-December 1992-
I'm in the middle of a training session. They let me into the Triad, so I'm working very hard to earn it. I've already gotten three teachers to quit. Apparently they don't like it when you stab them with a knife.
I was just training.
I see Zhishan walking in with a young girl. She looks about 12 years old. Her hair is a shade of dark brown, almost black, except for a lock of white hair.
"Kate. I want to introcuce you to someone." Zhishan says in Chinese. He never speaks Chinese to me, so I assume the girl doesn't speak English.
I grab a towel to wipe a bit of sweat off my forhead, afterwards I go to the girl and hold out my hand. "Kate Rory."
She hesitantly shakes it. "Chien Na Wei."
Zhishan goes straight to the point. "Chien is going to live with us."
My eyes widen a bit in suprise. "She is?" I ask, still in Chinese.
"Yes." Then he gets a phonecall. "Kate could you take her to her room, I have to take this. She'll be sleeping in the room across from yours."
I nod and throw the towel in the laundry basket. "Follow me." I tell her.
I lead her through the many hallways that I've come to learn out of my head. I stop at the blue door across from my green one. I open it and let her in. "Do you speak English?" I ask her in English.
She gives me a confused look, so I switch back to Chinese. "I'll take that as a no."
"What was the question?" She asks.
"If you speak English."
"No."
I shrug and sit down in the chair across from the bed. She sits down on the bed. I decide to just ask it. "How did you end up here?"
She sighs. "Some people at school were bullying me and I did this thing in response that really suprised me. I encountered Zhishan, who said he could teach me to be stronger so no one would hurt me again. And now I'm here."
'To be stronger so no one would hurt me again.' That sounds familiar. That's almost exacly what he said to me. I drop it and focus on the story. "Why were they bullying you?"
"Because I look different." She replies, pointing at the strand of white hair she has. "Zhishan said that I'd feel different when I come with him, but I don't."
This gives me a crazy idea. I run to the lab to get this bucket filled with hydrogen peroxide. Then I run back to the blue room and give it to Chien.
She looks confused. "What is this?"
"Hydrogen peroxide." I reply. "Ms. Ngan thaught me that if you soak your hair in it, your hair turns white. I bet you'll feel very different."
She looks shocked at first, but then a smile forms on her face. "Let's do it."
---
-Present-
Sara is teaching me how to fly the ship. It's actually more fun than I expected. "Gently." She reminds me, while I race through the temporal zone.
I laugh. "What's the fun in that?"
She rolls her eyes, but I can see she's enjoying this. Then a sudden hard blow on my head causes me to go unconsious. Why does this keep happening?
---
We're all in the office that now belongs to Sara, I guess. "... And then I turned to steel and knocked her out." Nate finishes his story. "Wait, how did I turn to steel?"
Haircut answers him. "Well, probably because I used the so called 'super-serum' on you."
Nate turns to him in shock. "You injected me with Nazi serum!?"
"Which I'd redesigned to quintuple my own strength and transform my skin into an alloy a hundred times stronger than steel." He explains himself.
"Steel. That's a cool name." Chucky says. He's eating another sandwich.
"Yeah, especially since my grandfather was called Commandor Steel. But what does that make me? Corporal Steel? Mr. Steel? Citizen Steel?"
"Captain Steel?" I suggest, playing along. Chucky opens his sandwich in front of me. I see the sprouts, take them and eat them. I've always been that weird kid that likes Brussels sprouts.
"Who cares? You got superpowers now dude." The kid says excitedly.
Nate ruins the fun. "Except I don't know how I turned to steel in the first place."
"Ray'll teach you." Sara tells him. "And Kate will help."
"We will?" Me and Haircut ask at the same time.
"Kate can fight and Ray, you said it yourself, you redesigned the serum."
Haircut is still not convinced (neither am I). "Which I did beautifully, but it's not like I have some sort of instruction manual."
"Guess you'll have to wing it." She replies. "Now I'm gonna have a chat with our stowaway."
Then she walks away, giving me a quick peck on my lips on her way out. I mean I'm happy for her that she's captain, but I liked it better when Grim Reaper was captain. He didn't trust me, so he never gave me any responsibilities. If I wanted to, I could just do nothing all day.
Nate turns to me and Haircut. "This is gonna be so much fun."
"So how about we train in the cargo bay." I suggest, not planning on letting the steel boy destroy my gym.
"Sure." He replies.
"Coming with." The kid says behind us.
We walk through the halls of the ship, down the stairs, to the cargo bay. Nate speaks up. "When I was a kid, I used to play JSA versus Nazis with my dolls. Well, they were action figures, really. But it doesn't matter 'cause I got superpowers now and it's awesome." He makes a quick jump at that last part.
I start speaking fancy, because why not? "So I'm guessing your powers manifested as a result of a heightened adrenal response."
The kid translates. "Basically, Amaya threatened you and you reacted."
Haircut has a glove of his suit on, one that's definetly capable of shooting an energy blast. "So now what we need to do is duplicate the conditions which caused you to, you know, steel on?"
Nate still hasn't seen the glove. "Wait, so you wanna threaten me?"
I sit down on one of the crates, while Haircut points his glove gun at him. "Not exacly."
"Wait, let's discus this." Nate tries, but Haircut doesn't listen and just shoots him.
The first time he misses, but this gives Nate the opportunity to steal up. Haircut puts on his whole suit and starts shooting at him, while I monitor Nate's vitals. The kid sits down next to me, enjoying the show.
"I bet you 20 bucks Ray wins this." The kid says to me.
"You're on." I reply.
Haircut keeps shooting him. "Yeah, come on!" Kid cheers.
I look at my tablet to see Nate's vitals are perfect.
"If grandpa Heywood could see me now." Nate says.
I notice Sara and Amaya walked in. They say something to each other, but I'm not listening. In the meantime, Haircut shoots Nate with both his arms at the same time. It doesn't do anything though. Then Nate punches Haircut, which causes him to fall on his back.
"I know you not gonna take that Ray. Go crush this Tin man." Kid encourages him.
I do the same for Nate. "You got this Steel boy!"
Haircut bumps into him with all of his force, but Nate doesn't even move. "Nice try."
"Come on." Haircut mumbles.
Nate bumps into Haircut, which causes him to get thrown back against the bulkhead door. The door opens, so we all reach for something to hold on to.
"Hold on, I'll close it." Nate says. He tries to close it, but instead he gets sucked into the temporal zone. Damn it.
Haircut shouts after him. "Nate!"
"Ray get inside!" Sara shouts. "We have to close the door!"
Then he shows that stupid heroism. "No, I gotta go after him." After saying this, he lets go and flies into the temporal zone too.
"Gideon, shut the cargo door!" I shout. She listens and does it. She's growing on me.
We run to the bridge, except for the kid, who runs to the engine room with my tablet. When we get on the bridge, professor egghead and my brother are already sitting there.
"What's happening to the ship?" Egghead asks.
Sara uses the control panels to connect with my tablet. "Jax, what's our status?"
"I've rerouted power from the secondary manifolds." He replies.
"Where are Dr. Palmer and Dr. Heywood?" Egghead asks.
I answer him. "Did you check out the window?"
He's just more confused now. "What?"
"How is it you people haven't managed to kill yourselves yet?" Amaya asks.
"The day is still you." Chucky replies.
There are a couple of sparks above us, so Sara turns back to the kid. "Jax?"
"Yeah, I'm working on it."
The ship finally stabilizes. "Gideon, I need you to track down Ray and Nate and take us to their position." Sara says.
"The compression caused us to lose corrective altitude, which put too much strain on the station-keeping thrusters." She replies.
"For God's sake, say it how it is. We're screwed." Chucky grunts.
That's what she does. "We're screwed."
So I stand up and walk out, heading towards the Galley.
---
After my noon licorice session, I go to my room to play a videogame. Gideon got me a PlayStation so I'm playing Minecraft, because why not?
So now it's night and I'm being chased by zombies. I didn't notice Sara walked in until she speaks up from behind me. "Here you are. Jax fixed the ship. We're going to Japan."
But I ignore her, I'm really focussed on not getting eaten.
"Hello? Hello?"
She says a couple of other things that I'm not listening to. In the meanwhile, on Minecraft I make the genial decision to dig a hole in the ground and hide there. But the hole is too deep, so I end up falling into an underground cave. Suprise, suprise, it's filled with zombies. Before I can get my sad wooden sword, I'm dead.
I throw the controller against the wall in frustration, while making a grunt that sounds too much like my brother for my liking.
I feel two soft hands on my shoulders. I look behind me to see Sara sat down on the bed and is now giving me a massage. I lean back against the edge of the bed.
"It's just a game." She reminds me. I honestly already forgot about the videogame.
"Mmm." I moan softly, not taking the time to come up with a worthy response to that.
"Are you coming with, baby?" She asks.
I do my best to come up with a good reply this time. "Yes."
She let's go now. "Remember the clothes you were wearing when we went to fight Genghis Khan?"
I nod, not sure where she's going with this.
She opens my side of the closet and grabs them. "They're mine now." Then she walks out.
I chuckle, open her side of the closet and take the clothes she was wearing then.
Chucky gives us a weird look when he sees our clothes, but he doesn't say anything about it.
"How can you bring a thug on a rescue mission?" Amaya asks as Sara, Chucky and I walk through the halls. "I know Kate is all right but Mick... I've known men like you. Men who take and prey on the week."
I'm really starting to hate her. I'm just constantly reminding myself that Chucky can stick up for himself.
And that's what he does. Ish. "Listen girly, I'm risking my neck for two morons wo fell out of a ship. Why? 'Cause they'd do the same for me."
"Why are you on the ship?" I ask her.
"'Cause I'm a member of the Justice Society of America." She replies. "It's my job to protect everyone."
"Except for my brother." I point out.
"Yeah, you snuck up behind me and sliced my throat like a ninja." Chucky adds.
"There's no such thing as ninja's you idiot." Amaya says.
"Tell that to Chuck Norris." I reply.
"Who's that?" She asks.
"And I'm the idiot?" Chucky grunts.
"And by the way I'm not your girly." Amaya spats at him.
Sara turns around. She clearly had enough of this. "All right if you three don't quit your squabbling, I'm going to maroon you in a time period of my choosing. Together."
I wonder if she would actually go through with it. I know she's really good at repressing and not showing her feelings, but that good? I decide not to test it. I just give Amaya a warning glare and then follow Sara to fuedal Japan.