Interlude 2
He hated this city. The buildings were all too short and there weren't enough lights to go around. Most of it was rough stonework, hardly any concrete or plastic to be seen. The locals called the architecture 'quaint' and 'historical'. He called it 'old-school trash'.
As Evan ran down the pavement, four or five drunk men chasing after him, he reflected that may have not been the wisest of comments to make. In retrospect, he really should not have mentioned that out loud when the locals were in earshot. Certainly not whilst walking past an open-air pub.
'Evan' was not his real name. When he'd been born his parents had given him a proper name to call him by. After they'd died, he'd chosen a new one for himself. As a Chinese teenager dressed in worn trousers and a hooded sweatshirt, he was barely half the size of the men chasing him. Despite this size difference, he was clearly in much better shape—he ran with the practiced stride of one who regularly took up distance running, while the men chasing him were already showing signs of fatigue.
At least people walk and drive on the correct side of the road here, he mused. He didn't want to imagine what might have happened if he hadn't looked to his right and left before crossing the street. He might have missed seeing the scooter that nearly clipped him as he attempted to escape across it.
He planted his right foot into the pavement, stalling his forward momentum just long enough to keep himself from stepping into the scooter's path. Its driver beeped at him as it drew close and passed barely centimetres in front of him.
Jerk.
His left leg came around, snapping itself to full extension just in front of the driver, then hooking back around to catch him just beneath his chin. The man flew off the back of his vehicle and slammed into the ground. The scooter continued for several more metres before it crashed to the street and skidded to a stop.
He wasted no time, kneeling across the driver's chest and wrenching the helmet away from his head. Even as the other man gasped in pain, he palmed the protective headgear and let his power course through it. Information about its mass and material composition flooded through his mind and continuously updated him as he made the alterations.
The hard plastic shell shifted and portions of it withdrew into itself, leaving short, stubby spikes along its surface. The full-faced visor was reinforced with extra material even as the rest of the helmet itself lost an equal amount spread across its surface. Seeing his task completed, he dropped the helmet around his own head, then squared his shoulders and turned to face his former assailants.
Of the original group chasing him, only three of them now surrounded him along the pavement. Behind the wall they presented towards him, he saw a fourth member walking unsteadily towards him, breathing heavily from their brief chase. If there had been a fifth, he saw no sign of him.
Then he felt a sharp impact against the side of his helmet and he stumbled briefly. There he is. The fifth man cried out in pain and shook out his fist, blood welling up where his knuckles had scraped against the spikes.
"Bloody hell!" the man shouted.
"Ha ha," he replied. "That's funny, because your hand is all bloody. Clever. I approve."
One of the other men grabbed his collar and hoisted him up into the air, bringing his face within inches of his helmet. "You think you're hot stuff, Chink?"
"No..." he grabbed the man's sleeve with his hand. The mass of the cloth filtered through his mind. With a thought, he forced the whole shirt to consume itself, the energy twisting itself around and sparking itself into fire. "I think you're the hot stuff around here."
The man shrieked as his clothing spontaneously combusted, dropping him back to the ground and frantically trying to pat himself down.
Hidden behind his newly acquired visor, Evan's eyes shone with glee as the reflection of the flames danced within his eyes.
ooo
By the time the official response had arrived, all five men—six if one included the owner of the scooter—had fallen to the pavement in various states of unconsciousness.
The pavement itself was warped in areas. Short calf-high barriers were sprinkled here and there, with matching divots nearby where the extra mass had been drawn away to raise them. Several of the brawlers had bruises along the front or back of their legs at the same height as the walls. The top half of a signpost was missing completely, a man lay nearby with a scorch mark against his side.
The scooter itself was almost unrecognisable. It had been stretched out to nearly twice its length, its mass shifted and rearranged along its frame to resemble a serpentine creature. If anyone had bothered to ask, however, Evan would have informed them that it only had a little less than three-quarters of its mass remaining on the frame.
The first responders had their squad car blown up from underneath them by a fireball the size of a bowling ball. Five-eights of the scooter's mass remained.
The next few squad cars to arrive took up safer positions several dozen metres away and officers took cover behind their open doors.
"Step away from the... vehicle!" a bullhorn-amplified voice rang out. "Hold your hands out to your sides, do not make any sudden moves!"
Evan flipped the visor on the helmet up briefly and spat onto the ground before lowering it again. He arranged the scooter-dragon in a more stable position and then removed his hand, turning slightly and leaning his back against it, arms crossed against his chest.
"Self-defense!" he called out. "These bums tried to jump me!"
"Put down your weapons!"
He grinned, "I don't have any!"
"Final warning, put down your weapons!"
He rolled his eyes, though the action was lost since his face was still covered. "What weapons?!"
"Hold your fire," an authoritative voice called out. A tall man clad in an armoured, golden costume stepped inside the perimeter, a young girl in a white, hooded cloak following at his heels. "We'll handle this."
"Sir—" the officer belatedly realised he was still shouting through the bullhorn at the cape and flicked it off. "Yes, sir!"
"What's your name, boy?" the older cape asked, fists posted against his hips.
"What's yours, Old Man?" Evan countered.
"I go by Ajax," he said politely. The bulky golden armour around his limbs and chest plates shifted briefly before settling down as he stepped into the ring bordered by the police cars.
Evan shrugged. "Never heard of you."
There was a slight pause as the two simply stared at each other. The hero was obviously waiting on Evan to return the courtesy he'd been given and offer his own name. Seconds passed as Ajax took several more steps towards the pavement, several steps closer to Evan.
"Are you responsible for this?" Ajax waved his hand to encompass the torn up pavement and fallen bodies.
"Maybe."
"Are you perhaps also responsible for the recent incidents of vandalism around this area?" Ajax's helmet stared pointedly at the coiled up scooter-dragon.
"Maaaybe."
"You are a remarkably unhelpful and rude individual, has anyone ever told you that?"
Evan inclined his head and grinned. "Why, thank you."
Ajax sighed. "I'm going to ask you just this once, will you come quietly and turn yourself in?"
Evan glanced upwards, staring at the 'head' of his transformed scooter. "Nah."
ooo
The fight was short. Evan had never heard of Ajax before, but if he'd had he would have recognised the mythology the man had taken his name from. Not that it had really mattered.
The man's costume was able to emit a large energy barrier that protected him from most attacks. After a barrage of fire that consumed half of the scooter's remaining mass, the barrier either ran out of power, or Ajax had simply decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Further attacks met the next layers of his defenses, reactive armour panels positioned across both of his arms, both of his legs, and his front and back plates. Seven layers of defense—each worthy of the ancient Greek hero—in normal situations it would have been able to sustain itself against all sorts of attacks.
The main problem was that his second-through-seventh layers were all physical objects. Which meant they were all parts of the whole that was Ajax's armour itself. It was also heavy armour.
One touch from Evan and the whole thing became a mass of metallic alloys that solidified all of the armour's formerly flexible joints and completely restricted Ajax's movements and encased him in a stiff shell that covered everything but his face. Unable to move, unable to stand, Ajax was very much out of the fight.
Evan's victory posturing was interrupted by a spherical formation of snow the size of a wrecking ball slamming into him from the side. He was bowled over by the impact, skidding several metres before he halted his uncontrolled tumble and got his feet back underneath him.
He slapped one hand against the ground, turning towards the direction the snowball had been fired from. A portion of the street itself warped and rose into the air as he pivoted. He was met with a horizontal snowfall, a barrage of snowflakes that did nothing but hinder his vision. A police car suddenly dropped into a small sinkhole that had opened up beneath it as the street-dragon belched fire, evaporating the snow flurry in front of him.
He stumbled again as he was struck from behind. He managed to keep his hand against his newest creation long enough to turn it around and shoot blindly in the direction of this new assault, but a clump of snow rose into the fire stream's path and snuffed it out, long enough for the pressure against his back to tear him free from the structure, rendering it inert.
His hands were quickly pulled behind his back and cuffed together. After a few more moments to make sure he was secured, the person kneeling on top of him stepped away. Several police officers moved forward to haul him to his feet, but he paid them no attention. Instead his glare was focused on the girl in the white cloak who was just now walking around him.
Ajax's sidekick. He hadn't even remembered she was there, so focused he'd been on her boss. Ajax had drawn his complete attention whilst his subordinate had prepared her attack. The older hero probably hadn't quite expected his defenses to fall so easily, but it had still worked. He was impressed, in spite of himself.
He watched as the female cape kneeled beside her boss and he grinned, even as the police officers manhandled him into a squad car. Ignoring the normals' various questions and commands, he slouched against the back seat and listed out his options. Now then... how can I turn this to my advantage?
...
"You set another garden on fire."
Wu Lung was startled out of his nap as a stack of papers dropped onto the table in front of him. Eyeballing the pile, he groaned as he calculated the time it would take to fill all of the sheets out.
"When we arranged your parole, it was with the understanding that I would be doing everything within my power to curtail your more dangerous habits," Flurry continued.
"Aww, c'mon," Wu protested. "That garden was already a mess. Weeds everywhere. It was the only way to be sure."
"Unfortunately for you, the owner does not share your conclusions." Flurry sat down in the chair across the table with a much shorter stack of paperwork in front of her. She flipped the first page over to glance at the reverse side. "The bounty for this capture is only £700. The cost of removing debris and replanting the garden comes to around £940. I will inform you now that I am not going to be contributing my share for your mistakes."
"Nine-hundred and... you've got to be kidding me! You just need a bunch of flower seeds and water!"
"Then perhaps you would like to contribute your own gardening expertise towards its recovery?"
Wu glared at Flurry, but she met his eyes without flinching. In all the time since he'd met her, he had never once seen her face smile, frown, or emote anything period. The first time she'd taken off her mask in front of him, he'd thought he had managed to annoy her so completely that her face had gone beyond fury and straight into the indifferent flatness he soon learned was her default expression.
Wu knew he was not a handsome man. He had thick eyebrows, narrow eyes, and a mouth seemingly set in a perpetual frown. He knew—from the reactions of people around him and also looking into a mirror when he was younger—that with a slight shift of his mouth and brows he could present the impression of uncontrollable fury, enough to make even the most courageous of men shy away from him briefly.
Except Flurry had never seemed to notice. Not even when he got in her face, screaming at her from the top of his lungs. She regarded him steadily in the same manner she regarded the cuddliest child. Except Wu was pretty sure even the cuddly child would be unnerved after being subjected to that inflectionless stare for any lengthy period of time. He was almost glad she wore that featureless, white mask out in public.
He sighed and broke the stare first, shuffling through his papers in an attempt to look busy.
Flurry didn't acknowledge his surrender, simply continuing from where she had left off. "I have already sent a memo to your trust fund. They will be managing the transfer of your assets to the landowner."
"Fine."
"I would ask that you find an alternative means to utilise your abilities. Something less destructive."
"I could shoot out shiny sparks instead. That would keep enough material intact to... I don't know—use my dragons as a shield or bludgeon things to death."
"Aside from the 'to death' part, that seems like an acceptable alternative."
"You're serious."
"I'm not Sirius, I am Sunny."
"You're... what?" Wu glanced up and found Flurry looking uncharacteristically flustered. At least he assumed that's what it was. She wasn't exactly wiggling around uncomfortably or twisting her mouth in embarrassment. An outsider might not even have noticed the miniscule change in her expression.
"I—ah... forgive me." She said. "That phrase reminded me of... someone I used to know. She liked to read... I mean, it was a reflexive..." She abruptly rose from the table and retrieved her mask. "Excuse me."
Wu blinked in surprise as Flurry suddenly retreated from the room. Then blinked again as he took in the stack of papers left on the conference table. He scowled.
"Fucking A..."
...
"Another one?" Wu frowned at the printout. "Don't we have enough people as it is? This place isn't exactly Villain Central. And we're already barely making ends meet with this guy dragging us down." He turned his head to regard the third person in the room. "No offense."
"None taken," Volley replied distractedly, his focus on the laptop in his lap.
"He is relatively inexperienced and his abilities are not sufficient for him to be able to make it on his own," Flurry said. "He claims he is local and he knows the area well. I believe his skill sets will complement our own nicely."
"What does he do?" Wu said.
Flurry opened her mouth, paused, and closed it. "I think it would be easier to understand if you see it for yourself." She half turned towards the door. "Do you have any further objections?"
Volley shrugged. Wu folded his arms and looked towards the ceiling.
"Fine," he said. "I'll see what the kid can do before I pass judgement."
Flurry left the room and returned with a young boy barely out of his teens. He wore a light-coloured jumpsuit, but unlike the other heroes he completely eschewed protective headgear or even a mask. Instead he wore a scarf wrapped loosely around his neck, raised just high enough to cover his mouth—although the fact that he was a good head or two shorter than everyone else in the room made that somewhat useless. Finally, he was either attempting a Superman-Clark Kent version of a disguise, or he had nothing to replace his glasses with.
"Worst. Costume. Ever," Wu instantly decided.
"Hey! I designed this costume! Show some respect!" the irate voice was high-pitched and Wu nearly re-categorised the newcomer as a young girl, right until he noticed the blue... thing floating through the door behind him.
"Bwa?"
"Eloquent as ever, Wu," Volley said, looking up from his laptop. "What's your name, kid?"
"Erm," the newcomer said. "Codename or real name?"
Volley's head lolled around his neck—his replacement for an eye-roll whilst his helmet was on—and extended his hand. "Volley. Pleased to meet you."
"Looking Glass," the teen said, taking the hand and pumping it once. "Yoroshiku, er, please take good care of me," he said with a slight bow.
Wu scoffed. "Great, a Kyushu refugee."
"Wu Lung," Flurry's tone was admonishing.
Looking Glass flushed slightly. "Actually, I was born here... but my parents lived there when they were younger. They moved here before it sank."
"The impolite one, as I'm sure you've gathered, is Wu Lung. I assume you're already familiar with Flurry over there," Volley said. He waved his hand towards Looking Glass. "So who's the pretty lady there?"
"I'm Jamie!" the little sprite chirped, preening slightly.
Wu arched an eyebrow, surprised that the thing had answered for itself. "Master-classification?" he hazarded.
"Something like that," Looking Glass replied.
"So, what can it—she—do?" Wu asked.
"Er, well, as you can see, she can communicate on her own. So if I wanted to I could send her next door and have a conversation with anybody I find over there." Looking Glass shrugged and scratched the back of his head. "We can share sight and hearing with each other. Basically anything I know, she'll know."
"And what can you do?"
"I, er... not much at the moment. I've signed up for some personal self-defense classes at my school, it's almost like their version of P.E."
"Hmm," Volley rubbed his chin, intrigued. "Your, ah—Jamie, was it? How far can she go?"
"Uh, I'm not sure, actually. I've generally kept her relatively close to me in the past, but I know we're good for at least a few hundred metres." He shrugged. "I could find out?"
"Interesting." Volley glanced at Flurry and nodded. "I'm sold, Boss-lady. My sensor packages are still a work-in-progress; I wouldn't mind having a second pair of eyes to play spotter for me."
Flurry nodded and turned to look at Wu.
Wu pointed towards the door, "In private?"
Looking Glass seemed to deflate slightly with disappointment.
Flurry simply nodded again and stepped outside. Wu followed her out and then went down the hallway into a second conference room. He stood there, facing the table until Flurry closed the door behind them, and then spun around.
"You want him for his ghost-thingy, don't you?" he asked without preamble. "And I don't mean just because she is his power."
Flurry froze, then slowly nodded. She reached up to pull her mask away, revealing a face the other two—or three—people would assume to be completely expressionless.
Evan pulled off his own helmet and ran a hand through his hair. "She reminds you of..."
"Yes." Flurry didn't elaborate—she didn't have to. They'd gone through similar discussions in the past, many times over.
Evan sighed. "Flur—Elaine... you have got to let this go. It's been years."
"I can't forget," Elaine said, staring down at her hands. "I'm reminded of it every day. It was my fault."
"Bullshit," Evan countered. "It was an accident. Anyhow, I'm not asking you to forget about it. Just... don't let the memory control you."
Elaine closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her waist. "... I'll—I will try," she whispered.
Evan placed his hand beneath her chin and raised it so that she was facing him. He waited until her eyes opened before he spoke again. "Now, tell me what you think, not what you feel. Use that brain you're so proud of. Do we need this kid? I'm sure Ajax is still looking for a new sidekick to mentor."
Elaine closed her eyes again as she pondered the question. Evan waited a minute. Two minutes. Finally she opened her eyes again and nodded. "He'll be useful."
Wu snorted and stepped back, pulling his helmet back over his head. "I'll believe it when I see it," he said.
...
Stratod...ncer down,GH-2. Melon Kali dec...ed,GH-2.
Wu Lung decided that these armbands were worse than useless. He'd heard so many great things about them—how they improved coordination between the coalition of capes and acted as emergency beacons for the fallen or the injured.
At any other time, it might have done so. Against Behemoth... well, either he had control over whatever radio waves these things functioned off of, or the energy he was putting out interfered with them. So, communications were mostly a bust. What few messages that did come through were lists of the casualties.
Wu couldn't speak for anyone else, but that did not strike him as being good for morale.
Their group had been split up. He and Flurry were part of the shielding teams, Volley had been tasked with his favorite role of long-ranged suppressive fire. Glass was even further from the frontlines, using J as communications and tracking.
At least he's finally good for something, Wu thought uncharitably.
To be fair, Glass and J had both proven their worth on several occasions. For the most part, however, Wu felt that they were merely a slight improvement over the working strategy that he, Flurry, and Volley already contributed to their team. So what if they'd found their targets in roughly half the time they usually spent hunting them down? Looking Glass did nothing to help with the actual takedowns.
Here, he was even more useless. Except for the fact that even the short-range transceivers Volley had been so proud of were glitching up, J would have been out of a job.
Eyjafjallajökull—How the fuck do you pronounce that?—was a completely unpopulated mass of rock and ice. Nobody knew why the Endbringer had chosen to strike here, although apparently his movements under the crust had triggered the volcano that was at the centre of the ice cap. The ash clouds had grounded airports all across Europe.
'I've inconvenienced Humanity for a few months, go me!'
A shout went up from several capes with ranged-viewing capabilities and word quickly spread down the line. The Endbringer was approaching their defense line. As he waited patiently for his orders, Wu wasn't surprised to see an electric blue backdropped against the ash clouds, diving towards their position.
"Hey!" J said as she slowed to a hover. "Um, the Beemer is approaching, somebody said ee-tee-aye four minutes or so. So uh... people behind you are getting ready to shoot him. You might want to put up shields."
"I would never have imagined," Wu said dryly. "Thank you, J."
Flurry's mask turned towards him briefly before she returned her attention to J. "Acknowledged," she said.
"Anytime!" the little sprite chirped. She flickered away, repeating her time estimates and the orders to capes further down the line.
Flurry began summoning snow from the air several metres in front of them, packing it as tightly as she could even as more and more snow began to gather. A nearby cape—he thought he'd seen her arrive with that group of American heroes—began reinforcing the walls with sheets of ice, forming a rough framework and extending it even further along to the sides.
Wu dropped into a crouch and planted his hand against the earth. Volcanic rocks were in abundance, but most of them ranged between medium sized boulders and sand-like pebbles. He began constructing his dragon, starting from several palm-sized rocks. He sacrificed portions of their mass to melt the surrounding rocks and add them to the main structure.
His armband crackled with static at the same time that shouts rang out from somewhere behind him and he saw several energy barrages lance out towards the approaching monstrosity. Most of them were absorbed or redirected by the dynakinetic.
As Behemoth approached closer Wu could see several smaller shapes circling him. Mover-class capes on harassment duty trying to delay him. Several forked lightning bolts shot out from the Endbringer and he saw several dots plummeting to the ground it their wake. His armband crackled with each successive lightning strike, but the transmissions weren't clear enough to make out any words.
Suddenly there was a bright flash and a glowing line connected Behemoth to a rocky ridge off to its side. A split second after the line began to fade, a gout of flesh and blood erupted from Behemoth's side and a loud crack filled the air.
Behemoth paused briefly and Wu noticed Flurry and the ice cape redoubling their efforts to increase the size and strength of their barrier. He belatedly did the same—he had his construct dig itself deeper into the earth and began absorbing rocks and boulders deeper within the ice cap as well as spreading it out, continuously adding more and more mass to his soon-to-be-dragon.
Another light flared up from the ridge accompanied by the loud crack, but this time there was no explosion in Behemoth's skin. Instead, a white-hot, glowing projectile hovered in mid-air for several brief moments as Behemoth absorbed its kinetic energy, then it shot back the way it had come, just as fast.
The projectile slashed through the ridge, breaking off a large chunk and starting a rockslide down towards the base of the mountain. The armband crackled. No more shots fired from the remains of the cliff face.
Behemoth resumed his course towards the defensive line.
Fire poured continuously at the Endbringer from the formations behind them, yet most of it was absorbed, redirected, or—in a few cases—reflected. The returned shots impacted shields and barriers setup by their defensive lines. As the Endbringer drew closer, so did the amount of reflections sent back to the capes firing them.
Barriers went up, barriers fell. Shields were rebuilt and reinforced. Still pressed against the ground, Wu Lung commanded his rock-dragon to rise.
An enormous, Asiatic dragon of ebony lifted itself free of the ground, rearing back as the Endbringer approached. Wu commanded it to coil up in front of him, his hand resting against its tail. He saved every shred of mass that he could, condensing the rock until it was almost half of its original size, yet almost denser than diamond.
His dragon snapped its head to the side, catching a reflected laser beam before it could continue any further. The laser gouged out a small crater, but the head remained mostly intact. The small pieces of rock that fell from the impact were far heavier than anything their size had a right to be.
Even as the head reeled away from the force of the laser's impact, another coil rose into the air to catch a projectile bolt. Another explosion as the energy of the impact chipped away at the dragon's body.
Swaying back and forth, from side to side, sometimes spinning in place to intercept the various beams and other energy strikes... his dragon danced.
Behemoth stepped in closer.
A lightning bolt flashed out, instantly blowing through the carefully constructed barriers of capes several hundred metres away. The armbands crackled. The ground in that area smoked and no new barriers rose to take their place.
Another lightning bolt, this one caught by the Dancing Dragon. Its head shattered with the energy, sending small but massive shards of rocks flying everywhere. The armbands crackled.
Wu Lung winced.
Another lightning bolt. And another. And another.
One such bolt instantly evaporated Flurry's and the ice cape's barrier, grounding itself between them. The earth exploded with rocks and other debris. Wu ducked behind the tail of his dragon and heard scrapes and pings as debris bounced off of its surface. The American cape hastily erected another ice wall between herself and the explosion but was still thrown to the ground as it imploded.
Flurry was blown backwards by the impact. He might have imagined it, but Wu thought he heard several sharp cracks as jagged rocks impacted her body. He definitely did not imagine the spray of red as her left arm all but shattered.
Their armbands crackled. Neither Flurry nor the ice cape rose to their feet again.
Wu Lung might have screamed. He might have cried. He might have gotten to his feet, climbing onto the back of the remains of his Dancing Dragon. He might have marched it forward, gathering more material as he closed the distance between himself and Behemoth. Nobody was paying close enough attention to know for sure.
He might have been watched by an electric-blue spectral ghost-type-thing screaming his name at the top of her lungs. But that's silly, she didn't have any lungs.
What is known is that Wu Lung went head-to-head against the strongest Endbringer—the Hero Killer himself—with a 50 tonne Dancing Dragon of volcanic rock.
He had... less than spectacular results.
ooo
.
.
.
He hated this city. The buildings were all too short and there weren't enough lights to go around. Most of it was rough stonework, hardly any concrete or plastic to be seen. The locals called the architecture 'quaint' and 'historical'. He called it 'old-school trash'.
In a another life, things went slightly... differently. In a another life, Evan didn't run into any sneaky sidekicks. He did run into a bunch of drunk braggarts... and beat them up. He ran up against a local hero and beat him up. The rest of the Bristol heroes didn't quite like that and after several months of continuous fighting he was forced to cut his losses and flee across the estuary. Cardiff didn't much like him either so he'd decided to head somewhere a bit smaller.
The latest town he'd found himself in was even more quaint than the others, with even older buildings. He didn't just hate it, he loathed it.
But it beat getting chased around by the various heroes in the larger cities. Granted, there was one hero in the out-of-the-way areas somewhere, but he was just a Tinker, and Tinkers never lasted very long against his power. They didn't like their equipment disintegrating into flames for some reason.
The guy had still put up a decent fight. Apparently he was a Tinker that enjoyed long-ranged combat and Wu had a devil of a time trying to track him down whilst he was being continuously sniped at. But in the end he ran out of materials before Wu did, and departed for parts unknown shortly afterwards.
Their battlefields had more or less become Wu's territory, with all of his various dragons littering the streets. It was then that Wu remembered a truism of life—people were jerks. They enjoyed stepping on those who were weaker than they were just for the sheer hell of it. If they found someone too strong, a group of them would just band together to take them out.
The solution was simple, he just had to become the biggest jerk around. One by one, he squashed the various gangs and crews in the area, driving them into the neighboring areas or assuming control over them. He'd learned his lesson from Bristol, however, and did everything he could to keep the territory running just well enough that he wouldn't attract attention from the capes operating in the surrounding areas.
Most of the residential areas he left completely untouched. He'd organised his new gangs to clean up the streets after his brief war. Only the various warehouses and industrial buildings were left to be his groups playgrounds. They reacted swiftly to any intrusions from other gangs, sometimes Wu would take the field himself and scare them all shitless.
It was during one of these raids that he first met Elaine Thompson—or 'Sunny' as she was generally referred to by the people around her. She ran some sort of store that catered to poor people, it seemed. She was well-liked in the community, donated to charities, all of that feel-good bullshit.
It seemed like a good idea at first. What better way to trick the heroes into thinking he was helping the community he had taken over? So he'd brought out the muscle and marched in, determined to put forth his special form of negotiation.
Wu was no stranger to combat injuries. He had been bludgeoned, he'd been shot at, he'd been electrified, punched, he'd suffered all sorts of interesting injuries. But try as he might, he had never recalled ever being slapped before.
He'd taken the place over anyhow. He'd placed the building and the area around it under his protection, marking the new boundaries. A few workers had fled, but for the most part the staff stubbornly stayed in place. A few of them even gave him and his representatives the respect they'd deserved.
But not Sunny.
They'd developed a working relationship of sorts. She verbally harassed him at every visit, belittling all of his accomplishments as if he hadn't done a decent thing in his entire life. He stoically took it all in as part of a stubborn effort to show her that he was not the common street thug she was painting him as, then professionally and reasonably reiterated his case for absorbing her little collective into his fold.
He still got slapped a few times every now and then. Even on the occasions when he ran off various gangs from her business, she still stubbornly refused his advances. She was grateful for his interventions, although her gratitude merely extended to slightly harsh language rather than her holier-than-thou rants.
Some of his minions thought the whole affair was amusing. A few of them teased him about it to his face. He set their clothes on fire. He never heard another peep on the subject.
...
A pair of minio—sentries—entered the building he used as his headquarters and immediately began jabbering their reports to him. In Scottish... or something. He couldn't tell. He glanced over at his lieutenant of the day and found him nodding as they spoke.
"What the fuck are they saying?"
The other man looked startled for a moment before his expression shifted into chagrin. "Oh, sorry, sir. Um, apparently there's an intruder."
Wu stared at the man for a few moments, waiting for the punchline. When nothing else came out, he rolled his eyes. "Yes... I can tell we have some sort of intruder, because I remember sending these guys out for that very purpose—I don't suppose you can describe the intruder?" He turned towards his sentries directly.
One of them opened his mouth—
"In English, if you would," Wu interrupted him, rolling his eyes. "Are you people Brits or not?"
The sentry clammed his mouth shut and all three underlings gave him a pitying look.
He didn't like that look. He tapped his fingers against his gauntlets pointedly. "What?"
"Erm, it's nothing, sir."
"It's just one person, a woman," the first sentry said in English. "She was asking to speak with you."
He frowned and held up a hand just below his brow. "About yeah-high, short-haired brunette?"
"I think so."
Wu hesitated. This was unprecedented. Sunny had never once deigned to visit his lair. Until now he hadn't even realised she knew where it was. "Did she look... happy? Neutral? Pissed off?"
"Very pissed off, sir."
Great. Wu sighed. "This'll be fun, go ahead and send her in."
Several minutes later, Wu was slouched comfortably in his favorite chair as he waited. He hadn't bothered with his helmet—his higher-level members already knew what he looked like, as did their guest. The door clicked open as Sunny was led into the room, followed by his lieutenant. The teasing remarks he had prepared to open the conversation with died on his lips as he noticed her expression—and her condition—and he involuntarily straightened in his seat.
She raised a bruised arm to jab a finger at him. "If you had anything to do with this, then parahuman or not I will find a way to rip you into shreds." Her words were slightly slurred, a large bruise on her cheek had swelled up and she was forced to speak around it.
"I... er, what?!" Wu gaped in surprise. Had there been an attack on her store? He'd not received any reports from his scouts to suggest such a thing. Even if there had been, she wasn't scheduled to work there today... not that he kept track of such things.
Sunny visibly deflated when presented with his rather obvious bewilderment. She glanced around the room, then turned a tired stare towards him. "May I have a chair, please?"
His lieutenant swiftly retrieved a chair from a side-room—promotion for that guy—and she collapsed into it, obviously worn out from... whatever had happened to her.
"Do I need to see the other guy?" Wu asked.
"I know you and I haven't always seen eye to eye," Sunny said, ignoring his quip. "You like hurting people, I'd prefer to help them—we have our differences and I doubt we'll ever be able to resolve them."
"That's one way of putting it," Wu agreed.
"You've always wanted me to join your organisation willingly. I've never understood why. My food bank is all but yours anyhow, but you keep pressuring me." Sunny glared at him, as if demanding to hear his reasons.
Wu spontaneously decided that discretion was the better part of valor. He shrugged noncommittally.
Sunny's glare softened into a pointed stare, then she closed her eyes and dropped her head into her hands. "My sister's been kidnapped," she finally said. "I don't like to ask for favors, so I hope you'll appreciate what I'm doing right now."
She raised her face slightly, though she kept her eyes focused on the floor in front of her. Wu idly noted that she was distraught enough to actually use contractions.
"I'm begging you. Help me find my sister and bring her home in one piece. Do this—" Sunny slowly, stiffly returned her body to an upright position and squared her shoulders. She closed her eyes and winced slightly as she stretched out various bruises and kinks, but opened them once again to bore into his. "Do this, and I'll do anything you ask of me."
The reality of just how important this was to her made Wu Lung cough nervously. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, then leaned forward and propped his head on his fists. "Tell me everything."
ooo
(a/n)—this will most likely be my longest interlude. it's not that i like this character over any of the others, but he just has the most backstory that i wasn't really able to explain in the main narrative. (although now given how much i'm sorta revealing for flurry... i'm starting to worry about what's left that i can put in her interlude...)
some people wanted an explanation of wu's powers and why they seemed different between the worlds. if it wasn't clear, their powers are exactly the same... they're just using them differently. bits and pieces of the power have been explained... although their use wasn't fully described. i'd like to think you readers can figure out why the latter is the case.
comments? thoughts? let me know!