Chapter Thirteen: Someone To Sink Your Fang Into.

We followed Lee-Ann to the old steel mill outside of town, and stopped at the back entrance. I had shivers throughout my body; I couldn’t fight the feeling that Fang was going to pop out of the shadows somewhere. I tried to shake it off, that’s exactly how he wants me to feel. He’s probably not even out yet. I did my best to calm down, and got ready to head inside. As we opened the door, Pain put his hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him (not that it was necessary, I could see him anyway). “Look big brother, not to sound rude, but I just got out of an old abandoned factory. The last thing I wanna do is go into another one. I’m going to go out for a while. I’ve been stuck in that facility as long as I can remember; I want to experience all the things I’ve missed. I know you can handle Fang on your own. You always were the best fighter out of all of us. Though I suppose it helped that you can’t die. I’ll come back once I’ve seen what I want to see. Good luck, brother.” He said smiling, a bright gleam in his eyes unlike any I’d seen till now. I was shocked to hear that he was leaving, but I understood the need to see the world. “Alright, little brother. I understand. I had hoped you would stay with us through this, but I know how you feel. I hope you find what it is you’re looking for.” He smiled and nodded at me, and without another word he turned and walked away, hands in his pockets.

“That’s it? He’s just going to leave? Just like that?” Lee-Ann said, obviously distraught. “It’s ok Lee-Ann, let him go. It’s something he needs to do. And besides, if he believes that I can beat Fang, then so do I. I know he may seem a bit odd, but he has a good heart. It’s just a little beaten and bruised.” Lee-Ann turned to me and put a hand against my mask, as if holding my cheek. “You’re a good man. Better than most of the ones I’ve known. I’m sorry for earlier. I was just so worried and scared. I’ve been betrayed so many times in the past…I swore you had done the same. I should’ve known better.” If I could blush, I'm sure I would be now. A good man, there was something I’d only been called once before. I could see it in her eyes, the pain from the past, but also the love for the present. I could tell she was scared, and confused, but she was also happy that I was there with her. In that moment all my doubts were pushed out, and I was sure that somehow, we were meant to be. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close to me, and she wrapped her arms around me, the same way she did back then. “You have no need to apologize, you were right. I broke my promise. But never again, from now on I’ll keep my promises. No matter what. We’ll get through this, and put it all behind us. Now, let’s get inside and find a good place to wait it out.” She smiled and hugged me tight, before letting go and leading me inside, shutting the door behind us.

Lee-Ann flipped on the lights, and with a loud clang the old mill was completely bathed in light. Machinery filled the room, and the smell of old steel and concrete floors filled my senses. I looked around for a good place to hide, and thought maybe there would be some back room we could hide out in. “Lee-Ann, you know this place best, where can we hide?” She looked around, trying to think of what the best place would be. “It’s been a long time. Give me a minute to try and remember.” She said, leaning her chin in her hand. “How about in plain sight? That seems to be working well for you so far. Gyahahaha.” That laugh. It couldn’t be. He can’t be here! How would he know? “Surprised, squishy? I thought you might be. Did you really think you could hide from me? World’s best hunter, remember? There’s nowhere you can hide I won’t find you. I’ve got your scent.” He leapt out from the shadows, and Lee-Ann jumped behind me, shaking. “T..that’s him? That’s Fang?” She asked, voice trembling. “I’m afraid so. It seems I underestimated how quickly he’d find us.” I said, focusing on Fang as he slowly walked closer. As he stepped out of the shadow I noticed he looked almost completely different. No longer looking like a wild animal, Fang was now donning a sleek leather jacket with three small metal spikes on each shoulder, and a pair of old, torn blue jeans. His hands and feet were still bare, and his claws scraped the floor as he walked slowly towards us, smiling. “Like the new duds? I picked em up on the way here. Figured I should try to fit in a bit, like you in your not totally suspicious trenchcoat.” He spun around with his arms outstretched, showing off his clothes like a model. “Shoes though, not a fan. Honestly I don’t get it, I mean, why do you need something to cover your feet? Just walk with them. It seems so superfluous. Humans, weird little creatures ain’t they?”

Lee-Ann gripped my arm tighter, and I could tell his nonchalant attitude was worrying her as much as it was me. It was unsettling how calm he always seemed, like he knew he could kill you in a second so it didn’t matter if he wasted time with casual chit-chat. “Get to the point Fang, we both now you didn’t come here for a fashion show.” I said, trying to mask the fear in my voice. Upon seeing his Cheshire grin, I knew he could smell it, no matter how hard I tried to mask it. He chuckled and leapt forward at us, claws bared. Lee-Ann screamed, and I stretched taller in an attempt to keep him from her. He stopped inches away from my mask and stood up straight, laughing maniacally. “Gyahahaha! You’re so easy to scare squishy. I’d say I made you jump out of your skin, but It looks like someone beat me to it! Gyahahaha!” I sprung a large fist from my chest that knocked him back. Surprised, he dug his claws into the floor to slow himself, sparks flying as his nails scraped across the floor. His smile faded and the laughing stopped, and at that moment I wondered if I had made the right choice in hitting him. “That wasn’t very nice. We were having fun, and you just had to go and spoil it like that. You can’t handle a little playful banter without hitting someone, and I'm the monster? That’s just rude. But fine, if you don’t want to play anymore, then I guess we’ll have to get serious.” The look in his eyes changed, and the playful Fang I knew melted away, and an angry predator took his place. A low guttural growl emanated from him, and he leaned forward, preparing to strike. I pushed Lee-Ann towards the door and raised my hands. “If that’s the way it has to be, then so be it. I won’t stand down Fang.” He cracked a smile, and raised his claws; “Good, I was hoping you’d make this interesting.” Without another word, he leapt forward with blinding speed, claws outstretched and aimed at my chest. I sent my fist straight at his face, hitting him just before he reached me. The hit sent him into a flip, which he quickly recovered from, landing on his feet gracefully. He leapt again, and I threw another punch at his face, but he held his hands together and sliced through my fist like a knife. He shot straight through me, and left a hole in my torso. Luckily since my fight with Pain things like that didn’t seem to hurt as much, but it still hurt like hell. I sealed up the hole and another arm formed where the first one had been.

Fang tilted his head and looked at me like a kitten seeing something new for the first time. “So that’s how you do it? Just…bloop, and everything’s fixed? Weird. Though I guess that explains how you survived that explosion. Say, I always wanted to know, what’s it like to blow up? I imagine it hurts a lot. But apparently not enough to kill you, huh?” He rested his chin in his hand, looking as though he was genuinely trying to imagine what it would be like to be blown up. Suddenly he jumped up, as if he had just had an idea. “Hey! I know! Why don’t we see if you can pull off a repeat performance?” His toothy Cheshire grin returned, and he pulled something from the inside pocket of his jacket. He held up a small metal square with a single button on it that reminded me of the device he used to open the door back at the Facility.  “Always with the big red buttons those scientists. I’m tellin you, someone watched a lot of cartoons as a kid. Anyway, this little bugger sets off the same kind of explosive we used to blow that place sky high. Sure, this building is smaller than ours was, but hey, sometimes you gotta make sacrifices for science. That was what they told us, remember?” His finger hovered over the button, and he looked to me as if waiting for some kind of witty rebuttal. “It didn’t kill me then, and it won’t kill me now Fang. I’m not scared of that anymore.” He began to laugh again, and pointed behind me. “Gyahahaha, I wonder if she feels the same?! Maybe you can survive a little boom boom, but I doubt she could. How about we find out? It’s all in the name of science of course, you understand.” It was then that I noticed Lee-Ann, huddled behind a barrel near the door. “Lee-Ann? I thought I told you to run!”

Before she could respond, Fang stepped forward, waving the detonator around. “Technically, you just pushed her without saying anything. But hey, the past is the past. Not that you’d remember that, and with any luck you won’t remember this either! GYAHAHAHA!” Without any warning at all, he pushed the button and the room shook as a large flame burst forth from the back of the building. I leapt back and wrapped myself around Lee-Ann, hoping I could protect her from this like I did when Jack had tried to shoot her. The flames hit like a cannon, and I could feel the searing flames biting at my skin. I held on as tight as I could, refusing to let anything get through and hurt Lee-Ann. Suddenly, as a familiar feeling washed over me, images began flashing in my mind. The Facility, scientists running and screaming, klaxon alarms ringing in my ears. Then the images stopped, and a full scene began to play out in my mind. Four people, standing in a hallway bathed in the pulsing red glow of the emergency lights. I recognized Fang and Pain, and there were two others. One was a stocky, square-chinned, towering brick house of a man. And the other was a young kid, tall and lanky, with short black hair wearing the same orange jumpsuit as the other three. Somehow I just knew that kid was me, or what I used to be at least. And for the first time I heard my own voice, shouting at the tall man. “D****t Zeke, you said no one would be hurt! The scientists were supposed to be cleared out BEFORE we set off the bombs! What the hell is this?!” The tall man looked down at the human-me and looked un-phased. He spoke in a gruff, emotionless voice, “They promised us it wouldn’t hurt too. Sometimes people lie, Maxwell. Get used to it.” Maxwell, that must have been my name. It felt strange to hear it now. I watched as my fists clenched and I could see fury in my eyes. Such beautiful green eyes marred by such rage, it was almost sad that this was the way I first saw my own eyes. “You knew didn’t you? You had this planned since the beginning, didn’t you?! Damn you Zeke, damn you. Those are innocent people Zeke! They were just doing their jobs! You’d condemn them to death for that?!” The tall man’s face screwed up in disgust, and leaned down to my face, his voice practically a whisper, “You think any of those people are innocent? Look at what they did to us, Max. Look at what they did to you. They turned us into freaks, into tools, for their own selfish reasons. Don’t tell me those people are innocent. They’re the real monsters, not us.” The human-me muttered something I couldn’t hear and ran off in the direction of the screaming scientists. Pain tried to reach out and stop me and shouted after me with tears in his eyes, but Fang held him back shouting to let me go. “If anyone can survive that explosion it’s him, but we can’t! We have to go, now! We’ll come back for him when this is all over.” It was surprising to hear Fang sound so caring, but it could have just been him trying to save his own hide and get out before he was caught in the explosion. The last image I saw was the three of them running in the opposite direction of the human-me, then nothing. As the last of the images faded, I slowly slipped into unconsciousness with one phrase wringing in my mind: “Damn you Zeke, damn you.”