Ever since winning the King of Earth tournament Nudara Fah had been feeling lethargic. During the tournament he had slain rival demigods and would-be superheroes without a second thought, eventually claiming the crown from the beautiful and deadly Tomou Gozen, and he was proud of the accomplishment too. But now that the competition had passed a strange malaise had cast its shadow over his daily life and the Black Prince could not help but wonder what the next step was…

He’d had a strange dream about turning into a toy a few months ago but that was about it.

Beyond this world, out there among the endless sea of stars, his siblings were doubtless gathering their own accolades for when they inevitably returned home to claim the throne. His father’s eldest were already thoroughly entrenched in Nethlesse politics and one would need a strong argument indeed to win over the electors when father finally stepped down. Nudara though, he was alone, scowling in his penthouse accomplishing nothing of note when the phone finally rang.

[Hey hey, how’s my champ doing?]

“I’m hanging up.”

[Woah, don’t be so hasty. You’ve been bored lately, right? I’ve got just the thing you wanted.]

“. . .”

[Someone is about to break into the blood bank outside of town and I don’t need to tell you that the Midnight Carnival won’t be too happy about having their meal ticket punched, so how about you save me the trouble, and go beat the thief up before it happens.]

Neglecting to ask how she knew a crime was going to happen before it happened, he replied. “I’m not your errand boy, find someone else.”

[Don’t think of it like that, traditionally, the King of Earth has always been the people’s champ. And right now, the people need someone to step in before all the ghoulies at the redlight district start throwing a fit because they can’t get their fix. It’s what a King would do.]

“. . . . . . . .”

[Besides, I have it on good authority this is P R E T T Y tough.]

That was how Nudara Fah found himself approaching the blood bank on the city’s outskirts. A blood bank that was really just a clever ploy for the city's unusually influential population of vampires to keep themselves well fed. At six feet and two inches he was tall for a human, but not obscenely so, a comfortable height that allowed him to stand above the crowd without being a walking tree. He had dark skin. Long black hair, cut like a razor over his brow, with a severe expression permanently etched upon his face. During the tournament his uniform had suffered tear after tear until eventually it could no longer be repaired, he had abandoned it after the final round, allowing the red-haired samurai’s blood to be the last that would stain it and exchanging it for a cool black suit with a furred jacket. The jacket in question hung from his shoulders and a vest strapped in over his broad chest, though he had adopted a modern look, the sword that hung over his shoulder was still as archaic as it had ever been with its waved black blade clinging to the space between his shoulder blades as if by some preternatural force. For once his ivory prosthetic was exposed.

And though it was largely unnecessary by this point, the eyepatch remained on.

Approaching the blood bank he followed a trail of molten warped molten asphalt as if someone had glided down the road on a stream of lava. Whoever he was, he wasn’t subtle. What he found waiting for him at the end of that trail were the remnants of what had once been a guard gate, battered open, the men stationed there to watch it nowhere to be seen. Weren’t most facilities in this city guarded by small private armies armed to the teeth to deal with metahuman threats just like this? How suspicious. And beyond him lay the blood bank. A siren wailing in the distance, desperately crying out to anyone in ear shot for help, with a scowl on his face Nudara advanced—something about this smelled funny.

Didn’t need Lurch’s goth femboy son telling him he had a lot to live up to with a title like King of Earth, Nudara was more aware than anyone else, that the number of people who wanted revenge on him for the way he’d snagged the title from the red-haired samurai extended far beyond this city’s edge. John—at least—only wanted to kill him because he was a reputable name and not because of some silly vendetta wherein he was mad that the Black Prince had killed someone he liked during a tournament where people were explicitly trying to kill each other.

John at least had the guts do it himself.

Nudara could tell that John was drawing something through the fog and judging by everything from their size to the stance he took, it wasn’t hard to tell that they were guns, giant guns for a giant man. They were undeniable cool but part of Nudara couldn’t help but scoff at the prospect that he really thought a firearm, the most dishonorable of weapons, would be able to take down the King of Earth. There was something grotesquely impersonal about killing your opponent at range that he couldn’t abide by and the Black Prince had learned to dodge bullets when he was still but a stripling and so by the time Rex had leveled his monstrous guns with the shrouded hound, he was already moving. Swaying to one side with a boxer’s grace as he preemptively dodged the slug only for his danger sense to spike for one brief haunting instant, it was then that he saw the glass shatter, shards of the stuff inches thick designed to withstand bullets shattering in slow motion mid-air before the Prince’s eyes.

Oh, so these weren’t normal guns.

Nudara half-flung himself to the side and was half-flung to the side by the shockwave passing him. Skidding across the floor until he found himself colliding with the receptionist desk where once there had been a meatcycle embedded in the front and now there stood a gaping hole sticky with meaty residue. The bang of the bullets followed milliseconds but in his senses still notably after the slugs. Who in turn went on to demolish a wall (or three) at the other end of the hallway before they would inevitably come to whatever stop was most natural for them, embedded in stone seemed most likely.

Though maybe they’d explode?

Of the exchange, Nudara was certain that he’d gotten the better of it, he’d only been shove aside. Roughly, enough to send him skidding along the ground and to leave an ache in his reinforced ribs. Meanwhile, Rex was embedded in a far wall bleeding from multiple little wounds all over his body, but were one to look at the expressions on their face then surely they would think the opposite of their little exchange. To see the Rex grinning like a feral beast from his place on the wall. To see how Nudara scowled at having been tossed aside like a leaf on the wind now climbing up to one knee with that fur collared jacket still clinging to his shoulders—somehow—it always managed to stay on. Nudara’s clothing had been created by a ghostly seamstress, they were spiritwoven, which meant that they could suffer a great deal of damage without falling away though even still they weren’t exactly a feasible form of armor… just a guarantee that Rex wouldn’t have to fight him in the nude.

VRRRM~!

Somewhere in the shroud of night a dragon roared, the meatcycle was on the move, the tactical part of Nudara’s brain told him that it was still a few moments away and that he ought to secure a better defensive position before engaging in a two-on-one battle. The arrogant part of his brain said charge. All of that ambient heat that had built up in the air around them exploded all at once. First it sucked in everything around it for a brief horrible moment that might-just might make dodging a lot harder. Might keep Rex off balance for the moment that Nudara lunged forward with an explosion blooming in the hallway behind him like a howling wolf, his left fist cocked back, black clad human knuckles looking to pound an impression of themselves in the big man’s abdomen or his guard or whatever part of his body they could while roaring black flames washed over him and blew a whole section of the bloodbank right back into the courtyard. His black still hanging over his shoulder.

“One serving of pain, coming right up!”

Nudara barely heard Rextep over the roaring inferno at his back and even that was a distant murmur. What was more important to him than the vampire’s praise was the fact that he leveled those guns in his direction and pulled the trigger three more times, each shot playing out in slow motion, from the squeeze of his finger to the little explosion down the barrel winked at him like a train barreling down the other side of a tunnel while flinging another slug. Like a train there was no stopping him. Nudara had already committed to launching himself forward and he now had the momentum of an entire hospital wing exploding keeping him going, he was in line to get shot, but the same void that had slurped up all the oxygen in the surrounding area and attempted to do the same to Rextep dragged them off their trajectory towards the Black Prince’s center mass where his own hand waited to snatch them out of the air.

KRRRK!!!

One slug had been strong enough to fling him to the side so three slugs definitely cracked something in the prince’s right hand, ripping through the leathery flesh of his palm, causing at least one bone to break through the flesh on the back of his hand and turning his fist into a smoldering hateful meteor. But the slugs had most certainly been stopped in their tracks. The slugs had been melted down into a single molten mass in the palm of his hand by the black fire spilling from his grasp and he charged.
Translating pain into psychic impetus that kept that fiery hound roaring forward and carried him through the stone opening only to collapse onto the ground beneath the hail of waiting cover fire.

“G̴̘͠͠É̵͉̲̊T̴̬͐́ ̵̣͐H̵I̶̪͒́M̸̳̆ͅ!”

The Prince snarled from his floor, pointing with a bloody finger, the Black Tongue filling the space between his words with an awful static that wrenched at the semi-sentient black fire construct that chased him and dragged its attention towards Rextep. Lupine head turning. Curving along the wall and avoiding the majority of Rex’s cover fire but still earning several gaping holes in its black body. Nudara’s construct howled with fury, angry at having its life prolonged by the prince’s pain, voice sounding like an out of control wildfire consuming an entire forest in the brief moment before it crashed down on top of Rex’s position. It had lost volume along the way. But still it hit like a bomb—shattering windows. Shaking concrete foundations. Sending cracks splintering through the floor and threatening to cave it in beneath them and drop the pair down to the basement in a few seconds where the blood bank no doubt hit its many secrets. Because of course it had secrets—everyone did in a place like Neo Babylon.

Anger still boiled in the Black Prince’s blood, or the magna flow that counted for it, his fiery fist clenched the molten slugs until he could feel the silver running between his digits and on his nose he could smell the stench of magic coming from—what was that he’d seen John playing with—some kind of box?

“What’s that you’ve got in your hand, John? This is no time for toys.”