Hey there, dear readers.
I want to apologize for the delay.
I didn't quite like how I previously wrote this chapter, it made Elektra look so plain, because I had the netflix version of her in my head.
I still think she is and that I could've done a better job, but again, I don't talk to girls.
Do you want me to delete the previous one, so it's correctly enumerated?
I also want to rework a lot of chapters, from the chapter 1 forward, and retcon the system and powers, again.
Hope you've all had a great week yourselves!
Sincerely, The Author.
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I've never been good at staring contests.
Eye contact's always been my weakness. It's just so goddamn awkward—like I should just blink to put us both out of our misery.
And with a woman? Forget it. And with this woman? it's definitely worse—way worse.
Her heel dug itselft into my ribs, keeping me underfoot, like I belonged there.
Yeah, this is fine—Out of all the ways this could've gone, being pinned by perfect blue eyes over here is not the worst outcome.
The rooftop was dead quiet except for my ragged breathing and the faint hum of traffic below.
"Uuuh… could we—maybe—talk this out?" My voice cracked, tight, breaking the silence.
"Quiet." The steel of her sai lowering down until its tip hovered just above my eye.
One sudden stupid move from me, and I'd be half-blind—or dead.
I gulped a baseball down my throat, forcing a crooked smile. "Right. Quiet's good. I love quiet—I'm great at quiet."
She just studied me, her head tilting slightly, like I was an animal she'd cornered. "Take it off."
My brows jumped. I looked from her heel pressed into my chest up to her face, maybe staring a little too long. "I—I'm sorry? Take… what off?"
"Your hood. Off. Now." She groaned out, already tired of me.
I nodded quickly, disappointed. "Oh—right. I knew that, I just… yeah. Sorry."
Raising my hands slowly, nervous, as her gaze tracked every inch of the movement.
Pushing the hood back, exposing my face under the weak glow of neon that reached the rooftop.
She crouched, the steel of her sai didn't tremble an atom, its tip hanging an inch from my eye.
Her gaze swept over me with the kind of precision a surgeon would envy—not curiosity, but assessment.
I could see her cataloging every fracture and bruise, tracing the angle of each strike, replaying the speed and weight of the blows in her head.
There wasn't pity in her stare. Just cold calculation.
She lingered on the half-healed cuts—the ones I hadn't finished scabbing.
On the crooked patch strapped across my nose—a cheap fix that didn't quite hide the swelling.
And in the way my jaw stayed clenched—biting down the pain.
"You're… young." she murmured, almost to herself. Her voice wasn't warm—but something faintly reflective in it slipped through. "Then again… Stick never cared about age when he forged weapons."
Ok, Wade. Play dumb.
"...Who's young?"
Not that dumb.
Her sai shifted—sharp and sudden. Stabbing the ground right beside my head, the cold prongs grazing my cheekbone.
The blade gave me a razor kiss, quick and exact, drawing a thin crimson line on my skin—It burned, as warm blood slid down through it.
"Don't" She said, her voice sharper than her sai's blades.
She isn't bluffing, got it.
She leaned in a fraction closer, her stare drilling straight through me, unblinking.
She was studying me, like I was a puzzle she wasn't quite sure how to start solving, or if she even have the right pieces to even try.
"Stick mentioned you." The words were slow, measured, like she was still deciding if she even believed them herself. "Told me to… 'train' you."
"…Like a Karate Kid movie?" I shot, joking, but with a tiny sliver of hope.
Her gaze snapped down like a whip, looking at me as if I'd proven, beyond doubt, that I had a negative IQ. "What- No."
"Right..." I tried again, this time quieter. "So—Rocky, then?"
Her jaw tightened. The sai tilted, again, the prongs grazing the skin just beneath my eye. "Do you ever stop talking?"
"Only when I'm unconscious, sorry about that."
She leaned closer, eyes narrowing. "Fuck you…"
"Okay...? I thought you had a sense of humo—"
Her boot pressed harder into my ribs, knocking the air out of me, forcing me to shut up. Her voice dropped, quieter now, almost to herself. "As I was saying, Stick only takes in people who've lost something or someone. And he bends and sharpens that grief into something useful—for himself." Gaze locked on me, as she let the pressure in my chest ease a bit. "So I'm going to assume Stick told you about The Hand… and about the Chaste." Her words grew sharper, edged with something personal. "To enter the Chaste—usually—you have to prove yourself. You have to endure and adapt to the pain they impose on you, all to rid yourself of the weakness you cultivate through a mundane life. And when you finally show them your strength, your talent, you earn the right to learn their… discipline."
Her voice lowered, bitter. "You have to climb, literally climb, to reach them." Her jaw clenched, the sai tilting against my cheek. "That's what I had to do. And even then, after all that, they cast me out. Well, Stick did. I'm still a little bit mad about that..."
Her eyes raked over me, narrowing like she was peeling me apart, piece by piece. "But you? You just show up, and suddenly all the rules just... vanish?" She leaned in, her voice a whisper, a cold but pissed off whisper. "I want to know… What did you do, that made Stick look at you like you're beyond all that?"
I swallowed hard, eyes flicking sideways toward where my baton had fallen—snapping back to her when she started talking again.
"And worst of all, why me? Out of all his peons, why would Stick pick me to train you?" Her tone softened a hair—not kind, just less sharp.
The rooftop fell back onto the faint hum of the city below. The question landed heavier than the blade hovering an inch from my eye.
Her eyes searched mine, as if I had a satisfactory answer. "Huff... Whatever. Don't mistake me for a kind teacher just because I've been putting up with your stupidity, kid. You'll have to meet my criteria, and if you fail to do so—" Her voice didn't rise, but the weight of her words did "—I'll make sure you do. Even if it is by banging your head against a wall. Got it?"
"Jeez... That's, hmm, one hell of a speech."
She groaned, tired, her eyelid fluttering in anger as her sai trembled against my cheekbone—not from hesitation, but from the force she was putting behind her grip.
Her boot pressed itself into my ribs again, making them creak. Auch.
"I am not here for jokes, kid. Neither of us is." She sighed deeply, her voice sounded soft, but still as dangerous in its calm. "Look, if you manage live through the night, you can consider yourself trained. Does that sounds doable to you?" she angled the sai just enough to kiss the skin under my eye.
I swallowed, the corner of my mouth twitching despite the weight on my chest. "That sounds like a damn good deal to me, but, and i'm just talking silly here, right? What if I just… y'know, don't feel like it. Say, I run?"
Her face didn't flicker. "Then I hunt you down, simple as." The sai cut deeper into my cheek, wincing as the stinging and sharp pain invade my face. "Do you understand now?"
Fuck, I shouln't have ragebait her so much.
Now I'm trapped in this rooftop boss fight until I win.
Great...
She finally eased back. Her boot shifted, grinding against my ribs a bit as she straightened.
"When I take my foot off your chest..." She leaned down again, her gaze narrowed, cutting through me, sharp as her sais. "You have three seconds to pick up your weapon."
It wasn't a question.
It was an order.
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Her boot reluctantly lifted, and took an few steps back.
The feeling of release from the pressure on my poor ribs was short of euphoric.
And for half a second, I stayed frozen—lungs heaving, ribs aching, blood trickling down my cheek.
Then the countdown started, indicated by the sudden shift of weight in her stare.
Not out loud—in my head.
Three.
I rolled, then crawled. Gravel biting into my palms.
My hands shot out for the baton lying a few feet away.
Two.
I barely managed to close my fingers around the grip—way harder than needed, nails biting into my palm.
Swinging it in a blind diagonal arc, desperate and clumsy.
The baton cut nothing but air before smacking the gravel with a hollow crack. Numbing my fingers for a moment.
I froze, on one knee, staring like an idiot at the space where she wasn't.
One.
She stood there, arms crossed, watching me with a faint twitch at the corners of her mouth.
"Get up."
I blinked. "...huh?."
Her sais lowered, no stone cold gaze. She straightened her back, rolled her shoulders, and sighed as if bored already.
Then she turned away. "Follow. Quick."
"What the—? I thought we were going to fight..."
Her head tilted just enough to look at me from over her shoulder. "I dont hit girls. But I'll make an exception for you if you don't shut up and do as I say."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Baton half raised, pointing it at her lazily, while I powerwalked to my backpack.
"Exactly what you think it means. Now, shut upand follow. Before I decide you aren't worth the migraine."
She stepped to the edge and paused, her silhouette a clear constrast against the neon glow.
For a second she just stood there, toes over nothing, the scarlet sash on her hip snapping behind her with the evening wind, a vibrant slash of red in the dark of the city.
Aurafarming, like any cool ninja should do.
Instinct revved me up, when she leaned just a little too far forward.
"Woah—hey! Careful!" I sprinted towards her, like I could catch her, despite being over three meters away. Before I could thought and realize how stupid that was.
She launched into the night—onto the next roof.
I slammed my heels down to try and stop, but the gravel gave. Shoes skidded across the roof—rocks spraying around like confetti.
Momentum dragging me all the way to the very edge. And for a heart-stopping second, the street below looked up at me, neon puddles winking like a thousand expectating eyes.
Waddling my arms in panic, doing the most undignified penguin imitation of my life. Until gravity finally had mercy on me and I fell onto my butt.
I sat there, heart thumping. "Shit! What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
From the roof across, she glanced back. For a beat, the corner of her mouth tilted—half smirk, half apology for the entertainment.
"That was cute." she said, clipped. "Mostly pathetic, but cute." Then she turned away and continued moving.
She didn't tease me further. Didn't need to.
The point had been made.
I hauled myself upright, my rib screaming at the idea of what comes next.
I shuffled away from the edge, looked down. The drop was like a maw waiting and starving to swallow me whole.
"You've got to be kidding me." I muttered. My fingers tightened around the baton.
She was already another rooftop ahead, turned around just to bark. "Move it!"
Of course. Every great hero goes through this rite of passage.
The Leap.
Tobey's Spidey, Miles Morales, even Kick-Ass. And uh... those three are the only who I remember doing this, and two of them only learned how to kiss the pavement.
That didn't made me feel better about my chances.
Stashed the baton back into the backpack. Double-checked my shoelaces.
Stretched my legs, felt the gravel pressing into the soles, and forced my breathing to slow down.
In, out. In, out. Don't let panic take control.
Run, then jump. It ain't rocket science.
I gave myself a considerable run-up. "Huff… fuck it." One step, then another, faster, faster.
When I reached the edge, pushed with everything every ounce of propulsion my left leg could give me.
For a second the alley below was just a blur, my stomach dropped instantly.
I reached the other roof, pain shot up my rib as I rolled. My breath came out of me in a wet, grateful wheeze.
Staggering upright, I caught back my balance, looked up—and she was already two rooftops away.
She was fast. Too fast.
"What the hell are we even doing?!" I gasped, trying to keep up, jumping into the next rooftop with the same result.
"Work." she shot back without slowing. "If you do good enough and survive, maybe you'll make me understand why Stick bothered me with you."
Another leap, another rooftop.
Every jump felt like rolling a dice against the universe.
Curses escaping my mouth each time. My legs burned and pumped with the adrenaline.
And then, finally, she stopped.
She dropped into a crouch at a roof's edge, the docks sprawled below, and shot me a sharp hand signal—freeze.
I dropped beside her, knees short of buckling. "Please tell me were done with the cardio—" The words dried in my throat. My stomach dropped. "…Holy shit."
Across the street, a warehouse hunched against the skyline. One filthy window forgoten open.
Inside, people moved. Some wore masks and Kevlar, with rifles strapped tight. Few others glided around like wraiths, black-clad, and what catched slivers of light I assume are blades.
They weren't just moving boxes. They were herding.
Children.
Their thin bodies pushed forward in lines, with wrists bound tight with ropes, the red around where the ropes are, is the rawness below the skin which had been rubbed off with it.
Shoulders slumped. Heads bowed, never lifting—like even the idea of hope had already been beaten out of them.
A soldier barked, rifle jabbing at a boy who was too slow to keep the pace.
The kid stumbled forward, nearly tripping the line.
Another hand shot out of the dark—not to steady him, but to shove him harder.
Her sai twirled once between her fingers, a lazy spin that didn't match the cold look in her eyes. "Human traffickers." The words were like a bucket of cold water.
"They bring them in through the ports. Kids from different parts of the globe. " She didn't look at me, just kept her gaze locked on the scene. "They have their fun breaking them down, then sell what's left… to the Hand."
I swallowed hard, bile rising with the thought of it. "That's—fuck... We should call the—"
Her head turned just enough to cut me off with a glare. "No. The Hand owns the police."
I blinked at her. My pulse hammered like it wanted out of my chest. "Then what's the plan? Just-Just—fight against a whole army of pieces of shit?"
"Welcome to the Chaste, kid." Her brows twiched with anger. "Listen and learn... hmm..."
Her gaze cut back to the warehouse, her whole body tense like a bowstring. "First thing?" She looked back with a side-eye. "Mercy—don't kid yourself. Mercy will just gives them another sunrise to hurt more people."
Her eyes flicked to me, sharp and quick. "And second... Hesitation. You hesitate, you're dead. Worse—if you hesitate, the ones you're trying to save are dead too."
On a creen, those lines could just be just another tidy phrase. Another neat little axiom that kicks off an action scene—All to lead you to a scene where the bad guys get what's coming, and the credits roll while making you feel morally vindicated, coupled with a catchy song so you can set it apart from other movies.
In real life, up close, though, it did not felt like just another tidy moral lesson, but a insult that steps on everything I still wanted to be—A better, rightful and kinder version of myself.
Seeing this in person, with the docks stink assaulting my nose and the opressing sight of those kids hopelessly hunched under the yellow light, the words turned corrosive. Rage rose like acid in my chest, hot and metallic; the back of my throat tasted like bile.
My whole body ached with helplessness—A raw, petty and furious feeling that devoured me.
I hate how small this makes me feel—Just a coin being rolled across someone else's palm. The Hand's palm—the ugly kind of feeling small, the one that lights your throat on fire, the one that makes your hands shake and makes you grind your teeth down to dust.
I feel betrayed, It's the same crushing feeling you get when you overhear that one person you trusted—a family member, a friend, maybe even a teacher—humilliate you behind your back. Only worse, because it's the whole world, shrugging while something like this happens under everyone's nose.
I wasn't thinking about stopping this with speech, or some dumn puns. I wanted to run down those stairs, kick the doors into the warehouse, and hurt them. Tear the ropes off those kids', grag those bastards' faces through the streets and into the light, make the city watch the abominations that happen under their noses.
The thought was honest. horribly honest. I only wanted to hurt them, until they couldn't hurt anyone else.
I wanted them to burn. All of them. Burn the Hand until there was nothing left to remember...
And yet, my body refused to match the anger in my head. A reflex to keep my head cool helped me transform that anger into something more useful. Logic.
I'm the kind of person that thinks that dying for the right reasons was a worthy death. But in this situation, just going in there, outnumbered and underskilled, won't achieve anything but get me a dog's death.
"Understood." I mouthed, my jaw unclenched an inch. My voice came out small and hoarse. Keeping the heat in control. "What do we do?"
She met my eyes—flat, patient, the look of someone who'd seen this exact scene too many times. "We go in, get out. Quiet. No headlines."
"No headlines? But—" I started.
"Trust me." Her voice was low, steady. "Headlines don't help when the Hand owns half the city. Make noise and they bury the bodies and blame the victims. The only way to hurt them is to hurt what they rely on." She flicked the sai once, casual as breathing. "Their supply."
Her words were not cruel. They carried the weight of someone who got taught by cold efficiency and was used to the unfairness of the world.
I agreed. I hated that I agreed. Every part of me wanted to refuse, demand a second choice, to be able to pick a better, brighter path than the one to be judge, jury and executioner. I thought my first time would be with... pause. I wanted to kill Cletus, yes, but it still felt like a distant goal and not a reality, but tonight, its too soon, and yet the math couln't be simpler.
I'm killing... and that's the only way to stop these monsters from hurting any of those kids.
A ridiculous, cowardly part of my brain still tried to bargain—remembering how the Hand's ninjas were like zombies.
A cowardly, rationalizing part of me tried another trick—play it like in the fiction, tell myself the ninjas were chi zombies. All to make any of this sound any less fucked, but staring at those kids, seeing what the Hand was doing to them, any faith in rationalizing this felt moronic.
I felt Elektra's eyes on me then, a tightening at the corner of her mouth, it wasn't quite judgment and wasn't quite sympathy either.
She saw the bargain forming in my head and didn't want waste a whole speech on it. "Listen. It's them or the kids." she said, quieter—not kind but effective.
"Now..." she said, voice low enough for only me to hear. "Don't do anything stupid. Move like a shadow. If you see a child, do everything you can to get them out—If you can't... just fall back. If it gets loud, we leave."
I stared at her for a beat, the last word like a cold weight. "What do you mean—leave?"
"The police." She shrugged, small and bitter. "They'll come if there's noise. For me, they're nothing more of an nuisance. For you, they're a full stop."
She folded her plan into three clean rules—Enter, Extract, Vanish—and delivered each rule with the absolute calm of a professional.
The thought of running away without the kids safe under my arms felt like a spit in the face. "I can't just leave them."
She looked at me then, and for the first time something softened—but not sympathy, exactly. "You can only save what you can reach. Learn that, fast."
That hit both like an accusation and a rule. I wanted to argue, to swear that if I charge in i'll be able to rescue everyone. I'd come back—I was almost certain, so the odds felt in my favor. But imagining myself trapped in a cycle of death and return, each time a little less whole, until there was no "me" left to come back—that terrified me down to the marrow.
I tightened my grip on the backpack. The anger in my chest did not go away. "Quiet." I repeated and nodded, slow and steady, an armor.
She gave the slightest of nods—not praise, only recognition—and then she melted into the dark and I followed.
I have to do the ugly part... I just hope, that this is truly the one and only good choice.
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Word count: 3710