And Then, Of Course

1. Kaze narrows her eyes and smiles:.
   "Where the red mountain
   Covers the last golden army
   There my father dwells"
2. Well, the Power of Haiku has floored Hitomi, so he's gonna stand there with his mouth slightly open.
   
   This causes Richter to be able to take the shot. Richter's exhausted and hurt, so most of his bullets miss. One, however, clocks Hitomi right in the head.
   
   Hitomi goes over backwards, but doesn't reach the floor before he Travels.
3. And then, of course, the door behind the Reader bursts open. It literally bursts, because a Mover behind it has pushed on every board in the door at the same time, shredding it apart.

About a dozen students in the blazers, ties and slacks of the Academy are in the hallway. Some have fire wreathing their hands, one is sheathed in ice, one has a massive barbell held in one hand, and so on. They didn't send the Readers and Finders to investigate the sounds of gunshots, evidently.

Richter is closest to them. He puts his gun to the wounded Reader's head.

"Your boss is a Reader, right? Well, read my mind."

From behind the boys comes an authoritative call: "Stand by, my New Men. Mr. Richter has the floor."

Neither Nick, nor Christine, nor Richter wonders where the female half of the student body might be. But it's the first thing Kaze thinks of.

Wind Against Student

Kaze keeps Nick and Christine Faded through touch--one hand on Christine and her leg locked with Nick's--as she interposes herself between Christine and Hitomi.

Then, reaching out her hand, she touches him to heal one of those nasty, artistic, black scars on his hand.

But she has only had the Healer power for a moment. It turns out the Healer has to actually touch the patient, not just pass a Faded hand through him.

"Hitomi, you are destined to lose. You are not at one with the source of Magic as my father was. You do not know what he knows." A slight but distinct emphasis on the present tense of the last word.

Hitomi hisses a sharp indrawn breath.

"The Chairman -- he lives?"

Christine and Nick, seeing that Hitomi is within arm's reach of them, hurry from his grasp. This also means they break contact with Kaze, and become solid.

Nick pours on the magic, with Christine boosting him. The Torch cries out with effort, then bends backward at the waist, his flames curling into rigidly frozen shapes around him, encasing him in a mound of frozen fire.

Hitomi tries to grab Kaze by the shoulder.

"Where is he? What is he working toward? Tell me!"

But of course, even a Fade can't grab a Fade.

If no one's going to shoot Richter, he might as well get up. He takes a gun off the wounded Reader and aims between Hitomi's shoulder blades. He may never get a better shot ...

Failing Torch

Kaze shouts at Ito: "Hitomi is crazed. Too many kanjii have driven him mad! There is a reason all the powers are not given to one person."

She would very much like to stay and watch/be a second at this duel, but Sky is in a lot of trouble--and it's not a duel.

Says quietly to Christine, "It is -your- power he wants. Do not use it obviously. And stay close to me."

"You can take on the Torch?" to Nick. Nick nods.

"We will get Richter out and then come back."

Kaze and her two friends rush to the hangar while Ito and Saburo bow to each other. Behind them, a slashing cacaphony of fighting sounds erupts.


Sky Masterson is separated from Richter by a burning slick of waste oil, spreading from a punctured oil barrel. The shadow of the Gee Bee airship, piloted by Belle, falls across the hangar. It is directly above the hole in the wall where Kaze's team is entering.

Kaze also spies Hitomi, back in the shadows near the south end of the hangar. Hitomi, as soon as Kaze's group enters, Travels away.

The Torch turns and washes Kaze's group with flame! But it doesn't reach all the way. A few feet from Kaze, the fire flickers into harmless smoke and heavy mist.

Kaze feels a heavy chill from behind her, where Nick is.

"I have him," Nick says. "Ignore him, or shoot him."

Christine touches Nick on the shoulder, and the flames from the Torch's arms shorten, the invisible junction of Torch and Icebox pushing closer and closer to the Torch as though he were losing a thermal arm-wrestling match.

Hitomi shimmers into solidity right behind Christine.

Sky and Kaze have seen all this, but have but a moment to react.

The Master Plan is to Burn the Sky

1. Sky shoots the Heavy. Maybe it will make him drop the other Iron Guard, and put out the fire for a moment.

   
   

   The Heavy was apparently not prepared to be shot! He staggers and lets his buddies down easy, then falls to one

   
   

   The Torch throws fire in return at Sky. A barrel of waste oil by the door whooshes into deadly flames. Sky is forced a step back by the intense heat. Although the Heavy's influence is off him, Sky cannot grab Richter in time. Richter and the young Reader are on the other side of the flaming oil drum.

   
   

   Sky feels the jazz ebb .. his luck is turning!

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   As Kaze (with Nick and Christine) moves past Ito, she whispers in Japanese, "Your boss struck Saburo down. Left him for dead. Hitomi is out for himself. A dog. He would do the same to you."

   
   

   "No, you don't understand!" says Ito, clearly stricken. "Hitomi is strengthening us .. all of us! He's making us strong enough to kill the Monster, and it's nearly here!"

   
   

   "You see, the Power that gives us our abilities is a living thing. It lives deep in the sky, beyond the Moon. But it is afraid, because there is a Monster which wants to eat it. Many times, the Power has come to a world, and given Powers to its people. But the people did not grow strong enough in time, and when the Monster came, the Power had to flee, and leave the people to their fate."

   
   

   "Hitomi is gathering all the Powers together. He teaches! But now there is a Power which can grant Powers to the unlucky, those not blessed like we are. Once he has that Power, he can emPower the world, and slay the monster!"

   
   

   Ito closes his eyes and bows.

   
   

   "It is my world, my race, at stake. I will not let you kill Hitomi. No matter who has to die."

   
   

   Saburo, with a scream, launches at Ito. Saburo's hands are claws, his arms are razors, and secondary spines with spikes on them are uncurling from his back.

   
   

   Ito readies his Power.

   
   

Converging

Traveled him several feet to one side, right atop the wounded mindreader, leaving behind the riveted steel bands holding Richter down. That is his third travel, so he is getting low on oomph.

But he's jazzed, baby, jazzed! His luck has never run so hot!

The three Iron Guards float, held aloft by their Heavy. Their Torch sprays fire to illuminate the room, not locating Sky immediately.

Sky falls on the Reader with Richter. The Reader groans, then Richter slugs him with surprising force. The Reader lolls, knocked senseless, although his eyes are still open.

Kaze, Nick, and Christine cross the lawn to the hangar with no problem at all, since all of the Iron Guard are hunting Sky.

Sky feels himself grow heavy, so heavy that he cannot stand up. A Traveler can jump with whatever he can carry, but what if he cannot even carry his own weight?

The Iron Guards float down into the middle of the room and split up, to take Sky from three angles.

Kaze, Nick and Christine arrive and see the Torch's flames lighting up the room. They can't quite see Hitomi, but they see the three Iron Guards, the Torch in red, the Mover in blue, and the Heavy in green. Kaze never got to know any of them very well; they weren't very friendly.

Saburo, who is NOT Faded, shouts, "Ito!" and the Mover turns around, startled beyond recognition.

"Saburo?" he says, followed by a Japanese sentence that means, "Have the devil Grimnoir made you into a zombie? For you are dead!"

Sky vs. Everybody

Sky travels to the lightswitch (his second jump), points one pistol at the telephone, pulls the switch and pulls the trigger at the same time. 

Good luck finding a lucky traveler in the dark, Iron heads! 

In his mind's eye, he pictures teleporting behind the Hitomi throwing a strangling wire around the man's filthy neck, imagining the event in gruesome and precise detail. 

Hitomi hisses in discomfort. In fact, he loses a moment, standing there with his arms around all three of his Iron Guards.

"Psychic attack!" he says, in English. "Quintana! Disrupt him with the Inward Shout!"

Quintana (the young Reader) who is on the floor covering his head with his arms because his telephone just exploded in his hand, rolls over, clutching said hand with every appearance of pain. He does not disrupt Sky with the Inward Shout, opting instead for the better-known Outward Whimper.

Meanwhile Sky trots over to the last known position of Richter, using his luck to avoid blundering into oil cans or assassins in the dark. He feels the jazz as his Power racks up one lucky break after another -- it's using up his magic, but it feels like it's revving him up. Like it always does.

The Iron Guard Torch throws flames ten feet in the air. Sky is lit up like two big spotlights were on him, just as he bends over to free Richter.

"He's got my ring," is the thing Richter chooses to say first. "He can do things through it."

Then the two-ton lift Richter is strapped to lurches off the concrete floor, falling upward with all the massive weight of its steel construction. Gravity has flipped upside-down!

Also, a dangling chain from a motor hoist whips through the air like a possessed bullwhip, striking at Sky's torso. It, too, packs a mighty punch.

Sky Steals the Stage

Sky teleports into the rafters over the lights in the hangar. He’s seen hangars before; they all got rafters up above the lights. He doesn’t know exactly where the beams and hanging chains are, but he’s always been lucky, so why not throw them bones?

When he appears, no one sees him. Hitomi, his bodyguard Rock, and the young Reader in school uniform are directly below Sky. The three Iron Guards are off to Sky’s right.

The Reader joggles Hitomi’s elbow. Hitomi’s eyebrow goes up; he stares into the Reader’s eyes. They have a moment.

Sky doesn’t have precognification or somehow whichwhy like that, but he gets an uneasy feeling about all this. The young Reader breaks off and runs for a telephone on the wall, while Hitomi Travels to the Iron Guards.

Hitomi grabs all three Iron Guards, embracing them as widely as he can, shouting in Japanese.

For a moment, no one is guarding Ronald Richter. He looks up and sees Sky silhouetted against the rafters.

Sky needs to do about three things at once. But he can’t.

+++

Meanwhile, Kaze has acquired Van Cortlandt’s Healer power. She Heals Christine’s feet, then Nick’s side, which is all burned up.

Victoria, the New York Massive, is still glowing red-hot. Healers have to touch their patients, which is problematic if the patient is at 800 degrees. Fortunately, Nick can cool her skin until it’s safe to touch her. When Kaze heals her, Victoria heaves a huge breath of air; her temperature has been burning up all the oxygen before it reached her, but being a Massive, it was taking her forever to asphyxiate.

“Bastard,” she says when she can talk. “How did he turn Lauren against us?”

“He’s got many mysterious powers,” says Nick seriously, playing along.

Kaze Heals Tojiro, then has to catch her breath. Healing is an unfamiliar strain.

“How are you holding up?” Nick wants to know.

Burning in Death

Fire ignites at the base of Lauren's spine and crawls up her back, flaring into complex tattoos all over her arms. The smoke from their burning is sweet and dusty at first, as it burns off the makeup covering her arms.

"My kanji are only slightly weakened by the death of their host," the voice of Hitomi says through Lauren's stiffening lips. "And now that I know where you are, I --"

He doesn't notice when Janet shoots Lauren's body. He might in fact not literally notice, if he's operating her body like a puppet rather than possessing it like a demon.

But he does notice when Christine lunges through the burning grass and grabs Lauren by the shoulders. As if tearing spiderwebs, Christine strips the burning kanji off Lauren's body, and stands there panting, holding the chain of firey letters in her hands.

Lauren's body drops like a sack. Nick quickly extinguishes the fire at Christine's feet, but can do nothing for the pain of her burns.

"It's okay, Nick," Christine says, "when you're a Torch, I guess burns don't hurt!"

She slips one of the tattoos over her hand like a bracelet. It snugs into place on her wrist.

"I don't want to go crazy ..." she says, looking at the chain of fire kanji hanging from one wrist. "Hey, I don't have to!"

She turns to everyone else.

"Who wants to be a Torch for a while?"

Kaze to Christine:

"Is van Cortland's healing power available...?" Her eyes are soft and sad. "I would prefer that one."

Christine: "Oh, but his Power isn't a tattoo. It's bound too tightly to him. I couldn't ... oh my ..."

Christine goes over to Van Cortlandt's body.

"It just .. .came loose," she says, holding a wisp of purest sunlight in her left hand. Her right still holds the fire kanji from Lauren.

"It's slippery -- I can't hold onto it!" Christine says. "Kaze, come here, quick! Before I lose it!"

Kaze goes over there. Quickly.

Christine hands Kaze the twist of sunlight. As it passes from her hand, the twist unfolds, into a dawn like that pure sunrise seen only at sea, on a clear morning.

This is not a kanji, but a Power. So it does not tattoo itself in a pattern of ink and punctures on Kaze's skin. Rather, it fills up a spot in her soul she was not aware was empty.

Just as she knows how to Fade, she now knows how to Heal. And suddenly perceives Christine, watching her anxiously, as a barely-contained whirligig of blood rushing, joints sliding, tendons flexing, lungs wetly contracting, brain gurgling ... nothing at all is wrong, she's in good health, but this is how a normal body looks to a Healer.

Except she has burns on her feet and ankles. Christine can't feel them, but they're bad.

"Hell," says Nick Voinovich mildly. A wrench has just hit him in the head, hurled by the Iron Guard's Mover. It clinks lightly and falls to the ground, instead of rebounding, and leaves a white mark of frost instead of a huge bruise.

Nick picks up the wrench, his eyes frost over, and he hurls it back, with the same force it struck him. The Mover is startled and has to deflect it, which means all the other junk he's throwing at Sky falls to the ground.