AOMR 31

It was one thing to receive a message, to read about something devastating and catastrophic happening from a distance, the medium dulling the sheer weight of the news. It was another entirely different thing to witness what that message spoke of in person.

The intense heat dried the eyes and evaporated sweat straight from the pores. The smog-filled air choked the lungs. The earth was cracked and destroyed, buildings obliterated, magma filling the fractures in the ground, following the path of least resistance. No message Empress Dowager Lu Zhi had received could have conveyed the true weight of what had occurred - of what she was now witnessing with her own eyes.

She turned on her heels, surveying the damage with wide, horrified eyes. She had come expecting many things, but none of them came close to the disaster that stretched out before her.

“Step back, Your Grace. Let our capes go ahead first,” Tian Xian whispered, reaching out to gently grab her shirt. Gone was her royal regalia of twin golden dragons on a sea of red. Gone were her assorted jewels, each worth more than some city-states. Gone was the delicate cloud of makeup her attendants had spent hours applying.

Empress Dowager Lu Zhi now stood like any other person - in a shirt and trousers, with a bulletproof vest across her chest. Her presence here was not to fight, but to bolster morale, to remind everyone where their loyalty lay.

Her original plan had been to deal with the fallout. With the help of Tian Xian and the capes not yet turned by Null, she had hoped to gather enough strength to deal with the scheming snake and the rest of the Yangban while they were still recovering from the assault by the mysterious attacker.

Everything changed when the Numbered Capes, those who served as Null's spies, assassins, and guards in her employ spontaneously combusted, screaming in confusion. That was the first sign that something had happened, something beyond what she had anticipated.

The wind stirred, sweeping away some of the smoke and giving her a brief moment to breathe. She nodded at Tian Xian. The wiry, white-haired cape was the strongest weapon in her arsenal, her final shield. A cape so powerful that even Null had deemed turning or attacking him too risky, especially given his advanced age.

All Null had to do was wait for the old man to die - and that would have marked the final beginning of the end.

The soldiers and capes surrounding her turned. She hid her fear. The terror at the power it must have taken to cause such catastrophe, all that and more was hidden beneath a mask of cool indifference. She straightened, standing as tall as her five-foot-three frame would allow, then spoke. The devastation before her tried to choke the words in her throat.

But she was the Dowager Empress. More than anyone else, she had to stand strong in the face of calamity. She needed to show strength now more than ever if she wanted to secure her child’s upcoming rule.

Her voice cracked at first, but she pushed forward. The soldiers and capes turned to her fully.

“You’ve all read the reports. You’ve heard the whispers. But now you see it with your own eyes. You feel the heat claw at your lungs. You taste the smoke on your tongues. You stand in the bones of a city that once breathed, as we do now.

“Some of you look to me, expecting answers. I have none. Not for why this happened. Not for why we weren’t prepared. But What I do have an answer for, is what caused this.”

More than one person stared at her with tear-filled eyes. This would be a turning point. Her last true chance to drive a stake into Null. Without Null's enforcers by her side, she was truly free for the first time in years and she would use that freedom in an act that would cost her life.

“His name is Null.” Silence followed. She continued. “He is the snake in the green grass we were taught to avoid. A cancer. A parasite that has drained the will of Imperial China for years, with the aid of his organization. And now, he has brought ruin to our once beautiful city. But fear not!” she cried, her voice somehow carrying farther than it should - Tian’s wind manipulation, no doubt.

“I am Empress Dowager Lu Zhi. And I stand with my people. If there is one thing the people of China possess, it is resolve. We are here to save who we can, to lay to rest those we cannot and to avenge those who have been wronged. I am not dressed in jewels. Not wrapped in silk. What you see is not an Empress dressed for court, but a mother dressed for war.”

She saw the ripple effect of her words growing stronger with each heartbeat.

“As we step forward into the ruins of a city that once stood as the bastion of Imperial China, remember this: you do not fight alone. You fight with me. With Tian Xian. You fight for the Imperial Family. For your families. For your homes. For the crown that will not bow.”

Her speech ended with thunderous applause and roaring cheers from the soldiers and capes around her. These were people she had never met. People she had once seen as mere statistics, peasants with no real weight in truth.

But she had been wrong.

It had been a long time since one of royal blood had led from the front. That distance may have worked in an age of mundane powers when peasants believed the Imperial Family were like gods.

But in this era where calamities roamed and humans wielded enough power to challenge the divine and the myths, that distance had become a weakness. A weakness Null had exploited.

Empress Dowager Lu Zhi remembered the message she had received just before leaving the palace: an empty envelope that had appeared beside her bed. Inside it lay a promise. A promise of power but at the cost of a favor. However if the Imperial Family were to rise strong again, they would need someone with true power at the helm… or else someone like Null would rise once more.

Everything she did, she did for her son.

As they began marching forward, Tian called her aside. “We’ve got news, Your Grace.” He smiled faintly. “There are survivors. Millions of them. Our forward scouts found them leaving the ruined city in droves.”

“That is truly good news.” She smiled, until she caught the look on Tian’s face. “Let me guess. There’s bad news too?”

That was when Empress Dowager Lu Zhi felt it, a tremor in the earth. “What was that? An earthquake?”

“No, my Empress. That’s the bad news. I believe the one responsible for this devastation is still fighting something in the heart of the city.”

This time, she couldn’t hide the shock. A fight? And they could feel it from this far away?

Just who had Null, in his unchecked arrogance, managed to offend?

X

Whether it began as a spar or a fight, it didn’t matter anymore. Whatever Hero had originally assumed could be thrown away. Now, all he could do was stand and watch, utterly captivated, as two forces of nature collided.

There were roars. There was fire. There was ash, alongside monumental blows that shook the ground.

It continued far longer than he expected, and he knew it was only because the old man was dragging it out. He had seen that man fight with no restraint before. He had seen him fight with true intent to end things.

The memory of Behemoth’s death was still fresh in his mind.

Then his helmet picked up a discordant note, a wave of sound that changed everything. He recognized it instantly. He turned, waited… and watched as the portal tore itself open.

Doormaker.

From that portal, Alexandria and Legend stepped out.

“You took your time,” Hero said the moment he saw them.

Legend stared at the devastation for a long moment, then turned to Hero and shook his head in annoyance. “You wouldn’t believe the bureaucratic red tape we had to cut through just to step foot on a sovereign nation that’s banned our presence. And then we had to explain why one of us had already broken the treaty by being here. As if that was not enough, Contessa made things worse by asking us to wait a few more minutes. Something about her path…” Legend finished with esperation coloring his tone.

Hero frowned. He had forgotten how hostile China was to outside interference. Even if he had remembered, he doubted it would’ve stopped him, not with a threat like this looming. More troubling than that was Contessa. They all knew her path worked in the end but that didn’t make it any less frustrating, especially when she had counseled them from interfering with the Yangban previously.

“I thought she couldn’t path the old man.”

Legend nodded. “She can’t. But she can path around him. Use the influence he leaves in his wake to try and build something. Or so Doctor Mother explained. Even that was enough to put her in the infirmary.”

“I recognize the dragon,” Alexandria said suddenly. Until then, she’d been entranced by the battle, her visor dimming the glare of fire as she stared ahead. “He fought with us against Leviathan. That fight was the final domino that sank Kyushu. What’s he doing here?” She turned to Hero, her dark hair billowing from the wind pressure of the battle. “And why are you holding a child?”

Hero shrugged, glancing back at the unconscious girl. “I’ll show you my recordings later. Long story short, the kid is the one the old man burned half of China to get back. As for the dragon, judging by the fact he came out of where the Yangban's underground base used to be, I’d guess he was either a prisoner… or working with them. Too early to tell.”

Then Hero noticed it, the silence.

He wasn’t the only one. Alexandria and Legend turned toward the source. Dust was settling.

The fight had ended.

And out of the smoke and ash stepped the old man.

He had slipped his kimono back on. His cane floated beside him, and he dragged the unconscious body of a young man by the leg, his face and chest scraping across the ashen ground without care. The old man stopped before them, eyes closed as always.

The silence deepened.

Then Hero blurted a question that had been on his lips from the moment he stepped foot here, “Why?”

The old man turned his aged features to look at him, eyes closed with that sense of callous disregard radiating off him once more.

"You see this wasteland and you ask why I burned it." Then his head tilted towards the child that was still in his hands. "This one was to be made in the image of another. A vessel. A weapon. A child twisted into something unclean. I do not regret what I did to reclaim her."

Only then did his eyes crack open to pin them in place with inhuman intensity and pressure. “Nor what I would do the next time such folly occurs.”

Then he flipped the brawny man he had dragged and placed him on his shoulders, as he stretched forth his now free hand. Hero was all too quick to gently pass the child back. None of them had missed the very obvious threat in his words, especially considering who it was coming from. It was less of a threat and more of a proclamation.

The old man cradled the child beneath his arms and turned to leave, but that was when Alexandria found her voice. “What happened to the Yangban?” Hero turned to her at the question. He had detected the note in her voice. Worry. What had happened to the Yangban and what had he missed?

“They faced the result of reaching for powers beyond their ken. Like the boy with the wax wings before them.” He turned away and disappeared in a blur of motion, but not without leaving a sentence on the wind. “They burned for their hubris.”

Then he was gone, leaving them to clean up the international mess that he had caused. A mess that had sent a message as clear as day. He was not just a sympathetic and amiable Endbringer slayer. When pushed, he was capable of overwhelming violence on the same scale. A true monster with zero regard for the opinions of others.

“So what are we going to do with the army marching towards us this very moment?” Hero asked as the zoom feature on his visor picked them up, just as the all-too-discordant note sent waves once more.

The portal ripped its way open and out came a weary-looking Contessa. “Support and assistance.”

The rest of the team looked at her with a raised brow. "Does Doctor Mother know you're here?" Legend asked with a smile. Hero did his best to hide his.

Contessa continued without paying the duo any heed. “We spin this and pin it in a way that makes it very obvious the Yagaban were the aggressors here, and with the Yangban out of the way, the Empress Dowager would be all too happy to work with us. This here is the end of the CUI’s isolation."

"Alongside Behemoth's death, this right here is another path irrevocably altered and changed, for our good as well. From now on, nothing would ever be the same.”

The portal ripped open once again, and the trio watched Contessa limp back into it. Hero turned as he suddenly realized someone was missing. "Where the hell is David?"

A/N: Ideally, the next chapter would be a PHO interlude. Unfortunately, it still seems complicated ash so no promises.