Infinity Era

by JDPrime22

Chapter 38 – Immortal

Morning sunlight managed to spill inside and fill the bedroom within the Chikara Dojo. It filled the tangled bed sheets, covered the feet managing to spill outwards. There were two pairs, the sunlight reaching upwards and covering the bare arms of the bed’s occupants. It was warm, but not nearly as warm as the two locked in each other’s embrace.

Before the sunlight could even reach his eyes, Danny Rand slowly opened both. The first glorious sight he saw that morning was the lovely expression of Colleen Wing lost in slumber. Instantly, the thoughts of their night together flushed back into his memory, causing a warm smile to spread across his lips. He stared at her sleeping form, watched her naked chest rise and fall beneath the sheets, her slender curves gently move alongside her breaths, all until the sun finally reached her eyes.

Seeing them flutter open made his own heart flutter. “Hi,” he whispered to her.

Colleen smiled. It was quite easily the sweetest, most beautiful smile he had ever seen. “Hi,” she replied, her long black hair lying in tangles over her eyes. None of it concealed that smile. He just couldn’t help himself and brushed her hair away, plunging forward for a morning kiss. Colleen sighed lovingly into his lips, reinforcing his push with one of her own.

When they broke away, the two stared into each other’s gaze, holding their foreheads together and locking securely. Colleen noticed his short, scruffy, blonde hair was just as tangled as her own, his soft scruff on his neck and face short, sweet, and simple. He adjusted himself more comfortingly, arm around her, scooting over so the heat from their naked bodies radiated off each other. “Sleep well?” Danny asked.

“Mhm,” Colleen mumbled, nodding her head. She was still quite tired, yawning carnivorously and shutting her eyes. It was so adorable Danny could hardly take it. “You?”

Rand breathed a little chuckle, leaning forward and kissing her forehead. “Heavenly.”

Smiling to the affection, she gently rubbed her fingers to his chest, caressing his pectorals and gracing the dragon tattoo. The black, slithering dragon curled over his heart. The tattoo that signified his strength and title. The Mark of Shou-Lao.

The mark of the Immortal Iron Fist. Colleen’s smile slowly began to deflate.

How he fully acquired it was still hard to believe for Colleen. She wanted to trust Danny—a relationship like theirs definitely required trust both ways—but she still had trouble trying not to take his words with a grain of salt. She knew that Danny was the son of the two billionaires Wendell and Heather Rand, and that he became orphaned and nearly died when he and his family experienced a plane crash. He lost both of his parents, having been saved by ancient monks and taken to be raised in K’un-Lun. That much Colleen understood to be true, although she never truly saw K’un-Lun herself, even when Danny took her straight to the Chinese mountains where it was located, only to find nothing. Like it had completely vanished.

Once he was trained by the Order of the Crane Mother to become a martial artist, Danny then partook in the Trial of Shou-Lao, which required Danny to kill Shou-Lao the Undying. A dragon. Colleen still had trouble trying to believe that part. In his victory over the beast, the Mark of Shou-Lao was burned against his chest, Danny plunging his hands into the burning brazier which contained Shou-Lao’s heart. Doing so granted him the power of the Iron Fist.

After finally returning home to New York, Danny sought to reacquire his family business—and hopefully his home—in the form of Rand Enterprises. It was a hard-fought war to reclaim his name and ownership of Rand Enterprises, not to mention having to deal with the Hand and Madame Gao using his business for her own twisted goals. Both Danny and Colleen learned that the Hand was still a threat to deal with, and Danny’s title as the Iron Fist gave him a certain destiny: to destroy the Hand by any means necessary.

They had succeeded. Barely.

After searching the globe with Colleen to learn of the Hand’s whereabouts, the mysterious Black Sky of the Hand murdered their only lead, prompting Danny to return to New York. It was back home where he met Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, and Matthew Murdock, better known as the Daredevil. Having succeeded in fulfilling his prophecy in defeating the Hand, Danny and his new allies didn’t come out of the war without loss.

That loss being Murdock. They left him to die, to fend off his love Elektra as the building collapsed all around them. Colleen could clearly remember Danny still holding severe regret for leaving Matthew to die. She had comforted him for hours, the two trying to convince him that what Murdock did was for his own doing, his own quest. Danny’s quest wasn’t over, even with the Hand now gone. His only goal now was to fulfill Murdock’s last wish.

And that was to protect New York City, to become its defender. That was the last he ever saw of Jessica or Luke for quite some time.

But when Claire Temple called Rand, informing him that Luke was currently in some deep shit, he found some comfort knowing that Cage was glad to see him since their war with the Hand. If anything, he could see Luke as being a friend of his, maybe even a best friend. With little to no surprise to Rand, Luke was indeed in some deep shit with a man known as “Bushmaster”. Together, the two destroyed one of Bushmaster’s growing labs creating a dangerous drug called Nightshade, known for giving unnatural powers to whoever consumed the plant. Once the mission had ended, Danny assured Luke that if he needed him for anything, that he wouldn’t hesitate to call Rand over.

He hadn’t heard from him since. That was months ago, to Colleen’s knowledge.

Now, with quite possibly the hardest parts of their lives beyond them, Danny and Colleen spent their free time together trying to create something. A relationship. A love. Hopefully something even more in the future. The hard parts came during the day when the two traveled the city, people gawking at Danny Rand, the lost child of the Rands, the billionaire. Danny appreciated the attention to a limit, trying to wave off the crowds and bring Colleen with him. The fun parts of their relationship came at night, when it was just them and no one else to bother the two.

Those were the parts Danny appreciated the most, just being by Colleen’s side. Talking to her, living with her, loving her. Being a part of her life and her a part of his was bliss in the highest form, something even food couldn’t satisfy his chi with.

Her stomach grumbled. Danny chuckled at that, seeing her squirm. “God, I’m hungry.”

Danny sighed, feeling his stomach to be malnourished as well. He clenched his fist, feeling the lack of chi as it hardly glowed. “I was hoping you’d say that,” he muttered, eyes locked with the soft golden glow burning within his fist.

“We should probably get up and get some breakfast.”

“Yep.”

A moment of silence between the two. The sounds of New York outside of the dojo were as loud as ever before. Danny chuckled once more, looking left to Colleen. “Too tired?”

“Too tired,” Colleen whined with eyes still closed, smiling slightly at the end.

“We got some time,” Danny mumbled, scooting closer and bringing Colleen nearer to him with his arm. She appreciated his touch, his warmth, and snuggled up on his chest. Danny smiled downwards, using his left hand to brush her hair, playing with it, gently soothing her. It seemed to work, Colleen’s satisfied sighs being evidence of that.

After several seconds, maybe even minutes of pure, heavenly bliss wrapped in each other’s embrace, Danny slowly felt the morning sunshine not being enough to keep him awake. Colleen’s soft body against his own was more than enough to make him feel drowsy once more, his eyes closing ever so softly. The sounds of New York were like a lullaby, Colleen his blanket, and their heartbeat the dreams that came next.

Of which both of theirs quickened at an unrealistic pace when they heard the piercing screech from outside the dojo, followed heavily by the massive tremor and explosion. Both Colleen and Danny sat up urgently in their bed, Wing grabbing the blanket to cover herself as the tremor followed throughout the entirety of their dojo. Shelves began to shake, nightstands falling and even the bed itself managing to move slightly, even with its occupants atop it. Danny held Colleen close to him, his concerned gaze shifting every which way as the earthquake continued to consume the dojo, almost reminding him of the Hand’s previous attack on New York last year. He didn’t need those thoughts in his head. The Hand was destroyed.

It was something else entirely. He knew it to be true when their glass window shattered, Colleen yelping in fright. And then, almost as quickly as it had come, the tremor ended, leaving just the sounds of utter chaos from the outside world. By chaos, both Danny and Colleen heard the screams, the sirens, the collapse of several buildings and the screeching of tires in the roads. More crashing. More screams. More chaos.

And from their window, both Danny and Colleen could see as a new flicker of light appeared. Darker. Heavier. Brighter than even the light of the morning sun. Danny looked over to Wing, the woman flicking her terrified eyes back to him. “We should probably get up,” she said, voice slightly shaking with a pinch of fear.

“Yep!” Danny shouted, flinging the sheets off of him. After leaping to his feet, he spun around, pointing to Colleen and saying, “Get some clothes on! Hurry!”

Colleen nodded and flung the covers aside. Per Danny’s request, Colleen proceeded to put on all the necessities first, then pulled up her black pants and put on a plain white shirt. After tying her shoes tightly, she looked back to see what Danny would wear. He pulled up his tan jeans first of all, putting his socks and shoes on and then focusing on just a single shirt, a green flannel. As he buttoned up the flannel, Danny followed Colleen into the heart of the dojo, his head low and focused on the buttons.

He gave up on the final three, revealing just the head of the dragon tattoo on his chest. His adrenaline, hearing the constant screams and sounds of destruction outside, made him shake with his movements, appearing on edge and hardly able to keep himself still and calm. Shuffling by the exit, Danny spun accordingly when Colleen came up to him. And with her, she held her Japanese katana and slid it deep into its sheath, the strap wrapped around her shoulder.

She met Danny’s muddled expression. He asked, “Is the sword necessary?”

Colleen only shrugged, pushing past him and exiting the dojo. “We’ll find out.”

Without not much else left to discuss, Danny followed her out the door. Together, the two of them stepped outside into the morning sunlight, pushing open Chikara Dojo’s doors and seeing the chaos unfold firsthand. A speeding vehicle came careening by in the street, several civilians fleeing from the light that laid in the distance. The car crashed against a lamp post, said lamp falling down and hitting the street. Families exited out of their homes, workers from their business, all to stare in the same direction that Danny Rand and Colleen Wing stared towards.

It was a firestorm. The lights, the fires, the explosions, the destruction that remained in the distance sent several pillars of smoke into the air, a great horizon of red and orange cascading across the sky. The smoke joined the fires that consumed the skylines, causing the sun to appear as a bright red orb hidden behind the smoke-filled air. The sirens emerged from and drove towards the chaos, to the heart of the fire, the screams within all of Manhattan.

And neither Danny nor Colleen could even breathe. If they did, they would breathe in the deadly smoke and result as a coughing mess like many other citizens that fled from the firestorm, their shirts covering their mouths. Doing the same, Colleen coughed violently, narrowing her gaze and gasping, “Oh, my God, Danny…”

“What the hell…?” Rand whispered. He turned down to the street below them, stepping forward and shouting. “Hey! What the hell just happened?! What’s going on?!”

He was met with the same responses to the situation he had already heard earlier: just more screaming. Colleen joined him on the sidewalk, her shirt covering her mouth. “I don’t think anyone knows,” she mumbled through her shirt, the smoke already painting the clear white a deathly black.

Danny breathed steadily, coughing only slightly but doing nothing more than just that. Already, the ashes from the firestorm consuming northern Manhattan were falling like snow on that early summer morning. Danny brushed the flakes away, turning his worry-filled gaze towards the fire. Towards the birth of it all.

“Whatever just happened, it was probably near Central Park,” he said, holding out a hand to block out the piercing rays of both the sun and fires. It continued to consume the horizon, more screams and sirens and other madness assaulting his eardrums. “Maybe a bomb went off or something.”

“A terrorist attack?” Colleen asked, stepping forward by his side.

“That, a gas leak, or… something else,” Danny stated, fear bleeding in his tone. Already, he started off at a slow jog, slipping past civilians running in the opposite direction. “We won’t know unless we check it out. Come on.”

Colleen was already right behind him, weaving through the fleeing citizens with slick precision. By the time she came up and joined Danny, he was focused dead ahead, his eyes straight into the fires that ate away at New York. Both it and the sun glowed a bright red.

Almost as red as the eyes of Shou-Lao, but not nearly as deadly.

Danny Rand clenched his fist. “And help as many as we can.”