Peasprout Chen--Battle of Champions

by Henry Lien

  She passes other senseis in the opening of the stadium wall leading out to the rails, who turn and exit with her.

  Sensei Madame Liao. And the Chairman.

  Fine, let them watch. I’m going to show them how a strange, extreme, and intensely lonely girl takes first place at this Annexation. I’m going to show them how a girl from Shin is the best person to keep Pearl safe.

  We plant the banner for Nobody and the Fire-Chickens in the center of the sandy floor. Yinmei and Cricket position themselves back-to-back and array their central gong and eight bells on stands in a circle around themselves.

  Doi, Hisashi, and I leap up the rows of stadium seating and stand atop the narrow track formed by the roof above the seats. Below, Cricket is holding two mirrored shields. He’s examining the tether strung at the top of the arena that reaches from one edge of the radial to the other. It’s not flexible rope, though, because it actually arches rather than sags in the middle.

  Cricket unclasps the sash from the waist of his inner robe. He takes the two shields, ties their inner handles together, and whips the shields up at the tether. They catch, circle, and slam against each other. Their curved, mirrored surfaces now provide a view of the entire panorama over the edge of the radial’s wall. My chest swells with pride at his ingenuity. Cricket and Yinmei will be able to see where the invaders are coming from before they climb over the wall!

  The boom of a cannon splits the air. Something red comes shooting up over the wall toward us in an arc, a banner weighted on both ends. It catches on the tether and unfurls, reading WAVE NUMBER ONE.

  On the floor below, Yinmei looks up at the mirrors and rings the bell for tone two at the same moment that Cricket rings the bell for tone seven. Invaders are coming at us from the northeast and the west.

  I take the invader from the northeast. He or she scrabbles over the wall like some slow, crusted monster from the deep. The invader leads with the right leg, like most girls, so I assume she’s a girl. The armor and the lack of skates make her about as nimble as a jumble of shells strung together. I spin at her in a double-toe quadruple scythe spin. In one fluid motion, she blocks my leap with the mirrored shield, immediately followed by whipping her other claw, which ends in a bouquet of horns, at me.

  I raise my mirrored shield to block the heavy claw, but the force of the impact sends me sliding back on the circular track. This is not going to be as easy as I thought.

  I hear a clatter below and see that Hisashi and Doi have sent the invader from the west crashing down to the sand below. They race along the track around the radial and come at my invader from her eastern side.

  The bell indicating northeast is the only one that continues to sound, so we just have this one invader at present.

  Hisashi leaps and executes a single-footed mantis cleaver jump at my invader, his extended skate blade jerking down like a mantis claw toward her feet. She blocks and sends Hisashi crashing down to the sand. His robe stiffens at the impact of his landing. He stands up to show that he is unharmed, thumping a fist on the cloth that has momentarily hardened into armor. “That’s Cricket power!” he shouts as he clambers back up to the circular track.

  I execute the identical move at the invader from the other direction. She blocks that, too, just in time, but then Doi executes the same move again. This time, Doi’s skate slices under her boots, sending the invader plummeting to the sand with a satisfying crunch.

  There is a boom, and another banner comes hurtling down and hangs itself on the tether, announcing WAVE NUMBER TWO.

  Cricket and Yinmei gaze up at the mirrors tied to the tether above. Their fingers shoot out and five tones ring in the air, indicating north, northeast, southeast, south, and west. Doi and Hisashi deploy to the east, I deploy to the west.

  I reach my invader just as he lifts his leg over the parapet wall and onto the track. He leads with his left leg like most boys, and he’s less agile than the girl invader, especially wrapped in plate upon plate of armor. I skate toward him from his southward side, and he raises the horned ends of his arms preparing to smash them down on me.

  However, at the last moment, I pound my fists down on the forcedrum strapped to my waist. I shoot far over in an arc and land behind him. He doesn’t have time or room enough to pivot around to face me on this slender track. I press my legs tight together and perform a double-soled flying dolphin tail strike, slapping him down to the sand below so hard that he bounces and plates of armor go shooting off in different directions.

  Of the bells that Cricket and Yinmei are still playing, the loudest and most urgent bell is indicating north. I turn in that direction and see Doi caught between two invaders. I drum my fists on the forcedrum, which shoots me forward so that I’m skating on the parapet wall itself. As I hurtle toward the back of the first invader, I fold a roundhouse loop into my path, swinging my skate hard into the side of the armored helmet and sending this one down to the sand.

  Doi ducks, and I continue skating on the wall over her, straight at her second invader. He steps forward and holds his shield toward me, but he makes the mistake of looking at me around the shield so that his helmet is exposed. I change the aim of my extended skate and channel my gathered Chi into a twisting motion.

  My skate blade flies at his face, but he seems unconcerned since the only part of his head that is vulnerable is a tiny slit in the helmet for his eyes. As I twist in the air toward him, I time my rotation so that when my skate impacts his helmet, it slots into the slit in his helmet. It doesn’t go in nearly deep enough to touch his face but the skate blade locks like a coin twisting open a slot. The momentum of my twisting jump turns him enough to send him sliding off his feet and slipping off the track down to the sand below.

  I land on the track and duck down as I hear Doi pound on her forcedrum and spring over me in a single-footed frog hop toward the southeast corner. She builds speed and skates on the parapet wall.

  South of me, I see Hisashi mirroring her, skating on the wall as well. They hurl themselves toward the two invaders caught between them. At the last moment, they pound their forcedrums and explode in a twin flurry blade formation that I don’t recognize. They easily knock both the invaders off the track and down onto the sand.

  Before these invaders have time to even exit the arena, we hear another boom, and another banner comes shooting over, announcing WAVE NUMBER THREE.

  Cricket and Yinmei strike the bells with their fingers. North, northeast, east, southeast, south, west, northwest.

  Hisashi, Doi, and I spread out, equally distant from one another. The two invaders I meet at the west and northwest have armored limbs that each end in clusters like knobby, deformed mushrooms. They crowd me so that I don’t have any room to take a leap at them. They coordinate their attacks, taking turns to hammer down on me with one blow after another so that I’m spending all my time blocking one or the other with my shield. I take a blow to the hip and another to the shoulder, but Cricket’s pearlstarch snaps the cloth of my robe into a hard plate of armor at each strike.

  Then they swing at me with all of their arms at once. I duck and leap down to the sand below and end in a roll, saved again by Cricket’s pearlstarch. Above me, the two invaders can’t stop the momentum of their swings. They clobber each other in the helmet, hard. They stagger a moment, then come crashing down toward me. I roll away just before they land and cover my head as sand and plates of armor blast over me.

  Yinmei rings the central gong furiously, indicating that the banner itself is endangered. To the east, I see that one of the invaders has climbed down to the sand. He is wading across in labored steps made more difficult by the weight of the armor. Even so, he’s only five steps from our banner. Brave Cricket has stationed himself in front of Yinmei and our banner, but he can’t use any wu liu on this sand, and I’ll never be able to make it to them in time.

  Above us, Doi and Hisashi turn at the sound of the central gong. They simultaneously bang on their forcedrums and explode downward, blades aimed a
t the head of the invader advancing to our banner. Hisashi lands first from the northeast, but the invader pivots in time. She swipes a claw at Hisashi. The point catches his skate in the empty space between the boot and the blade, and she uses the force of his own leap to whip him into the side of the stadium. He crashes into the perimeter barrier, actually cracking the pearl.

  An instant later, Doi’s skate strikes the invader’s chest, sending her sliding backward on her rear end with enough force that she plows a trough through the sand all the way down to the pearl surface of the radial underneath.

  Doi and I look to Hisashi. He stands but holds up his skate. The blade is snapped in two. “I’m out,” he calls to us. “I’ll stay down here and protect the banner.”

  Doi and I each do three-pointed leaps up the stadium seating to the track above. Doi ascends on the north side; I ascend on the south. However, as I land on the track, the blade on my right skate snaps off. I reach out to catch the blade in time before it falls to the floor below. Thank the Heavenly August Personage of Jade, it’s unbroken; it just came loose. Then I look up to see the three screws that had held it in place tumble through the air and bury themselves deep in the sand.

  Bells ring out furiously, and I look to the directions indicated. Across the way, Doi is fighting an invader on either side of her, while two more invaders begin to make the difficult climb in armor down the covered stadium seating to the sand below.

  “Peasprout!” hollers Cricket. “Use your shield!”

  What does he mean, use my shield? No one’s attacking me.

  “The wall is a chute!” he cries.

  The wall is a chute. The shield is a missile.

  I take the mirrored shield, set it down on the track I’m standing on, and kick it as hard as I can along the track.

  It slides on the track of the pearl, whipping along the curving wall. It speeds toward the two invaders holding on to the edge of the track as they start to make their slow, armored way down to the sand. The shield slices along the path, scraping them off the track one after the other, sending them bouncing onto their rear ends onto the sand.

  My shield continues whipping along the path, barely slowed. One of the invaders flanking Doi blocks my shield with his own, sending my shield bouncing back along the circular track toward me. I stick my remaining skate blade out as it comes at me, popping up when it hits. I pluck it out of the air.

  The two invaders then turn back to Doi and resume pounding at her as she cowers under her shield. The invader on the left brings both antlered arms down on Doi’s shield so hard that it splits in two. Doi takes the remaining piece of shield, which is now a sharp, slender shard of mirrored metal, and begins lunging its point toward the viewing slit in the invader’s helmet, curbing her strikes so as to distract but not injure.

  Doi slips one skate blade under the invader’s feet. As the invader plummets down, one of the antlered arms catches on Doi’s blade. With two cracks, the antler snaps just as Doi’s skate blade snaps. Doi and the invader go tumbling down together.

  At this point, the exhilaration of being back at school and competing is starting to wear off and the fatigue is starting to take over. The final remaining invader looks at me. She begins clambering over from the east side of the radial. I sling my shield along the track at her, but she blocks it with her shield, sending it back to me again and again. She plows toward me in solitary tortoise formation. She has learned from the others not to peer over the shield. She stomps along the track toward me, blind but impenetrable. I can’t use the forcedrum to leap above and behind her because I don’t trust myself to land on the slim track on my one remaining skate blade.

  I sling the shield down the circular track at her again and again, and all I get is my own shield bouncing back to me.

  “Peasprout!” cries Cricket from below. “Use the architecture!”

  Use the archi—

  “It’s a radial!” he continues. “It’s circular!”

  Then I realize it. Heavenly August Personage of Jade. My brother is a genius.

  I stop kicking my shield along the track toward the invader’s shielded frontside. Instead, I turn and whip my shield down the track in the other direction, toward the invader’s unprotected backside.

  The shield is traveling so quickly that the metal sings against the pearl.

  Below, Cricket and Yinmei strike a riot of tones on the bells.

  They’re trying to mask the sound of the shield for me as it flies toward the invader’s backside. It’s working! The invader has no idea about the shield racing toward her back. She’s continuing to advance in my direction with her shield facing me.

  The shield sweeps the invader’s feet out from under her, hard. She does a full backward somersault in the air. She bounces down on the track with a clatter, flops over the edge, and rolls down to the sand below.

  I turn to Doi, down on the floor of the radial.

  “It’s no use!” she cries, holding up her broken skate. “I’m out!”

  Another boom as a banner hurls into the air and lashes on to the tether. WAVE NUMBER LUCKY.

  “My blade just came off,” I cry down to my battleband. “Can anyone unscrew a blade and toss me up the screws?”

  “There’s nothing here to unscrew with!” says Cricket.

  We’re only on the luckieth wave, and I’m the last skater remaining on the track with one good skate. There’s no way that we’re going to top the current high score of eight waves. Not even close. And the Chairman and Sensei Madame Liao are watching all of this somewhere.

  We needed more people in our battleband. I should have let Suki join. I should have considered—

  What is happening below? Yinmei has stepped onto her swiftboard and taken up her poles. She’s able to move on the sand using her swiftboard far better than we can on our skates. She’s pushing her way across the radial, toward the entrance leading out of the arena.

  “Where are you going?” I shout at her.

  She twists around and yells back, “You said you were serious about winning.”

  “So you’re going to just abandon us because we’re not winning?” I cry out.

  She doesn’t bother answering, just continues through the exit of the radial leading out to the rails.

  “Peasprout, look out!” Cricket glances at the mirrored shields strung above him. His fingers shoot out all at once to six directions, then seven, then eight.

  “Cricket? What are you doing?”

  “It’s three groups coming up the walls one after another!”

  The first six invaders crest the parapet wall. I ready to throw my shield.

  Then, they all stop.

  They’re talking to their comrades below, over on the other side of the wall.

  Through the entrance of the radial, Yinmei pushes back in on her swiftboard. She moves slowly because something is attached to the end of her board. It’s her academy outer cloak tied into the form of a sack.

  When she reaches the center of the radial, she unties the sack. Tens of skates tumble out onto the sand. She picks up one skate. She announces in a high clear voice like a Meijing opera singer, “Here is the skate signed by Little Ching-Ching, legend of Pearlian opera and winner of the Pearl Shining Sun Most Precious Skater Award.”

  “That’s mine!” shouts someone atop the radial.

  Yinmei calls up to the owner of the skate, “Come no closer, or this shall go into the sea.”

  Hisashi makes his way to Yinmei’s side. Yinmei might not have the strength to fling the skate hard enough so that it goes into the sea, but no one can doubt that Hisashi does.

  Yinmei continues, “And this one skate has an inscription on it. Two logograms intertwined. Ong and Song.”

  One of the invaders on the parapet climbs over and stands on the track. He takes off his helmet. It’s that Ong Hong-Gee, the boy who, along with his boyfriend, were so kind to Doi, Cricket, and me last year.

  “Disciple Wu Yinmei,” he says. “Please don’t do anyth
ing to that skate. It belonged to my ancestor. She died fighting in the Bamboo Invasion. I gave it to my beloved Song Matsu when we declared our bond with each other.”

  “Then you must stand down, and all the other opponents with you,” demands Yinmei. “And our battleband must be granted the first place in this Annexation. If not, this skate and all the others will go into the sea.”

  She hands the skate to Hisashi. He takes it and assumes the ibex bow position, readying to launch it over the wall of the radial into the sea at her command.

  “What are you two doing?” I shout. “Hisashi, you drop that skate now! That’s an order!”

  “We are helping us to win,” says Yinmei smoothly.

  “This isn’t winning! This is cheating!”

  “This is not cheating,” she replies. “This is besieging the cloister of Xie to rescue the kingdom of Wo. A time-honored battle strategy.”

  “No one’s going to reward that kind of tactic here. This isn’t Shin.”

  “It will be Shin if you do not employ this kind of tactic.”

  I feel the silence in the radial. Everyone must be thinking of the Empress Dowager’s threats to invade Pearl.

  “She’s bluffing,” says another of the invaders on the parapet.

  Yinmei nods to Hisashi. He winces and says, “Really?”

  She nods again.

  He says to Ong Hong-Gee, “Aiyah, friend. I’m very sorry.”

  “Hisashi, don’t—”

  He sends the skate soaring in a high arc over the radial. Everyone holds their breath.

  Someone cries, “The coiling water dragon!”

  Far off, from the northwest, we hear the tiny splash. We wait.

  No rising metallic hum, no approaching scream and roar. Only silence, broken by something that sounds like a whimper. We all look to the source. Ong Hong-Gee, that proud, kind, good young man, is covering his mouth, forcing back tears.