<div class="floatleft">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/9/93/Lishin.jpg)</div><strong>Name :</strong>Judge Fu Li Shin<br/><strong>Element :</strong>Fire<br/><strong>Location &amp; Time :</strong>Palace, evening<br/><strong>Tagging :</strong>Heini, Open<br/><br/><hr/><br/>The Black Crane's silk-drenched emissary stopped short as Heini's dart pierced her. A murderous dagger slipped from her fingers, and she slouched to the garden stones, cursing the rival schools with her last remaining breath.<em>"The feathers of the Black Crane... are... countless~" </em>was all she managed to say. Her accomplice, the masked assassin, remained silent. A needle-thin sai was drawn to deal with the judge and the thief.<br/><br/>At the foot of the ancestral shrine, there was Lord Chiang burdened in his ceremonial garb, laboring to breathe. The blue veins of his face were visible under the lantern light, and the assassin stood over him. "You'll have no use for gold in a prison cell," Judge Li Shin answered. "Instead, I'll give you a chance to clear your reputation. If the gods favor you here tonight, I'll name you innocent." The judge's grasping fingers went for the fang dagger at her backside, feeling the oddly reassuring shape of Heini behind her. The fingers searched a moment. Her purse was not there. Silently, she cursed herself, but she'd given her word to name Heini innocent.<br/><br/>Li Shin's dagger lunged for the assassin's shoulder, and became trapped in the sai's prongs. With weapons locked, the judge's dominant hand reared back for her signature technique. "Buddha's stone-" she began to say, but the sai gave a surprisingly strong twist. Li Shin performed a half-flip that was clearly involuntary from the way that she landed, prostrate and a stepping stone for the assassin's bounding leap. "Pleh!"<br/><br/>Heini still impeded the assassin's escape route. Sharp, efficient knife-hand strikes swooped for the thief's vitals with cold precision, one, two, three. She was testing Heini's technique.<em>"A student of many arts, I see. You would do well with the Black Crane, girl. True kung fu is living and breathing, not enslaved in dusty scrolls and guarded by old men." </em><br/><br/>Li Shin rose as the blows were traded. A moment's concession to her vanity to dust the shoulders of her cape, and she attended to Lord Chiang. "Our benevolent lord is poisoned! You must interrogate her- make her surrender the antidote!"