I looked around the dimly lit, cavernous gym and did not see any fresh bullet holes on the grimy concrete walls, and no glass from the few small, barred windows was broken.
So, this definitely wasn't a drive-by shootin'.
Which immediately made me wonder who the fuck these particular unfortunate fuckers were, and who they'd pissed off.
I got my answer almost immediately, when I finally noticed that most of the guys currently gettin' patched up, or bleeding to death, had distinctive, identical bird tattoos prominently displayed on their foreheads.
And most of them, even in their current battered state, still wore some ragged piece of a dark, formal suit.
These guys are Genji's loyal gang members – The Black Birds.
They'd probably had a major, bloody clash with some other rival gang, but frankly, I wasn't too fuckin' interested in their specific shitty situation right now.
I just walked around the edge of the chaotic, makeshift field hospital, carefully lookin' for a familiar face, someone I could actually talk to without gettin' my head bashed in.
I soon found Asuka, her face pale and drawn, healin' one of the more seriously injured gang members, who had a gaping hole in his stomach.
And she was sweatin' like a goddamn whore workin' serious overtime on a busy Saturday night as she painstakingly knitted his wound closed with her sparking hands.
She must have been doin' this shit for a long, long while now, probably hours.
"Hey, Asuka...." I tried to call out to get her attention, my voice carefully neutral.
But she didn't respond, didn't even flicker an eye in my direction.
She just stood up, her movements stiff with exhaustion, after she was finally done with that particular guy, and immediately started movin' wearily to the next injured guy lyin' helplessly next to the previous one.
"Asuka," I called out to her again, a little louder this time, but she still didn't fuckin' respond.
I called her a couple more times after that, but she just kept on actin' like I was speakin' to a fuckin' brick wall, completely ignorin' my presence.
Then, as I attempted to gently touch her shoulder, just to get her damn attention after callin' her name yet again, she suddenly spun around and fuckin' yelled… right at ME?
"What, Shitsubo?!…
Why the fuck are you callin' me, Hmm?!
Are you fuckin' blind, you retarded asshole?
Can't you fucking see this mess?!" she yelled, her voice cracking with exhaustion, her eyes blazing with clear, undiluted anger and raw annoyance.
"Is there anything fuckin' seriously wrong with your fuckin' brain, hmm?!
Can't you see I'm fuckin' swamped, completely fuckin' busy right now, you half eaten rotten vegetable?!" she continued her tirade, her voice rising in pitch, as her usually gentle healin' magic, now in the visible form of cracklin' green electricity, spiked erratically around her trembling hands.
Seein' as she was obviously, royally pissed off for some stupid goddamn reason that clearly had absolutely nothin' to do with me, I decided to try and give her one of my patented, disarming smiles.
Even if she is just bein' a complete and utter bitch right now.
I've seen Daigo use this exact same kinda move to smoothly talk his way out of trouble when he has to converse with folks that are bein' unreasonably, stupidly hostile for no good reason.
"I just wanted to know where Hoshi is…." I tried to ask my simple question, with that fake, placating smile still plastered firmly on my face, when she suddenly cut me clean off.
She shot up quickly from her crouched position and pulled up aggressively straight into my personal space, lookin' up at me with cold, dead, utterly merciless eyes.
"What, Motherfucker? You still want to say some more stupid shit? Get the fuck out of here right now, before I personally shove a red-hot fuckin' iron rod right up your scrawny, bitch-ass!!" she yelled, her voice a low, dangerous snarl, clearly meanin' every single goddamn word she said.
"Oi, Asuka. The fuck's the matter?" a new, gravelly voice interjected.
A heavily built guy with a prominent bird tattoo on his brow, similar to Genji's and the others, wearin' a torn and bloodstained, but still recognizably expensive, black suit, and with his hard, cruel faces almost completely covered with intricate, disturbing tattoos of spiders and bones, asked in a lazy, arrogant tone as he swaggered slowly towards Asuka and me.
"Just this useless bitch-monger here, causin' trouble…" Asuka started to say, her voice still tight with fury, but before she could continue her rant, he gently, almost possessively, pulled her aside, away from me.
Then he faced me squarely, his bulk blockin' my view, lookin' straight into my damn eyes with a predatory stillness.
His stare was so fuckin' intense, so full of naked, brutal intent, I could literally almost see the violent, ugly thoughts he was havin' about me flashin' behind his dead eyes, and none of them, absolutely none, were somethin' I ever wanted to unwillingly experience firsthand.
"Get the fuck out of here," he uttered coldly, his voice a low, menacing growl, laced with so much palpable malice that it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I wanted to back off, to retreat, but for a terrifying split second, my mind kept failin' to properly tell my suddenly frozen body what the fuck to do.
I immediately spun on my heel, intending to leave as soon as my body could finally react to the command from my brain.
Then, I felt a strong, vise-like hand grab the back of my neck firmly, its grip like iron talons, and start roughly draggin' me bodily across the crowded, blood-soaked room, like I was nothin' more than some worthless street dog with a broken tin can tied to its tail, bein' dragged outside to most likely be unceremoniously beaten and then killed.
I tried desperately to remove his fuckin' hand from my neck, to break his crushing grip, but I absolutely could not fuckin' do it; he was too damn strong.
I was dragged ignominiously out of the gym and then violently thrown, like a sack of rotten cum, into a dark, stinking corner of the alleyway outside, a spot already littered with overflowing trash bins and the decaying, rotten parts of some dead animal.
I crashed hard into the goddamn piled-up garbage, the impact knocking the wind out of me.
I tried to immediately scramble up, to get to my feet, but he then kicked a heavy, sodden bag of trash contemptuously right into my face, makin' me sink back down helplessly into the disgusting, reeking pile of refuse.
I just stayed there, unmoving, to try and prevent him from becomin' even more violent than he already was, somehow managin' to coil up into a tight, protective ball amidst the filth.
Then he said, his voice still cold but now loud enough for anyone who might be nearby to hear, "…You are fuckin' lucky I don't have the time right now, you little shit. Otherwise, I would personally spread your fuckin' guts all over this damn street," and then he turned and went back into the gym without another word, the door slammin' shut behind him.
I gently, painfully, stood up and started to dust the literal shit and other assorted filth off my battered body as much as humanly possible.
Then, I picked up my equally soiled bag, my precious cargo thankfully still intact, and briefly looked at a random, indifferent guy that had stood nearby throughout the entire humiliating ordeal, casually urinating against the wall and clearly seein' everything that had just happened to me.
After a few long, awkward seconds of just starin' at him, and him starin' blankly back, I finally left the immediate front of the gym, the sounds of pain and desperation still echoing from within.
I walked quickly through the familiar, dark street corners again, deliberately avoidin' any areas where I knew bunches of local people were likely to be hangin' out.
I walked with my head down low, my ragged hoodie pulled up tight over it, tryin' to be invisible.
I couldn't help but feel intensely fuckin' annoyed that I couldn't see Hoshi, or even find Hanzo, to sell my hard-won elixir.
Though what Asuka and that 'Spider and bone' tattooed motherfucker did to me definitely fuckin' stung, both physically and mentally, the money, the goddamn money I desperately needed, was still far more fuckin' important right now.
Soon, a cold, miserable rain started to fall, but I did not try to hurry my pace towards home.
I just walked slowly under it, lettin' the dirty city water soak me to the bone.
And after a while, I stopped under a flickering, faulty streetlight and happened to look down at a large, jagged piece of broken mirror lyin' on the grimy, wet ground beside me.
I saw my own goddamn reflection starin' back.
My unkempt, matted hair, plastered to my skull by the rain.
My skinny, gaunt, dark-skinned face, now sporting a fresh, ugly bruise alongside the old, faded scar on the side of my lip.
The other, more prominent scar that ran straight through my right eyebrow, splittin' it neatly in two.
And one swollen, rapidly blackening eye (which might possibly be from the earlier fight against those short-white creatures, or maybe from the recent introduction to the garbage pile).
All of this, this whole pathetic picture, covered with wrenched, filthy, bloodstained clothes, lookin' just like every single other hopeless, invisible lowlife scum in this goddamn, indifferent city.
I stared hard at my own reflection, completely fuckin' lost in it for a long moment, and for the first time in a long while, I truly saw what I actually look like to the rest of the world.
A mistake child.
A pointless lump of flesh.
A gutter-kid with absolutely no prospects, no future.
A worthless, oxygen-thieving air-breather.
A mere space filler in a world that didn't see me… a dead man already walkin', just too stupid to lie down.
At that precise moment, I was completely overcome with so much crushing, negative feelin' as I involuntarily started to recollect all the shit, all the pain and disappointment, that had happened in my miserable life right up till this very goddamn moment.
I did not feel anger - who the fuck would I be angry at? The world? Myself?
I did not feel exposed - I was never fuckin' secured or protected in the first place.
I did not feel lost - there was never really a proper place for someone like me in this whole fucked-up world to begin with… I am, quite simply, fuckin' worthless.
I had to reluctantly, painfully, force myself to look away from that damning, broken mirror and continue my slow, water-logged walk towards what I laughably called my home.