The Lands of the Rising Sun

Alemmani

We continued down the various sets of hallways until we came to a large glass window. The window overlooked a warehouse filled end to end with Alemmani. The floor was filled with girls dancing on poles surrounded by men yelling and jumping around. In the middle of the room was two men fighting which drew the largest crowd. The bass from the music vibrated the window and shook my chest. The rotating multicolored lights pulled my focus in onsetting a headache I observed the room. Women were dancing in cages held by chains from the ceiling they each bore a different animal's head as a mask. I recognized the wolf, bear and horse heads but the other three looked unreal one was a feathery creature with a long beak, another was a pig like creature with long tusks and the last was a sheep like creature with curved horns. I saw a set of stairs that led to another overlook directly across from us. The window was blacked out but I could see dark figures dancing around inside. "I think were gonna have to blend in to find this guy," I said. "How'sth that?"

"Not sure I guess just dress like them and find a way in that room."

The Alemmani wore makeup on their face like war paint and what looked like self-made clothes sewn together from other pieces of fabric. "Were gonna have to ditch the backpack and shit."

We hid our supplies under the bags of sand and tore our clothes up with our knives. "You think they'll sthay sthomething about the paint?" ask Snake. "Ehh... I think we can get away with it."

"What if they talk to usth in that weird language?"

"Just uhh... I don't know, just say some non-sense I guess."

"What about the gunsth?"

"I say we leave them here, it seems like only a select few got 'em, we don't need no reason to stand out." I grabbed the tranquilizer darts, blowpipe and the dead man's spiked bat. "Stho you get a weapon but I don't?"

"You're a smart boy, you can talk your way outta shit." Before we made our way to the stairs we positioned the bodies to make it look like they were in the midst of sexual intercourse on top of the bags of sand with the man lying between the girl's legs. I hoped whoever walked by just ignored the substantial amount of blood drying on the floor. I stopped and held my fingers up in a square looking through it with one eye chortling I said, "Another fuckin' masterpiece." Snake shook his head and started down the hallway.

We opened the door to the staircase and descended. We approached the bottom of the spiraling stairs to the door leading into the large party room. "You ready?" I asked. "Y-yeah let'sth justh get thisth over with."

"You sound nervous."

"Yeah no sthit if thisth doesthn't work we're dead."

"Have I ever led you wrong before?"

Snake's face grew limp as he pushed me aside flinging the door open. I followed with a smile.

The air was so stagnant and filled with smoke. Men and women were everywhere dancing and yelling no one even batted an eye at us. We pushed our way through the crowd getting knocked back and forth like sailing a rough sea. My thoughts escaped me through the roaring crowd. I could barely see where we were going, hopefully toward the stairs under the blacked out overlook. We stopped when we hit a wall of men standing in a circle. Between flailing arms and flying liquid I could see men fighting. I watched one man bury his shoulder to the others stomach flipping him over to his back. The man dropped on top of the other beating his head in. After a couple of hits two men jumped in and tackled him off the unconscious man. Two more followed after, followed by another few. In a couple of moments the whole crowd had joined in creating a massive brawl. Snake and I found ourselves caught in the middle trying our best to dodge random punches. I was shoved to the ground and dropped my bat. I scrambled for it but someone grabbed it before me. I looked up to see him winding a swing. Snake punched him square in the jaw, but the man still held on to the bat. I got to my feet and tried to tackle the man but I was thrown off balance when someone knocked into me. The man swung for Snake with a missed attempt and dug the bat in to a man's back. I grabbed Snake as the crowd shifted toward the bat wielding man. He was beaten mercilessly and we made our escape.