Dragon Island

by Berryhill, Shane

  He holds Kusanagi in its sheath across his lap.

  We are in what looks like a futuristic hospital room—one imagined by the set designer behind Sigourney Weaver’s Alien movies. There are no shiny, golden droids or streamlined Star Trekkian surfaces here. Only jumbles of circuitry and wires that run in zigzag patterns across dark metal walls turning red with rust. Mechanized insects that are half-falling apart themselves crawl around the room, fighting a losing battle against the structure’s disrepair.

  It’s as I’m trying to sit up that I notice the straps binding my wrists and ankles to my bed.

  The pale man stands. He gestures to my bed and, as if by magic, it rises and folds so that I’m no longer lying down, but rather sitting in the chair the bed has become.

  He holds Kusanagi out before him and then unsheathes the blade. As he does, the blade’s brilliant white light floods the room, accompanied by the sound of its ringing. I shield my eyes, but not before I notice the robo-bugs skittering away to hide among the room’s shadowed cracks and crevices.

  “Exquisite, is it not?” the pale man asks.

  The light fades, and I remove my hand from eyes. Kusanagi now glows softly in the Pale Man’s hand, its ringing replaced by the soft hum of its energy.

  The Pale Man begins cutting the air with the sword. Kusanagi flashes and hisses as it slices up and down, back and forth. “A blade so subtle it could shave the electrons from an atom or cut through time and space!”

  The pale man holds the blade out before him and examines it in admiration.

  “And that would be the least of its powers.”

  The pale man points Kusanagi at my face. My eyes cross as I stare at the sword’s tip in fear. Until now, I’ve thought of Kusanagi as a weapon of protection—one that was mine and mine only to wield. I never considered the possibility it could be turned against me.

  “Do you know what the word Kusanagi means in the language of the Toho, Raymond-sai?” the pale man asks.

  I shake my head vigorously.

  “It translates literally as the sword of the gathering clouds of heaven.”

  I gasp as the pale man drops the blade to my throat. I feel warm liquid trickling down the side of my neck. It’s only when the pale man draws Kusanagi away and allows me to see the droplets of my blood at its tip that I realize he has nicked me.

  “And a cloud raining torrents of blood, Kusanagi has been.”

  The pale man wipes my blood from Kusanagi onto my pants leg.

  “While incomparable in that regard, the sword was never meant to be used as a mere cleaver. Kusanagi’s capabilities stretch far beyond simple warfare.”

  Moving in a quick, fluid motion, he sheathes the blade.

  He leans forward, examining me with the twin black holes bookending his nose.

  “You do not look much like your forbearer,” the pale man says. “In fact, I fail to see any resemblance at all.”

  My mouth struggles to form words. They catch in my throat several times before I’m finally able to voice them.

  “I don’t look like who?”

  “Why, the prophesized warrior, Kintaro. The golden boy himself!”

  “Kintaro? Golden boy?”

  “Yes, a great warrior who exuded grace and power!”

  The pale man leans down so that mere inches separate his face from mine. I cringe in my chair, trying to become as small as possible.

  “Nothing at all like you.

  “Where as you have done nothing but sit here wide-eyed with fear, Kintaro would have demanded not only his release, but that of Kitsune’s. And if he did not get it, he would have found a way to escape, destroy his enemies, and save the girl.”

  The pale man stands so that he can sneer down at me.

  “Wherever Kintaro rests, he must truly be ashamed. You are nothing but a coward.”

  I shrink even deeper into my chair. The pale man is right. Since I awakened, I’ve not had the first thought regarding Kitsune’s whereabouts, much less her safety. I’m nothing but the coward he and my father both proclaim me to be!

  The pale man begins to guffaw.

  I’m so confused.

  “What,” I stutter, “what’s so funny?”

  After a few moments, the pale man gains control of himself.

  “It has been my experience, young one, that courage is a thing held dear only by fools and dullards.”

  The pale man stuffs Kusanagi’s scabbard into the bands of cloth at his waist. He crosses his arms and the parody of a smile returns to his face.

  “Give me a good coward, any day. One with guile and cunning. It is we who will be left standing in the end after all the brave Kintaros of the world have gone down in self-inflicted blazes of glory, eh?”

  I curse under my breath, unable to keep the trembling out of my voice. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You are obviously no prime physical specimen,” the pale man says.

  I look down at thin arms, my pride wounded despite the truth of his words (Heck, because of it).

  “And yet, you,” he continues, “an outsider—a mere human, no less—managed to survive on Kaiju Island for days all on your own before the girl came to your aid.

  “This proves you are not without resources.”

  His hand closes over Kusanagi’s hilt and squeezes.

  “You have already brought me the god-dragon sword. Perhaps you can be of further service to me?”

  I perk up, sensing a chance to continue living, however slight it may prove to be.

  The pale man’s voice fills with melancholy.

  “I have been down here in the deep labyrinth so long with only the mechs to keep me company. It has been so hard. To know the secrets of the universe and yet not have anyone to share them with.”

  The pale man abruptly snaps his head up and crosses the room so that we are once again face-to-face.

  “I’ve longed for a second,” he says. “Someone to learn and appreciate my work. Someone who can go out into the world before me as my emissary—my prophet—and proclaim my coming.” The pale man folds his arms beneath the long, thick sleeves of his red kimono. “Someone to prepare them for my rule.”

  The pale man relaxes. He backs up a step so to better appraise me.

  “The fact that it would be Kintaro’s heir would only make it all the sweeter.

  “What do you say, Raymond-sai? Will you become the disciple of Ningai Ura?”

  I peer at the soulless void where the pale man’s eyes should be. Every instinct I’ve tells me to get as far away from this Ningai Ura as possible!

  But fleeing isn’t an option. In truth, I’m pretty sure the only option I’ve open to me is doing exactly what Ningai Ura wants. So I do what all spineless cowards would do in this situation: I give in.

  “Uh, yeah,” I say, “Sure. Whatever you want! Just please don’t hurt me!”

  My new master’s lips peel back from his immaculate teeth to form a malicious grin.

  Chapter 15

  Should the human race invent a time-travel machine like the one depicted in the novel by H.G. Wells, we would still be limited in our capacity to go back into the past.

  To clarify, the time machine’s moment of inception would be the farthest one could travel backward in time.

  Our only hope of journeying to a time occurring prior to that date would be for us to encounter an advanced race, presumably one of alien origin, who possessed such technology at a time preceding the construction of our own time-machine...

  —Excerpt from The Magic and Music of Time Travel, by Akira Ifukube and Shon Jason Medley (2009)

  “What have I done?” I mumble under my breath.

  I’ve given my allegiance to a mad man—one seemingly bent on world domination! It’s enough to make me wish I’d met my end in the plane-crash with everyone else!

  But I’m not so lucky.

  I’ve had to live to contend with all the monsters and dragons running rampant on KaijuIsland!

  I follo
w Ningai Ura out of the room into a long, circular corridor better suited to a nuclear submarine than the depths of a subtropical island. There are more dark metal pipes and the mechanized, insect cleaners here, along with hatchways and branching corridors on either side.

  I know curiosity killed that cat, but I dare a question anyway.

  “Are you a Xenomian?”

  This sends Ura into guffaws. The starched shoulders of the black mantle he wears over his red kimono shudder as he laughs.

  “Yes, you could say that I am, Raymond-sai. The very first Xenomian. Or the very last, depending on your point of view.

  “The people who created this subterranean wonderwork have long departed Kaiju Island, leaving only their mechs behind to maintain it.

  “This place is now mine and mine alone to control.”

  “But—?”

  “Look about you, Raymond-sai. Is it the farmland of the Toho that you see here?”

  “I, uh—”

  “No! This is a place of technological marvels. One the ignorant Toho are incapable of comprehending. It is only natural they would think the droids that service it are simply strange kaiju. It is all they know.”

  Ura sighs and shakes his head.

  “They are a people without imagination, Raymond-sai. They dream no dreams of greatness.

  “Do you have a dream, Raymond-sai? A passion? Something that will not let you sleep at night because it refuses to quit running through your head?”

  “Uh, no.” I say sheepishly. “Not really.”

  Ura abruptly halts and then whirls to face me.

  “A shame.”

  He just as quickly turns away and resumes his walk.

  “Then again, perhaps it is fortuitous that you do not. After all, how would you be my own personal prophet if you were beholden to other gods, hmmm?

  “Yes, indeed.

  “I think it is best that you are void of ambition. Time and again your race’s history has shown that a much too ambitious underling may overwhelm their master.”

  Ura turns on me again and places his face in mine.

  “And that is something I simply will not tolerate.”

  I swallow hard and lower my gaze so that I don’t have to look into the sunglass-induced void serving as his eyes.

  I sigh with relief when Ura resumes his walk.

  “I have a dream,” he says. “A glorious one. One that I’ve long worked in secret to fulfill.

  “Alas, the results thus far have not been quite what I would have hoped.”

  At that moment, the sound of a large animal moaning in agony drifts down to us from the far end of the corridor. The sound is so woeful and terrible it makes my heart ache and my hair stand on end!

  “When the Toho cast me out,” Ura continues, “I was without recourse. I survived alone in the forest for weeks, hunting game during the day and hiding from the demon kaiju at night.”

  The animal’s wail sounds again. Louder this time. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard. I want to run the other way, but Ura keeps going, leaving me no choice but to follow.

  “There was only one thing that kept me alive for so long, Raymond-sai—only one thing that gave me the strength to keep going.

  “Do you know what it was?”

  I shake my head, though with Ura’s back turned to me, he is unable to see the gesture.

  “Uh, no.”

  I gulp as watch Ura’s hand fall into a white-knuckled grip around Kusanagi’s hilt.

  “Hate.

  “Pure and simple, Raymond-sai.

  “My heart was boiling with it!”

  The animal’s wail becomes a shriek and I jump, my already frazzled nerves popping like the buttons on a fat man’s shirt.

  “It was hate that made me curse my ancestors and journey beneath KaijuIsland to explore the deep labyrinth. With my soul already as black as the tunnels where Ryuu sleeps, I had no fear of the death he and the other creatures that dwell here might have well brought to me for invading their territory.”

  The animal howls and I shiver so hard I feel it in my soul.

  “But do you know what, Raymond-sai?”

  I shake my head, speechless.

  “It was not death I found in the deep labyrinth, but salvation.”

  We reach a series of windows lining the corridor on either side. Through them I see a number of robots that look like armored samurai from the year three-thousand A.D. They are poking huge, exotic kaiju with electric prods. Chains with links the size of truck tires fasten the creatures to the floor so that they are unable to move, much less resist.

  One daikaiju, a giant, jungle cat with great, leathery wings, snake-skin belly, and a segmented scorpion tail, spies me through the window. It looks at me with pleading, yellow eyes and utters the wail I heard during our approach.

  “I discovered this chamber,” Ura says. “Sensing my talents and greatness, it transformed me!”

  There’s an edge of gleeful hysteria in his voice.

  “It bestowed to me an arcane knowledge far superior to even that of your world!

  “It was magic, you see. Your people would call it science, but it is magic just like that of the shobijin, only viewed from another, far greater vantage. Like the opposing side of a coin! Different, but the same.”

  I watch as several android samurai holding large vats of bubbling, red goo climb on top of the cat beast. There are things squirming in the goo mixture—tiny, insectoid things much like the bug droids trying to maintain this corridor.

  “I used that knowledge to reactivate this chamber,” Ura continues, his eyes locked onto the daikaiju. “I and my reconnaissance droids traversed time and space in the chamber’s saucer-ships, studying every inch of Ryuu, gathering data so that we could learn to wield the god-dragon’s power without the aid of Kusanagi or the shobijin.”

  The droids begin pouring the goo into the daikaiju’s ear. The beast screams louder than ever. I look away, unable to watch. But Ura will have none of it.

  He seizes the back of my neck in his hands and twists my face around, forcing me to watch the scene being played out on the window’s other side.

  “You must watch and learn this process,” Ura says. “It is how I maintain influence over the kaiju.

  “One day, it is you who will oversee their transformation into my minions.”

  The feline daikaiju squalls, unable to stop what’s occurring. I watch in disbelief as the yellow of its eyes grows red with blood.

  No.

  Not blood.

  Red, robo-bug-filled goo.

  Just like that in the eye of the monster that crashed our plane!

  Oh my. It was him. The pale man. Ningai Ura. He caused our plane to crash. He killed all those people!

  I should rush him. Tackle him. Do something!

  But I don’t.

  I just stand there.

  Afraid.

  Afraid for my own coward’s life.

  Ura waves his hand over the console stationed at the bottom of the window pane. When he speaks again, his voice echoes back at us from the window’s other side.

  “Release Nekokat.”

  The droids climb off the daikaiju and begin pulling up the stakes binding its chains to the floor. Before the last stake can be removed, Nekokat springs to its feet. The action causes the cat-monster’s remaining chain to snap like a rubber band stretched beyond its limit.

  What happens next takes only seconds. The broken chain recoils with such force that it cracks like a whip, striking an android and severing it in two.

  “Stop, Nekokat!” Ningai barks. “I, your master, Ningai Ura, command you!”

  Nekokat pays him no attention.

  The daikaiju raises a forepaw and unsheathes claws equal to Kusanagi in length. Nekokat slices through one of the three remaining androids and then pounces on the last two, easily crushing them beneath its abundant weight.

  The cat daikaiju looks at us through the window. There’s no hate or anger in its blood-red eyes.<
br />
  Only madness.

  The beast’s jaws open and an ear-piercing shriek accompanied by rings of visible, oscillating energy surge against the window, causing it to burst inward. Our hands pressed to our ears, we duck just before we can be shredded by a thousand deadly shards of glass.

  After several moments, the shriek ends. Ura takes advantage of the reprieve and leaps to his feet.

  I peek up and almost wet my pants when I see Nekokat charging us.

  “Shut down!” Ura shouts.

  Unbelievably, Nekokat obeys. The cat dragon halts in mid-run and falls over onto its side, asleep. The din of the slumbering daikaiju’s snores fill the corridor.

  Ningai Ura stands gazing at Nekokat, his chest rising and falling, his hands clenched into fists, his face a picture of anger and frustration.

  He calms and then turns to peer down at me.

  “I admittedly have not quite perfected my control over the daikaiju, yet.”

  Not quite perfected—? Who is he kidding? Nekokat almost had us for dinner!

  Ura reaches down and draws Kusanagi from its sheath. White light fills the chamber then softens into a tight corona around the blade.

  “But with Kusanagi in my possession, there is no longer any need to rush my experiments.

  “Now, I have a direct link to Ryuu. And through it, I shall have all of creation for my own.”

  Chapter 16

  Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological response in which a hostage shows signs of loyalty to his or her abductors, regardless of the danger and mistreatment he or she has suffered at their hands.

  —Excerpt from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders, Vol. 5. (2006)

  Ningai Ura and I continue down the corridor of dark, rusting, space-age metal in silence. I think about all the miserable things that have happened to me since I crash-landed on KaijuIsland and curse the day I boarded that stupid plane at LAX!