Cherry Blossom Girls
International
~Book Seven~
By Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2019 by Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2019 Boycott Books, LLC
Edited by Andi Marlowe @ Andromeda Editing
Audiobook by Justin Thomas James, Laurie Katherine Winkel, Annie Ellicott, and Jeff Hays
www.harmoncooper.com
[email protected]
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Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HarmonCooperWriter
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Seriously, I make this $H!+ up.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The Story Thus Far
Chapter One: The Shitshow Begins
Chapter Two: Damn You, Damon Lord
Chapter Three: Tourists to Terrorists
Chapter Four: Demons be Gone!
Chapter Five: An Ode to the Number 4
Chapter Six: Back to the Rockies
Chapter Seven: Father Pow Wow
Chapter Eight: I May Have a Future in Fashion Design
Chapter Nine: Boom!
Chapter Ten: Undercover Missionaries
Chapter Eleven: First Class
Chapter Twelve: Lost in Translation
Chapter Thirteen: Shibuya Crossing
Chapter Fourteen: Basement Sauna
Chapter Fifteen: I Think I’m Turning Japanese
Chapter Sixteen: Terrorists to Tourists
Chapter Seventeen: Trains
Chapter Eighteen: Purple Safety
Chapter Nineteen: The Fastest Way to Get Around Tokyo
Chapter Twenty: Subway Disguise
Chapter Twenty-One: Positive Vibes
Chapter Twenty-Two: Shopping for Dreams
Chapter Twenty-Three: Rescue Mission
Chapter Twenty-Four: Drown
Chapter Twenty-Five: Regroup and Reorient
Chapter Twenty-Six: Expert Craftsmanship
Chapter Twenty-Seven: To the Arcade!
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Assault Awaits
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Hashima Island
Chapter Thirty: Rooftops
Chapter Thirty-One: BFE?
Chapter Thirty-Two: Reverse Shield
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Journey Ahead
Back of the Book Content
The Story Thus Far
**Contains Spoilers**
**Read if you need a refresher, or if you want to start the series on the seventh book, after Gideon has a superpower and his harem has grown.
The Cherry Blossom Girls saga begins on a dark and stormy night, a day before the cherry blossoms bloom in the spring of 2030. Gideon Caldwell works at a Yale gift shop, and is a semi-failed LitRPG/Gamelit writer living in New Haven, Connecticut at the time, who doesn’t have many friends aside from a Canadian writer named Luke Lyrian.
A psychic shifter named Grace (codename: Sabine) shows up on his doorstep, naked. After some super awkward moments, Gideon realizes that Grace has escaped a secret government facility and that G-men are definitely after her. He also realizes that she has a port on her neck that he can plug into with his smartphone to adjust her powers.
Concluding that this is a great story, Gideon decides to start writing and publishing ebooks about his journey.
Eventually, another super named Veronique comes after them, attacking Gideon and Grace in a hotel. After a bit of negotiation (and some sex, exploits, and some clever convincing on Gideon’s part), Veronique joins the group, and brings with her the ability to control metal and drain people of their energy.
Their mission? Destroy the facilities that are creating superpowered soldiers for the FCG, or Federal Corporate Government. The program the FCG funded to create these superpowered soldiers is named AEFL, or the Agency of Enhancement and Future Logistics.
Fast forward a few days and Gideon, Grace, and Veronique are on the run after destroying the first of six of these facilities, helped by a now dead scientist named Dr. Kim, who has recorded a bunch of videos to be digitally delivered to Gideon even after his death. Gid and the Girls are attacked by a woman named Dorian, a teleporter with the power to craft energy creations with her saliva.
You guessed it, she eventually joins, and they destroy another facility in Austin, Texas.
At this point, Gideon and the three are now being hunted by Angel, a super-powered man with the ability to fly and heal, as well as Mother, a telepath who is, as her name implies, the mother of all these supers (but not quite—keep reading!).
Now on a roll, Gideon and the Gals move on to a facility in New Mexico, only to find that other supers are being held there. Four of the supers are teenagers named Ingrid (a beast morpher), Fiona (a water user), Michelle (a super speedster), and Alex (a telepath who becomes an enemy pretty damn quickly). They are also joined by Stella, a woman who can manipulate vectors.
On the writing front, Gideon is working on Mutants in the Making, a three-part series that details his exploits with the CBGs. While all this other shit is happening, he gets enough buzz to attract the attention of EBAYmazon, who eventually offer him a publishing deal. Which is good for Gideon, aside from the fact that the added exposure comes back to haunt him later in the series.
Now onto another facility, Gid and the Girls get separated after an attack in Nevada, Gideon winding up in the desert alone with a pissed-off Stella. He finds a man named Father, who is later revealed to be the brother of the supervillain Mother. Father has the ability to heal and manipulate reality.
Father and Mother, get it? No, they didn’t fuck.
But they did use their eggs and sperm (and donors) to create all the superpowered individuals that are part of the AEFL program. Also, oddly enough, Mother is pregnant with Angel’s baby, which means she’s either pregnant with her own son’s kid or with her nephew’s kid.
But that’s just a weird aside.
It is Father (real name: Jim Mathers) who gives Gideon his superpower, because as it turns out, Gideon has the potential for a superpower, but he needs to be manually unlocked.
After Father’s surgery, Gideon is now a mimic, and he can take up to three powers through touching someone with a super ability. At first, he has to keep track of whose power he has and the order he took them, but later, he’s able to mentally move a power out while taking a new one in.
Eventually, Gid joins back up with the others (Dorian, Grace, Veronique, Stella and Michelle). Unfortunately, Fiona and Ingrid are still being held captive by Mother and Co. Gideon and the Girls also have a superpowered sound manipulator with them named Chloe, who they are holding as a prisoner. She’s still a bad guy at this point, so she hasn’t joined the group, but she will later (notice a trend?).
Hell yes, they save the day, rescuing Ingrid and Fiona and continuing with their mission to destroy AEFL’s facilities. Gideon’s writing business continues growing, even though the media has stumbled upon his books, and the government is blaming a botched attack (initiated by Mother and Angel’s crew) on Gideon.
Yup, he’s a fugitive by this point.
And just when Gideon thinks things are about to get easier, they are attacked by a new team of villains paid for by a celebrity named Natalie Johansson, who blames her cousin’s death on Gideon (in actuality, it was Mother’s botched attack that killed Natalie’s cuz).
Gid and the Girls now joined by Chloe, who is officially a member, destroy two more facilities in California, but they now have new enemie
s in the form of Natalie’s crew, one named Smiley, a strongman, who seems immune to any of their powers. Not able to do everything themselves, Gideon and the Gals are joined by a man named Clarence, who serves as their butler, cook, and sometimes enforcer.
At the start of the journey, Gid and his crew use their powers to exploit the general public. Be it using Grace’s psychic power to steal cars, or “feeding” Veronique (who doesn’t eat) by offering up innocent victims for her to drain.
Basically, the CBGs do a lot of shit that’s illegal.
But now they want to change that; they want to become a proper superhero team. They get proper uniforms from an armor designer named Vince Porter, and Gideon sets out a plan for the group to stop “Breaking Bad” and start “Breaking Good.”
Before attacking the last AEFL facility, the group sets up a base in the Rocky Mountains, a place where they can call home and grow as a team. Trying to figure out where they stand and how they should use their power, Gideon and Grace even go as far as helping solve a murder in California.
Around this time, they reunite with Father, who moves to their base. Gideon becomes even more famous, especially after appearing on TV arguing against the government’s AEFL program.
EBAYmazon hosts a release party for the omnibus of Mutants in the Making, and Gideon gets the feeling that AEFL, Mother, Natalie and Smiley will probably try to attack them.
Surprise! Gideon also gets the ability to mimic four superpowers at once, although his power is still not as strong as the original super.
So he doubles down, going along with their plan to force an attack, hoping that the media catches it all, so he doesn’t have to keep convincing people that supers exist. At the same time that the book release party is about to kick off, the final facility is destroyed.
Gideon also learns from Father and Dr. Kim, the scientist who has posthumously been delivering emails to him containing classified info, that a man named Damon Lord, an associate of Father and Mother, took their data and moved to Asia, where he lives in Setagaya, Japan.
Even worse: Damon Lord has been creating mutants abroad.
The book launch party goes according to plan, hell breaking loose when all Gideon’s enemies attack at once. Gideon and the Girls are able to fend them off, that is, until Damon Lord shows up and crystalizes Fiona the water user, who is shattered into small chunks.
Gid and the Gals get the hell out of there, but not without some serious repercussions, including the death of their first teammate, and the government doing partially what Gideon hoped for by shutting down the AEFL super soldier program. But the FCG is also swearing to go after any mutants and eradicate them, which is Gideon’s greatest fear.
So that’s the recap. With that in mind, you should be able to start the story now.
The crew as it stands at the start of CBG International
1) Gideon—writer, main character, mimic (With the ability to replicate four powers, but only at 60% strength or so of the original power holder. Note: he usually keeps a few of the same powers “on deck” including the ability to negate someone’s power, which he borrowed from a former bad guy turned deserter known as Jules).
2) Grace—psychic shifter, possibly mastermind of the whole story because she’s always in Gideon’s head.
3) Veronique—metal vampire (Gideon’s name for her), with the power to use metal in any way she wants and drain people of the metal in their blood.
4) Dorian—teleporter with the ability to use her saliva to create energy creations. Her go-to “wand” is a paintbrush or her finger.
5) Stella—vector manipulator. Mostly unexplored power, one that Gideon is afraid to really use.
6) Michelle—super speedster, the youngest member, chatty AF.
7) Ingrid—second youngest member, beast morpher, who morphs into a male monster named Tulip.
8) Chloe—sound manipulator who can also fly.
9) Father—the co-founder of the AEFL program, who now sees the error of his ways. He has the ability to heal and to modify reality.
10) Clarence—the CBGs’ butler responsible for cooking.
That’s all, folks.
Enjoy,
Harmon Cooper
Chapter One: The Shitshow Begins
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
Besides having a last name that most definitely led to bullying when he was in grade school, Charles Dickens pretty much had it right in his quote from David Copperfield, which couldn’t have been about the magician, considering when it was written.
Unless Dickens was a time traveler…
But fuck all that noise, I was practically living a conspiracy considering my choices in life and the beautiful superpowered women I had surrounded myself with, so I didn’t have time for a 4Chan deep dive, or any of the other wacky shit that lurked in the forgotten subs of Reddit.
No chemtrails, no conspiracies, no BS.
And speaking of magicians—well, sort of—if my peers from Frances Walsh Intermediate School could see me now, they also would definitely think I was a magician, considering how I looked at the moment.
No longer was I a handsomish nerdy guy named Gideon Caldwell with a shaved head and a scar on my face. Nope, I was currently about fifty years older with slicked back white hair à la Stan Lee (RIP), wearing a tailored blue suit and polished leather shoes.
Looking primo incognito in Washington, D.C.
You bet your ass I was using Grace’s shifter power in the United States Capitol, Grace, Dorian, Veronique and Yours Truly set to meet Senator Andrea Ellicott in a couple of hours, chairwoman of the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
There was a crowd of tourists from all across America and the world, most of them queuing up to check out the Capitol Rotunda and the sweet statues tucked away in the corridors that led to the House or Senate chambers.
The same thing we had just done a few moments ago.
And as “grand” as it was (and oftentimes troubling), the history of my nation was the last thing on my mind as I looked around.
There would be a ton of innocent deaths if someone tried to attack us at this moment. And sure, Veronique had warned me about this, but it was easier for us to hide in plain sight than it was to go wait outside her office.
Which was why we were sitting in the Capitol just killing time.
The thing was, I needed some face time with the Senator from Montana, and coming to D.C. was the only way to get it. Senator Ellicott was the one who had called for an eradication program to target all superpowered individuals after the attack in Washington state, and if anyone was going to be able to talk some sense into her without mansplaining, it would be me.
It was kind of fucked up that she’d called for our deaths, considering it was the Federal Corporate Government, or FCG as they were lovingly called, which had implemented the plan in the first place.
But that was neither here nor there.
It was my job to convince the Senator that there were true enemies to go after, and that the eradication of all individuals with enhanced abilities would only lead to more turmoil.
My eyes shifted over to our teleporter, Dorian.
Damn was she looking fine in her painted-on pantsuit, the tattoos on her arms covered by long sleeves, a bunch of rings on her fingers which she had recently picked up on a weekend getaway trip to Santa Fe.
I smiled at her, and Dorian smiled back, a look of utter professionalism on her face.
Veronique stood in front of us in a matching pantsuit, hers a bit smaller, Veronique’s petite form not quite filling out the outfit in the same way that Dorian’s body did. Still, the metal vampire, as I liked to call her, was looking fresh to death in her CEO get-up, her blonde bob pinned at the side, a predatory look permanently etched on her face.
And then there was the psychic shifter herself, the one who started all this by showing up on my d
oorstep, Grace, who was currently morphed into the body of a beautiful Latina woman, long brown hair, a bodacious badunkadunk that definitely caught a few glances as we walked the mean streets of D.C.
The three original CBGs and one Cherry Blossom Boy, all undercover.
And what a day it had already been.
We arrived in D.C. a little early, mostly just to give Dorian time to recharge after teleporting all the way from Colorado. So we’d done a little sightseeing, checked out a few of the free museums and munched on some street food.
It was a damn good time too, and after licking our wounds in Colorado for a bit, it was finally time to push forward.
To make something positive happen.
Which was why I wasn’t the least bit stoked to see men in black milspec armor enter the main hall of the Capitol building.
MercSecure is here, Grace thought to me.
Stay calm. Let’s see what happens next.
Capitol coordinators started clearing tourists out, a few of them panicky until someone started giving away vouchers for some godawful 3-D tour of the White House I’d already sat through earlier.
For a moment, I figured we could just disappear with the crowd, but I knew what this was about, and there was really no point in doing something drastic at this point.
“I told you this would happen,” Veronique said.
“We need to go,” Dorian said, ready to teleport us out of there.
“Give it just another minute,” I told her. “Let’s see how this plays out.”
As a mimic, I was able to carry four borrowed powers at a time, and currently I had Grace’s shifter and telepathic powers on deck, as well as Father’s healing powers and Jules’ ability to nullify any power around him.
And aside from all that, standing before me was one of the most dangerous people I had ever known, Veronique, who was not only able to drain people of the metal in their body thus killing them (hence the nickname metal vampire), but also wield any metal in the vicinity.
So we stayed seated, cool as cucumbers. Once the crowd was gone, the men in the black uniforms all surrounded us, dozens of them, their weapons aimed right at us.
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