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The subway train to Chinatown rocked unsteadily against the tracks as it tore around a bend in the underground. The dingy lights of the car flickered and buzzed as the wheels clicked against the rails. Graffiti fought with garbage for turf inside of the subway while rodents and other beasts scurried to get out of the light of the passing train in the dark, dank tunnel that loomed around the train like a coffin. Valorie buried her nose in her phone and bobbed to the beat of the music running through her headphones, pretending to be involved in a ferocious text message exchange despite having no service in the tunnels. She was the one person wearing any color in a gaggle of black hoodie wearing thugs. To an outside observer it would seem like she was being targeted for some brutal boxcar beatdown or for some other form of harassment, the way the hoodlums had closed in a circle around the sitting woman. Their voices were low and hushed; some were visibly carrying pipes and other makeshift weapons. One of them was clutching a brown bag in their hand with god knows what inside and pushed it with a certain amount of force towards the young woman. [i]Drink it or we’ll gut you, Bitch,[/i] this outsider would imagine as they pretended that they hadn’t seen anything, knowing it’d be best not to get involved with those thugs.

Of course, Valorie was not actually getting harassed. Although she was nothing like them in appearance (asides from hygiene: she still wore her clothes from yesterday despite the Sun already being down), she was most certainly with them. The man forcing the brown bag and, to our non-existing observer urging her to drink, had forced it to the woman in frustration more than anything else. He had bought the drink for himself, and she had been railing him to share the love since they had gotten on the subway train. Valorie tore the bottled bag from his hand and took a swig of the beverage. She wrinkled her nose and grimaced. [i]Malt liquor, gross.[/i] But alcohol was alcohol, and when all of the places around there knew she was using a fake ID it meant she had little choice in what to drink--and a drink was something she certainly needed.

“Any questions?” asked the only other girl in the group and the apparent leader of this branch of Rats.

Valorie hadn’t taken her name to memory yet; she doubted she’d need to. The girl was part of the Fifth Street Rats. If the Bloodblooms and the Nyctaris looked down on the other gangs, and the other gangs looked down on the Rats, then the Rats looked down on the Fifth Street Rats. Even newbies like Valorie knew the Fifth Street Rats were a joke. They dressed tough, they acted tough, and they talked tough, but like a person holding a pair of deuces in a high stake game of poker they folded every time when things got rough. The Fifth Street Rats were the kind of gang who would gladly try to steal candy from a baby and yet still somehow manage to come out with just a shitty diaper and a black eye. They were losers. And since Valorie was tagging along with them, that too meant she was now a loser...if only for the job. 

That was the first reason she needed a drink. The second reason she needed a drink was because she had pissed off Quinn--ultimately the reason why she was now on a subway train with the Cleveland Browns of street gangs. Quinn had told her that the Fifth Street Rats might be getting some Fairy Dust. This had come, naturally, after they had a ten minute screaming match over the phone during Valorie’s cab ride (and then she had stiffed the poor bastard on the tip, too).  In hindsight, Valorie realized this was a kind of penance. Yes, yes, she would probably score some drugs, but no high was worth dealing with these assholes. Especially when they had such [i]great[/i] ideas like the one this chick had just shitted out of her mouth. 

Which was the third reason Valorie needed a drink.

“Yeah, I have one,” said Valorie, resting the bagged bottle between her thighs. The odds of the man getting it back during this train ride were exceptionally slim. Putting away her phone, she elbowed the two Rats sitting beside her to slid over so that she could have some room to lounge. 

“Didn’t even think you were listening, uh…” It seemed the other girl hadn’t taken her name to memory either. Valorie narrowed her eyes.

“I wish I hadn’t,” said Valorie. “So, my question?”

“Whatever. Go ahead.”

“Okay. Thanks. Great!” Valorie gave a smile that was clearly fake. “Do you think I’m fucking stupid?”

“What?”

“I’m going to pretend you said no. So, are you fucking stupid then?” said Valorie. Some of the other Rats bristled; the girl blinked, confused and caught off guard. She had been surrounded by the Fifth Street Nobodies for so long that she wasn’t used to be challenged by another Rat. Valorie rose her hand. “It’s a rhetorical question. I already knew the answer when I heard your fucking plan.”

“Who do you think--”

“Shut. Up.” 

Valorie stood up very quickly, the bottle gripped in her hand, as she stared down the other woman. Despite being larger than Valorie, the other Rat backed up. Perhaps because she thought the woman was going to club her with the bottle of Cobra. Perhaps because she saw the anger still lingering in Valorie’s eyes from today’s earlier failure. Maybe it’s because she knew Valorie had gotten a vial of Demon’s Blood (although Valorie was saving that baby for a rainy day) from one of the other Rats. Valorie took another chug from the bottle, focusing hard to make sure she didn’t wince. She had learned through Quinn that the best way to deal with any Rats she did not know was to establish an early dominance. [i]Like it’s the first day of prison, only it’s generally best to avoid shanking any of your fellow Rats. That kind of bothers them.[/i] Truth be told, most Rats were junkie cowards and quickly kowtowed whenever somebody took command. 

Although occasionally you’d just get socked. The punch did not come, however, so Valorie continued, talking more to the other Rats than to the girl:

“Look, while I am all for smashing some gobo-bitch’s shop apart because he hurt fuck boy’s feelings,” said Valorie, gesturing towards the man who had tried to buy his piece from Gish with drugs; the same man who had given her a vial of Demon’s Blood in return for a false favor she would never deliver upon. “But if you think running blindly into a gun shop swinging a bat around is good idea then I can just shoot you myself and save you some time. Unlike some of you, I would rather spend tonight getting high from some Fairy Dust instead of through a morphine drip while recuperating in a hospital or dead from a gunshot wound through my,” she jabbed a finger against the woman’s head, “empty.” Jab. “Fucking.” Jab. “Skull.” Shove. The girl fell onto the seat across from.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” said Valorie, looking around at the group. “When we get to Chinatown you guys are going to find some place close to this prick’s shop to hole up in. Don’t all stick together; seriously, a group of six people with bats and bars all wearing black is suspicious as fuck. I’m very surprised you even made it to the subway without getting picked up. But don’t get far enough apart that you can’t see one another neither. I’ll go inside, make sure there isn’t a whole bunch of dudes in there, and distract whatshisname. I’ll send you,” she pointed to the same guy from before. He had given her his number so that they could meet up later for that never-happening favor that she had agreed to, “a text. That’d be the signal for you guys to come in while he’s distracted.”

The subway stopped and the doors slid open with a woosh. Valorie tossed the other woman her bottle. She wanted to get wasted, but she’d have time for that later. A clear mind would be necessary for her part of the plan.  

“No time for questions. Let’s go.” 

She disappeared through the sliding door, a train of Rats following after her. The station was emptier than usual. It was late enough in the day that the office crowd were already home safe, and too early in the night for drunken degenerates to be out of the bars. The few individuals in the station were still cautious enough of the throng of gangsters spearheaded by a young woman to give them a wide berth. Valorie walked with a cool confidence as she led her troop up the stairs, a lit cigarette already in her mouth as she exited out onto the streets of Santa Somabra’s Chinatown.

Somewhere, a radio came to life: “Spotted seven suspicious looking types coming out of the subway. Five male, two female, all wearing black except for the woman in a red jacket leading them. A few of them are armed. Orders?”

From her vantage point the Ijosalfr could see both the entrance to the goblin’s apartment and the fire exit leading by his window. She had caught flashes of his green skin through her binoculars, working on guns and chatting on the phone, but nobody had yet to enter his apartment. She could have gone and warn him herself; an enforcer for the Bloodbloom carried a certain bit of authority. Yet any movement before the Rats struck could possibly send them scurrying back to their holes, and the she-elf was not going to miss an opportunity to redeem so many corrupt souls. 

And she certainly wasn’t going to let any of Nyxie’s men take her marks. She pulled the walkie-talkie up to her lips: “Just follow them for now. We don’t want to chase after the wrong rodents.”

Valorie had never been to Gish’s before, but one of the Rats fed her directions. Closed down markets lined the streets. If the sun was up the markets would have been open and thriving with energy, but the folks in Chinatown were smart enough to head indoors when the moon came out. The sky was a light mixture of purple and orange, and strings of paper lanterns cast an eerie red glow throughout the streets. Darkened doorways led into massage parlors with lovely young girls supplied by the Nyctari and laundromats that stowed away drugs for the Nyte Kings. She passed by a restaurant that she had gone to before with Quinn and the Chinese Theater that they had been thrown out of an hour later for start a fight. When they were a block away she stopped and turned to the gang.

“I’ll keep an eye on the front to make sure that bastard doesn’t leave. You three, head back behind his apartment and keep an eye on the back door. The rest of you, hide out by the fire escape. Once it gets darker I’ll go in and then give you the signal.”

She watched as the Rats scurried to follow her orders, a cool smile on her face as the other girl walked by her. Valorie could read the girl’s mind: [i]Bitch[/i], it said, echoing the thoughts in Valorie’s mind. 

Meanwhile, the radio crackled back to life: “They’ve split up.”

“I have an eye on their leader,” said the she-elf. “Return to your post in case others show up. I’ll radio if I see anything.”

Valorie continued down the street as the pack of dark hoods disappeared into sideroads and alleys, pulling her own hood up from beneath her red flannel jacket. Flicking the cigarette out into the street, Valorie ducked into a small restaurant and found herself a table by the window. Pulling out her phone, she hammered out a quick text message and hit send. Then she pulled out a fashion magazine and pretended to be reading it as she formed her part of the plan.

She knew she had to get rid of the goblin--though not in the typical mafioso euphemism sense where she tied some cement shoes to his tiny green feet or give him a necktie from Colombia. Vandalism, break and entering, stealing, drug dealing, arms trafficking, necromancy? Fine. Valorie still had enough teenage rebellion in here to find something romantic and thrilling about defacing property. She had enough greed and desperation inside of her to be okay with taking from somebody else if it meant bettering her life. She could lie to herself and say that selling drugs and guns was mostly a victimless crime. She didn’t force the junkie to overdose or the killer to pull the trigger. Necromancy? She only saw it as bad when she failed, and even then it was hard to say if there was any victim but herself. She started with a dead body, she ended with a dead body and her own crushed spirit. 

But leading a bunch of Rats to bash the green out of a goblin? Even if she didn’t harm him herself, she’d still be directly responsible for his wounding or possible death. She couldn’t deal with that. Valorie didn’t believe that she was a good person; that part of her was shattered, scattered across Santa Somabra by her own hedonism. Yet, even if she didn’t fully buy it, she could still lie to herself. Fuck it, even if she knew she was rotten to the core at least she could fool others into thinking there was an ounce of decency in there somewhere. She’d even be okay with that. So she’d help him escape.

But she had to find some way to make him trust her. 

“Just a water,” she said to the waitress. “I’m waiting for a friend.”

As Valorie waited for her imaginary friend and the right time to make a move, Vigilance watched her from the shadows of a nearby roof, her fair skin disappearing behind her death mask. Seven more souls. She would claim seven more souls tonight.