A calm sea was the most welcome thing to ask for on their return to Japan.  Everything in Atlantis had been far too chaotic and stressful for all involved.  So just a simple boat ride back felt like almost a vacation.

Even when Yuki became King and all of the outward threats died down.  He remained busy on his countrywide tour to boost civilian morale.  The constant threat of the Council hung over them, even though Yuki insisted that they wouldn’t do anything yet.  But the ‘yet’ in his phrasing still made them worry.

Meditating in the center of their yacht, Yuki kept their transport alive.  He picked something a little more subdued for their return trip.  Some wondered if maybe he had matured a little and some of his childishness disappeared from the heavy dose of reality he received while in Atlantis.

Saki poked in, noticing Yumi watching Yuki from a distance.  She smiled and stepped lightly forward.  Yuki still needed his focus since it was a long trip and they didn’t have Eudokia as they did for the trip before.  Placing a hand on Yumi’s shoulder, she got her attention.  “Worried about him?”

A quick turn revealed all of the complex emotions carved through Yumi’s face.  She looked away almost immediately when she realized how transparent her face was.  “Sorry, Saki.  I know I shouldn’t stare and he’d just say he’s fine.  He looks fine, but I heard what happened to the last King, his father.  We don’t know how long it’ll be before Yuki ends up like that.  I can’t—“

“Yumi, he’s tough.  And it’s not like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  It’s just until he handles everything here.  When we left it was still pretty chaotic in Japan.  Yuki feels responsible as the one that unleashed Pandora’s Box upon Japan.”

“I know it’s selfish of me.  But I just wish he didn’t have to carry all of this weight.  It’s more than one person should have to bear.”

Saki stepped forward a little.  “This is just my opinion, so I don’t know if I’m right.  This might sound cruel, but I think this is good for him.  The last year he might have looked happy, but I sort of got a feeling he was bored or directionless.  He didn’t know what he wanted to do.  After his mother died, he just lost everything.  It might be more than he should need, but for the first time since losing his parents he’s got a goal.”

The thought made Yumi pause for a moment.  She had only known him for a short time.  Saki had always been next to him.  She knew what he was like before everything changed his life.  So maybe she was right.  “That’s still very sad.  But if you’re right, maybe it is a good thing.”

Chapter 286 – Rude Welcome

Out on the bow of the yacht, Fumiko, Yori and Seiji parked themselves.  The coldness of the south seas finally left for the warm open sunlit skies of the tropics.  While they only had some spare clothes that Yuki made up for them, as they lost all of theirs during the fighting, it was enough to enjoy the weather.

Seiji rubbed his right arm a little absentmindedly.  He had been staring at Fumiko’s stump of an arm.  The longer that he stared the more that he rubbed his own arm.  Eventually, it became more than he could take.  “Hey, you know Yuki could fix you up right?” Seiji pointed out.

Keeping silent, Yori just watched to see things play out.  ‘Seiji…’  It was a touchy subject.  While he never asked either, Yori understood that he didn’t need to ask or should ask.  It was just something that remained understood.

Staring through narrow eyes at Seiji, Fumiko’s expression quickly turned twice as severe.  “And what about those scars on your arm?  I’m surprised you didn’t allow the girl to fix them up along with the rest of you.”

“Eh?”  He missed the subtext that Fumiko stabbed at him.  Seiji raised his arm to look at it.  The two near full-length scars on his arm stayed, the place where Cosmas’ swords cut him during their first encounter.  “This and that aren’t the same sort of thing!  I mean you don’t even have one of your arms!  Mine still functions.”  After his last fight with Cosmas, the talismans previously wrapped around his arm never returned.  It seemed the healing process ended.

“You sure it’s not for a reason?”

The question targeted him almost too close.  “So what if I do?!  What about you?”  He lashed back at her rather than addressing himself.  His hand clutched his wrist as though protecting it.

“I have my own reason.”  She glared at him harshly.  The look in her eyes told everyone to drop the subject immediately.  Once she declared her position on the topic, Fumiko turned and walked away.

“Should have kept your mouth shut, Seiji,” added Yori before walking away.

“Hey!  I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to get your arm back!  You need two of them!”  Neither were listening and quickly disappeared into the depth of the yacht.  He threw up his fist into the air in annoyance.  At least he knew well enough not to punch the boat.

Inside the cabin, Yori followed Fumiko and like Seiji he was about to butt into something that he didn’t belong.  However, he saw how much strain she had been in ever since her capture.  On the outside everything seemed fine, but he didn’t need his mind reading powers to figure out something was wrong.  “You should get some rest.”

Fumiko tilted her head back quickly over her shoulder.  Most of the glare still held on from Seiji’s blunder.  “Putting your nose into places it shouldn’t be.  I thought you knew better.”

‘This isn’t the same girl I remembered coming out to Atlantis with.  It’s completely changed her and not something as simple as maturity like with some of the others.  There’s something darker at work, it’s not even just her anger at Yumi.’  He only had an idea of what was going on with her.  The experiences in Atlantis were something that had a harsher impact on her than anyone else.  He could only understand a part of what she was going through.  “I know you haven’t been sleeping well.  Back in Atlantis, I saw you up late at night pacing or balled up in a corner.”

He touched on something more personal than she expected.  It immediately brought out her fangs.  “Stay away from me, Mizuno.”  A flame popped up in her hand almost instantly without the need for a cast.  “Before I force you.”

Yori ground his teeth behind pursed lips.  She completely rebuffed him.  Pressing his groundless position further would only be dangerous.  ‘I’m going to have to take this more carefully than I expected…’

Aside from the occasional nosiness from Seiji, the boat ride ran smoothly.  It impressed everyone that Yuki managed to keep the boat up for the entire trip back to Japan.  He ran them faster than the last time, since he was working against his own ability to stay awake as well.  It only took about thirty hours to reach the waters near Japan.

Unfortunately, that was when their next challenge presented itself.  They had been gone for a month.  In that time the world continued to move without them.  And things were no longer the same for Japan.  None of them expected what they saw on the horizon.  Saki pulled Yuki up under protest to the deck.

“Why won’t you tell me what’s going on Saki?  You know I need to focus.  I’m getting really sleepy right now and my head is hurting like someone’s taking an ice pick to my skull.”

Saki shoved Yuki out in front.  “That’s not important.  You need to see this.”  She pointed out to what should have been Japan.

Blurry eyed, Yuki stumbled around his friends, all gathered on deck as well, to look at Japan.  Or the lack of the islands.  “Huh?  That’s not an island, that’s a boat, Saki. Why’d you bring me up to see a boat?”

“Damn it, Yuki!  Open your eyes!”

“Eh?”  He stared back at her.  His ability to focus on anything that wasn’t his power was pretty much shot.  However, her glare certainly did wonders to motivate him.  “…right…”  Yuki stared across the horizon once more trying to take it all in.  “There’s more than one boat.  Did we arrive during a festival?”

Tired of Yuki not getting it, Yori spoke up to fill him.  “It’s the entirety of the US Pacific Fleet, or at least a significant portion of it from what we’ve been able to see just from here.”

That seemed to perk up Yuki immediately as though he was some sort of military otaku.  He leaned forward against the railings to stare harder.  A pair of binoculars popped up in his hands to let him examine one of the ships.  “You’re right?!  Plus isn’t that a British flag?”  Everywhere he looked he saw warships.  They all sailed in a tight formation.

“We’ve picked up at least five different country’s naval vessels.  Something like that can only mean one thing.”

“It’s a UN organized mobilization.  But what’s the UN doing in Japan?”

“We still don’t know, but that massive of a fleet isn’t parked out here for no reason.”  Yori looked back at their boat and how close they were getting to the fleet.  “We aren’t a registered ship.  It’s going to be hard getting in even as something as small as us.”

Yuki turned away from the ships and focused back on his friends.  He knew what Yori implied.  “Well, we don’t know what’s going on out here.  I gave no profile on radar, so they haven’t seen us yet, probably.  But visual identification is still a risk.  I’ll make us invisible, so everyone get inside.”

As they all shuffled inside, Yuki looked back over his shoulder at the fleet.  ‘I’m not liking the feeling I’m getting from this.  It’s not quite the homecoming I was expecting for us…’  Once they entered the main cabin for the yacht, Yuki altered the boat’s appearance to cloak it completely.  He built it into the law just in case something came up that they needed to sneak it.

“Yori, you still got those translation earrings I made for you?”  He saw him nod and pointed him to the radio.  “We might learn something from him if they are broadcasting.  With any luck it’ll be across all frequencies.”

Yori’s sister stepped up in front of Yuki, as he stared out in front of the ship.  “Anything we can do?”

“Yeah actually, you’ve got far better eyes than I do.  Watch out ahead and to the side.  They aren’t going to know we’re here.  So we need to steer around.”  Everyone took up positions around the windows calling out to Yuki any dangers they saw.

Slipping into the fleet was no problem.  But trying to get around a bunch of warships with no clue of their presence made things challenging.  Yuki kept over steering in his unfamiliarity with boats.  Even if it was newbie friendly, he still never drove one.  ‘Dammit!’ he snapped as he nearly spun them around avoiding a destroyer.

Just as they broke free from the wall of ships, a voice broke through from all sides.  They thought they were spotted for a moment, but realized that it wasn’t pointed at them.  Someone from the fleet spoke over the broadcast equipment.

They spoke in something that wasn’t Japanese, leaving it up to Yori to be their translator.  “This is the UN Blockade Fleet!  Stand down immediately!  If you continue to take aggressive actions direct force will be taken to subdue all individuals.  I repeat this is…”

“Blockade?” Yori’s sister questioned in surprise.  It explained the reason for the fleet, but not for why it was happening.  All of them looked around at each other trying to understand what had happened to Japan since they were gone.

Saki shouted out, pointing to something she saw in the distance.  “There’s something coming towards the fleet!”  In another second, it was almost too late for her to scream.  “Get down!”

Just off their starboard side, a massive blast of purple rocked the boat around in the disrupted sea.  The target was one of the UN warships.  It scored a direct hit to the upper deck, but didn’t cause any severe damage that would cause it to sink.  However, another blast came in quickly, likely trying to finish the job off.

They could only watch, unable to do anything as the boat jumped almost into the air from the next attack.  A bright light from behind blinded everyone.  An explosion came out of the light a moment later breaking out new tide waves spinning their boat around in circles.

“Yuki!”

“Damn it!”

“What the hell is going on?!”

The voice said something else, but Yori was too busy holding on to dear life that he couldn’t be bothered to translate.  However, they didn’t have to guess for long as something flew by their boat along with several others.

It was all too fast for Yuki to see.  They were merely blurs.  “What’s going on?!”

Chiharu was the only one that seemed unaffected by the whole thing.  She carefully watched everything unfold.  “It looks like the UN sent in a peacekeeping force.  They don’t look familiar, but judging from the fact that they were using powers like us, I’m guessing the UN somehow has empowered people working with them.”

The boat finally started to ease up, though the fighting that broke out in the distance left the sea angry.  It did give them enough to stand back up, though Yuki had the hardest time of it.  The others seemed to have already adapted and were barely affected.  “The UN is fighting someone?  That blast before was from that group wasn’t it?”

“Most likely.  When we left people were still discovering their powers.  In a month’s time they’ve already started to use them.”  Chiharu looked closely at the fighting happening in the distance.  It gathered everyone’s attention quickly.  “Given this information, it’s safe to assume that the UN’s purpose here is a peacekeeping action against Japan.  They’ve likely blockaded the entire country viewing all of us as threats to the world.”