It Never Comes The Way You Expect

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feng_icon.gif rico_icon.gif

Scene Title It Never Comes The Way You Expect
Synopsis When Rico Velasquez runs into the stalking shadow of Feng Daiyu, grievances are resolved.
Date June 2, 2009

The Rookery, Staten Island


Breathing comes in panting, feverish breaths; booted feet slam on the pavement, splashing through puddles. The world is a blur on the edges from tired eyes, and an olive-drab jacket slams up against an old and graffiti-stained brick wall out of the glow of a flickering streetlight. One hand shakily clutches a pistol in one hand, dark eyes trained on the mouth of the alleyway where empty streets open into the broken avenues of Staten Island.

With each exhalation, breathing becomes easier, but the pulse of adrenaline surging through the scraggly-haired Puerto-Rican's body causes his limbs to continue to shake. He has not felt like this in what seems like a lifetime. Trembling fingers find purchase on a magazine in his jacket pocket, and a motion of his thumb ejects an expended clip to the street with a clatter, another slapped in the bottom of the gun with a click, the slide pulled back to chamber a round.

Rustling cloth overhead causes a flutter of panic in his heart, and he pushes away from the wall, rolling to the side to bring his gun up and towards the glare of the streetlight and a black silhouette dropping down from the roof above. A gunshot rings out, shattering the light and sending shards of glass raining like falling stars down around an inky black shape that slams down atop the Puerto-Rican.

A wrist is grabbed, and in one fluid motion bones snap, the gun is lost to the street, and a whip of fabric and leather comes as a foot strikes Rico Velasquez in the side of the head while his arm is bent, sending him cartwheeling across the alley to collide with discarded trashcans and plastic bags full of refuse.

Vision blurred, all he can see as he scrambles up to his feet is the dark outline of a man roughly his height stalking down the alley, straightening black sunglasses. Rico throws his weight forward, breaking into a forward roll before tumbling out into a sprint, just before the sudden and sharp pain of steel wedged between joints causes mind-numbing agony and his face meets the damp concrete below.

Somewhere beyond Staten Island, thunder rolls, and the sound accompanies distant flashes as Rico's eyes swivel up to the far closer figure than he imagined. His eyes divert down to his leg, where a wedge-shaped throwing knife has been expertly lodged between his femur and thigh at the joint of his knee, displacing his kneecap. A hot, rasping breath escapes parched lips, and Rico rolls onto his side, swinging his good leg out to knock the assassin's out from under him.

But he's already in the air when the wild ground-fighting maneuver lashes out, only to be directly on top of Rico like a pouncing tiger. The crushing weight of Feng Daiyu's body atop Rico is accompanied by a knee pressed squarely into his midsection, and the flash of another gleaming steel knife directed under his chin, pressing up at soft and vulnerable flesh, followed by his other hand throwing a clatter of plastic and metal to the ground, loose wires all torn and frayed on them.

"Your blasting caps." The words come stilted with a strong Mandarin accent, dark brows lowered to the tops of equally black sunglasses worn at night. Rico can feel Feng's breath at his cheek, feel the bite of steel on skin. He knew this day would come, he might have figured it would be Ethan, or Raith, but this— this is the last thing he expected.

"You." Rico splutters out, eyes wide as he stares up at his own muted reflection in Feng's glasses. "What—what are you doing here?" The Chinese man's lips pull back into a smile, and his body moves with a lightning-quick alacrity, switching knife for bare hand, grasping Rico by the throat as he lifts him up off of the ground and swings him by the throat to slam into the wall with unexpected upper-body strength. The impact causes his leg to bend, the pain to shoot up his side from the wedge driven between his joint, and a sharp cry of pain to escape his lips.

Feng's head tilts to the side, one hand ripping his sunglasses off as he stares at Rico with steady and murderous glare. "Where is the Wolf?" Of all the things to ask of Rico, the one thing he has no true idea about. There's a ragged, dry exhalation of breath that comes before a laugh, and then a scream as Feng raises his foot to rest on the protruding knife from Rico's knee, stepping down on it as if it were a pedal.

"I don't know!" Rico howls out, head slamming back against the brick wall in an involuntary motion. "I haven't seen him in months—I haven't seen him since before Kazimir died!" There's a scowl from Feng, fingers wound in cloth and Rico is propelled away from the wall before crashing down on the ground like so much dead weight, the wedge throwing knife kicked out of his leg violently, leaving a drooling, bloody hole between flesh and bone.

Feng turns around in that same fluid motion, pressing his lips into a contorted expression of restrained anger. "Where is Zhang Wu-Long?" A head slowly shakes in response to the question, and Rico looks up from the ground to Feng, blood running down the side of his head in a wide, flat line that drips off of his earlobe.

"Go to hell," Rico growls out in enough time for a hard-soled black shoe to impact the side of his face, sending him reeling back down to the ground again. The shoe is pressed against his cheek, and he catches the flickering of steel out of the corner of his eyes as Feng withdraws another knife from inside of his jacket.

Fast footwork moves the shoe from cheek to below chin, turning Rico's head to the side in the same motion that a knife thrown with a flick of the wrist, straight into the Puerto-Rican's right eye socket with a wet slap and a howling cry of agony as blood and ocular fluid pulses down in a dark line across his cheek. The wedge-bladed knife scrapes against the bone of his eye socket as Rico rolls around on the ground, Feng stepping away from him to let him thrash, quickly kicking the discarded pistol from earlier further down the alleyway.

"Where is Munin?" Feng regards Rico over his shoulder, looking at the knife embedded into the scraggly-haired man's eye socket. A grumbling, growling cry comes as Rico manager to splutter out in ragged, wet exhalations the only thing that he can truly muster for this moment of dismay.

"Go… to hell, asshole." Moonlight reflects off of a whisper thin thread of something metallic that snakes down from inside of Feng's sleeve, with a tiny lead weight at the end that dangles and bounces as the fiber becomes taut. Rico closes his eye and spits blood at Feng's feet, just before the whip and bite of a thin woven steel wire finds its way around his throat, tightening like the noose he's managed to dodge for all of his sins for so, so long.

Black gloved hands creak as they tighten around the wire, pulling it tight around Rico's throat as the Puerto-Rican is lifted off of the ground, and a knee placed firmly at the back of his neck. Struggling ensues – a thrashing of limbs wildly and ineffectually – it always happens like this. Feng's lips press tight together, a frown creasing his features as he waits for the flailing dance of death's approach to go through its predictable motions.

Finally, when the man who trained countless murderers falls limp behind the choking wire, Feng lets it go slack, dropping dead weight to the pavement in a slouched heap. Fingers work open and closed, and Feng's dark brows lower in a furrowed expression of distaste, and he presses his hand on something at his wrist, and the thin, silvery thread is wound back into his sleeve mechanically.

One by one, bloody knives are collected and wiped off on the body laying on the wet pavement of the alley. The gun is collected next, turns from one side to another, examining the scratched off serial number, then holstered in the back of his pants. Black gloves come off, and a cell phone is retrieved from inside of his jacket, flipped open as a light flickers on the inside, a single number dialed with memorized presses of a thumb.

"Director." Feng's eyes divert down to the body, "Velasquez is dead. Still no leads on Holden or the remainders of his cell. I'm going to pursue a lead on a Richard Cardinal, I'd like it if the bureau could send me whatever they have on him." A pause, and Feng's free hand reaches down to pull his sunglasses up out of his coat, flicking them open with a practiced motion of his wrist.

"Of course, Director." The sunglasses are slid on, pushed up the bridge of his nose with two fingers to a comfortable position, "tell your wife I said hello, and I'll be by for dinner when this is over sometime at the end of the month." Dark eyes divert from the corpse to the mouth of the alley, and there's a nod of Feng's head. "Of course, goodbye Director."

Click.


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