Cutscene: Power Struggle

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –?

  May 10, 2011

  1:07 AM

  Asada Seo was considered by some to be a big man, at least in the physical definition of the word. Standing straight, he measured up at just a little more than an inch or so over six feet without shoes.

  Tall for a Japanese man.

  Tall for most Asian men, he knew that much.

  A few years of being in the ABB had done it's part to disabuse him of the notion that he was anywhere near the average when it came to something that obvious. It wasn't quite as easy to see at the moment, what with him sitting side saddle on his motorcycle the same as the few men he had brought along with him, but he knew if he were to stand, he would tower above every single one of them.

  Lung liked shit like that.

  Shit that showed strength.

  Five years of running protection for the man in his own neighborhood has taught Seo that much.

  Whether it was just looks or actual strength, the dragon wasn't really picky, a simple fact Seo had picked up on pretty quickly. After all, why else would you lift up some random nineteen-year old wannabe above older, more experienced, and definitely more hardened criminals?

  Didn't make much sense otherwise. The young man raised a hand to his face and rubbed the scruff that dotted his chin as he continued to wait. The cold night air didn't bother him much as he rolled his thoughts around in his head, the conversation of his boys around him nothing more than background noise.

  The only other option Seo had ever given much thought to was that Lung was looking to instill loyalty when he chose his underlings. Again, something Seo really doubted when it came to Lung. After years of working for the dragon, he learned that the man assumed they were all loyal anyway, at least in the face of his strength.

  Not like the choice was ever really in their hands, from the way Seo saw it. You only ever had two choices when it came to the dragon boss, anyway.

  One, never ever let Lung think you were anything but loyal.

  Two, burn.

  No one ever went with number two.

  At least, not by choice, anyway.

  Plenty of people ended up going the second route no matter what they wanted, their choices not really mattering to Lung when the dragon got his blood up.

  The cape leading the ABB had a bad habit of offing the people that pissed him off the most. Far too often, that was those that worked directly under him. It had started way back in the day with the old collection of oyabun that ran the gangs when he arrived in the bay and it continued with Lung's lieutenants every now and again.

  Sometimes, the big man didn't even feel bothered to do the deed himself. You simply entered the restaurant for a nice meal and just never left the kitchens.

  The funny thing was that sort of thing never seemed to happen to the guys running the shadier shit. Even Lung needed to get his dick wet on the regular, scaly as it might have fucking been, and those scummy fucks had it good for almost a whole decade untouched…

  Well, at least they had until some kid fucked their shit up in a permanent way.

  Somehow, the cops and PRT suddenly had lists and names of every place and person of importance when it came to that side of the ABB, even the ones outside the bay strictly. Most would have blamed one Big Ken, but word going around was that he died the same day his restaurant did, done in by the Empire.

  Purity, Hookwolf and Stormtiger had made themselves real fucking visible that whole week, all throughout ABB territory. It would have been the smart bet to figure one of them had gutted the rich fuck for all his secrets and, well… his guts.

  Seo knew better, though.

  He knew way better than most.

  The twenty-something removed a hand from his jacket pocket and raised it to his mouth to place a single loose cigarette in his mouth. He scrambled through the pocket of his jeans for a few seconds more with a slight frown on his face, only for his expression to turn up slightly as his hand came free once more, this time with a silver lighter in his grip. As he hummed the theme to some show he vaguely remembered, the Japanese man cupped the butane lighter to the cigarette he held between his lips, only to pause.

  His lips shifted around the cigarette in his mouth as his men began to go silent. Seo glanced up, frowning slightly as he spotted one of the first few cars pull into the mostly empty parking lot, the sound of hard rubber on gravel and an idling engine drowning out most other noise as over a dozen cars of similar make and model began to enter the lot.

  I told these idiots to split up and stagger… A sigh escaped him a moment later, the taste of nicotine already filling his mouth and nose. The first car came to a stop just meters from him and his boy's motorbikes, several more following behind in a constant stream that went on for at least a minute.

  What part of 'low fuckin' profile' is hard to understand? He felt his eye twitch at the familiar noise of loud Korean rap blasting from several colorful vehicles entering last. Fuckers never listen to common sense.

  Seo let his eyes drop as he muttered curses under his breath, the man taking a moment to calm himself as he breathed in the stick of nicotine in his mouth. Seconds passed and Seo took another drag, mutterings turning to curses as he heard car door after car door open and shut.

  The former ABB lieutenant opened one eye to a cry of "Seo!" as a much shorter and much wider man dressed in a bright red tracksuit slammed shut the passenger door of the sedan nearest to Seo and his group of bikers. Seo, in comparison, had on a white dress shirt under a black-and-white motorcycle jacket, the first few buttons of his shirt left to display his tattooed bare chest and golden chain. A pair of black jeans and matching motorcycle boots completed the ensemble as he remained seated on the side of his custom bike.

  Making his way over with the three men who had ridden with him, the Chinese gangster gave him a smile as wide as it was mocking as he threw his ring-laden hands out and let out another shout of "Seo!"

  "Wei...," Seo raised a hand in a lazy wave as he returned the greeting with a much calmer and quieter response.

  Much like Seo, Zhu Wei was considered by some to be a big man in the ABB on his own merits. Unlike Seo, though, Wei was somewhat lacking in height, even for the average man. Still, despite being somewhat short, the Chinese man far made up for it in sheer bulk, the once muscle-obsessed man having let himself go a good bit over the years. Both him and Seo had also served directly under Lung, and then for a very short while under his replacement, the two of them being minor players that Lung had chosen to raise higher above others. Wei had been friendly with a few of Lung's trusted people - the late Big Ken among them - and used that to weasel his way into a lieutenant position years before Seo ever even joined. Past that, the only similarity they shared was the hate they had for each other's guts and their mutual awareness of that.

  "I see you… You..." Seo's eyes flicked down and back up again as he gave the other former ABB leader a once-over and then over to the group gathering behind him. It was through great effort that he restrained himself from frowning again, despite how much he wanted to. "Wow. You… brought..."

  Asada Seo nodded his head in Wei's direction, barely able to spit out the rest of the sentence, growing irritation close to turning his vision as red as the other man's tracksuit.

  Zhū Wei glanced over his shoulder as a sizable mob of Chinese men and more than a few women formed up in the parking lot behind him, most of them young enough to barely be out of college at best. Even to the eye of an unaware bystander, they would clearly stand out as ABB, tattoos and fucking weapons visible on at least a few of them. The fact that they all wore red prominently somewhere on their bodies - caps, shirts, bandanas - only furthered that image…

  Granted, that didn't mean much anymore as the ABB colors of red and green had been left in the past. Over the last two weeks, what was left of the ABB had begun to splinter without any of their former cape leadership to keep them united through fear. Chinese gangsters had taken to wearing red, Koreans to blue, and the Japanese - especially those who still followed his lead - stuck to white.

  It didn't take a genius to see that all the splintering has formed along racial lines, not unlike what the situation had been before Lung. The main difference was that, instead of following the lead of old and experienced bosses, they were being led by new, young faces.

  Well… Seo raised an eyebrow as he slowly took in the older man's girth again. Mostly, I guess.

  Already pushing that pointless thought aside, Seo also did his best to ignore the fact that he and his own boys were outnumbered by at least five to one, but that was much harder to push down when he knew exactly the kind of person he was dealing with. Huh.

  His eyes scanned the crowd again, slower this time, visibly taking the time to inspect almost every single person in front of him.

  Apart from almost a dozen near the front, most everyone else the former lieutenant had brought along with him was fresh-faced and barely blooded, ABB in name only. Oh, you fat fuck. Wei seemed to have brought along nothing but gofers, dumb muscle and whoever else was awake this early in the morning. It would be a miracle if anyone in the crowd did anything as important as picking up protection money.

  So, he didn't bring anyone he couldn't afford to lose, Seo concluded, fighting the expression that threatened to take over his face. Don't give yourself away. You figured this would happen.

  "Ah, yeah, all this." Wei turned back to Seo, a smile spreading across his face as he let out a small chuckle, "I know you said only a few, but a couple more of my boys wanted to hear this deal of yours. You know how it is, big man."

  "A couple," Seo repeated, tone betraying nothing.

  "A little more than a couple, but you get it." Wei's smile shifted into a smirk as greasy as his forehead, the overweight gangster picking at the heavy gold chains he wore over the tracksuit top that strained a bit too tight against his prominent gut. "That gonna be a problem?"

  For a few moments, there was relative silence in the parking lot, Seo's own men tensing quietly behind him as he stared down Wei with an incomprehensible look.

  "Nah, nah," the much bigger man waved his hand with far more energy than he felt, laughing off the growing attention. A second later, Wei joined in, his laugh more raspy than Seo's but just as sincere. It's not like you basically screamed from the fucking roof that some ABB shit is going on right fucking here. "Nah, it's no problem. Least you made it."

  "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure." Wei let out another chuckle as Seo rolled his eyes, the sound trailing off until both men were staring at each other again, their gathered lackeys doing much the same.

  "So, Seo," Wei broke the silence again, his volume somewhat raised. "What's this deal about? You know, the one you couldn't tell me about over the phone?"

  "Couldn't t-?" Seo muttered to himself for a moment, cigarette in hand, before pausing as his eyes flicked over to the crowd in front of him, his eyes meeting those of several of Wei's men before dropping back down again to the former weightlifter. Oh… so, that's how we're playing it.

  Unable to help himself, the taller man let out a short bark of laughter, to the visible surprise of Wei and several others. "Man, I can't believe it," Seo let out another snort before returning the cigarette to his mouth. "I can't fuckin' believe it."

  He shook his head disbelievingly, and shrugged his shoulders as casually as he could. "Wei, I don't know how but it must have slipped my mind. I honestly swear…" He paused mid-sentence, eyes hard and mouth a thin line before he spoke again, this time with a deeper edge to his voice. "... but what I don't get is how the fuck I forgot to tell you the biggest fucking news I've heard in a while."

  "...Yeah," Wei coughed, looking off to the side. "No fucking idea either."

  "You showed up anyway, though," Seo continued, not even trying to hide the sneer on his face anymore as he blew out a stream of cigarette smoke. "Brought a whole squad with you, too. 'Cause why, man? Just cause you were curious?"

  "Seo, c'mon… c'mon, man," Zhū Wei spoke up again, still wearing a smile as he raised his hands as if to calm the larger man. "Don't be like that. It's not that serious."

  Seo let out a scoff behind closed teeth, the noise coming off as more of a hiss as he shook his head. "If you say so, bro."

  "...'sides," Wei continued. "It ain't just me. The boys wanted to hear you out too. Why don't you tell them the big news? See what they think about it?"

  The confused looks he was getting from Wei's "boys" didn't make the man's lies sound anymore convincing, not that Seo wasn't aware he was full of shit already. Frankly, he was pretty sure almost all of Wei's "boys" knew how full of shit the older man was, even the ones that hadn't followed the man to this meet-up. The Japanese gangster felt his left eye twitch, the taste of ash in his mouth as he bit down on his cigarette. Fat fucking bastard. Can't even lie for shit. Biting his tongue before those words could escape him, Seo nodded his head slowly as he leaned back on his bike. "... Alright."

  Raising his voice to make sure he was heard, Seo began as bluntly as possible. "If you ain't a complete retard, you know the ABB is more than in the fucking ground. To this city, to this people, we're all dead men fucking walking. Even our own… our own neighborhoods look at us like shit now. You've seen it. You lived it." His mouth turned down into a furious scowl as he saw several of Wei's people shaking their heads. "Don't you play fucking stupid with me! You know exactly what the fuck I'm talking about so don't act like I'm spitting bullshit!"

  Seo took in a hissed breath from between gritted teeth, clicking his tongue as he turned his head to the side for a moment. "They look at us like shit, you know it. They don't say it but you see it in their eyes. You get the same looks. And, you know what?" His nose crinkled slightly as he breathed in again, cigarette smoke filling his nostrils. "I don't blame 'em. They're our people, on our territory. And we fucked them over."

  The general mutters from both in front of him and behind him seemed to agree, encouraging Seo to press forward. Rather than say anything else, he opened up his biker's jacket, exposing the lining and went for the inner pocket. Ignoring the tensing of Wei and several of his men, Seo pulled out a green-colored packet of cigarettes, a smiling green worm with a cigarette in it's mouth on the cover as it poked its body out of a bright red apple. "I buy this shit every week at the same convenience store since my ass was eighteen. Wu's Market, if you know it, you know it."

  More nods and mutters of agreement met his statement, albeit with some clear confusion as to where he was going. "Uncle Wu was family to me, you know," the smoking gangster continued. "He was family to a bunch of us. I've known that old man my whole fucking life and I didn't say a goddamn word when Bakuda put her shit in his skull. I pussied out cause I didn't…"

  Seo paused to blow out another gray plume of smoke, digits tense around the cigarette in his hand. Any tenser, and the man knew he would be holding nothing but ashes and paper. "Look, I pussied out. Didn't say shit cause I wasn't looking for that bitch to put one in mine either. We all shut up and followed orders, let some random cape who just joined up do whatever the fuck she wanted and we got fuck-shit for all of it. What we got was a shit-ton of our people getting free brain surgery and every fucking person looking at us like monsters. Be a hell of a lot better if they were wrong, shit."

  His other hand tightened around the pack of cigarettes as he shook his head again. "Fuck, I couldn't even look Wu's fucking daughter in the eye when I bought this shit today. Y'know what? Any fucking one of us could have put a bullet in that fucking cape's head. She ain't bulletproof. She can't heal. We coulda capped her twice and we'd be good right now."

  Seo returned the green packet to his pocket and, in the same motion, took the lit cigarette out of his mouth. "Fuck this shit. Look..." A large gray cloud of smoke escaped his lips, the gangster releasing a sigh as he felt his nerves ease slightly with the action. "I'm fucking tired of all this. I know you are too. Bakuda fucked us, yeah?"

  He raised an eyebrow a moment later at the sudden "Yeah!" he received in return from Wei's crew and some of his own as well. Judging by the slight jump Wei was trying to play off as nothing, the fat man wasn't expecting it either. Wasnt looking for an answer, but whatever.

  "Yeah, Bakuda fucked us…" Seo paused to take a smoke-free breath, "but Lung ain't do us any favors either. That bastard never cared about a single fucking thing but his own rep."

  The voices of agreement began to peter out with the quickness Seo had expected before he finished the sentence.

  Before anyone could interject, the Japanese gang leader quickly continued his statement, an added edge to his tone as he raised voice. "Don't start that fake fuckin' loyalty bullshit. The dragon's caged up and he ain't getting out so there's no getting fried for speakin' up. Now, listen, yeah? Look, Bakuda was AIDS but Lung was fuckin' cancer. The fucker was killing us for years with his bullshit."

  "Ey, Seo," Wei drawled, shaking his head slowly as he kept eye contact with the taller man. "You're talking some crazy shit right now. Lung made us, made the ABB. Man kept our people safe."

  "Did he, really?" Seo scoffed out loud, exhaling another lungful of smoke. Even still, he had to admit that Wei had something of a point. He ain't wrong with the first part, though. At best, half of one.

  "Yeah, yeah, he did," Wei continued, edges of his mouth tilting up into a smirk. "I don't appreciate the shit coming out of your mouth about the boss. You know no one fucked with us or our territory with him around."

  "Yeah?" Seo bit back. "'cause I think you're fuckin' confused right now. We got fucked with all the goddamn time. Lung made it worse cause that motherfucker had to scale up every few weeks and swing his dick into Empire territory."

  "That's not li-"

  "How many times we get the fucking Nazis wrecking our shit, leaving random bodies as a message to teach the ABB a lesson, especially after Lung picked a fight and got his ass chased out?" Seo spat out, annoyance coloring his tone. "Man didn't give a shit about us, 'bout people he said he was about. He got free and didn't say shit to Bakuda about this suicide bomb brain surgery shit." Seo took another pull from the nicotine stick between his fingers, keeping eye contact with Wei as he did so, as if daring the shorter man to contradict his words. "Cape just ran to another fuckin' fight and got his ass beat for the second time."

  "Oi, Seo!" Wei barked at him. "You going too fucking far."

  "Yeah?" The Japanese gangster snorted at Wei's words. "Still ain't wrong, though. The fucker was killing us for years with his bullshit."

  As Wei bit back whatever he was going to say next with a constipated look, Seo took another pull from his cancer stick. Lung… Lung had operated like a fuckin' idiot. Years of working for the man had taught him that much. The cape was strong, sure, but he felt that his strength was all that mattered. He didn't know shit about much else apart from his pride and how best to kill whoever pissed him off the most.

  And look where that got him.

  The dragon they had been forced to serve had basically pressed everyone between the ages of fifteen to fifty within his organization. If you were some type of Asian, you were ABB and that was the way Lung wanted it… the fucking idiot.

  It didn't help thing much that most of the city was now suspicious of anyone of Asian descent, thanks to Lung's retarded fucking recruitment style. The ones that ain't some kind of suspicious, he breathed out another lungful of smoke, are just better at fuckin' hiding it.

  "The dragon…" Seo raised an eyebrow, pulled from his thoughts as Wei spoke up again, "he killed the old men. Every oyabun… of every Asian gang in this city."

  "Your point?"

  "He kept us, chose us, let us live, the kobun…" From the way Wei seemed to be looking past him instead of at him as he continued, the other gangster was sure the discussion, as it was, was no longer much of one. "As long as we didn't fail him. As long as we stayed loyal. He'd protect us, our homes, our part of the city…"

  "And how's that working out for us, Wei?"

  "You would know better than me, Seo," Wei barked back, "considering you're the one kneeling down to kiss the boots of some fuckin' guǐlǎo brat."

  The silence between the two of them would have been deafening, if the murmurs breaking out from the men behind and in front of Seo weren't loud enough to be overheard.

  Seo froze for a moment, cigarette held just inches from his lips, and turned his gaze back down to Wei. He felt a twinge of rage run through him as he shuddered, and judging by the sudden silence from several of his own boys, even they noticed. After a moment, the gangster slowly and carefully placed the cigarette back in his mouth.

  "Ain't no one kissin' any fucking boots, you hear me?" Seo replied as calmly as he could manage.

  "Yeah, I bet. Ain't this boss the same little shit that wrecked half your old crew?"

  Seo let out a grunt despite himself. After a moment, he caught himself. "It was war. We shot at him. You know how it is."

  "Yeah, yeah, I bet," Wei's smirk returned. "By the way, what happened to that shit fucking sword you used to wave around, Seo? Didn't that same brat pick it off you?"

  "... We made a deal for it."

  "I bet you fuckin' did," Wei's smirk widened, the man patting his stomach. "Did you make a deal to suck his little white dick too or you just do it for free?"

  "Listen up, you fat fuck! I made a fuckin' deal to save our asses!" The calm left as quickly as it arrived. "Hell of a lot more than you're doing stirring up trouble!"

  "Oh yeah, big man?" Wei replied, a laugh on his lips as he flashed a big yellow grin in Seo's face. "What's this big fuckin' deal?"

  "The fucking deal is you're a greedy pig who thinks he's hot shit," Seo hissed back at the other liutenant. "You know exactly what the fuckin' deal is. You just wanna act tough in front of your people and make me look like some kind of bitch."

  "I don't gotta make you look like anything, big man," Wei openly laughed in the taller man's face, gut actually shaking. "You know people talk, right? I got Joon on the line the other day and he was tellin' me some big fuckin' secrets about the kiddy cape you makin' all this big 'deals' with."

  "Big fucki-" Seo paused as thoughts suddenly took in the other part of that sentence. Anger fell away into confusion as he spoke again. "You workin' with Joon now?"

  "Working with?" Wei took a few steps more towards Seo, until the two of them were literally spitting distance from each other. "Strong words. Let's just say that the interests of Zhu Wei and Joon Lee find themselves mutually aligned for the foreseeable future," he replied, clearly repeating words someone else had spoken to him.

  Seo kept his mouth in a firm line, fingers tensed around his cigarette.

  Joon Lee.

  One of the few remaining ABB higher-ups that the cops or PRT hadn't snatched up. There was fucking good reason for that, too. College-educated and sly as hell, the Korean man was the trickiest bastard Seo had ever met in his whole life, and he always made sure never to get caught with his pants around his ankles. If Wei was a selfish, gluttonous, weasel of a man, then Joon was a slimy fucking snake. A good drinking buddy, but still.

  "Real question is," the Chinese man laughed out loud again, "who exactly are you working for?"

  "Don't play me," Seo bit back, fighting back the anger in his voice as Wei smirked. "I'm not fuckin' here for that shit. You know damn well who I'm working for."

  "Course I do. People talk, Seo. Joon got boys in jail. I got boys and girls in jail. They spread secrets," Wei's smirk dipped slightly as he spoke, expression darkening. "Secrets about that new boss of yours that Bakuda figured out."

  Okay, then. "Secrets, huh?" Seo turned his head slightly, staring off into the Brockton night. The warm aroma of cigarette smoke clung to him like a security blanket, the man taking a deep sniff before he responded again. "Like what?"

  Wei grunted in confusion, frowning slightly before he recovered his expression. "Like you're making deals with the same cape that took out Oni Lee and Lung!" The Chinese gangster raised his voice, clearly speaking to Seo's men and his own more than he was actually talking to Seo at this point. "What about that, Seo? What about that?"

  So, that's what we're on now? Seo raised an eyebrow and scoffed. "Ain't much of a secret, Wei. For all I know, the boss likes playing dress-up. I don't question it. He's out there right now keeping the Empire out of our space and paying us to help him out with that. Got no complaints with that."

  "And you want us to work for the kid that fucked the whole ABB into the ground?" Now, it was Wei's turn to scoff, the other man raising his hands in disbelief. "Are you fuckin' serious?"

  Fuckin' retard, I swear. The Japanese gangster let out a loud sigh. "I want a lot of things, Wei. A couple million in the bank, half a dozen girls on my dick, a private island somewhere in the Pacific so I can fuck 'em all day and night and pass out on a bed bigger than my mom's old apartment." Seo took another pull from his cigarette, his thoughts moving a mile a minute until he let out another gray exhale. "What I need is someone on our side so the Empire don't kill our families whenever they get the itch. The kid came to me for info on the Empire and I made a deal to save our fuckin' skins."

  "This is bigger than you, Seo," Wei raised his voice as he glared daggers at his Japanese counterpart. "You can't make deals for the rest of us!"

  Seo scoffed one more time, cigarette just brushing his lips. "At least the deals I make stick."

  Wei blinked. "Wha-"

  "The Koreans were never on your side, idiot. They're in on my deal, if you couldn't figure it out. Joon and Park, all the Blues, since day one. Even the other Reds, the ones that went with Chu. Matter of fact, Chu's probably giving your boy Charlie the same message right now. Either that or Charlie's dead," Seo added with a smile. "Long story short, we're all tired of being shit on in this city. Only way to go from here is up."

  The other man seemed frozen, mouth half open as confusion and shock expressed themselves clearly across his face. "You… you…y…" Wei bared his teeth, face going red as he devolved into cursing in Mandarin, pointing an angry finger at Seo as the Japanese man stood there, not understanding a single word.

  The Japanese man dropped his cigarette, grinding it under one boot as he stepped away from his bike. "From where I'm standing, you're the only boss that wants to bring back what the ABB was, trying to bring us down. The rest of us… we're letting it die with Lung. If you fuck with this, you…" Seo Asada folded his arms, "well, you're just gonna die."

  "I'm gonna die?!" Anger and hate twisted Wei's face into something even uglier. "You fuckin' first!" The man's hand jabbed toward his back, reaching for an object tucked into his tight waistband. Before his fingers could close around it, the gangster froze in place again.

  A smile spread across Seo's face as he witnessed Zhu Wei pale with a wiry arm wrapped around his neck, barely letting him breathe, the other arm leading to a hand firmly attached to the gun currently placed against his temple.

  "...whatthefuck."

  Seo raised his gaze to watch as just behind Wei, almost a dozen of his men found themselves in the same or similar positions as the rest of the crew Wei had brought along to this meeting as simple muscle for intimidation quickly subdued them.

  "...whatthefuck."

  "I guess I didn't make it clear," Seo continued, stepping closer to the trembling Wei. "Most of your crew knew about the deal, fatass. You didn't have to tell them shit. All I had to make sure they didn't tell you or your right hands. Simple."

  "They… th-thi… what the fuck...whatthefuck?" Wei's breath shallowed as he gasped for air, doing his best to scream and struggle even as one of his former boys pushed the gun harder against his head. "Fucking traitors! You're all fucking traito-"

  "They're not traitors, Wei. They're loyal to this city, to their neighborhoods, to their families. Not to pig-shit like you. This was how it was always gonna go down."

  The Chinese man continued to struggle, face reddening from the effort even as the wiry young man continued to tighten his hold. After a few seconds more, he let out a long gasp for air, his gut expanding as the man let himself sag in defeat. "...why?"

  "Why? You really gotta ask that? We want our people safe. We want money in our pockets. We want less trouble, not more."

  "... fine. Fine, I give in, alright." Wei grunted as he spat on the ground, eyes darting from side to side angrily as sweat dripped down his reddening face. "Just… just call your boys off."

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  Seo shook his head. "They ain't my boys."

  Wei opened his mouth to ask a simple one-word question, only for it to die in his throat as a dark figure dropped into the parking lot from seemingly nowhere, gravel displaced under his feet from the sudden impact.

  "He's right."

  Beneath a dark skull mask and a shock of thick blond hair, a mouth full of sharp white teeth grinned at him.

  "They're mine."

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

  – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

  Here's the link to the fic Discord btw:

  Hope you can join.

  And the cover art for Arc 6 is right below for your viewing pleasure.