In the end everything collides

Sonnet noticed the small smile, even if the man's voice did not waver from it's monotone. She wondered idly about the blood stain on his knee, it didn't look fresh, although it was no entirely surprising, judging by the man's long, tangled hair he didn't care all that much about his appearance. He was unusually short for a man at only 5'6, although that still put him above Sonnet's diminutive frame.

She saw him returning the inspection, examining her work clothes, jeans, a blouse, and heavy boots, with a dark jacket over the ensemble. The jacket had a high collar, but it was open, and did nothing to conceal the livid scar at her throat. She moved with the easy grace of a dancer or a gymnast, and what was visible of her bare skin showed toned muscle.

She smiled and raised an eyebrow at his question. "I wouldn't say it's my job description but if you were paying attention it's obvious I can take care of myself."

There was a hidden threat there, a cautionary tone that warned Max not to go too far. Normally Sonnet would have taken offence instantly at the suggestion that she couldn't handle herself, but she was feeling strangely generous, and the slight buzz in her system was probably feeding that. Besides, her skills were rarely needed in bars. The patrons at those she frequented tended to learn quickly, or they were already in the habit of not causing trouble with others. Sonnet liked to drink quietly, and there were few people who could keep up with her drinking habits.

She'd watched the way Max had fought with an experienced eye, and it hadn't been the wild and unruly punches of a drunk man, but the calm and collected responses of someone used to taking hit. "Boxer?" She said by way of a question.

After all, they clearly both had sorrows to drown, perhaps they should drown them together. The new drinks were brought to the table, another beer for Max, and another bottle of whiskey for Sonnet. Her metabolism made it difficult, not to mention expensive to get drunk. Perhaps some company wouldn't be so bad. She almost laughed at that mood, it was so rare as to be alien to her, but she wouldn't squash it just yet.

My childhood spat back out the monster that you see

In the end everything collides

Sonnet was a little surprised to see the bottle of liquor smash into her first opponent’s head. It had been full, and with it’s thick glass it made a dull clonk noise on impact. The half-empty bottle of whiskey had already done quite some damage, the second blow from the other woman had finished the fight without argument. The man clutching his crotch looked up with fury in his eyes and started to climb to his feet. Sonnet barely gave him a second glance, raising her knee with startling speed. It hit his jaw with a crack and his head snapped back. He tottered on his knees for a moment before falling backwards almost cinematically.

Sonnet scowled. The men had been too drunk to put up a fight, although Sonnet rarely went looking for a particular challenge. She was a teleporter, that gave her an edge against nearly every opponent. No one could see an attack coming from every direction, and Sonnet could be in the one place you didn’t expect her to be. Even so, both men had gone down quickly, and her desire to hit something hadn’t been satisfied by the paltry challenge they had presented, if any.

She didn’t believe in drawing out a fight any longer than was necessary. She’d fought ESU and Heroes, and she usually came out on top. Not because she was particularly powerful, or a significantly better fighter, but because she had no qualms about finishing a fight quickly. She had her own sense of honour, but it didn’t extend to some archaic sense of fair play. You fought to win, not to honour a set of rules, she was Yakuza, not Samurai.

She stepped back from the unconscious men, and glared balefully about the bar, daring anyone else to step up and challenge her. Then she turned to the other woman, she was pale, unhealthily so and her face was scarred in a way that rivalled the sickly twisted strand of flesh about Sonnet’s throat. One eye seemed to droop, and there was a long line of scar tissue tracing over one cheek to the corner of her lips. Her voice was hoarse as she spoke, her tone clipped and mechanical in a way that betrayed English as her second language.

”Sorry, I just really wanted to hit something…”

My childhood spat back out the monster that you see

In the end everything collides

Sonnet didn’t quite expect someone else to show up, and in such a cinematic manner. She was pretty sure she had actually seen that whole thing in a movie before, and she idly wondered whether she was actually dreaming this entire experience. The man responsible for the two thugs predicament was in a complete getup as Spider-Man. She was pretty sure he wasn’t a Hero, for one, Disney would have sued him into the ground if he was; or taken out a hefty sponsorship. That and she was relatively familiar with the Heroes in NYC, more than she would care to admit in fact.

It was fortunate however, that the man had appeared when he had, and Sonnet took advantage of the sudden distraction to slam one of the Eastern European thugs against a cargo container, bashing his head repeatedly against the metal until he went down with a groan. She picked up the gun he was carrying, a compact and evil looking sub machine gun. It wasn’t to her taste, but she had an idea to throw them off her scent.

Already one of the men had started firing up at the web slinger, while a number of others began to pick up guns and crowbars, arming themselves for what they believed would be a short fight. Most wouldn’t tangle with a metahuman, but she didn’t blame them for not taking a man dressed as a comic book character seriously. Even if the last year should have taught them better than to do so.

She leaned out and fired a hail of bullets towards the man taking potshots at the fanboy, leaning back out of sight and teleporting across to the opposite side. This time she didn’t even bother aiming, simply hooking the machine gun around the corner and pulling the trigger until it clicked empty. She dropped the gun to the floor with a clatter. Already the ruse was working, and she moved again, stepping through space to appear crouching on top of a container, firing twice and clipping a thug running for cover.

The men were looking about wildly and shouting instructions to each other in a language she didn’t understand, but she could tell that they were confused and thought that the vigilante had been accompanied by a much bigger group.

There were screams from the cargo container the men had been clustered around. Obviously their ‘merchandise’ could hear the gunfire and were afraid of being caught in the fight. She didn’t blame them. They hadn’t asked to be here, to be in this situation, and they certainly hadn’t asked to be caught in a dustup between a vigilante and a human trafficking gang. Her jaw tightened. She’d have to be careful, she couldn’t risk word of this getting back to Kenshin, so she’d have to keep her use of her abilities to a minimum, but that didn’t stop the Spider guy from using his. She only hoped he was smart enough to pull it off.

My childhood spat back out the monster that you see

In the end everything collides

They sat in silence for a while, long enough for Sonnet to have finished the first bottle and gotten most of the way through another. She’d been drinking them fast, faster than she normally would, and they were big bottles. As a result, she had something of a buzz going, which didn’t help what happened next. Whether it would have made any actual difference was unlikely. Sonnet didn’t need alcohol to start a fight.

The man that put his hand on the table was muscular in the way that suggested it was manufactured in the gym rather than entirely natural. Sonnet glared balefully at the interruption, but he wasn’t paying attention to her, he was looking at the other guy sat at the table, evidently assuming he was her boyfriend, and therefore in charge of her.

That probably didn’t help. ”Hey buddy, you and your girl are in our spot. Clear off.”

She glanced at the long-haired man sat across the table from her, and not seeing what she wanted, she slammed her glass down onto the offending man’s pinkie. He didn’t quite scream, but the half-whine that came from between his teeth betrayed the pain he had felt. Sonnet ground the glass into his finger some more. Until he snatched it back with a growl.

”Bitch. You got a problem?”

She glared mockingly up at him, ”Not any more, he just took his hand off my table.”

He clenched his fists, clearly wanting to hit her but not willing to raise a hand to a woman in front of his friends. ”This is our table, you two are in our space, now you and your boyfriend clear off.”

Sonnet slowly stood up, staring him in the face the whole way, then leaned forwards. He towered over her by quite some margin, but her face showed not one iota of fear. ”It’s my table, now fuck off before I make you and your friend’s my bitches.”

He glanced back at his friends, gaining some bravado from their presence. He couldn’t let himself be shown up by a woman. That was his first mistake.

My childhood spat back out the monster that you see

In the end everything collides

The Yakuza didn’t control all of the crime in New York, it might have been profitable, but it would be more dangerous to be an organisation so large. At that point the government that had been content enough to turn a blind eye to them might begin to fear their power. It was the same in Japan. The Yakuza survived through division, the Yamaguchi-Gumi might be the largest criminal organisation in the world, but in Japan it was but one of a dozen different factions. In New York it was the same, the Yakuza had their territories, the Triads, the Mob, the Mafia and Gangsters had theirs. Everyone existed in a sort of delicate half-truce. Some groups even had what could be called friendly relationships.

Sonnet had heard about tonight quite by accident. The group was Eastern-European, and while they and the Yakuza were not friends, they did not have a particularly strained relationship. This group operated mainly in the business of flesh, and several of the Yakuza’s recent purchases for certain aspects of their business had come through these men. They were good at their job, and they moved people in bulk from Europe. The Yamaguchi-Gumi didn’t operate much trafficking from Europe, so they often shored up their business with that undertaken by other groups.

Sonnet had never liked that part of the business. There was something about it that she just found distasteful, and she’d always made an effort to avoid any personal involvement. It was probably one of the reasons why she was a shateigashira and Ando had risen to wakagashira, he was more willing to get involved in all aspects of their business. It was only Sonnet’s effectiveness in everything else, and he metahuman abilities, that kept her where she was. Kenshin, her Kobun knew her ambitions well, and he offered her opportunities to advance, most of them she seized with both hands. But she had always erred away from those involving the purchase of people.

They were unloading the container now, and Sonnet felt her jaw tighten. She hadn’t planned to be here, but she couldn’t sleep. For a teleporter a simple walk could take her hundreds of miles. Tonight, it had only taken her a fraction of that.

The men could see her, perched as she was in the shadows above them. She was about to leave when she heard someone cry out. She closed her eyes, muttering a brief prayer and asking for her father to forgive her, then she pulled out her gun.

My childhood spat back out the monster that you see

In the end everything collides

Sonnet's hand, flat, palm down, slapped down on the butt of the man's pistol, he struggled to get his hand around her, looking down to manoeuvre around the unseen obstacle. That was his first mistake. While he was struggling to pull his gun Sonnet had kicked out one long leg into the back of the other officer's head, slamming him forward and bouncing his head off the dashboard. He turned around woozily, trying to throw a punch which Sonnet blocked lazily with the palm that had been on top of the first man's gun, using the momentum of his attack to catapult her elbow into the now armed officer's nose. He dropped his gun as blood spurted from his face, crying out in shock and pain.

It clattered into the footwell, and Sonnet turned her attention back to the man she'd already partially concussed. He was regaining more of his faculties, and reached over the back of his seat to lunge for her throat, she disappeared, reappearing behind him and putting a boot squarely into his backside, lodging him firmly in the gap between the front seats. She caught sight of the driver going for the horn, spinning the wheel so he missed and catching one of his arms between the spokes, she pushed it further, and he groaned as his forearm was caught on the dash, twisting his wrist in a direction it was not meant to go.

The other man was still struggling, trying to get out from between the seats. She pulled her foot back and realigned her aim, before kicking it forward once again. There was a small squeak, and the man went very still. A rabbit punch to the throat of the driver threw him back against the window, choking, and a blow delivered from her elbow to his forehead on the rebound left him unconscious.

The last man was still mostly unmoving, and he went even more still when he heard the click of Sonnet's gun being cocked.

"Fucking meta."

My childhood spat back out the monster that you see