I'm not gonna deny, multiple different titles for this post came to me, most of them either too-appropriate or inappropriate or both (depending on one's individual sensibilities). And while I try not to make them too jokey, I just couldn't think of a fully-serious title. Just be glad I'm not doing a 'Fast and the Furious' joke.
So let's get to it, with my usual caveat that the talky bits might not be exactly verbatim.
"Oi, is that any way to look at a woman?" Shango said to the monks as they glared at a woman in similar but different robes leaving the room.
"Stay out of this, it's beyond your affairs," the one in the hornet mask (whom I'm calling Hornet from here on out[0]) snapped at him.
...
"How many of the monks do you think took vows of Chastity?" Hǎifēng asked, eyeing the monks.
"I think for you, they might break their vows not to eat meat," Shango replied.
...
Hǎifēng stared down some monks glaring back at them, tension thick in the room. "Go get laid."
Hornet forced himself to try and calm down before Shango got his attention.
"Now be a good little lapdog and retake your seat in peace," Shango dryly mocked the monk.
Hornet spun on him, eyes blazing with anger and recognition. "You."
"Oh," the bird-aspected Lunar began with a delighted grin as his identity registered with the Immaculate. "Hello, brother."
"Brother?!" Hǎifēng asked, shocked.
And now...
"I'd heard rumors you'd succumbed to a power," Hornet says to Shango, noticing the wings coming out of his back (which are there even in human form). "This is... disappointing."
Shango mockingly laughs and brings one hand up to rest his forehead against his knuckle, muttering. "Disappointment. I guess that was my nickname, wasn't it?"
"The family had heard rumors," the monk continues. "Rumors that you'd fallen to dark powers, become Anathema. I was hoping it wasn't true."
"To insult me is one thing, but to call Lady Luna a 'dark power'... I should bite your tongue."
The monk holds up a placating hand. "I mean their power is not meant for mortals. It will drive you mad."[1]
"Mother drove me mad, you drove me mad, Father..." Shango trails off.
"Mother and Father are worried sick; they got a message from an information broker in Lathe and sent someone follow up, only to find he'd been mysteriously murdered, apparently by a pirate. What did you do?"
It takes Shango a moment to remember the Abyssal Exalt the Circle encountered in Lathe -- and yes, they did in fact kill him, though to be fair it was someone else who had the bright idea of making it look like he'd been killed by a pirate he crossed.
"Zither..." Shango says after thinking it over. "Ai, yai, yai... necromancers... You want to talk about dark powers, there you go. There's an 'anathema.'"
"Regardless, when this is over, I'm going to find you, and take you somewhere where you can get help."
At this point Shango pulls Weirdflame from its holster and aims it at Hornet, activating Spark of Madness to 'load' it with magical fire. His eyes glow brightly. "When this is over, you will be dead." Then he twirls it on his finger and resheathes it.
Hornet lowers his head and shakes it. "This is my fault. I should not have gone so far for my training and my work. I let this happen to you." He looks back up at Shango with genuine pity.
Shango says that Hornet and their parents will pay. (I didn't get down the exact line, sorry.)
"Someone's going to have to stop you, one way or another," Hornet says, tensing up like he's about to do something, and then the door to the teahouse slides open.
The woman dressed as the Scarlet Empress stands in the doorway, silently surveying the room.
"That dress does make her ass look fat," Hǎifēng comments under their breath.
The 'Empress' snaps her fingers and someone who looks human wearing one of those not-quite-uniforms suggesting he's one of the competitors' assistants (like Bageru) comes in and shows her to a table.
"Just sucking tit for tips, aren't you?" Hǎifēng says to the assistant, who ignores them.
"One abomination at a time," Hornet mutters before he leaves. Many of the other monks also get up and leave, having suddenly lost their appetite. The servers are off to the side, preparing bowls of rice and pickled vegetables to try and distract them with food, like they did the day before.
Once the monks are gone and the door's about to close, a familiar webbed grabs it and opens it again as Xương lurches in, looking very much like he came into the wrong place.
"Well? Who do I gotta see about some refreshment?"
A server quickly leads him to a table, trying to get him as far from the 'Empress' as possible, but he goes out of his way to bump her table when he's close enough. Her gaze snaps to him with a baleful glare, and he neither acknowledges her nor what he did.
Once he sits down he's handed a menu and the tea map, and he just asks them if they have anything stronger than tea. The server informs him that after certain hours, they have a variety of light wines and sakes available, and that just gets a raised eyebrow from him as he points at the tea map without looking at it. He does, however, fill in an ordering slip for some sushi and even though it's not on the menu he asks for oyakodon, which is a simple enough dish they can accommodate him. He makes sure to ask for all of the chicken and eggs they have (he doesn't do the full routine but I just had to link the video).
Meanwhile, nearby, Hǎifēng slaps Shango. "How dare... how dare you... how dare you use me as a social WMD without telling me first?" they say, stammering, pissed at being manipulated into provoking the monks.
"That's... that's more what you're mad about...?" Shango begins. "I thought you'd be upset about the 'family' thing."
"Your family is... you manipulated me and made me look like an asshole!"
They go back and forth for a bit, with Shango making the argument that he wasn't manipulating Hǎifēng, just taking advantage of their 'natural sassiness.' Hǎifēng then goes to sit with Xương and drink some of the tea. They recognize that he's drinking a variety called Cherry Riddle, something that can be found in the Southwest but only in the possession the wealthier visiting Dynasts. He's basically chugging the top shelf stuff like it's the bottom shelf stuff to wash down his food. They claim the tea for themselves (he says they can have it, as it's the worst beer he's ever tasted) and order something more his style -- the closest thing this teahouse has to 'swill': a Blessed Isle blend called Noble Killer, very strong, and quite caffeinated for tea.
Over the course of grumbling about Shango, Hǎifēng manages to inadvertently give Xương a recap of everything he's missed so far this morning.
Shango ponders for a moment as to whether he wants to go join Xương and Hǎifēng, or sit and sulk at a table of his own for making Hǎifēng feel bad. He decides on the latter, and slips the waiter some silver if he could somehow, out of the kindness of his heart, get him just a single bottle of sake. The server considers that for a moment -- on the one hand, Shango's clearly not in the best state of mind. But on the other, that also means he's not sure what Shango might do if denied. And sure, he could try to get someone 'official' to come in and handle Shango, but how much damage might an unstable Exalt do before they get there? He tells Shango he'll come up with something, and comes back a moment later with a teapot he's filled with the cheap, fruit-flavored sake people buy when they want sake but don't have the palate for it.
We jump ahead a bit to the group heading back to their chambers after breakfast, when the magical announcement system (basically, Magos' voice echoing through the structure of the arena) informs everyone that the tournament is about to reconvene. And then Shango's mask lights up, as he is summoned.
At the ring, the floor has taken on the form of what we at home would recognize as a crude wrestling ring -- raised square platform, corner posts with ropes. Possibly a folding chair hidden somewhere. Shango stands outside the ring, and on the other side, naturally... is his brother. Hornet nods to him as if to say 'Of course.'
Shango leaps into the air and transforms into his hybrid form, doing kind of a 'double jump' with a flap of his wings and lands in the ring with his flame piece drawn.
Hornet reaches out and grabs the lowest rope and flings himself into the air, flipping dramatically over the ropes to land in the ring. He lands in the classic three-point crouch, aka the 'superhero landing,' and across the bottom of the 'screen' we see this...
Hornet Cleanses the Hive
aka Baihu Kojo Naade
Child of Sextes Jylis
Second Coil of the Immaculate Order
Humble servant of the Breath of Mela, studying at the Pinnacle of the Eye of the Hunt
Translation: 'Child of Sextex Jylis is a fancy way of saying 'Wood-Aspected. 'Second Coil' means the second of five ranks of the Order. The 'Breath of Mela' is the martial wing of the Order. 'The Pinnacle of the Eye of the Hunt' is a specific monastery, which should concern any of you who've read The Realm and understand the significance.
As Hornet raises from his crouch and takes on his stance -- a variant of Mantis form, with the arms held out wider and higher than the traditional Mantis stance[2] -- the camera pans up and away from the caption and then swings around to Shango, who stands there with the flame piece at his side, cloaked in the majestic and terrible stillness of the Righteous Devil form, a dark surety in his eyes. (Look, the description of the stance in the book is incredibly vague, roll with me on this.)
Hornet lunges at him and, almost too quick to see, Shango brings Weirdflame up to blast him in the face. He tries to claw the flame aside with his bare hands, but it's just too much and he's blasted back against the ropes. Shango, the madness fueling his weapon exacerbated by the emotional intensity of the moment, has a brief vision of Hornet tangled in the ropes and on fire.
Hornet suddenly tears through that vision as he rushes him again, closing the distance, Essence wreathed around his fingers like talons. The familiarity of the movements washes over Shango -- this is a Falcon-style move, one that he's intimately familiar with both from having trained in those techniques but having used them himself since his Exaltation. He draws Essence into his body, toughening it up, and Hornet's Essence talons spark off of him. He barely touches Shango, but he does touch him, something few Dragon-Bloods could do.
Shango grabs Hornet's robe and flips Weirdflame around to hit him with the butt of it. Hornet reaches up and grabs Shango's arm to try and pull him off-balance and get him into a grapple, but Shango wrenches his arm from his grip and starts beating him in the face with the butt of the gun. His heartbeat pounds in time with the strikes as everything seems enveloped in a heat haze. He is the phoenix.
Up in the viewing box, Hǎifēng and Xương can tell something is wrong. Hǎifēng blurs out of the box to rush down to the ringside.
For Shango, everything seems to slow down as Hornet slumps against the ropes, beaten and bleeding, the magical-wood hornet mask practically the only thing holding his face together. He's dimly aware that he's been declared the winner, but he doesn't care. The intensity of the moment is too much for him, he has to end this now.
He raises Weirdflame and aims it at Hornet. The camera's focus briefly shifts from Shango to Magos standing in the ring behind him, as they start to become aware of what's about to happen. They aren't fast enough to stop him.
But Hǎifēng is. Time snaps back to its regular speed a hundred hands clap in Shango's face, throwing off his aim and deflecting the burst of flame into the floor next to the barely-conscious monk. The crowd still cheers in the background, not fully aware that the Lunar just tried to execute his opponent -- his own brother -- but a number of individuals visible ringside (of various shapes and obvious power levels) saw what's going on. They know.
Shango, his ears ringing, his pounding heartbeat fading back to normal, brings Weirdflame up to examine it for a moment, and then collapses.
To be continued...
[0]-- When you join the Immaculate Order, you actually give up your birth name and instead use a very simple monastic name assigned to you. Later, you can reclaim your original name, or retain or embellish your monastic name. This monk's original monastic name is Hornet. His full name... well, I'll get to that in all due time.
[1]-- This is a Third Edition thing. 'Anathema,' to the Immaculate Philosophy, are people who've been infected (or stolen) the power of the Unconquered Sun or Luna, and are going to be driven to madness by the power. Their way of allowing Immaculates to acknowledge the Incarnae without declaring them evil via their Exalted.
[2]-- There's no mechanics for this, it's just a flavor choice reflecting that in addition to Mantis style, Hornet also practices the techniques of Falcon Style. As a reminder, both he and Shango grew up studying Falcon Style (though Shango has purged himself of those moves, lest we forget), except the last time they saw one another they only understood the mundane (meaning Charm-less) aspects of it.
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