“Graphic novels, yes,” Ahmey said. “I’m familiar.”
“You’ve read My Ninja Girl?”
“I’ve perused the volumes available here, yes.”
“Then you know,” Micah told her carefully, skipping over what Youseg had revealed to him, that he could very well die in the near future. “We seem to have come to a crossroads. I guess you could call it that. Yes, a crossroads. And after discussion with Youseg, we believe it is time.”
“Time for?”
“To do something, to stop the Society of Monks from going any further onto the dark path that they have found themselves on, the one that we discussed in detail in our previous visit. And we want you to be the leader of it. We know that there are meetings of higher-ranked monks, the upper echelon, and we want to use one of these meetings to install you as the new, um, de facto leader. A coup. From that point forward, we would like to bring the Hermetics to the table, to form some kind of council…” Micah cleared his throat, feeling more and more like the air was being sucked out of the room. “Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, but we can go into more detail about it. That’s just sort of the overall idea of the plan.”
“There is a meeting coming up, a day from now,” Ahmey said, which was not at all how Micah expected her to respond. There was no way of knowing what was going on in the young nun’s head, but he certainly didn’t expect her to immediately agree to their plan, which was what it sounded like based on her tone. “For this to work, we will need to be prepared for an all-out war at the administrative building in Coralie, inside and out. I do have a connection, an older nun seated on the ‘upper echelon,’ as you call it. Also, you should know that it is called the High Council, but that detail isn’t important. What is important is speaking with Saru to see if she would support our cause. We would need some support, at least initially. Change has been made through the Society of Monks from time to time in this very way, and I can go into the history of that later, but to do what you are suggesting, we will need a plan for inside the building, and outside. Are you prepared for something like that?”
“The plan for inside will be us,” Yuri said, summarizing a conversation they would definitely be clarifying over the next day. “We will act as your security detail; I’m assuming every member has a detail, right?”
“That’s correct. And outside? That will be just as important as inside.”
“In that case, the plan for outside would be the Hermetics, as well as Bobi, our AI, and his mechas,” Micah added. “A two-pronged attack.”
Ahmey nodded. “For this to happen, we need to start the planning process, and you need to get in touch with the Hermetics. I’m sure they will have demands that need to be met. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to rely on the Monks of Repose for this. They have all but disbanded after recent events, most going into hiding. That said, if we make a true effort here, they will certainly play an important part in implementing our cause once we have taken power. But first, it starts with Hermetics. Our outside protocol is as important as what happens on the inside.”
Chapter Ten
Micah didn’t like the outcome of the very brief conversation with Hermetics leader Julia, but she had presented him with no other option, and even though it was not an ideal situation, he had reluctantly agreed to it. There was more to discuss, and that would take place sooner rather than later, after she spoke with Choro. It was time to line up the pieces now—the Society of Monks’ upper echelon—the High Council, as they were known—was set to meet just over a day from now. It was the perfect time to strike.
Dinner was a light affair, one overseen by Soraya with food provided by Ahmey, the smell of a baked dish filling the expansive chambers beneath the young nun’s shrine. They had been given several rooms, which would have been great had the rooms not been glorified dormitories. After some negotiation, Soraya took a room all to herself, Bunni shared one with Liza, and Micah ended up in a dorm with Yuri. He would have preferred being in a room with both Bunni and Yuri, but there wasn’t much space, and bunk beds further complicated matters.
“Top or bottom?” Micah asked Yuri as he set his things down on the table near the bed. He was glad in that moment that his grandmother wasn’t in the room—she would have had a field day with this question and retorted with a lewd remark.
“You can take the top,” Yuri told him.
Micah considered suggesting that they share one of the bunks, but they were even smaller than he thought they would be, and the likelihood of his feet dangling off the end was high. He undressed and took the top bunk, Yuri doing the same and taking the bottom.
Micah didn’t think he’d be able to fall asleep, not quickly. Even if he was exhausted by what happened over the course of the day, he still felt energetic, like he should be up doing something. Shifting to his side, he stared to the opposite wall of the small room, which was now lit by a small night lantern powered by industria. It wasn’t that comfortable of a space, everything bare aside from a wardrobe in the corner next to a place where someone could hang their bucket. Micah and Yuri’s buckets were on the table, neither of them spotting the hooks earlier.
Note to self, he thought as he thought about the people who had likely stayed in the room, monks and nuns in passing, perhaps the occasional long-term visiting scholar. It was a windowless space, more prison-like than not, and while it should have been warm it was not, Micah glad that there were plenty of blankets on the bed.
He moved to his back, and stared up at the ceiling until it began to blur on the periphery. This seemed to help to some degree, and perhaps he would have finally been able to rest had it not been for movement below. His gaze shifting downward, Micah caught Yuri standing in her panties, quietly opening the wardrobe. She found a night robe and slipped it on, the hood going over her head after she’d swept her dark hair back. Yuri stepped out of the room, and brought her sword with her.
This piqued Micah’s interest.
As soon as the door slid shut, he hopped down from the top bunk and slowly exited, catching the ends of her robe as she turned the corner down the hallway.
Micah crept after her, and from there up a flight of stone steps that led to the shrine above. He paused at the door, the creaky floorboards of the shrine telling him that Yuri had stopped for a moment. He waited until he intuited movement and moved to the next space, ducking behind a thin wall made of paper, one meant to be used as a room divider.
He lost track of her, and the darkness of the shrine’s interior didn’t help, even if there was light coming in from outside. Surprised the place wasn’t better lit, Micah scanned the outer walls of the room until he located an open window. It was the only place that she could have left through, unless she had gone through the sliding door at the front.
Figuring he would trace her steps exactly as they were laid out, Micah also went through the window, and soon found himself in the courtyard of the shrine. He glanced around for her, and when he didn’t see a hooded figure, he began making his way around the compound, small as it was. Even with its urban surroundings, it was peaceful here, as if the shrine existed outside of town and space.
Micah soon ended up where he had started. Did she leave the shrine? Where had Yuri gone?
He made his way down to the entry, and peered through the alley created by diplomatic apartments. He listened, even though that would do little, Micah catching the sound of some murmuring from one of the lower apartments, the breeze that night on the floating district nonexistent.
Where could she be?
Micah started to grow worried. He didn’t think Yuri was the type to simply disappear, yet he couldn’t find her, and if she had run off somewhere, it was going to be damn near impossible to find her. Did this have something to do with Milsung’s death? Micah was just about to step out to the alley when he heard a whistle above. After another long pause, he looked to the rooftop of the shrine to see Yuri seated with the hood still over her head, her knees in front of her, and held tightly to
her chest by her right arm.
Micah approached the building again. “How did you get up there?”
“I jumped.”
“Ummm…” Micah didn’t think he’d be able to jump it. After another glance around, he saw that one of the statues had a ladder lying beside it. He propped the ladder against the edge of the roof and climbed it, joining Yuri.
“I hope I’m not bothering you,” he said as he sat down next to her, Yuri still with her hood over her head, her face not visible at the moment.
“I’m glad you did.”
“Not a bad view,” Micah said, even though they were mostly looking at the apartment buildings in front of them. Still, he could see the stars beyond, and the moon happened to be full tonight, adding a mysterious pearl-glow to everything. It was quite the setting.
“I needed some fresh air,” she said.
“I can’t blame you. It was stuffy down there.”
“I should have asked if you wanted to join me.”
“I really hope I’m not bothering you.”
Yuri looked at him. “Of course you’re not.” She scooted closer to Micah, and looped her arm through his, placing her head on his shoulder. “You have yet to bother me. I don’t know how you do that.”
“It takes great skill, and plenty of distractions,” he joked.
“We certainly have had plenty of distractions.”
“Tell me about it. But hopefully we’ll make some progress here over the coming days, and things can calm at some point, go back to normal.” Micah’s own statement caused him to smirk. Normal? He thought. What is normal when you live with three ninjas from the past, your grandmother, your best friend, and rebellious nun?
“I used to sit somewhere near here, you know,” she said, nodding toward one of the apartment buildings.
“You did?”
“Uyanga was less crowded then. No buildings like this, and you could still see the sky. There used to be a small hill there with a garden in front of it. I suppose they demolished the hill to build the building, but it was a nice spot to sit. At least once a week, that’s how often I came here,” she said. “Unless, you know, a work assignment came up.”
Micah nodded. He didn’t actually know what a typical assignment would have been like back then, but he didn’t want to interject at the moment. It was nice hearing her talk about the past, especially because she often kept it to herself.
“I don’t wish time travel upon anyone, and even if it is sad to see both the extent to which things have changed, and stayed the same, it is also fascinating. It’s nice to know that your people somehow continued onward, that lives were lived, that everything progressed, even if that progression was stilted in a way by the monks.”
“Do you miss living in your own time?”
“Things were cleaner then, but the demands on my time were greater, considering I had a squad of ninjas to lead. Leadership suits me, but to answer your question, no, I don’t miss it too much. I have come to like our little situation. I only wish…” She trailed off for a moment. “I only wish things with Milsung had turned out differently. We weren’t as close as we should have been back then, and maybe this was a mistake, but I thought we would be able to become closer in this time period. All of that… All of it was so sudden.”
“It was.”
“But I’m starting to feel better, even if I’m not really showing it. I can’t let it be a distraction, not with what we are planning to do. There will be a time to mourn my younger sister. Right now, it’s not proper.”
“It’s fine,” Micah assured her. “You should be mourning her. It is proper.”
“No, right now we need to be focused on doing our best to complete the mission we were tasked with completing, which was to prevent the Society of Monks from becoming what they have already become. In a way, we have to work backward, and if you think about it, the way in which we plan to go about this task is just as devious as things that have been done in the past, including Neojuku’s rise to power.”
“I haven’t really thought of it that way.”
“That’s how things are most of the time; if you don’t meet them with an equal amount of force or greater, they will simply cut you down. Not everything applies to swordsmanship, but that certainly does. Well, that, and grace.”
“So maybe that’s how we look at it, that we’re meeting them with both force and grace. I don’t foresee Ahmey ordering for everyone’s heads. I certainly hope not.”
“She may have to. It really depends on who is in that meeting, and how badly they want to hold onto the power they currently wield. There will be a great number of deaths in the next several days, which is why I have to be particularly focused. None of those deaths can be from our side.”
“Right.”
And if there ever was a moment for Micah to tell her what Youseg had prophesied, it would have been right then. But he couldn’t get the words out. He didn’t want Yuri to worry, and as Youseg had suggested, keeping it a secret would prevent the others from doing something that could push his prediction closer to reality.
“Is everything all right?” Yuri asked after he didn’t say anything else.
“Everything is fine,” Micah lied. “I’m just enjoying the view. I really wish I could have sat on that hill with you in the past.”
“I wish you could have as well.” She tilted her head up to kiss his cheek. “You would have liked it.”
Micah checked in with Choro again the next morning. He could already hear the ninjas in the other room preparing themselves for morning training, a series of grunts, feet on the floor, and weapons striking one another reminding Micah just how little he had in common with the lifestyle of the women he lived with.
But he was fine with that. He had his own role in their little situation. Not quite the diplomat, but certainly the glue that held them all together in his own unique way.
Even though the beds were small, Micah had ended up sharing the bottom bunk with Yuri after they had come in from the rooftop. Now with his back propped up against the wall, he placed his helmet on his head, waited for it to power on, and said the magic words, Choro’s voice appearing on the other end.
“Everything set?” he asked.
“Yep, I just confirmed the meeting with Julia.”
Micah hesitated.
“I wouldn’t be sending you to meet her if I didn’t think this was the best way forward,” Choro assured him.
“We are just too close now for error.”
While Micah wished that everything could have been done over the headset, Julia wanted to meet in person, insisting that personal contact was important to her after what happened last time. So it was set, just a few hours from now at a location on Uyanga provided by the Hermetics. This was one reason the ninjas were warming up at the moment. Just to be on the safe side, Bunni and Soraya planned to head to the location an hour and a half early for reconnaissance reasons, both disguised as nuns.
It was a gamble, but Micah trusted Choro, and if Choro told him that he had assurances that they weren’t going to be taken into the Hermetics’ custody, then he believed him. And Micah had to. The more and more he transitioned into a role as the leader of this group, the more he realized that it was of the utmost importance for him to trust his team, that everyone had the best interest of the group at heart.
Especially now that their numbers had thinned by one.
“Micah, sweetie?” His grandmother’s voice caused his heart to swell. She was a rascal, and her input was often salacious to a degree that it could debase a conversation, but he loved her nonetheless, and he missed her in that moment, Micah once again thinking of Youseg’s prophecy. Would this be the last time he spoke to his grandmother? Would he ever actually see her again?
Don’t give it too much power, he reminded himself as his grandmother started up.
“Choro told me the plan, and I want you to know that I don’t agree with it. Not one bit. The Hermetics can fuck right off; I’m guessing So
raya is saying the same thing.”
“Pretty much.”
“And Yuri?”
“She wants to be diplomatic, but she is definitely suspicious of them.”
“As she should be! Those useless fucktards were going to use me as a hostage. Yes, we know that, Choro,” she said, her voice thinning for a moment as she argued with Micah’s friend. “You were there, you’re the one that came and got me. Ugh, just let me talk to Micah! I swear, sweetie, most of the people in this world are trash, and those that aren’t trash are in dire need of being recycled. Ha! Fuck them all, right? That’s my philosophy. Anyway, where was I?”
“Actually, I don’t know where you were going…” Micah pressed himself out of bed and placed his feet on the ground. He stood, and smiled as his grandmother launched into another diatribe about the Hermetics which ended with her changing the subject to Bunni.
“She has to agree with me. The Plains Dweller is clever. I like her; she sort of reminds me of myself.”
“She is also hesitant about it, right.”
“I knew it! I always knew she was one to be trusted, such a nice girl, and that butt on her! I only wish mine had been that perky back in my golden years. Or are these my golden years? Why would anyone call the years leading up to their death golden? We’re doomed as a society, if you ask me. Anyway, just be safe, and if any of those fucking Hermetics losers even flinch in your direction, shoot them dead or have one of the girls stab them. I really should be there, you know. It sounds like you could use my support.”
“Does it?”
“Of course, it does. Choro is saying something to me. Hold on. Oh? Oh, that’s right. It looks like Youseg’s slaves, I mean attendants, have prepared breakfast. There had better be some meat in there this time. Is there meat? No? What kind of monastery is this? The monks and nuns eat meat back in Neo-Hokkaido. Do I look like a rabbit to you? No, I’m not trying to be offensive, I’m asking you a serious question, Choro. Come here and help me up. You put me in this soft chair, and now I can’t get out of it. I sure would like to take a nap here later. I know it’s your room, you could go somewhere else. Did you ever think about that? What the hell are you doing in here all day anyway?”
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