Flying Swords of the Windy City
CAPONE SLAIN!
Notorious Mobster Shot Dead at Hawthorne Inn
North Side Gang SuspectedSeptember 20, 1926
Al Capone was shot dead this morning by rival gangsters at his Hawthorne Inn in Cicero. Unidentified gunmen in black sedans pulled up outside the restaurant where Capone was eating and unloaded hundreds of rounds of lead, destroying the building and killing dozens of innocent bystanders.
Several members of the North Side Gang, Capone’s long-time rivals, are wanted for questioning. Police expect violent retaliation in the weeks to come…
Johnny Tao was raised by a pair of incestous river pirates who schooled him in black magic. His childhood was spent on the run, waging war against rival corsairs and bearing witness to acts of depravity that cannot be bound by punctuation.
The pair was eventually cut down by Imperial soldiers while dining at a bathhouse, where they had forced the kitchen staff to butcher and stir fry the wait staff. Johnny Tao was no longer with them, but he would say later that he mourned their passing.
He was a master of Dim Mak, the so-called “touch of death,” and knew the secret of Buddha’s Poison Palm. Though he lived a life of violence, constantly hunted by his government and a laundry list of his parents’ old enemies, he never used these forbidden techniques. He said that the harm done to himself would be far greater than that inflicted on others.
Pushed constantly down the dark path to power, he found himself distracted by real wisdom. Raised to be a sorcerer and a warrior, he became instead a mystic and a monk.
But the future does not erase the past and he knew that, eventually, he would meet the same fate as his parents: executed by the Emperor’s inescapable hand. And so he fled across the Pacific and hid under the darkest, lowliest rock he could find: Chicago.
Thus does a man in wooden sandals come to sit in the North Side office of Bugs Moran, one of the Irish mob’s heaviest hitters. His blood-stained spear leans against the wall by the door. He wears a conical, wooden hat with his pin-striped suit; American enough in the middle, but Chinese where his body meets Heaven and Earth.
“We’ve got a window of opportunity, here,” Bugs explains from behind a massive, oak desk. It was supposed to be imposing, but it only makes Moran look smaller. “The Outfit is divided, eating itself. A patient man might wait for the dust to settle, but patience can fuck a duck. I’ve wanted McGurn and his assholes outta my territory for a long, long time. Carpe diem, as those fuckers’ wine-sipping, boy-buggering ancestors would’ve said.”
The man named Bugs jots down an address like he’s carving up some stoolie’s face, tears it free, and slides it across the desk with a stack of bills. “They’ve got a guy on the payroll, a celestial named Chuck. We just want you to take care of that one guy. Kill him, distract him, block his feng shui or whatever the hell, just get him outta the way for my guys. If you do well, we can see about more permanent employment.”
Johnny Tao takes the money and the address with a nod. He gets up, smooth as silk, and makes for the door. Triggermen flank him on either side. As he nears his spear, Johnny makes the tiniest lunge toward one of them and the thug staggers back as if hit, crashes into a grandfather clock. Johnny chuckles as he walks out the door, spear in hand.
A few hours later…
Backstage at the Green Mill, a gaggle of armed men in cheap suits are fixing themselves a bite to eat. They gave the last of the boozehounds the bum’s rush about an hour ago and the legitimate staff has already punched their time cards and headed home. This is their time, these precious predawn hours when rats and criminals rule the world.
A steel spear tip slices a perfect arc around the handle of the door at the back of the kitchen and Johnny Tao kicks it open with ease. He’s greeted by a man frying an omelet and his two hungry friends, one on either side of the room. They all draw guns from barely concealed shoulder holsters.
“You’re trespassing on Bugs Moran’s territory,” Johnny Tao announces from beneath the rim of his coolie hat. “This is your eviction notice, effective immediately.” He levels his spear at the man near the frying pan.
“Well… Get out!”
Johnny taps his spear on the frying pan’s handle and it spins into the air, spraying sizzle all over the first goon’s face. He screams and fires, but the shot goes wide, then he drops his gun to grope for a towel.
Johnny continues to spin the frying pan on the tip of his spear, gauging his other two opponents. When one of them tenses just slightly, forming the intention to fire, Johnny sends the flying pan at him. It deflects a bullet, then crashes into the triggerman, knocking him over a drying tray full of dishes.
The third thug’s piece barks loud and Johnny pirouettes out of the way. He comes around the goon’s side of the kitchen between the fifth and sixth bullets and extends his spear until it kisses the barrel of the gun. The last bullet wedges inside, causing a violent backfire that shreds the gangster’s hand. Johnny’s spear slaps him in the side of the head and he bounces off a cabinet door before crumpling to the floor.
“Is that it?!” Johnny Tao goads the speakeasy. “I thought the Nickel Gang had some heat!”
A man in a fedora and a kung-fu shirt emerges from the manager’s office, twin hook swords held at his sides like folded wings. “Do you speak Mandarin?” he asks.
“Among many other languages,” Johnny replies.
“My employer’s wishes are that we conduct our business outside, as to minimize damage to the property. Would you mind?”
Johnny twirls his spear behind his back and gestures toward the door. “Apres vous.”
Chuck gets the drift and exits into the alley. Johnny follows at a safe distance. They study each other’s stances beneath the solitary, flickering streetlight. Johnny extends his spear to take maximum advantage of his reach. Chuck loops his hook swords together, neutralizing that advantage. Johnny lowers his spear to his side and shifts his grip to the center. The wind blows yesterday’s paper between them.
Hook swords snap like a bullwhip, hacking at the air where Johnny’s hat used to be, but the head inside has ducked back and out of the way. The spear whips up in counter motion to Johnny’s dodge, cleaving the air at the top of Chuck’s nose. It clips his fedora, which blows away like a tumbleweed.
They flow around each other’s swings, ducking under, leaping over, and then Tao tosses his hat into the turbulent space between them. It blinds Chuck for a moment, just long enough for Johnny to step skyward. He floats like a loose balloon up to the roof next door. As he’d hoped, Chuck pursues him, running up the Green Mill’s wall and leaping across to the far side.
They skip over moonlit rooftops like stones over a still pond until Chuck kicks a loose shingle into Johnny’s spine, disrupting his chi. Johnny crashes down in the middle of Broadway and rolls to a stop. Chuck bears down on him like a bird of prey. The spear comes up to block and Chuck catches it in his steel talons, chops it in twain.
With a half a haft in each hand, Johnny boxes his assailant’s ears, then kicks him forward and over his head. They each fly to their feet and exchange whirlwind attacks. The staccato sound of drumbeat blocks rattles the street.
The broken end of a spear shaft slips inside a hook sword’s crook, twists it out of Chuck’s grip, and sends it skittering over the asphalt. Chuck grabs the spearhead with his suddenly free hand and tries to hack Johnny’s off at the wrist. Tao lets go at the last moment and Chuck hurls the weapon away.
His remaining sword comes down like a hatchet. Johnny blocks high with a two-foot piece of wood. Rather than let the blade slice through, Johnny steps back and gives way, then kicks into a barrel roll that twists the hook sword like a wet towel. The wood splinters, explodes.
Before Johnny’s feet can brush the ground, Chuck delivers a spinning side kick that sends him plummeting through a storefront window. Predator follows prey, leaping through the shattered glass. A tall shelf full of screws and nuts topples toward him like an avalanche. Chuck grabs the top rung and pulls himself over, somersaulting down the other side.
The crash reverberates off a cramped space full of hard, metallic objects: a hardware store. The two unarmed men look around at their treasure vault of blades, staves, and bludgeons.
Then, they gauge each other.
Johnny Tao runs for a rack of claw hammers and raises his guard just in time to deflect a pair of hatchets homing in on his throat and stomach. He counters with a low swing to his adversary’s knee and a high blow to the temple, but Chuck blocks them both with the flats of his blades. Whiz-clang! Whiz-clang! They dance to their own drumbeat, moving slowly down the aisle as their arms blur through the air. Each contact casts off sparks like New Year’s firecrackers.
The gardener gives a little ground, drawing Chuck in close to one of the shelves, then hooks his claw around an incoming hatchet haft and pulls the weapon over his shoulder. It bites into the wooden shelf and won’t let go. Now outnumbered two to one, its brother tries to retreat, but Johnny catches Chuck’s arm between both hammers and folds it at the elbow, putting the blade on a collision course with Chuck’s face. He wisely lets go and it clatters into the shelves behind.
The Mandarin disengages, Johnny’s claw hammers hounding him as he flies up and over, into the next aisle. He hooks a can of paint with his foot and whips it into the air, where it punches Johnny in the gut. He tumbles to the floor and rolls heels-over-head to his feet.
Chuck is already at the end of the row, perched over a tall stack of circular saw blades. His flat palms blur over them and they fill the air like locusts. Johnny backpedals, knocking them away as quick as he can, but they decapitate first one hammer, then the other. He kicks the last one up and over his head; it leaves a streak of grease on the tip of his nose.
Tossing his headless hammers, Johnny kicks a shovel into his hands and holds it like his long lost spear. Chuck looks left and right, inspecting shelves of color swatches and bristle brushes before selecting his weapon: a pair of paint rollers.
Greenthumbs flies down the aisle, twirling the shovel into a guillotine swing that’s cut an inch short by one of Chuck’s rollers. The second roller snaps down from the other direction, locking the shovel tight. They struggle for a moment, before Johnny Tao leaps up into a handstand and spins his weapon like a propeller blade. The paint rollers skitter away in opposite directions.
Chuck bolts like a cockroach. The pirate follows him and they careen through the store until Chuck crashes into a wall full of rope and cable. He unspools some chain and wraps it around his hands. Clang! Clang! One executioner’s swing after another ricochets away until Johnny flips into the air and drives back down like a thunderbolt. Chuck dodges away and the shovel blade punches through the chain, setting it free.
Now, the Mandarin unfurls the chain’s full span, snapping it back and forth like a whip. He ensnares the shovel, yanks his enemy toward him, and cracks the other end at Johnny’s temple. Tao lets go and skids to a stop, but it’s too late. The shovel sails away and the chain comes back. It coils around Johnny’s neck. He tries to counter-attack, but Chuck wraps up his arms and snares his leg, wrenches him off his feet.
“Wait! Wait!” the gardener chokes. “I can teach you… forbidden… the Dim Mak. Poison Palm. I can make… you powerful.”
The Mandarin moves around behind him and gets a solid grip on the chain, then he tightens it until Johnny Tao’s spine snaps. “If you cannot give me a warrior’s death, what use are you to me?”
GREEN MILL RAZED
Machinegun McGurn Vows Revenge
October 16, 1926
The north side awoke to an early sunrise as the notorious Green Mill restaurant blazed. Armed men kept the fire department at bay until little more than the smouldering foundation remained.
The restaurant’s owner, Jack McGurn, is a known associate of the late Al Capone and his presence on the north side has long been a thorn in Hymie Weiss’ paw…
It was in 1924 that the Chicago police helped the North Side Gang rob a distillery. In broad daylight, they nabbed over 1,700 bottles of whiskey that had been kept under lock and key since the start of Prohibition. Both cops and crooks stood to make a fortune, but at too high a price for one man.
Cadogan Lynch, a former employee who lived nearby in the Kilglubbin neighborhood, watched the entire heist happen out the window of his recently foreclosed home. Drunk out of his mind, he somehow managed to blitz the gangsters’ convoy, run them off the road, and beat the ever-loving shit outta each and every one of ‘em.
He gave the hooch away for free, for which the locals took to calling him “The Hero of Kilglubbin.” After he sobered up (a matter of several weeks), the scofflaw could not share their assessment. He was horrified by the violence he’d visited upon those mobsters and felt he needed to serve some kind of penance.
So, he turned himself in… to the North Side Gang.
Police custody would be tantamount to suicide, he reasoned, since the bulls had been a party to the robbery and he wouldn’t be able to defend himself while sober. Liquor had always been the key to unlocking his berserker spirit and, barring whatever sangria he could make in the toilet, prison is a dry county.
The Northsiders put him in chains, dressed him in rags, and kept him around as an attack dog. And so, when boss Hymie Weiss is targeted by Capone’s right-hand man, a whale called Big Tuna, there’s no one he’d rather have riding shotgun than a scraggly-haired drunk in wrist irons.
Their driver is cleaving his way through midtown traffic when an old, asian man in an orange-and-yellow suit lands his dress shoes on the hood of their car. “Fuck!” Hymie spits whilst cranking the lever on his mare’s leg. “It’s the paper tiger!”
“Keep the safety on, Boss. I’ll shake him.” The driver puts it in neutral and sends the car into a spin, but the man on the hood just ticks off his prayer beads and leans into the wind.
Scofflaw twists the cap off his hip flask and pours its entire contents down his throat. He slaps the driver on the shoulder and asks, “Keep it steady, will ya?” before rolling down his window and climbing out onto the roof. The sedan pops back into gear and heads straight down Upper Wacker.
“I am Sifu Phuntsok,” the orange-clad man introduces himself over cacophonous honking. “That means I’m a teacher. What do you need to learn?”
Scofflaw answers that question with a chain to the face, but Sifu leans a fraction of an inch out of reach, then responds with a whip of his prayer beads. They sting, but do no real damage. “Your chi is strange. Powerful, but it flows through you all wrong. What has damaged you, strange foreign devil?”
Spin kick, leg sweep, forward kick, nothing. The paper tiger sees them all coming. He catches the forward kick in one hand and tosses Scofflaw into a backwards cartwheel that carries him nearly over the automobile. He ends up teetering on the spare tire.
Sifu leaps sideways just as Hymie blows a hole in the roof of the car. The monk springs off the side of a slower moving delivery truck and flies past Scofflaw, kicking all the while. The Irishman bends his knees and hangs off the spare, ass over asphalt, until the Chinaman is clear.
They charge each other and grapple in midair. Scofflaw gets his chains around Sifu’s throat and Sifu wraps his prayer beads around Scofflaw’s. They orbit around each other before crashing into a city bus. The windshield gives way and they tumble down the aisle, each trying to reverse the other’s hold. Passengers sing them a chorus of curses.
Out the back of the bus and into the street they go. The prayer beads break, releasing Scofflaw, who pulls his opponent over his head and throws him bodily into a skyscraper. He stops to catch his breath and sees Hymie’s car cross the bridge two blocks up. Sifu sees it, too. He’s standing in the ragged impact crater, calmly brushing the dust off his suit.
Scofflaw digs deep into the street and launches himself like a cannonball, but Sifu just steps off the ledge and drops below him, then skips over the river. Scofflaw grabs what’s left of the fire escape, tears it free, and leaps to the ground, dragging the twisted metal with him. It comes down in a broad arc and swats Sifu like a fly, smashing him into the far bank.
Sparing no time to catch their breath, both men leap over the river and meet in the middle with a flurry of flying kicks. One of Sifu’s pitches Scofflaw face-down, then another drives him straight through a barge. It snaps in half and begins to sink. Sifu lands on the bow, now jutting forty-five degrees out of the water, and straightens his cuffs.
Moments later, Scofflaw explodes out of the river like a cruise missile. A geyers rises up in his wake and blasts Sifu into the side of a bridge. The old man catches himself on a steel beam and climbs up to the top. He tracks Scofflaw’s comet’s tail to a nearby intersection, where the Irishman’s coughing up half the river.
“Do you think the booze gives you your power, strange foreign devil?!” the paper tiger booms. “It may be the key, but you are the source. It is not the key you should worry about, but the lock. Why is it there? Is it made of shame? Regret? Why don’t you allow yourself to be free?!”
“You wanna teach me something, old man?!” Scofflaw screams through gritted teeth. “Come down here and teach me how to shut you up!”
“As you wish!” Sifu floats off the bridge and Scofflaw turns away, scans the oncoming traffic. Something in his gaze causes a truck driver to abandon ship, so Scofflaw brings his shackled fists down on the hood, crumpling it. The vehicle pitches into a cartwheel that carries it over Scofflaw and directly into the paper tiger’s path.
Sifu meets it with a kick that completely reverses its rotation and pounds it into the ground, out of his way. He lands in the intersection as it crunches behind him. “Are you not your own master, slave?”
The Irishman’s warcry rattles the street lights. He bulrushes his adversary, who places one foot gently on Scofflaw’s head and rides him out onto the bridge. Chains encircle his orange-clad ankle and whip him down like a bag of ice, shattering steel.
Lying on his back in the middle of a crater, Sifu plants both feet in Scofflaw’s midsection and launches him skyward. The Irishman crashes through Reid Murdoch’s clock face, which collapses on top of him.
“You must learn to forgive yourself, if you ever wish to unlock those chains!” the teacher yells into the wreckage. He flies up to the top of a nearby skyscraper, but can’t find any trace of Hymie’s car.
Something shifts in the remains of the bell tower and Scofflaw emerges with one of the clock’s hands in each of his. He twirls them around, cracks his neck, and points the hour hand at Sifu.
“Who are you really fighting?” the teacher tsk’s.
“Oh, shut the hell up, ferchrissakes!” Scofflaw takes to the air in a plume of brick dust and debris, lands atop Sifu’s skyscraper, and delivers a volley of wicked swings with his new weapons. Bits of brick and steel float past and get obliterated in the crossfire.
Sifu retreats across the downtown skyline and Scofflaw pursues him. They crash through ornate monuments of sandstone and steel. “You don’t need absolution,” Sifu laments. “Seeking it only compounds your regret. You need only admit the truth.”
“And what’s that?!” The Irishman executes a twirling cartwheel leap that overtakes his opponent and lands him atop the Tribune building, ready and waiting to take Sifu’s head off when he lands.
“You enslave yourself.”
The clock hands cross Sifu’s throat like scissors, but he makes no attempt to stop them from consummating their relationship. He knows he’s already won.
Scofflaw drops his weapons, raises his arms, and brings his chain down on the paper tiger’s head. It drives the old man ankle-deep into the masonry, but the chain breaks into a hundred bits.
A free man touches down on Michigan avenue and walks north toward Kilglubbin.
WACKER WACKED
Unidentified Irish and Chinaman Wreak Havoc on Newly Completed Upper Wacker Drive
November 29, 1926
The war between the North Side Gang and the fractured remnants of Al Capone’s Outfit raged out of control on Sunday as two so-called “flying swords” demolished bridges and buildings along the Chicago river.
No arrests have been made. Chicago police continue to look the other way and the Feds seem content to let the criminal underworld devour itself…
Yan Yan Zhao was raised as a boy… until she discovered sex. Recognizing her potential, Wudan monks had adopted her almost as soon as she could walk. They gave her boy’s clothes and tossed her in with the student population at their monastery, where she thrived.
Ten years later, Yan Yan began to notice peculiar changes in male behavior. She found that a sly smile or a well-timed glance could get her out of chores or into a second helping at dinner. However, she also found her technique receiving less criticism than it deserved, which threatened to slow her progress. Clearly, this was a power that must be used judiciously.
Too bad, then, that she so dearly enjoyed using it. She liked to flirt and found male attention gratifying. She wanted to touch and be touched, so she began sneaking into town at night and hiding her shaved head under a wig. To this day, she still prefers wigs to real hair.
Galavanting about bars and brothels is a sure way to earn the ire of any responsible adult. When the Wudan master called her in for a reprimand, she tried to seduce him. That got her banned from the mountain for good.
And so it was that she came to America, the new land of female empowerment. She hit the flapper scene like a sack of bricks, developing a reputation for crashing parties… and ending them early. Her small stature and ready affections got her nicknamed “Baby Vamp,” but she preferred to be known by her favorite expression: Raspberries! She carried her scolar sword with her everywhere; it didn’t take long for bouncers to stop asking.
When the proprietor of one of her favorite clubs, Casa Madrid, needed muscle for his new gang, she was his first round draft pick. Samuel “Teets” Battaglia left her out of his meat locker torture sessions, because she “kills everybody too damn quick,” which was fine by her. She found much beauty in violence, but not when it was executed with cruelty.
The same could not be said for her encounter with Chuck, which takes place on New Year’s Eve. Battaglia had just recently split off from the Outfit, unwilling to recognize Big Tuna as Capone’s heir. Machine Gun McGurn had done the same, but was less discerning in which names he put on his hit list.
Baby Vamp is neck deep in necking when McGurn makes his move, spraying enough lead across the club to bust it open like a pinata. She flies across the dance floor with sword outstretched, skewering the slugs meant for her boss.
The dance floor clears like low tide, leaving Baby Vamp alone against the killers. She stands in front of Teets’ table, but gives McGurn time to load a fresh drum. She twirls her sword and smiles sweetly.
“You shoulda joined the Nickel Gang, Teets!” McGurn yells, cocking his gat.
“I’d rather fuck your dead mother!” Battaglia retorts while cowering under his table.
McGurn lets his Chicago Typewriter do the talking. Baby Vamp thrusts her sword straight into the stream of bullets and rotates her wrist, creating a cone of whirling steel that sends hot lead ricocheting into the floor, walls, and ceiling.
The empty chamber clicks and she’s off like an arrow, blade aimed right down the barrel of McGurn’s gun. Before she can split it like a reed, Chuck swings a length of chain around the sword and pulls it to the side, but Baby Vamp is ready. She lets Chuck drag her into a spin that becomes a rolling double kick. Her left foot connects with the gat, bending its barrel. Her right foot hits McGurn in the chest, pancaking him against the wall.
She keeps rolling past Chuck and lands on his far side with the chain coiled tight around her blade. They play tug ‘o war for a second, then Chuck brings out the business end: a hand axe fused to the chain. Baby Vamp lets her sword slide free and glides back a foot, out of reach.
She sees McGurn limping away out the back. Behind her, Battaglia races for the front.
Chuck loops his chain around one arm and yo-yo’s the hatchet into his hand. “Death by a woman’s hand?” he muses in Mandarin. “Killing a woman would be even less honorable, regardless of her skill. Our business is concluded.”
He follows in his boss’ footsteps until a champagne bottle smashes against the wall, showering him in bubbly and broken glass. “It’s midnight,” she informs him. “Where’s my kiss?”
He laughs a little, under his breath, but keeps on walking.
Outside, McGurn is long gone. Chuck wall runs up to the rooftops and starts heading east. Baby Vamp explodes up through the Casa Madrid’s skylight behind him. Three more liquor bottles hang in the air with her; she launches them at Chuck with a trio of tornado kicks.
His chain flies into action, surrounding him. The bottles shatter, but now he’s soaked and smells like a wino. This shall not stand. He turns west and charges. She floats away like a giggling leaf.
They skip north over rooftops and narrow streets, until Baby Vamp perches on a moonlit rail bridge over the river. She puts her sword behind her back, so Chuck lands in a defensive stance, axe twirling slowly in one hand.
“Men are ridiculous,” she laughs. “How can you find honor in fighting other men, but not women? Are you truly that interested in each other’s junk?”
“Death is the only honor left to me,” Chuck confesses. “Disowned by my master, banished, cast to the wind like a fistful of funeral ash. I’d expect you to understand that, Zhao.”
“For women, there is no honor in this world, only subjugation, but we are strongest when our enemies think us weak!”
She hops down off the struts and starts slicing support beams. The bridge shudders. Chuck leaps skyward. She kicks several broken beams up at him, but he knocks them aside and entangles the last in his chain. As he descends, he swings it down like a blacksmith’s hammer, pulverizing the bridge.
As the current below swallows the wreckage, Baby Vamp floats to the far bank and glides upstream on a river of steel. The Mandarin follows, taking pot shots with his hatchet-gusari. She dances just beyond its lethal range until, cartwheeling over a low swing, she thrusts her sword down and pins one link to the gravel.
They wrestle for a moment, then Chuck flies overhead and twists his chain into a whirlwind. She lifts herself into a handstand on the hilt of her sword, safe in the eye of the storm. When Chuck lands, his weapon is wound so tightly around the blade, all Raspberries needs is a sudden snap of her wrist to break it into a thousand pieces. Tiny bits of broken steel fill the sky like a second firmament.
Pouty-faced, she shakes her head at him while she pulls her blade from the ground. Glancing down at the hatchet, now free of its tether, she shrugs and kicks it to Chuck, who plucks it like an apple.
Thunder rolls down the railyard toward Baby Vamp and she meets it head-on, lodging her scholar sword under the wheels of an oncoming freight train. It derails, crashing down on Chuck like a tsunami.
He slides through the dirt as the first car hurtles over him. He smashes his way through the windows of the second, emerging just in time to skip over the third and fly clear of the rest. The train plows through the yard, spraying earth in all directions.
Then he’s on her like a hailstorm, chopping and slashing with force of fury, all concerns about the fairer sex washed away.
The scholar sword flashes like lightning. Sparks fly in every deflection. Their clangs mix with the sound of locomotives moving in the darkness. One such train passes behind them, carrying livestock west out of the city.
A painted thumb jabs deep into Chuck’s neck, sending a shockwave across his meridians. Raspberries kicks around him like a dancer, landing behind, and delivers a one-knuckle punch to the base of his spine, cutting off his root chakra. The coup de grace is a pommel bash to his heart, a hammer that shatters his chi like a pane of glass.
She kicks him and he careens through space, crashing into the passing train. Chickens scream at him. Feathers fill the air, then separate like the Red Sea as Baby Vamp skids to a stop just inches from her prey.
“Dying by my hand would have been an honor, Mandarin,” she whispers in his ringing ear, “but you don’t deserve it. Some of your strength may return, in time, but I’ll be cold in the ground before you fly again.” She steps back to the edge of the car.
“Wherever this train is headed, stay there.”
NEW YEAR’S TERROR
Machinegun McGurn on Rampage
Jan 1, 1927
Gunfire rang in the new year at Casa Madrid, where Jack McGurn sprayed hot lead over revelers in an attempt to murder his rival, “Teets” Battaglia. Though several were injured in the stampede that followed, no deaths were reported and both mobsters are still at large.
Calling the gang war an “earthquake of carnage,” Mayor Dever has asked federal law enforcement to step in. Unless someone can seize Capone’s crown, his crumbling empire may bury Chicago alive…
Sifu Phuntsok once stood on the threshold of Nirvana, one step away from enlightenment and eternal bliss, but was unable to cross on account of his boundless compassion for all you sorry ass motherfuckers.
The enlightened mind must discard many illusions on the long, arduous climb to Nirvana. Separation is one such illusion, but finding true oneness with all things is a real bitch. It forces you to care about their suffering and want to help them overcome it, which you can’t very well do from a transcendental state of being and not being.
“Shit!” he thought, or its nearest Tibetan equivalent.
For a while, he tried teaching, following in the Buddha’s footsteps in the hope that others would follow in his. Fat fucking chance. The title was to his liking, though, so he kept it.
Sifu began to think of compassion not as a rope extended to those in need, but as a noose pulled tight around his neck. He had to cut himself free, so he sought out the worst humanity had to offer: opium smugglers in Shanghai, human traffickers in San Francisco, and now warring gangsters in Chicago.
Men with ridiculous names like “Big Tuna,” who has hired Sifu to oversee a peace summit, of sorts, between himself and Capone’s other would-be heirs. Big Tuna has gathered them in the ruins of the Hawthorne Inn, Scarface’s funeral pyre, where they sit around a long table surrounded by mothballed furniture and walls pockmarked with bullet holes.
A man called “Teets” sits across the table, beside his Wudan harlot with the scholar sword. She’s trying not to make eye contact with “Machinegun” McGurn, who has just interrupted Big Tuna to reveal a deeply unsurprising double-cross. Sifu stifles a yawn.
“The Irish are on their way,” McGurn announces. “You can either unite under my leadership or die like the free range chickens you are — ”
“JUDAS!” screams Teets and his bodyguards draw arms, but the harlot’s heart also sings of betrayal. She grabs both gats around their barrels, twists them from their owners’ hands, and then pistol whips her former comrades in the face. Baby Vamp flies across the table and lands in front of McGurn, who’s already headed for the door.
“I’m disappointed, Battaglia, but not surprised,” McGurn tsk’s. “The Irish expect to find you all disarmed.” He whisks the white sheet off an upturned table, revealing a small pile of tommy guns and ammunition. “Nuts to that.” Then, he’s gone and mobsters are finding weapons under every white sheet in the place. The scent of gunmetal fills Sifu’s nostrils.
When no one seems intent on pursuing McGurn, Baby Vamp fixes her eyes on the Paper Tiger. She loosens her sword in its scabbard. Sifu takes Big Tuna’s umbrella and flies toward her, but she meets him halfway and they land on the table. Muzzle flashes bloom at their feet.
Her blade flashes, too, slashing and stabbing, but Sifu slaps the flat with his umbrella every time, knocking it off target. She switches her grip, starts sliding her sword along her opponent’s “weapon,” carving it like a turkey. Sifu flips the umbrella around and uses its crook to grapple the harlot’s elbow, pulling it down and pressing her sword against her own neck.
“What do these devils mean to you, that you would kill for them?” he asks over the tommyguns’ thunder. “Money?”
“What else is there?” she replies in heavily accented but passable Tibetan. Then, she drops the sword into her off hand and whips it up, cleaving the air just inches from the retreating Sifu’s face.
“Everything and nothing,” he quips sagely while slipping inside her guard and pressing his knee into hers, disrupting her stance. He tries to pull her off balance, but she bends like a reed in the wind, switching her stance and doing the same thing back to him. Their footwork flows like a foxtrot.
“What I know, old man, is that the world isn’t the source of evil,” she chides him. “No-good men are.”
The old man grabs her around the neck, plants one foot in her midsection, and rolls backward. They sumersault the length of the table, come back to their feet, and Sifu whips her through the vacant window frames. Outside, icy sleet slashes her skin like tiny razorblades.
The Northsiders are pulling up and she plummets into one of their windshields. Armed men spill out on both sides. She watches the Paper Tiger’s orange form descend on her like a comet. Rolling backward, she launches herself clear with one hand. The car craters under the Sifu’s shoes.
The Irish decide to leave them the hell alone and march on the hotel, for they are wise.
“You’re hopeless!” Sifu hollers over the storm. “Morally derelict. Pridefully ignorant.” He leaps into a twisting flip that carries him through the sleet like a firework pinwheel. Baby Vamp leaps at him, swinging her sword, but one of Sifu’s twirling feet sweeps it aside as the other drives her into the pavement.
He lands above her head, declaring “I will teach you!” She swings her feet around and kicks herself up. “I will teach you and you will fail. We will set each other free!”
Her sword cuts ribbons in the sleet as she slashes again and again. He dances away from it, cartwheels around it, slaps the blade with the flat of palm when he can’t escape. Then, her foot slips in behind the sword and connects with his chest. He slides through the water gathering at his ankles.
“Every teacher I’ve ever had has betrayed me!” she screams. “Out of jealousy or lust or simple, male arrogance! That’s all I ever needed to learn.” She slithers in close, stabbing from unconventional angles, testing his defenses. Sifu’s orange coat is soon peppered with holes.
He steps inside her reach, loops their arms together, and twists such that the tip if her sword bites into her far shoulder. She loosens her grip and the old man kicks the weapon across the street.
Baby Vamp lands a scorpion kick in the old man’s armpit and he backs off, examining his paralyzed limb. “Very good,” he begrudges. Three palm strikes to his shoulder rectify the problem. He flexes his fingers. “If someone of your talent cannot follow the path, what hope is there for the rest? Your failure will condemn them all!”
Sirens explode on both ends of the street. Moments later, g-men are leveling guns at them over the doors of two black sedans. The sluggers declare a sidelong truce, then she cuts right and he cuts left, engaging their common enemy.
Baby Vamp pounces over a sedan and, before the guns can follow, she’s kicked one suit’s head through the rear window. She catches his pistol as he goes limp and sidearms it up front, hammering his partner in the trachea. She kicks the car and it rolls over on the last two g-men on the far side.
Meanwhile, Sifu slides beneath a volley of gunfire, then grapples his first fed and bends his elbow backward over the open door. The poor man yowls and drops his piece. Sifu cartwheels over him and disarms his partner with a kick on the way down. He plucks handcuffs from the first man’s pocket, catches a punch from the partner, and lashes both of them to the door frame.
He rolls over the top of the car and lands behind the last two agents. With one hand, he disassembles the driver’s piece. The other hand puts his partner in a painful arm lock. An orange-clad foot comes up and bounces the driver’s head off the car, then whirls around and sweeps the last man’s legs out from under him. A knuckle strike to the forehead knocks him out cold.
Dusting off his hands, Sifu turns back to his adversary and finds her already plunging a hairpin through his sternum.
“I’ve threaded it between the halves of your heart, Paper Tiger.” The light in her eyes shines through the sleet. “Pull it out the wrong way and you’ll die. I can show you,” she smiles, “but can you accept a woman as your teacher, Sifu?”
He staggers. “How could I possibly trust you?”
“I don’t need your permission to kill you, old man.”
He considers that like the sound of one hand clapping, then resolutely takes the hairpin between two fingers and throws it into the storm.
“Shit,” he gasps, or its nearest Tibetan equivalent.
Baby Vamp watches him fall, then looks over to the hotel, where more men in black sedans are rounding up the few surviving gangsters. She frowns.
Party’s over.
