Season 1, Episode 4 - The Microwave V - "Xihui Park"

Isaac and Reed arrived at the top of Blueberry Hill. Isaac took a moment to look at all of Narragansett spread out below him, nearby houses and small apartment buildings shifting into rivers and parks until rising into the skyscrapers of downtown against the blue sky. He then looked back at the dojo; it looked like somone had taken one straight out of Asia (at least the Asia Isaac saw in kung fu movies) then planted it down in New England.

The two passed below a red Torii gate. The stone walkway ahead of them cut through a courtyard, filled with green grass, gold marigolds, and red chrysanthemums. Water streamed steadily out of a stone fountain; next to it stood a few statues of Confucius and various laughing Buddhas. The walkway eventually led to the foot of the dojo itself, a large wooden building with its roof painted red, sloped ceramic tiles forming an East Asian-style hip-and-gable roof. Unlit paper lanterns dotted the courtyard and entrance.

“Did Derek migrate here from Asia?” Isaac asked, looking around in awe.

Reed sighed. “His family was actually among the original colonists.”

“You mean the ones that settled on the West Coast after the Unleashing?”

Reed shook her head. “One of the original English colonists. In the 1600s. Not a single thing of Asian in him. He just likes the style.”

Isaac whistled. “Well, don’t we all.”

Reed started talking as they continued up the pathway. “Alright, Isaac, so Derek, he can be a little out there sometimes. And he’s old now too. But he’s been nice to me so I want you to be nice to him.”

Isaac raised a thumbs up. “You know me. Being nice is my middle name.”

Isaac thought about it, though. Is this an actual request from Reed? To be nice to someone? There’s actually someone she cares about that much?

They arrived at the end of the path and walked up a few wooden steps. Now in front of the wooden doors, Reed rang the doorbell. A soft, melodic mixture of bamboo flutes and stringed instruments played.

“What’s that?” Isaac asked.

Reed sighed. “The Moon's Reflection on the Second Spring.”

Isaac heard the sound of footsteps from inside, the sound of someone bumping into something, the sound of a curse word, then the sound of the door handle jiggling. The door opened.

Isaac wasn’t exactly sure what he expected the legendary Derek Domino to look like, but certainly not like this. All the (admittedly government-sponsored) posters depicted Domino as a handsome man with flaming red hair, sporting a star-shaped scar on his cheek that he earned during the Presidential Restoration.

The man who stood before them today appeared in a shabby yellow and black jumpsuit. His flaming red hair was now an old white shaded by the decades, tied into a pony tail at the back. His scar was still there, but similarly faded. And his eyes. His dark eyes looked bored yet dangerous, playful yet ready to turn serious at a moment’s notice, with a distant, dreamy quality to them that suggested a life of constant journey and struggle, of good mixed with bad, of day mixed with night.

...well, that's what he would tell you, anyway. Reed knew the truth was that he always stayed up too late watching television and never got a good night's sleep.

But anyway, Isaac supposed that the fifty-odd years since the Restoration took their toll on Derek Domino.

In the doorway, the old man stared down at them. Isaac felt uncomfortable, but to Reed and Domino, it seemed like an old ritual or routine.

“Hello, woman,” Domino said at last.

“Sensei,” Reed greeted.

“Sensei?” Isaac found himself questioning. “Reed, you actually call someone sensei?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Reed answered. “He’s my sensei. I may not like it, but that’s what he is.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” Domino dryly confirmed. The old man looked Isaac up and down. “This the one?” he asked Reed.

“Sure is,” Reed said.

Domino said nothing for a moment. Isaac felt sweat on his forehead.

Suddenly, red energy crackled up and down the old man’s jumpsuit. A Rddhi current shot out of Domino, encircled a plank a wood, and flung it right at Isaac, all in a moment’s notice. A moment’s notice was much too fast for Isaac, who only had the time to open his mouth before the plank connected with his forehead.

Isaac fell to the ground, kicking up a small cloud of dust. As he rubbed the burgeoning bruise on his forehead, he glared at the old man.

“What the hell was that?!”

“What the hell was what?”

Isaac pointed at the plank. “That! You just flung a piece of wood at me for no reason!”

“No reason?” Domino questioned. “This is like one of those moments in a movie or book where the hero meets the old sensei, and the old sensei tests the new kid’s mettle by ambushing him. The hero usually deflects that attack, earning a slightest bit of the sensei’s respect, making the sensei willing to train the hero. But you, my friend, just took that piece of wood to the head without raising a fuss. I just disrespected your personal space worse than Lyndon B. Johnson’s Jumbo on a tarmac.”

Isaac and Reed looked at him blankly.

“That one actually made sense!” Domino exclaimed. “Read about it!”

“Enough old man references,” Isaac retorted. “And this isn’t a movie! This is real life! You don’t just ambush someone when you just meet them!”

Domino stared off into the distance with muted eyes. “Half my life has been ambushes."

Reed rolled her own.

“And besides,” Domino continued. “This is not just real life. This...is war! A big storm is brewing, and you kids are going to be right in the center of it. You always need to be ready and keep your head on a swivel.”

“A war’s coming, sure, but not right now," Isaac protested. "I’m still training. There's time."

Deep down, Isaac knew Domino had a point, but he quickly realized that the old man had that Reedish quality in him, that slight arrogance that rubbed Isaac the wrong way and always made him double down on his argument.

Domino snorted. “I’ve heard those same famous last words from many a private right before they suddenly find themselves in the trenches guzzling rat shit and cleaning out their buddies’ innards from the palisades.”

“...guzzling rat shit?”

Domino kept rambling. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, kid. Life itself is a constant struggle. The body and its parts are a river, the soul a dream and mist, life is warfare and a journey far from home.”

Isaac, still feeling the welt, kept glaring up at the old man. “Christ, how many buddies’ innards did you have to clean to end up like this?”

“Isaac!”

Isaac blinked. The sudden interjection came from none other than Reed.

I’ve never heard Reed get emotional like that. What the hell am I doing? Letting myself get scolded by Reed, and the worst part is, I actually sort of deserve it for making fun of a war veteran!

Isaac looked up at Domino with new eyes.

If this guy is important to Reed, then I oughta treat him better. And even if he wasn’t, I should still treat him nicely. Give him some allowance for the war. And for being old.

Isaac stood and dusted himself off. “I’m sorry, I think we started off on the wrong foot. My name’s Isaac.”

Domino didn’t say anything for a moment. Suddenly, he flung another piece of wood at him.

This time, Isaac was ready. Golden energy flared in his right fist and he backhanded the incoming plank in half. The broken wood fell harmlessly to the ground.

Domino nodded in approval. “I know who you are, Isaac. Reed’s told me all about you.”

Isaac blinked, then looked at his friend. “You have?”

Reed side-eyed Domino for a moment, then sighed. “You went a whole year without powers, but you always kept believing in something greater than yourself. And after all that hard work and belief, you got them. Don't get the wrong idea, but that's pretty cool to me.”

Isaac didn’t know what to say. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “...thanks, Reed.”

Domino nodded again. “I like that too, Isaac, but in an old sensei seeing a young student full of potential sort of way, not in an unadmitted sexual tension sort of way like you two have toward each other.”

Isaac and Reed raised their eyebrows.

Domino smiled. “C’mon, you know it’s true. I bet you guys got a lot in common. Favorite sitcom episode?”

“The moo goo gai pan Thanksgiving episode,” they said in unison once more. The two looked at each other.

“Favorite type of movie?”

"1970s Hong Kong action films." Again in unison.

“And favorite movie?”

“Netrunner 2067,” Isaac answered.

“Poliziotto a Sei Camere, Uomo Dai Due Pugni,” Reed answered, more smugly.

Domino kept smiling. “And your favorite, real favorite movie, not the one you've prepared to answer with when asked in public?”

Isaac sighed. "Susurration of the Soul.”

Reed kept looking smug. “Yeah, nice try. Susurration of the Soul, I like that 1990s style animation but the soul in it does little more than whimper, amiright?" Reed laughed at her own joke. "I'm a mature woman with mature taste. My favorite movie? Visions de Lyon.”

Both Isaac and Domino looked at her blankly.

"What?" Reed questioned. "It's a movie about a young girl's voyage of self-discovery in Vichy France. She must choose between her traditional life at home and a chance to make something of herself, all the while caught in a love triangle between Pierre, the gruff French Resistance fighter who treats her distantly, declaring he has no time for a young girl who's so unsure of herself, yet it comes from a place of caring, and Franz, the gentle German officer who, while kind-hearted, represents France's repression. What? Don't look at me like that. It's a work of art, I tell you."

Domino spoke at last. “...and your favorite, real favorite movie, not the one you've prepared to answer with when someone calls you out for the initial bluff?”

Reed sighed and looked away. “...Susurration of the Soul.”

“There we go.” Domino clapped his hands. “There’s more to life than media consumption, but we can talk about that later after our training.”

“Training?” Reed questioned. “We’re just here to get a VHS.”

“I’m not letting you come all the way across the Pond just for a VHS,” Domino explained. “I’m gonna add a little Domino twist to your training. I’ll get you guys to the next stage in no time.”

“Really?” Isaac’s eyes were sparkling.

Reed rolled her own.

“Alright, alright, let’s just get this over with...”

Domino, Isaac, and Reed followed the walkway around the dojo, enjoying the shade provided by the overhanging roof. As they rounded the corner, Isaac saw that, to the left of the dojo, there was a training ground, one of those sandy ones refined from years of practice upon it. Spread out in the sand and dirt were traditional dojo items like training dummies, bows and arrows, and swords. Joining them in an odd mixture of the traditional and the modern were rifles, grenades, and...was that a mortar?

They came to a stop on the wooden walkway. Domino crossed his arms in pride at the sight of his training ground. “I built this from completely from scratch. All by myself too, if you ignore the contributions of the New England migrants from Upstate New York following the end of the war.”

“How much did they contribute to it?” Isaac asked, his eyes wide at the sight of a real life dojo training ground.

“...all of it,” Domino admitted. “But that’s not important. What’s important is the fact that I have trained many a pupil here, including our dear friend Hibiscus Reed.”

Reed nodded, her face displaying an initial sense of pride before being covered by her general aloofness.

Domino looked over at her. “You have talent Reed, real talent. It’s a damn shame you left the dojo to pursue your idealistic dreams of creating a new world, only to turn into an unfeeling tool of the war machine in the process.”

“That’s why you left your teacher’s dojo, Sensei,” Reed corrected. “I left because the school year started at Cambridge Middle.”

“Cambridge Middle?” Isaac asked. “As in Cambridge Middle School, the feeder school for Cambridge High School and University, the best Rddhi academy in New England?”

Reed looked at him darkly. “You don’t have to spell it out. We all know what it is. And I’d rather not talk about it.”

Isaac decided it would be better to drop that line of conversation for now.

Reed looked back at Domino with dull eyes. “Sensei, the faster we finish training, the faster we can get out of here, right?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d stay, you know. It’s been so long...”

“Sensei, I was literally here last week to give you that VHS tape.”

“Which I still haven’t watched. Every evening I tell myself I’m going to watch it, but I get caught up in gardening, painting...well, reading books on gardening and painting. Well, watching television on gardening and painting. But either way, I get caught up. So I was hoping that now that you’re all here, we could watch it together.”

Reed’s eyes were still dull. “I’m just trying to get home.”

Domino felt a slight autumn breeze in the air. “If that’s how you feel. At least you’re doing the training.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

Reed cracked her neck, cracked her fingers, then strode off the wooden walkway, down into the training grounds. Dirt crunched beneath her sneakers as she approached a training dummy.

“By the way, Sensei...I’m a real ass-kicker now,” Reed said with pride.

What’s with this change in mood? Isaac wondered. Could it be...she actually wants to impress him?

It was moments like these that really made Isaac wonder what exactly went on in Reed’s head.

Domino enjoyed the change in mood as well. “Alright, Reed, show me what you got!”

Reed grinned. She got into a combat stance, her shoes sliding into position across the dirt.

She reached for her sword, red energy crackling up her raised arm.

“These dummies won’t know what hit ‘em,” Reed declared, pulling the Domino Sword out of the scabbard on her back. She twirled the sword in her hand, feeling energy course through her-

Domino raised a hand.

“You are already dead.”