7th Moon
Chapter 13

By the next day, Zokushou was back in her fatigues with her hair in a ponytail again. She hadn’t forgotten what Keisei had taught her, she just realized that she was most comfortable as a military commander and looking the part. Keisei didn’t care as long as she stopped being suspicious of her and her friends.

The period of comfort was short lived however, as the resistance intelligence network brought news of two developments. First, it seemed that Seventh Moon was attempting to take back Sakuma Dam. Second, it seemed that there was a new threat coming from Kyushu Island. They didn’t know much about either one, although it seemed that Kyushu had some fruit that was making the residents much stronger and they were just now coming to the Honshu and it seemed to be that their intent was to take over.

Zokushou was very quickly decisive. The mecha from Hiroshima would be taken to Sakuma to defend and secure the dam while the espers would accompany her and Sora to Nagasaki so that Sora could complete repairs on the mecha there and then investigate the matter of the fruit there. Sora gave a pilot a crash course in how to operate the mecha and sent him on his way with a small back-up force to maintain operations inside in the dam. While Sora was training the pilot, Hidariude, Keisei, Kichiku, Douji and Zokushou gathered supplies they would need for their trip to Nagasaki. By the time they had everything loaded up into Sora’s truck, there was just enough room for Kichiku and Douji to squeeze in the back. As Douji tried to squeeze into his spot, Zokushou tried to stop him. “Oh no, you’re too young for this, you need to stay here in Hiroshima where it’s safe.”

“He goes where I go. We are a family and we stay together.” Kichiku responded with a tone of finality, his words as hard and immovable as he was. Hidariude and Keisei nodded in agreement as they put on their helmets and got on their motorcycle. Sora had just joined them in time to hear the beginning of the conversation and nodded in agreement with the espers. Zokushou wasn’t sure why, but it seemed to be pretty clear that if she was going to get cooperation from the espers, she needed to accept Douji would come along with them. She still thought it was dangerous to allow the boy to come with them under such dangerous circumstances, but she relented.

Sora took the wheel driving his truck with Kichiku and Douji riding in the back and Hidariude driving his motorcycle with Keisei riding along following them. At first Zokushou was uncomfortable because she didn’t know the others very well, but Sora was calm and focused on leading the way to Nagasaki and the others just quietly followed. Kichiku and Douji were actually meditating and communing with Hidariude and Keisei telepathically. Hidariude was trying to make sure he kept pace with Sora so he had to keep his conscious focus on driving and only passively listened to his fellow espers.

The espers didn’t exactly speak in words telepathically, they weren’t quite advanced enough for that. It was more a mix of shared emotions, abstract thoughts forming simultaneously in four minds at once. They had all developed their abilities together at the same time, so they were used to each other, but if someone new were able to join in, they’d probably be shocked and confused. They mostly reminisced in a dreamlike state about the shrine where they used to live. It seemed real enough, especially when they could truly relax and abandon reality, but they always knew sooner or later they would have to wake up and face the real world far from home. It did, however, remind them why they were fighting, to go back home and never have to live in fear of Seventh Moon ever again.

While the espers were passing the time on the open road half living in their own minds, Zokushou observed them with curiosity. She was completely unaware of what they were doing and it looked like the two in the truck were sleeping. “What are they doing back there?”

“I don’t know.” Sora answered. “Probably a Shinto ritual.”

Zokushou laughed. “Shinto, what good are those ancient gods anyway? They sure haven’t been helping us so far. Where were they in Kanagawa three years ago? Or twenty years ago during the plague? And what about what my father is doing? Did the kami of the moon turn a blind eye to the one trying to usurp his throne?”

Sora was a little surprised at the venom in his compatriot’s voice. “Wow, you really have lost faith haven’t you?”

Zokushou gritted her teeth. “It’s hard to believe in god when your father is the devil.”

“How do you feel about the espers then?” Sora asked. “They were created by your father. Does that make them monsters or do you believe that they are capable of redemption?”

“I suppose if the devil’s daughter can find redemption, anyone can.” Zokushou postulated. “Or perhaps I’m just siding with the lesser of two evils and hoping we all go down in a blaze of glory.”

Sora laughed dryly. “I know you don’t really mean that. You want us to achieve victory. But then what?”

“I don’t want to get my hopes up thinking about that.” Zokushou replied. “First let’s just focus on bringing this to an end, and cross the bridge of victory when we come to it if any of us are alive to do it.”

Sora did not like the negative direction this conversation was taking and decided to continue driving in silence. After driving all day they stopped with the mountains between them and Nagasaki just on the horizon. They agreed they would save the mountain pass for the next day. They were all quite hungry so they stopped for a meal. They had very meager rations, mostly rice cakes and water. They did have some dried vegetables as well, but just enough to add some flavor. After they ate they set up camp for the night. Kichiku volunteered for first watch since he hadn’t spent a lot of energy riding around all day and could afford to just sleep in the truck the next day. Keisei felt she was in a similar situation and volunteered to take second watch while Kichiku caught up on his sleep. The next morning as the sun rose, both were ready as everyone else and they got back in the truck and on the motorcycle and went off into the mountains.

At first the mountain pass was quiet and empty. The espers felt nostalgic, as it reminded them of their mountain home. However, this sense of peace gave way to a sense of dread as they detected a threat looming over them. They knew exactly what the threat was, two different assailants coming from different directions. Kichiku stood up in the truck in preparation of the fight to come and Keisei prepared to stand on the motorcycle for the other threat to come at a different angle.

A ball of white fell out of nowhere attempting to crush the truck and strand the travelers, but Kichiku jumped and threw himself into the ball sending both hurtling into the road ahead. At the exact same moment Keisei jumped on top of Kichiku while he was at the height of his jump and bounced off his back into the air. Sora swerved the truck to avoid them and was surprised to see in the rearview mirror that the white ball was actually Yeti, an NWE soldier the size of Kichiku and covered from head to toe in white hair. Meanwhile, Keisei was attacking Yeti’s partner Tengu, a soldier with sharp features and black feathery wings, in midair.

Keisei and Tengu had a complicated fight. Tengu had the advantage of flight which meant that if he could shake off Keisei, she would fall to her doom, but at the same time flying was harder with her trying to attack him. He decided his best move was to try to get as high as he could and then dive bomb and twist at the last moment to land on her. Keisei sensed what he was doing and let him rise up, and then when he started his dive bomb she waited until the last moment and then jumped off just before he performed his evasive twist. Tengu crashed into the ground, though his evasive maneuver helped him to avoid too much injury. As he got himself to his feet he found Hidariude pointing a sword at him.

Meanwhile, Yeti was grappling with Kichiku. Yeti had tried to prepare tactical advantages by taking time to familiarize himself with the territory and use everything around him to his advantage. He moved Kichiku towards cracks and loose stones to throw off his balance and lose his footing. Kichiku could sense these traps and carefully stepped around the pitfalls, even manipulating his opponent to fall into his own traps. When Yeti was thrown off balance he picked up rocks and threw them at Kichiku. This was a flawed method of attack since with Kichiku’s geokinesis, he simply struck the rocks with seismic force from his fists forcing them to explode back towards Yeti.

Both of the soldiers realized that they were outmatched by their opponents, but suspected that they might have a better shot if they switched opponents. Tengu desperately launched himself into the air and dive bombed Kichiku. At the same time, Yeti lifted a large rock in each hand and threw them at Hidariude and Keisei. To Yeti’s dismay, Hidariude was able to slice through the flying boulder with his sword and Keisei jumped on the other rock and brought herself into the air to drop on Yeti. He blocked Keisei’s attacks and immediately turned his attention on Hidariude.

Kichiku was now busy fighting with Tengu. Tengu was able to take advantage of Kichiku’s weaknesses. First, Kichiku was very heavy so when Tengu was airborne Kichiku could not jump high enough to reach him. Second, Kichiku’s geokinesis was useless against someone who could stay off the ground, Tengu was immune to tremors and Kichiku could not control any earth that he was not in contact with, so midair manipulation was not an option. Tengu’s fighting style was based on birds of prey that relied on high speed dives, so Tengu would rise high up into the sky and dive bomb Kichiku faster than he could react. They were familiar with each other’s fighting styles from when they trained together on Seventh Moon, but since there had always been relatively confined spaces, the range that Tengu had now was more than Kichiku was ready for. Kichiku remembered the flies when he trained with Ryu, and once again, he closed his eyes and prepared to focus not on where Tengu was, but where he would be going. On the next dive bomb, Kichiku threw a well-placed punch at Tengu’s solar plexus, launching him back into the air. Tengu managed to regain control in the air and kept himself out of range, but he would need a moment to recover and plan his next move.

Hidariude had an advantage on Yeti because of his sharp blades, but Yeti did have a tough hide and had learned long ago to block Hidariude’s blades by carefully grabbing them with his hands as a direct blow would wound him. The hard part was defending against Keisei while maintaining focus on Hidariude, but his tough hide allowed him to endure her blows. Keisei threw a few punches and kicks before she realized she was ineffective, so she decided to try a different approach. She had managed to make more of her paper bombs from materials she found in Hiroshima over the few days she was there and now kept them in a special pouch that Sora managed to find time to make for her. She attached a few of these paper bombs to Yeti and threw a few through the air toward Tengu. At just the right moment, Hidariude and Kichiku backed up and braced for impact as Keisei put up her two fingers and said “Kayakujutsu ignite!”

Yeti had been warned that this could happen and started tearing off the paper bombs just before they exploded and managed to avoid taking too much damage. Tengu had managed to stay just out of range and the bombs exploded in midair stunning him more than anything else. By now Sora had managed to get Zokushou and Douji far enough away that they could just see what was going on, but they were still safe. Douji projected this sense of safety to his fellow espers and they took a moment to try to talk down their attackers.

“Yeti, Tengu, we don’t have to fight.” Hidariude said.

“This is madness, Toromi is turning us against each other for no reason.” Kichiku continued.

“Toromi created us and you betray him by going against us.” Tengu replied. “We are the New Wave Elite and it is our destiny to take over the world. In the past three years, we have achieved much success, and if it weren’t for you delaying the inevitable we’d have Japan already!”

“I have cleared out the Himalayas, Tibet and the southern rim of China by myself!” Yeti chimed in. “I killed every last Sherpa and yak in the region with my own bare hands and I’m not letting you stand in my way!” Yeti roared and lifted a chunk of the ground to throw at the espers.

Kichiku grabbed the rock and threw it back at Tengu and Yeti. The two soldiers dodged in either direction and realized it was time to call in reinforcements. They pulled out small handheld devices to call robot shock troops. First Tengu’s troops arrived like bombs being dropped from the sky, landing in a cloud of dust that the espers just managed to avoid. As the dust cleared, the robots attacked the espers. By now anyone else would have been killed, but the espers could see through the dust and greeted each robot with a neutralizing attack. Hidariude sliced his robot causing the two halves to fly around him into the mountainside behind him. Kichiku met his robot with a well-placed punch that compressed the entire machine like a spring and resulted in a violent implosion. Keisei did not have the same level of strength to put on such a showy destruction of her robot, but she knew a few aikido techniques and used one to redirect the momentum of the robot towards the remnants of the robot Hidariude dispatched and crashed into the nearer half of the robot.

There wasn’t a lot of time to celebrate victory over the robots because Yeti’s backup caught up with them. Tengu’s flying robots had simply been a diversion while the other robots were attacking the truck, trying to kill Zokushou and Sora and capture Douji. Douji’s pangs of fear alerted the other espers and they responded immediately by sprinting to their allies’ defense. Zokushou and Sora pulled out their handguns to shoot at the robots attacking them, but Douji was somewhat defenseless. Before the robot that took Douji could get far, Kichiku smashed it and retrieved the boy. “Are you okay Douji?” The boy nodded back. Hidariude and Keisei finished off the other robots securing their friends.

Yeti and Tengu felt desperate, they did not know any other way to fight their enemies so they had begun climbing back up the side of the mountain where there were explosives set up to create a landslide. Once they were above the line of impact, they detonated the explosives. They were all in the direct line of destruction, so Kichiku thought quickly. “Everybody on the truck and get out of here now!” He stood between the motorcycle and the mountainside and pressed his hands against the ground. Using his geokinesis he managed to halt the landslide, but he couldn’t fight gravity forever, they would have to move fast. Sora drove off the truck as fast as he could with everyone but Kichiku in tow.

Tengu and Yeti started to pursue the truck figuring they would be easier to fight without Kichiku among them. Hidariude and Keisei sensed them coming and launched a counterattack just as their assailants caught up with them, buying enough time for Sora to drive the truck over the mountain peak and down the other side of the mountain. Kichiku sensed that they were all safe and let go of his hold against the landslide. He hopped on the motorcycle and quickly sped off trying to keep up with the truck. As Kichiku passed Hidariude, Hidariude jumped on the motorcycle to take it over while Kichiku jumped off to take over his fight with Yeti. Hidariude caught up with Keisei who hopped on the back of the motorcycle.

Sora desperately tried to keep ahead of the landslide now rushing down the mountain behind him. Zokushou turned around in the passenger seat with her gun in one hand and Sora’s in the other and shot at Tengu to protect Hidariude and Keisei. Tengu tried to evade the attack, but his feathers were frayed by combat and the bullets hit his wings, finally grounding him. Kichiku and Yeti had managed to get on top of the landslide and were riding it down the mountain, but Tengu was out of luck and was now buried under the rubble. Yeti struck out against Kichiku with rage over the loss of his comrade, Kichiku dodged to leap down in front of the landslide and again used his geokinesis to hold back the landslide to protect his allies. To Yeti’s surprise, Kichiku did more than stop the landslide, he actually redirected it as a tidal wave of debris back over onto Yeti. The moment played over in slow motion as the mountain seemed to swallow him up. In his very last moment, he could swear he saw the faces of every one of his victims in the wall of earth about to consume him. He saw no pity on those faces as it collapsed on him and swallowed him up.

Kichiku then began to run downhill with all he had, though he had broken the momentum enough that he was no longer in any real danger. Everybody met at the bottom of the mountain some time later. They looked back at the battlefield, amazed at how the landslide had covered the road and changed the appearance of the mountain. Again they had to face more destruction because of Seventh Moon.

Kichiku stopped and said a prayer in memory of the fallen soldiers. “Though they were our enemies, they were once comrades. They were born with so much potential, corrupted by those who created them to serve as weapons of destruction. Let them know the peace in death they never knew in life.” The espers bowed in honor.

Zokushou did not feel as bad as the espers did. It took everything she had not to say out loud “Good riddance.” But even though she did not say it, her feelings were palpable to the espers. They did understand her feelings though, they were almost killed. They were only sympathetic from knowing where the soldiers had come from, but part of them agreed with Zokushou. But to admit the endemic evils of the New Wave Elite was to accept it within themselves, so they chose to have mercy on these departed souls and believe that anyone could be redeemed.

After the brief memorial, they got on their way. Hidariude and Keisei got on their bike while the others got in the truck and they drove off towards the Kanmon Bridge, the last step in their journey to Kyushu and Nagasaki. They were all tired from their battle, but they were not comfortable setting up camp so close to the battle. They drove until it was too dark to see the mountain or anything else for that matter.

In the twilight they pulled out some rations for dinner before they went to sleep. They couldn’t help looking up at the night sky to see the seven moons. It looked so strange since only the original moon looked like it should. The others had once been asteroids but were now covered in man-made structures and appeared to be more machine than rock. Even among the rest, the one where the espers were born was unmistakable. They all looked at it with a mix of hatred and relief at the distance.

Zokushou started to reminisce. “I remember living on the Seventh Moon as a child. I was born just a few years before the last war and the birth of the first soldiers. I didn’t know much about the world where I lived then, but I remember being amazed that it was no older than I was. Everything was being built around me constantly. I didn’t know any different so I didn’t understand how dangerous it was to being living in a half-built space station. I was just excited by the growing world. I felt like it was a part of me and I was a part of it. Then I learned what was really going on. I really don’t know what my father had in mind for me, or if he even wanted me in the first place. When I first got to Earth, I looked at the moons and I thought the seventh was the most beautiful because it was my moon. But in time I grew away from it and realized that it was an ugly place filled with ugly things. It’s been six or seven years since my mother got dragged back there and I was left alone to spread the truth about what was going on. That’s about seven years of running and hiding. How do you guys handle it?”

Hidariude was very quick with his response. “I just look up there and hold my hand up with the Seventh Moon between my finger and my thumb and go squish.” He demonstrated as he described it, pressing his fingers together as he said squish.

Kichiku, Keisei, and Douji all said “Me too!” and followed his lead. “Squish, squish, squish!”

Sora joined in, “Squish!”

Soon they were all laughing. Hidariude continued his thought. “We’re on Earth and we’re free, that’s half the battle. Now we just need to make sure they know it’s over and leave us alone. Remembering how tiny it is in the night sky is just part of remembering that it’s not impossible, just far away.”

Zokushou thought about what Hidariude said and realized he was right. She smiled and felt a lot better. “I’ll take watch tonight. I don’t know if I can sleep after all that anyway, but I’ll catch up tomorrow as we ride the last leg.”

The others agreed. “If you change your mind and need someone to take over, ask me.” Keisei said.

Zokushou nodded and watched as they all went to sleep. Sora sprawled himself across the front seat of the truck. Kichiku and Douji curled up in the back of the truck. Hidariude and Keisei leaned up against the bike and spooned. It didn’t take long at all for the weariness of battle overtook all of them and they fell asleep. They all looked so peaceful it seemed a shame she would have to wake them in the morning. She looked back up at the moon with her finger and her thumb around the Seventh Moon.

“Squish.”

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