INTRODUCTION

New York. Late Evening. A young Japanese man sat in a confessional booth inside a church on some darkened corner of the city.

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I’ve never done this before, so here goes…Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I’ve done many… questionable things. Acts of intense violence…and betrayal. I’ve killed men and women. Each time, standing on the edge of my black abyss, as the blood roars in my ears, I try to resist.”

Weak. Alone. I fall. And the darkness consumes me as I bask in the glory of the bloodlust. Until I finally realized what I’ve done…

“What should I do? Help me, Father.”

The young man leaned back in the darkened confines of the confessional, a Japanese sword gripped in his hand.

“I’ve killed so many…so many…I don’t know what to do…”

Footsteps echoed through the quiet church as someone approached the confessional. The young man sheathed the sword and wrapped it in cloth to conceal it, parted the curtains and stepped out. The approaching priest stopped his walk, startled.

“Can I help you, my son?”

“No, Father. I was just leaving.” He said in accented English.

As the young man headed out into the New York night he whispered a response…

”Not tonight, Father.”

Have you ever been hurt so bad, you couldn’t hear anything but a high-pitched roar…and then you realized that it was the sound of yourself screaming? There is a world on the other side of pain, full of horror and hopelessness and concentrated suffering. But there is no fear there. What’s there to fear when you’re in the middle of the worst that could happen? I died once. And I came back…better.

[Shanghai, China, 1999]

Today’s weather was mild. Not as sunny as usual as it is in China, but Liu Chiang decided that his family should stroll and appreciate their hometown. Liu Chiang, 32, had a simple and small family; his Japanese wife, Asuka Shindo, 29, who chose not to share her husband’s last name; and his young, nine-year-old son, Ashura.

Both Asuka and Ashura kept their surname so that they wouldn’t be connected with Liu Chiang due to his profession and become targets of revenge.

Liu Chiang was employed as a professional assassin. To be more elaborate, Liu Chiang was the greatest assassin on Earth. He succeeded a long line of assassins that dated all the way back to the Qin Dynasty, the Black Dragons.

Asuka keeping her last name and passing it to her son, in her mind, would keep anyone from seeking revenge. Ashura knew what his father did for a profession, but it was completely rationalized: Liu Chiang referred to himself as “A janitor of anthropological refuge”. In other words, he wiped out the scum off of face of the planet.

But Liu Chiang wasn’t as bloodthirsty as his reputation made him out to be. Liu kept himself up at being the perfect model as a fighter, and as a parent. He taught Ashura Kung Fu since he was four years old, and since Liu Chiang was a great master of Chinese martial arts himself, within a few years, Ashura was groomed into a young master of kung fu.

As his family walked, Liu Chiang felt a change in the wind. The iron lining the inside of his changsan hugged his chest as they walked, albeit a little faster than normal.

“Ashura, I’m going to ask you a quick question. Answer it if you know it.” Liu Chiang knew many languages, but spoke predominantly in Chinese (and Japanese for his wife).

“Okay, dad.” Ashura turned to his mom. “Another philosophy quiz,” He stated in Japanese.

“Hey…what’s wrong with philosophy?” Liu Chiang joked, chuckling. “All right. Which is better: Martial arts or a good sword?”

“I think that a good sword can help a novice, or make an expert really powerful.” Ashura answered quite expediently.

“That’s not all, Ashura. What is most important is the warrior that’s wielding the sword. Ashura, always remember: Your own inner strength, your Chi, will always be the best weapon that you can summon to use.”

Ashura felt no need to respond; he simply nodded and smiled. Whenever his father taught him or explained something cryptic like that, it was always important to listen. Asuka smiled also; Liu Chiang was a great husband, and he worked to make Asuka happy in anyway he could.

Liu Chiang’s mild laughter ceased when he noticed a red dot resting on Asuka’s chest. A laser sight immediately came to mind and his senses kicked into overdrive.

A dark sedan pulled up half a block behind them, and three men clad in black piled out of the car.

“Shit!” Liu Chiang motioned for Asuka and Ashura to run when Asuka felt the sniper’s bullet tear through her shoulder. She stumbled, but Ashura was there to help her regain balance, and they ran down an alleyway.

Liu Chiang felt his senses sharpen, and he drew his gun. “Can’t someone enjoy time with his family without becoming a fucking mark?!” He leapt over the car in front of him and fired at the assassins, who took aim at their target.

The bullets tore into the assassins’ legs and one assassin’s arm, causing him to drop his gun which involuntarily fired and put a bullet through his comrade’s face. The killers were preoccupied with their wounds to return fire at the advancing, superior assassin.

“Didn’t your contractor tell you at all who you were up against here? Didn’t they tell you what I was capable of?” A side that was never seen before emerged in Liu Chiang.

“I’m one of the scariest fucking assassins who ever walked the Earth, you assholes. Didn’t they explain to you that you’ve been sent to kill the BLACK DRAGON?!”

The assassin missing his arm was the only one unable to form coherent words. The other one managed to utter words. “Oh, fuck, I think I’m going into shock…” He bled out all over the sidewalk, but not as worse as his partner.

Liu Chiang anchored his gun at the assassin with the missing arm but turned his head to the one with the missing kneecaps.

“Listen. Listen to me, you little shit. If I’d wanted you dead, I would’ve directed the bullet through your hypothalamus gland, but I just took out your knees. So tell me, who sent you?”

The assassin kept quiet, save for his groaning and moaning. Liu Chiang squeezed the trigger and blew the one-armed assassin’s brains out. The splatter of the brains hitting the pavement caused the remaining assassin to shudder in horror.

“Do I have your attention now?”

As if on cue, the assassin began sputtering words like a loudspeaker.

“Th-this wasn’t even our idea, man! I don’t even know who you are! You were just a name in an envelope. It said kill you and your family!”

“Oh, wow, and I thought you were criminal masterminds!” Liu Chiang said sarcastically. “Who the hell are you people?”

The assassin grew silent again, for he could see the assassin that planted a bullet in Asuka’s chest. Liu Chiang made a cardinal mistake: he forgot about the sniper.

The bullet tore through his chest, followed by a second bullet. The assassin laughed but a bullet from Liu Chiang’s gun liberated his brains.

Liu Chiang’s senses went on overdrive again as he turned back and fired, emptying his clip at the direction from where the bullet came. The sniper was gone, and the only thing on his mind was his family.

Asuka and Ashura made it to the end of the alley, finding themselves in the sniper’s sights. A bullet was fired, hitting Asuka in the chest and knocking her against the alley wall. Ashura jumped to his mother’s side but she pushed him out of the sniper’s sight, causing her to take another bullet.

“Mom!”

“Ashura, stay back! Uhh!”

Another bullet ripped through her chest. Asuka screamed and coughed up blood. The sniper rested his sight on Asuka’s head until he himself was in an assassin’s sight; Liu Chiang fired a round that rammed through the sniper’s scope and planted itself into his eye.

Liu Chiang chuckled, and then dropped his gun. He knew he didn’t have much time left. Ashura was in tears; Asuka died from her wounds and he didn’t know of his father’s fate.

“Ashura!”

Ashura looked back and saw his father, bloodied and smiling.

“Heh, we got caught with our pants down.”

“Father, no!”

Liu Chiang collapsed, his blood spilling onto his son. “Listen to me, son…become stronger. Become stronger than me, stronger than anyone in our family.”

He withdrew an object from his pocket; it was an amulet with the lettering of “Dragon” in Chinese.

“This means that you are now a—Uhh!—Black Dragon. We Black Dragons go all the way back to the Qin Dynasty. It’s up to you how you choose to live up to our bloodline…”

With that, Liu Chiang succumbed to his injuries and died. Tears streamed from Ashura’s eyes but he had no emotion present on his face, he was completely deadpan. He knew that this would be the last time he would shed tears.

"When the smoke clears, there will be no more tears..." were Ashura's last words during his old life. His new life would start the next day.