AA229 - Final Exam (Patreon)

…In a moment reminiscent of the Eyjafjallajökull air crisis of 2010, the unexpected eruption of Mount Tokachi has caused massive disruption to air travel between the US, Canada, and East Asia. While new safety measures allow jets to fly in much heavier particle concentrations than they could in 2010, much of Hokkaido is covered in floating ash at more than twice the safe limit.

Cancelled flights include…

James cancelled the live newstream. “This wouldn’t be a problem if we’d left before exams.”

“We couldn’t have known,” Suki pointed out. “It’s still three days before the date we were given for the ritual.”

“It can’t be a coincidence, though,” Harue mused. “Do you think they started it early?”

“It’s possible,” Mitsue said. “But the site is well outside of the volcano blast zone, and its stated purpose is not to set off an eruption, but to open a portal. It’s possible that the volcano is a prerequisite for the completion of the ritual.”

“That’s insane,” James stated. “Are all the other rituals going to start with a volcano as well?”

“What I would like to know,” Professor Toei said, “Is why you kids are filling up my office!”

“Don’t we have to plan?” James asked. “We need to get up there now, before things get any worse!”

“Negotiations are proceeding, yes.” Professor Toei pinched the bridge of his nose. “When they’re complete, when we have a way to get you to Hokkaido, I will send for you.”

“We need to leave now, if we’re to have any hope of stopping the ritual,” James argued. “With this weird storm in place, we can’t just helicopter in, can we?”

“The storm would make it difficult, even without the ash being a factor,” the professor agreed, waving off the satellite weather picture that James had pulled up on his phone. “You’ll have to use ground transport, and getting clearance to enter a disaster zone is proving difficult.”

“At least the volcano gives you an excuse to evacuate the population,” Mitsue pointed out. “Have the military started giving our claims more credence?”

“They’re too busy complaining that we didn’t warn them about the volcano,” Professor Toei said dourly. “As if we knew.”

“Something to keep in mind for future ritual sites, perhaps,” Mitsue said. “In any case, are we any closer to getting transport?”

Professor Toei frowned. “We might have something tonight,” he said. “However, the only safe route in means entering Russian airspace. I have contacts trying to trade the location of the Kamchatka site in exchange for them looking the other way, but… tensions are high.”

“I’m sure they have concerns about the JSDF deployments,” Mitsue agreed. “I take it that open communication is not an option?”

“Don’t make the mistake of assuming that the Black Dragons are limited to Japan,” Professor Toei said. “In any case, I will call you when I have something. Get out of my office.”

*

“Why is she here?” Professor Toei yelled over the sound of the helicopter starting up.

“You jerk-offs were about to go and have fun somewhere, so I thought I’d join in,” Shion yelled back.

“Sorry!” Suki said at a much more normal volume. “She followed us, and we couldn’t stop her without making more of a fuss, so…”

Professor Toei closed his eyes and seemed to conduct an entire debate in his head.

“Fine. Whatever,” he finally said. “The others can fill you in on the way.”

Shion smirked and got on board the helicopter with the rest of them. She kept quiet through the take-off, examining the whole process with a weird mix of interest and disdain. It was only after things had settled down that she spoke through the earphones they were all wearing.

“So where are we going, anyway?”

“Hokkaido,” James said shortly.

“Cool! We’re gonna fight a volcano?”

*

Camille Delacroix was waiting for them at the gate of the portside storage facility where they’d been told to meet. James was halfway exhausted from the trip so far. They’d landed at sea, of all places, on some kind of helicopter carrier. Then they’d transferred to a smaller military vessel, which had taken them to Hokkaido, where they'd landed at a civilian port.

Every single person since the helicopter had been very upset with the situation in general. At the same time, they were specifically upset with the unexplained presence of teenagers on board their ship. Most of them were too polite, or too lowly-ranked to express their anger with anything other than bulging eyes or a clenched jaw, but some of them were.

Of course, Shion had just shouted back, which only made things worse. Each time.

Camille’s casual lean against the gatepost, beret jauntily tipped to one side, was both a relief from his recent experience and an affront to it. She exhaled a cloud of thick blue smoke.

There was a Danger! No Smoking sign attached to the gate she was leaning against.

“Ah, you have three more, this time,” Camille said lazily. She looked Shion up and down. “Is this the famous riot fashion of Harajuku that they talk about? I am unimpressed.”

Shion was the only one wearing their school uniform, at least in theory. She was committing so many violations that street fashion that happened to look like a school uniform wasn’t a bad guess. The rest of them were wearing more hard-wearing, comfortable clothes. Even Shugen had found some jeans, boots and a flannel shirt.

Camille had spoken in English, but to James’s surprise, Shion seemed to understand the French girl.

“Screw you, and screw fashion too,” Shion said, speaking in Japanese. She stepped closer and sneered. “You’re gaijin trash, who the hell cares about impressing you?”

Camille blew another lungful of smoke in Shion’s face. “Good attitude.”

“Joke’s on you, gaijin, I don’t breathe.”

“This is Shion-san,” Suki cut in before the two could come to blows. “She does violence. And this is Shugen-sensei, who does sorcery.”

Camille raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t he a little short for a sorcerer? And who might you be?”

Shugen frowned, not understanding what they were saying, but hearing his name. Suki stepped in front of him.

“I’m Suki, and I do magic as well, a little. Perhaps you’ve heard of my sister, Kageya-san. From Scarlet Moon?”

Camille’s eye twitched. “I’ve heard the name,” she admitted. “Don’t mention it to Luc, or he’ll want an introduction.”

“If we’ve finished with the posturing, can we get inside?” James asked. “We’re running behind schedule.”

Camille gave him a disapproving look. “The posturing is important, le Ricain. But I suppose we should get a move on, yes.”

She pulled a key out of her pocket and unlocked the gate, dragging it fully open. Then she left it there as she led the group towards the warehouse. Noting the backward glances, she explained,

“We’re ready to leave once you’re on board. And we’re not leaving anything behind, so who cares who comes by?”

She dragged the main door open, yelling, “Hey, the kids are here!”

Shion bristled at the words, but they were all teenagers. Amile wasn’t much older than them, but the rest of the Georgians were adults.

Amilie was first, her pixie-cut blue hair not concealed by a nun’s habit this time. Today, she was dressed in blue-camo combat gear. It wasn’t quite as bulky as the SWAT armour that James had seen on TV, but it did seem like it was made of Kevlar and hard plate.

“Ah! You made it!” Amile gave James a friendly grin. Then she turned a decidedly less friendly one on Kana. “Good to be working with you again.”

“Yes,” Kana said, showing her teeth. James couldn’t call it a smile. “I am looking forward to it.”

Introductions had to be made. Amile had been joined by two ‘frontliners’, Katarzyna Veleva and Arjun Narayanan.

Arjun was a lean-looking brown-skinned man with black hair and a close-trimmed beard. His sword was wrapped around his waist, which confused the hell out of James. He didn’t even know where to start with that.

Katarzyna was in her late twenties, tall and severe-looking, with pale skin, dark blond hair braided tightly against her head, and heavy-lidded grey eyes that looked unimpressed with what she saw.

“This is our backup?” James couldn’t place her accent, other than ‘somewhere in Europe’. “Well, hang back and do what we tell you, and maybe we won’t all die.”

“Hey, Kat, are you forgetting that I’m the one in charge?” Arjun challenged.

“No, I’m in charge,” Amilie objected. “I’m the one who was given the gate-piercer.”

“That’s just because it happened to be a spear,” Katarzyna countered. “I’m the one who—”

“Shut up, all of you,” Gérard growled. “You eat what I put before you, you go where I drive you, and then you hit the things I tell you to hit. I’m the one who yells at you when your filthy boots ruin Estelle’s carpet. I’m the one who is in charge. Maintenant, get on the bus!”

The others laughed like this happened all the time and trooped onto the bus. James wasn’t sure where they’d got it from. It had Global Atmospheric Response Initiative painted on the side, but there was a decided lack of weather instruments inside. Instead, there was a big open area with a narrow table and bench seats on either side. Behind that was a cramped electronics workbench, and behind that was storage.

Camille and Luc took a smaller van with similar markings.

“They won’t be going all the way,” Amile explained as the two vehicles pulled out of the lot. “We’re expecting electromagnetic interference as we get closer, so those two are going to set up a communications base to link us back to headquarters.”

“We will be in constant communication,” Camille confirmed from a TV mounted on the ceiling. “Oh, and Mitsue, there’s a locker in the back with your name on it. I ‘ave prepared a few party favours.”

“Oh! Thank you very much.” Mitsue bowed to the TV screen and disappeared into the back.

Amile scowled. “I was gonna tell him about the explosives,” she muttered.

Katarzyna laughed and clapped her on the back. “Stop sulking and tell them about the gate-peircer.”

“Right, right,” Amilie grumbled. They all took a seat around the table, and she brought out a long, narrow box from the back.

“You brought sorcerers… does that mean you have a plan to close the gate with magic?” she asked.

Everyone looked at James. Shugen might have been a better choice, but he wasn’t really following the English conversation.

“We don’t,” James answered. “We don’t know anything about the gate, so we don’t know how to close it. We’re hoping to disrupt the ritual before it finishes.”

Amilie nodded. “That is how it is for us,” she agreed. “But the higher-ups back in Europe had an idea. They sent us this.”

She opened the box. Inside was what looked like a spear made of glass, glowing faintly from hundreds of close-packed runes contained inside it.

Shugen frowned and leaned in to inspect it.

“This should disrupt whatever kind of portal magic they’re using,” Amilie explained. “If we can send this through the portal, or embed it in whatever portal-adjacent infrastructure they have, it should… close the portal.”

“This travesty is dangerously unstable,” Shugen declared. He spoke in Japanese, which most of the table understood. Only Arjun and Katarzyna had blank faces.  “I’m surprised that it hasn’t exploded already.”

“It’s stronger than it looks,” Amilie told him in Japanese. “Do you think it will break the gate?”

“Ohh, that’s what it’s for?” Shugen looked back at the spear. “Probably,” he reluctantly admitted. “It’s difficult to imagine any spatial working remaining intact with that inside it. But the nature of the failure would be unpredictable.”

“What does that mean?” James asked.

“The gate might fizzle out,” Shugen explained. “Or it could explode. Or it could explode… catastrophically.”

Amilie nodded. “That is what the egg-heads said.”

“Is that… wise?” James asked. Catastrophic explosions didn’t sound wise.

“Eh, it is what it is?” Amilie said with a shrug. “If the gate is opened, then we are already dealing with a catastrophic situation.”

“I suppose that’s true…” James said doubtfully.

They ran into the army roadblock before they left the city.

“Professor Toei warned us about these, but he said you’d know what to do,” James said.

Amilie nodded. “Gérard handles this sort of thing all the time. Just stay back. It might be hard to explain why the weather chasers have an American schoolboy on board.”

She had a point, but James peeked into the forward compartment anyway. He saw Gérard talking quietly with the JSDF soldiers and handing over a large wad of banknotes. The soldiers nodded and started pulling their temporary gate open.

James snuck back into the main compartment. “Guys, I think Gérard bribed those soldiers!”

Harue looked around, her eyes twinkling. “As the only Japanese citizen here, I guess it falls to me to express my surprise. I’m Shocked! Shocked! To think that the honourable JSDF would fall to simple bribery!”

“I’m a Japanese citizen,” Mitsue said mildly.

“As if,” Harue sneered. “You were born in a no-contact village in the middle of nowhere. I’d bet American dollars that your family registry is faked.”

“I—” Mitsue stopped, taken aback, but he rallied quickly. “As if your family registry is real,” he countered.

“It totally is! All my family are delivered in a proper hospital, why wouldn’t we? They have all the best drugs!”

“If we could get back to the bribery…” James tried. Harue waved him off.

“It’s fine. It’s like tipping in America.”

“What?”

Harue gave him a wide smile. “Like servers in America, soldiers aren’t paid enough, so they need to supplement their income with bribes. It’s how we support the troops!”

“That is… not right,” Amilie said carefully. “But we are both part of secret societies, we can’t always follow the law. So we find ways around it, in service to the greater good.”

“Is that really necessary here, though?” James asked. “I mean, we  arrived on a JSDF ship; surely we could have gotten some passes to get past the roadblocks.”

“The more that know, the more our enemies can find out,” Amilie warned. “The Black Dragons are everywhere, but a bit of corruption can cloud the waters.”

“It can be tricky,” Arjun acknowledged. “Fortunately, we just have to hit things!”

He laughed and exchanged a high-five with Katarzyna.

“It’s true,” Amilie admitted. “We leave that stuff to the support crew.”

James sighed. He didn’t want to think of himself as a pawn of an organisation that committed criminal acts. Were Professor Toei’s connections with the military above board?

Suki leaned against him. “Don’t worry too much about the future,” she said. “With any luck, the world might end tomorrow.”

*

They got to drive uninterrupted for about an hour before the first monster fell out of the sky. Gérard slammed on the brakes just before it hit, bringing the bus to a screeching halt across two lanes of the highway. Fortunately, there was no one else on this side of the road. There was plenty of traffic going the other way—when they saw what was on this side, they drove faster.

“What was that?” Arjun yelled.

Gérard was swearing effusively in French. “It came out of the sky!” he managed to say eventually.

Amilie reached for her spear. “We’ll check it out.”

Gérard, still cursing, pulled a short, heavy-looking firearm out from under the steering column. He kicked open the driver-side door and peered upwards before jumping out onto the road. The three frontliners went out the side door, and James followed them.

There were some suspicious-looking specks in the sky, but most of James’ attention was drawn to the figure on the road. Amilie got to it first, poking it and then turning it over with her spear.

“What is that?” Arjun asked.

What they were looking at was some kind of humanoid dinosaur. It reminded James of a pterodactyl. It had an aerodynamically shaped head with a toothy beak and a bony crest. Its arms were twice as long as they should have been, with a large flap of leathery skin joining them to its body. Its legs were of normal length, ending in clawed feet.

The creature looked emaciated, nothing but skin, bone and corded muscle.

“It’s wearing a loincloth,” Amilie said. Katarzyna clapped her on the shoulder.

“Of course, that’s the first place you’d look,” she teased.

“Shut up. It means it’s not an animal.”

“Not very smart, though, considering it flew into a bus,” Harue said, joining the group. She sniffed the air. “It’s flesh and blood, not a spirit,” she added.

“There are more of them up there,” Kana called. She stared at the sky, not deigning to approach the fallen lizard-thing. “But they do not seem inclined to join their kin.”

“Hey, Shugen! You got any idea of what these are?” Harue called out.

Shugen had been the last to leave the bus, looking nervously at the sky. He glanced over at the corpse, but didn’t stray far from Kana.

“The Great Dragon God-king conquered many worlds, with many races,” he said. “He brought some of them back to serve in his armies. I don’t recognise this particular race, but it has been a long time since I was in Tenra.”

“Is that what happened to the oni?” James asked.

“The Great Lord brought us here, but we were always a part of Tenra,” Shugen said. “Dragons, humans and oni lived… never peacefully, and never together, but on the same lands.”

“Everybody get back on the bus!” Gérard screamed. He reverted to angry-sounding French for a few words before going back to Japanese. “The radiator, it is cracked. We have twenty minutes, maybe, to find a garage and get it fixed. Then the water is gone, and the heating, it begins. Then the engine is dead.”

He clapped his hands at them as they stared. “Move! Move! If the engine is dead, then you are walking to the mountain!”