Rain of Blood
1.1

"Please God, no..." Dad's whisper was muffled by the hands he cradled his face with. Sitting in his wheelchair, he leaned forwards heavily onto the kitchen table, appearing as though he'd be unable to support his own weight without the rigid surface. Head shaking in denial, he continued to whisper to himself. "Not this. Anything but this."

I watched him from the corner of my eye, unable to face him directly because of the shame that coursed through me and undoubtedly painted my face. My left hand nervously tapped away at the pommel of the tinkertech alloy katana, thrust through the sash around my waist. The blade's reassuring presence helped me to steel my nerves, regardless of the fact that it would be of no use to me for this particular confrontation.

The silence stretched on, each agonizingly long second punctuated by the near thunderous tick of the cheap clock mounted next to the fridge. Fidgeting, I reached up with my right hand to brush a wayward lock of dark curly hair behind my ear. A glint of light drew my attention as I pulled my hand away. On the outside of the firm black bracer that protected my forearm, wrist, and hand, the stylized oriental dragon reflected the dim kitchen light off its bright golden surface.

Dad let out a long shaky breath.

"Why Taylor?" He asked, fear and desperation coloring his voice and making him sound so much smaller than the once confident and fiery spirited man who'd held the Brockton Bay dockworkers association together for years. "Why would you do this?" I flinched, the note of betrayal in the question striking me like a blow to the face. I opened my mouth, fumbling through my thoughts for an adequate response that wouldn't hurt him more, only to be preempted by his defeated whisper.

"It's because of me, isn't it?"

"Dad, no!" I responded immediately, desperate to reassure him no matter how right he may have been. "It's not- I didn't-" My left hand clamped down around the hilt of my blade as I pushed off from my lean against the wall, raking through my hair with my right as I struggled to come up with an excuse. "They took over the whole neighborhood dad, I had no other choice! We can't afford to pay the protection fees and I- The Protectorate can't- no, won't push them out. This area's not valuable enough. It's- It's Lung dad, and they've got this new Tinker who specializes in bombs, and is littering them over the whole area."

"Taylor," Dad cut in, breaking off my growing tirade. "It doesn't matter what happens to me. I can figure something out. I can take out a loan and we can move far away from here. This house, this city, none of it matters anymore. We- we don't even have to pack. Let's just get up, and leave, and go somewhere else. Somewhere far away-"

"No dad." I interrupted, lips pressed together as I shook my head in denial. "We can't. These people, they know who I am. They'll never just let us leave. I know they're watching and if it even looks like you're thinking about running-"

"I don't care!" My dad's scream was punctuated by his fist slamming down on the table. Something cracked and it tipped, a glass of water falling over with a clatter and rolling over the edge to hit the floor with a crash. "I know how these people operate Taylor, threatening you with your family to get you to obey. Don't listen to them! I don't care what happens to me-"

"I do!" I screamed back, whipping around to meet his eyes and pointing frantically at myself for emphasis. "I care! Me! Your daughter! Your last surviving family! You're all I have left dad! I can't lose you too. I won't." I managed to keep my voice steady even as the first tears began to trail down my face. My explosive response caught him off guard and we lapsed back into silence again, unblinking stares locked together with pain and desperation.

Eventually I turned away, blinking the tears out of my eyes as I stomped over to where the glass had hit the ground. Stooping low, I started picking shards off the floor, carefully cradling the growing pile in my other hand. As I worked, dad put his elbow on the armrest of his wheelchair and leaned heavily into his hand.

"I'm always making a mess of things." He said, his voice quiet and a bit hoarse. "Things went to hell and I was never there for you. I drowned myself in work, just trying to forget the painful things and I lost sight of you. Boy did I pay for that one." With a self deprecating and mirthless chuckle, he knocked on the hard plastic of the wheelchair. "You did too, maybe more than me."

"Dad-" As I stood to dump the shards into the trash, my attempt at an interruption was ignored. Dad continued.

"I thought that was the lowest things could get: me getting hurt and being unable to work. When you decided to drop out of high school to get some dinky part time job, I wanted to say something, anything to convince you not to, but I couldn't. I was weak, and I knew that without the money, we'd be out in the streets before long. I swore to myself that as soon as I was able, I'd make it up to you. That it wouldn't be for long. How full of shit am I?"

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that it wasn't his fault. I wanted to tell him that I didn't resent him and that I didn't mind working, that it was better than high school ever was. I wanted to tell him that he shouldn't feel guilty, that he'd done the best he could given the circumstances.

But I couldn't, because somewhere in the back of my mind, a little seed of resentment lingered. A little piece of me did actually look back on our lives, on the last few years, and found my father wanting. Found the things that he could have done better, should have done differently. "I'm your daughter, and you all but abandoned me when I needed you most." It whispered to my subconscious and polluted my compassion and understanding with oil slicks of anger and hate.

I hated that part of myself almost as much as I've come to hate this city.

Dumping the rest of the glass in the trash bin, I wiped my hands to clear off any smaller bits and took a hair tie from my wrist to bundle my curls into a low ponytail. Finally, I wiped the tears off my face on the black fabric at my shoulders and turned back to dad and walked up to him slowly. When he didn't look up, I put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. He lifted his head to face me and I gave him a weak smile.

"We'll get through this. Both of us. Just like everything before, and whatever else may end up happening. This," I gestured to myself, to the costume I was wearing, a sort of loose black ninja outfit, and the sword at my hip. "Isn't forever. As much as Lung's using me, I'm using him too. I'll bleed him for everything he's worth and then at the end, when I've found a safe way to do it, I'll get us both out of this city and we can start over. Give the whole father daughter thing another shot, right?"

He turned away, facing down into his lap. I followed his gaze to see his hands, shaking with how hard they were clenched, on top of his unfeeling legs. Giving his shoulder a brief squeeze, I let my hand slide off and made my way to the backdoor. With a quick tug, I pulled up the thick black fabric around my neck to cover the lower half of my face up to the bridge of my nose and slid the other hood like section up over the top of my ponytail. As I was opening the door to leave, dad called out to me one last time.

"I love you, Taylor."

I hesitated, and just before slipping out the door, replied.

"I know."

Standing at the mouth of a dark alley, the designated gathering point for my group, I tapped a steady rhythm on the pommel of my sword. It was a little tic I'd developed since I'd been given the traditional Japanese blade, a plain katana with a black scabbard and hilt, a week ago. I guessed that it had something to do with my power, but simply being reminded of the blade's presence at my side did wonders for calming my frayed nerves.

My power was strange in comparison to some of the others I was aware of. Instead of granting me a single obvious ability, I had a grab-bag of minor enhancements to my body and mind, coupled with an innate understanding and mastery of the use of a sword. What I lacked in brute strength and durability, I made up for with pure speed, quick thinking, and a profound skill that I had not practiced a day of my life to earn.

It was a bit stupefying that such an oddly specific ability was possible when swords, and a Japanese katana specifically, were not exactly common. I had spent many a night with a queasy feeling in my stomach thinking about the implications: that maybe I was destined to join the ABB right from the start. Where else would I be likely to get a sword heralding back to a country that had long since died at the hands of Leviathan.

I shook my head to clear away unnecessary thoughts. What was important was the now. I'd been forced to join a dangerous gang that normally only lined its ranks with those of Asian descent. If I wanted to keep my head above the water, and secure both my own safety and that of my father's I couldn't afford to hesitate. Powers or not, I was the little white girl who had to prove her worth in a big way. Lung's personal hand in "recruiting" me had kept the dissenters at bay, but I didn't know how long that would last for. My powers had made me somewhat tougher, but I didn't think I was anywhere near bulletproof. All it would take would be one "accident," and I'd be just as dead as anyone else.

I couldn't afford to risk that. My life wasn't the only one on the line. Without me, my dad would have no way to support himself. The compensation he'd been receiving ever since his accident wasn't even enough to cover the essentials and that was without the added problems being paralyzed from the waist down brought to the table. Brockton Bay was a dying city and the shipping industry had long since collapsed. There simply wasn't any money left to help a crippled salary man support himself for the rest of his life, and so my dad had been abandoned, just like a good half of this city.

I was still here though. I was still healthy. I could still work, and just recently, I had gotten super powers. My dad was the only family I had left since my mom died three years ago, and if I had to lock away my principles and make a deal with the devil to save him, then that was exactly what I would do.

After all, what had this city ever done for us? Dad had worked tirelessly to support the stagnating dockworkers association, bringing proposal after proposal to the mayor to try to turn things around. Every time he had been ignored and it became obvious that the city officials had no intentions of salvaging the Docks from the decay and poverty that overtook them. After all, simply cutting their losses was far easier.

With me, I had been relentlessly and brutally bullied for over a year before dropping out of high school. I had brought my complaints and what evidence I could to the faculty and principal time and time again, desperately reaching out for help. Every last time, I was ignored. There was never enough evidence, in spite of the bruises and cuts that covered me, and never any witnesses, in spite of the teachers and students who caught my tormentors in the act only to turn away.

Focusing on these slights made the justifications a little bit easier and a little more believable. I wasn't in a gang because I wanted to be after all, I had been forced by people stronger and more frightening than myself. No one could blame me for bowing my head to Lung, a villain strong enough to fight entire teams of heroes and come out on top. In addition, would it really be that bad a thing to lash out against an institution that was so corrupt and morally bankrupt that they'd abandon the people that relied on them just to make things easier for themselves?

"Hey!" I was startled from my thoughts by a sharp voice with a thick accent. I turned quickly to the source, and came face to face with the leering visage of a fanged demon. Well, the mask of one at least. "Contact, group one. Time to go." It took me a moment to parse Oni Lee's thick accent and brief statements with their meaning.

The group of Asian gang members I was waiting with tonight was the second gathering of two. The first group contained Lung, the leader and strongest parahuman of the ABB, and probably a couple dozen unpowered gang members to support him. Our group was similar, containing Oni Lee, one of Lung's parahuman lieutenants, myself, and another dozen Asian gangers armed with an array of guns, bats, knives, and bludgeons.

"Right." I responded, trying to project more confidence into my voice than I felt, as I stepped out of the alleyway following behind Oni Lee. When we stepped clear of the surrounding buildings, he turned and lifted his head to stare off down the street. On top of a distant roof, the next block over, I could just make out a figure appear in the darkness. Taking a calming breath, I shifted my left hand to grasp firmly at the top of my blade's scabbard, right where it met the sword's guard, and broke out into a light jog. Behind me, Oni Lee's form crumbled into ash.

Oni Lee was a teleporter with an extra trick. When he appeared somewhere new, he left behind a short lived clone where his body was previously. The clones had all of his gear: an array of knives, guns, and explosives, and were capable of independent action for anywhere between five to ten seconds before they decayed into a pile of ash. They were extremely useful as disposable combatants or as a distraction, and Oni Lee made full use of them as guided suicide bombers.

He was also a murderous psychopath.

I didn't want to lose track of him as I suspected that he had no intention of waiting for me, so I stopped holding back and let loose a burst of speed, crossing a full block in three lunging steps that hardly took me a blink of the eye to complete. Reaching the base of the building Oni Lee had appeared on, I looked up and quickly plotted my course. After a brief crouch I leapt straight up, easily clearing three stories, and with an extra push off of my selected windowsill, I cleared the top of the building to land on the roof.

A few feet away, Oni Lee's clone crumbled into ash and I had a frantic moment where I glanced around searching for where he went. Thankfully, my sense of sight was one of the things that had been improved by my power and after a moment I spotted his silhouette breaking up the solid line of a distant rooftop. Wasting no time, I dashed off in the same direction, crossing over several roofs with a single step as the Docks rushed by beneath me.

My speed was easily one of my stronger powers, so as soon as I managed to settle into an easy rhythm of steps, jumps, and lunges, I quickly closed the distance with the real Lee and followed closely behind. Several blocks ahead of us and a few hundred feet to the right, a plume of fire briefly illuminated the city night. Oni Lee adjusted his course to head towards it in a straight line and I diverted to follow.

Where there was fire, there was sure to be Lung.

The leader of the ABB was a powerful pyrokinetic who only grew more powerful the longer a fight dragged on. In addition to the fire, Lung possessed a potent regeneration ability that also scaled up with the length of the fight, and gradually turned more and more into an honest to God dragon. Well, a dragon like monster. I had seen him during the later stages on the night I'd been forcibly convinced to join, and while there were certainly many parts about him that resembled a dragon (like the talons, and tail, and scales) there were also parts that were a little bit off (like the split open, multi sectioned maw.) It made me think his form was some child's nightmare rendition of a dragon, instead of one straight from the pages of a fairytale.

With three more teleports from Oni Lee, and several more high speed dashes from myself, we arrived on a battle scene straight out of a monster movie. Lung, already nearing ten feet tall, fully covered in gleaming silver scales, and sporting a serpentine tail and hands and feet tipped with dangerously sharp talons, was grappling viciously with three monstrous quadrupeds the size of minivans. All throughout the surrounding street and in-between the many buildings lining it, a thick inky blackness had settled over the area, obstructing all sight through it. The monsters appeared to be working together, one grappling with Lung directly as the other two snapped at his legs, arms, and tail, trying to clamp down and crush through his silver scales. Periodically, lungs skin would flare with fire, the flames bursting out and coiling around him to ward off the beasts which shied away from the intense heat.

Every now and then, just as Lung would appear ready to deliver a decisive strike to one of the monsters, he seemed to stumble, losing his footing or having his arm swing wildly to the side in a complete miss. From the research I'd done about Lung's targets, I had a good idea what that meant.

Lung's goal for tonight, was to make an example of a new group of minor villains that had turned up in Brockton Bay recently. They called themselves the Undersiders and were basically a group of thieving parahumans that specialized in "smash and grab" style capers. They were getting to be somewhat notorious for their slippery nature, always seeming to avoid capture or pursuit without serious complications. Apparently, one of their heists had mucked around with one of Lung's business ventures and he decided it was time to teach them their place in the pecking order.

One of the Undersiders' members was a Master who had the power to screw with someone's body, making them stumble, trip, drop something, flail about, etc. on command. Basically, if I wanted to help and get in Lung's good graces, my immediate goal was to see if I could track down the nearby parahuman and stop him from interfering with Lung's fight.

Stepping up next to Oni Lee on the edge of the building, I turned my sharp senses on the street and buildings around us, what little I could see of them with all of the strange black smoke around. Letting my eyes slide back and forth across the scene, I scanned the surroundings methodically. Every open space, every potential hiding spot, I studied sequentially, trying to avoid missing anything. It only took me a few passes to spot him.

Between two warehouses, right at the edge of the area the thick black smoke concealed, a lithe figure wearing what looked like tights and a frilly white shirt was peering around the corner of a building. Every once in awhile, he would gesture wildly with what looked like some kind of ornamental scepter, and in response, Lung would stumble or suddenly loose his grip on one of the large monsters facing him. Behind that first figure, was what appeared to be a large man wearing black leathers with an opaque motorcycle helmet with some sort of graphic on the visor. From his position, he was more than half concealed by the rolling black smoke.

Unsure of how to proceed, I tapped Oni Lee's shoulder to get his attention. His mask snapped around to face me and the sudden motion startled me enough that I took a step back. Quickly, I extended my arm and pointed out the two figures I'd spotted. Lee followed my finger and responded by reaching up to the bandolier strapped across his chest and pulling out a knife. With a sudden sinking feeling of apprehension, I snapped my attention back to the two people I'd pointed out just in time to see Oni Lee appear next to the one with the scepter and drive his knife straight into the distant figure's throat.

I choked in a horrified gasp, right hand coming up to cover my mouth over my cloth mask as the grip of my left hand on my scabbard tightened enough to make the material groan. Oni Lee had almost certainly just killed the figure with the scepter and it was entirely my fault for pointing him out. I was overcome by a wave of vertigo and dropped to my knees to avoid falling over the side of the building.

Death was certainly something I'd been aware of, something I'd come to accept since my mother passed away, but the casual murder that had just happened before my eyes was not something I'd been prepared for. I knew Oni Lee was a psychopath, a murderer with a body count higher than I'd wanted to think about, but to see him kill so callously, without hesitation, made me feel cold in a way the chill spring air had nothing to do with.

That could have been me. I found myself thinking, a sort of numb realization setting over me. That could still be me. I amended a moment later. It wasn't as though my safety was assured. If there was one thing that had been made abundantly clear to me over the course of my short membership with the ABB, it was that Lung did not react well to disappointment. He tended to make examples out of those who failed him, using their punishments as incentive for others not to repeat their mistakes.

My thoughts went back to dad, struggling to claw his way out of his wheelchair and onto the couch using only his arms. I thought of the railings he'd walked me through installing next to the toilets, so he could maintain some dignity in going to the bathroom by himself. I thought of all the little things throughout the day I had to help him do, and of all the hours I put into working the crummiest jobs I was able to scrounge up in a dying city, just to get enough money to put a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter on the table every week. I imagined dad, withering away in a wheelchair with no one to help him, if one day I never came home. I couldn't afford to give Lung reason to be disappointed with me.

Taking a deep breath, I forced down my growing panic with cold, selfish logic. These people were villains. They'd had a choice, and had decided to antagonize Lung. I didn't know their individual circumstances, maybe they were good people in a bad situation like so many others. Maybe not. In the end, I couldn't afford to worry about them. I had just as much of a right to fend for myself and for my dad who relied on me, as they did for themselves. Could I be held at fault, simply because circumstances had put us, desperately struggling to stay afloat, opposed to one another? Letting the breath out, I steeled my resolve.

Rising back to my feet, I turned my attention to Lung, as a cacophony of explosions roared out in quick succession a street away. He was still fighting the three monsters, but now, without the interference and having grown large enough to exceed their individual masses, he was quickly gaining the upper hand. He was almost certainly already on the path to victory, but there was no reason I couldn't act to speed things up a bit, making myself useful.

The whisper of metal sliding along wood announced the drawing of my blade. With the surety of years of constant practice that I had never performed, I brought the blade up in a careful arc, gently taking hold of the bottom of the hilt with my left hand. With a fluid grace, I brought the glimmering metal around to point behind me over my left shoulder, as I stepped up to the edge of the building. I spotted my target, one of the monsters preparing to charge Lung from my left and stepped over the side, one foot still touching the edge of the roof. I relied on gravity to pivot me forwards from my point of contact, as the beast began its charge. Finally, as my body passed the point of being parallel with the surface of the ground, I pushed off from the roof, flying straight towards the creature's right flank at great speed.

With a simple rotation of my body, my lunging fall, bodily rotation, and the swing of my arm added together granting my blade extreme cutting power. The bone that covered the creature's hide gave little resistance and the arc of my sword carved cleanly through a full half of its body cavity. Hitting the ground, I bled off my momentum with a forward roll and began my follow-up strike. Sliding my left hand up the blade to support the back of the naked metal, I exited the forward roll with a leap, combining the rotational force with the jump to bring the sword back up to speed. Tracing the same arc as the initial strike, my blade easily carved through the monster's opposite flank, completing the cut fully through its body, neatly bisecting it at the center. My final strike transitioned into an aerial spin with my body hanging parallel to the ground for a full turn before I shifted my mass enough to tip my rotation from the horizontal axis to the vertical, landing on my feet and bleeding off the momentum with a spinning skid across the pavement.

Without the interruption from the monster I had just slain, Lung was able to finally get a secure grip around the neck and legs of the beast he was currently grappling with. With a roar and a mighty heave, he spun the beast around to slam it into the second like a bony bludgeon. The second beast was thrown away, crashing through the side of a warehouse with the sound of crushing stone. Shifting the monster into a headlock with his left arm, Lung rammed his right fist into its snarling maw. With a whump of displaced air, the fist ignited and the sound soon grew to a roar as the draconic man fired a continuous jet of fire down its gullet. After a good ten seconds of continuous fire, Lung allowed his flames to die off, heaving the smoldering husk of a corpse off his arm and onto the side of the street.

An agonized scream pierced the night air as Lung turned to calmly regard the corpse of the monster I'd cut in half. He shot me a brief considering glance before turning to find the source of the scream. A butch looking girl with short blonde hair and a plastic dog mask on her face was stomping out of an alleyway, brandishing a metal pipe. With another enraged cry, she grabbed her mask and ripped it off of her face, glaring at Lung with eyes full of hate and spite.

"I'll fucking kill you!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. To accompany her cry, a monstrous growl echoed through the street as the third and final monster stalked out of the hole it had made when Lung smashed it into the warehouse. "You mother fucker! Kill him! Kill him!" Even as the giant monster began to charge him, Lung crossed his draconic arms and settled into what could pass as a disinterested posture. As the beast closed on him and he made no move to meet its charge I tensed in realization. He wasn't going to fight, not anymore. This was a test, it had to be. He had been distracted with the other monsters when I'd killed the first one so he hadn't seen my attack.

In a single quick and smooth motion I sheathed my blade and with a sudden burst of speed appeared between Lung and the charging creature. Planting my right leg forward and leaning my weight onto it, I slid the left out behind me as I pulled my blade with its scabbard out from the sash around my waist. I held it at the ready in my left hand, my right hovering above the hilt as I bent my knee, lowering my center of gravity. As the beast continued its furious charge, I timed the rhythm of its lumbering gait and readied myself. As it was kicking off with its back legs, preparing the front to catch its weight and continue to propel itself forward, I made my charge. I burst forwards faster than the eye could follow and drew my blade in a simultaneous strike.

In an instant I had passed, blade held out to my right at the end of its strike and as the monster's front legs hit the ground, it crumpled into the pavement like a puppet with its strings cut. It slid along the ground with its leftover momentum, bone grinding loudly against the pavement, before slowing to a stop several feet in front of Lung. Along its left flank, a red line of blood welled up along the surface of its hide, outlining the cut of my strike, clear through from mouth to rear.

With another enraged war cry, the masculine girl aborted her charge towards Lung and turned to me, lifting the pipe high above her head as she charged. Even with my back turned, my instincts sparked to life, painting a picture in my mind's eye of her charge and the exact placement of her eventual overhand strike. Without turning to look, I raised my blade to catch the pipe on the flat of it and with a single flick of my wrist, tore it from her hand to sail away into the nearby alley. Without hesitating, the girl instantly transitioned from her attempted bludgeon to a wild haymaker. I stepped back with my right leg, and with a single fluid spin I avoided her blow and pivoted beside her, using the rotation to bring my sword around to strike her at the base of the skull with the pommel. She collapsed to the ground.

Fifteen minutes of uncomfortable silence later, as Lung gradually reverted back to human, Oni Lee reappeared in the street next to Lung, a girl in a tattered purple and black costume with blonde hair slung over his shoulder. Jaw finally human enough to speak again, Lung turned to him.

"The others?" He asked without fanfare.

"Dead." Oni Lee replied simply. Lung nodded, instantly accepting Lee's words as truth and turned to regard me with a critical eye. I was facing a quarter turn away from him, head bowed slightly and regarding the two of them with my peripheral vision.

"That leaves one more loose end." Lung announced in a deep, rumbling tone. His gaze drifted to the unconscious girl lying in the street at my feet. Oni Lee saw as well and reached for a knife with his free arm. Lung raised a hand to stop him. "Not you. This one is hers."

My mouth went dry. This is the moment I had been dreading. I had tried to ignore the sinister suspicion I'd had, ever since the dynamic shifted from attempting to prove myself to Lung, to being actively tested by him. He wanted to know if I could kill, would kill for him. If I refused now, what would happen? Would I be disciplined? Maybe he would begin to threaten my dad. Lung had claimed that he would be looked after and safe so long as I was loyal to him. Would refusing to take this final step now be all it took to be declared disloyal?

Could I take that chance?

Blade still free of its scabbard, grasped surely in my right hand, I stepped around to stand on the fallen girl's right side, her head on the ground to my right. With a slow, deliberate motion, I brought my blade in line with her neck and held it aloft.

I hesitated.

Taking a deep breath in, I closed my eyes. In my imagination, I saw my dad, standing across from me on the other side of this girl. This villain. This adversary who was positioned against me by the emotionless, indifferent hands of fate. I wondered to myself if in a different life, we could have been on the same side, friends maybe. A world where we never had to fight, and I never had to make this choice. Across from me, my dad was crying, bitter tears streaming down his face as he looked on helplessly, because in spite of my indecision, he knew that he was watching the death throes of the girl that had been his precious daughter.

"I'm sorry." I said aloud. To who I didn't know.

I brought down my sword, and the head of a corpse rolled briefly across the pavement.

With a mechanical sort of motion, I brought my sword up and pulled away a piece of cloth from where it hung at my waist, part of a stack that had never before been used. With a careful and deliberate motion, I gripped it tight on either side of my blade and drew it down the length. I'd have to clean it properly once I'd gotten home, but it was ill advised to sheathe a sword with blood still clinging to its surface. Dropping the soiled cloth, I brought my sword up in a fluid motion and calmly slid it back into the scabbard. Finally I turned to face Lung and lifted my head to meet his eyes.

His lips curled up into a solemn little grin. It wasn't humorous, snide, or mocking. Instead it was full of understanding and maybe a hint of regret.

"Those are good eyes." He spent another few moments simply meeting my gaze before finally he nodded and turned to walk away. "I will be in contact. Until next time, Battousai."