Epilogue
As Thunder Dragon regains consciousness, only the faint touch of the tip of a spear at his throat stops him from rearing up. Instead, he glares up at the woman holding it there. "Involving yourself
now?" he asks.
Scathach somehow shrugs without adjusting the point of her spear. "Just ensuring that the fight
that you lost doesn't promptly start up again. I believe the three of you have some things to say to each other."
As she says so, he can see his former opponents standing just a bit behind her, looking down at him with what looks like appropriate apprehension. "Yes," he says. "We do, at that." Before either of them can say anything, though, he presses on. "Breaking the rules as you two did means that I don't owe either of you a boon. So I hope you enjoyed that fight, for it's all --"
Trouble interrupts. "I think not. In a few minutes, we're going to ask you for something, and you're going to give it -- voluntarily."
Thunder Dragon stares at her. "Your temerity is without limit."
"Thank you," she says.
"I don't think that was a compliment," says Wukong.
Trouble shrugs. "As the Lady of Dun Scath has said, you lost. And everyone saw you lose."
Thunder Dragon laughs bitterly. "'Everyone?' You overestimate the market value of these events. I might have a few million viewers all over the world, but that is a far cry from --"
This time, Wukong interrupts. "She meant, everyone in Bhutan."
He starts. "What -- no, that's ridiculous. There aren't more than a few hundred television subscribers in the country, and they don't --"
"There were, until
a very fast-moving individual took advantage of your focus on these events to deliver battery-powered TV receivers to every village in this country," says Trouble. "All of them pre-subscribed to this event. All of them showing this final battle to every person in Bhutan.
Wukong picks up the thread when Trouble falls silent. "They all saw you lose. They all know you can be beaten." He pauses. "I imagine any number of revolutions are being plotted, as we speak. I imagine they are being supplied by a variety of interested parties."
Thunder Dragon stares at the two of them in stunned silence. He finally finds his voice, but only enough to stammer. "You -- you --"
"Did you think you were the only one who knows how to exploit the media?" says Trouble. She doesn't wait for his response. "Now for that boon, the one that you're going to want to give us, because it's in your own best interests. As someone said earlier, 'Get off
our planet.'"
He keeps right on staring, but now he's found the rest of his voice. "If that was what you wanted," he says in a low, angry tone, "then you had just to beat me by the rules and --"
"And you would weasel your way out of it," says Trouble, more anger in her tone than there has been before now. "Exact words -- 'any boon the king of Bhutan can grant'. Oh, if someone asked you to leave Earth, you'd have done it. But once you'd left, you'd no longer the be king of Bhutan, and no longer have to keep any promises he'd made. So you'd come back and conquer all over again. So there's no point to that request." She lets out a sigh. "And we found another way to obtain the only other worthwhile request that anyone had come up with."
That addendum confuses him, clearly, but most of his focus is on what came before that. "First you call me a coward, and then you call me a cheat. Is there any more insolence that you'd like to offer?"
Trouble opens her mouth to answer that, but Wukong speaks further. "All that needs to be said has been said. Will you grant the boon?"
Thunder Dragon looks back at Scathach, who has been listening with her usual bored expression. He beckons for her to move the spear away, and, after a moment of consideration, she does so. He stands, dusts himself off, and then looks at Trouble and Wukong. "I came to this world to find worthy opponents. I found treachery and cowardice instead. So be it. I go because it pleases me to go." He looks up at the dome, as one who is about to fly up towards it might look.
When, after a moment, nothing has happened, he looks again in Wukong's direction, annoyed.
"Oh. Sorry."
Thunder Dragon shakes his head. Without a word, he flies up, through a portal in the dome, and is gone from sight in a moment.
And so, at last, it ends.