If there ever was a contest trying to find the most deceitful name of an establishment, Kian’s teahouse would surely be among the top finalists, for it was no teahouse and it didn’t belong to Kian for nearly two decades. Still, locals had kind memories of this place and the new owner didn’t want to scare the permanent guests by changing name of such a well-known establishment.
Also, the name Honest Fang’s taphouse wouldn’t have such ring to it and so was mister Honest Feng forever cursed to serve orders of the worst possible clientele in a bar that bore name of someone he barely knew. But hey, there were people with worse problems than he did. For example this one, Feng said to himself as he checked out the exotic newcomer that just passed the threshold. She definitely had troubles of her own.

It wasn’t the first time he had seen her for she was one the more regular customers, stopping by for drink or two every week or two. Honest Feng liked her more than most of the costumers, not that it meant much. She didn’t cause any troubles apart from a few disastrous singing attempts under influence and usually just stuck to her bottle and spent the night in the silent joy of drunkard.
She was also more pleasant to watch than most of his costumers. Not that he watched her all that often. Honest Feng wasn’t that kind of a man. He was honest.

The woman looked more troubled than usually and usually she didn’t look troubled at all. Her moves very little bit too twitchy and black bags under her eyes looked like sign of something else than usual overworking. Something haunted her and whatever could haunt woman like that had to be way worse than whatever issues Honest Feng could have.

She sat in front of the bar, like always, and ordered a double shot of baijiu. Twice. That was unusual. She needed that drink. Last few days were confusing, unnerving and rather unpleasant. She shouldn’t have taken that job. It stunk from the first minute and she was dumb to take. But no, she just had to stick her nose to something big and now she was going to pay for it in a big way.

„Fuck this,“ she cursed aloud, not giving a thing about her company and sighed, not even noticing that bartender brought her the drinks already. „Something amiss? „he asked her.
The woman turned his head to him, despair in her eyes. „Everything is...“ Her voice was, though distorted by the thick accent, obviously tired. She take took the shot of the crystal clear liquid and kicked it inside her throat with almost mechanical movement, then slammed the glass on the hard wood of the bar.

„Never take jobs offered by pretty orc ladies. You know what? Just run whenever you see a pretty orc. It’s safer that way.“
Her response amused Fend and peaked his curiosity. „I guess. What happened?“
„Aren’t you little bit nosey? “the woman snapped at him. Then she changed her mind. Who else could she trust if not a man who had the honesty literally in his name? Besides, what was the harm of sharing a little?
„This orc wanted me to find out a few things for her. Wasn’t exactly mind kind of job but the payment and girl were sweet, so I decided to go with it. Little did I know how fucked will it become. Some shit, I found out...“she stopped for a while, recalling things she’d rather forget, and kicked in the second shot.
„Long story short, the girl is dead and I think that somebody has been tailing me. One of my hideouts was already trashed and it didn’t look like your usual burglary. But I might be lucky and just a paranoid strak. What do you think? Is there someone behind me?“ she was joking, but there was something like spark of hope in her words, like if she honestly expected that Feng will tell her there really was somebody watching her. Honest Feng, not wanting to disappoint, actually tried to find something.

It was difficult to accept that Saint was truly dead. She’d been by Soora’s side for almost as long as she could remember. Before either of them had been known as Saint or Piranha, the orc had been her friend and to many others they had seemed inseparable. They had fought and argued quite often, but their band of loyalty had remained strong through the years. Yet Saint had gone off on her own without any explanation, and now she was dead. Saint’s body had been horribly maimed and on display when they’d found it. Soora really didn’t want to think about it. It had been bad enough that she’d seen her best friend that way once. She’d been the one they’d asked to identify the victim, because the body had been in such a sorry state.

The only clue anyone had to Saint’s murder was this female human Soora had been following the last days. Piranha had gotten one of her decker friends to go through Saints messages, and while most of the messages had been deleted there had still been enough for the decker to find who Saint had been communicating with. It left her with no idea why Saint had talked with an unknown human, but plenty of suspicion as to whom the murderer was.

Piranha wanted to put a bullet in the human’s skull and be done with it, count it as her revenge. Her boss Heung Lei had told her not to do it, and when a boss within the triads told you to do something it was often in your best interest to listen. Sure, Piranha hadn’t always followed her boss’ instructions to the letter, but this time he had a valid point. They didn’t know for certain yet whether this human had murdered Saint or not. She found a temporary solace in imagining what they’d do to her once they did prove it though. Saint had died quickly they told her, but Piranha would ensure her killer did not.

Thankfully she wasn’t the only one looking for the murderer, and there was more than one victim. Someone had to find something at some point. Meanwhile Soora followed the human around like a stalker, trying to catch her in the act. When that didn’t seem to yield any result, she trashed one of her hideouts to scare her. It hadn’t given her much satisfaction either.

She’d followed her to some place called Kian’s Teahouse. Piranha hadn’t been to the Teahouse in question before, but she knew the city rather well. She wasn’t sure how to proceed with her problem regarding the human anymore, but kept following her anyway. After considering her options for a moment, she went inside the teahouse. Sooner or later she’d have to confront her, to ask about Saint or blow her brains out, but for now she took a secluded table that had a view of where the human had seated herself. She wasn’t worried about losing her as one drone guarded the entrance, and another guarded the back door. They were hidden well enough that no one should notice them unless they were actively searching for something.

Piranha couldn’t hear the conversation that the bartender and the human were having very well, but from what she could tell the woman was upset. Good, she’d been disappointed if the human hadn’t showed any signs that what she was doing was getting to her. Piranha fished her PDA out of her pocket, and checked her messages. Maybe someone else had found something already. Several of her messages were job offers for her as a shadowrunner, but nothing new about the murders unfortunately.