The Maw didn’t hide. It wasn’t a cave for whispers - it was the Underworks trying to be kind to itself.
Set into a wide-bellied arch of old brick, its na was painted in a looping hand across a brass board, letters rubbed to a soft shine over the years. Warm air rolled out as the door opened - spice and smoke and the buttery sll of bread, the stench of alcohol, a little engine oil that clung to everyone down here. Laughter ca with it, easy and full. This wasn’t a den of shadows. This was where the Underworks bragged, sched, sang, and... Made the darkest of deals.
Inside, light had a warm tone. Ceiling fans turned lazy circles above as a fiddle and a drum tussled in a corner, the players sitting on beer crates.
The crowd was the usual Underworks patchwork, with a few exceptions: chanics with blacked knuckles, runners with light feet, two miners still dusted pale at the collar, a trio of rchants hunched over a map, rcs in coats with too many pockets, a pair of quiet types who never turned their heads but saw everything anyway. Voices stacked without tripping. Dice clicked, rolling. Cards sighed. Soone whooped. Soone else swore kindly. No one looked twice -until soone should.
A few faces tipped, just enough.
"...that’s him!"
"...the Loud one...Gauntlet kid..."
The whispers slid back into the noise as quickly as they ca, and the Maw went on pretending it didn’t care who did business at which table, so long as the drinks were paid for and the trouble had the good manners to happen outside.
Marcus Valerius sat at a corner table that had sohow managed to claim space around itself. Coat too new, shoes too clean, hair parted like an order. He had a drink in front of him - a polite pour of sothing clear - and a small, expensive-looking plate he wasn’t eating from. In his left hand, a pocket watch clicked shut and vanished. In his right, pinched between two fingers as if it weighed nothing, was a compact black case with rounded corners and little to recomnd it.
Next to him stood a man whose job had shaped him to it: square coat, square jaw, a scar pulled one corner of his mouth downward. He didn’t sit back. He existed near the edge of his chair, weight already in his feet. His hands were empty in a way that ant they were not.
Obi rolled the stiffness out of his shoulders, breathed once, and sauntered over with the sort of smile that made friends nervous and strangers curious.
"Evening," he said cheerfully, stopping just close enough to be impolite. "That’s a very brave coat for this neighborhood."
Marcus looked up. His eyes were careful. "Do I know you?"
"Not yet," Obi said. "But you will if we keep talking."
The bodyguard rose, not fully - enough to put his shadow on the table. "Seat’s taken."
"Looks like it," Obi said. "Terrible sha. I was just admiring your... Looks. Aren’t you so kind of official?"
Marcus completely ignored him. Instead, he carefully placed the case on the table.
Hikari had already drifted, slowly, silently approaching the table from behind. She was a phantom. Unnoticed.
The bodyguard tried to hit Obi, as a warning. Raizen, in a flash, deflected his hand, and pushed him back.
"Walk away," the bodyguard said. His voice had that flatness professionals buy with years - the sound that isn’t loud and doesn’t need to be. "Not your table."
Obi grinned, wider. "We’re all family down here. Tables are simply a suggestion." He tipped his head at Marcus. "What brings a clean sleeve this deep? Trying on morals to see if they itch?"
Marcus’s mouth twitched. "I’m working," he said. "And you’re too loud."
"Guilty" Obi said. "I’ll take that as a complint. Ask around!"
So glances softly turned
"Don’t need to," the guard answered. His eyes flicked once to Raizen, found the quiet there, ca back to Obi. "Last chance."
Obi leaned an elbow on the very edge of the table, didn’t quite set weight. "Funny thing about last chances" he said. "They’re never as last as people think."
The guard moved.
It wasn’t a lunge. It was a clean, short step ant to get Obi to give ground and set a line. Obi didn’t. He slid the angle instead - half-turn, shoulder brush - just enough to make a scene. Raizen stepped at the sa ti, quiet as weather, heel outside the guard’s foot, hand on an elbow - not grabbing, guiding. For a heartbeat the big man was off his plan and had to choose between balance and pride.
He chose balance. It saved him from eating wood and lost him the mont.
"Easy," Obi said, palms up, pleasant as a prayer. "No need to chip the furniture. The stew didn’t do anything wrong."
Hikari finally made her move. She reached for the case.
It was small in her hand, slick enough to bite. Her fingers found the handle - no latch, no lock, just pressure - and lifted.
Marcus’s smile brightened, almost fond. He didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch. "Clever," he said gently. "And costly."
A steel cuff fired from the handle with a cruel sound, caught her wrist, and locked. At the sa instant a bolt snapped down through the base and into the table with a smack like a judge. The case beca a nailed thing, humming once as so little coil inside it told the world it had done its job.
That click cut through the tavern like a new note in a familiar song. The bodyguard’s head turned to it as if pulled by a string.
Obi’s palm shifted to kill a swing that didn’t co - because the swing wasn’t for him anymore. The big man folded the distance with an economy that said training first, fear later. His jacket parted cleanly.
The bodyguard pulled a pistol out of his coat.
Not a sloppy street piece. Neoshima stuff: matte guntal, ceramic-edge slide, a slim vented barrel with a narrow coil-strip along the spine, and a silencer that could make the gunshot a whisper. It humd in the way a thing hums when it’s asking the next bad question.
The music in the corner stopped. A spoon stopped mid-stir. Twenty conversations paused in the sa breath.
Obi and Raizen were still finishing their step when the world narrowed to a circle of dark tal and the skin it touched.
The gun pressed, cold and absolute, against Hikari’s head.
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