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Xu Shangqi, alias Shaun Lee, knew Katy Chen was trouble the first day they met in high school. So much trouble, in fact, that he was probably risking a heart attack before the age of thirty by befriending her. A saner person would have probably left her and gone looking for calmer, quieter friends, but Shaun had experienced enough shit in his life that his claim to sanity was just a bit tenuous, and he knew it. Besides, it was hard to argue with that manic, freewheeling grin she flashed him that first time, especially when it left him with that impression of wild innocence that was the polar opposite of everything he was running away from.
Even with drawback of the occasional brushes with cardiac arrest, he wouldn’t trade her for the world.
The First Time: Cool Wind in my Hair
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2014
“Call me that again!”
Shangqi felt a distinctly foreboding feeling as the tall, over-muscular, angry white boy marched up to him. “I- I didn’t-”
“What, you wanna go?” The racist idiot who clearly didn’t care about the distinction between Chinese and Koreans got right up into Shangqi’s personal space, dropping his backpack on the floor as he did so. He got so close, Shangqi could smell what he suspected was Red Bull on his breath under the cover of an obnoxious amount of Axe body spray.
The sudden close proximity of such an obviously aggressive individual had all his reactive instincts rising to the surface. His fists clenched, and his brain immediately began assessing his surroundings and going through possible defensive measures.
The other boy was muscular, sure, but his stance was all wrong. It was likely that his past fighting experience – assuming he had any at all – consisted of mindlessly pummelling someone smaller and weaker than him, maybe even with a buddy of his holding the victim’s arms to prevent any effort towards self-defense. Those muscles could easily come from lifting weights, but that didn’t mean he’d had any instruction on using those muscles in a real fight. There wasn’t enough space left between them for Shangqi to land a proper punch to the throat, but perhaps a hook to the jaw would be a good start.
Shangqi also had three ceramic knives hidden on him, but there were plenty of opportunities for improvised weapons just lying around. The backpack the idiot had just dropped could be used as a heavy weapon, or even left on the floor to trip him up. The walls were lined with metal lockers, some of which were unlatched, which would allow Shangqi to swing the doors into his opponent’s face. The other boy had a set of expensive-looking headphones hanging around his neck, with a wire that would make for a half-decent garrotte. One bystander watching nearby was holding a shiny pen he could grab and-
‘No,’ he told himself firmly, ‘You left to get away from that. You don’t want to be a weapon anymore.’
But it was easier said than done to be more than a weapon, especially when his instincts had him cataloguing every inch of his surroundings without him consciously thinking about it, assessing the entry and exit points, the vulnerabilities of the people around him, their stances and the odds that they might be watching him or waiting to pounce, and the number of ways he could take them down in five seconds if they did. His brain went to those places regardless of what he wanted.
But if he did that, he knew he would get in trouble. And any trouble, any attention drawn to himself, was bad news. If he got into a fight, the school could try to call in his guardians, which he didn’t have, and then there would be an investigation into his just barely-passable fake background. Doing serious damage to the other boy could see him arrested, which would be even worse, and maybe even get himself in the news, or something, in all the wrong ways. (Would extra-violent school fights get in the news?) And then his father could find him and send his men to drag him back to the Ten Rings.
Shangqi couldn’t let that happen. He would rather die than go back to that.
So, he forced himself to unclench his fists, take a breath, and let whatever happened happen.
“ON A DARK DESERT HIGHWAY!”
Shangqi blinked. One second, he’d been mentally bracing himself for the prospect of getting punched in the face. Then he blinked, and suddenly this tiny, dark-haired girl in a bright yellow T-shirt and eye-searingly pink camo pants was standing between the two of them, screaming – no, singing at the bully at the top of her lungs.
“COOL WIND IN MY HAIR!”
The other boy didn’t seem to know how to react to this. He had gone from overconfident aggression, staring down a skinny kid with no idea that said kid could kill him barehanded in seconds, to baffled shock, staring down an even smaller girl who – despite her size – had quite an impressive lung capacity that she was using to its fullest. Everyone in sight was stopping and staring.
“WARM SMELL OF COLITAS! RISING UP THROUGH THE AIR!”
She was standing up on her toes, clearly trying to get as in this guy’s face as she possibly could, despite their height difference. Probably both as a strange intimidation tactic and as a means of blocking his field of vision as her hand snatched the shiny car keys out of the open pocket of his letterman jacket.
(Shangqi doubted anyone else saw it besides him. All the people he’d met since going on the run seemed to be terribly unobservant.)
By now, however, the boy’s expression was starting to shift from confusion back to anger. Her unorthodox method of stopping him in his tracks was starting to wear off, and Shangqi feared what the bigger boy might do to the tiny girl.
“UP AHEAD IN THE DIST- RUN!”
Clearly, the girl realised the same thing he did, because she suddenly whipped around and darted away. Shangqi was still so stunned and confused by her actions, he didn’t even react when the girl grabbed his arm as she blew by him, dragging him along for the ride. His senses caught up to him quickly, and he had to fight the urge to rip his arm away and strike back at her. That wouldn’t end any better than fighting the douchebag who couldn’t even tell the difference between Chinese and Koreans. So, instead, he just kept running along with the girl, keeping pace with her easily once he was actually trying.
Before they even rounded the first corner, another girl caught up to them. This one was wearing an all-black shirt and short skirt, with a lot of frills, and black knee-length stockings. She was also cackling like mad. “Did you see his face?!” she crowed.
“Don’t stop!” Girl #1 (he should probably get her name soon) urged.
They ran all the way out to the parking lot, where they finally came to a stop, breathing heavily. Well, the girls were breathing heavily, and Shangqi started imitating them a little, knowing that normal boys his age didn’t train nearly as hard as he had and wouldn’t have his endurance.
“Well…” Girl #1 gasped, “That… was fun!” She grinned up at him, the expression so full of adrenaline and sheer delight that it left him reeling a bit. “I’m Katy… What’s… your name?”
“Sha- Shaun,” he replied, catching himself just in time to stop himself from slipping up. (Shaun, he was Shaun Lee, now.)
“I’m Soo,” Girl #2 introduced herself, getting control of her breathing back a little bit faster than her friend, “And the idiot back there was Brad.”
“Almost as big an idiot… as the guy who thought… it was a good idea… to talk back to him,” Katy shot in between breaths.
“I just told him I’m not Korean,” Shaun protested.
“And called him an idiot. It’s absolutely on-point, but he hates it when people point that out. And he’s, like, twice your size.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” He hesitated, not knowing what to say next. Claim he could’ve taken the guy? Because he absolutely could have; he’d taken out men even bigger than that spoiled white boy (Shuan knew just enough about American culture to recognise the expensive name-brand clothes Brad was wearing from head to toe) while they outnumbered him three to one. The armed guards protecting his Mom’s killer had been-
‘No,’ he scolded himself, forcing that train of thought to come to a halt, ‘Don’t think about that. Focus on what to do next. On what to say to blend in here, to make no waves, to keep your name out of the news and off official records so that Ba can’t find you and send his men to drag you back.’
Damn it, that train of thought was already going back to where he didn’t want it to go.
“Well, you know what else you didn’t notice?” Katy taunted, holding up the keys and dangling them from her fingers, “I’ve got the keys to his fancy new Mustang. Anyone up for teaching Brad a lesson about what happens when he forgets to pick on someone his own size?”
Shaun narrowed his eyes. “And what kind of lesson involves his car?” Was he getting dragged into an act of petty vandalism, or something?
“Oh, it’ll be fine! It’ll be just one trip around the block!”
Oh, no, this was much worse. “Won’t we get in trouble?”
“Only if we get caught!”
It was getting caught that scared him the most. In his mind’s eye, he could just see the headline now: ‘Mysterious Illegal Immigrant Implicated in Grand Theft Auto!’
Katy was already running over to a bright, shiny, red car parked in two spots in the rear corner of the lot. Soo followed her, and for some inexplicable reason, Shaun decided to do so, as well. Katy didn’t hesitate to jump right in, sliding into the driver’s seat in one fluid motion but then having to stop and readjust the seat to accommodate her shorter legs.
Soo was a bit more graceful getting into the backseat. “Come on, New Guy!” she cajoled, reaching forward and patting the headrest of the front passenger seat. “Hop in! You can even ride shotgun, in honor of your first time on a Katy Chen Joyride!”
(Shaun was pretty sure there weren’t any firearms hidden in the car, so he assumed it was just another one of the many, many English idioms everyone was throwing around and expecting him to get.)
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” he asked hesitantly, “Like, do you even know how to drive that?”
“Oh course I do!” Katy shot back, “We do this all the time!”
“Only to those who deserve it, though,” Soo added.
“Come on!” Katy urged, “It’ll be fun!”
Fun.
When was the last time he’d had fun? Vague and faded memories came to the surface, of Dance Dance Revolution with his parents and sister, of Ba shamelessly cheating by covering Mama’s eyes and Mama laughing as she batted his hand away. He could recall playing with other children in the park when his parents brought him and Xialing along while grocery shopping in the nearest small town. Mama and Baba had encouraged it, since it was pretty much the only social interaction they had with any kids besides each other.
But that was all before his mother died. After that, it was nothing but training and training and the occasional peaceful moment with his father or his sister (but never both).
But that grin on Katy’s face… He remembered the first time they had gone to a public swimming pool, on the first (and only) vacation they had taken as a family, less than a month before Mama died. Seven-year-old Shangqi had been nervous about going off the diving board, but after seeing other boys his age leap off with no fear whatsoever, he’d gathered his courage and taken his turn. The adrenaline rush had made him laugh out loud before he’d broken the surface of the water, resulting in him swallowing a whole mouthful, but as soon as he was done coughing and sputtering, he’d been ready to try again. Xialing, not quite yet three years old, had wanted to be just like her big brother, even though she barely even knew how to doggy-paddle. She had gotten in line with her bright pink lifejacket and matching water wings, but when it had come time to jump, she’d frozen. Mama – having observed some of the other parents with smaller children – had then gone up on the diving board with her, while Baba had swum below. Mama, after a few words of comfort, had picked Xialing up under her little arms and basically dropped her down into Baba’s waiting hands.
Xialing had shrieked during the short drop, and the watching Shangqi had initially thought it had been in pure terror. But then he’d gotten a look at his baby sister’s face and seen the pure joy and excitement in her eyes. The same excitement he had felt after his first jump.
That same excitement was echoed in Katy’s smile right now as she started the car and revved the engine.
Oh, screw it.
Before he could second-guess himself, Shaun circled around the front of the car and got into the passenger’s seat, and found himself scrambling to buckle in as Katy slammed her foot on the accelerator. The car lurched violently out of its parking spot – spots – with a loud screech of tires, and barrelled towards the exit.
“Whoa, slow down!” Shaun cried as he fumbled with the seatbelt buckle.
“Where’s the fun in that?!”
The next couple of minutes were some of the most terrifying of his life. (Not the very most; nothing would ever scare him as badly as the night his mother died.) Katy careened around corners, blew red lights, dodged other cars like they were obstacles in a slalom, and even did a wide spin that she called a ‘donut’ in the middle of one intersection. The worst part came when they narrowly missed a damn semi truck by just a couple feet. Shaun would forever swear that his heart literally stop beating when he came within arm’s reach of the truck’s front bumper and the horn blared, almost but not quite drowning out his and Soo’s screams and Katy’s whoops of joy.
Katy only slowed down when they approached the school’s parking lot once more, as if she was trying not to draw attention. Soo was mildly hysterical – about halfway between the ‘terrified’ type of hysterical and the ‘laughing mad’ type. Shaun had a white-knuckled grip on the panic handle in the roof above him with one hand and the back of Katy’s seat with the other, and was doing his best to remember his lessons in controlling his breathing and heart rate. Katy was laughing like a maniac.
The joyride finally ended when Katy smoothly pulled into (one) parking spot. Shaun had to force himself to let go of the handle and seat. “Gǎo shénme guǐ?!” he gasped, “Are you insane?!”
“Oooh…” Soo teased, “Don’t let Katy’s Waipo hear you saying that! She’ll wash your mouth out with soap!”
“The really nasty-smelling soap!” Katy added, her manic grin still in place.
Shaun slumped back in his seat. “I’m never getting in another car with you ever again.”
(And yet, he still volunteered to hide the car keys in Brad’s locker without telling them how he did it, covering up their little joyride. And then he found himself joining her for another only a few weeks later.)
(Okay, so, maybe he was just a little bit insane, himself.)
The Second Time: Machete for an Arm (No, Not Razorfist’s)
Friday, October 31st, 2014
Shaun wrinkled his nose and resisted the urge to scratch his face. He didn’t want to ruin the detailed skull makeup that Katy had painstakingly painted onto his skin. It had taken her something like half and hour to complete, and it was incredibly well-done, the different shades of black, white, and grey blending to craft the elaborate image on his face. It would be a crime to accidentally smudge it, according to Katy, who was now in her room changing while he finished his English homework. Once she was done, they would be on their way to escort her eight-year-old brother Ruihua to beg strangers for candy.
Shangqi had heard of Halloween before leaving China, of course. It wasn’t popular there except in Western expat communities, or schools with foreign teachers, but he’d heard of it. That did not, of course, mean he was prepared for how big it was here. The first-generation Chinese immigrants, like Katy’s grandparents, weren’t all that into it, but the younger generations were just as enthused as their peers. And that meant that Ruihua was going Trick-or-Treating, and Katy had been put in charge of escorting him. Upon hearing that her new friend had never experienced Halloween, she had immediately conscripted Shaun into helping her. Hence the skull painted on his face right now and the skeleton hoodie he was currently wearing. As soon as Katy was dressed, they’d be on their way. In the meantime, he had some homework to get started on.
Shaun scowled down at the worksheet on the Chen’s living room coffee table. The first activity was simple in and of itself: match words from Column A to definitions in Column B. However, the words in question were driving him up the wall. English made him want to tear his hair out sometimes! So many of the rules had exceptions that you had to memorise, and sometimes there were no rules, like when the hell he was supposed to pronounce the ‘C’ like a ‘K’ or like an ‘S’. ‘G’ was similarly problematic. And don’t even get him started on words that sounded the same but were spelled differently, like ‘blue’ and ‘blew’, or words that had the opposite problem, such as ‘tough’, ‘trough’, ‘though’, ‘through’, and ‘thought’. They were on a particularly demanding unit this week, so he was learning new vocabulary like ‘charismatic’, ‘procure’, and ‘ideology’. And he couldn’t for the life of him remember the difference between ‘detect’ and ‘reconnaissance’, aside from the fact that one was a verb and the other a noun. Okay, so maybe he should just focus on the definitions that began with ‘to’, since all the verb ones tended to start that-
“RAAAAAGH!”
Shaun just about jumped out of his skin at the loud shout that suddenly exploded directly to his right. He did jump up off the floor, banging his knees on the underside of the table. The pen that had been idly tapping on the paper as he thought was now gripped in a way he could to stab his attacker with it. Shangqi slipped into a fighting stance, taking in the person standing in front of him and assessing the immediate threat. The most pressing detail was the red-stained machete wielded in the masked intruder’s right hand. He had to deal with that first. If the pen didn’t work, he still had one knife hidden in his boot-
Mrs. Chen rushed in from the kitchen, dish towel still in hand, took one look at the situation, and immediately turned to the armed figure before Shaun could urge her to retreat. “Chen Ruiwen!” she snapped, “What do you think you’re doing?!”
What. Who? As he blinked, the figure removed their white mask to reveal a very sheepish Katy Chen underneath. “Uh… Getting into the Halloween spirit?”
“More like giving your friend and I heart attacks!” her mother retorted, “Shaun, are you alright?”
“I- Yeah,” he gasped, feeling his heart pounding in his ears, “Yeah, I’m fine. She just- came out of nowhere.”
Shame filled him. He hadn’t heard her coming. He had been too focused on the paper in front of him, and had left himself unaware of the world around him. And he hadn’t even noticed the hints that she wasn’t an actual threat. Death Dealer would have punished him dearly for his inattention. Ba would be so disappointed.
He looked Katy up and down, taking in her outfit in more detail. Her battered white hockey mask was smeared with what was obviously not blood. (In fact, Shaun was pretty sure he could smell a faint odour of nail polish.) The huge olive-green coat hanging off her tiny frame looked like her dad’s, the same one he’d been wearing last week when unloading the newest delivery for the store. He wasn’t sure where she got the patched overalls or the hiking boots. And most importantly, the machete she carried in her right hand (which was covered by her coat sleeve in a way that made it look like she had a machete for a hand) was clearly made of dull plastic, and also covered in bright red nail polish.
“Katy, you know better than that,” Mrs. Chen scolded, her hands on her hips, “Apologize! Now.”
“Sorry.” To her credit, Katy really did look like she meant it.
Shaun gave her a stiff nod as he forced himself to relax. His pulse was still pounding in his ears, and he was certain his nails were at risk of drawing blood from his palms. “S’okay.”
What was not okay was the fact that he’d let her get that close without noticing. If it had been Death Dealer, his old teacher would have exacted a severe punishment for his inattention, starting with a bamboo cane to the head and only getting worse from there. And then his father would have followed that up with either a blistering lecture about how he needed to better, or that disappointed glare followed by simply walking away dismissively, which honestly hurt more than the lecture.
“Are we going, or what?” Ruihua whined from his spot in the hallway. He was all set to go in his costume, which consisted of a handmade (courtesy of his Waipo) dark red, brown, and gold getup in a generic East Asian-inspired style, with some reddish makeup surrounding his left eye, and a pair of toy swords strapped to his back. “Ruiweeeeen…”
“Yeah, yeah, we’re coming! Got your candy bucket?”
“I got the pillowcase!” He held up said bed linen in triumph. “It’ll hold way more than some stupid, dinky bucket!”
“Ruihua,” his mother said warningly, “Don’t forget your coat.”
“But a coat will ruin it! Prince Zuko didn’t wear a coat!”
“He wore a cloak to that Ember Island Players show,” Katy offered.
“But I don’t have a cloak!”
“Which is why you’ll be wearing a coat,” Mrs. Chen insisted, taking it out of the closet and holding it out to him.
Ruihua took it with much grumbling. Shaun helped him take the swords off so that he could put the coat on and then strap them back on over it.
“Alright, let’s motor!” Katy cheered, “Candy awaits!”
The three of them made their way downstairs and down the street. A few of the businesses were giving out candy, and they stopped at those first on their way to the community centre where a big Halloween event was supposed to be taking place.
As Ruihua was getting his first candy of the night, Katy shifted uncomfortably next to Shaun. “Hey, uh, sorry for startling you like that,” she apologised, “I should’ve known sneaking up on you was a bad idea.”
She really should have. While she’d never managed to do so before tonight, she had seen him jump at sudden noises, noticed how he kept his back to the wall as often as possible. He had told her that he hadn’t had the best life growing up, and could she please not push for details?
Shaun sighed. He hated that he couldn’t just be normal, or feel safe enough to not feel the need to look over his shoulder for assassins and kidnappers. Ba scoffed at the phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’, but Shangqi frequently envied Katy’s ability to walk down the street without knowing just how many pickpockets she passed by every day, to pass an alley without having to consider the possibility that someone might be lying in wait in the shadows. She felt safe in an unsafe world, and while it was likely to backfire on her at some point in her life, it certainly looked less stressful.
“… It’s okay,” he finally answered her, “It’s part of the Halloween experience, right?”
“For some. You have to respect people’s limits, too. I once volunteered at a haunted house for charity, and we had a rule that said to hold back and shut up if there were crying children coming through.”
“A… haunted house?”
“Wait, I didn’t tell you about those, yet?! They’re awesome! We should totally- Well, maybe not tonight. They usually involve going through a marked path and people in costumes jumping out at you. Just jumping out and spooking you, no touching. It’s supposed to be fun.”
It sounded nerve-wracking. But at least he would be going in knowing what to expect, so maybe…
“Maybe next year,” he guessed, “We’ll see.”
The Third Time: At Any Moment, Half the Population can Just Disappear
Thursday, May 31st, 2018
“I’m just saying, you’d think that, with all the super-powered people running around these days, obnoxious assholes would realize that anyone who could fulfill their impossible demands like carrying twenty-five to-go boxes in one go could also, like, pick them up and throw them onto the roof, or something, or worse.”
Another day, another shift, another evening of grumbling about how much customers sucked. Shaun’s legs ached after hours on end of standing behind the counter, and although he’d endured worse in training, that didn’t mean he wasn’t looking forward to getting home and putting his feet up. First, he had to endure the rush-hour bus back to his new ‘apartment’.
(Mrs. Chen had told him multiple times that a garage is not an apartment, but rent in San Francisco is anything but cheap, and it’s slim pickings for a nineteen-year-old technically-illegal immigrant who chose to skip college and enter the workforce straight out of high school.)
“I know, right?” Katy griped over the phone. While she had taken the college route, she still worked part-time as often as her schedule would allow. Whereas Shaun had just finished a shift, she was on her fifteen-minute break. “Like, I told you we’re out of strawberry ice cream, but you want me to magically pull strawberry ice cream outta my ass? Sure, bud, only instead of ice cream, I pull out a magic fireball and roast your stupid ass with it.”
“I don’t think the Baskin-Robbins manager would appreciate that.”
His bus was rolling up to the stop, and he fished his pass out of his pocket with one hand.
“Nah, Dale’s cool. If the customer was enough of an entitled asshole, he’d be on my side. Maybe. Well… Okay, he’d probably have to fire me but let me take a free ice cream on the way out.”
Shaun shrugged, even though Katy wasn’t there to see it. “Yeah, but then you’d have to explain to you Mom-”
“AAIIIIII!”
The sudden scream made him jump and whip his head around, looking for the threat. He didn’t see any sort of attacker, but his eyes soon landed on something terrifying that his brain couldn’t explain.
A young woman waiting at the bus stop with him was staring at her hands in horror. The skin was turning brown, her hands crumbling to ash as the effect spread up her arms. Within two seconds, her entire body had dissolved into nothing but a pile of grey-brown dust on the sidewalk.
“DADDY?!”
A little girl wailed as she, too, collapsed into ash despite her father’s desperate attempts to hold onto her.
A man crashed solidly through the door of the bus, only to land as a plume of brown dust on the sidewalk in front of everyone.
Chaos erupted everywhere as more and more people started disappearing right before Shaun’s eyes. He stumbled, bumped into someone, and ended up choking and spitting when he reflexively looked over his shoulder at them and got a face full of ash.
“Shaun?!” Katy called desperately through the phone, “Shaun, what the fuck- AGH!”
‘CRASH!’
Shaun’s cell phone almost slipped out of his numb fingers as the unmistakeable sound of a crashing car blasted through the speakers. The fact that it was preceded by his best friend’s scream and followed by silence made his entire body go cold. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. Was this what a heart attack felt like?
‘Beeep…’
The phone chirped that the call had been disconnected. With shaking fingers, he frantically tried to call her again, relying on a nearby tree for support as his legs could not longer fully support his weight.
Nothing. The call wouldn’t connect.
He couldn’t talk to Katy. What had happened to Katy?! Was she dead? Did the car hit her? Did she crumble into nothing like all those other people around him? Millions of questions raced through his brain, and the world around him began to grow fuzzy.
‘Focus your mind, Shangqi!’ A voice that sounded uncomfortably like his father’s rang through his head. ‘Maintain your awareness of the world around you!’
The world snapped back into focus. People all around him were running, screaming, crying. Cars were screeching and crashing to a halt. The bark of the tree was rough against his back through his T-shirt. His fingers ached from the death grip he still had on his silent cell phone.
Katy. He needed to find Katy. She was on her break at Baskin-Robbins, probably sitting on the bench outside where she could get some sun.
Within weeks of arriving in San Francisco, Shangqi had memorised the basic layout of the city. The instinctual fear that he was going to be found and snatched up at any moment had led him to plan multiple routes to all his usual destinations, routes that included streets and side-alleys. And even as the years passed and the paranoia waned, Shaun had continued the practice of ensuring he knew all the best ways to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible.
With the fastest route on foot in mind, Shangqi set off, running down the street and dodging pedestrians and cars and bikes, climbing and jumping over fences and whatever else he found in his way. Muscles that he hadn’t used in a while burned as he evaded every obstacle in his path, but the pain was unimportant. His objective had solidified in the forefront of his mind: find Katy. He would not allow anything to get in the way of that.
He reached Katy’s workplace in record time. The scene was eerily similar to the bus stop he had departed from. More people yelling, some sitting in shock and staring at piles of ash that had once been friends or loved ones. There was, as he had suspected, a car crumpled against a light post. The splintered wood of Katy’s favourite bench littered the road underneath and around it.
And there, crushed to the point that it was nearly unrecognisable, was Katy’s cell phone.
“KATY?!” The scream tore its way out of his throat without his permission.
“Shaun!”
He blinked. Was that…?
It was. Shaun had about one second to recognise Katy before she barrelled straight into his chest. He automatically wrapped his arms around her, feeling the solidity of her shaking body and praying to whatever deity might exist that she wouldn’t crumble into nothing like all those other people.
“Thank God,” she was saying, over and over again, “Thank God you’re okay!”
“I’m fine,” he assured her, not letting her go, “I found your phone on the- I thought you were-”
“I dropped it,” she murmured into his shoulder, “That car almost hit me. The driver’s seat was empty, but there was a screaming little kid in the back, and the whole thing was filling up with smoke. I pulled him out, and- His aunt was on the corner. I guess he and his mom were coming to pick her up, or some-” She choked. “That was his mom.” Katy finally stopped clutching him so hard, and it took all of Shaun’s self-control to force himself to let go and let her pull away. “Oh, God, Shaun, my Mom! What about her?! And Dad and Ruihua and Waipo?!”
“We’ll find them,” he promised, taking both her hands, “Come on, we’ll find them.”
The two of them took off down the street, still holding hands, each one terrified that the other might vanish if they let go.
The Fourth Time: Dumber Things with Worse Odds
Saturday, May 30th, 2020
Shaun peered over the railing, staring down at the rushing water below. “Are we… sure this is a good idea?”
Katy leaned over, as well, but way further than Shaun dared, with her feet on the lowest rung of the railing and a huge grin on her face. “Sure! It’ll be super fun!”
Soo, on the other hand, stayed far away from the railing, standing dead centre in the middle of the bridge over the canyon. “I can’t believe you talked me into this…” the pre-law student half-grumbled, half-whimpered, “Look, I can just stay up here and take pic-”
“Oh, come on, Soo, you promised!” Katy goaded, “It’s my birthday, and you have to do what the birthday girl says!”
“Your birthday’s not ‘til Tuesday! And you also have something planned for that! You can only play the birthday card once!”
“Oh, so that means you’ll be doing those body shots off male strippers like I suggested?” Katy asked with a wicked grin.
Soo’s face turned red. “No!”
“Pfft. Law school’s making you boring, Soo. You only turn twenty-one once!”
“I had an exam the next day!”
“Ladies!” The bickering girls’ attention was quickly drawn to the greasy-looking thirty-something man standing apart from the trio. “As fun as this is, I have another group booked later today. Shall we get started?”
“Sure!” Katy hopped down, practically bouncing in place after landing.
Shaun, who had been silently shaking his head at his friends’ argument, straightened up as well.
The three of them were a couple hours out from San Francisco, having made the long drive in order to attend a private bungee-jumping lesson that Katy had found online and insisted on going to, as an early twenty-first birthday present to herself. The lesson itself was situated on a metal bridge spanning a rather gorgeous canyon out in the middle of nowhere with a river at the bottom.
“Okay, then! Now, have any of you done anything like this before?”
All three shook their heads; Katy’s mom would never let her, Soo was afraid of heights, and Shaun didn’t think being trained to scale a mountain barehanded in an emergency counted, not that he would admit to having done it if it did.
The instructor, Heath, was pretty quick about showing them all the pieces of equipment involved: harness, cord, helmet, rigging system, etc. Shaun was a little surprised at how quickly they were going through the safety rules and instructions, because less than twenty minutes after the lesson began, they were being suited up in the harnesses and helmets to do their first jumps.
“Are… Aren’t we going to go over the safety rules one more time?” Soo questioned, holding her harness out in front of her at arm’s length like it was going to bite her, “What if we get stuck, or something?”
“I have a retrieval kit,” Heath promised her breezily as he gave Katy’s rigging one last inspection, “If the rigging system gets jammed while I’m pulling you up, I can go down myself and get you.”
Shaun frowned, remembering his mountain-climbing lessons and how there had been more people present than just him and his instructor. One time, the main instructor had slipped on the icy cliff-face, and while he’d managed to hang on and recover, he’d had a spotter ready to act if something went wrong.
Heath was teaching them alone. And it was miles to the nearest hospital.
“Relax, Soo!” Katy insisted, all suited up and now about to climb the steps to the edge. “I think this is gonna be fifty bucks well spent!”
Shaun looked at her askance. “Fifty dollars for each of us?” he questioned.
“No, all three!”
“That seems a little… low.” Shaun had googled ‘bungee jumping prices in california’ the previous week, until Katy told him she’d found a great deal. During his search, he’d learned that, on average, group packages ranged from fifty to three hundred dollars or more per person. Fifty for three people was suspiciously cheap. His eyes instantly shot over to Heath, now wondering if he should have kept looking.
If Katy noticed his uncertainty, however, she was doing her best to ignore it. “Okay, Soo, get ready!” Once Soo held up her phone and confirmed that she was filming, she continued: “First time bungee jumping! This is gonna be sick!”
Meanwhile, Shaun was now scanning every inch of the line that he could see, and he found, near the end of the bungee cord where it was attached to the railing, the signs of wear and tear, to the point that it was starting to fray.
Katy was now up at the top of the steps. “Here we go!”
“Katy, wait-”
“COWABUNGAAAA!”
At first, the jump seemed to go perfectly. Katy dove down into the empty space between the bridge and the river, her arms extended as if she were doing a swan dive. The bungee cord pulled taut when she fell past its usual length, and that was when everything went wrong.
With a loud ‘SNAP!’ that made Shaun’s heart skip several beats, the bungee cord broke at the frayed section just as Katy was slowing to a stop. Her scream – and Shaun and Soo’s half a second later – echoed even louder.
“KATY!” Shaun dove for the end of the cord, but missed.
Fortunately, Katy was also hooked up to a rigging system meant to pull her back up after the jump was completed. The system’s ropes went taut, the metal strapping attaching it to the bridge railing creaking under the strain, but nothing broke. Katy was left dangling over the water, still shouting and panicking.
“Hang on!” Heath called to her once he was done swearing repeatedly under his breath, “I’m pulling you up!”
It took him almost a full minute to pull Katy back onto the bridge. Shaun and Soo – the latter actually forgetting her fear of heights – hung over the rail and grabbed onto her hands as soon as they were in reach. The three of them practically collapsed onto the bridge floor together, with a badly-shaken Katy sandwiched between the other two.
It was Soo who recovered enough to speak, first. “When was the last time you inspected your equipment?!” she demanded shrilly, “She could have died!”
Shaun stood up, clenching his fists to hide how badly they were shaking – with fear or rage, he wasn’t completely sure. And right now, he didn’t really care. “Soo, take Katy to the car,” he ordered, his voice hard, “I’ll get the rest of our stuff.”
Heath looked like he was torn between protesting or defending himself, but some subconscious, primal part of his brain probably registered just how much danger either act could put him in, so he stayed silent.
“But-”
“Go.”
Shaun kept his furious gaze fixed on their so-called ‘instructor’, so he heard rather than saw Soo pulling Katy up to her feet, removing her harness and helmet, and leading her away. “You’ll be lucky if we don’t sue you!” the future lawyer cast one last parting shot.
As soon as he was sure the girls were gone, Shangqi sprang into action and lunged at Heath. Snatching the man’s arm with the speed of a striking snake, he twisted the limb behind the bastard’s back and then slammed him chest-first against the wobbly railing. With his other hand, Shangqi grabbed the back of Heath’s neck and shoved it so that he was forced to look down at the waters below.
“If you ever put someone’s life at risk like that again, and it reaches my ears, you will be the next one going over the edge. Without a harness. Are we clear?”
“Hey, what the fuck, man-”
Shangqi yanked Heath back and slammed him into the guardrail again. The rail creaked ominously from the impact. “Are we clear?!”
“Okay, okay, yes! We’re clear!” Heath’s voice literally squeaked in terror.
Shangqi leaned in to whisper directly into the scumbag’s ear. “Good.”
The Fifth Time: Hang On!
Monday, April 1st, 2024
“Oh, hell no! Screw you! I’m not doing this!”
‘This’ being ‘climb onto rickety bamboo scaffolding way too high up in the air on the side of a Macau skyscraper while we’re being chased by deadly assassins’.
“If we make it to the elevator, we can hop in on the next floor!”
Shaun felt terrible for asking this of her. After the Bungee-Jumping Incident, Katy had developed an aversion to heights that hadn’t bothered her before. It wasn’t as bad as Soo’s acrophobia, but she was definitely no longer eager to be up that high without a solid surface firmly beneath her feet. But the only other option that Shaun had was leaving her behind, chancing her getting caught by his father’s men. And then they would use her as leverage, threaten her to force him to comply with his father’s demands, hurt her to punish him for leaving their ranks. Throughout his training, Shangqi had seen what became of the Ten Rings’ prisoners, and what they endured. He couldn’t let any of that happen to her.
And she had a pretty good idea of what would happen, too, if her worried glance back over her shoulder as the fight club employees and spectators screamed behind her was any indication.
“Katy, we’re out of options!” Shaun pressed, “We have to go now!”
She glared at him, her expression conveying a mixture of ‘I so hate you right now’ and ‘Don’t you dare let me fall’. But she took his hand, and on the count of three, he pulled her out the window and onto the thin pole beside him. Her right foot slipped, but he caught her under the arms and pulled her back up before she could actually fall. She clung to him for a moment, her breath shaky.
From here, he could see the external elevator, far, far to their left. “Just head straight for that elevator,” he told her, “You got this.”
Still hanging onto one of his hands, Katy carefully began to cross. She was reaching her arm out to grasp the next pole – there were wooden boards bridging the expanse immediately beyond it, so she would be in a much less precarious position, and could move much faster, once she stepped onto the first one – when the windows behind and several floors above them exploded outward. Shangqi ducked instinctively, and once the shower of glass had stopped, he looked up, and he saw at least three fully-armoured Ten Rings assassins glaring down at them. No doubt there were more right on their heels. And they could cross this expanse much faster than Katy could ever hope to.
Reluctantly, Shaun let go of Katy’s hand as soon as he was sure she had a good grip on the next pole. “I’ll buy you some time!” he shouted, “Just keep going!”
Katy hesitated, visibly torn. But then she looked up briefly at their pursuers, and bravely turned and continued onward without him.
The first assassin swung down, just barely failing to land a kick aimed at his head, and from that point, Shangqi’s attention was wholly focused on keeping himself alive as his father’s soldiers did everything they could to throw him off the scaffolding. Even as a little voice whispered ‘Murderer’ in his head every time he kicked or threw one of them off, instead. At one point, he did fall multiple stories down, only to land with a punishing impact on a providentially-placed board below. And he still kept fighting through the pain of that impact, because they would never, never let him take a moment to recover, never give him a fair fight. Such mercy was expressly forbidden in the Ten Rings; it was one of the first things he’d been forced to learn at his father’s knee.
“SHAAAAUN!” Katy’s voice reached him, and she sounded terrified.
And she had good reason to be. When Shangqi looked up as he slammed one assassin face-first into one of the bamboo poles, he felt his heart almost stop in his chest. One of the other poles had come loose at the top, and Katy was clinging onto it for dear life as it slowly bent under her weight. And all the time, she was screaming for him. Then the pole dropped down, slowly beginning to break at the point where it was still connected to the rest of the structure. “OH MY GOD! OH!”
Shaun/Shangqi – it didn’t matter right now – didn’t waste any time. “Coming!” He threw the assassin he’d been holding aside, and he ran. “Hang on!” He ran and he jumped and he flipped and he kicked, barely sparing a thought for the six other assassins that got in his way beyond what was needed to get them out of his way.
The bamboo snapped, but by that point, it had bent downward so much that Katy was just barely in reaching distance when she dropped. Shaun desperately dived towards her, grabbing her wrist while using his free hand to hold onto the scaffolding and keep them both from tumbling to their deaths. The effort strained every last one of the muscles in his arms and torso, but he refused to let go. “Got you!” he gasped.
Katy looked up at him, and there was a moment of relief, but then her eyes focused on something else above and behind him. “SHAUN!”
He only just had enough time to look up before the assassin jabbed one of the electrified scythes against his chest. Fire ran through his entire body, and when it let up, Shangqi kicked his attacker away just as Shaun registered the fact that Katy’s wrist had slipped out of his spasming fingers. “KATY!”
For the next several weeks, the terror on her shrinking face as she plummeted toward the street below would haunt his nightmares. His entire body went numb, even as he hauled himself back to his feet, his mind swirling with thoughts of ‘No she’s dead I failed she can’t be dead it’s Katy she can’t be dead’.
And then a black-clad blur shot out and snatched Katy out of the air, pulling her back onto the scaffolding below with such force that they both slammed into the glass windows. They both looked up at him, and Shaun recognised the other person’s face.
It was Xialing. The baby sister whom Shangqi had abandoned ten years ago, who had abandoned him just now, had come back to save Shaun’s best friend in the nick of time.
Then another assassin lunged at him, and he was back in the fight. Hopefully Katy would be able to stay out of it, this time.
The Other Time: Now You Know How it Feels
Sunday, September 1st, 2024
It kind of went without saying that Katy’s life was full of surprises, these past few months. Ever since that douchebag on the bus had slammed her into the window one second and gone practically flying six feet back the next, with her notoriously pacifistic best friend standing there with his arm outstretched, fists clenched, and eyes burning with rage. Said best friend had immediately followed up with even more surprises by taking the douchebag and his pals on in a demonstration of martial arts skills that would make any of the wuxia film stars Ruihua loved watching look like complete amateurs. The runaway bus situation had just been the cherry on top.
Then there had been the insanity that was Macau, a nigh-immortal terrorist’s mountain compound, a drive through a people-eating bamboo forest, the hidden magical village populated with dragonscale-wielding badasses and magical creatures straight out of Waipo’s best bedtime stories, and the soul-sucking demons that had laid siege to said village while terrorist assassins were laying their own siege.
So, yeah. Surprises.
After all that, it had been almost surreal to go back to a normal life – you know, minus the valet parking job, because of course the Fairmont wouldn’t accept ‘A laser-machete-wielding assassin demolished our bus and his buddies were targeting Shaun’s sister next so we had to hop on the next plane to Macau ASAP’ as an excuse for not showing up to work. (Which was totally bullshit, considering the entire Bus Incident had gone viral for all the Internet to see.)
Still, life otherwise went on, with some new variations such as job hunting and dealing with their newfound internet fame for the Bus Incident, as well as getting through the legal issues that inevitably crop up when you’re caught in the middle of such a destructive incident and the actual instigators are either dead or nowhere to be found (at least, by the authorities). Thank God Dad knew a good lawyer. And that every last witness on the bus had sworn vehemently that Shaun and Katy had been minding their own business (aside from Katy’s comments on Research Paper Lady) before being attacked first, and that they’d prioritised saving the lives of said witnesses.
And then a sorcerer had opened up a sparkly portal in the bar while they were having drinks with a disbelieving Soo and John, and he’d called Shaun by name – his real name, which Katy was still learning to pronounce correctly – and invited the pair to a conference call with two of the fucking Avengers.
Months later, Katy was still stunned to unlock her phone, go to her contacts list, and see names like Hawkeye, Bruce Banner, and Ant-Man in there. She and Shaun regularly had dinner with Ant-Man and his family once every couple of weeks, and sometimes she was forcibly reminded that the dorky dad doing card tricks at the end of the table was the same giant man who burst out of the harbour and almost capsized their ferry six years ago. Or that the woman rolling her eyes at him could shrink down and get into anyplace and kick your ass literally without you seeing it coming.
But the biggest shock, the one that hit her harder than all of them combined, came when she was at home watching TV with her family, about five months after the Bus Incident. It was Waipo’s birthday, and they were celebrating. Katy had just come back from a three-week trip to the Barton Homestead in Iowa, getting some archery instruction from the retired (“For real this time, damn it!”) Hawkeye. Even Aunt Melinda had managed to get time off her super-secretive, super-busy government job and come over for a visit. One person who was not there, however, was Shang (a compromise between ‘Shaun’ and ‘Shangqi’ that only Katy was allowed to use). He had gotten called in to deal with some Avenging business, and thus had to bail out of the party at the last minute.
Still, they’d had a pretty festive mood going until Ruihua noticed that the TV (always set to the news on mute if no one was actively watching anything) was showing footage of the Avengers battling it out with some alien douchebags who had believed Thanos was in the right and only escaped being dusted by Stark’s Snap due to not actually being part of the purple bastard’s army.
(None of this information was on the news; Katy was only filled in during the agonising wait for the Quinjet later.)
The cameras were on the new Captain America at first, occasionally focusing on the ever-elusive Winter Soldier, but then they caught sight of the ‘Red Dragon’, as the press had started calling him. With his red armour’s scaled ‘pattern’ (they were keeping the fact that it was actual dragonscale under wraps, for obvious reasons), and the fiery-orange glow of the Rings under his command, it was pretty darn on the nose, and Shang found he liked it. He was a little less fond of the storm of media attention that came with it. A decade of keeping his head down out of fear – no, terror – that he would be forcibly dragged back into a life of darkness and murder had left its mark on him, one that did not just go away overnight, or even after a few months of that danger being neutralised.
Still, there was no doubt that he was one of the more captivating Avengers to watch whenever they fought out in the open. Katy liked to think it was the shininess of the Rings drawing the reporters’ attention, like how laser pointers attract animals and small children. And in this instance, that meant that there were at least three different cameras on him, capturing three different angles of Katy’s best friend in the whole world getting impaled from behind by an alien’s spear.
Later, Katy would swear that her heart had stopped beating for a moment.
(Later, after finding out Shaun was going to be fine, Ruihua would swear that her shocked scream had left him temporarily deaf in one ear.)
The whole trip to the new Avengers Compound was more or less a blur. Everyone had been talking around her, Aunt Melinda had made some calls, and then Wong had opened up a portal for her to come through.
(It wasn’t until after the whole mess was over that Katy made the connection between the latter two and started asking her aunt some serious questions.)
Thanks to the literal magic portal, she actually arrived before the Avengers’ Quinjet returned. Katy was instructed to wait until they deboarded, but her restraint only lasted until the jet’s rear hatch began to open. She sprinted across the grass, elbowing one agent (or helper or whatever his job was) with a move Hope had taught her when he tried to stop her, and jumped onto the ramp before it even finished lowering.
Luckily, the one closest to the exit was Barnes, as he was the Avenger with the fastest reflexes and was therefore the only one actually quick enough to get out of her way with so little warning. Katy only paused when she realised she had never been on one of these things and wasn’t sure where to go, until she spotted the shiny red of Shang’s armour, neatly folded on the floor next to the wall to one side with no Shang wearing it. The dragonscale staff, rope dart, and knives that he’d been permitted to bring from Ta Lo were also there, all neatly stacked together next to the armour.
The Ten Rings were next to them.
Wilson didn’t even bother to argue with her presence. He just calmly approached and gently steered her over to another portion of the jet, out of view of the hatch, where her best friend was lying on a stretcher, pale and clearly in pain, but also clearly awake. A thick wrap of white bandages encircled his torso, with a dark red stain on the spot where she had seen the alien’s spear ripping through his stomach.
“Oh my God,” she gasped, falling to her knees at his side, “How are- What- How-”
“Hey,” he breathed, his voice and his face both tight with pain, “It’s okay. I’m-”
“No, you do not get to say you’re fine, Xu Shangqi! I saw you get shish-kabobbed on live TV! You scared the shit out of me, you know that?!”
“Uh… Sorry?”
A finger tapped on her shoulder, and Katy whipped around to glare at Wilson, who was still standing over her. “He’s gonna be fine,” the new Captain America informed her, “Didn’t hit anything vital. But we still need to get him to the infirmary, so you’ll have to continue yelling at him on the move.”
As long as she still got to tell her idiot bestie off for scaring her, Katy was fine with that. She stayed by Shang’s side as they wheeled his gurney out of the Quinjet and into the building, all the way up to their medical centre. And all the while, she berated him about how he’d scared her, how he’d nearly given her a heart attack, how he could’ve died, how he’d scared her… Okay, so she was repeating herself a lot.
“You know…” he wheezed when she finally stopped to take a breath, “You almost sound like your mom, there.”
Katy gasped. “Bite your tongue! Just you wait until you’re all healed up, Mister, ‘cause then I’m gonna smack you so hard… God, is this gonna be the rest of my life? Freaking out every time you get hurt on some dumb-ass Avenging thing? I swear, Shang, if I die of a heart attack because of you…”
Shang snorted, and even though the act was enough to make him wince in pain again, he still mustered enough energy to fire back. “Well, you’ve given me at least five in the past ten years, so…”
“Goddammit.”
THE END