Tokyo was once described as a city of dreams and opportunity.
For centuries, it was already a significantly multicultural city, and considered very cosmopolitan and progressive. But now, the paradigm had shifted drastically.
The newer arrivals like the Oceanian, the Meizhou natives and the Aryans were often poor and destitute,
barely scraping by making a living and exploited by the ruling Han & Yamato, plagued by poor sanitary conditions
and their ghettoes a hotbed of gang violence brought on by unemployment and a lack of education.
It didn’t help that they were hemmed in by more established groups, such as the Arabs, Saxons & Kampucheans,
whose own ethnic districts were strategically positioned as buffers to prevent the possibility of spilling over into the posh Han & Yamato dominated parts of Tokyo.
In particular, although both were English speaking peoples, the Oceanians and the Meizhou First Nation peoples were known to feud, mostly stemming from fierce competition for low wage jobs.
It didn’t help that there was an element of religious strife involved; although most Sinicized peoples had become largely secular,
the Oceanians had transformed their variant of Taoism into a dogmatic faith, putting them at odds against the Muslim First Nation peoples.
The Tokyo Police Department tended to let these atrocities play out. It didn’t concern them or the needs of “true-blooded” Chinese.
It was official policy to only get involved if the violence spilled over into Han & Yamato districts and only if Han & Yamato lives or properties were threatened.
In short, the ethnic strife and the crime that was borne from it were laid out by design.
One such First Nation woman, sat in her apartment, thinking hard about what she was going to do with her life.
She had come from one of the inner regions of the Chinese Meizhou colonies, and sought to make a career for herself in journalism.
She was gifted of course, but poor. And her family supported her with all they had,
enough to help her get started as she pursued her internship at the Tokyo Ribao. But she never did get a break.
Always saddled with menial tasks and never getting the chance to accompany a reporter to break a story.
And now she was stuck here at a crossroads, staring at her ceiling wondering if she should sail back home and disappoint her family.
The young woman began to sift through the correspondences she had saved throughout the years.
They were all letters from across the vast Taipingyang, from her Meizhou hometown.
Her cousin, who was the only literate person in the family other than herself would write to her often, asking her if she was well, while subtly nudging for her return.
The Han administrators had settled a new colony called Huangshi that looked promising, not too far off from their town and even across the ocean;
relevant only because her cousin knew job prospects and social mobility were the worst
they’ve been in decades in the Core and suggested she come back and try to use her talents in Huangshi.
In the letters, there was sort of an unspoken acceptance and feeling that she wasn’t rising as high as she deserved, and that she was welcome back home anyway.
But the young journalist was a prideful girl. She couldn’t come this far just to let them down.
Her fingers eventually settled on a family photograph that was sent to her, running over the images of the braided women and stalwart looking men that comprised her extended family.
It was very honestly, the most precious possession she kept.
She missed them dearly and hadn’t realized how fragile it looked until she caught herself dripping teardrops onto the photo, bending the corner.
She soon got up to get something to wipe it off.
It was then that she heard a knock on her door.
She froze, locks of brown hair swiveling as she turned in response to the noise, careful not to make a sound.
A rusty butcher knife was lifted up from her countertop as she made her way down the hall.
The week before, another First Nation family in her apartment block was found dead from an Oceanian home invasion.
She hoped that she wouldn’t be the next casualty of this ceaseless blood-feud.
Peering through the peephole as she clasped her hand upon the doorknob, she saw that it was two Han men in long coats, heads topped with porkpies outside.
They certainly weren't Oceanian gangbangers.
“I told you, see, this ain’t the one we’re looking for,”
“Shut yer trap, they’ll come out soon enough,”
The man banged on the door again, “Anyone in there?”
She held her breath. She was relieved that they weren’t Oceanians, but she was sure they were still gangsters from the look of it.
“Nobody, man. This isn’t the one, you have the wrong address,”
“Fine, you read the directions then. Not my fault these
pinkie hovels all look the same,”
The men left and made their way up the stairs, leaving the woman slumped against her door, catching her breath.
She was tired of living in such a dangerous neighborhood. But she was even more tired of living with so much doubt hanging above her like a spectre.
Part of her wanted to stay in the Core, and make something of herself, despite all odds being stacked against her. But another part of her yearned for home and stability.
She yearned for the white-topped caps of the mountains near her hometown in Meizhou.
The white-topped caps that lent the young woman her namesake, Ether Snow.
In a few moments, she heard a few gunshots go off upstairs. The noise was deafening.
The new Xia colony of Huangshi.
Ru Haozi was able to make ends meet and move his family off the streets and into a cramped, but serviceable apartment.
Basic heating was still a problem, but at least they had a roof over their heads now.
These days, there was a sort of zeal that filled him as he did his daily work.
After he had joined the Visionary Egalitarian movement, he was hired by a movement sympathizer, who had access to clandestine manufacturing capabilities.
Laboring in secret on munitions and carbines during the night, he earned a solid wage and built real friendships amongst the other disenfranchised poor.
As a father of two though, he knew the risks associated. This was, in no uncertain terms,
a seditious organization that constantly feared discovery and crackdown by Tokyo administrators.
His wife couldn’t put a finger on it but she knew something was strange.
At first, she had harbored suspicions that a moneyed mistress had taken her husband as a lover and given him a stipend.
But she found no cause to worry; there was never lipstick on his collar or strange smells emanating from his musculature.
Still, there was definitely something about him that seemed calculated and incomplete in its truths.
He simply told his wife that he had found a job but she knew that most of the employers in the city
paid a pittance in wages and that he couldn’t have possibly saved up enough in such a short period of time.
A sort of dread had sunken in that he might have become involved in something illegal.
As she laid silently behind her husband on their bed, she let these thoughts float in her mind,
weighing the possibilities against one another until her eyelids began to droop and she fell fast asleep.
Ru Haozi awoke in the middle of the night instinctively, his biological clock alerting him to his witching hour shift.
He turned behind him to see his sleeping wife and gave her a light kiss before he got dressed and out the door to the factory.
The workingman felt guilty lying to his wife, but he believed it to be for the best.
After all, he was sure that if she had the insight, she would much prefer this over starving in the streets.
Hastily, he made his way through the streets to the factory.
When Ru Haozi arrived, his co-workers were all on the factory floor assembled as the commissar began to address the crowd.
“Gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. Tonight’s a special night. The Speaker is coming to our factory to give a speech.”
The assembled workers chattered with excitement at this prospect. It was known within the movement that
Mr. Fan Zhen frequently met with new members of the organization from time to time.
But their workplace had not yet had the chance to be graced by the presence of their illustrious leader.
“Order! Order!” the commissar exclaimed as he was immediately bombarded with questions from the workforce.
“Save your questions for when he comes. I just want you all you to know and be ready to present yourselves accordingly when he has arrived.”
True to the commissar's word, at around the break of dawn, Fan Zhen arrived.
He strode in accompanied by his retinue of bodyguards as he began to greet and shake hands with the workers of the factory.
The men were weary-eyed from their graveyard shift work but their eyes gleamed with eagerness at the prospect of hearing Fan Zhen speak as a number of
workers were ushered into the meeting room upstairs while those who had already met with the leader many times held down the assembly line floor.
Fan Zhen appeared dignified as he sat and peered across the room and opened his mouth.
“When you’ve peeled back the layers of a politician, you’ll find nothing but a heart capable of nothing but deception.
I want to spare you from the hyperbole and I want to attack any cult of mine at the source, with the full knowledge that this may cut at my power.
Because I believe in the common man, and I also want to believe that we can put our trust in human leaders, and not those elevated to the status of gods.
So I want you all to know of my crimes. And then you can decide if you still would like to follow me or not.
This is the difference I want to highlight between myself and the men who are currently in power. The difference is that I'm giving you a choice. So please listen.”
“There’s nothing in my past that I am going to hide from all of you.
I will freely admit to these things because I know that each and every one of you have done these things before.
And it isn’t because we’re bad people. It isn’t because we are all unfilial sons and daughters. It is because they; the bourgeois, leave us with no choice.
That we needed to resort to such desperate measures, to go against our convictions, almost throwing away our humanity, in order to sustain a near animalistic existence-”
Fan Zhen’s conference was cut short abruptly with an external disturbance.
Outside, the signature skidding and screeching of automobiles could be heard and after a moment of silence, screams and wounded howling erupted in the main assembly line.
The doors burst open and several gangsters rushed in and began spraying the factory down with submachine gun fire.
“Get down!” one of Haozi’s comrades yelled as he tackled Haozi to the floor.
Tommy gun bullets riddled the glass above them, showering dozens of shards onto the men.
The workers who hadn’t been wiped out from the onset of the assault took cover and tried to scramble towards any implement within reach to defend themselves.
Fan Zhen’s bodyguards drew their sidearms and immediately began exchanging fire with the mobsters.
The Speaker was in danger!
Ru Haozi peeked over the table he was leaning against to see all manner of carnage being inflicted on his fellow man.
Fan Zhen had been knocked to the ground as people shuffled back and forth in the confusion.
Several mobsters had already made it up the walkways and had the Speaker in their sights.
When the workers realized this, they all jumped into action.
One man yanked a fire ax from the emergency case and charged towards the doorway.
“My life for the Speaker!” the man yelled as he split the lead thug’s head open with a fire ax before being pelted by a hail of bullets.
Ru Haozi kept his head down and yanked the ax out of the mobster’s head from behind the safety of the corner.
He noticed that many of the Speaker’s bodyguards were either killed, wounded or busy holding off the marauders.
It was up to the people to safeguard their own hope, and with the ax in his hands, he determined that they needed to have a hand in carving out their own destiny.
Shouting over the withering fire, he yelled to Fan Zhen.
“Come Mr. Speaker! Follow me!”
“Come on, help him escape!” he motioned to some of the other workers.
They sprang into action, pushing a bookcase into the doorway, helping buy them some time.
He soon guided the workers and Fan Zhen across the steel walkways hanging overhead, running with their heads low as to
avoid sniping shots from the strikebreakers occupying the assembly line below.
In a few moments, the staircase for the rooftop came into view and they ran through but a mobster lunged out at
Haozi from the side and attempted to choke the life out of him as the other men began engaging the mobsters in the tight quarters.
He wasn’t a professional bodyguard, and had never taken a life before. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to start now as he swung his ax.
Haozi wrestled free from the mobster, smacking him with the butt of the weapon and then slamming it into his gut,
knocking the wind out of his adversary and rendering him unconscious.
As he approached the door to the rooftop, he swung wide, this time with the blade of the ax.
Haozi, leading the other men, began to hack away at the door and grabbed as many planks as they
could as a few of the men courageously held off the pursuing mobsters to buy Fan Zhen some time.
Quickly, but cautiously, they began tossing them between the roofs of the buildings and withdrawing them after the entire party made the crossing.
Shouts from the distance indicated that their pursuers were still hot on their trail.
But otherwise, the Speaker had successfully escaped with his life.
Multiple realizations had just come to Haozi as he continued to run with the survivors.
He came very near to taking a life in the heat of the moment. And he also came close to losing his own life.
Which would have left his wife and sons without a husband and a father.
The thought passed as they stopped to catch their breath by a smokestack as the other men kept a lookout behind them.
“I want to know, what is your name, sir?” Mr. Fan asked, still breathing heavily.
“My family name is Ru. My given name is Haozi, Mr. Speaker, sir,” the workingman replied, soaked with sweat.
“You’ve defended me admirably, like the ancient heroes of yore.”
“I’m no hero, Mr. Speaker. The real hero is you. Someone who can give ordinary folks like me some hope.”
Fan Zhen wore his impression on his face as he put a hand on Haozi’s shoulder.
“Ru Haozi, how would you like to be one of my bodyguards?”
“The truth is, and I’m obligated to let you know about the dangers of this post if you are to accept,
this will only become more dangerous. My profile is significantly heightened now compared to when I first started.
The Governor of Tokyo and the business magnates in the city have already begun to catch on to my activities. So I fear there will be many more attempts on my life yet.”
“With that knowledge of the sacrifice and danger involved, I am prepared to improve your pay drastically for your services rendered.” he added.
The men concluded the safety of their location and started to look for a way down from the rooftop.
“Well, first we must escape,” Fan Zhen remarked as the men prepared to go down a fire escape.
“But I’d like for you to think about it,”
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Not April Fool's. Real update.
Switching from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice.
Don't expect too many more updates though within a reasonable span of time.
to the knowledge that it was unfinished with a bried flash of 
and then a complete 
