by Alan Gratz
“You think that’s a good idea?” Archie asked.
“I do,” Clyde said. “You all got your assignments. League of Seven—full steam ahead!”
31
Gonzalo whistled for Alamo, and he, Fergus, and Martine rode off after Aniwye. The others ran for Buster.
“Give me a lift?” Archie asked.
Buster lowered his head to sniff Archie and wagged his tailpipe slowly and hopefully. Archie put a hand to the big steam man’s face.
“I’m so sorry, boy,” Archie said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Buster whistle-barked and licked him with the pneumatic loading ramp inside his mouth. Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Okay,” Archie said, laughing. “Okay.” Like a real dog, Buster was forgiving of his friends to a fault. Archie swore he would never betray that loyalty again.
Archie helped Hachi take Kitsune to the medical bay while Clyde got them moving toward the Mangleborn.
“I can’t believe Buster forgives me,” Archie said.
“You’re part of our pack,” Hachi said. “We all forgive you.”
Hachi left for the bridge, and Archie stayed with Kitsune. She looked even paler than before. Mr. Rivets had barely bandaged her wound when she’d left to help pull Archie out of his madness, and holding the illusion had taken its toll on her.
“Is she going to be all right, Mr. Rivets?” Archie asked.
“Luckily the harpoon missed the femoral artery,” Mr. Rivets told him. “But Miss Kitsune has suffered quite a shock to her system. We all have.”
“I’m so sorry, Kitsune,” Archie said again. “I’m the one who made you come along, and then I did this to you.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said. “Made me come along, that is. Not harpoon me.” She coughed, and her fox ears drooped.
“You should save your strength, miss,” Mr. Rivets said. “Master Archie, perhaps you should leave us now while I do what I can to repair Miss Kitsune.”
“No,” Kitsune said. She put a weak hand on Archie’s arm. “I never did—I never did tell you where I came from. The truth.”
“Not now,” Archie told her. “Let Mr. Rivets help you.”
She shook her head. “I may not get another chance. I promised. And I always … I always keep my promises.”
Archie looked at Mr. Rivets, and the machine man lowered his medical instruments.
“I’m … I’m from a little village called Takayama, outside Ametokai in Beikoku Prefecture,” Kitsune said. “My mother and father were rice farmers, regular people with a little house and three perfect children. Until they had me. They never meant to have me. Four is an unlucky number. The Japanese word for ‘four’ sounds just like the word for ‘death.’”
Kitsune coughed again, and Mr. Rivets gave her water to drink.
“My fox ears and fox tail were a terrible omen, my mother said. My father called me a monster, and went to the kitchen for a knife. He was going to kill me on the spot, before the neighbors could see. But my grandmother stopped him. She told my parents she would take me out to the woods and leave me to die.”
Kitsune had told Archie so many stories about who she was and where she’d come from, he’d gotten used to thinking everything she said was a lie. Maybe it was how weak she was, how much effort it took her to tell this story, but this felt like the truth at last.
“My grandmother did take me out to the woods, but instead of leaving me to die she hid me away in a tiny cabin and raised me in secret. She was the one who named me. Cared for me. But it was a lonely existence. My sobo’s face was the only one I knew growing up. She was the only person I ever spoke to, ever played with, ever touched. She was my only friend, but she couldn’t always be with me.
“I fought my loneliness by creating worlds full of people in my head, and soon discovered I could share them with my sobo—could make her see anything I wanted her to see. She told me stories of the real world, and I brought them to life. Our little one-room cabin became the deck of an airship over Mt. Tacoma, the bridge of a submarine at the bottom of the Great Western Sea, a flower-filled valley on the moon. If I couldn’t be taken out into the world, I could at least bring the world to our cabin.
“When I was old enough, my sobo told me how I came to be what I am. Long ago, a fox disguised herself as a woman and married a man of my clan. She was a good and faithful wife, but the man discovered what she was, and she was forced to flee. But before she ran away, she bore my ancestor a daughter. That baby didn’t have fox ears or a fox tail, but her daughter did, as did her daughter’s daughter’s daughter. Fox blood runs through the women of my family, and every few generations, a monster like me is born.”
“You’re not a monster,” Archie told her.
Kitsune closed her eyes. “One morning in my eighth year I awoke, but Sobo didn’t. She was dead. There was nothing left for me then in that cabin. It was time for me to leave. I put on a white kimono—the color of death, for the rest of the world thought me dead—and took nothing else besides my grandmother’s pearl necklace.”
“The one I grabbed from you,” Archie said. “The one you wanted so badly you joined the League to get it back.”
Kitsune nodded as well as she could. “I went back to Takayama, where I had been born, and hid myself from the villagers until I discovered which of them were my parents. Then I ruined them.”
Archie could only imagine what she’d done to punish her family. Kitsune didn’t say.
“I’ve been on my own ever since,” Kitsune said.
“I’m … I’m sorry,” Archie said.
“No. You don’t understand,” Kitsune said. “Except for Sobo, I’ve never had a family. Until now.”
“Archie!” Clyde called. “This is your stop! You’re up!”
“Don’t die,” Archie told Kitsune.
She gave a single, weak laugh. “I promise,” she said. “And I always—I always—”
Kitsune faded away, and Mr. Rivets stepped in. “Go, Master Archie,” he said.
KRI-CHANG! Archie felt Buster lurch as the Wendigo hit them.
“Buster! Open up!” Archie called, hurrying up inside the steam man’s head. “I want to get a flying start!”
Buster’s mouth opened, and the frozen shape of the giant ice cannibal filled the view. Archie felt something coursing through him, but it wasn’t rage, and it wasn’t adrenaline. It was love. Love for this new tribe of his. His new pack. His new family.
For the people he loved, he could be a hero.
“Raaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” Archie yelled, and he launched himself at the Mangleborn, punching it in the chest. Ka-THOOM!
Behind him, Clyde swung Buster for Mishipeshu, the Underwater Panther.
“All right,” Clyde told Hachi. “Let’s see if there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
32
Mishipeshu swatted at soldiers with its big black cat paws, batting them around like cat toys. A Muskogee woman froze in front of it, the horror of what she was seeing paralyzing her, and the Underwater Panther leaped at her.
BWAAAAT!
Buster’s raycannon knocked the Mangleborn to the ground, and the female soldier woke from her trance. She ran away screaming, but at least she was running away.
Buster hunkered down and whistled at the monster. Mishipeshu flattened its antlers against its head and stood up straight, ruffling its silky fur.
“Buster doesn’t like cats,” Clyde told Hachi.
“Yeah. I don’t think it likes us much either. Is the arm Fergus reattached working all right?”
Clyde moved a lever with his right arm, and Buster’s big brass right arm flexed. “It was a rush job, but so far so good,” Clyde said. “I could beat this cat with one hand tied behind my back anyway. This one time at the orphanage I broke my arm climbing a tree. Well, falling out of a tree, really. Had my arm in a cast for a month.”
“Clyde—” Hachi tried to break in.
“I had to learn how to write with my left hand, ’caus
e of course Mrs. DeMarcus wouldn’t let me skip my schoolwork.”
“Clyde—”
“Had to learn to eat left-handed too. What a mess! And boy, did that cast itch something awful! I had to take one of Mrs. DeMarcus’s crochet hooks and wiggle it down in there.”
“Clyde!”
The Underwater Panther leaped at them, knocking Buster backward to the ground. KaSHUNK. Clyde’s seat belt held him in place, but Hachi had to grab on to a railing. She hung by her arms, her skirt swishing as her legs swung free. Buster’s boiler growled, and the big cat and dog wrestled and tumbled on the ground, biting and scratching and kicking at each other.
“Mr. Rivets, you okay down there?” Hachi called.
“Miss Kitsune is strapped securely to her table,” Mr. Rivets told her. “I, however, would appreciate a little warning before being thrown across the room.”
“Mr. Rivets, you’re about to be thrown across the room!” Clyde yelled.
BWAAAAT! Buster’s raycannon blasted Mishipeshu into the ground and launched the steam man backward onto his butt again. KerKLANK. The Underwater Panther flipped onto its feet and tried to run away, but Buster lurched forward and caught its tail. Mishipeshu screeched and pulled, but Clyde held tight.
“Okay, we got the tiger by the tail, as Mrs. DeMarcus used to say. Now what?”
“We can’t kill this thing, so we’ve got to trap it somewhere,” Hachi told him. “That’s what the ancients did.”
Clyde grunted, fighting to keep hold of the Underwater Panther. “How about a big hole in the ground?”
“That would work,” Hachi said. “But where?”
“Right here!” Clyde said. He let go of Mishipeshu’s tail. “Buster, dig!”
Buster whistled happily and attacked the ground, furiously scratching and clawing at it. Dirt and rock flew out behind him as the earth beneath the giant steam man disappeared.
Clyde held his hands away from Buster’s controls, letting them swing and flail without him.
“Buster loves to dig,” he told Hachi.
“We’re going to have to lure Mishipeshu back,” Hachi said. “And trick it into thinking there’s not a hole there.”
“One person for that job,” Clyde said.
Hachi nodded and slid down the ladder to the floors inside Buster’s chest. She hurried to the medical bay, where Mr. Rivets stood beside a sleeping Kitsune.
“How is she?” Hachi asked.
“Recovering,” Mr. Rivets said. “The aetherical nature of the weapon helped the cauterization process.”
“You can wake her, then?” Hachi asked.
“I wouldn’t advise it, miss,” Mr. Rivets said. “Miss Kitsune will still require a great deal of time to convalesce properly.”
“We don’t have a great a deal of time,” Hachi said. “Kitsune, can you hear me? Kitsune?”
Kitsune stirred and looked at Hachi through half-lidded eyes.
“I’m sorry, Kitsune,” Hachi said. “But we need your help. Buster’s digging a hole, and we need you to make a Mangleborn think it isn’t there.”
“I can do that,” Kitsune said. She tried to get up, but Mr. Rivets’s restraints held her back.
“You can do it just as well from your bed,” Mr. Rivets said, and Hachi took that to be as much as he would allow.
Hachi threw open a gun port. Buster had already dug out an enormous hole. “Use me,” Hachi said. “Just like before. I’ll be your eyes. Read my thoughts, and then project them to Mishipeshu.”
Kitsune nodded.
“Okay, Clyde,” Hachi told him via shell. “It looks deep enough. Back Buster away and we’ll lure Mishipeshu over.”
Buster pulled his head out of the hole and stood behind the huge pile of dirt he’d created. Hachi found Mishipeshu on the horizon, and imagined Buster was a very large mouse standing in the middle of a field that did not have a huge hole dug into it.
“Okay,” Hachi told Kitsune. Hachi felt a tickle in her brain like before, and then got that odd sensation that someone else was inside her brain, the way you could tell when there was someone else in the room with you even when your eyes were closed. Hachi’s instinct was to fight it, to push the other person out of her brain, but she let down all her barriers and invited Kitsune in.
“I see it,” Kitsune said from the bed, her eyes closed. “I’m going to push the vision to Mishipeshu.”
Hachi felt her own consciousness extend with Kitsune’s and reach out to the mind of the Mangleborn in the distance. It was like stretching her hand out and touching the green flames of her nightmares, the aetherical fire that had engulfed her at Chuluota when she was a baby. The mystical inferno that had swallowed the soul of her father and brought Archie to life. Hachi’s hand reached the flames, and all at once a flood of images assaulted her, making her scream. Mishipeshu devouring a canoe full of warriors. A raging storm. A circle of cultists making a sacrifice. A hero cutting off one of the panther’s whiskers. Mishipeshu destroying a raycannon with its tail. The Underwater Panther stalking a steamboat. Ripping a battalion of soldiers apart with its claws.
There were other things too—images and sounds and ideas she couldn’t understand. Things that were impossible. Math equations that added up wrong but were right. Floors that were also walls. A man who was his own grandfather. A staircase that twisted in on itself, so you would climb up and down it forever. The images came at Hachi so fast, so strong, they knocked her to her knees. She threw up every barrier she could, tried to push the thoughts away, but they gushed in on her like the water in the Sonnionto puzzle trap. They pushed at her and pulled at her and she choked on them, drowning.…
And then, as suddenly as the vision had swallowed her, she was spit back out on the floor of the medical bay, her mind clear but still vision-logged. Mr. Rivets helped her to her feet, and Hachi saw Kitsune was passed out on the sickbed, a metal, wire-covered hat on her head.
“Both of you started screaming, and I was unable to get through to you verbally,” Mr. Rivets told Hachi. “I assumed something had gone wrong with your attempt to communicate telepathically with Mishipeshu, and one of Mr. Tesla’s hats was all I could think to do to sever the link.”
Hachi kept a hand on Mr. Rivets’s shoulder. “You did good,” she told the Tik Tok. “Saved us. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I think connecting to somebody else’s mind must be a two-way street for Kitsune. But she’s usually the only one able to push thoughts through. That Mangleborn flooded us with visions. Memories. Stuff I didn’t understand. Now I see why people with weak minds go insane around Mangleborn.”
And maybe why Martine was so alien, if she was able to think the same way the Mangleborn did.
“Miss Kitsune suffered much worse than you did,” Mr. Rivets said. “I cannot say how long she will be unconscious. She’s had quite a shock.”
Hachi nodded and climbed back up to the bridge. The images she’d seen still haunted her.
“Kitsune’s out,” she told Clyde. “We’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way. Can you cover the hole with trees?”
“Sure,” Clyde said. “But how are we gonna lure Mishipeshu on it?”
“I’ll take care of it. Just get that hole covered,” Hachi said.
Hachi hurried back down through the steam man’s interior and jumped outside. Mishipeshu loomed tall on the other side of the battlefield, swatting and snapping at United Nations soldiers and Manglespawn alike.
“Circus, showtime!” Hachi called, and three little wind-up animals burst out of her bandolier. They buzzed around her head, happy to be out and about. “See that big cat-thing?” she asked them. “I need to get its attention. Can you help me do that?”
“Roar-roar-roar!” Mr. Lion chirped.
“But don’t get hurt!” Hachi called as they flittered away.
Hachi ran after them, dodging soldiers and Manglespawn as she ran. She knew she could be fighting the monsters, taking some of them out, but the soldiers could handle Manglespawn with
their rayguns and cannons and clanker tanks. What they couldn’t do was take out a Mangleborn. That was her job.
Mishipeshu looked much, much bigger from the ground, and Hachi caught herself wishing she was still inside the protective brass hull of Clyde’s steam man. The Mangleborn’s pelt was dark and wet, like an otter’s, and its head was sinewy and round. Its eyes flashed bright like a cat’s in the night, and it looked down at Hachi like a cat spying a mouse.
“Oh crivens,” Hachi said.
Hachi leaped out of the way as Mishipeshu pounced. She’d escaped, but the Mangleborn was fast—too fast. It pounced again, pinning her to the ground under its massive paws. Hachi felt the wind blow out of her, and for the second time that day she felt like she was suffocating. Mishipeshu’s mouth widened, baring its teeth in something like a gruesome smile, and it twisted its long snake-like neck down to eat her as she gasped for breath.
“Roar-roar-roar!” Mr. Lion growled.
“Ooh-ooh-ooh!” Jo-Jo the Gorilla grunted, thumping his chest.
Tusker the Elephant trumpeted, and together the Tik Tok toys fluttered in Mishipeshu’s face. The Mangleborn snapped at them and batted at them like a cat chasing a silver bell on a string, and Hachi was free. She dragged herself away, gulping for air while her flying circus bought her time. She’d been foolish to rush in, thinking she could do everything herself. If Fergus had been there he would have scolded her. But he wasn’t here, and neither were any of the other Leaguers. She was going to have to do this herself.
“Hey, furball!” Hachi called up at the Mangleborn. “Hey! You’re not finished with me yet!”
Mishipeshu stopped snapping at the flying circus and bent its sleek round head down at her again. “Merowrrr!” it roared.
Hachi took off at a run toward Buster, the Mangleborn on her heels. She ran back and forth like a mouse across a kitchen floor, zigzagging through Manglespawn and raycannon craters and UN warriors, Mishipeshu’s claws swiping at the air behind her. Clyde had just finished laying the last of the trees when Hachi ran out along a log to the middle of the trap. She turned and watched as the Mangleborn barreled across the battlefield toward her, knocking steam men and clanker tanks aside like they were toys.
