Cherry Blossom Girls International

by Harmon Cooper

  Dorian’s eyes went wide as she understood what I’d just suggested. She swallowed the rest of her bite and said, “Of course, that’s how we’ll do it. We go directly to them; we bring the fight.”

  “Exactly. It is almost like when Bae opens up a portal. So let’s do that. After breakfast, let’s get this show on the road.”

  “Now we’re in my territory,” said Veronique. “Everyone touches Dorian, we go, and as soon as we arrive the four of us launch into action,” she said, pointing to Ingrid, Chloe, Dorian and herself. “Gideon, you and Michelle look to secure Grace and Stella. We will fight them off; you get our teammates.”

  “I can do this,” Michelle said, punching her fist into her free hand.

  “Yes, definitely, this will work. Okay…” I took a deep breath in. “We get in, we rescue them, we get out as quickly as possible. We can bring the fight later, but for now, we need to focus on rescuing them. Everyone agree?”

  They all nodded, Dorian going for another banana.

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Drown

  We flashed away and were suddenly free-falling, Dorian not able to teleport us before we all splash-landed into a massive body of water.

  And maybe we would have teleported away if it hadn’t been so quick, if several of us hadn’t mistakenly let go of Dorian’s shoulders.

  But no, the six of us hit the water, a huge wave coming up and washing over us, scattering our bodies, cold saltwater blasting into my face, the threat of drowning suddenly more real than it had ever been before.

  No stranger to swimming, I moved to the surface of the water, seeing the light on the other side, barely enough oxygen in my lungs to break through. But I eventually made it, taking in a big gasp of air just as another wave hit me, saltwater spraying everywhere.

  The waves were choppy, and I knew better than to try to fight them.

  I also knew that I had a telekinetic power available to me, and that if I focused…

  Another wave hit me, fuck, and I came up for air again, this time hearing some screaming, the sounds of hands slapping against the water. Gathering all my wits, I started to rise from the top of the water, just as another wave moved past, slamming into my side, my glasses barely held onto my skull through their strap, which I’d smartly tightened just before teleporting away.

  My mind on the mission, on rescuing the others, I managed to push past the wave, to use my telekinesis to give myself a vantage point and what I saw…

  We were in the middle of the ocean.

  And for a moment, a very quick flash of stupidity, I wondered if Damon Lord had a goddamn underwater lair.

  But I discarded this thought almost instantly, spotting Ingrid thrashing in the waves, the young morpher in her beast armor. I assumed she was trying to morph back, but that the tension was making it almost impossible for her to focus as she splashed below. Looking around, I saw something burst out of the waves, Chloe rising to my side, breathing heavily, sopping wet.

  “Fuck…” she said, catching her breath.

  “Get the others!” I told her, pointing back down at the waves.

  Who was I kidding? I needed to help as well, which I immediately did once I spotted Veronique’s body.

  No…

  Like I was back on the swim team in eighth-grade, I dove toward the water, not giving two shits that one false move could drown my crazy ass.

  I hit the water, just missing another large wave. Swimming at full speed, I reached Veronique and pulled her to the surface, the metal vampire coming alive almost instantly, her eyes wide with fear she grabbed onto my neck, draining me.

  “Don’t drain me!” I told her. “I’ve got you; I’ve got you!”

  A wave hit us, burying us deep beneath the sea. We came back up, and I started to focus my power on lifting us both out of the water, a headache coming on, the tumultuous sounds of the waves crashing all around me. I went under again, holding onto Veronique, and came back up after a wave passed.

  Chloe shot out of the water, with Dorian under her arm. As soon as she saw Veronique and me, she lifted us as well, the surface of the water rumbling as we were pressed out of the waves.

  “Can you do more?” I asked her.

  She nodded, looking to Ingrid, who was still flailing. I was glad that she had to pinch herself to turn into Tulip, because dealing with Tulip in this situation would have only made things that much worse.

  Michelle.

  My heart sank as I looked at the water below, trying to find the young speedster.

  “What about Michelle?” I shouted.

  “Just let me get Ingrid first,” Chloe said, the strain evident on her face. “Dorian is out completely; I think the sudden collision shocked her into passing out.”

  “Michelle!” I called out. Veronique was still in my arms, burying her head against my shoulder. I hadn’t really thought about Veronique and water, but I remembered that when we attacked the facility on Santa Cruz Island she had been queasy the entire way.

  Ingrid started to rise out of the water, still punching her fists against the surface of the waves. She hadn’t righted herself yet, so it literally looked like she was being pulled up by a tractor beam, and it was then that Michelle appeared on Ingrid’s back, looking up at us.

  She had been walking on water, evident in the fact that she wasn’t wet like the rest of us.

  I had seen Michelle do this before, and I was completely impressed that this was her first reaction, that even while falling, she had been cognizant enough to right herself where the rest of us had failed.

  With all of us now suspended above the waves, Chloe and I started looking around frantically.

  I saw it before she did.

  Turning to the west, I noticed a boat shaped island, apartment blocks built on one side, seawall on the other. And I would have gone toward it too, but something about the place looked abandoned.

  Something was off.

  “What do you think it is?” I asked Chloe.

  “My gut reaction is that it is where they are storing Stella and Grace. But there’s no way to really know…”

  “No, you’re right,” I said. A few solid white seagulls had started off in our direction. A couple were already circling beneath us, squawking loudly. “It makes sense. Dorian’s power was set to its highest level, and maybe, this is just my theory, but maybe her Conscious Spatial Awareness prevented her from teleporting to the actual island. Maybe it needed more information. I don’t know. We can figure that out later. That is definitely where they are. My fuck if there was ever a supervillain lair…”

  “What now, Gideon?” Michelle called up to me.

  I didn’t know if we were still near Japan; I didn’t know how far it would be to land. Part of me wished I had Noah’s power to send off a bird, but alas, my biblical powers ended at satire, about the place where my superpowers began.

  So we would have to try something else. “We need to find land. Dorian is knocked out, Veronique is recovering, Ingrid is…”

  Now that she was away from the water, Ingrid morphed from her beast armor mode back into her own form, the bony armor immediately retreating into her body as Michelle jumped off, the young speedster caught in Chloe’s power as well.

  “Are you sure you’re still okay?” I asked Chloe.

  “I’m okay. It’s not as hard as it seems to do this,” she said, and by the look on her face, it seemed that she was starting to relax a little. “I can use my echolocation ability to find the shoreline.”

  “Let me see if I can…” I reached my hand into my pocket for my phone, only to realize that it’d been completely soaked, and sure enough, fried.

  “Don’t worry, Gideon, I can do all of this. I can help.”

  And with that, Chloe lifted all of us just a bit higher in the air, turning in the opposite direction of the strange, abandoned island.

  Since she was keeping us all afloat, I felt a change beneath us as she started using her echolocation ability, a high-pitched noise cutting through t
he rumbling bass at our feet. I had heard her use it before, sort of a percussive, clicking sound, but now I could feel it, like my back was a snare drum and someone was playing sixteenth notes on it.

  It didn’t take her long to find a direction, which just so happened to be toward the east. We picked up speed, and as we did, Veronique started to let up a bit, eventually separating from me, and floating next to me.

  We were holding hands now, and Ingrid and Michelle were holding hands as well. Dorian was still out, but I would heal her as soon as we got to the shore.

  Eventually, we saw two big clusters of rocks jutting out of the water, one with a group of trees on top, the rock peppered in barnacles. We moved toward the copse, and onto solid ground.

  Finally.

  I turned back to the water for a moment, watching below as the waves smashed against the rocks.

  I couldn’t see the island, the one with the abandoned buildings on it, but I knew it was out there.

  I knew Grace and Stella were near.

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Regroup and Reorient

  Chloe sat with her legs tucked under her, allowing Dorian to use her thighs as a sort of pillow. I was crouched before her now, pushing as much healing power into the punk rock teleporter as I could.

  “Where are we?” Dorian asked as her eyes fluttered open.

  “We don’t know,” Ingrid said, looking out at the water.

  “We can’t assume we are in Japan, that’s the first thing,” I said. “But once we’re all able, we can start walking in that direction.” I pointed away from the water.

  It was clear which direction we needed to go, but Michelle and Veronique both followed my finger as I pointed anyway.

  Veronique was better now, not yet making eye contact or really acknowledging anyone in the group, but better. I wanted to reach out to her and let her know that it was okay to be afraid of something, but I had been with her long enough now to know that it was best just to let Veronique stew.

  She would get over it, eventually.

  Dorian sat up, and brought her hand to her mouth for a moment, looking like she was going to be sick.

  “You teleported us out there,” Michelle explained, nodding toward the horizon, oblivious to the fact that Dorian looked like she was going to be lose the bananas she’d eaten earlier. “Gideon thinks that they are keeping Grace and Stella on an island out there. It was a pretty strange island too. Just out in the middle of nowhere. Abandoned buildings on it. Should I go check it out? I could probably run there and back pretty quickly.”

  “No,” I told Michelle. “We don’t know what kind of traps they have on that island; it’s best if we just stay together. Let’s figure out where we are first, then we can learn about the island.”

  “We’re in Japan,” said Dorian, who looked to be getting control over her sudden sickness.

  “Maybe, but we could also be somewhere else in Southeast Asia. There are a lot of islands, and we will need to see some writing or meet some people to be sure. And we’re definitely not going to do that on this huge rock.”

  “Okay, just give me another moment,” Dorian said as the waves crashed against the rock below. We were about twenty feet up from the water, blue and orange ripples as far as the eye could see, the sun coming up, the breeze perfect.

  I could smell the ocean, which made me miss Connecticut like I’d never missed the Nutmeg State before. I remembered taking I-95 North as a kid to the Clinton Hills Outlets, my parents always stopping at Hammonasset Beach State Park along the way, sometimes going up to Mystic Pizza for a late lunch, or antique shopping in New London.

  It seemed like so long ago, but I had even made this trip a couple times with my ex just a few years back.

  The same trip, over and over again.

  And in that moment, stranded on a rock island off the coast of somewhere, I missed the comfort of that regularity.

  Just doing the same thing all the time. There really was nothing wrong with it.

  For all those who wanted adventure, I had had my fair share, and secretly wished for domesticity. But I knew this wouldn’t come, not for a long time.

  Dorian flashed away, which made my heart jump into my throat for a moment until I saw her reappear high in the air and start falling, flashing away again, reappear higher up in the air, and eventually reform in front of me.

  “Land isn’t very far from here,” she said, once her body reformed, “and I should be able to teleport us there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m serious. It just looks like it’s far because the trees are covering up the view of the land. It’s like the distance between our hotel and the crosswalk in Ueno.”

  “That close, huh?” Chloe asked as she floated up into the air. Once she had a good vantage point, she confirmed this.

  “A few of you can come with me, the rest can go with Dorian,” she called down.

  “I think I’ll teleport with you all,” said Veronique, placing a hand on Dorian’s shoulder.

  “I always prefer flying,” Michelle said, and as the words left her lips she began to rise into the air.

  “I’ll go with Dorian,” said Ingrid.

  “Gideon?” Dorian asked.

  “Well, it’s a hard decision, but I think I’ll just get there the quickest way possible.”

  Dorian and I locked hands, and poof, we were standing on a beach not far from…

  “You didn’t tell me there were homes here,” I told Dorian.

  “There are homes here,” she said, offering me a snarky smile. We were all wet, but, and this was definitely a testament to Vince Porter’s ability to design uniforms, our bodies were surprisingly dry beneath, aside from my sides, which apparently were covered by breathable fabric.

  I could see what Dorian and Chloe meant.

  We were in alcove of sorts, a beach between the shoreline and the cluster of rocks that we had flown to. I saw proof of a highway not far from here, and couldn’t see any signs on it, but I could hear a truck rumbling by.

  “We need to find out what country we are in…” I started to say as Chloe and Michelle descended to the beach.

  “That wasn’t a long trip at all,” said Michelle. “I could have just run here.”

  “Remember, stay together; we really need to stay together from here on out, so yes, you could have run here, but it’s best if we just keep together,” I told her.

  “So how are we going to figure out what country we are in?” Dorian asked as she looked at a small seawall protecting the homes from any encroaching waves.

  The wall was covered in moss and sea snails, a rusted piece of metal sticking out of the ground in front of it. I didn’t know how helpful this would be if a large enough wave came up, but at least something was there. The wall also prevented me from actually seeing the homes, only giving us a view of their rooftops.

  Two were red, another was blue with solar panels on it.

  “Wherever we are, it has to be a country rich enough to have solar panels on the rooftops.”

  While solar energy had really started to spread across the world, it still wasn’t exactly cheap. Then again, we could be on some random island off the coast of Malaysia, where the UN, or some other agency, had set up solar for the locals.

  “I will handle this,” Ingrid said, taking off toward the wall.

  I caught up with her, and I was going to say something like, “let me take care of this,” but she had a determined look on her face, and I wasn’t trying to get in her way.

  There was an opening in the wall and as we passed through it, we saw a vehicle to the right, an Asian man unloading a crate from his small vehicle.

  Ingrid waved at the man, who gave us a look of sudden shock.

  “We’re in Japan,” she said.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked her as the man slowly set his crate down.

  “His license plate.”

  It was true, his license plate did look like some of the ones we had seen in Tokyo, b
ut I had to be sure. “Talk to him,” I told her.

  “Sumimasen, koko wa doko?” Ingrid asked.

  The old man gave her a curious look and grunted an answer. “Nihon ni imasu…”

  “See? Japan,” Ingrid said as the others joined us. “Chloe, please, the man.”

  “Will do,” she said, energy radiating from her throat.

  Once Chloe took over, and even with the language barrier, the older Japanese man invited us into his humble abode. We followed him through a narrow path filled with random bits of junk, and by the looks of it I got the feeling that he was some type of hoarder.

  “Is that a fountain?” Michelle asked as she looked at a Grecian-looking statue jutting out of a pile of bathtubs and discarded kitchen appliances.

  “That’s what it looks like,” said Dorian, as the man called something to an open window.

  His wife came to the door, a short woman with a wrinkled face, a bit heavy but still fit. Chloe had the woman under her spell in a matter of moments, and the lady stepped aside, gesturing for us to come inside.

  “What’s next, boss?” Chloe asked me.

  “Please don’t call me boss…”

  She smirked as Michelle and Ingrid passed in front of her, Ingrid telling Michelle how excited she was to be entering an authentic Japanese home. “I’ll keep an eye on them,” Veronique said as she followed behind the two young supers.

  “Next, I need to get a phone,” I told Chloe and Dorian, who were still waiting for my answer. “Well, I guess we need to figure out where exactly in Japan we are, because it is a pretty big country, and then we need to figure out which island that was. But a phone would help. Besides, I won’t be able to adjust your stats remotely without one.”