ch.15

I apologize for the lack of chapter last week. As I already mentioned on my pat-reon, my laptop broke two weeks ago and as everyone whoever had to write anything on a phone can tell you, it sucks. After my second rage quit trying to write last week's chapter I decided to take a break before I start hating my own story.

>>>><<<<

Previously on Dc Warlock:

Slowly tears began to pour out the girl's eyes as she lets out a silent scream of horror. Her body wanted to scream, to express the grief she was feeling, but for some reason, no sound made it past her lips. It was a horrible thing to watch.

I wrench my eyes away from the crying girl with difficulty and turn my attention to the man.

"Why did you kill Faizul?" I ask him. Although it was obvious that the girl did the killing, it was even more obvious who the one in charge was.

"I was hired to," he replied easily, looking away from the girl for the first time since I arrived, a hint of disappointment on his face.

The sense of danger the man was emanating got turned up to eleven the moment he turned his full attention on me. Something was telling me that if I gave him even one chance to get me by surprise, that he will find a way to kill me, powers or no powers.

Frowning at both his answer and the danger I was sensing from what looked like someone without powers, I concentrated on finding out both of their identities. A gamer style box opens in front of me with both their names and backgrounds on it. I pause in shock as my power tells me that I was looking at David and Cassandra Cain, assassin extraordinaire, and assassin in training.

Fuck!

>>>><<<<

The man, no, David Cain's eyes narrow and his entire posture changes. Gone was the slightly weird father that just watched his daughter kill a man in cold blood, thinking that she was playing a game, and in his place stood a ruthless assassin.

And if the murderous intent that he was sending my way was any indication, I was the reason for the sudden change.

Did he just sense me using magic on them?

I guess it wouldn't be all that surprising if he did. Both my power and memories were telling me that he was one of the world's best assassins and if that wasn't enough, he was also trained by and currently working for Ra's al Ghul, the Mystic Master Assassin himself.

He is probably trained in sensing Magic by using Ki or some other DC assassin bullshit ability that is obviously just magic with another name.

Looking at the still comatose Cassandra Cain from the corner of my eyes, I sight. I remember this scene, this is when she kills someone for the first time after being tricked by David into thinking it was just a game.

Because of the body reading ability that David had trained her in since her birth, which left her both mute and dyslectic, Cassandra had experienced the life draining out of Faizul the whole time he was dying.

If nothing was done, the trauma of today will give her an aversion to killing, making her flee from her father, and join the bat family as the newest batgirl.

But that will only happen if no one interferes and the future continues to run its course undisturbed. The complete opposite of what I was about to do.

I always liked Cassandra more than the other Batclan members, she was ruthless. Unlike the rest of the bat family members, she would kill if it really came down to it. I just have to remove the trauma from today from her mind and make it so that she doesn't experience the death of everyone she kills and I will have another partner I can count on.

Noticing nothing bad happening from the Magic he sensed, David turns away from me and to his daughter. But I don't let that fool me for a second, I have no doubt that the slightest threatening move on my part will result in me having a few extra holes in my body.

"Let's go," David orders his daughter mercilessly, ignoring the new kid for now.

He was hired to kill Faizul and not fight a weird kid that could use magic. And unless it was absolutely unavoidable, he won't go around killing for free, which is why Faizul's guards were only unconscious instead of dead. The League of Assassins directive was to kill only those ordered to, no more no less.

Not getting the response he expected, that being total obedience, from his daughter. David takes a threatening step in her direction, "I said we are leaving, Cassandra!"

Cassandra's silent scream stops at David's step, making eye contact, she gives him a glare full of hate and pain. Her eyes roam around the office searching for a way out, she takes notice of me for the first time and does a double take in surprise - in all likelihood she is trained to know everything about her surroundings and is surprised she didn't notice me before now -.

I can see the cogs in her mind spin as she notices that I was standing slightly in front of the only exit out of the room. It doesn't take her long to decide to run around me, while using me as an obstacle against her father, to buy herself some extra time to flee.

"Sleep," I tell her, bringing an end to her plan before it could begin.

Cassandra's eyes close, before shooting open again. She shakes her head frantically, trying to keep herself awake, and while her willpower was impressive in the end my magic wins out and she falls down on the carpeted floor asleep before her head hits the ground.

Turning my attention away from the sleeping Cass, I meet the impotent glaring eyes of David.

The moment I started my sleep spell on Cassandra, David had moved for his weapons faster than humanly possible and had them half up pointing in my direction by the time the spell was done. I wasn't using my super speed of course but it was both impressive and kind of scary how good he was.

Even now I could feel something inside of him - his Ki? - fighting my magic and trying to release him.

"What have you done to me?" David gritted out his mouth with difficulty, the only other body part besides his eyes that could still move.

"I turned off your ability to move," I said casually like it was an easy thing to do instead of something that cost me 3 souls and counting to keep up and refresh every time his Ki made some leeway in dispelling the effect.

Turning someone's ability to move off may cost a lot now but later on, it can become my go-to move to use on people without any resistance against it. Against those with resistance stopping or killing them the regular way will probably be a lot cheaper soul-energy wise.

Ignoring David's shock, I turn my attention to getting inside his mind. Having done it before, I expected it to be simple but I should have known that nothing was normal about this whole situation.

"*BANG!*"

I have just enough time to realize that my mind-probe has collided with a barrier around David's mind before my mind-probe gets severed.

"Motherfucker!" I yell, taking a hold of my pounding head. It felt like someone took a hammer and just went crazy on the back of my head.

What the fuck is Ra's al Ghul teaching these guys?!

To break it down, David's Ki had withdrawn from where it was fighting my 'paralyzing spell' all over David's body, collected together, made a barrier around his mind, and severed my mind-probe, all before I could react.

I glared in the amused eyes of David after I was done healing myself from the mental backlash.

Normally after such a painful backlash, I would try another way to get what I wanted, maybe use a more subtle method rather than trying to force myself in his mind with brute force. But after seeing David's smug look and being a fan of the age-old adage 'if power doesn't work, you haven't used enough of it', I take hold of all my souls and make another mind-probe before shaping it in the form of a hammer and start battering the Ki shield with rapidly increasing amounts of power.

The amused look leaves David's eyes as my first hit cracks his shield, the second hit makes him grimace in pain, by the third hit his nose starts to bleed and his Ki shield is in such a bad shape that a stray breeze could make it fall apart.

My next blow barely makes contact with the Ki shield before it shatters into a thousand pieces. David gives me a bloodshot glare before coughing up a mouthful of blood in response to all his Ki being drained all at once in such a violent way.

I had to use almost 4 souls to get in David's mind, compared to the normal 50 percent of one soul I used when viewing all of Hei Jiang's memories was nothing, it just shows how much of a monster David would be against normal people..

This fight has been the biggest expenditure of soul-energy of any battle I have been in so far, and it isn't even a real battle!

If it costs this much soul-energy to get in David Cain's mind, how much is Batman, the man known for his impenetrable will, going to cost?

Better yet Ra's al Ghul, if his student could reinforce his mind with Ki there is no doubt in my mind that he could do the same, only better. How much Ki does he have after being alive all these centuries and how good has he gotten at manipulating it?

Putting all those questions behind me for now, I went back to perusing David's memories and knowledge for anything worth stealing, like all the League of Assassins secrets he knew and his training from both the League of Assassins and other places.

I conjured a marble and put everything I thought could be even a little useful in it.

Those training lessons and skills will come in handy for Cassandra and I. She already is badass with what 'little' she learned over the years, just imagining how much stronger she can become under my tutelage makes me shiver.

After I am done with that, a little mind manipulation has David thinking that Cassandra freaked out because of her first kill - which is kind of true - and fleeing in the crowd before he could stop her. After searching for a while he left Macau angry that Cassandra was a failure, in this version of the 'truth' I never interrupted them and stole his daughter.

Unfortunately killing David and getting this whole thing over with wasn't an option. It wouldn't be all that hard to figure out what his latest mission was and tracing it back to the gang and building I was about to take over. Ra's al Ghul would be here within the week and I'm not ready to open that can of whoop-ass on myself without it being absolutely unavoidable or for a really good reason. Even I can't fight a whole Assassin organization on my own, at least not yet.

Instead, I healed him and removed any traces of our 'fight' from his person. The only thing I could do nothing about was his empty Ki reserves.

Or could I?

Taking hold of a soul, I imagined his Ki reserves regenerating to full again when he left the building, while I didn't think that his Ki could remove mind control that had already been applied without David himself controlling it, I wasn't taking any chances.

I could feel the dredges of his Ki try to resist my spell before being overwhelmed and my spell taking effect. I can't believe that really worked, even I forget how bullshit my powers are sometimes.

Making David's mind blank, I send him on his way with an order to ignore anything strange going on in the building and to let his mind make memories of what he expects to see and notice by itself. That way there will be no discrepancies in his memories.

I follow him as he opens a secret door in the penthouse leading to an emergency exit, which he of course knew of, and left without a backward look.

Returning to the office, I glance at the corpse of Faizul and the cutely snoring body of Cassandra, what now?

>>>><<<<

Making a connection with Nina's mind is almost uncomfortable easy after the whole spectacle with David. I really should give them some sort of mental defenses, if it is this easy to just waltz in their minds and do whatever I want, whenever I want.

Looking through her eyes, I saw that she was making good use of the silk cloths she asked me to conjure for her.

She had split up from the rest of the gang and was currently fighting a group of Six Dragons goons who had barricaded themselves behind some tables and chairs. As I watched, a goon took aim and shot in Nina's direction, when the bullet was 5 feet away from her, one of the two silk cloths wrapped around her arms moved like it had a mind of itself and nimbly snatched the bullet out the air.

That same silk cloth moved in front of Nina before spreading out in an impenetrable shield as the rest of the goons also opened fire.

The other silk cloth didn't stay idle however, it snaked its way through the air and into the makeshift barricade of tables and chairs and started throwing goons around like nobody's business.

Having grown up watching bad wuxia fight scenes, Nina took inspiration from their iron cloth technique and added it to her own fighting style. Her silk cloth could be as soft as a feather or become harder than steel while still keeping its flexibility and malleability.

There is precious little a normal human can do against something that in a heartbeat can change between being as soft and nimble as silk and being as hard as steel while hitting with the strength of a bull.

During training, Nina had explained to me that it was easier for her to just keep her telekinesis connected to one, or in this case two things, and to use those instead of reconnecting with a new thing or person every time she wanted to attack.

"That was pretty good," I said in Nina's mind after she was done restraining the unconscious goons with their own clothes.

Startled, Nina jumps up and glances around, her silk cloths protectively surrounding her form.

"Alexander?" She asks out loud, recognizing my voice, "where are you?"

"I am talking in your mind," I inform her.

"This feels different from when Mili does it," Nina replied, her face set in an uneasy frown.

From what I could tell from Nina's surface thoughts is that when Mili talked to her, she could tell that someone was on the other side talking like a mental phone call, but when I talked it was just like the voice originated from inside her mind itself and it was making her uneasy. The only reason she didn't think it was her own mind was because the thought had my voice.

I changed the connection between us to how she remembers talking with Mili felt like, "how is this?"

"Yes, thanks that is...wait did you just read-"

"Nevermind that" I interrupt her, "The reason I am 'calling' you is because Faizul is dead."

Nina narrows her eyes at my interruption and the reading of her mind without permission but the news of Faizul's death trumps all that.

"Good riddance," she answers coolly. However, with me currently being connected with her mind, it was impossible to miss the storm that my words had unleashed inside her.

Her mind was a violent melting pot of different and opposing feelings right now. Glad that Faizul was dead and she had avenged her mother, anger that she hadn't killed him herself, and even a small part that felt sadness over the death of her father.

The moment she calms herself down and decides to take all those feelings and literally shove them inside a box in her mind to deal with another time is unmistakable. The storm of emotions and feelings that were raging stops and disappears so fast that it leaves me floored.

I don't think that that is healthy...

"The problem is that I couldn't get his knowledge about the gang and his businesses from him before he died, is there someone else who would know all that?"

With my bullshit power, I was pretty sure that I could take the knowledge from Faizul's corpse or out of thin air but I just wasn't willing to pay the amount it was no doubt going to cost me if there was another, easier way.

"Yes Huang Yingzhe, he is Faizul second in command. He takes care of all the Six Dragons legal businesses, I wouldn't be surprised if he knew more than Faizul himself about the business side of things."

As she talked about Yingzhe her mind brought up an image of what he looked like a few years ago when she last saw him, "any idea where I may be able to find him in this huge ass hotel?"

"Nope," Nina replied just as a bullet pings against the wall next to her.

"Duty calls," she continues, already I could see the storm of emotions and feelings surface again now that she has something or rather someone to work them out on.

Which is a little healthier, I guess...

"Be careful and don't get cocky just because you have powers," I reminded her before closing the connection.

>>>><<<<

Coming back to my own body, I concentrated on finding the whereabouts of Huang Yingzhe. Luckily for me and unfortunate for him he was in the hotel, and not far at that just one floor down from me.

Picking up Cassandra in a princess carry, which was kind of awkward with her being the same size as me and all, I started walking to the elevator.

On the way, I make sure that my Manashield envelopes both Cassandra and me instead of being skintight. I usually keep it skintight to deceive people into thinking that I was more invulnerable than I really was.

Closing the elevator door, I again take hold of the elevator with my power and imagine it going down.

With me having to go only one floor down, it takes only a few seconds before the elevator dings to signal its arrival at its destination, and the doors start to open. Right into the ambush, I had been waiting for the whole time I had been in the penthouse.

My shield flares in sight as I immediately get pelted with automatic gunfire. Ignoring the rain of bullets for now I take stock of the situation, 3 goons were standing side by side in the hallway leading to the elevator, shooting at me with rifles while another 3 were waiting behind them, ready to tag in when needed.

What they thought to accomplish that the first group couldn't, I didn't know.

Having taken stock of the situation, I appear behind the group and continue walking to what seems like a security room, behind me the goons fall unconscious from a hard blow to the back of their heads.

Frowning, I check myself over for any problems. I moved slower than I intended to right then. Finding nothing wrong with my super-speed ability, as far as I could see, I went down the list of abilities and tested them all. After that, it didn't take too long to track down the problem to my Manashield.

Normally, my Manashield automatically defends me from what I find dangerous to me such as bullets while not defending against things that were dangerous to normal people but not me, like the air when running faster than sound.

But with me having changed my Manashield to also protect Cassandra, it had automatically, without me having even thought about it being dangerous to her, protected Cassandra from the air when moving that fast, which in return made me less aerodynamic and slowed me down slightly.

This means that my Manashield had sensed that the air would be dangerous to Cassandra, something I didn't even know I made it able to do.

I need to be more careful with my thoughts when making abilities or when intending something to happen from now on, this time it resulted in something positive but who knows what will happen next time I neglect to keep all the possibilities in mind.

Not that it really mattered this time, I was still faster than any normal people could react to. Arriving in front of the door leading to the security room and where my power was indicating Huang Yingzhe is, I kick the door in. The two goons who were waiting to surprise me got their own surprise when the door flew off its hinges and hit them in the face, breaking their noses and knocking them out instantly.

Walking inside I dodge around the slow moving machete that was aiming for my face and hit the goon hiding next to the now doorless doorway in the stomach, making him fold up and spew out the contents of his stomach.

I checked the room for any more goons while in super-speed but the only person left conscious was an older looking Huang Yingzhe from the image I got from Nina's mind. Who at the moment was pointing a gun at me.

He opens his mouth to say something, but having learned my lesson in underestimating normal people in this universe and honestly getting tired of this whole situation, I have him stripped of all his weapons with broken legs before he can react.

A brief look in his mind, tells me everything I need to know about Huang Yingzhe. Trying to make him work for me would be pointless, he is completely loyal to Faizul, who he sees as his blood brother. He would forever try to destroy the ones responsible for Faizul's death which in this case is Cassandra, who would be working under me, and thus me.

Even if I mind-controlled him to be loyal to me I would have someone in my midst that would betray me at the drop of a hat, the moment one of my enemies removed my mind control from him, it just isn't worth it.

Conjuring a marble I put everything I came for inside, that being all his knowledge about the gang, all the businesses the gang owned, and secret bank accounts he knew of, there were a lot of those. It seems that Faizul left all the money side of things for Huang Yingzhe to manage.

I was done plundering Huang Yingzhe's mind off everything useful before the first scream of pain was even done passing his lips. Having acquired some respect for his loyalty to Faizul while in his mind, I put him out of his misery and broke his neck fast before his brain could register any more pain.

Glancing at the corpse of the last person the goons could rally under after Faizul's death, I smile. All that is left to do now is to help the kids with rounding up the rest of the goons.

And then I will be the proud owner of ¼ of Macau!

>>>><<<<

As you no doubt noticed, I made the assassins(David) a little stronger than they are in the comics because everyone always brags how good and dangerous they are in-universe but it gets never shown except Lady Shiva(she is awesome), they always get used as disposable mooks or they only win when the heroes are doing dumb shit.

A lot of the humans without powers in DC like Cassandra Cain and Lady Shiva are known to use Ki/Chi(the flow of life) as an explanation when they do something not humanly possible, so I'm going to explore it a little more than it is in the comics and use it to justify the Leagues of Assassins fearsome reputation.

Ki/Chi users won't suddenly become as crazy strong as Karate Kid or Kong Kenan but they will be noticeably stronger and better than even the ridiculous 'normal humans' of DC.