GUIDING LIGHT ( iron fist.. ) ✔

o5. flickering lights..

"Sierra?" Danny helped the girl blacked out in his arms, back into laying on his couch. The seething light from the window as tall as the entirety of the floor announced a morning less fortunate now that his own chamomile tea joined Sierra's spilt on the ground. Her words had the impact on him much like the vision the Sanctum has gifted him with to connect to this odd woman's story. 

There was little he could do, even as her body flinched and spasmed out of the control of consciousness, making Danny resort to the desperate measure of closing his right fist above her chest, at a safe distance. The chi gathered, concentrated and lit up in golden flares, which burnt scorching fire in his palm, which he scrunched his face trying to open up. He had healed Colleen before, learning from the Hand what else his trainings could have prepared him for; there was nothing stopping him from using the healing powers of chi on Sierra too, just to bring her back and...

His thoughts drifted to K'un-Lun, inevitably remembering how he had found it missing, its entrance stained in the blood of guards who should have never had to face an enemy without his presence there to protect the city which took him in and nurtured him into a warrior, from the lowest times of his life. They saved him and he had failed, so inevitably, Sierra Harss, this stranger, brought him the hope in measured enough to gain his utmost care.

The destruction of thoughts made the light in his almost open palm dissipate. Danny was ready to try again, resilient and desperate, but Sierra woke up before his fist tightened shut. Her hand grasped his wrist with a gasp coming out of her mouth. Into the depths of her green eyes, Danny found fear, before she acted upon it and pulled him down so harsh he could not question why his hand fell on top of her chest and his head rested on the portion of couch next to her.

No sound of an opening door came through before a needle punctured through the couch cleanly, flashing above Danny's head and breaking a hole into the window. "I think she's here to kill you," Sierra whispered, on the verge of tears. Oh, how hard she clung to the sleeve of Danny's suit, reminiscing with now the clear sound of gentle steps how she had woken up one day, hunted by evil people.

Sierra needed that to stop, but she was starting to understand, in the way her jaw clenched, that there was no going back to normal, not even when all of this finds its end.

Another needle came through the couch, missing Danny by centimeters as he dodged out of the way of its whistling sound in air, faint for untrained ears, but loud to his. "Come down," he mouthed more than murmured to her, guiding gently so that she rolled off the couch and hid in his previous spot, down at the wooden base, less likely to be pierced by the needles of the enemy. "Stay here," Danny nodded down at Sierra. Letting her know it was safe to let go of him came as a pat over her white knuckles, taming them to release their frightened grip. 

How is he not afraid? Sierra watched in disbelief how Danny took only one deep breath and jumped over the couch, his right fist so bright she would have otherwise thought it caught fire.

"There you are, champion," Tarah laughed from behind her dark silk mask, wasting no further breath before throwing three needles at Danny. He watched them for less than a second before anticipating their route and stepping aside, bumping his fist to their side and redirecting all three into the wall.

Tarah's luck came with the territory on which this fight took place. This was no arena, but rather a location which Danny knew he could not wreck and secure a win. There were too many people already in the building, working jobs under his jurisdiction, by which he had a duty as sacred as that to K'un-Lun. He was going to hold back, while Tarah had the advantage of not giving a single drop of sweat to the casualties it took to protect her people and get on the winning side of a silent war of Heaven.