Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  “Please, call me Jake.”

  “Jake, I’m kind of in the middle of something. I’ll sign the electronic one if that’s an option.”

  “Busy? Are you writing? Just think of me as a fan checking in!” he laughed.

  “I’m in the middle of prepping to take out one of the secret facilities. With the CBGs right now.”

  “Ha! Your narrative is so wild. Everyone knows it’s not true, but you’re really playing it out, aren’t you? You really believe it. This is why I reached out to you. I read the first installment. Loved it. Looooooooooovvvved it. Second installment? Well, to be honest, I’m only halfway through, but it’s great. Good action, fun narrative. It just feels so real.”

  “But it is all true. I thought you understood that.”

  “Sure it is, sure it is.”

  “It really is,” I said and got to my feet. “But that’s fine; if you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “It’s like Carlos Castaneda or something – and the Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Everyone knows it was fiction, but it almost read like nonfiction.”

  Dorian and the bed disappeared. They reappeared five seconds later, a surprised look on the teleporter’s face.

  “Whoa!” Michelle shouted.

  I gave Dorian the thumbs up. It would work. Now all we had to do was orchestrate our plan.

  “What’s going on?” Jake asked.

  “Look, Jake, it’s been real nice talking to you, but I have to get on the road. Things to do.”

  “But how’s that third book coming along? Are you about ready to pop it out?”

  Grace snickered as she packed another frag pouch.

  “After today? Sure. But I need to get through today first.”

  “Are you experiencing some stress?” Jake asked. “We can fly you out here and put together a nice relaxing massage and creative package for you. Maybe hire some other writers to help you pitch ideas. This would have no effect on the advance I already told you about. This is just so you can get in the groove.”

  “Fly out to Seattle?”

  “Sure! It’s not bad today; a little rainy, but that’s the Pacific Northwest for you.”

  Veronique gave me a look that could split concrete.

  “Okay, got to go,” I told him as I surveyed the room and the destruction in our near future. “I’ll send you an update soon, Jake.”

  “And the contract, don’t forget that!”

  “Will do, and thanks for reaching out.” I hung up and turned to Dorian. “Let’s do this.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Fast Attack

  Dorian and I sat in the parking lot in our recently borrowed SUV. The back was loaded with flammables, the gas tank full. She had her eyes closed, visualizing what would happen next. One of her hands was locked in mine, the other gripped the inside door handle.

  Grace hadn’t wanted me to go, and I could tell by the look on Veronique’s face that she didn’t either.

  And who could blame them? It was a literal suicide mission; possibly even worse than the fight we were gearing up for later that night.

  But I wanted to be there for Dorian, to give her the courage to pull through by taking the journey with her.

  If this plan went south, I would go up in flames with the vehicle.

  I glanced up at our hotel window for the last time. The others were looking out at us, worry evident on their faces.

  “Are you ready?” I asked, looking over at Dorian.

  “I’m ready.” With her eyes still closed, Dorian took a deep breath, her full concentration on what we were about to do.

  We disappeared in a flash, along with the vehicle, a spiral of galaxies and blips of light all around us.

  The vehicle took shape in the bottom floor of the New Mexico facility, in Ingrid’s large room, the shocks causing us to bounce a few times before settling.

  There had been nothing in the way to obstruct the vehicle.

  It was a perfect landing.

  “You fucking did it,” I gasped, elated. “You did it!”

  But we didn’t have time to celebrate.

  Dorian opened her door and got out. We met at the front of the vehicle, her paintbrush already in her mouth as she took my hand.

  She started to create a perfect circle of energy with the brush, its tip swirling, the purple energy radiating around the circle with each pass. I could tell she was overheating, evident in the vein beating on her forehead, but she was focused, ready to get us out of there.

  With a quick exhale, Dorian brought her paintbrush back, tightened her hold on me, and hurled the ball of energy at the SUV.

  As planned, and to make sure the attack went through, we reappeared outside the facility. We were now on the edge of a cliff, razor-winged moths whirling in my stomach. We were supposed to be on the ground and if we had teleported just a few feet out, we would have appeared in midair.

  No matter.

  I heard the explosion, heard the sirens that followed, and heard more explosions.

  Flames licked out of the facility, a mushroom-esque cloud of fire and smoke lifted into the air. The New Mexico facility was finished.

  Dorian grabbed my wrist and we were gone again.

  “Fuck yes,” I said when we appeared in the parking lot of our hotel.

  Dorian fell forward onto one knee. I dropped down beside her, helped her back to her feet, and ignored how fast my heart was beating in my chest.

  Talk about an adrenaline rush. My nerves were on fire, I could barely tell up from down, and everything in my periphery had a glaze to it.

  Definitely adrenaline.

  After a quick glance around to make sure no one had seen us, Dorian and I entered the lobby and took the elevator to the second floor.

  “Thank God,” Grace said, coming to her feet when we entered our room.

  She’d been sitting on the bed, her back pressed against the headboard. Stella and Michelle were on the other bed, and Veronique was still in the sofa chair.

  “You guys pulled it off?” Stella asked, a mischievous look on her face.

  “It was crazy,” I said, barely able to catch my breath.

  I’d done nothing, but the pressure alone and the teleporting had taken its toll. A small part of me even felt guilty for what we’d just done. There were surely innocent lives that were lost in the attack, but this was war, and we wanted to let them know we were no longer fucking around.

  But have we become the villains?

  No. Part of me believed we were still the good guys in this battle.

  But what if the good guys and the bad guys are interchangeable? What if they have the same motives, to win and to see the other side lose? What really separates us? Is it all dogma and self-aggrandizing concepts of liberty?

  Don’t think too much about it, Writer Gideon, Grace thought to me as she took my hand and led me to the bed. She laid me down and brought my head to her bosom, aka my happy place.

  “We’re going to have to get out of the country when all this is over,” I mumbled into her pillowy goodness.

  “Where are we going to go?” Michelle asked.

  I realized then that I was smothering myself in Grace’s tits while there were others in the room. I pushed away, adjusted my glasses, and cleared my throat. “We’ll figure that out later,” I said, getting my act together.

  Now sitting on the corner of the bed, I looked over at Veronique, who had one leg crossed over the other, her dark eyes fixated on me.

  “You need to feed, don’t you?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  Grace got out of bed and Dorian took her place. Naturally, and without turning around, I placed my hand on her thigh. She was really warm. I looked at her then. “And you need to relax. I also want to mess with your abilities again once you’ve cooled off.”

  “I’m hungry too,” said Stella.

  “Pizza?” Michelle asked.

  “We have got to start eating something other than pizza. You know, some healthy fo
od.”

  “Salad?” Michelle’s face scrunched up with disgust.

  “Okay, let’s settle in the middle. How about burritos? I think we can have those delivered by drones. Who wants a drone burrito? Hell, who wants two? Shit, I didn’t think about this though; I’ll need a credit card to order drone burritos. And we don’t have a car, although a car could be helpful for later.”

  “Can’t we just do a healthy pizza?” Michelle asked. “One with peppers or spinach or something.”

  “That is definitely an option. Veggie pizza it is!” I said hurriedly. Besides, we had things to prep and I wanted everyone resting.

  The pizza came in about an hour; three veggie pizzas, all of which we paid for with our reserve cash. Nothing like having a ton of cash. And to be smart, I placed a roll of hundreds in my pocket, easily three grand, just in case.

  After everyone had eaten, and they’d had time for their food to digest, I moved on to Grace’s stats. I’d already returned Dorian’s abilities to what they’d been before, and I swear I could see her face lighten as the change took effect.

  For Grace, there was one thing in particular I wanted to play with, as we hadn’t tried it in a while.

  As soon as I turned the Opacity dial down, her form began to disappear, much to Michelle and Stella’s surprise. Dorian took notice as well.

  “You can turn invisible?” the teleporter asked, staring at the spot where Grace had just been. “How come I didn’t know that?”

  “Not entirely.” Grace moved her hand so that we could see the light reflect slightly off her translucent form. I also noticed the imprint of her body on the bed.

  “But close enough,” Dorian said. She moved over to the bed and placed her hand on Grace’s thigh. “That’s … uncanny.”

  “It’s something else, and while Mother will be able to see her, the rest …”

  I turned the dial up; Grace’s color instantly came back to her body.

  “Now, what’s next?” I asked.

  “Food,” Veronique said.

  “Right, you need to feed. Dorian, are you up for grabbing someone?”

  “In an hour.”

  During the hour that passed, the CBGs and single Super Teen chilled as I researched the Nevada address on GoogleFace maps.

  There wasn’t anything unique about the meeting location ‘Ken’ had given us, aside from the fact it was in the middle of nowhere, thirty miles or so outside Reno. A simple warehouse with a parking lot, that was all. There was nothing I could find in the vicinity that would give us an advantage. No tree coverage, a few smaller hills, but mostly desert.

  It was clearly a trap, and knowing that, we could at least prepare accordingly.

  Which brought me back to my earlier suggestion about getting another car.

  I zoomed out and found the road that led to the warehouse in question. I couldn’t see any type of fence guarding the place. The road simply jutted off the access road.

  “Dorian, we need to get a new car.”

  “You know, transporting vehicles isn’t exactly easy,” she said from her place on the bed.

  “I understand, but we’ll only have to transport this vehicle one time. And even if there is a fence that’s not on the map, we’ll get through that. We need leverage, a distraction.”

  What if there are helicopters?” Michelle asked, fear in her eyes.

  “Let me deal with them,” Veronique said. “Helicopters are my specialty.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five: You Say Nevada, I Say Destruction

  And that’s how I found my crazy nonfiction sci-fi writing ass driving down a dusty highway, the CBGs and Michelle in the middle, and Dorian up front, my USB cable plugged into her neck as I dialed back her abilities.

  The stolen SUV belonged to Veronique’s latest victim, a guy we met at WalMacy’s again. It was spacious and smelled like pipe tobacco.

  To sum up the rest of our afternoon: we got Michelle a vest and a ballistic helmet, the back of the vehicle was loaded with good ol’ WalMacy’s explosives, and Grace was now invisible.

  The pony show was well underway, Nevada the host to however our future would play out. The horizon was nothing aside from a few scattered rock formations, shrubs, and a handful of sad palms. I could tell the place didn’t get a lot of water, yet there was something beautiful about it, mystic even.

  The SUV now in auto drive, I dialed back Dorian’s Tele-Sphere Radius as planned. She gasped, the color returning to her face.

  “That was so cool,” Michelle said, interrupting the silence that had permeated the SUV’s cabin for the last several minutes.

  “Thanks,” Dorian said. “Everyone touch me.”

  To make it easier, she shifted toward the middle of the vehicle, awkwardly placing herself between the front and back seats.

  I disabled the auto drive, took the wheel, and stepped even harder on the gas pedal.

  The meeting place appeared in the distance and I veered off the road, making a beeline for its outer wall. Rock and bits of sand drummed along the exterior of the SUV, adding a percussive ambiance to an increasingly stressful situation. We tore through a small cactus patch, going close to ninety miles an hour.

  One glance in the rearview mirror and I saw that Stella’s eyes were closed, our backup plan. Veronique had a wild look on her face, mouth open as she stared wide-eyed at the fast-approaching warehouse.

  “Now!”

  And before the single word could leave my mouth, we flashed away.

  We reappeared on the other side of the storage warehouse just as the SUV exploded into its southern side, the concussion rattling inside my chest.

  Like ants pouring out of a toppled ant hill, MercSecure soldiers tore out of the structure, getting as far away from the flaming side as they could.

  “I’ll see what’s inside!” Michelle said and tore off for the facility.

  “Wait!” I yelled. “Be careful!”

  “Let her go,” invisible Grace said from a position to my left. “She’ll be back.”

  “There’s no one there!” Michelle said, reappearing. “No Fiona, and no Ingrid. Only soldiers and now fire.”

  Veronique nodded and placed a hand on her fanny pack full of shrapnel. “Let’s handle this.”

  As if on cue, the bullets tearing in our direction stopped in mid-air.

  “Get down,” Stella told me, using her vibrational powers to push me onto my belly.

  Rather than protest, I stayed low, watching as the superpowereds lined up their attacks.

  Veronique held off the bullets; Dorian traced her patented T-Rex with guns for arms in the air; Stella formed what looked like some type of boomerang made of rippling, translucent energy; and Grace stayed behind them, ready to assist once Veronique dropped the barrier of stalled bullets.

  As a few Humvees appeared in the distance, barreling toward us at breakneck speeds, Veronique let the bullets go, followed by Dorian’s Jurassic energy creation and Stella’s vibrational attack.

  Their projectiles cut the approaching mercs down like they were cardboard cutouts. It was a bloodbath, and at some point during the melee, Michelle let out a little shriek and covered her eyes.

  “Humvees, three o’clock,” Veronique said to Dorian, who lightly flicked her paintbrush against her tongue.

  Heavy artillery followed, and Veronique kept the large bullets from hitting us. Rather than turning them back on the Humvees, she waited for the vehicles to get closer and pulled their axles out from beneath them, kicking up a ton of debris.

  Dorian’s humanoid energy creations moved in next, cutting through the military trucks’ hoods and throwing energy fists at the men driving them. One of the mercs managed to escape. As he ran in our direction firing his weapon, I lifted my hand and …

  … swept his feet out from beneath him using Grace’s power, now my power.

  “Here,” Michelle said, returning in an instant with his gun. She crouched next to me now, an excited look on her face as she dangled the weapon in front
of me.

  “No idea how to use that thing,” I said. “I know, I’m ashamed too. Just never thought I’d be in a situation where I’d need one. Seems I was wrong!”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do with it?”

  Nope, now was definitely not the time to figure out how to use the gun. While I would have loved to tuck it into the back of my pants, rapper-style, I’d probably end up shooting my ass cheek off, which was the last thing I needed. “Just leave it here, and get down. I’ve got my own attack power.”

  I focused once more on the merc I’d just knocked down. He was getting to his feet and I used my telekinetic power to slam him down again.

  Whether I did it or invisible Grace did, it was anyone’s guess. But as it stood, their numbers were thinning, and the mercs smart enough to realize that shooting at us didn’t work were in the process of retreating.

  Dorian teleported above another Humvee, dropped a couple of charged frag pouches, and bailed out of there. The explosion sent the vehicle off its trajectory, its weight causing it to tip, a fire instantly starting up on its underside as one of the paramilitary soldiers tried to scramble out.

  The guy wrestled his gun from the Humvee, turned to us, and fell backward immediately as one of Veronique’s bullets struck him in the forehead.

  “We’ve got this!” Michelle called out as she disappeared, punched someone in the dick, and reappeared next to me while Veronique finished bringing the guy down by feeding off him.

  A sudden flash before us caught our attention.

  Mother, in a mil-spec black bodysuit that definitely showed off her baby bump, stepped forward holding Ken’s severed head. She was joined by Augustin, Chloe, Stella, and the teleport named Danielle.

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Banished

  “You’re sick!” I screamed at Mother. I tried to run at her but was held back by an invisible force.

  I knew the force holding me back was Grace when I felt a hand touch my cheek, as her voice rang out in my head, Relax, Writer Gideon.

  Mother dropped Ken’s head onto the ground and kicked it over to us.