Once the plane landed, and Kai was done throwing up from the turbulence, the group was ready to exit the plane.
"Are we gonna have to sneak around again?" Akilah whispered to Bloom.
"No, honey. I doubt the information has gotten over here yet. The Advisors seldom cooperate with each other willingly. It'll probably take word of mouth for people to get our descriptions." Bloom smiled back at Akilah, who dropped her cautious demeanor.
"Then I wanna go eat Takoyaki." Chase stretched immediately after exiting his seat. Amora's eyes lit up at the idea.
"Please!" Amora added.
Bloom and Alex chuckled.
"Let's try to get settled in at our new compound first. I'm sure we'll be able to enjoy the city after that." Alex led the way down the aisle.
The flight attendant waved goodbye as the group entered the airport.
Even though it was still the same nation and the same language, the kids seemed to be excited that they were even in the same location that the Frewins, Alex and Bloom would talk about.
"Woah, did Mr. and Mrs. Frewin ever come here?" Vida asked.
"Oh, all the time. It would be Me, Bloom, our friend Maybelle, our other friend Manny, he's the leader of the Tokyo compound, Jade- I mean Mr. Frewin, and my sister, Mrs. Frewin." Alex scrunched her face like something had disgusted her. "It still gives me chills calling her Mrs. Frewin."
Alex and Bloom laughed.
"Oh, I can't wait to catch up with Manny." Bloom smiled at Alex.
"I don't remember a Manny." Taro tried to recover a memory of someone named Manny.
"He left when you and your brother were little. He left to help the rebels over here around the same time that my sister and Jaden left to help the failing orphanages down in Virginia." Alex confirmed her timeline in her head.
"Alright, onward!" Chase pointed into the sky like a boy scout, leading the way.
"This way." Alex turned his head towards the correct path.
The group left Haneda airport, catching a taxi right outside of the airport.
"Sorry guys, I only have about five seats. You'll have to pack in like a clown car!" The taxi driver joked.
Alex and Bloom got the more spacious two front seats, since "They were the adults, after all,".
Amora and Akilah got into the third row, while Hendrix, Taro, Kai, and Chase had to collapse over each other to fit into the second row.
"Aw, I should've gone first." Vida tried to look for a path past the boys.
"Well I'm not moving." Chase was laying across the floor leisurely.
"And I can't move." Kai was pinned to the side of the seat by his brother.
"I got it." Hendrix got out of his seat.
Vida tried climbing over the seat, but was having trouble.
"Need help?" Hendrix grabbed Vida's waist, trying to help her over the seat.
Vida's eyes widened, just as Amora's.
Vida looked back, a flustered expression on her face.
"S-sorry." Hendrix pulled his hands away.
The group eventually got situated after the trials and tribulations of fitting seven teens into five seats.
The drive to the compound was filled with sight seeing, even if it was on the more mundane side.
The kids marveled at the everyday architecture, the cherry blossom trees still bare of flowers.
After a thirty-minute drive, the taxi pulled up to an abandoned high school on the outskirts of Shinjuku.
"Are you guys sure this is the place? It's been abandoned for half a century." The taxi driver wore a concerned face.
"It's alright, we're ghost hunters!" Bloom smiled, knowing it was a bold-faced lie.
The taxi driver shrugged, waved goodbye, and zoomed off.
"What a charming group of youngins." The taxi driver told himself.
The group turned towards the abandoned high school, walking past the gates with wonder.
It was a huge complex, probably on the bigger side for a high school in this city. It sported two buildings, two stories each. The kids even got a glimpse of a swimming pool behind the main building.
Alex knocked on the main door to the high school.
"Password?" A voice spoke from behind the white door.
Alex pulled the sleeve on her right arm back. She looked at her wrist. A tattoo on her arm read the address of the Tokyo compound, and under it read "One Nation, No Freedom", which Alex spoke.
The door swung open. A man with a sharp red buzz cut opened the door. He wore a white tank top and work pants, but the first thing anyone noticed about him was his scars.
He had scars reaching from the corners of his mouth to just below his ears, and another scar scratching down his left eye, which was completely white.
"Hey, how are y'all doing?" the man with the scars asked.
"Hi! We're from the compound in D.C. The compound got infiltrated by the Correctional Forces, so we were looking to stay here for the time being." Bloom smiled.
"Oh, I'm so sorry." The man put a hand over his chest. "Well, you can stay here for however long you want, you know that by now. C'mon in." The scarred man walked into the building, waving his hand towards the group.
They all walked in, where the compound's residents seemed to be bustling about the place.
"Everyone! These are some of the guys from D.C. Give them a warm welcome, okay?!" The man with the scars yelled over the miscellaneous noise.
The crowd of rebels all cheered and waved.
"Oh, where are my manners? My name is Jason, I'm in charge of the oversee in this compound. Me-" Jason was interrupted by Bloom.
"What about Manny?" Bloom began to get worried.
The once happy faces of the compound residents grew somber.
"Manny… Sometimes Manny liked to go on these missions to rescue people who were arrested for heresy. He. I don't know how to put it lightly. On one of the missions… Well, he didn't make it out. One of the Officers caught him by surprise." Jason stuttered over his words, trying to put it as softly as he could.
Bloom and Alex went silent. The kids tried to gauge if the two adults were going to be okay without bringing attention to their reactions.
After a few more moments of silence, someone in the center of the room spoke.
"You two were his friends, right? I can show you to his grave, if you want." A blonde boy pointed to the back of the building. Alex and Bloom nodded, "Please,".
"You guys go and get comfortable. We'll join in a bit." Bloom smiled through her emotions as she and Alex walked off.
To the shock and sadness of the kids, they could see Bloom's smile twist into a face holding back a sob as she turned around.
"C'mon, guys, let's get you started." Jason waved the kids towards him as he walked to a staircase on the side of the main room.
The kids followed him, trying to assure themselves that Bloom and Alex would be okay.
Bloom and Alex followed the blonde boy down a hallway until they met a glass door leading to a small grass field.
The field was home to a dozen or so headstones, with an immature cherry blossom tree in the middle.
Bloom and Alex stepped on to the field, seeing that the very first headstone they came across said "Manny - the greatest to ever do it" carved very roughly into the stone.
"If you guys need anything, just call for Slim, that's my name." Slim smiled awkwardly and closed the door as the two women turned their attention to the headstone.
A few moments of silence passed. The clear sky of Shinjuku wasn't enough to keep their hopes bright.
The wind blew through the makeshift graveyard, making some of Bloom's hair stick to her tear-ridden cheeks.
"We're the last two alive from our little group." Bloom smiled through her tears, keeping her eyes on the headstone.
"I know." Alex spoke quietly.
"You'd think it would get easier. Every time I see one of those kids get hurt my heart aches, and every time someone dies it feels like a little bit of me dies with them. Milo had so much of his life ahead of him, so did Manny. We didn't even get to say goodbye to Sierra and Jaden, none of them." Bloom leaned in to Alex, rubbing her tears away with her sleeve.
"I know." Alex said.
Back inside, Jason led the children down a hallway of classrooms. He had slowly recovered his hyper demeanor, marching down the hallways with the kids behind him.
"Nice to meet you guys. Like I was saying before, Manny left me in charge of this compound. My little sister helps me with some of the stuff I can't get to. She's actually around your guys' age, I hope you'll be friends." Jason continued to rant about whatever came to his mind. He scratched at his bright red hair all the while.
"You said each of the classrooms is used as a bedroom, right?" Taro asked.
"You know, if you're running low on classrooms, I can always just share a room with Amora, no big deal." Chase shrugged. He was then immediately tripped by Amora, who let out a little chuckle.
"Oh, don't worry. We have plenty of space. My sister should have already put the keys in the doors to your guys' rooms. They're at the very end of this hallway, you guys can pick which one you want from the rooms that have keys to them. I've got to check in on the two that went to see Manny's grave." Jason waved goodbye as he turned around, heading back to the main lobby.
The group walked down to the end of the hallway where they saw a girl with clunky headphones putting keys in the classroom doors.
Her jet-black hair flowed well past her shoulders, her white tank top tucked loosely into baggy blue jeans. She bopped her head to the music that was loud enough to bleed out to the group.
Taro's jaw dropped at the sight of the girl. She was genuinely beautiful, at least to the teens.
"This one's mine!" Chase charged into the room in the very corner, falling to his knees when he laid his eyes on a box television in the corner of the room. He paid no attention to the girl he had to run past.
Taro nudged Hendrix, silently saying "You seeing this?" through his eyes. Hendrix didn't entirely get what he was trying to tell him.
"We can just pick the rooms we like?" Akilah asked. Her and the other girls were slightly excited to have another girl with them, maybe even a friend.
"Ones with keys." The girl looked up from her hands for the first time, taking off her headphones as she glided her eyes over the faces of the teens. Her glare lingered on Hendrix, whose head of pink hair was poking out from above the rest of the group.
"What's your name, pink-haired boy?" The girl drew a flirtatious undertone that not everyone was able to pick up on.
"Uh-" Hendrix was interrupted.
"His name is Hendrix." Vida had caught on to the girl's undertone quickly, trying to block it off without being rude or obvious.
"Oh god, what am I doing? She probably didn't even mean it like that-" Vida's train of thought stopped.
"My name's Molly. I like you, Hendrix. You're mine now." Molly grabbed Hendrix's hand from around the rest of the teens, dragging him away from the group.
Hendrix pushed back a little, but was more confused about what she meant. Romance was the farthest thing from his mind right now, so it couldn't even register with him that she was flirting.
The group stared in shock as Hendrix was dragged down the hall.
"What?!" Taro dropped to his knees in despair as the rest of the group went silent, whether it be in shock, confusion, or jealousy.