Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  Dorian nodded. She wore her long sleeve ribbed sweater, which perfectly accented the contours of her body. I could see her paintbrush sticking out of her pocket, almost as if it were a wand.

  I had an idea of what to expect once we got inside, and I was not disappointed.

  The first booth we ran into was an NRA table with bikini-clad women taking signups. Their bikinis were, of course, made of fabric that looked like the American flag, and each of them had a pink AR-15 across their backs.

  It was awesomely bizarre, sexy in a female Rambo way. Damn, those Lady Rambo movies of the early 2020s were the shit.

  That was the first time I saw Natalie Johansson, back before she was a household name.

  “Where are we going?” Dorian asked.

  “Sorry, I was having a flashback.”

  “Do you normally announce that to people?”

  “He does,” Veronique said.

  We continued our way through a diverse crowd of mostly men, many of whom took second glances at Dorian and Veronique. I couldn’t blame them there; aside from the bikini-clad gun hawkers at the front, there really weren’t many hot ladies here.

  Focus, I had to remind myself as we waded through booth after booth of death instruments. Everything from a handgun to a grenade launcher was present, and one guy had every grenade that had ever been used by US forces cut in half and displayed, showing their inner workings.

  “Anyone have good body armor?” I finally asked a man in a leather vest with skin the color of a maple leaf in late October. He squinted at me for a moment as he scratched the mole on the side of his nostril, glanced from Dorian to Veronique, and then used his chin to nod me toward the booth next to him.

  “Nick got the best stuff,” he said in a gruff, Texas voice. “Custom shit too. Stuff for your ladies. Fits the curves of a woman. Not being no sexist here, just saying they have curves. Even them thin ones like you two.” He started cackling. “Boy, you don’t see many folks from Austin out here gun shoppin’, but I’m glad to see it!”

  “Thanks,” I said as we turned to the next booth.

  “Wait a dang minute now. You cain’t just stop at mah booth without takin’ a look. I got all sorts of exotic shit,” Maple Leaf man said. “After you,” he told Veronique, extending his hand to her.

  I gulped as she took his hand.

  Don’t do it, I thought to her, and as if she were as psychic as Grace, Veronique looked at me with a wolfish grin on her face.

  I was pleasantly surprised when I entered his booth to find vintage guns and martial arts weapons. The centerpiece of the booth was a golden dragon above a wood statue of a naked woman holding a katana.

  “See here, I got muhself a Japanese wife,” he said. “Two actually. Well, divorced the first. Ha! But the second misses is still with me. Imagine that. Old country guy like myself. Can’t help but love an Asian woman – no offense to you two, but they just get the job done for me.”

  Veronique picked up a throwing star and showed it to me.

  “How many throwing stars do you have?” I asked him.

  “How many? Well, I got nicer ones than that. That’s just one for kiddos. Edges ain’t too sharp. Those are five bucks a piece, and I gots me about twenty.”

  “We’ll take them,” I said, pulling out a Benjamin.

  He chuckled as he filled a bag with the throwing stars and handed it to me. “Shit, if you want that, maybe I can interest one of you purty ladies in a katana.”

  I exchanged glances with Dorian and Veronique. Dorian shrugged.

  “I think we’re good,” I said, and we moved on to the next booth.

  The body armor guy was pretty chill, and he let us look around without trying to sell anything. I found a ballistic helmet for myself – got to protect the money maker! – and a light bulletproof vest.

  “That’s the best I have right there,” Armor Guy finally said as I took the gear over to him.

  “I also need vests for them. Helmets too.”

  The man had salt and pepper hair, wore a plaid shirt and an Iraqi war vet hat. As he moved over to a rack of body armor, I saw that one his legs had been replaced.

  “These are some of the best vests available, used by Israeli forces and designed to give breathability – which is important if you’re moving frequently – range of motion, and provide the protection you need. It’s comfortable and lightweight. Form-fitting too.”

  He handed Veronique the first vest and pointed out armor specs as she started to put it on. “Interior front and back padded zonal panels, oversized air channels, holds ten by twelve and eight by ten plate sizes, but I’ve got the ten by twelves in this model. Along the right side you’ll find a one hand quick release escape system, and let’s see … what else can I tell you? It’s the best on the market, plain and simple.”

  How anyone could look sexy in body armor was beyond me, but Veronique pulled it off, and Dorian soon would as well when she tried on her own model, which was larger than Veronique’s due to her bust size.

  “I also have it in desert camo, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  “Black will work,” I told him and got out my roll of cash. “And helmets for them.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me.

  “We’re shooting a movie in … San Antonio. Our prop guy didn’t get the right stuff, so the director sent me out to pick this stuff up. The actresses,” I said, nodding at Dorian and Veronique, “wanted to come along because they’d never been to a gun show.”

  He laughed. “Yep, I thought there was something interesting about ya’ll. I bet Hollywood types don’t get out to too many Texas gun shows. What are your names? Been in any movies I’ve heard of?” he asked, pulling out his smartphone to use the calculator.

  “Veronique Caldwell,” said Veronique.

  I gulped.

  “Dorian Gideon,” said Dorian with a flirty smile, “But people call me Grace.”

  “Grace and Veronique,” Armor Man chuckled again. “Boy, if that doesn’t sound like trouble.”

  I smiled. “If you only knew. What’s our total?”

  He showed me his calculator and then added a ten percent off discount. We were down another twelve hundred dollars or so, but it was necessary. I counted out the cash and handed it over.

  “You need anything else?” he asked.

  “Not unless you have some EMP weapons.”

  “Damn,” he snapped his fingers. “All sold out.”

  “Could we wear this stuff out or would that be too much?” I asked.

  “Hell no, it wouldn’t be too much,” he said. “You’re at a gun show; half the people in here have body armor and the other half are carrying heat. Not me. I only sell armor, not guns. Guns make me twitchy, but I like the culture, and a gun show is a damn good place to sell body armor.”

  “Great, thanks again.” I waved to him and we left his booth, Dorian and Veronique in their armor with their helmets tucked under their arms.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Grand Theft Auto ATX

  We arrived back at the motel and I paid for another night. Diego hadn’t said anything about the girls wearing body armor, and aside from commenting that he was ready for a beer, he was quiet most of the ride back to the motel.

  Once we were in our room, I laid out the supplies on the bed and got to work. After admiring themselves in the bathroom mirror, Dorian and Veronique took off their vests and joined me where I knelt at the foot of the bed as I worked.

  If either of them sensed I was thinking about their proximity, they didn’t let on. Instead, they began cutting the black T-shirts into squares of fabric and placing thumbtacks, nuts, bolts, and nails inside before twisting the ends together and tying a knot.

  I wanted to make weapons I could throw and Veronique could then wield, as well as weapons Dorian could quickly charge and toss.

  Each pouch was about the size of a golf ball, and by the time we finished using all the fabric, we had at least a hundred of the little pouches. We stuffed them in ou
r backpacks and fanny packs.

  Veronique put the smaller circular saws in her fanny pack, and Dorian kept the larger ones in her backpack. They had other ways they could take someone down, but this gave them something extra to wield.

  Which reminded me.

  I checked my email to find that Dr. Ken Kim had sent me the code again as promised, with instructions on how to activate it.

  “You ready to try?” I asked Veronique. I indicated what I meant by placing my finger on my neck.

  “Sure,” she said as she lay down on the bed. I found the USB cable and got my smartphone ready. I needed to charge it, especially because of what was going down tonight, and I figured having an extra phone for communication purposes would help too.

  “Dorian, will you plug in the other phone?” I asked. She plugged it in and walked over to the picture she’d been slowly burning into the wall. It was a stunning piece, a Tibetan mandala if I’d ever seen one. To get started again, she lightly touched the tip of her paintbrush against her tongue.

  I could smell the paper sizzle of the wallpaper almost immediately.

  Focus, I reminded myself. A shadow box appeared on my smartphone and I cycled to the bottom, following the directions Ken gave me. A few more folders later I arrived at a place where I could input a command.

  I took a deep breath in. I trusted Dr. Kim more than I did a few days ago, but I’d also proved with David Butler that my instincts could be wrong.

  I hesitated, and Veronique noticed I was stalling.

  “If they come for us, we’ll be ready,” she told me.

  After another deep breath, I keyed in the code and a pop-up box told me it had been accepted.

  “Feel anything different?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, but by this point, I was already scrolling back to her main abilities list. I found her Metal Absorption and Modification skill and saw that an option had been added.

  Main: Metal Absorption and Modification

  Wielding Capacity: 5

  Adaption Speed: 6

  Alloy Integrity: 4

  Blood Metal Conversion: 6

  Blood Metal Absorption Proximity: 10

  It’s at ten now? I moved a few steps away. Her head turned to me, the muscles in her neck quivering slightly.

  “Try from here,” I instructed her.

  She lifted her hand and red energy swirled around it. Soon, I was feeling that increasingly familiar sensation of weakness in my knees.

  “It works,” I said, gasping as she let go.

  She unplugged the cable and sat up, a smug smile on her face.

  “This is what Grace’s holding area looks like,” Dorian said. I glanced over to see that she’d made an entire schematic on the wall next to her mandala.

  “How did you …?” I moved over to it and she reminded me not to touch the piece.

  “It might still be hot,” she said. “But this is what I remember it looking like. I walked around it once, just to get a better picture in my mind. This is where we’ll spawn.” She touched the image with the tip of her paintbrush.

  There was nothing unique about where they were holding Grace.

  It wasn’t like the place back in New Haven, Connecticut, which was attached to the main facility by a hyperloop pod. There were three rooms, and Dorian had suggested we spawn inside Grace’s room, rather than risk any type of altercation in the others.

  “It’s big enough for us to spawn there?”

  “It is,” she said, “and we’ll spawn in a way that keeps you toward the back.”

  Way to make me feel useless, I thought, but she was probably right.

  “They’re going to try something, I just know they are. The faster we can get her and make it to the getaway car, the faster we can get going and switch vehicles somewhere along the way. And switch again. And switch again.”

  “We still need a car,” Dorian said.

  “That’s our next step, and we’re going to rely heavily on Veronique for that. Let’s take a walk.”

  We put the laptop, money, and spare clothes in the empty shopping bags we had. Then we went downstairs to find his abuela on her smartphone, smacking gum. She barely acknowledged us as we left the motel and crossed the street to the university.

  St. Edward’s University seemed like a pretty nice place, and as we walked up the curving road, we saw a large parking lot full of vehicles.

  It was fucking hot outside, even with the fact it was past five. I don’t know how people down here did it, but I would take New England weather over this any day. Wiping sweat off my brow, I found the vehicle we wanted, a convertible Mercedes, and we started the waiting process.

  We stayed under a nearby tree for a moment as I scanned the parking lot for a different convertible. I wanted the convertible just in case Veronique needed to do some fighting while I was driving.

  I couldn’t believe that was one of the considerations I had to take in my life, but …

  “What if we trigger the alarm?” Veronique asked after we’d waited for about twenty minutes.

  “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. The driver probably has their alarm set to their smartphone. Everyone does that nowadays. Yeah, let’s trigger the alarm.”

  As birds chirped overhead, I left the shade of the tree and walked down to the car. I placed my hand on it. That didn’t do anything, so I reached across the door and started fumbling with the rearview mirror.

  The Mercedes beeped at me.

  “Making progress …” I said as I started fiddling with the door handle.

  The alarm finally went off.

  I went back to the tree and picked up our shopping bags, which I’d set on the ground. We waited for the driver to come out. A female college student exited the art building, and by the way she was walking, I could tell it was her vehicle.

  She was a light-skinned black woman with curly hair dressed in jeans and a black tank top with the words Stubb’s Barbeque on it and a silver necklace that hung over the upper edge of her top.

  “That’s her,” I told Veronique.

  Before the woman could pull out her keys and stop her car alarm from going off, Veronique began draining her. Dorian moved to catch the woman just as she fell and guided her back over to me. I asked her for the car keys.

  “Who …?” The woman tried to scream, but as soon as the sound came out of her mouth, Veronique placed her hand on the woman’s head and drained more energy.

  Damn, we really needed Grace in this operation. It was a lot cleaner.

  You never know how much you need a psychic until the psychic is gone.

  I glanced around nervously as Dorian opened the woman’s purse and took her keys. We helped her into the back of the Mercedes just as another student came out of the art building.

  With the key in the ignition and our life and funds in a couple of shopping bags in the trunk, I started the vehicle up and peeled out of the parking lot.

  Veronique was in the front, Dorian in the back with the student.

  “She’s okay, right?” I asked as we got onto the highway.

  “Seems fine to me,” Dorian said without checking.

  I would have chuckled if it weren’t for the fact that this was a somewhat serious situation. We had kidnapped someone and stolen their car.

  Shit had just gotten real.

  After a little confusion, we ended up driving to the parking lot outside of Jim’s. It was a familiar place, and we could easily get on the road heading west from here. Once I parked, Dorian placed her hand on the woman. She instructed Veronique and me to hold hands, and when we locked fingers, she clasped her hand around ours.

  We reappeared in the hotel room.

  “How’s your charge going?” I asked her after the butterflies in my stomach settled.

  “Better; it’s like you got some of the kinks out.”

  We set the college student down and propped her against the wall. Veronique drained energy from the woman until her skin started to shrivel.

  I
didn’t know how long she would be out for, but we needed it to be until at least tomorrow. We’d be long gone by then.

  So we relaxed.

  Later that evening, we would order tacos and go over our plan again, but for now, we all needed to rest.

  That was something they never covered in action movies or action-adventure books. The good guys had to rest sometime. Well, we weren’t quite the good guys, but we weren’t quite the bad guys either.

  Truth of the matter was, and it applies even to this day, I still didn’t know what we were. But I do know, and I did know at the time, that part of our identity was held by Grace, and that she was a very important key to this puzzle.

  Just as important, and maybe selfishly so, I missed the hell out of her.

  Chapter Thirty: Taking Down Helicopters is Fun

  We knew we were heading into an ambush. It was an unsettling feeling, but there was nothing we could do about it now.

  Veronique wore the black bulletproof vest, her ballistic helmet, and the fanny pack filled with frag pouches.

  Dorian wore the same thing, and also had a backpack full of saw blades and more frag pouches.

  I too had on my vest, helmet, and carried frag pouches, both in a fanny pack and my backpack.

  “Let’s do our best to get in and get out,” I said for the sixth time since we ate dinner. “Mother and Angel will be there, for sure, and I don’t think anyone can withstand Mother’s telepathic attacks. That’s why we need Grace. So, let’s get in, and get out. Sorry, I just said that. And sorry for the pep talk. This is fucking scary.”

  Dorian nodded. “We will make this work, Gideon, just stay low. Ready?”

  We got into position, Veronique at the front with her hand in her fanny pack, me in the middle, and Dorian behind us both.

  We flashed away and appeared inside Grace’s holding cell, my stomach somersaulting twice as our forms took shape.

  It was an unlit concrete space, easily forty by forty, with a low ceiling and a sarcophagus in the center, similar to what had been holding Veronique.