Cherry Blossom Girls International

by Harmon Cooper

  “It appears so.”

  Famous. Last. Words.

  A portal split open next to me, swallowing Ingrid up. I was shoved inside, Stella immediately jumping to my aid, colliding with Angel, both of them falling into the portal with me.

  Suddenly, we were all standing in a vast plain, the sun setting at a different point in the sky than it had been in Japan, rolling hills as far as the eye could see.

  The portal shut before any of us could do anything, before I could even attempt to get my bearings.

  “Fuck…” Angel said as he got to his feet. I sensed that he wanted to shove Stella, but he didn’t; instead, he begrudgingly offered her his hand.

  The vector manipulator did not take Angel’s hand. She got up on her own, looking around the area and then back to me.

  “We’re not in Japan,” she said.

  “Clearly,” said Ingrid, who was still in her beast armor, now towering over us, well, not exactly towering, but a few feet taller.

  “But the others…” I started to say.

  “They got away, Gideon,” Ingrid assured me. “They must have…”

  “There are a lot of superpowers I hate,” Angel started to say, “but the one that I hate the most are teleporters and portal users who actually know how to use their abilities offensively. Who knows where the hell we are.” He kicked at the dirt, frustration radiating off his form.

  “Maybe I can figure it out using my phone…” I said, going for my side pocket. Then I remembered that I’d been holding my phone when the water came, that….

  Dammit…

  Sometimes I felt like such a goddamn amateur.

  You really should have a waterproof case by now, Writer Gideon, I thought to myself in Grace’s voice. You idiot!

  “Never mind,” I grumbled, shaking my head at my own shortcomings.

  “There’s only one way to find out where we are,” Angel growled. “And that is finding civilization. It’s going to take me some time to be able to fly again. I was already weak, and I put most of my energy into stopping that motherfucker Smiley from crushing my skull.”

  “Well, it looks like we may need each other’s help to get out of here.”

  “Fuck, Gideon, why do you have to make things so goddamn awkward?” he asked, gritting his teeth as he glanced to Ingrid and Stella. “Of course we’re teaming up, for now. And I haven’t forgotten what you’ve done to me, all of it.”

  I shrugged. “You have to admit it was kind of funny when you had your normal-sized head but a little body…”

  “Watch it,” he said, as Ingrid snickered.

  “I can lift us on the air,” Stella started to say, and she probably would have done just that had it not been for something grabbing me from behind, a sharp object coming to my throat.

  “No one move or I kill him,” a female voice said from behind me, her blade pressing into my Adam’s apple. “This ends here.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Reverse Shield

  The invisible woman had been the one who had shoved me into the portal.

  I could tell this when I looked as far as I could to my right and saw nothing, yet still felt the blade against my neck.

  I was surprised to hear Angel speak. “I don’t care if you kill him, but if you do kill him, you are aware that we will just kill you, right?”

  “Don’t care?” I asked, slightly offended. And I was definitely scared, not in the least bit stoked to have a blade pressed against my throat, but to hear Angel put it so bluntly…

  “You won’t find me,” she hissed. “I will kill him, and then I will quickly kill each of you.”

  “Gideon, this is going to hurt,” Stella said, lifting her hands, light green energy swirling around her fingertips.

  “Do it, I dare you,” the woman hissed. “We will fly backward, and I will make sure to bring the blade across his neck when I do.”

  I smiled at Ingrid, Angel, and Stella, offering up a shit-eating grin that I could tell none of them had yet to interpret.

  There were several ways I could handle the invisible lady considering the powers I had on deck.

  I could melt the blade away—it was close enough that I sensed it; I could also drain her power; or I could nullify her ability to turn invisible, letting the others take her.

  Ultimately, I chose to do a combo of all my options.

  The blade was close enough to make it easier to control the metal, which I quickly turned to putty as I activated Jules’ Power Negation, the woman going from invisible to visible in a matter of seconds.

  Using her shock as a distraction, I stepped out of the way.

  And it was at that point that Stella had her, the woman pinned to the ground, trapped beneath one of Stella’s shields.

  She was invisible again by this point, I had let up on my power negation so Stella could use her ability, which made it look kind of strange, just a half sarcophagus on the ground, occasionally pulsing as someone punched from the other side.

  “Well, you have trapped her,” Angel said with disdain. “But we’re going to have to let her up eventually, or you could just bury her.”

  “Do we kill her?” Stella asked me. And while she was sometimes like Veronique, I saw the difference in her personality in that single question.

  Veronique would have never asked at this point; the woman would have been shriveled up by now if the metal vampire had been here.

  And even though I was supposed to be focusing on what was happening, I couldn’t help but worry in that instant about the others, hoping that they had gotten away.

  What if Damon has ambushed them?

  No, they got away, I thought as I watched Stella continue to contain the invisible woman. They must have. Focus, Writer Gideon, I reminded myself.

  The invisible woman was putting up a pretty good fight, and I could tell by the power of her hits that she had some sort of enhanced strength. Still, not enough to break Stella’s shield.

  “We don’t kill her,” Angel finally said. Oddly enough, I got the sense that he had been waiting for me to give an answer, but when I hadn’t, he’d stepped up.

  “Leverage?” Ingrid asked. The beast morpher was back in her sixteen-year-old girl form now, no evidence whatsoever that she had been in a towering beast suit just moments before. I still didn’t know how Vince Porter had done it, how he allowed her armor to account for her size change, but he suceeded.

  And her outfit didn’t even look stretched.

  “She may be the smartest one in your group,” Angel said, grinning at me.

  “Why does everyone say that about her?” Stella asked, a tinge of jealousy in her voice.

  “What is her relation to Damon Lord?” I asked Angel. “You were there for a month,” I reminded him.

  “I’m surprised he didn’t have more of his underlings when you came,” Angel said, not quite answering my question. “Many were there just a few weeks back, or at least I think it was a few weeks.” Something flashed across his eyes, a haze of confusion. “I was in that place for a long time.”

  “A month, you were in there a month,” I reminded him.

  “It felt longer than that. Just me and that little shit-for-brains kid with his power nullification…” Angel clenched his fists at his sides. “Anyway. Damon Lord does care for his own. And wherever he went, once he realizes she is missing, he will want her back. Who is she to him? I don’t know. Haven’t seen her before. But I’m guessing he’ll come after her.”

  “We should get a name from her,” Ingrid said. “It’s better than referring to her as the ‘invisible woman.’”

  “Good call,” I said. “What’s your name?” I asked down to the now visible woman. She spit, her saliva hitting Stella’s shield and splashing back into her own face.

  “Spit—we’ll just call her that for now,” Angel said.

  “Fuck you,” the woman told me, flashing me two middle fingers.

  “You are our prisoner for now,” I told her, lifting my hand and showing her my palm
. “And if I were you, I would answer our questions, and do what we ask.”

  I activated Veronique’s power, draining some of the woman’s life force. She lay back on the ground, cringing as she stared at my red palm.

  “Arianna,” she finally said, her voice trembling. “Arianna Lord.”

  “Okay, so she has a name,” I told our little group. “And I’m starting to see a trend here in the names of Damon’s minions…”

  “Fuck you,” she whispered. “I’m no minion.”

  “And since we’re on the subject, what’s the name of the albino shifter lady?”

  “Fuck… you…”

  “Not an answer,” I told her as I drained a bit more.

  “Regina Lord…”

  “Okay, Damon, Regina and Arianna. That’s a start.”

  “We can also extract some information from her while we try to find civilization,” Angel suggested. “I know a few ways.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I told the chiseled man.

  It was weird not seeing his long, greasy dark hair in his face. Ripping all his hair out in Seattle had forced Angel to actually make eye contact with people, which clearly wasn’t one of his superpowers.

  “Let me out of here!” Arianna shouted, kicking against Stella’s vector barrier. “Now!”

  “What do you think, Ingrid?” I asked the young beast morpher. “How do we keep her under our control?”

  “You could just drain her until she passes out like Veronique does, but then one of us would have to carry her. I could do that in my beast armor mode, but if she woke up again, she’d probably turn invisible again and escape.”

  “I will take care of her,” Stella said. “I will make her stay inside a reverse shield.”

  “Reverse shield?” I thought it through for a second. “Oh, I get it, you have put a shield around her in the opposite way, right? That’s why she can’t really do anything about it.”

  “You catch on quick, Gideon, she’s been under that thing for a few minutes now…” Stella said.

  “Sorry, I have a lot on my mind. Like for one, where the hell are we?” I asked, looking around at the endless plains and rolling hills. I didn’t think we were in Oklahoma or Kansas, but this was how I imagined those places looked.

  “I already answered how we are going to figure that out,” Angel said. “Stay on topic. Is he always this scatterbrained?”

  I looked to Ingrid and Stella for support, but got none.

  “I’ve just got a lot on my mind…” I told Angel. “Like getting back to my teammates.”

  “What do you know about how it feels to lose someone you care about?” he asked, taking a menacing step closer to me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you know how much crap your little group has caused the people I care for? Well? Do you? You don’t even know the half of it!” he said, his voice rising.

  I wasn’t about to back down to Angel. Not now, not after everything I’d already been through today. So I took a step in his direction, coming eye to eye with him.

  “Do something if you’re going to do it,” I said, a bit shocked at those words coming out of my own lips, but also proud for standing up for myself. I didn’t take kindly to bullies, at least, not anymore.

  “We’ve already done this before,” he said.

  “Then you know what happens next. If you try anything, I take your power, and then I’m really able to hand you your ass,” I told him.

  “You can’t fight as well as me. You and I both know that, Gideon.”

  “But I can nullify your powers and…”

  “No fighting,” Ingrid said as she stepped between us, shoving both of us back. “Unless you want me to bring Tulip into this. We have more important things to do right now than argue about the past. Those things can be settled later. Right now, we have a shared enemy, Damon Lord and this woman,” she said, pointing at the lady. “Now, how are we going to keep her contained?”

  I nodded at Angel in a way that told him that this wasn’t done yet.

  “I already said how we’re going to do that,” Stella told us. “I’m going to create a larger reverse shield around her, a dome that moves with me. We can start heading in any direction, and once Angel can fly, he can take to the sky and hopefully figure out where we should go.”

  “Let’s head to the west then, toward the setting sun,” Ingrid said. “We are bound to eventually find something.”

  “Okay,” Stella said as she stepped back, her vector shield starting to change shape so that it now almost resembled a half-submerged Easter egg. Arianna stood, her form still visible.

  “The shield is not going away anytime soon,” Stella reminded her, “and once it does go away, Gideon here will drain you of all your energy and you will pass out.”

  “I also have telepathy on deck,” I told Stella under my breath. “Maybe I could try to mess with her mind a bit.”

  Stella considered this for a moment as the woman who looked like Veronique continued to glare in our direction. “It’s worth a shot, but let me keep my shield up for now.”

  “Empty out all of your weapons,” Angel told her as he approached the vector shield. “All of them.”

  She dropped the knife she had earlier, which I could tell was useless anyway considering what I’d done to its blade. From there she went to her bootstrap and pulled out another blade.

  Arianna wore a black outfit that reminded me of what the MercSecure goons usually wore, hers a bit skintight, but with armor along the shoulders, forearms, thighs and shins, as well as a thicker rectangular shape over the front of her body. There was a Velcro flap on the side of her uniform, which she lifted, pulling out several small, curved blades, no larger than playing cards.

  She dropped all of it to the ground, and stepped aside, Stella’s shield moving with her.

  “Take all of it,” Angel told me. “And as we walk, figure out a way to make a pair of handcuffs with the metal.”

  “Do you think that will work?”

  “Of course it’ll work,” he said. “Veronique would have already done something like that by now. Or she would have just killed this woman.”

  “My name is Arianna.”

  “Sure, call yourself whatever you would like, but the name was probably given to you by Damon, and like all of us, you didn’t really have a choice in your name.”

  “You don’t know anything about him!” she seethed.

  “Whatever; we don’t choose our own names.”

  “Grace did,” I told Angel as we started walking east. I had all the metal in my hands now in a large metal ball. I was trying to treat it like Play-Doh, but it wasn’t working as well as I hoped it would. If we stopped, and allowed me to focus for a moment, that would probably do the trick.

  But for now, we were still walking.

  “Grace is a different story entirely,” Angel said, staring off at the horizon. “But I’m guessing you already know that.”

  “I do.”

  “And to be clear, once we get to civilization and you can get back with your group, I will take Arianna with me,” Angel said with a smile. “I know someone who will be pleased to see her.”

  “You’re going to take her?” I asked, looking to Stella for confirmation. She simply nodded, her focus on keeping the vector shield around Arianna.

  “Of course I am. Do you think your little group is really going to be able to take an actual hostage and use them as leverage?”

  “You know, I’m pretty sure it’s something we have already done before,” I told him, not having to remind him that we had basically done this with Veronique and Chloe, hell, and Dorian.

  It was the easiest way to get a new member.

  “Sure, you’ve had a few successes,” Angel said, “but I don’t think you would truly know how to use this woman to bring Damon to his knees. And believe me, Gideon, what this guy represents is even worse than anything my little group could have conjured up.”

  “I have lot
s of questions about your ‘little group,’” I told him, shaking my head.

  “And you have plenty of time to ask them. It appears as if we are literally in the middle of nowhere.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Journey Ahead

  So we walked.

  I still didn’t know where we were, but wherever it was, it was beautiful in a barren sort of way. I couldn’t imagine living in an environment like this; it felt completely foreign to my natural setting of New England, which was known for its trees, mountains, and rock features, the beautiful spring blooms, the verdant green summer, the fall leaves, and the inevitable winter.

  I didn’t know what this place looked like during the four seasons, but I could tell that it got cold as balls here, something I definitely noticed as we walked, as the sun started to disappear on the horizon, the temperature dropping.

  I thought then that we were in a desert, this assumption based solely on my knowledge of temperature dropping in warm places and such. But honest to God, I did not know where we were, and it wasn’t like there was a streetlamp somewhere or a sign.

  Nothing.

  Just endless rolling hills, plains and an occasional sparkling stream.

  “Is anyone else hungry?” I asked, just to make conversation.

  We had been silent for the last thirty minutes or so, just focused on finding civilization.

  “Of course,” Stella said, still maintaining her reverse vector shield around Arianna.

  “Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to?” Angel grumbled.

  “I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t the only one,” I told him.

  I had accepted the fact that Angel and I weren’t going to be pen pals. Sure, we had a shared goal in getting to civilization and possibly seeing Damon Lord’s demise, but that was about it.

  So I tried to focus on what we had in common.

  “Why do you think he took you, anyway? You never told us,” I asked him as we started up a hill.

  “He didn’t tell me much,” said Angel. “Only that it was part of his plan. I think he was trying to get to Mother, and no,” he said, stopping and turning to Ingrid, “I haven’t forgotten what you did to her.”