Polluted Jianghu: 新年少鹏

Your fist slams against the metal door. "I'll fucking kill you!" you shout, feeling the metal dent and conform against your fist like a glove. You drive another fist into the weakened metal, and with a shrill screech the metal gives way. A dinner plate sized chunk disappears and clangs off the opposite door. And of course he's gone, your hand gropes around in empty air, wriggling your arm through the too small hole. Okay. "I'm coming for you, you fat shit!" you continue, fingers curling around the edges. "I'll chew on your fucking spleen, see if I don't!" The door squeals like what you imagine the warden will when you get your hands on him.

The light is red, emergency red. They really have a good system.

The metal strains against you but it is cold and dead and you are hot and alive. Blood thuds in your ears, and your fingers slowly set about expanding the hole. Heh. "Expanding the hole."

Wait.

There's a pair of crablike hands grabbing your wrist, in a wet plastic smelling jumpsuit. A face leers up at you, a moray eel at his prey. What the fuck kinda position is this guy in to pull it off? Then with monstrous strength the thing, the man, whatever, pulls you and the door into the hallway, where the water sloshes up to your knees and pours in like a river down the stairwell. It's deafening, all this water in this tight space.

The assailant is holding you down. You have wrenched your arms away from his grip and he slides around you like a sea krait and is pressing you down into the cold bilgewater. You cannot breath, all you can see is pulsing red, and this is how you die, isn't it? Slow and agonizing--

Fuck this mauldin shit. The poets and pop idols can have it. You brace your legs against the ground and kick yourself into the roof, crushing the monster between you and the roof. Except the thing just slides away, like some kind of deep sea cephalopod away in a cloud of ink. It hooks a hand around your knee and drives you back into the water. You refuse, and grab onto the appendage with cruelly hooked fingers and squeeze. It feels like rubber, deforming under your grip, so it doesn't surprise you at all when it vanishes and the monster breaks from you. It's doing the circling thing everyone does, pacing around the other as the water rises, slowly, slowly.

"A pleasure to meet you," the monster gurgles, "I'm Remora. You're Ming Jian, the singularly uncanny motherfucker that managed to equal Metalhead."

"He ain't shit," you say in reflex.

"They tell me you love that phrase too."

Think, think. Remora, god, what is with you and being pounded by dudes with thematic names, is elastic. You need something sharp, like that spear with crowfeather tassels Uncle gave to you, the dramatic arse. Or, a length of broken pipe. "It's a good phrase. Who told you that, Hong Ernu?"

Remora moves like shadows in the night. Fucking poetry. "I've been around everywhere where water is, yo." There's pipes all around. You know what you're going to do. "Give up, Mr. Ming. Make this easy on me, think rationally. I've seen ya fight, you fly around. Can't do that here. You're as good as lost."

"Telling me how you have the high ground is such a bitch move." And with that, you burst forward, plunging an arm to the shoulder where his chest was, and then you tore a length of pipe out in a burst of plaster. Honestly that was pure good luck. It's not long enough to be used like a spear but you can still stab with it, you think as you crush one end of the metal pipe into a sharpened point.

The first stab, a full body blow, hits something metallic in Remora's hand, making an arc of sparks. It's a long serrated dagger, a triangular shark tooth. "You got a theme, motherfucker." It's hard to move in this water but you muscle through it anyway. Where is he? Behind you. He ducked underwater and almost opened your throat before you turned and fell into the water which was a bad move, because Remora is sitting now on your chest like a ghost, pressing you so hard you can feel the tiled floor crack and splinter under your combined weight.

The dagger is in play. Remora is not hindered by the water. It bites your skin open, blood leaking out in a mist. But it's a very, very tangible thing. Next time it comes down you grab the blade and tear it out of Remora's hands, ignorant of how the serrated edge bit into your palm. He pushes off, wary now as you test out the knife. Good. A bit too front heavy, but you will deal.

The water is chest high and it's like a solid thing, a brick wall fights against you every inch of the way as you charge down the hallway, a fan of translucent glass cresting and breaking as you pursue Remora down the length of the hallway. You pin him to the end of the hallway as the water roars into the void behind you. He grabs your hand holding the dagger fit to gut him, smashes his skull into yours. You see stars for the moment and return the favor tenfold, driving his solid skull into the concrete. Then water hits your back and tears you away from him in the riptide.

This is what fighting a shark in the ocean is like. Remora is in his element. The water is up to your nose now and the corridor is a little ocean. He cuts at you with each pass, like a torpedo. It's so hard to see, because the water is stinging your eyes and the light is flashing like a seizure inducer. How do remoras kill sharks? the rephrased question rises in your mind. They chew them bit by bit. Wait, a factoid rises in your mind as Remora grabs you by the throat and drives you into the ground, dagger only centimeters from your throat. Every time you narrowly bat the knife away it chews a little closer to your bones. You imagine that your arms look a little like kebab on the roast now.

Next Step…
[1.2] {Wrathful Manifestation} Bring This Tower Down: You bet Remora can't swim through concrete. Bust down the roof, bust down the roof above that roof, and then continue.
[1.2] {Harmonious Society} Break And Run: Okay this is a bit of a bitch move, but it's also the smart one. Swim up to the stairs, run out, get Yuexia.
[1.1] {Pain Is A Teacher} HE AIN'T SHIT