Peasprout Chen--Battle of Champions

by Henry Lien

  Crick is doing his job out there on the Principal Island to disrupt the other battlebands. He must have gotten control of one of their magnetized metal-stringed shamisens.

  A riot of drumming sweeps toward us. It’s Suki and her two other little bowl-haircutted copies, pounding on their drumblades. The Pink Army. They finally figured out what we did to the sea. So our advantage is ended, but we have lucky points over them right now.

  The Pink Army drives straight toward the feet of Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess on the rafts floating on the water. The girls that form the feet are clamoring and screaming at Suki and her battleband to stop. They should know Suki better than that. When they realize that she has no intention of being reasonable, they abandon the armature and dive off to the side into the water.

  The Pink Army shouts, “Long live Pearl!” and drive right into the armature struts of the goddess’s feet, severing them with the speed of their angled drumblades. Radiant Thousand-Story Very Tall Goddess sways on its amputated stumps. More and more girls abandon the armature and leap into the water, dropping from the collapsing goddess until there is only the tiny figure of Etsuko left at the top.

  We hear a shrill shriek of “Infuriate me to death!” as the armature of the goddess comes toppling down and slams into the water. The force of the impact sends waves rollicking around it, flipping three of the cannonskiffs onto their sides.

  “Three points to the Pink Army!” yells Sensei Madame Yao.

  The Pink Army rides the crest of the first great wave emanating from the fall of the goddess and speeds southeast toward another cluster of cannonskiffs.

  I thrum on my right drums lightly to sweep my drumblade in a circle. I scan the bobbing sea around me, filled with debris and students swimming back to shore. I catch sight of Doi and Hisashi. They, too, are turning their drumblades, looking around.

  “Yinmei!” we all call out.

  She’s nowhere to be seen.

  I drive my drumblade over to Doi and Hisashi.

  “Did you see what happened to Yinmei?” asks Doi.

  “No, did you?”

  “Last I saw her was before Radiant Thousand fell,” says Hisashi.

  “She must have been pulled under the surface of the water!” cries Doi.

  “No,” I say. “Her blade would have popped back up because of the magnetization.”

  “Then where is she?” asks Doi with rising panic.

  “Be quiet,” I order. “I need to focus. We’ll find her.”

  There’s so much noise around us: the sloshing of the sea. The moaning of bruised students. The bang of the cannonskiffs firing in the distance. The drumsong of the Pink Army across the water to the southeast.

  And far off to the northeast, so soft that it must be fifteen li away, and getting fainter with every beat, we hear the pounding of a drumblade as it races away.

  In unison, we whip our heads around.

  Yinmei.

  Fleeing from us.

  Toward the Shinian ships.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  Yinmei doesn’t know where the pearl comes from.

  But she knows how to destroy it.

  Yinmei’s been waiting all year for this moment to tell the Empress Dowager the secret of the salt. Trying to learn as much information as she could. Waiting until the sea was magnetized and the noise and tumult of seven other drumblades pounding at the same time would mask the sound of her escape.

  My sanctuary status depends on my battleband. And now one of my battleband is racing across the sea to tell Pearl’s greatest enemy about our greatest weakness. I’m sure she’ll also tell the Empress Dowager of the ingenious weapons I developed.

  Everything she’d done all year was to gain my trust, to peer over my shoulder at the secrets I was learning. I’ll be seized and deported back to Shin, to face the Empress Dowager’s fury. Even if I’m not sent back, the Empress Dowager will send her navy to demand the secret of the pearl. We can’t give it to her, because there’s only enough of it to build and maintain one city. But then her navy will bombard Pearl with salt balls to melt our whole city into the sea and watch us drown.

  So whether we obey her or not, we face the end of the city of Pearl.

  All because I trusted Yinmei.

  She could be fifteen, twenty li away by now.

  And on a drumblade, she’s as fast as I am. Faster. I’ll never catch her before she makes it to the Shinian ships.

  I scan around me. Out here at sea, there are no rising drifts, and I have to squint through my smoked lenses against the glare of sun on water.

  Hard to the south, by the outward curve of the rail leading to the little temple where Sagacious Monk Goom and Sensei Madame Chingu live, I catch a glint of metal surrounded by a skirt of blue sparks on the water. The Repeller holding the magnetization of the sea under our drumblades.

  Yinmei wouldn’t have taken one of the other Repellers. She’d have to take more than five steps to get up the ladder leading to the pier. She wouldn’t risk damaging her heart and lungs again, especially not before having to drum so far to get to safety.

  So that means that there’s only one way to stop Yinmei from getting to the Shinian ships.

  I execute a roll of beats on my drumblade in a hard spin and head south.

  “Where are you going?” asks Doi, drumming along beside me.

  I say firmly, “We can’t let her get to the ships.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I beat on my back drums to burst forward away from Doi. She follows with a burst of beats of her own.

  “Peasprout, what are you planning to do?”

  “Yinmei’s going to tell the Empress Dowager about the salt!”

  “You can’t just unmagnetize the sea under her. She’ll drown.”

  “She can tread water just fine until we get to her.”

  “Her heart and lungs will burst! They’re already damaged from treading water and from when she walked to protect you from the Shinian soldiers!”

  “Those soldiers wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her!” I yell. “They’ve been waiting all year to speed her back to Shin as soon as she discovered what the Empress Dowager needed!”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “Yes I do, and so do you!” My drumblade leaps ahead, leaving Doi behind.

  As I near the Repeller, I drum with my left hand while I reach for the Repeller with my right hand.

  A flurry of syncopated beats erupts beside me. Doi’s drumblade comes slicing hard toward mine, ramming me far aside of the Repeller.

  “What under heaven are you doing, Doi?” I shout across the water at her.

  “She’ll die.”

  “She won’t. We’ll get to her in time.”

  Doi executes a martial drumming sequence that ends in a crescendoing spiral of beats round and round on all six drums. Her drumblade leaps into the air and comes spinning toward me, blade pointed outward like a lethal iron fan.

  I execute a double-knee forward chrysanthemum spin off my drumblade. I flip into the air like a flower slapped off its stem by a gust. As Doi’s drumblade slashes into mine below me, I aim my legs so that I land on Doi’s shoulders. I hook my legs under her arms and sling her overhead off her drumblade, slamming her hard onto the surface of the sea.

  She hits with a splash and dips below the water, but then rights herself with her skates beneath her.

  “You can’t just drown her!” Doi shouts.

  “Better her than our whole city!” I cry.

  Doi pumps her skates hard and hurtles toward me. She pounds her right skate down with her full Chi. It slices into the water, but the magnetization responds by sending her bounding up in an arc, shooting toward me with a blade pointed at my chest.

  I execute a lunar rabbit diagonal jump, using the repelling force of the magnetization to quicken the three reversals of direction. Right, left, right. I spin toward Doi and knee her hard in the chest, sending her sliding across th
e water. She tumbles backward but executes a scissor sweep and roll, popping up to face me again.

  Then she sees my hand. I’m beside the Repeller, grasping its ringed handle. “Peasprout, you can’t! We’ll never get to her in time.”

  “Yes, we will.”

  “She could be forty li from here.”

  Doi is circling me as I speak to her. Heavenly August Personage of Jade, she’s preparing to execute an unblockable flying dragon grasping the clouds spin on me! But she’ll have to give up fifteen of her lifetime’s six hundred and eight riven crane split jumps to do it. She’d give that away to attack her best friend to protect this girl? I stand in the circle and pivot in place to watch her progress, my anger growing.

  “How dare you!” I shout at her. “You’re responsible for this, too! You convinced me to trust her.”

  Doi speeds up her skating around me.

  “After all you and I have been through. You’d betray your best friend, endanger your best friend. And your brother. And Crick. For that girl.”

  Doi skates harder and harder, ignoring my words.

  “You’d destroy our home,” I say, pointing at her. “You’d drown the whole city of Pearl. You’d condemn three million people. For that one girl.”

  Doi’s velocity is already past the point necessary to arm the spin, but she keeps skating, the magnetization pushing her to unprecedented force. She’s going to make the manuever not just unblockable; she’s going to make it devastating.

  There’s not the least bit of fatigue in her Chi. Her desire to protect Yinmei is stronger.

  I can’t stop her with my wu liu. I have to stop her with my words. I need to think of the most hurtful words I can say to her. I have to make my words not just unblockable; I have to make them devastating.

  Forgive me, Doi.

  I hiss at her, “You’d throw all that away for a girl who threw you away!”

  “You threw me away, too!” she hurls back.

  “You brought that on yourself by lying to me for a whole year! You’re good at pretending to be someone you’re not. That’s why the two of you get along so well. You’re perfect for each other.”

  “At least I have someone,” Doi cries. “You’re so hurtful and mean. No wonder you have such weak relationships. Just like Sensei Madame Liao said.”

  “Better to be alone than chase after some girl who just used you because she could sense your desperation.”

  “Stop it! You don’t know what’s true.”

  “And you’ll never know the truth because you’re never going to see Yinmei again. But you’d—”

  “Peasprout, stop! How could you say such things?”

  “—sacrifice everything you love for her. You really have that little respect for yourself? Butterfly, indeed. You’re the only butterfly under heaven to crawl back into the cocoon and turn back into a worm. You’re the only…”

  But I can’t get any more words out because I’m crying too hard.

  Doi’s standing still on the water, doubled over, her face pressed in her hands, sobbing quietly.

  It sickens me that I have to do this.

  It sickens me that I can do this.

  That even if I don’t mean the words, they’re always there when I reach for them, always ready for me to use.

  And I’ll always use them.

  Because I’ll always have to.

  I’m learning how to be a leader.

  And I’m unlearning how to be the person I want to be.

  I look at the Repeller under my hand. How long has it been now? Half an hour? How far out is she? In what direction? Doi’s right. Maybe we had a chance to reach Yinmei in time when we first discovered she was missing.

  We’ll never find her in time now.

  “Please don’t do it!” pleads Doi.

  “Don’t make this harder for me.”

  “Peasprout, please don’t take this away from me!”

  Through tears, I look at my friend, heaving with pain over my words, with the doubt and hurt that I shot at close distance straight into her heart.

  A quotation from leadership class comes back to me: A leader doesn’t just make decisions between two unbearable choices. A leader finds a new third way.

  I take a deep breath and release the Repeller.

  “I think there’s another way,” I say to Doi as her expression deflates with relief.

  “Thank you, Peasprout.”

  “But I need your help.”

  “Anything.”

  “We have to summon a coiling water dragon.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  We won’t be able to overtake Yinmei before she reaches the Shinian ships. However, even if she boards one of the ships, they’re stranded until the sun sets, when the winds of the Western Belch will pick up. This is Pearlian sunset, though, which means sunset is when the bottom edge of the sun touches the horizon of the sea, not when the sun sinks entirely. I measure the distance between the sun and the sea using finger geometry and calculate that we still have one hour left before the two meet.

  The pearl in the water repels and is repelled by metal. If we launch the metal of our drumblades at it with the right force, we should be able to nudge it in the direction that we want. Thus, we have only one hour left to summon the coiling water dragon and try to herd it with our drumblades to smash into the Shinian ships while they’re stranded, waiting for the winds.

  * * *

  Doi and I find Hisashi out on the water. Together, we drive to the Principal Island and hail Sensei Madame Liao at the Hall of Lilting Radiance. I don’t tell her that Yinmei knows about the secret of the salt or what we know about the coiling water dragons. I just tell her that we need to halt the Annexations because Yinmei is missing.

  She and the other senseis confer. Sensei Madame Yao is sent immediately to the city. She’ll alert the Pearlian authorities to send police boats to find Yinmei before the winds of the Western Belch rise.

  * * *

  When we find Crick, he has one of the Battle-Kite Sparkle-Pilots’ giant shamisens with the metal strings strapped to his back. I lead the three of them to the northwest edge of campus. We park our drumblades on the seaward side of the Arch of the Sixteenth Whisper. I explain my plan to Crick, and his eyes light up. He looks out across the sea, past the Conservatory of Wu Liu, toward where the Shinian ships are anchored. He asks, “How high did you say the wall of the nest was?”

  “About three stories,” I say.

  “And the coiling water dragon that you summoned last time?”

  I look to Doi and Hisashi. They answer together, “About fifty stories.”

  “But almost all of it remained below the water until we slapped our Repellers down,” Hisashi says.

  “And how many full rotations in the water did you make to summon it?”

  I turn to Doi. She’s been a master of counted spins since she was Baby Swan Doi. She says, “About three hundred and seventy, I think.”

  Crick begins doing calculations on the palm of his hand. He shakes his head. “You’re going to have to make the coiling water dragon much, much smaller. About five stories tall. To summon it, you’ll—”

  “Is that big enough to destroy a ship?” I ask.

  “We’re not going to destroy the ships.”

  “Nobody will drown; they can grab on to the debris and float until the police boats get to them.”

  “No, Peasprout. We’re just going to damage them so that they can’t go anywhere. We’re going to have to aim it at the exact middle point between the two ships. According to Shinian naval formation, they’ll be no farther than three ships’ lengths apart so that the crew of one can board the other with rope bridges in case of an emergency.”

  “Why do we have to drive it between the two ships?”

  “When you deliver the final frequency force shot, the coiling water dragon will pass between the ships so quickly that its wake will pull the two ships together and slam them into each other. That should da
mage them enough that they can’t set sail.”

  “Can’t we just use the magnets to pull the nails out?”

  “Those magnets aren’t nearly big enough.”

  “I don’t like your plan. It sounds too imprecise. We should just drive the coiling water dragon directly into one ship and then the other.”

  “I told you, we’re not going to hurt anyone. Remember, we’re supposed to be nice this year. And anyway, you only get one chance, because you’ll never be able to control the coiling water dragon after you’ve delivered the final frequency force shot. Now, can we get back to how to summon the coiling water dragon?”

  I sigh and wave my hand. “Go on, Crick.”

  “You’ll need to skate eighty rotations in the nest before slamming the Repellers down on the water. That should summon a five-story-tall coiling water dragon.”

  I say, “That doesn’t make sense. Three-hundred-seventy rotations to summon a fifty-story-tall one, but eighty to—”

  “It’s not a direct ratio; it’s a receding progression. I’m sorry to cut you off, Peasprout. It’s like the proportions of a seashell’s spiraling chambers if you— Oh, please just trust me! I’m good at calculations!”

  “All right.”

  “But even if you make it only five stories tall,” he continues, “three drumblades won’t be enough to herd it. This coiling water dragon is going to be much, much faster than what you saw last time. You’re going to need at least six drumblades.”

  “We don’t have six drumblades,” I say.

  “And how would six drumblades be any faster than three drumblades?” asks Hisashi.

  “It’s not that they’re faster,” answers Crick. “If we make the coiling water dragon small enough to respond to the metal of your drumblades, it’s going to be so agile and able to switch direction so quickly that it’ll slip right between three drumblades. You’ll need at least six of them following tightly in the form of a semicircle to herd it and keep it on course.”

  “Well, we only have three drumblades,” I say. “So figure something else out.”