Peasprout Chen--Battle of Champions

by Henry Lien

  My drumblade barely makes it onto the bridge, but I miscalculate the vibrations and the right front and middle drums are smashed off by the balustrade. Ten thousand years of stomach gas. Now I can’t turn left! And I need to turn left to get to the Garden of Whispering Arches to the south. How am I going to—

  Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess comes crashing down in front of me. The sharp, daggerlike points of her two giant skates are aimed at me. Above me, the goddess is flexing her torso and readying to slam down all six arms on me.

  I don’t think; I just react. I pound down on my drums and head straight over the northwest edge of the Principal Island toward the sea.

  I’m able to regain control of my drumblade in time to layer a triple-meter scale up and down my left drums to guide me around the narrow strip separating the Pagoda of Filial Sacrifice from the water. I can’t turn left, but if I keep circling right around the pagoda, I’ll eventually head toward the Garden of Whispering Arches. And the perimeter around the pagoda is too narrow for the goddess to follow me.

  She totters over to the pagoda and wraps her six arms around it, as if she were going to crush it, but she isn’t tall enough for Etsuko to see over the top of the pagoda. I shoot past her and race toward the Garden of Whispering Arches. As I coast, I give my throbbing muscles a rest.

  No one’s at the Garden of Whispering Arches.

  To the east, I hear the thundering of drumblades.

  But there’s something in the sound that’s impossible:

  The drumming is coming from seven drumblades.

  I make another arcing loop to the right until I’m facing east. I shoot out of the Garden of Whispering Arches, leap over the canal, and plant down hard on the great straightaway in front of the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties, as long as half the campus. In front of me, I find Yinmei and Doi speeding away from me, down the straightaway.

  And close behind them, I see Suki. On her own drumblade.

  Make me drink sand to death! So that’s the “something else” she had lined up. Where did she get it? She must have spied on us while we practiced, after we refused to let her join our battleband.

  To their right, across the Central Canal, Cricket and Hisashi race the other two girls of Suki’s the Pink Army, who are on drumblades of their own. Cricket and Hisashi are ducking and jumping their drumblades again and again, and I think how silly it looks until I see the flashes of metal and realize that they’re doing so because the two girls are swiping at them with swords. Real steel swords. How can this be legal?

  What am I saying? This is Suki’s battleband. Of course she’s playing dirty.

  Ahead of me, Suki lifts a lacquered, banded handle in the air in one fist. She depresses a button. Two blades shoot out from either end of the handle, which Yinmei and Doi duck just in time to miss.

  I beat my back drums to blast forward and catch them.

  They pass the Bridge of Serene Harmony halfway down the length of the straightaway.

  Suki is using one hand to alternate beats on her left and right drums while spinning the double-bladed staff in the other hand like a twirl of knives.

  Doi blocks the rotating blades with skate and drumstick, until one of them slices her drumstick in half. Her drumblade threatens to unbalance. As she struggles to regain control, Suki attempts to stab holes in Yinmei’s drums. However, Yinmei anticipates Suki’s jabs and dodges them by adding subtle trills and grace notes on her front drums that cause her to prance forward and lurch aside every time Suki stabs down.

  With a burst of furious thundering on my back drums, my drumblade explodes forward, veering to the right. As it goes sliding toward the water of the Central Canal, I extend my arms, leap off my drumblade, and execute a backward flip into the air.

  Time slows as Suki glares at me from under her severe bangs in hatred and I soar high above and land right on the seat of her drumblade behind her so that we’re riding together. Suki screams in frustration as she jerks her drumblade from side to side to try and unseat me.

  I reach around Suki, grab her double-bladed staff, and before she can let go of it, I heave backward hard while kicking her rear end. I send her flipping back over my head to land on the pearl behind me, crunching on her plates of armor. Without her staff. I drive forth on Suki’s drumblade.

  To my right, Doi raises a drumstick in my honor, and to the left, Yinmei gives me the same salute. We twirl our drumsticks in our fingers and strike them against one another.

  This is fun.

  Behind us, I see the two other girls of the Pink Army have stopped battling Cricket and Hisashi. They drive up beside their stranded captain, seething on the pearl.

  Suki shoves one of the girls hard, sending her flying off her drumblade, then snatches her drumsticks. As the girl splashes into the Central Canal, Suki brings her drumsticks down hard and comes shooting after us.

  Doi, Yinmei, Cricket, Hisashi, and I meet at the southeast corner of the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties. Without having to speak, we turn at once, like a team of horses that have worked together since they were colts. We speed along the perimeter of the Principal Island. We race past Eastern Heaven Dining Hall, leaping over the little waterfall where the runoff from the canal flows. All five of us are completely soaked in sweat from our tremendous effort, and the wind from our racing gives us some much needed cooling.

  We need to cross back to the Garden of Whispering Arches. The Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots can’t keep up with us when we are at full velocity on our drumblades, but we can’t defeat them unless we bring them down to the pearl in the garden. Further, Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess will have trouble stomping on us amid the knolls and curved paths there.

  We shoot into the southern quadrangle only to find the goddess is standing in its center, blocking our path to the garden.

  We swerve hard on our five drumblades and arc to the right around the goddess. She slams down fist after fist behind us, but she can’t pivot as quickly as we can turn.

  We gain speed to try to shoot past her, but then several Sparkle-Pilots drop out of the sky on lines, blocking our path. We’ll have to turn around and go back the long way, along the perimeter of the Principal Island. None of them will be fast enough to catch us.

  I point back toward where we came from, only to see Suki and her remaining battleband mate come jumping over the canal runoff toward us, their bangs flapping up with the impact.

  We slam our drumsticks and veer hard right to continue circling the quadrangle.

  More and more Sparkle-Pilots shoot down on lines from the sky above, and we have to swerve to dodge them as they slam down on the pearl in front of us.

  Behind us, the goddess pounds down again and again, barely missing us and making the pearl beneath our drumblades tremble in a way that interferes with our playing and precise navigation.

  As we race in loops around the quadrangle, every exit is cut off by the Sparkle-Pilots or by goddess fists and feet pummeling down on us from the sky.

  Suki and her battleband mate surge forward toward Yinmei, blades drawn to puncture her drums and seize her. They pursue us hard around the courtyard as we take repeated tight right turns, churning around the figure of the furious goddess like a water funnel, with the Sparkle-Pilots moving more slowly at the outer rim of our orbit, zipping up into the sky every time we try to knock one of them down.

  There’s no way out. We’re trapped here against these three formidable battlebands. Each of them with unique powers.

  We can’t defeat them. Not all three at the same time.

  But we don’t have to.

  We can make them defeat one another.

  I motion for my battleband to drive in tight formation around me.

  I command them, “Yinmei, when I give the signal, slide your drumblade sideways so that you are no higher than chest level. Doi, Cricket, Hisashi, when I leap, leap up off your drumblade and grab the tether of a battle-kite, tug down, then dig your skates into the pear
l! Now!”

  At that, Yinmei unleashes a storm of beats on her front left drum, causing her drumblade to dip down and the blade to almost slip out entirely from under her, until she is sliding so low that her knee is nearly touching the pearl.

  Doi, Cricket, Hisashi, and I shoot up. Our drumblades go flying out from under us, burying their front points in the wall of the Gallery of Paragons of Honor. The lucky of us each grab a tether connecting a Sparkle-Pilot to his battle-kite above.

  We tug down hard, and lucky battle-kites come plummeting down to the pearl.

  The falling tethers tangle in the other tethers, bringing the rest of the battle-kites crashing down to the pearl, lashed together at chest level by the net of lines.

  We dig our skates in and brake hard on the pearl before we run into the tethers while Yinmei’s skid-drifting drumblade dips easily under the net.

  Suki and her battleband mate, however, drive right into them. Their drumblades go shooting out from under them as they are yanked off, slung backward, and shot onto the pearl on their rear ends.

  Some of the Sparkle-Pilots remain upright and try to skate after us to haul us off our drumblades. However, the tangle of tethers has caught around the legs of the goddess, and the Sparkle-Pilots’ skating just wraps them tighter.

  The knot of battle-kite tethers unbalances the giant figure, and Etsuko shouts, “Left foot adjust!” It’s too late, though. The lines have bound the goddess’s legs into one huge stem.

  We watch as Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess comes tipping over so slowly, so gracefully, and smashes down at our feet, sending pieces of armature and girls sprawling across the pearl.

  Etsuko pops up from the wreckage and screams, “Infuriate me to death!”

  Yinmei reverses her drumsong and drives over to us.

  We look around us at the quadrangle filled with the moaning figures of our downed foes.

  We prevailed! We defeated them! We didn’t just defeat them, we knocked them on their rear ends! We covered the floor with them! If I’m correct, that means we’ll be awarded the equivalent of holding off our opponents for an infinite amount of time, which means we’ll have taken first place at this Annexation.

  We worked together as one. This cluster of five people.

  We were a battleband.

  The five of us turn to look up at the thirteen senseis on their dais atop the Palace of the Eighteen Outstanding Pieties. We bow deeply to them.

  I look at the Chairman. It’s impossible to read his emotion, but I see him swallow.

  As if he were choking on his words.

  And then Yinmei and Doi throw their arms around each other. With a great smile, Hisashi rushes over to me and for a second, I think it’s going to happen to—no, he hesitates, or I hesitate, or he hesitates because he thinks I hesitate or something, then, suddenly, we’re doing that awkward triangle-shaped lean-to embrace that some boys give each other because they’re afraid of standing too close, and it’s so clumsy that I almost want to laugh.

  Yinmei and Doi eventually disentangle but remain holding hands. Hisashi puts his hand on my shoulder. It’s warm, but it’s friend-like. Was I hoping for more than that? Maybe? But for now, it feels good to have this boy as my friend.

  Then, as if we all think it at once, we look for the only one left out of our quadrangle of warmth, Cricket.

  He’s standing off to one side with a sour look on his face. He’s tugging down his bangs, which are blown up so straight that it looks like he was struck by lightning.

  “Uhhk. Too sugary. You’re making my teeth hurt,” he says, then breaks into a smile. “At least there wasn’t kissing.”

  He squeals and tries to skate away when he sees us puckering our lips and coming for him, but it’s too late. We’re on him, and we’re kissing him all over his head with his silly bangs frosted like a pony’s mane as he squirms and laughs and says, “Don’t mess up my hair!”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SIX

  Nobody and the Fire-Chickens is soundly in first place after the Second Annexation, followed by Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess, then the Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots, then the Pink Army. After the Annexation, other battlebands immediately start trying to create drumblades as well, but none of them seem to be able to get both the mechanical and musical aspects correct.

  Subtle changes appear between Yinmei and Doi. I see it when I pass Doi on her way to visit Yinmei, watching as my best friend hurriedly hides something in her pocket. Once, I caught a glimpse of one of these objects. It was an Edaian paper sculpture folded in the shape of a crane. Doi, making sentimental presents. I see it in how Yinmei pulls a chair out for Doi at meals. I see it in the ways that they both struggle to accept every nurturing gesture from each other, as if swallowing a large pill without water.

  Doi has definitely started to avoid being alone with me. I wonder if it’s because I remind her of the complicated history between us last year. Does she want to put me behind her as much as she can, now that she’s found someone?

  Though I try to put it out of mind, every time I see Hisashi, all I can think of is that awkward, triangle-shaped lean-to friend embrace that we gave each other. Am I disappointed? Am I relieved? Perhaps it was for the best, because perhaps he’s too much like the false Hisashi from last year, except even more so in every way. And I must never forget that that person doesn’t exist. That person skated right over my heart.

  * * *

  Even though I successfully led our battleband to victory, Sensei Madame Liao keeps requiring me to attend remedial leadership class with Gou Gee-Hong. I don’t understand the point of memorizing all these gibberish Zendoshi koans, like “If you wish to hear a whisper from halfway across the world, make the world into an ear.” Why is she teaching us ancient philosophy when we have far more urgent things to worry about, like Shinian invasion? And why do I, who led the battleband that fought off the abduction attempt, have to sit in a remedial leadership class? However, I don’t complain. I want to show her that I have the self-control required of a leader.

  One day, I arrive at leadership class to find Sensei Madame Liao standing before only one desk.

  “Where’s Gou Gee-Hong?” I ask.

  Sensei Madame Liao says, “She graduated from leadership class.”

  I don’t think; it just explodes out of me: “How do I get a fair shot with you? My battleband is ranked first. Gee-Hong’s battleband is in second-to-last place. We fought off Shinian soldiers! I would have thought that my successes would make a difference, but apparently nothing is ever good enough for you. At least not if I do it.”

  “Sit down, Peasprout.”

  I sit. I don’t want them to, but hot tears flow down.

  “Peasprout, your use of drumblades to win the Second Annexation was very significant. You do not realize just how sig—”

  “Is this supposed to make me feel better? You grudgingly toss me a little crumb of praise only after I have to make a fool of myself begging for it.” I don’t look at her. I look off to the side and blink away tears.

  “Are you finished? You have not listened to what I am trying to tell—”

  “Oh, so now you’re saying that I’m also a terrible listener. That I never let people finish. Well, I guess that makes it complete then. I’m the worst, most horrible person under heaven, the absolute most—”

  “Peasprout, silence!” says Sensei Madame Liao. “Please. I want you to listen to what I am going to say. A leader finds a way forward when no one else can. A leader does not just make decisions between two unbearable choices; a leader finds a new third way. You have more natural leadership in you than any student I have ever met. It radiates from you.”

  I don’t believe what I’m hearing. “So why did you place me in a remedial leadership class?”

  “Who said this was a remedial leadership class?”

  “But Gou Gee-Hong…”

  “There are many things you still need to learn. For example, as I was saying: the drumblade
s. I do not think you understand the danger they place you in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With them, you proved to the Chairman that you are valuable. You do not want the Chairman’s attention, good or bad. Now, he is going to want to use you for his plans. If you refuse to do what he wants, he will never let you go. You are too dangerous to let go.”

  She’s right. How did I not see that?

  “So what am I supposed to do? If I don’t keep coming up with ways to defend Pearl, he’s going to revoke my sanctuary status. If I do come up with ways, he’s going to want to keep me for his own.”

  “A leader finds a new third way.”

  Oh, that’s a lot of help.

  Sensei Madame Liao says softly, “Peasprout, this class was for the students who needed it most. Gou Gee-Hong needed it because she has never taken on any form of leadership. You needed it because you are facing just about more than any leader has ever had to face. You are a leader, Peasprout. If you would only allow yourself to be.”

  She can’t help me. She can only give me this affirmation.

  But after all this time having to do without her affirmation, I think I’m just fine without it.

  I’m in more danger now than ever before. So what? I found hidden doorways out of inescapable situations last year. I can do it again. I just need to pay attention and learn how to use everything around me.

  The curriculum is no help, though. For reasons unexplained to us, all the disciplines begin focusing on magnets after the Second Annexation. In wu liu class, Sensei Master General Moon Tzu, through Sensei Madame Yao, teaches us about fighting with magnetized skate blades as a way to alter the flight of incoming arrows and deflect the thrusts of swords. We learn how to whip and strike our blades so that the yin and yang in the metal separate to turn them into temporary magnets. Some attract metal and some repel it, depending on the orientation of the yin and the yang in them.