Shatterbucks (meta)

Plots strings have come together!!!
==Fashion snobs==
Please see also "Fashion Snobs" 
>shmoo92: How much do you want to know about the original Hannibal Chau?
Fives: Tell meee<
Ori Cohen is 19 and is going to track down who killed his little brother (who, admittedly, fell into a gang and got himself killed). > Fives: Right< He's really good at pattern finding so he digs thru the records office until he's got a location for the other gang's leader and off he goes and stumbles right into a firefight. > Fives: Oh god<
A woman shouts and he wakes up a couple days later with a couple gunshot wounds and a job offer from this Chinese woman wearing a red brocade dress and two inch gold heels. >Fives: 😍<
Meet Wei Shan, the self-styled Princess of New York. >Fives: 😍😍😍<
She was /also tracking down the guy because her fiancé died in the same turf war as Zachariah Cohen. >Fives: Ooohh< Except her fiancé was picking up an 19th manuscript--he restores books. 
>Fives: Ooooooohh
Fives: Yes please
Fives: 😍 mm, books<
He was super nice and they loved each other very much; Shan didn't want to give up running her triad and he was /more than happy taking care of her and his books. >Fives: *nods*<
(Her second marriage is arranged and she has him killed the week after the wedding, but I thiiiink she organizes her third marriage and they stay together for a while.) >Fives: 😍😍<
Between the first and second engagements, she asks Ori to marry her every so often but he's like, '... no? Im barely twenty?'. >Fives: Yess< He also has a little sister, Lesham, and she’s allll for the idea; Shan meets her for milkshakes after school sometimes and they go dress shopping. His parents are ... not orthodox / conservative Jewish but they're pretty religious, however they do like Shan and aren't adverse to them getting married. >Fives: Ooooooooohhhh<
She can shoot accurately up to twenty feet, and then she literally could not hit the broad side of a barn. However, she can also shoot the wings off a fly with a handgun from 100 meters away.
Her office is next door to "Mama Chao's" Schezuan restaurant; it's one of Shan's money launderers but Ori prefers the other joint down the street (not that he ever says so in front of Shan!). When she’s actively ruling, she dressed Ori up as this 'Hannibal Chao' character when they had to meet with foreigners and Shan didn't have high hopes. >Fives: 😍😍😍😍😍<
She’s also a nerd: She saw "A New Hope" four times and owns the collector's edition VHS >Fives: Nice!!<
This is all mostly in the 1980s; fast forward to 2008~:
Hermann's friends have to move out of residence at the end of first year and they end up in this seven-person place (based on a true story!). One of the students living there is Vanessa. She's getting her degree in chemistry, and has an Irish wolf hound. 'Possum' isn’t a corruption of 'awesome'; Possum is a gigantic dog with the brain of a miniature poodle (ie she thinks she’s a lapdog and loves lap cuddles), is afraid of birds, and lives with Vanessa’s parents. 
> Fives: Okay, I'm here and so here for a wolfhound named possum
Fives: 😍😍
Shmoo92: I was wondering if it was supposed to be 'awesome' but nope, Possum is a gigantic dog who likes lap cuddles and's afraid of something adorable
shmoo92: Possibly squirrels
shmoo92: (But I'm not sure f they have squirrels in the UK tho)
Fives: Birds
Fives: I knew a Doberman who was shit scared of birds near her
shmoo92: Birds it is!
Fives: 😂<
Part of the chemistry program is an internship and Vanessa’s is with an NYC makeup company. >Fives: *nods*<
Shan's getting her vows renewed and she's getting her palette picked out, and she sees Vanessa's super curly, super massive hair and /begs to let her put sparkles in it. >Fives: Ooooh< So Vanessa ends up with a head-ful of gold and glitter! 
>Fives: 😍😍😍😍
Fives: Perfect<
Shan gives Vanessa her card and insists she call if she ever needs anything. Idk if Shan brought a photographer or if one was hanging around but they suggest Vanessa try modelling out, so she does. >Fives: *nods*<
Shan's also soooorta planning her retirement (private island!!!) but Ori's not so keen (and he still won't marry Shan although she tries convincing him otherwise). >Fives: Oh man 😍< He's kinda being shuffled around the Tang clan but he doesn't mind much ... except when he has to work with Liu--he vowed never to work with Liu after the first time they met and have since worked together a couple times (technically three, but they don't talk about the second time—
>Fives: Haha, perfect
Fives: I love stories of "we don't talk about that."
shmoo92: This may not be quuuuuite up your alley though--<
It started with Ori bodyguarding 15-year-old Liu and his mom at an event and a five year old saying his patent leather black shoes were awful, then people are leaving in a hurry and Mrs Wei asks quietly and tensely to come with her so he follows her to an alcove where Liu, teeth bloody and skin clammy, clutches a stab wound in his side (but there's only torn fabric; the skin's unbroken); they leave as quickly as they can but Liu’s staggering, then throws up in a plant and insists on just resting for a little bit, so Ori scoops him up and they get hurry more (but the hall keeps getting longer and longer?) and there’s a distant explosion, the building shakes, and Ori stumbles. Liu rolls away, suddenly a lot better, tells Ori to help Mrs Wei, and the hall getting very hot and Mrs Wei collapses so Ori picks her up but everything's burning, Liu's standing between them and /something and he's on fire—
And then they're outside, an EMT's giving Ori a shock blanket, and Liu has two shadows. >Fives: Omg, nice<
(For the record, Liu didn't sell his soul to the devil, the devil sold /its soul to Liu.) >Fives: Heeee<
—Liu doesn’t offer anything, and Ori isn’t sure he wants to know, anyway. 
Liu’s generally unnerving even without that … incident, so when Ori’s not working for Shan during her retirement transition, he tries to get contracts with less unsettling characters. 
 
At some point during that period, a couple years after when they first met, Vanessa and a group of models are supposed to go clubbing at this place their manager/someone recommends, and the bus lets them off in this super sketchy part of the city and it's cold and none of them are wearing jackets and it's looking like an epic disaster—
"I know someone!!!!!" >Fives: Yesssssss<
She doesn't have the number any more, but when she calls the switchboard asking for Shan, she's redirected to the office. 
Ori picks up. 
There's some back-and-forth (none of the girls' phone would have GPS yet) but one of them has a phone that can send pictures so they take a couple shots of the area and someone in the office recognizes something so Ori sends a couple cars out to get them, but that'll take a while!
But in less than ten minutes, this black truck pulls up and all the girls are even more on edge. >Fives: Eee<
A couple Chinese guys get out, open up the back, and out come a few clothing racks of knock off designer winter coats because Shan controls a chunk of Chinatown and she has a warehouse nearby. >Fives: 😍<
There's a bit of a situation when they try to get them back to the hotel; it's in Italian Don territory and neither Shan nor Ori are allowed in without express permission but they're having trouble explaining that no, they're not trafficking anyone, they're trying to help a bunch of stranded teens. It gets resolved but it's a little awkward. >Fives: Heeeeee<
I think it's the third time they work together that Liu's muscling in on Hong Kong and he's sent Ori to audit a variety of establishments—on behalf of the Tang clan's High Dragon, of course, not Liu. >Fives: *nods*<
In one fight ring, Ori’s picking up on something super weird with three, unrelated names; based off the stats, it's like they're being inconsistently assigned to one of three different people. >Fives: Ooooooooohhhh<
One of the fighters asks if he and his brothers can get a sponsor to go to the Jaeger Academy and Chau's like, 'not on your life, kid' (because this guy's one of the top earners) and then he sees in the anteroom two other versions of this same guy and all three of them leave. >Fives: OOOOH<
It's not until an hour later when he's whining to Shan that he realizes that those triplets were a) a batch of missing kids b) missing kids from the Tang clan c) /triplets from the Tang clan, and d) that the guy who's running this place knew all of that and tried to hide it. 
Shan's like, oh shit, how fast can you leave the country? >Fives: !!! 😀😀<
He gets an aide on the phone and has them make travel arrangements for three kids (none of whom have ID) on the first flight out of the country—it doesn't matter in what direction, just away and eventually to the Academy, which is how Cheung, Jin, and Hu, go from 'never going to the academy' to on their way in less an evening!
>Fives: Ugh, god,I love it and I love you. You're the best
Fives: My day was very long and very shitty and this made most of it worth it
Shmoo92: 
Shmoo92: ^how awesome I feel ^u^
Fives: 💜💜💜<
A couple days later, Ori reads that the former fight ring owner was found dead in the building that had been burnt to the ground. >Fives: Ooohh<
(Liu smells like ashes but he usually does these days.) > Fives: Oh god<
Category:Fashion Snobs
Category:Wei triplets
Category:Wei triplets (ficlet)
Category:Chau
Category:Chau (ficlet)
Category:Meta
Category:Vanessa
Category:Vanessa (ficlet)
Category:Liu
Category:Liu (ficlet)
Category:Ficlet