not being by.

Billy cuts him off, just as the lecture starts up, in English. "No time, Mikey. Not right now. You've heard of Tony Kwan. We gotta jet, bro. Boss needs this statue."

Everyone involved in the Octagon knows who the boss really is, and can guess why he'd want a statue. Even Billy's thoroughly Mundane older brother. He gives Kwan a nod, then sighs, weapon now holstered. "Fine, fine. Let's go ahead, I'll help you carry it downst--"

"And we need your car." Billy cuts his big brother off with a grin that takes away the sting. He's got his hands palm together, fingers out, in a lighthearted mockery of the old-world 'pleading' hand gesture. "We've just got our bikes, Mike! C'mon, man. The safehouse the Boss wants it at isn't too far."

Detective Shen gives his brother a glare, but nods. "Fine. But no lights. And you two stay on your shitty bikes, and lead the way. I won't have a bunch of fingerprints pawed all over it, and your shitty cigarettes stinking it up. It's a company car."

"Seattle's finest taxi service, eh? Awesome."

Slapping the top of the box, Tony starts to push it off the table into Mike's waiting hands, expecting that the infiltrator will do most (all) of the heavy lifting.