He didn't let the announcement faze him, although part of it was surprising. "Why did you call him Yashida?"

Shiro's eyes narrowed further, which seemed like a physical impossibility. "Didn't you do your research, old man? When he married into the family, he adopted the name. Not legally, of course - what court would allow a man to take his wife's name, especially when he has no papers to prove his own identity - but it was common knowledge. At least within the family."

With the Yakuza, you had to become adept at reading between the lines. "You're saying some of the Yashida clan is still around?"

"Not everybody lived in or around Tokyo. Some lived farther away; some were overseas at the time. But he did gut them as a legitimate crime family - he made the name a joke. Most of them changed their name rather than be associated with that farce. A couple had the money and connections to gut it through."

"Some you know." Hardly a guess.

"One of them has spent a lot of time and money getting past that ... incident. You have no idea what a slap in the face it is to bring him back."

"Slap in the face? He's a free man - he can go where he wants. He's even been to Tokyo recently ... but, oh, I guess your wonderful intelligence network missed that."

His expression soured so much it looked like he'd just bitten down on a lemon wedge. "Where is he, Tagawa?"

He grimaced, shaking his head. "That man - "

"Freak."

" - that man destroyed two well armed families in hours; he cut through them like a warm knife through butter. Do you not think the same thing could happen again?"

"We're ready for him this time."

"Are you? He destroyed you once."

Tony knew that would get to him, and it did. Shiro's glower was an ugly thing to behold. "No one destroys the Yakuza. Certainly not some ageless freak who owes us a blood debt."

"Owes you? I'd think you owe him. You took his wife, did you not?"

Shiro didn't answer that. "You're running out of time, old man. Where is he?"

Tony sighed, and slumped back in his seat, which seemed to get less comfortable the longer time went by. "Do you want my brother's assets and all he left behind? I'm willing to negotiate, but only if you back off. There's been enough violence, don't you think?"

He scoffed derisively. "Back off? You're surrounded, you senile fuck. We call the shots here."

"Do you? Kill me and my people right now, and you will never know what became of anodyne."

He tried to keep his neutral lawyer face, but his posture stiffened, as if he'd just tasered him in the ass. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Oh really? My brother was very careless with his records, but what do you expect from a coke fiend? I have everything he had about anodyne, all of it, and it's in a place of safety far from here. If I do not call in a code at certain explicit intervals, one of my personal bodyguards - ironically not here with me - has been instructed to turn over all the records and samples to both the U.S. and Japanese governments. And you know how they are about illegal narcotics."

He matched his stare for a long time, but Tony didn't blink. He was in the power position here, and Shiro was slowly starting to realize that. "You're bluffing."

"Am I really?" He stood up, and Shiro jumped to his feet, as if about to try and restrain him, but he didn't move around the desk. "Why don't you find out, Shiro? Tell your boys to start pulling the trigger."

"This is bullshit," he snarled. "You'd be incriminating your own brother!"

"Who I never gave a fuck about even when he was alive," he replied coolly. "But now that he's dead, who really gives a shit? In fact, I think it would give me the smallest bit of pleasure to see his name smeared over the daily papers like so much excrement on a wall. My business is clean, which any investigation would reveal. How's about yours?"

If looks could kill, Tony knew he'd have been scraped off the carpet with a shovel. "You have signed your death warrant, old man."

"I have a habit of doing that," he admitted, moving towards the door. Turning his back on Shiro right now was extremely dangerous, and so very insulting; he was dismissing him as a threat, and they both knew it. "You play nice, and I'll make sure the records find their way back to your bloodthirsty organization. Do you really think I give a shit if people wish to kill themselves? But the moment you attack is the moment the records are mine for good." He put his hand on the door knob, and only then did he glance back at Shiro. He was so livid his face was nearly purple - his head looked like an overripe plum. "And I'd seriously reconsider going after Logan. I brought him here for one reason: to finish the job he started, and destroy you all. If I were you, I wouldn't remind him how much he hates you."

"You're not leaving Hong Kong alive," he sputtered, so enraged he could barely talk.

Tony gave him a small, professional smile. "We'll see." And he left Shiro impotently staring holes in his back.

He loved how these people kept completely underestimating him. Would he have bothered to show up if he couldn't beat them all?

As soon as he came out, Marcus stood up, looking a little puzzled. “That was fast.”

“He was called away on an emergency.”

“Lawyers have emergencies?”

Tony grabbed his arm as he walked past, and gently tugged Marcus towards the door with him. If he held fast he couldn’t have moved him, but Marcus played along. “We may need to hurry,” he confided in a low voice.

Marcus looked around suspiciously, keeping pace with him. “Why?”

“Because I think the shooting’s about to start.”

****

Logan knew they were being watched. Someone - someones? - were staring so intensely at the car it made him feel like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin. The car windows were tinted, though, no one could see inside, but he still didn’t like it. “Something’s wrong,” he muttered, trying to look up at the roofs of all the neighboring buildings. Only a couple would be any good for snipers, and he didn’t see any … but then, a good sniper would be virtually invisible.

“Is that why you’re fidgeting like a fucking three year old?” Yukio snapped.

“Are you at all a bodyguard?”

“It isn’t my main description, but yeah, I can fill in.”

He wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare. Fill in? Like you could do that and be halfway decent at your job. “We’re being watched. I don’t like this.”

“It’s downtown Hong Kong, and we’re in an expensive car. Yeah we’re being watched, dipshit.”

He didn’t snap at her - he wanted to, but he didn’t. It would be wasted. This was so fucking wrong he could barely stand it. He decided to give Marc and Tony a couple of minutes, then he was going in after them. Fuck a couple of minutes; one minute. How long had they been gone?

“No you are not,” Yukio suddenly said, making him jump. “He told you to stay here - you stay here.”

“You ain’t my boss.”

“If you want to keep your job, you’ll keep your ass in the car.”

He gave her a hard look. Yukio stared back at him, unblinking and unforgiving. “You’re really annoying.”

“So are you,” she replied coldly.

“Does this mean we’re on a date?”

“You wish, asshole.”

“Not really.” Finally, he saw Marc and Tagawa emerge from the lawyer’s office, but Marc had his hand inside his jacket, and seemed to be glancing around casually. Shit. “Start the car.”

“You’re not my boss,” she shot back.

“Oh, god damn it, something’s wrong. Start the fucking car.” He popped open the door, and said, “You took long-”

“Stay in the car,” Tagawa said sharply in Japanese.

Logan frowned at him, and shot back, in Japanese, “Why?”

“Because I told you to,” he responded. That sounded so unlike Tony he actually stayed in the car - how bad were things? Maybe she finally got the picture, because Yukio started the car.

Marc literally shoved Tagawa into the backseat, and Logan had shoved himself over to the other side, so Tagawa was once more sandwiched between them. “What’s going on?” Logan asked, in English, as Marc clamored in and slammed the door.

“No fuckin’ clue,” Marc answered honestly, pulling out one of his Glocks.

“I pissed off the Yakuza,” Tagawa said.

“I thought you already did that,” Logan countered.

“This was another one,” he replied simply. “To his face.”

“Okay, yeah, I’m gonna assume that’s askin’ for it,” Marc commented.

Logan heard the whine of a motorcycle engine, rapidly approaching, and looked out the tinted rear windshield to see a helmeted man on a smaller motorcycle - maybe a Kawasaki, a Yamaha, something like that; he sometimes got those smaller bikes mixed up - but it was a dark bike, with a dark clad anonymous rider, and it set off mental alarms before he started reaching into his jacket. Drive by shooters on motorbikes occurred to him, brought out one of those strange cases of déjà vu. “Yukio, back up.”

“What?”

“Reverse, fast, now!” He shouted, as he saw the man pull something out of his jacket. Something metal.

“Do it!” Tagawa ordered.

He was the boss, so she did what he said - she threw the car into reverse, and they jolted back, so quickly he could smell the burning rubber on the pavement.

It startled the biker, who was expecting a stationary target - or at least one moving away from him, not towards him - but before he could swerve around, Logan threw open his door. The front of his tire caught the edge of the door, nearly yanking it off at the hinges, and sending the biker flying straight over his handlebars. Since he only had one hand on them anyways, he went catapulting through the air like a human cannonball as the bike clattered end over end towards the opposite side of the street, finally coming to rest against a parked car it hit so hard it embedded itself in its bumper, shattering the taillights.

The biker wasn’t so lucky. He went flying through the windshield of an oncoming car, and the driver was so startled he swerved and smashed into the curb and didn‘t stop until he hit the sidewalk, so violently the airbag deployed. The driver was moving; the driver was the only one for now.

“Holy fuck!” Marcus exclaimed.

Yukio had hit the brakes on impact, and he could see how wide her eyes were in the rearview mirror. “Shit.”

Logan got out, and said, “Drive. I’ll meet you back at the flat.”

Tagawa, for the first time, looked startled. “What?”

“Bud, you can’t draw their fire on foot,” Marc replied, not all that shocked. “They will take you down, and wipe out civilians.”

“I got a bike now, don’t I?” He said, giving him an evil grin. Well, it wasn’t a Harley, but it was probably better for crowded Hong Kong streets.

Marc tossed him a gun, and Logan caught it, deciding not to argue with him about it now. It might come in handy. “I love you, you crazy motherfucker,” Marc said with a rangy grin, giving him a wink.

“Logan, don’t - “ Tagawa said, looking suddenly ashen with shock, but they had wasted too much time already. Logan kicked the slightly warped back door closed, and ran across the street to retrieve the bike as Yukio burned more rubber getting the hell out of here. He shoved the gun in his coat pocket, not sure why he was bothering to keep it.

He had to yank the bike out from the car, and its rear bumper fell off and hit the street. Oops. The bike looked fine - some minor body damage, and its headlight was history, but who needed it now? It was day, although the light seemed corroded somehow, yellowed as if filtered through dirty clouds. It was appropriate.

He had to kick start the damn thing twice - the first time it refused to start - the engine finally sputtered to life, then roared, as if it was pissed off. He felt like he’d been punched in the back, and figured from the scent of gunpowder in the exhaust choked air that he had been shot. The sniper finally taking the shot, huh? Good thing he didn’t go for a head shot - he didn’t need a migraine right this second. The shirt must have done its job, as the “punch” was all he felt.

He straddled the bike and took off fast, weaving dangerously through downtown traffic, hoping the rear guard would be more interested in coming after him first. He took turns randomly, cutting into pedestrian alleys usually strewn with garbage, and while it may have been less than a macho ride, at least the small bike was highly maneuverable.

Did he have ay fucking idea where he was or where he was going? He knew he must have been slightly northeast of the Chung Wan district, where Tetsuo’s “secret” apartment was. He had to lose his pursuers before heading that way.

Wait - lose them? He wasn’t going to lose them - he was going to teach those fuckers a lesson. They wanted to pick on an old man? He was probably pretty old - they could pick on him.

He was reasonably sure he had followers, judging from the honking and screeching brakes and smashing glass in his wake, and it made him strangely, angrily gleeful. But what was he going to do with them?

The question became extremely important as he turned a corner, and hit a dead end. Well, not exactly - it was a side street so crammed full of bumper to bumper traffic, there was no room to move at all, not even on his streamlined bike. In fact, it was a market street, and many of the vendors had simply spread their make shift and ad hoc stalls into the street. Fortune tellers’ tables lined the sidewalk, next to bamboo cages full of chickens and a rack of freestanding clothes that could have been wheeled straight out a department store. In fact, it almost looked like a movie set - all it needed was the fruit stand that would get kayoed by the ubiquitous car chase.

He slued the bike around, about to double back and find an outlet that wasn’t a virtual parking lot, only to find the narrow alley he slipped down immediately blocked off by a large black car .

A large black car with the barrel of an automatic rifle sticking out its tinted window.

“Oh, fuck me,” he muttered, quickly looking for cover. “Everybody get down!” He shouted in Cantonese, the primary dialect of Hong Kong, as he threw himself off the bike and hit the street rolling. The gunshots followed obligingly in his wake, and one of the tires of the bike blew out with a sound like an M-16.

There were screams and the sounds of panicked fleeing, almost but not quite drowning out the sound of bullets that continued to chew up the pavement maybe centimeters from the noodle hut he was sitting behind, using as cover from the alley. Ricochets screamed through the air like angry wasps, shattering glass and breaking fragile goods, possibly even pegging a chicken by the sound of it. Poor bastard never had a chance.

He wondered if Marcus’s gun was the one with the adamantium bullets - he was sure to get those bastards with a couple of random shots - but just as he sniffed the barrel to see if he detected adamantium, he sensed one of the panicked mob behind him. A man who put a gun barrel flush against the back of his skull. “Good night, white dog,” the man said in perfect Cantonese, and pulled the trigger.

It was like a fucking meteorite slammed into the back of his head, making him see stars and washing out his vision in shades of black and red. He almost lost consciousness, and may have for a second or two, but he forced himself to ride it out. It was hardly the first time he’d been shot in the head.

Besides, the gunpowder burned, it ate into his skin like acid, and the bullet did tear own his scalp before ringing his metal skull like a dinner bell. He heard the man’s gun clatter to the pavement, and he turned around, eyes still focusing, to see a neatly dressed Chinese man with a huge red stain discoloring his pale blue shirt, a stain that kept growing as Logan’s eyes regained their clarity. The would be assassin looked down at him, eyes glazed, and staggered back, leaning hard against the wall to keep his balance. Blood now dripped from the end of his shirt, dark internal blood that spattered the ground like spilled ink. “Oh
fu -” he began, then crumpled to the pavement, as loose limbed as a rag doll.

You could call that either karma or a really unfortunate ricochet; depended on your point of view. That would teach him to shoot someone execution style in the back of the head. Okay, no it wouldn’t, he was dead, but still …

Logan grabbed the man’s gun and shot blindly around the corner, aware that his would-be killer had just alerted him to a short cut he hadn’t noticed before. It cut behind the noodle hut and what looked like a butcher’s shop, forming a narrow alley that went who the hell knew where. It could lead him into another trap…but so fucking what? What did he have to lose here?

He retreated into the warren of narrow back alleys, which was still slick with morning dew and a recent rinsing, and it was so narrow he sometimes had to turn sideways to walk through it. If anyone was following him, he wished them luck, as this was piss poor place for a gun battle.

The gunfire finally stopped, and he guessed one of the guys in the car finally got the idea they were shooting at nothing. Good for them, stupid dumb asses.

He felt a bit like a dumb ass as he worked his way through the maze, a little disoriented that something like this could exist in the heart of downtown Hong Kong. The maze existed like mushrooms at the base of the steel and glass skyscrapers dominating the Chung Wan skyline, like redwoods towering over the forest floor. He was beginning to wonder where the cops were - they were pretty strict, as was the general rule in Asian countries - but then he realized someone had been paid off well. There would be no cops today, or possibly ever … except, of course, to arrest him. He heard the “whup-whup” of rotors slicing the air, and glanced up, hardly believing it. Had they sent a helicopter after him? No fucking way! But what else could it be? Yukio could hardly have gotten back to where they stashed the chopper and come for him. Well, why not strafing from the air? More fun for everyone.

Eventually the maze came to an end in a wider, dirty alley behind several buildings in what had to be the Central district. Through another cut through alley full of empty crates and garbage cans he could see thick, bumper to bumper traffic, and herds of people walking by on the sidewalk. On one hand, it was good: a hell of a lot of witnesses, some who might have money and power, and no one was driving away. But, on the negative side, there was a lot of potential collateral damage, and while the odds were he could get successfully lost in a crowd, he could also lose sight of an attacker before he was right on him - the problem with a crowd was sometimes his senses simply became overwhelmed; there were simply too many people, too many scents, and he knew damn well almost everybody would be staring at him.

He shoved the gun he’d taken from his would be killer into his opposite coat pocket, so he now had two guns he had no intention of using again. On the bright side, though, if he ever felt the urge to re-enact a John Woo movie, he had the necessary tools.

He ducked into the first open building, and almost instantly regretted it. He was almost overwhelmed by the smell of strong tea, people, old wood, boiling rice, and bird shit. It was one of those tea houses where bird lovers brought their feather friends to “meet” each other and show them off. Birds were considered good luck in Hong Kong, as well the occasional status symbol, depending on the bird. They sat on spare tables inside their bamboo cages, twittering songs as their owners drank tea, ate lunch, or played games - a couple of old guys were playing mahjong in the far corner, and a tinny radio somewhere was broadcasting the play by play of a cricket (!) match. A lot of people looked up as he came in, and a canary in a cage hanging near the entrance fluttered its wings and chirped at him in a startled manner, as if his appearance shocked it. At least the place was sparsely occupied, with not even ten patrons as of yet, and the doors were wide open, keeping a continuo! us flow of air in and out of the tea house. Of course, it held the dual purpose of keeping the bird scents from being overwhelming, and the humidity from building up inside the building to an intolerable degree, but it let him know there was a way out of here. He figured he could cut through buildings until he ran out of them, and then he could risk the street. If he thought he could take a true gamble, he could catch a cab, but it was undoubtedly faster on foot.

He started walking through the wide, sparsely decorated tea house, he realized a man in a back booth by the kitchen was staring at him with a lot more hate than the situation warranted. He was young, with slightly tousled black hair and a handsomely insolent face, hunched over a cup of tea. He was wearing a white t-shirt that read, in bold black lettering across the chest “Let‘s So Bring It! On Down!” , an example of those incoherently mangled English “sayings” popular among the Japanese - it was often referred to as “Engrish”, even by people fond of them. In fact, Logan suspected Marcus had a wardrobe full of those kinds of t-shirts - him and Bob both, come to think of it.

Just because he was Japanese didn’t make him Yakuza - but that hate filled stared, with just a hint of recognition, did. “Don’t do this,” Logan told him in Japanese. “Not here, not now.”

The boy - and he was a boy, probably twenty two if you were being extremely generous - jolted and sat back as if he’d slapped him. “I don’t take orders from you, Yashida,” he spat, his eyes narrow and deadly.

It was Logan’s turn to be surprised. Why did he call him Yashida? Did marrying into the family automatically make him one? Oh, wait, yeah, it probably did. There was a narrow “window” looking into the kitchen, and before the door swung open, Logan had caught a glimpse of someone too big to be a mere chef, and caught a whiff of gun oil in among the mélange of odors. “Everybody get out, now,” he exclaimed in Cantonese, hoping they listened to him. The door swung open, and suddenly two tall, thin men - one Chinese, one Japanese, stood there, brandishing a Magnum and a Beretta, respectively.

Just to mix it up, the kid in the Engrish shirt pulled out a silvered Glock, and said, “You gonna give up quietly, old man?”

He glared at them, as he heard some of the patrons leaving, birds tweeting in distress as they were yanked up suddenly from the table. “Is that actually an option here?”

The Engrish kid snorted derisively. “Nah. We just thought it would be funny to see you beg for mercy before we blew your fucking brains out.”

A third man, beefier than the other two, came up behind the guys in the kitchen doorway and looked out over their shoulders. “This is the guy?” He said, scoffing in disbelief. “What’s the big fucking deal? He ain’t even armed.”

“I’m not the one who’s gonna be begging,” he snarled, holding his arms out and springing the claws on both his hands.

They all seemed to jolt en masse at the sight of his claws, and the beefy man said, in a humorously small voice, “Okay, I take that back,” as Logan lunged claws first for the kitchen door.