[i]Exterior shot: the late afternoon sun casting its rays through the skyscrapers of Sky Gate City, painting their white-and-chrome surfaces with fire, drowning the color of the ubiquitous gardens and trees in shadows. The clouds rolling in off the mainland are hiding the penthouses and the glider pads, the blinking warning lights and the cloudfishers, leaving only the pillars standing between heaven and earth. The shadows are sharper than usual, harshly defined, and the lights switching on feel feeble in the face of night rising up from the sea.[/i]

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Once upon a time, there was an old man who taught criminals the laws of the [i]jianghu[/i], the world beneath the city, the world of sewers and basements and access tunnels, of hidden dojos and stuttering neon lights, of tournaments and fat stacks of cash and, above all, honor. If a criminal did not have honor, even while breaking the law, what could they ever have?

The Flower Mountain rotated around the axis of that man: mastermind, martial artist, and enforcer of law on the lawless, the law that was the only constraint on those who had mastered their bodies and their abilities. And now that man is dead.

Which is why there is a fire spreading on the twenty-sixth floor of the Providence Tower, inside one of the residential blocks, and the outer windows are beginning to buckle and blacken from the heat.

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[b]"Pathetic Worm!"[/b] Xingtian raises their fist and, from one of the elegant flowers wrapped around their wrist, green-blue-black fire gushes forth, and underneath the hiss of fire is the howl of unquiet spirits. Spectral light throbs across their armor like blood pulsing through the body, and fire licks at the hem of their cloak. Like the snarl carved into their helmet, it's the kind of fashion statement that you have to earn. [b]"You Are All Disgusting Parasites! In My New City, I Will Purge Your Vermin Dens With Cleansing Fire And--"[/b]

The Triad enforcer known as Ox jinks to one side, rolls, grabs a foldable bicycle someone abandoned in the chaos, and smashes it across Xingtian's helmet. And, to her credit, Xingtian takes two steps back, rocking on their heels. She follows up with two kicks to the head, sloppy Seven Shadows style, and then gets blasted through the front window of a Viet restaurant by Xingtian's Ghost Cannon, careening through tables and chairs.

[b]Foxpearl![/b] Xingtian's first appearance in the city was robbing from a bank, and there they got away after flying up into the clouds. But that crime had a lot more posturing and smashing through steel doors with that suit of armor, and a lot less fire everywhere in the middle of a nice neighborhood. You've got a vantage point from above (what kind?), and doubtless a theory on what's going on.

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"Okay, everybody, let's go! You're going to be okay! Keep moving! Don't stop until you get to Tranquility, there should be city personnel there to help you! Nothing here is more valuable than you are! Make sure that you have all your family members!"

You can still distantly hear the Vermillion Princess, [b]Rain[/b]. She's traded off going through the apartments on this floor and making sure everyone's evacuated to you, and now she's doing her best to act like the hero of the city, a beacon of calm authority that people can look up to in case of emergency. The slight warble in her voice doesn't matter; she's still making sure that this doesn't turn into a full-blown panic and nobody gets trampled.

You, however, have just found someone who hasn't evacuated.

That's because he's unconscious. And also tied to a chair.

Even by the standards of SGC apartments (tall ceilings, multiple rooms, designed to handle a family comfortably if necessary), this one is fancy. There's a decorative fountain in one corner, non-standard security cameras (the chair being at an intersection of a couple lines of sight), and a somewhat gaudy taste in wall decorations. That's an entire-ass halberd hung in the hallway, for example. And your brain's gonna be running through possibilities while you untie him, anyway, so why don't you scope it out?