Chapter 68
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Night. The restless, shifting, intoxicating light of enormous bonfires and torches. A circle formed by dozens of people standing shoulder to shoulder. Earth beaten down to the hardness of stone. Two figures stand at the center. Tall, broad-shouldered, bare to the waist. Their bodies ripple with muscle, and their faces are locked into predatory snarls.
Two of us. Me and Yui.
I mean, how could the Head of the Martial Arts Federation visit the Head of a closed family Martial Arts School and not fight? That would just be boring. Wouldn't it?
In truth, this was a friendly sparring match. Yui just likes theatrical effects. And it gives the people a celebration. Bread and circuses — a classic. The "bread" side of things was well covered here: a tropical paradise, tourism, shrimp farms, lobster breeding, pearl oysters, sea grapes, fishing… transit of narcotics from China to the US military base and onward into the States. Transit of weapons from the States into China, Taiwan, North Korea, Japan. And now — the circuses.
The Founder of the Clan: Great-Grandfather Creed — the story about the Gift of Kami gets told to small children up until they're about twelve or fourteen. And to outsiders. Those who belong, once they grow up, come to understand the actual state of affairs, but they still don't mention it out loud unnecessarily. It's taboo — had come to visit the Elder of the Clan: Grandfather Creed. The Clan had cause to celebrate!
Grandfather Creed challenges Great-Grandfather Creed: the young Wolf tests his teeth against the old Wolf, checking whether those fangs and claws have gone dull, whether it's time for him to step aside. Double the celebration!
A step toward each other, and the young Wolf throws the first strike — a spinning jump kick. Powerful, fast, beautiful. Yui is good.
But the strike finds no target, because I flow around him like water and end up behind my son. He doesn't stop the attack and hits again — a straight back strike. I flow around that one too. Then a short sweep takes out his supporting leg. Yui converts the fall into a jump and breaks distance, rolling immediately to change direction and attacking again, this time low — a fist driving up toward the jaw. The strike is powerful, fast, nearly invisible, but it finds no target either. Neither does the next one. Nor the one after that. Nor the one after that.
Yui is good. Very good.
But I'm better. More capable, more formidable, stronger. Faster and more experienced. And it shows. I'm even taller than him. To say nothing of the four artificial enhancements to my body, the capabilities of the "jump" and the "freeze-frame"… and the magic, which I can now deploy as a weapon of last resort. I'm certain few would survive if I repeated that first and only spell of mine.
But that's not the point. I'm not trying to win. Because Yui lost from the very beginning: "The one who attacks a Master of Aikido does not lose because he attacked too slowly, without enough force, incorrectly, or at the wrong moment — he loses simply because he attacked." Yui had struck first. And I am a Master of Aikido. Even if I don't consider myself worthy to teach that art to others, even if the understanding of the Ai-Ki path that O-Sensei possessed is beyond my reach, I had studied the principles of Ai-Ki and its foundational technique as if possessed — eighteen years under O-Sensei's guidance. My sixth dan was not given to me for my pretty eyes.
I'm not trying to win or prove anything to anyone — that's not the point. This fight, this sparring match, is our way of speaking. Mine with Yui, ours with the Pack, with our children and grandchildren who have gathered here tonight and are watching us in the unsteady light of the bonfires. We are not fighting. We are dancing. We are having a conversation.
I could end this fight with a single blow, or a single asae, but I don't. And we keep moving in the light of these fires and torches. No electric light, no roof overhead — only living flame, only sky, only wind and sea.
The blood boils in the veins. The pack members surrounding us begin to stamp their feet in rhythm. Yui and I go still, and then we roar — a thunderous, animal roar directed at each other, the kind only we can produce. Lupines. If the Marvel canon is to be believed. If it is, then all of us — me, Logan, and of course my children — are descendants of Romulus. We are one bloodline. True, I killed Romulus. But that's how the laws of the Pack work: he challenged me, and he was the weaker one.
Our roar is taken up by hundreds of throats — the Creeds who have gathered this night. It is terrifying. It is awe-inspiring. It is exhilarating. It sets the blood ablaze.
Yui and I step out of the circle, and the next pair takes our place. Blows exchanged, again and again, and then a roar. These two are shorter than ours, and less striking, but that's to be expected — if they'd done it better, they'd have been the Firsts, not us. Then another pair. Then another.
The last to step out was Natasha. She couldn't help herself either. And she stepped out with Tatsumi. The fight was beautiful. Tatsumi was every bit Romanova's equal in speed and strength — in fact, he surpassed her. But Natasha had better technique. It was evident.
And after the fight and the separation, Tatsumi let out a roar no lesser than any that had come before him.
Why not? Not every Creed grows up to be built like a wardrobe, and hair can always be dyed. It made perfect sense for the Clan to have their own people on the other islands as well. In the power structures. A small family business needs cover, after all. And who else would have warned Yui in advance that I was flying into Okinawa? Obviously him. And obviously I had known. Otherwise I wouldn't have been so candid with Natasha on the plane.
Somewhat naturally, I found Suo beside me — she had apparently managed to arrive by portal just in time for our celebration — and pulled her close in greeting.
After that came dancing, songs, more dancing, more songs… and passionate sex. At least, that was true for Suo and me. I wasn't keeping track of everyone else.
Later, lying in the guest house on the warm, soft floor, with Suo's head resting on my shoulder, I stared at the ceiling and let myself remember. I was remembering forty-five.
I had been here, after all, during the battle with the Americans. I had told Erik I was going away on business for a couple of months, didn't specify where, and jumped to Okinawa. Why? What drove me? It was simple enough: I remembered the history of Vasya-Sensei's world, remembered what had been done to Okinawa in that world. Not in great detail, of course — the Japanese-American War isn't exactly taught in depth in Russian schools, just an overview: a couple of key dates, some figures, nothing more. But I remembered that much. And because of that, I couldn't abandon my children to be torn apart by someone else's enemies.
Say what you will — I'm a lousy father. Objectively, that's true. But I turned out to be a good Pack Leader in a combat situation. On our Great Hunt. And yes, I have too many children to ever be close with all of them, but they are MY children. And I will not allow anyone to kill them. To shell them from naval guns, demolishing their homes, taking the lives of their families and loved ones.
Not everyone survived that month. We gathered a hundred and twenty-seven Creeds, literally piece by piece. The remains of seven were never found at all.
The pieces that were found were laid together in piles — but no. Only three came back to life. The rest were buried in a large family crypt that was specially built at that time.
A deliberate choice was made not to bury them in the ground or cremate them: on the chance that a miracle might happen and some of them might "reassemble" themselves over time. That way, all they'd need to do was push open a lightweight plywood coffin lid and step back into the light. But no — not one of them has revived since. Thirty-five years have passed. And every year, Yui descends into the crypt and carefully checks every coffin.
And the strangest thing of all — the remains don't decay. They lie exactly as they were placed.
Forty-five. It was terrifying here. Almost like forty-two outside Moscow, accounting for the climate and geography. The Americans had assembled a genuinely enormous force that time: destroyers, aircraft carriers, marines, fighters and bombers. A hundred and thirty thousand men. A hundred and thirty thousand. Just think about that number. That's so Zen — how many that is.
And a hundred and eighty thousand Japanese. Also… not a small number. So what can two and a half thousand mutant fighters accomplish in those conditions? Quite a lot, as it turns out. They can be decisive.
Everyone has heard of the Divine Wind. Of the Kamikaze. That was us. Not all of them, of course — there were ordinary men among them too. Patriots. A shame about them.
But here's what I'll say: the second time you steer a Ohka bomb into the side of a destroyer, you do it better. And by the third and fourth time, you don't miss at all. You choose your impact point deliberately, not just crashing anywhere, but calculating maximum effect. And angling yourself so the blast throws you out into the sea, away from the wreck.
In ground defense we were an absolute nightmare for the Yankees. Bullets don't work on us. In close combat, no one has a chance against us — not shapeshifters, not vampires, and they were there in that battle too, naturally. And on top of all that, the islands were home ground. We knew every stone, every tree, every shrub. A Lupine in the jungle — you couldn't design a worse enemy.
And we swim well. Underwater. Far and long. With a heavy mine in a bag on our backs.
So yes — decisive. And we decided things decisively.
But a hundred and thirty thousand is still a great many. And it was terrifying. If our psyche weren't half-animal, we would've lost our minds entirely. But as it was… we held. We held the line. We held ourselves together. And we left not one invader alive on our soil.
After I returned to the Alps, my inner Beast slept peacefully for another ten years — it had gotten that much of the bloodlust it needed. The Beast — that's a problem with my descendants, by the way. They all have an absolute vital need to let off steam from time to time. To break free from the suffocating confines of civilization, to shed every social restriction, to taste blood. That's why Yui holds these savage night celebrations. And sometimes real blood does flow in that circle — arms and legs torn off each other, throats torn out. And several live cattle or bulls are always ripped apart after the fights. Some roast the meat. Some eat it raw, right there. That's a matter of personal preference.
That's why they don't allow outsiders to their "sabbaths." Not even the most renowned fighters, not even super-soldiers five times over. An exception was made for Natasha. And only because Tatsumi had stepped into the circle with her, and he controls his Beast better than any of the rest of us. Tatsumi — he's only a week younger than Yui, in reality. And in strength he falls behind him by very little, if at all. Same with skill. What he showed in the circle… well, it wasn't as though he was going to kill the girl, was it? And why not let her shine a little? The truth is, in forty-five he tore apart more than a thousand American soldiers — with his bare hands and with weapons alike. He made five sorties on the Ohka bomb before the planes ran out. Swam the mining missions eight times. Only I did more. And today he is the Head of all Creed intelligence operations in Japan.
He personally asked to bring Natasha into the circle with him. On his own responsibility. She had caught his eye. Yui and I had no objections. We trust a son's and a brother's word. Hm — I'm certain that Tatsumi and Romanova are somewhere at this hour tumbling together in the heated bedroom continuation of the dance they began in the circle.
They're both adults. They'll sort themselves out. Besides, I remembered that in the canon, the Black Widow had trouble with conception. In this world… I hadn't asked. I should ask, actually. If it's relevant, I'm not stingy with the serum. And I can put together the Vita-rays in no time, that doesn't take long. Actually, it was past time to bring her fully into the fold — the girl is talented. She already knows too many of my secrets. That won't do.
Speaking of the serum — Yui and I hadn't tried it on the remains of the fallen yet. What if God is willing, and Buddha isn't offended by the thought? Maybe it would actually work.
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