Hey all! I know it's been a while since I've touched my Mighty Max series, but nothing will keep me from it forever. This time we'll be crossing with an anime known in the US as "Ronin Warriors" but known in Japan by its original name, "Yoroiden Samurai Troopers." For this, you can completely blame my beta. We watched RW together and she pestered me until I got an idea that couldn't wait.
A couple of really, really important notes:
As always, this story is finished and a chapter will go up every week until we're done. It fits in with all my other Mighty Max stories after the events of everything else that's happened – this is canonical to the rest of my fic, and several different stories will be referenced from here on out.
This is also the darkest story I've written in a long time and maybe ever. I'm not kidding, guys. I took Max to some pretty dark places, far worse than he really deserved. If you are likely to be triggered by gore, murder, and a certain amount of torture, message me or leave a review and I'll warn you about what to expect and when so you can decide if you want to proceed. You do NOT have to worry about any form of sexual abuse because you will NEVER get that from me. But there's a lot of nasty things that can be done without involving a sexual element, and I hit what felt like most of them.
At the start of the next chapter, I'll go into more detail about what to expect on the RW side. I'm playing a little fast and loose with that canon, but I promise I have good reason for it.
If I haven't scared you off, thanks for sticking around! Enjoy!
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
-==OOO==-
It was a perfect evening. The sky was clear and dotted with stars. Max was surrounded by all of his best friends. And the city of Hong Kong gleamed far below like a million jewels piled together. As he kicked lazily through the warm water of the pool on the roof of the hotel, the Mighty One sighed.
"I'd forgotten how good this felt," he said mostly to himself.
"What?" came a familiar voice from his other side. Max turned to where Felix and Bea had swum up.
"This. A night like this. No heroics, no monsters, no saving the world. Just being a kid and having a good time. Just the basics of childhood – nothing fancy."
"Nothing fancy, huh? Just being a kid? And being in the exclusive pool at the most expensive hotel in Hong Kong doesn't have anything to do with it?" Bea asked shrewdly.
"Well, okay, so the butler waiting on us hand and foot is a nice touch," Max conceded. "But come on! How often do we get to live the sweet life this way? And how often do you see Virgil relax? Even Norman's smiling!"
"He is not," Felix countered, peering across the teeming pool of teenagers to the lounge chairs beyond where the massive Guardian reclined very slightly, like a bent railroad tie. Virgil, on the other hand, did look quite content to be sitting there, beak buried in a book as he sipped the tea at his elbow.
"Okay, so maybe not exactly smiling. But Normie never smiles unless there's something to kill, so this is as close as he'll get." His face flickered for a second into a stillness that Bea and Felix were getting more and more used to seeing in him. "I've been working so hard for so long. I'd forgotten what it was to let go for a while."
Grinning at his two friends, Max spontaneously dove back under the water and kicked until he could feel the glass edge of the pool. Opening his eyes through the water, the Mighty One pressed his nose to the clear surface and stared into the open air above the skyline. The glass was probably 6 inches thick, but it was still pretty amazing to be underwater and looking down on an entire city. It was a glorious end to a day spent mostly hanging with his friends and their whole class who were very much enjoying the two-week exchange program to Hong King. Max, of course, had been through the city many times, but never as a tourist – always as a hero in a rush.
Bea glanced to Felix. "He hasn't taken any time off for months, has he?"
"Nope," Felix shook his head.
"Well," she smiled, "I guess as long as the guardians don't seem to mind, I'm not going to spoil it for him, either."
Max came up with a gasp. "Spoil what for me?"
Felix interrupted. "Look! The fireworks are starting."
The celebratory fireworks were amazing, far better than anything Max had ever seen in the US, even if he'd forgotten what, exactly, was being celebrated. But as he leaned his arms on the glass wall of the pool overlooking the city, he felt something stir a slow circle inside his chest. Flinching at the sudden discomfort, the Mighty One reached up to touch his Cap, assuring himself it was there, before turning to look at Norman and Virgil. They remained where they had been at the other end of the pool.
He seemed suddenly very far away from their protective presences, actually. As the cold trickle inside pricked insistently, the boy tried to focus on the fireworks, tried to tell himself he was just being silly.
"Look at that Max!" Bea said abruptly a few minutes later, confusion in her tone. "What do you think it is?"
The Cap-Bearer followed her pointing finger up to the sky where he could distinguish a single point of light that seemed not to belong to any other explosion from the aerial display. The cold feeling inside was spreading now, and Max felt sure something was not right. He again looked to where his Guardian had been and he was somewhat less than surprised to see Norman now standing, face tight. If anyone had better instincts than Max, it was Normie.
"Hey guys, I'm not sure that's part of the show," Felix said finally, staring at the same object that was now growing larger in the sky.
"I think you're right. And I also think we might want to get out of here," the Mighty One said, a tremor creeping into his voice. As his friends hastily backpedaled in the water towards the shallow end, Max felt himself retreating much more slowly. He was sure the thing, whatever it was, was coming closer. Unable to keep the alarm inside at bay, he turned to all the other students and spectators surrounding him in the pool.
"Everybody out of the water now!" Max knew in moments of chaos that he could sound like someone to be obeyed, and he was never so glad as in that moment. Almost no one stared motionless at him; rather, most of the kids reacted without thinking about from whom they took the order and began to clear out. Nobody was panicking yet, but the instinctive knowledge that something was dreadfully wrong seemed to be contagious.
"Mighty One?" Virgil called questioningly.
"Get them clear!" he shouted back as he moved quickly through the water to pull a very young girl from where she continued to clutch the edge of the pool. She was not more than five years old, probably with her parents on vacation, and she definitely was looking at the fireworks and not the light that approached from above. She held on to the far edge even against Max's insistent pulling, shouting something in another language.
A scream, high and terrified, shattered the night as the mild chaos broke into full pandemonium. The Mighty One looked upwards just in time to see a shapeless lance of dark light just a few heartbeats away.
The world slowed down as Max did the only thing he could think of: he flung the little girl, who thankfully was quite light, as hard as he could towards safety and began to move in that direction himself. But he knew, even as she splashed into the pool some yards away to be snatched to safety by an adult, even as he stroked through the water frantically, that he would never get clear in time. His moments to escape had been spent ensuring the child was out of harm's way. It was far too late.
With a roar, the strange, panic-inducing thing flashed past the Cap-Bearer, exploding as it struck the bottom of the pool between him and safety. Its concussive blast stole the air from his lungs and made his ears ring, but Max was hardly aware of it. All he knew was the sickening feeling of falling amid broken glass and chunks of concrete and gallons of water now freed from the pool and spilling down the side of the skyscraper like a horrible waterfall.
And with the torrent, the Mighty One fell from the sky.
-==OOO==-
The scene was dreadful.
Red banners and lanterns hung in tatters where they had not been torn up for emergency bandages. Lounge chairs now served as stretchers for the injured and terrified. The empty pool, an artificial crater now made real, still dripped wet in places with both water and blood. Most of the water had gushed away after the explosion tore the once-magnificent building, flooding water and ruble onto the street far, far below. The blood belonged to the many, many wounded from the flying glass and debris that had been sent airborne, though thankfully, none of the injuries were too serious. The Mighty One had seen to that.
"If he hadn't warned people," Felix whispered shakily, "we'd all have been killed. Everybody in the pool would have gone over like he did."
"Max…oh no…" Bea sobbed, her head buried on Felix's shoulder. The long gash down her leg from a piece of cement still needed to be looked at and bandaged, but no one had the heart to pull the girl away. She stood, huddled against her remaining friend in the shelter of Norman and Virgil, mourning bitterly.
"That was the duty of the Mighty One, and his greatest gift," the ancient Lemurian said. He sounded old, very, very old, and every word was punctuated with a grief so profound it seemed to be spelled in his very feathers. "He was selfless to the very end. No matter the cost to himself, Mighty Max would risk everything for another. It was…he was a true hero."
"But couldn't he, you know, be okay?" Felix asked for the hundredth time. "He's always come back from stuff before."
"It's been half an hour," Norman said in a voice that might well have been granite for all the inflection it displayed. "If he could have returned, he would have by now."
"I just don't believe it!" Bea shuddered.
"Neither do I." Virgil hung his head. They stood silently for several more minutes before someone's remaining composure broke at last.
"This is all my fault!" Norman suddenly raged. The Viking had gone from entirely locked-down fury to utterly lost in it. "I should have gone to him the minute I knew something was wrong!"
"Norman, you…you couldn't have known," the Lemurian protested weakly.
"But I did know! And so did he! The Mighty One…" Norman trailed off, powerful emotions warring inside. He wanted to scream, he wanted to beat the ever-living daylight out of anything that moved, he wanted to shed tears of blood, and he wanted to seek revenge. But mostly he wanted his Cap-Bearer back.
As Bea continued to cry and Felix continued to be shocked, as Virgil began to mourn with the soul of one who has loved a charge better than he had ever loved another living being, Norman felt his heart explode within and die. His boy was gone, gone forever and for nothing. Not in battle, not in confrontation with Skullmaster, not even with the chance to say goodbye. Mighty Max was dead.
A primal roar tore itself from the Viking's throat. Norman would avenge his friend, his charge, his boy. He would see blood flow as it had not flowed on earth for a thousand generations, and when it was over, he would join Mighty Max at last to keep him company in eternity.
-==OOO==-
Max woke slowly, feeling pain with every throbbing beat of his heart. As he became aware of himself, it seemed that everything hurt – his ears, his head, his chest, his arm, his legs, even his hands. But the hurt was a good thing, and after a few agonizing moments, he relished it. Hurt meant he was alive.
He was on his stomach, he realized, lying on some very gritty, rocky ground, and the sun was very, very hot on his back. Prying his eyes open, the sight of a barren, scrubby land greeted him. Some kind of desert, but no place near home, nor Hong Kong, then.
"How did I…?"
Almost unaware, Max moved an arm that ached painfully to touch the Cap on his head. Of course. The memory of the last terrifying moments came back to him: as he had been falling from the building, the Cap had reacted, meaning a portal was nearby. Though he had had no way of knowing where it would lead, and indeed, some portals led into the bottom of the ocean or in the middle of a glacier, anything seemed better than his imminent death on the ground in a thousand sloppy bits. He had dived for the vortex with every bit of strength left to him, and had fainted almost immediately.
The Cap-Bearer pushed himself to his knees slowly and took stock; he had to know what shape he was in if he was going to have a few more minutes to think about anything else. He still had the Cap – that was the main thing. His head was ringing and he was fairly certain he had at least a mild concussion after the shockwave of the blast. Also, Max seemed to remember his head striking the side of the pool or the building on the way down. No wonder he had a headache then.
He was still wearing only his bathing suit, which meant there was a whole lot of exposed skin to be bruised, cut, and littered with abrasions from his disagreement with a concrete wall and less-than-controlled landing in a rocky field. One long cut stretched from almost his hand to his elbow and was bleeding quite rapidly. He must have used it to shield his face, for there was nothing amiss there that he could feel. His bare back hurt abominably, and he was reasonably sure that he was well and truly sunburned, as he had evidently been unconscious in the blazing sunlight for a while. His lungs ached from having the wind knocked out of him twice, and he had definitely turned an ankle and bruised a wrist landing here – wherever here was – but that seemed to be the extent of it. He was alive and basically in one piece. That was a start.
"Okay, Mighty One, now what?" Talking to himself always made Max feel a bit better.
A conversation held long ago with Virgil and Norman rose up in the Cap-Bearer's mind.
"If we are ever separated in the heat of battle, say you are cut off from us or fall into a portal by accident, you must return to us as quickly as you can," Virgil said, eyes piercing with the this-is-a-lesson-you-can't-miss look Max knew so well. "Depending on the nature of the separation, it may take you some time to find your way back, especially if you have actually taken a portal elsewhere."
"So what do I do then? It's not like I know every portal in the world and where it goes," Max said with a certain amount of exasperation.
"I know that. Therefore, Mighty One, you must do the best you can. You have already proven to know some portals, those we frequent more than others, and by and large you seem to have a ready grasp of which portals will lead you home. Correct?"
At Max's nod, Virgil had continued. "So our contingency plan is thus: if you are parted from us, Mighty One, head towards your own home. From there, you will either be able to backtrack to us immediately or wait for us to come for you. Also," and here Virgil's eyes had taken on a much more dire gleam, "should anything ever happen to the both of us, my advice is the same. Return to your home, and wait. Destiny will do the rest."
Although Max had never gotten a clear answer out of Virgil as to what he meant by that, at least he had something to go by.
"Okay. So, head home, then? Trouble is I don't know where I am now," the Cap-Bearer lamented, shakily getting to his feet and looking around. The hot, uneven land seemed to go on forever. Trusting in his famous luck, Max closed his eyes and spun himself around – not a difficult task given how dizzy he already was. When he opened his eyes, he headed as quickly as he could manage in the direction before him, praying that it would lead him to something, anything, that could help.
-==OOO==-
"Norman, I know you're in pain. I know it as well as you do," Virgil pleaded desperately with the Viking. "But you can't do this now!"
"Why not?" came the half-growled answer.
"A blood feud will not help us with our most immediate problems!"
"What problem is more immediate than the fact that the Mighty One is dead!?" Norman roared.
"Norman! I feel just as you do, but there are two things we must, must do first!" Virgil said wildly, doing everything in his power to keep the Guardian in check.
A grunt showed that at least for the moment, Norman was willing to listen.
"We must retrieve the Cap. It must have…it must be down somewhere below, and we must lay our hands on it or…everything will have been in vain." The Lemurian swallowed anguish at all the things such a statement meant, all the things he could not let himself feel and endure until his duty was done. At what they might find when they located the Cap, what might remain of its Bearer. Bile rose in his throat at the thought.
"But first, we must make a phone call. It is perhaps our last hope."
-==OOO==-
After the first mile or so, Max lost feeling in the bottom of his burning, lacerated bare feet. The sun was merciless, and his shoulders felt like they were bleeding from it. The air was dry, and the sudden, surprisingly harsh wind drove sand deep into the abrasions on his body.
"I'd rather run a marathon in Skullmaster's domain," he thought to himself, gritting his teeth as he nearly missed a step and had to slide to catch himself. But staying put would gain him nothing and possibly cost him his life. He squinted against the bright sun, grateful at least for the Cap's shade. Although lifting an arm hurt, he touched the brim, as if reassuring himself.
"You haven't let me down yet. I'm hoping you know where we're going," he muttered around the gravel in his throat, not entirely sure if he was speaking to the Cap, the universe, his destiny, or something else. But whatever he spoke to, it didn't seem to be listening.
The minute became what felt like hours, and soon Max's body was at its limit and he knew it. He was no longer bleeding, thankfully, but every bit of his body still hurt abominably, and the sunburn on his back was only getting worse as time went on. Worst of all, his head was spinning and Max knew it was as likely that he was walking in circles as that he was still moving in a straight line.
Just as he felt sure he could not endure another step, the Cap jumped to joyous life in the face of a portal. Max had no ability to consider where this one might take him, but he hardly cared; he fell into the portal and let it carry him away.
-==OOO==-
"Mother of the Mighty One, has the Cap-Bearer returned home?" There was a moment of tense, hopeful silence, and then the Lemurian's whole body seemed to slump inward, grief finally confirmed. "Then, I have grave, grave news."
Norman only half-listened to Virgil's conversation now that all they had feared was true. He felt ready to explode inside, and it was only out of respect for the boy he had lost and the friend who was also suffering that held him still.
"We believe…that the Mighty One…Max…has…fallen."
The pain that wrenched its way past Virgil's beak and into his voice pulled another of the Viking's heartstrings and snapped it. Whoever had done this, whoever had robbed them both, had robbed the world of their boy, they would pay. To his dying day, Norman would have blood vengeance for Max. And perhaps, perhaps in the seeking of that revenge, he could slaughter the pain inside that threatened to defeat him as no enemy ever had.
"I'm so sorry, my dear lady. We…couldn't save him. I'm so sorry."
A few moments later, the Lemurian ended the call, turning back to Norman with eyes that burned unshed tears. Norman was too angry, too close to berserking, to offer comfort, but he did nod shakily to Virgil.
"She said just what Felix did – that maybe he survived it somehow. It's…strange, how those who had only rarely seen Mighty Max in such danger feel so certain it could not have taken him. But we, who have known him to escape many times before, know better. I wonder why."
"Because we know better than they that the Mighty One was always human, always just a boy, and more fragile than most. They knew him only as a son or friend and a hero, but we knew him as more. We knew all that he was, all he would be. All he never…" But Norman could not go on. He closed his throat and hung his head as grief briefly quenched the fire within and drowned him.
-==OOO==-
This time, Max tried to focus on keeping himself conscious as he rode through the wild energies of the portal, drawing what little courage he could from the fact that at least he had made it long enough to blindly gamble once more. As the end of the portal came up, he faced it with his eyes open, ready for anything.
Or so he thought. But as he passed through the portal, something disoriented him, maybe the usual head-rush of using the Cap, and his sight exploded into bright colors before fading to grey. He felt himself bump on something relatively soft and cool, but he was beyond even knowing if he was on snow or sand or grass. It hardly mattered – he couldn't have done anything about it.
Movement felt impossible, and for some reason, Max couldn't even care very much anymore. How long he floated lying there he didn't know, but something eventually roused him from his stupor. A voice quite near to his head spoke.
"I know you! You are the Cap-Bearer, are you not? And hurt!"
Max's head was swimming again, and he felt himself sliding down a long, dark tunnel. It was cool there, and it seemed easier. He let himself go, a few words accompanying him to oblivion.
"Do not fear. I will take care of you. Rest, Mighty One. You are safe now."