The Raptor of Life

Chapter 21 Part 2

(Colleen Wing)

(Flashback)

 

Chikara Dojo
Colleen’s Loft
06:23 PM

Colleen was recuperating from the storm called Jean Grey who had swept through her Dojo. The EMTs had decided to take all the kids injured while the dead bodies of the ninja Jean had killed had simply disappeared without trace. This had been more tiring than she had thought, and Colleen won’t delude herself into believing that she won that spar with the other redhead; it had been closer than she thought. The girl was a fountain of chi, compared to the puddle sized chi container in Colleen’s body.

The martial artist’s hands were shaking, as the weight of that chi attack finally took its toll, Colleen had internal damage to her organs… putting her hand before her mouth, Colleen coughed and spat blood. “She’s not experienced, but if she was a little bit stronger than me, she would have killed me.”

More, Colleen needed more training. She was thinking about that while cooking for her and Sasha, traditional Japanese food for tonight. Colleen intended to tell her ward to stop getting involved with Jean Grey as she was more than she appeared to be and too dangerous. While letting the piece of Kobe beef marinate, Colleen thought that she needed to pull Sasha and her friends out of the school somehow…

Yes, she liked that idea!

Boom! 

The entire building shook and Colleen could barely stand up on the tatami. "What the hell-"

Boom! 

They were under attack! She felt at least twenty chi signatures enter in the dojo and start spreading in the building. She immediately cut the fire on her stove, held an arm toward where she stored her sword and with some chi exertion, the weapon flew handle first into her waiting hand. Just in time, as three men in gray and sleek futuristic armors quickly surrounded her. Not a stitch of skin was visible, that didn’t bode well for the swordmaster.

Some sort of baton slid into their hands, crackling with bluish electricity. Colleen watched the weapons and as she wasn’t an idiot, summoned her sheath as well and this is when the fight started. The middle man threw himself at her baton first. She diverted the electrified strike with her sheath and delivered a front kick to the man, slightly making him slide back on his feet, damaging the tatami floor. “This is expensive.”

The two others flanked her, one targeting her legs and the other the center of her body with a tackle. The two men didn't expect her to jump on the man with his arm out that was targeting her leg and use his body to twirl out of the way and kick the third man who had attacked her first.

Colleen’s sword twirled and she targeted the neck where there seemed to be less metal with a thrust of her sword.

Thunk!

"Grrrk!!" The man held onto his throat and started wheezing into his helmet.

At the same instant another man attacked her but she evaded the hit and her attacker ended up bowling over into his colleague, electrifying him. “Aaaaaarrrkkkhhhhh!”

“What?!” The man took back his baton and was distracted by his colleague falling face first on the tatami only for Colleen to strike it from his hand and deliver a butterfly kick reinforced with chi into the middle of his body, denting his armor slightly. 

Colleen observed how the metal held its form, saving the armor user from suffocation; with wide eyes, Colleen suddenly decided that discretion is the better part of Valor and attempted to flee her loft with her sword.

“Damn, she’s running away!” One of the men that was still on his feet shouted.

The swordmaster opened the door and exited the loft when she felt herself hit by something and catapulted back into the room. She crashed into the sofa which softened the impact; Colleen watched as a man in gray and black armor came into existence as if he just appeared in the door frame. He looked like an idealized version of what a technological shinobi would be like. “I’m in a manga now?”

Step. Step. Step. The man who had kicked her slowly entered into her living space as if he owned it, briefly looked around and his gaze settled on the downed men who were quickly recovering.

"You guys alright?" The man’s voice echoed in the room.

It sounded like there was some kind of sound filter that masked his voice that bothered Colleen. She was also furious that the guy was ignoring her; the other men stood back up and one of them said, “Yes, thanks for your concern, sir!”

"Who are you all? Why are you attacking my place?" Colleen stood up and she felt the need to cough but she stopped herself forcefully. It wasn't time to show weakness to those intruders. 

She subtly looked around, there was a building bordering the Dojo and her bedroom's window had access to its roof; she could run, but the kids that she was sheltering would be lost.

“Take her down, we got everyone else.” The new man commanded.

Colleen attacked immediately, blade first. But… CLANG! A straight black blade blocked the sword coming for the man. The woman’s eyes burned with fury as she gritted out, “You will free all of my students!”

The man didn’t say anything for two seconds before adding, "No."

Colleen’s blade glowed with yellow light as she channeled her chi through it, preparing to launch an attack despite how painful it was to use her lifeforce with the internal damage she had incurred in her last fight against Jean. She didn’t notice when one of the men behind her let a metallic ball slowly roll forward. 

Roll. The ball touched Colleen’s left foot, causing her to look down and her eyes to widen as the hole opened into the ball and green light sparked and lit up all her nerves with strange energy. Bzzztttt!

Her entire world became pain, so much so that her brain shut down and everything went black for Coleen.

 

(Flashback end)

***

 

Birdcage
Cell block D (Energy manipulator block)
Time ???

 

Colleen didn't know where she was when she woke up. But the ceiling was transparent and showed only darkness with sparse spots of light. She was on a really comfortable bed with dark sheets covering her body, slowly sitting up, Colleen looked around herself and observed her surroundings. There was not much in the way of furniture and she found herself in a cell of ten square meters; a table, a sink, a booth with a shower and toilet, and there was even a bookshelf with a screen built into the middle of it.

Then the swordmaster took on a thoughtful expression as she remembered the dream she had just now, about how she ended up here. She recalled the absolute pain she went through when that goon in black armor dropped the device that felled her. *It had been fucking… no stay classy Colleen, the pain had been unbearable.*

The red haired swordmaster laid back on her cot, despairing at her situation, she was now imprisoned, with no idea where she was or when, how long had she been unconscious as well? The fact that she was naked under the sheet made her paranoid…

Knock. Knock.

Looking toward where the knocking  sounds had come from, Colleen saw an aperture open in the wall facing her bed. Something slid from it and warily, Colleen got out of her cot to see what it was. With a slow gait she walked to a… parcel made of cardboard. There was a sheet of paper stuck to the box. Colleen crouched and looked at the box and read the note.

Red is the new black, make yourself presentable. 

Colleen glared at the piece of paper and opened the box, wrapped in plastic there was a… uniform. A red prison uniform to be precise. The redhead looked around and saw that she had no choice, there was no other clothing for her in her… cell. With a heavy sigh she proceeded to unpack the uniform from the sheet of plastic wrapped around it and slowly put it on. Undershirt, shirt, undies and pants; Colleen looked into the box and saw a pair of black leather sandals.

When she was done putting the uniform on, Colleen observed how it was oddly comfortable and cool. *Strange.*

Finally presentable, Colleen watched as the gray wall she was facing became less and less opaque to completely transparent. A woman with blonde hair and a stylish black tactical outfit with a gun strapped to her thigh appeared, gazing into the swordmaster’s eyes. “Good evening, Miss Wing.”

Looking her up and down, Colleen analyzed the woman’s stance and facial micro-expression before gritting her teeth and managed to ask, “Who are you?”

The blonde gave Colleen a smile that was all teeth, worthy of a toothpaste ad as she introduced herself. “You may call me Miss Lovelace, but my codename is Chimera.”

*Barely there and she’s already playing games with me.* Colleen thought, trying to reel in the rage she was feeling now that she could target it at someone.

With a hard stare, Colleen said, “You’re my jailer.” And then she finally asked, “Where’s my adoptive daughter?”

This Miss lovelace… Chimera, whatever was her name, grated on Colleen’s nerve with her smile as she said, “Oh, little Sasha is right over there, with her best friend.”

Another cell facing Colleen’s became visible when Chimera stepped away from view; Colleen saw that Sasha was inside with her friend Francine in the same red prisoner garb. Sasha’s eyes widened when she saw Colleen and moved fast and punched against the wall, only to be sent flying as an arc of electricity coming from the transparent surface struck her.

Colleen knew better than to punch against the walls of her cell now, but she couldn’t stop herself from shouting, “Let the girls go!”

The wall of Sasha’s cell became dark gray again and Chimera placed herself before Colleen. “I’m afraid that I cannot do that, Miss Wing.”

The swordmaster looked into the woman’s eyes, she had stopped smiling and had a neutral expression on her face; she stood there with arms alongside her body, waiting for something. Colleen didn’t understand why all of this was happening, what did they do to be treated like this? “Why are you doing this to us?”

Chimera leaned forward and put her right hand against the wall: as she looked into Colleen’s eyes she said, “That is a quite good question, Miss Wing. To answer it, let’s say that your… sponsor landed you in this situation.”

 That allusion to her sponsor… it could only mean, “Bakuto-sama?”

Snapping her fingers, Chimera smiled. “Yes, him. You see, Miss Wing. I work for a powerful and secretive organization led by someone related to the girl you fought earlier this afternoon.”

Colleen raised an eyebrow at that, she wasn’t surprised that getting close to Jean Grey landed her in this situation, “Jean Grey? I knew that girl was trouble when I met her…” Colleen growled out.

Chimera laughed, calming herself down after coughing in her hand. “Oh boy, you have no idea… and let me ask you, are you aware that you fought against the student of the Perfect Death?”

Perfect Death, the skank in red, the ninja slut assassin in barely there clothes? The strangely efficient assassin that had been working for the Hand but deserted last year? With all the things she saw Jean Grey do and her having no problem killing people or maiming them and her being able to use chi and move like a trained killer… How powerful was Elektra Nachios to have trained someone who could fight on par with Colleen? “No, please… tell me that Bakuto-sama didn’t do anything… untoward-”

Chimera interrupted Colleen by waving her hand and emitting a little chuckle. “Unfortunately, your sponsor kidnapped Miss Grey’s girlfriend and killed said girl’s father; as Jean Grey is rather important to our organization, now our assets and personnel are focused on destroying the Hand, the organization you’re working and recruiting people for.”

Colleen couldn’t believe what she was hearing, Bakuto is the man who saved her when her grandfather died; he was a noble and kind man. He was a good teacher as well, what Chimera was saying didn’t compute with her image of the man. “This is a lie, Bakuto-sama is a good person he would never do this.”

With a piercing gaze, as if Chimera could look through her, the blonde had a shocked expression. “You really believe that.”

Crossing her arms under her breast, Colleen defiantly said, “I do.”

Chimera sighed, then began to laugh; it wasn’t a nervous laugh, it was more… mocking. She looked into Colleen’s eyes and asked, “But would you stake your and your adoptive daughter’s freedom on this belief?”

This question startled Colleen, Bakuto-sama sheltered her when she had needed it, but… some of the orders he had given her over the years didn’t sit well with her. “I…”

Chimera smiled as she saw Colleen's indecision and took something from one of her pouches. Colleen was surprised that it was a thick folder. “Before you say anything, I want you to read this.”

A rectangular slot opened in the wall and Chimera slid the folder inside. It landed at Colleen’s feet and the swordmaster looked at it as if it was venomous. Chimera shook her head at the other woman’s reaction and said, “I will be back when you’re done, Miss Wing.”

When she looked up, Colleen found that the woman was nowhere to be seen, she breathed in and out, relaxing her body’s stance. She looked down again and decided to see what Miss Lovelace wanted her to be aware of…

 

# # #

(Operator Anthony Hayden)

 

Adirondack Base
11:00 PM (US eastern time)

 

Anthony had been saved from homelessness after his five years tour in Iraq, the wife he had left at home was fucking another guy and had kids on the way; this was a common story in the army for everyone who signed up. He should have seen the signs that his wife, Tiffany was cheating, the guys in HQ had even warned him of this exact problem. The result was that he had nowhere to go as the woman had taken his home from him in a rather nasty divorce. His savings were the first thing that Tiffany took, he still doesn’t know how she did it despite himself having proven without a doubt that the kid she was pregnant with wasn’t his; some shenanigans or backroom dealings must have happened.

Before he could say homeless, his friends swooped in to save him and directed him to a certain man, Sergeant Avery Johnson, an old friend of his captain in the Army. Anthony believed that he was being set up to join a black ops company that the US used for deniable operations; but god was he not thinking big enough. Anthony got mixed into a clandestine operation spanning the entire globe, this organization he was now working for was called the Ascendency, whose goal was to advance technology and unify humanity and reach for the stars.

When he was offered to join the Ascendency, Anthony had mocked his friends and sergeant Johnson for believing in fairytales. But they blew his mind by showing him Metahumans using their powers on site, then proceeded to explain that earth and human history was longer and stranger than Anthony thought. 

The Boss Lady, Jean Grey, was one of those Metahumans; she was drop dead gorgeous and a… teen. A teen with the body of a toned playboy centerfold? What did her parents feed her for god’s sake?! Anyway, she wasn’t legal, so Anthony chose to forget any lusty thought; this operation was led by a kid genius pumping out new technology with all the monkeys in lab coats she surrounded herself with. New planes, guns, medicine and other marvels of technology churned from the lab and factories all the time for testing and implementation into the troops’ gear.

He had to be retrained to handle the new technology, satellite imaging and drone operation, his department was in control of everything pertaining to communication and recon. He was also the guy behind the chair for one of the power armor contingents, his level of access allowed him to see what the Ascendency was up to; so far they've been playing mercenaries in Africa and the Middle-East to test their weapons against warlords, providing aid to freedom fighters or free regions from the yoke of children killing would be tyrants. 

Anthony loved his new job, he was paid 100k a year and had the best Healthcare possible, the lab monkeys had developed new medical techniques and technology, he even got a new girlfriend out of the deal, her name was Megan Stein; sure she was younger than him by five years and worked in the hydroponics sector, but it felt good to be with someone so driven to make the world better. Everyday was peaceful, at least until now; today the organization went into full alert and Anthony noticed a lot of activity on the comms and the troops being dispatched to New York.

The guys in his department had told him that a similar thing happened recently. Those guys were right, Anthony was aware that the Ascendency was responsible for the Fall of HYDRA, the killing of all those corrupt bastards in Europe as well, and now they were about to engage a millennium old cult which uses magic martial arts of some sort. 

Just as he thought that, he saw golden portals open up in the teleport room and a lot of people in strange clothing arrived. He recognized one of the Boss Lady's girls,Velma? Wilma? Ah, yeah Wanda! In a flash of blue light, Boss Lady appeared in the room and was having words with the bald woman who seemed to be the leader of the magic people.

Seated behind the window in the communication room which shared space with the teleport room, Anthony couldn't hear them speak, but the discussion became animated as they gestured to each other. Things seemed to calm down when Wanda hugged the Boss Lady and then she opened a portal and all the sorcerers passed through it, following her.

Anthony shook his head, he kept seeing weird shit everyday, what's next? Giant robots? He heard the door of the teleport room open and at least sixteen people in blue glowy power armor entered in single file. Behind them were the engineers carrying boxes with designations written on them: Prototype particle cannon, scoped railgun rifle and a bunch of pain, frag and conc grenades and more of those exotic weapons that he had seen used in the testing fields. 

"We're at war." Anthony said as he saw a fucking mecha stomping behind the engineers.

Next time he won't provoke Murphy with his comments…

 

# # #

(Wilson Fisk aka the Kingpin)

New York City
Manhattan
439 West 38th Street
Fisk Towers
11:50 PM

Wilson had a bad feeling, as he watched through the window of his office at the tallest level of his skyscraper, he couldn’t escape that niggling sensation that he was being watched. He turned back and then sat on his humongous  comfy desk chair and booted up his Stark computer. Once it finished starting up, the logo of the Stark OS gave him access to his desktop and clicked on the icon of his organizer, he noted the meetings for the next day, he had one with Madam Gao, that cold bitch.

He won’t say it out loud but Wilson regretted entering into a partnership with Gao’s group, they were too controlling and pried too much into his family life. The simple fact that Gao kept using his children and wife as bargaining chips to keep him compliant with her goals was irksome. Leaning into his chair, Wilson became thoughtful, he looked at the framed pictures of his wife, Vanessa, and of his kids, Maya and Richard.

Wilson swore that he would protect them. And it was while he was thinking this that a ‘Boom’ sound rang in the background that the building shook. This sounded like trouble was coming for him… *An attack?*

From under his desk, Wilson took a large shotgun, pulled on a drawer on his right containing a box of ammo; he quickly loaded the shotgun and when he was done, he put another five buckshot in his vest's pocket. Standing up from his chair, Wilson walked up to the statue between his bookshelf and a large painting depicting his wife. He moved the spear of the angel's statue on the right and with a quiet hiss, the door of the panic room opened. But before he could enter, it was loudly closed by an invisible force and Wilson was sent careening into his desk.

When he looked up, the mammoth-like man saw three figures appear out of thin air as if they were covered by some mist. They all wore black and silver armor covering every bit of their skin. “What the f-”

They pointed their guns at him, just before they could shoot him, Wilson fired his shotgun. When the buckshots hit them, the impact made the men stumble back but they still stood as if nothing happened. Wilson widened his eyes and asked, “Who the fuck are you?!”

They didn’t answer, simply raised their weapon. Wilson let go of his shotgun and jumped out of the way behind the sofa, lifted it and threw it at his assaillants.

CRASH. 

Two didn’t escape and got stuck under the long sofa, while the one still holding the blocky gun that fired at him. WHOMP!

The blast this time got Wilson. The crime baron fell back, held on his stomach as he felt as if he took a cannon to the chest. He looked hatefully at the man who pointed a weapon at him and dial something up on the blocky gun. “Do it, kill me!”

“Sure.” The man and then he pulled the trigger.

WHOMP!

Wilson felt something snap inside of him and attempted to charge the man, but he stumbled midway and fell on his front. Flop. 

He couldn’t see or hear as blood flowed from his ears and mouth. “Grrglll.”

It took time, but he eventually bled out and died as the sonic weapon did him in. The man who killed Wilson looked at the sonic pistol and threw it away and… Boom! The weapon exploded and created a mini shockwave that destroyed anything made of glass, in particular the panoramic window in the office. The men who had taken off the large sofa from themselves were now standing behind their colleague and shielded themselves on instinct as the shards flew everywhere despite the full-body light armor they all wore.

The winter wind blew into the office through the destroyed windows. One of the men said, “Frank, you okay?”

“Yeah, I had time to let go of the gun. We will tell R&D that the prototype sonic pistol will explode after firing it on the highest setting.” He pointed at the remains of the sonic pistol that burned part of the carpet on the other side of the room.

The man chuckled. “Klaue isn’t going to be happy about it.”

“Tough, that’s for him to fix.” Frank shrugged.

The third man asked, “Did he croak?” When he looked at the humongous body in white business suit.

 The second man went to check, and put his hand against Wilson’s neck. “Yes, Frank.”

“Good, but just in case...” Frank took his side-arm and…

Zap. Zap. Zap. He fired his tetryon beam into Wilson’s head, completely destroying it. He holstered his side arm and sighed as his objective was successful; Wilson Fisk was dead, now he will be able to go to the other tertiary target, Harold Meachum.

“What do we do with the other sub-targets, sir?”

Frank turned to his colleague. “Boss Lady wants them alive, but she doesn’t want them around either.”

Vanessa Fisk and her children will be collected and handed to the tender mercies of Jean, she promised to not kill them and he trusted the kid.

“Go.” Frank told his men. He watched as they walked toward the elevator, to access the penthouse where Fisk’s family lived.

 

# # #

Back with Jean…
Adirondack base

 

I was in my office, looking down through the glass window at the robotic factory assembling the weapons that passed the prototype phase. The tetryon guns couldn't be constructed by human hands as there were some little hazards involved such as radiation or possible explosion if any error was made when the parts were assembled. I felt the mind of Chimera coming to the corridor leading to my office, she seemed to be worrying and upset about something.

Before she could enter, I took a bottle of Coca-Cola from my mini-fridge and poured myself a glass of the delicious beverage. Goldie used a tentacle to take one of the chocolate candies in the jar I just opened for her, she at the same time tried to reassure me that we would find Cindy and that we would kill everyone involved or devour them. I was down with that idea.

Chimera finally entered, without knocking obviously, knocking wasn't something a telepath did.

“Fisk is dead.” Chimera announced as she closed the door.

I sipped on a glass full of Mexican Coca-Cola, and then looked at my friend. “That’s good, Mera.”

Chimera looked at me with trepidation as she asked the question that has been bothering her. “What do you intend to do with his wife and kids?”

I don't know what she thought I would do, but I'm not in the business of killing kids and their mom. I wasn't going to punish children for the sins of their father. “Send them away with a sizable fortune to live their life after brainwashing them to forget about Fisk.”

Chimera sighed in relief, then she took a seat in front of my desk. “Oh, that is better than killing them. I had come here about to convince you not to kill them”

“Am I some kind of evil Dark Lady?” I asked with a giggle.

Then I felt that Chimera actually thought that I was on the way here. I looked at her a bit wounded that she thought that about me. “I am not evil.”

Chimera laughed, then coughed a bit by putting a hand on her chest. “Right, you're not. So, who is next on the list, my master?”

I glared at her, she was already breaking out the Star Wars quotes. “Meachum and Gao.”

Downing all the Coca-Cola from my glass, I recalled from the Netflix shows in my previous life how Gao was actually a beast of a martial artist that could shoot Hadouken like there was no tomorrow. She could heal and regenerate and she had longevity. I was good at CQC thanks to all the training I did and I was even more of a beast with my telepathy but… I doubted that I could take on a millenia old granny who had more experience in this world than me in guarding her mind. 

I doubted that I could crush her with my TK as well. “But Gao is more dangerous, she’s a chi Monster.”

Opening my mind to Chimera who used her telepathy to see what I was talking about, she whistled. "How are we killing this old fart? She reminds me of Sinister."

I smiled at my blonde friend. "Asymmetric warfare."

 

# # #

(Madame Gao)

February 21st, 1997
10:01 AM

 

Rolling her eyes Gao motioned for her driver to pull over and take the parking spot that was available. Of course today would be the day they fixed the streets of Chinatown. Settling back against her seat, Gao cycled her chi trying to push away the foreboding feeling that followed her around all morning. No, it had followed her since she felt this burst of bloodthirst which erupted last night. The atmosphere in Manhattan has since become quite heavy. Bakuto was not in his usual haunts and unreachable, the holdings with his names have all been completely destroyed by another force that Gao couldn’t guess at.

And she heard that one of her associates, Wilson Fisk was found dead in his office; it sounded preposterous to her, but her men have confirmed it. Now, Madame Gao was en route to one of her hidden bases to secure the men who followed her, Meachum and all the gang bosses of Manhattan. Alexandra had elected to not hide, wanting to act as bait for the ones who were attacking them and their interests. Meanwhile, Murakami and Sowande the other fingers were readying their troops for a counter attack.

Opening her eyes as the light music finished playing, Gao waited for the vehicle to turn off and her driver to open the door. With the door opened Gao turned to get her cane out in hand when she noticed the X mark on the floor just outside her door. 

*Ohh, so that is why I have been feeling this way all morning.* With a small sadistic smile on her lips Gao brought her chi to full as she pulled her driver a little using him to play up her old lady act. 

Stepping out onto the street she cast her gaze around, that dangerous tingle at the back of her neck spiked. Of course, with her grip on her driver's arm it was nothing to reposition the lad into the way. 

His chest exploded into meaty chunks as the round tore through him. Tch, her sword flicked outwards from her cane with less than the time it took to blink, deflecting the bullet downwards into the pavement. 

Smirking at her would-be assassin, Gao looked upwards to where her would-be killer was perched. 

Mirror….? 

*Splat*

The headless corpse of Madame Gao, one of the most dangerous leaders of the Hand, fell as chunks of brain matter and bone vaporized from the impact of a sniper round. 

Zoom out effect from Chinatown to a lone building sitting along the Brooklyn bay facing towards Manhattan.

Back with Jean…
Forty six seconds and 12 milliseconds earlier… 

 

Sitting in a meditative position, I breathed in, then out relaxing myself as my custom sniper railgun finished its dialing in procedures. Picking up my radio, I hit the team call function. "All teams report." 

"Janitor 1 in position, mirror in place." 

"Janitor 2 also set up. 

"Janitor 3 set up and ready ma'am. "

"Road work team in position. 

"Alright, Road Team, call it when you see her." Putting my radio down, I settled in as the scoped rail sniper prototype adjusted itself automatically on its dynamically stabilized gyroscope. 

First I dialed in the elevation of the building compared to my target, making sure to compensate for the negative spin of the Earth’s coriolis effect. That alone would mean that I would have to aim for a Gao that would be moving away from the target area at a rate of three meters per millisecond due to the distance. Then the rail sniper adjusted for the humidity and shifting heat and cold pockets the water to pavement shift would produce. 

With all the wind speeds calculated, I would need to allow for shifting winds from when the slug left the building, the wind over the bay, and then the wind in the city surrounding each building. All the data that I would need was fed back to me by each of my teams. The rail sniper can be used with my portable computer linked to EVE to provide the ballistic calculations necessary to engage long range targets. 

This shot alone was inspired by the movie Wanted and I was thanking the grace of Stan Lee that I now lived in a reality with broken physics. 

From the room I was in, the window to shoot Gao was less than a dime in diameter when I looked with my scope, but all that would change with the wind turbulence around the three large skyscrapers that narrowed down my view. 

If anyone could see me now they would ask me why I was aiming out towards the Brooklyn bridge; but how would they be able to understand the aerodynamics of bullet drop and velocity. Hell, I could already see it play out within my mind's eye.

The slug leaving the chamber was followed by its brother mere seconds behind, the shots fired not only in sequence but also at such a speed that I wouldn’t even be able to witness it. Hell, from the time I pulled the trigger to the time Gao was tagged with the first round I would already be packed up and leaving. 

Closing my eyes, I felt the salt water on my skin, the rattle of the train, the scent from the hotdog vendor one block over. 

Reaching out with my mind, my telekinetic touch ghosted over controls and dials. The chirp of my computer told me that everything was ready, but I knew that was only about the numbers. A hand went to the control modules and activated the active sonic and inertial dampers. The quiet hum reached my ears but was interrupted by my radio chirp. 

"Demon in the zone." 

Letting out another breath I gazed at my monitor tracking everything. The travel time would be forty plus seconds due to Gao being pulled away from her mark due to the Earth's rotation. 

When the car pulled up, I realized that it was now or never. Floating upwards, I stared down the long scope as it was fed data from all my teams and devices and waited. 

The shot that I was about to take was of such importance that I felt it was better to rest myself against the rifle and use my hands to brace. To pull the trigger I sent out a small tether of telekinetic force.

The timer ticked down and I watched as Gao’s driver pulled over for parking. When the man got out and opened the door, I pulled the trigger. 

The rifle kicked and I braced even as the flash of discharge flared to life washing my vision out. The adamantium slug rocketing outwards faster than the sound barrier, with its smart packaging working to actively keep it silent. 

Before the light could even dissipate from my eyes, the rail sniper adjusted by .0321 millimeters then I fired again. Getting out of my seat, I gave my orders. “Alright team, break it down and pack up.”

One of my men asked me, “Ma’am, are you not going to check to see if you made the shot.”

I shrugged. “Don’t have to. Move it people, I want us gone before those ninjas even begin to investigate the surrounding buildings of her corpse.

“Ma’am, we are nearly three miles away.” The same guy commented again, he was rather chatty.

“Guess that’s a world record then.” I chuckled.

“Ma’am.” A Guard asked, confused. 

With a smirk I gave him a tablet, when he looked down, he saw a line with such curves he thought that I was playing a joke on him. Three of those curves went around buildings mere inches before being pulled in a direction by the wind stream. Then he saw the video clip of someone’s head bursting like a watermelon before imploding into the void. That was clear signs those rounds were carrying some exotic payloads. 

With a shiver he watched the red head leave wondering how in the hell she could work out such an assassination. 

 

# # #

 

Adirondack Base
01:21 PM
War Room

 

So, I have offed Gao, big deal. The rest are going to be tougher to kill now that I reminded them of their mortality. Murakami, Sowand and Alexandra Reid, their heads and dead bodies were scattered in their bases. My Dragoons and Black Hawks didn’t take any chance to let them fight back and now they were dead. The most dangerous of the five fingers are Gao and Bakuto anyway, there’s only him left and the rest of the Hand cult leaders and some of their demonically possessed sub-bosses.

Then I entered the war room with my people and the sorcerers from Kamartaj. The room was at the lowest level of the base, shielded by a shell of adamantium with a faraday cage only used for security concerns. Inside, there was a humongous computer with multiple screens attached to each other; it was what was called a combine-interface. It’s the original supercomputer created by the late Nathaniel Essex; it was recently upgraded by me to what my friend in Mongolia calls a primitive quantum platform. What mattered was that it was compatible with my Artificial Intelligence, EVE, and the three satellites we had in orbit that fed data and the secrets of the world to my organization.

There was a round table with an interactive screen on its surface that acted like a holographic projector, with multiple chairs around it. The walls around them took on a blue metallic shine meaning that the room was in use and blocking radio and other esoteric signals; they had the side effect of blocking teleportation as well, magic based or otherwise. Jean sighed as something bothersome was happening while she had been explaining what the mundane side of this conflict was going to do while the Ancient One was going with Wanda and I to look for the emergence point where the demonic infestation was happening.

But me being in charge and telling what we were going to do doesn’t seem to sit well with some of the sorcerers… it all started when Karl Mordo, a journeyman level sorcerer, spoke. 

"This situation was borne out of your own action, and makes me question your place at this table. You should defer to your elders and leave the planning phase to the Ancient One." The opportunist and brown nosing asshole sickly said.

Deep down I thought the same, that this situation with the Hand was of my own making, I should have taken some precaution to protect everyone in my friend circle to avoid any of them being taken hostage and to stop kidnapping scenarios from occurring. I really don’t like that guy, I’m happy the Ancient One was here to stop me from frying his ass with my magic.

"Since you started your… crusade we have noticed a large rise in demonic attacks in Asia…"  The man had said the word crusade with venom. He was being subtle, but not enough. I saw the other sorcerers nod behind him.

"Pardon me, but do I sense hate in your voice?" I asked when I heard Mordo accuse me of agitating forces I couldn't control.

He ignored me and looked me into the eyes. “You’ve caused this situation.”

I laughed at him, sat forward and stared at him in a mocking manner. “I don’t see how it’s my fault if there’s a sudden rise in demonic activity, Mister Mordo.”

“You don’t?! You’ve entered into a war with the Hand!” The sorcerer couldn't believe what she was saying, someone that shameless shouldn't exist!

"I think you've been misinformed, they started it. And now I intend to finish it." I huffed while flipping my hair and glared at the self-righteous prick.

Mordo looked with mouth gaping at how unrepentant I was acting; who did he think he was speaking to? A dumb kid with the moral maturity of Winny the Poo? He glared at me. “It’s even worse, if you had looked for another way, we might have less souls sent to power the Beast.”

I felt Goldie getting annoyed and wanting to silence the sorcerer. [Annoyance, disrespect: Let’s eat him.]

*No, darling you can’t just eat people who annoy you; and look at him, you might get indigestion.* And who knows what a sorcerer tasted like, maybe not as good as metahumans. I mean there was all that extra-dimensional energy surrounding them.

I didn’t miss how the Ancient One tensed when Goldie spoke to me, so… she could intercept our mental communications? That was interesting to know; how skilled is the ancient one to be able to do that when my thoughts are basically intertwined with Goldie’s? I focused back on the discussion with the boyscout.

Still glaring at him, I said, “Are you speaking about preserving the status quo? So, you’re one of those conservative guys who would suffer evil to avoid a little harm? Is all that bullshit you spew about defending the Earth from extra-dimensional threats just hogwash?”

Mordo stepped back, startled by my argument and the weight of my gaze; he looked like such a dirty little thing right now. I hated stagnation, and he represented it in all its ugly glory. Now, I understand why in the movies the ancient one didn't choose Mordo as a successor to her position. He was an inflexible person, and a rule stickler, he would never be able to do the job or make the hard decisions.

Mordo was not leader material, but a follower who couldn't be trusted with the fate of the world. It was time to stop paying attention to him and come back to planning. “Remind me, Mister Mordo. What's your rank at this table again? Journeyman, right?”

I turned to my magical mentor and looked her in the eyes. “Ancient one, you should make your students know their place and who it is they’re trying to look down on.”

I had enough of this shit, my girlfriend was snatched by a demonic cult, either she kept her underlings docile or I will have to call off the mission and go to someone else for my magic backup. I know how to get to Otherworld, or hire Selene Gallio's service… though I don’t want to imagine the price she would ask of me.

Obviously, Mordo didn't take it well to be reminded that he was unimportant, his face darkened and he glared at me. I felt him muster some magic. "Impertinent little-"

"Mordo." The strict voice of the Ancient One interrupted Mordo making a fool out of himself, at least more than before.

"Yes, Ancient One?"  The man suddenly looked more meek.

The bald woman nodded. "Be silent, you have no grounds to accuse her when the circumstances were not of her making." 

I wanted to laugh at the livid expression the sorcerer in training was making; seriously just because you’re hot shit in your little temple doesn’t mean you can strut in my base. I non-helpfully added with a little psionic pressure, "I don't suffer fools, Mister Mordo. And the kind of power play you just tried is risky, even more so when you don't know who you are dealing with. I hope you’ll pull your weight in this operation, I already have my doubts about your competence."

"..." He said nothing, or just like a good boy he was listening to the Ancient One. To my empathy he didn’t feel like he was behaving though. I know that some time soon, I will have to remove him when he inevitably goes bad after learning what the ancient one did to be immortal. Speaking of Dormammu, I intended to aid my mentor in kicking the Dark Dimension leader’s ass.

Linking my hands together, I smiled. "But I am a magnanimous person… I shall give you a chance to prove me wrong, Mister Mordo."

"CoughLiarCough."

<Stop acting like a jumped up villain, Jean.> Chimera projected her thoughts to me.

The Ancient One laughed mentally, showing a dignified and stoic expression outwardly. I glared at my second in command and said, "You should get your throat checked out, Chimera."

The blonde calmed down, giggling. "Thanks for your concern…"

After a round of tittering from the Ascendency's side, I got back to business and said, "Anyway, now that we're done laying blame, I have two proposals."

The screen-table lit up, showing a blue hued hologram of the Earth turning on itself, the planet stopped spinning and the hologram zoomed in on where China, the Koreas and Japan were located. "First, I propose going to North Korea and breaking the Hand and their holdings there, as well as culling the major demons and their minions that I feel are gathered in Pyongyang. I still don’t know how many strongholds they possess there." 

This is where Cindy was seen the last time I could follow her with my timestream manipulation. Going to the unknown didn’t sit well with me, I wanted to get Cindy right away but I had to be logical here. We would need intelligence before assaulting the country and the people responsible for that clusterfuck.

Every sorcerer around the table spoke at the same time when I told them the news. Those that stood behind them didn't react, they must be ignorant or too confident… Major demons were bad news for the planet. The ancient one raised a hand and silenced everyone with a muting spell, then she looked into my eyes.

"How many Major Demons are there?" The Ancient One asked me, she didn't like how I just revealed that she just shirked her job.

I closed my eyes and let my mind drift and looked for the wrongness in that part of the world, in my mind’s eye I could feel ten big sickly black spots staying in place, with a lot of minor spots surrounding them, they were the rabble, the people that they had infected with their taint.

"Ten or so from what I can feel." I reported to my mentor. 

A tall blonde man interrupted me, he had kind blue eyes and felt way smarter than that guy, Mordo. "How can you detect them from this far away, Miss Grey?"

“We all have our secrets, Mister Kaecilius.” I said with a smile.

"Jean has special abilities that I've been helping her hone for the last two months. She can detect the unnatural on the tapestry of reality. If she says that there's ten Major demons there, I trust her judgment." The Ancient One told them without lying even once.

She told them something without revealing anything about my abilities as well. No one knew they were in the room with an unstable Phoenix Host who might snap at any moment. I was forcefully calming myself down and trying to find Cindy and plan a strike to decapitate the Hand's leadership. 

The stealth satellite was pointed at North Korea and my people with the help of EVE were cataloging every military and industrial asset the country possessed. I will strike at it once I am done with the Hand…

The Ancient one seemed to think about it or try to peer into the future to see what might happen, but as I am involved… she may have a hard time seeing all possibilities.  She put her fingers on her temples and started massaging them. “We can’t go there, there’s too much unknown.”

I nodded, having anticipated that answer. “I agree with you.”

Then the hologram switched from North Korea to Japan, there were a lot of minor red dots, a big one near Mount Fuji. “This is why my second offer is to go to the heart of the Beast’s den directly and take him out with his worshipers, like a domino effect, this should destroy its influence on Earth. Their location is here in Aokigahara, a forest on the northwestern flank of Mount Fuji on the island of Honshu in Japan; in a place called the Valley of Mercy and Wrath.”

“What kind of resistance do you expect?” Mister Kaecilius asked me.

“Heavy resistance and an abundance of demonic creatures, with possessed shinobi crawling in the valley.” This was going to need a heavy assault and everything we had.

“How do you expect to break their defenses?” The Ancient One asked cautiously.

“Easily, this is a plan that I call Wrath of the Heavens.” I think it’s high time to test the bombardment and decimation drones.

Thanks to the gathering of science minded intellectuals in my organization, we’ve come up with VTOL capable fighter drones equipped with energy and mass driver weapons; they are still in need of testing, we will see how they will do on the field under the control of EVE. I will make those fucking ninja regret ever passing me off. When I finish things in Japan, I would send my forces to South America, Russia, and Africa to finish the branches of the Hand. With no access to the demonic magic that they enjoyed, I hoped that they would be easier to deal with.

I will find Cindy, and then I will never make that mistake of leaving my loved ones unguarded ever again.

 

# # #

(???)

Meanwhile in Japan
1-1 Furugome
Narita
Chiba 282-0004
Narita airport
14 hours later

The white haired and balding old man waited for his fellow Daimyo to arrive, he had been surprised that Bakuto was coming back to Japan. It worried him, Bakuto was supposed to take over the criminal underground of the US and Canada then to spread the Hand’s cult reach. However, contact with the nascent branch has completely been cut off. The old man feared that something untoward might have happened.

Contact with Madame Gao was lost, she was the one in charge; Alexandra Reid had simply vanished, Murakami and Sowand were nowhere to be found as well. The old man asked himself if this was enemy action and that it was why Bakuto was back in Japan. Was it his fault? Or had his colleague gone to ground? Which one of the Hand’s powerful enemies had decided that their expansion into North America should be stopped? The Chaste? That old man, Furinji? Or someone new? He hoped not.

Things were going great in Japan at the moment, the Emperor was in the Hand’s pocket as well as the Diet and the JSDF and most of the banking institutions. They had their fingers everywhere and liked the status quo. Things changing right now would not be tolerated. Just as he had that thought, the elderly man exited the luxurious limousine he was sitting in, they were in a hangar for one of the private jets reserved for the Hand’s use.

As the hangar’s gate opened, seven people were exiting the private plane… they were all unknown to him but he recognized the feeling of anguish emanating from their inner-chi, to have seen their comrades and brothers and sisters in arms being slaughtered or dying. They all bowed to him as they saw him at the entrance of the hangar. Finally descending from the jet’s ramp, the familiar figure of Bakuto wearing a white ninja Gi with his sword strapped at his waist approached him.

The man looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept for days. Bakuto looked quite relieved to see him, but he didn’t lower his guard. 

"Bakuto-dono, welcome back." The elder man slightly bowed his head after joining his hand over fist in a gesture of respect.

Bakuto returned the same gesture. "It is good to see you, Takashi-dono. But I wish it was under better circumstances…"

Takashi nodded with a grave expression etched on his wizened face. “The NA chapter has gone silent, I imagine that you know why?” 

Bakuto coughed in his hand, avoiding Takashi's gaze. “Yes I do.”

Looking at Bakuto acting this way reminds Takashi how young the man was compared to him, and that his hubris had caused him to pay dearly. The elder man put his arms behind his back, waiting for Bakuto to elaborate. “Well… what happened?”

Bakuto looked into the afternoon sky, the sunlight was declining; he sighed and began his tale. “I underestimated a young woman, she has the potential to become a great warrior, and I wanted her in my service, but…”

Interrupting him, the old man bluntly asked, "What is her name?"

"Jean Grey." Bakuto replied, biting out each name with venom.

Takashi let his arms slide along his body, took a little block note with a pen and wrote the name given to him by Bakuto. Then he nonchalantly snapped his fingers; a masked man in scarlet red gi appeared out of thin air.

“Goshujin-sama, what is thy bidding?” The man looked down at Takashi’s feet, not daring to look him in the eyes.

"Look into this young woman's background." The elderly commanded.

The man took the piece of paper and said, "Yes, Goshujin-sama." Then proceeded to disappear completely from view.

Old Takashi turned to Bakuto and waved at him. “From what you said, I can guess that you discovered that this Jean girl was already under tutelage by someone else? This always happens, believe me. Please, continue your story.”

Bakuto started to say how he met the intriguing Grey-san, when his protégé’s adopted daughter had a fight at school with Jean Grey. The Hand’s finger confessed that he didn’t expect that events would  snowball into the destruction of the Hand’s chapter of North America; he said that he was greedy after knowing that she was able to manipulate chi like Wing-san, his protégé and she was younger and had more potential for growth and becoming stronger. 

Bakuto then finished his tale with its conclusion, “It happens that she’s connected to an unknown organization, powerful people who already knew that we were in the US and struck us to every location tied to our Organization.”

There was something missing, Takashi thought that the retaliation was disproportionate. With a disciplinarian tone, Takashi asked, “Ah, and what did you do for them to attack so strongly?”

“...I may have taken Grey's paramour hostage, I tried to blackmail her and force her into the hand’s service, as a result she destroyed the NA chapter as an answer.”

Takashi looked at Bakuto in disappointment, "This is dire news and it all happened because you overreached."

Bakuto didn’t look like a chastised teenager, but more like a man who knew that his life was forfeit when Takashi shared the news with their Lord. “Now she’s coming after us I presume?” The elder man asked.

“Yes.” Bakuto said with his head lowered, knowing that he was at Takashi’s mercy right now.

“Our Lord will punish you.” Takashi said in a saddened tone.

He truly was, Bakuto was an exemplary member of the Hand, with Gao, Reid and the rest of the five fingers he paved the way for the organization. But with age and such good results from his trailblazing career, Bakuto has gotten arrogant and for his hubris was slapped hard by reality. Takashi sighed, turned to the open gates of the hangar and looked at the declining sun.

“And I deserve it, I was too set in my ways and eager to show the girl the stupidity of her youth and why she shouldn’t resist; she killed Gao, Reid, Sowand and Murakami and anyone connected to the Hand in the US. This setback can’t be forgiven…” Bakuto admitted with humility.

At least the boy was willing to repent, Takashi liked this fact. “Is there a way to just give her back her lover and…”

If they could negotiate and smooth out this incident, Bakuto’s fate would be less tenuous; however, Bakuto shook his head and said, “I doubt it, Miss Grey is a stubborn and bloodthirsty young woman.”

The younger man explained what he had felt when he was still in New York, how a wave of bloodthirsty chi had engulfed the entire city. He had to flee as it was at this moment when the attacks started to happen, this organization he provoked had ways to kill people like them who were peerless with chi manipulation and combat. 

“Bakuto-dono I will be candid, you should have stayed in America and died there. The Beast will consume you for this…” Takashi warned.

“I have a plan to avoid this fate…” Bakuto said with determination.

Takashi shook his head, he saw that the young man wanted to avenge his honor as well. “For your sake, I hope so.”

But despite the two men’s wishes, events conspired against them as other organizations took aim against them as they smelled the Hand’s blood in the water.

 

# # #

 

February 23rd, 1997
Interpol Japan
Tokyo
At the same time…

 

Deputy Commissioner General Rio Aikawa was a patient man, but being blocked from actively resolving problems in his country by the Diet made him a bit bitter. He knew he smelled an eel, that some people didn’t want him to focus on the Yami organization. How many of the Diet members were bought or unintentionally obstructing Interpol?  There were too many to consider…

He was currently in a telephone discussion with one of the pillars of Japanese culture, a man who contributed to the martial education and the preservation of their people's peace. Right now his old friend was informing him about how someone or another organization had destroyed the nascent Hand chapter in New York, USA and that those same individuals spoke about doing the same in Japan.

Rio didn’t know how Furinji-san got this information but it was truly fortuitous. Rio was now in a position to temper and mitigate the level of collateral damage brought by two secret organizations duking it out. "Yes, Furinji-san, we will investigate. Thank you for tipping me off."

Rio then thought about what he knew about the Hand, the organization was shrouded in secrets and had existed since Feudal Japan. They were involved in human trafficking, drug dealing, assassination, and other reprehensible activities; they did have legitimate fronts, in particular in Kyoto and Osaka where the supernatural society was more hidden and integrated with the mundane world.

Then we have this new organization challenging the known quantity that the Hand has become; Rio needed to know more about them before wanting to engage people who gave a bloody nose to the Hand. Old man Furinji must have called him because he wanted to have access to a certain officer in his employ.

“Oh, oh, oh. This was all I wanted to tell you, Rio-kun. I must leave now, take care of Momoka, the poor dear keeps saying that you work too much.” Furinji-san added.

"Say hello to Miyu-chan for me." Rio replied.

He didn’t like the fact that his wife aired their relationship problems to the old man, Furinji Hayato had better things to do, like training.

“Will do.” Furinji-san hung up after a chuckle.

Rio sighed and leaned into his comfortable office chair and took a cuban cigar from his drawer and lit it with his custom lighter. He breathed in the smoke and… exhaled as he thought that he was taking on a huge gambit there, this other organization might not be able to take down the Hand despite their legendary ruthlessness and fear cloaking them. But what is life without taking risks? 

Pushing a button on his office’s phone, Rio called the director of Criminal Affairs. “Call officer Chun. I have a case for her…”

She was the best choice for this mission, after all she’s used to escaping their kill teams…

 

# # #

 

Back with Jean…
Japan
Kyoto
Yasaka shrine
3 hours later

The sorcerers opened a portal and me and everyone quickly passed through and found ourselves at the Yasaka shrine, a Shinto shrine in the Gion District of Kyoto. Situated at the east end of Fourth Avenue, the shrine includes several buildings, including gates, a main hall and a stage. It was night, but the place was majestic to look at because of all the lights coming from the stage and the main gates.

An old man surrounded by a lot of women in white and red Miko outfits bowed to the Ancient One and she responded in kind. The Ancient One looked at me, then she waved her hand in the air and a shimmering bubble appeared around her and the old man she bowed to earlier; she turned back to him and started discussing something with him that… I couldn’t hear despite my plethora of bullshit abilities. This was a nice spell that she was using here, I will ask her to teach it to me later.

The Ancient One had become a bit distant since she came to the base. Did she see me destroying the planet because of the state I was in earlier? I felt ashamed, I let myself give in to my rage… How many times does it make? I’ve been pulled from the brink too many times and almost did something I’d regret. I needed to be better and get a hold of myself.

The Ancient One dispelled the bubble of energy she used to not have me spy on her discussion. Next she walked toward me with a neutral mask on her face, when she stopped before me she placed her hands into the sleeves of her kimono as she informed me that, “We’re going to attack from this temple.”

Frowning, I asked, “Why? Shouldn’t we go to their Valley and start to assault them there?”

Her face relaxed from the neutral expression she had, she simply smiled at me as she took a hand out of a sleeve and pinched my nose. “Trust me, Jean. It’s better to attack from afar. Do you trust me?”

The Ancient One may be manipulative and a bit underhanded… but she’s my magic mentor, if I can’t trust her, then who can I trust?  “Fine, we will do as you say.”

The bald woman then proceeded to leave, striding toward Wanda who was helping Wong set up the tent dedicated to the sorcerers. I’m happy that she’s here, I sent all my friends and their family to hide in the Egypt base again after what happened to Cindy and her family. Again, a spike of guilt struck me, making me hold onto my chest as I felt regret from not having anticipated that asshole Bakuto.

I stopped feeling sorry for myself and got my head in the game; I don’t know why the Ancient One wanted to launch our attack from the shrine, but it seems she saw something in the future if we attacked from much closer. I’m going to listen to the one person who is a demon hunter by profession. As I looked around me, I could feel many disturbing energies that I’d never felt before.

I could feel the dimensional magic that us apprentices and sorcerers used, but I felt something more… ethereal, wispy (?) spiritual (?) through the air thanks to my psychic senses. Kyoto was also built on what’s called a Dragon vein or for us westerners, Ley line nexus which is multiple ley lines converging in one location.

It took hours for my engineers to settle in the shrine's courtyard. The tents were assembled, the generators online and the antennas to connect the camp to our satellites were standing inside the courtyard. The uplink transceiver was a small metallic black tripod powerful enough receive and transmit data to the ‘Sister Eye’ network I created; a trinity of three satellite the size of two container that I placed in geosynchronous orbit with my portals as I wasn’t limited by rockets and fuel like most nation on Earth to deliver satellites in orbit around Earth. 

The Sister Eye network was loaded with a lot of options such as telecommunication, Radio and my prototype Quantum entanglement device where information is sent through particles, entangled photons and so far it was my secure communication channel.

Thanks to the powerful computers inside each satellites, my organization can create visual images based on the sensor data it gathers, I can basically do what any spy satellite in my previous world could: 

• Optical imaging surveillance
• Missile early warning
• Electronic reconnaissance
• Radar imaging surveillance
• Communication

They could also defend themselves with Tetryon beams or move with my prototype ion thrusters. Thinking about it, I need to update them to the new models soon… I will do that after I’m done saving Cindy and make sure she’s alright. I sighed and looked at the engineers installing the holographic table in the middle of the command tent. This device allows projection and interaction of holographic avatars over great distances with a haptic interface of my own invention. The technology wasn’t a new one, I mean in my previous world it was already there… Haptic devices are common in the form of game controllers, joysticks, and steering wheels. 

But with this holo-table I can create an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the holograms. The holo-emitters work in tandem with tactile sensors that measure the force exerted by the user on the interface. 

“Ma’am, everything should be ready in five minutes.” Maria Hill suddenly came next to me; she was decked into the  black and blue bodysuit all my Dragoon wear.

“Good, I will open the portal to the base.” I told her.

Maria nodded and walked toward the command tent to help setting it up better; meanwhile I watched as the sorcerers were enchanting the CQC weapons and the ammunition we had brought with us. They were blessing them to be more lethal to demonic entities. They were doing a good job.

I slapped my cheeks with my hands. *Head in the game.*

Now that I had a portal point in Japan other than Akihabara, I needed to open my own portal here. My Ascendency uniform changed to the green and gold Phoenix raiment with a shroud of cosmic pyrokinesis surrounding them. Lifting my right hand into the air, I opened a portal, a damn big one, fifteen meters in diameters that I connected to the launching bay of my fighter drones.

Almost immediately I felt my three automated VTOL stealth fighter drones exit the portal; those were the unmanned flying drones using the graviton engine based on the Vulture’s tech that I built onto. The two devices were like night and day; Adrian Toomes’ design can reach speeds of up to 95 miles per hour and attain a maximum height of 11,000 feet, while mine has no ceiling and can achieve Mach 1 easily due to me simply possessing better materials such as Vibranium with its energy-manipulating properties.

Those drone fighters were not meant to be piloted by a human, I didn’t have to design a cockpit that is basically a titanium "bathtub" that can ward off anti aircraft rounds up from 57mm. A cockpit in a fighter plane is designed to protect the pilot where they're most likely to get hit by ground fire: the underside and the nose.

My black eagle MKI use a similar technological principle to my replica Knight Rider car, but instead of titanium, I use an alloy of Vibranium/Titanium/Aluminum to form the plating of their molecular bonded shell; the difference was that my car was rated for conventional firearms and explosive devices, while my drones and aircraft were rated for war. The Black eagle was an energy hungry model due to all the systems I stuffed into it, I had to come up with a completely new design of fuel cell. I used my prototype MKV fusion batteries that I could recharge thanks to the Deuterium fusion reactor that I built (It was largely more powerful than the Helium 3 that Nathaniel Essex had invented, it pains me to confess that I used his design to make my own).

To recharge the fusion fuel cell, I came up with the Deuterion beam energy transfer system. It was fascinating to see all my engineers dance and throw a party because of the tech we came up with. My scientists couldn’t wait for us to go live with our research and prototypes and show to the world what we were capable of. *Of course I knew that it wouldn’t be this easy. The Oil Barons will try to eliminate us to stop us from killing their business. But they cannot stop me, they cannot stop the future.*

Those fighter drones were fast as they were equipped with a Ion engine, a superior design compared to the one on my private jet. The drives generated charged particles that were then hurled from the rear of the ship, producing thrust in the process; those were theoretically rated for space flight, in atmosphere the craft with an ion engine could reach sustained speeds of Mach 4, quicker than anything on Earth beside those Wakandan Talon Fighters who could go faster because they cheated with full vibranium tech while I reproduced the results that vibranium tech brought with normal material.

I was really proud of the armament on those too; the Black Eagle was equipped with one gauss minigun, twin laser cannon turret, two heavy missile pods, and one photon warhead. The fighter drone was thirty meters in length, eighteen in width and six in height, it was my biggest flying reconnaissance and power projection vehicle so far. And I was going to send them on a reconnaissance mission first.

 

# # #

 

Command Tent
Yasaka shrine
5 minutes later

Fighter Drones overlooking the Aokigahara Forest, 358 Km away from Kyoto.

It didn’t take long for the Black Eagle to reach the enemy’s territory. Seeing my aircraft fly at full speed through the hologram of the tactical holo-table was an experience, we could see the cities and towns between our location and those of the Hand’s compound. I liked the fact that the optical camouflage and the silent mode on the crafts' engine worked as intended.

I had tested them on deployment in Mali, France and a lot of other countries were helping the legitimate government in an operation to oust Islamic militants from the north of Mali, who had begun a push into the center of Mali. My men slaughtered them all and France took the credit, good for them.

As I watched, the pilot who I stood behind, braked with one of the three fighter drones and he said out loud to inform me, “We’re seeing the valley, ma’am.”

The Valley of Mercy and Wrath wasn’t much to look at at night, what we could analyze from the sensors was that it was a Rift type valley, a linear shaped lowland between several highlands or mountain ranges created by the action of a geologic rift. Inside was a beautiful Japanese castle sitting on a hilltop and on screen we could see that the castle was composed of a network of buildings around it; turrets, gates, earthen walls, storehouses… 

We were using night vision to see everything here while the fighter drones were invisible and in hovering mode. The technology for this was super easy to develop as other nations had it already; the principles were like this: an image-intensifier system works by collecting photons through an objective lens, converting them to electrons via a photocathode, increasing the electrical energy with a microchannel plate, converting the electrical energy back to light using a phosphor screen and presenting the image for viewing through an eyepiece lens. 

This was all tech that was already available that Wakanda pilfered from the US and… refined with their Vibranium technology. It was useful to see the grounds of the future battlefield. I wish that I had developed a more powerful sensor able to scan the castle for schematics.

“Thermal imaging.” I ordered.

The pilot proceeded to obey while I watched him use the haptic interface of his hard light keyboard to activate the option on the application.

Thermal imaging provides the ability to “see” people within a building, for example, and can also be used during daylight hours; and there were a lot of people in the fucking buildings… The computer counted them and estimated that there were at least five thousand people in this valley.

As I didn’t design this system, I didn’t know what I was looking at; I mean, I had an idea but I wasn’t an expert… “Okay what are we seeing here? I forgot to add a distinction between animals and humans in the algorithm of the application.”

The technician chuckled with a hollow tone. “There’s an awful lot of people there, ma’am.”

My eyes became hard as I understood that all the red and yellow spots were people. “Nothing that a photon warhead can’t fix, I assure you.”

I nuked a lot of places before, this place wouldn’t be the only one. Camp Lehigh in New York state, that castle in Berlin and my Nova and photon bombs testing in space. From the sensors I would need the three photon bombs, their yield had been limited many times compared to the original exploding device used in Germany by yours truly. The scientists and engineers had banded together against me to not have WMD capable of leveling a country. They scaled down the bombs and evicted me from the project which is named Apollo.

The technician looked at me from a side eyed glance and mumbled, “Huh, that’s radical.”

“Don’t bomb the castle, there are innocent people inside!” The Ancient One warned urgently.

The bald woman looked at me in the eyes and I felt a light touch on my mental shields, I let it in and the Ancient One said mentally, <There’s two people there, that you need to save in the castle, Jean.> 

She started showing me the memory of a vision, a purple haired girl and a gravely wounded and unconscious asian woman laid on beds in a lab somewhere. They were strangely familiar to me, but I shrugged, it wasn’t important. Sighing, I asked, “But I can bomb the surrounding buildings right?”

The woman went into an obvious trance, her eyes glazing over as she consulted the timestreams, when her eyes regained the light of intelligence, she nodded to me. “Yes, it’s a better solution, nothing important will be lost.”

“Great!” I put on my most evil grin and focused my eyes onto the holographic screen before me.

I put a hand on the technician's left shoulder and tightened my grip on it. “Try the multi lock-on system, okay?”

The man’s hand flew on the hard light keyboard as he entered command after commands, next he touched a targeting reticule icon on the holo-screen and he touched all the structures around the castle on the rendered video. Multiple ‘Beep’ sounds announcing the system locking on.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.Beep. Beep.Beep. Beep.Beep. Beep…

The technician leaned in his seat and declared, “Firing solution acquired, ma’am.”

“Kill them! Kill them all! Slaughter them in my name!!” I shouted after emitting a laugh that would without a doubt throw me in the looney bin. They took my love from me, and I will take from them everything for their trespass! 

The Ancient One looked at me worriedly while Wanda hugged me from behind, making me stop. I exhaled a bit and calmed down.

In the meantime, the technician raised his palm and pushed the big red button on the right side of his desk while saying, “Bombs away! I repeat bombs away!”

This was just the opening salvo…

 

# # #

(Takashi)

 

Valley of Mercy and Wrath
Castle
Study

 

While in his study which was full of old relics and trophies won from the stiff and cold hands of his dead adversaries, Takashi had a foreboding feeling as he finished contacting the other branches of the Hand. They were now all on alert and ready for the storm sowed by Bakuto to strike. Takashi hung up his phone, putting the flat of his hand on the cherry wood of his desk, the deceptively elderly man started to think.

He guessed that by now the enemy knew where their holdings could be found, the South American branch was the most likely to have been scouted and to be attacked as well. Unless it was too obvious… Takashi couldn't neglect the fact that this new foe had projective power and assets at the military level. The assault on the New York branch showed this military precision used in a merciless, swift, focused blow.

The thing was, he couldn’t guess what type of powers those people had, was it magic? Or those mutants who pop out of the bamboo forest from time to time? Maybe a group similar to the Brotherhood belonging to this upstart Magneto? Takashi snorted in ridicule, he loathed the man; he was just a broken toy who couldn’t accept loss. That state of ignorance couldn't go on, that is why he opened the beige manilla folder in front of him.

Information about this young woman, Jean Grey, had been difficult to obtain, more than usual, so much so that the infiltrated shinobi in SHIELD only obtained a heavily edited copy of the young Miss’ dossier. So far, all Takashi could see was that the young girl had telepathic and telekinetic powers, as well as a genius intellect; she made what passed for school in the USA looks like kindergarten, then there was a detailed file of how she met with… Elektra Natchios and suddenly everything made sense to Takashi.

In the file, it was shown how long Jean Grey was trained, and Takashi could scarcely believe that it's only been five months since she became able to use chi. This rate of growth was simply astounding compared to experts who had taken years or even decades to master their lifeforce. Furthermore, in the file, it was said that Jean was part of the Ascendency,  ah finally the name of their enemy. But he wasn't prepared for what he read about them, nuking military camps, destroying HYDRA and coming up with new technologies which made SHIELD envious? Takashi asked himself what kind of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon had they provoked? He wasn’t afraid, they had the Beast and thousands of troops specialized in martial arts and magic, they also infiltrated most of the known governments. No matter, just like always they will fall, the Hand has existed longer.

Takashi heard a whistling sound coming from the window of his study, the sound reminded him eerily of the devices the americans had bombarded Japan with at the end of the second world war; it was with reflex that he activated the talisman at his neck which shone with golden chi and covered him in a protective bubble.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. 

A flash of blue light illuminated the night like it was day again. The window exploded into shards of glass, filling the entire room and they bounced on his impromptu shield talisman’s bubble of force. Flashback of the times when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, Takashi hoped that it was the end of it but…

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. 

A second bomb went off. 

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM.

And a third! A Beast damned third! The lights in the castle went completely dark and Takashi could hear the people inside scream in anguish, hurt or fear. Not everyone seemed to have handy protection talismans like him stashed on themselves. Takashi feared for the servants, it was hard to get blind or deaf good helpers nowadays.

Takashi walked to the window and looked outside and saw a lot of troops appear amongst the ruins of the building that had been surrounding the castle with blue flashes of lights and ran toward the castle. He saw a blue light coming toward him and fell on the ground.

Zaaaap! A hole appeared in the wall in his study where the light struck. *Advanced and futuristic weapons indeed. It is just like in the file I’ve read.*

“The barbarians are already at the gate.”

Takashi took out the global alarm talisman he had on his person in his sleeve and infused it with chi. The bloody ink started to glow on the yellow paper and exploded into motes of lights. “Time to retaliate.”

 

# # #

 

Back with Jean
After bombardment 

 

The fighter drones threw three devices at the east, north and south of the valley, they were called Rapid Deployment of Troops device or RDT; they were just souped up receivers for my teleporters. Once the thick metal ring-like devices landed on the burning grass or in the middle of the vaporized ruins of the store houses… my Dragoons landed and began to secure the perimeters.

I opened portals in the night sky and my Samson copters silently exited them with a bunch of power armored operatives jumping down from them weapon ready. From my other portals combat drones were pouring down from the Adirondack and Egypt bases. I was floating into the sky with a TK shield around me and I used my life sense to feel around me; there was only my troops and I around, the photon bombs had hit them hard and fast, killing anyone in the surrounding buildings.

But it couldn’t just be that easy…

Light flashed in the dark sky, an octagonal formation started to fill with glowing Japanese and Chinese ideograms. And it was at that point that people started to appear between my troops and the castle. Ten, fifty, hundred… thousands… Those fuckers seemed to have responded in kind  and teleported their own ninjas.

Opening my arms wide, thousands of red glowing constructs looking like darts appeared around me. I started making them vibrate at high speed and… launched them at Mach 1 at the army of pajamas wearing foot soldiers. 

BTOOOM!!!

The effect was devastating, my construct leveled the battlefield with dust and blood. After this I raised my hand to my mouth and spoke in my vambrace, “Send in the Decimators.”

My command was followed as the four by three meters drones floated toward the survivors of my little attack; the Decimator drones started shooting their rapid firing plasma guns at the wounded and fleeing Ninjas. They floated six meters from the ground thanks to the mini graviton drive and propelled by the mini-ion thrusters that gave them a 200km per hour speed.

The A.I. driven drones received pot shots on their variable geometry armors, fireballs, water, thaumic beam of either pure magic or chi. Some of them fell on the ground, broken; but the sorcerers and chi using ninjas were overwhelmed by the thousands of drones coming toward them in different attack vectors.

“Weapons hot people, move out!” I commanded the troops.

 

# # #

(Sergeant Avery Jonhson)

 

Battlefield

 

“You heard the lady! Move like you've got a purpose!” Avery shouted at his squad, half smoked cigar sticking out of the side of his mouth, the world at his back. There was no hiding his indulgent smile as HIS troops gave a OORAH!

Heavy boots pounded pavement as the heavily armored Dragoon’s with the laser cannon’s took point. The one squad sniper and his spotter stayed in the back and the other mid range followed behind their tank. Already, fire balls were lobbed at them and their armor shields took the damage while absorbing the heat.

If anyone was watching the grizzled Sergeant, they would notice his quick movements and the sounds of Zap! Zap! Zap! He killed three of those pajamas wearing bozzos while running with his boys toward cover toward the nearest scorched black wall while the other squad filled the air with deadly energy beams. The air smelled of blood, shit, and fire with a whiff of ozone. Avery stopped when one group of those ninja conjured earth to box them in with tall earth walls. He gave the air one strong sniff, nostrils flaring, “Welcome to ninja ville.” The Sergeant barked with a mad chuckle, then stepped out of cover with his Tet-pistol raised. Another four going down from his quick pistol action.

With a half a step back, he was once more behind cover, a hand to his coms unit, an order for his men on the TacNet. “Throw a pain grenade at those sons of bitches!”

It was the scrawny kid with more courage than brains that threw a pain grenade first over the wall, the rest of the squad did the same to the other side of the earth walls. The grenade went off with a *bzzzt* and Avery heard the scream of their foes, music to his ears. The drones firing overhead stopped and fired on them, making Avery chuckle as they must be having some more holes in their bodies.

Avery raised a hand and a fireball appeared, he threw it at the wall and… BOOM, it exploded forward as if he had strapped some C4 to it. “KNOCK!! KNOCK!!” 

He felt like he was twenty years old again, and he looked like it; he was faster, stronger and his instinct was on point. His own daughter didn’t recognize him sometimes, but it’s not like she cared, she was a Dragoon as well and under Frank’s command. Their sniper connected to the drones in the air and looked on his HUD to see if the way was clear. 

It wasn’t.

The Dragoons switched from their Tet-pistol to their battle-rifle loaded with pulse munitions capable of shooting through walls a meter thick. Seeing the ninjas behind cover with his thermals, Avery pinged overwatch, “Those pajamas fucks want to play hide and seek. Solve my problem.”

Multiple invisible lasers locked on different targets, all behind the crumbled building. There was no hiding during this fight with active thermals to show where the ninjas were hiding. Avery’s guys fired with abandon into a scorched and ruined building. When some realized that their fellows were being killed even behind cover the ninjas jumped out from behind their cover.

Avery was already prepared with his combat rifle configured into grenade launcher mode, a cluster round already speeding towards their ambush location. That same cluster round fragmented into five frag grenades with homing functionality..

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The Dragoons’s armors took the brunt of the shock and even resisted the kinetic release of the explosives; while that was happening in front of him. The hairs on Avery’s neck twinged, fast as lightning, Avery twisted around as he dropped low, his Tet-pistol leaving the holster and raised. 

ZAP!

The blue coherent beam of energy struck a ninja that was coming out of a shadow, one of those chain weapons in his hands. 

Avery did a little finger roll with his Tet-pistol, used the still glowing red end to relight his cigar, “Always check your six.”

Ignoring the awed look some of his troopers were giving him, Avery cast his eyes around to scan his surroundings. What he found was the Decimator drones still scouring the ruins for victims to put holes into.

At the side, his troopers straighten themselves with a “Yes, sir!”

Letting his rifle fold on itself into a rectangle and putting it on his back slot, Avery decided that he might as well finish this run with his Tet-pistol. Might as well leave a hand free to burn those assholes with his powers or take over the fire within the local to create extra fireballs to share the good times.

“Remember your training, slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” Avery stated his eyes containing a steely glint that commanded respect from all. His troopers gave nods in return, which earned them a grunt of satisfaction, “Lets go hunt down the rest of these pajama bandits! OORAH!!”

“OORAH!!!!”

 

# # #

(Random Dragoon, Zack Gordon)

 

This was a nightmare to Zack. This was his first big scale campaign with the Dragoons, their goal was to remove a criminal organization from the face of the Earth… but he would never have anticipated the hell he was thrown into by accepting to be deployed on the battlefield. There was some magic shit going on too, fire balls, spears of water or the ground opening and sealing his fellow Dragoon with the earth.

Zack had almost been tricked into one of those earth traps the ninjas used. The next wave of enemies struck them with a torrent of water, coming down on them; Zack raised his Tet-pistol and pulled on the trigger before he could be hit, his squadmates doing the same. It was a good move as the water superheated and turned to steam; Zack loved those guns! Swiftly running toward their foes with their augmented body attribute, the Dragoon tackled the ninjas or just shot them dead.

One of them attempted to flee, but Zack didn’t let him. Zap! He shot at the scarlet pajamas clad fucker in the back, creating a big hole where the ninja’s left kidney should be. Falling down, the ninja screamed in pain, but still found the courage to crawl out away from them.

“Fucking die, already!” Zack made an ugly expression and pulled the trigger three times.

Zap! Zap! Zap! Each beam reached the center of the ninja’s body, taking out his heart and lungs. He raised his hand to deflect two shurikens fired at him from his right, some pajamas fuckers were hiding in the destroyed building there.

Zack took a high yield grenade from his utility belt and threw it into the building. “Fire in the hole!” He warned everyone on his TacNet communicator.

Boom! The destroyed building crumbled on itself even more, whoever was inside was sure to be dying right now. 

But contrary to Zack’s expectation, this wasn’t the end; some sort of black smoke oozed out of the flaming and scorched ruins and the atmosphere around them became heavier. The grass wilted and the concrete and stone around the Dragoons turned to dust. The black smoke started to coalesce and take a… shape.

“Yo, what the fuck is this shit?!” One of Zack’s squadmates voiced what everyone was thinking.

The black smoke suddenly changed into monstrous creatures with leathery or feathery wings, red skin and eyes and claws everywhere! The monsters screeched, claws high and attempted to tackle the Dragoons. Zack punched one in the face and sent it flying. “Oi, they didn’t say we would be fighting fucking monsters?!”

He pulled the trigger but nothing happened as his energy pistol jammed. “Fuck!”

The creature he had sent away jumped on him again and made him fall on the grass and started to claw at his armor. Zack protected his face with his arms. “Fuck, someone help!”

 

# # #

 

Back with Jean…

 

It was awe inspiring watching the first major battle of my Dragoons. But it was at this point that things didn’t go as planned as I felt something dark coming toward them… it was like a tide of evil surging through the shadows and the dead bodies that exploded into balls of miasma and wrapped around the battlefield. The grass wilted, decaying due to the malevolence of the demons taking shape after leaving their human shells. They looked horrible, there were a lot of creatures with claws, black and red leathery skin, red glowing eyes with horns and wings at their backs, feathered or leathered. 

The walls of writhing demons met the Dragoons who panicked and started to fire into the creatures. Some of the demons even shrugged off the blue bolts of tetryon energy until my men switched to projectile weapons. I knew I should have developed those bolters like I wanted, not just gone with pulse munition! There were wounded everywhere as some even fell at the claws of demons but they were swiftly teleported to the camp in the Yasaka shrine thanks to their teleportation beacon.

 

# # #

(Dr. Ethan Scott)

 

Hospital tent

 

Ethan thought that nothing could hurt the Dragoon, they boasted about their armors or new fangled weapons all the time. He had thought them invincible by modern standards; he was sorely wrong about that. 

At the start only people with broken bones and heat burn started coming in the teleportation area that they’d cordoned off; but now? Jagged claw marks and envenomed face scratches, broken arms and almost crushed body kept piling up in the area. The cry for help or to make the pain stop were disheartening; Ethan understood there and then that he was not built to be a field medic and that he will stay in the hospital at base.

Some of those Dragoons will have to be transported back to Egypt's base hospital, Ethan couldn’t help any of them right now, the only thing keeping them alive was the armor they were wearing. He was thankful that the head of the medical department had put his foot down and risked displeasing Miss Grey to obtain the budget to expand the hospital in the main base.

*That little girl is a genius, but she’s too scary sometimes. Who the hell uses wounded people as test subjects for untested medical procedures?* Ethan thought in his heart as he helped move the worse patients to the other teleportation area for Egypt base with the anti gravity double-stretcher.

“Two for transport.” He spoke in his vambrace’s communicator.

He has learned to not voice his thoughts and to have a psionic blocker on himself when in her presence; but not in the bi-weekly telepathic check with Chimera. He might not like his boss, but he loved his job in the Ascendency, they paid well and their research was advancing the medical field by leaps and bounds… Ethan was aware that he was making history and that he was well placed to be part of it. 

A purple portal appeared in the cordoned area and through two heavily armed Dragoons exited the hole in space and came forward. Behind them were orderliness in blue nurse outfits who took the patients Ethan was taking care of. He handed his preliminary diagnosis to one of them as they left.

The portal stayed open of course.

Zumf! Ethan turned his head toward the arrival area and saw more Dragoons down. Some even missed a limb or two despite how their armor should have prevented this.

“Goddamnit, there's more coming…” He walked with purpose toward the wounded.

 

# # #

 

Back with Jean…

 

<Teacher, it’s your time to shine!> I communicated mentally to the Ancient One.

It was finally time for the sorcerers on our side to do their duty. Speaking of the devil, the Ancient One appeared on the field with a portal and conjured light that encompassed the entire valley, driving out the murky dark miasma that had spawned from the dead bodies all over the battlefield. The scream of the demons pierced my ears and those of my troops, some of them were completely terrified by what they were seeing but I held their mind in my telepathic grasp and reinforced their courage and reassured them that I was with them, that they might get wounded, but that I wouldn’t let them die.

The ancient one started firing -a spell she’s tried to teach me- the Bolts of Balthakk at the demons, which were fancy lightning attuned magic beams. Wanda appeared behind her and boiling caramel smacked into the demons' faces, then the demons started dying in droves of electrocution and magical candies concoction. Despite not being able to spawn from the bodies, the leathery fuckers kept coming; Wanda needed to get serious and stop with the kitchen witch power set.

<Wanda break out the big spells! None of that kitchen witch stuff!> I sent my orders to my witchy friend.

Wanda stopped moving for a microsecond and summoned a green barrier around herself as she answered my mental command. <Oh, you want real spells? You’ll have them!>

“Be seared by the blood of Gaia!” Wanda shouted for all to hear.

Crack. Crack. Crack. The ground around Wanda began to crack and a viscous orange substance erupted from the cracks forming molten balls of lava floating around the teenage scarlet witch. Wanda turned the lava balls into projectiles and threw them into the swarm of demons, taking care to only target the areas where the Dragoons weren’t at. With splatters of heat creating craters in the ground, the pocket of swarming demons screeched in pain as they were being burned by the lava. Wanda continued to bombard them behind her barrier. Her auburn hair flew widely in the air as her aura flared.

“Okay, that's a serious spell alright. I need to never piss her off…” I said out loud.

It seems that a group of demons noticed that I was floating in the sky and were coming toward me, ten of them? Mustering my own magical powers, I focused my will and called out, “By the fire of creation.”

I directed my hands toward the dumb demons flying toward me and… with a loud FWOOSH, at least some of them died as the tongue of fire extended twenty meters from me and purified the miasma wrought demonic beings. I created a dozen burning cosmic constructs in the form of raptors around me that flew directly toward the demons trying to regroup.

The cosmic fire constructs streaking with blazing trails toward the demons like homing missiles with birdlike cries, each one never missing their targets as they engulf them in cosmic fire, erasing the blight of those cursed beings from our reality. Ancient One, her sorcerer pals and Wanda were cleaning house while my Dragoons were… using their pulse munition rifle and grenades to rip through the demons.

The Tetryon-pistol seemed to have almost no effect on the demons. Was it because they were made out of dark energy? Fortunately, to stem the tide, my Dragoons decided enough was enough and broke out the Amplified Mobility Platforms; those suits were an improvement on my exoskeleton design on the Achilles armor. 

They were four meters high and armored as much as I could make them to still keep their prodigious mobility; and they were armed with the more heavy weapons that my weaponsmiths and scientist have come up with. Miniguns and coilguns prototype with pulse munition, with a heavy CQC combat knife made of titanium/adamantium alloy to engage targets coming too close.

The Dragoons and Decimators cut a large swath in the demons while supporting the sorcerers. I took care of the flying demons who tried to escape the valley; too bad for them that I had a TK barrier around it to stop them from fleeing. Just one of them escaping would cause untold damages.

I continued using my cosmic flames to take out the isolated pockets of demons, or saving my men from being overrun. 

“There’s not much of them left, we can do this.” I remarked as I used a fire spell to burn down the last isolated demons.

Obviously, Murphy felt challenged by my observation; the ground started to shake. RUMBLE. RUMBLE. RUMBLE. A pit opened before the castle’s gate and a giant black worm with disgusting yellow clots and silvery veins surged from it.

SCREEEEEEEECH!!!! The creature’s roar was like earring someone passing their nails on a chalkboard. The miasma that this sinful thing was emitting was smothering as well. Giant tentacles appeared from around the worm, wriggling menacingly. The Dragoons started to panic as they saw the gigantic worm or whatever this was.

On the open communication of TacNet I heard some of them shout things like: 

“Man, we’re going to need bigger guns!!!”

“Demons and now we got a goddamn tentacle monster? I saw that anime and I’m not getting anal raped!”

“I have to agree, my sphincter is getting a bit tight there…”

“Calm down everyone! Focus fire on that thing!” 

That wasn’t the worst that was happening, from the yellow clots on the worm's body, dozen… no thousands of small white worms started to spawn, wriggling and landing in wet sounds around the battlefield. They were like a mini version of the big fuckign worm; the Dragoons started firing at them right away. 

“Where did those things come from?!”

“What the fuck!”

“Call HQ! Tell them to get us the heavy flamers!!”

The sounds of heavy fighting filled the battlefield, the sorcerers started using whatever flame spells they had to take out the little minion. Whoever was controlling the worm must not have liked how easily we took care of the demons he or she unleashed on us. Pulse munition didn’t seem that effective on the worm minions and we didn’t have an infinite supply of them with us right now. I was about to take care of the big worm that kept spawning those annoying shitty mobs when I heard the Ancient One’s voice loud and clear on the battlefield:

“Seven Rings has Raggadorr, from indigo to deepest black! Their fabled might we now implore...Grant us the power to smite these fell beings back!” 

She summoned a perfect cylinder of magical force into the air over her position, it shone with eerie blue light; the cylinder separated into seven circular bands of different colors ranging from indigo and black. She threw them at the worm and the rings hovered over the wriggling abomination, the larger rings encased the worm and the shortest ring began to shine with black light and…

WHOMP!! The giant worm thing was drowned in rainbow light that started destroying its body particles by particles until nothing remained. There was no ichor, or remaining tentacles, only complete disintegration. This stopped everything on the battlefield for a moment, before giving hope to everyone that they could win this; the Dragoons and Sorcerers started to fight even more fiercely.

After witnessing why she was so respected and feared, I took a good resolution here and now. “Okay, don’t piss off Ancient One too.”

Now that I was done with the flying critters, I…

[Excitement, Bloodlust: Violence!] Goldie said in my mind, the poor girl wanted to kill things too.

“Yes, let’s kill some of the remnants.” I flew toward the side where my Dragoons and the sorcerers were fighting.

Landing near Wanda and the Ancient one, I let Goldie wrap me into her Klyntar battleform. My fingers turned into claws and I jumped into the fray. 

“Men! Don’t fire on the golden clawed gal! She’s with us!” I heard the voice of Avery Jonhson on the TacNet warn the Dragoons to not fire on me just to make sure.

Our claws started to rend into the white wriggling abomination, and our cosmic fire started to incinerate and purify any of their remains as we bisected and tore into them. As we killed them, we started to find out their weaknesses, fire was a definite one, also there was an upper limit to their regeneration, thank Stan Lee they didn’t multiply as we cut them down. Cosmic fire or just fire seemed to be the antithesis to demonic miasma, we will note down this in our report when everything is done. We shared our observation on the TacNet with sergeant Jonhson and as a result, fifty power armored operators were dropped on the white worms with the prototype heavy flamers, burning and searing the disgusting creatures.

Scientia potentia est, Knowledge is power. “And knowing is half the battle, the other half is extreme violence.”

This assault gave us the idea of adding hot plasma weapons to our organization’s arsenal. If our enemies started to dabble with demonic extra-dimensional beings, we needed weapons that punched holes into things… We think Warhammer 40k was right. “Fuck the Xenos.”

We spread our consciousness over the battlefield and used our control over fire to smite every monster around us. Fire balls manifested in the air and started to fall like hail on the white worms, boiling their body and then consuming them, leaving only craters on the ground as they exploded. Not letting ourselves relax for a moment, we noticed that some of them were still there.

They had burrowed under the ground to protect themselves from my fire rain; and like moles moved under the earth. We followed their movement and noticed that they were moving toward the sorcerers, surely to take them by surprise, too bad that we could follow them with our life-vision. We teleported to the Ancient One and pushed her out of the way.

“Jean, what are you…?” She asked in an offended tone.

But she understood why we did that when tentacles speared from the ground where she had been and the horrible white and veiny creature showed itself with teeth in its mouth. We turned our arms into blades and we cut the worm in two and used our cosmic fire to burn the creature out of existence. We planted one arm blade into the ground and decided to use the fucking tunnels the creatures used as a conduit form our fire.

Like a flamethrower, we generated our flames and let it spread under the earth, relentlessly seeking the creatures thanks to my life-vision. We stayed like this for over a minute as they tried to flee to the surface, but it was too late, despite holes opening all over the battlefield with pillars of flame gushing through them.

“They’ve been Terminated.” We laughed at my quotes.

I turned to our teacher, the bald woman looked somewhat worried by our behavior from the emotion we could feel from her.

“Jean?” She called out one of our names.

This was the first time that we had given in to the link between us so much; Jean and Goldie always stayed distinct from each other, but right now, this was a novelty for us. We shook our head and looked at the immortal sorceress. “No, Ancient One, when I am like this…”

We took our blade arm from the hole, and turned the blade back into a clawed appendage. [“...WE ARE GOLDIE.”]

We struck a pose, causing the Ancient One to shake her head at us. “You and your theatrics.”

 

# # #

(Wanda)

 

Since her escape from the Vault, Wanda had found out what family was like, that she was special and had magic, that she wasn’t just a dangerous person that needed to be locked up. That she wasn’t just a tool to be discarded and that she was worth something. Jean had shown her what love and friendship was and for a long while, Wanda had thought that she was dreaming and still sleeping in that cell she had been in for the last six years.

But Wanda was now able to discern reality from hallucination thanks to her training with the Ancient One. Traveling through the dimensions and astral plane has a way to wake you up and make you feel that your problems aren’t really problems in the end. This bullshit with the Hand was proving it to her once more, things could be worse.

Wanda walked toward the dark pit where the slimy black worm had been, stopping right at the mouth of the deep hole. Wanda lifted her right hand and a large pile of earth surged from the ground, forming a construct that bridged the deep pit before the castle of their enemies. Wanda had been shocked by the scale of the battle she had participated in; men, women in strange garbs and surprisingly monsters fell left and right to her spells. 

The mope up and securing of the battlefield was still happening behind her, while the other sorcerers and Jean prepared to follow her into the eerie castle.

The teenage witch made the bridge extra sturdy and ten meters wide, and she walked forward to test its solidity. Jumping up and down, the bridge didn’t crumble under her. She turned to the others and said, “It’s safe.”

Jean in her battleform was the first to join her and Master Kacealius next. They finally reached the walls and passed through the gates and found themselves in a garden with cherry trees surrounding the main building. Wanda found the anachronism of such beauty strange when this place was led by monsters and killers. There was a giant pond with some fishes swimming in it, Wanda carefully threw a diagnostic spell to see if they were really fishes… and not monsters like the ones she fought earlier.

"Not monsters, great." Wanda said with relief.

The teen witch turned her eyes to the castle's gates; almost certainly new horrors and Gaia only knows what waited for them inside, but she would be ready. Wanda realized that she needed to stop holding back and to fear that she might lose control, they were fighting inhuman entities and that her reservations about killing were hindering her.

[“When we enter this place, we need to be careful.”] Wanda heard Jean say in the strange echoing voice she suddenly developed.

Turning toward her best friend, Wanda loomed at Jean in her too revealing form; she wanted to poke out the eyes of the journeymen looking at Jean too attentively. 

“Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs, Miss Grey.” Master Kacealius commented as he moved his arm to perform a spell  that Wanda was getting familiar with, the detect life spell.

He must not have liked what his spell discovered as he stepped back from the gates.

Jean shook her head. ["No, you don't understand. We feel like this castle is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside."]

Wanda tried to feel what Jean meant, what she detected was more akin to unfathomable darkness and a corrupt presence. These must be the major demons that Jean had told them about when they were at her base. Wanda decided to ready her Seraphim spells, and regretted not accepting reading the book of the Vishanti when the Ancient One offered it. But she didn’t want to become Sorcerer Supreme, Jean had told her when she refused that Wanda was being an idiot and that being considered a spare candidate to the title wasn’t that bad.

Master Kacealius spoke with trepidation. "Ah, are you detecting any spatial fluctuations?"

*Ah, spatial magic, we didn’t come that far in my studies yet. But how can Jean be aware of other dimensions and space magic?* Spatial, time and dimensional magic were strangely interlinked; due to Wanda focusing on the basics, she wasn’t that far in her education. 

Jean nodded at the master. ["It’s a similar sensation to the mirror dimension, that's all we can say."]

"I see, we'll be on our guard. Who knows how many enemies are left inside." The middle aged sorcerer gathered his robes and went to give the news to the Ancient One who had stayed back in the garden, something had attracted her attention.

The Ancient One looked in the air and clapped her hands together, red glowing light started to shimmer into existence and covered the entire castle. To Wanda’s vision, countless asian pictograms and hieroglyphs formed intermingled into an elegant geometric and arithmetic structure. Wards, powerful ones were protecting this castle.

The sorceress walked back toward the gate and seemed to be trying to decipher the wards. When she reached Wanda she spoke with a wondering tone. “Interesting, it is a shame that they relied on blood magic to build this.”

Wanda opened her armored trench coat. Letting the black and red body suit hugging her curves be seen. She reached for something inside of it; it was a book or it was more accurate to say that it is her personal grimoire, her book of shadow like Jean called it. She put her hand on the cover and the lock on the side opened, as she consulted the grimoire, she let her magic seek for her what she wanted to know, after all her grimoire was linked to the library at Kamartaj, it acted surprisingly like a computer connected to internet would. 

At least that’s how Jean described it.

*Ah, here it is. Blood magic is a school of magic that taps into the inherent power of blood to fuel spellcasting and that can be used for violent corrupting purposes such as mind control and demon summoning. Spilling of blood is a potent force in the working of magic. 

It may be a token sacrifice, but it may also be the loss of life that fuels the spell. Some blood may be indicated to be more powerful than others. Common types are human blood, monster blood, the blood of royalty, the blood of a special line, the blood of an innocent, a child's blood, the caster's own blood or virgin's blood. Sometimes only a single person's blood has power, and any other blood is powerless. The other side of the coin is menstrual blood, which is used much less frequently but is associated with life magic when it is used. 

Not all blood magic is nefarious, countless rituals can be used to seal, check the lineage of someone or be used in healing.* 

Wanda found it disturbing how such magic could be used to do harm. She looked up at the wards before her and concluded that these were blood wards, built through the sacrifice of countless people. The auburn witch turned to the Ancient One who had stopped her inspection and stood beside her. “Teacher, can you break it?”

Her teacher looked thoughtful as she crossed her arms. “Alone? No. Those blood wards are too powerful, they would reflect any attack on us.” 

“What the? Those bastards are turtling up?!” Jean exclaimed crudely.

Wanda and the Ancient One ignored her; the teenage witch asking an important question. “Then, what do we need to break through?”

“You.” The sorceress supreme had a conniving smile tugging at her lips.

Wanda understood what the Ancient One meant; she had a need for her Chaos Magic, an obscure art that wasn’t seen since the advent of Chton, God of Chaos, who was sealed in Mount Wundagore. Chaos magic can manipulate, warp, and reconstruct the fabric of existence and reality to the user's very whims.

“Teach me.” Wanda slightly bowed her head, but her eyes were still on the bald woman.

“Follow me, student.” The Ancient One stepped toward the gate.

Wanda followed her eagerly. As they stopped before the giant gates, the Ancient One began to explain what was a dangerous part of Wanda’s magic. “The manipulation of reality is a dangerous art, Wanda. What I am asking you to do, is to basically negate the existence of these blood wards.”

Calling on her magic, Wanda let it fill her body and soul with her eyes closed; a red aura flared around her but before she gave in completely to her power, she took the reins of the metaphysical beast. Just like Jean had shown her, this was her power and she controlled it, not the reverse.

“Good control, Wanda. Now, focus your will on wanting those blood wards gone.” The Ancient One whispered in her ear.

When she opened her eyes, Wanda glared at those abominable blood wards; she wanted them to be destroyed, to erase their existence as it proved that evil had succeeded a long time ago. Wanda will do her best to eliminate such selfishness and greed from ever taking roots. The blood wards resisted and tried to defend themselves; Wanda wasn’t surprised that the defense was somewhat sentient. But she was stronger than them, Only the strong can and will defeat evil.

CRASH!!! The sounds of the blood wards breaking was like a glass pane that had been broken, and the red shards of magical energy simply ceased to exist as they fizzled out of reality. The other sorcerers around Wanda reacted stoically or cheered at her feat of magic. Wanda also avoided looking at those who clearly were jealous of her powers, people like Mordo.

Wanda smiled at her success, she didn’t even feel winded by the exertion. The Ancient One put a hand on the teen witch’s shoulder and said, “Good job, Wanda. I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you, teacher.” Wanda grinned as she turned to her teacher, she liked being praised by the woman. Even more so when the Ancient One was such a great teacher and helped her develop herself magically and mentally.

The Ancient One’s smile faded and looked at Wanda more sternly with a warning tone. “You won’t use Chaos magic without my chaperonage, are we clear?”

Wanda nodded. “Yes, teacher. I won’t use Chaos magic without your supervision.”

She had felt it, how powerful Chaos magic was, it also meant that it was too dangerous to use at her current level. Even Jean would have had a lot of issues trying to manipulate such a force; though Wanda knew that Jean had even more problems with the Phoenix Force itself teaching her skills and controls. This was a matter of perspective to Wanda, she realized that long ago after hearing Jean share her story that she wasn’t the only one on this planet suffering.

“When you reach your journeymanship, you’ll be free to use it.” The Ancient One reassured Wanda, giving her carrot after giving her the stick and a form of motivation.

Wanda nodded. “I trust you to know what’s best for me.”

“Good student.” The bald woman patted Wanda’s cheek, turning to Jean who was playing with her golden tentacles, forming weapons with them. It was a disturbing and violent vision. 

Wanda could feel Jean barely restrained anger, she felt ready to burst at any moment.

“Jean! Open those gates!” The Ancient One commanded.

[“Aye, aye!”] 

Jean raised her hand and the castle gates began to tremble, a crushing sound rang in the air signaling that the hinges of the gates were destroyed and the left and right parts of the gates were extracted from the entrance. Jean floated them into the garden between the pond and a cherry tree. Jean sauntered first toward the gaping entrance and stopped so suddenly, not moving one inch.

This worried Wanda who was suddenly at her side and… the view inside the castle stole her breath away. Jean caught Wanda’s arms and pulled her inside as they advanced toward the… cliff.

["Okay, we're not in Japan anymore."] Jean commented in awe.

Wanda and her best friend were joined by the Ancient One and Master Kacealius who had a shocked expression on his face. “A pocket dimension, that's what you've felt inside this castle, Miss Grey.”

Inside the castle was a completely different environment; where Wanda expected walls, halls and stairs there was another world that looked just like a holiday brochure for the caribbean. The atmosphere inside the castle was subtropical in nature; it must be because of the emerald sea with the two islands that Wanda was seeing, the sky was blue and cloudy inside as well.

“No, this isn’t a pocket dimension. This is something else entirely; I think we’re inside a dimension akin to the Egyptian… Duat.” 

“A what?”

[“The Egyptian’s Afterlife, Wanda.”] Jean informed the scarlet clad witch.

Then she proceeded to explain what the Duat was, it was basically another world where the souls of the deceased needed to cross in order to make their way to the hall of judgment, where their future would be decided. The Duat was believed to include a wide variety of different locations, including rivers, lakes, fields, hills, mountains and deserts. Each location was home to a different set of inhabitants, including helpful deities, dangerous animal-demons and other deceased humans. 

“However, this place seems rather different. It feels darker.” The Ancient One commented.

<NOPE, NOPE! Fuck this! Someone! Anyone please help!> A psionic wave spread from the second island in the sea, carrying a powerful mental cry for help. It sounded and felt female in nature.

Jean’s face shifted, her mask slowly fading to reveal her face. ["I'll be right back, Mister Kacealius, Ancient One."]

The two of them nodded and Jean’s body exploded into potent flames shaped into the form of a bird. She took flight and with speed Wanda thought impossible disappeared from view, only to reappear over the island.

SKREEEEE!!!  

The bird shaped aura beat its wings and… Completely savaged the island by burning the vegetation, the monsters and the rivers on it out of existence. The only thing left on the island was a facility that looked like one of those military bases seen in the US. Nevermind Wanda breaking the blood wards, seeing Jean completely annihilate an island was terrifying. The teen witch watched as the facility exploded into blocks of concrete floating in the air; Jean killed everyone inside it but twenty people from what Wanda could feel.

She cast a spell to see farther than her normal eyes could hope to and she noticed that on the island, a survivor was left, a disfigured man in a business suit and trench coat who was raging and gesticulating at the bird of flames and might with a katana sword in his hand and throwing chi attacks at it. Jean’s bird’s avatar looked at the man, opened its beak and breathed fire on the island, completely obliterating it and making the sea boil.

Wanda asked herself if Jean could do the same to a continent? She turned to look at the expressions of the other sorcerers, in particular to Mordo who was now sweating like he was in the desert and realizing with eyes big like saucers that antagonizing someone with power strong enough to make the Ancient One treat her as an equal wasn’t a good idea.

Twenty cocoons of fire floated around the bird of fire which flapped its wings and the island was restored and visibly covering itself in vegetation and life. This was humbling for everyone and showed that Jean was resolute in taking and giving by her actions. The bird of fire flew back toward them, flapping its wings and bringing with it the people it had rescued.

The bird-like aura dissipated and Jean landed before Wanda and the other sorcerers, handing them the eighteen people who were whole and awake, keeping the two unconscious ones with her. The fire cocoon disappeared and Jean put them on the ground. One was a beautiful girl with hair dyed purple and the other was a sexy asian woman with black hair and an athletic body; she looked as if she was hit by a truck with how her face was… rearranged.

Jean frowned and crouched at her side and put a flaming hand onto her face. [“Begone, demon, you shall not have her.”]

The asian woman’s mouth opened and dark miasma like smoke erupted from it and Jean’s hand reached for it and forced the creature to take form. This was a demon, just like the red skinned one from earlier when they assaulted the valley. Jean was holding it by the neck with uncommon strength as it struggled and clawed at the redhead’s arm without any visible damage.

Gyaaak!! Screech!!!

With an expression of disgust on her face, Jean said, [“Burn bitch.”]

FWOOSH!!

And the demon caught fire like a doll covered in oil and started to screech in pain as it was being purified and destroyed. Jean shook her hand in revulsion when the demon was completely gone with an expression of distaste. [“No wonder Gaia wants us to kill them all if we see those, they are foul.”]

Wanda’s best friend then started healing the asian woman who briefly opened her eyes for a moment, but quickly closed them down falling unconscious again. The teen witch couldn’t contain her curiosity as she asked, “Who are those people, Jeanie?”

Without even looking at Wanda, Jean explained, ["They were in cells and being… prepared to be sold as assassins and informants. There was a lot of hypnosis and brainwashing stuff in that facility. Oh and this one? We have no idea who she is but we applied emergency healing to her… but her mind is in pieces… it feels like… amnesia. The purple haired one, she’s called Elizabeth Braddock and she's…”]

Jean stopped speaking and looked at Wanda right. [“Yes Miss Braddock, we're saving you, yes, we will get you out of here."]

"Are you speaking to someone?" Wanda inquired, looking at Jean strangely.

The Ancient One chuckled and instructed Wanda to, “Focus your will and open your third eye, Wanda.” 

Wanda did just that and slowly the form of a tall purple haired young woman who looked like she was out of a playboy centerfold appeared. She looked around her as everyone looked at her. 

“Oh, she’s in her Astral form.” Wanda said with her gaze onto the gal called Elizabeth.

Her mouth agape, she finally realized that she was finally visible to more than Jean. <You can see me? Are you all telepaths like me?>

Jean cockily smiled and said, “Yes we’re all somehow receptive to psionics. Oh, and we’re going to get you home, Miss Braddock.”

 

# # #

(Executive Maria Hill) 

 

Command Tent

 

The fight with the Hand’s force had been horrific to witness. She was a veteran from Iraq and was prepared to battle human beings with special skills, but maria would have never thought that monsters were on the menu when they decided to attack the hand.

Maria stood before the holographic screens, watching all the drones video feeds showing her a lull in the battle and the Dragoons were roaming the battlefield to eliminate enemy stragglers. The other technician had stayed silent for a long time as they were confronted with the images of horror, then they continued to do their job supporting the Dragoons and the sorcerers until they took the castle’s surroundings.

Some had needed replacement as they broke down mentally because of what was shown on their screen; Maria didn’t want to think about how it was on the battlefield, she feared that some of those operators and Dragoons wouldn’t recover from being exposed to the darkside of their world. Maria expected a good number of them to find religious and mental help later, another thing to add in the next executive meeting.

“We lost contact with the sorcerers and Miss Grey, Ma’am.” A technician reported to Maria.

The latina turned her cold gaze to the man, her expression shifting to one of worry. “That’s not good. Are the enemies scrambling our comms?”

The seated technician shook his head. “We’re using Quantum Entangled communication, it’s impossible to break into, I think that it’s more a question of something running interference.”

Another technician, the one at the first’s side added, “The only thing I know which could do that are dimensional fluctuations.”

Maria didn’t understand much of what those men were telling her; most of them were retired and homeless physicists or ex-army radio people, but they knew their stuff. Maria realized that she needed to read more of the theory and technical manual about the technology they used.

A female techie walked in and interrupted the two old men. “Then it means that this castle doesn’t seem to be what it looks like.”

One of the men at the table typed on his keyboard, causing a box in the middle of the tent to open. It was boxy and had a retractable antenna in the form of a flower blossoming. “Switching to prototype subspace communication.”

On the screen the image of tropical islands in an emerald sea appeared. The cloaked drones following their boss and the sorcerers gave them telemetry and atmospheric reading comparable to what could be found in the Caribbean, however there was much more air pressure wherever the group was.

"We got video and sound, but I’m doubting what I’m seeing." The second technician commented with his eyes not leaving the screen.

Maria frowned. “Where the hell is this? Two tropical islands in the castle? Am I going crazy? Or did they open a portal to somewhere else?”

Then they all saw Jean in action and destroying an island and rescuing people; everyone stayed silent at the show of power. Maria was happy to have quit SHIELD if it was who Fury wanted to fight, he won’t like what he will get if he doesn’t stop antagonizing her current employer…

 

# # #

(Takashi)

 

They broke the castle’s wards. Takashi couldn’t believe it. “This should have been impossible.”

The elderly man looked on in shock as the group of sorcerers and the dangerous Miss Grey entered inside the Hand’s castle like they owned it. The protection in the valley… nay, the entire castle’s security should have made taking the Hand’s seat of power impossible. 

The shinobi force, the lesser demons and the Kodoku worms were all slaughtered by those soldiers in black armor and their… exotic weapons. He had hoped that they would be stopped and stymied by being unable to access the castle, but one of the sorcerers made short work of the blood wards protecting the castle. Blood wars that had been fueled with the sacrifice of millions of people over five hundred years. They were destroyed in a matter of minutes as if they had been insignificant and a net loss of effort from the Hand. 

What worried Takashi the most was the presence of the Ancient One; he had hoped to not attract her attention for another decade, but it seems that the sorceress supreme finally had had enough of them operating with impunity. 

But how was she connected to Miss Grey? Takashi had so many questions and only sparse answers. Through the crystal ball he was using to spy on the group entering the castle, he saw when they ended up stopping at the entrance of the castle's innerworld. They stared at the innerworld for over ten minutes, until something provoked Miss Grey who… wrapped herself in fire and flew toward the center of the innerworld, her aura taking on the form of a familiar creature. *Fènghuáng?!*

A phoenix? An ancient Phoenix! The fenghuang has positive connotations. It is a symbol of virtue and grace. The fenghuang also symbolizes the union of yin and yang, it also represents fire, the sun, justice, obedience, and fidelity. Creation and destruction in its pure form.

Takashi watched as the Phoenix flew and destroyed the island by defacing it of vegetation. The major demons that were guarding it didn’t stand a chance as they were swept away and snuffed out by the might of the giant flame bird; only the re-education facility stood on the naked island, which the Phoenix promptly deconstructed. Takashi sat transfixed in his study as he watched demons and shinobi being disintegrated with its fire magic.

The elderly man knitted his brow as he watched Miss Grey take something from the facility. He was surprised that there was a survivor, it was Tsurayaba-san, he could be easily recognized because of his recent disfigurement, he was trying to battle Miss Grey by throwing blades of chi at her. In vain as they fell harmlessly against her fire wreathed aura.

The Phoenix glared at Tsurayaba-san in disdain, opened its beak and a powerful stream of fire descended upon the swordsman. There was nowhere to escape as the cone of fire engulfed the entire island and then the last survivor died without having shown any information which could help Takashi in this crisis.

As his hands were on the crystal ball, Takashi’s snooping was noticed by the Phoenix who looked back at him with its giant eyes. The crystal ball started to vibrate and multiple cracks appeared on its surface until...

Crash!!

Takashi protected his head with his sleeves as the crystal ball exploded on his desk. Unfortunately for him the explosion left a gash on his face, black blood began to ooze from the wound; Takashi wiped his face and looked at the white colored sleeve soiled by his blood.

Cold fury rolled in Takashi’s vein as he thought about who brought this calamity to them. “Bakuto, you did it this time! You brought our ruin to our doorstep!”

Standing up from his chair, and leaving his study; the Daimyo of Japan decided that he would kill and chase out his enemies himself. He couldn’t allow them to reach the Beast.

 

# # #

(Bakuto)

 

Bakuto waited in seiza position for the girl who had taken everything from him. His honor, his men, his partners in crimes who had stayed with him for millenia. There wasn’t anyone left over in New York to report to him, they’ve all been killed or are on the run. Whatever money he had amassed had mysteriously been siphoned from the banks his organization had used.

All of his criminal associates and their investissement have disappeared in a series of ‘accidents’ or gang wars. Usually it was the Hand creating such excuses for their enemies, it rankled that their modus operandi were used against them. Whatever this Ascendency was, it was a powerful organization. Bakuto no longer exercised the same level of power as before, Takashi had taken his subordinates and threw them at the force attacking the valley.

Bakuto was in the hall leading to the throne room where the Beast lay waiting. He readied his katana, after checking for any point of failure in the blade by using the bright light of the gold plated Chinese candelabra on the ceiling. The Muramasa blade was a special one that he had commissioned by the late Blacksmith from the same family name; it was hallowed in the blood of the Beast.

Originally, Bakuto had thought that it had been an immense honor; now it has become his leash. The Beast had been rather displeased by his action and punished him through his sword. He was punished by the Beast burning his soul at random time, the pain was unbearable and made him wish for death.

The only way to make it stop was to bring the girl, Jean Grey, back to the Beast for him to possess her and add her to the pool of minions. Bakuto was resolved, he would thrash the girl in combat and fulfill this task to retrieve his honor and the privileges he previously enjoyed. 

He placed his katana back into its scabbard and waited for Grey and her party to arrive. Bakuto heard numerous footsteps on the marble of the inner palace and lifted his head toward the entrance of the antechamber.

Urgh.

Crash.

"No, don't!" 

The guards at the antechamber's entrance were quickly dispatched. Bakuto stood up and smiled, ready to fight. He knew the girl would want to settle their dispute one on one; it was clear as day that she was led around by her hubris. The doors opened and dozens of people entered, magic at the ready.

Bakuto focused on the redheaded girl in a gold and red suit with claws in place of fingers who was at the front of the party coming in.

"You're finally here, Miss Grey. I welcome you." There was a lot of venom in Bakuto’s voice.

 

# # #

 

Back with Jean…

 

After sending the rescued people to the Egypt base with the journeymen sorcerers after scanning them for any surprises, magical, mental or physical, we proceeded to check the second island that I hadn't annihilated yet. Only the masters, ten of them, stayed with the group to check the entire island. It was bigger than the one with the holding facility and the gateway to the other levels of the castle. 

Oftentimes, the vegetation gave way to other buildings or rooms, this was a clever way to deal with invaders. We kept accompanying Wanda and the ancient one, Goldie was still with me and helping me with my -Jean- declining mood; the more we thought about the Hand, the more I wanted to just raze that entire valley from the face of the Earth because of the evil perpetrated here. 

It took everything to focus on the mission. We were worried for Cindy and her brother, it’s almost been a week since they got kidnapped; and after seeing that holding facility, We don’t think Nari, their mother, was as guilty of helping the Hand as we thought. The Hand was an old… hand at brainwashing or hypnotism; they had magic or techniques for that, but more recently they decided to modernize.

We found caches of cybernetic implants that would have been surgically installed in the brain of the people we rescued and after forcefully siphoning memories and knowledge from the Hand doctors operating, we now knew how they subverted their way into society and slowly took over.

Most of the leadership of Japan and other countries had those chips in their brains; this situation was more delicate than we thought. It also meant that we needed to get the creator of those chips out of the circulation. That someone is called Doctor Tramma, a woman in her thirties who was a genius in cybernetic and who is a North Korean national. North Korea, where Cindy and her brother disappeared. This isn’t a coincidence, and it made me want to go look for Cindy even more.

We already knew what needed to be done to get Cindy and Al Jr. back and destroy the Hand’s influence on the world. It didn’t include murder for once, no, but the birdcage and our hospitals are going to be busy. After some time, we stumbled before a humongous Japanese style temple, guarded by demons in human skin. It was getting easier to discern who is possessed or not after so much contact with demonic energy. It was really easy to see with two different thought streams emanating from them.

Demons were also creatures of the astral plane; they could thrive there and look for victims to take over. That was why it was important to not have any free demons on Earth at all, even benign ones can do a lot of damage. 

We didn’t have to do anything, the sorcerers took care of all the demons and killed the guards, they were already lost and subsumed by the foul creatures. We passed through the Tori leading inside the temple and suddenly found ourselves shifted into the Castle proper facing another set of guards.

This time it was us who took care of the four guards. We zipped toward the first and caught his halberd and used our claws to sever his head; we used the weapon in our hand to kill two others with a chi wave that turned both guards into bloody mist. The last one stepped back from us.

“No, don't!” But his plea fell on death ears as I vertically bisected him.

Next I vaporized the bodies with cosmic fire, like I said earlier, no demonic resurrection for any of those bastards.

“Jeanie, you need to chill.” Wanda said when she walked toward me.

We turned to the doors that those fuckers were guarding, I was about to go open it when Wanda stopped me with a hand on our shoulders.

[“I’m calm.”] We said, as proof I didn’t destroy my surroundings.

“No you aren’t. Look, you just went on the kill in the blink of an eye and you are scaring the masters.” Wanda whispered in my left ear.

We looked at the masters who were speaking amongst themselves and subtly looking at me and… they were worried. We shrugged, not worried at all by how us killing mercilessly was perceived. [“We don’t see what’s wrong, we didn’t kill real people.”]

“I know, they’re demons. But please don’t lose yourself.” Her hand tightened on our shoulder.

Looking at her in the eyes, smoothing our expression into one of understanding, we said, [“Sure.”]

The masters decided to use remote viewing to see what was behind the doors; master Kacealius described some sort of antechamber with only one person inside, a man with a white gi and a sword at his side. They showed me the image they perceived through their divination and we recognized who it was.

We had seen him through the memories of the guards we killed; this was the man who started it all. Sauntering to the door, we opened it with a good TK push and found Bakuto standing between us and the place where the big boss was sure to be located.

“You're finally here, Miss Grey. I welcome you.” The man, demon, thing said.

The Hand’s people were in no way human anymore; just demons in human skin who long ago took over the meat suit they were placed into. They don’t even realize it.

[“Leave that asshole to me, guys.”] We said to the sorcerers.

The Ancient One nodded, wanting to see how we would handle the one who wronged us, we’re sure that she won’t like what we’ve got in store for him. We turned to the man who'd hurt us as much as Sinister had in my last big fight. The hatred we felt couldn't be quelled with mere bloodletting or death, we wanted suffering and humiliation for that thing standing before us.

[“BAKUTO!”] We shouted with a crazy smile on our face.

We walked toward the Hand swordmaster, our knuckles popping as we tightened our hands into fists. Stopping ten meters from Bakuto we stared into each other’s eyes. We broke the silence when we said, [“We’ve been perfecting our bitch slap and you’re next on our list.”]

SLAP.

Bakuto didn’t even have the time to react and was  sent flying straight into a pillar in the antechamber.

BOOM!

And the pillar broke under the impact. Next the side of the ceiling held by the pillar started to fall.

Crumble. Crumble.

Unfortunately, Bakuto agilely rolled  out of the way by using chi reinforcement on his body. It was like being in those fantasy kung fu movies, he rolled out of the way and was now standing tall and looking hateful at us. He unsheathed his sword from its scabbard and entered in a combat stance, the blade shining with crimson colored chi.

Slowly walking toward him we started to banter, [“We told you that we would find you, you girlfriend stealing asshole.”]

We cocked our head and stared at Bakuto's physical features. [“Huh, you need to be tanned and dye your hair blonde.”

Bakuto looked offended by what we said as he glared at us. “I’m not a NTR character, shoujo (girl).”

That surprised me, that he even knew what I meant. With a knowing grin, I commented, [“I see. You’re a man of culture as well.”]

He moved fast, targeting my throat, but we deflected the blade with my TK, aimed his extended sword arm with our claws. He stepped back and tried to cut us at the waist but we crouched and targeted his legs and used our klyntar flexibility to swipe them. Bakuto caught himself with one hand and… jumped up.

We followed him in the air unleashing a flurry of kicks that he blocked with his sword, somehow he could follow our movement. Smiling… we teleported behind and kicked him in the back, slamming him on the ground face first, but he agilely recovered. Teleporting at his side again, we flanked him by using a chi wave or a Kikoken ripped off straight from Chun-Li.

Bakuto went low and evaded our kikoken by sliding under it, slashing his sword right. My stolen spider senses warned me and we inhumanely bent our waist avoiding a sword wave similar to what Colleen Wing had thrown at me. We didn’t have the time to think, we sent multiple tentacles at him, they all connected and with all the strength we could muster we flung him at the wall behind him.

He caught himself and charged back at us with fluidity in his movements, each of his slashes, stabs were getting faster and created vacuum blades. We protected ourselves by ignoring his attack completely with a solid TK shield; raising a hand, we… pushed. And then a powerful telekinetic wave swept Bakuto who slammed against the wall I had sent him before.

Bakuto stayed pinned on the marble wall by a tremendous telekinetic force; he tried to move or slash his sword, even focus his chi but there was no way that he could escape right now. We were throwing the equivalent of a car’s weight at him; he could be as talented as he wanted with chi or martial arts, but in the end he was just a human, sure he was demonically enhanced as well… 

Slowly we raised the pressure and walked toward him. [“It was fun, we got to play with you a bit but now it’s time to give you what you deserve.”]

We were face to face with Bakuto, and smiled at him; we felt that he now realized how fucked he was, that we’ve been playing with him all this time. We ransacked his mind for everything he was worth… oh he was resisting, nevertheless, we kept breaking his mental defenses over and over; looking for where he had taken Cindy.

Completely ignoring the two thousands years of depravity and evil Bakutou tried to drown my assault in to overwhelm me; who did he think he was fighting? We were natural psionic and we’ve got the Phoenix Force who was billion of years older than the fucker backing us up.

Ah, found it. He sent her to… We saw red at the information. [“We’re not going to kill you, you don’t deserve any peace for your trespass.”]

With four tendrils from our Klyntar form, we speared his body and cut his sword arm. “Ya… Yameroooo kudasai! (Please stop!)

[“Nah, we won’t, lol.”] We said as we looked for a suitable dimension… oh! Here is it, 

We pulled him out of the wall into a TK bubble, his severed arm and sword followed us. Opening a portal, a powerful energy and white light invaded the antechamber. We threw Bakuto and all his shit into the portal, his demonic constitution will be a curse in this holy dimension. Every evil Bakuto has done will come back to him physically and mentally; yet the holy dimension won’t allow him to die till he is purged of every taint in his body, soul, mind, and ID. Considering how deep the demonic corruption he had allowed himself to fall prey to, it will maybe take eons for him to be purged.

He will suffer, and won’t ever be able to die, but he will wish we had killed him. We closed the portal, only to see a semi-bald man with white hair stepping toward us. He wore a crimson chinese traditional outfit with long sleeves, black pants and shoes. He looked exactly like those old masters from Kung Fu movies.

“Was all this truly necessary? We could have found common ground…” He asked with disappointed eyes.

We knew who he was, Bakuto’s memories were clear on his identity, this was the leader of Hand in Japan.  [“Takashi, I presume?”]

He slightly bowed his head with his hand linked together as if we were some kind of empress or something. “And you are Jean Grey-san.”

Laughing, we answered his previous question. [“To answer your question and in terms you can understand, Bakuto touched our reverse scale and now we will burn you all for it.”]

We didn’t have the time to entertain him; so we turned to Wanda and the others. [“Wanda, and you Masters; We don’t have the time to deal with this small fry, we will leave the old coot for you. Ancient Ones, please follow us”]

Wanda simply replied, “Sure Jeanie, leave the rest to us.”

Master Kacealius entered into a combat stance, golden mandalas of magic appearing into his hands. The other masters followed his example. 

Takashi didn’t take it well, “Foolish child, you are courting death.”

[“Yeah, yeah now watch us go bitch slap your demon sugar daddy, old man.”] We teleported to the ancient one and then to the other door leading to what must be the Beast’s lair. 

The Masters and Wanda all attacked the old man while we opened the doors to the Throne room of the Beast. [“It’s time to redshirt this mother fucker.”]

“Be more classy, Jean.” The Ancient One complained. She looked rather put out with my language.

 

# # #

 

The doors opened on a darkness filled tennis court sized room. The walls consisted of dark brickwork of some sort, runes etched onto them; a multitude of ninja hid there against the walls, hidden by a magical camouflage. There was a red carpet stretching to the throne where a naked ten foot fat monster with sepulcral black skin; no… fat wasn’t enough to describe that demonic thing.

To our lifevision the demon -because it was obviously a demon- was full of lifeforce and… souls. It had grown fat on millions of people and it looked disgusting…

The… Beast woke up, red glowing eyes opening and peering at the Ancient one and myself. “Who dares disturb my slumber? I shall flay your skin and piss on your meat and suck the marrow off-”

[“Yo, calm your tits, Satan.”] We said as we let our fiery Phoenix aura out.

This shut up the Beast for an instant. The demon suddenly looked more subdued because of our display, so much so, that its guttural voice was less confrontational. 

“Who are you?” It asked as it leaned on its throne… and spread its legs.

*Eww demon micro-penis in full view.* We can’t handle that, let the Ancient One do her job.

We turned to the yellow clad Sorceress Supreme. [“Ancient One, this is your gig.”]

The Ancient One smiled at us, knowing exactly why we let her take charge here; we weren't the demon slayer experts here and we didn’t want to touch or fight such a disgusting being. Goldie and I were in complete sync on this decision; we would be taking care of the mooks shinobi thinking they were stealthy.

The Ancient One moved forward, the shinobi around us braced for an attack. “You know who I am, Demon. After all, you’ve been watching the assault on this valley since the start. You even sent your demonic minions. We won’t let your evil spread more than it has already. We’ve come to tell you to leave this dimension or be destroyed with everything you’ve created, Beast.”

*Yeah tell him, Teacher!* We cheered for her.

“Oh, and how will you make me leave?” It laughed wetly. A malicious glint shone in its eyes as they bored into us. “I’ve been on this plane for centuries; I built up my power base here and fed on the delicacy that is human flesh and their soul. I won’t leave, I refuse to! You’re in my domain and you have no power here. But I will give you a chance; Leave and never come back.”

The sorceress’ hands lit up with golden mandala forming in them. “I refuse. You’ll find that I’ve got power aplenty, Demon; the Hand dies today, and you’ll no longer be tempting humans into joining your little evil cult anymore.”

The Beast laughed and struck the armrest of its throne with its big deformed right hand. “So be it! Attack!!”

“By the Flames of Faltine!” From her hands, the Ancient One conjured a wave of fire that she sent at the fat demon.

Meanwhile, ninja wearing armored versions of their scarlet outfit with snakes embossed on the red metallic plates appeared from the walls, weapon ready. They all attacked in tandem; unfortunately for them, we were ready for it. At high speed my raptor constructs manifested and lunged for all the ninjas.

Skreeeee! Boom! Boom! Boom! Most of the armored ninja escaped being blown up but at least two out of twenty were killed. We now understood that the Beast kept all the elite Jonin with it as guards. They all looked at us as if we were a particularly venomous snake. Speaking of snakes, the Ancient One continued to fight the Beast which somehow turned into one with black scales, red eyes and poisonous breath.

We covered ourselves in a telekinetic bubble and looked at the position of all the fucking ninja, our eyes, and spread arms turning red with the light of our optic and kinetic blast. [“You all die now!”]

KRAKOOOOOOOOOOOM. Through my current mastery of the Phoenix Force, we launched the four ruby-red-colored beams from the kinetic dimension at our foes; they homed onto each of the elite jonin and killed the first five who were not prepared for this exotic attack. Our beams simply pierced them in the hearts or heads.

The leftover jonins were even more surprised when the beams homed in on them; they attempted to evade but the beams curved and still got them. One second later, the Beast’s guards were all dead. [“We fucking love Omega Beams.”]

Or at least… their meat suits were as their bodies started to expel the usual demonic miasma.

But they were snuffed out by the Ancient One who was still battling the demonic snake, she just waved her hand and chanted, “Begone with the Icy Tendrils of Ikthalon!”

Just as the demons were about to form, they found themselves encased into ice; their rictus of fear frozen forever; all those demons were medium one. We conjured a ball of cosmic fire, but before that… [“This is Sparta!”]

We kicked into the air and a telekinetic wave spread from our foot and turned all the frozen demons into ice shards.

CRASH! Then I threw the ball at the ice destroying any trace of the demons as the cosmic fire consumed them to the Quantum level. We looked for any other enemies but there were none left beyond the giant demon snake battling the sorceress supreme. 

The beast charged the Ancient One and spat out a cloud of noxious gas that started to eat through the brickwork and the black marble. The Ancient one conjured more flame and esoteric spells to cut through the demon’s scales; black blood and snake scales fell and splattered on the ground.

Hissing, the Beast spoke, “Give up, sorceress! None of your paltry spells work on me!”

That demon can’t be this stupid, right? How couldn’t he even see that he was exactly in the center of the room and that the Ancient One has been tracing a magical circle to contain him? We mean… it was obvious when she kept lowering the intensity of her spells and bringing the demon on a merry chase around the room.

“Oh, really?” The Ancient One smiled tauntingly at the disgusting snake. “Then how shall you fare against the Crimson Band of Cittorak?”

Numerous red bands of energy shot out of the Ancient One’s left hand through a mandala and started to wrap around the demon snake’s body. The band encased the Beast and tightened around it.

“What is this!!??” It screeched while struggling.

It was at this point that the magic circle on the marble ground the Ancient One had been engraving with her cutting spells gained a white glow and turned into a prison for the demon. 

“Your time on Earth comes to an end, Beast!” The Ancient One announced triumphantly.

“NOOOOOO!!!!” The beast screamed, trying to escape the containment circle… to no avail.

The Ancient One raised her hands over her head, making circular movements with them. “Begone, let the Whirling Winds of Watoomb rise from the nether regions...to carry you back from whence you came!”

She conjured powerful mystical currents, a portal opened into the ceiling over the demon snake, showing a desolate dimension full of hellfire and red landscape. The sorceress used the winds to lift the demon and yeet him through the purple.

“I’LL COME BACK!!” It threatened as the portal closed behind it when it passed through.

“It’s right, the demon will come back. As long as it has followers on Earth, they might summon it back.” The Ancient didn’t even look winded as she explained things to us and looked at the empty magical circle.

Not on our watch, we walked to the circle and felt for the infernal dimension coordinate where the Beast was sent back to, it was a talent we picked up when we started spying on other dimensions and universes thanks to the Phoenix Force. [“We see… then it’s time to go further beyond.”]

The ancient one turned to us and asked, “Jean, what are you going to do?”

We smiled. [“Some cleaning, we’ll be right back.”]

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEE.

We let the Phoenix Force completely subsum our body, it’s energy filling us and it turned us into a psionic being momentarily; it was so freeing… we became the raptor of life and threw ourselves into a portal to the Astral Plane, traveling at the speed of light into the ectoplasm filled dimension.

We ignored everything else as we sensed our target really nearby. Stopping before an egg shaped dimension that stuck to Earth, there were others which were doing the same, they exuded the same demonic energy we’ve felt from the Hand demons. “Is that its personal dimension?”

To our vision we saw how many souls it had gorged on, millions of life stuck in this infernal dimension and suffering. We were going to send them back to Lady Death, and we felt sorry for dumping so much work on her and ruining her date with Jean Prime.

“We shall set every soul free!”

Our phoenix form grew and grew, until we were bigger than the sun and we turned into a humanoid shaped female with Phoenix wings. The Hand will die today, there will be no Beast, no demons, we shall annihilate and send them to oblivion. Our cosmic avatar manifested a drill in our right hand and while it revolved at relativistic speed on itself we pierced through the demonic dimension. “Fucking die!”

It wasn’t with a big explosion like in the movies that the infernal dimension was destroyed, no it just… popped like a bubble and everything inside was incinerated with the Phoenix aspect of destruction. The Beast and whatever was inside the dimension won’t come back; we watched as the millions of souls were freed and were being caught by Lady Death’s minion, the Death Gods. They all looked at us with fear and just did their job; some of them bowed to us in respect.

We let go of the form we’ve taken and open a portal back to the Ancient One; reconverted our body into a physical one, not pure psionic energy. The Sorceress supreme looked at me with trepidation in her eyes. 

“Did you just destroy an infernal dimension?” 

We weren’t certain how she knew, but we shrugged. [“Nothing important was lost.”]

The Ancient One chuckled, put a hand on our shoulder and said, “I hope you’ll be more restrained in the future, Jean…”

 

# # #

 

1 hour later
Yasaka shrine
Command tent

 

It was morning in Japan, the shrine was closed for ‘renovation’ and I could finally take a break. Goldie and I separated our consciousness; this union has been too intimate to my taste and I learned a lot about her. What she’s been hiding from, Goldie has been moonlighting as a vigilante and using my batwoman costume.

She was in the dog house, she still didn’t understand why I was mad at her. Oh yeah, my Dragoons and my drones took over the valley and the castle; I decided to not destroy them and turn them into my own assets, a future base where we could stash Ascendency’s stuff.

It was while I was having thoughts about how I would use the valley that Maria Hill came to me and said, “Ma'am we found where Miss Moon and her brother are being held.”

I stood up from my military folding bed. “Fucking finally!”

---

A/N: This is the end of the Hand arc, now we're going to have the interludes following it, then chapter 22!

If you are looking to get early chapters and read all the good stuff I haven't posted to the public yet, support with the link below:

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