Oni Lee had long ago worked out how to find Lung when separated.
Smell the wind for something burning. Burning wood, asphalt, or metal usually, flesh didn't smell that different from pork.
Listen for the explosions. Screams just didn't travel that far.
See the glow of the fire. Or the giant dragon shooting said fire.
Even in the state he was in now, he still remembered that.
But there was no fire, no screams, no explosions. Nothing to see, smell, or hear.
But he had instructions for that.
He searched methodically, and, eventually, came across the Leader of the Azn Bad Boyz.
He was indeed slipping away, for what he saw barely stirred his interest.
---===---
Lung was angry. That wasn't new.
Lung sitting on the curb was a touch odd. He was never still for long.
The scales on the ground were odd, normally they receded into his body when he was done. He didn't look injured though... had he torn them out himself?
Lung sawing at his now very long hair with the upper half of a halberd was quite odd.
Still he said nothing. He just waited for orders.
---===---
Fucking Brute powers, I'd need a grinder to cut this. Or get Lee to do it when I slept. That was when my powers were at the weakest after all.
But that'd take ether and my Laz-E-boy to relax that far, and we had things still to do.
I didn't need to look up to know that Lee was silently behind me, I felt his heat. My greatest secret and one I'd never uttered aloud. No one above room temperature could hide from me.
Quiet you.
"Lee. Personal Status."
It hurt still, faintly, that this was what we were reduced to, but I'd had plenty of time to watch his degradation, the pieces of him slipping away.
"Relatively uninjured, I fell a couple times thanks to one of them, and had difficulty teleporting in the darkness one of them was creating."
Ah, Regent, Grue. I remembered practicing with them, whenever Brian could drag Alex into training.
"I am a little thirsty, hungry, and will need to go to the bathroom in a few hours."
Because he needs me to tell him what to do about that. About nearly everything now.
Except murder, he could still do that part pretty well. But everything not murder needed... help.
"I have three things that must be done tonight. Then we can rest."
Lee didn't say anything, but looked down and waited.
"But first help me with this."
---===---
With my stubbornly long hair in as close to a Jurchen Queue as Lee could manage without shaving me, I proceeded to search for a phone.
Since I hadn't said for him to follow, Oni Lee waited where he was. Hopefully, there was still enough of him to react if anything went amiss before I could return. But it would not be long, and I think it helped him a bit to be left alone with what thoughts he had left.
Ah, phones. I never carried one naturally, I tried to at first, but burning burner phones was just setting money on fire.
Oni Lee's was also no longer working, a side effect of his powers. The more delicate and intricate something was, the faster his teleportations would cause small glitches. It was, as a matter of fact, the way we first noticed that his powers were harming him. It was also the reason he stuck to knives and bombs. Simple and robust worked best, and with certain simple and sturdy cell phones being replaced with those thin and delicate things that were practically all screen, well, soon we'd have to switch to radios or something. I'd wreck them, and so'd he, each in our own ways.
And so I found a pay phone in short order. A quick punch relieved the phone of it's change box, and I used a coin to dial a very specific number.
A number I couldn't possibly know.
The phone rang twice, before it was picked up.
A voice I both remembered and hadn't heard answered.
"Hello?"
I was right. I wasn't crazy from some strange Master power.
"Hello?"
Then I realized I hadn't said anything and cleared my throat. I laid my accent on fairly thick. "Is this Miss Militia?"
"Yes it is. And who am I talking to?"
I smiled behind my mask. "Lung."
Any softness in her voice vanished instantly. "How did you get this number?"
There she was, soft and kind, hard and resolute. I think I missed her.
"That isn't the right question to ask." I could almost picture her looking around the nearly empty office area, looking for another late shift officer to start to trace this call. "If you want, I will tell you the answer, but may I offer a different question to ask instead?"
This was fun, talking to people instead of at them.
"And that would be..." her tone making it less of a question, also drawing it out. The trace was on going. I'd seen enough movies to know this.
"The question I would ask would be; 'Is Armsmaster still alive?', but if you really want to know how I got this number, I won't stop you."
Yes, talking to people was fun.
---===---
I was halfway back to where I'd left Oni Lee, humming a tune that I think my mother used to sing, when I heard the screams. I broke out into a run, and I could go very fast when I needed to and the ground or my shoes didn't matter. As I turned the corner of the block I saw something that would forever be burned a memory for me. And I had seen some very strange things in my lives.
Apparently, sometime after I left, some of my men came back. It had taken longer than normal, probably because there was so little roaring or explosions.
And, also sometime after I left, the motorcycle of Colin, of Armsmaster, had righted itself and was attacking my men, despite the damage it had taken from me throwing it at him.
"Fucking Tinkers." It was funnier when it wasn't happening to me though.
I turned to Lee, who hadn't moved from where he was standing. It hadn't gotten close enough to him to matter. Sighing, I walked past him and reached for the man I'd broken.
Armsmaster was a robust man, most wouldn't have survived what I'd done to him. I picked him up by his neck and reached for the arm I had torn off.
I still don't know exactly why I'd torn it off, much less cauterized the stump afterward. But, looking at him now, I think he was more correct this way, whatever that meant.
The arm I handed to Lee along with his instructions. As he disappeared into ash, I bellowed at my men.
Not to them, but at them. It really made a difference.
"Stop fighting the Tinker Bike. Come here now." I didn't need to repeat myself, a choice between a bike and a dragon, the sensible listened to me.
They backed up and tried to circle around to reach me, only to find the bike, balancing itself by means I couldn't understand, slowly following like some mechanical attack dog.
It stopped when it saw Lee waving the arm. Then it swiveled to look at me holding the rest of him. The kickstand popped out and it rested in a way I could only describe as warily.
Things quickly calmed down after that. The men, of which I noted were less than half the number than what I started with, were fairly battered and pained, but capable of whatever I ordered them to do including one of my Lieutenants. Of the ones that were not here, I'd see to them later. I-She had been pretty liberal with the stinging insects. I wouldn't kill those ones. The cowards though...
"Which of you knows any sort of first aid." Ironically, I couldn't just use Chinese or Japanese, but instead English. I could with the upper ranks, but not with the street level. "Azn" covered a lot of different languages.
A couple of hands went up. They were young, maybe fourteen or fifteen, Japanese yet clearly not brothers, likely friends. "We took a course on it in school."
My eyes narrowed, Winslow didn't offer anything like that..."Which school do you come from?"
"Um A-Arcadia sir."
Part of me was puzzled, though I knew not why. Arcadia didn't magically stop teenagers from joining gangs, it just kept the overt groups and colors and grafitti at bay. People from all walks of life did everything good and bad, just for different reasons. Noting how clean they looked, no signs or smells of drugs on them, I decided it was probably rebelling against overbearing parents.
I realized I was staring at them, and it was making them terribly nervous. Turning, I pointed at the broken hero. "Do what you can to stabilize him."
"But why? You've won."
I froze. The sharp indrawn breaths of all the remaining members clued them in that they'd done something bad.
They had questioned my orders.
The Dragon would make an example of one of them.
The Warlord would have explained and planned and prepared. Or it would like to think it would. It probably would have done something stupid and self-sacrificing.
---===---
A little of both would suffice today. Minus the stupid and self-sacrificing.
They were side by side, so I placed a fatherly hand on each of their shoulders. They looked up at me, suddenly realizing that their rebellious natures had placed them in the hands of Lung.
"I am in a good mood tonight, so I will tell you why. In fact, will tell you why twice."
They nodded slowly, worried but also perplexed at my words.
"He needs to survive the night, because I intend to trade him. He's more valuable that way. That is why."
They nodded, and then winced as my fingers squeezed lightly. Lightly for me that is.
"You now know the why for that. Now you shall now the why forever more."
My hands were not on fire, not yet, but they were painfully hot.
"You may ask 'When?' when you know not when, and 'Who?' if you know not who. You may ask What and Where, this I will allow."
My fingers tightened slightly. "But."
"I leave the 'How?' up to you. That is your role. And I will punish or reward accordingly."
My eyes glowed with the fire just behind them. I pulled them upwards until they were standing on their toes.
"This is the second 'Why?'. The only Why you will ever need for the rest of your lives, as long or short as they may be."
My fingers were near the boiling point of water, and my grip was like iron. They did not look away, they knew their lives hung in the balance of keeping my gaze.
"Why? Because I am Lung. That's why."
I let them both go and they fell to their knees gasping and clutching their lightly burned shoulders.
"See to this man. Do what you can. Then you can see to yourselves." I tapped my finger against my chin, thinking briefly. "Afterwards, I think I shall have you train the others what you know. Then more hands would go up next time."
---===---
After the Armsmaster's cuts were bandaged, and his broken bones set, I had the men leave.
The Lieutenant, whose name escaped me at the moment, remained behind for special instructions.
This had to be perfect.
"Oni Lee will teleport you to my room. Once inside, he will fetch a gray box. This cannot be teleported, and, is to be delivered to me at the park I am going to."
He nodded, started to turn, then hesitated. His hand shot up, like he was in a class.
I raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"
"It's the one with the birdbath right?"
I nodded, satisfied. "Correct. And be careful, the contents inside are irreplaceable."
His eyes moved back and forth, thinking about which route to take. "Is fifteen minutes all right?"
"Yes. Go."
---===---
Oni Lee was back within a minute and together we started walking towards the park.
The bike followed behind quietly.
I was carrying Armsmaster as gently as I could, bridal style, trying not to cause his broken ribs to dig into his organs, while Lee carried the arm and the pieces of the halberd, and kept between me and the bike.
We didn't talk, we didn't need to.
My mind was busy thinking, turning the puzzle of this night over and over in my head.
Who was the god of the Yellow River tonight?
I felt the puzzlement and once more thought to explain. It seemed to help.
T'an T'ai Mieh Ming, a disciple of Confucius, was attacked, at the instigation of the god of the Yellow River, by two dragons seeking to rob him of a valuable gem he carried. One came from the east with scales of white, the other the west and scales of blue.
And they all fought over the gem. The clouds were torn, the mountains crumbled, and the forest burned.
T'an T'ai Mieh Ming did, but only because the two dragons fought each other as much as they fought him. Had they been united in focus, the man could have never won.
Afterwards, looking at all the destruction wrought by the greed they all had, T'an T'ai Mieh Ming realized the weakness of worldly goods, and broke the gem into pieces and scattered the fragments.
She still didn't understand.
Before tonight, we were two dragons. Now we are the man. But tell me, who is the god of the Yellow River who caused all of this to be?
Neither of us had an answer to that.
---===---
The bike watched as the Dragon turned to the Oni and asked a very strange question.
"Who am I?"
To which the Oni replied. "You are Lung."
"If I am Lung," the Dragon argued, "then where is my pearl?"
The Oni thought for a moment. At last, he replied. "You cast it aside when you left Japan."
The Dragon nodded sadly. "I suppose I did."
He straightened nodded to himself. "I'll have to find another then."