WAR: What Is it Good For 6 (Patreon)

The morning air in Blüdhaven tasted as ugly as the city looked.

The sun was as weak as ever behind the morning smog that already coated the sky; a watery smear behind a permanent ceiling of industrial shit that never went away.

Just once in my life I don’t wanna see light coming down looking like dishwater. Ten AM in the morning and that light didn't do jack or shit to warm the cracked concrete under his feet. Kenny shook his head slow, his hands stuffed deep into the pocket of his windbreaker as his eyes tracked people shufflinglike zombies to jobs that barely paid enough to keep the lights on in apartments already falling apart.

That’s Mellville Section for you.

His shitty neighborhood wasn’t the worst part of the city but it could definitely tie with second place on a bad day, the decay over the last decade more and more obvious every day. The distant rumble from the freight yards was clear enough from here, just audible over the closer hiss of old bus air brakes in need of a change, and nearly drowned out by the angry beat of some shitty rap thumping from a passing Hellcat. Same old Blüdhaven orchestra.

At least Gotham had rich people that pretended to give a shit.

His eyes flicked from one side of the street to another, always careful as he passed an alley; you never knew what kind of dickhead would pull a knife or a gun on you? His roaming gaze paused on a brick wall, quickly taking in a rainbow riot of spray-painted color that probably looked decent once. Now it was just faded and peeling like everything else, some forgotten wannabe meta-hero's face getting tagged over with fresh white wings. Flybois mark. 

Turf war's getting closer to home. The thought floated past flat and detached, same way he'd notice clouds building up before a storm.

Just another shitstorm on the horizon.

Kenneth flexed his right hand inside his pocket, the one that'd been wrapped up like a club just last night. Now it was just... a hand. No pain. 

No swelling. 

His fingers, all five, flexed themselves out and then came together in a tight clenched fist, the power rippling under them making the motion feel far stronger than it should have been. The movement felt clean, sure, knuckles sliding into place with confidence that seemed wrong. The bruises on his face, split lip, all that geography of getting his ass beat by Jimmy Kostas had vanished. All of it just wiped clean as he looked at his face in the church bathroom mirror, gone like they'd never even happened.

When his eyes had snapped open on that cot in the church’s basement, he knew as well as he knew anything that he was fine.

From his head to his toes.

Better than fine, even. 

Rested, with no aches or pains or anything else that would make him even feel close to shit warmed over after all the body-bruising and brain-bashing he’d been through over the last couple days.

Nah, he was whole. 

And that scared him way more than any vampire ever could.

Only thing he'd eaten since last night was half a bag of Cheesy Poofs and a bottle of water, both pulled from the small blue kiddy pouch now hanging around his waist. Magic never-ending fanny pack full of junk food that he was starting to realize had the power to heal him up. Sure. Why the fuck not, right? 

His life was a cartoon now anyway.

Speaking of cartoonish fucking nonsense, last night felt like a blur of impossible shit stacked on top of more impossible shit. Father Keane, that soft-spoken priest with eyes like a tired old soldier, had laid it all out for him, clean and simple. He was smack-dab in the middle of a three-hundred-year secret war fought in the shadows of a city built to be a nest for bloodsuckers. The Morituri. The Cross Cutters. 

Both of them in an endless losing battle against thousands of vampires.

Thousands.

The number was a joke, and somehow he'd signed up to be the next punchline. Whoops. He snorted out loud but there was no humor in it. My bad, right?

What was this, Underworld fucking Evolution? Was Mila Jojovich gonna pop up somewhere in spandex, doing gun kata?

Out of the frying pan and into another bigger frying pan, somehow.

DC vampires were supposed to be rare, something Batman dealt with between Arkham breakouts. He’d never even heard of vampires being this big of a deal before, not in his last life at least and he had read a lot of DC in that life. Hell, he even remembered a comic panel, one showing off a certainghoulish yellow-skinned monster. The Hemo-Goblin. 

A vampire who gave people AIDS because some writer thought that was clever and some editor actually approved it. Balls-out insanity that almost made him laugh. Whoever came up with the HIVampire needs to get slapped with a baseball bat.

But this wasn't that. This was different. A whole infestation. A thriving parasitic ecosystem. An entire city built by monsters, for monsters. Three hundred years of fighting that? That was insane. Literally. 

The definition of it, he was pretty sure. 

Like, why not just give up at that point? Nuke the whole fucking city from orbit; only way to be sure. Kill them all and let God sort it out, type shit. 

But noooooooo…

The father had his reasons and Ken understood them, but he sure as shit didn’t have to like them. Something about not wanting vampires to turn to mass murder, trying to avoid chaos, because it wouldn’t even be a pyrrhic victory. Kenneth rolled his eyes as he turned the corner onto his street, sneakers scuffing against sidewalk cracks that'd been there since before he was born.

Too late for that, Padre. Ken shook his head again. People are dying.

Kenneth Isaac Charles King Jr slowed his steps down to almost complete stillness as the familiar shape of his townhouse came into view, eyes going wide as he faced something he wasn’t sure he believed. They said they'd fix it. But... 

They'd actually fucking done it.

The front door, the one that'd exploded inward in a shower of splinters when Tyke had smashed right through the thing with all his meta-strength, was back whole again. 

Not even patched.

Ken stared with his mouth almost hanging open as he took in the new paint job, new deadbolt, barely a scratch on the thing. What the hell kind of contractor works overnight? His eyes flicked left and right, careful as he walked up to the door in case anybody tried to rush in behind him.

His key, the same one he'd carried since he was eight, slid into the new lock with a clean well-oiled click. Kenneth couldn’t fight the frown on his face as he pushed the door open and stepped inside, eyes scanning everything, taking in the impossible.

The living room was clean…

Well, as clean as it was before last night at least. 

The broken dining chair was gone, replaced by one that matched the others so perfectly there was no point in even checking. The hole in the drywall where Bella had thrown him was patched and painted, color just a shade too light, pretty much the only sign anything had ever happened here. Even Ma's mirror...

Ma's mirror from HouseServs was hanging on the wall pristine, no cracks, no vampire-smashed glass. Jesus Christ.

The Lord might not have had jack to do with it exactly, but it felt like a miracle with how fast these people worked. Faster than any contractors in Blüdhaven, that's for damn sure. It was like they'd just edited the violence out of his life, cut and pasted reality back together. 

Is it rude if I say that’s really fucking creepy?

Kenneth was halfway to the stairs when a tired groan drifted like a ghost from the kitchen. A ghost that’s been hitting the boxed wine real hard. 

Ma stumbled out, eyes bleary, faded blonde hair a mess and a half the way it was sticking up in directions gravity shouldn't allow. She was still wearing yesterday's clothes; wrinkled Mercy General t-shirt and gray sweats that'd honestly seen better years. 

The faint smell of cheap white wine clung to her like bad perfume, mixed with that antiseptic hospital scent that never quite washed out. "...where you been?” Ken frowned at the sound of her voice, thick with sleep and hangover, both soft and slurred.

"...at a friend's," Kenneth lied, the words tasting like sand and regret in his mouth. What else am I gonna say? Fighting vampires with priest ninjas?

Ma stared at him with one eye half-open, gaze unfocused and struggling as she made a noise somewhere between a grunt and acceptance. "...mmm'kay. You hungry?"

Kenneth shook his head. He wasn't. Those magic Cheesy Poofs were surprisingly filling, apparently. 

"...mm'kay." She shuffled past him, ghost in her own house, and started the slow weary climb upstairs. She needs to stop drinking with the other burnt-out moms from the ward. He could tell it was killing her too; one cheap box of Franzia Chardonnay at a time. She’d only started drinking after Harry too.

Kenneth watched her disappear into the upstairs hallway, then a few seconds later, he climbed to his own room. The door closed behind him, three locks clicking into place one by one and shutting himself in from the rest of the world. Kenny let out a sigh as dim morning light filtered through his single window, painting gray stripes across stained carpet that'd been there since President Horne.

As the last lock settled, Kenneth let out a long shuddering sigh, air leaving him like a punch to the gut. He leaned his forehead against the cool wood. Solid. Real.

...why does everything feel fake now?

Being back home, back in this box, made everything else seem unreal. 

The vampire. The fight. The vampire hunters in tactical gear. 

All of it just bad dream territory. He wasn't hurt anymore, which he was happy for but still wasn’t sure how to explain how Cheesy Poofs had pulled that off. His bruises were all gone, hand working perfect too. But if he had to be honest... None of it feels real.

Kenneth turned and walked to his dresser, reflection as stunningly handsome as ever. Green eyes stared back at him, wide and bright in his own face. He stepped closer until his breath fogged the cheap streaky glass.

…It is real, though.

The concepts, the words that'd flooded his mind in that church basement, were still there, all of it just humming in the back like background radiation. Chakra.

The word wasn't a thought; it was knowledge that'd settled into his bones like it'd always been there. A whole energy pathway, separate from blood and nerve, that had burnt itself into him in an instant last night and still thrumming through him now. He could feel it, this warm coiled thing in his gut pumping blue blood through a different set of veins, the entire thing a brand new limb he didn't know how to move yet. The flow of it, the way it moved through channels and points he knew were called tenketsu. 

Knowledge hit Kenneth's skull harder than Jimmy Kostas ever could, fragments punching through his brain like shrapnel from a grenade he'd never pulled the pin on. It hadn't stopped at just the chakra thing because that shit came with history, lineage, a whole fucking name burned into his soul. Uchiha.

The name was a brand, seared deep, along with a language he'd never spoken and memories of a life he'd never lived. Kenneth knew what it was, though. Course I fucking know. Might not exist here, not in this screwed-up comic book reality he was stuck in, but in another life he'd watched it religiously. Read every manga chapter the day it dropped. Played the goddamn video games until his thumbs cramped and Ma yelled at him to get off the PlayStation.

Uzumaki Barrage! Rasengan! Chidori! The knowledge crashed into him all at once, each piece of old-world fandom falling into place with a grinding, sand-like friction, fiction mashing with lived reality in a way that made his teeth ache. ...worth it. So fucking worth it.

Kenneth brought his hands together in front of the streaky mirror.

Over a thousand muscle memories twitched under his skin, fingers aching to fall into patterns he'd just stolen from someone else's life. Someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing.

Ram. Snake. Tiger. His knuckles knocked together wrong, seals stuttering out of order like a broken engine trying to turn over.

"C'mon," his breath fogged the glass as all twelve of the names stood out like neon signs in his head, English and Japanese both clear to him. It was all knowledge he knew — Rat, Ox, Rabbit — from being taught, in a classroom he’d never been in, and by a teacher he’d never met.

The first three runs were ugly as sin, barely worth even being called seals at all. Fingers clashed against each other, wrists jerked wide, the whole thing looking more like he was having a seizure than doing ninja shit. He kept at it anyway, each cycle dragging a little more sense out of the noise rattling around his skull.

Memory bled forward without permission. Academy drills under hot sun on packed dirt, sensei's voice calling counts. His shoulders started remembering before his brain caught up, muscle memory from muscles that weren't his.

Fourth run. Fifth. 

Sixth.

Seventh was when his hands went from rushing through brute flailing to actual shapes: Horse, Ram, Boar, Dog. 

Kenneth forced each form complete. Thumb-to-middle on the ne seal until it pinched his skin, pinky crooked just right for ushi, ring finger braced under index for tora. 

He didn’t slow down, but the world did, as he caught how his own hands made the blunt square of Pig; palms, fingers and knuckles pressed together. Snake was the simplest but the hardest to manage, especially with how interlocking his fingers made it harder to move to the next. Come on.

Each seal was a different puzzle of joints and tendons. Tiger's interlocked fists that felt like gripping invisible weapons. Rabbit's split palms with hooked fingers pressing together until his joints ached in ways that felt familiar and foreign at the same time.

The mirror was already clouded with his breath, the ghost version of Kenneth throwing half-visible gang signs back at himself on loop number eleven. 

He flexed his wrists, shook out the cramps for no more than three seconds. Fingers flicked back into his motion as he went again, diving right back into it because he wasn’t done. Monkey, Dragon, Rat, fingers grazing clean as if invisible rails kept them honest. His breathing lagged behind the pace, as he pushed for speed he shouldn't have.

Dragon: index and middle fingers criss-crossing like a zipper. Ox: open hands interlocked from horizon and vertical angles, fingers slid through each other. Horse was palms stacked, ring and pinky splayed, index fingers speared skyward in a triangle. Each seal carved itself into his tendons until he didn't need to look to find them.

Different orders each time, seals stacking in his head as he was determined to reach the proficiency he remembered he didn’t have: rabbit, inu, mi, tora. Knuckles clacked and smacked and clicked , pain dulling to a good heat; ten minutes bleeding into fifteen as the rhythm of the seals took over completely. The mirror in front of him doubled and redoubled every motion: a stuttering slideshow of tori, mi, ox, dog, uma.

His hands began snapping home with skill that belonged to someone born in Konohagakure, not Blüdhaven. It was so much easier, even as sweat ran down his jaw, fingers damp as he pushed himself through an electric slide of muscle and memory that felt more real than anything else in his life. I, ram, hare, saru, ne-

The last run finished as he sped through each and every one in a rush of two seals per second, all twelve done in six. Kenny stood there, breathing heavy and shaky, as he looked at himself in the mirror, red eyes spinning back at--

Whoa…

His eyelids went as high as they could go, eyes just as wide as he took in his fully transformed eyes. The dimly lit features of his room sharpened, the contrast on everything cranking up to an impossible degree, colors bleeding into a stark, vibrant clarity. Individual dust motes danced in the beams of light slitting through his window blinds, the fine, spidery cracks in the silvering of the mirror suddenly as clear as his own face.

His reflection blinked back at him, everything moving just a fraction of a second slower than it should. And in each of those red eyes, a single black dot, shaped like a comma, circled the pupil, a stark, perfect mark of power.

The Sharingan.

A slow, dangerous grin slid its way across his face, wide and hungry, as he refused to take his eyes off… his eyes.

"...I’m gonna kill some fuckin’ vampires."