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- UNCUT -

( Hey everyone. For better readability, here's the entirety of Sons of Theseus in a single post. Please note this is enormous, clocking in at over 7300 words, so brace for a mountain of text under the Read More. If you'd like a TL;DR version, click here, though it contains spoilers, naturally.

The icons indicate separate posts. Snakes = Bryan's POV, owls = Dragunov's.

As far as content warnings go, please be aware this contains, in no particular order: canon-typical violence, brief gory depictions, lots of foul language, war, pain, and death.

Likes and comments are very appreciated! Thank you for reading! )

- 𓆚 -

The world's largest celebration of an ex-corpse turned Hollywood Boulevard into a teeming sea of cheering crowds. Countless arms pumped and snatched at the rainbow of confetti snowing from the flawless blue sky. Excited screams punctuated the trumpets blaring from mariachi musicians stationed on rooftops like heralding angels. The day was seventy-five degrees with forty percent humidity.

The doors of the Chinese Theatre burst open and Bryan Fury stepped out into Southern Californian paradise. His audience roared with praise as he tugged the lapels of his suit jacket, his grin gleaming like the sun off his designer shades. Flanked by a cadre of slim supermodels in slim dresses, the cyborg descended amongst his adoring fans.

Arms spread wide, hands brushing and being brushed by jittering, shrieking devotees, he approached the blank concrete square in the sidewalk. Kneeling before it, he thought about what to inscribe. Simple was best. With a finger he drew his name, all caps, bigger and bolder than life with underlines like missile trails.

The crowd exploded, bodies bobbing in seismic waves as the music swelled to a crescendo. Bryan rose to his feet and thrust his fist skyward, a triumphant cry tearing from him that hundreds echoed back. Cameras flashed like starbursts while cannons cascaded streamers and silver glitter and a glowing warmth he hadn't felt in ages filled his mind. He was seen. He was known.

A pair of arms curled under his own, hands resting on his sternum. Bryan could recognize their scars anywhere. A face pressed briefly, affectionately, into the back of his shoulder, and lips softly brushed his ear.

"Well done, darling," Dragunov murmured.

Despite the postcard weather and rock concert crowd, the pit of Bryan's stomach turned to frost. Never once had he heard Sergei speak. That was not the soldier's voice. That was his own.

Pale fingers trailed over his throat.

Fury swung a punch behind him, and the vague shape there broke apart into streams of navy mist. The sounds and smells of the Walk of Fame felt as distant as his plummeting mood. What the fuck was that? He tried for steadying breaths, heartbeat pounding in his ears.

A heartbeat he did not have.

He looked to his entourage. They were nothing but smears of peach and tan, brushstrokes emulating hourglass figures and beehive wigs. Whirling back around, he saw his audience was a wall of faceless blotches and stains, an endless LSD trip projected on suffocating wildfire smoke. The music stuttered and skipped. Impossible. Wasn't it playing live?

Trying to blink the insane mirage from his eyes -- no use, it was still there, its cheers warped long and low into funerary wailing -- Bryan reached to remove his shades. Something larger than lenses stopped his fingers. Bulkier. Pulling on it, he felt it press against the back of his head. He grabbed the crown of his head, arms straining to rip his skull apart.

CRUN--

--nch.

Still breathing hard, it took Fury a moment to gather himself. He was in a small white room, standing on some sort of small round treadmill. Mechanical arms attached to the machine and hanging from tracks on the ceiling lashed cuffs around his ankles and wrists. In his hands were two pieces of some sort of helmet, cracked down the middle with technicolor wiring exposed.

Two men and a woman in white coats stared from an observation window, eyes wide and mouths agape with fear. A fourth researcher stood in the room with him, frozen in place, laptop clutched to her breast.

Bryan looked himself over. Left arm and right leg devoid of synthetic skin, check. Camo pants, check. Ocular HUD reporting normalizing respiration rate, adrenaline levels, and latency between brain and limbs, check, check, check.

He couldn't help but chuckle.

It had been a whirlwind, even by his standards. Receiving word from a Hollywood studio that wanted to tell his story was unexpected but interesting. He remembered walking into their office and shaking hands with the director -- yeah, that was him in the observation room, wearing a nametag from a private military company. They wanted to try a new technique, he said, a type of VR AI that captured and generated visuals from memories. Always willing to play my greatest hits, Bryan recalls saying. They'd strapped him in and turned it on. The next week had been a tour de force, carnage reimagined: gunning down insurgents in Middle Eastern deserts, plowing through waves of Zaibatsu even as his flesh tore like fishnets, a second extinction of the Manji clan.

Grinning, he loosed a nostalgic sigh. The little black box between his lungs was worth its weight in diamonds. He sent it a kind, simple query: where would I be without you?

He interpreted its response as followed: here, where you've been for the past one year, four months, and eleven days.

The researcher inched toward a door in the corner.

Still smiling, Bryan craned his head toward her. "Oh, you clever bastards," he muttered, and threw the broken helmet through the window, impacting the director's face with a spray of blood.

As he slumped to the ground, the others bolted. Seconds later the room was shrouded in red as an alarm blared. The woman with the laptop had her hand on the doorknob.

Pain exploded down her side as Bryan grabbed her shoulder and wrenched her close. She could feel his breath, hot and humid, on her neck. "No you don't," he snarled, "You have some explaining to do. Looks like I've been out of the loop for a while."

Guards are coming, she thought, trying to contain her panic and her bladder, It's okay, it'll be okay. The guards had guns. They'd take him out.

Yet he held her in front of him, his grip like iron. She had seen for herself Bryan's opinion on collateral damage.

Jackboots thundered closer.

His words were beetles in her ear: "Start talking."

- 𓅓 -

The Tattered Blackbird was one of many pubs in Kensington, yet as it came into view, Polya Dragunova's heart wedged itself in her throat. She cut across a gap in traffic and maneuvered past the businesspeople finished with work and waiting out rush hour milling on the sidewalk outside. The interior was worse, a veritable sardine can of twentysomething professionals reluctant to return to flats they shared with half a dozen of their peers. White collar gaggles blocked the typical pub decor from sight and a chorus of weekly gripes drowned the news on the TV over the bar. Polya didn't care about any of it. All that mattered to her was the man taking an entire booth to himself in the corner, sipping a pint like nothing was wrong.

Her brother.

Polya bowled her purse into the seat across from him hard enough to hit the wall with a heavy thud, and threw herself down right after. "Make it quick."

Sergei Dragunov steeled himself in the bottom of his glass. This was never going to be painless, but she needn't start swinging right off the bat. Fine. Very well. He could do quick. He tossed a yellow envelope onto the table, trying to ignore how his sister flinched.

She stared at it for a moment, then tore it open. The card inside was black, bordered in gold stars, YOU DID IT! printed under a paper mortarboard. Within were four salmon pink notes -- two hundred British pounds. She picked them up, watched their watermarks appear and hide in the light.

"What the fuck is this," she said.

Here we go, Sergei thought.

"No, really, what the fuck is this." Polya's features darkened to an apocalyptic scowl. "Is this a bribe? Are you fucking bribing me to talk to you? You could rob a fucking bank for me and I still wouldn't give you the time of day, you fucking fascist!"

Her volume was steadily rising. Dragunov could feel perplexed looks pointed toward their table.

She kept going. "I don't want your blood money. I don't want you in my life. I feel fucking stupid for even looking at your text. My graduation was really nice, you know? Going out with normal people, people who aren't war criminals. But then you drop out of the blue and my whole fucking week is ruined."

Sergei rubbed his brow, eyes squeezed shut, his other hand clutching his elbow. He had hoped otherwise, but couldn't deny the truth: this was a terrible mistake.

She was on her feet now, face livid, tossing the pounds at him. "No contact means no contact. How fucking dumb do you have to be to not get that?" Her voice was a bitter screech, every word a needle. "You're a drone. An ant. Disgusting. All you do is destroy -- innocent lives, my peace of mind, Mom's heart--"

"ENOUGH!"

The shout ripped from Dragunov's soul like a malfunctioning rocket, propelling him onto his feet and his fists onto the table. His throat immediately protested, nicotine-scented phlegm knotting in his windpipe. He couldn't breathe. What little air he could reach was spent on muddy, racking coughs until he was bent double, hacking black mucus into his palm.

A few pub patrons inched toward him, unsure about the situation but unwilling to watch him suffer. Sergei waved them off. Through blurred vision and blood pounding in his ears, he saw all eyes on him and Polya, stunned yet still trembling with rage.

It didn't matter. It didn't matter that he was protecting his home -- protecting her -- the only way he knew how, skimming money he could have easily spent on anything else for months to wish her the best. For someone who had spent four years mastering artistic expression, she refused to see an olive branch.

A long, loud tone blared from the TV. Breaking news. The general gaze turned toward the screen. Murmurs went up, hands clasped over mouths, cheeks drained of color.

Across an ocean, a city burned, and a demon proclaimed the end of the world.

Polya glanced between the broadcast and her brother. A curious paradox: he was right there, and so was the rest of the pub, yet seemed separated by lightyears. The thing on the television, the warning crawl about falling satellite debris, on the other hand, was as close as a dangling guillotine blade. And as her worldview sat on the chopping block, more than anything else, she felt very, very alone.

She looked for Sergei. The front door slammed, and he was gone.

- 𓆚 -

The Colosseum was an apt place to hold the Tournament. No amount of time could cleanse it from a history of bloodshed. Built to commemorate imperial power, a new emperor now sat at its head, eking judgements on nations from the fists and feet of their finest gladiators.

Not like Bryan cared. What the Colosseum needed, in his humble opinion, was some extra defacing.

Any wall would do, really. The one he was walking past now? Perfect. Ocular lenses flaring to compensate for the low light in the hypogeum tunnels, a smirk turned his lip as he pressed his finger against the stone. Simple was best. His name, a permanent mark on the world wonder, all caps, bigger and bolder than...

--shit.

The cyborg dropped his hand, his amusement extinguished like a match. He'd just done that. The memory of Hollywood was still fresh in his mind, even though it'd been a dream. Right? He'd felt the sun on his face. Smelled the perfume of his entourage. Reaching out, he stroked the wall. The rock was rough under his touch. He heard the spectators in the stands above calling for the next fight. This -- this was real. This was the King of Iron Fist Tournament! This was as real as it got! Combat against the best of the best for the highest stakes imaginable!

--which meant this very well could be an illusion too. If he could think it, there was a real possibility it was not real.

Bryan groaned, leaving the wall to its own devices. Life was better when I just killed people, he thought, I am never dealing with those fucks at Netflix again.

Turning a corner, he saw a group of men in military fatigues ahead. He heard the language they spoke, saw the flag patch on their shoulders. In their midst, leaning on his knees in a folding chair, uniform blue as an arctic sea, was Dragunov.

Fury froze. If this was all scripted, Sergei was the exact person who would make an entrance at this time. What was the next play? Approaching him fell right in line with whatever virtual plot was unfolding, if there even was one, but Bryan couldn't ignore him either. Breaking this chain of events would only cause new ones to form...

--if he was still being force-fed lies. Or was life simply chugging on?

--shit.

This was ridiculous. Why did it disturb him so much? Ultimately, there was no correct choice.

But there was a fun one.

Swaggering up to the convoy, Bryan grinned as chitchat died and hands flew to holstered guns. "Hey there, sunshine," he said, "Hah. You look like hell."

With the weight and chill of icebergs, Dragunov levelled a narrow stare at him. Bryan didn't remember him being so pale. Perhaps it was the contrast with the dirt on his clothes, the bruises on his face.

"Bet Shaheen looks worse," Fury continued, "Beat him half to death, didn't you. I'm sure he'll be fine. His country, though? You opened it up to the Zaibatsu's nasty little claws. A lot of people are going to die, Drag."

Expression unchanging, the Russian picked up a canteen, took a swig of water. The justification for his indifference was obvious: better them than us.

"Psch. Don't tell me you get your rocks off saving lives now. Wasn't that long ago you had the time of your life completely thrashing some of the very meat-bags in this ugly, old ruin. I know. I was there. Or did the thing in Vegas change your tune?"

The canteen paused halfway to the floor. Looking back, Sergei's gaze turned to a glare aflame with acrid cold.

That's it, Bryan thought, teeth bared in an ear-to-ear smile, There he is. "Y'know, between you and me, we could nip this whole fuckin' thing in the bud. C'mon. Kazuya is a purple people-eater, but you're an expert in that sorta shit and I'm me." He slowly shook his head. "There's gonna be no better time, Drag. We stopped a disaster before. Let's do it again."

Deliberately, as if facing down a prehistoric python coiled to strike, Dragunov rose to his feet.

The explosion tore down the tunnel in a shockwave of dust and pressure, knocking them all to the ground. Under the echoing roar of the blast and the rumble of ancient stone breaking came panicked screams from the crowd above.

Sprawled on his back, covered in grit, Bryan barely acknowledged the diagnostics crawling in his eyes. His body was fine. His grip on reality, however, felt as unstable as the fissures in the ceiling.

- 𓅓 -

Dragunov, meanwhile, scrambling to his feet, had other things in mind. Survival, first and foremost, and the well-being of his men. They had taken up positions with guns out and ready, but they were clearly scared out of their wits. These were not hardened operatives. These were boys fresh from basic, a scant few the Russian Army could spare, assigned simply to escort him to Italy to represent and defend the lives of his people. A relatively easy mission, until someone or something decided they could not leave well enough alone.

Creaking noises from above. It wasn't safe here. Grabbing his own sidearm, Sergei pointed into the tunnel in the direction of the blast and ran to take lead.

Behind them, moaning, Bryan began to rise.

Sounds of a stampede grew louder as they drew closer to the surface. They raced the cracks in the walls up a flight of stairs into an aboveground passageway. Despite the evacuation broadcast directing where to escape, a handful of panicked, bleeding spectators stumbled past them. Dragunov caught one, a man in a bright red Hawaiian shirt, by the shoulder, shoved him aside, and paid no heed as he plunged out of sight. For treating the fate of millions of innocents as primetime viewing, there was no salvation.

Another shockwave rocked the Colosseum. The floor rippled under his feet and fresh dust stung his face.

New voices ahead, shouting over the din. Sergei lifted a fist beside his face, calling his men to halt. An armed squadron corralled escaping civilians toward refuge. He could recognize their baby blue berets anywhere. They were UN.

Ravens.

Outrage smothered self-preservation. This went miles beyond meddling. This was escalation. The state of affairs was far from ideal, but in ruining the Saudi champion, Dragunov secured a measure of safety for Russia. Now these scavengers, these carcass eaters, jeopardized it all.

He raised his gun. His men aimed their rifles.

The next trickle of seconds lasted years.

A thunderclap from on high slammed them all to the ground once more. Dropped weapons scattered in every direction.

Horror speared his insides as the world went dark, but he was not blinded -- hellish clouds blotted out the sun and turned the air frigid.

Footfalls and terrified cries hammered around him as peacekeepers and his own soldiers fled.

Hauling himself to one knee, Dragunov caught glimpse of two glowing eyes. Bryan, standing at the top of the stairs, staring at him with uncertainty.

Outside, Azazel roared its rebirth--

--and the Colosseum finally gave up its ghost. The ceiling buckled, pouring an avalanche of stone, concrete, and steel.

Sergei had time for one, last thought: his family.

And he was overrun.

- 𓆚 -

"DRAG!"

Bryan ran towards the collapse before the dust had time to settle. A nova of light made him flinch, eyes overwhelmed by brilliance and turning the world even darker. His ears clocked the accompanying snarls as louder than jet engines. Whatever was happening in the arena, he didn't care. It didn't matter. A desperate mantra dominated his mind.

No. No. No.

Throwing pieces of rubble was too slow. His fists smashed stone and steel asunder.

No. No. No.

The knuckles of his right hand frayed, revealing black alloy underneath. He kept going.

No. No. NO.

His tether to normalcy couldn't leave him. He couldn't.

"DRAG!"

There. A line of a blue sleeve amidst heaps of gray. All of Bryan's CPUs cycled faster as he tore through the last pile of rock. They would laugh about this later over drinks in a dive bar, how Fury dug him up like buried treasure--

--sudden realization turned Bryan motionless.

He freed Dragunov, all right, but those insides were not supposed to be outsides.

The cyborg sank to his knees. It did not compute. It was unthinkable.

And because it was, it was real. This was not a dream-- --this was nightmare.

Time became unmoored this far north. The sky, full of chrome clouds, concealed the position of the sun. It could be noon, it could be half past midnight. The harbor jutting into the Barents Sea was bathed in a nondescript un-light, the snow tinged gray with the various drippings of loitering military vehicles. Two men, bundled head-to-toe against the numbing cold and carrying automatic rifles, stood at attention on either side of an enormous, circular blast door embedded in the rocky cliffside. When Bryan Fury crested the other side of the harbor, their thick snow goggles hid any reaction.

The cyborg, for his part, felt nothing. Had felt nothing since the Colosseum. A hurricane inhabited his head. There were no thoughts, no foresight -- just a Category 5 maelstrom of barbed wire, sheared metal, and whipping winds. A complex of commands kicked on from somewhere in the bowels of his machinery and roared in animal defiance for the past twenty-four hundred miles and forty hours. He had paused only to hijack another car or truck when his latest ride fell apart, overworked and riddled with ammunition.

His trek crossed seven countries, and all mobilized against him. It was a blur of battlefields, the stink of burning explosive clinging to what remained of his skin. His black and red endoskeleton was littered in chips and tears and coated in layers of dust, ash, and dried blood. Some part of him dripped inky fluid, forming a dark trail as he approached the door.

Behind him dragged a rope tied to a wood crate.

The guards remained still as he drew within twenty paces. It was possible they were robots. Bryan had faced enough of those crossing most of Eastern Europe, both Zaibatsu and G Corp made. Not even a glance as Fury wrenched the rope around, flinging the crate forward in a dizzying spin across the slush until it slid to a halt.

His voice, with ballistic volume: "FIX HIM."

Utter silence. Finally, in unison, the guards stepped away from the door. Locks disengaged with bangs and groans like breaking sea ice, and it sluggishly swung open.

Bryan grabbed the rope and entered the Gold Raptors base.

The ramp was a steady decline illuminated by florescent lamps, their bumblebee hum the only sound aside the rumble of circulated air and the scrrrrp of wood on concrete, leading to a massive hangar. All that moved were motes of dust. A single light over an elevator gleamed in the otherwise cavernous shadows.

Had Fury still the capacity for nuance, he would have been offended at the blatant instruction, but that was long discarded back in Italy. The prime directive came closer with every step. Nothing else mattered.

The elevator opened on its own. Bryan stepped in, crate in tow, and descended one thousand feet into the earth.

It delivered him to a hallway. The layout was familiar -- he'd been in a containment wing before. As he walked down the empty corridor, he spared the briefest glances through the viewports on various doors. This was where they housed the horrors. A rust red boar the size of an elephant -- a ballerina in arabesque, perpetually aflame -- clumpy smoke with yellow eyes orbiting an antique stove--

One door unlocked with an electronic buzz and click. He went in.

Tubes and cables, some as wide as Bryan's torso, ran like entrails across the floor, snaked up the walls, and hung from the ceiling. Monitoring equipment sat in powerless consoles. Something on the other end of the cell glowed a sunset halo. Fury approached.

At first, he couldn't tell what it was. It resembled a giant steel fennel seed, seven feet long and cherry red. It sat embedded in a nest of metal spines that seemed to grow out of the wall itself, a lattice of iron urchins dark as interstellar space. Its upper half was transparent, revealing a hollow interior full of raw chicken pink fluid.

Suspended within was Dragunov.

For the first time in hours, miles, and devastated countries, the storm in Bryan's mind dissipated, and clarity returned to him. The journey, his wounds, all were forgotten.

A gentle crack, and the cradle unhinged open. Looking in, Fury noted the soldier was nude, hair floating around his face, eyes closed, breathing. Fast asleep, not a trace of tension in his body. Covered in scars.

Beautiful, Bryan thought.

Distant rumbling came closer, building into an electric roar. Arcs of lightning tore through the cell, bounding off the tubes and cables. Bryan barely had time to brace himself, but the surge danced around him and drove directly into the cradle itself with a deafening bellow.

Sergei opened his eyes.

An instant later, he wrenched himself upright, shouting in pain, pink fluid sloshing onto the floor. He clung to the side of the cradle, knuckles white, wheezing as his lungs filled with air.

Bryan knelt so they were face-to-face. Dragunov, wet, naked, and trembling, was exquisite. More importantly: he was alive. The nightmare was over, and the world was finally, undeniably real.

Eyes and smile glowing, Fury cocked his head playfully, chin resting on his hand. "First time?"

Dragunov punched him in the jaw.

- 𓅓 -

Chaos. Utter disarray. There was no other way to describe it. Dragunov felt his mind had melted and he was scrambling for handholds in a titanic whirlpool of impossibilities. The Colosseum. He remembered that -- remembered an instant of crushing pressure, the familiar sound of bones cracking deafening in his ears. What happened? Why was he drenched? Why the fuck was Bryan here?

"Welcome back."

A single screen on an otherwise dark console burst on. The grainy picture displayed the silhouette of a man, his details obscured by the brilliant spotlights behind him. He sat in a chair, one leg across the other, hands folded in his lap.

Sergei knew him by his voice and, despite his tremors, saluted. The man was the Major, the head of the Gold Raptors.

"At ease," he said.

Dragunov dropped his hand. Better to keep hold of the cradle. It was more grounded than he felt himself.

Moaning, rubbing the pain from his face, Fury hauled himself to a seat on a wooden crate. Why was that there?

"You have many questions," the Major continued, "I shall answer the most pertinent, as time is of the essence. At 13:44 hours CET, forty-one hours and three minutes ago, you were killed by traumatic asphyxia. Through anomalous methods at our disposal, you have been resurrected, your self duplicated from a remote biotic snapshot taken at the moment of your death. We have made some minor adjustments to your overall physical condition, including removal of the stage three tumors in your lungs and trachea."

Oh. That explained the perfluorocarbon bath. Sweeping loose hair out of his eyes, Sergei peered over the edge of the cradle. Yes, he recognized the spines now. They'd been extracted from the bottom of the sea not far from here, come to think of it. There had been some chatter about potential cross-testing with other specimens in the past.

-- wait, what was that last par--

"You will be deployed immediately to Yakushima in Japan to represent Gold Raptors' interests in the area," the Major said. He leaned closer, voice graveyard cold. "Your reconstruction goes against the core tenets of our organization. That you are our best option, even in death, for combatting this threat to global security is the only reason we did so. Do not squander the gifts we have given you, Admiral Dragunov." He settled back. "You are dismissed."

The screen blinked to black.

Sergei's throat was tight -- with emotion. The plug was pulled on the vortex, flushing it down the proverbial drain and leaving an unfamiliar residue: fear. He palmed his heart, its two-step steady. My God, he thought. They scrubbed him out like an old iron pot.

God, my God.

Two men in white coats entered the room. One carried a blanket.

What choice did he have? His mission, and he had to accept it, was abundantly clear. Once spetsnaz, always spetsnaz. Death would have him when he was no longer needed.

Resolving himself, Dragunov climbed out of the cradle. He had a job to do.

He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and departed the room, white-coats in tow. He wished he had a hair tie.

With little option himself, Bryan followed, scowling as he processed what just happened. This reality was weird.

The twinkle of moon blue grit in the cradle water went unnoticed.

- 𓆚 -

International borders again, this time on fast forward. Bryan had last been on a military aircraft that had willingly carried him two lifetimes ago. Looking out a window at the approaching island made his pistons clench in excitement.

Dragunov, not so much. He looked fantastic in tactical armor, that was a given. Kevlar suited him, and the red beret a no-brainer. It was the scowl, heavier than usual, that soured the atmosphere of the entire cargo hold. Didn't he care about the morale of his men?

Crossing the belly of the beast towards him, Bryan patted a pallet bristling with weaponry, gun barrels poking out at random. "Couldn't decide what to get from your boys, so I ordered one of everything."

Nothing. Not so much as a wayward glance.

Dragunov had no one but himself to blame for his terrible mood. Back at base, while being patched up with new synthetic skin, Fury caught him investigating the wood crate. "I wouldn't look in there if I were you," Bryan had hollered.

Sergei gave two seconds consideration. A pointed finger dropped with sledgehammer finality. A crowbar made quick work of the lid.

The green stench of decay bloomed over the entire medical bay. To the Raptors' credit, there had been less revulsion than Bryan expected, their doctors and nurses hardened by routine treatment of anomalous illness and injury, but heads still turned away, lunches still fought down.

Sergei stared into the contents of the crate for a long time. The pulped tangle inside stared back.

He waved his hand once. The lid was replaced, the crate taken away.

There was the gurgle of a flamethrower. Barbeque scents.

Fury looked around the hold. Somber faces on every soldier. Being a complete sad-sack had to be a prerequisite for joining the Gold Raptors. At least they all perked up when he kicked the pallet closer to the cargo hatch. "C'mon, boys and girls," he cried, "Who hasn't wanted to visit Japan? I hear there's a chance of hail. Bullet hail, courtesy of yours truly. Hey, everyone strapped in?"

Yanking a lever on the wall bathed the hold in red warning light and drilling klaxons as the hatch bowed open. Howling wind threatened to suction out anything not battened down. The pallet spilled over the edge and out of sight.

Bryan turned back to Dragunov. Sergei still sneered, but there was a new glint in his eye -- a let's get this done hardened resolve. Fury knew it well. He'd seen it before every fight they'd had, with or against each other. It meant someone or something was in for a world of pain. It meant Dragunov was feeling better. Feeling himself.

He'd be fine.

Grinning, Bryan bowed like a Hollywood actor, and jumped from the plane.

An instant of freezing freefall, synthetic muscles bracing, then impact -- jarring, dirt and debris flying, barely tickled. Brushing off his pants -- the leather scuffed, but oh well, plenty of alligators in the sea -- he approached the pallet. It hadn't survived the drop, guns strewn like a popped pimple. No problem, it just meant he could fine tune his selection. He thought he wouldn't be thinking again soon. The storm was already blowing.

Zaibatsu forces already took up position in a valley. G Corp had the high ground. Oh, this was going to be good. A real two-for-one deal, with Tournament morons sprinkled on top.

Bryan lifted the Gatling gun. It was time to make new memories.

- 𓅓 -

Back in the saddle again. Dragunov could do this in his sleep. He could do this dead.

No. No, don't think about that. Don't think about being alive for just over twelve hours. That doesn't help anyone. That doesn't keep his people safe. Focus.

It's hard when it's this easy though. The Raptors had hardly been deployed yet. Sergei and his squad watched the battle unfold from their vantage point halfway up a mountainside. This was not their fight. At the first sign of anomalous behavior, it would be.

He let one or two of his soldiers pick off a target every so often. Someone who looked important. Someone who would make the course of events more entertaining if they died. Dragunov spotted them through binoculars, relayed positions through gesture. These were veteran Raptors. They understood.

A sniper rifle blasted. In the valley, a head popped. Business as usual.

It was almost boring.

A flash of yellow in Sergei's sights caught him off-guard. Frowning, he looked again. It was King, complete with full feathered regalia. King. Really? Was G Corp that strapped for combatants, they had to send in a Mexican wrestler? This wasn't a battlefield, this was a goddamn three-ring circus.

It would be mildly interesting to see what kind of skull lay under that stupid mask. Dragunov pointed into the valley. It wasn't hard to determine who he wanted killed. Shifting her stance, the Raptor sniper took aim. Crosshairs centered on golden fur and black rosettes. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

The Doppler effect broke open overhead, crashing waves of sound down upon them. A plane, black as night, Zaibatsu emblem on its sides, crested the mountaintop then dipped downward. A bombing run. Its payload hung one-handed underneath, over seven feet tall with veins of electric red.

Sergei's pulse quickened. They had no intel on a new Jack model. Despite superior numbers, Zaibatsu forces were losing ground. That they chose to utilize it now made his hair stand on end. If this was their ace in the hole, what made it so?

The possibility of anomalous enhancement could not be ignored. Dragunov swung his arm ahead. The Raptors moved.

The terrain was steep and rocky, a combination that required careful planning of every footfall. By the time they had descended, the war had advanced to meet them. Blood, dirt, and gunpowder hung heavy in the air. Dragunov didn't remember combat smelling this way, itchy on his skin.

The difference a new windpipe makes, he thought, and before that train could start rolling, something slammed hard into his side. He lost balance, fell end-over-end down the slope.

His brain kept going after his body rolled to a stop. Until now, all he had experience had been discomfort compared to this. This hurt, and his factory settings flesh had no idea how to deal with it. Groaning, he crawled to all fours, looked up.

Who wore a white suit to a combat zone?

- 𓆚 -

Wholesale slaughter -- now that was living. Biopics? Overrated. Celebrity? Not when you had infamy. The movie studio thing had been a novelty, sure, but the killing fields was where Bryan shone.

He'd long lost track of his body count.

It was incredible, really. From his perspective behind the Gat, deep amidst the torrents of bullets and bodies, the Zaibatsu and G Corp forces were schools of minnows, and he a shark. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. The gun mowed them down like grass, blood spraying, severed limbs flying, their death screams music to his ears.

He might have been laughing. He could not hear himself over the storm's hellish shrieking in his mind.

A flash of lightning blue caught the corner of his eye. A pink-haired pixie, darting between volleys of shots.

Fury grinned, his targeting reticules locked onto her every movement. Could this day get any better? Boots on the ground, tank shells in the air, destruction and agony and he in the thick of it, pushing the world order into a whirling blender of meat hooks and razor winds, and now this, the chance to forever exterminate a challenge to his throne of Doctor Bosconovitch's Greatest Contribution to Mankind. Forget seedy Chinese alleyways, downing fighter jets in flight with just a girder -- fuck, forget Yoshimitsu. This was going to top the charts.

He swung the Gat around, aimed slightly ahead of her. The barrel spun up with an eager squeal.

--then there, below her, an un-color that did not belong to nature, distracting him. Radioactive bubblegum. In the sheath of a sword. That was slashing Dragunov in two.

No.

Bryan froze. A beam of light burst through his tempest, rooting him to the ground. He could only watch as the old stranger's blade left a deep, steaming gouge in Sergei's chest armor. Dragunov raised his arms to block the next two cleaves only to catch the handle on the backswing with his face. He collapsed to his knees.

Bryan dropped the Gat.

No. No.

Sergei craned his head up. Wiping his knuckles across his cheek left a comet tail of blood. Resurrection had placed him right back in meat. Fallible meat, as Fury knew too well.

Dragunov tried to stand. His face twisted in agony as a leg failed to respond, stiff as a board. As rigor mortis.

He was not fine.

No. No. NO.

Bryan grabbed the reins of his mental storm, willed it to his feet to fly him the twenty paces between himself and the injured Russian. Each step echoed like a hammer. A heartbeat. The sea of bodies around him dissolved their details into bruised, sickly smog. Reality was soup, and he fought time's quagmire with every carbon fiber of his being.

The stranger lifted his sword for the killing blow.

NO NO NO NO--

Impact. A millisecond's awareness to brace Sergei's neck as momentum raced them onward and gravity tore them down. A dozen jolts and blows as the ground got its licks in. One last tumble before the world came to a halt.

He'd ended up on top of Sergei. Grabbing him by the bulletproof vest, Bryan yanked him close, eyes burning with crazed desperation.

"You fucking moron," Fury cried, shaking him, "I can't lose you again!"

Under him, Dragunov's mouth was slack with shock, then confusion. Bryan gave him a once-over, hunting for wounds. They put him in meat, how cruel was--

--there was a combat knife in his fist.

Oh. OH.

Sergei was a spetsnaz super-agent with enough CQC tactics to massacre an army, and playing possum was well within his repertoire. Just because it was the oldest trick in the book did not make it inviable. Hell, Bryan had seen him do it before. There was that time in Barcelona against father and son Laws. He'd laid on the floor of the -- bar? restaurant? dance club? Fury didn't remember -- feigning unconsciousness, and when Law the Younger went to investigate, he'd surged forward and toppled him, kind of like what'd just happened, and the look on Dragunov's face turned volcanic with rage, and then Bryan had eleven inches of sharpened steel embedded in his thigh.

Fury howled as white-hot pain lanced up his side. Sergei shoved him off, scrambled to his feet. Bryan winced as he yanked the knife free.

The emotions bristling on Dragunov's face were fascinating. Anger, volatile, ready to explode at any moment, lined with disbelief. He had the man in the white suit right where he wanted, doing exactly what he wanted. Now he still lived. A Raven, if the anomalous weapon proved anything, one of Sergei's killers, still lived.

"Oh, ex-fucking-scuse me," Fury bellowed, tossing the knife away, "If you didn't look like such a bitch--"

Dragunov ran at the cyborg, throwing his entire body behind his fist.

To an observer, the fight was initially any other slugfest. But as it progressed, something changed. A cadence emerged -- punches and kicks dealt with surgical finesse, energy conserved or spent with atomic accuracy, bodies moving with dancer's grace. Sergei and Bryan had done this before, helpless to resist the primordial hatred burning in their veins and cables. Neither man wanted to. It felt right. All of spacetime could crunch down to their bubble of violence; they wouldn't care. In their grimaces, their spilled blood, they were singing.

I hate you, I loathe you, I could do this forever.

But good things had to come to an end.

Bryan saw it first -- a purple thorn hanging in the sky. "The hell is tha--"

Flames rained from above, dousing everything in eldritch plasma.

- 𓅓 -

It was eerily quiet. Nature abhorred a vacuum, and soon the air would prickle with the moans of the pained and dying, but Dragunov, armor smoldering, took the opportunity to lie on the dirt. Just for a moment. There was peace amongst the pebbles.

Behind him, Bryan coughed a cloud of dust. Time to get up.

He wrenched himself onto an elbow, giving himself enough of a vantage point to see the aftermath. Huge, steaming fissures stretched from one side of the valley to the other. Half-melted tanks sat in piles of useless slag. Smoke billowed like parades of pallbearers into the ashen expanse. Beneath, those who remained clung to their last ounces of strength.

A thought occurred to him: who was he kidding?

In less than an instant, hundreds had been vaporized. How was he meant not only to compete with that, but triumph? An ant would have a better chance leveling a mountain. Once upon a time, there had been a man who could do that, his faith his shield against the devil. That man was dead. The thing that bore his name, ordered his soldiers, and defended the fate of his nation was a pale imitation in comparison. A cracked, oozing egg, rotting from the inside out.

Sergei sank back to the earth.

Blessed silence.

Behind him, again: thop-shff, thop-shff. Bryan, pulling himself over by one arm. Judging himself close enough, the cyborg rolled onto his back, loosed a harsh breath. "Hey, Drag?"

Muffled against the soil: "Nnm?"

"That fuckin' hurt."

Yes. It did.

More quiet, infiltrated by a breeze. Sergei raised his face to catch its freshness.

"Like...how did you do that? I've been in a lot of knife fights, but that's a first."

--what?

Strangling the protests of his aching flesh, Dragunov heaved himself to his knees. Bryan himself sat up, pulling apart the gash in his pants to stare at the deep puncture in his leg. "You stabbed me between the muscles," he said, "Muscles that can stop bullets. If I had a femoral, I'd be bleeding like a stuck pig." He looked at the Russian, face slack with sincere awe. "You weren't even trying. You just did it. I mean, you have past experience with my thighs, but...whole armies have wanted me dead for years. You killed me two minutes ago with no effort."

Yes. Yes, he did that. Sergei alone had accomplished something no one else on the planet could, not even the man he used to be. And as realization sank in, heat like molten iron blossomed from his chest, spreading to his fingertips and pooling in his toes. He was not damaged, he was hatching, even if he did not know what form the wings within him would take.

It didn't matter. He was seen. He was known.

It must have shown on his face because Bryan's expression lit up, a grin crawling from ear to ear. Just like old times, baby, that grin said, The world lies at our feet.

A tremor tore through the ground. In the distance, a stadium-sized chunk of rock blasted into the sky, shrouded in a veil of supersonic flight. It tore past the clouds for a destination in the upper atmosphere.

"Oh, get over yourselves," Bryan yelled. Grunting with pain, he threw a stone after it. It clattered far short of its mark.

Dragunov, meanwhile, watched as his Raptors emerged from cover. They seemed no worse for wear, shedding their combat gear for hazmat suits. Using modified Geiger counters, they fanned out across the battlefield, searching for anomalous particles left in the wake of the purple flames, pausing only to execute anyone dying in their paths. By the number of samples they took, the results were promising.

"So...now what?"

Sergei didn't bother glancing at Fury as the cyborg scooted next to him. He was not actually asking for advice. He was testing the waters. Once he knew where Dragunov's mood lay--

"Got it!" Bryan leveled a finger between Sergei's eyes. "You need a vacation. That's what I did last time I cheated death. It's good for you, y'know. Do some soul searching. Figure out what's real to you." A beat. "Uh, I'm going with you, of course. If you want."

Dragunov let his lip curl in a small smile. Yes. He did want.

Somewhere on the steaming wastes, welcoming the dawn of a new age, someone was whistling.

- FIN -

#t: sons of theseus #unbrydledfury #( cut for length )#( seriously; this is a biggie )

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