AN: normal text is English while italics is foreign language

8

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8

A day for oddities

Not that Chang having work for her was unusual nor the job itself; protection was, after all, merely flip side of what she was most often called upon to do. Still for The Heavenly King to ask this of her, it was humiliating.

It was a mark of how important this was to her that she resorted to Chinese.

"Have I done something wrong Boss?" Shenhua begged in their native tongue.

"Have you done something? Why would you think I'm punishing you?"

"Everybody knows that the bartender's the Lagoon Girl's Bitch boy." Shenhua ranted, "Now you're asking me to hang around with him, which means hanging around with her?"

Word was out about the hit squad Revy and Archer had dealt with.

"You asked me to find out who tried to kill you and I did." Shenhua complained.

Shenhua had been sent to ask questions about the confrontation, specifically who in the city had knowledge and more importantly money they shouldn't have.

It had taken less than half a day of work to find a whore house with a recently cash poor regular who suddenly had plenty of money to burn whose origin he wouldn't speak of.

The happy idiot had been delighted to find upon his next visit two girls waiting for him instead of just his regular, at least until the idiot had been persuaded to let himself be tied to the bed.

It was amazing to Shenhua how even the vague promise of sex was enough for a man to lower all his defenses ... among other things.

A little make up, a different hairstyle and clothing, and even someone as infamous as Shenhua could pass unnoticed until it was too late.

"You did a great job," Chang reassured, "no one could have found him as quickly as you or gotten the information out of him in such a ...memorable way."

Shenhua and the luckless mook had a long private talk.

Boss Lao's name came up eventually. It was fear of Lao's wrath not bravery that kept his mouth shut.

Shenhua had simply given the man a more powerful motivation to overcome his fear of possible violence or loss of life. Specifically she threatened to take a needle point blade to his privates.

"Men are always more cooperative when you threaten to take a knife to their manhood." Shenhua chuckled.

"Funny how the thought of a ten inch throwing dart being shoved up his urethra can really focus a guy." Chang snickered.

"So if you're happy with my work why ask me to hang around with Cocktail-boy," Shenhua wanted to know.

"It's easy work," he assured her, "just hang around the Yellowflag and keep Archer company for a week while Boss Lao is in town. Make sure he doesn't get into too much trouble."

"If you want me to take care of him, " she mimed the slashing of a throat. "I can do it."

"He's not the one I want to see dead." Chang explained a dark look in his normally pleasant eyes.

"See this is about Lao; I can take care of him." Her obvious disgust made her meaning abundantly clear.

"No you kill Lao and I have to be responsible for the job. Things get messy." Chang growled, "no matter how much I want to see the little shit up to his eyeballs in raw sewage."

Shenhua calmed down. She'd worked for the Triads long enough to know how dangerously capricious its own politics could be. One day you were up, the next down. The only constant was the absolute necessity of the appearance of honor and respect.

"...That said," Chang replied, "if Boss Lao's mistress, was to take a liking to Archer, well that would just be an unfortunate misunderstanding wouldn't it? You know how competitive women her age can be."

"Why me?" Shenhua asked, "Why not Twinkle Girl, she likes the bartender."

"That's why you're perfect," Chang replied. "Besides, Revy and the Lagoon are busy for the next couple of days; and no, that's no coincidence."

"If Cocktail-boy tries to sleep with Boss Lao's Mistress, the best you can hope for is that he'll end up in many boxes floating in bay."

"...and I expect you'll step in if any of Lao's underlings get the wrong idea."

"What if Lao gets the wrong Idea?"

Chang's eye got that sinister gleam in them that was rare enough that when you saw it God help whoever had managed to get on his bad side.

"A man as reasonable and mature as Lao, no way would he let something petty like a Gwai Lo banging his woman make him do something stupid." Chang smirked.

A day for oddities indeed, Shenhua was pretty sure that Chang had a plan. She was fairly certain that plan involved manipulating Archer into doing his dirty work and she was pretty sure that no man, not even the so called 'world's most dangerous spy', would survive the fall out if a crime boss's girlfriend suddenly got a taste for Gwai Lo love.

"You really think bartender survive this?"

Chang smiled, "Let's just say I knew an arms dealer named Skorpio back in the day. Word is he underestimated the bartender. He's not around, Archer is."

"As long as I'm getting paid, if Cocktail-boy wants to fuck cougars behind the Lagoon Whore's back I won't have a huge problem with that. "

"And that's why I like you Shenhua, you don't sweat the details."

Thus her place at the bar in The Yellowflag.

Another long night for Roanapur's best killer. At least as far as Shenhua was concerned.

A random stranger slid up beside her, "How about I buy you a drink sweetness. " He said in a voice that might have been more seductive and less sleazy two and a half drinks ago.

He was the fifth man to try and pick her up that week, the second one tonight.

Shenhua smiled just as brightly as she had the last four times.

Summoning her best imitation of a come-hither look she gestured at the space next to her responding in the pidgin dialect she resorted to when someone wouldn't show the courtesy to learn proper Chinese.

"You sit next to me. I buy you drinks, as many as you can have in hour."

The man smiled broadly especially when he felt her hand sliding along his thigh - until he felt the razor sharp blade indenting his skin.

Shenhua continued speaking as if the blade in her hand weren't hovering ready either to castrate or geld the man, gently tracing the blade along a major arterial pathway

"It take about hour for you to bleed out after I cut you from here...To here."

"What the hell...?"

"Then whenever other stupid horny men try and talk to me, you tell them what happens to people who think I common bar whore."

The man backed away watching her hands fearfully. Once he was far enough away from the Taiwanese murderess he turned and ran.

The escaping idiot's panicked steps took him past a group of thugs sitting at a table covered in money and booze. The men jeered at him while exchanging money.

Shenhua was certain now, the bastards were gambling on who'd try and talk with her and how long it would be before she send them running.

She made a mental note to track each man down, as far as she was concerned some of the money belonged to her and she'd get what was coming to her even if she had to carve herself some white meat to get it.

"Thanks for not killing that one." Archer snickered with a wink, sliding a lychee fruit cocktail at her. "I'd like to avoid the creepy goth girl with the chainsaw."

"Of course I not kill him," Shenhua replied in pidgin English, "he smart man to keep hands to himself and keep mouth shut."

One not bright jackass had hurled an insult at her after she let him escape.

Shenhua's blades were, as a point of pride, perfectly balanced; ideal for throwing.

He'd run screaming into the night, a throwing blade lodged in his thigh, his pants already soaked with so much arterial blood, one might be forgiven for thinking he'd pissed himself.

Stupid idiot probably hadn't yet figured out that the blade wound would continue bleeding. Without treatment he'd be dead in less than an hour.

That thought was almost a compensation for losing one of her weapons.

"By the way you be nice to Sawyer next time she come around."

Archer grimaced at her tortured English, "She's litte, she's creepy and she likes chopping up dead people, that's like every horror movie ever right there." He snorted,

Shenhua was shocked, not at what he said, but that he'd said it in Chinese, poorly accented to be sure but still impressive from an American.

"What," Archer snorted, "that can't be any worse than your English."

"Your Chinese sounds like my English." Shenhua shot back.

Yeah well...shutup," Archer faltered, "Damn, I had something for this."

"I'm pure Taiwanese," she replied in her native language, "the only reason they teach girls in my village English is so they can fuck tourists. "

"-And as a tourist, can I just repeat how great that is?"

Archer remembered his summer abroad after graduation, including the week in Bangkok. Malory Archer insisted he never speak of that lost weekend.

He never could understand Malory's bitchiness about that one, he'd been a kid fresh out of boarding school, how much did any teenage boy know about proper protocol at a Bangkok Whore House.

"Aren't you whoring with enough women as it is?" Shenhua sneered.

"I'm not just whoring," Archer insisted, "I'm legitimately compensating for my emotional distress by engaging in inappropriate hi-risk behavior."

Shenhua gaped at him.

Archer sighed, "What?" He sneered, "am I the only one who's read the DSM?"

If it was possible Shenhua's stare got even more bewildered,

"...the DSM?," he prompted, "definitive guide to psychological diagnostic practice?

Shenhua seemed shocked.

Archer sighed, everyone seemed amazed that someone as superficial and shallow as he was still had hidden wellsprings of talent and skill. Lana Kane was the same way.

Archer rolled his eyes, "Fine, I'm the weird one because I'm well read," He grunted, "Never mind."

Shenhua considered cutting him just on general principle. The only thing that saved Archer's life was Boss Chang's explicit instructions.

Shenhua had to wonder, what sort of woman willingly subjected herself to an oaf like this regardless of how firm his cheekbones wavy his hair or firm and tight his bottom.

Had she a phone and the number of ISIS firing range a woman named Lana Kane would have been more than happy to explain.