A Visitor

“So… how did your date go?” I asked casually at breakfast the next morning. Sanzo glared bullets at me and Hakkai chuckled awkwardly. They’d come back to their room at a reasonable hour – I’d heard that – and had chatted for a long time afterward – Gojyo had heard that. The fact that they had been so chatty was good, and that Hakkai hadn’t tried to bunk with us was even better.

However, neither one seemed to feel ready to call it a date yet. “Max, I wouldn’t call that a date,” Hakkai reprimanded gently. Sanzo nodded in agreement… kind of.

I shrugged, letting the issue drop. Then I changed my mind. “I’ll suppose that the idea of an audience – aka Gojyo – listening through the wall can be a bit daunting, but it was only him doing that! Goku was snoring like a motor boat and I was busy trying to read.”

“How do you try to read?” Hakkai asked me. He’d seen me reading my book the previous day, so he knew that I could read English (my book had been written by the brilliant Melanie Rawn and thereby had been in English).

“Ack, you sound like a teacher,” I complained.

“I was a teacher,” he said.

“Oh, me too!” I said brightly.

Unfortunately, my distraction tactic failed. “How do you try to read?” he insisted.

“Um…” I reached into my pocket and pulled out my compact, pointed the magnifying mirror at the table top and Called my math text and psych journal into being on the available surface. Hakkai picked up the textbook and started flipping through the pages, looking impressed. “I realize you can’t read the titles, but one is a highly advanced mathematics textbook, and this other one is the latest psychology journal where some idiot published a new theory and didn’t bother to explain things in a way that a sane person can understand. Okay, I’ll admit that I belong in a loony bin, but that didn’t make anything easier.”

“What was the theory?” Hakkai asked.

“Eating spinach means you’re depressed,” I said sarcastically. Then I shrugged. “I still don’t know. I was trying to read it last night, but couldn’t because I was cussing out the author too much.”

Goku laughed loudly, nearly spraying a rice ball over Gojyo. I covered his mouth before he could, though, receiving appreciative looks from the men at my table. The serving girl bounced up behind us and handed me a napkin as she giggled. “Wow, miss, you are very brave,” she said.

I took the napkin gratefully and wiped my hand appreciatively. “No, I have some very blond moments.” Then I looked from Sanzo – who is blond and excessively grouchy – to the waitress – who was blond with the biggest knockers I’d ever seen – and closed my trap with a snap. “Oops.”

The waitress chuckled and patted my cheek. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Would you like to order something else?”
I looked down at my empty plate, thinking. Then I looked at Hakkai’s and Sanzo’s, thinking that they had not eaten very much. “Hakkai would like some pancakes,” I said. “Gojyo would like a few more sausages. Sanzo wants toast and waffles.”

Sanzo glared daggers at me. “I do not.”

“Oh, come on! You guys eat like birds!” I said. “You need to eat more or you’re going to starve!”

“I don’t want more!” Gojyo said loudly, which was quite the surprise, considering that a few moments before he had been fighting with Goku over every morsel of food that got put in their mouths.

“I don’t get you people,” I said as the serving woman walked off without writing anything on our ticket. “You’re fighters, right?”

“Yes,” Hakkai said.

“You travel around a lot on your journey, right?”

“Right,” Gojyo confirmed as he threw an arm around the back of my chair.

I looked at the little white dragon that had settled on Hakkai’s shoulder and smiled at the little tyke. Then I dragged my eyes back to the obnoxious males around me. “Then how come Goku is the only one with a healthy apatite?” I demanded. “Albeit he does go over the top eating everything in sight, but his hunger is mostly psychosomatic, probably from some sort of trauma he experienced where he was starved for long periods of time. I’m not suggesting that you guys eat quite that much, but you can stand to eat more.”

“I wouldn’t be one to talk, sweetheart, but you eat too much!” Gojyo said, mimicking the nickname that the waitress had given me. I ground my teeth. I don’t like nicknames, but I tolerate them from strangers.

“I do not,” I said calmly. “My body needs strength to withstand the demands I put on it. It has to be able to survive the drain of near-constant fighting using both magic and my mutant strength. It needs to withstand hours of grueling dance rehearsals, performances, acting, and singing, playing musical instruments, tumbling, tightrope walking, juggling knives, and anything else that I can possibly get it to do without giving out on me. If I didn’t eat I would be a hollow shell, consumed by my inner power. You guys are all powerful, too. How can you not eat so much?”

Nobody answered. Eventually Sanzo asked, “Does your brother eat the way you do?”

“All of ‘em do,” I replied. “Everyone in My Dance Troupe does, too.”

“Oh, you’re in a dance troupe?” Hakkai asked, interested.

“Yeah,” I said.

“What’s it called?” he asked as he sipped some tea.

“… My Dance Troupe,” I said, knowing full well exactly where this was going. It was a perpetual joke among my family.

“Yeah, what’s it called?” Goku asked.

“My Dance Troupe,” I repeated.

“Seriously, Max, what’s the name?” Gojyo asked. He was getting a little annoyed.

I turned to Sanzo. He had it figured out already. “Sanzo, what’s the name of the group I belong to?” I demanded.
He glared at me and answered into his coffee cup as he took a sip. “…My Dance Troupe.”

I turned to Goku. “There you have it. MDT is the most prestigious performance group in my reality. Every single one of our performances we’ve put on since the year 2000 has been completely sold out, standing room only. We’ve had eight world tours, made nearly a dozen movies, and if it can be done on a stage, we’ve probably done it. Hell, I have to do a pole striptease when we perform Rent! My character’s a stripper… Gojyo, don’t look at me like that!”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but I’m absolutely in love with the idea of you stripping!”

I rolled my eyes up to the ceiling and stared at one of the light fixtures. The bulb had gone out. “Don’t call me sweetheart, stud muffin, or I’m going to invent some decidedly embarrassing stories about you and tell them on street corners for money.” He paled.

“What does your brother call you?” Sanzo asked. What was with him asking about my brother all of a sudden? It made me want to play with his mind, too, but I also wanted to protect myself. Ah… the tough decisions one must make in one’s life!

“Which brother?” I asked. “I have… Okay, let’s see…. Adam, Ben, Cal, Dan, Ethan, Frank, Gideon, Eros, and Pipse are my brothers who are still alive. Step brothers… that would be… Jake, Fred, Justin, Josh, Christopher, Christian, Cory, and… John Chap. Which one would you like me to tell you about?” As I spoke I realized that I was actually telling these men about myself. It didn’t matter. Not only were they trustworthy, no one could get at my brothers from this dimension. They were safe. “That would be nine brothers and eight step brothers.”

They just stared at me. I smiled and finished cleaning off my plate. Then I scooted my chair away from the table and stood. “My life is complicated, but it isn’t here. I’d like to thank you for the lovely breakfast. I’ll be out in town for a while today.”

“Hey, Max, no running away!” Gojyo said, leaping up from his seat at the table.

Sanzo was a half a second behind him and Hakkai was following a close third. They reached out and touched me. My skin screamed from the contact and I tried to jump back, but for some reason four pairs of arms locked themselves around me, and I found myself drowning in agony that I hadn’t truly felt since I was twelve years old.