25 - Smiling Statue, Pale Worm, Grinning Dragon
GraftingBuddha
Retired Pooh-Bah
25 - Smiling Statue, Pale Worm, Grinning Dragon
Taylor woke from her sleep, dreams filled with images of centipedes curling in on themselves, forming endless spiralling coils of shining lacquered scales and needle-like legs. She breathed deeply, and coughed - her throat was on fire, and the room's atmosphere was acrid from the sheer amount of insect repellant she'd sprayed into the air. Experimentally, she invited a small spider into her room - it perished in a matter of moments, and Taylor finally consented to open a window. The fresh air was a balm to her throat, though a few experimental forays into speaking proved that, indeed, her voice still needed about an hour to recover to full strength. She hoped she wasn't dramatically reducing her lifespan with this stuff… but then again, a short but human lifespan would definitely be preferable to a life spent as a host to some monstrous centipede. Which she may or may not still have growing in her stomach. She didn't know if the gnawing feeling was from a gigantic centipede, or from the fact that she'd barely eaten since Fugly Bobs the day before yesterday. Thinking of Fugly Bobs made her think of Sanagi, and thinking of Sanagi, sadly, made her think of her time in that godforsaken tower.
Taylor dashed to the bathroom and more or less scoured herself with near-boiling water. Any lack of hygiene, at least at the moment, reminded her of the foul musk of DeNeuve's apartment. And thinking of that apartment reminded her of how close she'd come to becoming its next permanent resident. Scouring oneself with boiling water and an abundant quantity of soup, followed by an exacting and slightly painful set of procedures designed to cleanse and purify every pore, every scrap of flesh which would produce an odour or would be susceptible to a rash… well, it didn't seem like something DeNeuve would do. It seemed as un-DeNeuve as a set of morning activities could get. Now all she needed was to get a job and contribute to society as a lawful and upstanding citizen.
Taylor paused as she was in the process of plucking her eyebrows, the tweezers glinting dully in the steam-clouded light. OK, some things were a little ridiculous, even for her. She'd just stick at the painful morning routine.
Morning routine completed, she stumped downstairs and made breakfast. She stared at a small plate of scrambled eggs, steaming softly, tiny flecks of black pepper atop a picturesque landscape of yellow fluffy hills. She continued to stare. And then, abruptly, she shoved the eggs into the bin and the plate into the sink. No food. Not yet. When she was sure that her diet wouldn't feed some monster living in her stomach… then she'd be content to eat properly. Fugly Bobs had been bad enough - panic and adrenaline fuelling an intense rush of hunger. But in the lucid light of a cold morning, there was nothing to distract her from her own misgivings. Her father had left the house - she felt an odd surge of panic as she realised she didn't know where he was… and then she calmed herself, reassuring thoughts of regular Sunday shopping coming to the fore. He was out. Must be. Her insects confirmed that there was no car in the driveway.
And so, Taylor sat in the living room in a squashy, aged, slightly stained but impeccably comfortable chair. She drummed her hands on her legs. Her insects were damn near non-existent in her vicinity - when one entered her range, she politely banished it far beyond, either walking into a trap, a pile of poison, a puddle, or simply beyond her range once more. The only exceptions were some flies which tracked as many movements as they were able. She may be paranoid beyond the point of reasonability, but she wasn't quite insane. Not quite yet. She checked her watch - barely ten in the morning. She checked her computer. Nothing. No messages from anyone. She considered going in to Turk's tea shop. She decided against it. She wasn't ready to face them, to tell them what she'd suddenly come to understand - that this weird cult was a mere representative of a history so vast they couldn't even hope to challenge it. She didn't want to see Turk and Ahab try and plan their way out of the situation, doomed by the fact that real victory was downright impossible. She didn't want to see Sanagi suppress her rage again, shuffle back to a job she clearly barely enjoyed with all hopes of promotion squashed. She didn't want to tell everyone that they'd lost, and they'd never even had a chance of winning.
She glanced at the file still on her desktop, the thumbnail a tiny frozen image of barely recognisable dark shape, coiling in the shadows. She considered again trying to give it to someone, trying to bring down some force greater than herself on the cult. She hesitated. The idea of dead, pale faces, burning in Lung's fire, staring at her in her dreams for years to come was a chilling one. Centipedes were bad enough. Guilt was quite something else. And speaking of guilt, despite the terror she'd endured, she felt no closer to finding Julia. She still wanted to find the girl - giving up felt wrong, and she still wanted to do something of value, a final send-off to this rotten city squatting next to a rotten sea. She dismissed the insidious thoughts that she was already dead, that she should just give up and do something easier, as the shades of Brent DeNeuve still working their way out of her mind. She ignored the fact that the same thoughts had been plaguing her since she'd started looking for Julia in the first place.
Taylor stood, and found her way down to the basement. When she was younger this place had scared her - monsters in the dark, spiders in the corners, webs strung across every open space, invisible in the gloom. She was fully aware there were no spiders here, and webs had ceased to bother her. The idea of something else lurking in the shadows still made her steps a little hesitant. Her insects had swarmed here enough that, of anywhere in the house, this was without a doubt the place she understood the most, down to each nook and cranny. And that meant she'd found something, back when she first got her powers. She'd thought nothing of it. Now, though… she opened a low cupboard, and pulled out a shining bottle. It was depressingly new, and depressingly depleted. Her father indulged every now and again. She wasn't sure what to do with it, but with a grim shrug she poured a small draft into a glass tumbler. The amber liquid gleamed. She sipped. Heat radiating down her, spreading throughout her body, dispelling aches and pains she didn't even know were present. For the first time that entire day, Taylor gave a very small smile, and sagged back into the chair.
Taylor was dozing lightly, near-empty glass resting in her hand, ever-so-close to falling to the ground. The operative word is 'was' - a small chime came from her still-open laptop, indicating a new message. Taylor snapped awake, placing the glass swiftly down on a side table and scanning her laptop's screen with feverish intensity. Her reading was slower than usual, which irritated her. It was a message from Sanagi - photos attached.
Taylor,
Found that warehouse we discussed, and found these inside. Snapped as many photos as I could before leaving, not sure how intact the place will be now. Thought you ought to have a look.
Best,
Sanagi
She snorted momentarily. Just like Sanagi - sign off a personal email with her last name and her last name alone. Come to think of it, she didn't even know Sanagi's first name… the thought vanished as she scanned the photographs, the alcohol slightly dulling her urgency - but only slightly. The photos made her go very still indeed, and her heart rate quickened. Bodies, burned and charred, looking more like wood… faces crumbled to dust, no point trying to identify them like that. She looked at photo after photo, some far away, some close up, a few showing the full scope of the scene… nearly twenty bodies, obliterated completely. What could have done this? The vision of history as a destructive tidal wave came back to her - the centipede cult was a continent-spanning phenomenon occurring throughout time. And now there was another, a cult that burned and had some influence over time and space. She had the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff in the middle of the night. The drop was out of sight, impossible to perceive, the sound of the waves crashing the only indication that there might be a drop at all. But even if she was right on the edge, a single step away from falling to her death, all that she felt was a sense of incoming precipitous doom. She almost felt the lip of the cliff beneath her feet.
The tumbler was set aside, a glance of contemptuous fury directed at the merrily shining liquid. Look at her - fifteen years old, dreaming of leaving Brockton and starting anew, obsessed over a stoner who almost consumed her mind, a centipede which might still be consuming her body, and now turning to drink because of, what, night terrors? More than that, she despised the sluggishness in her body, the slight delay in responses, the slow tenor of her thoughts. She felt keenly that she'd poisoned herself, the alcohol crawling through her veins and clogging her neurons. She scanned through photo after photo, attempting to find something, anything that might indicate Julia was here or not. Some of the figures were distinctively female. Some were distinctively male. None were so destroyed as to be completely unidentifiable. The female figures… no clothes she could pick out, no distinguishing features. And then, she saw it - a small light, gleaming.
One of them was wearing a blackened earring. A small ring, with a sharp spur projecting downwards. Julia has worn those. She mentally slapped herself - other people wore those earrings, they weren't exactly unique. But who wore just one? Lots of people, surely… and Julia was included in that category. She scanned the figure, trying to pick out anything she possibly could. Face structure? Could be Julia, but she was accustomed to seeing Julia's face with actual living flesh on it, not as some carbonised statue - a statue that was partially crumbled, too. Build? Hard to tell… young, perhaps? Or just thin? The earring, the build, the face structure, the curve of the lips - lips she'd seen curled into sneers far too often to count, now twisted into an expression of sublime joy… none of these things were substantial on their own, too small to rely on. But together, they planted a seed of sick doubt in her stomach. The sense of history bearing down around her made her pessimistic, and that seed of doubt blossomed into a tree of grim certainty.
She'd lost. She'd spent days worrying about a centipede, when something entirely different had gone ahead and killed the girl she was looking for. She didn't even have the willpower to close her laptop, shoving it to the side. The tumbler remained untouched. She stared at the ceiling, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. No insects to project her feelings onto. She'd failed. She'd tried and she'd completely and utterly failed. She'd been pursuing the wrong cult. She was too slow.
She'd lost.
She glanced at the screen again, noticing once more the video of the centipede cult. Rage started to blossom in her, rage that would make Sanagi proud. Pure, undiluted hatred - this cult had delayed her, had distracted her, and it was all for nothing. She'd learned everything about this cult - nearly everything - and it was a complete waste of time. And she had, on her crappy cheap laptop, the tools to completely destroy them, to wipe that cold, smug look off that woman's face. She pulled the laptop back towards her, and hammered out a brief, curt email. She explained what she had seen. She attached the video. She asked Sanagi to do what she needed to do.
The tumbler was emptied. It only made her more furious.
Across town, Sanagi's own computer rang with an alert - a new email. She checked it - Taylor, just as she had suspected. Her eyes went wide as she reviewed it, coffee forgotten and congealing on the desk. Taylor suspected one of the figures was Julia… her evidence was flimsy, and as a police office she should be more demanding. But this wasn't police business. This never would be police business - no case file would ever be opened to look into the charred smiling statues, no investigation would ever be launched. The warehouse would continue to rot, and some drunk or junkie would trip over the statues and eradicate any trace that they were ever there to begin with. Sanagi's professionalism slipped. Dreams of promotion slipped. This was a perfect case - a missing girl, a murderous cult, exposing it would have guaranteed a promotion. But instead the cult was some bizarre thing which transcended anything she thought possible. The girl was likely dead, and while her body was right in front of her there was no way it could ever be submitted in a court of law.
Sanagi snarled. She had no leads on the fire cult, no leads on where they might be or what they might want. But she did have leads on the centipede cult, and had every reason to eradicate them completely. She wouldn't be paid for it, she wouldn't be rewarded. She wasn't even sure if it would really satisfy her. Her father's advice faded from her mind. Professionalism could go fuck itself, she wanted to hurt something. A savage grin spread across her face as she looked at Taylor's request. She stood, coffee almost spilling as she did so, and near-sprinted to the door, barely hesitating to put on her jacket. She raced out, neighbours keeping a good distance from the woman they'd come to know as exceedingly polite, painfully tidy, and absolutely bloody terrifying.
In less than an hour, her car was parked and she was walking to a small group of young men, barely younger than her really. Japanese, she could tell - and one Korean. Appropriately, she barked at them in Japanese, using her best drill-instructor voice:
"Oi! ABB?"
The youths shuffled, awkwardly. It was one thing to run around wearing the colours, intimidating everyone in sight, feeling the dragon himself looming behind them supportively. But it was quite another to have a wild-eyed Japanese woman who looked ready to tear something apart shriek in the language they mostly associated with overbearing parents and relatives - they lived in the USA and hung out with a wide variety of Asians, English was the dominant language even in the ABB. One of them, slightly older, nodded.
"Yeah, what's it to you?"
"I have information for Lung."
She thrust a USB stick in their face, waving it tantalisingly.
"Information on a parahuman on his turf. I bet he'll love to hear it."
A deep voice came from behind her, causing her to whirl around.
"If he'd like to see it that much, why not tell him yourself?"
Sanagi gave a nervous grin, her murderous rage abating slightly in the face of what was, ultimately, a rather terrifying threat. She made platitudes, explaining that this could be wonderful for them, but the large gentleman was adamant. In a few moments, she was inside a car, the youths sitting by her side with expressions of slight confusion - not to mention fear. Only an idiot was nearby when another idiot chose to provoke the dragon.
Lung was bigger than expected. Even as a human, no scales to be seen, no trace of his powers on display, Lung was massive. A pile of muscle and sinew, built around a wide and solid frame, with intense eyes staring at her from behind a snarling metal mask. She'd been dragged to his current pad, an expensive place 'borrowed' from a local business owner who owed the ABB a great deal of money. She'd protested for half the journey, and after some stern reprimands, had spent the rest glaring sullenly at anything she wanted to glare at. Which, at the moment, was just about everything.
Once again, her hasty rage had led to her getting into a sticky situation. The last time it had been an internal review for her behaviour. The time before that it had been… well, that was before she was in the police, and it had been settled quietly. Even if she still had the scars on her thigh. This topped all previous occasions, though - standing before Lung, the Dragon of Kyushu, the Human Endbringer. He who had challenged the Protectorate of Brockton Bay and had brought them to their knees. He who had united the disparate gangs which prowled the Asian neighbourhoods of the Bay, crushing their leaders and binding them into a single tribe. And for all his reputation as a fighter, there was a deep intelligence shining in those eyes, a probing mind that was currently sizing her up. A mind that found her wanting.
He was sitting casually in a large chair, bottles of liquor off to one side, terrified-looking women massaging his shoulders. As she watched, he lifted a small bottle of expensive tequila upwards, pouring it down his throat in a single gulp. She saw the alcohol ignite as it traveled downwards, saw the glow as his own internal heat turned it into alcoholic steam. The rush of gas was quickly inhaled through his flared nostrils, and the dragon leaned back.
"You have information."
A statement, not a question.
"...yes, Lung. I have a video of a parahuman living in your territory, who preys on the people under your protection."
Her tone was demure, quiet. Usually she'd be enraged at stooping to such a level. Now, though? She was just happy her voice wasn't shaking. Lung rumbled, and gestured to a laptop lying off to the side. Smoothly, a gang member took the USB stick and inserted it, presenting the screen to Lung. The women at his side watched curiously as it played. Taylor had edited it a little, reducing it to the most relevant parts - specifically, the parts which highlighted the distinctively unnatural aspects of the cult leader.
"This is from the Luminous Qigong Centre."
Lung growled, and Sanagi shut her mouth.
"You come to me with a video that I'm supposed to believe isn't faked, and ask me to level a building?"
Sanagi paled. She scrambled for lies that sounded convincing.
"No! My… my sister was taken by the cult, and I wanted revenge. I had some friends go in, but they couldn't kill the leader, too tough. So I thought it prudent to approach you, Lung, and ask for your help."
Lung stared at her. Was he larger than before? The women backed away slightly, eyes already widened by the video's contents. One of them looked downright horrified - a patron of the centre? He turned to his subordinates.
"Do you recognise her? Is she one of our own?"
A chorus of shrugs met his question. He turned to one of the women, the one who'd reacted so negatively to the video.
"And you? Do you know of the Qigong Centre?"
The woman froze like a deer in headlights, but managed to stutter out a few sentences before falling silent. Chinese. Damn it. Lung nodded understandingly, turning back to Sanagi.
"So. My subordinates do not know your face, but my woman knows of the centre. She says there's no parahuman there - nor any sign of them."
"Ask her if she'd been to the top two floors! That's where the parahuman lives - in the video there're images of what's up there, all the bodies. The centre is clean, but the top is where you'll find all the dirt."
Lung paused, considering her words. He rumbled some Mandarin to the woman, who replied hesitantly.
"My woman has never seen the top, nor does she know anyone who has. Still, there is no reason to trust your words."
He barked a command to a subordinate, who sprinted away and returned with a small and unadorned wooden box. Lung opened it, revealing a short, sharp, curved sword.
"These are incredibly rare, woman. This is worth more than you will likely ever make. Consider it an honour that I am using it now."
He placed it before her, handle pointed towards her hand. Sanagi, kneeling, stared at it disbelievingly. He was right - these were beyond expensive. Ever since Japan fell into chaos, traditional arts had more or less perished, and huge archives had been plundered or destroyed. A sword like this, made in Japan, possibly hundreds of years ago, was a priceless artefact. She couldn't believe Lung owned one.
"Prove to me that this place must be destroyed. Prove your passion, your lust for revenge. Your little finger will suffice."
His tone was smooth - that was something the videos never captured. Lung had a smooth voice, low and soft. When he wanted it to be, of course. She'd heard it escalate into a deafening roar more than once, but it was disconcerting to hear the complete opposite curl through the air and into her ears. She saw how he was able to not just conquer multiple gangs, but fuse them into one. She felt the urge to obey him… and then the realisation sank in.
"I… my little finger?"
"It will suffice. Hurry. My patience wanes."
His tone was growing more clipped. Sanagi looked at the sword, shining in the dim light of the apartment. Lung's women had retreated, and were both pointedly not looking towards Sanagi. The subordinates were mixed - some looked away, others looked on with ambivalence, and a select few leaned forward with eager stares, excited to see some blood. She picked it up with hands that felt too sweaty to do anything involving sharp objects. The sword was… light, but the sense of purpose imbued in it, the promise of violence, made it seem heavier than a dumbbell. Her other hand splayed out, the little finger protruding outwards. The rest of the fingers abandoned it, leaving it poking out alone and afraid, pale and clammy. If she squinted it looked like a pale worm on the dirty floor.
Sanagi gulped. A bead of sweat travelled down the side of her face.
Did she really want to do this? Her rage was almost gone now. Did she want to pursue revenge that badly? Would Lung even let her go if she failed his test? That last thought chilled her blood. And then, ignited it. This… large-muscled soft-voiced bastard, who owned something that really should belong in a museum, was asking her to slice off her finger and would likely kill her if she didn't. He couldn't just take the bait, nor could his men. Idiots, the lot of them, pretending at some form of culture while they scrabbled for leavings like the cockroaches they were. Her rage bubbled over, her eyes brimmed with fury. She felt the urge to drive the sword right into Lung's heart - he didn't see her as a threat, so he'd probably still be mostly human. And it doesn't take much to kill a human. Kill him with a sword worth more than he ever would be. That seemed fitting. But no - that centipede bitch deserved worse, deserved to suffer for what she'd done, deserved to suffer in place of the bastard/bitch who'd burned those bodies and left her to patrol the filthy streets like some common cop, probably going to get knifed by a junkie one of these days and that would be the end of Sanagi who couldn't get promoted out of harm's way because apparently there were gods in this world and they didn't produce admissible evidence.
Sanagi looked into Lung's eyes, and he blinked, smiling slightly at her expression. She snarled, in a voice quite unlike the demure one she'd had before.
"Fuck. You."
The knife slipped down, and she grinned to hide the fact that she wanted to scream. Lung grinned right back. With a shaking hand, she dropped the sword and picked up her little finger. She stood, impudently, and walked towards Lung, thrusting the little bleeding worm in his grinning face.
"Now kill the bitch."
Taylor woke from her sleep, dreams filled with images of centipedes curling in on themselves, forming endless spiralling coils of shining lacquered scales and needle-like legs. She breathed deeply, and coughed - her throat was on fire, and the room's atmosphere was acrid from the sheer amount of insect repellant she'd sprayed into the air. Experimentally, she invited a small spider into her room - it perished in a matter of moments, and Taylor finally consented to open a window. The fresh air was a balm to her throat, though a few experimental forays into speaking proved that, indeed, her voice still needed about an hour to recover to full strength. She hoped she wasn't dramatically reducing her lifespan with this stuff… but then again, a short but human lifespan would definitely be preferable to a life spent as a host to some monstrous centipede. Which she may or may not still have growing in her stomach. She didn't know if the gnawing feeling was from a gigantic centipede, or from the fact that she'd barely eaten since Fugly Bobs the day before yesterday. Thinking of Fugly Bobs made her think of Sanagi, and thinking of Sanagi, sadly, made her think of her time in that godforsaken tower.
Taylor dashed to the bathroom and more or less scoured herself with near-boiling water. Any lack of hygiene, at least at the moment, reminded her of the foul musk of DeNeuve's apartment. And thinking of that apartment reminded her of how close she'd come to becoming its next permanent resident. Scouring oneself with boiling water and an abundant quantity of soup, followed by an exacting and slightly painful set of procedures designed to cleanse and purify every pore, every scrap of flesh which would produce an odour or would be susceptible to a rash… well, it didn't seem like something DeNeuve would do. It seemed as un-DeNeuve as a set of morning activities could get. Now all she needed was to get a job and contribute to society as a lawful and upstanding citizen.
Taylor paused as she was in the process of plucking her eyebrows, the tweezers glinting dully in the steam-clouded light. OK, some things were a little ridiculous, even for her. She'd just stick at the painful morning routine.
Morning routine completed, she stumped downstairs and made breakfast. She stared at a small plate of scrambled eggs, steaming softly, tiny flecks of black pepper atop a picturesque landscape of yellow fluffy hills. She continued to stare. And then, abruptly, she shoved the eggs into the bin and the plate into the sink. No food. Not yet. When she was sure that her diet wouldn't feed some monster living in her stomach… then she'd be content to eat properly. Fugly Bobs had been bad enough - panic and adrenaline fuelling an intense rush of hunger. But in the lucid light of a cold morning, there was nothing to distract her from her own misgivings. Her father had left the house - she felt an odd surge of panic as she realised she didn't know where he was… and then she calmed herself, reassuring thoughts of regular Sunday shopping coming to the fore. He was out. Must be. Her insects confirmed that there was no car in the driveway.
And so, Taylor sat in the living room in a squashy, aged, slightly stained but impeccably comfortable chair. She drummed her hands on her legs. Her insects were damn near non-existent in her vicinity - when one entered her range, she politely banished it far beyond, either walking into a trap, a pile of poison, a puddle, or simply beyond her range once more. The only exceptions were some flies which tracked as many movements as they were able. She may be paranoid beyond the point of reasonability, but she wasn't quite insane. Not quite yet. She checked her watch - barely ten in the morning. She checked her computer. Nothing. No messages from anyone. She considered going in to Turk's tea shop. She decided against it. She wasn't ready to face them, to tell them what she'd suddenly come to understand - that this weird cult was a mere representative of a history so vast they couldn't even hope to challenge it. She didn't want to see Turk and Ahab try and plan their way out of the situation, doomed by the fact that real victory was downright impossible. She didn't want to see Sanagi suppress her rage again, shuffle back to a job she clearly barely enjoyed with all hopes of promotion squashed. She didn't want to tell everyone that they'd lost, and they'd never even had a chance of winning.
She glanced at the file still on her desktop, the thumbnail a tiny frozen image of barely recognisable dark shape, coiling in the shadows. She considered again trying to give it to someone, trying to bring down some force greater than herself on the cult. She hesitated. The idea of dead, pale faces, burning in Lung's fire, staring at her in her dreams for years to come was a chilling one. Centipedes were bad enough. Guilt was quite something else. And speaking of guilt, despite the terror she'd endured, she felt no closer to finding Julia. She still wanted to find the girl - giving up felt wrong, and she still wanted to do something of value, a final send-off to this rotten city squatting next to a rotten sea. She dismissed the insidious thoughts that she was already dead, that she should just give up and do something easier, as the shades of Brent DeNeuve still working their way out of her mind. She ignored the fact that the same thoughts had been plaguing her since she'd started looking for Julia in the first place.
Taylor stood, and found her way down to the basement. When she was younger this place had scared her - monsters in the dark, spiders in the corners, webs strung across every open space, invisible in the gloom. She was fully aware there were no spiders here, and webs had ceased to bother her. The idea of something else lurking in the shadows still made her steps a little hesitant. Her insects had swarmed here enough that, of anywhere in the house, this was without a doubt the place she understood the most, down to each nook and cranny. And that meant she'd found something, back when she first got her powers. She'd thought nothing of it. Now, though… she opened a low cupboard, and pulled out a shining bottle. It was depressingly new, and depressingly depleted. Her father indulged every now and again. She wasn't sure what to do with it, but with a grim shrug she poured a small draft into a glass tumbler. The amber liquid gleamed. She sipped. Heat radiating down her, spreading throughout her body, dispelling aches and pains she didn't even know were present. For the first time that entire day, Taylor gave a very small smile, and sagged back into the chair.
* * *
Taylor was dozing lightly, near-empty glass resting in her hand, ever-so-close to falling to the ground. The operative word is 'was' - a small chime came from her still-open laptop, indicating a new message. Taylor snapped awake, placing the glass swiftly down on a side table and scanning her laptop's screen with feverish intensity. Her reading was slower than usual, which irritated her. It was a message from Sanagi - photos attached.
Taylor,
Found that warehouse we discussed, and found these inside. Snapped as many photos as I could before leaving, not sure how intact the place will be now. Thought you ought to have a look.
Best,
Sanagi
She snorted momentarily. Just like Sanagi - sign off a personal email with her last name and her last name alone. Come to think of it, she didn't even know Sanagi's first name… the thought vanished as she scanned the photographs, the alcohol slightly dulling her urgency - but only slightly. The photos made her go very still indeed, and her heart rate quickened. Bodies, burned and charred, looking more like wood… faces crumbled to dust, no point trying to identify them like that. She looked at photo after photo, some far away, some close up, a few showing the full scope of the scene… nearly twenty bodies, obliterated completely. What could have done this? The vision of history as a destructive tidal wave came back to her - the centipede cult was a continent-spanning phenomenon occurring throughout time. And now there was another, a cult that burned and had some influence over time and space. She had the feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff in the middle of the night. The drop was out of sight, impossible to perceive, the sound of the waves crashing the only indication that there might be a drop at all. But even if she was right on the edge, a single step away from falling to her death, all that she felt was a sense of incoming precipitous doom. She almost felt the lip of the cliff beneath her feet.
The tumbler was set aside, a glance of contemptuous fury directed at the merrily shining liquid. Look at her - fifteen years old, dreaming of leaving Brockton and starting anew, obsessed over a stoner who almost consumed her mind, a centipede which might still be consuming her body, and now turning to drink because of, what, night terrors? More than that, she despised the sluggishness in her body, the slight delay in responses, the slow tenor of her thoughts. She felt keenly that she'd poisoned herself, the alcohol crawling through her veins and clogging her neurons. She scanned through photo after photo, attempting to find something, anything that might indicate Julia was here or not. Some of the figures were distinctively female. Some were distinctively male. None were so destroyed as to be completely unidentifiable. The female figures… no clothes she could pick out, no distinguishing features. And then, she saw it - a small light, gleaming.
One of them was wearing a blackened earring. A small ring, with a sharp spur projecting downwards. Julia has worn those. She mentally slapped herself - other people wore those earrings, they weren't exactly unique. But who wore just one? Lots of people, surely… and Julia was included in that category. She scanned the figure, trying to pick out anything she possibly could. Face structure? Could be Julia, but she was accustomed to seeing Julia's face with actual living flesh on it, not as some carbonised statue - a statue that was partially crumbled, too. Build? Hard to tell… young, perhaps? Or just thin? The earring, the build, the face structure, the curve of the lips - lips she'd seen curled into sneers far too often to count, now twisted into an expression of sublime joy… none of these things were substantial on their own, too small to rely on. But together, they planted a seed of sick doubt in her stomach. The sense of history bearing down around her made her pessimistic, and that seed of doubt blossomed into a tree of grim certainty.
She'd lost. She'd spent days worrying about a centipede, when something entirely different had gone ahead and killed the girl she was looking for. She didn't even have the willpower to close her laptop, shoving it to the side. The tumbler remained untouched. She stared at the ceiling, tears pricking at the corner of her eyes. No insects to project her feelings onto. She'd failed. She'd tried and she'd completely and utterly failed. She'd been pursuing the wrong cult. She was too slow.
She'd lost.
She glanced at the screen again, noticing once more the video of the centipede cult. Rage started to blossom in her, rage that would make Sanagi proud. Pure, undiluted hatred - this cult had delayed her, had distracted her, and it was all for nothing. She'd learned everything about this cult - nearly everything - and it was a complete waste of time. And she had, on her crappy cheap laptop, the tools to completely destroy them, to wipe that cold, smug look off that woman's face. She pulled the laptop back towards her, and hammered out a brief, curt email. She explained what she had seen. She attached the video. She asked Sanagi to do what she needed to do.
The tumbler was emptied. It only made her more furious.
* * *
Across town, Sanagi's own computer rang with an alert - a new email. She checked it - Taylor, just as she had suspected. Her eyes went wide as she reviewed it, coffee forgotten and congealing on the desk. Taylor suspected one of the figures was Julia… her evidence was flimsy, and as a police office she should be more demanding. But this wasn't police business. This never would be police business - no case file would ever be opened to look into the charred smiling statues, no investigation would ever be launched. The warehouse would continue to rot, and some drunk or junkie would trip over the statues and eradicate any trace that they were ever there to begin with. Sanagi's professionalism slipped. Dreams of promotion slipped. This was a perfect case - a missing girl, a murderous cult, exposing it would have guaranteed a promotion. But instead the cult was some bizarre thing which transcended anything she thought possible. The girl was likely dead, and while her body was right in front of her there was no way it could ever be submitted in a court of law.
Sanagi snarled. She had no leads on the fire cult, no leads on where they might be or what they might want. But she did have leads on the centipede cult, and had every reason to eradicate them completely. She wouldn't be paid for it, she wouldn't be rewarded. She wasn't even sure if it would really satisfy her. Her father's advice faded from her mind. Professionalism could go fuck itself, she wanted to hurt something. A savage grin spread across her face as she looked at Taylor's request. She stood, coffee almost spilling as she did so, and near-sprinted to the door, barely hesitating to put on her jacket. She raced out, neighbours keeping a good distance from the woman they'd come to know as exceedingly polite, painfully tidy, and absolutely bloody terrifying.
In less than an hour, her car was parked and she was walking to a small group of young men, barely younger than her really. Japanese, she could tell - and one Korean. Appropriately, she barked at them in Japanese, using her best drill-instructor voice:
"Oi! ABB?"
The youths shuffled, awkwardly. It was one thing to run around wearing the colours, intimidating everyone in sight, feeling the dragon himself looming behind them supportively. But it was quite another to have a wild-eyed Japanese woman who looked ready to tear something apart shriek in the language they mostly associated with overbearing parents and relatives - they lived in the USA and hung out with a wide variety of Asians, English was the dominant language even in the ABB. One of them, slightly older, nodded.
"Yeah, what's it to you?"
"I have information for Lung."
She thrust a USB stick in their face, waving it tantalisingly.
"Information on a parahuman on his turf. I bet he'll love to hear it."
A deep voice came from behind her, causing her to whirl around.
"If he'd like to see it that much, why not tell him yourself?"
Sanagi gave a nervous grin, her murderous rage abating slightly in the face of what was, ultimately, a rather terrifying threat. She made platitudes, explaining that this could be wonderful for them, but the large gentleman was adamant. In a few moments, she was inside a car, the youths sitting by her side with expressions of slight confusion - not to mention fear. Only an idiot was nearby when another idiot chose to provoke the dragon.
* * *
Lung was bigger than expected. Even as a human, no scales to be seen, no trace of his powers on display, Lung was massive. A pile of muscle and sinew, built around a wide and solid frame, with intense eyes staring at her from behind a snarling metal mask. She'd been dragged to his current pad, an expensive place 'borrowed' from a local business owner who owed the ABB a great deal of money. She'd protested for half the journey, and after some stern reprimands, had spent the rest glaring sullenly at anything she wanted to glare at. Which, at the moment, was just about everything.
Once again, her hasty rage had led to her getting into a sticky situation. The last time it had been an internal review for her behaviour. The time before that it had been… well, that was before she was in the police, and it had been settled quietly. Even if she still had the scars on her thigh. This topped all previous occasions, though - standing before Lung, the Dragon of Kyushu, the Human Endbringer. He who had challenged the Protectorate of Brockton Bay and had brought them to their knees. He who had united the disparate gangs which prowled the Asian neighbourhoods of the Bay, crushing their leaders and binding them into a single tribe. And for all his reputation as a fighter, there was a deep intelligence shining in those eyes, a probing mind that was currently sizing her up. A mind that found her wanting.
He was sitting casually in a large chair, bottles of liquor off to one side, terrified-looking women massaging his shoulders. As she watched, he lifted a small bottle of expensive tequila upwards, pouring it down his throat in a single gulp. She saw the alcohol ignite as it traveled downwards, saw the glow as his own internal heat turned it into alcoholic steam. The rush of gas was quickly inhaled through his flared nostrils, and the dragon leaned back.
"You have information."
A statement, not a question.
"...yes, Lung. I have a video of a parahuman living in your territory, who preys on the people under your protection."
Her tone was demure, quiet. Usually she'd be enraged at stooping to such a level. Now, though? She was just happy her voice wasn't shaking. Lung rumbled, and gestured to a laptop lying off to the side. Smoothly, a gang member took the USB stick and inserted it, presenting the screen to Lung. The women at his side watched curiously as it played. Taylor had edited it a little, reducing it to the most relevant parts - specifically, the parts which highlighted the distinctively unnatural aspects of the cult leader.
"This is from the Luminous Qigong Centre."
Lung growled, and Sanagi shut her mouth.
"You come to me with a video that I'm supposed to believe isn't faked, and ask me to level a building?"
Sanagi paled. She scrambled for lies that sounded convincing.
"No! My… my sister was taken by the cult, and I wanted revenge. I had some friends go in, but they couldn't kill the leader, too tough. So I thought it prudent to approach you, Lung, and ask for your help."
Lung stared at her. Was he larger than before? The women backed away slightly, eyes already widened by the video's contents. One of them looked downright horrified - a patron of the centre? He turned to his subordinates.
"Do you recognise her? Is she one of our own?"
A chorus of shrugs met his question. He turned to one of the women, the one who'd reacted so negatively to the video.
"And you? Do you know of the Qigong Centre?"
The woman froze like a deer in headlights, but managed to stutter out a few sentences before falling silent. Chinese. Damn it. Lung nodded understandingly, turning back to Sanagi.
"So. My subordinates do not know your face, but my woman knows of the centre. She says there's no parahuman there - nor any sign of them."
"Ask her if she'd been to the top two floors! That's where the parahuman lives - in the video there're images of what's up there, all the bodies. The centre is clean, but the top is where you'll find all the dirt."
Lung paused, considering her words. He rumbled some Mandarin to the woman, who replied hesitantly.
"My woman has never seen the top, nor does she know anyone who has. Still, there is no reason to trust your words."
He barked a command to a subordinate, who sprinted away and returned with a small and unadorned wooden box. Lung opened it, revealing a short, sharp, curved sword.
"These are incredibly rare, woman. This is worth more than you will likely ever make. Consider it an honour that I am using it now."
He placed it before her, handle pointed towards her hand. Sanagi, kneeling, stared at it disbelievingly. He was right - these were beyond expensive. Ever since Japan fell into chaos, traditional arts had more or less perished, and huge archives had been plundered or destroyed. A sword like this, made in Japan, possibly hundreds of years ago, was a priceless artefact. She couldn't believe Lung owned one.
"Prove to me that this place must be destroyed. Prove your passion, your lust for revenge. Your little finger will suffice."
His tone was smooth - that was something the videos never captured. Lung had a smooth voice, low and soft. When he wanted it to be, of course. She'd heard it escalate into a deafening roar more than once, but it was disconcerting to hear the complete opposite curl through the air and into her ears. She saw how he was able to not just conquer multiple gangs, but fuse them into one. She felt the urge to obey him… and then the realisation sank in.
"I… my little finger?"
"It will suffice. Hurry. My patience wanes."
His tone was growing more clipped. Sanagi looked at the sword, shining in the dim light of the apartment. Lung's women had retreated, and were both pointedly not looking towards Sanagi. The subordinates were mixed - some looked away, others looked on with ambivalence, and a select few leaned forward with eager stares, excited to see some blood. She picked it up with hands that felt too sweaty to do anything involving sharp objects. The sword was… light, but the sense of purpose imbued in it, the promise of violence, made it seem heavier than a dumbbell. Her other hand splayed out, the little finger protruding outwards. The rest of the fingers abandoned it, leaving it poking out alone and afraid, pale and clammy. If she squinted it looked like a pale worm on the dirty floor.
Sanagi gulped. A bead of sweat travelled down the side of her face.
Did she really want to do this? Her rage was almost gone now. Did she want to pursue revenge that badly? Would Lung even let her go if she failed his test? That last thought chilled her blood. And then, ignited it. This… large-muscled soft-voiced bastard, who owned something that really should belong in a museum, was asking her to slice off her finger and would likely kill her if she didn't. He couldn't just take the bait, nor could his men. Idiots, the lot of them, pretending at some form of culture while they scrabbled for leavings like the cockroaches they were. Her rage bubbled over, her eyes brimmed with fury. She felt the urge to drive the sword right into Lung's heart - he didn't see her as a threat, so he'd probably still be mostly human. And it doesn't take much to kill a human. Kill him with a sword worth more than he ever would be. That seemed fitting. But no - that centipede bitch deserved worse, deserved to suffer for what she'd done, deserved to suffer in place of the bastard/bitch who'd burned those bodies and left her to patrol the filthy streets like some common cop, probably going to get knifed by a junkie one of these days and that would be the end of Sanagi who couldn't get promoted out of harm's way because apparently there were gods in this world and they didn't produce admissible evidence.
Sanagi looked into Lung's eyes, and he blinked, smiling slightly at her expression. She snarled, in a voice quite unlike the demure one she'd had before.
"Fuck. You."
The knife slipped down, and she grinned to hide the fact that she wanted to scream. Lung grinned right back. With a shaking hand, she dropped the sword and picked up her little finger. She stood, impudently, and walked towards Lung, thrusting the little bleeding worm in his grinning face.
"Now kill the bitch."
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