RAN TAKEDA
THE HUMAN GARDE ACADEMY—POINT REYES, CALIFORNIA
MONDAY MORNING FOUND RAN TAKEDA IN DR. SUSAN Chen’s weekly Adjusting to the New World course. Dr. Chen was in her midthirties, pretty, with her hair always arranged in a fastidious braid. She was Chinese by way of Canada and, like most of the Academy’s faculty, academically impressive; she held dual PhDs in world literature and behavioral science. Ran enjoyed Dr. Chen’s literature class but liked these weekly New World meetings even more. The discussions were always freewheeling and wide-ranging—last week, they’d spent the entire session debating what to do about the Mogadorians in the Arctic internment camps. Ran wasn’t much of a participator, but she liked listening to the debates, and especially the way Dr. Chen made complicated real-world problems of life and death seem like they could be solved right there in the classroom with rational debate.
This week, Dr. Chen had written “Constructive vs. Destructive Legacy Use” on the board. In the seat next to Ran, Nigel yawned dramatically.
“Look around at your classmates,” Dr. Chen began. “What do most of you have in common?”
Ran pushed her overgrown black bangs out of her eyes and did as she was told.
She looked first at Nigel. Her nakama. The literally loudmouthed punk who Ran knew was secretly fragile. Nigel did the talking, Ran did the listening. Nigel caught her staring at him and made an ugly face. Ran subtly raised an eyebrow. In their secret language of facial expressions, Nigel would interpret that correctly as amusement.
In the next seat over from Nigel was Lisbette. From Bolivia. Capable of creating and projecting ice.
Caleb Crane. America. The duplicator.
Omar Azoulay. Morocco. Immune to fire and capable of breathing it like a dragon.
Lofton St. Croix. Canada. His skin projected razor-sharp quills at will.
Nicolas Lambert. Belgium. Enhanced strength.
Maiken Megalos. Greece. Enhanced speed.
And on and on, around the room Ran went, until she arrived back at herself.
Ran Takeda. Japan. Girl who blows things up.
“Combat,” Ran said under her breath.
Nigel raised his hand, getting Dr. Chen’s attention.
“Oi, I got it, Susan,” he said, and Ran’s mouth tightened in disapproval. She didn’t like the disrespectful way he insisted on addressing their instructors, but Nigel was Nigel. “We’re all a bunch of considerable badasses, aren’t we? Take over the bloody world with this bunch, couldn’t you?”
Some laughter from the rest of the class. Dr. Chen nodded in patient agreement with Nigel’s bluster.
“Exactly, Mr. Barnaby,” she said. “These seminars weren’t put together at random. This group, in particular, intentionally includes those with advanced control of Legacies that Earth Garde deems combat-oriented. One day soon, when your training here is completed, you’ll be placed into a division of Earth Garde Peacekeepers and potentially be deployed into dangerous situations. War zones, riots, Mogadorian insurgents. That is your future.”
“Heck, if that’s the case, shouldn’t we have this class in the training center?” Lofton spoke up in his lazy surfer drawl.
Ran felt her ears go red. Thanks to her roommate Isabela and the Academy’s inadequate soundproofing, the mere sound of Lofton’s voice made her blush with discomfort.
“Yeah. After your lecture on all the horrible things we’ll be facing, most of us could probably use the extra training time,” Lisbette said. She cast an envious look in Ran’s direction. “Some of us haven’t beaten Professor Nine’s obstacle course yet.”
“Correction. Only one of us has done that solo,” Nigel said, looking in Ran’s direction as well, his face filled with pride. She pretended not to notice either of them.
“But that is exactly why we’re here,” Dr. Chen said. “Just because you’re expected to be soldiers doesn’t mean that has to be the sum total of your lives. As I’ve said before, you must remember that you are not weapons. You are people. And like all people, but especially Peacekeepers, you must aspire to be above violence. Today, I want us to think about how your violent Legacies might be used in unconventional ways, towards altruistic or beneficial purposes. Have any of you considered that?”
The room went silent. Ran looked down at her hands, both of them splayed on top of her desk.
“Approach it simply,” Dr. Chen pressed. “What is one way that you could use your Legacies where no one would get hurt?”
“I can lift heavy things,” Nicolas said at last, uncertainty in his voice. “Like, help build houses and stuff, right?”
“Good,” Dr. Chen replied. “That’s a start.”
“We can all do that, brother,” Nigel replied. “That’s what the telekinesis is for, innit?” At a look from Nicolas, Nigel held up his hands. “Don’t get me wrong. Unlike me, you’re strong enough to be the beams in a skyscraper. Muscles from Brussels the sequel over here. But what can you lift with your hands that the rest of us couldn’t lift with our minds? Nah, mate. That Legacy o’ yours is good for punching. Strictly punching—”
“Thank you, Nigel,” interrupted Dr. Chen. “Do you have any thoughts on your own Legacies?”
“Oh, I’m easy-peasy. I can help the deaf to hear. I can shout tornado warnings across small towns. I can auto-tune rap songs.”
“Ice sculptures,” Lisbette said suddenly.
Dr. Chen turned in her direction. “What was that?”
“Um, I’ve been making ice sculptures in my spare time,” Lisbette elaborated. “For fun. I can do that.”
“Auto-tune? Ice sculptures? Dr. Chen’s not asking about useless tricks,” Maiken scoffed. “There’s a water shortage in some countries, Lisbette. God. Ice melts. You can create water.”
“Oh yeah,” Lisbette said. “That too.”
Dr. Chen held up a hand. “Now, hold on. Let’s not discount artistic applications. One could argue that art is an altruistic use of one’s Legacies, with intangible benefits to society.”
“Hell yeah,” Nigel said. “I’d rather have the Sweet than some bloody water, that’s for sure. Follow your inner artist, Lizzy.”
Caleb raised his hand. “Organ donation.”
Dr. Chen turned to him. “Could you elaborate on that, Caleb?”
“Well, I can duplicate myself,” Caleb explained. “So, a surgeon could perform an operation on one of my duplicates, take the organs and give them to someone in need.”
Lofton made a face. “Do those clones of yours even have organs, dude?”
Caleb blinked. “I mean, I obviously haven’t dissected one, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Nigel gave Ran a look—the same slack-jawed and cross-eyed expression he broke out whenever his roommate did something weird. She gently tipped her head in response, reminding Nigel that he was supposed to be making an effort with Caleb. Unlike Nigel, she never blamed Caleb for the episode months ago with the Chimæra. He was just following orders.
“Mate,” Nigel started in a gentler tone than the one he’d used with Nicolas. “Don’t your duplicates disappear when you get too far away from them?”
“Yeah,” Caleb replied. “But my range is getting farther . . .”
Nigel rubbed the back of his neck. “Right. But, uh, assuming them clones even have hearts and livers and whatever, wouldn’t those organs just disappear when you absorbed them back up? You’d leave some poor sot with a hole in his belly.”
Caleb nodded slowly. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“This is gross,” complained Maiken.
“We might have to spend a little more time workshopping that particular idea,” Dr. Chen diplomatically told Caleb. “However, Caleb’s on the right track. That’s exactly the kind of outside-the-box, nontraditional thinking that I hope to inspire in you.” Dr. Chen’s pacing brought her over to Ran’s desk. “What about you, Ran? Any thoughts?”
Ran tensed up.
“No,” she said quietly.
Dr. Chen smiled. “Come on, Ran. There’re no wrong answers here. There’s got to be something you can add to the discussion.”
Ran felt the eyes of her classmates upon her. She racked her brain for something to say. With a touch, she could render an object’s molecules unstable. When she released an object thus charged, it would explode with all the concussive force of a grenade. What were the altruistic and beneficial applications of that?
That’s when the flash occurred. All of a sudden, Ran’s mind went hot and she was back in Tokyo. Buried under a pile of rubble, the roof of what used to be her family’s small apartment on top of her, her little brother crying somewhere close. Trapped. Suffocating. She shoved against the debris with all her might. The telekinesis that Ran hadn’t even discovered yet triggered and the chunks of roof went sailing off her. Some of them—the ones she’d been touching— exploded. She staggered to her feet, blood in her eyes, not sure what she’d just done.
Ran was the only Garde known to have manifested her telekinesis and primary Legacy at the same time. Such a trivial fact meant nothing to Ran now and meant even less back in Tokyo.
“Ran?”
She couldn’t hear her brother crying anymore.
“Ran?” Dr. Chen asked again.
The vision passed. She was back in the classroom, everyone staring at her. Her desk vibrated beneath her fingers. Ran glanced down, saw that she had begun to charge the polished wood desktop. With a deep breath, she pulled that energy back inside her, narrowly averting an explosion.
“No,” she said again, firmly, and this time Dr. Chen accepted that answer. Her teacher moved on, but not without a lingering look of concern for Ran.
After the seminar, Ran strode purposefully across the lawn towards the girls’ dorms. It had been a few weeks since she last experienced a flashback like the one that overcame her in class. Foolishly, she’d begun to hope that they were fading, the visions of Tokyo during the invasion relegated to an occasional nightmare. Not so. Ran wished she were harder. More in control.
Nigel caught up to her. He looped his hand through her arm, matching her pace.
“All right, then,” he said casually. “Nice day for a speed walk across campus, innit?”
Ran didn’t respond. Nigel was adept at interpreting her silences, though. She didn’t mind his presence.
“How’s the new roommate?” he asked, each of them having gotten new additions to their suites over the weekend. “Mine’s a real sweetheart. Excitable sort. Told me they’re gonna write about us in history books. I can get behind that. A welcome change of pace from ol’ Caleb, who I might very well find pulling guts out of a clone when I get back to our room.”
“Mine seems kind,” Ran replied. “Overwhelmed. Very tired.”
“Getting the tour from Isabela would wear out a marathon runner.”
“Yes,” Ran responded noncommittally. “She is a healer. A good Legacy.”
The atmosphere around them changed. It was subtle—the noises from other passing students became muffled and fuzzy, while their own soft footfalls in the grass sounded louder thanks to a lack of background noise. Nigel was using his sonic manipulation Legacy. He put them in a bubble so that no one would be able to hear them.
“We gonna talk about what happened in class, love? Or are we just gonna dance around it?”
Ran pressed her lips together. She knew Nigel got a kick out of it when she played up her own robotic nature.
“I do not dance,” she replied stiffly.
Nigel snorted, but kept giving her that concerned look. “You had one of your episodes, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You not taking those meds Dr. Linda prescribed?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Ran stopped. She turned to look at him. “Are you taking yours?”
After learning about what happened to them during the invasion, Dr. Linda had prescribed both Ran and Nigel the same antianxiety medication. Ran remembered how Nigel had clicked their two identical pill bottles together like they were cheers-ing. Now, he flashed her a sly smile.
“Nah. You know they made me tired. I gotta stay functional.”
“As do I,” Ran said.
“So we’re both full Cuckoo’s Nest,” Nigel observed with a shrug. Then, his face got serious again, an expression Ran wasn’t used to seeing on his pockmarked cheeks. “Look, you know I tell you all my shit . . .”
“Yes,” Ran said.
“But if I’m ever talking too much, if you need to get something off your chest, you know I’m your man, right?”
Ran smiled. A rare thing. She put both her hands on Nigel’s bony shoulders, carefully avoiding the spiky studs sewn onto his denim vest.
“You are my man,” she said. “Do not worry about me.”
Nigel laughed brusquely and looked away. “All right. We had our moment, didn’t we? Let’s go back to silently repressing our feelings, yeah?”
Ran let her hands drop away and they resumed their walk across campus. Nigel’s words were stuck in her head, a couple of random phrases that hinted at some bigger inspiration.
Gotta stay functional.
Repressing our feelings.
Ran stopped walking.
“I have to go back and see Dr. Chen,” she said suddenly.
“Huh? About what?”
But Ran was already jogging back towards the administration building. “I will see you at dinner!” she called over her shoulder.
Ran found Dr. Chen still in the seminar room, tidying up for the next class. The jog back hadn’t come close to winding her and Ran had a habit of entering rooms quietly. When she finally spoke, her soft voice made Dr. Chen jump.
“I have an answer.”
“Oh, wow—Ran. You scared me.”
“I am sorry about class before,” Ran said, believing Dr. Chen was referring to the near explosion at her desk.
“It’s okay,” Dr. Chen replied kindly. “So, you gave my question a little more thought?”
“Yes,” Ran said, a tinge of excitement in her voice. “The best way for me to benefit society using my Legacy—the only way, I believe—is for me to stop using it entirely.”
“Well, Ran, that’s not exactly the point of the exercise—”
“Please inform the other administrators,” Ran concluded. Her message delivered, she was already halfway out the door. “I will no longer blow anything up.”