A fourth assailant fell, his nose broken and spurting bright red blood. His partner attacked from the right, though his gun hand hung limply, broken at the wrist when Jian had entered the building. The baton in his left hand swooped towards Jian's skull, and the man who was the Silver Shadow didn't even turn his head as he stopped the man's swing by seizing upon his wrist and twisting as he pulled down.

The sound of breaking bone and snapping tendons was unmistakable as the guard twisted in mid-air, trying to save his wrist by following its unnatural rotation with his body.

He failed, and fell heavily, both wrists broken. Jian's foot found his neck, and he looked down to make eye contact. "How many more?" he demanded.

The guard spat at him, the saliva darkening Jian's pants at the calf. With a twist of his foot, the guard's larynx collapsed, and he flailed miserably as he asphyxiated.

Jian continued deeper into the complex.

Silver Shadow #12
"Hong Kong Nights"
(Part III)
by Aaron Baugh

True to his word, Jian hadn't broken Lin Wei's right hand, but the Triad underboss vexed him by not answering his questions in a forthright manner. To punish him, Jian had separated, then broken every joint in the man's left hand.

Though brutal, it had proven exquisitely successful, producing four locations where the elusive Japanese master could be hiding. The first was a dead end, the opulent home empty of everything of value.

The second had been a small-time gambling operation, illegal under the new continental regime. Jian had taken enormous pleasure at breaking it up. The more he stayed in Hong Kong, the more of his old self reared its ugly head. For some reason, Jian wasn't bothered by it. Not in the slightest. The current lead, third overall, led him to a small but prim-looking office building, still impressive but desperately outdone by the other steel and glass structures of the island city. A red steel fire door was his target, the door that the guards had sold their lives for.

As he moved further down the long staircase, he could feel the presence of others, smell their sweat, hear their breathing and their heartbeats. . . his senses were sharper than he had ever experienced before. That was exactly how he knew the single door at the bottom of the stairs hid a small gang of hired muscle. Muted sounds told him that there were two beside the door, right next to it.

No good could come of this.

The door burst open, and the stairs were splintered and chipped in a hail of gunfire. The moment that the fusillade ended, Jian leapt down from his spread-eagle position along the ceiling, planted fingertips on the top of the doorjamb, and swung through, dropping two men before even touching the ground. Leaping up from a crouch, he spun in mid-air, legs spread as he helicoptered 720 degrees. When he landed once more, there was only a single man left of the original seven, and he backed up, eyes wide and fearful, the weapon he held posing no threat since it was pointed at the ground.

Jian smiled, then took a quick step forward. The soldier dropped his weapon. "Just point, my boy," whispered Jian.

The man indicated a solid-looking steel door, and Jian glanced at it, then back to the guard before crooking his finger in the 'come here' gesture.

* * *

Kim Jiyang stared at his elite bodyguard, tapping the arm of the plush chair he sat in, swirling a small bit of brandy in a gold-rimmed snifter. The tap at the door suddenly monopolized his attention, and he nodded to the guard to go ahead and open it. He stood and finished his drink, then turned to pour himself another.

Kim realized he'd been tricked as soon as he felt the cool hand on his neck. Another snaked around and fished his automatic out from under his jacket. "Old tricks, Kim," hissed the voice in his ear. The hand pushed him away, and Kim spun to face his assailant.

"Li Fong."

"Hi Kim." The gun fell into four pieces at Jian's feet.

"My men?" asked Jiyang as he took in the limp body of his bodyguard, lying in an awkward posture on the ground, his head at an awkward angle on his body. Thick carpeting had cushioned the sound of his body striking the ground, and Jian's assault had been so swift that no warning had been given.

"Dead. They got in my way."

"What do you want? You told me six years ago that I'd die the next time you saw me."

"You still may, Kim. What I need now is information. I need to find Takeda and the others who sent Fung and Huanshin He to Pacific City.”

"I didn't know they left."

"They won't be returning."

Kim suddenly looked older. He nodded slowly and sighed as he moved to the small bar and poured himself a brandy. "I told them it wouldn't work, that you were too good."

Jian took a step forwards. "A name."

"Wang."

"This is Hong Kong, Kim. Lots of people by that name."

Kim shook his head from side to side. "No no, you know this one well."

Jian frowned, then his expression cleared as realization broke over him. "He's still alive?"

"No thanks to you. I'd be just as angry if you'd broken my back and left me in Tokyo to rot. You should've kept a lower profile if you didn't want to be found. Working in TV and opening a few dojos is a good way not to do that." He spread his hands wide. "You had to have known that we'd look for you, find you. Loss of face is very important, even when we measure our success in the dollar and pound." Kim raised his glass to drink, but Jian crossed the space separating them in a heartbeat and pressed the glass against his face; the bottom edge of the glass' mouth clicked against Kim's teeth as brandy splashed up his nose, making him cough and sputter.

"Where?" Jian's demeanor became, in a split second, infinitely more vicious. The hand not holding the glass against Kim's face pushed to his chest. His thumb dug under the breastbone, putting pressure against his heart and lungs.

Jiyang smiled fiercely, despite the discomfort Jian was causing him. "Oh, I'm sure he knows where you are, Li Fong. Fung and Huanshin He don't return from their trip, Takeda gone into hiding...certainly there can be only one man responsible. I only wish I could watch him rend you limb from ---"

The sound of his words were stolen as Jian's left hand curled into a talon and tore out Kim Jiyang's throat. A fountain of arterial blood cascaded onto Jian's shirt, and Jiyang's corpse sighed as it crumpled to the ground.

"He knew nothing," came a voice from the doorway.

Jian relaxed and turned towards its source. "Takeda."

The Japanese-born master faced Jian across the room. He had dark circles under his eyes, the look of a man both haunted and hunted. Hunted by an upstart martial artist who was a master beyond his own lifetime, and haunted by his own cowardice. "That's the way we run things, Jian Li Fong. No information to subordinates. We cannot allow them to have the keys to our defeat."

A smirk. "As if that would save you, Takeda," said Jian as he nudged Jiyang's body behind him with a short kick. "Fung was a challenge, I'll give you that. But the others," and here he paused to shake his head. "The other 'masters', as you call yourselves, were far from it. If Fung had challenged Huanshin He, you probably would have a different man sitting beside you in that arena, and succeeded in bringing me to what you label justice."

Takeda stiffened. "The time for words is over. Now it is time for action."

Jian's expression fell into one of pity, and his tone softened. "Who drives you, Takeda? Whom do you fear so much that it overrides your own cowardice? You know how this will end."

The Triad master nodded. "I cannot defeat you, Jian. When you killed Fung, I knew it."

"Then go," said Jian, making a gesture towards the door. "Go somewhere else and pretend you never made it back to Hong Kong. Make a new life."

Takeda stared at him, and Jian thought that he could make out the beginning of tears forming in his eyes.

"I can't," he said, his voice close to breaking.

"Then let me make it easy for you."

Jian moved towards him, and Takeda's instincts took over.

* * *

People say that experience is a terrific thing, that it can overcome youth and energy, overcome those with drive. It usually fails to mention immense natural talent, and powers that people possess, whether they're the kind that let them do quantum physics in their head or bench-press Volvos.

Takeda fought like a man possessed, but it was over in a horribly short amount of time. The older man had lunged, his strikes on target and fierce, but Jian was too quick, blocking each hard strike with a soft block, like blocking a two by four with a pillow.

Each time, the strike recovered a little bit slower, and for forty seconds, Jian didn't fight back, he simply blocked.

Forty seconds is a lifetime when you're fighting for your own life.

When Takeda's end came, it came in a rush, in a blinding series of blows. The master's final kick found only air as Jian whirled to the side, bringing up his hand in a clenched fist, the roundhouse backhand clipping Takeda's skull beneath his left ear. The old man staggered as Jian's knee found his kidney, right hand crushed his cheekbone, left shattered a rib. Jian half-stepped back and kicked him in the chest, over the room's desk.

Bloody and beaten, Takeda lay there then slid off to sit on the floor. His breathing was labored and ragged, the broken ribs perforating a lung.

"You're a fool, Takeda," said Jian as he hauled the man to his feet.

Takeda nodded weakly, and his lips moved, though there was no breath behind his words.

Jian's left hand went to the back of Takeda's neck, his right to Takeda's chin. His muscles strained briefly as he pushed and pulled, heard and felt the snap of cervical vertebrae.

As the last of the masters who threatened him and his friends fell to the ground, Jian thought of what had been Takeda's last words. It could have been 'Thank you', it could have been 'Please'.

Jian blinked, and then moved again. He wasn't done in Hong Kong quite yet.

A furtive ransacking of Kim's office and study produced nothing but a mess. Suddenly conscious of the blood that stained his hands, his shirt, his face and neck, he paused to clean it the best he could, and swapped shirts with a dead man, wadding his own into a ball and depositing it in an alley on his way out of the building.

Jian had put two and a half blocks behind him when a flicker of motion on his left made him tuck, dive, and roll. Six iron spikes bit into the building behind where he stood. As he came out of his roll, three more peppered the brief expanse of sidewalk previously inhabited by his upper torso. A final spike streaked towards his head as he came up one knee, and Jian's hand was a blur as it snatched it from the air.

He gained his feet, facing his attacker, just as it started to rain in Hong Kong. Jian flung the spike downwards, letting it join its brothers buried in the concrete. There wasn't anyone around, too close to the 'secret' building where members of the Triad worked. Neighborhood citizens knew the places to avoid, knew that things happened nearby that weren't meant to be witnessed. Truth was, they were more than happy to stay blissfully ignorant.

Pei Wang could have passed for Jian's brother. Both men were lean, hard-looking. Wang's hair was shorn very close to his scalp, his left earlobe was missing entirely, and the scar down his left cheek gave his smile a lopsided effect due to nerve damage of which the scar itself was the only external sign.

Jian knew all of this and more, because it had been in a cloistered temple in Northern Japan that they had last fought. It had been then that Jian had given Wang his lopsided smile.

Both men stared at each other as the rain visibly increased in its severity. It lashed at the two men, and Jian discarded his jacket, then rolled up the unbuttoned sleeves of his stolen white shirt.

Wang simply spread his arms and shrugged, the long open sleeves of his shirt slid up a few inches, and he put his hands on his hips.

"You should have killed me when you had the chance, Li Fong." he said evenly.

Jian smiled. In another life, another time, Pei Wang could have been the Silver Shadow, could have been a man Jian counted amongst his friends. He nodded. "You're right, Wang. I should have."

It began.