Kagura, by arrangement with her building manager, had the complex pool to herself from 3 to 5 pm every Thursday. It wasn't a good pool – far too small and overchlorinated – and her coach would have fainted rather than suggest she practice in it. Which is why she didn't tell her coach her building had a pool at all.

Stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. She hit the wall, flipped in a graceful motion and started another easy lap, this time using the backstroke. No pressure. No coach. No clock. Just her, and the water. Here, she competed against no one except herself.

It was relaxing.

Training for the Olympics was a full-time job, especially less than a year before the Summer Games – four years ago she'd left college to train full-time for the last Olympics, and the result was a bronze and, it seemed, a career. Prize money paid for her pool time, her equipment, her trainer's exorbitant salary. Oh yeah, and food and shelter. Now it was gold or bust…

…except the competition wasn't as much fun as it used to be.

It had started after the Olympics. The sports media had ended up fascinated with the young Japanese phenom, with her brash competitive nature and her love of mugging for the camera (her favorite shot, from a Sports Illustrated profile, showed her grinning and giving a thumbs-up, headlined "YAY!"), and she'd just gotten better and better. Neither had endeared her to other swimmers. Her outstretched hand and congratulatory "Good job!" to the vanquished competitors was often met with a cold stare. It seems that the higher up the sports ladder one went, the more attitude problems one encountered.

It wasn't right! Kagura lived and breathed competition, and knew everyone else did too – but competition was supposed to be a good-natured matching of skill against skill, not tinged with envy and dislike. Her coach thought the same way her competitors did. "Think of them as enemies," he'd said. She didn't want enemies! She wanted rivals. Skilled, talented people she could thoroughly beat, and then go out for drinks with afterward. People like –

"YAAAAAAHHHHH!" SPLOOOSH.

Kagura knew that voice. She also knew that splash. There was absolutely NO way –

"Heya, knucklehead!" Tomo shouted, jumping up onto Kagura's shoulders and nearly drowning her in the process.

Kagura came up spluttering. "What the – Tomo, you total numbnut! What in the…" She took off her goggles. Yeah, it was Tomo, grinning like a madwoman. Kagura grinned back –

and dunked her friend.

Tomo came up coughing. Kagura was laughing. "You idiot! You still wear your swimsuit under your clothes? What a numbnut!"

"It's a numbnut reunion!" said another cheerful voice.

"Don't call us numbnuts, Osaka! – Hey, hi, Osaka!" Osaka waved, feet dangling in the shallow end. "What are you guys doing here?"

"Long story," Tomo said, splashing her friend for no good reason. "But let me set you straight, senor. We're knuckleheads, not numbnuts."

"Excuse me? I think we're numbnuts," Kagura said, splashing back. "That's what we've always said."

Tomo splashed back harder. "I believe you're mistaken. It's 'knuckleheads,' not 'numbnuts.'"

Splash. "Numbnuts!"

"Yeah, which one is it?" Osaka wondered.

Splash. "Knuckleheads!"

Splash. "Numbnuts!"

"Hey! Maybe it's 'knucklenuts,'" Osaka said.

The girls in the pool stopped their splash-fight and stared. "Huh," Tomo said. "That's not bad."

Hugo paced the waiting room, oblivious of the knucklenut reunion that had just walked in, cheerfully bickering. He was excited, of course – expectant fathers will be – but also worried. It was Serena's first pregnancy. What if something went wrong? What if –

Oh dear. There was the doctor now, walking towards him, her face hard to read. She knelt down with a rustle of lab coat, and looked Hugo in the eye.

"Congratulations," Dr. Sakaki said. "It's a girl, three boys, and another girl."

Hugo yowled happily. "That's wonderful!" exclaimed his person, Megumi. "And their coloring?"

"Seal point," Sakaki said solemnly.

"Oh, fantastic!" breathed Megumi. She'd trust no one else but Sakaki with the health of her prized show Siamese. "Come on, sweetie, let's go see your babies!" Megumi scooped up Hugo and followed Sakaki into the back. Sakaki came out a moment later and stood in front of her three friends.

"Hi," she said quietly, peeling off her thick biteproof gloves. "Good to see you."

Tomo, Kagura, and Osaka grinned. That greeting was the equivalent of a squeal and a bear hug from their taciturn friend.

Kagura smiled but said nothing. Sakaki had been her high school rival, and after so many frustrating sports defeats at Sakaki's hands, Kagura was damn well going to win the first-haircut-compliment competition.

"Your hair's different," Sakaki said, observing Kagura's new cropped style, a pixie-ish cut designed to fit neatly under her swim cap, that had the surprising effect of making the tomboyish athlete look more, not less, feminine. "It looks nice."

Hehe, I win! Kagura thought. It didn't matter that Sakaki was completely unaware that there was a contest. "Yours looks good too," she said as a concession to the loser. Sakaki's dramatic long hair was now cut in layers, with soft wisps framing her face.

"Yeah, yeah, we're all hot chicks, look at us," Tomo said impatiently. "Sakaki, I've gotta tell you something important…"

"Yomi called," Sakaki said. "I already know."

Tomo smacked herself in the forehead.

"Toldja," Osaka said.

"Just for two weeks, right?" Sakaki said. "There's something I've got to do."

Dr. Takuya knew Sakaki well. And, as any man in his right mind would be, he was also desperately in love with her – ever since her third week at the clinic, when she'd spent three icy-calm hours in surgery removing several feet of string from the stomach of a deathly ill kitten, and then sobbed in relief when the patient came out of the anesthetic, meowed, and nibbled her hand. The stoic demeanor hid one of the warmest hearts he'd ever encountered.

Whatever he'd hoped for, though, he was stunned when she walked silently into his office and dropped keys on his desk.

"House keys," she explained, in her telegraphic way. "I'm gone for two weeks. Watch Maya?"

Takuya knew and liked Maya – the big, beautifully patterned cat, some sort of cross-breed, was disdainful of most people but adored Sakaki, and she often brought him to the office, where Takuya had actually taught him to fetch (there was some Siamese in there, he wagered). "Uhh… okay?"

"Good." She gave him a rare smile and had absolutely no idea it was going to make him slightly dizzy for about a week. "Maya likes you." With that, she turned and was gone.

Takuya sat and stared at the door for several minutes, turning the apartment keys over and over in his hands. Could he possibly dare to hope…?

No. The only man Sakaki could love would be a man who loved cats as much as she did. And Takuya was a dog person. Bond with Maya all he liked, he'd still be a dog person. He sighed mournfully for a love that could never be.

"So, did you notice how your friend there was looking at you when you asked him to watch Maya?" Kagura said, grinning. "He's totally got the hots for you."

Sakaki stared at her feet and blushed madly. "Haha! You like him! Come on, Sakaki, tell us what you think of him…"

Sakaki continued to examine her shoes. "…He's a dog person. But…" she added, very quietly, "he's cute."

The five girls stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.

"Oh wow," Osaka breathed. "You're gonna get married, aren't you?"

Tomo waved her arms madly. "No time, no time for that!"

"But we're only twenty-four," Osaka said, bewildered.

"No, I mean, we don't have time to stand around and talk about guys. We've got to have a briefing – "

"You mean you're gonna explain what we're doing?" Kagura said.

"That's what I said," Tomo said. "Except I'm an Interpol agent so it's a briefing. Anyway, we need to be ready to leave for San Francisco first thing tomorrow.

"Brush up on your English, ladies! We've got one more person to pick up."

Meanwhile, over the South Pacific…

The plane was small and noisy, but very comfortable. Nyamo imagined it as what first class on a jumbo jet would be like. Big leather seats, attentive flight attendants, hors d'oeuvres of many nations (takoyaki!), and, unfortunately, free sake. "Unfortunate" and "free sake" didn't usually go together in Nyamo's mind, and especially not this sake, she thought as she sipped the delicate wine – unless Yukari was around.

Yukari had taken the opportunity to get schnockered on the free booze, and was currently sharing a raucous laugh with the English-speaking couple sitting across from them. The fair-haired, middle-aged husband and wife were either Danish or enjoyed filled breakfast pastries, from what Nyamo could make out. (Nyamo had learned a little more English over the years – with an emphasis on memorizing phrases such as "She is crazy" and "Please do not listen to what my friend says".)

"Thank you for flying Iyaman Airlines. We will be landing shortly. Please place your tray tables in an upright position…" The announcement was repeated in four languages. Yukari turned to Nyamo with a mad grin.

"Vacation! This is so great! I hear we're some of the first people who get to see this new resort. I wonder, are drinks included in the package?"

"Let's hope not," Nyamo muttered, slapping Yukari's hand to stop her fiddling with the tray table locking mechanism.

"Awww, Nyamo, you're such an old lady… Hey! Look! We're landing! We're gonna crash! Aaaaaaaaaa... No, wait, we're not! We're not gonna crash!"

"Please do not listen to what my friend says," Nyamo said pleasantly to the Danish couple, who were looking alarmed at Yukari's random shrieking.

The plane touched down – and before people could start reaching for their luggage in the overhead bins, the flight attendants started gently guiding them off the plane. "Your vacation starts now. We'll bring your luggage to your rooms," they said.

"Wow, now that's service. Okay… fun in the sun, here we… Wait. What?"

Yukari stopped at the top of the exit stairs, looking out at the tarmac. Nyamo peered over her shoulder. The scenery was indeed beautiful, with lush palm trees and colorful ground foliage on either side of the runway…

…but on the runway, there were about fifteen men. In black. With guns.

A flight attendant gave Nyamo a rude shove from behind. She and Yukari staggered down the stairway, along with the rest of the astonished passengers. Several people tried their cell phones, and cursed at the lack of signal. The attendants, now much less friendly and armed with pistols, herded the thirty passengers past the serious men in black to stand in front of another man, this one in sunglasses and an impeccable grey suit.

"Welcome, hostages," he said in elegant Japanese, gesturing expansively, "to my island paradise."

Notes:

The motto of this chapter: NEVER LET YOUR CAT EAT STRING! Ever! Also, you CAN train Siamese cats to fetch.

Kagura and Sakaki are the two hardest characters for me to write, because I'm not athletic, I'm not driven, and I'm definitely not quiet. Hope they turned out okay.

The credit for the bit about the "knucklenuts" goes to the Boy (my fiance). Thank you, Boy, for giving me ideas!

Next chapter: Academics, Denny's and karaoke in San Francisco!