(Worm)Chasing The Dragon (2024)

'One day, one step'

November 4th, 1999

Lung trailed behind her, Alexandria's ruined cape hanging loose from his left shoulder, held in place by a pin bearing the PRT's insignia.

Men had come into his room, after he'd shaken Alexandria's hand. The first brought with him a tray with rolls of bread and fine teas atop it. Lung had been sampling them eagerly when the second man and third man had walked in. The second said nothing and his face revealed nothing as he picked a corner of the room to stand in silently. The third, however, brought with him a fresh change of clothes, a pair of form-fitting jeans and a black satin shirt that exaggerated his muscles. They'd tried taking the cloak from him, but he'd asked Alexandria if he could keep it.

How she had laughed.

It made her sound young, almost his age.

Even now, walking behind her, chin held high as he ignored the insults and swears levied toward him as they made their way down the street to a parked car, PRT troopers flanking them on either side to keep the crowd at bay, that strange man ahead of them both, he still found himself wondered how old she was.

Had she been fifteen herself, the first time she donned that armor?

Or had her worst day come to her even younger, as it had for him?

Lung doubted he would ever find out.

The second man, wearing a pair of shades that covered his eyes, raised a hand to slow them as he maneuvered his way over to the front of the parked car. He stepped inside the driver's seat and the car's lights flashed for a moment, the engine roaring. It looked like a limousine that had been cut in half, all the luxury packed tightly into an armored and travel-sized package.

"Where are we going?" Lung asked the heroine as they got in the car, Alexandria on the left, himself on the right. The windows were tinted so dark he could not see outside, and the interior was lit by a small backdraft of neon purple lights in the driver's cabin, the vehicle's controls and driver's seat sectioned off.

"To a temporary PRT office we've set up in the aftermath of Leviathan's attack." She replied. "We'll assess your abilities further, start signing the first of your contracts and waivers, and hopefully get ahold of your parents."

He stilled, huffing under his breath, offended that they felt the need to 'test' him. "You already know what I can do."

"That's right." She said. "I do. The 'test' we have in mind is just a simple demonstration of your abilities to give you a preliminary rating for every other member of the PRT. We'll be adjusting it and doing more tests once we're stateside, obviously."

He bristled slightly at the thought, the vastness of the idea, of him going to America. "I do not have a father. You must find my mother. She is the one you will need to convince."

"What happened to your father?" She asked, voice softer.

Lung shrugged, feigning indifference. "He thought he could handle the shame. In the end, he could not. He left us."

Alexandria's face was unreadable, shadowed harshly. "I see. I'll need your name, then, to track her down. The government hasn't gone that far yet, so I don't know it." She tried faking a laugh, but her pity was as obvious as it was disgusting.

He frowned. "I used to be Ojima Kenta. You will find her under that surname. Ojima Fang."

She reacted strangely to that revelation. "Kenta being your first name, yes?"

Lung nodded. "It was."

Her chin dipped, barely visible in the dark. A small flicker, a spark from a quickly dissipated lash of flame rolled off his thumb, and he bounced it between the webs of each of his fingers, and it flared in intensity with each leap, just barely illuminating Alexandria's minute frown each time.

"Are you close with your mother?" She finally asked, once she'd grown bored watching him play his little game.

Lung nodded his head, jaw clenched. "I try to be. It is not easy."

Alexandra turned away at that.

Their conversation died there.

(X)

The walls were such a stark and bright white they stung his eyes to look at. The room was maybe thirty meters wide and about as tall. The only mote of color in the entire cube he was trapped in was the large black door, the single entrance and exit.

They'd arrived here more than an hour ago. He'd spent forty-five minutes of his time here waiting in another room before they had ushered him over to this part of the complex.

Above his head, an intercom whirred to life. Meaningless words trickled out, and Lung raised a brown, not understanding, until they were repeated in a feminine and robotically translated voice.

"Please demonstrate your pyrokinesis."

Lung shrugged. Twin flames snapped to life in the air, just above both his hands, and he clenched both fists, flames writhing in his palms, licking out and snapping through the grooves and gaps between each finger, his skin unburnt, the heat pleasant.

After a bit more peaco*cking showcasing the way he could grow, extinguish, and shape the flames, he extended both hands and flooded the entire room with fire until the intercom screeched again. The sound of the roaring flames muffled the nebbish analysts's English, so he extinguished them with a wave of a hand as he waited for the voice to translate.

The voice didn't translate, however. He thought he heard the scribbling of pens and pencils, an awkward cough, and he fought the urge to scowl at their indifference. After a moment of extended silence he paced throughout, the robotic voice returned.

"Please demonstrate your growth and healing factor."

Lung frowned, then shrugged again.

For this, I will give you a show.

He held out a wrist, and dug his nails into it with his offhand. Blood welled up, and he dug deeper, grimacing through the pain. Another voice chimed in amidst the chorus of what he guessed were swears that were hissed, Lung just barely able to make it out. It was female, but natural sounding, light, yet authoritative-sounding, abrasive, domineering.

Alexandria, perhaps?

He ignored it as he clawed deeper. He scooped away the first layer of skin, then the second, and third, and then he started running into muscle. He stopped, blood flowing down his entire arm, dripping to the floor in heavy spalts, almost the entire limb coated in red. He clenched his fist on reflex, and his fingers wrapped around something harder, perhaps a tendon or nerve bundle, and he tugged it upward-

-And blood spurt into his eye, hard enough to hurt, momentarily blinding him as he felt that something snap.

He pulled his hand away after covering the wound on instinct, and-

It happened again.

And again.

And again.

Okay, or maybe it had been an artery.

The female voice was more frantic now.

Lung swayed on his feet, slightly paler and slightly annoyed. He wiped most of the blood off of his face and held his hand out at bay, watching the blood spray out at a distance farther away than he was tall.

After maybe a minute or two of furtive blood spray, the pressure dropped, the artery having healed. The blood trickled out still, but much slower. When he looked into the hole he'd gouged into that wrist, he caught a glimmer of silver showcasing his bloodstained reflection.

The black door opened, and Alexandria stomped towards him, a roll of bandages in one hand.

"What?" He asked her.

The Japanese that came out of her mouth was absolute nonsensical gibberish, so he tried again in Mandarin, then Cantonese. All garnered no further response as she held his arm in place and bandaged his wrist.

Lung bled through the first layer of bandages almost immediately She held out her cape and brushed it over his entire arm, wiping it clean and ruining her cape one more.

Then she wrapped a second and third layer of bandages over the wound.

It bled through those too.

Lung shrugged a final time. "It'll be gone in a few days. There is no need."

Alexandria stared at him, lips a thin flat line. She seemed to have understood. Her next words were unmistakably Japanese, but slow, limpid. Was her leeched knowledge fading away?

"Test over."

Lung raised a brow, waggling his arm. "But there is more to show you."

She shook her head vehemently. "Test. Over. Sign now."

Ah. His...contracts must have arrived.

He'd never put his signature on anything before. The thought made him feel strangely nervous.

She led the way back through that unnatural white room's black door, past all the men in suits writing on papers and cameras and monitors, walked him out of the entire building, through a refugee camp crowded with injured people and a handful of what looked to be powered people, to another, more natural looking building. He read the sign above it.

It was in Japanese.

Matsuda & Kimura Law Offices.

"

"You." That was all Alexandria said in reply.

For you.

He frowned, slightly suspicious.

They made their way inside, and two middle-aged Japanese men were waiting for them in their little lobby. They exchanged pleasantries with Alexandria and utterly ignored his presence for a few minutes as they got to talking, Lung having found himself a home in one chairs nearby.

After the talking was finally over, Alexandria left, and the two men waved him forward, still not speaking to him, leading him off towards one of the two offices inside, the one that said Matsuda on the glass.

He took a seat in the front chair, sinking into the warm leather with a pleased sign, taking his new cloak and flipping over to cover his chest like a warm, cozy, bloodstained, and tattered frock.

Lung looked back, and saw that the men were gone again.

So he waited.

And waited.

And waited, eyeballing the clock above the door the entire time.

Another hour went by before Alexandria returned with the man who must have Matsuda.

"He's here to act as your lawyer for this proceeding." She said, once more back to perfect Japanese. She slapped a gigantic pile of papers onto his desk, and subsequently slid the majority of them off to the ground with a swish of her hand with a small laugh accompanying the gesture. "Those, I'll take care of for you."

She slid the topmost leftover paper toward him, and Lung scooted closer with the chair, taking a pen off the desk to look it over.

It was in English.

He looked to his 'Lawyer'.

He was still waiting by the door, motionless, silent.

"This is all just asking if you've committed any crimes or broken any laws before, if you've ever used drugs, or have been arrested or convicted for any crime."

He looked to his Lawyer again.

Alexandria laughed again. "In America, violating American law."

"Oh." Lung said.

Alexandria leaned over his shoulders, lips close to his ear, pointing toward each of the boxes in each column. "Left is yes, right is no." She whispered.

He signed a checkmark into all the no boxes.

Alexandria slid the paper aside and pushed forward the next one.

"This is just a consent form for any and all future studies, power tests, or thinker visits we might have you go through. You can ignore just about everything but that lovely little box on the bottom." She pointed to it, and even Lung knew what that was. He got through half of the Kanji word for Dragon before she could stop him.

"I should have told you. We'll need it in English print. Here-" She reached over and wrapped her fingers around his hand.

Though they looked and even felt so soft and delicate through her gloves, he knew that for the trick it was. She smoothly scribbled over his mistake and delicately traced what must have been his English name over the other side.

It looked like mistaken gibberish, something a bird of prey would gauge into a rock upon takeoff with its talons.

Kenta Ojima.

She slid it aside and pushed the last paper, well, pamphlet forward.

"This is your Ward's contract. It'll denote your schedule, salary, patrol area, etcetera. We'll go over it all in person once we're overseas, since you're a bit of a...special case."

She gave him a small smile. "We won't be able to get your gold without some...adjustments I'll have to make over there too."

Lung shrugged, then frowned, realizing something.

"Worudo? Purotekutorete?" He tried the English on his tongue. It came out feeling wrong.

"You're under eighteen. You can't formally join yet, but I promise this is a formality. You'll be directly under my supervision, treated with respect and as a full-blooded member, don't worry. Just sign here at the bottom." She said, flipping the packet over to its end.

Lung signed it, trying to copy his English name down the way Alexandria had.

She slapped him on the shoulder. He jolted slightly, blushing at the sight of the wide smile on her face.

He wondered again, more privately in his mind, how old she had been when she got her powers, and how old she was now.

"Are we done?"

Her smile wilted slightly. "Not quite. You're still a minor. We'll need a parent or guardian's signature for all of these forms."

He slumped in his seat.

Kasuga, gone.

He closed his eyes so they would no have to see the tears that threatened to spill forth.

That hand fell upon his shoulder again. "Hey, we'll find her. I've got faith she's alive."

Lung nodded his head, slightly hesitant.

She pulled away and made her way towards the door. "I'm going to go make some inquiries and do some searching myself. I'll be back soon. You can wait here."

She left before he could say anything more, face grim, determined.

She would find his mother, Lung hoped.

The lawyer left with her, after a moment's hesitation.

Then Lung was alone again.

He looked back at the clock. Sighed, kicked up his feet on the desk, and closed his eyes.

Then he went back to waiting.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

All Parahumans are f*cked up, even young.

Lung, as you can see, is pretty messed up, and pretty blase about it to boot.

(He's brute 4-9, Nine being Leviathan tier, 4 being just below half that. His skin is thicker and tougher, sure, but I interpreted that 4 rating as his natural healing factor keeping him mostly immune to hostile small-arms fire, since that would immediately begin triggering his growth. Self-harm, or passive harm? That would just trigger the healing and a tiny amount of his transformation. Considering it took him a couple of weeks to regrow a pair of eyeballs and a month and change for a whole arm, he'd stop the fatal bleeding quick, but as soon as the injury was no longer life-threatening, the healing would sloooowwww way down.)

Also, I lied, The one chapter talking, one chapter fighting dichotomy won't really arrive until he gets to America.