After the summit concluded, Stephen Wu had made an advance towards me. It was also an advance I reciprocated and welcomed. After all, he was charming. He was chivalrous. Aptly so, we found ourselves in a romantic relationship.

    With Lee now president, we chose to celebrate by visiting Gastro's - a popular fine-dining hot spot for couples in Houhai - Běijīng's elegance quarter. After leaving the establishment, we decided that the night was still young, and still jubilant. We had also decided that it was time to take our courtship to the next level of intimacy. Therefore, we had excitedly entered Stephen's Phantom-H-Class Rolls Royce and headed towards my estate in the Fengtai District. This was until we were snared in traffic on the congested fourth Ring Road. "We should have taken Lee up on his A.I.S.U offer," I said, regretfully. "The hovercade could have sped us through and we would be there by now."

    "True, very true," Stephen admitted, "but I don't mind sitting in the traffic. It's therapeutic and even more so because I'm with you. Plus, The Filters have almost cleared the sky, so now we can appreciate the holo-drone fireworks a little more.

    "Don't stress, my sweetheart. Can we not just take in the celebrations together?"

    "Stephen, of course we can," I responded. Smitten, I looked deep into his eyes, knowing my doleful smile was dimpling my cheeks and arousing him.

    Despite Stephen's relaxed attitude, some drivers continued to honk and bib at one another. After all, it was frustrating to hover forwards a meter or so in the mass crawl. Consequently, some drivers had jumped out to engage in road rage, or to look up ahead and understand reasons for the solid jam. In the adjacent lane, it also appeared that more people were ready to exit and protest. Jumping out from a tinted SUV, four goons wearing sunglasses and dressed in dark suits, hit the ground and stood protectively. Then, as one of its rear doors de-materialized, out stepped the Notorious One - who was known by various names - some of which included, 'O-Kenai Ashii' - 'The Pink Lady' - and in recent times, 'The Queen of the Damned'... Frightened more than any other time in my life, and with my eyes forcing me to look at her, I could see that O-Kenai was a petite woman who wore coral pink iLenses. Additionally, she donned a matching-colored kimono robe, decorated with a brown twisted blossom tree along the side of it, possibly to reinforce her notorious calling card, as well as her aesthetic menace.

    Quick to lay siege, the goons ducked low and shifted around our hovermobile. Somehow, they then fixed something to it; likely a pre-coded scrambler; which de-materialized our doors and immobilized the hover cells! Now with an open walkway, O-Kenai mimicked a ninja assassin and spirited into the seat directly behind ours.

    Right then, I accepted our fates. This was the day we would die.

    "Do you, know who I am?" O-Kenai asked. Her voice was soft, yet cold. Theatrically, she stroked at her prized weapon of choice - an imitation Hattori-Hanzo umbrella sword that was attached to a thin strap and draped over her head and shoulders.

    "I have an idea," Stephen responded, looking deep into the rear-view mirror. "But we're, not afraid of you."

    I had wanted to whack him for trying to bluff with the biggest crime boss of all time! But I remained frozen instead and began to inhale the domineering pheromones the clan leader gave off.

    "Well you should be," she whispered back, all four of her words floating from her mouth like murderous ghosts. "I don't imagine that you would like to succumb to my reputation, or the live blade rested upon my lap."

    With her statement understood, miniature beads of sweat oozed from our pores.

    Frantically, I couldn't help but shy back against the dashboard as the terrorization persisted!

    "Stephen and Ling, the underworld's shadows were once my only sanctuary," O-Kenai continued. "But thanks to Xen Lai and yourselves, this will hopefully change, very soon. However, I do not trust him. He is a politician, and as we all know, the worst kind. Therefore, I am warning him yet again, through my threat of you both. If he alters our agreement in any way, then not only will I remove all those in his line, but all of those in yours. Then, there will be no Solution at all."

    As the anarchist played with us, I remembered what the world knew of her.

    O-Kenai had once embarked upon the bold ambition to do what no queen or kingpin had ever done; not even her mother; which was to gain sole control of the underworlds' gangster clans. In her day, and dubbed the Jade Mistress, her mother - Yakuza boss Yuriko Ashii, had once used a more sly and seductive method to steal power. Ensnaring men with her beauty, Yuriko would then dismember her often-brutish victims with her trademark geisha decoration; the Fan-Fatale; a butterfly-bladed weapon which some said she considered as much akin as young O-Kenai.

    However, for O-Kenai, the Yakuza Clan was just the beginning. As she grew and inherited her mother's throne, she used their crypto-currency fortune to hire some of the worlds' most reputable mercenaries, most of which had secretly trained backgrounds. With the best at her disposal, O-Kenai sent them around the globe to retrieve ordinary people, women and children, mostly. These people were the immediate kin of rival Mafia, Triad, and Cartel boss members. Kept in secret locations, they were her leverage. Moving forward with her plan, O-Kenai underwent open heart surgery and got a nano-tec surgeon to sync a multiple bomb trigger to the pumping organ. Additionally, these people were not released until micro explosives had been attached to theirs as well. If any attempt was made on O-Kenai with her heart stopping, then the rival clans' loved ones would be damned, and meet sudden and gruesome demises. Therefore, this was how she submitted the underworld into answering only to her, 'The Queen of the Damned'. In return, O-Kenai promised them that together, and under her infinite rule, they would all rise as one - as The Rising Clans.

    I had continued to recollect until The Pink Lady flinched; scared me again; and held her fingers up under her nose. Looking closely at her pink-painted vampire tips, she inspected the quality of her manicure.

    Almost as distressed as me, Stephen had had enough and challenged her! "Why are you doing this?" he screeched.

    "Because, I, can," she muttered - her tone completely aloof and nonchalant - her chin protruding forwards to intimidate us further. "More to the point, Mr. Wu, because the world is not enough. I want the cosmos, and every one of its stars. Coincidentally, luck would have it that you will be constructing Earthian Star, my first ever one."

    To follow, O-Kenai divulged hers and Xen's agreement in detail and through to the very end. Everything she revealed was news to us both and it was clear that Xen had been far from forthcoming...

    What was even more surprising, was the fact that she had left us alive.

    Just as quickly as she had entered the vehicle, The Pink Lady whirled out like a weightless phantom. Once back in her SUV, it somehow managed to disappear deep into the traffic ahead, camouflaged by the horizon of red neon lights.

    In the aftermath, Stephen cradled my shaking body, while I sobbed uncontrollably until dawn.