Chapter 3

The spike of a peculiar herbal scent invaded the nostrils and brought Bruce back to his senses. He looked up at the one who had awoken him and half expected to see the man who had taken him out. But it was a slender lady who was bent over him with a china bowl of steaming liquid. She smiled at him through slim brown eyes that sat beneath sharply angled black brows, and moved the bowl away from him. Dressed in an oriental shirt and pants suit framed with a mandarin collar and long sleeves, and silky long dark hair kept neatly tucked up at the back of her head. Upon her ears dangled golden teardrop earrings that had engravings on them in a language that Bruce could not understand. "You've been asleep for quite a while," she said with an accent that he struggled to place.

He looked around. He no longer was in the cell that he had first found himself in. This room was much larger, surrounded by large wooden pillars that had concentric squares beneath what looked like lotus flowers, carved into them. Beyond the pillars lay four stone walls, much like the material that he had found in his cell, and two adjoining wooden doors with rice paper in the upper part of the frame, surrounded by concentric squares, much like the carvings on the pillars. Not too far from their side was a bamboo rack that held a number of wooden sticks. "I was moved..." he said.

"Yes," she said, and kept her gaze on him till he turned to her. "My name is Wu-San." She paused for a moment, and went on, "You may call me Sandra."

He nodded politely at her as he sat up. "I'd introduce myself, but I'm pretty sure you already know who I am."

"You are Bruce Wayne of Gotham City," she replied, her eyes taking a quick dip at the mention of his name.

"Sandra, do you know why I'm here?" he asked, even though he would assume that she might have a similar answer as the man he'd met before.

"You are our master's chosen one, to redeem your city from self-destruction."

"I've heard that before, but it still doesn't make any sense. What do you mean by self-destruction? What's going to happen to Gotham?"

"The process has already begun," she said, her voice brimming with authority. "The master says Gotham has gone on for years unchecked, and its corruption is vastly consuming what was once good. In time, its evil will prove to be its end."

Taken aback by the bold proclamation, Bruce gave himself a moment to let her words sink in. He couldn't disagree on the aspects of corruption. Gotham had indeed become quite the cesspool, as he himself had borne witness to. Wayne Enterprises was of course, not exempt. In fact, he'd begun to recognize that much of the rot stemmed from his own company. He wondered if that was the reason that selected him out of the many. "You believe in the prophecy as well?"

She nodded with certainty. "The master has never been wrong. Not in all the years that he's been alive."

Bruce could only assume that she was referring to the man who had been in his cell. "No disrespect. But I don't share the faith that you have in your master. All my life I've been taught that life is what you make it out to be, and that people who base their decisions on the assertion of certain prophecies coming true will be setting themselves up to fail. Besides, I certainly have no aspirations to be among the conquerors that your master has listed to me."

She frowned, "You can't have met the master yet. You've only just arrived."

"Who was it that I met then? He never gave me a name."

"It was Adept Harmen who brought you here."

"I asked to meet the person in charge and he claimed that it was he."

Sandra smiled gently. "Adept Harmen is given charge of the prisons, but we are all under the wise direction of the master."

Bruce bit a corner of his lip. "Can I meet with your master then?"

She shook her head. "No one meets the master till they are ready, and you haven't even begun your training."

"My training?"

Sandra rose to her feet and walked over to the wooden rack. "That's why we are here, Mr Wayne." She picked out two long sticks and threw one to him, just as he was getting up himself. "To train you to be the person you need to be."

He caught and held the stick between his hands. It was smoothly polished, even though scratches on the bark indicated it had previously been used. "I didn't sign up for..."

The end of her stick flew downwards in his direction, and instinctively he moved to block it with his own. "You asked to meet the master. Complete your training and I will take you to him myself." She flipped her stick around and met his at a different angle.

"How long will this take?" asked Bruce, already feeling impatient. The thought of Alfred alone with his clone, parading around as Bruce Wayne, greatly irked him. He hoped to God that Alfred would be able to detect inconsistencies in his behavior and figure out the truth.

She moved more ferociously in his direction, slamming her stick into his each time he managed to catch the blow. He backed off, his sight never leaving the movements of her arms, taking several steps backwards till he found himself pressed against one of the pillars in the room. She came fully at him this time, entangling his stick in a twisted spin with her own, causing him to lose grip of it, and placed him in a choke-hold.

"As long as is needed," she said to him, as she took a step away, effortlessly levered up his stick with her own, catching it in one hand, and handed it back to him. "Again."