Polluted Jianghu: 新年少鹏

The time for a signal to race down the brain to the finger ranges from 150 to 200 milliseconds. A bullet travels three thousand kilometers per hour. Your heart pounds, slow, so slow. Th-thoom. Th-thoom. No, that's just your thought outrunning time, through the turgid murk of the transient world. You see everything. You see the orange bloom within black clouds, the gunpowder exploding in x30 slowed down time. Alternating currents of heat and cold run down your back, your left hand rising in a blur.

And everyone else?

They are leaping backwards. Birds startled in flight, the part of your mind that comes up with inappropriate metaphors say. The shock of the explosion sends microscopic ripples down Kirishima's sleeve. He smells like cologne, covering up the rusty copper scent of blood. The lines, stark white on his tanned hands, say that he is a fighter, that he has taken knife, pipe, and fist to the skulls of our fellow man.

Next, the screech of metal on metal, the bullet spinning against the rifling. Who would hear this? It is covered by the thunderous shock of the gun firing. For you alone. Your hand claps the barrel, you can feel where the bullet is, like a progress meter it is heating up, from the root. You grab it tight, crushing it with the sudden force of lightning touching the earth. Metal twists, squealing in protest. You complete the motion, a wrenching of the wrist and it is all over.

You hold the broken barrel in your hand, clenched in your fist. The very tip of the bullet protrudes out of your hand, peeking out of the bent barrel, and your thoughts immediately jump to the prurient.

The shock on Kirishima's face is delectable. That little fucking mummy shit, you read. God, I might just make it after all.

"So?" you ask. The broken barrel swings between your fingers. You didn't just rip it away. You crushed it, so hard you can read your fingerprints in the hot metal. You stick it between your lips like a cigar. There's no smoke you can blow, and the hot metal and the gunpowder steam scorches your mouth. Moron. "Am I hired?" To mimic a billowing cloud of obnoxious cigar smoke you sputter out a single drumbeat pah.

Nobody liked that.

"I hate you so much but you're the real deal," Kirishima admits. "You're hired."

"This is why I'm the only one that signed up. The rest were scared by your devotion to making this workplace the most hostile workplace on the face of this earth."

Kirishima's mouth quirks in a way that might be Uncle-ish fondness or homicidal frenzy. Hard to tell. "Don't overestimate yourself," the accountant corrects. "It's the Wu Manor. And also the holidays." The scarred Yakuza drags a couch chair opposite you. "As a matter of curiosity, are you, ah, from Yanbian?" the accountant probes.

Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Things are falling into place. These guys- Kirishima's group- are probably an ethnic Korean gang that joined Kirisaki, smuggling robo-bits up from the Korean Economic Union. So, who's the old boss? Perhaps the accountant, but you have a niggling feeling Kirishima killed him when taking over the gang. The way the accountant said Yanbian, he made it sound like home. But, Kirishima has a Japanese accent. He could be zanichi. That's a double reason why he'd super hate Oogami.

Aw, fuck. You sorta feel bad about the plan now. Well, maybe Kirishima could just break away. And, as Yuexia adroitly summarized, they're villains anyhow.

"Nope," you say. "If this is about why I signed up, let me be clear- I have skills, lack morals, and will kill for cash." The lie slides out of you easy as breathing. Like a slug scooped from its shell.

"Oh, doesn't that describe us all." The accountant sniffs. "Well, do you have a nom de guerre? For record keeping."

"Ming Jian."

The pun makes the accountant chuckle.

"Okay, shut up now," Kirishima interjects like an icebreaker smashing through… well, ice. "Ming Jian, your first job. I have a warehouse full of mechanicals that I need guarding, and I know that fucker Oogami is planning a hit by proxy to make me look bad to Father."

You… don't really yawn. More like test out how functional your jaw is. It sorta is, sorta is not? "Why don't I just kill him? Make it easier for you."

Kirishima waves it off. "No. This is in the family. You don't get a say. You will never," he emphasizes, "get a say."

Fair enough. "Fair enough," you repeat. But it'd work, maybe. He's considering it. "Should I get going now, or do I have some time?"

"Huaran Street, three thirty PM," he barks out. "Its the only warehouse, you can't miss it." He sticks out his scarred hand and you take it. "Don't fuck up."

---

"So, how'd it go?" Flay looks up from her computer at you, taking off her headphones for a moment. The rear compartment of the van is pleasantly warm, if a bit stuffy and smelling like hot metal. You called Flay for a pickup two blocks away from the yakuza office. It took a bit of walking and a lot of not trying to freeze.

"I dared Kirishima to shoot me and broke his gun when he did." You shake out the snow in your hair as you step into the van. The door closes behind you, shutting out the snow and the cold. "Catch." You toss the broken barrel at Flay, who plucks it out of the air without looking.

"Hn. So you got in?"

You nod, looking around the narrow room. "Where's Yuexia?"

Speak of Yuexia, and Yuexia arrives. A snowdrift brushes against your legs. "He was a creep, sister," she complains, tossing her white hood down. "Urgh!"

Flay snorted. "Yeah, well, you're the one that picked the smack dealer."

"Only 'cause this guy took Kirishima. Can we switch, or is it too late for that?"
"Hell no. We have a connection! Go make one with your creepy meth dealer," you shoot back. It garners a glare, and then a snort.

"And there was this guy," Yuexia continues, "he had like, a slit open mouth? Don't the Japanese have a monster about that? So many earrings! He tried to get me to cut him, which is all kinds of ew and no."

"Big rip." The cyborg turns around. "So! Let's get started- you, Mr. Between Names, what's Kirishima got you doing?"

"Guarding a warehouse. The one on Huaran," you say. "Three thirty in the afternoon. Kirishima thinks Oogami might send a hit squad over soon."

Yuexia raises a hand. "Yeeah that's uh, me."

Hell yeah, you get to beat up Richie Rich.

Flay's thinking. "Yuexia, when are you planning to take the warehouse?"

"Midnight, I think?"

"How many people are coming with you?"

Yuexia shook her head. "I don't know. They said something about the brute squad, and I think the slit-mouthed guy is coming with me. Or he's not. I can't speak Japanese."

"Hmm. Okay, I think they're just going to show up to look tough," Flay thinks out loud. "So what you two are going to do," she says, "is escalate like mad. Yuexia, I'm sorry about this but I need this guy to call you bad names."

"Eh, whatever, we're gonna fight anyway." She shrugs it off. You sneak a look at the time- twelve o'clock.

"I'd win, just to be clear." You crack your knuckles. "Flay, can you drop me off somewhere that sells weapons?"

"Screw you," Yuexia retorts as Flay guns the engine. "I'd win. Your head's cracked."

Three hours later (the cafe you spent the time at didn't have very good anything to justify another half hour) you step onto Huaran Street, bouncing your new mass market spear against your shoulder. The wood is cheap, the red tassel is some fake polyester shit, but the spearhead is decent quality. It feels good to have it in your hand. Like a limb you didn't know you had until you lost it. The security guard at the warehouse gives you a look. You smile and he waves you by.

Huaren Street is empty. As in, there's no buildings. There's only a low block of the warehouse, the rest of the street consisting of empty or parking lots. The rolling metal door opens up, a smattering of grey jumpsuits workers moving between shelves and shelves of unmarked cardboard boxes. "You're the security consultant?" The woman who greets you has a low buzz cut.

"Yessir."

"Great," she moans. "Wonderful. Well, welcome to the Huaran Warehouse. We're a totally legit import export storage space for a third party electronics manufacturer. Feel free to look around, but don't open anything without permission."

To Do List:
[]- Do your job and case the wider joint. Build an understanding of the land.
[]- Walk around the warehouse. Pretend to work. Scope out the possible loot.
[1.1] {Harmonious Society} Talk to the other people. Identify faultlines and hear stories.

You would like to know where to start with a conversation. Really dazzle them with your sparkling personality. Unfortunately, the only thing you have is a bag of anger issues, communist slogans, and half faded migraines masquerading as a personality. This is harder than it seems but you know where to start: find an oldie smoking off to the side and ask about the weather. Problem: there is no oldie here. You shrug and begin to walk a circle around the warehouse, paying attention to the faces. You count about thirty heads fucking around, for lack of a better word. There's even a laptop connected to a game system that has Smash Bros idling in the background. Three workers are lazing about in front of it, intent on the game or their soda.

An image on the screen tosses another image against the platform, smashing it against the floating rock as a number increases from 0% to 50%.

"Aren't you s'posed to be working?" A woman in a baggy jacket turns to face you after soundly humiliating her counterpart, who tosses his console on the floor. Two pigtails that look too young for her and a cigarette dangle from her lips. Wait. Only the cigarette dangles from her lips. Her pigtails are on the back of her head. Where are you going with this?

"Aren't you?" Master of rhetoric, you are.

The woman shrugs with a dead-eyed apathy you can only admire. "I'm on my break."

"Long ass break." You point a bandaged finger at a small and growing pile of plastic wrappers that sits at the feet of the one that's currently snoring away like a bandsaw. She leans over and whacks him, startling him but only that. "There's nothing to do," she says. The sleeper snorts and turns over. The crinkling of plastic follows his slow geological shift.

"Then why don't you let me win for once?" her counterpart, a young man with a shock of dyed hair that flops around in a vaguely offensive direction, complains. "

The cigarette turns circles in her mouth. "Get good," she spits out. "Do you wanna play a round? You'd probably be more fun to beat than this chump."

"Fuck you," Hairshock says, adjusting how he's lying against a crate. "Seriously, though- dude, what's up with those bandages?" Now he's turned around, looking at you with shock in his eyes.

"I lost my sweater," you say. "Anyway, uh, it's been a good chat. I'm gonna pretend to work some more before I fuck off. Ciao." They make vaguely agreeable grunting sounds as you turn around to find Buzzcut Manager. The shelves of merchandise are oddly well arranged, from your cursory inspection. The eyes of the workers follow you, your uncanny figure, a mummy in a tracksuit, bouncing a cheap spear against his shoulder.

Man, now you know why no violent murder gang tools around with spears anymore. It's incredibly awkward, having everyone look at you like that. You don't think a lot of them are working. Makes sense- slow day, the merchandise is all packed, and if Wu Manor knows their shit they probably clubbed Kirishima's middlemen first. The question is, how much money is Kirishima burning on having the workers be around?

Well, probably nothing. He probably made them work here to work off their debt.

Buzzcut Manager's watching some sitcom on her tablet in the overlooking security office, boots propped on her desk. She hears you coming up the metal stairs. "Is there a problem?" she asks, not even bothering to pause the show. A smatter of forced laughter rises.

"Uh, I was sort of expecting you to give a shit," you admit.

Why bother? The shrug of her shoulder says. "Yeah, join the club. I'd be a lot more busy but nobody's buying. Not even the black market, which is all sorts of fucked."

You nod, then point at the really badly concealed slackers. "What about them?"

"Sanhe kids. Did you see a girl playing Smash? She brought like, fifteen people with her," she dismisses, the term for the subculture of youth transient workers. Work for a day, party for three, and if you have to sleep in a trash bin with a hangover for the next week, well, who cares? Sit, eat, and wait for death. "I'd be yelling at them but I wouldn't be able to find any more replacements."

"Dope. I have another question." She makes a go on hand gesture so you go on. "Who do you sell to?"

"Dunno. Don't care. Boxes go in. Boxes go out. Who knows." In her tablet screen a too well dressed housewife breaks a wine bottle over someone's head, you don't care who. "That being said, uh. The manifests say a lot of this goes on a train to Kazakhstan. So I'm assuming a snakehead gang."

"Dope," you repeat. "What's your opinion on…" you wave a hand. "All of this. The yaks?"

"Well, I hope I don't get a bullet to the head, but that's about it." She smiles at you, lazy and cynical. "That's your job."

"I have a feeling Kirishima'd rather me protect his warehouse of cybernetics."

"You meant Oogami. I worked with Kirishima and he's probably the best shady underworld boss I had."

"That's a low fucking bar."

Buzzcut Manager nods. "Okay. He's the best boss I had, period. He doesn't try to pull the parasocial bullshit everyone else does. He pays me on time. He doesn't care what I do with the warehouse as long as it looks pretty when he comes around. Do you have something else to say?"

You stepped on a landmine. Immediately disengage. "Okay, I get it," you raise your hands. "I'm going to shut up and fuck off now. Sorry."

"Good. Fuck off and do your job."

Well, that was a failure. The good news is that you know nobody is around to guard Huaren Warehouse. The bad news is that people might actually like Kirishima and that might be a problem. Or it might not. You need to talk to Flay about this. Well, not right now. First you want to talk to the detritus of today's society.

"Hey, kiddos," you say, throwing your spear against the wall. It clatters centimeters away from the sleeper, who "Room for one more?"

"Ffuck you." Hairshock raises you a middle finger. "I'm probably older than you, fuck off."

"Sure. Hey, give him your controller." The woman turns and you see a name tag on her chest- Ming Ming. Weirdly cute name. You settle down next to her. The good. You have an in. The bad. Hairshock tagged you in during a losing streak. Ming Ming traps you into an infinite wombo combo, and your bullet catching speed doesn't help you diddly shit against unfair cheating video game strats. Video games are bullshit. Transmission lag is bullshit. You hate it. "Ha~," Ming Ming breathes. "Yo, do you want to bet money on this?"

You shake your head. "Eh, can't blame me for trying." Ming Ming shrugs. "Surprised to see someone take the job. The last guard signed off with broken shins."

"I'm pre-broken. You don't have to worry about that." God shit it. How the fuck do you- no, that's the wrong button. You hate this control and you hate this game. "By the way, did you see Kirishima when you got hired?"

"Seriously, dude?" Ming Ming laughs. "Yakuza underboss, giving a shit about us." She waves a hand and you notice some burly looking fellows giving you a stink eye. "Man, that's a stupid question. No, Ms. Bao handles us transients."

"He tried to shoot me," you say.

"And then?" Hairshock looks up from his bottle. He's curious.

"Well, I caught the bullet with my kickass kung fu skills and that basically impressed him into giving me a job."

Hairshock nods slowly, thinking to himself. "So what you're saying is that I should learn kung fu to catch bullets so I can impress employers."

"Hey man, in this job market?" Ming Ming's eyes twinkled. "Anything goes."

Okay, here you go. "Even working under threat of the Wu Manor?" You toss it out casually. Just putting it out there. It freezes over the congenial atmosphere. The bottle- glass- breaks under Hairshock's grip. Hysterical strength, you wonder, or internal force?

"It's money," a voice wavers in the background.

"Work for a day, party for three," Ming Ming agrees, laser focused on the laptop screen.

"Hell of a pay to get you to work against the Wu Patriarch. I heard he was pretty buff," you note.

Ming Ming shrugs. "He's not going to fight me. What's the point? There's hundreds of us. If it wasn't us who got the job at a marked up pay, someone else would. And…"

"No, he definitely would." You draw on Hong Erhu's dismissal of the Jianghu, the rivers and lakes, teeming with psychotic, grudge obsessed fish. "We're all petty motherfuckers. And if he trained his internal force, he could be old enough to have personally seen the occupation. You think he'd be a forgiving type?"

"Shit."

Worming In...
[1.1] {Chase the Red Sun} "Have you considered unionizing? Proletariat solidarity in the face of the reactionary pig-dogs!" (Increase Chase the Red Sun to Intensity 2)
[1.1] {Harmonious Society} "Still, Kirishima's hired you. And he's hired me to ensure general bodily survival. Don't need to worry." (Increase Harmonious Society to Intensity 2)