“Disregard any extradition treaties, and if anyone asks, mention my name,” Youseg told the lead rabbiteer as he approached the man. “This is no normal situation, and it would be best if we don’t make it an inter-country affair. For now, let’s keep the Society of Monks in the dark about their appearance.”
He offered the man his hand, and the man took it. “As you wish, Youseg,” the rabbiteer said, something different about his voice now.
Can he control minds as well? Micah thought as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. It was as if the rabbiteers had completely forgotten why they were in the hotel, and each one that Youseg healed simply thanked him and gathered with the others near the door, preparing to depart.
Once they were all gone, the monk motioned for Micah and the ladies to follow him. He stopped at the door and looked over to the hotel clerk, who was just starting to stand behind his duty station, sobbing from the light wound on his shoulder.
The clerk nodded, his expression suddenly blank. “As you wish, Youseg.”
Chapter Four
Youseg was indeed a local legend, the man practically floating through the streets as people stopped to greet him, only a few catching that he was walking with a kitsune. The general public seem to be in awe of the man.
All because of the My Ninja Girl comic series, Micah thought. He couldn’t get over the fact that just an hour or so ago, he thought the comic book was a historical drama, but to find out that the series later came to the future…
I guess stranger things have happened.
Youseg led them under another red gate that opened onto a wide boulevard seemingly out of place in the dense urban environment, the sides of the road lined with flowering shrubs which pressed up against the sides of rowhouses, a fresh scent in the air. He could see the monastery up ahead, one with pagodas shaped like rabbit ears, massive trees out front as well, with dozens of red and green flags hanging from the branches.
Men and women in robes and veils over the lower halves of their faces came forward at the gate to greet them, several launching into action as they prepared a space for Youseg to greet his guests. A tent was hastily erected in the courtyard and suddenly filled with cushions for Micah and his team to sit on, the monks and nuns disappearing as quickly as they appeared, promising to return with tea and other snacks.
Youseg took his place at the front, motioning for Micah and the girls to sit in front of him. It was a nice day out, the sky a vibrant blue, the air freshly scented by the flowering bushes around the monastery. Micah noticed that the buildings were constructed in a way that made it appear as if they were floating, each structure clad in a polished finish he’d grown so accustomed to seeing at the religious institutes in Neo-Hokkaido.
“You have finally come,” Youseg said once they were all seated. “I do apologize for how things turned out at the hotel. As I said, I was on my morning stroll and I heard a struggle. I’m from this part of Muryane, and for what it’s worth, I have been known to stick my head where it doesn’t belong. For once, this perhaps turned out to be in my favor. Unless…” Youseg looked at Micah just as he finished removing his helmet, Liza doing the same. “Unless you were looking for me.”
“No offense, but we’ve never heard of you,” Soraya told the monk matter-of-factly.
“Two of them have familiarized themselves with your early volumes, but she’s right, we were unaware of who you were until this morning, nor did we know how long the series went or that it changed time periods,” Micah explained. “Only the first five to seven volumes are available in Neo-Hokkaido.”
“Yes…” Youseg said, a hint of annoyance in his voice. “Predictably, the publisher was censored by the Society of Monks once the storyline changed, and the Royal Star Ninjas came to our time. I believe I struck a nerve. That was always my intention, you know. From the start of the story, I wanted to see my vision to its natural completion. The earlier volumes were rooted in history, with violence and sex added…” He smiled humbly at them. “I was a younger man then, you see? I thought that it was the only way to reach my audience. I see now that it is the only way to reach my audience, which is why I’ve stopped writing graphic novels altogether. Plus, the visions came to their natural conclusion.”
“Could you have at least called it something else?” Soraya asked, still a bit skeptical. “My Ninja Girl? You do realize that the Royal Star Ninjas were, and are, trained killers who spent years of their lives dedicated to our unique craft. The title you’ve given your series trivializes us; belittles us. We aren’t girls, and some of us never got the opportunity to even feel young.”
“Ah, yes. The original title was The Royal Star Ninjas and the Quest to Save Neo-Hokkaido: A Secret Unabridged History and a Prophecy. As you can well imagine if you have any knowledge of the publishing world, the publisher rejected the title, and one drunken night, I scrawled out the three words that would later become the title, almost as a joke. I didn’t think they would possibly consider it. I wouldn’t have shown the title to the publisher, but my agent stopped by the next day and saw the words and acted as if he’d had an epiphany. And that is how it became My Ninja Girl. Odd as it is.”
“There is no way you would have fit your original title on the front of the comic book,” Soraya told him.
“You’d be surprised what a good font center can do, especially the ones in Heian. But you are right, that would have been tricky.”
Youseg’s monks and nuns returned with tea and snacks. Once they were gone, he turned his questioning to Micah, asking in great detail what happened, and how they’d ended up in his country.
Micah started from the beginning, with the mantra he had whispered at the shrine in Thunderhama, which had awoken Yuri and Soraya. He mentioned those that had died helping their cause, and how their numbers had grown to include Bunni and Liza. He then went on to tell him how the Society of Monks had not only clamped down control over his country, but they had killed his parents while testing biological weapons, and that they’d released the same weapons, a variant of the sweating sickness, in his home district not so long ago. They were attacking their own people.
The older monk listened carefully as Micah told him more about how they’d come to be in his country, from the rescue mission to save Bunni and Yuri, to their escape through the woods, and how they had worked with an ancient AI known as Bobi. This reminded Micah that he probably should check in with Bobi at some point, something he had failed to do earlier on. He assumed, however, that Bobi was at least monitoring his feed when he wore his helmet; the AI was always on top of things like that.
“There’s one more thing…” Micah said before looping back around to how Milsung had joined the group, which involved a discussion of the mantra once again, one that Youseg actually recognized. “And that’s pretty much how we got here.”
“Fascinating. And it is here where you are supposed to be. There is a part of my vision that I never included in the graphic novel series,” Youseg said after a long pause. “As crazy as it may sound, I saw myself as part of it in some way, which was another reason why I stopped when I did, fabricating an ending regarding a young nun’s assassination. I didn’t want to write myself into the series, make it a meta-fictional thing, as I find those to be somewhat tedious and more clever to the author that penned it than their audience. But I always hoped that what I’d seen would come to pass, even if the years, and my notoriety in the community, have made it seem almost as if it were a fever dream, some vision I’d had as a young man that merely brought me wealth, but not true happiness. Now that I see you all, I feel truly happy. I feel I have contributed, and I can now contribute more.”
“How?” Yuri asked. “As it stands, we are fugitives.”
“As I said, the years have been kind to me when it comes to wealth, which has given me the time and money necessary to truly understand the usage of industria. I have ancient tomes in this monastery that Neo-Hokkaidan eyes could only dream of seeing. After I wrapped up the grap
hic novel series, and if we’re being honest, during the time I was writing it, I dedicated myself to cycling industria, learning from the masters of my own country, many of whom have since left us. I spent a year in Jokamatchi as a scholar-in-residence, and another year in Neo-Hokkaido. There were times that I didn’t know what I was working toward, but I couldn’t deny the visions I’d had, so I continued doing what I could do to improve myself, my understanding of the power. As to how can I help you, that is precisely how. Not only can I teach you to utilize industria as I did back in the hotel, but I can offer you a safe place to stay in the meantime.”
“Seriously?” Micah asked, not sure what to make of all this.
Youseg motioned toward the far side of the monastery, Micah noticing that there were several housing units there. “I even had those built, hoping that one day you would arrive. People thought I was crazy at the time…” He rubbed his hands together. “They will need some touching up, but they should provide you a place to live while you get back on your feet and start training. So, what do you say? Are you ready? Shall we begin?”
By the time Micah arrived back at the hotel, the lobby had been cleaned, everything was in its right place, no sign that a small battle occurred here not too long ago. He had left the ninjas behind, Liza traveling with him as added protection. They were greeted by the hotel clerk, Sven, who now had his arm in a sling as he gingerly reminded them that payment was due.
“Youseg is covering us,” Micah told him. “In fact, we’re moving into the residence at…” He suddenly realized he was potentially saying too much. “The residence at the, um, Jokamatchian Embassy,” he said, clearing his throat. “We’ll be leaving shortly. For payment information, I’ll have Youseg’s people contact you. Or a shrine. Or whatever.”
Rather than stick around to finish that conversation, Micah took the elevator to the top floor with Liza, who chuckled at his conversational awkwardness once the door shut.
“It wasn’t my best moment,” he admitted to her.
“But you got your point across. Everything is just coming together so quickly.” The elevator stopped, and for a moment it didn’t seem like the door was going open, Micah feeling a spark of panic in his chest. But it opened, and they came out onto their floor, the door to the presidential suite directly in front of them.
“Choro isn’t going to believe any of this…”
“I don’t think I believe any of it, but I saw what the man was capable of, and I heard his whole spiel,” said Liza. “It appears we don’t have any other options at the moment. And if he can help us utilize industria a different way, and perhaps learn to move objects with it, we will come out on top of all this in the end.”
“You aren’t wrong there,” Micah said as he keyed himself into the room. He found his grandmother resting on one of the couches, her legs propped up on an ottoman as she snored. The light coming in from the window added a warm glow to the space, perfect napping conditions, and rather than wake the beast, Micah tiptoed past his grandmother into Choro’s room. He knocked, and once he heard confirmation from the other side, he opened the door for Liza.
“We have news,” Micah said once he shut the door behind him, Liza standing close enough to Micah for their bodies to be touching. He felt the urge to place his hand on her hip, but refrained from doing it in front of Choro, who didn’t know about the relationship they had.
The big man sat on the bed, graphic novels spread out before him, a smile on his face as he looked at Micah and the former nun. Behind him, on a side table, was all the gear he had carried with him. It wasn’t much, nothing like his basement apartment back in the Golden Trash District, but it was clear that Choro was doing what he could with what he had on hand.
“News?”
“You didn’t hear?” Liza tilted her head to the side. “It makes sense you wouldn’t be able to hear it all the way up here.”
“Hear what?” Choro asked.
“We had an encounter in the lobby below.”
He gasped. “Monks? Hermetics?”
“Rabbiteers, a sort of governmental police force,” Micah told him. “They were assholes, but this was warranted, I guess. Our appearance at the hotel last night raised a bunch of red flags, and surprise, there is now an extradition contract that the Society of Monks put out on us just in case we happen to leave the country. Well, as you can imagine, this led to a fight, which was interrupted by…” Micah smirked at his old friend. “I mean, it sort of makes sense considering what area of Muryane we are currently in, but also is quite a coincidence.”
“What is? What are you saying?”
“Hermane Coofyur, yes, that Hermane, came to our rescue,” Micah said as he gestured toward the graphic novels. “Of course, that’s his pen name. His real name is Youseg, and like the guy said earlier, he’s a monk.”
Choro’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Hermane Coofyur came by the hotel?”
“He did, and basically threw us around as if we were pillows. He has mastered industria to a level I haven’t personally seen before. Liza?”
She shook her head.
“Wait, are you telling me the guy writing these graphic novels is an industria master?” Choro made a gesture as if his mind had just been blown.
“Precisely. After he found out who we were, and how we related to what he considers the prophecy he laid down in these novels, he invited us back to his shrine. Apparently, he never fully wrote about his visions because he didn’t want to write himself into the story.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“Part of his prophecy, or the visions that he had that led to him writing the graphic novel series, has to do with the Royal Star Ninjas coming to the future, as you know, to our time. Not spelled out in the later volumes is a trip they take to Heian to meet him, mostly because he wanted to avoid metafiction. He has even prepared a residence for us, if you can believe it.”
“Hold on. Are you saying that he also had a vision that we, or you, would eventually come to him, and he actually prepared a place for us to stay? That this never made it into the graphic novel? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re saying.”
“That’s exactly what we’re telling you,” said Liza. “And I know it sounds wacky. So…” She glanced around the room. “Unless you are wanting to stay here and cover the bill that’s going to come due, we should probably just go there. You can ask more questions along the way.”
“Have you told your grandmother?”
“Not yet. But I’m sure she’ll come along,” Micah told him.
“I don’t know. She really likes the hotel, and was going on about how the curves of everything are salacious, and how they were making her feel a bit moist. So gross. I had to leave the room.” Choro began gathering up the graphic novels. “In that case, I suppose it’s better if I come with some ammunition.”
“Ammunition?”
“Questions about what is written here, about his vision, how it came to him, you know the drill. I’m interested; I want to pick his brain a bit like any fan boy should. Now that you say that he never wrote the true ending, I’d like to know about that as well if you want to share. If not, I’ll just pester him until he throws me a bone.”
“Right,” Micah told Choro. “In that case, we’ll gather everything else and wake my grandmother. See you in a few.”
Once they left Choro’s room, Micah and Liza headed over to the couch, where he gently placed his hand on his grandmother’s arm.
“What?” she asked. “Micah, sweetie, is that you? I was having a dream about Regnya, your grandfather’s other wife. I could have sworn she was here with me. She would have laughed at this ridiculous hotel room, how fancy it was. Such a sweet woman. Oh, Liza? Where are the others? Are you ready to marry my grandson yet, dear?”
“Is that what you would like me to do?” Liza asked softly.
“Of course, I would like you to marry him. It would be a destination wedding, would it not? Just look at this fancy ass hotel. I’m sure
they have a banquet room, and we can just bill someone else like the bastards we are.”
“What about the two wives I already have?” Micah asked, teasing both his grandmother and Liza.
“I’m sure they could make room for one more. It’s not like you have anything else to do aside from save the world,” said his grandmother before a bout of coughing. “I’m sorry. Something about the air here just isn’t… It’s too clean. Have you sensed that? It’s not like the dirty air we have back in our country. Where was I? Save the world, right? No, I know that’s not exactly what you’re going to do, but at least you can change the world for the better, and make your parents proud. Such a good boy. Now, why the hell are the two of you hovering over me like a pair of goddamn vultures?”
“It’s a long story, but we have a new place to live.”
“You have got to be kidding me. I was just getting comfortable, and I like the curves of the furniture—”
“—I know, I know,” Micah told her, “Choro already told us. But this other place will be even nicer. It’s a monastery not too far from here.”
“A monastery?” she asked, looking to Liza. “Don’t think just because I’m an elderly woman prone to age-related issues that I’ll all of a sudden repent for my many sins, blah, blah, blah. I’m not trying to move into a monastery unless there is a fountain of booze waiting for me.”
“We can’t guarantee that there will be a fountain of booze,” Liza said, “but it will be nice and comfortable. And it will be better than this hotel. We seem to have gotten a little unwanted attention here.”
“They’re trying to collect, aren’t they? The cocksuckers.”
Micah nodded. “Among other things, yes.”
“Other things?”
“The Society of Monks has put out an extradition contract on us,” he told her as he offered her his hand so she could stand up. “It will be safer for us at the monastery. I’ll explain everything on the way over. Let’s get you packed up; it’s not very far from here, and once we’re there, I promise we won’t bother you for the rest of the day so you can relax.”
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