Cherry Blossom Girls International

by Harmon Cooper

  I opened the app, making sure everything was in place and nodded, happy to be back in the real world.

  Or at least, connected to it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Assault Awaits

  I never quite understood how some people were able to use things like their smartphone or their e-reader in a vehicle. As soon as I looked at an object that had a digital screen on it, aside from the vehicle’s dashboard, I instantly felt nauseous.

  Which meant I would have to wait until we got to our seaside hideout to dig into the notes on Hashima Island.

  Luckily, it was a quick drive back from Nagasaki, and I spent most of the drive staring out the window at the gorgeous shoreline. Such a beautiful place, really, and I wished in that moment that Grace was there to share it with me.

  I even imagined her asking me questions in Ira Glass’ voice, teasing me.

  Writer Gideon, how do you plan to assault the island?

  That’s a good question, Ira, and it’s something I’m still working out. I believe we will come from the north side of the island, and use the element of surprise to find the prisoners we’re looking for.

  That is a good plan, but what if there are guards?

  We will take them out as silently as possible, or perhaps, we will distract them.

  It may be a good idea to have a loud distraction ready to go, just in case.

  That’s not a bad idea, Ira.

  That’s what I’m here for, right?

  I really wish you were actually talking to me in my head right now, and I wasn’t just talking to myself.

  How do you know I’m not talking to you?

  Goosebumps.

  I seriously got goosebumps after that thought hit me, but then I realized it was my own mind, I was sure of it.

  Nice try, Ira.

  It’s important for me to keep you on your toes, Writer Gideon. Trust the others. They know what they are doing. They are experts, and they would do anything to rescue their teammates.

  I plan to. And even though it’s not you talking to me, Grace, I will rescue you today.

  The small van pulled into the driveway, and from there continued back to the seawall, parking where we had found it earlier. As I got out of the vehicle, I looked overhead to see seagulls, gliding on currents, oblivious to our woes.

  I am not saying it would be nice to be a seagull, but right now, it would be better than a dude who was going into a battle against someone who could easily kill his friends.

  And as I walked back toward the home, I let this thought go. No sense in dealing in negativity.

  Keep it positive, Writer Gideon.

  I turned to the group. “I’m going to do just a little bit of research, and then I’ll start adjusting the stats of those who need their stats adjusted, we’ll get suited up, and we’ll go from there. Cool?”

  “Cool,” Michelle said as she zipped past, disappearing into the open doorway, her phone in her hand.

  “Everyone should charge their phones too. We aren’t bringing our phones with us, but it’s good to have a full battery. Okay, focus, Gideon, focus,” I told myself as I took a chair on the back patio.

  The chair was rickety, but that didn’t matter: I had some research to do.

  First, I started with the history of the island.

  Hashima Island was one of over five hundred uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, which I figured was how they said the Nagasaki State. The island was shaped somewhat like a battleship, which led to a second name for it, Gunkanjima.

  Undersea coal mines, something I had never heard of before, was why the Japanese had established the island in the first place, using it as a forced labor site. This was why there were apartment blocks on it, and it was also the reason for the refinery and other buildings all on the island.

  A self-contained work station.

  Talk about dystopian.

  Hashima Island had been abandoned in 1974, which meant the island had operated for nearly a hundred years, as it was established in 1887. Peak population in 1959 saw over five thousand people living on the island, and the place had been open to tourists until the last five years, when the Japanese government mysteriously stopped letting people visit.

  “So, a re-abandoned island,” I mumbled to myself, skipping past some of the articles I had screenshotted about adventurous people who liked to go to these sorts of ruins.

  I then began looking at pictures on the map, a few close-ups of the apartment buildings, establishing yet again that my initial notion, to approach from the north side of the island, would be the best way forward.

  “Good,” I said as I went straight to the CBG app, pulling up Chloe’s stats.

  Main: Acoustokinesis

  Sound Sculpting: 5

  Acoustic Acceleration: 6

  Sonoluminescence: 5

  Rhythm Manipulation: 6

  Sonokinetic Combat: 6

  Sound Detection: 5

  Sonic Stimulation: 6

  Overcharge: 3

  Echolocation: 5

  I was happy with everything I saw aside from Echolocation, which I knew would be crucial for us to figure out where people were located on the island. So I kicked this up to ten, and brought her Sound Sculpting down by one, my eyes stopping at Sonoluminescence, and pondering what it meant for a moment.

  “Shit…” I whispered as an idea came to me.

  Talk about a possible distraction. I continued playing with her stats, bringing up Sonoluminescence as well, which forced me to bring down Sonic Stimulation. I still wasn’t happy with the fact I’d brought her Sound Sculpting down, but maybe this was something I could adjust in the field.

  In the end, it looked like this:

  Main: Acoustokinesis

  Sound Sculpting: 4

  Acoustic Acceleration: 5

  Sonoluminescence: 9

  Rhythm Manipulation: 4

  Sonokinetic Combat: 5

  Sound Detection: 3

  Sonic Stimulation: 4

  Overcharge: 3

  Echolocation: 10

  I didn’t do anything to Michelle, nor did I do anything to Ingrid’s beast morphing skill, figuring those two were good where they were for the time being. I felt the same way about the metal vampire, leaving Veronique at her current skill level. Before our botched Empathetic Teleportation stunt earlier, I had decreased Dorian’s Teleportation Rapidity skill to up her Empathetic Teleportation.

  I decided to keep it like this for now, and I still wasn’t quite clear why we didn’t just teleport straight to the island when we first arrived.

  It has to do with her Conscious Spatial Awareness, I reminded myself as I stepped into the house and found the CBGs sitting in the Japanese couple’s living room, watching a crazy game show, a few on their phones looking at pics they’d already taken.

  Years ago, I had caught some random translated Japanese show on HuluFlix, a non-anime one, and was nearly knocked on my ass by the amount of on-screen graphics. Whatever they were currently watching was similar: people in mascot costumes running around doing some ninja warrior shit, a host laughing with a maniacal look on his face, a genderfluid woman in a bowtie bowing repeatedly at the camera.

  But rather than judge, or try to figure out what the hell was going on, I simply sat on the ground and watched as well.

  Just zoning out.

  I wanted to make our moves under the cover of dusk, which meant we had several hours to kill.

  Scratch that: more like an entire day to slay.

  And maybe it would have been smart to move while the sun was at its apex in the sky, but I thought the more cover we could get from our natural settings, the better.

  At some point I fell asleep, my head in Dorian’s lap as she continued watching television. I woke up an hour later, the kind Japanese homeowner already preparing a pot of tea and cookies.

  Thoughtful. I really liked our hosts, even if they were under our control.

  Through Ingrid and Chloe, I tried to offer to clean up their
junk, to organize it, but the older man didn’t seem to mind the clutter.

  “Daijoubu desu, daijoubu desu,” he kept saying.

  It was about this time that Veronique and Michelle headed outside to do some training with Michelle’s two blades. Ingrid, Chloe and Dorian followed them out.

  I wanted a different role in this rescue mission. Rather than try to actually fight, I simply wanted to work as support, like a goddamn healer. I wanted to trust, just like I had imagined Grace telling me. I wanted to trust that the CBGs could do this themselves.

  Boy, was I wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Hashima Island

  We had a light dinner, rice and curry, which got me wondering how the Japanese got into Indian-style curry in the first place. Not that it was bad, I loved me some chicken tikka masala, but I wondered how it transferred from India to Japan. Yet another thing I would have GoogleFaced had I had Internet access...

  But it was nice not to be connected, a real good thing, actually, coming from someone who had had high-speed Internet since childhood.

  And seeing this old man and woman made me wonder about their family, and from there, it made me miss my own mother and father. It had been a while since I had talked to them, well, a week, but it felt like it had been a century considering all the things we had gotten into thus far in Japan.

  I would update them in the future; I really didn’t want my mom to worry.

  “I think it’s time,” I said after we had let our food settle. All of us were watching an even stranger Japanese game show in which people dunked their heads into bowls filled with squids while trying to chomp down on a ping-pong ball with their mouths.

  Interesting...

  “Okay, everyone gear up,” Dorian stood, a determined look on her face.

  You didn’t have to ask the CBGs twice.

  It wasn’t five minutes before we were all standing outside in our superhero uniforms, the sun preparing to set in the next hour, a pink hue with purple edges to everything I saw. I had my glasses on, because of course I did, and I adjusted the back strap to make sure they were on tightly.

  I also had a backup pair just in case.

  The plan was to leave all of our stuff here, get Grace and Stella, teleport back here just to get away from the island, and then back to our hotel in Ueno.

  Simple, right?

  “This is going to work,” I said, doing my best to suppress any doubts.

  It wasn’t easy, either.

  It was hard not to be filled with dread when it came to assaulting a powerful enemy on an unknown territory. But that was what we had to do.

  “On me,” Dorian said. “We will use my teleportation power to get as close as possible, and like I said, we will do it from a higher point in the air, so we can see where we need to teleport to next. You said the north side of the island, and that makes sense to me, but it would be best if I could actually see it.”

  “Should I morph now?” Ingrid asked me.

  “Not just yet,” I told her. “We need to be as fluid as possible, and the beast armor could be a bit bulky.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay,” said Veronique, placing her hand on Dorian’s arm. “Once we hit the island, I am in charge. No questions.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  Dorian closed her eyes. “Here we go.”

  The six of us disappeared in a purple flash, reappearing high in the sky, falling toward the sea below. I had one arm on Dorian’s shoulder, Veronique was next to me, Michelle was at her left foot, Ingrid at her right, and Chloe on her right arm and shoulder.

  And with a nod for confirmation, her head craned to the left to get a better look at Hashima Island, Dorian disappeared again, this time appearing on the northern shoreline.

  Actually, if she had just appeared on the shoreline, we would have all landed face first in the sand and rock. No, Dorian actually appeared in the water, Veronique going for my arm almost immediately.

  “I got you,” I told her as we made our way to the shore, the six of us hiding behind a large seawall for a moment to dry off.

  “You knew that this was part of the plan,” I said, ignoring the dirty look Veronique was giving me. “We didn’t want to appear directly on the shore, and the way that we teleported meant we would have face-planted. But it shouldn’t take us long to dry off. Earlier, Vince’s uniforms dried in like ten minutes or something.”

  “It was definitely fast,” Chloe said, wringing her hair out.

  “But we can kickstart the reconnaissance while we are here,” I said, nodding at the seawall, indicating that we should go around the other side. “Are you ready, Chloe?”

  “Yep,” she said.

  Veronique stepped between us. “I’m coming with you if you go.”

  “I would expect nothing less,” I told her.

  The three of us slipped around the side, moving up a set of half-crumbled stairs, shattered seashells everywhere.

  We could see the two tall apartment buildings on the other side of the island, a bunch of debris between them and us. I had the usual powers on deck: Grace’s telepathy, Jules’ power negation and Father’s healing. For my fourth power I had chosen Ingrid’s power, just in case things got out of hand and I needed to Hulk out.

  It was a risky move, but we’d talked about it, and I knew that the creature I transformed into, who I had lovingly named Manchester, could be helpful at times.

  I had the urge to mentally alert Grace that we had come for her, but I hesitated, wondering if they had a telepath searching for such thoughts. Then again, if they did have a telepath searching the area for thoughts, they would have already picked up on us by now.

  So I did it anyway.

  Grace, we are coming for you, I thought aloud.

  A soft wind picked up, blowing to the other side of the island, and once it had subsided, Chloe went to work with her Echolocation power. She was focused now with her eyes closed, her throat growing as bright as I had ever seen it.

  Her eyes opened and she nodded.

  “I am sensing people in both buildings,” she explained, nodding toward the two apartment blocks. “The building on the right has people moving about freely. Six people.”

  “And the building on the left?” I asked with a gulp.

  “It has…” Chloe did her thing again, absolutely no noise reaching my ears. “There is something preventing me from knowing exactly.”

  “So it’s a gamble?” I asked.

  “No, it’s there, there are people there; I just can’t tell the number.”

  “Maybe there are more,” said Veronique.

  “Maybe.”

  Chloe’s ears twitched.

  “What else?”

  “Something big, between us and them.”

  “A human?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Someone of that size makes me think it is Smiley.”

  “Fuck…” I whispered.

  More proof that I had been right all along. Damon Lord was working with Natalie Johansson, of all fucking people. I didn’t know if Mother was involved in this, but I had a feeling we were about to find out.

  “We shouldn’t engage Smiley,” Veronique said.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” I told her. “We need to cause a distraction that gets him to focus his attention on the right while we sneak to his left.”

  “That should be easy enough,” said Chloe.

  “Yeah, it shouldn’t be very hard for us to do something like that,” I said. “For now, let’s head back down to the seawall to dry off with the others. Once we come back up, we will do another headcount and see what we come up with. Then we will head toward the building on the left.”

  I felt like we were Scooby and the Gang by the way we comically snuck around Smiley. He was sitting at a picnic table of sorts, hunched over, looking at something, and even though I had told her not to, Michelle snooped on what it was exactly he was doing.

  Playing Solitaire? What in the actual fuck?

&nb
sp; We couldn’t talk at the moment, we were to the left of Smiley, behind a carved-out refinery, all six of us moving as quietly as possible.

  But I did have Grace’s telepathic power on deck, so I was able to open a private chat with the group. The only problem with this was, well, Michelle again, whose thoughts were all over the place.

  I think I could run up in there and rescue Grace and Stella before Smiley saw us. I can run even faster than I did earlier, you know. Maybe you could adjust something in my stats to make me twice as fast as I normally am. I don’t know. You made a print out one time of my abilities and I memorized them, but then I forgot them. I will try to remember them again though, for next time.

  Michelle, quiet, I thought back to her.

  We could get the drop on Smiley right now, Ingrid thought to all of us.

  I turned to her and shook my head, totally understanding why she looked so angry at the moment, her fists clenched tight, her nostrils flaring. Tulip and Smiley sort of had a rivalry going on, and I got it: it was something that Ingrid wanted to put an end to.

  But the more we could avoid that big fucker with the tattooed smile across his face, the better.

  Smiley was sort of like a mix between Bane and Doomsday, the towering bastard solidly in the DC Universe, and we still hadn’t really figured out a way to hurt him. There had been that time that Michelle stabbed him in the head, but he just wore a helmet now. And if that attack had affected him in any way, he hadn’t shown it.

  So, better safe than sorry.

  Eventually, we got to the end of the wall, Chloe peeking out over the other side. It wasn’t very far between us and an entrance to the left apartment building, but there was a wide-open space here, and if Smiley simply looked up to the right, he would see us.

  Which was why we needed a distraction.

  Chloe moved close to Veronique, whispering something in her ear, pointing at a water tower on top of the building opposite us.

  The metal vampire nodded, and red energy started glowing around her wrists as she focused on the water tank, which came unhinged and fell backward, the large crash immediately catching Smiley’s attention.