ArchivedLogs:We Do What We Can

We Do What We Can
Dramatis Personae Tian-shin, Cage	2013-11-11 Tian-shin shows up to volunteer with Cage's work detail. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location <NYC> Midtown East
A dense, skyscraper packed neighborhood, Midtown is the busiest commercial district in the United States, and one of the busiest pieces of land in the world. Day and night, Midtown is filled with people going to and from work, enjoying the nightlife, and walking quickly through the streets. Very few live in Midtown proper - only the most wealthy and work-obsessed - but many who live in and around the City work here. In many ways, Midtown is the heart that beats in the city that never sleeps. The area around Heroes for Hire is relatively quiet this morning. The HFH Hummer is parked nearby, actually tucked neatly into a parking space, in spite of the fact that there's no one around to enforce regulations. Across the street and in the mouth of an alley, Luke can see a small cluster of zombies doing something on the ground there, but he's been quiet enough to not draw their attention yet. One the sidewalk near the Hummer are three black body bags, which Cage is in the process of labeling and zipping up. Luckily for everyone concerned, this November day is bitterly cold, which means bodies take a lot longer to stink up. Nonetheless, Cage is wearing a nose plug and clear safety glasses. He's also wearing a heavy, warm-looking black pea coat, with blue jeans, and brown work boots. In addition he's got black fingerless gloves of some stretchy, synthetic material, and a black beanie which is rolled down over his ears. A bicycle rolls up the street and comes to a stop at the curb. Its rider is a slender Asian woman wearing a royal purple bike helmet, lightly tinted goggles, a gray jacket, and black tights. She also has a /sword/ strapped across her back. Her eyes track first to the zombies, then to Cage. The latter she approaches on foot, both caution and determination evident in her bearing. "Sir." Quietly, with a shallow bow. "You are Like Cage." It isn't quite a question. "Yeah, that's right," Luke says. He glances up when the bike comes near, but the noise didn't concern much at first. He hasn't seen any zombies riding bicycles yet. He stands up from he was kneeling, zipping up the last bag, and turns to face the woman. "You ok? You need help with something?" He glances past the woman to confirm she's not actually being pursued at the moment, glances back across the street to make sure that little group is still busy, and looks back to the woman. "My name is Hua Tian-shin." She bows again, deeper this time. "I do need help, yes, but I am here to ask whether you need /my/ help." There is no trace of sarcasm in her voice, no smirk upon her face--though, upon closer examination, there are a few spots of blood. "You are running relief missions. I would like to join you, if you would have me." "Look, uh, Ms… Tinshin?" Luke is apparently not well practiced at pronouncing Chinese names. "I ain't gonna lie, I could /use/ some help out there. But you have to understand, I can't just put people in danger, you know?" Luke's tone is gentle, apologetic. "It's different for me 'cuz," Luke shrugs. "Well, I mean, I guess you know who I am. I don't mean to be rude, but are you a mutant or something? That's quite a pig-sticker you got on your back there…" he adds, nodding at her sword. "Hua is my surname, but you may call me Tian-shin." Now she does smile, though without showing any teeth. "You would not be putting me in any danger. I will either do this with you, or I will do it alone." Her dark brown eyes flick to the zombies. "I don't /know/ if I'm a mutant, Mr. Cage, but I know how to use that pig-sticker. Turns out being a lawyer isn't worth all that much in a zombie apocalypse." Luke nods, and says slowly, "Ti-ann-shin. Is that closer? I'm sorry, I'm terrible with this stuff." He raises his eyebrows at her declaration of intent, and then just nods. "Well, that is an attitude I can get behind," he says with a grim, brief smile. "Tell you what. There's just three in that alley over there. I've been putting them off to finish these, but how about you and I go over there together? We can see how well we work together." Luke regards the alley across the street, and glances around at the otherwise deserted block. "Just one thing: I'm doing this for the families, and I don't want them dismembered if we can help it. It just… feels disrespectful. So that's my one rule for working together. Stick 'em in the brain," he says, sadly, gesturing at his own head. "And don't cut 'em up if you don't have to, you know?" Luke flexes his hands in the cold, bringing them up to blow on them. "Close enough." Tian-shin shrugs, evidently more bemused than frustrated by Cage's mispronounciation of her name. "The jian is a weapon of finesse, not intended for dismemberment in any case." So saying, she unsnaps the fabric loop keeping her weapon in its scabbard and draws it. Though its pommel and guard are decorated with jade dragons, the sword does not have the flimsy appearance or high polish of a display piece. "Are eye sockets off-limits?" she asks as she starts toward the small knot of undead. Coming from anyone else, this might sound flippant, but Tian-shin seems completely earnest. Luke nods at her explanation of the sword's purpose, and admires the blade as she reveals it, but doesn't ask any more questions about it specifically. Luke sighs and shrugs at her question, while leading the way across the street. One of the zombies has already noticed his movement, and is distracted from the unrecognizable carcass the group was working on before. "You do what you gotta do to stay alive, and unbitten. But I've been making my best effort to leave as many open caskets as possible. I've had good luck under the chin, through the open mouth - 'cuz it's pretty much always open. The base of the neck works too, but I've just been working with this," Cage says, pulling his jacket aside to draw the long combat knife that was sheathed at the back of his belt. He watches the little group as the other two notice the first one moving. The three look like they could have been friends, three skater kids in their previous lives. One is in a black Linkin Park t-shirt. One has a white shirt with a unicorn and an unfortunately placed rainbow. The third is wearing a t-shirt with all manner of energy drink logos on it, and the tagline of 'Juiced'. All three are also wearing skinny jeans and vans sneakers. "Just that?" Tian-shin raises both eyebrows the knife. "My backup weapon looks much the same, but I have been trying not to get close enough to need it." She advances on the zombies, dropping into a fighting stance. The sword she keeps up in a guarding position, and her empty right hand is held wide for balance. "I've got the unicorn." The tip of her sword dips, as she does, beneath the swipe of the corpse's hands, then drives upward toward its chin. "I kinda have an advantage, you know?" Cage says, shrugging. "There isn't much they can do to me." Luke's expression is weary when he nods at Tian-shin's claiming of the white shirt, so he rushes the other two, knocking them to the ground to make sure they can't gang up on her yet. The walking dead don't have any sense of self-preservation of course, and make no effort to avoid attacks. The expert swordswoman's point finds it's home precisely, and the zombie teen slumps to the ground, still. Meanwhile, Cage is straddling the Linkin Park kid while 'Juiced' tries to gnaw on Luke's arm. Luke carefully slides his knife up under the young man's chin to quiet him, but Juiced loses interest, and starts to shamble after Tian-shin in jerky, unpredictable movements. It looks like he's walking on a broken leg that doesn't quite hold him up right. Tian-shin frees her blade from her first mark's cranium barely in time to meet the last zombie, of the "Juiced" shirt. Her sword-play grows considerably sloppier when she starts improvising, as she is obliged to parry away one grasping arm, then the other. After the around parry, she delivers a solid kick to the zombie's solar plexus is a bid to knock it back, or knock it down. In either event, her sword follows fast, hastily aimed at Juiced's gaping maw. The 'juiced' zombie does stumble back, but doesn't seem affected at all by the actual kick to his gut. When the sword comes snaking in, the dead kid jerks his head at an odd angle and tries to bite down on the sword. He can't do any damage to the weapon of course, but he does success in turning the point to pass through his cheek instead of the roof of his mouth. With his own zombie quieted, Luke stands up and turns just as Tian-shin sends 'Juiced' back in his direction. He drops his knife and grabs the thing from behind, wraps his arms in a full-nelson, and then pulls the head up, exposing the underside of his chin. Luke's face is grim, but he gives Tian-shin the 'go ahead' nod. Though she does not hesitate, Tian-shin takes the offered shot with great care. The blade slips into undead flesh with little resistance. Teeth gritted, she keeps pushing until the body goes still, then withdraws her weapon with equal care. There is surprisingly little blood on the steel. She pivots on one foot, checking their surroundings. "Clear, for now." Turning back to Cage, she looks down at the now-inert bodies. "What /are/ you doing with the remains?" When the body goes limp in his arms, Cage lowers him carefully to the ground, gently, reverently. "Now comes the ugly part," Cage says, sadness in his voice. "We go through the pockets and see who to contact. It's easier when I get called on requests, but everyone deserves to be put to rest." He starts patting the boy down and finds a wallet. "You wanna check that one? The county's gonna take ages to ID people on their own. We'll barely make a dent, but we do what we can." "I am glad you are doing this. A lot of people are missing loved ones." Tian-shin nods sedately, wiping down her blade with a rag before resheathing it. This done, she reaches into her pocket, but the hand comes back out empty. She kneels beside the bit in the unicorn shirt and begins her own rather inexpert search. "We do what we can."