"You ungrateful child — you look down on this old man?" Stick puffed out his whiskers and glared.
"Master, I meant not the slightest disrespect. You said it yourself — K'un-Lun is only at the level of Mount Hua among the Five Mountains. To deal with the demons and heretics of the Ming Cult, you still need Shaolin and Wudang. And these days the Ancient One's might presses down on the whole galaxy — would she ever allow the Beast to descend? So even having joined the Chaste, the most I'll ever handle is people like y— no, I mean, with your teaching, ordinary folk won't stand a chance against me!"
Damn it, almost let it slip. Weak as Stick was, he was still her master, and she couldn't go bruising his ego. What if she really offended him and he refused to teach her the Zixia Divine Art?
Stick had no notion of the treasonous thought running through his disciple's head — otherwise he'd have flown straight back to Japan tonight and quit wasting his heart's blood raising this little ingrate.
"All right, enough flattery. I'll ask one more time: do you truly wish to join the Chaste? Think it through before you answer. Once I've registered you, there's no taking it back." Stick confirmed it again.
"Master, I've got an idea. Enroll me in the Chaste under the Spider-Man identity — how about it?" Maya was already pleased with herself. She had plenty of alter egos; as long as it wasn't her real self, she'd join any organization on offer.
Stick's mouth twitched. "That works. I'll say you're an employee of Tony Stark, and keep your true-disciple status under wraps. Once I'm done teaching you two, I'll pick up a few students elsewhere as cover. No matter — everyone in the organization knows I've a soft spot for taking on pupils."
A true disciple really does get the star treatment — he agreed to even that. Maya congratulated herself on making the right call.
"So I'd like to buy a house to use as a training base. What do you think?" Maya asked next.
Stick thought about it and refused again. "Maya, I don't advise it. You may be expecting too much of our organization. Put it this way — in Yue Buqun's day, the Mount Hua Sect was one of the Five Mountains, and it was still dirt-poor. The Chaste has real strength, but our appetite for money isn't strong. A few million dollars wouldn't make a ripple in Manhattan, and the Chaste's total liquid funds run to only a few hundred thousand. There's no way we could swallow an order the size of a whole building. A cash flow that large would absolutely alarm the other members — and your identity would be exposed."
"If you didn't fear exposure, of course we could arrange it easily. But you joined as Spider-Man — does Stark Industries need the Chaste to cook its books? At this stage, what you gain from joining is an intelligence channel, and people who'll handle discreet matters for you. Later I'll give you an identity token and the roster of the Chaste's New York members."
Stick made his case with reason and evidence, and Maya understood his bind. "Then what about training going forward? Renting a place outright is too flashy. One old blind man and two kids, over and over for months on end — what are people going to think?"
"Maya — sharp your whole life, and foolish for a moment. Central Park closes every afternoon just past five. Isn't that a fine spot?" Stick chuckled.
The truth was Maya wasn't being foolish at all. Central Park had long been in her calculations. It was just that she wasn't only learning K'un-Lun kung fu from Stick — she had a whole pile of ninjutsu that needed somewhere to train, too.
Now that she had Medical Ninjutsu, developing the wind nature of the Rasengan had to move up the schedule. There was also Tsunade's Chakra-Enhanced Strength. A lot of people assumed the Chakra-Enhanced Strength of Tsunade and Sakura was taijutsu. Total misunderstanding — Chakra-Enhanced Strength was actually Medical Ninjutsu. Not because someone's brain had sprung a leak, but because the principle was dead simple: concentrate chakra at the point of impact. That's it. That's the whole thing. Really.
Maya had been able to use Chakra-Enhanced Strength for ages. But being able to use it didn't mean she could actually use it. In Naruto, all three generations of the Senju line's Hokage could employ it — and the threshold for Chakra-Enhanced Strength was chakra control. So why was it Medical Ninjutsu? Because no matter how flawless your control, the striking limb gets hurt — and that's exactly when you need Medical Ninjutsu.
Delivering the strike while healing the injured limb with Medical Ninjutsu at the same moment — that was the wall Chakra-Enhanced Strength put in front of so many people.
Remember the first time Maya ever saved someone? To beat the clock, she'd funneled chakra into her feet — and wrecked her left foot, which took ages to heal afterward. That had been the basic application of Chakra-Enhanced Strength. The outcome just hadn't been pretty.
Picture it: Naruto's Wind Release: Rasenshuriken was a super-sized logging machine, and Tsunade's Chakra-Enhanced Strength was a full-on bulldozer. If Maya really cut loose with either one in Central Park a few times — heh.
So Maya needed a private, sturdy training ground. But she couldn't very well say any of this to Master Stick. Not out of fear he'd leak it — purely because she was afraid of crushing the old man's spirit.
Here's a metaphor. Chen Jinnan hands Wei Xiaobao the secret manual he'd practiced for thirty years, holding nothing back. Then one dawn, while he's supervising Xiaobao's horse-stance drills, Xiaobao opens his mouth, spits out a flying sword, hops aboard, and says: "Master, hold on a sec — let me fly to Hankou and grab you a bowl of hot dry noodles for breakfast. Want extra chili?"
Granted, the metaphor was only roughly on the money. The gap between Stick and Maya wasn't as wide as the one between an immortal cultivator and a low-martial mortal — quite the opposite. Stick's K'un-Lun secret arts were enormously useful to Maya.
Stick's martial arts were built around developing the human body; a longer lifespan came standard with the practice. Ninjutsu, on the other hand, was purely a killing art — forget longevity, using ninjutsu was a slow death, and aging before your time came with the territory.
Just look at Stick — hell, the man had lived from the Qianlong era to now, and still showed no sign of checking out. Decades from now he'd still be beating a strapping young buck like Daredevil until he coughed blood. Then look at Sarutobi Hiruzen: in the Konoha Crush, up against Orochimaru — his own student, no less — the old Third managed a grand total of three ninjutsu. Yes — three low-tier ninjutsu, and then His Honor was out of chakra and had to stake his life on the Dead Demon Consuming Seal.
In the end, Maya didn't sabotage Master Stick's morale. The two of them settled on a schedule to train in Central Park. As for Maya's ninjutsu — well. Nothing for it. That would have to wait a while.
After parting from Stick, Maya headed home for dinner. But the moment she stepped into the little living room, she found the mood tonight was distinctly off.
Jennifer hadn't cooked. She sat on the couch clutching James and crying, and Jack wasn't saying a word either, hunched alone in the corner, chain-smoking for all he was worth.
Maya paid the two of them no mind. She scooped up the equally teary James, briskly fixed him a bottle, and only once her baby brother was hiccupping away and sucking at his bottle did she ask, "What's going on with you two? Jennifer, what are you crying about?"
At her daughter's question, Jennifer seemed to find an anchor, and cried all the more piteously. "S-sob — Maya, it's Jack. Jack's out there — he's found himself a mistress! I just had a baby, and he goes and finds another woman. It's too much, sob—"