Chapter 11
Gwen was grateful for the fact that Kumo did not struggle when she attempted to transport her. She found the warehouse Miles mentioned and set Kumo down there. Miles had been waiting with some blankets and some food, a level of thoughtfulness Gwen did not expect from him. Not that he was thoughtless of course.
Then they'd left Kumo there. Miles didn't ask any questions. Another surprise. He'd just seemed really sad every time he looked at Kumo. Gwen hadn't wanted to question him on it either. It just felt awkward to ask at the time. And there was still the important question of where Alex was and what she was doing that Kumo needed to answer. Some breathing room was needed, as far as Gwen was concerned and so she'd called it a day and gone home.
The next morning she'd come back around to deliver some of the fast food she picked up along her usual path to school. When she came in through one of the windows she found herself greeting a swath of empty blankets in the corner behind a few crates.
Kumo was gone.
xXx
I walked down the street. It was some street. Somewhere. I felt grimy and sticky. I probably stank. People gave me a wide berth. I wasn't sure how long I was walking, or in what direction I was walking, but I knew that I walked long enough to feel it in my back and in my knees.
My back was better but walking still hurt. I enjoyed it for some reason. Feeling the pain in every step I took. All the while I was thinking, non-stop thinking. About money. About success. About talent. Trying to fathom what was so attractive about being big and having a company with your name on it. Besides the obvious material things of course. If I asked anyone, I was certain they'd say they wanted it.
But whether they actually wanted it enough to put in even a fraction of the work required was another discussion. When you considered the odds against them once they even thought of a viable idea that fraction became still smaller. And among those who weren't intimidated or settling for reasonable alternatives, the ones that actually succeed would be even smaller. A small fraction of a small fraction of a small fraction…
You started from school. You had to get good grades to show you were smart, so companies would want to hire you in future. And so banks would be more willing to give you better loans with easier deals. The fact that I had bad grades throughout was damning in that regard. It didn't seem to matter what I did. If this was really what life was about… getting the grade, to get the job, to get the money… all of that on repeat…
I don't want to be here anymore.
I paused mid-step. Green. There was green in front of me. I looked up to see a small park right at the edge of one of the rivers. I wasn't sure which river. What did they call these again? A pier? A pier-park? Just a park? I stopped caring half-way through the thought.
It was simple and clean. I liked it. It reminded me a lot of Grandpa Hanzo's garden, although he had far more plants in his… and those little stepping stones he liked to use to practice his balance. I walked to one of the benches facing the river and sat on it. I lifted my legs up and crossed them. I could hear the water and the wind, but I could also hear the hustle and bustle of a living city behind me. The contrast was jarring. As if for the first time I was looking from the outside in.
All that hustle and bustle… and for what?
Hustling where? Bustling where?
"Where to?" I said aloud. My voice was coarse and weak.
It was all just so… empty. What had I been doing for so long?
"But if you finish this now we can save time!"
Dad kept cleaning. "And?"
6-year-old-me did not comprehend. "We save time. We can do anything else."
"Anything else like?"
"I don't know anything…"
Dad had smiled at me like he thought it was cute that I was trying to police his time management.
"And once we complete that 'anything'. What next?"
"Whatever comes next?"
"Like?"
"I don't know. But that doesn't mean we should waste time."
Dad was only further amused. "People don't work like that."
I remembered being confused. Was he saying that it was okay to waste time? To not do things as quickly as possible? I had always been taught to do things as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality. People don't work like that. Didn't time saved mean you could accomplish a lot of things, experience the greatest amount that life had to offer before you died?
"There is no finish line that you must cross in this life."
I was sitting in Grandpa's garden watching him do his morning exercises. I had shared my problems with my Dad's slowness with him and he too had laughed at me.
"Perhaps this will help you understand… what do you think these movements I do are about Alex?"
The question had stumped me.
"Fighting people?"
He laughed. "They can be used that way, but no."
He had explained it to me then. There are two parts to a person that he knew of. The body and the mind. The two often did not agree with each other. The urge to sleep, when you knew you had work to do. The urge to eat when you knew you'd had more than enough. And in reverse, the urge to work when you knew your sleep was lacking and you were damaging your health. The urge to keep working when you knew your nutrition was lacking. The urge to keep moving forward toward the achievement of a goal, ignoring all the other things that kept you strong, healthy and functional.
"The essence of martial arts is to bring these two together, for you see, the body left to itself is an animal, seeking only pleasure. Its shortsightedness will surely bring it to destruction. The mind suffers from a different problem. It thinks and reasons, calculates and measures and in doing so it forgets there is no meaning in the calculation, no purpose in the reasons and without these life itself means nothing. It is a machine, too disconnected, too mechanical, too cold and far away. The mind strives after the wind. Left to its own devices, it too, will bring you to destruction."
I hadn't been able to catch most of that then. But I got the gist, especially when I remembered Dad's responses to my badgering. Sitting on that bench right on the edge of the wall of noise that was New York it was startlingly clear. The waves would move, the sea creatures would swim, the sun would go down and rise up. Things would move on until they ended, with or without you.
Something about the realization made me breathe easier.
I was doing it just now wasn't I? Striving after wind?
Long hours spent trying to do well in school, the little sinking feeling when my highest grade was a C. Something completely disproportionate to the effort I was putting in. Always asking why, trying to understand why I alone seemed to struggle. Why I alone seemed to understand what was said but the minute I sat a test my scores told me I knew nothing. Or worse, when I would draw a complete blank and stare at the page until time was up.
I held my face in my hands for a moment. Have I been doing things wrong?
"It leads you to take on responsibility that should not belong to you."
I could understand now, a little bit, why he told me to leave Mum alone. It wasn't that we weren't in danger or that we couldn't be hurt. It wasn't that Mum was his wife and he didn't want to do anything to her. It was that it wasn't for me to decide. I was stepping in where I did not belong because I thought I knew The Answer. The Solution. And with complete disregard for the feelings of everyone involved, myself included, I went after Mum… and choked.
Because people don't work like that…
Candy and Amy were affected by this too. Uncle Jerry was in the hospital because of this. Dad too. I had every reason, but the adults told me no. Because people are more than efficiency and calculation and there was more to my actions than results. The real question was if I could live with it… with being a target…
And I could, I realized.
"'If you want to live a comfortable life, make sure you never love anyone, be selfish and never sacrifice…'" I whispered the words to myself. Grandma's words.
So…
If I wasn't going to try force things my way any more… what was I going to do now?
xXx
Gwen landed on a rooftop panting slightly. "She cannot have gone that far! What is today?!"
xXx
"Visitor to see you Mr. Arthur."
John looked up from his feet to the doorway where Yukino was walking in. The nurse who'd announced it turned away once he'd looked in their direction and left the room.
"Please, finish," Yukino said with a gesture.
John turned his attention back to the handlebars and finished the last of his steps. At the end of it Yukino assisted him to the rest bench against the wall. She'd come with someone, a young woman who could pass for Alex's age mate with very frilly black hair.
John smiled briefly. "What brings you? I didn't think you would come."
Yukino also smiled briefly. "It's business sadly."
John frowned at that. Yukino had long since outgrown his help financially.
"Not what you're thinking. Bella?"
The girl came over and held out a sheet that Yukino took and then offered to him. He read it. Then he read it again, dumbfounded. He kept re-reading it. The words were in print but it wasn't sinking in. Never in his life did he ever think that this would ever happen to him. What had he ever done…?
Moments passed in silence while he continued to stare at the sheet.
"A divorce…" was all he said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I don't think you understood the extent of my ambition when I told you I wanted to found a company that would change the world. You're too small John."
He felt the anger flare up but one of the first lessons he had ever learned as a young boy, even before the girls started to look smaller and softer than him, was how to master his fury. He was grateful for his parents strictness, here yet again, it was preserving him. Keeping him stable. And so long as he was stable he could make sense of the situation and choose.
"You would say something like that," he said, tasting the irony of the words as he said them, "to me?"
"That's not what I mean and you know it. You're satisfied, John. Everything you currently want is yours."
He shook his head. "Not everything."
"But the things you can control… the things you can influence are going your way."
"Not of late."
"And I do admit that is my fault, but you're only pointing out contradictions and ignoring the context of what I'm saying."
She was right of course. That was the anger talking. Demanding that he point out all the pain she was causing now.
"Yukino, I know dishonesty when I see it, most especially from you," he said. "There are any number of ways we could have made this work. The money you have spent to place me in this hospital with priority care could've been used to prevent the majority of the trouble we've faced up until now."
Yukino nodded. "This was the only way to get you to sign these."
Twenty years of intimate knowledge turned around and used against him.
"Suro Obaa" indeed.
In his youth he had thought the saying foolish. An attempt at painting women in an unnecessarily evil light. After all, anyone and anything could hurt you, why fear women specifically? Every time his father made jokes about the saying John had never laughed… but he was seeing it now. It was advice to young men, given not because women were inherently evil but because the young men could never quite seem to fathom how different women were when it came to causing harm. Male conflict was easy to understand.
"If a man threatens to kill you in your sleep, you can sleep. If a woman threatens the same, stay up".
He could feel his heartbeat quickening, trying to reconcile what was happening now with the woman he married. He was struggling. Was he blind? Was there some hidden meaning to everything she did that he could not see? Was it something he did? Did it stem from her dissatisfaction with Alex? Had she simply not loved them as he thought she had?
The choice was simple. He could insist that he would not sign and remain a target despite Yukino's distance, or he could sign and let it become officially known that he had nothing to do with her. Then he would no longer be a target. Left on his own this choice would be easy for John. He made his pledge twenty years ago and there was no room for turning back on it as far as he was concerned. Even if Yukino decided he was less than dirt he would not sign.
But Alex… complicated things. This sort of living wouldn't be good for her… He had to choose…
And so he was furious. Furious at Yukino for putting this choice before him. And she knew he was angry too. She was relaxed in body but her eyes were sharp. Watching.
"You are cutting us out," he said.
He didn't shout but there was a boom to his voice all the same. As if the words came from a deep well of little thunderclaps.
Yukino stood up. "You said it yourself. Some things are my choice to make. Now you have yours. Come, Bella."
She and her assistant walked out. John continued to stare at the documents.
His hands shook.
xXx
Norman Osborn sat at his office in Oscorp, eyeing the reports before him carefully. After some more careful inspection, he grinned and sat back. He'd learned all he could from Fisk's attempts. It was about time he took his crack at Mrs. Arthur.
It was time to lay some groundwork…
xXx
Yukino sat in the limo followed closely by Bella. Once in the driver set course back for her main building. It was around this point that her phone rang. Bella handed her handbag to her and she fished the phone out and put it to her ear.
"Good morning, this is Yukino Arthur."
She listened to the speaker. "Of course Mr. Rand. I wouldn't mind a meeting at all."
They set up a meeting and she ended the call, dumping the phone back in her handbag. Bella then pulled the handbag away and set it in her lap. Women's fashion necessitated handbags, but Yukino didn't like them because they were restrictive baggage as far as she was concerned. Bella was a godsend in this regard.
Her personal assistant was Blasian, just like Yukiko, but the Asian features were far more visible than they were on her daughter. Indeed, if Alex did not tell people she was partially Japanese, they often couldn't tell at all. Nerdier and smaller she may be, but Bella had spine to her. And intelligence.
"You have questions," Yukino said, staring ahead as the car stopped at a light.
Bella pushed her glasses up her nose and hesitated before speaking, "I was wondering why Mr. Arthur reacted that way. I thought he'd jump at the chance, given what's been happening…"
Yukino often encouraged questions and part of involving someone in your business as a personal assistant meant a certain degree of transparency was necessary. Nevertheless she briefly considered not answering this one.
"John and his family view marriage as a bit more binding than most would," she said.
Bella frowned. "I don't understand."
"To John, a divorce is like asking him to cut out his own lungs."
Bella didn't get it. She wouldn't. But she wisely remained silent. She was smart. Even if she couldn't understand why that analogy was accurate, she could understand what happened up in the rehab room. The man had been forced to choose which of his organs he would like to keep.
"The two of you are now one, Yukino. Do you understand what that means?"
xXx
It took me a while to find the subway but once I did it was a straight shot to Queens. Toss in some walking and I was home by the time the sky was darkening. It was funny how easy it was to blend in. Take off the mask, hide it in my belt and say that I got drunk at a costume party. Because teenagers do that type of thing, y'know? I was pretending to be a ninja.
But miss why do you have so many injuries? Wouldja believe I fell down the stairs? Pretend to be sufficiently hungover and people believed it, although some wanted to know if I was trying to hide signs of domestic violence. By the time I reached home I was dead tired from all the explaining and ducking I had to do.
I climbed into my apartment first to shower and change into my ripped clothes. Then I crawled out and went for the door to Aunt Amy's place. I knocked and the door was opened almost immediately.
Aunt Amy saw me, burst into tears and drew me in for a hug. Candy was behind her, her curious look changing to one of surprise. I was pulled in and the door was shut behind us.
xXx
She'd skipped school to search Harlem and still there was no sign of Kumo. Gwen pushed a hand through her hair.
"Some hero I am…" she muttered to herself.
She leaned against the stair house of the building she was on and sighed. An entire day of frantic searching and she found nothing. How could someone just disappear like that? Given the state Kumo was in too…
"Hey."
She jumped and then clutched a hand to her chest when she realized who it was. "Damn it, Miles."
He was crouched on top of the stair house looking down at her through the white lenses of his mask. "Saw you swinging around," he said. "Wondered why you were around so late. Harlem's a good bit away from here."
"Kumo's missing."
Miles paused. "Oh…"
"Yeah."
The two stayed silent for a time.
"Why don't you go home then?" Miles suggested. "I'm on patrol right now anyway. I can keep up the search for a while longer."
Gwen sagged slightly. She really was tired and she'd been running around all day.
"Thanks, Miles. Really."
"No problem."
He jumped up and dove over the side of the building, shot out a web line and swung away. Gwen watched him disappear around a corner and sighed. The boy had a point. She needed rest. She hadn't been sleeping well of late. With a thought her symbiote crawled up her face and became a mask once more. Then she too dove off the building to begin the journey to her apartment.
xXx
Nick Fury observed the footage of the young girl taking on one of AIM's Hulkbuster attempts. He paused at the moment she landed a kick on its midsection and rewound the fight. On his desk and to his right he had the results of some blood tests done using samples stolen from the lab she had attempted to destroy. Her DNA shared many similarities with Spider-Man and his folk. Fury rewound the video again, observing how she went from being tossed around to winning the battle.
He knew Spider-man had taken on the Hulk a few times, often calming him down or mitigating the damage the Big Green Man could cause. But he did it with his wits and his agility moreso than his strength. Spider-man was capable of dealing blows that the Hulk could feel. That was a known factor, but making the Hulk feel your blows and actually hurting him were two very different discussions. Obviously a Hulkbuster suit could not compare to the Hulk in question, especially if Banner really let himself go- then the suits would be irritants at best.
Even so, this… was concerning.
A mere child was capable of this…
She was an adolescent, not yet in her prime. Would she grow stronger still? How stable was she given what was happening now?
I want eyes on this one, Fury decided.
A holographic screen slid off his desk and into the air at his command. With a single swipe, he started making the necessary calls.
xXx
Ensho stepped out of JFK airport with his luggage and took a taxi to his hotel. He needed rest after such a tedious journey. He stepped into the room, put his luggage down and took off his clothes to shower. He saw himself in the mirror of the bathroom, how muscular he had become. This was just one of the signs of his growth since then.
He took his gaze away from it and finished his ablutions. The Master's daughter was in New York. He would find her and lay claim to what was rightfully his. His bed was soft and sleep was blissful.
