Description: Once opun a forgotten time in Naerose' history, she sought revenge against a certain someone. Now though the past is forgotten what lessons can we learn from it? Probably nothing.
In Southtown, at a local Chinese restaurant, a huge man sits on a bench lined up before a table. A big bag of money sits beside him, and he's got a feast sitting before him. Noodles, teriyadi, soup, tea, and, of course, plenty of rice. He's gorging himself on food, eating as horrified people watch.
Chinatown was her stomping ground. She had made one of her first friends here and though that person was long gone, it still held a special place for her. Today though she was on a mission. The fact that Chang was in Chinatown and indeed whom she was looking for was mere coincidence. She had been looking for the big fella and thought he wouldn't be that hard to locate. Turns out she wasn't wrong. Oh yes, she was making a list. The list included everyone she felt she needed to encounter and speak to, to be more specific, people she wanted to give a job to.
Management was hard, Naerose was soon finding and even having some, one , or none interested parties in her venture, she was quickly learning the nightmare of effort it was going to take. This was of course, without competition. The other thing, the word on the street as it were, was that she had competition. She was going to havebust a Monte Cristo style cap. First though, she needed a thug or two and Chang fit the bill.
She approached from behind, on foot, in her usual red attire. The key was to get his attention without getting eaten. So she gave him a wide space when moving to take a seat opposite him at his table. VERY careful to stay out of arm's reach. She was pretty sure he might accidentally grab her and swallow her whole before even noticing what he had done. Totally not cool.
"Hiya!" interrupts Naerose as she sits down. A biiiig smile on her face.
Chang looks up as he slurps up some noodles. His brow furrows at the witch, as he swallows his mouthful. He sips some tea, before he looks up at Naerose. He sets the tea down, and grabs a stick of beef teriyaki. "Whaddya want? You can't have none of my food!" He idly picks some food out of his beard as he notices it, eating the scrap. It's key to do this before birds show up.
"Hey woah there big fella," Naerose replies, defensively with her hands held up, having set her broom down to lean against the table, "I'm not here to take your food, I'm well, I'm here because.." A slow shift in her demeanor changes the red witch from confident to totally struck.
"I'm new here, totally lost and I have all this cash, but I don't know anyone who could help me out with my problem.. " To illustrate this point, Naerose whips out a roll of cash on a money clip. Totally the cliche style wad you would expect in some sort of TV show. Though the truth is there is only about five dollars there, it looks to be a wad closer to one hundred, and that is if it was only singles. Which it is, but Naerose has the monies among folded over, so as to hide the actual value of the bill, furthermore she has green paper stacked behind the few real bills in order to pad the amount. She didn't need Chang knowing she was broke.
"I just. I dunno, you seem to be an upstanding gentleman and.." Naerose pulls a red hankerchief out and sniffles into it, "I totally don't know who could do a simple job and help me out."
Chang blinks as he sees the big stack of cash, being too dumb to suspect anything other than that Naerose must be some sort of wealthy heiress. "A job? I like money. What kinda job do you need?" he asks, as he bites beef off the teriyaki stick. He chews noisily and with his mouth open, some bits of beef falling out of his mouth and down into his beard.
Looking around and adjusting her shades, probably to hide that she wasn't actually crying, "Really? You'll help? Oh thank you mister, thank you thank you." Then she leans in, cause you know this is super secret. "I need someone .. well you see, my dad owns a big company and he has some small time competition, they're putting him out of business by under cutting us, it's all very complicated.." Naerose seems to think she might lose Chang if she weaves too intricate a tale, "Basically I need someone to get a job with the competition, tell them that they are willing to do anything it takes no matter how dirty, and record the sort of activities they might be asked to do, so my dad can prove to his clients that his business is more ethical. It's no big deal, I'd pay, the company would probably pay too, so it's like double dipping and besides, this company you'd be spying on, they wouldn't lose any customers, they'd jus .. Well most of their customers are into dirty work anyway, I just want the ethical clients to know what they're really about." Naerose isn't going to take no for an answer either, she reaches into her hat (where she keeps all of her stuff) and pulls out a mini digital tape recorder. "All I need you to do is record what the contact says the job is on this, don't show them the recorder, don't tell them about it and don't mention me or this job .. If you can do that , well, you can have this whole wad of cash!" Naerose waves the wad of cash in the air and sets the digital recorder on the table.
"Payment on delivery."
Chang stares dimly at Naerose throughout her explanation of the situation, not grasping it really well. "So...You want them to hire me for something bad, and tape record it? I think I can do that. I like money." He then takes a handful of fried rice, and crams it into his greasy mouth.
Naerose thinks for a moment, cause you know, she has to make sure Chang's simple explanation was everything, then she decides it was, but adds, just to be say, "Yep, just don't let them know you're tape recording it." A big smile returns. "So then , here is all you need, I wrote it down for you." Naerose fishes in her hat and pulls out an index card. It reads:
'Contact Elle Belmounte by leaving messages at the Capital 7 Casino *the casino's number is included* asking to meet her. When the tape recording is finished, contact Alceide Sato. And a contact number is listed for that person too.'
Turns out, Naerose didn't actually trust Chang to get it entirely right and had at least one backup plan in place. An example being, good luck tracking down Alceide. Though none of that is said, just the index card passed over. "Since you'll have the tape recorder, payment is assured when you return it. After all, this is not worth anything to me at all if I don't get the recording." Naerose winks over the top rim of her shades.
Chang takes the tape recorder, and the index card. He squints at the index card, his mouth moving as he reads it with only the most basic level of comprehension, before putting both away. "Okay, boss lady! I'll talk to Acid Saxo when I'm done with the job! You're making the right choice, I'm super smart, I can do this easy!"
"Oh thank you thank you thank you," Naerose replies, having not considered the name as being pronounced 'Acid' before, but then decides, what the hey, that's a great way to say it. An inward smile indicates that she's totally going to cash in here, except that means she has to find a way to get money to pay Chang for working for her before he can finish the job. None of this registers even remotely on her face as it seems Naerose has a plan. Or seems to think she has a plan. Perhaps mutual interests can net her some cash for this job, though could she trust Chang along? And should she keep bothering him when he is trying to eat? actually he doesn't seem to mind eating while she's there. Oh right, the act.
"So, sorry, but I didn't get your name.." Naerose offers, trying to maintain a polite not super giddyness about the whole ordeal. This was the first step. She might have had little luck with management so far, but she was pretty sure she could pull off journalism, it was after all one of her fortes.
"I'm Chang! Chang Koehan! Nice to meet you!" he says in a friendly manner, looking forward to the pay off. But first, he must eat! He goes back to eating the food before him, looking quite ravenous and rather sloppy in the process.
Log created on 11:09:56 05/06/2009 by Naerose, and last modified on 22:38:11 12/19/2010.