When the Emperor arrived at the island, he was escorted by a team of Imperial Guard; all metahumans of various ability, two of them with inhuman speed, another simply overall super-human in a variety of respects, and the final one a fairly well-known warrior, able to generate blades of energy from anything in his hands; or even just his fingernails. All of them looked virtually identical; carefully, meticulously tailored and groomed to look as similar as possible; a bland, unassuming wall of security behind their lord. The helicopter landed outside the construction site, and his guardsmen moved with him.. a construction engineer bowing, stepping into his path; easily recognizing the tall, lean elder with his neatly trimmed grey beard.

The first two guardsmen had their hands on their weapons; but the Emperor simply stepped forward. "I trust you need to inform us of something?"

"Of course, your majesty. We recovered the last of the survivors a few hours ago; and the Empress is holding a ceremony, both for the victims of the collapse, and for her brother."

The Emperor gave a short nod. "Ahh. I understand. I should have had my arrival announced further in advance. Still. If it is her brother, it makes him a cousin of mine. It is only appropriate that I attend. If you would help me enter with minimal disruption to the proceedings?"

***

The gathering was somber, as was only to be expected. Notably absent were any form of marker for Salamander and Infernal; Eyeball had their bodies dumped into the ocean on the way back to the island. For everyone else, including the guards who'd followed the two traitors on their way, a proper grave had been dug, a stone marked it; a trivial matter with the sort of power on-hand.

Emerald was looking out at the crowd; people who had depended on her great-grandmother for guidance, been betrayed by her foolish obsessions, and then by her errant children. She couldn't say that, though. All these people were part of the same mixed-up family. She needed to hold these people together at least long enough to wrap up all of the loose ends and get them on to a better life. That... might take years.

Eyeball was beside her, supporting her. A quiet, powerful figure that evinced different levels of fear and respect from those in attendance. The engineer had carefully and precisely carved the stones for each grave, adding a few notes from immediate family to each piece. For Ripper, his, own stone had both his real name and date of birth as well as his villainous name

For Eyeball, this wasn't the first time he'd lost a friend in action. During his time in the desert he had lost many friends, and strangely enough the ones that had hurt the most were the ones who he had never really liked but had still died to keep his people safe. His time as a villain, on the other hand, had for the most part only seen such casualties among his enemies. While a few had been lost during the Ascension event in Mexico, the overwhelming majority of those who died around him since had been those trying to stop him from whatever he was doing.

Ripper, though, had been closer than most of those soldiers he fought beside. For the past couple of years he and Ripper had a friendly competition, to see who could perform the best robbery, and more importantly, steal the most useful, or valuable, object. This was a contest which was friendly, which was a good thing, because Ripper won it handily every time. Some of the things the reptilian had stolen were literally priceless, and some of the technologies he had acquired were both ground breaking and highly classified.

For much of it, he'd considered the man a brother; the one who'd introduced him to his fiance, and, whenever the marriage finally happened, he'd become his brother-in-law. Something which was now never fated to be.

Emerald wasn't standing quite straight; the bandages covering the various breaks in her wings, her careful stance; a network of wires holding everything in place to help it heal. She'd just lost her brother. Not just her brother; her guardian angel, the one who'd stopped her from being raped that fateful day she ran from this place, and helped her escape. And some of these people had lost parents, children, siblings.

The only positive note was that their killer, Salamander, was already gone. Those who'd been abducted returned... along with a group of surrogates. As she looked over the small clusters of mourners; those who had been lucky enough not to lose any immediate family had already returned to their work; she saw... a group of armed men approaching. Her initial spike of fear, her instinct to gather her energy and get ready to douse them aflame... sank when she saw the man accompanying them.

When he reached Ripper's grave, standing beside the duo, Emerald bowed; and Eyeball, not sure who this was, but understanding it was someone important, followed her cue.

"Your majesty." Emerald spoke softly, before rising to meet his gaze.

He gave a brief nod in return. "Dragon Empress. An interesting title. And fitting enough, it seems. I regret that I didn't have time to know my cousin, your brother, before he passed away. Would you like to speak of him?"

She sighed. She was tempted to reveal the truth. That her family wasn't really related to the Emperor at all; but depending on the Emperor himself, that might have catastrophic consequences for her family. "He... was one of the best of us. He was my half-brother, and the definition of a golden-hearted rogue, a veritable robin hood... except that he kept enough for himself to live an extremely wealthy life. He stole historical artifacts, priceless paintings... even a few I insisted he return.. but he also saved me on many occasions. He looked quite a bit like his father, but was never a ruthless assassin like him."

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

She laid a hand on the gravestone. "A loving brother, and my best friend. He should've died doing something heroic. Saving the world. Or, at the very least, being caught escaping with some artifact or other."

The Emperor nodded. "I head he died to slow down a ship. To stop the escape of the ones responsible for all of this, with the children they'd abducted?"

"... Yes. I suppose it was a heroic enough reason. Would have been even better if he had slowed them down and then lived to make it home though. At least they're dealt with now."

He looked down at the grave. "I've been considering making events regarding your family more public. Officially recognizing your family as part of the nobility. Your great-great grandmother's incest and other foolish deeds forgotten and forgiven, the absurd rules our ancestors put in place, considered to end with your great-grandmother's passing."

Emerald sighed. "She wasn't the one to actually commit incest, your highness. That would be her children and grandchildren. She didn't consider taboos to be important; only results."

"Ahh, I take it she was too embarrassed to reveal it to her children. She was the emperor's... second cousin, perhaps? Not a sister, but just close enough to be generally advised against. She had been set to marry a lord she despised, and seduced my grandfather to try to avoid it. I would appreciate it if we could... create a somewhat less twisted official history of the clan, for when we reveal it to the public... if that is acceptable to you."

Emerald blinked, confused. Was her clan actually related to the Emperor? Did her side actually have the full story? "...If you'd like, then of course. At this point I'm not certain that either of us knows the whole truth."

"Also... I heard that you had just recently had some dealings with the Yakuza. While dealing with Famiglia is acceptable; they were once criminals, but are now a state of their own, I would ask you not risk our image with such, once you're publicly known."

She smiled. "You don't need to worry about that, your majesty. My great grandmother had abducted a member of the Yakuza's family because of their genetic profile. I sent them home with an apology as soon as my great grandmother was out of the way."

The Emperor nodded. "Excellent. No more criminal activities or secrecy then. We can discuss details over dinner, back at the palace, if you'd like. Let your people get things settled here. Repairs can proceed without us."

"Of course." She glanced at Eyeball. "Would you mind if I spoke with my fiance before we left? There's something he'll be handling for me... outside of Japan.. that we need to discuss."

***

Eyeball and Emerald walked together through the building; a simple storage shed that had been attached to the old fortress, now one of the few original structures remaining standing in the area, and stopped beside a crate, hopefully out of earshot of the Emperor's people.

Eyeball smiled, and slid his helmet off so he could meet Emerald's gaze. "Looks like someone gets to have dinner with the Emperor of Japan. I take it I'm not invited?"

"You know full well what you've got to do tonight. Go on this tour. Figure out what you need to. Rescue the children. Shut it down. I... if the Dragon clan is going to be a publicly known thing going forward, I'd prefer nobody knows about any of it... I'd like it if this is all handled first."

"Of course. I can't promise to rescue all of the kids; depending on where these camps are, that might just be impossible. But I'll do what I can."

She leaned forward; a brief kiss; a grimace when she started to hug him, only for the motion to pull painfully on her damaged wings. "And what you can is damn awesome. Get it done. And... make it back in one piece."

***

The dockhouse was filled with mercenaries and villains, some of them whom Eyeball had worked with before, such as the Engineer, Butcher, and of course Clone. Others were relative unknowns; ordinary-seeming folks in body-armor with rifles and handguns, a strange-looking man with a guitar strapped to his back, and even a few members of the Dragon clan; namely two of Emerald's cousins, dark-scaled metas who were younger, weaker versions of their father Salamander, and Emerald's father, Gabriel.

The Black Knight, of course, was standing immobile off in the corner, almost like a statue.

"Alright, people. Here's the deal. This afternoon I am going to be going on a tour of an unknown number of facilities with General Zhou. There are at least two, but may be as many as five. our objective is to rescue however many children we can, and make sure that none of these surrogates or personnel inside survive. These facilities are technically criminal organizations, but in reality they are operated by the Chinese government. Aside from the children, no one in these facilities is to be considered a civilian or bystander. Everyone who knows about this is a valid target."

He walked over to a stable covered with weapons cases. "This is what we're calling the Pale Gun. It's a simple low velocity 40mm revolver with a control chip built into it. Its got a range of about a hundred meters, will only work against lightly armored targets... but will initially paralyze the victim with pain, and then convert them into a Pale One... which will obey myself, Engineer, and whoever is holding one of these guns. We can very rapidly convert the local security forces into assets, or take control of any personnel we need to bypass biometric doors. Each shell costs about ten grand to make, so don't waste them on test shots; but you're each getting paid a half-mil, plus another grand for each kid you save, so don't leave any in the magazine either."

"Each of you gets one, which holds eight shells, and an extra eight shells. I'm also giving you each one of these..." He held up a small silver ball. "This is a pressurized neurotoxin container. All of you were given the antidote to it already or I wouldn't even let you in this room; if this thing were to break, all of us would be dead within seconds otherwise. Once as many kids are out as we can save, one of these in the ventilation system will kill every living mammal in the facility."

"I have a variety of other gadgets that the Engineer will explain for those of you who can best make use of them. But I'd like to make it clear. Odds are good we won't be able to save any of these kids at all. If the facility is too far inland, we'd have to get them out past the whole Chinese army. If you're hitting such a facility? Don't risk yourself. Have one of your team set off the neurotoxin over the facility to take out any outside guards, another put it in the ventilation system, and use the Pale Guns to create diversions to help get the hell out. If, however, one of these facilities is on the coast..."

He set the device down. "We have a friend that can provide enough naval support to get these kids out. If we need to hijack a boat, fine; we get the kids out, deploy the neurotoxin when we leave, and get the hell out of dodge."

He looked around at the collected group. "Zhou told me the tour should take about twelve hours, maybe into tomorrow as well. We won't launch until we have data on all of the facilities... but when we do, its go-time, we'll be splitting up and hitting all of them at once. Get some sleep. Try out the Pale Guns with some of the training ammo. Sometime either this evening or tomorrow... we'll be making these bastards wish they'd never been born."