Fon knows something is wrong. He's tried to take better care of himself, but the headaches, fatigue, and pain have only gotten worse. He knows these symptoms from before. It can't be that though. There's no way the universe is cruel enough to give him that again. It has to be something else. Fon starts avoiding food again: eating only what he's cooked or what Mei and Sifu bring him. It doesn't help, so he probably isn't being poisoned. Not that he's vulnerable to poison; Fon is careful to use Poison Disintegration whenever he isn't completely certain the food is safe. Contrary to what would be convenient, his life doesn't stop at the realization he's ill. Even if he was inclined to tell them, the Triad wouldn't let him out of his assignments. He usually has assignments about four times a week.
This job seems like a typical assassination at first, and it isn't hard to get to his target. He doesn't bother with a ruse and simply climbs in through a third story window. Fon is surprised when the target isn't alone. He doesn't know why the guy is here (if he's the target's bodyguard or lover or both, Fon doesn't judge) but he's pretty impressive. In this crazy world, sometimes he forgets that non-Flame-users can be just as dangerous as Flame-users. This man uses a variety of poison, which Fon was not as prepared for as he would have expected.
Throwing knives coated in poison don't even faze Fon because he's fast enough to dodge bullets. He doesn't need to use his Flames if he doesn't get hit. Then the man drops a capsule that disperses a mist into the air. When Fon had taught himself Poison Disintegration, he had been focused on what he ingested. Given the frequency with which people in the Triad tried to poison his food, it only made sense. He's never prepared himself for inhalants. Seeing the poison dissolve into the air, Fon feels vulnerable for the first time in a long time.
He didn't know he was still capable of panic.
His Flames react. They explode out of him in a way he hasn't experienced since they first activated. Fon has enough control to direct them to burn everything around him. The room is on fire and his target is dead and his opponent is dead, but there is poison in the air. He doesn't know how far it spread, or how potent it is. He doesn't want to die and the air isn't an opponent he can fight. At some point he realizes that his Storm Flames coat him like a second skin. Trying not to breathe, he makes his way to the warehouse he uses for Flame training.
It's been years since he needed meditation to perform Poison Disintegration. He meditates anyway.
He concentrates on his respiratory system. Usually it's the digestive system he focuses on, but he's done enough breathing for his martial arts to know how it's supposed to work. Looking for anything that's not supposed to be there, he then burns it away. Fon loses track of time as he works, but he's pretty sure he's going to live. His nose is bleeding and he's exhausted, but he hasn't keeled over yet.
If there's any poison left in his system, he can't figure it out himself. There's only one way to check. Of all the people in the Triad, there is no one Fon hates more than the medic. That creep has a habit of looking too long and touching too much. He's the reason why Fon got so good at treating injuries. No way is he leaving Mei alone with that guy. But Fon can't do blood tests, so he has no choice.
The creep (Fon refuses to remember his name) makes him take his shirt off for no reason, but he doesn't touch. Fon broke his fingers last time Creep tried. The blood tests are done quickly. It turns out, he did manage to burn all the poison out of his bloodstream. But the results turned up something that makes him panic again. A new record really: twice in one day, when he hasn't done this at all since before. It's also the third time he's completely Disintegrated someone who set him off. Everyone in the Triad dismisses it as the Creep trying to touch him. This allows Fon to hide the diagnosis that panicked him.
Leukemia.
It killed him once. Slowly and painfully and bringing so much suffering to those he cared for. Treatment after treatment, each worse than the last till he hated them more than he hated the illness. He can't do that again. Not to himself or to his sister. It terrifies him more than the knowledge of what is to come. But he refuses to die. Not this time. This time, Fon is going to win.
The solution comes to him so easily he wants to cry. It's essentially a targeted therapy using Storm Flames. Before, the first thing they tried had been targeted therapy. Targeted therapy uses substances that hurt only cancer cells. It didn't work then. Then they had tried chemotherapy after that. It had made him so sick he had begged them to stop. Losing his hair had hurt. He wasn't vain, but it felt like even the most basic parts of himself were being taken away.
Now, he keeps his hair long. He's aware it makes him androgynous and that the Triad jokes about his sexuality. It's also a target in fights; people always try to get him by the hair. He doesn't care about any of that. It's something that's his. Like the tattoo, his hair is for no one but himself. If his plan works, Fon will keep his hair this time.
He goes back to his physical meditations. Fon also studies about the way the bones produce blood cells and what leukemia does. He studies with the fervor and obsession usually reserved for his marital arts. Concentrating on how his body should be working, he looks for what's wrong. It takes weeks of intense meditation, but he learns to feel it: the cancer in his bone marrow. To his minds' eye, it seems like a dark mass – a wrongness – in his bones where the cell production occurs. Fon can almost feel the excess white blood cells entering his system.
Using his Storm Flames to burn out that inhaled poison was the most precise work he's ever done. This is going to be a thousand times more difficult. It's more than the guided precision of Poison Disintegration; it's forcing his Flames to work against basic instinct. Flames naturally work to protect the user, and they only backlash when misused or used excessively. Cancer cells aren't an intruding outside force the same way poisons are. They are abnormal and damaging growths, but they are still his cells.
For all the delicacy of the human body, it's actually rather difficult for humans to hurt themselves. It takes the same force to break fingers as it takes to break a baby carrot. But basic instinct and pain responses prevent it. Martial artists train themselves to overcome those limits. They learn to hit hard enough to hurt themselves in order to do things like break boards and cinderblocks. Fon has long taken that to the extreme (he's long taken all his training beyond normal limits). Applying this aspect of his martial arts training to his Flames is new. But it's necessary.
The weeks – then months – that he works on this alarm Mei and Sifu. They think his food issues are back, so they hover over him. Eating is difficult; he feels the lack of appetite that is a symptom of leukemia. Forcing himself to eat is hard, but he does it to keep them from worrying. It does help a little in fighting off the fatigue.
Two months of experimentation eventually pay off and he adjusts Poison Disintegration to target the leukemia. Meditation reveals that the cancerous cells are being reduced. It takes a period of about three weeks to Disintegrate them to the point he feels better. The dizziness and fatigue goes away, the headaches stopped, he can eat again, and the only bruises he has are from training and fights. Mei and Sifu seem relieved.
Just in time, too. Something seems to be up with the Triad. In the last two weeks, he has been completely pulled from missions. The teachers have also stepped up his training. His martial arts styles are more fluid than they've ever been before. Also, they've taken to drilling him on the 'romance languages': English, Italian, French and Spanish. While before gives him an advantage, this is a large change from the more local/practical languages he'd been taught since he was born here: Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese and Korean. Whatever it is that's going on, it has to do with martial arts and it's probably happening in Europe. Fon is officially curious.
