“It’s not my fault you two are on this trip. If you had stayed home I could have done my regular flying,” Reimi said sweetly, blinking her fiery red eyes.
“You are so much like Natsuki,” he replied, exasperated. “You’d better take off before she finds us. She’s going to be pissed.”
With another blink and shuffle of sleek feathers, Reimi opened her gray wings and hopped up onto the railing. She swayed for a second before tilting forward toward the water. Her wings caught and she rose high into the air on the turbulence behind the boat. David smiled, and then hid Takumi’s clothes behind a bench. Walking back around the corner he ran right into Natsuki.
“Where is he, she?” asked Natsuki in a harsh whisper. Rie just behind her. David glanced back and up.
“Reimi couldn’t let the seagulls have all the fun,” he said, deciding to enjoy his decision, rather than worry over it. As if accentuating his point a gray blur swooped in among the white birds and snatched a snack from a Mizuki’s hand. She screamed and backed all the way into the boat’s interior.
“At least there’s no fire,” Rie said.
Natsuki looked as if she was going to burst, then let out a loud laugh and sat on the bench to watch Reimi fly. Rie sat beside her, an odd expression on her face.
“How come you’re not mad? You always got mad at me when Kou summoned you without warning,” David whispered, curious and more than a little annoyed.
“It’s different with us,” she said.
After a few more dives, spins, and other aerial stunts, Reimi tilted her wings and curved around behind the boat. She landed awkwardly on the railing, and then hopped down onto Natsuki’s lap. The little bird seemed to smile, her eyes blazing white-hot for just an instant.
“That was fun, thank you Natsuki. I am sure Takumi is a nervous wreck. Tell him not to worry. Also, thank him for the chance to spread my wings a little. It’s the first time I’ve been able to fly over water, pretty scary!” the phoenix said in her haunting voice.
After nuzzling Natsuki one last time, she hopped over to David, allowing him to take her and Takumi’s clothes to a nearby restroom. A few minutes later, Takumi emerged and they were able to join their classmates unobserved.
With the ferry approaching its destination, the second years threw the last of their bait over the side to the still swooping birds.
Less than half an hour after leaving the ferry behind, their two buses pulled into a giant parking lot and stopped next to a line of similar tour buses. Beyond the lot, brightly colored walls and towers failed to conceal the rollercoasters of every type stretching into the sky.
Despite the other tour buses, there was almost no one in sight as the students made their way into Greenland Amusement Park’s first promenade. It was as if the park had cleared out the whole place just for Nakano Junior High’s use. After receiving tickets for lunch, their teachers released the students to go and have fun, with a strict return time.
After a quick ride on a free leg coaster, David surveyed the rides, stalls, and people around them. The park was not as empty as it had first seemed. Here and there, other uniformed students ran around in small groups. David even spotted a few gray uniforms among the more common blue and white.
‘Seems like the Okinawa kids are here too,’ he thought to himself.
‘You’re going to be left behind. The rest of your friends are almost to that other metal contraption you call fun,’ Kou answered, prompting David to run off toward a ride called the Corkscrew.
‘Welcome back.’
As they went through the rides and attractions, everything from huge coasters to gondola rides and archery, David saw more and more of the gray uniforms. Everything was fun enough, though some of the rides were difficult for him to fit into since he was so much taller than most of his other classmates. The thrill of dives and spins paled against his memories of the fight in the warehouse and the other dangers he had faced.
‘It’s the same prey- I mean kids that are following you. They change up between getting to the rides before or after us but they are following.’
‘Could it be Chul Soon?’ David asked as he tried to catch the other students’ faces. The operator opened the door then and they were ushered into another giant spinning wheel.
By unspoken consent, David’s group decided to wait for lunch until just before it was time to leave, that way they could get as much done as possible before they left. After a particularly rickety old wooden rollercoaster, Rie sidled up to David.
“This is so much fun!” she said, her face flushed with excitement. “It’s my first time on rollercoasters. Guess what? I heard Mizuki got so scared after the first one she refused to go on any others. So much for the Class Representative!”
“You know, I had forgotten,” David said smiling. “I used to be afraid of rollercoasters. I never went on them until a few years ago. We went to a place by my house for my birthday, and since I was the birthday boy, they dragged me onto the biggest coaster there. It scared the hell out of me, but it was also exhilarating. I guess after what we’ve been through anything they can throw at us here is pretty tame.”
“I can almost imagine the old David sitting scared in a cart before it plummets,” Rie said wryly. “I guess he really is gone isn’t he? That’s okay though. I like the new you. And so do a few other people.”
Turning David saw a group of girls from another class eying him and giggling as they pretended to examine a game. One of the girls turned away from the rest and walked over.
“Picture time!” she said in enthusiastic, if muddled English. David was jammed in a small kiosk with the group as they maneuvered him around. Kou growled within as the flash stung their human eyes, and David had to concentrate to ensure they did not transform. Then with more giggles, they pushed him out of the booth. They let him stumble away and rejoin his own group as they concentrated on digitally editing the prints and adding cute graphics before they were printed. Kou’s growl shifted from annoyance to amusement.
‘Now you are going to have your picture stuck on a bunch of girls’ pencil cases, complete with little hearts and all their eyes enhanced to look like yours.’
With his own growl at Kou, David rejoined the others. Naoto looked at him but said nothing.
‘If I didn’t know better I’d say he was jealous!’ David thought.
“Ha! You got snatched by the pikura girls,” Tsubasa said with a smile. “Maybe we can lose them in the maze.”
The wiry boy turned toward a two-story building that looked as if there had been at least an attempt at making it look scary. With his tracking and martial arts training, David was confident the indoor maze would be easy enough.
Inside the building was an interesting explosion of glow-in-the-dark colors. Every few meters, there was another set of doors and a quiz question. While it was entertaining for the group to watch whoever answered the question wrong to try to open a locked door, the path led them in a relatively straight line at first.
The second floor was a different matter. Darker than below, it was more like an old bomb shelter with twists, turns, and a low ceiling. David hung back, allowing the girls to take the lead, as they seemed the most excited by the maze. Just as David was losing interest, a strong hand grabbed at his black uniform jacket and pulled him away from his group.
Twirling and on the edge of summoning his Seikaku, David found himself face to face with the beautiful young girl he had seen the previous day. Her gray uniform seemed to blend with the low lighting and dark walls. A shadow was across her face but her bright eyes shown out like lanterns. They were in a small space, inside a divider accessed by a gap between it and a wall. He was surprised to note some kind of perfume on her that, while he could not describe, was intoxicating.
“Uh, hi,” David said, while he gulped in breaths of air in an attempt to steady his racing heart and Kou’s fighting instincts.
“I’ve been watching you. You’re different from most of your other classmates, and
not just because you’re a gaijin.” Leaning in, her voice became a bare whisper. David froze. She was so close in the small space. “I need your help. Someone is after me. Someone that I think you could handle.” Her hand brushed against his side.
‘Chul Soon.’
“David?” Rie called from out in the maze. Before he realized what was happening, David was back out in the maze just in time to catch Rie walking around a fake wall. “Come on, everyone is already outside, where were you?”
“I, uh, I guess I got lost,” he replied, glancing back. He saw the barest flicker of gray as the mysterious girl disappeared. Rie studied him.
“Either you’re lying or you’re an idiot. I’m not sure which I’d prefer,” she said, turning for the exit.
Outside the maze, the rest of their group was trying their hand at a hammer bell while they waited for him. With only twenty minutes to go before they had to leave, the students headed toward the entrance for lunch. David tried to spot the Okinawan students, but even Kou failed to find them. With everyone fed and the last stragglers accounted for, they took one last picture before a giant superhero statue and headed out.
As everyone on the bus began discussing the virtues of the various attractions, David pondered the strange girl’s words. Kou replayed the memory of their encounter as they rode through the Kyushu countryside. The bus took them through towns, farms, and mountains as they made their way south and east. The rice fields gave way to buildings and the Nakano students were suddenly in the midst of another large city. Beside him, Naoto pointed to the outer walls of an ancient Japanese castle through gaps in the tall buildings around them.
The Nakano Junior High School tour buses pulled into yet another parking lot behind a long line of other buses. Unlike at the amusement park, there were people and tourists everywhere. From the parking lot, a large expanse of grass and a dike spread out before them. As David got off the bus, he saw the tall walls, first of stone, then wood, that formed a square around the double-towered keep beyond. The walls looked as if they could have been larger versions of the ones at the Matsumoto Estate, only newer.
“For the arrows,” Tsubasa said as David stared. “The holes in the wood are so the defenders can still shoot.”
“I wonder if the Matsumoto Estate ever had them,” David whispered to Takumi. His host-brother tilted his head in the Japanese form of a shrug.
As David’s attention returned to Kumamoto Castle, he felt Kou awaken within him. It was the same feeling he had gotten when they had seen a portion of the Zodiac Tiger’s memory in Kyoto. His vision blurred and the parking lot disappeared. Thick smoke obscured the keep. His perspective had also changed, he was lower to the ground, and his senses fed so much information to his mind that he had trouble understanding the flood.
As he slinked forward on his four powerful legs, men in old leather and wood armor ran past him. Approaching the walls, David saw a group of scared but determined men rushed out of one of the gates to meet the samurai. These new men had dark blue uniforms and guns instead of swords and arrows. The men knelt, their rifles shaking as the samurai rushed them. There was a flash of muzzle fire and the line of samurai broke. Another force galloped from the trees to join the rifle-men. Among their horses was a cart of supplies. Together the two forces fought their way back to the high inner walls. Where no one had been an instant before, an older man in richly adorned military suit stood. He bowed.
‘They do not realize who they follow,’ the old man said. His voice was tired. ‘I have been unable to lure the yūrei out. Fighting a war, I did not want to fight, just because one monster has found high walls behind which to hide. I have sent letters, but the new government does not understand the true history of Japan yet. There is no room for my kind of warrior anymore, no room for the Jitsugen Samurai.’
‘Do not despair young warrior,’ came the deep, growling, and powerful voice David had heard only once before. Just as when Kou spoke in tiger form, David heard the words as if they were from himself. Yet this was not Kou’s voice, it was older and more powerful. ‘Together you and I shall go defeat this abomination. Then you may relax, reassured that another will come if your suspicions about who is behind this are true.’
David was struck by the desire to call out to the old man, but he disappeared. Before him, a large black-haired stallion looked down with deep, intelligent eyes before his perspective shifted back toward the castle. Together the two animals surged forward. They ran past men of both sides unopposed. Finding their way through high twisting walls, his enhanced vision took in the rifles pointing through slits all along the way. The horse and golden tiger somehow made it unscathed to the giant keep. Already several buildings around them were on fire, but the main structure was intact. Imperial Guards were everywhere, sorting through the new supplies and helping the injured from the recent sortie. David wanted to turn from the arrow and sword wounds, but his body took in the sights with sickening clarity, the scent of blood straining the tiger’s restraint.
The horse and tiger did not stop until they were at the top of the highest tower, a feat given the steep staircases. There, in a room that overlooked the siege below, stood an unassuming man. As the horse reached the floor, the man turned. His skin was translucent and his eyes were dark orbs. David remembered the way Rie had looked after her possession, his stomach twisting at the memory. The yūrei smiled wickedly, its lips a vicious curve of ripped flesh. Taking a sword from a dead guard, he attacked.
By the time the yūrei had made it across the room, the horse was gone and an old man was standing in his place. A bright sword, a Seikaku, was in his hands. The battle was fierce. David had been studying swordplay for months. He had seen Masao Matsumoto wield the blade faster than he could follow, yet here was something so beyond that it was inconceivable. Both moved with inhuman speed. But even as they fought, the memory began to fade from David’s mind.
Blinking, David was back where he had been before the vision. Kou purred loudly within his mind, yet nothing else seemed to have changed. With a frown at the Zodiac memory, he followed Rie toward the same walls Kou’s predecessor had entered with the old man.
Inside, little was recognizable from the memory. The wooden structures were new, rebuilt after fire, and modern souvenir shops and museums replaced old battlements. As they approached the keep, their tour guide talked about the hundred wells, the history of the place, and local legends. He smiled to himself when they spoke of the siege during the Satsuma Rebellion and the destruction of the keep from fire.
‘The old horse, he must have been Saigou Takamori, the leader of the Satsuma Rebellion. They arrested him, so he likely defeated the yūrei and lived. I wonder if their duel is what really destroyed the old keep,’ Kou thought.
After walking through a wide tunnel with thick wooden support beams, they exited into an open space before the main keep. There, each class once again lined up for a group photograph. This time, David did not see the Okinawan girl.
‘If only our classmates could see our Tiger Armor. It’s so much cooler than the plastic those guys are wearing.’
‘If you had reason to wear your Tiger Armor then we would both be in trouble, wouldn’t we,’ Kou replied, chuckling a little within David’s mind.
‘We might need it if Chul Soon shows up.’ That thought killed their mood as they moved toward the keep.
It was an interesting exercise, David thought, walking up the narrow steps and among the exhibits within the keep. The whole interior of the castle had been converted into a museum. As he wandered, David compared the pictures, relics, and recreations to what he had seen in the Zodiac Tiger’s memories. Kou helped make the comparisons by calling up specific images from the newly accessible memory. At the top, David met his classmates as they crammed into a narrow space with wide views of the castle grounds and Kumamoto city beyond. With the railings ringing the center staircase, the top floor was nowhere close to what he had seen in the vision. Beside him, Natsuki and Takumi smiled together as t
hey looked out at the walls and turrets below.
Slowly, so as not to draw their attention, David brought his hands to his face. As soon as he had them in focus, David quickly snapped a string of photos with the school’s Canon D6. As soon as the first one went off, David could see Takumi begin to turn. Loud, high-speed shots clicked off, and David wondered if his ears had started improving. Before Takumi could register what he had done, David hopped the closest railing and ran down the stairs with a wide smile.
‘Let’s put some of our hard-earned speed to use.’ Kou growled in pleasure.
David and Kou had decided to make it their mission to get Natsuki and Takumi to start dating publicly so that they could move past all the awkwardness. While they obviously cared about each other, Takumi and Natsuki were touchy whenever David did something that might bring their”relationship“to the attention of the rest of their classmates.
‘I don’t get why they don’t just start dating,’ David thought has he weaved between the other museum-goers, Takumi hot on his tail. David cleared the entirety of the stone steps outside only to land before their homeroom teacher. Berating him for running, Moriyama-sensei led him to the giant tree to wait for the rest of the students. David gave Takumi an orange-eyed wink as he handed the camera to Moriyama. The camera was there for the official scrapbook. After viewing a few of the pictures at David’s insistence, Moriyama smiled and laughed. Takumi looked murderous, but David was off the hook.
Since they had spent the whole morning on the ferry and at Greenland, the students only had an hour at the castle. As they got back on the bus, Takumi whispered, “I’ll make you pay for that.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not like you were kissing or anything. Though you should have. I’m sure she would have liked it,” David whispered back. A pained look of embarrassment washed over Takumi’s usually stoic features.
‘He can fight ōkami, obake, and oni yet he cannot even consider telling the girl he likes how he feels. You should be careful or he might realize you’re putting the attention on him so that he doesn’t ask you-’ Kou’s thought was cut off as their bus left the castle. Another long ride on their way to the next hotel.
Revenge of the Akuma Clan Page 6
