Logs:Schooled

Schooled
cw: mild violence
Dramatis Personae Ion, Tian-shin
In Absentia	Lantern Festival "Damn, boy, what they teach you in law school?"
Location <NYC> Chinatown
One of New York's oldest neighborhoods and the oldest Chinese enclave outside of Asia, Chinatown is a vibrant ethnic community, which draws throngs of tourists annually as well. This neighborhood is packed with Chinese-owned businesses, from restaurants to groceries to theaters to fashion. On this last night of the two-week-long Lunar New Year celebration, the streets of Chinatown are ablaze with lanterns. The chill of the evening has done little to dampen the enthusiasm of residents and visitors at the Yuan-xiao street fair. Children run about in loud packs, carrying battery-powered lanterns of myriad fanciful designs, ranging from traditional dragons and phoenixes to not-so-traditional Pokemon and emojis. Tian-shin does not have a lantern, but she is decked in holiday finery: a black coat worn open over a long red brocade tunic with rosettes of black and gold bats, wide-legged black pants that flow skirt-like about her as she walks, and high-heeled black boots with heart-shaped decorative buckles. Her hair is bound back in a neat and elaborate bun, secured by a black lacquer hair stick with a small red jade pig dangling from the end. "Maybe we should start thinking about actual dinner instead of--oh /hey,/ tang-hu-lu!" she exclaims, angling through the crowd toward a vendor displaying a rack of candy-glazed cherry tomatoes. "I haven't had these since...well, probably around this time last year. Tomatoes are a vegetable, so...this counts as real dinner, right?" Ion doesn't look all /that/ different than his usual. His Mongrels cut is on over a plain leather jacket, paired with heavy blue jeans and black boots. He has a string of paper pigs wreathed about his head like a crown, though likely they weren't originally intended for that purpose, and a red face paint dragon on his cheek that's beginning to peel. "Wazzat?" A little muffled through a mouthful of tang yuan. He veers over to follow in Tian-shin's wake, gamely producing his wallet with a flourish one he has determined: "Oh hell yeah, /food/, sure. If you can eat it it's a dinner. Wait these is candy /tomato/? I want one." It's /possible/ that so far, sugar is all that Ion has had tonight. "Yes, is very sweet," the vendor reassures Ion as he accepts the money and hands over two bamboo skewers loaded with candied tomatoes. "Xie-xie," Tian-shin thanks the vendor, and then Ion, "gracias." She pulls the first tomato off of the score and eats it whole, bouncing up slightly onto her toes with delight and then blushing. They continue strolling down Mulberry Street, toward the raucous music issuing from Columbus Park. A tall Chinese man in a black and blue brocade tang suit waves and works his way through the crowd toward them. "Tian-shin! {Happy New Year!}" He switches back to English with a quick, nonplussed glance at Ion. "You look great." "Hiii," Tian-shin's greeting drags out subtly, and her smile is a little stiff. "Thanks. {May you grow prosperous.} Ion," she glances at her companion, "this is Michael. Michael, Ion." "We went to school together," says Michael, grinning. "So you're a /teacher/ now, huh?" "Xie xie," Ion echoes, and "yeah no problem!" just before he cronches happily into his first hard-shelled tomato. He shoves his wallet back into his pocket, hooking his arm through Tian-shin's and bobbing his head to the other man. "Yo." His chin jerks upward, his own smile broad. "Which school? You a lawyer, too?" His dark eyes flick up-down over the brocade jacket. He clamps his front teeth down against the stick, works another tomato off of it. "Real /fancy/-ass teacher," he adds, mouth full of candy-tomato. "School swank as fuck." "High school," Tian-shin clarifies, "then law school. He's a big-shot lawyer now, /I hear/." The emphasis on the last phrase is quiet but firm. "Could say that!" Michael says, puffing out his chest just a touch. "I'm with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher up in Midtown. Just got myself a nice condo and everything. Teaching is the noblest profession, but it doesn't pay too great, even in the private sector. Must be difficult, especially since your father..." He trails off without any apparent intention of completing the sentence, looking meaningfully at Ion, then at his arm looped in Tian-shin's. "So, Ion! What do you do for a living?" "That sounds --" Ion waves his skewer vaguely in the air. "Fancy, too?" He sticks the end of the wooden skewer between his teeth, sucking at a sliver of lingering candy from the previous tomato. "This and that, you know." Around the stick, his grin stays sharp. "Don't got me a condo but I do fine." Tian-shin schools her expression to careful neutrality. "It pays well enough, and I do maintain a private law practice in my spare time." Ion's answer, though, almost coaxes her to smile. She hides it by pulling another tomato off of the skewer. Michael frowns. "You shouldn't have to do that, Tian-tian. A /proper/ gentleman should help support you and your family." Here he gives Ion a hard look. "Not just do...'this and that.'" "You say he went to a good school?" An aside to Tian-shin, this sounds skeptical. "He think I'm trying real hard to look a /proper/ gentleman?" Ion's head shakes as he crunches into another tomato. He tilts his chin up when he turns back to Michael. "/Tian-shin/," he leans on this name, punctuated for emphasis with a staccato jab of his kind of chewed-up skewer into the taller man's chest, "supports her own damn self just fine, she look like she need my help?" "If I don't say it's a good school, NYU's alumni relations office will make sad puppydog eyes at me," Tian-shin replies with a shrug. "But clearly /some/ part of our education was lacking." Michael doesn't even seem to notice Tian-shin speaking anymore, his attention and growing anger focused on Ion. "Look, pal, I can tell you don't care about that, otherwise you wouldn't come to a festival with her dressed like that." His face twists with disgust when Ion pokes him, and he gives the other man a firm shove back. "Obviously she can take care of herself, but she deserves better than someone like /you./" Ion rocks back when he's shoved, his expression lighting up with delight. "Boy, look like I'm the one who's dressed /right/." He unhooks his arm from Tian-shin's, hand curling into a fist en-route to a solid (and sharp-static-jolting) hook aimed at the side of Michael's jaw. Tian-shin takes a small step back and holds the rest of her snack well away from the developing brawl. There's a definite glint of amusement in her eyes, though. Michael clearly did not expect further escalation, and the blow catches him squarely in the jaw. He staggers back, shaking his head to clear it. "What the /fuck/?!" he demands, and then charges Ion in a kind of full-body tackle. Though larger in stature and quite fit, he's no trained fighter. Ion turns his shoulder, shifting to catch the brunt of the tackle more against his elbow than his body. The actual contact comes with another forceful jolt -- a split-second snap and Ion zaps himself straight /through/ the oncoming charge to reappear in nearly the same instant just on Michael's other side, bringing that same elbow down against the larger man's back. He's still grinning as he backs up a couple steps, waggling his stick and the sole remaining tomato on it at Tian-shin. "Yo, babe, I /like/ your parties." Most other pedestrians are giving the fight a wide berth, but some are stopping to gawk. "You show him...sweetheart!" Tian-shin covers her guffaw with one hand. "Chinese people know how to party, but so do you." Michael doesn't look like he's having nearly as much fun. He had no time to recover from the electrocution of Ion's passage before getting elbowed in the back, and probably would have gone down if he hadn't stumbled into the arms of some onlookers, who push him back up while turning him around with vague encouragements. He blinks at Ion, now behind him. "You're going to regret that!" he roars, and charges--again, the exact same way. Tian-shin slides her hand up to cover even more of her face, still giggling, watching the spectacle through a gap between two fingers "Well, I had a lot of -- damn, boy, what they teach you in law school?" Ion is mid-crunch of his last tomato when Michael rights himself. He shakes his head, drops the stick, and drops his weight even lower, shifting to the side to aim a swift kick at Michael's knees as he charges. "You could maybe learn some things from Tian-shin, huh?" Michael does go down this time, sprawling across the pavement and bellowing in pain. A couple of men who had been watching reach to help him up, but he curses and waves them away. When he finally manages to stand back up, he glares at Ion, and then Tian-shin. "Have fun with your biker thug boyfriend. Guess crime just runs in the family, huh?" He spits on the ground--there's a bit of blood in it. "You just /had/ to find someone who reminds you of your old man--" Somewhere in the middle of this speech, Tian-shin stopped laughing. She walks right up to Michael, while he's still speaking, and punches him in the abdomen. When he doubles over, she grabs him by the hair and slams his face into her knee. Then, while he's still clutching his nose, she spins him around--still clutching a fistful of his hair, which twists at his scalp--and kicks him solidly in the rear. This sends him reeling away into the crowd. "They're nothing alike," she calls after him. The bystanders have gone quiet, staring at Tian-shin now, her face bright red and her hands visibly trembling. "Lo siento," she tries to smile at Ion, and mostly succeeds, "I knew you had him." Altercation notwithstanding, Ion is among those offering to help Michael back /up/, though he backs off with the others. And a step further when Tian-shin steps in, one arm crossing over his chest and his opposite hand rubbing at his chin. "What you apologizing for, he had that coming. Boy don't seem to understand what's a party." Casual, he slings his arm back through Tian-shin's. "Us, though, /we/ know what's up. And I think what's up is it's bout time for some booze. You tell me, who got the fancy stuff around here." He returns Tian-shin's mostly-a-smile with a bright one of his own. "Only the best for my girl, you know." Tian-shin continues blushing, but does not seeming particularly self-conscious about leaning against Ion's arm. "{And yet my mom thinks my /age/ is what's kept me single,}" her Spanish is a weird blend of American high school Castilian and rural Oaxacan. "C'mon," she leads him away, heedless of the stares that follow them, "Uncle Wu has some aged gaoliang from Matsu..."