NaNoWriMo Day 30: The End

NaNoWriMo goal: 50,000 words by November 30 Average daily goal: 1,667 Today's count: 5,926 Total: 55,005

Note: I won. Will suggested that at 50,000 words exactly I end it by writing "and then they all suddenly died in a major explosion" but I didn't think that was fair. This is not much better, I admit. It's not the way I planned on ending it. But it's something. Thank you, everyone, for your support. I am so sleepy. And amazed. What a hell of a thing this was.
Update: I tweaked a few things, realized I had one more loose end, and tacked an extra bit at the very end. It feels a bit more complete, but I really should let it go. Again, thank you for reading! I'm about to collapse in my cubicle, right about now.
Yet another note: Not to spoil anything for you, but in the bright light of day, the comic book violence in this passage feels stupid and cheap, in the context of the headlines we all read each morning. I may have to write another novel soon, to make amends for the way I treated bloodshed here. So WARNING: This novel contains shallow, ill-thought out portrayals of violence, for which the author is heavily contrite.

---

Isa and the thieves spent the day preparing, going over their plan, making flash cards, inventing mnemonic devices, spinning out long scenarios. They sat in the greasy chopstick joint Isa had found near the parking lot in Oakland, where Annie worked through a platter of dumplings — “They’re like ravioli,” she squealed — and Kimo wolfed down two bowls of noodle soup studded with red roasted pork. Isa sat with her back to the wall, in the back of the restaurant, watching the window. They drank pot after pot of tea.

“What happened in there with your parents?” asked Kimo. “Y’all don’t seem like a happy family.”

Isa poked at her chow fun. The fat glossy noodles slipped out of their tangles and into a looser chaos. “It’s a long story,” she said.

“You still want to save them, though,” said Annie, slurping a Coke. “That’s sweet.”

“Yeah,” muttered Isa, “I’m sweet.”

When the sun was about to set, Isa waited while Annie picked a car along the side streets.

“This one!” she cried, pointing. “So cute!”

Kimo stared at the Mini Cooper. “Where will I put my other foot?”

“Okay, okay, this one!” she danced around an SUV.

“Unstable, hard to park. Gas guzzling!”

Eventually, they rounded on a silver colored Honda Civic.

“Sleek, but boring.”

“Perfect.”

Within moments, they were inside, and the engine was running. The stereo began blasting a light FM station, playiing pop songs of the eighties. Tina Turner was worrying the great question over and over: What’s love got to do with it?

Annie cooed, “I knew I’d get something out of dating those hoodlums straight out of juvy!”

After an hour, they were crossing into the patchy streets of SoMa, crawled over with leather boys and adventurous yuppies out for cocktails. They drove around and around, past an odd building with furniture stuck to the outside of it. “Ooh, art,” noted Kimo. And they went on and on, zeroing in, looking for the poor part of town, the dark part of town, past the desirable, paid-for parts of town, into the world of immigrants, uncertainty, places other people don’t really want to look.

The sky was a brilliant tangerine and flamingo pink. Outside the doorway to a warehouse near the interstate, they saw what looked like a young Mexican kid sitting on a folding chair, wearing a big puffy coat. It was getting cold. There was no wind, just a strange damp chill that made the air feel gelled. Isa eyed the boy as they drove around, and she noted, with a jolt, that he eyed her back. He had Asian eyes.

“He’ll have a gun,” Isa muttered.

“Do we have a gun?” asked Kimo, eagerly. “I always wanted one.”

“Of course we don’t have a gun,” Isa said. “I’m a freaking ninja.”

“Gotcha,” said Annie. “So we’ll take his gun.”

“There’s got to be five more just like him inside,” Isa muttered.

“That’s a bad way in,” Kimo agreed. “You should go in from the top. We’re not coming with you, remember. But we’ll wait in the car.”

They parked down the block, around the corner, out of sight. The warehouse took up the whole block, so it was impossible to break in to another building and cross over to the warehouse’s roof.

“Watch my back,” said Isa. She climbed out of the car and into the street. A single streetlamp went on. She had no shadow. It was still partly light. She peered up into the sky and readied her grappling hook. Then she was climbing.

Annie and Kimo lit a cigarette, read a celebrity magazine. The ninja pulled herself over the edge and was gone from sight.

“Nicole Kidman has beautiful, beautiful skin,” sighed Annie.

“Bitch is paralyzed in the face, you think that’s beautiful?” huffed Kimo. “You’re prettier than her any day.”

“You’re the best.”

“I really want a gun,” Kimo mused, flipping the page.

***

The roof was eerily quiet and empty, and the path to the door absurdly unencumbered. She suspected there was a camera under the roof overhang of the door, but when she got there, there was nothing. She listened at the door and heard nothing. She tried the door, and it was unlocked. She threw it open, and nothing. She threw a hat in. Nothing. She peeked. Legitimately nothing.

A can of Silly String came out. She sprayed to look for tripwires. Nothing. She walked in and peered into the hallway, and saw what looked like a short stairway leading to shabby hallway, with one door and another stairway down. Lofts. She creeped along the wall, listening. The sounds of a television. The smells of someone frying garlic. Loud pop music, coming from below. Then shoes with a heavy step, started up the stairs. She hid, quickly, behind a big green garbage can, just in time to see a drunken thickset Japanese man in a rumpled suit and glasses drag himself up to the door.

“Mitsuko-san!” the man yelled. A moment later, a small old woman with gray hair in a bun, dressed in a satin robe, answered the door and bowed.

“Yes, Hiro-san, what do you need?”

“Three girls,” he barked, “and more whisky.”

She bowed again and closed the door.

This was a very unlikely place for Mr. Jonin, thought Isa. She waited. In another few minutes, three young women, dressed in tight cocktail dresses, exited the door, the last carrying a tray of whisky and glasses. They made their way down the stairs, and Isa followed them a bit, a few paces behind, staying out of sight, and lingering on the stair, peeking into the space beyond to watch what happened.

The stair led to a large loft-sized space, filled with Chinese girls. Or at least, that’s what it looked like at first. Really, there were probably only two dozen or so, milling about in cheap dresses. They all looked to be about Isa’s age, or young at least, and not too well fed. Three were standing in a row near a group of men who sat in the middle, in suits, doing something at a table in the center. She didn’t see Mr. Jonin.

The girls who brought the whiskey made their way to the center of the room and set it down in front of the five men. They stood up as the girls arrived, and Isa saw, with a gasp, an enormous pile of money, stacks of bills. One of them pinched the girl who brought the whiskey, and she looked away, disgusted. Isa didn’t have time to examine the scene further because the door in the floor above her opened again, and this time she heard Mr. Jonin’s voice clearly, thanking the woman named Mitsuko.

She froze between leaping down and backing up, and turned just in time to meet his eyes. He was reaching inside his coat. She ducked, springing forward, and rushed him, toppling him over before he had a chance to ground himself. A gun fell out of his hand and flew across the floor. She was on top of him then, going to break his arm.

He shouted. Mitsuko’s door opened, and the little old woman appeared with a gun.

Isa pulled out her dagger and scrambled behind Mr. Jonin, holding it to his throat and placing him between her and the old lady. With the volume of the music downstairs, no one below seemed aware anything was awry above.

“It’s all right, Mitsuko-san,” Mr. Jonin explained, choking slightly. “This is my friend, Miss Isa. She has always had a strange way of saying hello.”

Mitsuko frowned and kept her gun pointed. “I am a very good shot, Mr. Jonin. My late husband taught me during the war.”

“It’s not necessary,” Mr. Jonin insisted. “She is just joking, aren’t you, Miss Isa?”

Isa grinned. “This is not a joke, teacher,” she whispered in English. “Yesterday was not a joke. I want my key.”

In English, he replied, “It’s not here.”

“Don’t make me have to search your body when you’re dead.”

He looked up at Mitsuko and returned to speaking Japanese. “She is an old student of mine. And really, I know you don’t know how to use that gun. Go inside. Take care of your girls.”

The old woman looked at the scene behind her, at the stair, and back again, then lowered her gun and went back inside.

“Why did you do that?” asked Isa, continuing in Japanese.

“She would blow my head off, she was so nervous,” answered Mr. Jonin.

They sat there on the floor, Isa with her dagger at Mr. Jonin’s throat, for half a minute or so.

Finally Mr. Jonin spoke. “Either you kill me or you let go of me, young lady. This is getting to be very uncomfortable.”

“Shut up.”

“I don’t think you understood what a favor I did you yesterday,” continued Mr. Jonin. “They wanted me to kill you.”

“I said shut up.”

“Isa-chan —”

“Don’t call me that.” She pressed the point of the blade into the skin of his neck, and a drop of red blood nicked out onto the steel. His breath was fast and shallow. She could feel how scared he was.

“Miss Isa, you’re making a horrible mistake. I thought you were working for your grandmother yesterday. But I heard you put Victoria in the hospital. Miss Isa, put the knife down.”

Isa relaxed her arm a little and let the dagger fall away slightly. “You betrayed me.”

“I couldn’t let your grandmother get the key. With that much money, who knows how powerful she could become? She could have all of the Chinese government in her pocket, not just the Hong Kong bureaucrats. She could be Chairman. Let me go, Isa, unless you like having me in your arms.”

She jabbed the knife back at his throat. “Don’t talk to me like that. I’m the one with the knife.”

“Please. Let’s not pretend you have the advantage. I know where the key is, and if you kill me, you will never get it again.”

She quickly pulled the knife away and scooted back, out of arm’s reach and flipped up to a standing position, her back to the stairs going down, facing Mr. Jonin. He rose slowly, brushing off his pants, then turned around to face her.

“Isa-chan, I could have had you killed yesterday, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t want you dead. You shouldn’t have come here. I always like to see your face, but not today. This is a bad day.”

“Is this a brothel?” asked Isa.

Mr. Jonin shrugged. “Your grandmother never told you she ran brothels? This is one of hers. I’m only here with clients. They like to come here.” He nodded toward the stair.

“Liar.” She left a hand inside her overshirt —Victoria’s overshirt — ready to pull anything out.

“It’s true. Miss Isa, you are my favorite student.” His eyes steadied upon hers. His voice was crooning, low. It thrummed. She looked into his face and saw the face she had loved all these years, the face that had hovered over her since she was an eighty-pound scrawny pubescent. Her first master. His words, then, despite herself, touched her pride. She tried to avoid smiling or looking away.

He continued, “I should have known you would find me. I never thought you would. They’ll be upset now. I was supposed to do away with you. They imagined I could. How could I? My best student?”

The half of the hallway near the stair to the roof was darker than the rest. He was standing on the edge of the shadow, and now he came closer, his hands out at his sides. “I am proud of you. And you came here, to see me.” He gave her a pathetic smile. “None of my students have ever come to see me. And you’re a grown woman now. I couldn’t be more proud of you if you were my own daughter.”

Isa let her hand relax out of her overshirt. She exhaled a sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

“I couldn’t run the risk,” he said, “of word getting back to your grandmother that I was willing to work against her. I thought you were a test.” He reached his hand up to his neck and wiped away a small bright red smear of blood.

“I’m not a test,” she insisted tearily, looking sincerely up at him, her hands fallen to her sides. She needed him to believe her. She was so tired, so sad, so lonely, so wanting him to forgive her. “I don’t work for my grandmother any more. I just need the key, Mr. Jonin. I need the key to make sure the treasure is safe. It’s my inheritance, Mr. Jonin. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I know, Isa-chan,” he said, bowing his head and folding his hands behind his back. “You were always special to me. I never wanted to hurt you either.” They stepped toward each other.

Then a scream ripped through the air: “EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” Isa leaped back a foot just as Mr. Jonin’s hand flew out toward her. A knife glittered in its path, just missing her.

A figure jumped out of the shadow, from behind the garbage can that had sheltered Isa just minutes before. It was Annie, in a black vinyl catsuit and stiletto boots, pointing her telescoping steel baton at Mr. Jonin and running at him with a scream, as he whipped around and blocked her blow, simultaneously stabbing his knife straight into the middle of her.

Her look was of surprise and frustration: “Oh!” she gasped, her mouth a round hole.

Mr. Jonin grabbed Annie, threw her at Isa, and ran past her down the stairs. To her surprise, Isa caught Annie; even as she thought duck, let the body fall, run, her arms went out to break her friend’s fall — her friend who had come up to see if she was okay even though she wasn’t being paid to do it — and laid her gently on the ground. Annie was still breathing, but shaking, her face a pale gray color.

Annie whispered, “Tell Kimo I looked fabulous.”

Isa hissed, “I’ll avenge you.”

“That’s nice,” said Annie, the blood seeping out of her suit, and went limp.

Isa ran down the stairs to see Mr. Jonin reaching the door on the opposite side, which she assumed led to outside, and his escape. She reached into her pocket and found a dart, then hurled it. It struck him in the back of the thigh, and he clutched at it, pulling it out, and shouting at his companions. The girls were screaming, running for cover, as the men pulled out their guns.

Isa took out the lights first. The room was lit mostly by a great dusty chandelier the size of a kitchen table, so she threw a knife into the wire, severing the connection and throwing the room into mostly dark, except for the glow of several televisions, and sending the chandelier swaying, still held up by its heavy duty chain. Shots were fired, but Isa wasn’t there on the stair any more. She’d leaped into the chandelier.

Pistols were fired into the chandelier, but she hadn’t really leaped there. She’d just thrown a bundle up. Really, she was down among the girls, down in the dim room, running, crouching, erratic. One of the five men grabbed a girl as a hostage, backing away, waving his pistol. The other four backed up, a four-way shooter, covering the whole room. Mr. Jonin had regained his footing and was trying to make his way through the screaming girls to get to the door.

Like a runner making for first base, she went into a long slide, her short sword out (Kimo had taken it the day before), taking out two sets of knees, and sending two thugs into collapse, with gory blossoms unfurling out of their torn trousers. They crawled on the floor, leaning up on their left arms, pointing their guns wildly. Their companions with the good knees looked around, saw what had happened, then whirled to see what was going on, when a string of firecrackers went off behind them. They fired, as Isa chucked two tranquilizer-tipped darts into their buttocks.

The hostage taker was making for the door, holding his gun to the girl, standing between Isa and Mr. Jonin, who had finally pushed his way through the running girls and was entering the hallway beyond. Isa ran past the hostage taker, whipping around just in time to grab the gun out of his hand, then slam the butt of it against the back of his head, sending him slumping to the floor. The girls were in the hallway, crowding, edging to get away from her. Isa made herself like a drop of water running through pebbles. She concentrated. She flowed toward Mr. Jonin, who was opening the heavy double front door, which had an old-fashioned bar set across it, as if they were expecting battering rams.

She threw another dart into the same leg as before, and he howled, pulled it out, then threw it right back at her. She leaped out of the way, only to have him throw a knife at her. She twisted, but it caught her along the outside of her upper left arm, causing blood to begin weeping through the fabric of her shirt. She stood to face him.

“Any more?” she asked.

He straightened to face her.

He said, “You think you’re better than me now? I didn’t teach you everything, you know.”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t teach me everything I know.”

He reached for his gun. But she was already on him. Three flying kicks: a kick to the inside of the knee, a kick to the hand going for the gun, a kick to the head as she flips backward, then a circular sweep, taking out the leg buckled by the knee kick. He reached for her and she swirled her hand in a circle over, around, crushing him in a grip that twisted him so she snapped his arm as she threw him over her shoulder. He fell and tried to roll away, but was too hobbled by the two darts and the three kicks to do it well, and she pursued him, but he blocked in time as she went to kick him again, grabbing her leg and taking her down. Then he was on top of her, going for her throat, but she squirmed away, grabbing one of Victoria’s needles and jabbing him in a painful spot on the inside of the leg, which caused him to howl.

He managed to grab onto her clothes and pull her to the floor as he got up, scrambling for the door. He had the bar up and was pushing his way outside, with Isa halfway up, on all fours, scrabbling toward him, when a looming figure by the side of the door caught her attention.

“Kimo!” she screamed. “He stabbed Annie! He got Annie!”

Kimo pulled out the gun he’d taken from the young thug at the door, who’d run off when threatened. He pointed it at Mr. Jonin. “You motherfucker hurt my baby girl!” he thundered, and pulled the trigger.

The bullet hit Mr. Jonin in the side of his abdomen, and he staggered back inside the doorway, against Isa, who rolled him off of her and onto the floor. Kimo came inside quickly and shut the door. He pointed the gun, but Isa waved him to stand further back.

“You see,” explained Isa, wiping the blood off of her face, and crouching down to Mr. Jonin, who was clutching his gut, whimpering now, “I did love you, once. You were all the father I had.”

He looked up in helpless horror as he held his hands over himself, even though there was no way to keep himself together, none at all. He moaned, “This is love?”

She shook her head. “For love, I would have stabbed you in the heart. But you haven’t got one.”

She held a long steel needle from Victoria’s arsenal in her hand. But she threw it away. She leaned down to kiss his cheek. His eyes were filled with tears, but it was only expected; he was in shock.

“You’re dying now, do you know that?” she asked.

He said yes.

“Will you tell me where the key is?”

He swallowed. “No.”

She stood. “All right then.” She reached in along the slit in her pant leg along her thigh and pulled out the five-inch Damascus steel knife, her sixteenth birthday present from Willy Orwonti. “Here you go,” she announced, and threw it down.

Mr. Jonin picked up the knife, looked at Isa, and looked at the knife again. Then he kneeled straighter and stabbed himself in the gut, drawing the knife across. Kimo screamed, and Isa slashed the short sword down across the back of Mr. Jonin’s neck.

She had never killed anyone else before. She felt sick. She shook. Kimo threw up behind her.

Isa turned to him. “Annie’s upstairs. You go through the room, go up the stairs.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d moved so fast.

Alone with the body, a mangled mess, Isa tried not to think about what she was doing. She went through his pockets one by one, hoping, hoping. In the inner breast pocket of his coat was a key ring. On the key ring was the key.

She gripped it as if it were trying to escape her. It was the key. It had the shape of a phoenix, in bronze. It was tied to the ring with a red ribbon. And attached to the ring was a car key.

She pushed her way outside. The street was empty, the sky dark. She pushed the button on the car key and heard the responsive honk a block away. Just then Kimo came out, Annie cradled in his arms. Tears had stained his face and moistened his collar.

“My baby girl, my baby girl,” he cried.

Annie opened her eyes. “Get me to the hospital, you big crybaby,” she gasped, then closed her eyes again.

“Why did you do it, Annie?” asked Isa.

“Wanted to see,” whispered Annie. “You were okay.”

“Gotta go,” said Kimo, shouting over his shoulder as he ran past, “you coming?”

“Got my own ride,” said Isa. “Please take care of her. Tell her thank you. Thank you, both of you!”

They rounded the corner and were gone.

She walked around to Mr. Jonin’s car, a black finish luxury model. The tank was full of gas. The night was young. She heard sirens in the distance. She had to move.

Her grandmother’s ship was moving closer and closer.

***

By the time Isa got her car to the Howard Johnson’s in Oakland, she had managed to take off her blood soaked overshirt, clean off her face. She had stopped at an Internet cafe for a bit, had a coffee, splashed some water on her face, checked her email and had a brief chat with Willy Orwonti, who was happy to hear she was okay. At the hotel’s room 404, however, she knocked and knocked without answer. At last, she called in cockadoodledoo and Daniella’s face appeared in the crack of the door.

“Where’s Mom and Dad?” asked Daniella.

Isa considered it. They’d left the girl behind and gone who knows where? Foolish, foolish. She was surprised she was related to them. “I think you’d better come with me. Bring your coat. It’s cold.”

The younger girl dutifully went inside, grabbed a coat, and then grabbed another one of Annie’s, a fake fur number with satin lining, handing it to Isa saying, “You need one too.”

In the car, when Daniella was buckled in, in the darkness of the multilevel garage, Isa handed her a bottle of water. “If you get thirsty.”

“Thanks,” said Daniella, smiling, “I am really thirsty.”

After she drank a few long sips, she began to feel extremely sleepy. It was dark, after all, and she’d spent all day worrying, but it did seem as if she was suddenly sleepy very quickly, and that her sister, ever since they got on the freeway, was avoiding looking at her or talking to her, just kept her eyes on the road ahead.

As for Isa, she had a lot on her mind, as you can imagine. She was reconsidering her wisdom in emulating Ching Shih. What her ancestor must have gone through to make her what she was. What she must have seen, it must have been horrible, horrible. She had been a prostitute. She had worked in a brothel. She had followed a man to the sea. In the end, Isa reflected, power must seem a wonderful thing to a woman if she can have it. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to turn such power down.

***

In the dim hours of the early morning, Isa waited on the shore near the Golden Gate bridge, shivering despite her coat, with Daniella curled on the cold ground beside her, asleep. To pass the time, Isa flexed, stretched, practiced a few techniques, stayed awake, stayed limber. She soon noticed a boat approaching, with a lantern illuminating a crowd of people. Someone aboard flashed a light at her. As the boat neared, she saw, to her surprise, that it was loaded with a dozen girls.

A man herded the girls ashore, and another two men came down from the land above, carting boxes of something else, which they loaded into the boat. Then the two men who came down led the girls up, into the city. They were huddled together for warmth, skinny, with the look of farm girls. Isa stared. The man remaining in the boat waved her on.

“Miss Isa,” he said. “My pleasure to escort you to the ship.”

“Who were those girls?” she asked, lifting Daniella awkwardly and carrying her to the boat.

The man grinned. “Workers. They come here to work for your grandmother.”

Isa frowned. “What kind of work?”

He whistled. “The usual. You know. Some of them will get real jobs, but they owe all of their money to your grandmother or they know what happens to their families back home. Some of them can’t get real jobs, they’ll work directly for Mrs. Ching.” He snorted and raised his eyebrows in a knowing way.

Isa felt sick to her stomach. Her fists clenched. She looked at her sister, asleep, snoring. “Let’s go,” she said, pulling Annie’s coat tight around her and smelling what seemed to be the faint lingering aroma of peaches in the collar.

After a long, splashy ride, with the motor running, through the dark morning waters, with frightening moments of darkness as the man killed the lantern to avoid detection, they arrived at the ship. One of the men came down to help carry up Daniella, while Isa quickly climbed the rope ladder let down to her. Soon she was taken to her cabin, which she was to share with Daniella. It was small but passable. Word was going out that they were raising anchor. Then a boy came to tell Daniella that her grandmother was aboard and wanted to speak with her.

“But I just spoke to her the other day,” Isa frowned.

“She flew to San Francisco,” explained the other, “and met the ship here.”

Isa was learning not to be surprised at what her grandmother could accomplish. She followed the boy into her grandmother’s luxuriously outfitted cabin, with its handsome dark wood furnishings, the gilded knobs on the dressers and doors, the absurd carved wooden bed bolted to the floor.

Her grandmother sat at the edge of her bed, wearing a loose silk quilted tunic buttoned up to the neck, loose silk pants, all in red, like a bride. Her old face was powdered a ghostly white, and her lips were as red as blood. Her gray hair was pulled back in a roll, and ivory combs held it back from her forehead. Isa realized, then, seeing her for the first time in months, how much she looked like Isa’s mother, how little she looked like Isa.

Her grandmother smiled. “My child.”

They sailed on across the water, toward the South China Sea. At night, Isa explained to Daniella what was happening. She wept, but believed her sister’s promises that she would eventually return home, and so kept mostly well behaved, except for a few tantrums and bouts of seasickness.

On the third day, they spotted another ship’s sail. A red one.

“What in hell?” asked her grandmother, peering through the telescope.

By the afternoon, the winds had brought the other ship close enough for all hands to be readying the anti-pirate weaponry. Isa’s grandmother was pacing back and forth, glaring.

“Who is that bastard?” her grandmother hissed, throwing orders around. The men loaded their guns, pointed their missile launchers. They waited for a signal to fire.

“It’s Lucia the Red,” guessed Isa. She took the telescope and confirmed. “That’s her. I worked with her once before.”

Her grandmother turned a cold eye on her. “Did you.”

“Oh yes,” replied Isa. “She’s pretty lazy. She only likes to take down cruise ships.”

“Is that so?” asked her grandmother.

“Yes,” said Isa. “I sent word to her I was going on a cruise.”

“FIRE!” screamed Isa’s grandmother as she reached out for Isa. Isa giggled and ran away. “Catch her!” cried her grandmother, as Isa scrambled away.

“Oh no, you can’t catch me!” sang Isa, as the missile launcher sent one into the water prematurely, and a few snipers tried to pick the detailing off of Lucia’s bowsprit.

The hands chased her around, bullied her up and down the levels, thought they had her a couple of times but flailed absurdly as they tried to grab hold of her as she slipped through their clutches, and in general looked farcical.

Meanwhile, the pirates were drawing nearer. Their ship was faster and lighter, easier to maneuver. She rode high in the water. The missile launchers and bullets had taken chunks out of the other ship and left parts of it blackened and smoking, but it was still nearing. None of the pirates seemed to be hurt. They were running around, laughing, dodging fire, returning it, but careful, careful. Isa began to grab in her pocket for the little lead balls she’d been using to practice her dexterity. She aimed them at her pursuers heads. THUNK THUNK and they were out. Her grandmother stood on deck furious, staring first at Isa, then at the pirates.

“You demon,” she shouted at Isa. “You heartless, ungrateful poisonous snake.”

“You stole my life,” Isa yelled. “You stole my mother’s happiness. Now you want to steal my sister.”

At that, as if on cue, Daniella stepped out of her cabin to see the noise.

“Go back inside!” both Isa and her grandmother screamed, just as the pirate ship pulled near, and a wave rocked the ship. Isa kept her balance but Daniella staggered to the rail.

“Careful!” cried Isa’s grandmother, running toward the girl. The pirates threw their grappling hooks over and began to board the ship.

Lucia, her red hair flying, began shooting left and right.

“Lucia!” cried Isa.

Lucia winked and went on shooting. Her boys all waved at Isa as they came on. Marco shot into the air and hooted.

Isa turned around to see Daniella and her grandmother locked into some kind of struggle. They were bent over each other, wresting something between them. The other night, Isa had tied the key onto a ribbon around Daniella’s neck. It had fallen out and was dangling out of her shirt. Her grandmother was snatching for it, and Daniella was trying to stuff it back in her shirt.

“My sister gave this to me!” she screamed, pushing the old woman away. “It belongs to Isa!”

“It belongs to me!” screamed the grandmother.

Lucia, hearing the commotion, took her seven-league strides in her big black boots to where the two tiny women grappled. “It belongs to ME,” she boomed. They both looked up. Lucia grabbed the key, dragging Daniella along with it, and used a dagger up her sleeve to slice the ribbon off. She held the bronze phoenix in her hand, confused.

“It’s kinda ugly,” she said. “Antiquity?”

“Yes,” hissed Isa’s grandmother, snatching at it.

“Gross,” said Lucia. “I hate antiquities.” And she hurled the key into the ocean.

“NO!” screamed Isa’s grandmother, hurling herself, in a frenzy of kicking red arms and legs, after it, over the rail, into the sea.

***

EPILOGUE

There is not much to tell, so I’ll tell it quickly, so everyone can get to bed at a regular hour, and there will be no more demands, asking how this one did, how that one did, who said what, and why.

The pirates took over the bright, shiny new cargo ship, full of bright, shiny new cargo, and threw all of Isa’s grandmother’s old crew onto the sinking Curse, after stripping them of their weapons and taking anything of value onto the Dragon Lady. They dropped Isa and Daniella off, of course, at Willy Orwonti’s. From there, Isa smuggled her sister back off to San Francisco, with a promise to return and visit, and contacted her grandfather, who endured a miraculous cure and thus was made caretaker of his own estate again, including those properties inherited from his late wife, lost at sea.

He transferred management of his late wife’s business and finances to Isa, and Isa, in her wisdom, delegated them to Lucia the Red, who at first balked at her new management duties, then took them over with vigor, banning the exploitation of women, dismantling the prostitution rings, and focusing the business on pure piracy.

Isa also wired thirty thousand dollars to an account set up for Kimo and Annie, and paid Annie’s hospital bills. Aside from a bit of shortness of breath, Annie was good as new after a month, ready to spend her windfall, and up for a vacation in the Philippines, complete with foosball.

For her parents, Isa wrote to them, on her grandmother’s stationery, forgiving them. She asked them how much money they needed to make up for the property destroyed in Victoria’s rampage, but they never replied. Possibly insurance covered it all. The police wrote it up as an act of vandalism with no witnesses. The next door neighbor attested that the punks who had done it had stolen his food as well.

Victoria, after she had recovered from her wounds, and the devastating pressure point combination that had slowed her metabolism until she was on the verge of death, disappeared back into Russia, to pursue her dream of becoming a chemist, and of working for the government.

Daniella, after making it home, finding her parents (she too was a resourceful girl), and starting school again, adopted a black and white cat and named her Maia.

Isa spent the next year operating out of Willy Orwonti’s pub, teaching martial arts to local boys on the weekends, waiting tables, and taking odd espionage jobs, a little light smuggling, a little enforcement. She didn’t kill anyone else. But she certainly frightened them. She also beat Willy Orwonti, again and again, at Soul Calibur. Once in a while, she repeated the poem her grandfather had taught her, for fun:

In the sea is an island where barbarians crawl.
Eight trees bow in a circle.
In the heart of the circle is a rock.
Beneath the rock is heart's desire.
It is yours, if you can lift the rock.

She imagined she was getting stronger every day.

And that’s THE END.