14562/Mister Yi will see you now

Mister Yi will see you now
Date of Scene:	09 October 2022
Location:	Two Bridges (Chinatown), Manhattan
Synopsis:	A clandestine meeting in Chinatown goes wrong for Bucky. Luckily Willow is around to lend a hand.
Cast of Characters:	Winter Soldier, Willow Rosenberg

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James Barnes has posed:
New York, New York! Talk to any tourist about New York, and they'll talk about Times Square, or the Statue of Liberty. They'll know Central Park, they'll have heard of Broadway, and they've almost certainly heard of SoHo even if they can't point it out on a map. Ask them about Hell's Kitchen and you'll get some response. But inquire about Two Bridges, and blank stares are your fate until you mention the other name for the district... Chinatown.

It is, indeed, just as bustling and exotic as people imagine. In Canal street especially, where faux stone dragons compete with slightly suspect noodle bars and purveyors of all things herbal, guaranteed to improve your chi in one way or the other. Much Go is being played on tables outside of quiet bars and small eateries, and small groups practicing t'ai-chi can be seen by the riverside, seeking to become more one with themselves, nature, the cosmos, or any combination thereof.

But leave those bright streets, and welcome to the warehouses, the industrial districts found so often near the river, and the smaller businesses that don't advertise. Visitors rarely venture this far, but even an unwary tourist could walk here safely, provided they ignored the sudden prevalence of visible tattoos on the locals, and asked no sudden questions beyond directions to the nearest restaurant or purveyor of earthly delights.

In this district one can find the small shop of specialty items. The dusty window doesn't advertise, and beyond the herbs on display, doesn't ever make quite clear what it is the shop might sell. Those who need to know, know. You didn't walk into this shop without an invitation of some sort.

A man is browsing the wares by the back shelves, seemingly interested in some of the books for sale. Occasionally his interest is held by rare herbs, or even home made remedies for all ailments physical or spiritual. But mostly, if judged by the studied nonchalance of the store keeper, he seems to be waiting...

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Chinatown.

By now, Willow was an expert at going to the stores - the real stores, as opposed to the fancy-schmancy tourist attractions. She had even picked up a few phrases besides! What with her former roommate!

This time she was just looking around, with hopes of sage.

Out in the streets, the moon began to rise. A full moon it would seem.

Willow came into the same store as the man. Bucky. And besides sage, she found candles. Really cheap candles in red. Cheaper than the ones she usually bought at the Chinese District in Gotham.

She quickly picked up three of them. Not four or two - them being even numbers, and were bad juju.

James Barnes has posed:
The thing about clandestine meetings in obscure shops, the important thing about them, is that they are supposed to be clandestine. Cloak and dagger is much easier when there is no cloak required, which means the daggers are all the more visibls for those who worry about them. A moon, bulging slightly to betray it is not quite full, reflects the pale moonlight into the small shop which is, it must be said, very poorly lit for a commercial enterprise. All the better not to see faces by...

The presence of an actual customer in the store has the storekeeper slightly off balance, although he remains polite, and smiling, and really trying to get this customer out of the store as soon as possible.

But it's no use. The bell over the door chimes again, and three more men walk in. Two have the look of those people that can be found anywhere, employed in a nebulous fashion by people who will swear blind that they'd never seen them before in their life. The kind of people who believe that leather is the answer to every fashion question, and whose nervous energy disqualifies them for any employment other than pushing someone's face through the back of their skull. Tattoos cover their faces and hands, where they each appear to be missing the last knuckle of their little fingers.

By contrast, the third man is so suave as to be best described as polished. He's the sort of man who believes that a white linen suit is the key to all doors, and has the bearing of one who is very rarely proven wrong in that regard.

One of the thugs detaches himself from the suave man, and approaches the man in the back. As imagined, the thug has no imagination, or inclination towards subtlety, and puts a hand heavily on the man's shoulder. "Mister Lee will see you now. Come!"

And the second thug? The second thug has approached Willow, looming over her with a grin that can only be described as a leer. "Are you looking for Mister Lee? Or looking for another Mister? I can be that Mister."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Eeeew?

Willow was better at finding out the paranormal types of enemies. But she was getting better at recognizing people who were bad. And the men who walked in the store definitely reeked of being bad.

And one of them tried to pick her up.

Not nice. Not nice at all.

Her forehead creased as she mentally went eww. Given the two choices, she would have to pick number one. Because there was no way in heck she was going to go out with that guy. "What is it to you if I was?"

She aimed at being blase, and pretty much cool. What she really managed was not that. Not in a long shot.

James Barnes has posed:
It may have proven to be the wrong thing to say.

The head of the man in the linen suit turns slowly towards Willow, giving her the look reserved for something they found sticking to the sole of their otherwise immaculate shoe. In the world of Mister Lee, that looks appears to imply, people don't look for Mister Lee without Mister Lee knowing they are looking for him. Someone looking for Mister Lee without the permission of Mister Lee to even start the looking, this look implies, is the path to ill-health, misfortune, and probably some very bad chi. Very bad chi indeed.

"She doesn't mean that." the man at tha back of the store speaks, for the first time, in a voice that seems to imply that the grip on his shoulder is a thing he will endure, but not for very long, and incidentally that any action beyond taking him directly to Mister Lee may result in, among other things, slight property damage. And possibly some extremely bad chi.

The two thugs, already the recipients of about as poor a chi as it is possible to obtain without actually actively trying to make it worse, appear lost. This is not going to script. But the thug nearest to Willow reverts back to what he does know, and grabs her by the shoulders. "Then come! Mister Lee will be happy to see you."

"Perhaps not." the voice of the man in the linen suit is, exactly as the exterior of him, polished. Suave. Civilised and erudite. In another word, smarmy. "What business do you have with Mister Lee?"

"She doesn't have any..." the man at the back of the store begins, until a gesture from Linen Suit causes Thug the First to elbow him in the stomach to shut him up.

And with a sad little *ding*, the storekeeper pockets the money of the sale and hands over the candles. "Here, take. Good luck. You need good luck now."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Now, Willow would normally back right out of there, with her candles, of course! But she couldn't leave that man with those guys. What kind of superhero would she be? None, that's what kind.

"You shouldn't be so mean. That guy was just sticking up for me. He doesn't know that you guys are bad."

Okay, maybe she should have thought about her wording.

James Barnes has posed:
The man in the back, doubled over, is the recipient of an elbow in the back of the neck which leaves him closer acquainted with the floor. From behind the shelves it's hard to see, but there are indications that, perhaps, Thug One is taking the opportunity to earn some more negative chi by putting the boot it.

The shop keeper locks up the till and disappears, with some haste, through a bead curtain. There is the sound of a metal door being slammed shut a few seconds later.

And it takes a few seconds for the sniggering of Thug Two to subside. "Oh yes. Bad men. We're very bad men. Very very bad."

Linen Suit finally fully enters the store and lets the door fall shut behind him, turning over the 'closed' sign and pulling down the blinds. "Bad men do bad things. Sticking up for someone, in front of bad men, is a bad idea. But you have us figured wrong. We are not bad men."

The thumping from the rear of the store subsides, although the reason for the cessation isn't quite clear.

"No, we are not bad men." Linen Suit continues as he approaches Willow, eyes as dark and evil as anything ever seen rising from a crypt. If this person is not undead, he very much would like to be. "No... we are evil men. Evil is much worse than bad. And when Mister Lee -"

This is roughly the moment Thug One goes out through the front door, horizontal, incidentally taking the glass and door frame with him. The man in the back doesn't as much stand as unfold, rolling his left shoulder. "There's a limit the theatrics I'm going to let you get away with. You reached it ten seconds ago."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Oh."

Willow caught the initial beat down on Bucky, but her attention was drawn back to Mr. Linen Suit. Who was declaring himself, and the gaggle of men with him, evil.

Now, bad men she sometimes had a problem with. They could be turned! Maybe they were actually good, and actually were in a bind. Maybe they just needed a helping hand to crawl out of the sewer, back into the street where they belonged.

But evil was evil. And he, himself said it, they were evil. And that one goon had already kicked the nice gentlemen in the stomach. She didn't like that. At all.

Carefully, she outstretched her hands, and concentrated, "This would be my final warning.."

Then all heck broke loose.

Willow really didn't have much choice. She let Mr. Linen Suit, have a blast of forced lightning. Sending him (hopefully) through the window with the other guy, who she only now saw that he /wasn't/ the nice man. He was a goon!

James Barnes has posed:
Some things happen extremely fast. So fast, in fact, that it usually takes an act of cinema to visualise, or a feat of writing to describe.

Suffice to say that, in a crowded few seconds, Linen Suit finds himself smoldering out on the street on top of Thug One, having, quite incidentally, taken the shop window with him on the way out. And through. Definitely, definitely through.

At the time Linen Suit briefly discovered the joys of flight, Thug Two was already underway to avenge Thug One. Only a frantic leap allows him to avoid the sudden lightning, which does in fact save him from being fried.

It does not save him from being booted.

The man in the back, as a matter of fact, eyes as blue as winter ice, receives Thug Two with a boot to the chest. The arc Thug Two describes is nowhere near as dramatic nor as flat as the ballistic trajectories Thug One and Linen Suit have achieved, but it all evens out in the end. In that Thug Two ends up in a heap, directly on top of Linen Suit, who was showing signs of getting up. These signs cease after being hit by an airborne thug.

"I think it would be a good idea to get out of here right now." says Man In The Back who is, quite suddenly, Man In The Front, and after a few moments even Man Behind The Counter. He's moving at speed, and with purpose, a far cry from the helpless man he appeared a few seconds ago. "Coming?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow doesn't try to use her magic for the nice man who-used-to-be-in-the-back-but-now-is-up-front.

Nodding, she quickly grabbed her purchase (what? She paid for it! (actually, she didn't)).

Walking over the evil-men, she whispers overly loudly, "You really didn't need my help, did you?"

James Barnes has posed:
Quite surprisingly, Linen Suit is showing signs of recovery already, despite now being the owner of quite the singed suit, and the recipient of nearly two hundred pounds of thug to the face not too long ago. "Haven't made up my mind about that yet, actually..." Man Now Rapidly Walking Away declares. "Things didn't go exactly to plan back there."

It's not until they're about a block away, and he's made sure the street they're on is reasonably deserted, that he finally stops and looks at Willow. Those eyes are... interesting. They're not the eyes of a kind man, or at least they're not anymore. They might have been once. These are eyes in which, quite clearly, evil has once lived... although no evil is in them now. What's in them now is concern. They're the kind of eyes that could have quite a few things in them, seemingly at the whim of the man himself. "Are you alright? You shouldn't have been caught up in that, I'm sorry."

Momentary pause

"But, should the worst have happened, you wouldn't exactly have needed my help either, would you?"

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow kept up with him. She doesn't look the fighting sort, and most definitely was to the scrawny side of normal. But she kept up.

When he decided enough was enough, that they could stop and talk, Willow was embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I guess I got in between you and them." But what kind of man was he anyway. And his evil still lurks under the creases of his eyes. Sorta the way Spike's did. "I.. thought you were in danger. And I couldn't leave you alone to defend yourself."

She balls her hands up, and puts them behind her back. ..Nothing to see there!

James Barnes has posed:
"Good instinct. Most people would have run away. Especially when they see a sub boss of the Lee Triad." Ah.

After a few moments, the man extends a hand in greeting. "Name's James. I thought I knew everything there was to know about those guys, but... something was off there." The voice, oddly, doesn't sound at all like the one he was using in the shop, or even when walking away. No, this is Bucky using his normal voice, the one with the slight Brooklyn accent. Like the look in his eyes, he probably has quite a few of these voices. "Thank you. I won't ask about the lightning."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
"Oh. I guess.. oh. My name's Willow. You know, like the tree. Actually my parents didn't know about Willow and magic. Though not as famous as the rowan tree. I wasn't named for magic though.."

She natters along about that for a little while.

She looks pleased when he compliments her about that self same magic. "Usually I only use it on monsters. My friends actually give them troubles, I usually give protections. I hope I didn't cause that man's death - do you think we should check on him?"

James Barnes has posed:
"All things considered, I think that would be a bad idea." James says, slowly, but smiling as he does. He doesn't tell Willow what he suspects, because who would believe him that vampires actually exist? Well, a few people, but he'd have to reach out to them soon. "Willow is a good name. Knew a man once called Ash, we called him Woody throughout most of the wa-.... all the time I knew him. Long time ago." Woops, nearly slipped there. But Bucky's mind is clearly on something else. "Anyway, Willow not named for Magic, you helped me out there. Don't worry about those goons, I think it'd take a lot more than what we did to hurt them permanently. Probably best of you think of them as monsters. Pretty much what they are."

For a moment he stops and glances around. Something in this street has eyes on him, he can feel it. And it's not a feeling he's ever been very comfortable with. "Anyway, choose a place to eat. Food's on me. Least I could do."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Watching his face, she frowns. "Who's watching you?" Willow bends forward just a bit. "Are you sure that those men don't have other spies looking at you?" They might!!

His statement that it wouldn't be the best thing to do is probably true, though it does get a giggle from her. "Now I know how it feels! I know of a good hole in the wall place that serves vegan Chinese food. I think they may have some meat? I really don't know. I'm a vegan."

D'uh!

"But you don't have to do it. Really. I'm used to being around people who are much more famous than I. And trust me, they don't accept bribes. Gee, I guess I shouldn't accept it either. I can pay for my half though! I'm a student. We always split the bill. Good thing my hole in the wall is cheap."

James Barnes has posed:
"One thing I'm not, is famous." Bucky grins, as he starts to lead Willow away from the backstreets. "Famously so. Got some famous friends, I let them have the publicity." That, at least, they seemed to have in common. As they walk, his voice drops to a barely audible whisper, delivered seemingly without his lips being involved at all. "At least three behind us. I'm guessing two on the roof. They're not sure what we are yet, so what we're going to be is outta here. I can talk to Mister Yi later." And the whisper has this going for it... he pronounces 'Yi' with the Cantonese inflection, avoiding the trap of most Americans that would make it come out as 'Lee'. "At the very least, he'll be expecting me now."

Next topic, gear shift. "Vegan Chinese? Hadn't had that in a while. And the price of food and the quality of food are, in my experience, inversely proportional. Had some of the best food I ever had that was free, had some the worst food I ever had in fancy places." Although, frequently that was because he was the reason the food didn't go over well. His surprise appearances in kitchens all over the world tended to knock food critics dead. Literally.

"Check is mine, I insist. Call me... old fashioned."

Willow Rosenberg has posed:
Willow is suddenly quite sober. No nattering on. No babbling about her name, or how she wasn't named for magic (in fact, at one point, Willow mother tried to burn her at the stake for doing magic).

"Should we drop out of sight?" She thinks she could do it. A little magic and some fog rolling in, then using a different spell..

Yeah, she could. She was certain.

"I haven't had much money. So.." She spreads her arms wide as if to say 'it is what it is'.

James Barnes has posed:
"Here's a tip. If you want to disappear, really disappear..." Bucky steps into the next street, and suddenly the bustle of Canal Street is all around them, complete with gormless tourists. It's a crowd, and two more people disappear into it as if they never were. "... best to hide in plain sight. Now, let's find that vegan place."