10 The Easy Way or The Hard Way

"What happened?" Fury asked the agents who looked at him as pitifully as they could but his eyes were stone cold. The agents sighed in sadness and looked at one of them who seemed to be the leader of the bunch. The man looked at them with grievances before looking back at Fury, reluctantly.

"The boy was out for a flight or something, I don't know what I can call it when one of us noticed a chicken in the backyard. We thought it was one of those chickens that are usually released to feed themselves during the day so we ignored it. Before long, we noticed something was wrong, one of us had gone dark. I sent someone to check on him but he too went dark too after an hour. We became alert after that and started patrolling in squads of three. The first squad was the one who found the pulpitrator, the chicken. It attacked one of them with a glowing wing attack and the poor bastard was sent flying backwards with a broken ribcage and sternum.

"The others opened fire at it which in turn alerted us so we ran over and saw the chicken finishing off one of the agents with a claw to the throat. We froze in disbelief which made the chicken attack us first. It was fast, like not Henry level fast but fast enough to hit us without any of us reacting to it. It countered everything we threw at it so perfectly it was like we were missing on purpose. It kept on attacking our vital spots that if it fought us one on one, we would not have held on for more than two minutes. When we were reaching our limits, Henry arrived. The chicken said something about him being the main prize. It seems that all the missions Henry was sent to do by us had already attracted the chicken's attraction. It said that it was a mutated chicken that lived in a monestery. It looked at how the monks were fighting and it immediately knew how to. It was a mercenary that even us were not aware of until yesterday.

"It attacked Henry and he got cocky because of his impenetrable body but the chicken managed to paralyse his body by attacking some thing it called his accupoints. When he was finally down, the chicken got cocky and stood on his chest, gloating at him. Henry killed it with the lasers from his eyes then warned us not to tell anyone, especially you, so you know why we are reluctant to report to you," the man finished his story. Fury was still expressionless but his mind was thinking about many things at once.

"You are all dismissed," he said. The agents sighed in relief as they scrambled out of the office. From the dark corner of the office appeared Natasha in her tight battle suit.

"That chicken might be from that place," Fury said with a look of de ja vu.

"You think so? They are accepting chicken as disciples now?" Natasha asked sarcastically. Fury scoffed at this.

"It doesn't matter if they do but this fight shows that their ki shit works. A chicken without formal training was able to completely immobulize that walking tank. I cannot imagine just how powerful the ones who have trained for long can be,"Fury said.

"What makes you think they will aid in killing Henry? They are monks, all they want is peace," Natasha added. Fury smiled at this.

"The seat of the director comes with a lot of perks and one of them includes knowing a lot of secrets from different regions of the world. Some of them are earth shattering like a monk whose mutation tends to make him a living Buddha," Fury said with cunning smirk.

Henry was looking at his food with drool dripping from his mouth. He had not seen such delicious looking food before, fresh from the kitchen, made by chef Gordon Ramsey. The name was too French and too accenty he did not bother to remember it but he was sure he would be going to heaven and beyond once he tastes it.

"I am going to enjoy this, very very much," he said and took a spoonful into his mouth. He felt his body grow goosebumps and lasers shot out of his eyes into the sky. The food was soo good he thought it was made by angels. Immediately, he started gobbling down the rest of the food till he got a phone call. He took out his Nokia phone and looked at who it was. He immediately lost his appetite when he saw Fury's name on the caller's ID. He picked it half heartedly.

"Another mission?" Henry asked with lack of enthusiasm.

"Yes. This one will give you a good challenge," Fury said.

"Yippee," Henry said down heartedly. "Who am I hunting now?"

"His name is Zhang Feng Yang. He is a monk in China in a village called Two Rivers in Chinese. He is a mutant who awakened his abilities two years ago and since then, he has been using those powers to do all sorts of stuff from helping people to punishing criminals,"

"He sounds like a good guy, why do you want to burst his balls?" Henry asked and took a bite off a steak.

"He's playing God. He made an infertile mother have triplets, a crippled man into a marathon champion, a deaf person into a tracking expert and a dumb guy into a K pop star. Everything he has done so far has been against the natural order and he is starting to draw attention to a lot of different people who will hurt everyone he has come in contact with to get to him. So, we want to bring him into our organisation for his and their safety," Henry rolled his eyes at this statement. He has come to know this SHIELD is a shadow of its former self. The previous SHIELD would not act the way this one was acting and it is all because the former director retired, Peggy Carter. There was a director before Fury and it all started going downhill from then. Fury's for the greater good was the translation of the organisation's greater good. No wonder Hydra, their archnemesis had infiltrated them for so long without them knowing. It's because SHIELD was almost becoming like Hydra. All they lacked was the mad tyrant that wants to take over the world.

"Sure, I will go over and talk to him," Henry said and immediately hang up.

Fury smiled when he heard the ringing from the other side. He put down the phone and turned to Natasha and nodded. She sighed then called someone else.

"Feng Xuan, I have a job for you. Do you know a monk by the name Zhang Feng Yang? You do, great. I want you to give him a warning. You have the picture of Henry Cowell? Good, take the picture to the monk and tell him that he is a mutant that wants to recruit him into an antihuman mutant organisation. Make sure when they meet, the monk is hostile to Henry. Do that and you will have earned the break you always wanted. Good bye to you too and I would hurry up if I were you."

Feng Xuan put down the phone and quickly ran to his room. He opened his safe as fast as he could and took out a picture of Henry. He gave the picture a quick look then ran out out of his house without kissing his wife goodbye, into his car and drove off towards the Two Rivers village. Feng Xuan did not know how many rules he broke and be didn't care. He knew how fast Henry was and any second wasted was closer to his mission failure.

After two hours of furious and close call driving, he finally arrived in the village. He took out wads of cash and asked the first person he met the direction to the monestery. He was pointed up a mountain and he let out a sigh of desperation. The steps were just too many but he took a breath in, squeezed his butt and immediately ran up the stairs. No matter how he felt his legs burn up, he did not stop till he reached the huge double doors of the temple. He was sweating up a river and panting up a hurricane. Once he got in, he felt all the fatigue wash away and his mind became clear.

"Welcome, patron. This penniless monk welcomes you into his monestery," a voice that almost feels ethereal sounded from the small temple. Feng Yuan looked inside and saw a bald young monk seated in a lotus style in front of a Buddha. Feng Xuan felt like he was about to lie to a living Buddha and his whole body broke out into sweat. But he gritted his teeth and went in anyway.

"Your heart is heavy with regret and unwillingness, what ails you, patron?" the young monk asked him. Feng Yuan swallowed hard before he spoke up.

"Venerable Zhang, I am afraid I bring you bad news. There is a person who is flying over to this place and he is coming to recruit you," Feng Yuan said. The young monk opened his eyes and looked at him with eyes so pure it was like he was a son of a god.

"I can smell the scent of evil karma all the way to your soul, patron. If you don't take care you might be in a mishap soon. Do you want me to cleanse them?" the monk asked him. Feng Xuan felt his heart jolt when he heard that. He has been doing things for SHIELD, things that cannot ever be brought into the light of day. It must be why he had such evil karma that the monk felt pity on him. But he immediately remembered his mission. He gritted his teeth and decided to go all out. He reached inside his inner pocket, took out the picture of Henry then showed it to the monk who frowned when he saw it.

"I know this man. He has appeared in my dreams for a long time and each time he comes nearing maliciousness towards me. Is he the one after me?" the monk asked, stunning Feng Xuan. He never thought the job would be this easy.

"He is the one, Venerable Zhang. He works with a mutant organisation called the Brotherhood and they want to recruit you into their ranks or kill you," Feng Xuan said. The young monk frowned even more when he heard that. He put down the picture, closed his eyes and started chanting some scriptures. Feng Xuan did not know what to do so he just sat in a lotus position and kept looking at him. After an hour, the young monk opened his eyes and Feng Xuan was scared by how scary they looked.

"He's here," the monk said. Henry was sure he was a hair's breadth away from getting a heart attack. He knew how powerful Henry was and as the saying said, better the devil you know than the angel you don't know. He barely knew anything

about Zhang Feng Yang except he was a mutant that is close to be a Buddha. The young monk calmly walked out of the monestery and Feng Xuan followed. Up in the sky hovered Henry who was looking at the young monk with a tired expression.

"Are you Zhang Feng Yang? Did I pronounce that right?"

"I am and you did surprisingly well for a foreigner," the young monk said, calmly. Henry slowly landed in front of them.

"I'm glad, I spent thirty minutes learning how pronounce the name. Good to know you can speak English seamlessly, this will make it easier. I am here to give you a chance to join our organisation," Henry told him calmly.

"You really did come to invite me into your organisation. I am sorry but I am not interested in entering such an evil organisation," the young monk answered, his voice calm as a lake.

"I know it's evil, they hoodwinked me into entering it too. I am glad to know I am not the only one who shares my sentiment. The things they have done are all terrible. But, I am afraid that they don't take no for an answer. We can do this the easy way or the really hard way, the choice is yours," Henry said. The young monk's demeanor suddenly changed as he turned fierce. Henry was taken by surprise because of this dramatic change in countenance.

"Guess we have to do this the really hard way," the monk said and threw out a palm attack towards Henry who threw a palm attack of his own. When the two palms hit each other, it was as if the world just came to an end. The collusion brought forth a sound a kin to a meteor crashing and with it came heat so severe the whole monestery was in ashes in seconds and the shockwave sent out destruction that even the mountain could not withstand that it crumbled to nothing but rubble. The village was gone, the mountain was no more, the only people surviving were Henry and Zhang Feng Yang. The latter had all his clothes ripped and he was standing a kilometre away from Henry who was still standing at the same position, only he had a scary smile on his face.

"I felt that," Henry said in a deep voice that sent chills into the heart of Zhang Feng Yang. "I have been restraining my strength because I don't want to mess up so many things but you took thirty percent of my strength without exploding, that means you are strong. SHIELD wanted you alive but accidents happen, right? I am going to give you my all, see if you can help me have fun." Henry took a deep breath as he closed his eyes, held the breath for a few seconds then opened his eyes again. His eyes had turned blue, as if they were ice bergs and the air around him for two kilometres turned so heavy it was as if it was about to be frozen into a liquid. Lightning arcs cackled all around his body as the ground beneath his feet turned into magma because of the heat he was producing. Henry looked at Zhang Feng Yang who was gritting his teeth, trying to dispell the terror he was feeling at the moment.

"You chose the hard way, I will not disappoint," Henry said with a voice so deep and loud the land shook. "Are you ready?"