"Thomas."

His foster father's voice is as clipped and unemotional as it was eight years ago, the last time they spoke.

"Your sister's ship is docking at Port 44 tomorrow at 5PM. Please meet her there and bring her to the Golden Flower Tearoom. I will be there."

The message cuts out.

It was left at 10:00 PM exactly, the previous night.

It is currently 3:12 PM.

...joy. Jauhung hasn't seen Raymond in... eight years, now? To be honest he hadn't really expected to ever see him again, and he's not sure how Raymond found his number but, well, it's not like Jauhung knows much about him in the end, is it? He's always said stuff like "you don't need to let the past catch up with you", so as far as Jauhung knows Raymond is a spy of some kind.

Well, whatever. He can do that. He didn't have any particular plans for today. He takes another drag of his cig then puts it out, takes another swig of his bottle of—what even is this, cheap baijiu?—gets dressed, and leaves. If he walks he'll get there a bit before 4:30PM so that'll work out fine.

Jauhung lives in a tiny apartment above a restaurant that's a front for a triad he's technically not a part of, and when he comes downstairs it's reasonably empty, though that's unsurprising given the time of day. "Oi! Yòukǒng!" calls Xiǎo from where he's sitting at the counter nursing a drink. He always uses the Mandarin pronunciation of Jauhung's name, for some reason, even though he speaks Cantonese alright—with a bit of a Japanese accent, but still, perfectly understandable.

Jauhung walks over to him, hands in his pockets. "Yo."

"Did you just wake up? Party hard last night?"

He shrugs. "Don't remember."

Xiǎo grins. "'Course. Got plans today?"

"Yeah. Meeting my sister."

"You got a sister?" he says, eyebrows shooting up into his bright green bangs.

"From back in America."

"Damn. She hot?"

"I wouldn't know."

He grins again. "'Course not. Pah, was hoping you were free, I'm bored as fuck and don't have an assignment until tonight."

"I'm sure you can find someone else to entertain you."

"Yeah, yeah," he says, turning back to his drink and waving a hand to dismiss Jauhung. Then he pauses and looks up to him again. "Zyu Hoi told me to tell you to eat somethin', if I ran into you. Consider yourself told."

Zyu Hoi's name he uses the Cantonese pronunciation for.

"I've yet to die of starvation," he says with a sigh and a shrug, but he does add "get something to eat" to his todo list on the way to Heoi.

There's food carts all over the place, because of course there are. It won't delay him by much to pick something up.

The docks aren't exactly bustling, despite the hour. Dock 44 in particular doesn't see frequent use. It's not just numerology, though that might be some of it; it's also too close to the Walled City. Nothing that close to the Walled City is popular with anyone except the wrong sort - broadly construed.

Jauhung is absolutely the wrong sort, no doubt about it. Most people, even most of the wrong sort, often feel uncomfortable and uneasy in a hard-to-define way the closer to the walls they get—or so he hears. He's always considered it yet another sign of his depravity or some such that he instead feels drawn to them whenever he gets close. They're a popular destination of his aimless wanderings, when he doesn't have a particular place in mind he wants to go and his feet just take him there. He doesn't usually stay there long, there's nothing particularly interesting to do while staring at the walls, but they draw him nonetheless.

He gets something to eat, goes to dock 44, finds somewhere to sit, and waits, smoking through his pack.

A familiar face gets off a speedboat. (Presumably she made most of the trip by some other means. Speedboats don't usually go transPacific.)

Ariel's tusks have gotten a little longer, but other than that, she was full-grown when he left. Her muscles are about where they were, impressive for a human but practically svelte for an ork. She's got a couple of arcane fetishes braided through her hair, and her piercing count's gone up. There's a tattoo around her throat and trailing down her biceps, some kind of spiky tribal design. She's wearing a lot of leather, some of which looks more armored than fashion-oriented. Not that any of it doesn't look good. But Ariel looks good in anything. It's about confidence.

She notices him and almost trips on the transition to dry land.

"...I was expecting Ray," she says. In English.

"...I wasn't," he replies in the same language. He puts his cig out and gets to his feet. "He told me you'd be here and that I should bring you to the Golden Flower Tearoom, said he'd be there."

"Right."

...sure. That might as well happen. "Don't think that's news."

"News doesn't have to be that new if I haven't heard it in a decade. And you looked better than this a decade ago. We get to that tearoom, I'm buying you a steak."

He sighs. "Such a pain in the ass."

"Your ass pains me. Because it's just two cartoon femurs. Sticking out of a place where an ass might otherwise be."

She lets go and pats his shoulder. "Let's have some tea with Ray, shall we? ...probably I should switch to Cantonese before I'm in a room with him where he can throw shoes at me for speaking English, though." She switches. "We must eat grass. The water. Grass water. On Ray. I will be easier when I talk taller. Fuck."

He switches, too. "Eat grass. I can get you some, if you want it so badly."

"Have I ever wanted salad?" she asks, belying her earlier difficulties. "Lions eat meat, baby."

He starts walking and gestures at a bird over yonder. "Not a lot of game in the big city but I'm sure you'll figure it out."

She extends a thread of magical energy, which Jauhung can just barely perceive. The bird flies alongside them for a few moments, and Ariel looks it over critically.

"It's all scabrous and shit," she reports, releasing it to flap away. "Not much of a mouthful, either. I probably won't have to give up hunting entirely... just supplement it. What's the good street food in this neighborhood?"

They reach the gate out into the port authority. It's locked.

"I wouldn't know," he says, shrugging and almost running facefirst into the gate. Which he had just walked through to get here.

It's not even 5:30PM yet.

The fuck?

"Careful, so lou, your head's full of chrome but it's not that full of chrome."

The joke is automatic; the rest of Ariel has gone serious. She traces her fingers along the steel. "Guessing this wasn't locked when you came in?"

"It wasn't." He enables his image link and hooks into the wireless matrix to try to figure out why this'd happen. Are opening hours that strict? Is there anything in the news? He might message Zyu Hoi.

(The thought of trying to find someone official and asking what's up doesn't even cross his mind.)

Opening hours? What's he talking about? Port 44 has been closed all day. In fact, the whole harbor has been. The news site says there's reports of criminal activity nearby, though it's only at a level-3 alert, which is to say, the Hong Kong minimum.

Ariel's got her eyes closed, and her skin's flickering with light so faint the setting sun mostly renders it invisible. "...Lion says he's sensing dragon lines nearby. Shoddy work, the kind some gangbanger shaman puts up in fifteen minutes if he's expecting a fight."

"...are you expecting a fight? I'm no good in a fight."

"What. Are you talking about."

"I don't have anyone after me, far as I know, so it's gotta be you. Or Raymond, I guess."

"No, shut up, we'll talk about that later. You're no good in a fight? When we were in middle school I saw you break a grown man's femur. That isn't one of the easy bones."

"That was then," he shrugs. "This is now."

"What did they do to you?" she asks quietly. "I don't know who, but. What happened? Somebody took the soul out of you."

He shrugs again. "Let's look for a way around." He types up a quick message to Zyu Hoi then dismisses his link. ...and belatedly remembers that other people can't see it. "News says there's been criminal activity nearby and the whole harbour was meant to be closed today, by the way."

"...yeah. Yeah, a way around."

She'll lead the way. Since Jauhung's no good in a fight.

Oh cool he much prefers not having to take the lead. He'll follow.

Jauhung gets a reply pretty quickly.

no clue, sorry kid

There's a smaller gate a little ways back, leading into Port 45. It's got an honest-to-God padlock on it, a big heavy piece of pig iron.

Ariel snorts. "Grug want lock gate. Grug protect imports. Grug get big metal lock."

"Hm." How big is that padlock exactly, is it something he could pick with some grumption and a big enough lockpick?

The lock's big, but the mechanism is pretty reasonably sized. He could get at it with a couple of hairpins.

"Give me twenty seconds," he says, and he starts to work at it. With actual lockpicks. Normal-sized ones, that is, which he just kind of always has on him, for whenever he may need them.

It takes him twelve seconds.

"Damn," Ariel says. "Grug better have insurance."

They head into Port 45. It's somehow even shittier than 44 - there's crates scattered everywhere, not to mention used needles, empty bottles and other general detritus.

Is Ariel going to lead the way again or was that a short-lived dream?

Yeah, she's got him.

The dragon lines come into view as they advance, a faintly glowing diagram of circles feeding into larger circles. In the largest and most central of those circles is a guy with glowing eyes, who's shivering even though it's June barely north of the tropics. Taking cover between various crates are four other guys - one of them has a semiautomatic pistol, one has a shotgun, one has a baseball bat, and one has a knife.

Glowy guy holds up his hand. "You're t-trespassing," he says, trying very hard to sound cool.

"Sorry about that," Ariel says, holding up her hands in turn. "We're trying to leave."

He raises his hands, too. Nothing to see here, no sir, just a sickly-looking twink and his admittedly pretty terrifying foster sister.

Glowy keeps twitching his eyes back and forth. "Yeah. Yeah, you just wanna leave, huh. You just sailed into a locked harbor by accident, no idea what's goin' on, didn't touch nothin', didn't see nothin', dressed like runners, shining like, shining like runners-"

"Man, my boat just came in and dropped me," Ariel says. "I didn't hear anything about a locked harbor. If we're not supposed to be here, it's because we're being set up."

"Yeah!!!" Glowy cackles. "Yeah, you're bein' set up, nothing suspicious, nothing weird about that, nothing's wrong at all, just let you waltz on through! It's all a big misunderstanding!"

Ariel tilts her head from side to side, not quite cracking her neck. An old signal. I'm going loud in five... four... three...

Oh joy of joys. He stretches his shoulders a bit, which is also an old signal: hold.

Then he looks directly at glowy. "It is kind of weird, I agree, but there's no reason for us to fight if this is a misunderstanding. Can we chat a bit first? I'm Hak Jauhung; what's your name?" He says all of this in a casual, unworried tone, like of course we can all solve this just by having a conversation like the civilised folks we are, without making any suspicious movements and keeping his hands in the air.

Glowy looks at him, sort of disarmed just by the confusion. "Knife Eyes Yan. I'd say nice to meet you but it isn't."

(Ariel... holds.)

"I'm sorry, aah suk, it's gotta be stressful to be here." His face softens, as he says that. He understands and sympathises, really. Especially if Yan is expecting a fight, that could be really dangerous! But it's alright, they can just chat. "What were you warned about? Maybe we could reassure you, if you think something was stolen, that we didn't steal it, or something like that."

His brow furrows a bit. "I-I did get a tip. Not that specific, just that something was goin' down at the harbor. And it is. You seen how many bastards are crawling around? Triads, runners, HKCP... you're just the first ones to come into our lot."

"...really?" Genuine surprise, and a tinge of worry. "No, we... actually didn't see them. I didn't even realise anything was happening, before, the gate was open when I came in..."

"Shit, you are bein' set up," Yan mutters. "Listen, you wanna get out of here? Get out of here fast. Before whoever wants you dead decides to kill me too."

     "What if there's a bounty?" asks one of his goons.

Yan rounds on him to loose a stream of invective. "You want to try to take a bounty that's got people shutting down the goddamn harbor, sending tipoffs to gangs all over the district, half a dozen runners, HKCP in their pocket, find out if there's a bounty for him and try to collect, hope they decide to pay out instead of killing you -" He breaks off into more elaborate compound obscenities, occasionally punctuating his point with darts of sizzling arcane energy for the goon to dodge.

"Thank you, aah suk. We owe you one. Please be safe, too."

Great, that worked amazingly, is Ariel ready to go 'cause he is so ready to go.

Ariel is very, very ready to go.

"...you haven't lost that," she notes once they're off the lot into a different, equally shitty lot. "Your... charisma."

"Is that what we're calling it," Jauhung drawls, returning to his more quiet and subdued persona. He leans against a wall and lights himself a cig because that was a pain in the ass and he needs a drag.

"It isn't magic," she points out. "I know how magic works. So yeah. I'll call it charisma."

He blows a puff of smoke at her face and shrugs. "Suit yourself," he says, tapping the cigarette with his index finger to drop some ashes onto the ground then bringing it back between his lips. He pushes himself off the wall and starts walking off. "Let's go."

She squints, at the smoke, but doesn't cough.

"You're such a dick."

But they go. Glowy was in a loading dock between ports 44 and 45; 45 is empty, and they can reach the gate back into the port authority complex.

Ariel pauses. "More dragon lines in there. Better dragon lines. Worse for us."

"So, you don't actually know what this is all about? What did Raymond tell you?"

"He told me he needed my help. I figured he meant the killing-people kind; I'm not great at most of the others. But I wasn't expecting assassination attempts this early in the process."

"Ah." So this is about them, then? He should've just stayed home and told Raymond to come to the restaurant if he wanted to talk so badly.

Well, is there a way around these dragon lines? Maybe they could swim.

"If you want to swim in Kowloon Bay, I can cure any of the fifteen diseases you get after, but somehow I get the feeling you're joking."

"I'm not going to swim. Let's just... figure it out as we go."

They go through the gate.

It's... quiet. The power's out, but it's got windows, so it's not dark inside, just weird.

"Feel like I'm in a middle school at 7PM," Ariel mutters, going towards the exit. She sticks to what shadows she can, but keeps moving.

Jauhung is in a thick dark coat so after he gets rid of his cigarette he's almost stealthy! Being deathly pale kind of ruins it but what can you do. He tails her quietly, surprisingly spry and agile given everything else about who he is as a person, and tries not to make any noises.

Some guys run through one of the gates and start firing shotguns at them!

"Fuck," Ariel hisses. She mutters something and gestures, and there's a cloud of searing volcanic ash around those guys, eliciting a great wailing and smell of seared pork. But more guys are coming through other gates, and some of them are close enough to the exit to block it off.

Oh so they don't even get any chance to talk, it's just walk in, guns blazing? What the fuck did Raymond do, who did he piss off? Well, Jauhung isn't bulletproof, or even bullet-resistant, so he should try not to get hit. And probably... try to run...? Wait, no, the exit is blocked off, fuck.

Honestly if he were on his own he'd probably just sit and wait to be filled with holes, it's not like he's particularly attached to being alive. It'd feel kind of shit, he'd have much preferred to die in some more personal way, guns aren't any fun, but still, he hasn't really been expecting to live a very long life. But he kind of doesn't want Ariel to die—go figure. Can he just sit on his thumbs and wait for her to mow down some people...? He'd rather sit this out if possible.

She calls a wooden tiger-spirit out of a decorative bonsai tree to deal with one cluster of goons with particularly annoying guns - sprays an approaching cricket-bat-wielder with acid - the ash cloud from earlier fades, and she calls one down on top of some mages who are trying to fill up one of the dragon line diagrams -

- another guy with a cricket bat gets close enough to hit her, just a glancing blow but she roars and the inconspicuous little lines between her fingers erupt shining metal claws and she rips his throat into pieces, but it's thrown her off her rhythm, and more are getting closer -

Such a pain.

Fine, whatever. He shows up out of fucking nowhere with a well-placed open palm hit to someone's outstretched arm to break their elbow and a kick to break their kneecap, and someone else—oh, that's an ork, the fun thing about orks is that it's very easy to elbow their chin just right so they bite their tongues or just get those sharp tusks somewhere they shouldn't be. If you know what you're doing, at least. Which he does.

He isn't strong. He can't break a grown man's femur. Or, well, he can, but not by being strong. He does it by being smart and using leverage. But he's weak, and stick thin, and when someone's got him pinned he can't escape it. He can just say,

"Harder. I can barely feel it."

The man looks confused, but doesn't loosen his grip.

Not until a metal claw punches out through his face. Then he loosens everything.

"The enemy's gate is down, so lou!" Ariel cackles, turning to shoot some more acid. "Focus on the goalies so we can get out of here!"

Oh, alright, he can do that.

"Hey, boys, come here often?" he asks, sidling up to the group at the exit. He's wide open, not even watching his flank, but when someone tries to hit him with a bat he moves with it and pulls that person's arm to tip them out of balance and a knee to the solar plexus disables them for long enough that he can step on their neck and now they're out of commission. The next one comes at Jauhung with a knife, clearly preparing to feint, but Jauhung doesn't dodge them at all and instead tanks the (disappointingly shallow) cut so that he can get close enough to smash their nose into their brain. And the last one has a gun, but they also have more than five brain cells and have noticed that a gun in close combat isn't that much of an advantage especially when your opponent is using the (possibly dead?) body of your ex-comrade as a shield and has just shrugged off being stabbed with a knife, so they instead decide they are not being paid enough for this bullshit and run.

"Let's go," he calls from the now-empty door, somehow managing to drawl despite having to shout.

Ariel runs after him, flipping off some goons and dropping another ash cloud in her wake. She's bleeding from half a dozen places and her wrist is clearly broken, but she can run with the best of them.

"You motherfucker, you made me think you'd gone soft!" she laughs as they flee.

"Mm," he replies eloquently, and he can also run with her but he's clearly a lot more badly affected by the cuts and, apparently, one bullet wound? He didn't notice that one happening. It was just a graze, he supposes it barely counts as a wound, but still, he does not have enough blood in him to sustain a run for very long. "That didn't count. They sucked."

"Everybody sucks when you're the best... man, you really are treating yourself bad." She grabs his hand and shoves some energy into him, and he feels a little better. There's fewer holes in him, at least.

Oh that's nice. Okay, it's more sustainable to run like this. If he saves his breath. Despite the chain smoking he does kind of walk all over everywhere for hours every day so he's not bad at this running thing either.

...wait, should he be the one leading? Fuck, he should. "This way."

"I hope the old man's ready for me to eat six thousand nuyen worth of dim sum. Afternoon tea is not enough calories for firefight aftercare."

She follows.

He's not sure they're being pursued, but just in case they are, he disables his connection to the wireless matrix and then takes a circuitous route passing through some rather unsavoury alleys and hidden spots. Eventually they can probably stop running, and Jauhung can pull up a map on his image link—he's got it downloaded, so he doesn't need a connection just to look at it—so they can go to the specific address they're meant to go to. He doesn't know this part of the city that well.

"We should do something about the thing where we look fucked up," he observes, idly.

Ariel nods and takes out a makeup kit. Inside is a palette of various shades of freezedried blood, along with a long-handled wooden brush.

"Hold still," she says.

He blinks. "I was not talking about my complexion."

"You think this is about your complexion?" she snorts. She spits on one of the compartments and mixes it vigorously together. "Hold still."

With her disgusting watercolor, she traces a rune on his forehead, then another on each cheek. Then she does the same to herself, and sings a little ululating prayer-song.

The blood dissolves, leaving nothing behind.

They look exactly the same.

...well, the watercolour itself seems to be gone and he can see a faintly glowing red rune on her face but otherwise she still looks fucked up.

"I don't think it worked."

Well they're still in an alley somewhere so what he'll do instead is look for a—yep, there it is, a piece of broken glass, thank you scuzzy alleys in Hong Kong.

"I see." Well, he's fine with just looking less fucked up. He doesn't personally mind the blood and dirt and scuffedness, it's just that in his experience tearoom staff tends to frown upon walking in looking like they did. "Let's go, then, it's around that corner."

     "The Golden Flower, you mean."

There are three men and one woman at the entrance to the alleyway. One of the men is troll-sized, without horns, and carries a heavily modified sniper rifle; another is an elf in tactical body armor that looks like BDSM gear; another is probably the skinniest dwarf either of them has ever seen, looking like nothing so much as a middle-schooler with the face of a runway model. The woman is nondescript, suspiciously so, but a keen enough observer might discern the metallic glint of her cybernetic eyes.

The troll was the one to speak up. The elf is leering at Ariel, the woman is standing perfectly still, and the dwarf is... fidgeting.

"—yo, Ehonté, what's up with the welcoming committee?"

"We aren't going to kill you," the dwarf says. "We're a protection detail. Nightjar is just, ah... dramatic."

     Nightjar (apparently) grunts. "Sue me."

"Ah huh. What do we need protection from?"

"Mister Black didn't actually say. He's a very cagey man. We were supposed to meet you at the harbor... but someone decided to get every thug on the peninsula in the same building to murder you, and it was all we could do to keep the snipers off. We've been tailing you since."

     The elf grins. He's got orthodontically sharpened teeth. "It's been a fun job so far."

"Hmm. So is this the kind of protection where you'll stand guard outside the tearoom or is it the kind where we follow you to a secret, isolated location?"

     The chromed woman speaks up. "The isolated location is if things go badly south... once it's obvious that if we wanted you dead, we could just leave."

"Yes, Plastique, thank you for your brutal honesty," Ehonté says with mild exasperation.

Jauhung shrugs. "Good enough for me," he says, then looks at Ariel to see what she's thinking.

"Nightjar, huh?" she says, after some squinting. "Same Nightjar with the hot takes about old Broadway shows in the runner forums?"

"Is our location known? To whoever wants to kill Raymond, I mean."

"We hope not. We had to physically tail you after you turned off your connection - thank you for that, by the way - and we took out the cameras in Golden Flower and three other tearooms across the district an hour before he sat down."

"Alright. Let's go, then." He wanted to shoot Zyu Hoi a message explaining that he'd be away for who knows how long and Zyu Hoi might need to find a replacement at the restaurant but he supposes that'll need to be later.

Forward. Ehonté and Nightjar take the lead; Plastique and the elf cover the rear. The siblings are sandwiched. They come up to door of the Golden Flower. The interior looks serene, through lightly tinted plate glass. There's an incense vaporizer, to lend some depth to the clouds of flowery steam inherent to a teahouse. The walls are lacquered red and gold, peeling only slightly with age.

There's a quiet thump behind them.

What now.

He turns to look.

The elf is on the ground. He's not visibly injured, but the blood is flowing from the back of his head like wine from an open bottle.

Plastique is already moving fluidly towards Nightjar. Her fingers have blossomed into knives.

Ehonté swears, grabs Jauhung and Ariel by the hands, and tries to pull them away from the melee.

Ariel isn't leaving. She flings an acid bolt at Plastique -

who takes it across the face and doesn't seem to even notice. The skin melts away, revealing steel-hard ceramics underneath as she begins fighting Nightjar in earnest. He's got two feet on her, and he's swinging around a sword that looks like it probably cost fifty thousand nuyen.

She's winning.

Ariel is no longer as committed to not leaving.

So much for that. He is more than happy to be led, he is no good in a fight against someone who doesn't suck.

Ehonté leads them down a blind alley, up a fire escape, through the hallways of an apartment complex, up to roof level, across a plank bridge, down into the basement of the building they end up on top of, and into a neighborhood maintenance/smuggling tunnel from there. He's not making them run, but he's not slowing down.

"I had a bulletproof getaway plan," he says tightly. "Unfortunately, she knew about it. Because she was on the team. So if either of you has a suggestion about where to go next, I'd love to hear it."

"D'you think they know about Wo's places? If the group finds out I brought outsiders with me they might kill me but they don't need to find out."

"...no, she'd have no reason to suspect any connection to the Wo group... and we could petition them for ongoing shelter while we figure out what to do. I like it. Any boltholes nearby?"

"Yes. ...I think. I got turned around." He brings up the offline map. "Whereabouts are we?"

"22.3011N, 114.1762E."

(He doesn't pronounce all of the numbers out loud with his mouth. He pings Jauhung with them. The actual words he says are "22-114.")

Jauhung lifts an eyebrow but, sure, he can find them. "Yeah I know a place. Let's go."

They go. Ariel looks like she is pretty done with this fucking day.

He was done with this fucking day the moment that one gate turned out to be locked, honestly.

Once they're outside, he leads them through a couple of alleys and then into an abandoned building and out the other side and into another abandoned building and downstairs into a basement that's sufficiently dusty it looks like it hasn't seen any visitors in years. There's a large painting, ripped in places and mostly faded away, leaning against the wall in a corner; Jauhung drags it to the side—it slides a lot more easily than it looks like it ought to—and places a hand on a little metal door behind it that looks looks rusted shut and resembles a dumbwaiter but there's a beep at his touch and it opens easily.

"Not good for trolls and most orks but you should fit alright," he says to Ariel, then he crawls in.

"Yeah, laugh it up, twink." Ariel clambers in after him; it's not like she's not twinky, for her reference class.

Ehonté is too, and his reference class is substantially smaller. He could fit in a regular dumbwaiter. Though he's glad not to need to.

The place is reasonably spacious, but lightly furnished, meant to hold some ten people comfortably and thirty cramped. There are a couple of terminals next to a wall, both unplugged, and a couple of sofas and a table and a little kitchenette, and that's it. You're meant to hide here, and not die of boredom if possible, but the "not die" part is the more important one.

When they emerge into it he's already turned the lights on and is making his way to the kitchenette to see if he can find something to get drunk with.

Ehonté gets there before him - those little legs can move. He picks up a bottle of plum liquor and looks it over. "Hm. Lower-proof than I'd prefer, honestly."

"Mm." Is there anything higher-proof than that? He's only been here once before. Eh, whatever, booze is booze. He grabs a different bottle than the one Ehonté did and walks over to the sofa then flops onto it. He reaches inside one of his coat's pockets and grabs his pack of cigs. If he has smokes and booze, everything will be alright, or at least a little bit less bad.

"Man, I heard dwarves drink hard but you've gotta weigh like fifteen pounds."

"What? -oh." He retrieves a hand towel and soaks it in brandy. "No, that's stupid. I'm cleaning Jauhung's injuries because otherwise he's going to let himself get a fatal blood infection."

He sets about this task.

"I'll be fine," he says, lighting his cig up and taking in a long, slow drag.

"Yes, you will, because I have field medical training." Ehonté scrubs the alcohol over a long gash in the forearm that doesn't have a cigarette.

"...did the glamor wear off already?" Ariel asks.

"No. I'm a mage. With a sideline in decking. You're a shaman, I'd guess?"

"Yes. With a sideline in ripping people's faces off." Snikt. Unsnikt.

Jauhung shudders delicately at the touch of alcohol. The pain of the wound had mostly dulled, and she sharpness of the alcohol brings it back to the forefront of his mind pleasantly. It doesn't hurt very much, it's just slightly titilating, but still, he'll take what he can get.

"How do you two know each other, anyway?" Ariel asks. "The Jauhung I knew might've ended up with runners, but this one got lobotomized or something."

Ehonté shrugs, swiping the blood-runes off Jauhung's face. "He... hasn't made himself known, exactly. But he makes interesting art, and has interesting talents, and has an interesting outlook on the world. Shadowrunners tend to make friends with interesting people."

He shrugs. "We just ran into each other at some point. I don't even remember." A drag and a puff. "I've been working for a guy in a triad. You run into people."

"You work with the triads and you said you couldn't fight?"

"He's more... what's that American thing... a Hooters girl. Eye candy, affiliated with the 'legal' side of the business. No gunplay."

"Oh my God, Jauhung in a Hooters top. It'd come down to his crotch!"

He lifts an eyebrow. "I'm thin, not short." Drag, puff, swig. "I'm not affiliated. I'm just a waiter."

"They're made to hang off, like, F-cups. You don't have to be short."

"You are sufficiently affiliated to know their boltholes," Ehonté points out. "Speaking of which: we cannot really stay here forever. How far would your Zyu Hoi stick his neck out for you, do you think?"

"Not far enough to get his head cut off. What'd Raymond get into?"

"Something big enough to involve someone placing an extremely deadly spy in my team almost a year ago, and break her cover now, for this. Big enough to initiate the debacle at Port 44. I don't know what exactly that is, but I don't think a man who's afraid of losing his head will be the anchor we need... which means we need someone who isn't. And who, despite that, can effectively protect us."

He sighs explosively. "Do you two have any candidates who fit the bill so I don't have to call mine. If one of you has an in with a pack of sewer-dwelling ghouls, now is the time to mention it."

"All my ghoulfriends are back in Seattle. Also, you got me all curious."

"I could probably find a pack of sewer-dwelling ghouls. Don't have one that'd already be willing to stick it out for me."

"Fantastic. Alright. Ugh. ...does this place have a Matrix jackpoint, if it does it's sufficiently hardened I can't see it. Which is good, if it exists."

"Yes," he says with a sigh. He takes one last swig of his bottle—empty now—and gets up to walk over to the kitchenette. He starts rapping his knuckles against the wall at about eye level from there in the direction of the sofa until he hears or feels something relevant.

He touches that part of the wall with the palm of the same hand he used to touch the fake dumbwaiter door outside. From this angle Ariel and Ehonté can see a faint blue shimmer run along the skin of his hand, and that part of the wall sinks into itself and slides away to the side to reveal a concealed jackpoint.

Ehonté inhales, then presses the tip of his finger to the point.

(It takes him a few minutes to reach a relay node he feels safe using, in a coffeeshop three miles away. From there, he leapfrogs to an office building for some furniture company, and a public library, and somebody's home network, and the coffeeshop again... eventually he's ready to call her.)

Ten seconds after he jacks in, a video call opens up, projected onto the wall from Ehonté's optical implants.

A middle-aged-to-elderly woman is on the screen. She's sitting in a nicely upholstered chair. Her wallpaper is printed with black and red lung, and hung with exquisite, slightly yellowing calligraphy.

She has a cigarette holder. A porcelain cigarette holder.

She's definitely going for a certain vibe.

"Tin," she says affectionately. "How is my favorite gutter rat? And who are your grimy friends?"

Oh. Her.

At least the recognition isn't mutual, and he'd rather it remain so. He grabs another bottle of something alcoholic, takes another drag of his cig, and walks over to the sofa to slump back onto it.

"Auntie!" Ehonté says with remarkably convincing affection. "I confess I have been better. My first grimy friend is Ariel, from Seattle, here on business. My second is Hak Jauhung."

'Auntie' straightens up at that. "Jauhung! Hoi speaks highly of you. I can see why; he always did like his boys half-dead before he even got his greasy hands on them."

Drag drag puff. "That makes sense. Maybe I should get deader, he'll love me then."

"Oh, no, he'd just feed you to the pigs. Tin, why are you hanging out with Wo whores?"

"Hey. I'm not a whore, I'm a thug."

Throat-cutting gesture.

"My mistake. Tin, why are you hanging out with a Wo whore and a thug who's going to get herself shot?"

Ariel is satisfied by this descriptor.

"Jauhung is being hunted by assassins. ...competent assassins."

"Unless I am terribly mistaken, you haven't had a bargaining chip on me in years."

"But Nightjar did."

"Very competent assassins."

"We seek refuge. And you'll want revenge for Nightjar. I think our goals align."

"Shut up."

She taps her cigarette holder repeatedly on the ashtray. It clicks loudly.

"Jauhung," she says. "Do you know who wants you dead? Or why? Or what you can do for me?"

"Someone's after Raymond. We're just collateral damage. I don't have anything going for me. Half-dead, you said." He's looking at her kind of intently, though; despite the lazy mannerisms and the way he's flopped over the sofa, his eyes are alive. "Who's Nightjar?" By which he means, who's Nightjar to you?

"My son. Technically. Your little friend's boss. Who's Raymond?"

"Father figure, I guess. Raised me and Ariel. Chinese, but raised us in the West, then I ran away and now I'm here. And I guess he was probably running away from someone. Last name's Black but I doubt that was his real name. ...original name."

"I've heard that name... I don't know where. I'll find out. I assume this has to do with whatever butchery happened at the port authority, too?"

"Hmm. Yeah. People got sent after us. My sister kicked their asses."

"Don't listen to him, he kicked like 85% as much ass as I did."

"Hm. I saw a few reports on that. A bloodbath, by all accounts. Who did you have with you?"

"Uh, nobody? That was just us."

"Hmmmmm."

Ugh, that sounds like people are thinking about being bothersome and ask things of him.

"15%," he counters. "If that." Will that make them not be bothersome? He couldn't claim zero responsibility, but his main contribution was helping them get to the exit, Ariel was the one who dealt with everyone else.

"Your lies demean us both. Tin - Ehonté. Bring them to the parlor. I think I can make space for them under my wing."

And she flickers out.

"Well. That was Gentle Wong. You'll get on like a house on fire, I'm sure."

"I dunno, I kind of actually liked her. Very... honest."

Whyyyyy is this happening.

"Do we have a way to tell whether we're still being hunted? I mean actively, upstairs."

"Yes. We're still being actively hunted, because we aren't dead yet."

"Okay so we stay holed up here forever, got it."

"It is probably time to get used to a certain background level of being hunted. In the meantime, I have some tricks that should help. Don't jack me out unless I start twitching, please."

With that, he turns back to the jackpoint and once again leaves the waking world.

Alright, sure, he'll make sure to poke Ehonté if he twitches. In the meantime he'll keep drinking whatever this is that's barely strong enough for him to feel it.

Ariel transfers herself to the loveseat next to Jauhung's sofa. "That shit looks rank. Share?"

He offers the bottle wordlessly and leans forward to crush his spent cigarette into a tray, then lights a new one.

Swig.

She swipes a cigarette, snips the filter off, and tucks it into her hair.

"So how have you been?"

"Killing people. Helping spirits. Sometimes helping people or killing spirits, for a change of pace."

She starts fidgeting with a little spark. It's an old tell, for when she has something to say and she isn't saying it.

Oh is she really going to make him ask. 

"Ariel-ze, what is it?"

"You know at some point you are actually going to have to tell me what happened. Right?"

"You remember Jake."

"...the troll or the elf – no, it's gonna be the troll. Yeah, I remember. You'd fuck him, he'd beat the shit out of you, you'd go biking, he'd call you slurs, I'd threaten to break his kneecaps, you'd fuck him some more..."

"Yeah. Him. 

"He shot me."

"And this was... unusual?"

In lieu of responding he taps his right eyeball with a finger. It makes a soft clinking noise and a soft glow can be seen from the inside for a second.

"...oh, shit. Tried to kill you."

"I don't know. Don't remember. There was something we needed to do, or something, and we needed to come here, and there was a fight—it wasn't just us, but it's... foggy. And he shot me, and someone took pity on me, I guess. I didn't learn who."

He says all of this dispassionately. The only part that elicited any emotion was the memory of Jake shooting him, but everything else is recounted neutrally.

Well, Ariel's gonna hug him about it.

...sure, that might as well happen.

"So I roamed around for a bit, and this triad guy saw a mural I painted and wanted to keep me as a pet artist. He's the one who gave me the eye.

"That's all there is to tell."

"...do you know what happened to the memories? Was it magic, tech..."

"...I think I was just shot in the head."

"Right," Ariel says, not quite snickering. "I think... there's probably magic that could get them back, then, but it'd be heavy information processing shit, mixed with pastwatching, mixed with neuroscience. I can fix up a broken bone, but I can't do any of that."

"It doesn't matter," he says with a shrug. "I never saw Jake again, so."

"I might look into it for my own peace of mind, honestly. I didn't like Jake, but... I wouldn't have called this. I didn't call this."

Jauhung understands, distantly, that Thomas would be more interested in that than he is, but... well, saying that "Thomas is dead" is directionally correct but is, itself, a much heavier way to put it than he thinks is merited. There was once a boy who lived in the US and who used the name "Thomas Black"; for various reasons, that boy is now living in Hong Kong and is called Hak Jauhung.

Nothing more than that.

Drag in, puff out.

Ariel starts fiddling with a loose bit of upholstery. "Ehonté didn't say how long he'd -"

Ehonté abruptly straightens up, opens his slightly-glowing eyes, and yanks his finger out of the socket. "All right, everyone, there have been sightings of us on seven cameras across the Hong Kong metropolitan area and three police reports of our arrest. If we're going to leave this hole, now's the time. Which is to say: move, move, move!"

...fine. Sure. He can be quick when needed. He puts his cigarette out and rushes for the door, ready to follow Ehonté.

Moving moving moving.

"If the sightings all stop when we leave -"

"I do this for a living, miss Wong. Most are backdated, and there will be thirty more in the next twelve hours."

"Cool cool cool."

"So where are we headed?"

"Heoi. More specifically, the Swift Winds mahjong parlor."

"A mahjong parlor. That's the caliber of mob front we're dealing with, here?"

"Gentle Wong feels that subtlety is not to her advantage."

Jauhung's been to Heoi. Finds his feet leading him there occasionally, actually, a bit more often than other places; he feels a sense of kinship with the floating shantytown hanging off of Hung Hom pier like a bloated corpse. He, too, is a parasite with few redeeming qualities who clings onto something (or someone) else for no reason other than that he's been doing it long enough there's no reason to stop, teetering on the edge of collapse if the wind blows the wrong way.

Plus, he can find people to fuck him up there more reliably than most other places.

In any case, he knows Swift Winds. Or knows of Swift Winds; he hasn't actually ever entered the building. He's not sure if he should be wishing he had, given the givens, but he's leaning "not". The upside is that he knows how to get there almost instinctively, knows the dirty alleyways with a perpetual smell of decay like the back of his hand. Whether that's better than Ehonté's chosen path remains to be seen.

Ehonté is confused, at first, but – the enemy knows his patterns. And Jauhung is good at this. He can fall back to watch their flank.

Aaand it seems like he's ended up leading the way for their little merry band somehow.

Nothing to it. They'll get there soon enough, and no one will notice them; they're just vagrants, after all.

Juuuuuust a trio of suspiciously well-dressed and magically charged and heavily armed vagrants, moving with purpose and grace towards their goals. Who match the description of the subjects of a manhunt.

Someone glances a little too long at them, and Ehonté lets them pass by then pulls the other two into an alley.

"This isn't going to work. Wong, can you do physical illusions or just mana?"

"I can do physical, but it's not gonna be pleasant for anybody."

"You would not believe how little I care about pleasantness. Illusions, please. You should be human, he should be an elf, I should be some kind of child but I'm not picky about what species."

"Ugh. Fine."

She draws a basic dragon line setup, plucks a mouse skull out of her hair, and starts channeling.

...maybe Jauhung should also get rid of the overcoat. Usually being an amorphous blob fits him just fine but perhaps here that description works against him. He supposes he'll have to get a single pack of smokes to keep in a trousers pocket.

Magic magic magic. Chanting, clouds of foul or perfumed smoke, swirling ghostly forms. The usual. (None of the smoke rises above five feet.) Within five minutes, the chanting comes to a head, and there's a horribly visceral sense of change. Jauhung's ears feel like they're being pulled like taffy, even though he can feel them in the same place they always have been. His spine is being stretched on a rack, even though it isn't going anywhere. His eyes are burning.

But all good things come to an end; eventually, there he stands, alongside a human girl with a passing resemblance to Ariel and a cherubic little elven boy.

"...beggars cannot be choosers, but did you have to make us blonde?"

"We're American tourists! You're my nephew."

"I will demand a Happy Meal by way of compensation. But at a later date, when we are less pursued by assassins."

"And me?" he wonders in a drawl. He assumes he must also be blond.

"You are apparently my father. Please contain your horror."

Sure, he can contain it. Look at him, containing all of the horror.

"Let's keep going."

Back to the streets. Jauhung can feel the difference, the absence of lingering looks.

"Auntie Ariel, you know that it will be suspicious for American tourists to go to Heoi?"

"If they get suspicious when we're at the pier, that's better than being suspicious at the next MTR station. Speaking of which:"

They descend into the bowels of the subway. (Physical illusions, as opposed to mana illusions, have the notable quality that they will fool cameras. Like the ones at MTR stations.)

"...you would make good runners."

"She would," Jauhung agrees. He doesn't particularly have any runner qualities, he feels, especially now that they're going to use the subway. Not that he feels particularly uncomfortable or out of place in it, he's just a lot more used to walking places.

"You always have liked to pretend not to be what you are. I sympathize, but that is going to stop being useful to you very shortly."

"...I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You act as though you are some kind of nonentity, an empty shell of someone who used to exist, with no qualities of your own. It is a transparent façade. One who does not exist would not flinch so, whenever people act like he does. And the man that you are is powerful, and talented, and, admittedly, an enormous dick, but that is no great sin for a runner. If you cling to nonexistence, if you cling to this self-image of a corpse – well, there are no shortage of men who will oblige you by making it truth. If, instead, you pretend to be alive – well, it is the only way we might remain so."

What the fuck is he on. 

"So long as they fuck me up properly before they kill me."

Eyeroll.

"Yeah, not gonna work. He kinda no-sells genuine. Anyway, this is our stop."

Takatakatakataka will they in fact manage to get to the mahjong parlour before someone picks up the fact that three bright and happy Americans should not be here?

They certainly can! People seem to be assuming they're mercenaries and thus giving them a wide berth. Whether this is a positive long-term depends on your perspective.

Swift Winds is exactly as bewilderingly Orientalist on the outside as the glimpse inside would imply. Among other things, the bouncer is a sedan-sized troll with an actual tetsubo.