Zeke spat, blood and grit catching on the wind. "What are you even doing here? This shipment's got nothing to do with you. This is a delivery from our supplier in Eastern Europe."

"Your pussy of a supplier helped smuggle us over," Kai answered, voice low and relaxed.

Zeke's face flickered - anger, then an odd amusement, like a man who'd just been told the punchline to a cruel joke. The coincidence stung. "Of course he did," he muttered, more to himself than as an explanation.

The surrounding yard hummed with diesel and tension. Cranes tilted in the distance, and men watched with narrowed eyes.

Kai slicked back his hair. "Seems like Dominique's trying to get her business back up. After the Scalpel and that lunatic Messiah got their asses handed to them by me and my friends, she must be rebuilding and reclaiming territory." He said it lightly, but the implication sat heavily between them.

Zeke bristled, defensive in a way that made him look smaller. "What's it to you?" he snapped. He'd been defended by Dominique once - she almost lost her life to this monster to save his. As such, his loyalty ran even deeper than it already had.

Kai's voice went colder, tighter, like a blade drawn from velvet. "I don't care who runs New York or which mutant thinks they're king. What I do care about is why the AMC swooped in to save Dominique, and how she ended up tangled with that Messiah lunatic." The red in Kai's eyes deepened as he leaned in, a predator testing a cornered animal.

"Did she ever interact directly with Nyx?" he asked, deliberate, each syllable a probe.

Zeke's defiance hardened into a hard line. "I'm not telling you shit." He tried to keep his jaw steady, but Kai could feel the kid's heart hammering. The bravado wavered like a candle in the wind.

Kai smiled - small, dangerous. "That's fine. I'll get the answers after I smack you around a little." The threat was offhand, almost conversational, but everyone present understood the ledger: pain could be persuasive.

'There are only two outcomes to getting beaten as badly as he had,' Kai mused, watching Zeke's chest rise and fall.

Either the man broke - eyes hollow, spirit ground down to a whisper - or he lit up with a furious spark, pride transforming into a dangerous, combustible rage. Both outcomes had value and risk.

Zeke seemed to be of the latter.

'Let's hope he can actually put up a fight this time,' Kai thought, not unkindly. 'He's recovered quicker than I expected. Mutants heal fast, and he's likely got someone in New York who helped patch his wounds.'

He flexed his right hand absentmindedly; the previous shatter had already healed clean. Bone knitting had become a banal miracle to him. The scar was a neat white line now, a thin punctuation on a language of violence.

Kai lifted a hand, a simple signal - index finger flicking, a peel of invitation - and called out, "Show me what you can do now, kid."

Zeke's eyes narrowed, something hardening there. He squared his shoulders, feeling the crush of the onlookers and the weight of the question. The yard seemed to hold its breath. Then he planted his feet, and the ground beneath him began to hum, preparing to answer in the only language that didn't lie: force.

-

Zeke's old scars throbbed like live wires as he launched himself at Kai, the ground beneath his boots cracking in jagged lines, stone splintering outward with every step. Dust and debris whipped into the air as he drove forward, fists clenched, vibrating with his shockwave power.

Kai barely shifted. He didn't even flinch as Zeke's first fist slammed into the concrete with a concussive BOOM, sending a ripple across the tarmac that shattered crates stacked nearby. The shockwave rocketed past him, tearing a trench in the earth, but Kai had already twisted, a fluid motion like water bending around a stone.

Zeke's next assault was a blur: a spinning high kick channelling vibration through the air. It detonated on impact with the wall behind Kai, spraying fragments of brick and metal into the sky.

Kai sidestepped, letting the blast blow past him, the shockwave slamming a nearby forklift into the air and twisting it sideways.

He then countered with a punch of his own, a simple, precise strike to Zeke's chest that sent the younger mutant skidding backwards. But Zeke hit the ground, shockwaves rippling from his palms, slamming the earth upward to cushion his fall and propel him forward again.

The force of his body hitting the ground created tremors that rattled every nearby object; barrels tumbled, steel containers groaned, and the pavement fractured like ice.

They were moving too fast for human eyes to follow - blurs streaking across broken asphalt, fists and feet delivering force that would have shattered bones in an instant if either were a normal person. Each blow carried the energy of artillery; each miss demolished the environment.

Zeke's frustration grew with every evasion. He could feel Kai holding back, and the thought gnawed at him. It drove him to push harder, to try to channel his vibrations into something more destructive, but every swing, every stomp, was deftly parried, redirected, or absorbed by Kai's impossibly precise movements.

"Why do you use those freaky blood powers of yours?" Zeke demanded between punches, breathing ragged, sweat and blood streaking his face.

Kai's eyes, glinting behind the dark lenses, narrowed. "Because I don't need to. And if I do, I can't guarantee you won't die without your boss here to save you." His voice was calm, almost casual, even as he dodged a punch that ripped a crater into the ground where he had just stood.

"Why don't you use another of those Mutant Enhancers? At least then you'd be somewhat capable."

Zeke roared, a guttural, vibrating sound, and slammed both fists into the pavement. Shockwaves cascaded through the airfield in concentric rings, flipping a stack of shipping containers and sending steel beams twisting into the air.

He lunged, fists vibrating faster than sound, aiming to pummel Kai into submission. But Kai flowed through it like water, weaving, stepping, spinning, dodging dozens of attacks a second.

They were simply on different levels.

But the ending of the battle left Kai's companions and Zeke himself both confused and shocked...

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