1.1 "What's Mine Is Mine"
Fu sighed and looked at his watch, letting his elbows rest on the sling for his MAC-11. The sudden pressure from the weight of his arms caused the sling to shift position so that the hard leather slipped down from its proper spot behind the raised collar of his jacket and chafed against the soft skin on the back of his neck. He groaned and reached up to move the sling back into place. He hated sentry duty. Or, at least, he hated sentry duty outside the restaurant, guarding his employer's car. Sentry duty inside, standing over the boss' table and eyeing the ladies was quite fine by him.
Fu was one of the "Elite Guard", a group of Exiles commissioned by The Merovingian and trained at L'école de la Tour to specialize in defensive operations. It didn't matter what needed guarding, Fu and his kind were experts at doing it. Whether it was destroying evidence of The Frenchman's adultery or watching the door to a casino were some client was playing, Fu was expected to do his job and to do it well. On this particular evening the job was watching The Merovingian's favourite black Mercedes stretch limousine in the parkade of some posh restaurant in Hampton Green. And it was dreadfully boring.
"You think he'll ever leave?" Fu asked his partner, Leng.
"What?" The other Exile asked, looking at him with that spaced out expression that was his trademark, tipping his sunglasses down so that they rested on the bridge of his nose.
"It's 11:30 already! I mean, talk about over-staying your welcome!" Fu protested, irritated as his sling started to slip a little down his back, leaving his MAC-11 dangling at his hip awkwardly. He fumbled with the weapon, trying to adjust it back into a comfortable position in front of him.
"Look, when the boss wants to leave, he'll leave. Why all the f-?" Leng began. He was cut off by the sound of metal crashing against concrete somewhere near the ramp up to their level in the parkade.
"What was that?" Fu asked. The crash wasn't loud enough to be from a car. It sounded more like a motorbike. But the sound of tires on the asphalt or the rumble of a running engine had not preceded the disturbance.
"Check it out. I'll watch the car." Leng replied, apparently unphased.
Reluctantly, Fu strolled down the rows of cars until he reached the ramp down to the lower level. He unslung his MAC-11, having only just found the proper comfort zone for the sling and the weapon on his body. Then, submachine gun held at the "High Ready" position, he descended the gently sloped asphalt. The barrel of the American-made machine pistol probed the space ahead of him. He changed his point of aim sporadically, like a hyper child with the attention span of a tropical fish. His eyes darted along with the weapon to cover each possible hiding spot in the parking lot. Fu realized only just now how dangerous and horrible a place to fight in a parking lot was. It seemed like a flat surface, as easy to cover from a vantage point like the entry ramp as an open plain in front of a hill. But the presence of so many cars and the dim lighting made it a death-trap. Anyone could be hiding in the shadows between the Jaguar and the SUV. Heck, someone could even be watching him through the tinted windows of the SUV, training their weapon on him as he slowly took another step down into the lower level.
Then he saw what had made the sound: an over-turned shopping cart smashed into the rear of a Volkswagen. Somehow, a gust of wind blowing through the cavernous parking lot had propelled the cart into the vehicle, generating the metallic crash he and Leng must have heard. Except, Fu realized, there were two problems with that theory of what had happened. Firstly, there was no wind. The evening had been quite comfortable, with very little wind chill. Secondly, there were no shopping markets for several blocks. Why would someone bring a shopping cart all this way to an exclusive parkade for a posh restaurant and a few high-end law firms? It was possible that one of the rare homeless people of Downtown had brought the cart here along with them on their travels and that they had somehow managed to sneak past building security. But it was not a probable reason for the cart being there.
Fu sprinted back up the ramp. As he went, he could hear the screech of tires on roadway. He barely rolled to the side in time to dodge a vehicle speeding around the corner of the higher floor of the parkade. As the vehicle sped past Fu's prone body, crumpled in the corner where his roll had left him, he saw that the car that had nearly hit him was The Merovingian's limousine. Someone had just stolen the boss' favourite car.
...What just happened?
Fu picked himself up and looked around the corner that the car had come from, looking for some sign of Leng. How had his partner let someone get past him long enough to break into the car and re-wire it? His answer came in the form of Leng's body lying in the middle of the asphalt. From the looks of the body, it looked to Fu as if someone had snuck up behind the other Exile and smashed him across the skull with something big and heavy- like a crowbar. It also looked like Leng had been run over too. Poor Leng.
And poor Fu. When the boss found about this... he was going to be in some serious trouble. Suddenly returning to The Source didn't sound quite so bad.