9:48 P.M., February 6th
Blossoming Rose teahouse, Chinatown, Gotham The atmosphere here was all wrong.
Yes, it was Chinatown, but even here Siobhan McKenna could smell trace amounts of "America" seeping in through the cracks. Still, it was probably as authentically chinese as any location in Gotham would ever be. After spending so much time in the lands of the
Jianghu, it was admittedly difficult to reintegrate with western society—especially the
worst of western society.
Ireland, the UK, Europe in general...she’d managed well enough in her return there. America, however, seemed to just be
drowning in punchable faces. Arrogant, self-righteous pricks in desperate need of having their teeth kicked down their throat.
Ironic that the feckin’
triads were the only halfway enjoyable company she could find after coming to this country. Why so many wished to move here was a greater mystery to her than even the lost texts of Nanda Parbat. Oh well, at least there was a vibrant underworld here—which meant plenty of opportunities for fun and profit!
“I’m a thief, not a killer. I don’t do assassinations,” she said in Cantonese.
”I couldn’t care less about the Punchingyellow family, or your shitty gang war. Don’t waste my time.”“It’s not merely the Italians that are the problem,” said Jingyi, hands folded beneath his nose. “Our men were attacked last night at the My Alibi Night Club. Slaughtered, for the most part, but there were survivors who managed to narrowly escape. One man is said to have been responsible for this massacre.”
”...And?” said Siobhan, using her chopsticks to pop a piece of her peking chicken into her mouth, a bundle of rice surrounding it.
”I still don’t see how it’s my problem.”“He is a violent
maniac that has been murdering his way through the criminal underworld for weeks now!” snapped Jingyi, his hands slamming onto the table with enough force to cause their drinks to rattle. “If we’re all dead, you won’t have anyone to conduct business with. Surely you can see how our interests align on this?”
Easing back in her chair, Siobhan glanced over the quaint teahouse. Most of those eating here were regular people unaware that they were sitting next to hardened criminals. Some of them gave her odd looks—that was something she was used to. Standing at over six feet in height with a head of auburn-red hair, she generally stuck out like a bloody thumb wherever she went.
”How about this?” said Siobhan, leaning forward.
”If I happen upon him while on the job, I’ll kick his ass free of charge. I’m not gonna to waste my time searching for him, however—I’m no P.I.”“Stop being so short sighted, Xue Huoyan!” Jingyi all but shouted, once again causing the table to raddle by slamming his hands down. “This could be the end of
all of us!”
As he got off his motorcycle and looked up at the quaint little building, he almost had a hard time believing some hardass crooks operated out of here. The two story building looked like any other teahouse around here, only a little more authentic. Looked a bit nicer, cleaner. Still, appearances could be deceiving. Grabbing his helmet from the side of his bike, he slid it onto his head, before checking to see if his two pistols were loaded. Satisfied, David holstered his pistols again and walked into the front door.
And it was only after he entered the tea house that he realized he had
no idea what he was looking for. He stood around at the entrance for a moment, scanning the room over and seeing all the people drinking tea at their tables, while looking like a total asshole in his costume. A few Asian guys in nice suits dotted around the room; security guards, no doubt, and he could see a faint glint of metal under their jackets, indicative that they were all packing heat.
One of the guards glanced over at him then looked away... Only for the guard to do a double take and shout something in Chinese at the other guards, pointing in his direction. Oh, great. Couldn't even make it ten seconds in without starting a scene.
'Nice job, Dave. Best infiltration I've ever seen.''Eat shit and choke on it.'The guards all fired at David, who dove behind a nearby pillar and pulled his pistols out. They all yelled curses in Chinese, either in an attempt to intimidate him or out of pure fear. He was kinda hoping it was the latter. The customers all panicked, beginning to swarm out of the tea house. David only gave a small chuckle.
"Can't even head into a tea house without getting a gun pointed at you in this town, eh?"And with that he rolled out of cover and began to fire.
Jingyi had dived underneath the table for cover at the first sounds of gunfire, poking his head out only when he realized it was coming from down below. Drawing his pistol, he crawled to the edge of the second floor and stared down at the carnage that had engulfed the once peaceful teahouse.
Siobhan, for her part, had continued to enjoy her peking chicken while observing Jingyi’s ever growing state of panic. He apparently hadn’t considered that they might be attacked here so soon after the battle at the night club. But that was the thing about crazy people—they seldom understood how to take things
slow.
”See? And you thought we’d never run into each other,” Siobhan noted to Jingyi, who was glancing up at her in frustration as he fired down at the vigilante.
”You want ‘em alive or dead?”“Either! I don’t care! Just stop him before he reaches the stairs!” shouted Jingyi.
Popping another ball of chicken and rice into her mouth, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind across the teahouse. The triads, the fleeing customers, the staff, and the vigilante—one thing they all had in common was
chi. Though they themselves were surely unaware of it, this raw life energy flowed through each and every one of them.
But there was something a bit off with the vigilante’s chi. It felt...warped, in a sense. Twisted. It didn’t quite flow naturally as it should. It reminded her a little of the terracotta warriors—dead soldiers sealed within mystical stone that would return them to life if the locations they were guarding were disturbed. Strange that he would feel similar to
them.
“What are you doing? Hurry!” demanded Jingyi.
Ignoring him, she stood from her seat with another piece of chicken and rice held between her chopsticks and calmly walked across the second floor of the teahouse, staring down at the floor the entire time. When she at last arrived at the correct location, she gave a quick hop into the air and then slammed straight down through the floor, directly above the vigilante.
Lashing out with her leg in a blur of motion, she slammed the side of her shoe into the strange, red helmet that her new opponent was wearing before she even touched the ground.
David had just gunned down the last guard when he felt his enhanced reflexes kick in. By the time he realized he was being attacked, however, it was already too late, and he found himself taking a kick to the head that managed to send him flying a few feet back, where he landed on his ass. He recovered quickly, doing an unnecessarily complex recovery move that involved spinning into a handstand before backflipping onto his feet and throwing his arms into the air, his back to the attacker.
'DAVE. SOMEONE HIT US. I'M NOT HAPPY.'David turned around, twirling his pistols and preparing to blow away whoever decided to play hopscotch on his head... Only to stop short at what he saw. His jaw nearly dropped. A staggeringly tall redhead with curves in all the right places. All he could do at the sight of her was mutter a near silent
"holy shit" in sheer awe.
'DAVE! DAAAAAVE! LOOK AT HER! LOOK AT HER!' Truly, she was the most beautiful woman he and Hood had ever seen...
... And she was probably going to try to kick their ass.
Recovering quickly, Dave holstered his M1911 and ran a glove across the top of his helmet as though slicking his hair back. He had
no chance with this chick... But hey, ain't not harm in flirting.
"... Hey there, hot stuff! Looking to join the party?" ... And after saying that, he really had to wonder how had he picked people up in the past. Flirting was a lot harder than it looked.
Siobhan had landed softly on her feet after delivering her kick, watching in silence as the man showed off his unnecessarily theatrical acrobatics. Shoving her last piece of chicken and rice into her mouth, she was forced to abruptly swallow it when he started…
flirting with her?By slicking back his feckin’ helmet, no less.
“Yer a bit of an odd sort, aren’t ya?” she said in English, her thick Irish accent now evident.
”Guess I shouldn’t be surprised—ya go about shootin’ up mobsters in that.”She gestured to his “costume”, staring at his helmet in particular.
”’Red hood’, right? But it’s not anythin’ like a hood, now is it? She’s more like a helmet, so why not ‘Red Mask’ or somethin’ that actually makes sense?”'... Wow, okay, she goes and insults our outfit, then she makes fun of our helmet. She's starting to seem like a thot to me, Dave.' Hood was sounding especially offended by the Irish chick's remarks, though Dave was still a bit distracted with... Other things to bother getting mad over it, at least for the moment. Once he fully processed what she said, however, he quirked an eyebrow. Not that she could see it, but still.
"Well, uh... You're not from around here judging by the accent you got going on there, but basically there was another guy in Gotham about eighty years back named, you guessed it, the Red Hood. Crazy enough, he wore a helmet instead of a hood, too! Figured I'd take it up as my crimefighting nom de guerre because I'm not too original." He tapped his helmet.
"Plus, I think red's a color that spices things up. When I was a kid going around beating up crooks I wore black, and black just isn't a fun color, is it?"Shrugging, David took a few steps closer to the kung fu lady.
"Man. Really yapping your ear off on this first date, where are my manners? Please, tell me a bit about you, my fiery headkicker."Siobhan watched him step closing, smiling. She continued to eye him up and down, but it was not a gesture signalling attraction—even if he likely interpreted it as such. Rather, she was checking his armor to see if it could potentially obstruct her chi.
”I’m known ta these feckers as Xue Huoyan,” she explained, stuffing her chopsticks in her pocket. Bending one knee while extending the other out at an odd angle, she curling her fingers until they formed a claw-like shape.
”Fer those of us who only speak English, that’s Snow Flame!”Taking advantage of their close proximity, she leaped slightly into the air with a spinning kick that seemed to slice through the air more like a blade than a regular limb. Aimed at taking his head off, Siobhan assumed he would dodge this, and so immediately followed up with a blinding flurry of claw-strikes when she landed that targeted the most vulnerable areas that she had discovered on his armor.
Were they used by a normal human, these techniques might be woefully ineffective. After all, simply curling your fingers doesn’t actually make them slashing claws. And yet hers
were, slicing through the air—and potentially flesh—with ease. Such was the power of the sacred arts of the Jianghu.
As soon as this "Snow Flame" lady got into that weird stance, David knew that nothing good would come of it. He took in a deep breath, allowing his perception of time to slow and tapping into his speed. He managed to easily lean back to avoid the spinning kick aimed at his head. He knew there would be a follow up, but he wasn't fast enough to dodge the first blow; it caught his right arm, managing to break his gauntlet, tear through his jacket, and give him a nasty gash.
He ducked and rolled backwards, coming out in another backflip to create some more distance.
"Phew! Nice trick you got there, Miss Ice Fire! Say, do you do parties? I'd love to see you cut up a cake like that!" He already knew she wasn't just a normal human; in fact, she was probably stronger than he was. He twirled his pistol in his hand and set his sights on her, emptying the clip in her direction.
In truth, the goal Siobhan in her use of
Heihuquan was not to merely cut him, but to literally tear hunks of flesh from his body. The fact that he merely receives lacerations said much for his swift reflexes. Inhumanly swift, in fact.
When he rolled back out of her range, Siobhan immediately changed her own stance in response. Folding her arms behind her back, she turned to the side, minimizing herself as he unleashed a hail of bullets in her direction. Weaving precisely around the oncoming gunfire almost like a blade of grass dancing in the wind, she quickly withdrew her chopsticks from her pocket as the last volley was fired.
Allowing her chi to flow into the simple wooden eating utensils, she intercepted the last of the oncoming bullets with one of the sticks, immediately arresting its momentum before giving it a quick
smack with the other chopstick, sending it flying back at the Red Hood.
When Dave finished emptying the clip, with Snow Flame easily weaving through the barrage of bullets, he figured that was that and they'd go at it with pure fisticuffs. Dave wasn't quite expecting what came next. She
caught the bullet with chopsticks. He only had a second to react, leaning out of the way of the bullet... But not quite enough. The bullet managed to chip off a chunk of his helmet and graze his forehead, a stray lock of brown hair peeking out of the hole.
On the inside he was screaming from how much it hurt.
On the outside, he kept up his same goofy facade.
"Oooh, didn't quite hit the mark there, did ya? Marksmanship not quite your thing?" He didn't bother waiting for another attack, instead running forward and grabbing an assortment of cups and plates from a nearby table. He flung them with all his strength at Snow Flame, hoping to hit her and at least make her stumble a bit. With his luck, she was made of iron and would no sell it. Or, you know, just outmaneuver them, like she did last time.
”Funny,” she said against the backdrop of a teahouse that had just been riddled with dozens of missed shots.
”I was just about ta say the same of you.”When Red Hood charged forward and began to throw various cups and plates in her direction, she immediately leaped into the air towards them. Touching the first plate with her foot, she set her next onto the teacup just ahead of it, effectively running on the still airborne dishware towards her opponent. Placing both of her feet on the last of the thrown plates only long enough to leap off of it, she descended upon the vigilante with the grace of a leopard.
Shifting to Jiao Li the moment she managed to get her hands on him, threw him towards the nearest wall with bone-crunching force...at least, it would’ve been against a normal human. This man seemed…
enhanced.
She was definitely intrigued.
"OhshitohshitohshitohshitohshIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"*KRAAAAK!*David burst through the wooden wall and into an alley between the tea house and a cheap massage parlor. He laid on the ground for a moment, groaning in pain, before leaping up onto his feet and cracking his back.
"... How the hell did I not break every bone in my body?" This was new. He hadn't exactly
tried it before, but he expected to at least break a limb or two tumbling through that wall. Aside from it hurting like a son of a bitch, he felt... Surprisingly fine!
"Phew! Hey, thanks for that, had a kink in my back that wouldn't get out!" David called back to Snow Flame as he walked back into the tea house through the decimated wall. On the inside, he spoke to Hood.
'Hey, uh, my psychopathic friend? How the hell did our bones not get turned into tissue paper?''Beats the hell outta me, dude.'Siobhan smiled brightly when he stepped back through the wall mostly unscathed, giving her a genuine round of applause.
”Ya really are made of tougher stuff than the average bloke, aren’t ya? ‘Should consider visitin’ Shambala, learn some real martial arts skill!”Rolling her neck from side to side for a moment, she relaxed her stance and pointed up above her.
”The boss of those triads is up there—or he was when I came crashin’ down. Probably ran by now.”“I don’t actually give a rat’s arse about protectin’ that scum, I just wanted ta see what ya were made of, bein’ the big scary vigilante that’s had ‘em all scared ta shite.”David grinned beneath the helmet, both at the praise Snow Flame was giving him and the fact that he apparently had the criminal underworld pissing their pants.
"Aw, they're really saying all that about me? Warms my little heart." David leaned against the railing to the stairs, looking up them.
"Well, it was nice getting to know ya Miss Snow Flame. Say, before I go and 'rain justice on the wicked' and 'send them back to Satan' and all that cool, broody bullshit, you mind giving me your number?"'Don't do it, Dave. She's a thot. I already know she is.''Shhh.'Siobhan glanced behind her, then sensed above her. All of the triads were either dead by this point, or had fled. The staff and customers had likewise evacuated the teahouse soon after the shooting had began. Returning her focus to the Red Hood, she shrugged her shoulders.
”Sure, sure, why the feck not? I run a bar a ways from here. 46th street, just outside Chinatown, can’t miss it. Me name’s Siobhan, by the way—me actual name.”Turning away from him, she began calmly stepping through the myriad clutter—broken tables, shattered dishes, dead bodies—towards the door. Maybe she was a little too harsh on this place; it had some pretty interesting residents.
Holy shit, that actually worked! ... Kinda.
"I'll uh, be sure to swing by sometime then! You'll probably recognize me from the bullet graze on my forehead." Turning around, David began to climb the stairs, grinning to himself. He took a look around, seeing, well, nothing. There definitely wouldn't be any clues as to where the Triad leader went amidst the ruins of the tea house, either. Damn.
'Hey Dave, if you let me do my thing, I could find this guy in no time.''... Fuck it, go for it.''WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'
"HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"Several hours later...
When David came to, the first thing he realized was that he was near ass naked, wearing nothing but his boxers and his helmet in a warehouse. He poked his head up to look around, spying the dead bodies, discarded weapons, and loads of shell casings. All he could do was sigh and lay his head back down...
"God fucking dammit, Hood." 
