Dragon Island (9 page)

I begin to hear even stranger sounds ahead of us in the distance. Alien sounds mingled with the zap of electricity and the working of machinery.

Then there’s light before us. It’s a mere pinprick in the distance, but one that grows larger with our every step.

“Careful, now,” Kitsune whispers. “They are near.”

I don’t have to ask who they are.

The Xenomians.

The kaiju whose ways are different. Mysterious.

Frightful.

Kusanagi has grown red hot at my back. I release Kitsune’s hand for a moment and remove the sword and its harness from my body. I take hold of the ancient weapon’s hilt and begin withdrawing it from its gold-studded sheath. My eyes widen in surprise to see Kusanagi’s blade aglow with crackling white energy. For a moment, our surroundings are illuminated by its brilliant light.

We are no longer in a cave, but a tunnel. The walls, ceiling and floor are covered by dark metal pipes, digital gauges, and computer circuitry. It’s a far cry from the rocky surfaces I would’ve expected to see.

“What are you doing?” Kitsune gasps. She seizes my sword hand and shoves it downward, forcing me to sheath Kusanagi. “Are you trying to announce our presence to the Xenomians?”

“Uh, sorry.”

The words sound sheepish and pathetic as they leave my mouth.

I suppose that’s because they are.

“Keep Kusanagi sheathed,” Kitsune orders through clenched teeth. “Do nothing unless I command it!”

“Okay! Okay! I said I was sorry!”

I shove Kusanagi into my belt.

Kitsune’s
luminous gaze studies me. I know what she is thinking. It’s more or less the same type of thing my father ponders every time I visit him.

She may not be wondering how a spineless coward like me could be her son, but she is considering if she was wrong about me. She is mulling over the possibility that I may not be a warrior from the heavens after all, but just the snot-nosed kid I claim to be.

Hey, sister, I told you: Raymond Nakajima is no hero. Just ask my Dad. He’ll tell you, real quick!

Kitsune takes my hand and begins to lead me to the light once again. I don’t know if it’s just me, but this time her touch feels more dutiful than kind.

It’s not long before we reach the tunnel’s end. The light spilling in from beyond is all around us now, the passageway’s machinery unable to hide in its brilliance.

Kitsune gets down on her hands and knees and crawls toward the tunnel’s edge, moving like a cat stalking its prey. I get down and crawl clumsily forward to join her.

What I see lying beyond the tunnel’s edge is more amazing and bizarre than anything I could’ve ever imagined!

We are perched in one of many tunnels snaking out from an enclosed chamber that’s roughly the size of my neighborhood. The pipes, gauges, and circuitry that blanket our tunnel’s walls spill out to cover the entire area above and below in increasingly complex patterns. These form several blocks of large, futuristic buildings and towers along the chamber floor. A single, domed structure stands at the center, dwarfing all else.

The entire scene is lit by sizzling arcs of electricity that leap from structure to structure and from chamber floor to ceiling, each totally unpredictable in its course.

But what really takes my breath away are the flying saucers!

I don’t know what else to call them. They appear to be spinning, circular constructs of light and metal hovering hundreds of feet in the air above the city.

Above us!

And flying saucers or not, they don’t appear friendly.

Suddenly, I’m gripped with the utter certainty that the saucer-ships have spotted us from their high vantage.

I panic and start to get up only for Kitsune to pull me back down. Hard.

“Be still!” she warns.

I try, but despite my best efforts, I can’t stop shaking.

Kitsune throws her hand over my mouth to stifle my scream at what sounds like the world’s biggest jet engine igniting. The noise reverberates through the chamber down into the tunnels, rattling our teeth.

For a moment, I’m certain the daikaiju that attacked my plane has returned.

Then what I originally thought was merely a domed structure within the chamber floor begins to slowly spin.

It gains speed and the sound of the engine I now realize is housed within it grows louder, changing from that of a perpetual explosion to the high-pitched whine of a working turbine.

Then, as though someone had flipped a switch, the dome’s dull gray surface flares with bright, dancing light, and the entire revolving structure lifts from its cradle among the city streets.

Meanwhile, Kusanagi has become an oven at my side. I slide the sword out of my belt and hang the harness on my arm so that I’m no longer in direct contact with the weapon. I’m amazed to see the gilded scabbard actually smoking from the sword’s heat!

Kusanagi now in check, I turn my attention back to the enormous spacecraft. As the vessel rises, Kitsune and I are forced to cling to the tunnel’s bottom edge to keep from being blown backward by the gale-force winds created by the craft’s rotation.

The construct rises higher and higher, spinning faster and faster until one note of its shrill whine is in indistinguishable from the next.

The ship joins the other, smaller crafts hovering in the air and I realize that it must be their mothership, figuratively speaking.

No. Not their mothership. Their great, great, grandmothership.

Beams of crackling energy discharge from the craft’s surface, zigzagging to zap its smaller counterparts and the chamber walls beyond. The sound is deafening. The ozone created by the discharge makes my skin tingle and my hair stand on end. Just when I feel I can take no more, there’s a flash of blazing light, and the ships vanish, taking their din of noise along with them.

Kusanagi instantly cools. Air currents wash over Kitsune and me, ruffling our clothes as they race out of the tunnel to fill the void left by the saucer-ships. My ears ring with the silence. My body swells as though something pressing hard against it from every angle had been suddenly removed.

“That’s a relief!” I whisper.

Kitsune perks up and sniffs the air.

“Kitsune?”

She turns and jumps at one of the man-shaped shadows now looming over us.

Before I can move, I feel something bite me and then course through my body. The sensation is like a thousand wasps stinging me at once! It’s a feeling I’ve had before—when I grabbed an electric fence on a dare.

The shock reaches my head and everything goes black.

The fabled Japanese warrior Kintaro is supposedly based on a real person named Sakata no Kintoki, who allegedly lived during the height of Japan’s classical epoch and served as a retainer for the
samurai
Minamoto no Yorimitsu. Possessing great strength and fighting skill, he was renowned far and wide for his abilities as a warrior. Like the legends of the “Big Men” of the American West who would follow him, tales of Kintaro’s prowess grew until fact became indistinguishable from fiction...

—Excerpt from
We Are Legend: The Truth Behind Heroes and Demigods of the World
, by Carl Davidson (1975)

A
s I lie unconscious, my dreams are invaded by nightmares. A pleasant ride home on my school bus becomes a catastrophic plane-crash. My mother’s sweet, smiling face morphs into that of the black man’s before he is devoured by some unseen monster. Kitsune, strong and beautiful, shrivels into a loping forest animal. The earth at my feet opens up and vomits hordes of shrieking bat demons. Then I’m dragged kicking and screaming into a cold, cybernetic netherworld, my father tugging one of my legs, the pale man the other.

I awake with a start and see the pale man sitting at the foot of the bed I’m lying in, his wicked grin spread across his face. I’m not at all surprised to see him here, in this new, waking nightmare.

With his hair pulled up in a samurai-style top knot, I see that the tips of his ears are as sharp as Kitsune’s. He has traded in the sunglasses he wore at LAX for some of a more futuristic variety. Their twin lenses look like bulbous spider eyes. The starched, wing-like shoulders of the black mantle draped over his crimson kimono make him appear twice as large as he was at the airport.

He holds Kusanagi in its sheath across his lap.

We are in what looks like a futuristic hospital room—one imagined by the set designer behind Sigourney Weaver’s Alien movies.
 
There are no shiny, golden droids or streamlined Star Trekkian surfaces here. Only jumbles of circuitry and wires that run in zigzag patterns across dark metal walls turning red with rust. Mechanized insects that are half-falling apart themselves crawl around the room, fighting a losing battle against the structure’s disrepair.

It’s as I’m trying to sit up that I notice the straps binding my wrists and ankles to my bed.

The pale man stands. He gestures to my bed and, as if by magic, it rises and folds so that I’m no longer lying down, but rather sitting in the chair the bed has become.

He holds Kusanagi out before him and then unsheathes the blade. As he does, the blade’s brilliant white light floods the room, accompanied by the sound of its ringing. I shield my eyes, but not before I notice the robo-bugs skittering away to hide among the room’s shadowed cracks and crevices.

“Exquisite, is it not?” the pale man asks.

The light fades, and I remove my hand from eyes. Kusanagi now glows softly in the Pale Man’s hand, its ringing replaced by the soft hum of its energy.

The Pale Man begins cutting the air with the sword. Kusanagi flashes and hisses as it slices up and down, back and forth. “A blade so subtle it could shave the electrons from an atom or cut through time and space!”

The pale man holds the blade out before him and examines it in admiration.

“And that would be the least of its powers.”

The pale man points Kusanagi at my face. My eyes cross as I stare at the sword’s tip in fear. Until now, I’ve thought of Kusanagi as a weapon of protection—one that was mine and mine only to wield. I never considered the possibility it could be turned against me.

“Do you know what the word Kusanagi means in the language of the Toho, Raymond-sai?” the pale man asks.

I shake my head vigorously.

“It translates literally as the sword of the gathering clouds of heaven.”

I gasp as the pale man drops the blade to my throat. I feel warm liquid trickling down the side of my neck. It’s only when the pale man draws Kusanagi away and allows me to see the droplets of my blood at its tip that I realize he has nicked me.

“And a cloud raining torrents of blood, Kusanagi has been.”

The pale man wipes my blood from Kusanagi onto my pants leg.

“While incomparable in that regard, the sword was never meant to be used as a mere cleaver. Kusanagi’s capabilities stretch far beyond simple warfare.”

Moving in a quick, fluid motion, he sheathes the blade.

He leans forward, examining me with the twin black holes bookending his nose.

“You do not look much like your forbearer,” the pale man says. “In fact, I fail to see any resemblance at all.”

My mouth struggles to form words. They catch in my throat several times before I’m finally able to voice them.

“I don’t look like who?”

“Why, the prophesized warrior, Kintaro. The golden boy himself!”

“Kintaro? Golden boy?”

“Yes, a great warrior who exuded grace and power!”

The pale man leans down so that mere inches separate his face from mine. I cringe in my chair, trying to become as small as possible.

“Nothing at all like you.

“Where as you have done nothing but sit here wide-eyed with fear, Kintaro would have demanded not only his release, but that of Kitsune’s. And if he did not get it, he would have found a way to escape, destroy his enemies, and save the girl.”

The pale man stands so that he can sneer down at me.

“Wherever Kintaro rests, he must truly be ashamed. You are nothing but a coward.”

I shrink even deeper into my chair. The pale man is right. Since I awakened, I’ve not had the first thought regarding Kitsune’s whereabouts, much less her safety. I’m nothing but the coward he and my father both proclaim me to be!

The pale man begins to guffaw.

I’m so confused.

“What,” I stutter, “what’s so funny?”

After a few moments, the pale man gains control of himself.

“It has been my experience, young one, that courage is a thing held dear only by fools and dullards.”

The pale man stuffs Kusanagi’s scabbard into the bands of cloth at his waist. He crosses his arms and the parody of a smile returns to his face.

“Give me a good coward, any day. One with guile and cunning. It is we who will be left standing in the end after all the brave
Kintaros
of the world have gone down in self-inflicted blazes of glory, eh?”