(KigaVerse) Shaolin Kid: Origins

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((Work in progress.))

2014
Millennium City, USA

A cold, heavy rain battered the flat surface of a Westside rooftop with relentless conviction. The unwavering downpour had been soaking Millennium City for hours, leaving it under four millimeters of water which was now feverishly working its way around the topography of the city, traveling along their respective paths of least resistance. The city was empty. Ghostly in its presentation at such a late hour. The only movement aside from the symphony of rain water coursing through the cityscape was the low pattering of a thousand nimble feet in pursuit of a common bounty. The full force of Millennium City’s Red Banner militia had descended upon the Westside in search of a single man.

Wounded and alone, Adewale Manuel, also known as the Azure Dragon, had been fleeing his pursuers for close to twenty straight minutes. Struck by a cultist’s blade in the left kidney, he was bleeding out and losing strength by the second. Any ordinary man might have been concerned for his own life. He might have been thinking about stopping the bleeding and getting his side stitched up. But there was no ordinary man to be found the Azure Dragon. His only concern, only focus was to protect the spirit of the Dragon Warrior which resided within him, giving him the strength and abilities he had used to become the Azure Dragon. For it was this power that the master of his pursuers had been seeking on this night.

Adewale was a tall, thick man of African descent with a muscular frame that swelled from under the flared, azure and gold trimmed shoulders of his super suit. His neatly groomed goatee was soaked with a crimson mixture of blood and rain water. He had been struck by the tip of a blade amid the heat of battle. The strike came without warning and left Adewale with no chance to prepare himself. The blow was clean and deep, piercing the pale blue leather of his costume and puncturing the skin beneath and sending a sharp pain through the left side of his abdomen followed by a numbness that made his knees feel weak. It became clear to Adewale within only moments that he had been bested this time. The struggle leading up to the fateful stab wound had left Adewale fatigued and damaged to begin with. Now he had likely been mortally wounded by a Red Banner blade and he wasn't sure if he could survive the night. He didn't have any of the answers he needed. No plans in place for this sort of thing. If he could escape his immediate pursuers, he may be able to heal up and fight another day. But he was losing blood at an accelerated rate.

The golden leather sole of Azure Dragon's boots lumbered heavily through the long puddle of a Westside alley, his feet sloshing through the water with labored effort as he nursed his left side, leaning against the building to his left for support. He cast his weary gaze down the length of the alley toward the street ahead. As he scanned the street for a moment, he was startled by the sound of a metallic door jarring open to his right.

Fifteen-year-old, Ricky Feng, poked his head out the door and into the rain, squinting in the raw exposure of its onslaught.

"Shit," he mumbled, averting his gaze to the threshold of the doorway where he took an old grey umbrella in his right hand. Extending the shaft overhead, he stepped out into the rain and locked eyes with a wounded, panting Azure Dragon. They shared a long moment of silence before voices could be heard from the street beyond the alley.

"Spread out and find him! He couldn't have gotten very far," an older Asian man shouted, seeming to be approaching the mouth of the alleyway where both Ricky and Adewale stood. As Ricky's eyes glanced down the alley, Adewale's eyes drifted above Ricky's head. The sign above the door he stood under read: Hanlong's House of Wushu.

He fixed his fiery hazel gems upon Ricky with a steadfast sort of intention that made Ricky uncomfortable upon locking eyes with the costumed hero once again, umbrella in his right hand, garbage bag in his left. Pushing off of the wall behind him in a labored fashion, Adewale attempted to lurch his way toward Ricky, but collapsed in the puddle after only a single wobbly step.

"Please," he uttered as he fell to the submerged concrete on his hands and knees. Ricky moved to his side immediately, dropping both garbage bag and umbrella to aid the costumed man. As he knelt next to the Congo native, Ricky noticed the wound leaking blood profusely. He was about to speak, ask if he needed an ambulance, or something, when Adewale's left hand shot forth, grasping Ricky's right wrist tightly. Ricky flinched, withdrawing as much as he could before he found himself in this stranger's grip.

"There is no time for me to prepare you for this," Adewale gasped, looking deep into the boy's eyes. They displayed a mixture of fear and intrigue, perhaps even alarm and confusion. Ricky was just a helper at the dojo, hardly a student until he could afford to pay for real classes. He mostly listened and watched as he did his job as a cleaner and part-time handyman. But after hours the Master would let him practice and do some light, unsupervised training. A routine garbage run had turned into what felt like the beginning of a martial arts movie.

"Prepare me for what?" Ricky asked nervously, tugging his right hand away from Adewale as if he had now regretted coming to his aid.

"For the sacred power of the Dragon Warrior," Adewale answered him.

"The what?"

In an instant Ricky felt a rush of warmth and energy surge through his being. Each of his senses seemed to be amplified in a nanosecond. The sound of every rain drop pelting the cityscape, as clear as his own heartbeat. The labored breaths drawn by Azure Dragon, seeming to slow down and stretch out over themselves. Every breath that filled his own lungs, cascading a wave of oxygen through his bloodstream and to each muscle group. His eyes widened and his chest fluttered as the power surged through his being, eyes ever-locked with those of the Azure Dragon.

"What is your name?" Adewale asked him, raising his voice over the sensation of the power coursing through the young man's mind, body and soul. Ricky was terrified, overwhelmed, but he answered him nevertheless, and perhaps even to his own surprise.

"Ricky Feng!"

"I bestow the power of the Dragon Warrior upon you, Ricky Feng," Adewale declared as ceremoniously as he could given his current state.

"I don't understand," Ricky uttered.

"Nor did I, Mr. Feng," Adewale mumbled as he loosened his grip on Ricky's arm slowly. "Now you must hide before they come. For the men who pursue me must never possess this power," he tried to explain through his pain and fatigue.

Meanwhile, on the street, the voices of Red Banner warriors drew nearer to the mouth of the alley. Adewale struggled to his knees, gripping the wall behind him for support to regain some semblance of his footing.

"Now go!" he barked in a low volume, prompting Ricky to haul his scrawny Chinese-American butt into gear. Ricky found a hiding spot behind the trash dumpster he was heading to in the first place. Adewale feigned readiness as the silhouette of Red Lotus emerged in the mouth of the alleyway.

"You want me? Here I am, Lotus!" Adewale shouted down the length of the alley toward the figure. The mysterious man known as Red Lotus wore sleek black and red armor wielding twin short blades from his back. He made his way up the alley slowly, more and more silhouettes of Red Banner warriors emerged in the mouth of the alleyway, piling up in silent anticipation of the coming moment. As Red Lotus gained quarter on Adewale, the Azure Dragon lost his strength and his legs failed him. He dropped to his knees before the man whos blade had pierced his side. Red Lotus loomed over him stoically, raising blade's edge to Adewale's chin gently lifting his gaze to match that of a fully masked Lotus. Only his venomous, vitriolic green eyes could be seen from under his mask. They radiated judgement and hatred. As Ricky looked on in an adrenaline-fueled panic, he imagined for a moment that eyes like that must make the devil uncomfortable. His gaze roamed along the edges of the rooftops above where more shadowy Red Banner figures stood in silent judgement.

Before Red Lotus could act against Adewale, a pitchy, serpentine voice shrieked across the sky.

"HALT!"

A dreadful hush seemed to fall upon the night itself. Lotus stayed his blade and stepped to the side. As he gazed over his shoulder toward the entrance of the alley, a shadowy, robed figured with a high ornamental hat and elongated arms with long, boney fingers boasting razor sharp talons, floated effortlessly into the alleyway. He hovered slowly toward Adewale roughly four feet off the ground, so as not to dirty his robe.

"For this one," the figure said in a maniacal manner of speaking that rolled and swelled with anticipation and calculation. "This one is all mine," Hi Pan finished as the exterior structure lighting of Hanlong's House of Wushu illuminated his face.

Ricky observed the man with a combination of amazement and anxiety. Ricky thought it had to be him. Hi Pan, Leader of the Red Banner Cult here in Millennium City. Ruthless, cunning, and one of Westside's most dangerous gang leaders. There weren't many people who lived on the Westside who didn't know the name from one of Westside's famous Reb Banner stories and rumors.

Hi Pan hovered gracefully toward Azure Dragon, his lanky arm swooping down to ever so slowly to cease Adewale by the neck, hoisting him gently off of his feet and into air. There he held him in place, leering into his eyes.

"Give it to me," he hissed with satisfaction.

"There's nothing left to give," Adewale managed to utter through the strangling vice of Hi Pan's skeletal fingers.

Hi Pan's expression contorted into a scowl of panicked rage.

"No! What have you done?" he growled with dread and malice.

Ricky looked on as Hi Pan gave a sharp jerk of his wrist, wrenching Adewale's neck and breaking it in the palm of is hand. Without hesitation or ceremony, Hi Pan's trunk spun to his left and he threw Adewale's body against the exterior wall of Hanlong's House of Wushu with violent force. He smacked against the brick exterior of the building and collapsed in a disheveled slump of limbs.

Ricky's mind went blank as he gazed upon the body of Adewale, his face gripped with awe-stricken shock and a numb sort of grief for this man whom he really hadn't known at all. In this city, a crime fighting costume spoke a thousand words. It carried an unspoken code of honor among civilian and hero alike. But Ricky didn't have time to process these emotions, for Hi Pan's gaze had shifted to the umbrella and garbage bag which still lay in the middle of the alleyway. Upon examining the odd pair for only a second, his brow dipped with a cunning rage that made Ricky's stomach swirl as Hi Pan's line of sight lowly traced its way from the garbage bag to the very dumpster he was hiding behind.

Ricky's heart began to beat even faster, a sense of shear, crippling dread overcoming his entire body. He began to feel like a cornered rat. Trapped, the unwilling target of a homicidal super villain's wrath. He wanted to run, just bolt for the Westside Police Station as fast as his legs could carry him, but there were too many Red Banner warriors surrounding the alley. His position within the alley was too jammed in and covered by Banner bodies. There was literally no escape.

Before Ricky's mind could fold on him, releasing a treacherous clamour of desperation into the cold wet night, the side exit door of Hanlong's House of Wushu flew open with authoritative force and Ricky's Master, Hu Chen, emerged with a cigarette protruding from his lips, spilling smoke into the rainy air which was contrasted against the night by the exterior lighting of the building.

"It doesn't take five whole minutes to ta-" Hu's sentence trailed into silence as he locked eyes with Hi Pan, and Hi Pan's cohorts all set their gazes upon Hu. As Hu's mouth stopped speaking his lower jaw hung in place and the cigarette fell from his lips. The moment it hit the watery concrete below, it hissed as the water snuffed the cherry and almost as if waiting for the cue, Hi Pan's right digits formed a stiff knifehand and his neatly arranged talons punctured the soft tissue of Hu's throat. Hu's right hand gripped Hi Pan's wrist as the villain gazed menacingly into his eyes. As the men exchanged gazes, Hi Pan grew bitter once again. Having found no trace of the Dragon Warrior within Hu Chen, he ripped his talons from the elderly Chinese-American man's throat and he stumbled back through the doorway of his school.

In that very instant, Hi Pan and all of his warrior were interrupted by thunderous sound of Ricky's fist making flush contact with the dumpster he had been crouched behind. They all watched in awe as the dumpster hurdled across the alley with supernatural force, colliding with the exterior wall of the building with a spectacular fireworks show of dislodged trash and black bags. In the alley, where the dumpster once stood to conceal him, Ricky stood in the heavy rain, an expression of resolve and rage smeared across his boyish face.

Hi Pan rotated his body to face the young man, now sure of the new vessel in which his bounty resided. He looked over the skinny, frail, unremarkable young man with a renewed sense of motivation and vigor. The two souls locked eyes in the unforgiving rain, a now unspoken thread of destiny having been woven tightly between them.

THEME

Genesis by Justice

The KigaVerse

Presents...

VOLUME ONE

Action/Adventure/Drama

Starring
The Amazing Shaolin Kid (Ricky Feng)
Liberty Kid
Azure Dragon (Adewale Manuel)
The Wicked Red Lotus
and. . .

Hi Pan!