A sweating, overweight middle-aged man in a garish purple suit spun in place like a top, his two pudgy hands frantically turning every one of his dozen pockets inside out.
Yang Ming recognized the walking mound of fat at a glance. Benjamin, a small-time dealer who specialized in smuggled appliances on Gotham's black market. Last month, his mother had been dumped at Yang Ming's underground clinic with acute heart failure, and Yang Ming had dragged her back from death's door.
Benjamin had an arm around his voluptuous, scantily clad young mistress. He had been planning to step into the jewelry store next door and buy her an expensive pearl necklace to win her favor.
But the instant he reached into his pocket to pay the deposit, he discovered that his leather wallet, stuffed with large-denomination bills and black cards, had vanished.
"Are you messing with me? Pretending you're broke?" His mistress pursed her fiery red lips in displeasure and turned to leave.
"Darling! I swear! I put thirty thousand in cash in there just before I left home!" Benjamin's features scrunched together in panic. He swore up and down while pounding his thick thigh in frustration, looking as ridiculous as a walrus that had failed to find a mate.
While Benjamin fretted, ready to frisk every onlooker around him, a young woman with neat, jet-black curls and a dark, fitted jacket slipped past Yang Ming. Her steps were featherlight, like those of a languid cat.
A whiff of cheap perfume mingled with the cold street wind and drifted into Yang Ming's nose. The girl lowered the brim of her cap, shifted her body, and was about to disappear into the crowded stream of pedestrians.
Watching Benjamin still hopping with anxiety, Yang Ming sighed helplessly. He walked over and patted the man's broad shoulder.
Benjamin was simmering with rage and about to curse out whichever blind bastard had dared touch him. But when he turned and recognized those distinctive dark circles beneath the baseball cap, the profanity on his tongue took a sharp detour. The anger on his fleshy face instantly collapsed into an utterly fawning smile.
"Oh! Dr. Yang! What brings you to uptown? Is there anything I can do for you?"
Yang Ming did not answer. With an entirely casual turn of his wrist, a bulging black leather wallet appeared in his palm as if by magic. He waved it in front of the stunned Benjamin.
"Take a look. Is this yours? I just found it at the foot of the steps outside the pharmacy. It looked familiar. Check whether anything's missing."
Benjamin's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. He snatched the wallet and rifled through it with his fat fingers. Not a single bill was missing from the thick stack of hundred-dollar notes, and the black cards and identification were all intact.
Every roll of fat on his body quivered with excitement. He shoved his inconvenient mistress aside, seized Yang Ming's hand in both of his, and sprayed spit as he declared that Dr. Yang was an archangel sent by God to save him.
The black-market dealer wasted no time showing his gratitude. He pulled a checkbook from the inside pocket of his suit, took out a fountain pen, and briskly wrote a check for ten thousand dollars, presenting it to Yang Ming with both hands.
Having just extorted a million dollars from Gotham's richest man, Yang Ming did not so much as lift his eyelids.
He casually pushed the check aside, his tone as flat as if he were discussing the weather. "If you really want to thank me, donate that ten thousand to the orphanage in the East End. Consider it earning yourself a little karma in this hellhole."
Benjamin's hand froze in midair around the check. Then he nodded repeatedly in agreement and, with awe written across his face, put an arm around his once-again-beaming mistress. He disappeared around the street corner, thanking Yang Ming profusely.
As he watched that mound of fat leave, Yang Ming lowered the brim of his cap, a faint trace of mockery curling his lips.
Found it? Like hell anyone would find a wallet full of cash on this street.
He had actually "taken" the wallet back from the curly-haired girl who had just brushed past him.
Normally, Yang Ming had no interest in even glancing at this sort of crook-on-crook business on Gotham's streets.
But after stealing from Benjamin, that reckless thief had gotten greedy. As she passed Yang Ming, she had silently slipped two long, nimble fingers into his coat pocket!
Before last night, she might really have made off with his money for medical equipment without him noticing a thing.
But now, master-level combat muscle memory, forcibly instilled by the system, was seared deep into Yang Ming's spine. Within a tenth of a second of the girl's fingertips touching the edge of his pocket, his reflexes had already completed the entire sequence from anticipation to counterattack.
Not only had he evaded her probing fingers with an almost imperceptible shift, he had helped himself in return. Using highly advanced Brazilian jiu-jitsu techniques for redirecting force and controlling an opponent, he reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and smoothly intercepted Benjamin's wallet.
The whole process took less than half a second. Even the girl, who considered herself one of Gotham's finest pickpockets, never realized that her newly acquired prey had already changed hands.
Neither Yang Ming nor the girl who went by the codename Cat noticed the pair of eyes fixed intently on them from the corner café across the street.
Behind a rain-speckled plate-glass window, an eighteen-year-old blonde sat on a tall stool. Her hair was tied in a neat, high ponytail, and her bright, lively features carried the boldness of someone still untouched by the world. In her hands was a cup of iced milk tea with double sugar.
Harleen Frances Quinzel. A freshman who had just been admitted to Gotham University's psychology program.
Although the noisy street between them kept her from hearing any of their conversation, Harleen's eyes, backed by an exceptional talent for criminal psychology and an obsession with the smallest details, had taken in every moment of that street magic trick.
She had clearly caught the curly-haired girl's theft, and seen even more clearly how the Asian man with the heavy dark circles had pulled off that unbelievable reverse pickpocketing with hand speed that defied normal human limits.
Harleen bit down on her plastic straw and took a long, hard pull of the cloyingly sweet milk tea, puffing out her cheeks.
There was none of the fear an ordinary person might feel on witnessing a crime in her eyes. Instead, they shone with an almost pathological excitement and fervor. She had an innate fascination with outsiders who broke society's conventions.
In her psychological analysis model, the common criminals on Gotham's streets were utterly boring. But that Asian man, seemingly exhausted yet concealing far more than he revealed, was the perfect subject for observation, full of contradictions and mysteries.
Harleen released the straw she had bitten flat, pulled a pink hardcover notebook from her canvas bag, and uncapped a ballpoint pen.
"Exceptionally subtle counter-surveillance skills, superhuman reflexes, extreme restraint regarding money and trouble."
The pen raced across the paper. She looked up, her gaze crossing the street as she tried to find that black-coated figure again, only to discover that he had already pushed open the glass door of the medical supply store and vanished completely from sight.
"Got you, Mr. Fascinating Subject." Harleen twirled the ballpoint pen in her hand, her radiant smile carrying a hint of unhinged curiosity.