2032/Hunted Between Worlds

Hunted Between Worlds
Date of Scene:	17 August 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	A Chinese military officer on the run from the People's Republic is a major token in the schemes of the old money of European alliance. Penguin's careful arrangement to move him into the hands of British paramilitary hands is foiled by Alice Gulliver, who takes him into her custody, outside the eyes of Hong Kong or Gotham City police. But still the man lusts for revenge against his homeland. And the Penguin is always one who understands humanity's darker ambitions, those that promise thanatos.
Cast of Characters:	Penguin, Wu

Penguin has posed:
    Colonel Jin "Lucky Kitten" Zhuo, a bureaucrat from the People's Republic of China, was the protege of a high ranking university professor, moving balances and economic data related to the military of the Chinese Army. Named "Lucky Kitten" for his childlike demeanor and his upstanding discipline, a once patriot of the Chinese government found himself on hard times when his son got caught up with the thugs of the inner city and found himself in deep with a gambling debt. Unable to report the incident to his superiors without sending his son to the labor camps, Colonel Zhuo found himself reporting on Chinese military movements of ammunition to an influential international Triad ring with ties in America. Accused of espionage, the Lucky Kitten evaded the country by simple virtue of remembering his father's job as a cab driver in Beijing, and the revenge in his heart at his son being executed by an intelligence cadre. The little cat had made it to Macau, and then to Dubai, and next to Johannesberg. It just so happened that the Triads had been selling his information to a high ranking mercenary company, Knight and Shield Services, a British group of bandits eleveated to the rank of privateer. And among brigands, debt runs deep.

    At the harbor, on a low and misty night among the pollution choked waters and the smell of fish, a fishing boat pulls into the harbor, named 'The Cigar', a tongue in cheek reference to UFO sightings. Captain Dwight Harriet, a smuggler captain involved in various movements of priceless works of art and the occasional cache of ammunition, had just orchestrated a rendez-vous with a passing container ship out of Argentina, owned by a blackshirt warlord land baron in the highlands of South America. Inside the hold, Colonel Zhuo waits, with a pair of black rosary beads, slowly staring at them as he fingers them, reciting Catholic prayers in Chinese in his head. Across from him is Lou "Spades" Tortelli, an Italian Mafia enforcer specializing in blade play, quietly drinking from a can of Pepsi. Lou is taking a high risk mission, but it means college for his daughter, as promised by the Penguin.

    On the rooftops across from the wharf, Armande "The Curse" Galica, an ex-Army Ranger, opens a case and begins assembling a light tactical sniper rifle, to work as the spotter for this exchange. Penguin needs to get Lucky Kitten into the hands of the British black operations company, to get him to South America and out of danger. His skills as a Maoist military accountant are vital, and the Penguin is serving the Crown once again.

Wu has posed:
    No matter how well-planned operations are. No matter how well-greased the palms of the GCPD higher-ups may be. No matter how much effort is spent keeping the wrong people away from shady transactions like this, there's always that one wrench in the works. That one person who by hook, by crook, or by sheer blind luck (bad or otherwise) shows up when he or she is least desired.
    Detective Alice Gulliver of the Hong Kong Police, deputized by and attached to the Gotham City Police Department is that wild card tonight. Meticulous planning of this operation aside, it's hard to plan for someone who just doesn't fit as a peg in any of the holes that are supposed to be there, to wit:

    1. She's not on the GCPD payroll, so she's almost invisible to snoops.
    2. While a noted figure to the underworld in Hong Kong, she's a noted figure in Hong Kong. Her presence in Gotham has apparently not made its way through the network of informants yet.
    3. All that aside, she really isn't supposed to even be aware of this operation. How did she happen to wind up in the docks?

    Her behaviour doesn't exactly scream "cop", mind you. She's prowling around the alleys, her eyes peering into shadows, nooks, and crannies, almost as if she's looking for something. Or someone.
    "Come out, come out, whatever you are..." she murmurs.
    A someone.
    She pauses in her prowling, pulling a sheaf of rice paper squares out of her pocket and ruffling through them. Distance and mist make it hard to work out what's on them, even through a sniper scope, as she stands in deepening mist, but there appears to be writing of some kind. Three are selected before the sheaf is returned to her left pocket. One square is crumpled and popped into her mouth. One square is licked and pasted to the inside of her vest. The final square is again crumpled and palmed.
    Her eyes scan the neighbourhood's streets and windows and rooftops. They pause briefly at the sniper, widening in shock.
    A profanity escapes her lips. A very bad one involving grandmothers and ghosts. (Well, it's bad in Cantonese. In translation it would be rather quaint.) A few heartbeats later she's in motion for the nearest cover.

Penguin has posed:
Armande spots Gulliver in his scope, his rifle held on in his hands and against his shoulder in lieu of a police sniper prop, instead using a sighting technique for scouts and trackers. He's in a kneeling position, right knee up and left knee down to brace himself, watching Alice carefully. And then, he tightens his jaw as she seems to spot him, before she plays her hand and goes for cover. That's a live one. He moves his rifle away from his eye, keeping a visual confirmation over the cover below, and taps his left hand onto a button attached to the jacket of his street musician's outfit. He talks briefly, at a room level, so the microphone on his collar can hear him, before he taps the button again and moves the scope back to his eye, continuing to watch the broad, foggy docks.

Lou hears a radio in his ear murmur, the voice of Armande, and looks up to the Colonel. "You've got company, Colonel." He rises from his seat as he takes a deep drink of his soda, finishing it, and throws it in a trash barrel in the hold. "No guns unless you're directly threatened. Those are the Penguin's rules. You're in a bad time in your life, right now." He reaches into his brown leather jacket and pulls out a large butterfly knife, flipping it into the open position gracefully, but savagely, and clicking the handle shut. "C'mon, Colonel. Welcome to America." The Colonel emits a sigh and loops his rosary beads around his hand, before sliding them into the pocket of his traveling clothes, a three piece suit purchased in South Africa. He stands and checks the clip on his well-oiled and maintained holdout pistol, before sliding it into a shoulder holster. Lou and Jin, one after the other, depart the hold, the boat rocking from the ocean.

As they reach the top deck, the Captain is already outside, peering across the wharf with an old barkeep shotgun laid across his left arm. He's slowly chewing mint gum, trying to quit smoking, before he looks sidelong at Jin and Lou. Silently, he turns his face away, back out across the broad expanse of dim city, lights glittering above the bad weather in the distance.

Wu has posed:
    Oh, this just keeps getting better and better, doesn't it? First a sniper on the rooftop, now an obvious Guido coming out of a ship alongside ...
    Alice gasps audibly enough to almost be heard over the harbour noises as she recognizes the other. "Lucky Kitten" here in Gotham!? Nothing in the dispatches about that, nor in her own private sources. Heads will be rolling. Well, some shouting will be done and some people will get marked for closer observation at any rate.
    Mind racing, she scans the dockyards without any of the uncertainty expected for the thickening mist.
    "One. Two. Three. Gum guy makes four."
    Not good odds. Surprise advantage lost, but she's penetrated deeper than they'd expected apparently.
    Then there's...
    "Zhou Shangxiao!" she calls out, her voice splitting through the night in its slightly accented Mandarin, echoing from enough surfaces to make it hard to pinpoint the source. "Xianzai shi tanhua de shihoule." Colonel Zhou. It's time to talk.
    Then, for the benefit of those not able to speak a civilized tongue. "GCPD. The Colonel and I have to talk."

Penguin has posed:
 Lucky Kitten freezes as he spots the hair color that Alice Gulliver has, his hands straightening flat beside him. The Captain, and Spades, fail to pick up on the signal, too concerned with the apparent GCPD officer making a highly unusual request. The Captain keeps his shotgun right where it is, knowing the law quite well, as a smuggler, not wanting to complicate matters for himself as the east coast version of a coyote. Spades, however, plants his left hand on the edge of the boat and kicksteps up over the rim, and down around to the dock, swinging to his feet with the knife in hand. Armande reaches to his rifle with his left hand, widening his view and doing a cursory scan of Alice's infiltration route, watching for any additional cops. He's been given strict orders to only fire if the principle, Colonel Zhuo, is in danger of leaving their hands.

 Spades slinks towards Alice, his knife glinting milky white from the harbor lights and creating a soft, ghastly glow amidst the rolling fog that chokes the ground here tonight beneath his waist. "Gotham City police?" Lou knows not to respond as if this was a costumed hero, since the affiliation of most cops in the city is up for grabs. "You weren't planned for. What's the slide?" The Colonel, meanwhile, looks as if he's been struck, knowing that Alice Gulliver's red hair marks her as capable of killing all of them.

 "No! No! No!" the Colonel announces, waving his arms. He hurries off the boat and onto the long pier, waving at Captain Harriet to push off. He rushes up behind Lou. "Don't fight, don't fight," he says, his normally spectacular English marred by a reflexive split between culture, in a new area. Lou looks at Kitten, shocked, while the soft faced man in his fifties puts a hand on Tortelli's shoulder.

 "<Not a Triad, not a Triad. What do you want?>" he asks in Mandarin, his voice soft and deferential, despite the handle of the pistol glinting from under his left arm. "<Don't shoot anyone, they don't know what they're involved in.>"

Wu has posed:
 "Put down the knife, Sonny," Alice says to Spades, not entirely unkindly. Entirely. "If I wanted you dead, your sniper would have been first." She points with unerring accuracy over her shoulder at the sniper. "Then your shotgun rider. Then you. I'm not here for you."
 She looks Zhuo over, eyes raking his form appraisingly.
 "I'm not even here for him, interestingly enough. He's a ... target of opportunity. I'm going to have to decide what to do now that he's here. And that's what the good Colonel and I will be talking about." She smiles. Well, bares her teeth. "You go run along now. Grown-ups are talking."
 She dismisses Spades, seemingly, and turns her attention to Zhuo.
 "<Colonel Zhuo,>" she says, with surprisingly respectful tone of voice and posture, right down to a fairly decent traditional bow, left fist against straight right palm held before her. "<It is both an honour and troublesome to meet you.>" Then the courtesy levels in her voice drop; eyes and voice both crystalize into ice. "<What business brings you into my patrol district?>"
 Her hand slowly reaches into her pocket then withdraws as she pulls out a sheaf of papers, like a disorganized notebook, the leaves fluttering in the dockside zephyrs.

Penguin has posed:
Lou looks to Colonel Zhuo, and the Colonel raises his left hand. Lou lowers his knife, and steps back, glaring at Gulliver. Zhuo does not return the bow, asserting his military rank and status, merely allowing a respectful nod with his mouth drawn into a slim line. Anything in him that was once a military officer of China, or a man raised in the Far East, is gone, hidden under the veneer of a fugitive.

"<Flight from China. I'm on my way to a linkup in Costa Rica. The Army killed my son, after I was forced to work for the Tong. I've been offered a job for a rival, that is also a friend to this country. I suppose you must choose your loyalties now, priestess.>"

Wu has posed:
 Alice nods, pursing her lips. The crumpled piece of rice paper she flicks over her shoulder out into the mist behind her as she lowers her gaze to the street, scuffing a spot on the asphalt to dislodge a pebble that got stuck in a crack.
 "" she finally says. "<Your battle is not mine. The PLA's battle is not mine.>" She idly flips through her calligraphy-encrusted papers, looking for all the world like she's skimming a book. "<But you know I'm more than what you think my red hair means,>" she adds obliquely. ""
 Her eyes flick up to Lou suddenly, her black irises hiding the blacker pupils within. "<You have chosen ... unwisely in your companions. Were it just you, I would let you go. Indeed I could probably have been persuaded to help you.>" The eyes swivel back over to the Colonel. "<The men you have aligned with now, however, are ... what one of my two oaths binds me to fighting. So tell me, Colonel: faced with my choice now, what would you choose?>"
 She'd make a damned fine poker player if this were her gig.
 "<It is quite a problem for me to decide.>"

Penguin has posed:
Lou's Catholic instinct takes over at the black eyed gaze, seeing the eyes of a black Irishwoman, his thumb rubbing along the paired grip of his butterfly knife. He shows his teeth out of instinct, despite not understanding the conversation. He keeps his knife down, but he clearly wants to fight at the mere look of her eyes.

"<The government we were raised in errs on the side of caution, and redeems through mettle. I was told this government, in America, errs on the side of forgiveness, and redeems through kindness. Have I been lied to?>" Colonel Zhuo replies, his face with the childlike softness that earned him the feline portion of his nickname, but the stern adherence to his country's modern ways (and improving them through his skills) that earned him the honorific 'Lucky'. He's using a trick of logic used by diplomats since time began, combining a pair of parameters he's provided with the simple, congruous logic of an economist.

Wu has posed:
 "<I'm still Xianggangren, Colonel,>" Alice corrects. "" Her mouth twists into a sardonic expression. "<I'm still working for the same people, ultimately, as are hunting you.>"
 One of the papers catches her interest and she extracts it, carefully, slowly, giving the sniper no reason for alarm, returning the rest of her papers to the vest pocket.
 "<Still, I see you more as a victim; one to be defended. That is not an issue. It is these men that are the issue. I've decided. The sniper dies. The captain goes free. Your other friend lives or dies according to his actions. You come with me.>"
 Now a genuine smile. Not the baring of a predator's teeth. Not the paper-thin veneer of courtesy over a wolf's form.
 "<Mercy comes from unexpected sources. But only if you trust Guanyin when she reveals herself to you. If my mercy is satisfactory, indicate it by crouching quickly and closing your eyes.>"
 A random (?) puff of wind brings some of the knee-height dense mist up into a fountain behind the cop, granting her a ghostly demeanour as she speaks.

Penguin has posed:
 "<You have understood so little of this city that invited you in,>" is all the Colonel says, before he puts his hands behind his back and takes a step backwards, stooping forwards with his head bowed.

 Lou "Spades" Tortelli steps into the space where the Colonel was, an instinctive bodyguard position, sweeping the knife in his right hand between his face, and Alice's, with a flourish to shine the light of the city and overcast skies between them, a wisp of fog following his arm, before he offers a pair of slices, one across the front, then one back to his right, merely opening forays, before he pulls back onto his left heel for a split second, merely a fraction of a dance, before he thrusts forward with the knife in his hand at Gulliver's left shoulder where it meets the ribs, above the heart.

 Armande adjusts his scope to the proper frame of reference, viewing the trio he's most interested in, adjusting his breathing back to his Rangers training.

 The Cigar, Captain Harriet's boat, meanwhile, slowly turns about, the Captain at the helm as it backs away from the pier, then turning about and thrumming away, into the fog and darkness.

Wu has posed:
    Alice steps into the blow, meeting it, guiding it, almost, into its proper place. Right above her heart. Right where the rice paper she'd stuck on the inside of her vest sits. The knife's tip bites a little bit into the leather before sliding off with the screech of steel on slate.
    As Spades' surprise washes over him, his balance thrown by the sudden unexpected resistance, Alice grins. This is back to the feral one, white teeth practically glowing in the night.
    "My turn!" she says, blood lust evident in both her raw voice and her suddenly sparkling eyes.
    She steps back, eyes closed, as the paper she'd so carefully selected before gets crumpled in her hand before her. The street is light sharply by a sudden, silent flash of light. Apparently she's tricked out some auto-igniting flash paper of some kind.
    Apparently.
    Of some kind.
    Of a kind whose light blazes far brighter than any flash paper ever used by a stage magician. The kind of light that bores straight through the eyes and into the retina, leaving afterimages that won't go away. Especially when mechanically amplified in a night scope, say.
    Her eyes open again as her hands almost sprout a pair of pistols.
    "Bang, bang, you're dead!" she whispers to nobody in particular as she fires the pair of pistols at nobody in particular, one pistol vaguely pointing in the direction of a stack of containers, those miracles of modern logistics, while the other points down the street into the moody, meandering mists. Her fingers squeeze five times each.
    Up at the rooftop, a fraction of a second later, almost a dozen bullets fly out of the air, five from above, five from the right, to pepper the area with the sniper.

Penguin has posed:
The knife glisses off the magic rice paper, leaving Lou overexposed in his knife stance, and then, the flash comes. He shouts in surprise, stumbling off his gait and nearly falling as his knife falls from his hand and goes flying across the concrete surface of the wharf. The flash also blinds Colonel Zhuo, as he stumbles away and turns to the side, clenching his hands over his face and crying out. He's not a professional soldier of that sort that would be a line officer, he's a theoretician for supply movements and the interconnected political economy.

The sniper sees the flash, of sufficient distance to avoid being completely blinded, but he loses his night sight. And then, the bullets come down, raining down from all directions. He bounces off his knee and to the left, his rifle discharging with a crack, into the air, before it goes flying from his hands with a swinging motion, hitting the roof and sliding to a halt. Armande, meanwhile, has aerosol splatters of blood burst from him at the rain of gunfire, before the crimson life fluids inside him begin leaking out, deep into the cracked mortar.

Wu has posed:
 "<Colonel,>" Alice says brusquely, grabbing the soldier's hand, ""
 Spades gets a vicious kick to the side of the knee, more out of spite than necessity--it appears that trying to stab her puts Alice off her mood--and Zhuo is dragged unceremoniously away. "" she continues. "" she adds by way of reassurance.
 She drags the Colonel as quickly as he can stumble while blinded into the stack of containers lurking in the white clouds behind them, stopping only when the pair have turned three times in the maze.
 "<Be still!>" she hisses, pressing Zhuo down and crouching alongside him, keeping them as deep into the dense portions of the mist as is possible. ""

Penguin has posed:
Spades emits a scream as his knee is kicked and hyperextended for a moment, before snapping back into position, albeit with a cartilidge snap that will turn him into a jump fighter rather than a groundsman. He collapses to the ground, and begins dragging himself away, weak and blind. He seethes with rage through the pain, putting effort into a fruitless escape, should Alice choose to pursue. He's heading for a car parked nearby, a dark blue LTD, cop colors besides black trim along the underbody. One of Cobblepot's cars, marked in such a way due to Penguin's adherence to an honorable concept of crime. That's why they call him 'The Penguin', in this town: he's a nun.

Zhuo is dragged along, staggering blind, and nearly falls as he's pressed down. "<You've doomed us, both of us,>" the Colonel whines, as he rubs his eyes left and right in a vain attempt to return his sight from the magic flash. "" he sighs haggardly.

Wu has posed:
 "" Alice says peevishly. "<I have freed you. You think your friends were going to let you live? You were going to be their slave until you were of no more use to them. Then you were going to die. Now you can find your way on your own, free.>"
 She shuts up and focuses a moment, eyes closed.
 "<OK, good, it was just the three. The child is crawling to a car. I think I may have hurt him more than I intended to.>"
 Her dark eyes open and she watches Zhuo as his vision returns. "<When you're good to travel, I'll set you up in a hotel. I can use my informant's budget for it, but it won't be fancy. After that, we'll see about getting you smuggled out of Gotham and into your own life.>"

Penguin has posed:
Colonel Zhuo's vision returns as he waits with Culliver, looking down in silent repose, not at the woman, or himself, merely pondering something with a fixed stare at the ground. "<You invoke community without service, to one who has committed treachery for family against country,>" he says lowly. "<And you are someone in service to the community, without treachery to family or country.>"

Zhuo looks to Gulliver, his mouth tight. "<The principles are very simple, in terms of shape. But you are not a detective, because you do not understand games.>" He looks away, at nothing. "<Very well, priestess. Perhaps you will learn the theory necessary to question oath in favor of structure.>" A slow smile creeps onto his face. "<A false saying is that, 'no man is an island'. In reality, the islands do not exist, merely pieces of wood in currents.>" He chuckles distantly.

Wu has posed:
 "No man is an island," Alice says, switching to the local community's language, albeit not with a passable local dialect. "But some men are peninsulas."
 Her face is deadpan. It's not clear if she's joking or not, nor for that matter aware of what she's just quoted.
 "An oath untempered by mercy is just a tool for oppression. Mercy not grounded in oaths is a tool of entropy. I am neither. I know why you did what you did. I don't approve, but I understand. And I, too, have felt the pain of loss."
 Something almost human creeps into Alice's face.
 "I understand the rage. The hatred. The desire to strike back deep and hard. And the unfortunate outcomes this can lead to. I've felt it. I've seen it countless times. Hence the mercy. You don't deserve the life you were about to walk into."
 Her eyes harden as she looks in the vague direction they came from.
 "<The shortened life you were about to walk into.>" she adds in Cantonese.
 "You've suffered enough, don't you think? You call me priestess. It's as apt a description as any; and I serve ideals higher than even the badges I wear."
 Sardonic grin.
 "It's your lucky day, isn't it?"

2032/Hunted Between Worlds

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