Chapter 3

"... and now the latest on the tragic story out of downtown today - five Vale police officers gunned down in a vicious attack on a police precinct, the prisoners housed there after last night's brutal brawl at a local club vanishing. The apparent orchestrator of the crime - identified by the police bureau as Silan Leaward of Atlas - also killed at the scene, apparently shot with his own weapon which he used to kill those police officers.

"Chief Steele has declined to speak on the loss of the two criminals housed at the precinct, but has sworn that they will be brought to justice - not just for their previous crimes, but for this new set of murders as well. A memorial service for the fallen officers is scheduled for this coming Sunday…"

A chill wind blew from the west side of town - off the sea and through the nigh-abandoned streets of the industrial district. Five men stepped out of a black, tint-windowed, plateless SUV and strode out to the middle of the empty street. One of them, a great brutish figure in an faux-ursaskin coat, reached into his breast pocket for a cigarette and waited patiently while a rail-thin man in a black suit and black hat lit the smoke for him.

He inhaled deeply before calling out a single word and beckoning with his free hand. Another, younger gentleman - similarly dressed in a heavy jacket, minus the fur, and tall where the other was broad - stepped forward. "Yes, father?"

"Hei, I want you to watch carefully how things go here tonight. Dealings with this pig of a man… they bring me chest pains, you know? Ah, but it must be done, and one day - while you'll have no such 'competition' as I do today, you will have to deal with your own subordinates and potential rivals in a similar manner. So pay attention."

"Of course, father."

As though on cue, the street was awash in driving light. Several of the men shielded their eyes or pulled on pairs of red-tinted glasses, but the heavyset man merely gazed into the coming lights as they closed in distance. For a moment it seemed as though the coming vehicle would not stop, and several of the other men prepared to hustle their boss out of the way. In the end, however, the car pulled off to the side, purred idly for a moment and went to sleep, the snuffed headlights leaving the space eerily dark until the street lights again filled the space with a hazy glow.

The sound of several car doors opening and closing followed, and into the light stepped a group of five or six men, dressed in immaculate white suits and sporting bowler hats. Their leader was a similarly blockish man to his competitor, rows of glistening rings upon his fat fingers as he strode forward to greet the others.

"Hui," the man said gruffly.

"Bron," the other replied in a similarly even tone. "I'm glad you could make it. We have much to discuss."

Bron nodded. "Indeed we do. Shall we begin with the encroachment that you've made upon my territory, or the mysterious attacks on my operations across the kingdom that have been publicly noted as 'more likely the work of humans than Grimm?'"

A few of the black-clad guards' gun-hands twitched, but Hui waved them down. "I'm sorry to hear about these hits against your organization. I certainly know how... frustrating that can be. That said, I've committed no actions against 'your territory' as you describe it. The way I view it, that territory is always available to those with the commitment to take it."

Bron's hands curled into fists and every guard present seemed to tense, waiting for the inevitable bloodbath that was to come. Bron ground his teeth and looked around for a moment before chuckling quietly. "You really are a bull-headed, old-fashioned, tactless pig, you know that, Xiong?" He scoffed as the tall young man next to Hui drew a sidearm, tracking the weapon on Bron's chest as guards all around the gentlemen drew their weapons and took aim.

"Hei!" the senior Xiong hissed. "I told you to watch - not shoot. Put the damned gun down." His voice was level, but deadly serious.

Hei took a deep breath before easing his finger off the trigger and lowering his pistol. Bron chuckled.

"That's right, Junior. Listen to your papa - you might end up just like him one day." He turned his attention back to Hui, a sick grin twisting his blocking figures. "You can play the fool all you like, Hui. The point is, whether you admit it or not, this is war now. And in war, only one side comes out on top.

"It won't be you."

Hei Xiong slammed the door of the SUV, watching the taillights of Bron Haler's own vehicle as it retreated into the murky night. He shot a glance over his shoulder at his father as Hui ordered the driver to take them back to the family estate uptown. They were quiet for a long time, Hei grinding his teeth, but nobody speaking until the car pulled into the drive of the Xiong home. A pair of guards closed the gates behind the vehicle and as everyone stepped out, Hui called his son aside.

They walked through the side gate and around the back of the home, lights inside the swimming pool refracting ripples across the faces of the two men.

"You do not approve of how lenient I was in the face of Haler's disrespect," Hui said. It was not a question - merely a statement of fact.

Hei inhaled sharply but nodded in response to his father's question. "You should have stood up to him. Letting him say those things - Haler already thinks you're weak, how could you just let him get away with saying things like that?"

Hui held up a single finger. "Firstly, do not presume to speak to me in such a tone as that. You are my son, and entitled to much more than many others… but you are also part of my organization, and you will treat me with the same respect I would demand of any of our men. Is that clear?"

Hei swallowed and blinked nervously before nodding. Hui raised another finger.

"Secondly, what Haler thinks is irrelevant. What we know to be true - that is what matters. Haler believes me a fool? All the better; that misinformation could lead him to make a mistake, which would benefit us. Are you beginning to understand?"

Hei nodded slowly. "Of course. I didn't mean to doubt you, just-"

"Shut up, I'm not finished. Thirdly, we will not have to worry about Bron Haler for much longer. I presume you saw the news reports the previous few days?"

The younger Xiong's eyes widened as he realized where his father was going with this. "A violent brawl sent two dangerous criminals to prison, one of them a former Haler footpad… then both of them escape and a man who we know to have worked for Haler before turns up dead at the same scene… and more recently, someone has been carrying out organized strikes on Haler's operations. Someone outside of our group."

Hui smiled and reached out, cupping the side of his son's face and giving him an encouraging pat. "And that someone is the key to everything, my boy."

Neo looked up from the scope of the high-powered sniper rifle that sat, lazy upon its bipod, on the roof hoarding in front of her. She rubbed her eyes tiredly and brushed a strand of hair out of her face as footsteps behind her signaled the approach of someone.

She listened carefully for a moment, carefully gauging the gait and footfall of the person before recognizing Roman's walking pattern and rolling over to view her partner as he strode up, cane tucked under his arm and carrying a brown paper sack. Grease saturated the bottom of the bag and Neo's eyes flashed as he dropped it on the ground next to her, squatting and leaning against the wall as he did.

"Anything change while I was gone?" he asked casually as he opened up the bag and withdrew a wrapped package. Undoing the paper, he peered inside. "Steak sandwich, with an extra patty - that's yours." He withdrew his hand sharply as Neo snatched the food from his hands, unwrapping it more fully and diving with gusto into the protein-packed package within. He took out his own meal and tucked in more conservatively, wary of his petite associate's taste for meat. The other night he had watched her rip apart a roast chicken and consume the bird like it had insulted her mother. Frankly, he was glad to finally have someone around who enjoyed a good steak - his ex-wife was an avowed vegetarian, and he had rapidly grown tired of being told how his "habits" were "murdering innocent animals across Remnant." Nonetheless, the… abandon with which Neo enjoyed her meals could be disconcerting.

Neo shook her head before gesturing to the sniper rifle and returning to her meal. Roman set down his own sandwich and peered through the rifle's viewfinder. Just as they had when he left, two guards still stood idly outside a large, double-story warehouse on an island in Vale's southern industrial district. The men were dressed tastefully in white, collared suits and black slacks, as well as black bowler hats. One smoked a cigarette and chatted quietly while the other idly toted an assault carbine held at hip-level.

Roman didn't know the two men, but they worked for Haler, which meant he had probably met them once or twice in the half-decade he had worked for the crime boss. He swiveled the rifle a few degrees and centered the crosshair over the head of the man with the gun, realizing just how easy it would be to end the life of the thug. Just one… little… tap…

He lowered the rifle and sighed, reaching down and taking a bite of his sandwich before coughing and nearly dropping the sandwich. He laid it down and pressed his eye against the scope again as new developments unfolded before his eyes.

A trio of black SUV's with tinted (likely bulletproof) windows pulled off of the main road and reigned in in front of the warehouse. A dozen men in the same pristine white suits (oh yes, very inconspicuous, Bron) stepped out, several carrying rifles or machine guns and standing watch while the two at the front of the warehouse hastily opened up the heavy iron doors. A few more men began unloading the backs of the SUV's, carrying heavy, sealed cases through the doors before they had finished opening. The entire affair lasted two minutes, but Roman took care to not every important detail in that time.

Though it was difficult to tell precisely, there were catwalks inside the warehouse which likely housed watchers or snipers. An room on the ground floor, as well as another up above, were separated from the rest of the room and housed an office space used for the administrative aspect of Haler's operation. Inside, a pair of trucks were parked on one side of the spacious loading area, while much of the remaining space was crowded with cargo containers, loading equipment and more of those heavy crates that the men were loading in from the SUV's.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and shuffled aside to let Neo take a look, taking the moment to duck down from the hoarding and take a bite of his sandwich before reaching into his coat for a cigarette and lighter. As he stuck the tip into the corner of his mouth and lit it behind the cover of his folded hands, he saw Neo duck down as well, wipe her hands off with a rag and dab at the corners of her mouth before setting back to watch Roman.

She raised an eyebrow, silently inquiring about the plan. Roman exhaled a cloud of smoke and pulled a knife from the inside of his coat. Flicking the blade out, he traced a circle in the cracking concrete roof beneath their feet, marking a large rectangle with several smaller boxes and squares inside. He pointed with the tip of his knife to the largest quadrilateral.

"That's the warehouse," he began. Neo responded with a "no duh," kind of expression and he sighed softly before continuing. "We're here. Main point of entry is the doors, which are watched and sealed, but can be controlled from either this panel here," he said, pointing to a spot near the far-right corner of the diagram, "or from inside. The security office here, and administrative officer here, house what we're looking for. They'll have a computer and probably paper copies of all Haler's dealings, contacts and suppliers - at least the ones relative to this operation."

Neo raised an eyebrow quizzically at the mention of paper records and Roman took a moment to explain. "Haler's always been a fan of using conventional books for keeping tabs on his deals - less chance that some opportunistic wise-guy with a scroll and a pair of balls will hack into the archives and start fucking shit up. Anyway, that's what we need to get. Now, I'm not particularly worried about the goons watching this place - I know the kind of people that Haler employs, and they're nothing impressive. However, we need to be careful to make sure that none of them can get a message off to Haler too soon. One of them blows the whistle and we'll be swamped with footpads - or worse, cops - before we can curse the bastard's name.

"I don't know what's in all those cases down there; I never saw any sort of cargo that necessitated transport like that, but once we have what we need, our best bet would be to burn the place or narc on Haler. That stuff is tainted," he said, noting Neo's look of protest when he suggested destroying the goods. "Without the resource network Haler has, we wouldn't hold onto that stuff for a day before the cops or someone else got wind of it. We wouldn't be able to fence it without Haler finding out anyway. Best not to take chances."

Somewhat reluctantly, Neo nodded.

"I'll stay here and provide overwatch with the rifle while you go in and get that info," Roman finished. "Don't take too long - police will be here quickly if this thing goes south, so let's be done and gone before that happens, sound good sweetheart?"

He threw in the last bit as a joke and chuckled at how quickly Neo's placid expression took on a much more dangerous edge. She smacked him on the shoulder as she passed, finishing her sandwich and picking up her parasol before nimbly leaping down the face of the building and landing in the alley at the side of the building. She slipped across the road as the doors ground shut, leaving all but the two watchmen inside the warehouse.

Roman flexed his fingers around the grip of the rifle, adjusting the sighting just slightly and once again centering the crosshair on the chest of one of the watchers.

Neo strode confidently up to the front of the warehouse, short legs stepping with a (comparatively) long gait as she put on her best smile. The two men took on defensive postures as she approached, the one with the cigarette still hanging out the corner of his mouth calling out to her.

"Hold up there miss. I don't think you're s'posed to be here."

She put on her best, "oh really?" pout and cocked her head to the side playfully. Roman scoffed as his aim loomed over the man who had yet to speak. The woman was walking sex when she wanted to be… and the grim reaper the rest of the time.

The footpad turned over his shoulder and looked to his compatriot for advice. The other shrugged, and as the smoker turned back to Neo, she lashed out like a serpent. Her hand struck the man in the throat and as he coughed and sputtered she kicked him in the gut, vaulting over his suddenly-hunched form and slamming the nerve cluster at the back of his neck with her elbow. The other man raised his rifle, but Roman was quicker. The rifle bucked and hissed in his grip and a round split the air, passing clearly through the man's calf and spattering blood onto the concrete behind him. He cried out and fell to one knee, Neo crossing the space in an instant and pivoting on one heel, a booted ankle crossing the man's face with an ugly crack. He fell, jaw shattered, and moaned on the ground for a moment before Neo gave him a good blow between the shoulderblades and kicked the man's rifle away.

She flashed Roman a cocky smile and moved along the side of the building, disappearing out of Roman's line of sight. He sighed, checking once more to make sure neither of the unconscious men became a liability.

A few minutes later, he inhaled sharply as he saw the heavy doors of the warehouse grinding open. Inside, as natural light flooded the warehouse floor, several Haler goons looked up, questioning the sudden arrival of more materials. One stepped forward, hand consciously drifting to the pistol at his side.

His hand never reached the weapon. Instead, a single, high-velocity round crashed through the center of his chest and exploded out the back. The man fell, dead before he reached the ground, and every other gangster in the warehouse leapt to alert.

Roman tracked the rifle from one man to another, dropping any too slow to find cover. One man ducked out of the way of one of his shots only to be suddenly dropped to the ground by a petite figure in a white jacket. The blur of brown, white and pink sprinted across the space again, flipping through the air and planting her hands on one man's shoulders as he leaned up from the crate he was cowering behind. Her momentum kept her rolling forward and her feet found purchase in the small of the foeman's back. She continued to spin, the unnatural, aura-fed strength within her miniscule frame flinging the man high into the air. As he flew, seemingly suspended, Roman tracked him in midair with the rifle and fired a single shot with struck center of mass and saw the gangster dropping like a sack of rice.

He cranked the bolt of the rifle and fixed in on another target. Neo, meanwhile, opened her parasol just in time to block a hale of machine-gun fire. She lunged around the paltry barricades the men were improvising from the crates and rolled, one leg sweeping the ankles of the shooter while the other launched her into a midair spin. She writhed like a snake, booted-heel crashing down atop one man's skull and slamming his chin against a container. Meanwhile she jabbed out with her parasol, slipping the closed package through the machine-gunner's defenses and opening the canopy as soon as it was on the other side of the white-clad attacker's form. Hopping into the air and wrenching backwards with her arm, the parasol staggered the man forward as it struck him in the back and forced him directly into Neo's double-footed kick.

He fell, clutching his broken ribs and sternum, as Neo playfully kicked away his weapon as well. She turned and looked around the room, noting numerous red and white heaps that played testament to Roman's efficiency with the rifle. Her admiration quickly turned to disappointment as she realized the fight was over, and she closed her parasol before turning and walking casually toward the ground-floor office.

It took Roman a minute to pack the rifle away in a duffel bag and cram the whole thing under the hoarding, before grabbing Melodic Cudgel and heading down to the warehouse himself. He stepped around the defeated forms of the Haler employees, stepping into the office and checking over Neo's shoulder as she poured through a stack of loose papers. She gave him only a brief, cursory glance, before returning to her work.

"What? No compliments on my shooting?" he asked, feigning hurt.

Neo rolled her eyes, which Roman noted were both brown at this precise moment, before pulling out a few papers, stuffing them into Roman's hands and gesturing to the stairs to the second floor just outside the office. Taking her meaning, Roman lead the way as the two crooks headed upstairs, repeating their process with the papers. Roman also took a moment to crack open the CPU for the computer seated on a metal desk and pulled out the hard drive as carefully as he dared. With luck, Haler's men had saved copies of their relevant information to the drive, and they could examine it at their leisure later.

He saw Neo perk up, eyes flashing in the (literal) blink of an eye from brown to pink. "What is it?" he asked, alert as well. She ducked in response and gestured out the door. Roman crept forward, peering around the corner and taking note of several black vehicles that had pulled up outside the warehouse. He swore quietly before realizing that the vehicles were not police-standard.

Half-a-dozen figures in black suits stepped forward, led by a towering giant of a man in a white shirt and black vest. They examined the Haler footpads, in various states of death or dying, before the man in the lead called out, voice ringing across the space.

"We know you're still here, and we know that you share a common enemy with us. Come out and let's talk business - I know that's something you both understand."

Roman shot Neo a glance and her eyes flashed. She shook her head slowly but Roman peered out again. The big man knelt next to one of the Haler men, the gangster's white suit stained with blood, though the man still drew breath. The vested newcomer held up the man by the scruff of his neck as though he weighed no more than a doll.

"You still need convincing that we hate Haler just as much as you?" He gave an almost-imperceptible nod to one of his henchmen and the black-suited figure stepped forward, drawing a pistol and shooting the wounded man through the head. The big fellow dropped the corpse unceremoniously. "You want Bron Haler dead, and so do we. You have the skills to kill him, and we have the resources to get you close enough to do so. If we work together, we both share in the spoils."

Roman checked over his shoulder again and saw the conflict on Neo's face. One eye flashed to white while the other remained pink and she edged closer to the doorway.

Sighing, Roman made the decision for them both. Standing, he stepped out into the open, holding his hands in the air. "I'm Roman Torchwick and this is my associate," he said, gesturing to Neo as she stepped out as well. He saw that she was unhappy with his decision, but he figured that if need be they could shoot their way out of here. Besides, these folks didn't strike him as cops, and if he wasn't mistaken, the black suits and hats down there were characteristic of Xiong associates.

"We're interested in hearing your offer," he continued nonchalantly.

At a distance, the big man smiled. "Then come on down. We'll give you a ride, you can meet our boss and we can have a nice, civil discussion. We've got plenty to talk about."

AN - Oh yeah they do. I'm glad I found a way to fit the crime war between the Xiongs and Halers into this - it's an idea that I really liked when it came to me and I thought it'd be a cool way to give yet another of our villains (Junior) a cool backstory alongside Roman and Neo. Next chapter will be a lot of plot-setup for later on, without too much action. Chapter 5 though? Whew. I've already got that one drafted, and if you think that Roman and Neo killing twenty people like in this chapter was brutal, you haven't seen shit.

Thanks to all the people who left favorites, follows and reviews (and the one guy who posted the same review 3 times - really appreciate you bolstering my numbers, bro), please feel free to do so again. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and thanks for reading!