“屌，打佢啦!”
Zain never liked fish.
His mom had always told him that his tastes would change when he ‘matured’ or whatever and he’d ‘grow’ to like it. As much as he missed her, he always felt like that was some BS.It didn’t make sense that you’d like new foods just because you got older, right?“快啲啦! He’s one fucking kid!”Either way, it’d been almost two years since then and Zain still didn’t like fish.He didn’t like it grilled, fried or baked and he especially didn’t like it raw, so the underground fish spot in Bayard on Chinatown was a new kind of hell for him. The smell was so bad he had to take it out on the Triad guys who were using it as a hideout.It might have started out about the Hand but, after a minute or two, it had kinda become personal.
“活你老母—you grab him then!”This one still had almost a dozen guys left, a bunch of them crowding him in another cramped hallway that seemed to fill this city. For some reason, bad guys always thought it would help them.
It never did.
Narrow meant they couldn't get past each other. It meant every time one went down, the next had to climb over him to get to him. More than that, it meant he didn't have to worry about anybody behind him.
Always assume there's one behind you.
Zain flinched at the sound of the old psycho’s voice in his head, but he checked over his shoulder anyway. Nothing.He snapped his head forward as—
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
—the first one came in with a cleaver, the thing still fresh and dripping with red as it slid shallow through his jacket and just along his rib. Zain bit back a hiss, the pain fading into the background as a punch with his silver-clad fist made something snap. He spun to face the next guy, turning into another attack as a machete swung wild at him.He lashed out, five fingers catching the wrist and squeezing.
It didn’t take long until the wrist was barely even a wrist anymore.
Blue light hissed up around his other fist, ki coiling out of his chest. Zain almost flinched as his balance went weird for a half-second but… whatever.
He threw the cross anyway.
The guy went off his feet and into the two behind him, all three of them meeting the wall together. Drywall didn’t hold against weight and momentum, a hole through the next room where a bunch of…Fish? Zain made a face. Again?! Second time this week and it made no sense. If he was mean enough to count shrimp, it would be a whole-ass third. Whatever. "YO!” Zain shook his head as he shook the hand out, blue guttering off his knuckles. "Somebody in here better start talkin’ bout the red ninjas or Imma start breaking hands!” One of them tried to crawl for the door and Zain stepped on the back of his wrist without even looking. "And until you talk, I’mma keep going. I got nowhere to be."
He kept going.
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Wind ruffled his hair as he ducked a hammer of a haymaker from a giant of a man. "Slow."True, but the oversized and overbuilt Yakuza didn’t have to be all that fast when he could hit hard enough to make someone like him feel it. The next hit came with speed and momentum behind it, big man kicking off the wall like it shoved him.Zain got his forearm up in time and the punch still turned him halfway around, arm stinging a little bit. Okay. Blinking, he ate the next three steps backward to keep balance. Okay, that one hurt.
Nobody’d hit him like that since the Hand and Stick.And both of them were psychos.Psychos with ki.
“...okay…” He rolled his shoulder as he looked back up at the big burly bastard, hands back up and ready. “So you eat better than the rest of ‘em, huh?”
The Yakuza didn’t bother to answer as he came forward with no wind-up, hands walking out in front of him as he rushed Zain. The teenager snapped another kick into his gut and, past a grunt and a frown, it barely folded the guy and —Nah!Zain’s eyes went wide as his ankle got gripped by five meaty fingers. Nah!Silent protests met deaf ears as all one-hundred-and-fifty pounds of him went airborne, the world whirling all around him. It didn’t spin for long, though, pain flashing white across his eyes as Zain slammed head-first into the wall.The taste of blood filled his mouth as he went rolling across the floor, nose gushing the stuff down his face, but he didn’t have time for that. It only took a second to catch himself, and half of that to jump back to his feet.Still a half-step slower than he’d like. Fuhhhhh-His arms went up, snapping over his head to block another hammer of an overhand right coming right down on him. -ccccckkkkk. The planks under his feet buckled and Zain knew right there that this guy was more than just muscle. Blood in his teeth, the teenager dropped his guard and swung out with a hook digging into the big body. Another shot dug even deeper, enough to force a step back. Zain grunted as he threw out a third right to the same spot, then a hard knee that forced the Yakuza down to eye level as he took one of his own.
“Gotcha!” Zain threw out a kick, this one right to the side of the Yakuza enforcer's still-standing knee. The joint popped like a firecracker, folding the wrong way as the man screamed and grabbed at his leg.
Zain didn't stop, arm snapping directly into a brutal rising elbow to the jaw.
The teenager didn’t need to see it to feel it, teeth rattling in the jaw as the guy forgot one pain for another. His body tumbled backward, all his bulk tipping to the ground hard enough Zain could almost hear someone shout “Tiiiiimber!”
One hand wiped the blood from his nose as he stared at the others in the room, the remaining Yakuza taking a step back. Light work.
That was almost the scary part.
He hadn't even been doing this whole thing for long. Barely a year since Colleen started fixing his sloppy street fighting, and now? Now he was moving through these grown men like they were moving underwater.
Ever since the Hand took his arm and he had to heal it back with that… that evil injection, his body had been different. What he used to struggle to do with ki, he could do on his own. If he needed any more proof, the way his hits could slam grown men like they just got swiped by a truck did it for him.
The math was entirely broken. He weighed about a buck-fifty at best, but when he planted his feet and threw a cross, niggas went flying. Every ambush turned into a slaughter by the time of the third punch.
“嘘だろ….”
Zain caught the swing of a metal pipe on his arm, force enough in the blow to bruise as it rang into his bone. With a grunt, he grabbed the guy's collar, and pulled his face forward right into a rising knee.
Blood sprayed across Zain's white tee as a nose was smashed flat and an unconscious body was thrown aside atop the big man from a few seconds ago. The kid stood there, chest heaving heavy and his bandana plastered to his face with sweat.
Four guys left, all of them backing up with their hands raised and staring at him like he was the devil with the horns and everything. Zain stepped forward, steel links clinking as the chain slid out of his sleeve.“兄貴、どうします?”The words weren’t aimed at him, one of the younger-looking guys turned to face some guy in a half-suit and a face full of scars. The man didn’t look back at the person who asked him, eyes still on Zain as he stepped forward. “D-don’t kill us.”
Kill you? Zain swallowed the copper taste in his mouth, one hand raised to adjust the bandana hiding his face. He didn't want to end them.
Stick would have ended them. Hell, the old psycho would have slit their throats and called him a soft little bitch for not getting it over with. Soldier.
“I’m not gonna kill you.” Sighs came loud but the memories of the Hand were even louder in his head, surfacing like black oil. “I just want to know what you know about the Hand.”
The toughest among them went pale, all the rest of that toughness fading.Zain’s lips twisted up into a grin. There we go.
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
A tired Zain walked up from the basement of the Yakuza warehouse, equal parts of him in a good and bad mood. Good, because he had finally found out a little more about the Hand aka the ‘Yami no te’ because just the Hand wasn’t enough.They had to be the ‘Hand of Darkness’ too.
Apparently, they were way above regular organized crime, too, and ran so much of it across all of New York. According to what the guys said, they didn’t run every gang and not even all gangs but they still decided which ones were allowed to keep drawing breath.The bad; apparently, they were way above regular organized crime, too.
Which is why he couldn’t really find them.
Which was… annoying as fuck.
Sighing under his breath, Zain let his hands drop. Eyes half-closed, he came around the corner of the hallway—“Where’s Francis?”—and came face-to-face with red.
Zain stopped.Red and black stood in front of him, a full leather suit standing over six feet tall and aiming a heavy pistol right between his eyes.
…fuuuuuuuu-
The oversized gun stayed up for a good two seconds, Zain’s short life flashing in front of his eyes before— "Whoops."
White eyes widened as that black-and-red mask stared down at him, the grown man tipping his head to the side. “Sorry ‘bout that there, lil buddy. Trigger discipline, I know, I know.” All casual and cool like two ninja swords weren’t sitting on his back, that hand cannon dropped down to his hip. "You’re no Yakuza. Wrong height. Wrong race-”That head tipped the other way. “Wow. Okay, racist. That was a little racist of me. Why can’t a Black kid can’t be Japanese?”
Those white eyes narrowed for a second. “Omae, nihongo shaberen no? Muri nara jimaku tsukeyō ka?”“...I? Subtitles? N-no…” Zain blinked at the figure in front of him rocking back and forward on his heels, attention still on those white eyes that somehow moved like a mask shouldn’t. “I kinda speak some Japanese, yeah?”“Okay. ‘Kinda’ Japanese. So, what are we talking here?” He raised a gloved hand. “Ordering ramen? Watching Death Note without the fansubs? Negotiating the release of a crime lord’s disappointing son?”Zain stared.
The masked man looked past him toward the basement door.
“Also, bilingual Black child splattered in blood walking alone out of a Yakuza basement sex dungeon.” He nodded slowly. “New York public schools have gotten extremely hands-on.”
“I…”
"You wouldn't happen to know a Francis, would you?"
Zain’s mouth moved slow around air and nothing else for a few seconds as he tried to follow the path of the conversation past the sight of the very very familiar costumed figure in front of him waving a gun around.
"You sure? He’s about yay high?” The gun went just a few inches above the man’s masked head. “Skinny guy, real stunner of a face, energy of a man who easily could have made a career as a white rapper?”
His question went unanswered in place of another question filling Zain’s thoughts. "Are you Deadpool?"
"Yeppers." The gun slapped to his forehead, a pistol-whip that Zain knew should have hurt serving as a salute. "Am I that popular already? Oh, that's nice. Imma ride that one all week. I'm waiting on my movie deal, actually. Whole thing's in development hell. That fucker Ryan Reynolds won't return my calls. Huge diva."
Zain's face scrunched up. "...I—"
Whatever he was working up to say went unheard and unspoken as somebody came around the far corner, soles slapping hard on the concrete in a dead run — a guy dressed up like the rest of the Yakuza, submachine gun already raised. Zain’s hand went to his chain but it didn’t even get there. Without looking back or turning his head, Deadpool just whipped the heavy pistol back over his own shoulder and pulled the trigger.
Zain's ears rang the same instant the man’s throat opened up, that running body falling to the ground with his SMG right under him. Blood sprayed hot and dark, painting the concrete and the wood right behind him. Gurgling echoed off the high ceilings as that body flopped, heels drumming the floor as the Yakuza drowned in his own blood in front of Zain.
"FUCK." The red guy slapped his own forehead with the smoking barrel. "I forgot to ask him. I literally — that was the whole — okay. Okay. It's fine. It's a process."
Deadpool let out a breath, gun already holstered at his waist and rolled his shoulders. "Well, see ya in the next crossover movie, kid."
He walked around the corner.
Whistling.
Through the mask.
Somehow.
Zain stood in the hallway with a dead man bleeding out four feet from his sneakers, ears still ringing high and thin with just one thought on his mind and the same one on his lips.
"...holy shit, Deadpool.”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Killer with a Kameo — 200 DPMeet the Merc with a Mouth.
ROLL: "Big Bro" (400) [Saint Seiya Episode G] {Providence}:Strong as you are, you won’t be winning against the Titans on your own. The Saints are a powerful group, but it is only when they are just that—a group—that they truly show their colors. You’re able to bring out the very best in those around you, your words of encouragement allowing people to break their limits and draw out an incredible amount of both power and emotion. Normally, these bursts of power are only temporary, but if you keep at it with someone, you’ll find that they retain more and more of the potential you encourage them to reach simply through your inspiring words. Summoning up all that emotion can also be pretty darn good for helping someone overcome their internal issues.
Dojo Points: 100