The Guy with the Dragon tattoos.

"You think he's comatose?" a voice said.

"Nah, he's obviously just asleep, just shut up for a second. If you listen closely, you can hear him saying 'food'," a second voice added.

"At a time like this? In the middle of the street? How does he do it?"

"Hey, you two! Grab that new recruit and put him in the van, or do you want to explain to the boss why we're late?!" a third person called out.

"Right. Well, time to damn our fellow man," the first voice said.

"Look dude, I have a wife and two children, I can't afford to take the high ground here, so don't try to guilt-trip me."

"S'just…" one of them lifted him up by the legs, the others by the arms.

"Hey guys, where are you taking me?" Ling asked, still sleepy, his stomach rumbling.

"Bakuda's lab," one of them said. "I'm sorry, but… a man's gotta live, y'know?"

"Bakuda? Never heard of her, she got food?" Ling asked.

"Sure buddy, all the food you'll ever want."

"All-righty then," Ling said, jumping out of the two men's arms, and running for their vehicle. "Time to get some food!"

The men that had grabbed him looked in his way with amazement on their faces as Ling stepped into the back of the van, now surrounded by depressed, crying people.

"Your funeral…" one of them, the one with a bandage around his head, though he couldn't quite tell their voices apart that easily, said.

"Bring me to the food!" Ling yelled as the door of the van was closed, the vehicle accellerating and moving through the street.

"You guys don't look too happy about the free food," he eventually said, looking at his fellow captives.

"How can you think about food at a time like this?" one of them asked. "Don't you know what Bakuda's going to do to us?"

"Actually I don't!" Ling supplied cheerily. "Mind enlightening me?"

"She's gonna put a bomb in our brain!" one of them cried out.

"Sounds bad," Ling said. "Why'd you get in if you knew that? They force you?"

"No, I always wanted my head to explode," another one replied, summoning up his last reserve of sarcasm.

"Well, guess you lucked out then," Ling said, standing tall. "Cause I'm going to rescue you all and take down this Bakuda person!"

His stomach rumbled, the sound far louder than that of the van's engine.

"You know, after I get some food in me, heh."

*** A Short Story ***

As the van stopped, and two armed men wearing silly colors threw open the door, and Ling jumped out.

"Hey everyone, heard ya got food here?"

Most of them looked on in amazement, as Ling walked on to the lady obviously in charge. Wearing a strange mask over her mouth and large goggles, as well as what looked like a doctor's coat of some sort, smeared with grease.

"You the gal in charge here?" Ling asked.

"Ah, we have a volunteer, good, gooood," she replied. "Put him on the bench!"

Two rather broad men stepped forward, thinking they looked self-assured, but Ling could sense disturbances in their Qi, ones he'd come to associate with insecurity, hidden or not. Both of them were armed, one with a club, the other with exactly what he needed.

Ling walked towards the second man, and as the guy tried to grab him, he stepped into his reach, placed a foot on the guy's toes, grabbed his arm, twisted, and within half a second, got himself a sword and a man crying on the ground.

Which meant six different guys were now aiming guns at him. Not that that worried him.

"So, let me get this straight. You kidnap dudes, put bombs in their heads, then force them to work for you?"

"Roughly the idea," the girl said, now in serious mode, her voice distorted by the mask. He could sense her life energy. It was strong, tainted with… something. Powerful, but distant. "So, what are you guys waiting for?"

The young woman's minions were scared, afraid, unwilling. She was the type of leader that would throw her people away, that would treat them as trash until that was all that was left of them. They were conscripted, and forced to obey on pain of death. Pathetic, monstrous, evil. He could feel their hesitation. These weren't killers, and most of them barely knew how to hold their weapons, even if one of them brought up the courage to.

There, a burst of aggression, but Ling moved before the man could turn thought into action. The bullet went through the space he'd occupied a fraction of a second ago, but he was already approaching his attacker, diving and twisting in his approach. Fear overwhelmed the man's meagre confidence, but there was always the danger of an accidental fire, and bullets didn't care how they were fired.

Three more steps, a slice to the man's arm and a boot to his chest, and his opponent was thrown to the ground, gun flying through the air as he grabbed it.

"Pathetic," Ling spoke, completely serious, one leg on top of his fallen opponent's. These people were the victims of their commander, and he didn't want to hurt them more than he needed to. "You call yourself a leader? These people aren't soldiers, I don't see a single man here that received any training, yet you make them fight your fights?"

"What, you think these are my soldiers?" Bakuda asked, a twisted glee moving through her body. This lady was crazy, that much was sure. "Because they're not," she continued, as she held out her hand in a dramatic gesture. "They're my cannon fodder."

She touched her fingers together, and Ling felt a wave of dread move through the room. Right, bombs in their head, he thought, jumping away from the man he'd disarmed just as Bakuda snapped her fingers and the man's head started glowing, blinding light shooting out of it as Ling ducked around a corner, diving down with his hands around his head as he braced for impact, the intensifying light visible even through eyelids, arms and a wall.

Eventually, as the light stopped, he stood up again, looking upon the carnage in the room with white streaks in his vision. Not everyone had been as fast, or lucky, as he had been, and the people in full view of the light were clutching at their eyes, screaming in pain. Bakuda, noticeably, was nowhere to be seen.

"What a coward," he said, walking around the room. Luckily, most of the people in the van had been spared from the brunt of the impact. "Hey, can one of you get like, a doctor or something?"

The people inside were unresponsive, so he dropped the gun, grabbed a man with mostly healthy-looking eyes by the neck, dragged him out of the vehicle by the collar, and dumped him near the door.

"What… what do you want?" the man asked, looking at-

Right, the sword. It still had blood on it, so this guy was probably just afraid.

"Get in the car, drive these people to safety, see if you can get some doctors to come here" Ling commanded, cutting through the bindings on the man's wrists in a single slash. "I'm going to take down this Bakuda gal, and see if I can get some food out of it."

He turned back to the garage, walking past the blinded people. Not much he could do for them right now except take down their boss. Thinking of that, there was one door left open, quite near the lady's workshop, where she'd been holding court. Lacking any better option to track her, he… could quite literally track her Qi, he realized. Normally, that would be hard in a city this populated, but she'd had a distinct feel to her, something he'd be able to track with some effort put into it. Focusing his senses, he walked through the door, ready to find his prey.

*** A Short Story ***

Okay, so Bakuda had most definitely gone through the door, entered a second room, opened the back door and… left in some sort of vehicle, probably a motorcycle, given by the other vehicles standing behind the building. That, at least, would explain her rapid movement away from this place. If she kept moving, tracking would be difficult, his range wasn't as large as old man Fu's, and even he would have a hard time finding someone between all these people.

Another presence appeared above him on the roof, the same sort of vague wrong-ness to it. He looked up, only barely spotting the new presence when a second one appeared behind him.

He spun, shielding himself with his sword as he caught a knife-swing from the new man, then quickly jumping away. How'd he been snuck up on like that? First by the man on the roof, then by the guy in front of him.

He looked at his opponent, a man wearing a demonic mask, clad in all-black. Knives, grenades and other dangerous tools adorned the man's belt, and he kept himself almost perfectly empty of emotions, both externally and internally. Not an easy opponent, if he could completely hide his Qi and sneak up on him, and especially not when there was a second man up-

The second (or first) presence disappeared all of a sudden, completely disappearing as the remaining man held his knife out in a fighting grip.

"I guess you have a bomb in your brain as well?" Ling asked.

The man stood still for just a bit too long, then shook his head.

"Guess I don't have to feel bad about this then!" Ling replied, stepping forward with a quick stab of the blade as, halfway through his attack, another man appeared several metres behind him. He spun in place, confused by how yet another…

The Hell? he thought as what looked like an except copy of his opponent was standing behind him, throwing a kunai that Ling was able to dodge just as the first man stepped towards him.

A swing of the sword, this time not met by a blocking dagger but by a flying one instead. As his blade entered the man's flesh, Ling limboed under the knife that had been thrown at him.

He turned again, ready to face his original target, when his sword came loose with unnatural effort, the source of Qi having… collapsed into dust?

"This just gets weirder and weirder," he said, as the other enemy in the alleyway also disintegrated all of a sudden, replaced by a Qi pulse coming from the roof again.

Was this the same person? Flitting about unseen and leaving afterimages from his speed? No, that didn't make sense, and they wouldn't leave dust behind then. No, this was something else. Some way to move along the veins of the Dragon, the same way Alkahestric techniques could?

Didn't matter, his enemy was dangerous, and he'd need to defeat the man. Those movements and the afterimages made him highly unpredictable, though his lacking skill meant that, if Ling saw him coming, he'd be able to win.

The man grabbed something from his belt, took out a pin, and threw it at Ling as he leaped onto a dumpster, then slung himself up a drainpipe, swinging himself over the edge of the roof right as the weapon went off, causing an explosion.

Not the type to give his enemy the time recover, the man with the mask appeared on top of him, swinging a short blade Ling barely dodged with a roll to the side. Then, as he tried to stand up, another version of his enemy appeared behind him, and while Ling was able to block the blade, the previous ninja flung his body into him from behind.

"Damn you're annoying aren't ya, you emotionless bastard," he said as he managed to roll further away, both his enemies crumbling into dust as he noticed a new Qi appearing to the side, some distance away. Knives again? Or another one of those bombs?

A knife flew at him, almost effortlessly sidestepped. This man really relied on his ability, unlike that little pipsqueak, who could actually fight rather than just perform alchemy.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" Ling asked, dodging another knife, then dashing forwards to kick a bomb away. As he said it, he felt some anger appear in his enemy, but as a second Qi pulse appeared behind him, the man's emotionless mask returned.

Ling dashed towards the newest body, ready to take the fight to the enemy. Hurting the man's copies obviously didn't work, so he'd have to reach him before he moved again.

Another knife, followed by a grenade he ran past, and his enemy moved again, onto another roof.

"What's the matter, you scared?" Ling asked, dodging a knife as anger showed in his enemy.

Above, he noticed, turning as the man appeared above him with two bombs in his hands, completely emotionless again. Was he getting his emotions wiped somehow?

As his enemy dropped, a new Qi pulse appeared some distance behind him, and the enemy in the sky pulled the pins on his grenades. "Suicide bombing without the suicide?" Ling asked, diving away, throwing himself off the side of the roof, landing painfully in a dumpster as yet another copy of his enemy appeared before him.

"You really have some messed up Qi, you know that right?" Ling said, noticing he'd dropped his sword somewhere in the chaos.

The man stopped moving for a second, giving Ling a moment to climb out of the dumpster.

"Qi?" the man said.

"Y'know, life-force? The part of us that is part of everything? That which pulses through the Veins of the Dragon? Your outfit looks pretty Xingese, so you gotta have heard about it, right?" Ling asked.

"This is a trick," his opponent stated, coming at Ling with his blade again.

Ling ducked beneath the strike, hooking his fingers through the loops attached to the bombs the man was carrying on his belt, pulling and dashing away.

His opponent turned his blade around, the razor-sharp steel cutting through his own gear, and he reappeared on the roof the moment the belt was loose, not taking the quickly exploding weapons with him.

The weapons exploded, and as Ling shielded his eyes from the flash, he felt his opponent take advantage of his moment of weakness, appearing behind him. He blocked the strike, grabbing the man's fist as another figure appeared on yet another side, this time throwing several blades at once, which were met by the flying body of the clopy. Less than a second later, another copy appeared in brawling range.

There was a pattern, Ling knew, but it was hard to figure out. His opponent weaved ranged and direct attacks together, but it was difficult to predict up front, and he was usually fast enough that everything Ling hit was dust, and he had no weapons to properly defend himself at yet another sword slashed just above him, cutting through a strand of his hair.

"Hey, You're supposed to use scissors!" he taunted, trying to figure out the mechanics. He intercepted a flying knife, catching it in mid-air at the cost of a small cut to his fingers, but it disappeared into dust. Whatever the man had on him when he reappeared was turned into dust, and if he lost it before that point, it didn't come with or disappear, so…

As he was attacked from two sides, he drastically looked around before finding his target, the pile of dust left behind when he'd thrown a copy to shield himself from daggers. Diving for it, he saw the glint of steel he'd expected, grabbed it from the ground, then blocked a blade with his new weapon.

These had been thrown before the man had moved, though from his opponent's hesitation, he'd forgotten about that little detail.

Another enemy behind him, but this time with more hesitation. His opponent had learned to respect his skills, even if it was difficult for Ling to actually hit him.

Two more versions of his enemy appeared next to each other, striking in tandem as a third appeared and threw his knife. Ling blocked one blade, threw himself against the other attacker, then turned in mid-air to have the flying blade lodge itself in the clone's back again as another Qi pulse appeared.

Moving lightning fast, this new Qi pulse, with the same strange taint as the other two he'd sensed, moved towards the distant enemy, and from the sound of it, launched a pulse.

Moments later, the two enemies crowding Ling had disappeared into dust, and through the cloud, he could see a man clothed in red laying waste to his opponent, punching the man's masked face roughly twenty times a second.

"Whoa," Ling said as he once again felt his opponent move, leaving a copy behind to be pummeled into dust while the new version stood on the edge of a nearby roof.

"Hey, he's over there now!" Ling yelled out, pointing at the roof. The man in red looked at him, then at the roof he was pointing at, but at that point, another Qi signature had appeared further away.

"Though I think he's gone now," Ling added with a smile.

"You can track him?" the new person, a young man by the sound of his voice, said.

"His Qi moves with him," Ling replied. "And it's pretty distinctive, weirdly empty."

"You're a cape then? The man on the phone wasn't very clear about things."

"Cape? Nah, this is obviously a shirt, why you asking?" Ling said, pointing to his open shirt with his bloody fingers.

"Doesn't matter, we can handle that later, is there anyone else around? Dauntless is on his way, and there are ambulance in reserve and-"

"Some guys with burned out eyes inside or something," Ling replied, not wanting to wait until the man was done with his rapidfire sentences. "Oh, and bombs in their brain, that too. And I guess at least one of them didn't survive his boss's attention. Bad boss, that Bakuda girl, not at all how you should treat your underlings."

"So no combatants?"

"Maybe that shifty guy if he comes back, but otherwise no," Ling said. "Why are you asking, you the local military or something?"

"Sort of? I'm Velocity, Protectorate East-North-East," the man answered.

"Ling Yao, future Emperor of Xing," Ling supplied in return. Velocity got puzzled, but got over it quickly.

"Do you require medical attention?" he asked, just as Ling's stomach supplied a helpful grumble.

"Nah, mostly just some food. I'm starving."