Asian Street Food

'I know who you are. You're that kid we took out yesterday, aren't you?' The voice of Luis came through into his mind, interrupting his thoughts about red energy points.

'Yeah. I'm Blake Johnston. And you're Luis, right?'

The man sputtered for a moment before responding. 'How you know my name?'

'Marvin told me.'

'What else did that skunk tell you about me?' He began cursing under his breath.

'Not much else other than the fact that you were stuck inside a jar behind that picture.'

For a moment, Luis was silent. 'Well I'll be damned. I can't believe that old coot cared enough about me to get you to rescue me out.'

'Don't get too excited. He had nothing to do with it. I wanted you out so I went and got you myself.'

'Is that right? What do you want from me then? My energy? If you're strong enough to take me out of that jar, then you're strong enough to just suck the life out of me. Why bother hauling my ass around inside your pouch?'

'Keep your life, Luis. I don't want it. I just want some information from you.'

Luis growled. 'I got nothin to tell ya.'

'What if I can feed you some good food?" He eyed the well-dressed man who looked as if he had everything. "You hungry?'

Luis said nothing, but the hunger showed up in his eyes. It looked as if he'd been starved for a long time.

Blake smiled. "I know a place where food is everywhere and all we have to do is tap in. Come. I'll take you there."

For a moment, a defiant glare shone in Luis' eyes, but then his shoulders slumped with dejected capitulation.

The dark alleyway was filled with people sitting around, chattering, smoking, and eating. It was outside a nightclub that was hot and jumping. It made Blake want to pull out his bass and thump along to the music, but first things first.

He stood in one corner near the cart filled with hot foods from the Asian vendor. Right next to her cart was a strip of grassy dirt that she placed her extra bags and containers of things.

Without hesitation, Blake reached into his bag and took out the silver lighter and two sticks of incense. He lit the incense and stuck them onto the far side of the food cart, away from view of the woman and her customers.

Immediately, all the food that was on her cart became available to Luis and Blake.

With a grateful nod, Luis began to gorge himself.

"Slow down your eating. Stick with me and you'll be fed. As long as I have incense sticks, we can eat."

"Oh man. I have no idea what all this food is, but it's hella good!" Luis muttered as he stuffed his face.

"Haha. It's Asian street food. A bit of Chinese, a bit of Vietnamese, a bit of Korean, a bit of Japanese. This woman has it all."

Blake pointed to the night club. "This is an Asian night club. She makes her money off these smokers. You smell what they smoke? It makes them hungry, so they come here and buy her food."

"I see that. She comes here every night?"

Blake nodded. "If you like this food, I'll take you here often, but I need your help, Luis."

"You got it man. What you need?"

Blake sucked down a chicken skewer and got down to business. "Okay so I need to know which band member is going to get hit next. I have to find a way to protect them."

"Dude, that's easy."

"What do you mean?" Blake downed a Tiger beer.

"There's four of you. All four of you are gonna die. It's that simple."

"No man. There's five of us.

"No dude. Only four. The last one is a girl."

"And?"

"The girl is the one who's important. The reason why you guys are getting whacked is because of her!"

Blake's eyes widened in surprise. "The new singer? We just added her like three weeks ago! I thought she was a nice girl. I didn't know she was out to kill us!"

"No man. She's not out to get you. She's just as much a victim as you are. Don't you remember the picture of that naked Asian chick that I was stuck behind?"

"Yeah…" Suddenly, Blake gasped. "Holy shit! That's Jazzie!"

He took a deep breath and poked at the weapons cache to look at the details of the items in his list.

Aside from his guitar and the large wooden sign, there was the painting. The name of the painting, as listed in his system's catalog, was Jasmine Love. He pulled the painting out and took a close look at the woman's face.

Jasmine Love. Jazzie Hunter. That was her! He just hadn't recognized her because the place was so dark both times he'd been there, and truth be told, who the hell looks at the face of a woman when her body is naked for all to see?

But now, since he was no longer in a panic and trying to survive the Overlord, he could take a seriously good look at the painting.

He had to admit, it was very well painted and was a very close likeness of Jazzie. It was a bit embarrassing that her body was all on display like that because the Jazzie that he knew was rather modest.

"So he's her what, boyfriend? Pimp?"

"No, no. Nothing like that. She's not the one you should focus on. Like I said. She's just as much a victim as you guys are. It's the Overlord. He's obsessed with her. Anyone who gets close to her is gonna get whacked."

"So you're telling me my lead guitarist Adam Stuart and my keyboardist Terry Williams are both in danger?"

"That's right."

"Who's next?"

"Ray Street is already dead. Terry is next on the list since Anh Hai managed to snag some semen from the dude."

"How the hell did he get his hands on something like that, man?"

Luis shrugged. "Terry's a good guy. He just has one bad habit. He fell for some hoe who works at a nail salon. They been banging each other on a regular basis for almost half a year now."

Luis swallowed a handful of dumplings and started in on the soba noodles.

"Last time he fucked her, she managed to scrape enough jizz off him to hand over to Anh Hai and got a couple hundred bucks for that."

"What about Adam Stuart?"

"Anh Hai doesn't have any biological specimen of his yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gets his hands on something. The asshole is a damn good Overlord. You don't get much better than him in these parts."

"Alright. Dinner time is over. Let's go." Blake rose up from where they were crouching.

"Lemme finish this soba noodles man. This lady has got some AMAZING soba noodles!"

"Gotta go man, before another of my friends die! Let's go, let's go, let's go!!!"

"…slave driver…"