February 28, 2012 - Lung cancer

"All stand for the president of the United States."

It was the clarion call typical of his previous grand entrances, but Jason Tranh wondered how many more of them he'd be listening for.  He hadn't much time left.

As he strode through the room, weaving past round tables that manage to cram together ten people at a thousand bucks a head, he forced his lungs to cooperate one last time, his face to freeze in its signature half-smirk.  He had to prove that nothing was wrong, at least to this audience.  On this night.

One last time.

He spied his wife sitting, as per usual, not at the dais but at a lowly table with journalists representing the other party.  A passive aggressive slap in the face.  Even though she knew what he was about to do.  Married to her for thirty of his seventy years on this planet and she didn't have the courtesy to pretend to support him at least this once.

Bitch.

He'd finally made it to the front.  Cameras clicked.  Lights flashed.  The teleprompter was positioned just where he liked it.  The fanfare from the musicians died down.  The crowd was still expectant and polite.  He gazed at the sea of faces upturned eagerly. A few seconds more and those faces would get restless.  A few minutes after his announcement and those faces would get ugly.

Okay, Tranh.  He gave himself a mental shake.  It's go time.

He straightened his tie, grabbed the mic, winked at his estranged wife in a half-hearted attempt at his former self and his former life.  Then he dropped the bombshell that would change the course of history as they all knew it.

February 21, 2012 - The old pirate

Senna was no more.  He had watched her die.  Had been forced to.  And as the ax descended, and as the crowd roared, and as the blood gushed forth from the bloody stump that had been her neck only seconds before, he had vowed to Santo Paolo di Colombino - patron saint of pirates - that no force on earth would prevent him from dealing ferocious vengeance unto those who had taken her from him.

But that was twenty years ago.  Twenty painful, lonely, rum-riddled years that had seen the demise of free-booting and the rise of a new breed of piracy that had effectively rendered him obsolete.  He no longer sailed the high seas nor felt the tug of the tides.  He no longer charted course with nothing but a compass and the stars.  He was a landed fish on an alien island, and he had nothing but haunted memories to keep him company.  Memories and the treasure from the last, lost Virillian Armada.

The boy cleared his throat.  "Maestro?"

He did not look up from the sketch clutched in his hand.  Indeed, his head bowed even lower so that the boy was unsure whether he was even awake.

"Maestro?" The boy tried again.

"She was bellissima, no?  And so young."

"Only thirty-two.  I know, maestro."

"She loved ginger.  Ginger and oranges.  Did I tell you?"

"Yes, maestro." The boy caught the long-suffering sigh before it escaped his lips.  "Many times."

Tears coursed down his weathered cheeks, unbidden yet unchecked.  He looked up then, and it was the boy's turn to lower his eyes, too overcome by the naked grief on his master's face.

"We shall kill them, Arturo."

"Yes, maestro."

"Kill them all."

bwahahahaha!

February 14, 2012 - “Put it down or I’ll scream!”

The store owner, his balding head gleaming under the fluorescent lights of our local 7-11, shook his broom handle at us.  He thought he looked threatening, but how can one really take seriously a 5-foot-nothing, 60-year-old Korean man sporting a Backstreet Boys t-shirt?  I mean, really.  Isn’t there some sort of limit to how old someone has to be before they stop trying to be pop culture savvy?  Plus, everyone knew that BSB were on their way out, to be replaced with the shiny new boyband version.  NYNC forever, dude.

“Cade. Dude.  You gonna pay for that shit?  Coz Han-gook over there looks ready to call the po-po on us and I’m not goin’ back to juvie, man.”

I glanced at Terence over the stack of munchies I held in my arms.  Sticking out from various pockets of my black trench coat were candy bars and bottles of soda.  I guess I looked a bit suspicious.  Perhaps a cart would have been a smart idea.

February 7, 2012 - "If you love me, you'll eat this."

The tranq had barely glowed red when it was jostled out of his hand by a clueless businessman too engrossed by his metafeed to even look up and apologize.  Spider swallowed a particularly obscene oath and muttered the Clan credo under his breath as he blended into the crowd.

"Stealth above all.  Stealth above all," he chanted, trying to keep his target in sight and still fumble in his coat for a replacement tranq.

The mark wasn't making it easy.  It was almost as if he knew Spider was on his tail and was making every effort to shake him.  That, or he was high on stims, if his ped patterns were any indication.  For the sixteenth time in half as many hours, Spider cursed Greebo and his kin for setting him up on such a shank assignment.  He chose to ignore his snide conscience who piped up just as frequently to remind him that he needn't have accepted the job in the first place.

"Hey, sweetness.  What's the rush?"

Spider's head jerked up, jarred and immediately suspicious.  No one addressed anyone so informally anymore, and especially not on a ped-way where any pause or deviation from the norm would get you excised.  He kept walking but the woman refused to be ignored.  She fell into step with him and her confident stride easily kept time with his, even though Spider topped her by a good foot and a half in height.

She seemed content to simply walk by him so, still keeping his peripherals on the mark, he took the opportunity to study this new variable.

She looked to be of indeterminate age but her hands couldn't lie and the freshness of her tattoo allowed Spider to hazard her to be at least twenty, give or take a couple years.  Her skin was the color of dark cocoa and her hair was knotted into a severe bun at the...