You can read early chapters in advance on my [P].[A].[T].[R].[E].[O].[N].
Link: [email protected]/Arson09
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Ethan wouldn't have intervened in this investigation if Dyer's accomplice hadn't invoked his name. His simple policy—to stay out of the business of others—was more for his own sake than anyone else's. He knew that once he started policing every crook, it would be impossible to know where to draw the line. At the state level? A national level? Or perhaps the entirety of the globe?
People rarely change; there will always be another crime to solve and another murderer to prosecute. It is an endless cycle. On some level, Ethan was unwilling to shoulder that kind of responsibility for the sake of his own peace of mind. He already hunted curses on a daily basis, which was a heavy enough burden.
Of course, if he encountered a thug during his cursed hunting, he would stop them—no questions asked. In every new city he visited, he sent his numerous Chimera Samsara to the local hospitals to heal the sick—again, no questions asked.
He had received offers of hundreds of millions of dollars to provide his services. One particular group had even offered him billions just to reveal the secret behind his abilities.
Because he didn't maintain a forwarding email or any social media presence, most of these contracts remained open-ended. He ignored the vast majority of them, but there were exceptions—specifically cases involving children and infants.
Ethan was a man of simple means, even in his past life. He needed three meals a day, and a bed to sleep on at night.
Between the Stark stocks he had acquired during the dip of 2008 and his original income from Kamar-Taj, he lived comfortably.
After completing his morning routine and a quick shower, he headed toward Mid-Wilshire. He had to stifle a laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation; Rosalind Dyer had kidnapped a woman and apparently believed that would be enough to force him into doing her bidding.
He arrived at the precinct and sank into the shadows, moving unseen toward the main briefing room where the officers were gathered. He caught the tail end of their meeting—specifically the part where they discussed placing him under arrest.
'Tora?' Ethan called out through their mental link.
'I will need to be in the immediate vicinity of that woman for at least a minute to extract specific memories,' Tora replied smoothly.
'You will have them,' Ethan assured him, slipping out of the shadows and onto the ceiling.
Ethan remained there for a full five seconds before someone finally looked up.
'Finally,' he thought.
"And how, exactly, do you plan on accomplishing that?" he asked, using his 'normal' voice.
'Are you deepening your voice, Ethan?' Tora questioned as he, too, began to slip out from his shadow.
'Deepening my voice? This is my original voice. Stop wasting time and go find her,' Ethan replied, sounding a little more defensive than he intended.
Ethan pushed off the ceiling, executing a seamless 180-degree mid-air rotation before landing gracefully on his feet.
However, before Ethan could transition into his next move, Bradford lunged from his blind spot with arms wide in a standard tackle position, driving into him with every ounce of his strength.
"A wall ? " Bradford questioned, staring at Ethan with genuine bewilderment as he retreated to create distance after the failed tackle. He immediately leveled his weapon and fired his taser directly at Ethan's chest.
Ethan blocked the incoming projectile with a wave of his arm and glanced down at his right arm where the taser leads had made solid contact, then pointed a casual finger back at the officer.
"Do I know you? I am notoriously terrible at remembering a guy's face... but I have a distinct feeling I have seen you somewhere before."
Bradford looked confounded; there should be approximately 2,000 volts of electricity coursing through Park's nervous system. Why wasn't he convulsing on the floor?
He was about to respond when Captain Andersen's authoritative voice cut through the tension. "Mr. Park, I strongly advise you to come in willingly. This situation will go much smoother for everyone involved if you cooperate."
"Your guy attacked me first!" Ethan exclaimed, gesturing toward Bradford.
From the side, Nolan stepped forward. "Well, you did appear in the middle of a police briefing room without warning. Officer Bradford was following standard protocol... actually, no, there is no protocol for this specific scenario." Nolan seemed momentarily confused by his own logic.
"Fair point," Ethan replied, shifting his gaze to the speaker. "Aye, you... I remember you.
Small world, no? You're the guy who saved those women during the Chitauri Invasion." Ethan spoke with one hand thoughtfully on his chin.
"You remember me?" Nolan asked, a visible smile breaking across his face.
"Yes, yes... I never forget the brave one's." And indeed, he was; Ethan's Rabbit Escape shikigami had reported that this man, after securing those women in a library, had immediately ventured back out into the chaos to rescue more people.
"You're a cop, huh? I guess that makes sense."
Nolan was about to clarify that he hadn't been an officer back then, but Ethan had already turned his attention back to the group.
John looked at Lopez, who was maintaining a hard stare, though something in her eyes had shifted. A hint of respect, perhaps?
"Come on, guys... we're supposed to be on the same team here," Ethan remarked, glancing at the wall of officers surrounding him. "We all want to save the kidnapped women. Just tell your superiors that I forced your hand. I'll play the villain; I can certainly work with that." Ethan added the last part as he caught a single bead of sweat rolling down the Sergeant's forehead.
"Heh... and if I refuse to play along?" Captain Andersen challenged.
"Oh, then I will simply have to force you," Ethan replied, offering her an unsettlingly innocent smile.
The moment those words left his mouth, every officer unhooked their holsters and trained their service weapons on him.
"Okay, that is quite enough out of you. I don't care if the world thinks you're some hero; nobody threatens the Captain while standing in this precinct." Officer Lopez was the one who spoke, her sidearm pressed firmly against Ethan's temple.
'I have the location of the girl. It's done, Ethan,' Tora shared through their mental link.
"Chingona! Aye!" Ethan chirped, glancing at Officer Lopez. "You know what they say: never mess with an angry Latina."
He would know he had spent a considerable amount of time exorcising curses in New Mexico during an outbreak early this year.
Though As the last word left his mouth, he activated Eclipse, vanishing instantly through shadow manipulation. The room fell into a stunned silence.
"Did you... did you just make the guy who tanked my 2,000-volt taser retreat by using your heritage?" Bradford questioned, clearly bewildered. "And what is up with his abilities? I thought it was just animals and healing?" This question was directed at the Captain, who looked just as perplexed.
Across the distant skyline, Ethan flickered into existence, with Tora manifesting from his shadow. The reason he had made such a scene at Mid-Wilshire was simple: there was a small chance that even Rosalind Dyer didn't know the exact location of the victims.
In that case, he would have had to comply with her demands. But it seemed her obsessive need to control every detail had been her downfall in this scenario.
"What is it, Tora?" Ethan asked, sensing his lingering unease.
"She could sense me, Ethan. She looked directly at me while I was performing the spell," Tora explained.
There was silence for a moment.
"It's not that unusual. There are always those who can perceive cursed energy slightly better than most," Ethan mused after some thought.
"Hmm... I never thought a human could be more creepy than a curse," Tora added.
"You underestimate my kind, Tora," Ethan replied.
Tora swung his arm in a circular motion, manifesting a shimmering Sling Ring portal. "Anyway, let's go save that woman," Tora said as he sank back into his shadow.
"Rosalind's accomplice is a man named Caleb Wright. He has assumed the identity of one Ryan Coleman, who happens to own this zoo," Tora explained as they stepped through the front gate of the abandoned facility.
As they made there way inside, Ethan spotted a worn-down cabin roughly a hundred feet inside the dilapidated complex. "The path here is well-trodden, and the doorknob is polished from use," Ethan noted, kneeling to inspect the dirt trail that veered off the main concrete path.
"That means it's been accessed frequently," Tora added.
"There is definitely a Ted Kaczynski vibe around this cabin," Ethan replied grimly.
Then they heard it—shallow, ragged breathing—and the metallic scent of blood hit their nostrils. "I'll take the back, you take the front. We breach in five seconds," Ethan signaled to Tora.
He and Tora moved into position. He mentally counted down while checking the handle; the door was locked. When he reached five, he used shadow manipulation to phase through the rear entrance, while Tora did the same from the front.
They were moving with such caution because they had sensed two distinct presences inside. Caleb Wright was there, in the immediate vicinity of the woman, likely in the middle of tattooing her.
Ethan navigated the interior; the cabin was cluttered with old zoo equipment, cages, and rusted incubators stacked high to the ceiling. He moved toward the next room, noticing that Caleb hadn't even registered the breach, far too immersed in marking his next victim.
He was never going to let this woman go, was he? Ethan thought. Even if he had helped Roslind this women would likely be dead.
Rage simmered within him as he entered the final room. Plastic sheets were draped everywhere, heavily stained with blood. He spotted Tora arriving from the opposite hallway, and there they saw her: Nora Tropes, tied to a rusty metal bed frame with her tormentor hovering over her.
Caleb was wearing old-school headphones and remained oblivious even as Ethan stood just four feet away. Ethan cleared his throat.
Caleb spun around frantically. Realizing the gravity of his situation, he darted a glance toward a revolver sitting on a nearby desk. Ethan tracked the movement. "Go on. Maybe you'll make it."
Caleb lunged for the weapon. SWISH! At the last possible microsecond, Ethan activated Boogie Woogie, swapping the positions of Wright and Miss Tropes.
Suddenly, Caleb lay bound to the steel bed frame, while Nora Tropes stood where he had been. As she began to collapse from shock, Tora swept in, catching her in a princess carry. Tora looked at the bound Caleb, then down at Ethan.
"I would like to handle this one, boss," he said.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. "Those memories really got to you, didn't they?"
Memory extraction was always tricky,
Tora might have witnessed what Roslind did to her victim and what she and Caleb had planned for this Nora too.
Ethan made his way outside the cabin, the unconscious Miss Tropes floating gently behind him. Tora rarely asked of him, he would not deny his request.
Later that day, an anonymous 911 call was placed, providing the exact location of the zoo. What the authorities discovered was as gruesome as it was poetic.
They found Caleb Wright's body with the tattoo DOD251213 freshly inked on his skin. He was impaled by a single pole through his abdomen, though a medical examiner later confirmed the stake had meticulously missed every vital organ. Caleb had died a long, agonizing death.
Nora Tropes was found earlier that afternoon in the St. Stephen's Hospital ER ward. Her memory of the event remained hazy, but she repeatedly recalled one vivid detail: a tiger had come to her rescue.