Cherry Blossom Girls International

by Harmon Cooper

  He stood with a grunt, and as he did, the cards that he had been shielding from the wind went flying away, which seemed to tick him off, Smiley taking a grumpy step toward the possible intrusion.

  We waited for a moment until he was far enough away that he couldn’t see us pass. After confirming that there was no one looking out at us, Chloe again used her Echolocation to confirm the bodies of the six people in the far-right building, and we continued forward.

  Moving with our backs hunched over, we made it to the apartment building on the left, and found a side entrance, letting ourselves in.

  The concrete and steel structure had definitely seen better days, the paint stripped off the walls, the rooms closest to the entrance in disarray. But there had been some improvement here, most notably a glowing clear tube that ran down the hallway, pressed against the floor.

  “Where are they?” I asked Chloe.

  “Gideon, I can run up the stairs and see…”

  “No, Michelle, stop asking to do things like that,” Veronique said harshly. The metal vampire had already moved to a room on the right looking out on the courtyard, checking on Smiley, a red glow around her hands.

  “I just want to be helpful…” the young speedster said under her breath.

  “”You are being helpful, Michelle,” said Ingrid, “just let us do this as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  “Everyone be ready for Plan B,” I told the group. The CBGs were going in prepared this time. We were no longer going to wing it, and just address situations as they happened. Father had made the suggestion before: always have a Plan B. Now we were going to enact it.

  We made our way down the hallway, as carefully and quietly as possible, and came to an elevator that seem to still be working.

  But rather than take it, we took the stairwell, Veronique going in first, followed by Dorian, Chloe, me and the young supers.

  It was when we reached the second floor that Dorian’s hand squeezed my elbow.

  “What’s up?” I asked her.

  “Don’t you feel that?” she asked, straining a bit, squinting.

  “Feel what?”

  “Gideon, I’m not fast anymore,” Michelle said, waving her hand. I had seen her do this before, and if she did this using her real power, it was nothing more than a blur. But I could actually see her hand this time, and see what she was referring to.

  “Is everyone else experiencing power loss?”

  “I don’t want to try to take my beast armor here,” Ingrid said, “but I feel something different.”

  Chloe nodded, a concerned look on her face. Veronique saw a nail on the ground and lifted her palm toward it, the nail doing absolutely nothing.

  I tried thinking aloud to them, and then asked if they heard my voice.

  All five of them shook their heads.

  “There is some type of power nullification going on,” I said, focusing on Jules’ power, feeling it move through me. I tried to think to them again, and suddenly, they were nodding.

  You can hear me now? I thought in their heads. Good.

  “Yes,” Ingrid said. “There’s a power nullifier somewhere, and you are nullifying their power with your power nullification, which means you are able to…”

  “Able to what?”

  “You are actually useful for once,” she said with all sincerity.

  “Actually useful for once?”

  Dorian couldn’t help but snicker, bringing her hand to her mouth to cover her laugh.

  “I’m always useful,” I reminded them. “My usefulness just presents itself in mysterious ways, like right now. So to recap, I’m the only one that can use powers, and I can only use them at about the sixty-percent mark.”

  “Sounds about right,” Ingrid said.

  “Okay, then we are going to have to rely on me going forward. We can’t stop now.”

  “No, of course we can’t.” Veronique looked up, a puff of air moving inside her cheeks. “We must be getting nearer to the source; we were able to use our powers on the first floor.”

  Chloe cleared her throat. “Let’s just hurry then. We are in a very confined space right now, and you and I both know,” she said, looking to Veronique, “that this is a worst-case scenario.”

  “Definitely,” Veronique said. “Gideon, lead the way.”

  Pins and needles. With each step we took to the next floor, I felt more and more terrified as to what we would discover on the floors above. I just didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and I’d been doing this long enough to know that a fight was coming our way, regardless of how quiet we kept our little excursion here.

  There was always a new battle on the horizon, but that came with the territory.

  And I knew this.

  I could tell that I wasn’t the only one who was on edge. The five CBGs without their powers now all as vulnerable as they had ever been before. They were gathered around me; I would do my best to protect them if something happened, and had already replaced Tulip’s power with Dorian’s teleportation ability.

  I only worried that I wouldn’t be able to teleport all of them together.

  But what else could I do?

  These were the types of things that we were supposed to train for, yet hadn’t had the wherewithal to test.

  It was when we reached the fourth floor that I noticed the five of them cringing, their brows furrowed, a vein bulging on the side of Dorian’s head.

  It struck me as odd what power nullification could do to someone with a super ability, but as long as I had Jules’ power on deck, it didn’t seem to affect me in the same way. I recalled the time that he and I had gotten into a fight, how strange that we had nullified each other’s abilities.

  This was different.

  By nullifying the nullification, as weird as that sounded, I was actually able to use my other powers.

  Weird.

  There had been some renovations on the fourth floor. The space was still antiquated, stained in rust, the rooms filled with abandoned furniture. It was almost as if someone had sliced the building in two and opened it up, installing a circular room, and then reattaching the top.

  I could still see the old structure of the place, the abandoned homes, but now there was a new wall in front of us, a curved structure made of metal.

  Whatever was nullifying their powers was coming from behind that curved wall.

  “Take mine,” Veronique said, extending her hand to me.

  I noticed a metal door in front of us; we didn’t know if it was locked, but I had to assume that it would be, especially since there was an eye-scanning device to the right of the door.

  “First take out that device,” Veronique said. “And I don’t know how to explain to you how to do this, but you will need to disable all electronics in the space.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know about that…”

  “I figured as much,” she said with a huff. “Let’s just start by destroying the scanner; it may trigger something if someone opens the door, and their eye hasn’t been scanned.”

  “I wish we could sense what was on the other side,” Chloe said. “If I had my Sound Detection…”

  “Or if I could teleport there; that’d be even easier,” Dorian whispered.

  “Even if we could teleport there,” I told Dorian, “it may be a bad idea.”

  “And just blowing off the door is a good idea?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Ingrid. “Either way we cut it, we are probably going to trigger an alarm. So let’s go quickly.”

  “Okay.”

  I touched Veronique’s hand, pushing Dorian’s teleportation power out. I planned to take it again in a moment, but I needed Veronique’s power to deal with all the metal.

  The first thing I did was take down the eye scanning device, and from there I focused on the door handle, eventually able to rip it out of its socket, the metal door swinging wide open and revealing…

  “Holy fuck,” Michelle whispered as we all caught a glimpse of what was inside
.

  “Language,” I said as we took in a circular room with a large yellow dome in its center. A boy sat in the dome, his back to us as he played video games. He had headphones on too, and if any alarms were going off, we couldn’t hear them.

  “What is this place?” Chloe whispered.

  The room was designed in a circular fashion with four doors, one in each of the cardinal directions. The walls between the doors were cages of sorts, and I nearly did a backflip when I saw who was in the first cell.

  Angel?

  Sure enough, that aunt-fucking Mother-fucker was sleeping with his back to the entrance of his cell, patches of his black hair barely growing back, the dude looking weaker than I’d ever seen him look before.

  I’d been the one that had screwed up his hairdo; it was when I had taken my beast form, Manchester, and had proceeded to treat him like I was auditioning for the role of Bamm-Bamm Rubble, pulling most of his hair out as I beat him against the ground.

  And instinctively, because maybe I was an idiot, my hand went to the locked door keeping Angel from the rest of the world.

  What are you doing? Veronique thought to me, her hand coming to mine.

  Angel is here. That means he is an enemy as well, and he may know what is going on.

  Grace and Stella are in that one! Michelle thought to all of us. I see them!

  I almost asked her if she had used her power, but then I realized that she couldn’t, so I simply nodded in her direction, following her finger to what she was pointing at.

  Sure enough, I saw two forms in a cell not far from us, both clearly Grace and Stella.

  “Don’t tell me we are getting Angel before we get Grace and Stella,” Veronique whispered.

  I put my finger to my mouth, reminding her to be quiet.

  The problem with getting Grace and Stella first was that we would likely be in view of the boy playing video games. I hesitated for a moment as I looked back to the metal dome, where the boy was playing the newest installment of Red Dead Redemption.

  “Kill him, Gideon,” Veronique said to me suddenly, no longer caring if she was being quiet or not.

  “Kill the boy?”

  I looked to Chloe and Dorian, both of whom nodded. I then glanced to Michelle and Ingrid, both of whom had looks of apprehension on their faces.

  “I can’t… We don’t know who he is…”

  “Gideon, you said I was in charge here,” Veronique said, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Whatever that kid is, he is the one stopping Grace and Stella from using their powers. He is an enemy, a creation of Damon Lord.”

  “I…”

  “Dammit, Gideon,” Veronique said, her eyes narrowing on me. “I would have already done it by now if I had my power. You know what? I will still do it. I’ll figure out a way to open the door on the dome. Give me the knife I made you.”

  “Gideon?” a man’s voice asked. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  We turned to find Angel glaring at us, the formerly muscular man now rail thin, hunched over slightly, one hand holding his other arm, looking like the cat dragged him in after a long night.

  “Not rescuing you, that’s for sure,” Veronique told him.

  “Bah,” he said, waving his hand like he couldn’t care less. “I knew when they brought those two that you would come. It would only be a matter of time. And I don’t need your rescuing.”

  “That’s not what it looks like from here,” Chloe told him.

  “Traitor. Shut your fucking mouth!” He coughed, a long, drawn-out cough.

  “What is this place?” I asked him.

  Angel spit. “What the hell does it look like, you fool? The kid in the center is a power nullifier, a dirty little fucker too, only plays video games. Never goes out. Sometimes they let him use the VR rig. His power is constantly on. Even when Damon Lord comes, they have to be careful around him.”

  I looked to the boy in the dome, still playing games, completely oblivious to the fact that he had company. “He’s that strong?”

  Angel nodded, starting to cough again.

  “How long have you been here?” Michelle asked.

  “Quiet, Michelle,” Veronique hissed.

  “No, it’s a good question,” said Dorian. “How long have you been here?”

  “I’ve been like this for… Since…” He frowned. “I don’t know how long. Since we attacked you in Seattle. That’s all I can remember. I mean, that’s the last thing I can remember. Sorry. My… Thoughts…”

  “So a month,” I said.

  “It’s been a month? Fuck…” I watched as Angel’s eyes fluttered, and even though I knew he was technically our archenemy, I sort of felt bad for the poor fucker.

  “Well, good luck,” Veronique said, turning away from him. “Gideon, you know what to do.”

  “Do it,” Dorian said.

  I had seen Dorian kill, and seeing Veronique kill was par for the course. And there was part of me that knew they were right, that I should neutralize this kid now, but if he was treated like them, just a boy brought up in a lab, what did he do to deserve that?

  “Kill him or don’t kill him, they are coming,” Angel said with a grunt. He nodded up at the ceiling. “You see those red lights? That’s new. It means they’re watching us now.”

  I lifted my hand toward the ceiling and stopped, noticing the blinking red lights. I turned back to Angel’s cage, popping the handle open.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Veronique asked, baring her teeth.

  “Veronique, you are right, I should do something about this kid, but I can’t kill him. I just can’t. And I can’t leave Angel here. Whatever they are doing here is wrong…”

  “Back on your high horse,” she started to say, but even though she was glaring at me, I saw the flash behind her eyes, a flash that indicated to me that she knew that I was just being myself, that I truly did not want to see people suffer, including the kid, including our aunt-fiddling archenemy.

  “Gideon’s right,” Michelle said, her voice wavering. “I hate our enemies just as much as the rest of you, but this kid hasn’t done anything to us yet. He’s just playing video games.”

  “Let me handle this my own way, and from this point forward, the mission is yours again, Veronique.”

  “That’s not the way this is supposed to work,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Just trust me.” I turned to the boy; I knew it would be better if he was at least knocked out, so I walked up to the yellow dome and tapped it with my fist.

  When he didn’t notice, I lifted my hand again, red energy radiating around my palm.

  I placed my hand on the glass and the kid shot up, craning his head to the left as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. He gasped when his eyes fell on me; it was then that I started draining his power, the boy going from shocked to sleepy, his skin turning purple, and energy coming into me that I had only felt a few times previously.

  He collapsed forward, cracking his head against the TV stand, out cold.

  “It’s back,” Angel said, taking a deep breath in. “My powers. I can feel them.”

  Dorian and Michelle moved to Grace and Stella’s cell in a flash, returning with both of them, Grace in her base form, her real form, and Stella with her eyes just barely open as Michelle hoisted her up.

  “Grace,” I said, taking her from Dorian immediately. I brought my hand to her cheek, feeling a burst of energy as I started to heal her.

  I was running on instinct now, oblivious to my surroundings, the periphery blurring. It was just Grace and me, her dark hair, pale skin, thin figure, and my healing touch.

  And it had been a mistake.

  I knew it as soon as the door across from us kicked open, Smiley ripping the door from its frame and chucking it across the room.

  It was Angel who stopped the door, the once greasy bruiser taking the brunt of the hit and throwing the door to the side.

  “Go!” Angel shouted to us, true fear in his
eyes. “Get out of here, now!”

  And that’s when Grace woke up.

  And when Grace woke up, especially after the torment she had been through, it was an utterly excruciating experience.

  Her eyes blazed white as she screamed in all of our heads, the psychic shifter floating up, her body rapidly changing through every form she’d ever taken. Some of the CBGs got the hell out of the way, but I stayed strong, reaching my arms out to Grace and bringing her back into me as she gasped, finally awake.

  “Gideon,” she said, her voice scratchy.

  “I’m here, Grace!”

  Smiley grabbed Angel by the neck and threw him into the wall. Angel burst through another door and into what was left of the apartment beyond.

  “We need to go,” Dorian started to say, and as she did, she stumbled forward, her hands at the back of her head like something had struck her.

  The invisible person.

  “I see her!” Michelle said.

  “Her?” I asked as I lowered Grace to her feet, and went over to Stella, who was being protected by Ingrid, the young morpher now in her beast armor.

  “Michelle! Do something!”

  “Okay, Gideon!”

  It was already chaotic in the small space, Smiley and Angel in the other room duking it out, the power-negating boy still in the center dome passed out, a crack already on its yellow surface. Grace was with Chloe now, Dorian trembling as she got back to her knees, Veronique already on her way to see to Smiley.

  Fwwwittt!

  An arc of blood graffitied the space between Dorian and me.

  This was followed by another spritz of crimson, and even with all the sounds of the fight in the other room, I could hear a woman gasp.

  I choked back a cry of shock as someone who looked exactly like Veronique appeared out of thin air, stumbling, bloodied gashes across her chest, another one along the side of her neck, not quite cutting her throat, but not far off.

  “She looks just like her,” I said, my hand on Stella’s head now as I tried to heal her and simultaneously figure out what the hell was going on.

  “Got her,” Michelle said, standing over the woman, her blade at her sides. “Do I finish?” she asked, looking up at me.