Chapter 114 – The Prince and the Fox

The air was a thick soup of dust, smoke, and the distant wail of sirens. One of Jack's clones stood amidst the wreckage, his pristine black hanbok a stark contrast to the gray devastation around him. He could hear them—faint cries for help, whimpers of pain, the shallow breathing of those still trapped deep within the rubble. The human first responders, with their mortal ears, couldn't possibly hear these ghosts in the concrete. But Jack could.

He closed his eyes, tilting his head, and tapped his foot against a massive, overturned slab of concrete. A soft pulse of Qi radiated from the point of contact, traveling through the debris, mapping the empty spaces, the pockets of life. Echolocation, monkey-style. He was homing in on the sound of a child.

As he stepped onto the pile of rubble, a voice shouted at him in sharp, urgent Japanese. "Hey! Who are you?! Get down from there! This is a dangerous zone! You'll make it collapse and compress the people under it!"

A firefighter, his face smudged with soot and exhaustion, was waving frantically at him. The clone turned, a serene smile on his face. He placed a single finger to his lips. "Ssshhhhh."

The firefighter was about to shout again, but then he saw it. The man in the traditional Korean attire was standing on a mountain of unstable debris, yet his feet were barely touching it, his weight seemingly non-existent.

The firefighter's eyes widened. "A meta?" he breathed, his tone shifting from anger to a desperate hope. "Can… can you help?"

The clone's smile softened. He had found her. He could hear a faint, weak voice, a little girl singing a lullaby to herself in the darkness below.

In a motion that was both blindingly fast and impossibly careful, he began to dig. He didn't use brute force. His hands moved like a surgeon's, lifting rebar, shifting concrete, his touch so precise that not a single pebble was dislodged from the precarious structure.

"Prepare a stretcher!" the firefighter yelled to his team. "We've got another one!"

The clone dug faster, his heart—a strange, borrowed thing—pounding in his chest. 'No, no, no, please…' he muttered to himself. He finally broke through into a small, dark pocket. And there they were. A family.

A little girl, no older than seven, was holding a worn monkey plushie, her voice a faint, reedy whisper as she sang. Beside her, her little brother, barely conscious, lay with his head on her lap, one foot clad in a cartoon dinosaur sock. The Korean parents were slumped against the wall, their voices a weak murmur. "Gamsahabnida…" (Thank you).

The little girl saw the light first, then the silhouette of a man in a hanbok and a tall hat, his form haloed by the rescue lights. It reminded her of her father, when he would dress up to take her to the spring festivals.

A weak, beautiful smile spread across her face. "Appa?" she whispered. "Did you hear my singing?"

The clone's heart clenched. He turned his head and shouted to another clone who had just arrived, "Bring me four peaches! Now!"

He looked back at the little girl, his voice impossibly gentle. "Your singing helped. It led me right to you. Now let's go. We need to get you to a stage. The whole world needs to hear your voice."

The little girl giggled, a sound like tiny, perfect bells, and then her eyes fluttered shut as she finally passed out from exhaustion.

One by one, the clones carefully tended to the family, passing them to the waiting paramedics. But the clone who had found them couldn't shake the feeling of familiarity. Then, his eyes landed on the monkey plushie clutched in the little girl's hand.

It snapped into place. The lopsided stitching. The button eyes. It was one of the gifts. One of the hundreds he had delivered on that chaotic, beautiful Christmas night during his side job as Santa Claus.

A slow, genuine smile spread across the clone's face. The chaos always came full circle.

Not every rescue ended in a giggling child and a happy reunion. For every survivor a clone pulled from the wreckage, there were others found in a final, silent stillness. The work was grim. Many were already dead, their lives extinguished in the first violent moments of the quake. But Jack's clones knew what needed to be done. They gently recovered the bodies, ensuring that each one could be returned to their family, a final, somber act of respect in a city torn apart.

The image of the man in the black hanbok and gat, multiplying into an army of helpers, began to spread like wildfire. Videos taken on shaky cell phones appeared online, showing figures moving with impossible speed, lifting rubble, and creating glowing peach trees whose fruit seemed to mend the wounded.

In the midst of this controlled chaos was Hisako Ichiki. Barely eleven years old, she had insisted on joining the rescue mission. Her Japanese heritage had given her a reason to follow the team, a personal stake in the recovery. Her psionic exoskeleton, a shimmering, translucent armor, glowed around her small frame as she lifted a heavy steel beam, clearing a path for the first responders. She had been at it all night, and now, as the sun hung high at noon, her exhaustion was beginning to show.

A Japanese firefighter placed a gentle hand on her armored shoulder. "Go," he said, his voice kind but firm. "Get some rest. We can handle it from here."

Hisako shook her head, her jaw set with a stubbornness that defied her age. "It's okay," she said, her voice tired but unwavering. "I can still help."

"You shouldn't be here."

The voice came from behind them, casual and unexpected. A Jack clone stood there, his arms crossed, an unreadable expression on his face. "Go back, X-kids. I'm going to have a talk with Baldie about the etiquette of bringing a child into a disaster zone."

Hisako's tired face lit up. "Uncle Jack?"

The clone blinked, his usual smirk faltering for a second. "Uncle Jack? Since when did you guys start calling me that?"

Hisako forgot her exhaustion for a moment. Ever since Billy, Hogan's son, had come to the Xavier school, he had been non-stop talking about his days playing and flying with "Uncle Jack." The name had stuck. Whenever a clone appeared on TV back in New York, the younger kids would point and cheer for their unofficial uncle.

A slow, wicked grin spread across the clone's face. "Kekekeke, so it's because of Billy, huh?" he mused. "I should give that kid a lesson on not willy-nilly adding nieces and nephews to my family tree. Kekeke."

He stepped forward and gently patted Hisako on the head, his touch surprisingly soft. "Go rest," he said, his voice softening. "Let your 'cooler than Wolverine' uncle clean up the rest."

With that, the clone turned away and began directing the rescue efforts. He moved with an effortless authority, pointing out trapped survivors only he could hear, guiding the first responders with a precision that was both a miracle and a mystery.

The real Jack moved through the devastation with a quiet, purposeful calm. He walked among the wounded, handing out peaches from a seemingly endless supply from his clone. For those who could eat, he gave the fruit whole. For those who couldn't, he would crush a peach in his palm, letting the shimmering, golden juice run over their wounds like a healing salve.

The peaches were not a miracle cure. They did not regrow limbs or bring back the dead. They worked by stimulating a person's own life force, their Qi, making the body's natural healing process accelerate at an impossible rate. Because of this, Jack knew he couldn't help the most critically injured; their life force was already too faint. So, he helped where he could, a silent, pragmatic god doling out second chances.

Beside him, the slumping form of Cheng Wudao, still resting on Zephyr's misty back, was beginning to stir. He pushed himself up, his muscles screaming in protest, but it was clear he could barely stand straight. Jack let him try. This was a test. Would his new disciple simply pray over the tragedy like the monks he had left behind? Or would he run away and blame the gods like some petulant emo kid? Jack didn't know. So he watched, and he waited.

From the side, a familiar voice cut through the air. "Jack Hou. What a coincidence to meet you here."

Jack didn't even turn. "Drop the act, Phil. You already used that line on my clone several minutes ago. He told me you think he's the real one."

Agent Coulson coughed, a flicker of professional embarrassment crossing his face. "So… are you the real one now?"

"For now," Jack said with a shrug. "So, what do you want from me? Or rather, what does SHIELD want?"

"I'm here to introduce you to Ami Han, the leader of South Korea's Tiger Division," Phil said, gesturing to the figures standing with him. "And Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan."

Jack's gaze swept past Coulson, past the Crown Prince, and landed squarely on the Korean woman. She was stunning, with sharp, intelligent eyes, long white hair, and, most notably, fluffy white fox tails swaying gently behind her. A Kumiho.

He ignored everyone else. He strode directly toward her, took her hand, and bowed with the grace of a courtly gentleman. He brought her hand to his lips for a soft kiss.

"Well, well," he said, his golden eyes twinkling with unhinged mischief. "I've heard your kind can steal a man's liver to become human. But what happens when you meet a monkey who already stole his own heart and replaced it with a stone? We should discuss the philosophical implications over dinner."

Ami Han was stunned into a beautiful, frozen silence. Phil was stunned. The Crown Prince was stunned.

Jack straightened up, his grin widening. "It was never on my bingo card to meet a Kumiho in the midst of a disaster, no less."

Phil coughed loudly, trying to wrestle the situation back to some semblance of diplomatic normalcy. "Jack," he repeated, a bit more forcefully this time. "This is the CROWN PRINCE of Japan."

Jack gave the prince a lazy side-eye. "You're too old to be a prince," he said bluntly. "You don't even come with the white horse you guys usually ride."

To everyone's surprise, the Crown Prince let out a low, genuine chuckle. "I was indeed told I am too old to be a Crown Prince," he said, his voice calm and amused. "And I am also, unfortunately, too old to ride a horse."

Jack threw his head back and laughed, a loud, joyous cackle that cut through the somber atmosphere of the disaster zone. "Kekekeke, that's funny," he said, pointing a finger at the Crown Prince. "Funny because you think you can hide your knowledge from me with your nonchalant attitude."

The Crown Prince's calm smile didn't waver, but his eyes held a new flicker of cautious interest.

Phil Coulson, ever the mediator, stepped between them. "Okay," he said, his voice a steady, de-escalating hum. "How about we talk in a more professional setting? Surely we have an unused command post we can use."

Jack turned his gaze to Coulson, his smile vanishing. "There are none," he said flatly. "We're using them to tend to the sick and wounded." He gestured to the sprawling triage centers where his clones were working alongside first responders. "So, which one do you want to be, CROWN PRINCE? The leader who kicks his dying people out of their tent for a meeting? Or the one who waits his turn?"

The Crown Prince was about to say something, a polite, diplomatic phrase already forming on his lips, but Jack raised a hand, cutting him off.

"Ahh, no need to say anything," Jack said, his golden eyes sweeping over the three of them. "I know this wasn't a natural disaster. I can feel something else at play here."

Coulson's professional demeanor cracked for a second. "So you know. We just had our suspicions. If you know, then you can help with—"

"It's not just that I know," Jack cut him off, his voice dropping, becoming low and dangerous. "I'm sure of what kind of entity was involved. But I won't help." He took a step closer, his gaze burning into them. "I don't know who, or what, that entity used as a catalyst. And until I'm sure, I will suspect all of you—all of you who are still clean and have no bruises—of being that catalyst."

He let the accusation hang in the air, heavy and sharp as a guillotine.

"So get out of my way," Jack said, his voice returning to a casual, dismissive tone. "There are still a lot more people to be rescued."

With that, he turned and walked away from them, disappearing back into the chaos of the rescue effort, leaving Ami Han, Crown Prince Naruhito, and Phil Coulson standing in stunned silence.

As if on cue, a clone popped up beside them, leaning on a shovel. "Uuuwww," the clone teased, wiggling his eyebrows. "Someone made our boss mad."

Another clone, carrying a stretcher, added, "You guys are in deep trouble now. He might not even invite you to his birthday party."

Crown Prince Naruhito simply gave a slight, thoughtful bow and took his leave, his guards falling into formation around him. Ami Han watched Jack's retreating figure for a moment longer, a complex expression on her face, before she too turned and left with her partner.

Only Phil Coulson remained, standing alone amidst the ruins. He looked at the wounded being carried on stretchers, at the exhausted faces of the rescue workers, at the impossible, life-giving peach trees blooming amidst the destruction. He let out a long, heavy sigh. He had come here for answers, and had left with only more questions, and a powerful, unpredictable new enemy.

**A/N**

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**A/N**