On their final morning in Japan, after the hustle and bustle of packing and leaving their hotel rooms, Daniel and Carmen walked to the rooftop terrace for a final selfie. They smiled into his camera with the skyline cluttering the background, a perfect encapsulation of their time in the dense metropolis.
As he put his arm around her shoulder, Carmen leaned into his grasp. That alone put it far above the picture they took in the Imperial East Garden.
They stayed united even on the plane back, too, taking seats next to each other. Interests swapped like hats, and Daniel listened to Carmen’s favorite rock album while she fumbled around with his music creation software on his laptop.
But, it was a long flight from Tokyo all the way to Morocco. While reading one of the books she downloaded, Carmen fell asleep with her head on his shoulder, and Daniel lived within the rise and fall of her breath. Until he fell asleep, too, that is. When he wasn’t knocked out, Carmen helped the time pass quickly.
If love made time pass quickly, she was the fast forward button to his twenty hour flight.
Yet, when they finally touched down, it felt like they were trapped for hours standing on their feet in lines and going between desks. They kept hoods on to hide their identities against potential challengers. None came, but their greatest challenge still turned out to be passing through passport control.
After two forevers, they were on a taxi out of the airport, riding to their hotel. Immediately, Daniel took his jacket off — the sun beat down on them as they fought through the busy traffic. Japan was like ten cities crushed together into one, but Marrakesh had more desert, more spread-out urban areas, more shorter, clay brown buildings.
Rafiq was in his element, pointing out landmarks and shops. “Man, I can’t wait for y’all to try some tajine while you’re here!” he said, then calling out in arabic for the driver to turn the music up.
Scents wafted through the heated air as they passed by a market stand selling and cooking fresh chicken. Daniel kept one of his headphones on, passively listening to one of Carmen’s rock songs, his eyes scanning the graffiti and street art. Just like Japan, though, he didn’t notice many Street Fighters, but his intuition could still pick out who was and wasn’t a Fighter.
“Is Street Fighting just an American thing?” Daniel asked.
“They do it in France and Europe as a whole, too,” Carmen said.
“Yea, they don’t really be doing all that here, ‘cause you’ll just get in the way, for real. I think it’s just a western thing. Right?” Rafiq asked, sitting forward.
Mr. Stone nodded in agreement from the front seat. “Indeed. Many eastern and African countries don’t allow street fighting.”
“So we don’t have to worry as much about someone calling us out in public? Nice,” Daniel said. “You from here, Rafiq?”
Rafiq chuckled. “Nah, dawg. I’m from Pakistan! My uncle just lives here, so we visited some summers. It’s real cool — y’all gotta see the Medina.”
“While I’m sure you have a list of places we must see, Rafiq, we must not lose focus on why we’re here,” Mr. Stone said. “You three are targeting Fighters in the hundreds, yet you’re barely in the metal ranks. If you’re going to be ready, we must spend a lot of time training.”
“So no tourist stuff? Man!”
“Not as much. I cannot allow these two to miss out on the Medina, either, though, so that will absolutely be on our list.”
Mr. Stone elaborated more on the plan for their training as they reached their riad, on the outskirts of the Medina. The Medina was the older, central city of Marrakesh. Gone were the modern multi-story buildings; instead, they sift through alleyways too tight for the people passing through them, with shouts and smells from the restaurants and shops wafting over it all.
The riad was a large, open house with a central sunroom and smaller individual rooms for them to stay in, with intricate and colorful interiors and patterned rugs on the walls. Daniel tried to record as soon as they walked in, but the person leading them to their rooms called him out for it, forcing Daniel to put his phone away.
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“Yeah, you gotta be careful about that, bro. They don’t really like people recording around here,” Rafiq said.
“Shoot. Why didn’t you warn us of that before?” Daniel asked.
“Cause then I wouldn’t have seen your reaction!” he laughed.
Rafiq and Daniel still shared a room, while Carmen and Mr. Stone got their own. Open-paned windows let in sunlight, honing a pleasant atmosphere. It felt less modern than the hotel rooms they had in Tokyo, but between South City, Paris, and Tokyo, a break from all the modern amenities was refreshing.
Mr. Stone elaborated more on their training plans as they unpacked their things in their room, calling Carmen over to hear. They had two goals for their time in Morocco. Since they were still only Golden Ranks, they had to reach Diamond for Mr. Stone to feel like they were ready enough for the tournament.
And then, they had to defeat him.
Daniel almost thought he was kidding. By the end of their time in Morocco, Mr. Stone said that they’d be able to beat even him in sparring sessions and even decided on that being their plan first thing the next morning. The idea of ever being able to match Mr. Stone’s skill didn’t sound very likely, but at least it was tomorrow morning, and not tonight. He was still exhausted from the flight.
Had to celebrate the small victories, right?
Even better, Mr. Stone still didn't know about their real plans for coming to Marrakesh, of all places. The restaurant within their riad served delicious barbeque, and the plan weighed on his thoughts the entire time.
The image of Apex wouldn’t leave his mind. Carmen and Rafiq promised that their plan was to avoid her, but the thought of an encounter still made him uneasy. What other powers had she stolen since then?
Silently, he sent up a prayer that training to defeat Mr. Stone would ready them to face her, too, let alone the impossibility of beating Mr. Stone at all.
The next morning, their first task was to enter a training lobby at a nearby Fighting Center. The riad served fire pastries and sweet orange juice for breakfast, but just when they were about to leave, Carmen stopped at the door.
“Crap, I forgot my phone!” she exclaimed.
“Don’t worry, I’ll grab it!”
Daniel borrowed her key and hopped back upstairs to enter her room. She’d barely taken anything out of her suitcase. Sure enough, she left her phone on the nightstand.
But, as he approached, his eyes drifted back to her suitcase, the colorful clothes inside, and the…faint glow?
His eyes weren’t deceiving him. But, it would be suspicious if he spent too long just to get her phone. Quickly, Daniel pulled her phone off the charger and crouched at her suitcase.
She kept two more vials of the strange pink liquid he’d found her taking back in Japan.
Anger rushed through him, heart thudding with betrayal — she told him she wouldn’t use it anymore. She promised. He told her about his Dad and his family. Did she not care? Did she not think it was that bad to him?
What about her fight with Sakura — was that even her skill?
“Did you find it, Daniel?!”
Daniel exhaled from his nose. “Yeah! Yeah, I…I found it. I’m coming.”
Clenching it in his fist, Daniel unscrewed the cap, taking a quick whiff of the intense strawberry scent before pouring it down her sink drain.
She would be furious if she found out, but he deserved to be, too, after she lied to him. Maybe she had a good reason. Hopefully.
Whether she did or didn’t, holding onto it wasn’t doing anything good for her. Daniel poured out her two vials and closed the door behind him, heading back downstairs.
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Carmen left her Memory Shots behind.
Marrakesh was a different world, but the Fighting Center still felt the same, only with more open ceilings, if anything. Once they reached the training gym and Mr. Stone opened a lobby for them to train in, she remembered that she’d been so tired, she’d forgotten to take a hit before she left.
She excused herself to the bathroom, promising to join them once she was done. Daniel gave her an odd look, but when she met his eyes, he only smiled and waved. In the bathroom, she dug into her mini purse, but it wasn’t there at all.
Damn!
Her tongue and brain itched for that same sensation, hoping for the sweet fizzy strawberry taste and the mental rush, but she had to work without it. Her thoughts fought through a swamp, and the Memory Shot was the only way out.
Carmen swiped her menu open, pressed the Fighting button, and navigated to where she could enter the code for the training lobby. The world darkened around her. Her eyes fluttered open, and the System had transported her to the familiar room with gray floors and walls and blue tiles.
Mr. Stone faced Rafiq and Daniel, and now her, as she appeared at Daniel’s side.
“Ah, Carmen. You’re just in time for the start of today’s lesson.”
He pressed a button on his menu. In a flash of light, three dummies appeared on either side of him, with gray fabric skin underneath matching white tracksuits, gray dreadlocks, beards, and canes.
“Each of you follow a clone and fan out,” Mr. Stone said. At the tap of his cane, the clones paced to either walls of the training room. “We’ll start with surviving proper offensive pressure.”