Cherry Blossom Girls 8

by Harmon Cooper

  But I held strong, my whole body trembling as I healed her.

  I suddenly felt more powerful than I’d ever felt before.

  I looked down at my hands, blistering energy radiating off of them.

  All of it crescendoed until...

  Suddenly, it was gone, and I was back to normal.

  “Are you okay?” Grace asked, a scared look on her face.

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “We have to leave,” Dorian said, looking to Michelle. “Do you think you can distract Tulip enough to have her change back?”

  “On it!”

  “Stella, we need you to contain Smiley for a moment,” Dorian said, “while Michelle gets Ingrid.”

  Stella nodded.

  And as the rest of us stayed put, Veronique still waking up, the three of them took off, teleporting over to the fight between Tulip and Smiley.

  Michelle started jumping around, getting Tulip’s attention.

  To help her out, Stella prevented Smiley from attacking by erecting a vector shield around him.

  I tried to get to my feet but couldn’t, my body still reeling from the energy that I’d expended.

  I felt like there had been a sudden shift within me, but I couldn’t be too sure. I would need to plug in first, I would need to see if there was some type of change...

  And I had to laugh at this notion, this idea that I would be able to understand what happened to me by simply reading out some bullshit make-believe stat sheet.

  But it was something, and as Dorian returned with Ingrid, Michelle appearing to my right, Stella launching herself toward us using her vector power to propel her, I figured that now wasn’t the time to get to the bottom of it.

  First, we had to get the hell away from New Delhi.

  Chapter Sixteen: Gurkhas and Fwends

  We landed in a field. A water buffalo with blonde hair grazed in front of us, flies buzzing around its head.

  “Do you see this?” Michelle asked, appearing next to the creature, startling it. It tried to move away, and once it did, she simply disappeared, the water buffalo too stupid to understand what was happening.

  Then again, I couldn’t really blame it. Most people couldn’t comprehend how quickly Michelle moved.

  “What kind of cow is that?” Chloe asked.

  “A water buffalo; they are unique to Asia. It’s not quite a cow,” I said.

  “It looks like a cow,” Dorian said.

  Veronique was still weak, so Ingrid had taken her beast armor, easily holding Veronique in her arms. Yeah, it looked weird as hell, Tulip’s overgrown body with Ingrid’s teenager sized head holding Veronique.

  But at least I didn’t have to carry her, not that I wouldn’t have, but it gave me the freedom to do other things, like scratch the back of my head while I tried to figure out how far we were from civilization.

  “I’m… sorry,” Michelle told Veronique for what seemed like the tenth time. The teen kept oscillating between being distracted by what we were doing, like our teleportation antics to get out of New Delhi as Dorian geared up to bring us here, to utter remorse.

  She had run the gamut over the last twenty minutes, expressing just about every emotion possible as she tried to deal with the guilt she felt over calling Hummingbird to us.

  But luckily, Veronique wasn’t giving her too much hell about it.

  “I already told you, it’s…” Veronique closed her eyes. “It’s not your fault. Not quite. Just be careful next time and maybe you shouldn’t have a phone.”

  “But…”

  “We can talk about this later,” I told the both of them.

  “Any idea where we are?” Stella asked me. “It seems like we’re in the middle of a jungle.”

  “Not a bad observation,” I said, turning in the direction of the mountains on the horizon. “But to answer your question, we’re supposed to be in Pokhara, a city in the country of Nepal.”

  The rest of the view was blocked by a tall tropical tree. There was a squad of birds I’d never heard before, something that sounded like a monkey, a smaller animal moving through the brush, away from us, and of course the sound of the water buffalo, which made a noise with its throat as it backed away from Michelle.

  “Michelle, don’t bother the water buffalo,” I said to her.

  “It would be so cool to ride one of these things.”

  “I’ll handle this.” Chloe lifted into the air, the wind fluttering the skirt attached to her uniform as she sailed overhead, almost to the point where she became an apex in the sky.

  Once she descended again, she pointed us in the direction of the trees, to the mountains.

  “Civilization is that way.”

  “Then that’s the way that we are going to go,” Ingrid said, turning to the jungle.

  She stopped at the edge of the field, the rest of us following behind her, Veronique still in her arms.

  “Thank you for carrying me,” Veronique said in her stilted way. “But I think I can walk.”

  “I don’t mind,” Ingrid told her, “and you took quite a beating back there. Just let me help out for a little bit. No harm done.”

  “She’s not wrong,” I started to say, catching the look from Veronique.

  I backed off, not feeling like getting drained, my thoughts jumping from the fact that I had actually never been in a jungle before, to what had happened back in India.

  What the shit was this Goku-like power I had exhibited?

  I really, no, we really needed to get back to America. I needed to go over this with Father, and we needed to take care of that motherfucker Hummingbird. Just thinking of him in that warehouse in Mexico had my blood boiling.

  If it hadn’t been for him…

  “Did you save the mother and her son?” I asked Stella.

  Of all of us, Stella seemed to have the least dirt and grime on her, just a smudge under one of her cheeks, her Dutch braid a bit frizzy.

  “Of course I did.”

  “Good,” I said as we came down a narrow path that led over a small stream, the canopy above us filled with life.

  “Look, a monkey!” Michelle said, pointing up at the trees. Sure enough, a mama monkey leapt from limb to limb, her baby on her back, staring down at us.

  “That’s so cool,” I said.

  Grace laughed. “You would find a monkey interesting, wouldn’t you?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Me,” said Dorian, eyeing the monkey and her child. “Those things carry diseases.”

  “How do you know that?” Chloe asked her.

  The sound manipulator was next to Dorian, and I could tell by the tone of her voice she was sort of teasing her.

  “I don’t know; I just heard it.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of things about monkeys, and I’ve never heard that they had diseases,” Michelle said. “Can I run ahead to see what’s up there? The anticipation is killing me!”

  “No, stay with the group,” Veronique said.

  “Okay, sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” the metal vampire assured her.

  “We aren’t too far,” Chloe informed us. “I saw a school or something about a quarter of a mile from our previous location. Maybe even closer. And the city is beyond that.”

  “A school, huh?” I asked as we came out of the brush into a glade filled with beautiful flowers.

  “These are almost as pretty as cherry blossoms,” Grace said, going to the first bunch of flowers and taking a big whiff. “Almost.”

  “I’ve never seen so many flowers in my damn life,” I said. “And you’re right, this is way better than what we get back in Wooster Square.”

  Now there were two words I hadn’t heard come out of my mouth in a while.

  When all this started, I lived in a garden apartment in Wooster Square, the highlight of my week usually the weekend farmers’ market, or the occasional concert at Space Ballroom in Hamden, or scoping out some of the college bars in downtown New Haven.

  W
hat would the CBGs think if they knew just how pathetic I’d been before Grace stumbled into my life? I mean, I wasn’t a loser, I had a girlfriend from time to time, but I definitely wasn’t some sort of incel…

  Grace looked to me, crossed her eyes, and stuck her tongue out.

  What was that? I thought to her.

  Stop living in the past. You’re with us now, and it doesn’t matter what your life was like before you met me.

  You’re right.

  I am always right.

  That’s not true.

  Remind me of a time that I wasn’t right?

  I don’t know, I’m sure there has been a time in the last couple of weeks. Maybe you weren’t right to show up at my doorstep and thrust me into all of this.

  She gave me a pouty look. You don’t mean that, she thought to me as we continue deeper into the jungle.

  “Fine, fine,” I said under my breath as we came out of the trees again, the sound of grunts meeting my ears.

  Standing before us was a squad of Gurkhas, the men wearing khaki trousers and white tank tops as they practiced their moves. And yes, they had curved blades at their sides.

  They speak English, Grace thought to all of us. I’ll handle this.

  The leader of the group stepped forward and smiled, his hands behind his back. The man had bronze skin, dark hair, and light brown eyes, and was thin and muscular. He was a head shorter than me, but was a towering figure nonetheless. For some reason, and even with my superpowers, I got this vibe that he would still be able to hand me my ass.

  Thank you, college, specifically, Southern Connecticut University.

  Had it not been for my history class, I wouldn’t have known about some of the things that the Nepali Gurkhas had done during World War II, from keeping the peace in India to slaying the Japanese in Burma.

  These dudes were the real deal.

  “Welcome to Pokhara,” he said. The men behind him snapped their legs shut, all clapping their arms at their sides.

  I mean, I wasn’t scared, but I definitely saw a few of the CBGs bristle, especially Stella, her hand coming up, ready to get her vector on.

  But as their leader continued, everyone relaxed.

  After all, Grace was in control.

  “I will have Batsa take you to my family’s hotel in the city,” the Gurkha leader said graciously. “There will be enough rooms for all of you, and we have an excellent chef. Please enjoy your stay in Nepal, and thank you for all you do, Cherry Blossom Girls.”

  “He knows our name?” Michelle asked, wide-eyed.

  “No,” Ingrid started to say.

  But I cut her off. “Yes, he knows who we are; they know that we’re trying to do good here.”

  The man nodded, the wind kicking up and whipping through his dark hair.

  The Gurkha known as Batsa came forward and stood at attention. Once he got the go-ahead, he broke attention, gesturing for us to follow him.

  “You cannot go into to town like that,” the man said, referring to Ingrid in her beast armor.

  “I told you I can walk,” said Veronique.

  “But I felt so important carrying you,” Ingrid said as she set the metal vampire down.

  I moved over to her side, making sure she was stable. Slipping my hand around her waist, I stood there with Veronique for a moment, waiting for her to drain me.

  To my surprise, she didn’t, and we walked like this for a bit, until it became awkward to try to step together at the same time.

  So we separated, our hands coming together, our fingers interlacing.

  Batsa proudly led the way, Grace beside him, Dorian behind her followed by Ingrid and Stella. Chloe was to our right, and Michelle moved back and forth, excited as ever.

  “Is there anything I should know about Nepal?” Michelle asked me. “The people look like they come from India. I can definitely say that. That isn’t racist, is it?”

  “No,” I told her. “Well, not quite. I don’t know. It sounds something a diversity and inclusion center could spend years tackling.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Isn’t this the place where monkeys come from? We saw some back there.”

  “I don’t think monkeys just come from Nepal,” I told her. “Maybe Africa?”

  “I hope we get to go there too.”

  Chloe laughed. “You would go anywhere, wouldn’t you?”

  “If it is with you guys, sure, I’ll go anywhere. We should visit all the countries. How many countries are there, Gideon?”

  “A lot.”

  “Continents?”

  “Seven.”

  “Countries again?”

  “Like I said, a lot.”

  “That’s not a very good answer. And I’m being serious here, how many are there? Twenty? Thirty?”

  “Higher,” I said. Veronique cracked a smile.

  “A hundred?”

  “Higher than that.”

  “Six hundred,” she said excitedly.

  “A lot less than that.”

  “Okay, so somewhere between one hundred and six hundred.” A determined look painted across Michelle’s face. “We will explore them all.”

  “No, we won’t,” Veronique said. “But if you want to believe that, fine.”

  “I want to visit all the countries. I want to see every type of person and hear all of their languages. I don’t want to learn to speak their languages, because they sound too difficult. I heard the Indian people speaking their language and that was a very strange sounding language. Very fast. And then I heard how they spoke in Japan, and it was kind of interesting. Polite, and quiet, but also it sounded complicated. And who is supposed to learn all these characters that they use? English is easy. Just twenty-six letters.”

  “Hey, Michelle, why don’t you run ahead and check out the town and let us know what it looks like?” Veronique asked. “That would be quite helpful to us.”

  “Are you f’n serious?” she asked.

  “Yep, go on,” I told her, “and then come back here and let us know if it’s nice or not.”

  “And it’s just this way, right? Straight ahead?”

  I confirmed her question with a nod. “Don’t go too far.”

  She took off, kicking up dust. Dorian turned to Veronique and me, and smirked.

  “What?”

  “You can’t just send her off whenever she’s being annoying.”

  “She wasn’t being annoying.”

  “Yes, she was,” Veronique said, squeezing my hand.

  “Well, maybe.”

  It was warm, but there was also a breeze in this place that reminded me of Colorado, a wind that had had some time to simmer in the mountains and bring down some of that cold air. The sky was blue, aside from a gray cloud to my left, and as we approached the city I could see the sparkle of water in the distance.

  The dirt path we were walking morphed into a proper road, motorcycles and older cars skirting along it, women selling vegetables arranged on plastic tarps, a bus parked on the side of the road as the driver and a few men worked on one of the tires.

  There were people walking as well, most of them barefoot, a few carrying straw baskets, others with their hands in their pockets. People noticed us. And as soon as they did, they couldn’t stop looking, not until Grace used her power to turn their heads the other way.

  It was odd being stared at like this.

  We had come from Japan, where people hardly paid attention to us, rarely making eye contact, to Nepal, where everyone was interested in who we were, why we had just come out of the Gurkha training academy.

  Different folks, different strokes.

  “We are going to rest here, right?” Veronique asked.

  “I thought you wanted to go straight to Kathmandu…”

  “That was before I was buried alive.”

  “I’m…” I looked at her, biting my lip. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner. I’m sorry we couldn’t get you.”

  “I
t wasn’t your fault. Stop apologizing like Michelle, whose fault it was, for the record.”

  “I’m still sorry.”

  “We’re fine now, and we’re together. That’s all that matters,” she said, squeezing my hand again.

  Chapter Seventeen: Pokhara’s Finest

  The hotel had an old-world charm to it, the place clearly built in the mid-twentieth century. The curtains, the quality of the woodwork, the elegance of the dining room with its white tableclothes and silver platters, a few foreign guests having an early dinner.

  “Who’s hungry?” Chloe asked, after Batsa bid us farewell, heading back to the Gurkha academy.

  “We will have food for you a bit later, madam,” the concierge told us. Even though it was kind of warm outside, the man still wore a black suit, everything tailored, his hair parted off to the side and glossy from hairspray. He smiled as Chloe continued to speak to him.

  A thought struck me like a mallet: we had left our backpack back in India, the one that contained our laptop, and all of our communication methods.

  “We are going to need some cell phones,” I told him.

  “Certainly,” he said, Grace already controlling his mind.

  “And…” I shook my head. “Never mind.”

  I knew it was too much to ask for a laptop, and I saw that they had a business center to the left of the entrance that didn’t seem very private.

  But I still wouldn’t have minded one at the time.

  Whatever happened to being a writer? I thought as we took the stairs to the third floor, two of us assigned to each room.

  And did it really even matter if I ever wrote again?

  With the life that I was living, and the plans that I had to “save” the world, there wasn’t a lot of time to plot out my stories.

  And in a way I could feel Manchester Rich begging me to write her, the city of Dwarvington ready to reveal to me more of its secrets, the dark mysteries that lurked in its back alleyways and hidden entrances.

  Meowroar!

  All those make-believe concepts were secondary now, pieces of an imaginary world in my head that only a small number of people gave two shits about.

  Then there was Mutants in the Making, my best-selling series that continued to hold its rank in the EBAYmazon store. It was for sale in bookshops, imagine that, and it was now available at libraries, at least according to an email I’d recently got from my agent, Jake.