eheu
Chief Defenestrator
Rooftop
"Montoya, West, Burns one, Burns two, and I think you know Taule'alo."
Julia knew most of the names already.
“Oi.” Oliver objected, “don’t lump me in with-”
Emily squinted at him from behind Julia, and for once he was sensible enough to stop talking on that cue, if only for a while.
She then shifted a few steps so that she could see the map in its entirety, and studied it for a few seconds after taking instructions from Eli. She then stepped back, pulled a few strands of hair out of the face (it was the wind), and rubbed her hands together.
“Ready when you are.”
Other side of the street from the Finance Centre
Oliver was chuckling all the way until stepping of the other end of the portal. He - or rather, one of him - was standing next to Eli. Either me or Taule'alo were the orders.
“Okay, but, did you seriously just not realise I literally could go with both of you?”
The chuckling ended with the sound of the portal shutting behind the two of them: the sound of the winds fading out behind them - and the sound of the streets fading in in their place - invoke an elevated awareness of the change of scene.
He cast his sight towards the small plaza-like space in front of the entrance to a rather large building.
The space - in stark contrast with everything around it - was almost entirely empty.
The jumpsuits were another thing somewhat out of place. Should the men be clad in black, carrying their weapons, they may have passed alright as security standing guard on the perimeter of a controlled area. Instead, there was thick fabric, and a dull, muted blue that evokes the classical image of workmen.
The three they saw earlier were the ones who were most noticeable, standing near the middle of the plaza. Two of them were standing together - strapped on one of their chests was something was more definitely not a fanny pack. He was wearing glasses, and appeared to be the only who wasn’t armed.
The blue, despite uninteresting, was quite easy to identify once one knew what to look for. At corners closer to the surrounding streets, in the shade cast by the somewhat creatively shaped architecture - he counted a few more of them, carrying less bulky pieces of firearms.
Around at that point, Kawai, along with the other Oliver, materialised a few hundred metres down the street. It was only then Oliver noticed that they themselves weren’t as well hidden in the crowd as he assumed they were.
“...did they notice us?”
It was hard to discern what exactly the guards were saying - it wouldn’t help them understand the foreign language even if the cacophony of the streets was peeled away. But the directions in which fingers were pointed and heads were turned, on the other hand, were a rather universal gesture.
“...I think they noticed us.”
Traditional Market
Tall, lean, spiky black hair; tattoos sprawling across most of the skin on his back, arms, and legs that the sleeveless shirt and shorts don’t cover. Alan Heng looked younger than most people expected. He was younger than a person of his status tended to be.
The one thing he hated was when people assumed from that that he was who he was just because he was the son or brother, or something along those lines, of someone who used to be important. That couldn’t have been more wrong. He was a self-made man. He worked his own way up the ranks - not because somebody died and made him king.
To be fair, though, a few people did die on his way there. He murdered about half of them personally.
And so this day he was on the very top of the hierarchy, and ruled the city - at least, most of its parts that mattered (most - there were a few kinks here and there, but those will eventually be worked out). That is why everyone within fifty paces down the street was scurrying away from the fruit and vegetable stands.
That was a good thing. That didn’t mean they were afraid - instead, that meant they were certain that no harm would come to them as long as they stayed out of the way. That was important, and today in particular he had taken extra measures to ensure that.
He wasn’t sure how much he trusted the foreigners he hired. Some of his men didn’t trust them at all - they were from outside the family and outside the country, after all. But he was more open-minded. They thought of them as part of a brotherhood. They weren’t wrong, but most of them didn’t realise that they were just as much of a business. And in business, International connections couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. Just out of caution, he did tell them to be inconspicuous as possible.
That was as far as his train of thought managed to go until he was hit in the face with a sudden gust of chill air.
Then the white flash of light in the distance faded. A few dozen metres ahead, just around a turn on the otherwise emptied streets, now stood a person in shorts and a ballistic vest, right in the middle of the road.
"Montoya, West, Burns one, Burns two, and I think you know Taule'alo."
Julia knew most of the names already.
“Oi.” Oliver objected, “don’t lump me in with-”
Emily squinted at him from behind Julia, and for once he was sensible enough to stop talking on that cue, if only for a while.
She then shifted a few steps so that she could see the map in its entirety, and studied it for a few seconds after taking instructions from Eli. She then stepped back, pulled a few strands of hair out of the face (it was the wind), and rubbed her hands together.
“Ready when you are.”
Other side of the street from the Finance Centre
Oliver was chuckling all the way until stepping of the other end of the portal. He - or rather, one of him - was standing next to Eli. Either me or Taule'alo were the orders.
“Okay, but, did you seriously just not realise I literally could go with both of you?”
The chuckling ended with the sound of the portal shutting behind the two of them: the sound of the winds fading out behind them - and the sound of the streets fading in in their place - invoke an elevated awareness of the change of scene.
He cast his sight towards the small plaza-like space in front of the entrance to a rather large building.
The space - in stark contrast with everything around it - was almost entirely empty.
The jumpsuits were another thing somewhat out of place. Should the men be clad in black, carrying their weapons, they may have passed alright as security standing guard on the perimeter of a controlled area. Instead, there was thick fabric, and a dull, muted blue that evokes the classical image of workmen.
The three they saw earlier were the ones who were most noticeable, standing near the middle of the plaza. Two of them were standing together - strapped on one of their chests was something was more definitely not a fanny pack. He was wearing glasses, and appeared to be the only who wasn’t armed.
The blue, despite uninteresting, was quite easy to identify once one knew what to look for. At corners closer to the surrounding streets, in the shade cast by the somewhat creatively shaped architecture - he counted a few more of them, carrying less bulky pieces of firearms.
Around at that point, Kawai, along with the other Oliver, materialised a few hundred metres down the street. It was only then Oliver noticed that they themselves weren’t as well hidden in the crowd as he assumed they were.
“...did they notice us?”
It was hard to discern what exactly the guards were saying - it wouldn’t help them understand the foreign language even if the cacophony of the streets was peeled away. But the directions in which fingers were pointed and heads were turned, on the other hand, were a rather universal gesture.
“...I think they noticed us.”
Traditional Market
Tall, lean, spiky black hair; tattoos sprawling across most of the skin on his back, arms, and legs that the sleeveless shirt and shorts don’t cover. Alan Heng looked younger than most people expected. He was younger than a person of his status tended to be.
The one thing he hated was when people assumed from that that he was who he was just because he was the son or brother, or something along those lines, of someone who used to be important. That couldn’t have been more wrong. He was a self-made man. He worked his own way up the ranks - not because somebody died and made him king.
To be fair, though, a few people did die on his way there. He murdered about half of them personally.
And so this day he was on the very top of the hierarchy, and ruled the city - at least, most of its parts that mattered (most - there were a few kinks here and there, but those will eventually be worked out). That is why everyone within fifty paces down the street was scurrying away from the fruit and vegetable stands.
That was a good thing. That didn’t mean they were afraid - instead, that meant they were certain that no harm would come to them as long as they stayed out of the way. That was important, and today in particular he had taken extra measures to ensure that.
He wasn’t sure how much he trusted the foreigners he hired. Some of his men didn’t trust them at all - they were from outside the family and outside the country, after all. But he was more open-minded. They thought of them as part of a brotherhood. They weren’t wrong, but most of them didn’t realise that they were just as much of a business. And in business, International connections couldn’t possibly be a bad thing. Just out of caution, he did tell them to be inconspicuous as possible.
That was as far as his train of thought managed to go until he was hit in the face with a sudden gust of chill air.
Then the white flash of light in the distance faded. A few dozen metres ahead, just around a turn on the otherwise emptied streets, now stood a person in shorts and a ballistic vest, right in the middle of the road.
