Cold-Blooded: A DC Universe Fanfiction (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 57: Slade: Nanda Parbat

Nanda Parbat, the strange and secret headquarters of the League of Assassins. Slade had met several people who had been there, even trained there, and heard several accounts of what it was like. Some said it was set in a desert, a city carved into a sandstone cliff face. Others said it was set in the Himalayan mountains, so high up the air was thin and starved for oxygen, but the fields of poppies which grew there were as blue as if they drank the color of the sky. The Nanda Parbat to which the private plane brought them was somewhere subtropical and humid, and from the air it looked like a ruin half overgrown with sprawling vines. Once on the ground, it became clear the ruin was too artful to be natural, the vines had to have been trained and cultivated to cover it just so.

What then was the answer to the mystery of Nanda Parbat? Did it change from one visit to the next? Did the visitor see what they expected to see? Being pragmatic, Slade believed there was not one League headquarters but several, and all of them were called 'Nanda Parbat' when outsiders were brought there. He might be wrong; stranger things existed in the world.

He began to swelter the moment they left the plane and stepped into the sun. Fifty pounds of body armor complete with a full face mask and a winter-weight underlayer had a way of doing that to a man. Yukie touched his shoulder, and refreshing coolness spread out from that spot. This was why they were so good together-all the things they did not have to say because they already knew.

She could not see him smile behind the mask, so he nodded, and she replied with a quick smile of her own. Looking at her in her bright new armor, he thought of Rose and her new Nyghtingale persona, and how their gear contrasted to his own combat-battered armor. He didn't want to look shabby next to them.

Perhaps it's time to change things up a bit myself. Not too much, I've got an established image and instant recognition nearly everywhere, and I don't want to change that. Something subtle, though. A color change, then? The blue-black was still good, implying darkness, danger, and menace, but the orange-it represented the smoldering coals of anger, the fire of ambition. But what would replace it? Gold.Gold for triumph and victory.

At the massive door to the fortress proper, they were stopped by a pair of guards and a very polite person of indeterminate gender who regretfully requested that they leave all weapons there before they entered the fortress.

"And who told you to tell us that? Ra's or Talia?" Deathstroke demanded.

"Ah, that is..." the person stalled.

"The man or his daughter. Which one? Whose orders do you follow? Out with it."

"The Lady Talia is most careful of her father's safety," the person replied.

"Yet the Lady Talia is no friend to me, which her father knows," Yukie pointed out, "and we are here at her father's invitation. I suggest this compromise. We keep our weapons until we are about to enter your master's presence, and surrender them there. You, of course, shall escort us to make sure we cause no harm along the way, along with as many guards as you deem necessary. Please confirm with your master if such terms are acceptable. We will wait." She smiled very gently at the person, as one might at a backward child.

The sun was shining full on all five of them, but only the guards and the person were sweating. Yukie was as fresh as a glass of cold milk straight from the refrigerator, and thanks to her, so was he.

They waited. The person conceded. "That will not be necessary. Please follow me."

The request was not unexpected; only the timing came as any surprise. The upside of being unarmed while completely surrounded by hostile assassins armed to the teeth was that you then had plenty of weapons to choose from, provided you took them away from their owners first.