Cherry Blossom Girls International

by Harmon Cooper

  “I need to say something,” Dorian told us, her brow furrowing. “I just want to say I’m sorry for not being more prepared in my teleportation. I can’t believe…”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Chloe told her. “It would have taken me off guard as well, to just teleport over a body of water.”

  “And not just any body of water,” I told Dorian. “That’s the ocean out there. I don’t know how much geography classes you guys had in the AEFL program, but the world is like ninety-seven percent water, and hell, by the end of this century it may be ninety-eight percent. My point is: none of us were expecting to arrive like that.”

  “Going forward, if we do try something like Empathetic Teleportation, let’s make sure that we have some sort of safety net in place,” Chloe suggested. “One of Stella’s shields would be good, or a telekinetic one, or I can make something out of sound.”

  “Not a bad idea,” I said, secretly happy with the fact that she had mentioned both Grace and Stella in a sentence as if they were still with us.

  Because they would be.

  I knew this in my heart, it would only be a matter of time, and each moment that passed was a moment wasted if we were not trying to rescue them.

  “Maybe Ingrid can figure out where we are. But wherever we are, we are going to need a phone, a smartphone to be exact. Shouldn’t be hard to come by, it is, after all, 2030.”

  “Okay, let’s start there then,” Chloe told me as we entered the home.

  It was quaint, but clean, and like the others, we took our shoes off at the front door. I stepped onto the tatami mat, noticing it had a small amount of spring to it, impressed by the hominess of the place.

  The interior was just about as Japanese as a space could possibly be, with sliding walls, very minimal décor, and just a few decorations that, ironically, centered around pictures of cherry blossom trees.

  “Nice,” I said as I stepped in front of the first picture, which was framed on one of the walls that wasn’t made of paper.

  “Hai, sakura desu,” the man of the house said to us, still ushering us into a dining room area of sorts where we sat around the table.

  I made a gesture that indicated a phone and he nodded, pulling out a flip phone from his pocket.

  “That won’t work,” I said. “I need something with Internet and bluetooth connection.”

  His wife came from the kitchen a few minutes later holding a platter with small teacups on it. She distributed the tea, and sat next to her husband at the front of the table.

  Veronique took a sip of the tea, her face going from skeptical to pleased. “What are we supposed to ask them?”

  “First, find out where we are exactly. Not just Japan,” I told Ingrid, “an actual location.”

  Ingrid asked the same question she had asked earlier, and the guy replied, Ingrid slightly frustrated for a moment as she thought of a different way to phrase it. “He just keeps saying we are in Japan,” she said after several attempts. “Let me try something else. Tokyo desu ka?”

  The man made a noise that reminded me of a whinnying donkey, sort of an “ee-yeh” sound.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked Ingrid.

  “It means ‘no,’” she said, returning her focus to the man. “Okay, um, Kyoto desu ka?”

  The man shook his head and then mumbled a word I was familiar with.

  “Nagasaki?” I asked. “He said Nagasaki, right?”

  “Hai!”

  “Hai!” his wife chimed in, pointing toward a north facing wall. “Nagasaki wa sono hōko.”

  “I am no interpreter, but I think that they are saying this is Nagasaki,” said Dorian.

  “I wonder how far that is from our hotel…”

  “I suppose we could make small teleportation leaps,” Dorian suggested.

  “No, that may be too obvious. Crap, we are also in our superhero uniforms. We’ll need disguises, especially if we need to go into Nagasaki. Or at least some different clothing.”

  “I could teleport back to the hotel and get the clothing stuff we already have, and then come back here,” Dorian suggested.

  I bit my lip. “I just don’t know how far Nagasaki is from Tokyo…”

  “Maybe you can ask them if they have a map,” Michelle suggested.

  “I don’t quite know the word for map, but I have an idea,” said Ingrid. “Mapu wa arimasu ka?”

  The old man exchanged glances with his wife. “Mapu wa… mapu wa…” His eyes lit up.

  He left the room and returned with a paper map which he began to unfold. The map was in Japanese, obviously, but there was a scale on it which I assumed meant kilometers.

  Ingrid asked him again where we were and he looked at the map for a moment, running his hand through the hair jutting out of his chin. He tapped on the map, in a location just outside of the city of Nagasaki.

  “Okay, so we are really close to the city, then,” I said.

  “You wouldn’t know it by looking outside,” said Dorian. “I didn’t see any signs of the city when I went up.”

  Using what I believe is called my distal phalanx (but I could be wrong), which was the top part of my finger connected to the knuckle, I measured out the distance.

  “About twelve hundred kilometers to Tokyo, so about…” I did the math in my head. “Eight hundred miles? That’s totally doable.”

  “It definitely is,” said Dorian.

  “So maybe we don’t need to go to Nagasaki after all,” Michelle said.

  “Hai, Nagasaki,” said the Japanese woman, pointing toward the north again.

  “But I still need a smartphone,” I told him.

  “But you could get one near the hotel, right?” Ingrid asked.

  “I suppose I could. You know, it doesn’t look like Nagasaki is very far from here,” I said, looking at the map again, recalling where the old man had pointed. “With all the heat on us in Tokyo, maybe it is better to get the phone here. Plus we can possibly get more information on this island. Then again, I might be able to find it online. What do you guys think?”

  “Let’s make sure the rescue mission happens today,” Veronique said with finality, “but let’s do it right, with a solid plan in place. What we were going to attempt earlier may have worked, who knows? But it was a bit sporadic, and we may have been jumping right into a trap. I think it’s best if we get our disguises, head to Nagasaki and see what we can uncover there while we get your phone, do the research we need, and prepare some weapons.”

  “Weapons?” Michelle asked.

  “This guy has a ton of junk out here,” Veronique said, nodding to the front door. “I’m sure I could conjure up enough metal to make you some pretty sharp knives. Plus I want more shrapnel for myself. If they really are out on that abandoned island, it gives us the advantage of not having to worry about civilians. We will really be able to let loose. So I want to be prepared for that.”

  Dorian nodded, as did Chloe.

  “Ingrid?” I asked, looking to the young beast morpher.

  “I think that plan will work. You and Dorian teleport back to Tokyo and get our clothing. Come back here, we will change, and then we will have this man take us to Nagasaki. I will keep working on communicating with them in the meantime.”

  “You two aren’t going alone,” said Veronique.

  “That’s fine. Are you ready to teleport now, Dorian?”

  The punk rock teleporter nodded. “Just let me finish my tea first. We will make this quick.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Expert Craftsmanship

  Our trip to Tokyo was just as quick as we had hoped it would be. Once we appeared in our hotel, Veronique and I gathered the clothing we had purchased yesterday, as well as a few other things we had, like Michelle’s Denver hat and my bolo tie.

  Hell, if we were going to be in disguise, I wanted to at least make it look cool.

  We were just about to leave when Veronique looked skeptically at the bolo tie in my hand.

  “What?”


  “Really?”

  “It was a gift from Grace,” I told her. While I was bringing it along for comic effect, mainly to lighten the mood, it really was a gift from Grace. And as stupid as it may sound, I felt instantly closer to her in that moment.

  “Let’s just go,” said Dorian as we flashed away, back to the small, coastal home in Nagasaki.

  “I’m so glad you are back,” Michelle said, the Japanese couple not at all fazed by the fact we had just reappeared in their dining room area.

  “Everyone get changed, and then let’s go to Nagasaki.”

  “It’s still early,” Chloe told me with a yawn. “I’m guessing most stores don’t open for a few more hours…”

  “Do they have Internet?” I asked Ingrid.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Dammit…”

  “It’s fine,” said Veronique. “We can begin working on weapons strategy while we wait for the electronics store to open.”

  “Good call.”

  The Japanese woman asked Ingrid something and she nodded.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “She wants to know if she can make us breakfast.”

  “Sure, it looks like we’re going to be here for a few hours. So no need to get changed yet,” I said, even though Michelle’s Denver hat was already on my head, and I had just finished up adjusting Grace’s bolo tie around my neck.

  I was still in my superhero uniform, which would definitely be something I had to change if we went into Nagasaki.

  Michelle started to laugh at my getup. “You know, the amethyst sort of matches the hat…”

  “Why don’t you help our host in the kitchen?” I suggested.

  “Wait, am I being punished?”

  “No, not exactly, I just don’t like people making fun of my bolo tie,” I said with a toothy grin.

  Ingrid started laughing, and she kept laughing for what felt like a minute. By this point, all of us had turned to her, trying to figure out what was so funny.

  “I finally…” The young beast morpher took a deep breath in, and laughed even harder. “I finally get your sense of humor and why it is funny.”

  “You do?” I asked, still adjusting my bolo tie.

  “Yes, I finally get it! You are funny because you are just random, and in a situation as crazy as ours—all of us aside from Michelle almost drowned less than hour ago, literally—you somehow manage to lighten the mood. I get it!”

  Michelle started to laugh. “I don’t get it, but laughing feels good!”

  The Japanese man and woman started to laugh as well. And eventually, it took Chloe’s power to calm everyone down a bit.

  “Now that that is over, let’s get outside and make some weapons. And I need Michelle. So someone else can help in the kitchen,” Veronique said, the corners of her lips still curved into a grin from laughing.

  Ingrid smiled at the older couple. “I will help. I can work on my Japanese some, and you’re not going to be able to make armor for me anyway.”

  “True, but we could make some weapons.”

  “My claws are my weapons,” Ingrid said as she turned to the kitchen, joining the Japanese woman. “For now, I just want to stick with what I know.”

  “Fair enough,” Veronique said as she moved to the front door, Michelle joining her. I looked to Dorian and Chloe to see what they were planning to do, and to the old man, who still sat at the front of the table, his legs crossed beneath him, the map stretched out in front of him.

  “What are we supposed to do?” I finally asked, tired of the silence that was spreading between us.

  “Let’s go outside,” Chloe said. “We can begin discussing strategy while Veronique crafts weapons.”

  “Good call.”

  Veronique had already separated all of the metal from the other junk by the time we stepped outside. My eyes fell upon a gleaming vortex in the man’s yard as all the metal was sucked into it, and deposited on the other end.

  It was a lot of metal too, a stack easily as tall as Michelle.

  “We will start with some knives for you,” she told Michelle.

  Veronique moved over to the young speedster and looked at her for a moment, seeing that she didn’t have the same type of belt that Veronique had.

  “Don’t worry, I can store knives here,” Michelle said, pointing to her shin guards. “It is one of the changes that Vince made. I hope he’s doing well,” she said, looking over to me.

  “I’m sure he’s fine.”

  Veronique crouched in front of Michelle and used her hand to measure the sheath on the side of her leg. She lifted her other hand, and a metal wrench flew into it, as if her palm was a powerful magnet.

  Now hovering above Veronique’s palm, the metal bent into itself and started to form together, creating a thick bar. From there, she began whittling away at it, slivers of metal sliding off and hitting the ground, instantly hardened by the time they touched the surface.

  Eventually, she measured what she had created against the sheath on the side of Michelle’s shin.

  Going to work again, Veronique made the blade flatter and sharper; with a flick of her fingers, a strand of a silvery metal rose from the pile. It reached the objects she was creating and then started to swirl up the shaft, stopping at its tip.

  She whittled away at it again, eventually creating a blade that looked like an expertly designed shank.

  “How is this?” she asked as she handed Michelle the blade.

  Michelle stepped a few feet to the side. She pressed the blade forward, practicing some of the moves that Veronique had taught her.

  “Is it light enough? Do you want it to be heavier?”

  “Just a little heavier,” Michelle told the metal vampire, a look of determination on her face that I had rarely seen. “But not by much.”

  “Done,” Veronique said as she floated the blade back toward herself, and lifted some of the strips from the pile she had whittled off. These merged back into the handle, and spread through the body of the blade to its tip, evident in the way it was quivering.

  Once Michelle took it from her, she nodded. “This feels much better,” she said.

  “Good to hear. I’ll make you another one now.”

  Veronique went through the same process, using all the metal she had discarded from the first blade to reform a shaft, pare it, and then grab more of the silvery metal substance from the pile. Once she was done, she let Michelle test this one out, the young speedster telling her that the weight was perfect.

  “I’m not done,” Veronique said. “Everyone who can carry one is getting a knife.”

  “I really don’t have room in my uniform for one…” I started to say.

  “Nonsense, you have room in the side pocket. The place where you keep Father’s blood and whatever else you store in there.”

  This was something Vince had also worked on over the last month. It was already present on the first uniform or two he had made for me, but now it was even better, the pocket under my arm designed in such a way that it wouldn’t be disturbed if someone struck me. It wasn’t annoying either. I couldn’t feel it pressing into my arm or anything like that, a testament to Vince’s skill.

  “And don’t worry.”

  “I’m not.”

  She got a smaller piece of metal from the pile and began creating a blade about half the size of the one she had made for Michelle, maybe even smaller. “I will make a sheath for it too.”

  And that is exactly what Veronique did.

  In the end, the knife wasn’t much larger than a Swiss Army knife, but it was sharp, and I tested out, putting it in the side pocket next to Father’s indestructible vial of blood and my now water-damaged smartphone.

  Speaking of which, I took the smartphone out and tossed it into the air, letting Veronique have her way with it, the metal separating from the device and going straight to the pile, the rest being deposited in a different stack of junk.

  I was sort of glad the guy was a hoa
rder, not just for the junk he provided to us, but also for the cover. There was so much crap that it would have been hard for even his closest neighbor to see what we were up to.

  Veronique made a blade for Dorian, a small one, which she stuck in the side of her boot; she also made one for Chloe, who did the same.

  The metal vampire then started constructing things for herself. She filled her pockets with sharp bits of shrapnel, and also formed metal bands, which she wrapped around her arms.

  “Just make sure that they don’t make any noise,” said Chloe once she saw the bands. “We are going to need the element of surprise when we assault the island.”

  “Good point.” Veronique turned the individual metal bands into a gauntlet-like object.

  “I really need either a picture, or a map or something to understand the island,” I said, “but based on what we’ve already seen so far, I would say that if they are holed up there, they are probably in the abandoned apartment blocks.”

  “I agree,” said Chloe. “Which means we will need to come from the other side of the island.”

  “I could still run out there,” Michelle suggested.

  While we had been talking, she had been going through some practice swipes, but she was now back in the conversation.

  I shook my head. “No, we move as a group.”

  “I can use my power to teleport us back to where we initially landed,” Dorian said, “but higher in the air this time. When I’m higher, I’ll be able to see the other side of the island, and then I can teleport us there, to the beach.”

  “How do you know it has a beach?” Veronique asked.

  “It must have something that presses up against the water. So we will teleport there.”

  “Good call. I will then use my Echolocation to look for people in the buildings,” Chloe said. “You can turn up my power on your new phone.”

  “Hell yes,” I said. “That’s one thing that is most definitely clear to me: we need to go about this as quietly as possible. If there are too many people on the island, we may have to wait until nightfall. Then again, if it seems like now is the time to strike, then we strike.”