Ashley Fox - Ninja Orphan Read online

Part One – On Fighting

  Prologue – Flying Dragons

  June 19th, 2309

  The arrival of a giant tuxedoed lion caused chaos among the students of the Flying Dragons Martial Arts Academy. The monster cat weighed in at almost three hundred pounds. Like a panda, or killer whale, his coat sported only two colors; his head, back, and most of his tail were black, while white fur covered his belly, forelegs, paws, and mouth.

  During the summer, the Flying Dragons Martial Arts Academy was relatively empty, as compared to the regular school year, and the few remaining students were infatuated with the playful lion. The animal showed no aggressive behavior, but rolled and tumbled with the children, baring neither fang nor claw.

  Ashton and Geoffrey were at breakfast when word of the massive animal spread through the school. They arrived in the courtyard with a handful of other students, excited to gawk at and play with the giant cat.

  However, when Ash and Geoff stepped into the courtyard, the animal ceased its games. His ears went up, and he sniffed the air. Fixating on Ash’s little brother, the lion bounded over to Geoffrey and sniffed him intently. Then, softly, the lion rubbed its face against Geoff's, licked him repeatedly and began to purr.

  Ash stood next to her brother, her hand brushing the cat's thick mane. She knew that if the cat were to turn hostile, there would be little she could do to protect her brother from its claws.

  Across the courtyard, the head abbot entered with a pair of adults. Ashley stared, stunned.

  "Geoff," she said. "Geoff!"

  The other kids also froze, but ignoring the adults, they just stared at her. Ashley had just given up the game. For a year, she had concealed the fact that she was a girl. Ashton kept his hair short and always spoke from the lower register. Now, for the first time, the facade had slipped.

  In the next moment, she dropped it altogether, and was suddenly running across the courtyard. "Mom!" she cried, hugging her mother.

  Her father stood beside them, his hand on her shoulder.

  Ashley looked back at Geoff, frozen beside the lion. "Geoff!"

  Geoffrey finally got out from behind the cat and sprinted to meet them. "Mom! Dad!" Geoffrey yelled as he ran up to his parents.

  The rest of the day passed in a whirlwind. Ashton and Geoffrey left the academy, never to return. They said no goodbyes, took nothing from their rooms. Dr. Fox arranged for it all to be delivered later.

  In the car, Geoff played with the cat, petting him and wrestling with him.

  "What's his name," Geoff asked.

  "He doesn't have one yet," Dr. Fox answered. "Any ideas?"

  Geoff smiled and squinted into the sharp morning sunlight. "Mono."

  "Mono?" his father asked.

  "Yeah, short for Monochrome," Geoffrey answered, beaming.

  The first night away from the Academy, the Fox family moved into an absurdly expensive and secure hotel. Movie stars wandered the halls. Room service was always available and fast. It was only temporary, but exciting for Mrs. Fox and the kids.

  Of course, Ashley and Geoff had dozens of questions for their father, starting with how he and their mother had survived their apparent murder. Dr. Fox explained that he had applied some first aid to their mom, after Mr. Dunkirk had attacked her. There had been a kit of the healing goo in the kitchen and it had saved her life.

  Director Stanwood's bullet had also been a stroke of luck. The .22 hadn't penetrated his skull and given him nothing more than a prolonged nap and a lovely new scar for his hairline.

  Stanwood and his cronies kept Dr. Fox's survival a secret in hopes of blackmailing him once he recovered, but Ashley and Geoff's escape had thrown a monkey-wrench into their plans. Stanwood's death at the hands of Ashley and the embarrassment of Dunkirk’s escape had further frustrated any political designs against Ashley's father.

  He apologized profusely for not having located them sooner, but after all, the martial arts academy was the last place anyone, included their parents, had thought to look.

  After six weeks in the huge suite, with maids, room service and a carpet that felt like a fur-covered bed, Ash didn't want to leave the hotel. Certainly not to move into the spare, modern house, newly purchased in up-town Angel City. There wasn’t a hard edge on a single piece of furniture in the hotel. The same could not be said for the new home they were about to move into.

  Ashley and Geoff asked about their old possessions, but Dr. Fox explained the police had sealed the house during the Dunkirk investigation. As far as he knew, it was exactly as they had left it. Despite Geoff’s insistent pleading, Dr. Fox refused to return to the address. He refused under any circumstances, even if it involved replacing all of Geoff’s previous clothing and toys with newer, more expensive versions.

  Their new home, on the prestigious top-shelf of the technology sector, was a cold, hard structure that made magically efficient use of space. Ashley and Geoff got to choose their own rooms, in the final tally, a total of three each. The estate was immense and secured by heavily armed soldiers, as well as a fleet of house and grounds keepers, all living on the property.

  Exploring the neighborhood, Ashley and Geoff quickly discovered the Angel City Parks, miles of hoverboard ramps, multi-tiered playgrounds and carefully cultivated forests, supervised by young citizens doing their mandatory two years of public service.

  Soon the school year started, but the horror they experienced on Calistan Way continued to haunt Ashley. Occasionally Mr. Dunkirk would make headlines, he’d have a close call with police, or take another victim, or be blamed for one.

  Ash alone seemed concerned, she regarded the threat of his return as not just probable, but inevitable. Especially since she was the only living person who could link Dunkirk to any crimes. Ashley's testimony, that she had found Mr. Dunkirk in the home with his murdered family and that he had attacked her with a butcher knife, would be enough to hang the suspected murderer.

  Ashley knew that her mom was technically one of Dunkirk's victims, but she was no longer dead. The incident had never been properly reported or filed, due to Stanwood’s federal interference.

  Whenever Ashley thought about those days, her heart would literally begin to ache, a hollow, burning sensation in her chest. She missed things the way they used to be. She'd loved the canyon forest, their neighborhood friends, and their beagle. She missed their adventures, but those days were long gone.

  The day Chairman Pierce fell from the sky everything changed. That was the day her father's prototype had first come into Ashley's possession, carried from the heavens by a divine messenger, delivering the item to the daughter of its creator.

  The Micronix, a computer to brain interface, was a device that could store thoughts, connect to other computer systems, transmit messages, anything a regular computer could do, all without the use of keyboards or monitors. Ashley didn't like to use it, but her younger brother Geoffrey had effortlessly mastered the device.

  Their father had never asked about it after his return. Ashley hadn't mentioned it, and Geoff didn't talk about it either. He never borrowed it or asked Ashley about it. He'd said it worked best for him when Ash had it, and she always had it.

  In addition to being her father's unexplained legacy, the interface doubled as a knife, its single button releasing a hidden blade.

  After her run-in with Mr. Dunkirk and the showdown in the police station, Ashley reasoned it was best to keep the device with her at all times. Mr. Dunkirk had lived on their street as long as Ashley could remember. No one had ever suspected him of being a mass murderer. Director Stanwood had known Ashley's father all his life and even as Stanwood shot him, Dr. Fox trusted him enough to ask for his help.

  Ash's memories of her home and the canyon where she and Geoff spent so many happy hours were all tainted with concealed evil. Ash felt death lurking all around her now, never more than one step out of sight, just waiting to jump out and say hello. She never left the device out of arm’s reach, even when she slept.

 
Just before Halloween, Mr. Dunkirk was spotted in Phoenix, but quickly vanished again. Ashley's father assured them that he had taken every precaution to protect their new address.

  "Besides, we aren't worried Ash. You're here to protect us," he often joked.

  The idea terrified the young girl, but her family, everyone, looked at her differently now.

  The footage of her fight with Dunkirk, captured by the hovering police vehicles, had been all over the news. Geoffrey's big sister had brutally humiliated one of the most dangerous serial killers in history.

  Inside their first week at the new school, he'd turned her into a playground legend. Whenever the issue of childhood bravado reared its ugly head, Geoff found the spotlight. The other kids loved his stories about Ashley, they would crowd around him and listen, reverently.

  Ashley would notice them looking at her strangely for several days afterward. Occasionally, one of Geoffrey's particularly brave classmates would get up the courage to ask her some meaningless question and later, brag to his friends about his brush with fame.

  Ashley didn't think of herself as a hero. She knew the truth. She was terrified. At one point, she even paid Geoff to keep quiet, but the damage was already done. Ashley did not want to get caught up in the obligatory tough guy challenges leveled at any and every karate kid, especially one who happened to be female.

  As far as the school kids knew, she didn't practice martial arts anymore, just ballet. In truth, Ashley spent every afternoon at Flying Dragons. Now she showed the same single-minded devotion for violence that she'd once shown for dance. Whenever news of Dunkirk's continuing escapades reached the girl, she redoubled her efforts.

  Wednesday, September 14, 2310

  The night before her fifteenth birthday, after Ashley came home from practice, Dr. Fox approached her in the kitchen. "There's something I want to ask you."

  Ashley and Geoff had been reunited with their parents for a little over a year now. The family had finally settled into something that, on the surface, appeared regular, safe and happy.

  "Yes," Ashley answered.

  Her father half-sat / half-leaned against a tall stool, pinning it against the center island.

  Ash was already unnerved by his very presence, but lately he’d been nice enough. He had not been like that when she was younger. Ever since he’d returned from the grave, finding them at Flying Dragons, the stern man he had once been was no more.

  Instead, he seemed nervous around her, as if dazed, the way a super-fan is around their favorite celebrity, the way the schoolboys were after Geoff spent an afternoon intoxicating them with exaggerated tales.

  "So, you really didn't want to go to that Kung Fu camp?" he asked awkwardly.

  "No, I didn't." Ashley found it easy to be cold toward him. She didn’t trust this kinder, gentler man. He was and yet he was not her father. After witnessing his death; that had changed her.

  He was here, and yes, he cared for her, but Ashley was no longer a child, and she no longer sought the protection of her parents. In this moment, that feeling made itself known and elevated her.

  He continued, "But you went, and then you went back. You spent a full year there, and now you go all the time.”

  This she had not expected. The young girl paused, waiting for the question, making him ask whatever it was he wanted to know.

  “Well... Why?"

  "You know why. You were dead. Things changed."

  Dr. Fox waited, apparently unsatisfied with the short answer. Suddenly he was her Dad again, the Old Man was there, watching, judging. Ashley bristled.

  "And because, well, they were searching for a ballerina. If I went to ballet school, Geoff and I would be dead now."

  He smiled. "You loved ballet, you were so talented."

  She saw through his words. This was something he’d been planning, this moment, for some time.

  Ashley narrowed her eyes. She had not once lost her sense of self. Not when confronted by the murderous Dunkirk, nor when experiencing a distortion in time that could only have been a mild hallucination.

  When first holding her father’s device, the Micronix, she hadn’t seen anything happen, what she had felt was a lack of things happening. She hadn’t felt the breeze on her face, or heard the rustle of the branches, rubbing their limbs together in the cool winds; that didn’t mean they had stopped all together.

  In a sudden epiphany, Ashley realized it hadn’t been a lack of time at all, but a lack of sensation. When she had released the device into her back pocket, the connection had broken, and her other senses had rushed in again. just like this moment, she thought to herself.

  She paused and wondered how she could explain, to herself, the frozen laser light and her transfixed friends. She could not. So she put it out of her mind, resolving to deal with it later, or possibly never.

  Her father was still watching her. Only a fraction of a second had passed. She didn’t drop eye contact.

  "I worked hard," she said. "But I didn't love it. It didn't add up to anything."

  "What does that mean, it didn't add up to anything?"

  "I did it to prove I was better than the other girls, not because I liked it. I did it because other women look up to dancers, and men prize them, not because I loved it."

  Dr. Fox said nothing.

  “I don’t do this out of that same place. I do this because I don’t want to end up like all those people in the canyon.”

  “That never should have happened.”

  Ashley heard him clearly. She knew he was somehow involved with the man who fell from the sky that afternoon, two summers ago. She knew that the black knife was at the center of it all.

  She knew something else too, but she did not know what that something was; only that she possessed the Micronix and that it made her powerful. She did not need to know anything more. She did not want to hear the whole story. She was not ready for that yet.

  He seemed as if he needed her to be ready, as if there were something he wanted to tell her. She hoped he would wait, maybe a few weeks, a few more days, at least. Their life had just gotten good.

  Ashley explained, "Geoffrey does things because he wants to. He does things for fun. The way he used to play with Jack, and how he does his experiments. I'm not like that."

  He took a breath and leaned back, relaxing against the counter. "I see. What are you like?"

  Ash hesitated, "I do things because I have to. This is something I have to do. It was the same with ballet. I don't know why, but I had to."

  She stood quietly for a moment.

  "It's weird. I was mean about ballet, but I'm not about this. Because this is all about being mean, I can be nice. I don't know if that makes any sense."

  Dr. Fox nodded, " A little."

  "It's different than ballet. That was all about what I could do," she said. "Now, I just want to learn, to help the other kids too. I'm not just doing it for me, but for Geoff and everyone, because the bad guys are out there somewhere, and they're not the other kids."

  Her father smiled.

  "I'm better than most of the boys already," she said, smiling back.

  “Of course you are.” He hugged her. "I know you don't always like it when I tell you to look out for your brother, but I'm glad you're here to protect him. I can count on you."

  "You're here too, right? We're safe here. Aren't we?"

  He turned toward the fridge. “Of course,” he said, as he opened the door, filling the room with light from the interior.

  "But then again, we were safe back on Calistan too," he pointed out. "Until we weren't." He turned back to face her, abandoning whatever it was he had wanted, letting the door swing closed, shutting out the illumination.

  Fox raised his hands to his daughter’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "That's why I made you go. That's the way life works, the way knowledge and experience work. Once you need it, it's too late.”