Dr. Horosha sped toward the noise, and I followed him down the hallway as best I could. I had to limply skip on my dead, disintegrating feet just to have a hope of keeping up with him. Meanwhile, Andalon effortlessly glided forward, floating inches above the floor. Sometimes she’d vanish and then re-appear further down the hall.

A nurse fled past us in wide-eyed terror. The nurse clutched his hand to his arm, covering up a freshly cut wound. Blood pooled up through the nooks in between his latex-gloved fingers.

“Go!” Dr. Horosha yelled. “And keep security out of this!”

Then another battle-cry rent the air.

Suisei made it to the open door before I did, and leapt in. Not wanting to be left behind, and with one last memory of wings tingling on my back, I formed a block of psychic force on the floor to give myself a surface I pushed off to fling myself around, through the open doorway, and right into the middle of a fight.

The room was larger than average, with enough space for a handful of individual beds, only one of which was currently occupied. Not counting Andalon, who flitted in through the doorway like a fairy’s understudy, there were four people in the room: Dr. Horosha, myself, and two of our mystery patients, one of whom was awake and alert. Very alert.

The young man’s eyes peered out from between the long bangs of his dark, disheveled hair with predatory intensity. He stood with his legs wide apart, and with the metal stand for his IV drip brandished with both hands like a traditional Munine quarterstaff.

A bo.

The word came rushing back to me, along with memories of my high school Munine language class.

Lifting a single finger from the metal stand, the young man pointed at his unconscious companion on the bed. He yelled something that was clearly Munine, and then Dr. Horosha took a single step back and replied in turn—I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, and even more so than usual.

It was at times like this that I wished I’d watched more subbed animé, rather than dubbed; maybe I could have picked up more of the language. I’d spent most of my Munine-language class memorizing kanji, because the teacher was a Munine native born to Trenton émigrés and had zero tolerance for anything less than perfect pronunciation.

The young man spoke again, this time thrusting the tip of the stand in my direction.

“What’s he saying, Mr. Genneth?” Andalon asked.

I don’t know.

Suisei sliced one of his arms through the air as he replied, as if to say, “enough!”

The young man yelled again.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

Dr. Horosha shook his head and turned to me. “This young man is speaking in an archaic version of Munine, one that has not been widely spoken in centuries. The language has changed since then. Not enough to render him incomprehensible—I believe he can more or less understand me—however, I am having difficulty understanding h—”

—The stranger screamed as he charged ahead, stabbing the staff forward. His movements were like liquid steel.

I darted to the right and ducked behind an unoccupied bed, while Dr. Horosha lunged forward and to the left, flinging his arms out and grabbing a nearby stool, and in the same movement—his loafers squeaked on the synthetic flooring—he flexed like a billowing cloak and swept out of the patient’s way, dodging the staff. Deftly holding the stool by its cushion, Suisei rammed it forward and to the side, deflecting the stand. But the patient pulled, twirling around in a rapid spin.

Dr. Horosha kept moving, pitter-pattering backward, down the room, avoiding the corners of the beds and the spaces in between. The patient redoubled his efforts, sweeping the IV stand at his opponent, and Horosha parried the blow with the stool like a lion-tamer of old.

But when the young man next thrusted forward, he stopped mid-strike.

A feint!

He loosened his grip on the stand, letting it slide back through his hands, only to grab it a half-second later, lunge forward, and ram the stand at the stool with redoubled strength.

Icy, spectral hands touched my back. “You have to help him, Mr. Genneth!”

The blow caught Dr. Horosha off-guard. He staggered, his posture lowering.

Andalon was right. So, I pictured music, and it formed in my grip just as I’d imagined it: a disk of glistening sound as thick as a cadence.

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I let the sound play, willing the disk spin at a blistering speed.

Too much.

Panicking, I tried to get it to calm down.

Slow, I thought. Quiet.

In my mind’s eye, the disk seemed to comply, and I was just about to let it loose when glistening mirage-shards jutted out from Suisei and exploded in every direction, growing long.

And then, suddenly, everything was pitch black.

Andalon screamed.

It took a second for me to realize I could still see the shards filling the room like giant needles, the snow-globe motes where they cocooned around Suisei, and the glistening psychokinetic disk revving in my hands, but their light did nothing to the darkness. But it was only sight that was impaired. I could still hear them. The young man yelled in shock. He must have seen the darkness, too.

I wish I hadn’t panicked, but I did. Between the darkness and Andalon’s scream and the light that was not light, I panicked, flinging my disk and letting it fly. A second later, the needles and the darkness faded, and just in time to see Suisei low to the ground, swerving around the young man, stool in hand, when my disk hit them both with the force of punching wind, making them stagger—but Dr. Horosha bore the brunt of it.

“Fudge!” I yelped.

The patient was quicker on the rebound. Seizing the opening, the young man swept the IV stand down low, beneath Suisei’s stool. He aimed for the doctor’s shins.

The blow struck; Dr. Horosha staggered.

“Mr. Genneth!” Andalon cried, “Do more! Do more!”

Clambering over the bed, I charged at the patient, whirling another cadence into my grip, thinking to heck with safety as I threw the thing at him, blasting him square in the back. It sent him flying.

Right into Dr. Horosha.

“No!”

The momentum smacked both of them onto the back wall. The stool in Dr. Horosha’s hand’s got cast off to the side.

“Genneth,” Suisei groaned, “stay out of this!” He flung a psychokinetic web out from his fingers as he scrambled away from the young man. The glowing threads pulsed and quivered, and suddenly, the young man’s arms and legs plastered onto the wall, stand in hand, held there, as if by a magnet.

“I’m sorry!” I apologized, “I didn’t mean to—”

—Then a new voice spoke.

Everyone’s eyes turned.

The other patient was awake. Awake, and talking, and I couldn’t understand a word of it!

Then a livid howl cut through the air.

Dr. Horosha’s opponent had found his second wind. He turned beet red, his features contorting with rage. The wizard-doctor stepped back, aghast, as the young man’s trembling arms lifted off the wall, and then lashed out.

The glistening threads flickered and then shattered.

The young man dropped the stand and ran at Suisei, with hands ready to gouge the doctor’s eyes out.

For a split second, the snow-globe motes around Suisei drew inward as an inner shell ebbed outward, expanding to take its place. It was like a jeweled egg, except made from many different colors and textures of light, sculpted and cultivated. Its glow coated him like an aura, and when he moved, it was with impossible speed, like an over-cranked film reel.

In a blur, Dr. Horosha skidded backward along the floor, yelling something once more in Munine. His attacker staggered, and then bent down and brandished the stand once more. Meanwhile, a scroll of psychic fibers unfurled from Suisei’s hand and pulled the stool off the floor and back into his grasp.

I couldn’t let this go on. Something horrible was going to happen. I know Suisei had told me to stay out of this, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

Though, given the two combatants’ postures, it might have already been too late for that.

The patient in the bed responded with an astonished expression, and for a moment, everything paused. Then there was a pause, and, for a moment, I thought everything was going to be alright.

But then the young bo-jutsu master bellowed.

No!

And then both men charged. The warrior yelled.

At that moment, I decided to do something extremely stupid.

In a split second—one part of my mind digging through my thoughts to remember the words, another part coördinating my powers, I conjured up a third disk of psychokinetic music and set it behind me. I willed propeller-purpose into it and let it spin. The psychic engine sent me skidding forward, and at just the right moment, I let go of the power and toppled forward, landing with a belly flop right next to the gap between both men, in clear view of them and the man in bed, just like I wanted.

Though, gosh, that landing sure stung!

As quickly as I could, I drew my dead legs underneath me and then stuck out my half-lagging arms, pressing them onto the floor as flat as could be while tucking my head between my shoulders. I shouted at the top of my lungs.

“Mashy-wacky kozaimahsen deshee tah!”

I had no idea whether or not it would work, but, looking up without lifting my head, I saw that, at the very least, I had succeeded in getting them to stop.

Three facefuls of astonishment flew my way. Each was as precious as a snowflake and just as unique.

Suisei’s aura receded. The ornate light-forms flickered and then vanished as the snow-globe motes returned to their dominant position.

And then, the man on the bed spoke. Sacrificed my last remaining shreds of dignity, I trembled in place while the three men exchanged words I couldn’t understand.

Finally, Dr. Horosha spoke, and in words I could understand:

“You can get up now, Genneth.”

And I did, but slowly. Very, very slowly.

And then I looked up.

The young warrior’s grip on the IV stand was still tight as ever, and the sounds of his heavy breaths filled the room like a tide, but the rage was slowly petering out of his face. His expression sank bank into steel, retreating into the groves of his raven-black bangs as he fixed his gaze at Dr. Horosha.

The man on the bed spoke once more, and the young man started to laugh.

Slowly, I turned to look at the patient on the bed, and then at Dr. Horosha. Suisei’s breathing was also heavy. Some of the color had gone out of his face. Beneath the light that glinted on his PPE visor, I could see sweat beading on his forehead. He regarded me with a tired, amused sort of bemusement and then nodded his head toward the man on the bed, who now sat upright.

And then Dr. Horosha told me just what it was that the man on the bed had said.

“He said something about having never seen a Trenton-man perform a dogeza of his own free will, and that any Trenton-man willing to so debase himself deserved at least one earnest hearing.”

The lucky bow tie strikes again!