Post by Jet Somers on Jun 5, 2010 7:37:14 GMT -5
Monday morning again. It's been a long night for Melanie. A long, lucrative night. Kyung-min doesn't register the shiner on her left eye when she enters his office. It's not unusual for his 'merchandise' to be mishandled by his clients. As long as nothing is broken or needs replacing, it doesn't warrant his notice. She unzips her gaudy zebra striped bag to remove his cut, and that's when she notices he hasn't even looked in her direction. His eyes are fixed on the plasma television set rising out of the opposite side of his enormous desk.
Three faces, candid shots and posed of United States Marines, are shown on the screen. They had been missing for over a week, their last known wherabouts had been Hiroshima, where they had been known to often take leave.
Kyung-min's chin was perched on the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. Melanie raises an impatient eyebrow, then glances at the screen. Instantly, the sensation of ice cold water rushes down her back.
She has to force her hand to stop it's involuntary rise to her battered eye socket. The night had ended with the deaths of three marines and one impossibly drunk citizen. She knew the look on Kyung-min's face. His posture, the way he was holding his chin. This was how he did his mental calculations. Her own mental process worked with the rough but persistant speed of a steam engine barrelling out of control. The soldiers had been known to take leave in Hiroshima before. They had been some of her boss's regular clients! Right now he was calculating the loss, and even though there was no way he could have connected their disappearances with his best and favorite street walker, she realized she had made a serious mistake. If she continued working her plan here, her greed for repaying the man who had landed her back in this hell was going to do her in.
----------
"You'd think I'd have learned about getting blindsided," Jet shook his head as Gian chuckled.
"Rome wasn't built in a night," Gian suggested, "Fucking Italians."
They were sharing a steak dinner... well, Gian was enjoying a nice meaty New York Strip, medium rare with a loaded potato. Jet was chomping a spring mix salad dashed with vinegar with all the relish of starving hare. Going against his natural aversion to red meat, Jet had paid for and offered to cook the steak if Gian wanted to pay him a visit at the apartment he had once shared with Jezebel and Sherry.
Jet wouldn't admit that the reason he had spent so much time training lately wasn't because he really felt he needed to load his arsenal to be a success in UGWC. Time had proven that Jet had what it took to adapt and survive in any competitive martial environment. Sure, he was getting better at what he did, and any style of opponent they threw at him was becoming easier and easier to prepare for.
But the real reason, the one he couldn't bring himself to put light to, was that when he wasn't training at the Cave, or dancing with Jenny, or collecting wins at the arena, he had to return to this empty apartment. Returning to these empty rooms meant remembering what his mistakes had cost him. Coming home meant being reminded of the stupid game he had willing played with The Covenant. A little company, even someone as foul mouthed and bigoted as Gian, was a welcome distraction from the voices in the walls.
"So what's your take? I know you're dying to size Deimos up," Gian grinned expectantly.
"It's not rocket science," Jet shrugs. "Someone figured out exactly what I was talking about last week. Think of this; UGWC kicked off with an amazing main event. Phrixus Deimos and I took one another to task, and the show we put on was a perfect portrait of the kind of experience UGWC wanted to bring to it's fans every week. Instantly we represented the new conquering the old, the decorated veteran meeting the hotshot new up and coming talent. It was an epic played out in less than fifteen minutes.You could say history was made that night, and no one would deny you."
"But last week, I mentioned that I felt like I'd helped birthed this promotion by headlining it's inaugural shows. Then, by the end of it's first pay per view event, I'd been demoted to the lowest tier of the championship competition. Deimos sees that," Jet points at Gian with his fork, "and he's realized that since those early stages of main eventing with me, he hasn't been able to accomplish the goals he had set down as his reason for being a willing part of the new company. To put it plain and simple, Deimos has been on a nearly constant failing streak since he got here. He's angsty, and bitter, blogging about his opponents to hide his uncertainty. Whatever tricks, whatever brooding facade he put on that made competitors apprehensive about facing him, it isn't working here. He has no power if we're not afraid of him."
"I set into motion a sequence of events that has put Deimos on a slow, torturous path into obscurity," Jet munches on a piece of lettuce slowly, tapping the handle end of the fork against his chin, "and although we've both unwittingly lost out on that show closing, fans-stay-for-us role, he looks down at his waist, and he realizes he has nothing to show for it. I do. And now, Deimos has started to feel something new. Something alien. Something eating at him like an undiscovered disease. And he hates it. Hates it so much he has to lash out because of it. He lashed out at me because my shining record, my edicts, my very presence represents that thing growing in the pit of his stomach, and the only way he can think to combat it is to try to take my glory and crush it. Only then, when he thinks my misery will share his company, will he be able to be at peace with that inner demon. And you know what that thing is?"
Gian knows, but he waits for Jet to say it.
"Fear," Jet confirms. "Phrixus Deimos feels fear."
----------
She stands on the corner in front of the blazing neon record shop for fifteen full minutes before she makes her move. She has to be sure no one notices her casually strolling into the alley across the street between the noodle house and the rug emporium.
When the crosswalk signal changes, she puts her head down and walks steadily across the painted lines. When she reaches the sidewalk on the opposite side, she makes a show of glancing into the rug emporium before ducking into the doorway of the noodle house. Once inside, she intentionally browses the picture menu before ordering pork mai fun. Stepping back out with the box, she nonchalantly steps to the corner again, digging in with disposable chopsticks.
It's delicious, but Melanie grimaces as if she just tasted sweaty ass. She takes out a napkin and sops the nonexistant grease from her fingers--no way she'd wipe them on the expensive blouse she's wearing. She looks as little like a local whore of the wrong skin color as she can, looking instead like a slightly lost and very hungry tourist. Glancing back into the white box, she sighs, making sure anyone who might see her only registers a lady disatisfied with her impulse purchase. She shrugs, then begins glancing around. She purposely trains her eyes not to fall on the trash can twenty yards behind her. She glances into the alleyway, then steps into the shadows.
Rolling her eyes at the wasted cash and pretense, she tosses the box of noodles into a heap of rubbish, then chances one last glance over her shoulder before walking right up to the side wall of the rug emporium. She counts up from the floor of the alley, and upon reaching the fifteenth brick, she seizes it with her nails. It takes her five minutes, but she finally works the brick loose, and reaches into the cavity it has left. From the hole she extracts a silk purse.
Silently Melanie counts. It isn't enough. Not even close. Her thus far clung-to ideas of hopping a commercial flight back to Los Angeles once a certain sum had been reached blow away in the wind of emergency, and she perches her chin between her thumb and forefinger, exactly like Kyung-min, doing the calculations. By train and bus, she can make it all the way across the Asian continent. It's going to take days, possibly even a week, but in Eastern Europe she can take up the cause again, catering to a whole new breed of clientele. Thailand wasn't far enough to escape Kyung-min's clutches, but maybe a new continent would put her out of his reach.
Making up her mind, she slips the purse into her gaudy bag and marches out of the alley.
Three faces, candid shots and posed of United States Marines, are shown on the screen. They had been missing for over a week, their last known wherabouts had been Hiroshima, where they had been known to often take leave.
Kyung-min's chin was perched on the forefinger and thumb of his left hand. Melanie raises an impatient eyebrow, then glances at the screen. Instantly, the sensation of ice cold water rushes down her back.
She has to force her hand to stop it's involuntary rise to her battered eye socket. The night had ended with the deaths of three marines and one impossibly drunk citizen. She knew the look on Kyung-min's face. His posture, the way he was holding his chin. This was how he did his mental calculations. Her own mental process worked with the rough but persistant speed of a steam engine barrelling out of control. The soldiers had been known to take leave in Hiroshima before. They had been some of her boss's regular clients! Right now he was calculating the loss, and even though there was no way he could have connected their disappearances with his best and favorite street walker, she realized she had made a serious mistake. If she continued working her plan here, her greed for repaying the man who had landed her back in this hell was going to do her in.
----------
"You'd think I'd have learned about getting blindsided," Jet shook his head as Gian chuckled.
"Rome wasn't built in a night," Gian suggested, "Fucking Italians."
They were sharing a steak dinner... well, Gian was enjoying a nice meaty New York Strip, medium rare with a loaded potato. Jet was chomping a spring mix salad dashed with vinegar with all the relish of starving hare. Going against his natural aversion to red meat, Jet had paid for and offered to cook the steak if Gian wanted to pay him a visit at the apartment he had once shared with Jezebel and Sherry.
Jet wouldn't admit that the reason he had spent so much time training lately wasn't because he really felt he needed to load his arsenal to be a success in UGWC. Time had proven that Jet had what it took to adapt and survive in any competitive martial environment. Sure, he was getting better at what he did, and any style of opponent they threw at him was becoming easier and easier to prepare for.
But the real reason, the one he couldn't bring himself to put light to, was that when he wasn't training at the Cave, or dancing with Jenny, or collecting wins at the arena, he had to return to this empty apartment. Returning to these empty rooms meant remembering what his mistakes had cost him. Coming home meant being reminded of the stupid game he had willing played with The Covenant. A little company, even someone as foul mouthed and bigoted as Gian, was a welcome distraction from the voices in the walls.
"So what's your take? I know you're dying to size Deimos up," Gian grinned expectantly.
"It's not rocket science," Jet shrugs. "Someone figured out exactly what I was talking about last week. Think of this; UGWC kicked off with an amazing main event. Phrixus Deimos and I took one another to task, and the show we put on was a perfect portrait of the kind of experience UGWC wanted to bring to it's fans every week. Instantly we represented the new conquering the old, the decorated veteran meeting the hotshot new up and coming talent. It was an epic played out in less than fifteen minutes.You could say history was made that night, and no one would deny you."
"But last week, I mentioned that I felt like I'd helped birthed this promotion by headlining it's inaugural shows. Then, by the end of it's first pay per view event, I'd been demoted to the lowest tier of the championship competition. Deimos sees that," Jet points at Gian with his fork, "and he's realized that since those early stages of main eventing with me, he hasn't been able to accomplish the goals he had set down as his reason for being a willing part of the new company. To put it plain and simple, Deimos has been on a nearly constant failing streak since he got here. He's angsty, and bitter, blogging about his opponents to hide his uncertainty. Whatever tricks, whatever brooding facade he put on that made competitors apprehensive about facing him, it isn't working here. He has no power if we're not afraid of him."
"I set into motion a sequence of events that has put Deimos on a slow, torturous path into obscurity," Jet munches on a piece of lettuce slowly, tapping the handle end of the fork against his chin, "and although we've both unwittingly lost out on that show closing, fans-stay-for-us role, he looks down at his waist, and he realizes he has nothing to show for it. I do. And now, Deimos has started to feel something new. Something alien. Something eating at him like an undiscovered disease. And he hates it. Hates it so much he has to lash out because of it. He lashed out at me because my shining record, my edicts, my very presence represents that thing growing in the pit of his stomach, and the only way he can think to combat it is to try to take my glory and crush it. Only then, when he thinks my misery will share his company, will he be able to be at peace with that inner demon. And you know what that thing is?"
Gian knows, but he waits for Jet to say it.
"Fear," Jet confirms. "Phrixus Deimos feels fear."
----------
She stands on the corner in front of the blazing neon record shop for fifteen full minutes before she makes her move. She has to be sure no one notices her casually strolling into the alley across the street between the noodle house and the rug emporium.
When the crosswalk signal changes, she puts her head down and walks steadily across the painted lines. When she reaches the sidewalk on the opposite side, she makes a show of glancing into the rug emporium before ducking into the doorway of the noodle house. Once inside, she intentionally browses the picture menu before ordering pork mai fun. Stepping back out with the box, she nonchalantly steps to the corner again, digging in with disposable chopsticks.
It's delicious, but Melanie grimaces as if she just tasted sweaty ass. She takes out a napkin and sops the nonexistant grease from her fingers--no way she'd wipe them on the expensive blouse she's wearing. She looks as little like a local whore of the wrong skin color as she can, looking instead like a slightly lost and very hungry tourist. Glancing back into the white box, she sighs, making sure anyone who might see her only registers a lady disatisfied with her impulse purchase. She shrugs, then begins glancing around. She purposely trains her eyes not to fall on the trash can twenty yards behind her. She glances into the alleyway, then steps into the shadows.
Rolling her eyes at the wasted cash and pretense, she tosses the box of noodles into a heap of rubbish, then chances one last glance over her shoulder before walking right up to the side wall of the rug emporium. She counts up from the floor of the alley, and upon reaching the fifteenth brick, she seizes it with her nails. It takes her five minutes, but she finally works the brick loose, and reaches into the cavity it has left. From the hole she extracts a silk purse.
Silently Melanie counts. It isn't enough. Not even close. Her thus far clung-to ideas of hopping a commercial flight back to Los Angeles once a certain sum had been reached blow away in the wind of emergency, and she perches her chin between her thumb and forefinger, exactly like Kyung-min, doing the calculations. By train and bus, she can make it all the way across the Asian continent. It's going to take days, possibly even a week, but in Eastern Europe she can take up the cause again, catering to a whole new breed of clientele. Thailand wasn't far enough to escape Kyung-min's clutches, but maybe a new continent would put her out of his reach.
Making up her mind, she slips the purse into her gaudy bag and marches out of the alley.
