“Can you fight?” Roger said in his deep tenor, speaking English.

They were crouched behind a pillar in the underground subway, they could hear the footsteps of enemies coming down the stairs.

It wasn’t exactly opportune.

But Sumire nodded her head, “I can try.”

She closed her eyes and around her a deep frosty mist came from around her, seemingly from nowhere, condensing and collapsing in on itself until a ball formed in front of her that quickly grew with shards of ice expanding down and outward.

Where once stood nothing, there was now a sabertooth tiger, brilliantly blue, entirely made of ice, oozing wisps of frost from the warm night.

Sumire slumped against the pillar, saying, “That’s all I got.”

“That’s all I need,” said Roger, cocking his dart gun. He stood up against the pillar and jumped into a roll to the next one. A bullet fired at him, ricocheting off the floor and across the room.

Sumire poked her head to the right. The saber tooth was crawling across the ground, hidden behind benches. Silently, it raised up on the bench and jumped one of the men in suits, her enemies.

The next instant it was a bloodbath, screams echoed in the subway as it sliced the jugular. She looked to her right, Roger slid out of the pillar and shot two rapid shots into the other man who was busy shooting the sabertooth. Destroying its core, the sabertooth suddenly collapsed and broke apart into pieces.

Sumire was horrified, and froze up like deer in headlights as her brain replayed the actions she’d just seen. This isn’t real… Why would I have to kill anyone?

Roger was shaking her shoulders, grabbed her hand, a train had come when she wasn’t paying attention, and they ran on it. She found that she was hyperventilating, and couldn’t get enough breath.

“Snap out of it!” Roger yelled at her, a bullet dented in the window near them. “Breath through your nose. This is what happens when you interfere with the Imperial Family, got it?”

Sumire obeyed his command and fell to the ground, wrapping her arms around her legs, trying to calm herself.

“I think one got on,” Roger said across from her, sliding a clip out of his gun and putting in another. The faint sound of a railgun's fire, and the resounding noise of a metal bullet hitting metal.

“Surrender now,” a man spoke in loud Japanese, “and I won’t have to kill you!”

Roger smiled, looking at Sumire. The train started moving with a rumble. “Do you wanna go back?” He asked.

She shook her head. There’s no turning back, now…

Roger cocked his gun, saying, “summon another one of those things if you want to escape. I’ll take care of you if you pass out.”

That’s exactly what’s going to happen, Sumire thought. She closed her eyes and summoned to her the frost that was a part of her, slowly losing feeling in her limbs all the while. Once the mist condensed and started to grow out spikes of ice like it was crystalizing, she lost consciousness.

Roger watched as ice expanded from a floating core of deep blue ice, from that condensed frost. But it never stopped expanding, even as the enemy across from them was shooting at it and chipping off chunks of ice.

It grew tusks, and a bulbous head, four large feet that were too big for the inside of a train car, and finally a trunk.

It’s a mammoth!

The moment it stopped growing, the mammoth charged forward, paving a path of destruction to its target, uprooting benches and smashing windows, denting the metal floor with massive paces, and impaled the man on a tusk.

Then it roared, deeper than an elephant, raising its head and goring the man thoroughly. He probably died instantly, Roger thought.

A tune in the cabin went off, indicating a stop. Roger pulled up his wrist and punched a destination into his Hologrip: The Docks. He turned to Sumire who was slumped down on the ground and picked her up in a bridal carry.

He ran to the other train across the way, not bothering to look back at the carnage. He had a good imagination, and enough experience, he could already guess what the outside looked like.

= = =

Sumire woke up, feeling sore and weak. She found it hard to even open her eyes, at first she wiggled her toes, fingers, but eventually she got her eyes open.

An unfamiliar ceiling, made of planks. She felt with her hands… She was in a bed, with a blanket pulled over her. She struggled to sit up, feeling vertigo, the world wobbling around her. I still don’t have much strength back, so I’ve only been out for a couple hours.

She looked to her right, a wall made of planks. She looked to the left, a counter and cupboards, with medicine and medical tools on the top. All of it made out of wood.

I don’t have vertigo, she realized, I’m on a ship…

She threw the blanket off of her and struggled to move her sluggish legs to the floor, putting a hand on the wall to stand up. She felt horrible. The ship’s constant moving in waves didn’t help.

She leaned against the wall and stretched her arms, feeling sensation return to them, then did the same with her legs. She knew it was cold, but Sumire never felt the cold. Never had.

With a hand on the wall, she found the door and left the room to a hallway that led up stairs to the top platform, the deck of the ship. With a hand on the rail, she looked around, and almost missed him, dressed in all black.

“Roger!” She yelled to him, waving her spare hand.

He walked over to her with hands in his coat pockets, saying, “What’re you doing? You need to get rest.”

She took her hand off the railing, trying to show she was fine, but ended up stumbling into Roger, holding on to his upper arms. She slid her arms around him, embracing him.

“I forgot to say thank you,” she said.

Roger pat her back, not saying anything.

Sumire looked up to him. “What are you going to do now?”

It went without saying that he couldn’t go back to New Tokyo, not with the Imperial Family on his ass like flies on shit.

Roger sighed. “We’ll talk about it once you’re rested.”

Sumire clung to him harder, pressing her head into his chest. “We’ll talk about it now. I owe you more than I could ever repay, I must know.”

“I was thinking I would travel with you,” he said. “Until I find a place to settle down, that is.”

“You’re not mad…” She trailed off, uncertain what to say.

“Hell no! New Tokyo was never my sort of place, anyways. It’s too corporate. I’m just a country boy, exploring the world, meeting interesting people… like you. I couldn’t ask for more.”

“Do you ever feel like destiny exists, Roger?”

He laughed, “Of course it does, I met you.” He grabbed her under the legs and swooped her off her feet, walking back down the stairs.

“Bring me up, closer to your face…” Roger silently obeyed, and Sumire leaned in and kissed him on the lips.

“This doesn’t change that you need sleep,” Roger said.

Sumire groaned. “Fine, fine…”