The Evolutionite Chronicles Book Two: Dagger and Shadow Ninja in: Welcome to Las Vegas

by Timothy P. Callahan

  “David never struck me as someone who can’t be reasoned with at least. But he did cause a lot of destruction last time we fought. Lots of people got hurt, a few badly, so he does have it in him to harm innocents.”

  “Good point. Try to reason with him first, then punch him in the nose if he doesn’t listen.”

  “Right.” They arrived at the counter and waited. “You go start your hunt, I’ll head back up to our room and get Nancy into her own room. Keep in touch and let me know what’s going on.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Thirteen Years Ago

  Tanaka leaned up against the wall and watched as Nancy walked into the drug store alone. He felt his stomach tighten and his fist clench. She’d been playing with her light powers and had figured out how to make herself look older. It was a simple matter of adjusting the light around her face in such a way as to cast shadows under her eyes and emphases the few wrinkles she had. She told him at the prom she was going to test her new powers to get a pack of cigarettes since she would look old enough where the old man behind the counter wouldn’t ask her for some ID. He argued, they fought, and she left.

  Tanaka looked in, saw her get the pack, and shook his head.

  Nancy walked out the door, oblivious to Tanaka standing there waiting for her. “Those will give you cancer,” he said.

  She stopped and turned, a grin on her face. “Well, I’m going to be a Protector soon so I don’t think I’ll live long enough to get cancer.”

  “Not so sure about the logic in that. Can I see them?” He held his hand out.

  “Last time I gave you a pack you teleported them away. Not going to fall for that one again.”

  “Okay, fair enough. But you really shouldn’t smoke.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” she said, turning around to walk away. “What did your brother tell you about smoking? Something about it destroying your karma or something.”

  “He doesn’t talk like that,” Tanaka said. “Much. Look, it’s part of the ‘ninja brothers’ persona we’re trying out, okay?”

  “Right. Ninjas. You’re part Asian. Racist much?”

  “Don’t get off topic!” Tanaka yelled. “You don’t need to smoke. It’s gross. Plus, it’s just not good for you, okay?”

  “Get off my back!” Nancy walked away, stomping her feet on the ground. “I’m going to do what the hell I want to do, okay? God, you’re just like my parents.”

  “Your parents?” Tanaka said, following closely behind her. “Your parents don’t care about you. Your parents don’t want you around.”

  “Neither did yours!” She screamed as she turned to face Tanaka. “At least my parents had a good reason to abandon me, they were both addicts. Yours just wanted you out of their lives because they couldn’t handle you.”

  “That is not true,” Tanaka said, angrily pointing his finger in her face.

  “You know it’s true,” she said as she slapped his finger away “You told me yourself. You told me everything on the night I took your virginity.”

  A crowd formed around them. He had been warned to behave while in public. The first rule was, no matter what, don’t fight another Protector. Tanaka mentally gave that rule the finger. “My parents love me. They sent me and Daniel away to help us train.”

  “They sent you away because they couldn’t deal with you. Daniel came because of you. You’re going to hold him back. You’ve always held him back. You hold everyone back, and you know what? You’re not going to hold me back anymore. We are done, we are over, we are broken up.”

  Tanaka stood there speechless as Nancy simply looked at him, waiting for a response. His legs went numb and his mind reeled at the words. They had been together for two years, been through training, grown up together. He told her he loved her and she said it back to him. But over the past few months, even he could see things changing. What he once thought was cool, like her stealing from stores or pretending to be older to get stuff, now rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe it was Daniel’s influence over him, or maybe he was just maturing and the lectures about how to become a good Protector resonated more. Whatever the case, Nancy and he were growing apart. She was the only one brave enough to say it first.

  “You gonna teleport away like you always do when we fight, or are you going to stand there and defend yourself? People are watching; they’re waiting. Come on, coward, what are you going to do?”

  “Screw you,” Tanaka yelled. “You know what the funny thing is? You seem to think you’re going to be a Protector. Well, you’re not. Not with those lame powers. Do you think I want to be with a loser like you? At least Daniel’s a winner and a leader and someone I can look up to. You? You were nothing more than a pretty girl I could show off. If I wanted to talk to my parents all I need to do is pick up the damn phone. Do you even know which crack house your parents are staying at?”

  Nancy punched Tanaka in the nose. Except for the first time, when she punched him in face to protect Pop, her punches were playful and never hurt. It was more like flirting with nothing but love behind the punch. This punch was driven by the anger of a hundred frustrations. She had never hit him this hard before. He stumbled back and looked up to see her jumping around, holding her hand in pain. His felt the blood dripping out of his badly-broken nose. Tanaka glanced around at the people and counted at least ten cell phones. This would make the news tonight, he was sure of it. “Did that make you feel any better?” he asked her.

  “No,” she said. “Just, get out of here, teleport away, get away from me, I don’t want to ever see you again.”

  “Fine,” Tanaka replied, then teleported away.

  He appeared in his room where he ran to the bathroom and grabbed a handful of toilet paper. Once finished stuffing them up his nose to stop the bleeding, he walked back into his small dorm room and sat on the bed. He felt the sobs start almost right away. The only other time he had cried was when he left his parents for this place. He wasn’t going to cry now, not for anyone and certainly not for a girl. Yet he couldn’t help himself, and no matter how hard he tried, the sobs came. The hot tears rolled down his cheek. Nancy had been perfect for him when he was fourteen; how could she not be just as perfect for him at sixteen? They should be together always. He had even thought about marrying her and now... Now it was over.

  Over.

  Just thinking that word send another wave of pain through his heart and clenched his gut. He would never hug her again, never kiss her. They’d never go out again or spend hours playing video games. It was over, and there was nothing more he could do. Moving on seemed impossible. How could he even wake up the next day without his morning call to Nancy?

  The door opened and Daniel walked him. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Tanaka, then sat across from him on the bed. “Nancy?”

  “Yeah. Broke up with me then punched me.”

  “I know,” Daniel replied, holding up his cell phone. On it was a frozen image of Nancy punching him in the face. “I paused it here. I’m thinking of making it the background on my computer.”

  “God, I hate that phones have cameras now. Liked it better when we weren’t being watched.”

  “Welcome to modern life.” Daniel said, sitting on the bed across from Tanaka. “You know I never really liked Nancy, right?”

  “Yeah, I got that impression from how often you avoided talking to her.”

  “Did I ever tell you why?”

  “Cause you’re a dick?”

  “No,” Daniel snapped. “It’s because I can sense something in her, something... Well, not evil, but bad? She’s not a good person on the inside.”

  “Screw you, she’s my girlfriend. Well, she was my girlfriend.”

  “I’m just saying it’s probably for the best you two broke up.”

  “She hates you, you know that? You’re, like, the main cause of most of our fights.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He leaned back on his bed and against the wall. “You know I’ll always be with you, right? We’re not just brothers
. We’re friends. You get on my nerves something bad, but all family members do that. You’ll never hold me back because we’re both in this together. When I fail, you fail, and when I succeed, you succeed. The Protectors have had a lot of individual members who were great, but they’ve never really had a brother team. I want us to be the first and the best.”

  A smile crept onto Tanaka’s face. “Thanks.” He also leaned back and onto the wall on his bed. “Will you swear to that?”

  “Yeah,” Daniel replied. “To my dying day, the two of us will be partners. The two of us will be there for each other. No one else will get between us. Not a woman, not a job, nothing. I swear to you, Tanaka, that I will always have your back, no matter how much you screw up. No girl can say that, right?”

  “If you weren’t my brother, this would sound really gay,” Tanaka said, which prompted Daniel to throw a pillow at him. “But, yeah, I swear I’ll always have your back as well. Although, I have the feeling having my back is going to be a lot more challenging.”

  “I have no doubts about that,” Daniel said. “You want to play some Madden?”

  “Yeah. Have to beat someone’s ass today, might as well be yours.”

  “Now that sounded gay,” Daniel said as he caught the pillow Tanaka launched at him.

  Graduation day

  Nancy threw the last of her clothes in her suitcase and struggled to close the lid. She thought her anger would give her more than enough strength to close the overflowing bag but it did not. Frustrated, she picked the suitcase up and threw it into a corner. The zipper ripped across the top of her fingers and tore a fingernail out.

  “Ouch! Ouch!” Nancy yelled as she placed the bleeding index finger into her mouth. The coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. She pulled it out and saw half of her fingernail was indeed gone. “Oh, that’s just great!”

  There was a knock from her door. It was soft, almost hesitant. “Go away!” she shouted.

  “Nancy. Come on, this could be the last time I see you.”

  Tanaka! How dare he? Nancy thought. “You haven’t talked to me since we broke up last year, why now?”

  “Please, open the door.”

  “Why don’t you just teleport in?”

  “You know I can’t teleport to a place I can’t see,” he replied. “I’m working on that, by the way. But right now, I can’t.”

  She folded her arms across her chest and lowered her head. “You’ll just rub it in my face, that’s all.”

  “Rub what?” Tanaka asked with a barely concealed chuckle. “My junk?”

  “Ugh,” Nancy stood from her bed and opened the door. Tanaka stood there looking all nice and cute. He wore a blue suit with a nice red tie and a white shirt. His pants were neatly creased and barely touched a pair of highly polished dress shoes. “Nice. You look like a clown.”

  “What happened to your hand?” Tanaka asked.

  Nancy looked at her finger. Blood dripped out and onto the floor. She reached over and grabbed the red handkerchief from Tanaka’s suit pocket. She wrapped her finger around it. “Nothing. Suitcase bit me, that’s all.”

  “Well, you’re tough. I’m sure that suitcase is now dead.”

  “Come on in,” She said stepping aside. “How was it?”

  “Oh, graduation? Fine, I guess. My parents were there.”

  “Ouch, that must have hurt.”

  “Yeah. It’s tough seeing them. It’s even tougher seeing my brother kiss their asses all day.”

  “Well, that’s why he’s got a brown nose.” Nancy said, pointing to a chair. “So, you didn’t come here to rub it in?”

  “Rub what?” Tanaka asked, once again grinning. “My junk?”

  “Grow the hell up,” Nancy said, holding back her own giggle. “Rubbing in the fact that you’re now a Protector and I’m not.”

  “No, I’d never do that,” he replied. “I wanted you be there with me. Even after we broke up. I don’t have any hard feelings, I really don’t.”

  “Me, neither.” She smiled. “But well, I have to go home now. Can’t stay here anymore.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like home. But you are almost eighteen, so you could move out on your own then. You have been saving, right?”

  “Yeah, a bit,” she said. “I could maybe get an apartment somewhere, get a job. Maybe become a stripper or something. They’re always looking for Evos with weird powers, and I have a very weird power.”

  “A stripper? Why a stripper? Why not a dancer or something?”

  “Nothing wrong with being a stripper,” she replied. “It’s empowering, you know?”

  “No, I don’t. But if that’s what you want, then yeah, do that.” He smiled. “You just need to tell me where you’re dancing.”

  She laughed and fell back onto the bed. “Oh, Tanaka. I’m such a screw up.”

  “Don’t say that. You’re not.”

  “My only skills are my powers and they’re not even all that great.”

  “You could have made them work.”

  “Dude, I worked on them for, like, eight hours a day almost every day and all I can do is bend light to make me look older, and have light, like, dance over my hand. I can’t even focus them to produce lasers like Mig, or make me look like someone else like all the other light benders. Heck, can’t even make myself invisible. I’m just me. A total screw up.”

  “First, you did not work that hard. Maybe an hour a day five days a week. Second, what you can do is pretty cool. Third, you’ll find your place.”

  “Just not here,” she said, sitting back up. “Look, Tanaka, thank you for at least trying to cheer me up. You really are a good friend, just not a very good boyfriend.”

  “You got me there,” Tanaka said. “Are we good? Like, when I leave here I’m going to dinner with my family. You’ll probably be gone by then so, are we good? Can I call you, or text you, or whatever, and it won’t be weird?”

  “No, it won’t be weird.”

  Tanaka’s cell phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the text. “Ah, Daniel. I have to go.”

  “Wait,” Nancy said, standing from the bed. “Can I give you a hug?”

  “Sure,” Tanaka said, meeting her in the middle of the room. The two embraced tightly. When he pulled away, he said, “So I have to go. Please give me a call, let me know what’s going on with you, don’t lose touch. Please?”

  “Go, and don’t worry. I won’t.”

  Tanaka smiled and left. Nancy pulled the handkerchief off her finger and cringed at the mess. She looked at the open door, listening to Tanaka’s footsteps as they disappeared down the hallway. She shook her head to try and keep the tear from falling from her eye. “Well, that’s that. Guess it’s time to start making more mistakes in my life.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “I’m bored,” Nancy said, flicking through the channels on her TV. Tanaka sat on a chair across from the bed flipping through a magazine. “We should go out. I can show you lots of cool things.”

  “We should stay,” Tanaka replied. “You said so yourself. David was looking for you on the strip. I don’t want to meet him out there. He’s kind of out of my league when it comes to fighting.”

  “Come on. You can teleport us away if there’s any issues.”

  Tanaka thought about it. Once the danger was over, they could do whatever they wanted, but it might take a while for Daniel to find David. Tanaka felt stir-crazy as well. He wasn’t used to sitting around just waiting for things to happen, and he had a few hundred dollars burning a hole in his pocket. Maybe they could make a quick trip to the casino floor. “I guess we could go to the midway.”

  “No, the strip! Circus Circus is a dump and the midway is for kids!”

  “We’re not leaving the hotel,” Tanaka replied. “Not until the danger is over.”

  “How about lunch then? There’s a really nice diner across the street called The Peppermill. It has some of the best food in the city.”

  “We are not leaving
this hotel,” Tanaka said without much enthusiasm. He was hungry and the prices for room service food were pretty high. His stomach growled as if to prove his point. “Okay, fine. Let’s go. But once we’re done, we’re coming back here.”

  “Great!” Nancy said, hopping off the bed. “Come on. Stay close. If I see my ex, you can just teleport us back up here.”

  “Hold on then,” Tanaka said. He stood in front of the bed and looked around slowly, memorizing where the furniture was, and keeping in his head the color of the sheets, the feel of the air-conditioning on his body, the sounds of the hotel all around him and the general location of the room.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t teleport into a room I don’t know well.”

  “You just looked at a picture to teleport outside, can you just do that?”

  “Yeah, but I need to be looking at the picture. If we need to make a fast getaway I want to do it quickly.”

  “And you can memorize this entire room with just a look?”

  “It’s something that might save my life one day, so, yeah. It’s a skill I taught myself pretty quickly.” He blinked and looked at her. “My powers keep evolving because I practice and figure things out. What about you? How are your powers?”

  She held her hand out and created a few lights, one red, one green, one blue. They danced over her palm. “I can do color now.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s amazing.” Tanaka replied sarcastically.

  She lightly punched his arm. “You never change. Always looking for the joke. Come on. Let’s eat. I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been up to once we sit down at the table.”

  The September sun sat high in the sky. Las Vegas was cooling down but it was still in the 80s when they walked out of the hotel and into the street. A few cars drove through the carport to either drop people off or pick them up. Dozens of people walked up and down the street while a few made the turn onto the pavement and into the casino part of the hotel.