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Marvel MK: CH 144 – Snake vs. Tiger
🕑 Added 2025-09-06 14:41:19 +0000 UTCThe third duel of the tournament was about to begin. Danny Rand sat on the stone bench of the K'un-Lun delegation, his hands, already wrapped in their ceremonial bindings, trembling slightly. His half-mask did little to hide the nervous tension in his jaw. He looked across the arena at Sihing and Jiu Zhizhu, who were being tended to by healers from their respective cities. They were greatly bruised, their chi depleted, but they were alive. A small, quiet sigh of relief escaped his lips.
Then, he felt a shadow fall over him. Davos stood, his movements slow and deliberate, and began to walk toward the arena. But he chose a path that took him directly past Danny.
Danny looked up from his seat, and their eyes locked. A wave of pure, unadulterated killing intent, as cold and sharp as the ice of K'un-Zi, washed over him. He shuddered, but immediately steeled himself, the gleam of his golden chi flaring to life like a startled ember around his fists.
Davos looked down at him, a sneer of pure contempt on his face. "Pathetic," he muttered, the word a drop of poison in the air.
He then walked away, leaving Danny trembling, not with fear, but with a new, burning rage. He would beat this impostor. He would not let this man, cloaked in the stolen, desecrated garb of the Iron Fist, win. He looked up toward the empty sky, toward the invisible cloud where the Sage watched. He would win the tournament. He would become a true immortal. And he would not, under any circumstances, allow Davos to sully the name of K'un-Lun any further.
…
High above, floating on Zephyr. "Hmmm," Erlang Shen said, his three-eyed gaze fixed on the figure of Davos below. "Quite the intriguing one, this one."
"Oh, him?" Jack said with a dismissive wave. "From Cunt-Long? Oh, wait, the colors are wrong. It's the K'un-Zi one, huh?"
Erlang turned his gaze to Jack, a flicker of genuine curiosity in his eyes. "Where did you get this knowledge, if you have not yet regained your full past-life memories?"
Jack, who was busy swiping haw flake crumbs off of Zephyr's misty form, shrugged. "I was forcefully fed a bunch of boring mystical shit by some old pervert for seven years. After that, I left one clone in every Mystic Sanctum. One in New York, one in London, and one in Hong Kong. They just sit there and read all day, keeping the library and all its knowledge inside my head."
"Quite the hassle," Erlang commented, his tone deceptively casual. "How many clones did you have to go through to find three that were willing to just sit in a library for you?"
Jack, who had been about to make another joke, froze. He turned to Erlang, his usual manic grin gone, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated shock. "How did you know?"
Erlang's gaze shifted back to the arena below, a faint, almost imperceptible smile on his lips. "Oh," he said, his voice a calm, even thing. "The snake vs. the tiger is about to begin."
The third duel began. Li Hua of Tiger Island and Davos of K'un-Zi faced each other in the center of the vast arena. There was no pre-fight banter, no exchange of pleasantries. There was only a cold, silent promise of violence.
Li Hua moved first. She snapped her fans open with a sound like a rushing wind, her body sinking into the low, powerful stance of a stalking tiger. Her chi flared to life, a fiery orange aura striped with black, manifesting as spectral tiger paws around her hands. She was a vision of grace and lethality.
Davos stood his ground, a cold, unmoving mountain. His chi was a different thing entirely—a dark, coiling silver that wrapped around his fists and forearms like venomous serpents, their phantom heads hissing silently. His foundation was the solid, unyielding rock of K'un-Lun, but his attack was the cold, killing poison of K'un-Zi.
Li Hua lunged, her fans a blur of motion. She didn't strike with them directly. Instead, she used them to launch a volley of hidden, chi-coated knives. The projectiles shot through the air, each one a shimmering streak of orange light that looked like a pouncing tiger.
Davos met the attack not by dodging, but by parrying. The silver serpents of chi on his arms shot out, striking each incoming knife with perfect, venomous precision, batting them harmlessly aside. He then moved, closing the distance with a speed that defied his grounded, powerful stance.
The fight shifted from a ranged duel to a brutal, close-quarters clash.
Li Hua's fans became a whirlwind of steel and silk, her every movement a powerful, pouncing strike. She was a storm of aggression, the embodiment of a tiger's fury. But Davos was a rock. He absorbed her powerful blows, his K'un-Lun stances allowing him to weather the storm. And with every block, he countered. His strikes were not powerful, but they were deadly. A serpent of silver chi would lash out from his fist, not to break bone, but to strike a nerve cluster. A quick, coiling kick aimed not to topple, but to cripple.
From the stands, the other champions watched, their initial interest turning to a cold, dawning horror.
"He's not trying to win," Danny Rand breathed, his own fists clenching at his sides. "He's trying to kill her."
It was true. Halfway through the fight, the pretense of a tournament duel had vanished. Davos's strikes were no longer aimed at scoring points; they were aimed at her throat, her eyes, the back of her neck.
Li Hua, her breath now coming in ragged gasps, her arm bleeding from a near-miss, realized it too. She was being cornered, her furious tiger style slowly being constricted by the patient, venomous snake. She saw an opening, a feint, and leaped back, creating a moment of distance.
"I yield!" she shouted, her voice clear and strong, though laced with a note of desperation.
The entire arena heard it. A murmur went through the crowd. The fight was over.
But Davos didn't stop.
In fact, he became more ferocious. Seeing her moment of weakness, her attempt to surrender, only fueled his killing intent. He lunged, his hand a silver, coiling serpent aimed directly at her heart. The Steel Serpent was about to deliver its final, fatal bite.
Li Hua was fighting for her life. Every dodge, every desperate parry sent a searing pain shooting up her leg, a ligament torn from the overuse of her Tiger Leap technique. But Davos was relentless, a predator toying with its prey, his silver serpent strikes coming faster and faster.
She remembered her Matriarch's final words before she left for the tournament. "A true tiger never shows its true claws until the final pounce."
This was it. Her final pounce.
With a desperate cry that was part battle-cry, part scream of pain, she unleashed everything she had left. She flung both of her fans, not as a volley of knives, but as whole, spinning discs of razor-sharp steel, a final, desperate gambit.
Davos, with a contemptuous sneer, saw the move coming. He slithered mid-air, a graceful, serpentine twist that allowed both of the spinning fans to sail harmlessly past him. He was about to deliver his final, killing blow, his hand a silver snake aimed directly at her neck, when he saw it.
Her nails. They were no longer the nails of a woman, but the sharp, curved claws of a tiger. And from the tip of each claw, a faint, shimmering sliver of chi, almost invisible to the naked eye, stretched out into the air. In a moment of last-ditch desperation, Li Hua dragged both of her arms back, pulling on the invisible threads.
The trajectory of the fans, which had already passed him, changed instantly. They curved back through the air, silent and deadly, aimed not at his front, but at his exposed, outstretched arms.
A spray of silver and crimson filled the air. A primal scream of agony, not of defeat, but of pure, unadulterated rage, tore from Davos's throat. One of his arms had been severed clean at the elbow.
He was about to lunge, to end the now-unconscious Li Hua with his one remaining hand, when a sharp CLANG of divine metal echoed through the arena. A powerful, unseen force had parried his striking attack.
It was Lei-Kung.
The Thunderer now stood between him and the fallen Li Hua, his expression a mask of cold, controlled fury. "Enough," he said, his voice a low thunderclap. "She is unconscious. By the rules of this tournament, she has lost. The duel is over."
Davos was about to retort, to scream his defiance, but Lei-Kung's voice roared, shaking the very stones of the arena. "ENOUGH! I will not have K'un-Zi break one more rule in this battle!" His cold, furious gaze shifted from Davos to the Crane Mother, a silent accusation that was louder than any shout. She knew what he was talking about. Davos ignoring Li Hua's yield was a grave offense.
The Matriarch of Tiger Island floated down from the stands, her face a mask of grief and fury as she knelt beside her fallen daughter.
While the tension brewed, Davos, clutching the stump of his arm, began to laugh, a high, arrogant sound. He looked at his severed limb, then at the sky, as if in triumph. "The serpent has shed its skin!" he declared. "From this day forward, I am the Steel Phoenix!"
As if on cue, one of the Crane Mother's daughters floated down from the K'un-Zi stands. Davos lunged, plunging his remaining hand into her chest. Her face went slack as her life force and chi were siphoned into him, a river of stolen power. The stump of his arm began to writhe and bubble. New flesh and bone grew at an alarming rate, forming a new arm, a new hand, but it was a pale, small, almost infantile thing compared to his other.
High above, a familiar, unhinged cackle boomed down, heard by everyone in the silent, shocked arena.
"Kekekekekeke! What a sad excuse for an arm! Do you need your mommy to help you eat?! Kekekeke!"
And with that final, humiliating taunt, the preliminary rounds of the tournament came to an end. It would be continued tomorrow, with the semi-finals.
…
Time flowed, and while the Heart of Heaven was a world of its own, the new day had already passed on Earth. In a quiet, secure SHIELD facility in New York, it was evening.
Steve Rogers sat alone in a room designed to look like the 1940s, a futile attempt to ease him into a new century. He was surrounded by files, a mountain of paper detailing seventy years of history he had missed. On a small television, a live baseball game was playing—the Tampa Bay Rays versus the New York Yankees.
He heard the soft scuff of shoes in the hallway, the subtle shift in the air as a figure stopped outside his door. His super-soldier alertness, still as sharp as the day he went into the ice, didn't miss a thing.
"Come in, Director," Steve said, his voice calm.
Nick Fury entered, his one good eye taking in the scene: the scattered files, the baseball game, the man out of time. "You've been at this all day since yesterday?"
"I need to catch up," Steve replied, not taking his eyes off the screen. "My mind is still at an all-time high. I realized it when I heard that helicopter outside yesterday." He chuckled to himself, a dry, humorless sound. "It's funny, really. Back in my day, America was still at a time when any flying vehicle would be in the hands of the military. And now, a news organization has one."
"If it makes you feel more at ease, the hospitals have them, too," Fury said.
Steve's lips twitched into a small smile. "The medics have their own choppers, huh?" He watched as the Yankees, several runs behind, failed to score. "There were no Tampa Bay Rays back in my day, either. And it seems my Yankees are about to lose to them. Haha."
"Do you need anything we can get you?" Fury asked.
Steve's tired smile faded. He finally looked at Fury, his blue eyes holding the weight of seventy lost years. "Why defrost me? I could have been there for the rest of my life."
"Because I'm selfish," Fury answered, his honesty a stark, surprising thing.
The answer took Steve aback.
"The world is changing every second," Fury continued, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. "We need all the help we can get to maintain the peace."
Steve sat back down, his gaze returning to the television, to the cheering crowd of Rays fans and the frustrated groans of the Yankees supporters. "Seems like we're already there."
Fury just tilted his head, his expression a silent, powerful question: Do you really believe that?
Steve chuckled again, this time with a genuine, weary warmth. "I'm old, Director. I think I need to rest for now. But know this: I will help whenever I'm needed. But I think for now, you can manage without me."
He gestured toward a stack of sealed files on a nearby table. Fury's gaze followed, landing on the familiar names: Howling Commandos, Peggy Carter, and Howard Stark. He walked over, picked up a single, thin file from the Howling Commandos stack, and handed it to Steve.
"Read it," Fury said. "Maybe you two can help each other."
Steve looked at the name typed on the front: James Howlett.
He muttered, his voice a confused whisper, "James? How does the military know I met him? And why is he filed under the Howling Commandos?"
"They don't, but we at SHIELD do," Fury explained. "And don't give me that. He was with your team for a while. Even Commander Dugan's reports list him as an unofficial member."
A genuine, nostalgic smile finally touched Steve's lips. "So, Dugan still couldn't keep his mouth shut, even after I was gone."
Fury turned and left the room, leaving Steve alone with the past. Steve opened the file. The sounds of the baseball game, of the new, strange world outside, became a blur of noise as he read.
'He's still alive.'
A smile touched his face.
'And he has a group he calls home now.'
He kept reading.
'The name is now Logan. And in the files, it says he has no idea who he was before.'
Steve's smile vanished, his face becoming a mask of serious, profound sorrow. He looked at the picture of the feral, haunted man in the file and muttered to the empty room, "Will he even remember me?"
