Chapter 32
That Part When The Hero Tests Their Powers
Tuesday afternoon, February 21st, 2006, at 1:45 PM. Bank of America.
Jon was a boy again, standing frozen in the bank lobby. His dad beside him, cracking dumb jokes to make him laugh as they waited in line.
"Hey Junior, did you know superheroes are real? And I am one of them!" his dad said, leaning down with a conspiratorial wink.
Jon's eyes widened with the naive excitement of an eight-year-old. "You mean like Superman?"
His dad hesitated, a small smile playing at his lips. "Well, I... I guess you could say that?” then quickly added,, “I can't lift cars or shoot lasers from my eyes, but I do save people sometimes."
"Really, Dad?" Jon's voice was filled with wonder.
Jon senior grinned, trying to act tough. "Yep! Instead of a cape, I wear a white coat. And my superpower? Making people better with just a touch."
Jon giggled, seeing his dad's attempt at being tough. He could remember exactly how his younger self felt at that time, the pride and absolute trust he had in his father.
How incredibly broad his dad’s shoulders were, as if he was invincible and no harm in the world could ever befall them with his father at his side. Best dad in the world. Is what he used to think.
Which made the next words that came out of his mouth all the more sincere. "Then I think you're like Superman, Dad."
His dad ruffled Jon's hair, a warm smile on his face. "Thanks, buddy.”
That's when it happened. All so fast. So terrifying.
The loud bang - a gunshot ripping through the air. Two men in masks stormed through the doors, waving pistols.
"Get the fuck down! This is a holdup!"
Screams erupted as people dropped to the floor. Jon felt his father's hand grip his arm, pulling him down. His little heart pounded in his ears.
The bank guard, Uncle Stan- one of his dad's friends - rushed forward with his hands raised. "Now fellas, let's all just stay cal-"
Another deafening bang drowned out his words. A blossom of red exploded from Stan’s neck as the bullet punched through. His eyes went wide, body crumpling to the tiles in a boneless heap.
The first dead body Jon had ever seen. He couldn't tear his gaze away from the growing crimson puddle spreading out beneath the still form.
"Stan!"
Jon's father straightened up, face ashen. The masked gunmen whipped towards the voice, weapons raised.
No...not again. Jon tried to shout, to scream "Dad, no!"
But no sound escaped his constricted throat. He had no say in this. No way of telling his younger self to try harder, to somewhat stop what was about to happen.
Just like that day, he could only watch in helpless horror as his father started walking towards the gunmen with his palms outstretched.
"Please, nobody else needs to get hurt here. I'm a doctor, let me just check on my friend..."
The gunmen glanced at each other, their pistols drifting towards Jon's approaching father. One shook his head.
"Stay back! Don't be a hero, doc."
But Jon’s father kept taking slow, steady steps forward, his voice impossibly calm.
"It's alright, it's alright. Let me just take a look and we can all walk away from this. I-It’s not too late."
Jon's entire small body was rigid, shaking his head mutely in desperation. He knew the words his father would say next. The same words that had haunted him for years.
Dad stopped, just a few paces from the armed criminals. He glanced back over his shoulder, meeting Jon's terrified gaze. A gentle, reassuring smile creased his face.
"It's gonna be okay, champ."
Then he turned back to the gunmen, opening his mouth to speak again. Jon wanted to close his eyes, not look at what he knew was about to happen.
Sure enough, the loud crack of the pistol was swallowed up in the deafening rush of white noise filling his ears.
He could only watch, paralyzed, as the bullet caught his father square in the chest - punching him backwards off his feet in a sickening spray of crimson mist.
Bam! Then another, in his stomach.
Bam! Then one last in his head. The blood and chunks of flesh splattering all over the little boy’s face and shirt.
The first thought Jon had, at that moment, was ‘How?’
How could his hero be treated like this? How could such a strong man be so… powerless? If his father, the greatest man on earth in his eyes, could be put in such a state, then… then-
Jon jolted awake with a hoarse, anguished scream of "No!"
He thrashed against his sleeping mat, chest heaving as if he'd just run for miles. Harsh, ragged gasps filled the stillness of the cramped room.
A cold sweat drenched his skin, clothes sticking to his trembling frame. Jon squeezed his eyes shut, trying to regain some semblance of composure.
The vivid images of his father's death still burned in his mind.
Jon clenched his fists, feeling the residual fear and anger from the dream. He forced himself to take deep breaths, trying to shake off the lingering horror.
"Get a grip, Jon," he rasped out through gritted teeth. "This is just sad..."
Dragging a shuddering hand down his clammy face, he let out a humorless bark of laughter.
Maybe I should've stuck with those court-ordered psychiatric sessions. Because clearly I'm still reaaaal well-adjusted after the whole 'Batman incident' went down.
As his heart rate slowly leveled out, Jon became aware of the crushed crater in the floor beside his mat. His fist had clenched so tightly during the night terror that he'd pulverized the sturdy ground into fragments without even realizing it.
"Oh, ominous much?" He intoned in a mocking, overly-dramatic voice. "The hero awakens to his incredible new powers in a shower of chaos... How very Shyamalan of me."
Shaking his head, Jon squinted around the dim room. His vision was preternaturally sharp despite the inky darkness cloaking everything in shadow.
"Huh...didn't peg 'I can see in the dark' as one of my physics-defying upgrades, that’s nice."
As his eyes raked over the familiar surroundings, he frowned at the conspicuous absence of his canine companion.
"Well, shit...guess Big Dawg decided to go gallivanting off on a 3 a.m. adventure while I was busy exorcizing my inner demons through night terrors again."
Jon sighed, hauling himself up and padding over to the clay pot area with slippered feet. He gulped down some fresh water, enjoying the quenching sensation.
"Look at me, I'm completely losing my marbles here," he muttered, gripping the edge of the pot. "I mean, on the one hand - childhood trauma's doing its whole 'greatest hits' tour inside my gourd again like a bad tribute band. But on the other, rando superpowers just keep dropping into my life like a weird-ass party favor..."
A glance outside the small house revealed the barest hints of pre-dawn light peeking over the horizon. Jon snorted, grabbing his robe from where he had left it.
"Well, the sun's not even up and it's already shaping up to be one of those days. Hell, maybe Big Dawg had the right idea getting some fresh air to clear his head. I could certainly use a break from all this quality psychosis..."
Tugging the robe on with a grunt, he snagged his boots and cracked open the front door, the only door, peering out into the misty mountains beyond. The air was cool and crisp, the faint scent of pine and rice mingling with the damp earth.
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"Besides, I still gotta put these powers to the test sooner or later."
With that, Jon ducked out into the gloomy pre-dawn, whistling a jaunty tune that sounded more than a little forced through the ghostly fog swirling around him. The village was still and silent, its inhabitants deep in slumber. He listened intently, his enhanced hearing picking up the soft rustle of leaves and the distant call of a night bird. No human footsteps, no whispers, no signs of life other than his own.
As he continued trudging away from the village, the night's strange events regarding that Minghan guy replayed through his mind. Jon snorted, rolling his eyes.
"Aaah, what am I even thinking about this now? It’s none of your business Jon."
He moved further into the forested area ringing the village, the shadows of night slowly giving way to muted shades of blue and grey heralding the approaching dawn, it would perhaps be another 30 minutes before anyone woke up. All the time he needed.
Jon chose his path carefully, making sure to avoid any well-trodden trails or potential onlookers. He wasn't far enough to get into trouble, but far enough to stay out of sight.
A cool breeze rustled through the boughs overhead as his sharp eyes scanned his surroundings. He paused occasionally, tilting his head to catch any unusual sounds. Satisfied that he was alone, he pressed on, feeling the tension in his muscles ease slightly.
"This should work..." he mused, coming to a stop in a reasonably secluded glade. A small clearing amid the dense underbrush offered just enough privacy to indulge his curiosity without any potential prying eyes.
Rubbing his hands together, Jon turned to look at the closest sizable tree - a gnarled, thick-trunked oak that looked sturdy enough to have stood for centuries. He rolled his shoulders, letting out a slow breath as he eyed the imposing hardwood.
"Okay, moment of truth and all that. Let's see what this crazy 'qi' power-up is really capable of..."
With calculated movements, Jon drew back his right fist and threw a relatively restrained punch towards the tree's ancient bark. Even as he consciously tried to hold back his innate strength, the dull thud of impact still made him flinch in surprise.
"Holy shitballs!"
The blow had pulverized a fist-sized divot straight through the oak's densely-packed core, punching out the opposite side like an artillery shell. Chunks of splintered wood lay scattered at the tree's base as the upper portion creaked ominously, threatening to topple over entirely.
A wide, slightly manic grin split Jon's face as he examined the devastation wrought by his comparatively light strike.
"Ha! Now that's what I'm freakin' talking about!" he crowed, flexing his undamaged knuckles with a low whistle. "Goodbye wimpy civvie arms, hello portable howitzers for fists!"
Buoyed by his initial success, Jon eagerly launched himself towards the next avenue for testing these new abilities: enhanced speed and agility. Bracing himself in a starting runner's stance, he couldn't resist throwing in one of his trademark quips.
"Alright, mad skills - let's see whatcha got! On your mark...get set...go, go, go!"
The instant those final words left his lips, Jon exploded into a burst of blurring momentum. The wooded glade seemed to distort and elongate by sheer virtue of how rapidly he covered the distance around its perimeter. Leaves and loose detritus kicked up in his slipstream like a miniature cyclone.
Yet despite the dizzying velocities he reached, Jon displayed an almost preternatural nimbleness and grace.
Leaping high overhead, vaulting fallen logs, and slaloming between trunks like an Olympic gymnast without missing a beat.
His heightened situational awareness granted him the ability to perceive and react to obstacles with rapid timing. Every footfall precise and calculated to optimize that relentless, blistering pace as he whooped and hollered without care.
To any outside observer, Jon's movements would have rendered down to little more than a tawny, airborne blur whipping through the underbrush. But to the man himself, it was as if the entire forest had decelerated into a crystalline slow-motion scene - every leaf, every cascading droplet of morning dew frozen in microscopic clarity.
"Hoo-ah! Now we're freakin' cookin' with gasoline!" Jon bellowed with gleeful abandon, launching himself into a soaring backflip to ricochet off the side of an ancient oak. It felt like the world was his personal playground now.
Maybe it was due to the adrenaline of the moment...but for the first time since getting sling-shotted into this crazy reality, Jon felt like he might just have a fighting chance against the weirdness.
When he finally stopped in his tracks, his breath bellowed out in a plume that fogged up the morning air.
Jon just grinned and brushed off his shoulders with a dramatic flourish. Even as his synapses still crackled with the lightning-like thrill of those movements, that manic, toothy smile never faltered.
"Hehe...I could get used to this..."
Jon was practically vibrating with exhilaration after putting his new abilities through their paces. Raking a hand through his windswept hair, he let out a breathless laugh.
"Okay, okay...super strength? Check. Freakin' Quicksilver super speed?" Another giddy chuckle escaped his lips. "Double check on that turbocharged madness."
He pivoted on his heel, surveying the devastation littered throughout the small glade with an approving sweep of his gaze.
"But I still don't have the first clue how to actually control this nutty 'qi' power properly. Maybe today’s field trip to the local library's in order to dig up the cliff notes version."
Jon rubbed his chin in contemplation, musing out loud. "Although, who even knows what other wild parlor tricks I might be packing under the hood at this po-"
The words caught in his throat as his newly heightened senses picked up the unmistakable sound of a footfall disturbing the loamy soil nearby. Just a solitary step...but one that his super hearing could interpret with surgical precision. The cadence, the weight distribution, the way the earth compacted underfoot - it was undoubtedly a humanoid presence skulking in the treeline off to his left.
Jon swiveled to face that treacherous direction, muscles tensing beneath his robe. His jovial expression had tightened into a guarded glower as his eyes swept the shadows for any hint of movement.
"Alright, I know someone's lurking out there!" The bark carried a terse, no-nonsense edge. "You might as well show yourself now and explain what the hell you're doing spying on me."
Only tense, pregnant silence answered his challenge. Jon ground his back teeth in frustration, mentally calculating every potential angle of this rapidly deteriorating situation.
If word got out about his...eccentricities before he had a chance to get his bearings, things could get very messy very quickly in Zhilan Village. As a nameless outsider, he was already skating on thin ice just being allowed within their settlement to peddle his modest wares.
But if the locals discovered he was some sort of cultivator who could punch holes through centuries-old trees trunks and outrun horses- perhaps even a Ferrari- without breaking a sweat?
Well, he might as well start packing his bags right now after they inevitably labeled him a freak and chased him out with pitchforks and torches… Okay, that’d be dramatic, maybe they would just shit their pants at the thought of a hidden cultivator among them, either way, not good.
His current toehold of quasi-stability could disappear in a heartbeat, with Jon tossed back to wandering the wilderness with nary a clue of what he was supposed to do or where to even begin unraveling the mystery behind his abrupt...abduction. And in this dangerous, unpredictable world filled with rapacious beasts and megalomaniacal cultists, staying off the grid was tantamount to suicide for an ill-prepared outsider like him.
Zhilan represented his only safe haven for the foreseeable future - somewhere he could lay low until unraveling some answers, even if it meant playing the role of unobtrusive merchant to the hilt. But if he'd already blown that cover without realizing it, then-
"I said show yourself!" he barked again, fists clenching in impotent frustration when the obstinate bystander continued their stubborn refusal to engage.
Okay, so the direct approach wasn't going to cut it. Jon scrubbed a hand over his face, muttering a caustic curse under his breath as he hastily reassessed his options. If he couldn't reason with this skulking interloper, then perhaps more...aggressive negotiation tactics were called for?
One way or another, he couldn't allow this witness to vamoose off and potentially destroy the only sense of equilibrium he'd managed to establish so far.
Jon's mind raced as the heavy silence stretched out, punctuated only by the furtive sounds of the waking forest around them. Alright, time for a new tactic before this already sketchy situation completely derailed any hope of damage control.
If I can't get them to show themselves, then maybe I can pinpoint their location instead, he mused, screwing his eyes shut in intense concentration. When Jon had first arrived in this world, he'd been overwhelmed by the sheer onslaught of enhanced senses assaulting him. But perhaps, with a bit of focus...
He inhaled a deep, steadying breath and let it out in a controlled stream. One by one, he forcibly shuttered away all external stimuli - the kaleidoscope of colors, the rugged textures beneath his feet, even the subtle eddies of air flowing over his skin. Narrowing his awareness down to the singular point of his sharp hearing.
At first, it was just his own rhythmic respiration, the rush of blood pounding in time with his pulse - a raucous din that bordered on deafening to his dialed up perception. Jon mentally dampened those internalized sounds with monastic discipline until they ebbed away into the background ambiance.
With that obstruction dispelled, his razor-edged focus expanded outwards in a rippling sonar sweep, auditory receptors extrapolating every minuscule vibration into hypervivid detail. The staccato fluttering of a night owl's wings cutting through the chilly air mere meters away as the raptor swooped down to seize an unfortunate field mouse scurrying nearby in its talons.
A sinuous rasp as a snake slithered its way through the boughs overhead, no doubt hunting its own meal while the morning's slanted rays had yet to fully penetrate the forest canopy.
Jon embraced the rising torrent of information with meditative serenity, allowing the individual strings to resolve themselves into distinct voices. Here was the harried patter of a squirrel dashing through the underbrush in pursuit of a fallen acorn. There, the hollow thrum of a hollow oak hosting a family of bird fledglings deep within its protective embrace.
And beneath it all, he could pinpoint the slow, steady reverberation of living pulses in their innumerable variety - some small and fluttering, others with a cadence rivaling the beat of thundering war drums.
Instinctively cataloging them, Jon delved deeper into the sonic maelstrom until one single pattern emerged - one that shared the unmistakable, yet distinctly elevated, rhythm of a human heart. Pounding rapidly.
Gotcha.
Jon's eyes snapped open, eyes locking onto a seemingly innocuous tangle of brambles and foliage off to his three o'clock. His lips parted in a tight, predatory smirk as his awareness zoomed in on that now isolated locus of noise. Okay, let’s see if they can call my bluff.
"Nice try at playing hide-and-seek there, my elusive little friend," he said aloud, fingers flexing restlessly at his sides. "But if you're not willing to come out of your own accord, then I guess the party's gonna have to come to you."
Before the lurker could even think to shift position, Jon's form blurred into a smear of speed mirage tailored by the roar of explosive motion. He arrowed through the trees in a corkscrew contrail, vegetation whiplashed aside by the shockwave force...only to rematerialize in a devastatingly solid crouch mere feet away from his prey's refuge.
The ground cratered slightly under the sheer impact of his abrupt deceleration, bits of loam still spalling outwards by the time Jon straightened into a relaxed, casual stance.
His stare pierced straight through the tangled branches mere inches from his face.
"Here's the deal...you've got three seconds to either come on out peacefully and explain what the heck is going on here," one slanted eyebrow quirked upwards in an expression of icy cordiality that belied the implicit threat underlying his words, "or I'm gonna have to get...insistent. And trust me when I say you really, really don't want to see what that looks like from this close up."
Jon crossed his arms over his barrel chest, locking his weight onto the balls of his feet in a picture of unhurried readiness. The strained silence stretched out between them, laden with unspoken tension.
"Well?" One word loaded with weighted challenges.
"Your call."
Just then, a small figure emerged from the tangled brush, gasping and struggling to catch his breath. Jon blinked in surprise as a familiar mop of fiery red hair and the gangly frame of a young boy no more than ten years old resolved into view.
"Bao?" he blurted, eyebrows hiking up towards his hairline. Of all the potential eavesdroppers, it had to be Qingshan's son.
The boy flinched at having his name called out, cheeks puffing out as he noisily exhaled the breath he'd been desperately holding.
"I-I wasn't spying, I swear!"