Cherry Blossom Girls 8 Read online

  Cherry Blossom Girls

  International

  ~Book Eight~

  By Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 Boycott Books, LLC

  Edited by Andi Marlowe @ Andromeda Editing

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Email signup: https://geni.us/HCReaders

  Facebook Group: https://geni.us/ProximaGalaxy

  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HarmonCooperWriter

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Seriously, I make this $H!+ up.

  Chapter One: Caged in a Yurt

  You can’t reason with your heart; it has its own laws and thumps about things which the intellect scorns, Mark Twain wrote in one of his more popular books about a Connecticut kid who ended up in King Arthur’s court.

  And while I preferred my favorite Mark Twain quote—I’m so happy I could scalp someone, which he wrote to a friend after asking Olivia to marry him for a third time and finally getting the answer he was looking for—the first quote was more apropos to my current shit-uation.

  Especially as I watched our prisoner, Arianna Lord, glare up at me with fear in her eyes.

  “I have to keep you weak,” I reminded her as I used Veronique’s power to drain more life force from the woman, feeling a power swell inside of me.

  “Angel is tricking you…”

  It was uncanny how much she looked like Veronique. It kept throwing me off. I knew it wasn’t her, but with those sharp features and her blonde bob, it was spot on.

  Even if the metal vampire and this woman shared similar features, Arianna was something else entirely. She belonged to Damon Lord’s crew, and I was starting to wonder just how many supers he had manufactured in Asia.

  All of them seemed to have been raised and brainwashed by him. And like the albino shifter, Regina Lord, none of them looked old enough to have been created at the same time that shit went down at AEFL, when Damon Lord left for Asia with all of Father and Mother’s research.

  “Angel is lying to you,” she said again, her voice barely above a whimper now.

  We were in a yurt, one of several that were clustered together.

  Stella, Ingrid and Angel were resting in the other yurt, the same one shared by the family of the man who’d discovered us in the Mongolian steppe.

  Surprisingly enough, my crew trusted me to watch our prisoner for the first shift, which I was happily doing (well, not happily, because I didn’t like seeing anyone being held captive).

  I knew that Arianna would have killed us if she could, and I still recalled what it was like to get punched when she was in her invisible form. But putting her in a cage reserved for a goat?

  I was surprised that I had enough of Grace’s psychic power to pull it off, that the Mongolian herders believed for some reason that we were Russian KGB members, and that Arianna was our captive.

  Or at least that was what I conveyed with as much imagery as I could conjure.

  The other option would have been to take the family out, which I wasn’t advocating for, even if Angel was ready at a moment’s notice.

  No way.

  This herder and his family had basically saved us. We would have wandered across the plains of Central Asia for quite some time had it not been for them.

  “I can’t believe you put me in a cage,” Arianna said for what felt like the seventh time.

  “You can turn invisible, and you haven’t revealed your other power to us.”

  “I don’t have another power,” she said.

  “No, I think you do. You have enhanced speed, not as fast as Michelle, but faster than a normal human, which has augmented your strength in some way. There’s no way you could have moved that quickly back in the police station in Tokyo.”

  “I was invisible. You would be surprised what people can do when they’re invisible and others can’t track their movement.”

  I lifted my hand again to drain more of her power and stopped, shaking my head for a moment.

  “You’ve already taken enough,” she said, a little haggard now. “I won’t be able to break out of here.”

  “One can never be too cautious when dealing with superpowered individuals.”

  “That’s a clever little quote you have there.”

  I sat before her, my legs crossed under my body. “I’m not what you think, by the way. I’m not some kind of monster, nor am I your enemy. There really is no telling what is coming next in this line of work, which is why I have to be cautious.”

  “Yet you are teamed up with your enemy, Angel.”

  “Another example of what I just said; there really is no telling. Angel and I have a history, sure, but we have a shared goal at the moment. And that goal is taking down Damon Lord.”

  She glared at me. “That’s where you are making a mistake. Damon Lord is trying to change the world, and to do so, we need more visibility, we need to show people our powers. And the best way to show our power is by stopping an incredible force, saving the day.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked her. “By turning the US government against us, you are doing anything but trying to save the day, you are only making all of our shared existences more complicated.”

  “You aren’t thinking straight, Gideon; the US government isn’t interested in you, they’re interested in Angel and his kind.”

  “What? No,” I said, shaking my head. “Up until about a month ago, the US government funded Angel and Mother. They were both part of AEFL. Are you actually familiar with what AEFL is?”

  “The Agency of Enhancement and Future Logistics; I’m well aware of the program that Damon Lord started.”

  “He didn’t start the program…”

  “Everything you have been told is a lie, Gideon. Let me out of here, you and I…”

  The yurt was lit by a single light casting an orange glow into the circular space. In that moment I registered something in her dark eyes, something I hadn’t expected.

  “No,” I started to say.

  “You and I could be capable of so much,” she said, pressing her face against the cage. “Just let me out of here. Let me show you.”

  I scooted back just a little, suddenly wishing that one of the others had stayed up with me. I didn’t like the way Arianna was talking to me, or the suggestion I felt that she was hinting at.

  “Come on, I’ve seen the way you look at Stella, you want her.”

  I almost laughed. “Stella?”

  “It must be so hard being around all those beautiful women and not getting laid.”

  She couldn’t read what I was thinking, but if she could, she would have known that this line of reasoning wasn’t going to work with me.

  I was continually paid in the shade, or better, laid in the shade.

  Anything she could offer me sex-wise didn’t really matter, not with the fact that I would be with the others soon. And besides, I had never been one to care enough about sex to risk my own life to have it.

  Well, aside from a couple of times Dorian and I had done it while free-falling…

  “What are you suggesting?” I asked, deciding to see where she would take this.

  “I think you know what I’m suggesting.” Arianna sat with her back against the cage now, her knees pressed against its front. She unzipped the front of her uniform some, revealing the top of her cleavage.

  “Sorry, I still can’t figure out what you’re suggesting.”

  “Does this help any?”

  She dropped her hand to her crotch, and moved her fingers back and forth in a dru
nken way, the effects of having her power drained clear as day, even though it was well past midnight. “Why don’t you let me out of here? It could be fun.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I think you know why,” she said as she unzipped the front of her uniform even more, reaching her hand inside and bringing her small breasts out, which were shielded by a training bra. “Let me out. I will tell you everything you need to know, and you can still join with the others after. Damon Lord will accept you. We will accept all of you. And you can have me anytime you want,” she said, practically purring now. “Just let me out.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Come on, you know you want to,” she said, licking her lips.

  I started to laugh, and the predatory smile on her face shattered.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “This is all, um, so sudden.”

  “Don’t you know what I’m suggesting?” she asked. “Anything you want, Gideon. Anywhere you want, and I mean that. Hell, I can even go invisible for you. I bet you’ve never experienced something like that.”

  I paused for a moment, pondering if Grace and I had done it while she was invisible.

  Through her morphing, Grace was able to turn herself invisible, and she was able to do so on her own, without me adjusting her stats.

  From what I could recall, we hadn’t done it while she was invisible, which now was something I totally wanted to try out.

  I mean, I didn’t know what it would be like really, to be fucking someone but not actually seeing them. And equally important: would I be able to see my own penis coming in and out?

  Just like the teleportation sex, it was something that the Giddiest Gidster this side of Gidston, Gidorado needed to test out for scientific purposes.

  In the name of Bill Nye!

  “Do you like that idea?” she asked, now touching her nipple with one hand, still getting herself worked up with the other. “You like the idea of fucking me while I’m invisible?”

  “I’m trying to think of a cool pun as a response, but I got nothing,” I told her, trying not to start laughing again. “I’m coming up blank.”

  She glared at me. “Have you even had sex before? If you haven’t, that’s okay, I can be gentle. I can be really rough too. I have a lot of bottled up aggression…”

  “You know, come to think of it, I haven’t had sex. But I have watched a lot of porn. I bet that would help me, right?”

  She didn’t know me well enough to register the sarcasm in my voice, so I let her continue, wishing that I could have recorded this somehow to show to Dorian and Grace at a later point in time.

  They would have gotten a kick out of her shenanigans.

  “The first thing I would do is start up here,” she said, pointing at her lips.

  “By talking to me?” I asked, squinting at her.

  She gave me a funny look. “You are very strange. No, I mean by sucking your big cock.”

  “Like sucking, sucking?”

  “Yes! You’re teasing me, aren’t you?” she said, placing her finger in her mouth.

  I looked down at my proof of writerhood. “I don’t know if it’s that big,” I admitted. “Maybe average-sized?”

  “That’s… fine. But that’s what I would start with, by sucking your average-sized cock, and then you could have me any way you want. I’d serve you. You could even finish on my face if you wanted. All you have to do is let me out of here. And I mean any way. However you want. Any position, any…”

  “Any what?” I asked her.

  “Just let me out of this cage and I’ll show you. I’ll be gentle.”

  “You know, when we were walking in the Middle of Nowhere, Mongolia, earlier, I would have never taken you as someone who was very sexual.”

  “What’s wrong with being sexual?” Arianna asked, still touching herself.

  Oddly enough, I could sense that she had actually worked up her arousal in some way. And using Grace’s telepathic power, which she clearly didn’t know I possessed, I checked in with Arianna’s thoughts to confirm this.

  Holy shit! She was actually thinking about fucking me if I let her out. She would kill me after, but Arianna truly wanted to get a taste of the G man.

  She also kept reminding herself to get ready if I approached the cage.

  “Have you not paid attention to anything I’ve done since we got here?” I asked her finally.

  “I just want to pay attention to you, baby,” she said, with less conviction in her voice than she’d had just moments ago. “Boo.”

  “I prefer baby.”

  “Okay, baby.”

  “I want to show you something,” I told her with a smile on my face.

  “Please, show me, I want to see it. Bring it over to this cage, and let me out of here, and I’ll show you something… And take those glasses off too. They only get in the way.”

  “That’s what the strap is for,” I told her, “and as for what I wanted to show you…”

  Arianna lifted her hand from her crotch, her fingers starting to curl, all except for her middle finger. She watched in horror as her own hand turned around, flashing the bird to her own face.

  “That’s too bad. Positive body image is important in our line of work. At least, according to comic books.”

  “You’re controlling me?” she said, gritting her teeth.

  “If you haven’t figured it out already, figure it out now. I can hear what you’re thinking, and I can control what you do. Trying to use sex to free yourself isn’t going to work with me. Even if you actually wanted to have sex in the end. Your idea, not mine.”

  “No, I didn’t!” she said after I let her lower her hand.

  “There’s nothing to be ashamed of; we all get worked up sometimes. You can finish touching yourself if you like, I won’t watch.”

  “Fuck you, Gideon.”

  I started to laugh. “Not today, Arianna, not today.”

  Chapter Two: Mary

  Stella took watch after me, the vector user with her copyrighted Dutch braid less than enthusiastic about having to wake up in the middle of the night to keep her eye on the caged woman.

  Once I got good and comfy in the other yurt—the family also in the circular space with us (which was odd)—I recalled something that Arianna had said.

  After trying to seduce me, and failing miserably, Damon Lord’s minion had doubled down on her statement that Angel had lied, telling me that he had come to Japan chasing after them, that they hadn’t kidnapped him from the event back in Seattle as he had told me.

  This did make me a little suspicious of Angel, but not any more suspicious of the aunt-banger than I already was. It seemed like a detail that wouldn’t really change the outcome here.

  At some point, we would reach civilization again, and a decision would have to be made. And rather than go with my gut, rather than keep Arianna Lord with us, I was planning to listen to the advice of others for once.

  Imagine that.

  It was odd to be in such an enclosed structure with so many people.

  There were eight of us in a yurt no larger than the bedroom portion of my garden apartment back in New Haven. Four beds, the family on one side, the CBGs on the other, anyone who couldn’t get a bed taking the floor.

  Angel had chosen to rest outside, ignoring the family’s protests. Whatever, tough guy.

  No restroom either, the only sounds in the yurt being an occasional snore, a stomach grumbling, or the wind hissing over the Mongolian steppe.

  In the end it didn’t matter.

  My own exhaustion knocked me out, and I only awoke after hearing a sizzling noise, and feeling a warmth radiating near my body.

  Since Stella had bequeathed a bed to me when she came to take over night watch, this left me with one of the more sought-after spots in the yurt. It also gave me a pretty good view of what was happening when I woke up.

  The family’s youngest girl, who couldn’t have been older than two, had been tied to a leash that wa
s wrapped around the center pole of the yurt to prevent her from going too far from her mother.

  The mother was at the stove, cooking something up, and also preparing a basket full of what looked like rectangular biscuits.

  The men who had found us in the middle of nowhere were already gone, out to herd their livestock or do whatever it was herders did in the morning. Ingrid sat with the mother, watching her cook, and Stella was asleep on the other bed now, which led me to believe that Angel was now keeping an eye on our prisoner.

  Feeling like resting, but also knowing that I needed to check on Angel just to make sure he hadn’t done something crazy, I shifted out of bed and slipped back into my shoes.

  “Saihan amarsan uu?” the mother asked me. She was thin with dark hair, a bulbous mole on her neck, and high cheekbones. She wore dirty clothing, which I assumed was the yurt equivalent of house clothing.

  “Are you fluent in Mongolian yet?” I asked Ingrid.

  “No, I just picked up a few things. Just hello and the names for a few objects,” she said. “It’s really interesting here.”

  “It’s definitely something,” I said as I turned to the door.

  “I think some of their family members are coming.”

  “What makes you think that?” I asked her.

  “They showed me a picture of them on their phone, and then sort of pointed around the space. You know, making gestures like they were coming here. Maybe one of them speaks English.”

  “We can only hope. Any idea which part of Mongolia we are in?” I asked with a yawn.

  “No idea. I looked around earlier for a map, but they didn’t have one here. They have cell service though. The mother used her phone earlier to call someone.”

  “Maybe we could use that to contact Dorian…”

  “Just phone service though, no Internet. They have a satellite; did you see that?”

  “I did not,” I said as I stepped out of the yurt.

  I was greeted by a beautiful view, rolling hills, the sun coming up, three men on horses in the distance, circling around a flock of sheep. To my right was a satellite dish, just as Ingrid had said. There was also a solar panel, and a motorcycle.