(The Seinan Civil War is the same
war you may have seen in "The Last Samurai.")
In the last part, I promised space aliens.
I'm afraid I may have mis-timed the space
aliens. The space aliens will appear in
the next part, do some stuff, and promptly disappear without talking to the digidestined. This
will create the impression that I'm not just distracting you, I'm dropping a
careful hint about where the story is going, like when I mentioned the "USS
Hawthorne" in the last chapter and then, suddenly, it becomes super important
in chapter 6. Right
after the space aliens.
4
Tai stood quietly in the terminal of the Kumamoto
airport. The noise of landing jets was
muted by the thick glass walls, and drowned out by the crowd passing by. Tai knew very little about Kumamoto,
only bits and pieces – the oldest iron axe in Japan
had been found at Tensui-machi in Tamana-gun. Kumamoto
had been the major battlefield in the Seinan Civil
War. Now, the province played home to a
naval yard, an airport, an excellent Greek restaurant and a major airport. Tai was pacing across the main concourse of
that airport, headed for the exit down to the tarmac below. It was part of his plan – he had a brilliant,
absolutely full proof plan to get Matt and Sora back
to Japan.
He cursed the entire journalism
industry as he stepped into the hot sun.
Matt's father was in Utah
at the request of his boss, who didn't understand that a station manager wasn't
a reporter. Then again, he didn't
understand that the reporters weren't cameramen, so at least Matt's dad was
useful doing that. It didn't change the
fact that Matt and Sora were still stuck half a
planet away. (He wasn't sure how Sora had gotten to go along – if he didn't have very good
evidence to the contrary, he'd of suspected they were getting it on.)
Tai was forced to hide halfway to the UPS planes – some security officers drove
by, and he ducked into a nearby building marked 'USAF.' The letters were vaguely familiar to him,
from some American movies he'd seen.
And, of course, from that vague adventure where all the digidestined had learned to speak perfect English, the one
no one talked about much.
While he was stuck hiding, he figured he might as well call Matt and Sora, tell them his plan.
He raised an eyebrow at his cell phone's display. It said the call wouldn't have any long
distance charges. Maybe they lowered the
rates for the Olympics.
After a moment of ringing, he heard a brief click, "Hello?"
"Sora?
It's Tai. Where are you?"
Suddenly he heard Matt's voice.
"Standing two feet behind you."
"Oh. Okay. Look, I had a perfect plan to get you to Japan."
"Well, we're here now."
"It was a good plan."
"So you said. Perfect."
"Yeah. And I figured I could use the time you were in the crate to figure out how to get to the Yellow Sea."
"We had to be in a crate?"
"Okay, maybe it was only almost perfect."
"We had a better plan."
"Yeah, but I bet you don't have a plan to get to the Yellow Sea."
"Actually, we do. You ever heard of the USS Hawthorne?"
"Is that something from Star Trek?"
"No, that's not something from Star Trek."
"Oh."
"We just need to get the others up here. Did you call Izzy and Mimi and Joe?"
"Yeah. Um, that was the other thing." Tai paused, and looked into his friends faces. "When I called Mimi's place, there were policemen there. They said Mimi was gone."
"Gone?" Matt stood up, and quickly shuffled Tai and Sora into a small maintenance closet. With a cautious glance up and down the corridor, he locked the door behind them. "When?"
"A few hours ago. I called Izzy's house, and Joe's – them too. They just disappeared, without a trace."