Hei (Li Shenshung) (
mortemscintilla) wrote in
fuse_box2014-08-12 06:10 pm
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Entry tags:
The good that I want, I do not do
WHO: Korra, Bolin & Hei
WHAT: Wherein Bolin gets into a pickle, and Korra learns the exact nature of Hei's 'work.'
[ Walking on his way to work -- his real work, not his factory-shift -- Hei buys a warm steamed-bun from a street vendor, enjoying the salty grease and hot dough. The sky is darkening, a filigree of dirty purple on the horizon. The lilac-gray cloudbanks remind him of a recurring dream in which skulls rain down from the sky like hailstones, millions of gleaming skulls covering him in a clattering drift of smooth bone and teeth. What's most puzzling is that the dream never disturbs him, as he imagines it would most people. At nights, sometimes, he closes his eyes wondering, with a sort of wistful curiosity, if it will come to him as he sleeps. ]
[ Crossing a warren of sooty alleyways, he feels the weight from the blades strapped under his clothes: an old Spyderco Clipit nestled in his front right pocket and his favored La Griffe with its two-inch spear point blade around his neck inside the shirt. The cold pommel nuzzles at him like an old lover. It's nothing to be proud of. Any fool can carry a knife. But it's a bigger fool who goes unarmed to jobs like his. ]
[ Funny, how he'd come to Republic City hoping for honest work. But when the purse runs empty, dishonest work has to do. That said, he can't say he's ever seen a place with a less honest look about it than this one. A deserted building. Heavy door and dirty bare windows. A dead juniper bonsai rests at the entrance. The sign reads: Moon-Queen. It's one of the newest Republic City phenomenon: the opposite of a tanning salon. Some young wife-to-be suffering from acne spots or sunburn? No problem. Fifteen minutes on a special bed, bombarded with whorls of therapeutic water-bending, and she's a dead-ringer for the Corpse Bride. The store is a front: drugs, guns, and stolen merchandise are hustled out the back. Half the beds aren't even plugged in. The others are actually tanning chambers. ]
[ One of Hei's contacts sits behind the reception desk. A posterboy for a bleaching salon: fat and fortyish, pale and hairless as a skinned lychee. He's a middle-tier triad guy, a pavement-pounder. He tracks high-ranking gangbangers, cons, cobblers, thieves and anyone too dangerous who winds up on the gang's blacklist -- an unhealthy list to be on. When Hei steps in, he nods, jerking his chin toward the back door. While Hei heads down the hallway, the man slouches to the door and, to the utter dismay of all albinism-worshipping females in the area, turns the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. ]
[ The parlor room walls, ceiling, and floor are draped in transparent plastic. One tanning bed rests at the corner, white with the dimensions of a coffin. Beside it, shackled to a chair and gagged tight, is Hei's target for the night. A rich kid: male, early twenties, working on some patchy facial hair that blooms in dark thatches at his chin and cheek. Hei's seen him in the line-up at clubs, wolf-whistling at girls from his fancy satomobile and slumming it up in seedy brothels. Not him exactly, but he looks like a thousand other guys in this city -- a type. ]
[ Not that it matters. All he is, to Hei, is a conduit for information on Bolin's whereabouts. And it's Hei's job to extract it -- a task which he's already proven, among all the triads whom he freelances for, to be chillingly proficient at. Not a very glamorous job, sure. But at least the pay is good. ]
[ Slowly, he slips out of his coat. Rich Boy watches him, his eyes a cloudy brown. His face is a mask of defiance but around the edges, like a corona of light silhouetting a solar eclipse, he sees fear. Good. Hopefully the extraction won't drag on tediously. He's hoping to leave early. Retrieve Bolin, get some groceries, head home, maybe surprise Korra with her favorite lychee-flavored mooncake when she gets back. A dully-domestic train of thought. But hey. The Black Reaper doesn't have to be a monster during his off-hours, too. ]
WHAT: Wherein Bolin gets into a pickle, and Korra learns the exact nature of Hei's 'work.'
[ Walking on his way to work -- his real work, not his factory-shift -- Hei buys a warm steamed-bun from a street vendor, enjoying the salty grease and hot dough. The sky is darkening, a filigree of dirty purple on the horizon. The lilac-gray cloudbanks remind him of a recurring dream in which skulls rain down from the sky like hailstones, millions of gleaming skulls covering him in a clattering drift of smooth bone and teeth. What's most puzzling is that the dream never disturbs him, as he imagines it would most people. At nights, sometimes, he closes his eyes wondering, with a sort of wistful curiosity, if it will come to him as he sleeps. ]
[ Crossing a warren of sooty alleyways, he feels the weight from the blades strapped under his clothes: an old Spyderco Clipit nestled in his front right pocket and his favored La Griffe with its two-inch spear point blade around his neck inside the shirt. The cold pommel nuzzles at him like an old lover. It's nothing to be proud of. Any fool can carry a knife. But it's a bigger fool who goes unarmed to jobs like his. ]
[ Funny, how he'd come to Republic City hoping for honest work. But when the purse runs empty, dishonest work has to do. That said, he can't say he's ever seen a place with a less honest look about it than this one. A deserted building. Heavy door and dirty bare windows. A dead juniper bonsai rests at the entrance. The sign reads: Moon-Queen. It's one of the newest Republic City phenomenon: the opposite of a tanning salon. Some young wife-to-be suffering from acne spots or sunburn? No problem. Fifteen minutes on a special bed, bombarded with whorls of therapeutic water-bending, and she's a dead-ringer for the Corpse Bride. The store is a front: drugs, guns, and stolen merchandise are hustled out the back. Half the beds aren't even plugged in. The others are actually tanning chambers. ]
[ One of Hei's contacts sits behind the reception desk. A posterboy for a bleaching salon: fat and fortyish, pale and hairless as a skinned lychee. He's a middle-tier triad guy, a pavement-pounder. He tracks high-ranking gangbangers, cons, cobblers, thieves and anyone too dangerous who winds up on the gang's blacklist -- an unhealthy list to be on. When Hei steps in, he nods, jerking his chin toward the back door. While Hei heads down the hallway, the man slouches to the door and, to the utter dismay of all albinism-worshipping females in the area, turns the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. ]
[ The parlor room walls, ceiling, and floor are draped in transparent plastic. One tanning bed rests at the corner, white with the dimensions of a coffin. Beside it, shackled to a chair and gagged tight, is Hei's target for the night. A rich kid: male, early twenties, working on some patchy facial hair that blooms in dark thatches at his chin and cheek. Hei's seen him in the line-up at clubs, wolf-whistling at girls from his fancy satomobile and slumming it up in seedy brothels. Not him exactly, but he looks like a thousand other guys in this city -- a type. ]
[ Not that it matters. All he is, to Hei, is a conduit for information on Bolin's whereabouts. And it's Hei's job to extract it -- a task which he's already proven, among all the triads whom he freelances for, to be chillingly proficient at. Not a very glamorous job, sure. But at least the pay is good. ]
[ Slowly, he slips out of his coat. Rich Boy watches him, his eyes a cloudy brown. His face is a mask of defiance but around the edges, like a corona of light silhouetting a solar eclipse, he sees fear. Good. Hopefully the extraction won't drag on tediously. He's hoping to leave early. Retrieve Bolin, get some groceries, head home, maybe surprise Korra with her favorite lychee-flavored mooncake when she gets back. A dully-domestic train of thought. But hey. The Black Reaper doesn't have to be a monster during his off-hours, too. ]
no subject
[ While she stomps and shrieks -- (from avenging valkyrie to tantrum-prone teenager in 0.6 seconds) -- he carefully daubs his face with a handkerchief. His thought tick over, gaze fixed on the woman's tight, stoic face. He doubts she'll crack easy. But with time, she will. Because they all do. She's probably been scrapping since childhood, punched and kicked, sliced a few times. Maybe her father used her as a punching bag and she's thinking I know pain, tasted it, not afraid to taste it again. But she doesn't know pain. None of them do; not really. Hei teaches them. ]
[ But not with Korra in the room. ]
[ Rising, he regards the woman a moment more: all calculation and under-the-surface anger. Then, to Korra: ]
The kid already told me where he is. The storage area behind the rally building. [ There's a beat, as he glances around the room. Battered walls. Sprawled bodies -- some motionless, others twitching. The flayed red thing on the tanning bed. For a moment he wonders what might happen if he were to take this new, stripped-down target -- this air-bending female -- and place her in another tanning bed. Would she crack easier than the Rich Kid did? Would she give birth to yet another, smaller, more agonized, less human version of herself? How many layers would she possess? He thinks of a Russian doll, one inside another, smaller and smaller, until you reach the true center. And he's tempted, on a remote level, but a nagging sense of caution prevents him from peeling this woman down to her very core. ]
[ Now isn't the time or the place. He'll need to drag her somewhere completely sealed. Question her in detail. In the meanwhile: ]
I'll come with you.
[ After a quick detour to drop this air-bender off at one of his makeshift torture-cells in the city. ]
no subject
How did you know Bolin was missing?
no subject
[ Maybe it's time to revise that policy. ]
[ Composing himself carefully, he tries to find words for his turbulent thoughts. ]
I'm in the information business. For the triads. [ Information extraction, to put a fine point to it. Because knowledge is one currency that never goes out of style. ] I heard rumors that a gang down south had jumped some mover-star. Bolin had told me he'd be in that neighborhood. It wasn't hard to put two and two together.
no subject
What was he doing there? [Was that what Hei and Bolin had been talking about? Did Hei get Bolin caught up in gang business, after everything he and Mako had done to get out?]
no subject
[ His expression remains blank as a test-pattern. But at his sides, his hands clench an unclench -- a subtle sign of escalating tension. ]
[ In a measured tone, he says, ]
He was convinced Amon was still alive. He wanted to hunt for leads. I knew for a fact he was on a wild goosechase. So I didn't try to stop him. [ A beat, before he rolls his shoulders in the equivalent of a shrug. ] Except he got caught in a turf-war between two gangs. That's how I heard the news.
no subject
Why didn’t you?! [Letting Bolin go on a wild goose chase into Triad territory... dorky, innocent, sweet Bolin. She could scream. She could punch him. He should have known better! Bolin should have known better! As if things aren't crazy enough without the people she loves getting themselves into shitty situations.]
Forget it. [She whirls around. She needs to get to the rally building and save Bolin.]
no subject
[ (Of course, if everyone did what's best for them, Hei's occupation would become redundant. It is his dismal experience that people rarely act in their own best interests.) ]
[ Case in point: This. ]
[ Scooping up the half-dazed air-bender, Hei slings her over his shoulder. No sense leaving her here, where someone might be sent to retrieve her. At a fast clip, he takes off after Korra. She's just been attacked by a mysterious group of benders. He isn't comfortable with the idea of her wandering around alone. ]
[ Drawing abreast of her, he says, ]
Why not let me handle it?
[ She should be getting in touch with Beifong. Telling her about the hitmen who attacked her. Not wasting her time -- and risking her life -- on a scavenger hunt for one idiotic boy. ]
no subject
Like you took care of that kid inside? [Her voice is biting.] I don't like the way you handle things. Come on, Naga.
[The polar bear dog takes off.]
no subject
[ Exasperated, Hei watches Naga bound off. The hot lash of her voice, her zinging blue glare, stays branded in his mind's eye. Reading his ruthlessness and the moral bankruptcy it represents: judging him as a human and finding him wanting. And she is in the right. That is the bitch of it. Even after years of associating with him, her moral certainty seems more certain than ever, while his ... Well, he'd had it once. He'd also had the warm net of a family to protect him, a canopy of real stars to light his way, a sister to love him. Life stole and lost the things you'd thought safely pocketed. Or else death did. ]
[ It's that, more than anything, that feeds a gallop of adrenaline into Hei's system. Doesn't matter if she doesn't approve of his methods. They get results. And if she wants Bolin back alive, that's all that matters. ]
[ With that in mind, he's ready to drop the airbender off at a safe-point -- drugged and bound -- and tail Korra until he's sure she and her stupid friend are safe home. ]