Cherry Blossom Girls International

by Harmon Cooper

  “We were drunk,” Veronique grunted.

  “Maybe all the people in the octopussy video were drunk,” suggested Grace.

  “Octopussy?” I asked her.

  “A joke!”

  “Actually…” I nodded. “That’s a funny joke. No one told me you were into puns.”

  “Was that a pun?”

  “Sort of? Anyway, I’m not being prude. We can explore this place later, or another place like it. I have a feeling this isn’t the only one in Tokyo.”

  “It’s definitely not the only one,” said Grace. “I saw a spot back in Ueno. They had costumes outside too, Michelle accidently ran inside.”

  I laughed as we took the stairs back to the bottom. “That would have been something else.”

  “Don’t worry, I would have wiped her mind. She’s still too young for this kind of stuff.”

  We gathered with the others, Dorian now with a plush Doraemon doll now tucked under her arm, and continued deeper into the Akihabara district. There was a lot less to see here than I would have thought, and the CBGs were getting bored, so we really didn’t have time to check out the manga and anime stores.

  One thing that caught all of our attentions was the maid cafés, many of which were on the first and second floors of many of the buildings. Young Japanese women in maid costumes stood outside the cafés, ushering people in. Michelle asked what this was, and if it hadn’t been for my knowledge of anime, I wouldn’t have known the answer.

  “A maid café is a place where you go to hang out with women dressed as maids,” I told her matter-of-factly as we started to turn away from the district, heading back toward Ueno.

  “Why would anyone want to do that?”

  I looked to Grace for a moment, trying to figure out how I could explain this.

  “I think some people just like to have the attention, and the maids do things for them like singing and cooking food. They also just hang out and talk to them. It’s for lonely guys who want attention from a female, I guess.”

  “So sort of like a geisha?” Ingrid asked.

  “Something like that. I guess it could be considered a modern-day, more consumer-friendly version of a geisha.”

  “Are we going to see any geishas?” Michelle asked me.

  “Now that, I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re in Tokyo or not.”

  “They’re in Kyoto,” Ingrid added.

  “Interesting. All this is just so interesting,” Michelle said as she tried to walk slowly.

  It was odd watching the young speedster move as a normal person, especially since she usually just zipped around the place. But she was trying to seem as normal as possible, and it was good practice for her.

  Once we were back in Ueno, we found a restaurant that served Japanese curry. It was delicious, and the food came quickly, a plate full of rice, curry on top with little hunks of meat, carrots and potatoes in it.

  So good.

  From there we headed toward the Ueno Zoo.

  I wasn’t a big zoo goer, and the last time I had been to anything that resembled a zoo was in high school, when I visited the aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut.

  But the zoo turned out to be an enjoyable experience, all of the CBGs enjoying the animals. They behaved relatively well, that was, until Michelle said that she wanted to ride one of the elephants, and Dorian offered to teleport her to the top of it. I had to step in there and tell them it was a bad idea.

  There was also a crocodile that had scared Veronique, the metal vampire starting to drain it almost immediately. I’d never thought about the fact that she could drain power from animals, so this was definitely a new discovery.

  But it made sense, and it gave us other options for “feeding,” not that I wanted to see her drain someone’s pooch.

  We spent more time than I thought we would have with the flamingos, all the girls watching and smiling, commenting on how cute they were.

  It dawned on me in that moment that they had never been to a zoo, that any exotic wildlife they had seen would have been on TV.

  The CBGs especially liked the red panda exhibit, the cute little guy tumbling around as a trainer came in with food. The giraffes were cool too, and really goofy in the way that they would peek their head out over the barrier at the crowd, and stare at us in the same way we were staring at them.

  By the time we finished up at the zoo, it was pushing five o’clock, the sun had heated up the streets, and everyone was tired.

  We still had plans for later that night, a visit to the Tokyo Skytree, but I didn’t know how many of them would be able to make that.

  “What do you say we head back to the hotel and rest?” I asked the group. “Tokyo Skytree is tonight!”

  “Can we just order pizza?” Michelle asked. “It has been a long day.”

  “No one wants to go to the Skytree?” I asked the group. We were in Ueno Park now, near a fountain and a street band playing Peruvian wind instruments.

  “We have more days in Tokyo,” Grace said, leaning with her hand on a bench. Veronique, Dorian and Stella sat, the punk rock teleporter offering us a long, drawn-out yawn. Chloe and Ingrid were next to me. Michelle was bouncing from foot to foot in front of us, but with a little less pep than she normally had.

  “I guess you’re right. Let’s just hang out tonight, eat pizza, and prepare for some sleuthing tomorrow.”

  “Pizza!” Michelle said.

  “I am fine with that,” said Veronique. “I’m so hungry.”

  “I’m down to lay low as well,” said Dorian.

  “Ingrid?” I asked the young beast morpher.

  “That’s fine, I have some stuff I want to read anyway,” she said.

  “Chloe?”

  The sound manipulator shrugged. “It might be nice to go on a night walk, but I’m down to keep things low-key. It has been an incredible day.”

  I smiled at all of them, not a cloud in the sky above, the Peruvian band really getting into the groove and drawing more onlookers with each passing moment. “It really has, it really has.”

  Chapter Seventeen: Trains

  Things moved quickly.

  They actually had Domino’s Pizza in Tokyo, and not knowing what the best local brand to order would be, we went ahead and went with the classic, although theirs was a bit… stranger. Domino’s Japan had pizza with mayo on it, tiger shrimp and one with kimchi on top, which I thought was a Korean specialty, but had somehow made its way onto a pizza in Japan.

  We stuck with the basics, mostly pepperoni, and it wasn’t long until most of the CBGs were passed out.

  I thought about going on a walk with Chloe; I considered going down to the basement sauna and getting nay nay with anyone who wanted to join me; I then thought about Manchester and Dragon, and finally putting a dent in How Heavy This Axe? Book Two; and from there I contemplated how we would go about discovering what we needed to discover the next day.

  Damn my monkey brain.

  All these swirling thoughts eventually put me into a deep sleep, the futon actually comfortable this time. We had walked around all day, and the deep sleep I experienced that night reminded me of what it was like to get an actual good night’s sleep after a long day of vigorous exercise.

  What a feeling!

  Being cuddled up next to Dorian and Veronique was an added bonus as well, both also passing out just as hard as I had.

  Morning came and I was up early, refreshed, back in the breakfast nook on our floor while the old Japanese woman who owned the hotel waited on me. I tried to shoo her away, to tell her I could take care of myself, but she insisted on bringing me a pastry and a banana, and pouring my coffee.

  Nice lady. And before we left, I hoped to get her a big lump sum of money for her troubles.

  Chloe was first to join me this time, followed by Ingrid, who had her little guidebook with her. Ingrid sat across from me and began leafing through the book while Chloe and I drank our coffees.

  “So the plan for today is to go to Setagaya,
correct? And that’s a district somewhere in this big city, right?”

  “Yup. Damon Lord either lives, or has a home of sorts, in this area. And according to Wikipedia,” I told Chloe, trying to sound smarter than I looked, “Setagaya is actually a ward, with a population of nearly a million people.”

  “And you expect to find him?” Ingrid asked, looking up from her book.

  “It may take us a little time, but we should be able to sleuth it out. Eventually. Grace knows what he looks like, and once she finds the right people, she will be able to implant the image in their minds. From there, they will be scouts for her, sort of. Like I said, this is going to take some time, and definitely some trial and error.”

  “Who gets to go?” asked Ingrid.

  “Grace, me and…”

  “Me,” Chloe said.

  “It would be better if you stayed with them, just in case there’s a mix-up.” I bit my lip, nodding as I thought this through. “The thing is, we’re not going to get separated. Not permanently, anyway. Let me at least say that. But if we do, you also have the ability to force local people to do what you want; no one else in the CBGs aside from you and Grace can do this. So it’s best if you stay here.”

  “Shoot…”

  “I would love to go,” said Ingrid.

  “No, if we have someone with telepathic abilities, and we have me with several abilities on deck, we will need someone who is pure offense, just in case.”

  “I’m not pure offense?” Ingrid asked.

  “Veronique, right?” Chloe asked, trying to hide the disappointment in her voice. “She always goes. Or Dorian.”

  “Dorian will teleport us there, and then pick us up. Or she may just take the train back. Either way, I want the rest of you to be able to leave if something bad happens. With Dorian here, you will be able to do that. Of course, nothing bad is going to happen. I repeat, this is just a mission to gather intelligence. And no to Veronique as well.”

  “So Stella then?” Chloe asked as she took a sip from her coffee. “She is offense and defense, but you guys usually use her for defense.”

  “It may be best to take Stella,” I said. “I was honestly trying to decide between her and Veronique, and the thing with Veronique is that she can be a little trigger-happy.”

  “A little?” Chloe asked, the way she was looking at me not at all covering the bad blood they’d had. They were cool now, but a possessed Veronique had definitely attacked Chloe before.

  “Stella it is,” I said.

  “And what are the rest of us supposed to do today?”

  “We won’t be gone all day,” I told Ingrid. “So just hang out in Ueno, go to the park, do some shopping, you know, that sort of thing. We will go to Tokyo Skytree tonight.”

  Excitement spread across Ingrid’s face. “I forgot to tell you: Skytree is near Asakusa, which is a pretty cool shopping district. They even have a Brazilian style carnival there!”

  “Great, then we will check that out.”

  “But there’s no carnival right now…”

  “But there’s still a shopping district, right?”

  “There is!”

  “Cool, I can’t wait.”

  In the end, I was surprised that the other CBGs didn’t give me hell for our plan. Veronique wasn’t stoked, but she didn’t put up much of a fight, which was likely because of Grace’s influence.

  I knew that they didn’t like it when we separated, and it had been my MO since arriving in Japan to keep us as close together as possible, but we were too big of a group to move around together, and today, we just planned to get some much-needed intel.

  It was better this way. Play it safe, keep things copacetic.

  We ate breakfast at the hotel this time, and once we were done, Dorian and I began looking at GoogleFace Map images of Setagaya.

  There were enough tall buildings for us to teleport to the top of, but there would always be the issue of getting down, especially if we didn’t know the layout of the place. We happened to find a building that clearly had a ladder attached to it, but something was off, and Dorian wasn’t so confident in her ability to get us there.

  “It’s all just so dense,” she said as we look at the map. “I don’t want to make a mistake here.”

  “Let’s just take the subway then. And of course, you should come with us too, and then you can teleport back here. We’ll set up a time to meet you, and if we do not meet you by that time, do not panic, we’ll just try to take the subway back. In fact, no one panic about anything. Just stay in this hotel, and in the Ueno area, no matter what happens. We will make it work.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said as we waited for the others to join us in front of the elevator.

  “We’re ready,” Stella and Grace said, stepping out of one of the rooms.

  The vector manipulator wore a pair of black slacks and a blouse, ballet flats too. Stella looked like she was on her way to a dress casual business meeting.

  Grace now looked like a different Japanese woman, this one more of a Harajuku cosplayer in a pink gothic loli dress with matching pink hair. You would think that something like this would draw attention on the streets of Tokyo, but it did not.

  After saying goodbye to the others, we took the elevator to the bottom floor, waving goodbye to our host as well. It didn’t take us long to navigate Ueno Station and find the Yamanote Line, Grace using her power to convince a man to use his subway card to scan us through.

  The Yamanote train came every couple of minutes, and while we waited, Grace found a guy who spoke English, quickly emptying the contents of his wallet. I didn’t know how much he gave us in the end, but it was a fat stack of ten-thousand-yen bills.

  The dude was loaded, and I was going to protest taking his cash until Grace told me he was a gangster.

  You mean he’s part of the Yakuza? I thought to her as he shuffled away.

  Is that what they call gangsters here? Then yes. He’s Yakuza.

  Our train came and we got on. The train was crowded, but much quieter than a New York subway train. We had apparently missed rush hour, which was famous for those images of conductors in white gloves cramming people onto the trains. But it was still packed, and there wasn’t enough room to turn around without bumping into someone.

  I had saved our directions on my phone, realizing that we probably would not get Wi-Fi wherever we were going.

  A good move too, as I definitely wasn’t picking up any signals in the train—or in the station, for that matter.

  After a longish ride, we got off at Shibuya, the four of us staying close together amidst a sea of people. I had been to NYC more times than I could count, and was used to the crowd at Grand Central Station considering that all the trains coming from Connecticut either got off at Grand Central, or 125th and Harlem.

  But I still wasn’t prepared for all the people in the Shibuya station. People moved in all directions, a constant whir of humanity, everyone careful not to disturb each other.

  It's crazy, Grace thought to me, and I looked back to see her now holding hands with Stella so they wouldn’t get separated. I reached out and grabbed Dorian’s hand, and felt that familiar tug of being presented with her powers.

  I figured it wouldn’t hurt, and just in case we had to move quickly, I replaced Father’s healing power with her teleportation ability. Besides, I had the indestructible vial of Father’s blood in my pocket, as always, so if I needed to dab it, I could.

  I checked my notes again.

  We were supposed to get on the DT Line, which stood for Tokyu Den-en-toshi Line, and take it to the Sangen-Jaya Station. From there, we could either walk, or take another train to Shoin-jinja-mae Station.

  Lots to remember, but I figured we would just get to Sangen-Jaya, the main area, and go from there.

  It was helpful that a lot of the information was in English in the station, but what wasn’t helpful was the fact that there would be two arrows pointing in different directions, each saying they went to a
particular train, because theoretically, if you walked far enough you would eventually get there. We made this mistake at least twice trying to find our line, and ended up on the wrong side of the tracks, which forced us to cross back over to be on the other side.

  But eventually we made it.

  And I was glad that we were planning to teleport back at the end of all this, rather than try to use the subway system to return to Ueno.

  “Just three stops,” I told them as the DT train started to slow, its brakes hissing and squealing.

  “Good,” said Dorian. “This is such a primitive way to travel.”

  Chapter Eighteen: Purple Safety

  “Seriously, don’t worry,” I told Dorian.

  I didn’t know how to architecturally describe our current setting, but I’ll give it a try. The Sangen-Jaya Station was mostly underground, and after navigating our way through the snakey bastard, we walked up a flight of stairs that eventually opened up onto a space seemingly modeled off a Roman amphitheater.

  The walls were made of black marble, there were shops on top, old men sitting on benches, a glassed off area for cigarette smokers, an escalator and a winding staircase.

  I really wished in that moment that we weren’t here to find the guy who was technically trying to kill us.

  But alas, we had gone from terrorist to tourists and now we were hunters. Framing it like that made it seem a bit cooler.

  Yes, hunters, moving in for the kill, or at least, the capture.

  But I was probably overthinking it.

  Yes, you are overthinking it, Grace thought to me.

  Thanks for always bringing me down to earth, I thought back to her.

  Someone has to.

  “So this is where I’m supposed to get you?” Dorian asked, an apprehensive look on her face.

  “This is it,” I told her.

  “Gideon…”

  “We will return, to this very same spot, I promise. Just…” I looked around at some of the buildings. “Teleport up there, and if all seems clear, get down the street to meet us here.”

  “Actually, it may be easier if we just find an alley now.”