The Adventures of FireFox and BlackDog
Episode 9: The Leonardo Cafe
Robin's cheek felt cold against the car window. She had been spacing out for half an hour and now she had no idea where she was. Her only consolation was that she wasn't the one driving. But it looked like Amon was spacing out too. He was navigating the mountain road with only one hand on the steering wheel. It made Robin nervous when he did that. She wished that Karasuma would say something about it from her seat in the back. But Karasuma stayed quiet. Where were they? Surely, the man they were going to question didn't live this far from the city. She glanced at Amon but he didn't glance back so she gazed out the window again. They were just coming around a sharp bend in the road, skirting a shallow valley. Robin caught her breath at the sight. She recognized it, or rather, she recognized the huge sinkhole in the valley floor. The Factory.
"Look where we are," she said.
Amon pulled the car over so they could all stare out the side windows.
"It's been a while since I've been back here," Karasuma said. "Sakaki used to come out here a lot right after the official search was called off. He'd wander around the wreckage, looking for any signs of you. Sometimes he'd drag me or Michael with him. Michael treated it like a game. He had gotten that email you sent from San Francisco. And I knew you had gotten out of the Factory because I was with you. But Sakaki didn't know any of that. Still, he never lost hope that you two were alive. When we got the call that you were coming back… I'd never seen him so happy."
For a moment, nobody said a word. But then Robin realized something.
"The seer foresaw this," she said.
"The what?" Karasuma asked.
"You still believe what that charlatan told you?" Amon teased.
"She wasn't a charlatan. Everything she predicted happened."
"You met a woman who could tell the future?" Karasuma said incredulously.
Robin didn't wait to be asked. She launched right into her story.
"We met her in Rome, in a little place called the Leonardo Café. We sat down and ordered coffee. She was sitting at the next table but we didn't notice her until she started talking to us. She said she had five prophesies for us. First, that we had recently saved an entire race of people, which was true. Second, that I would be reunited with a relative in the near future. Two days later Juliano called us. Third, that the way home would be bumpy. There was a storm over Narita Airport when we flew in and there was terrible turbulence. Fourth, that there was a friend still searching for us. She must have meant Sakaki. And fifth, that we would revisit the place of our greatest triumph. And here we are."
"Cummon, anyone could just guess those things," Karasuma said.
"Anyone could guess that we had saved a race of people?" Robin teased.
"Charlatan," Amon muttered as he guided the car back onto the road.
Well, that was episode 9. The Leonardo Café is fictional. I've never been to Rome so I couldn't use the name of a real café. Also, Narita Airport is the major international airport serving Tokyo. The next episode will be the last and it WILL be the Pagoda Restaurant story.
