New Blood
by Saber Alexander McConnell
Rated PG13

CHAPTER 5: Riot Gear

When Nohano awoke, the odd clouds that had threatened the area the day before had passed, and he wondered why it hadn't stormed. He didn't think he'd ever seen the sky cloud over so badly without raining buckets. Still, he wasn't about to complain about the mystery; the hot sun had shone once again, and Nohano spent the day outside.

Despite spending a good deal of time contemplating his strange sphere, shaking it and rolling it on the floor, and trying to get it to do something, all that happened was that the mist inside swirled dizzily around. There was some kind of odd symbol within the mist that looked Chinese, but since Nohano didn't know Chinese, it did little to dispel the mystery. Nohano got exasperated with the bauble quickly, and ended up stuffing it back into his suitcase for another time, when he had a little more patience.

Come the beginning of May, No Quarter was busier than ever. May was a popular time of year for Renaissance Faires, and the group had been booked solid for a month. During the late spring and in the summer, some faires even went into the weekdays as well, taking advantage of college and high school students on break who enjoyed the festivals.

Nohano had not had much time to puzzle over his strange sphere, too busy with practices and performances. But what time he did have to himself, he devoted to figuring the strange object out.

One day in early June, utterly frustrated and angry that there seemed to be nothing whatsoever special about the orb, he'd just about had it. With the rest of No Quarter at the supermarket, and Nohano locked in the bathroom with the sphere, he clutched the thing and held it above his head, pouring out his frustration, his sheer desire to make it do anything but sit there in his hand! "Damn you, work!" he snarled. "Do something!"

To his astonishment, the orb disappeared, leaving his hand empty, but Nohano felt different. He looked down at himself and let a cry of startlement to see that his clothes were either gone or covered by the strange covering he now sported. It seemed to be some kind of protective gear, like the riot police wore, though he'd never seen any riot cop wearing white and red gear! His frustration melting away, he gaped in amazement, bringing his hands slowly up to peer at them; they were covered in white...gauntlets, he supposed they were.

"Unbelievable..."

Nohano wiggled his fingers, impressed at the flexibility he still retained, even though the gear seemed to be as hard as titanium. He knocked on the wall of the bathroom, making a dull clunk against the hard wood. Then he clenched a fist; it seemed impossible he could clench his hand so tightly with thick gauntlets, but he could. Nohano let a laugh of sheer delight. The sphere had been special after all; he'd just had to figure out how to work it.

"Nohano? What the hell are you doing in there? Or do I wanna know?"

Nohano nearly jumped out of his skin at Robert's voice outside the bathroom door, and he spun around, feeling as if he'd been caught doing something he shouldn't. He hadn't been expecting the others to come back so early. "Just reading a comic book," he said, then added in a smart-aleck tone, "and sitting on the toilet. Aren't you glad I asked?"

Nohano heard a rueful chuckle from Robert, and something about wishing he hadn't asked. Nohano took a big breath—for some reason he didn't want the others to know about this. It was something that shouldn't be shared lightly, that was for certain, not to mention he was half afraid they'd lock him in the loony bin. He certainly felt as though he belonged in one!

He looked down at the odd gear, mild panic chilling his skin. How did he get the gear off? He couldn't just come out with it on, it would raise a lot of weird questions! The orb! He needed to find the orb! "Where is it?" he muttered to himself, looking at his hand as if the sphere as if it might appear of its own accord. A second later, it had. Nohano was left as he'd been on entering the bathroom, in his rumpled jeans and T-shirt, holding the swirling, red orb in one outstretched hand.

After gaping at it for several seconds, he slipped it into his pocket, sprayed some air freshener in the bathroom as if he'd spent a while using the toilet, and slipped out of the little room.

"Is it safe in there?" asked Robert mildly, sitting on his bedroll with a magazine.

"I think so," said Nohano with a laugh, though it sounded a little forced.

Apparently it sounded a little forced to Robert, too, because he gave Nohano a look of concern. "You all right, kid? You've been kinda distracted the last few days."

"Yeah...I'm okay," said Nohano, laughing again, though this one was far more natural. Distracted...that was one way to put it! "I'm okay. Just..." He shrugged. "Space cadet mode. Hey, I'm allowed to be a mental case every once in a while, aren't I?"

Robert chuckled, giving Nohano a rueful smile. "Yeah, I suppose you are. Hey, the others are outside, playing a game of badminton—you know, No Quarter style." That meant that they were not just trying to hit the shuttlecock over the net, but to hit the other team members with it—the more hits, the more points. It was a lot more fun than the normal kind! "You up for a game?"

Nohano grinned, happy to take a break for his puzzling mystery; he couldn't experiment more with Robert there, anyway. "Sure! Prepare to go down in flaming defeat!"

"Ha!" said Robert indignantly, getting to his feet and tossing his magazine down onto his bedroll. "You'll eat those words, punk!"

Robert chased a snickering Nohano down the stairs and outside, where the others had their net set up in the compound. Gregory had just nailed Aaron upside the head with the birdie, and was gloating about it. Nohano cheered and joined up on Gregory's side. "Figured you could use some help," he said, snagging a racket from the sidelines.

"Always, mate! Got to get that wretch back for defeating me last time." Which "wretch" he meant wasn't clear, but it didn't matter; they'd all won at some point in time or another.

For the next couple of hours, Nohano completely forgot about orbs and weird gear, and immersed himself in the unorthodox sport. His side claimed victory that day, four games out of six, and Nohano made sure to gloat about it as they all headed for the van to put the gear away. They didn't carry a whole lot of unnecessary things when traveling, but the badminton was how they let off steam, so they deemed it an appropriate frivolity.

Nohano relaxed the rest of the evening, and noticed that Robert didn't look worried about him anymore. 'Probably just figured I was in some kind of funk, I guess," Nohano thought, with a pang of conscience about lying to him. Nohano was fairly close to the rest of the group, as close as a group of performers get traveling together for weeks at a time. But Robert was his favorite. He had looked after Nohano at first, making sure he got along all right. He ignored the exaggerated sense of maturity that Nohano had projected when he first left the foster family, and made sure he felt included...not just some tagalong.

Still, how could he possibly explain something like that sphere, even to a good friend?

Nohano lay awake that night for three hours, pondering his problem. He had strange armor gear, armor that had been mailed from Japan when he was seven. It was destined to be his...and there had to be a reason!

He dreamed again that night, a dream that had him sitting bolt upright and screaming in terror. Even with his water dreams, Nohano had never woken screaming; he cried out sometimes, cursed, or whimpered or groaned, but never screamed. But he had never dreamed of anything like this before.

He wasn't even on Earth. He wasn't anywhere he could have ever recognized; a stark, bleak landscape, with alien galaxies revolving overhead, and green tinges to the clouds. A horrid chill of recognition came over him at the sight of the clouds, remembering that day weeks ago, when the sky had turned green.

The clarity of the dream was terrifying; he could smell the stone beneath his feet, a tainted, earthy smell, not something that could ever occur on natural ground. He felt the wind, warm, but somehow repulsive, like the breath of some monstrous creature. He noticed his shadow beneath him, watched the clouds move with the wind, and listened to noises he could not identify.

Worst of all, he could feel the place. He could feel it, as if it were sentient, as if it were some great, living realm, half-feral and twisted.

He'd walked, walked forever it seemed, dread growing in his chest with every step. He'd walked until he came to a very small cleft in a great mountain, and slipped inside. He walked through the darkness, feeling his way, until he came into the feeble light once more, and gasped in horror. Before him lay a sprawling valley, full of buildings of dark stone, and right in the center was a giant palace, a palace straight from ancient China, or Japan. Spires and towers rose up towards the unnatural sky, and the dread, the horror and taint grew tenfold. A panic unlike any he'd ever felt gripped Nohano's heart, and he froze, watching the main doors of the horrid palace open.

Nohano caught only a glimpse of the...creature...that walked out of the doors; on two feet, clad in Asian armor, it walked like a man, but it wasn't. Nohano watched as the being turned, and they locked gazes for just a second.

And then he was awake, and screaming bloody murder.

The other four were jolted from their slumber, Gregory lurching to his feet and spinning around, half asleep, as if something were about to attack. Robert stared at Nohano and stumbled hastily to the hammock his arm around the boy, speaking in an urgent, low tone, trying to calm him. For several moments, Nohano whimpered with panic, scarcely aware that he was awake, and that Robert looked badly alarmed by Nohano's fear.

Nohano felt like sobbing and throwing up at the same time, curling into a ball and letting Robert cradle him. He couldn't speak yet, couldn't answer the man's worried queries about what he'd dreamed that was so horrible, and was he okay? No, he really wasn't okay...but once he had calmed enough to speak, he said shakily that he was.

"Nightmare," he managed, taking a big, shuddery breath and holding it for a few moments.

"The water again?"

Nohano shook his head, trying not to think about the malign land, and the horror that lived there. "Worse," he said.

Looking relieved that Nohano had calmed and apparently come to his senses, Robert still didn't let go of him just yet. "You wanna talk about it, kid?"

Nohano looked up to see the rest of the group looking at him with concern—though Manny didn't look awake enough to manage much more than a very vague sort of worriment. He finally shook his head; he definitely didn't want to talk about his dream, not in front of anyone...and maybe not at all. There was no way he could ever convey that kind of horror in words. And what made it worse was that he had the distinct intuition that it had not been just a dream. This place existed, and Nohano might just have to go there some day.

"I-I'm all right," said Nohano, getting a hold of himself and lying tiredly back down on his hammock.

The others stumbled back towards their bunks, but Robert stayed where he was, sitting on the floor next to Nohano's hammock. "I'll just stay here for a bit, kid," said Robert, smiling a little. "I remember having nightmares when I was a kid...had to go see a shrink for them, they got so bad. It helped, a little. Miserable things, aren't they?"

Yeah, that was one word for it, though a dreadful understatement. Still, Robert's concern and his presence helped. It helped enough that Nohano was able to drift back into sleep.

The dream did not come back, for which he was grateful, but he did dream of spheres and the strange gear that went with them. When he woke the next morning, he realized with horror that the two things were connected.

---

Two men walked down the streets of Pomona, California, gazing up at the sky overhead. The older man, though clearly in his twenties, had stark white hair and a patch over one blue eye. The younger man was quite unremarkable, a young man of nineteen with brown hair and eyes. They both walked nonchalantly side by side, just out for a stroll along the streets.

But something about them made people avoid them on the sidewalk, even walking into the street to avoid them. Whether it was the slyness that shone in the boy's eyes, or the unusual appearance of the older man, no one could quite say, but they were right to be wary.

Dais and Moral did not get along well together; they were far too alike. Dais dealt in illusion and deception, and Cade dealt in deception and stealth. They were both entirely too cocky, and their egos were at odds as often as they themselves. Talpa had set them this task together for this very reason; they would either learn to tolerate each other, or deal with the consequences.

As a result, both were being stiffly polite to the other as they strolled a little too casually along the street.

"Do we know where we're to go?" asked Moral after a few moments, looking up and down the street. He was more comfortable here than Dais was, being use to American cities, and having come from a time period not much earlier.

"West. That's all I know. But we're closer now than we've been in weeks, and that's a good thing."

Moral nodded his head, though he said nothing.

Talpa had learned much through his scrying, including the fact that someone from Japan had been conscripted into uniting the Ronin Warriors once more. A new group of youths, who would wear the Ronin armor. Talpa had not given up on the idea of assembling his original armor once more and imbuing it with fresh power. He could create all the new armor he wanted, but these had the power of antiquity.

Interestingly, however, he learned that this person, whoever he was, had also crafted three new set of armor for the Ronin, whose numbers would increase to eight. It was a mystic, he knew that, for he was able to shield his identity from Talpa; that meant the armor would be mystical as well. He was very interested in it.

Talpa had not gained the new youths' exact locations, but he had been able to narrow one location down; at least one of the armor orbs was in a land called California. He had called for Dais, giving him the task of locating the new Ronin and his companions. Once close he would be able to sense the orb's power, and hone in from there.

"What does he look like?" asked Moral.

Dais shook his head, scowling slightly, but not at Moral. "I don't know," he said, frustration tingeing his voice. "The master could sense his presence through his scrying screen, but could only tell it was a boy a little younger than you."

Moral scowled, also, kicking an empty can that lay on the sidewalk. "That's useful of him," he muttered.

Dais stopped, his eyes narrowed, and grabbed the youth's shirt. "Don't speak that way again of our master, until you can do better than he. Understood?"

Moral narrowed his eyes, but finally nodded, remembering the results of his last spate of defiance. "Yes, sir," he said sullenly. He didn't like it, obviously, but Dais was his superior, and defying him would get him nowhere.

Dais nodded, satisfied, and the two men walked on.

It was nighttime when Dais felt it, the slightest tinge of power, power that triggered a distant memory of Wildfire. His eye widened and he stopped Moral, who looked at him with some irritation. Both of them were weary and frustrated. "What is it?" he asked, managing to keep his tone civil.

"Power orb," said Dais, smiling. "Far from here...but whoever has it has made contact with it—its power radiates. Still yourself, reach out...you can feel it."

His irritation passing, Moral stood still and did as Dais suggested, reaching out with the mystical sense he gained from living in the Nether Realm, and caught it—a faint tingle, like a mild electrical current, that passed almost before he could feel it. "Whoa—freaky!"

"Yes—it's this way. I feel we will find him soon."

"Okay," said Moral, nodding his head slightly. "Let's go find him, then."

Dais said nothing, only led the way, setting pace considerably faster than he had been using—he could travel far faster, if he'd known exactly where he was going, but as it was, they would have to walk...and slowly close in on their target.