Fei had to pick the lock on the door in complete darkness, but she managed well enough with a couple thin splinters of wood that she’d torn off of the pieces of smashed chair in the middle of the room, not without pricking her finger a good couple of times. She pushed the door open slowly and quietly, peeking out in caution to be sure that no one was standing guard. And of course they weren’t. Amateurs.
Cautiously, she slipped out of the room and closed the door back behind her before padding aimlessly around the halls. This building felt like a maze, nothing quite making sense, and for a moment, Fei was terrified that she’d be stuck in here, like a lab rat turning corners just for her captors to find her once more. But then she heard it--- a faint cry, muffled by walls or fabric or whatever may be, causing her to glance around the halls in search of its source. And then she came to a door, once again locked from the outside, and picked the lock on this one as well, letting herself in. An almost inaudible gasp escaped her lips as a familiar face came into view, and she immediately closed the door behind her, bare feet padding against the floor as she made her way over to Jungjin, maneuvering the gag down from his lips. “You too, huh?”
I must be sacrificed
So can I help you all?
I'll be a s c a p e g o a t if I can
My resolution failed
And all who died
Light of day still hurts me
Part 2 (B) Mid Day July 1st
it was stressful. looming gang war and the repercussions that came with it. junho had a tendency to escape gang politics if he could, pushed it to the back burner to prevent him from dealing with it. he’d much rather do, than sit around and discuss action. and with all that was happening as of late--the howler seeing better days, two other gangs facing their own losses, tensions high and the members of the howlers essentially barred from interacting with those from other gangs; it was simply much too stressful. part of him craved the freedom he had with fixing and crafting weapons. at least then he’d feel useful. here, though, in the midst of strategy, he simply wanted to huddle in a corner and nod along to whatever everyone else would say.
the weapon tech was in the middle of lighting a cigarette, heat if the flame that flickered next to his hand not registering, passed the sudden intrusion of something warning. he moved slowly at first, curiously. too close to the canisters. the cigarette slipped from between his fingers, lighter following suit, arm twisting around his back so as fingers to clutch the gun he’d kept on him. he didn’t trust this, to save his life.
then it all happened so quickly.
junho couldn’t see passed the smoke barrier, was aiming his weapon fruitlessly, urgently. then came the sound of gun fire. a rain of shots taken, some of which zipping straight passed him, just barely hitting him yet snagging his clothing as if it were nothing. yet he felt so helpless, in that moment. panicked, like a child unable to think for himself.
instead of retaliating, junho found himself looking around, instead. for sam. he was scared, needed his leader to tell him what the fuck he should do. who he should be shooting at. where he should be hiding. “sam! sam!..” he yelled at the top of his lungs. it seemed to draw attention to himself, rather than do anything productive.
searing pain had taken him by surprise, the first shot his body had undergone, directed to his lower back, just under his ribs. then another, straight afterwards, to the back of his thigh, and the entirety of the side of his body collapsed under failure. his upper arm, on the other side, had taken the next shot, before his entire body had fallen to the ground.
but then it just seemed to... stop.
he couldn’t hear anything passed the ringing in his ears, could taste the blood in his mouth, yet everything else was entirely numb. the smoke started to lift, but he didn’t want to look at himself. didn’t want to assess the damage. he was just so scared. tears ran from his eyes, blubbers and whimpers, sobs. all as he tried his best to drag himself to the closest wall, anything sturdy to lean against. “d-dad!” he’d tried to shout again, stuttered, broken voice, barely a shout through his crying. perhaps it was the adrenaline keeping him awake, but as soon as he could lean against something, he simply stared at the ceiling and breathed. hoped to god everyone was at least still alive.
Heeyoung was fuming. She was livid. She was so completely and utterly distraught that her vision was blurring at the edges, seeing red. She’d gotten the call a mere half hour after Heidi had left her place, ruining her blissful state and shattering the thin line between the calm of her bedroom and the chaos of reality. And reality was hitting her like a moving train right now, standing helplessly in the middle of a swarm of cops outside La Fortuna. They wouldn’t allow her to go inside, claimed that they couldn’t allow the crime scene to be disturbed quite yet--- they were still collecting samples. But they didn’t know. They didn’t know that those were her people in there, people that she’d sworn protection to in exchange for their loyalty. And she’d failed them. One night was all it took to wipe out her numbers and her number one source of income.
Her fists were clenched tightly, hidden under her trench coat and some stupid fucking blanket that the officers claimed was supposed to help with shock, nails digging bleeding crescents into her palms. And she funneled all of that energy, that anger, into tears, putting on a show for the APD as her mind spun, only violence at the forefront of her brain. But she couldn’t lash out. In front of the police, she was a poor, distraught casino owner. Nothing more, nothing less.
Someone slid up beside her, and Heeyoung didn’t even flinch. She’d recognize Heidi anywhere. She immediately relaxed one fist, pinky finger reaching out to wrap around Heidi’s in some attempt at anchoring herself. “Excuse me,” she called out to the nearest police officer, wiping her tears on her sleeve in some sort of act to gain sympathy. “When will we be allowed in?”
Sungmin stood lonely in the center of The Howler, notebook and pen dangling by his side as he took in the state of his gang’s main source of income. This was a mess. It was an absolute disaster, both physically and on paper, a definite thousands of dollars worth of damage, if not more, and for once, Sungmin didn’t have any idea how they were going to pull themselves out of this.
And that was frustrating, considering the many tight financial situations he’d managed to steer the Howlers out of in the past. So many sleepless nights just to keep his people afloat, scrounge up enough income for daily operations, and all of that hard work was destroyed in one night, left shattered and flooded and topped with a pretty little lotus flower floating in a pool of vodka on the floor. Sungmin felt sick. Because why would someone do this? Why would someone like The Ivory Lotus, who had profits to spare and no reason to fear their humble little family lash out in such a personal attack? It just didn’t make sense, by any standard, and thinking himself in circles was starting to give Sungmin a headache.
And so he stopped. There were priorities, and his first order of business was to survey damages, not to solve some mystery of plausible motives. That was his job, after all. So he pulled himself out of his stupor, stepping over smashed wood and shattered glass as he made his way around the bar to start his observations there.
In an agonizingly slow process, he surveyed the damage of every square inch of the bar, estimating the cost of repair or replacement, and the numbers were adding up far quicker than was reasonable. His notebook was beginning to look like a bad doctor’s note, nearly illegible from how much he was scratching out and reworking, trying to come up with some semblance of a plan that was in their budget, but he was coming up blank. He’d cut labor costs by planning to ask for Howler volunteers to help with clean up and reconstruction, cut a bit off of the bill by repurposing a few things they already had lying around, but the numbers were still unreasonably high and Sungmin was beginning to give himself a headache again.
Sam was going to flip shit. He was already flipping shit, Sungmin imagined, just with the vague knowledge of the setback this would cause, but showing him the numbers wasn’t something that Sungmin was looking forward to doing. Because he cared about Sam. And Sam cared about his people. And this could potentially ruin everything that they’d worked so hard for, destroy what little they had in the first place.
A heavy sigh falling over the nearly empty room, Sungmin packed up his notes, careful not to touch or step on anything as he made his way out of the Howler, closing and locking the backdoor behind him. This was going to be a nightmare of a problem to solve.
So he was on babysitting duty. Great. Not that Hanjae considered Honey helpless--- quite the opposite, actually, he was pretty fucking terrified of what he could potentially do--- but Sam made it pretty fucking clear that he was the less desirable choice, just there as Jaesun’s backup and to keep an eye on Honey. Well, Sungmin was there too, and Hanjae trusted him to do quite literally anything except fight. So there was that.
He wasn’t sure why he was expecting a giant ambush the moment he met the others at Honey’s front door, but that didn’t happen. Literally nothing had happened--- they were just sitting in an awkward circle around Honey’s living room waiting for some sort of communication from Sam. Sungmin, bless him, was trying his best to keep some sort of lighthearted conversation going but Honey didn’t really seem to want to talk about much at the moment, and Hanjae himself was so full of anxiety that he could barely comprehend the words leaving his own mouth.
Hanjae’s phone buzzed once in his pocket, signaling a new message in the Howlers’ group chat. He could hear an amused snort from Sungmin’s direction as he pulled his phone from his back pocket. “What is it now? Hisoka still trying to get a cat? Or is it another Sam meme?” But the older man’s words fell on deaf ears as Hanjae’s eyes scanned over the message in all caps, and before he even had a moment to process what he’d just read, the message disappeared, his screen replaced with a picture of Lena pulling a comedic face, her contact info stamped over it. And his hands were shaking, but he somehow managed to swipe the bar across the lower half of the screen to accept the call.
“...Lena?” It was hard for him to get the first word out but once he did, panic found itself into his tone of voice, unable to stop. “Are you okay? Is everyone okay? What the fuck is happening?” And that, at least, seemed to gain the attention of everyone else in the room, wide eyes all pointed in his direction. But he paid no mind, instead listening to the panicked voice of his friend on the other end of the call, making absolutely no sense but somehow getting her point across just fine. “Fuck, where are you?” And he made his way quickly to the front door and out into the mid day heat, no communication with his group no matter how many questions were thrown his way, but they seemed to be following anyway, at least. “Look--- we’re on our way, okay Lena? Just stay on the phone with me.”
Heeyoung’s heels clicked obnoxiously against the tile floor of the hospital, as she made her way through the halls at an almost intimidatingly determined pace. It was like one blow after the other, first her casino rendered useless and half of her gang left bleeding on its gambling floor, now two more Ivory Lotus members down with crippling injuries--- an obvious message sent by someone that was looking more and more like Ace by the second. She hadn’t even laid a finger on his fucking dumb ass bar. And now her members were paying the price for an obviously staged hit, and Heeyoung? She was furious. She was downright ready to slit throats. How dare they disrespect her and her people, how dare they step all over them as if they hadn’t earned their right to this city as much if not more than anyone else? The Howlers and the Night Bloods were dead to her. She’d take the whole god damned city down with them if she fucking had to. But right now her first priority was her followers ( the few she had left ) and making sure that they were all okay. She had sworn protection to these people and she’d give it to them if it was the last thing she’d ever do.
The room numbers on the wall were counting down agonizingly slow until finally the room she’d been instructed to by the hospital’s front desk came into view. Yoonoh was sound asleep, tucked into the bed in the middle of the room, his injuries glaringly obvious, but it wasn’t that image that put Heeyoung on edge. No, it was the girl sat beside him in a chair, hand holding tight to his, her head pillowed on the edge of the bed. And Heeyoung recognized her, but then again, she didn’t. Had she dyed her hair? Well, yes, obviously she had a different color hair than the last time she’d spoken to her, but there was also something else that was just... off. Different. Heeyoung leaned against the doorway to the room for an extended moment, simply taking in the scene before her. “Hello,” she announced her presence loudly and bitterly over the silence of the room, crossing her arms over her chest.
Fei had felt sated. She had felt good for once, in the midst of her fellow Night Bloods, treating her like family, like something precious. And though he had immediately taken it back out of embarrassment or whatever, Key had admitted to caring about her. Jeon Minki, who demanded her respect and terrified her into submission, had quite explicitly stated that he cared about her in a chat full of the elite members of his gang and invited her to stay at his place simply because she was feeling anxious about the recent attacks. And that felt good. She hadn’t felt this good since the last night she’d spent with her father. But, oh, Fei was so naive. She was so fucking naive if she thought that things would keep getting better from there. Why would the universe allow her of all people to have nice things? Answer: it wouldn’t.
She didn’t know what she’d done wrong--- she was simply curled up on the couch, a tub of chocolate ice cream she’d swiped from the freezer in one hand and her phone in the other, scrolling through the comments on her latest post on Instagram. And she’d almost allowed herself to become sad, for a moment, when she found a familiar username hidden within the likes on the post. But she didn’t. She felt better now, even in the silence of Minki’s living room as the rest of the members of the Night Bloods were spread into different rooms of the house, sleeping or otherwise. Mostly otherwise, probably.
First, it was a lamp going out in the garden, dimming the amount of light seeping in through the oversized windows, then a muted thump against the ground outside. Cautiously, Fei set her phone and the tub of ice cream on the coffee table and lifted herself from the sofa, careful as to not make an excessive amount of noise. Rustling through all of the drawers in the living room until she finally came across a letter opener, she gripped it in her hand as she would a combat knife, hesitantly stepping toward the side entrance of the house.
Her bare feet were immediately covered in the early morning dew of the grass, cool air whipping around her mostly bare legs. Where were the guards that Minki had supposedly set on 24/7 patrol? Ah, there. In a lump on the on the grass. Her eyes widened as she felt someone grab her from behind, immediately lashing out to elbow her attacker in the ribs, slipping from their grip. But as she spun around, she found not only one lonely assailant but a whole group of them, clad in black veils. Were those from the fucking Halloween store? She expected better quality from the Duchess and her band of sneaky women, honestly.
Her stance was one of challenge, arm crossed over her upper body with the letter opener pointed menacingly in her attackers’ direction. And she fought. She fought really fucking hard, but there were too many of them coming from too many different angles and she went down with a needle jabbed into the side of her neck, but not before slashing one of them across their upper back, the lacy end of the veil cut clean off and fallen into the grass, the letter opener falling from her hand to join it. The more she squirmed, the more whatever they’d given her seemed to take hold, and she soon found herself out cold, black seeping into her vision.
Fei wasn’t sure whether she was conscious or not, dreaming or wide awake, a black blanket of nothingness surrounding her tiny body. She opened her eyes. She could’ve swore she opened her eyes and yet there was nothing but solid black. Panicking, she tried to stand up, only to find her limbs restrained, tugging painfully against what she could only assume were plastic zip ties. And it was hard to breath, a thick strip of fabric tied around her lower face and dipping into her lips like a gag. Don’t panic. Don’t you dare panic, Fei, you’ve trained for this.
A few deep breaths in and out of her nose, and she calmed her mind, closing her eyes once again to think clearly. She squirmed slightly, not enough to invoke pain but enough to gather tactile information on her immediate surroundings. The chair beneath her was wooden, cheap and unfinished if the scratching against the back of her thighs was anything to go by. Ah, good. That was good. She could smash it against the wall if she could manage to stand up, but her ankles were tied tightly to the legs of the chair, rendering her immobile. Okay, new plan, then.
Fei extended her feet, pressing her toes against the ground in what had to be a mimicking of some sort of ballet stance, lifting the front two legs of the chair only a few inches off of the ground. Not ideal, but it would have to do. In a swift jerk of her body, she took advantage of the imbalance to build momentum and swing the chair around in a chaotic arc before it crashed down to the floor at an awkward angle, snapping the right two legs off under the weight of her body, pain searing through her as her right side hit the floor, cry of pain muffled by the gag in her mouth. Okay. Okay, that’s fine. Focus.
With her right leg now free to move, it was easier. First, she crossed her free leg over the other at the ankles, using as much strength as she could muster to snap the front left leg off of the chair. And just like that, both legs were freed. Lying sideways on the cold floor with only half of a chair against her back, held there by her arms which were tied together at her wrists, she found that this wasn’t even the most compromising position she’d ever found herself in. So there was that, at least. Planting her feet against the floor, she pushed her whole body, sliding the loop of her arms over the back of the chair and then under the lower half of her body until her bound wrists were positioned in front of herself instead. From there, she was home free. A little sawing of the zip tie against the edge of a piece of the chair left her hands free, and she quickly removed the gag from her mouth, content to at least be mobile and breathing regularly.
After taking a short breather, Fei struggled to lift herself from the ground, her limbs nearly giving out on her. And the pain as she walked was excruciating, but she managed, making her way to the wall and feeling her way around until her hand caught on a door handle. And she didn’t have any semblance of a plan from there, but she couldn’t stay docile in a pitch black room as a war began brewing around her. That wasn’t going to happen.
