Melt

[Min]

Hotel Pennsylvania:
New York:

Min was very patient, a dying art in the break neck world of today and now. She could fill a glass with ice and set in on a table only to spend the hours watching it melt away. The beads or perspiration forming a perfect ring. A million different combination and sizes in that singular, small event. The XWA tower? It was her glass of water and she watched it melt day after day after day, only to see it fill up again. Patterns recognized, variations in days, minutes and seconds. But the names? The names were not important, only their positions and destinations. No, only one name was important to Min. But that was personal, and she had all the time in the world for that. She would take all the time in the world for that.

"Business first."

She didn't need to remind herself. She had the ultimate reminder in the form of a trajectile lodged in her brain. That is called experience. That is something that can never be trained into a person. That singular moment had changed her life death. The kill shot no one could of possibly survived.

The weather had cost Min some time. The cold and snow gave her headaches to such a blinding degree that she had to wrap herself in to a self induced, Opoid haze until the winter blasts had run their courses. But once the snows had begun to melt, the pain melted with it. Her eyes cleared of the powerful drugs, and she picked up exactly where she left off.

Every building, everything a person inhabited had a pulse or rhythm. The bigger it was. The more controls it had in place. The easier it was to chart. Arrivals. Departures. Security. Services... they were easy, along with the heartsick drones the filled the offices. Their pages were neat and organized. Only one thing was giving Min troubles and that was the XWA. The "professional wrestlers" in particular. They were the exceptions. They had no schedules. They had no shifts. They had no meetings. Several had obvious substance abuse problems. Several others were equally obvious in their psychotic nature. Almost all of them were erratic with minor behavioral nuances. They did not belong in society. The lot would have been well suited for prison life, or immediate execution as Wastes of the State. But why did they have to be inside The Plaza? What possible function did they have besides making her meticulous work that much harder. Min recorded them patiently, their time quirks... their shopping trips... their studio sessions... their "deliveries"... their violence. A pattern would emerge sooner or later.

"Everything has a rhythm."

[Min]

There was a sliver of a window opening. It was beginning to make itself more defined. It was in the earliest hours between night and day. It was a time when the drunks finally passed out, or the deviant mind finally devoured it's last electrical impulse. Everything in the XWA tower went silent. Everything had run its course. That was when Min would go to work. But now she would start changing focus. She would watch that little window of time very carefully, until its borders were set. But the rest of the time? She had to start testing the boundaries of the tower, and finding her way inside.

"Which one of you?"

Wasn't it poetic that the very people who were making her job difficult were going to be the same people that got her inside? The wrestlers of Blackheart's little hobby, the XWA. Their egos and physical lifestyle made them the easiest targets. The famous were ridiculously simple. Their key was their vanity and they? They were Min's key. It was a pretty package. She closed her eyes and cranked her neck to each side, looking around the meticulous room. She had not slept in the bed. She had not set foot on the carpet in almost 24 hours and her bladder had reached its impossible limits. Barefoot got up slowly, stretching and letting the blood flow free. She walked lightly to the bathroom, ready for long shower before she went out into the night.

Money, sex or violence. Which one would it be? She had plenty of all three at her disposal, and from experience they all could get you inside almost any building in the world. The shower sputtered and hissed before a blast of hot water and steam connected with the air, filling the small room and fogging the mirrors. She didn't know the XWA wrestlers names, only their appearances which she ran through her mind one by one as she shrugged off her last piece of clothing and stepped into the shower. Her pale, Asian skin reveled in heat and moisture it had been starved of for so long. Her deceptive muscles brought out by the flow of the water down her spine, over her slightly rounded ass and back down her calves. A little Chinese flower drinking in the rain; poisonous to the touch. She would flip whatever switch was needed. She would become whatever was needed. She could be frighteningly empty. A perfect place to hang a mask of any form: money, sex or violence.

"Which one?"

The kind. The naive. The loved. They were discarded first. But that sill left most of the wrestlers in play. It would be a matter of trial and little error. It would be just like when the perfect shot comes into focus, and you know it is time to close their eyes forever. Your entire essence is focused as you ride the imaginary trajectory, from barrel to success. It was a second nature, and Min practiced it with skill. The cracks in people. They were everywhere. You just had to look from a far away place, latch on and never let go until they crumbled. Action. Reaction. Beauty in Min's mind.

[Min]

Min's jet black hair was streaked with blood red, her face dotted with geometric shades of yellow and red. If she was in another city or in another time, she would have toned it down. She could meek. She could be bookish. She could be invisible. But this was New York City, so she turned it up. Tight black with slashes of red brought out her facial features that many found exotic. The curves of her slight breasts pressed up the leather stitched V in the neckline. She looked part futuristic tribal warrior, part dance club viper. The kind of woman you would be scared of, but wanted to take home, protect and devour at the same time. That was the mask she was going to wear. That was the woman she would be when she stepped outside. That wasn't who she was at all.

She looked herself over in the long, slender mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door. Her body was little more than inventory, to be checked, double checked and used as needed. Her detachment was frightening in her depth of disconnect. It also made her one of the best "Watchers" to come out of Asian in the last 20 years. She was a national resource that was guarded and treated well. The funny thing was, they could have kept her in a cardboard box and fed her nothing but supplement and she would continue on exactly the same. Money was meaningless. Power was meaningless. Sex was meaningless. Soon her very existence would be meaningless, because soon she would have her revenge. Revenge was her singular fuel. Revenge kept her warm at night. Revenge had saved her life that night as she had laid bleeding out from a hole in her skull, alone. That was when she figured it all out. That was when she embraced nothing, except the one little spark. Life is not so complicated if you strip it down.

She looked up from her toned body and into her own face and then, flicking a switch inside, a luring and demure smile spread across her face. She studied it, like the rest of her inventory before putting it away. Large sunglasses and a sleek, New York, messenger filled with every kind of trick she could possibly need for the night were the final touches. It tied everything together.

"First stop, Fight Club."

For a club that no one was supposed to talk about, it was one of the worst kept secrets in the world. Their fights had been become the stuff of urban legends; homoerotic monuments to violence, blood and broken souls. A perfect gathering place for XWA wrestlers. A perfect place to make first contact.

They were going to love her.