Falling Down: A Smashing Good Time

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And I know you know I know that you know I know.

Neon 1 Corinthians 13:12

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"Teleported!?"

Hitomi stood shock still, incredulous, as Josh and Hailey paused and turned around to talk to her about it.

Josh reached up and scratched the back of his shaggy hair, unsure how to explain what he and Hailey had witnessed just a few minutes before.

Hailey took the initiative, apparently better at unpacking difficult subjects, and clarified: "Well, I mean, we didn't *see* you *teleport*, exactly, um, it was more like one second you were standing there trying to get that lady to calm down, and then when she tried to kill the baby we both took our eyes off of you because, you know, the FRICKIN LADY THREW A BABY AT THE GROUND, and suddenly you had somehow already gotten under the falling baby and it smacked right into your arms."

"Dude. Looked like it hurt, and then the baby started crying, so we knew it was alive, and then the lady got taken down by the cop. It was like an action movie! Hard to believe, really - harder to explain!" Josh exclaimed, "Like, you were just a blur of motion! An all-star soccer keeper move, that's what it was."

Hailey smiled, "Like one of the tiniest soccer ninjas I've ever seen!"

Tiny? What. Her? She was totally an average Japanese girl's height!

She drank milk!

Hailey must've realized Hitomi had taken the "tiny" comment to heart, because she immediately followed up: "I mean, tiny compared to the nutty tub of lard who tried to hurt that poor baby!"

"Not that we're focused on the overweight part," Josh rejoined, "That lady was Bat. Shit. Crazy."

But Hitomi was processing what Hailey had said earlier about how she had saved the baby. At first she was nervous, worried that something inexplicable had happened - now wasn't the time to stand out - but it sounded like she'd just acted on instinct and dived for the baby.

She sighed in relief.

Except... she could have sworn she saw - the "other her". All that blood. And... and...the...

But no, no. NO.

The world was on fire. Planes were literally dropping out of the sky. The President had been killed on TV with a sword by something that looked like an angel.

The last thing she needed to do was draw any attention to herself during a worldwide - well, she assumed it was worldwide - total meltdown.

Right. All she wanted to do was get back home safe and sound, curl up with her laptop, and do some coding.

Yes, sweet, sweet laptop time. Just her and the internet. She unthinkingly grabbed up her satchel and held it to her chest protectively.

"I was just lucky! I barely remember it... I just want the baby to be OK!" Hitomi exclaimed, "But thank you both so much for helping me find the embassy. I would be so scared to go alone!"

There was no way the embassy could've sent a car to come help her: everyone was having the same emergency. She hoped they'd let her in. They'd have to, right? She was a citizen. Her parents paid their taxes!

"No problem!" the other two chorused, oh, they were holding hands, how cute! Together they all turned and began moving along again.

They were heading northeast, and the sky - despite the daylight - had grown hazy with smears of smoke. Hitomi couldn't understand how things could fall apart so quickly, but they kept passing people sitting on the curb or on benches, staring into space. Some had their phones in their hands, attempting without success to contact loved ones.

Hitomi was happy to distract herself from the disturbing nature of what she was witnesses, so she talked with her kind escorts, sharing a few more details about herself and learning more about them.

It turned out that Josh and Hailey both worked as "Analysts" for the U.S. government, and just happened to be in D.C. that day because they were visiting one of the Federal Buildings for work.

Apparently they were assigned to someplace in northern Virginia, usually.

Hitomi never would've guessed, honestly. They sure didn't seem very "official."

She was used to American government workers always wearing suits and acting a little stuffy. Usually she'd see them around the D.C. streets wearing lanyards with their photo IDs clipped to them, hanging down around their bellies.

These two, on the other hand, just wore casual clothes and you honestly couldn't have picked them out of a crowd.

Besides Josh's shaggy blond hair and scruffy beard nothing really stood out about them. Hailey had brown hair and brown eyes, and she even had a plain shoulder-length haircut. They were both wearing slacks; he a polo, her a blouse, and they exuded "averageness."

But who cared? She had lucked out!

Hitomi had managed to find two helpful, well-grounded Americans who actually wanted to help her and keep her safe.

You know what? *This* is what she always thought of when she imagined Americans. Friendly, energetic, nice people who smiled a lot and respected the bond Japan and America had forged in a post-WW2 world.

Josh and Hailey asked her about how Hitomi had become an exchange student and she got to explain her scholarship, which was cool, because most people's eyes glazed over whenever she tried to talk about Computer Science with them.

Hitomi had earned a *very* exclusive invitation to attend a technical school in America during her Junior year thanks to her contest-winning code that she had written in Japan. She had created a novel method of generating true random numbers using Quantum Computers, but, since she didn't actually have access to the cutting-edge (and very expensive) technology, had run it in the contest's simulation platform.

She actually got to co-author a paper with a real university professor showcasing her work!

In fact, after today's lecture, she was excited about trying to port her code to the new architecture of the Q-Foam system! She was getting really animated and smiling a lot as they walked, talking about her project with them, and she even forgot the pain in her chest for a bit.

Another clenching factor in snagging the rare exchange position was all thanks to her dad being fairly fluent in English thanks to his work in international logistics. He had been teaching her ever since she was little girl, so she had aced the TOEFL test with incredibly high scores.

Talking in English was fun and this was really helping her take her mind off of all the insanity that was happening around them.

Hitomi kind of figured they were just humoring her to help keep her calm, but wasn't that super nice of them? So she kept boring them to death with her observations on programming languages and they nodded and smiled while checking their phones on occasion.

But the phones still weren't working and the internet was down.

They were on 31st Street, heading north, passing a variety of buildings that offered Wi-Fi, but the Wi-Fi was a lie. It connected, but there was no access to the actual internet.

The sidewalks weren't too crowded, but obviously things were not OK. Occasionally they would pass clumps of people crying on building steps, or sitting in circles praying, and one guy had literally run by wearing a giant sandwich board sign that said, "THE eND is HERe".

Josh chuckled.

Hailey just hugged onto him and dismissed the weirdo, who, thankfully hadn't spared them a second glance as he went by, chanting: "The Lord is come! His Kingdom is come! The Lord is..."

They kept moving, but Hitomi realized she wanted to take a picture of the guy's sign to show on Instagram - well, whenever it came back up with the rest of the internet - and spun around and snapped off a shot.

Click-click.

If the man was bothered by what she had done he made no sign of it, moving down the sidewalk with a vacant expression on his face, still chanting.

Crud. Her phone battery was definitely draining itself faster than usual. Hitomi had been incessantly checking it. She looked at the top-right corner and saw the empty bars.

Oh! No wonder! It was constantly trying to find a network to connect to!

She set it to Airplane Mode and tucked it back in her bag, hoping to conserve the battery life for when she really needed it.

"Hey, uh, guys?" Hailey said.

"Yeah hon?"

"I've gotta, um," she made air-quotes again, "Um, 'nature's calling'."

Josh nodded, looking around, it didn't look like there were going to be any open buildings in the chaos that would just let them waltz in for a bathroom break. He pointed at the opening of a small alley a half a block down the street.

Hitomi was having trouble following along, what was "nature's calling?"

"Ugh, no, not doing it!" Hailey rejected Josh's idea - she looked at Hitomi, "Do you need to go, too?"

"Go?" Hitomi asked, feeling a little dumb. "Go where? The embassy?"

"Oh, right, 'go' to the bathroom, I mean."

Hitomi blushed. "U-uh, no! No I'm good!"

Josh looked at Hailey with concern, uneasy about their situation, "Can you hold it?" he asked.

"Erm, probably not." She huffed loudly. They were closer to the alley entrance now.

"Fiiiiine, c'mon." She started speed-walking ahead of them to the alley, her brisk steps causing both Josh and Hitomi to break into a light jog to catch up to her.

Hailey disappeared around the side of a dumpster, which in America were mind-bogglingly huge. It had two giant plastic lids on top that were bigger than Hitomi was tall, and two side "windows". She could see Hailey through its other side until the embarrassed young woman grabbed her side's black plastic window covering and slid it closed.

"Ew, god, it's filthy back here," they heard her say, "OK, Josh, you stand guard!"

He sighed comically, and did so, leaving Hitomi part-way through the alley while he stood to the side of the dumpster, blocking any side-view angle of his girlfriend, who was awkwardly squatting behind the blue dumpster. Hitomi noticed that Americans didn't seem to have the same dexterity as Japanese people did for holding their clothes off the ground when doing the deed - probably because they were spoiled by all the sit-down toilets.

Ha! Let 'em try one of the public train station squatting style toilets; she'd been learning how to precariously balance skirts and jean tops around her knees since she was a kid!

Hitomi heard the soft dribble (poor Hailey) of water hitting dirt and couldn't help but blush in embarrassment. Josh laughed, probably a little too loud, since they were trying to be discreet.

She turned away a little, looking down at a bundle of broken and discarded pipes and HVAC equipment piled against the brick wall next to her.

"You think this is bad? Ha! You should've seen her after last New Years, man, we had to stop like three or-"

Josh's face went from teasing to deadly serious in the next heartbeat. Hitomi heard footsteps behind her and turned just in time to see three men step into the alley's entrance, blocking the sunlight a bit and tossing shadows past her all the way to Hailey's barely visible shoes sticking out from behind the dumpster.

Josh stepped protectively in front of where Hailey had been relieving herself. Thankfully, she was still mostly hidden behind the dumpster.

Not Hitomi, though: she was completely exposed halfway between all of them, next to the pile of junk.

"Nuh-uh, get your girl out here man," one said in a thick accent, striding forwards. The way he said "girl" sounded more like "gi-url."

He was bald, wearing a torn up wife-beater under some sort of jacket. She could see a big metal-studded leather belt holding up his baggy blue jeans. The guy to his right was Black and might be bald - it was hard to tell because of his beanie cap - and was dressed in a big Che Guevara T-shirt tucked haphazardly into some long cargo shorts.

Their other friend had short, spiky hair - it looked like he put a lot of gel in it - and was also wearing a wife-beater, but it had a ton of filthy-looking stains on it.

Urgh. She could smell his B.O. from several feet away.

They all smelled - reeked, really. Like a combination of sweat, Patchouli, and weed. Hitomi hadn't ever smoked pot herself, but Minako had demonstrated exactly what it smelled like in front of her once, and the cloying smell mixed with the other odors made her face scrunch up in disgust.

"Oh, you got a problem you little bitch?" the first one said, and this time "bitch" sounded more like "beech."

She rapidly shook her head in the negative, hoping that her fear was evident on her face.

From behind her Hitomi could hear Hailey step into view, quietly asking Josh, "You didn't bring yours, did you?"

"To the city? No. You?" he whispered back to her, but too loudly. Could this man not modulate the volume of his voice!?

"Oh it's like THAT, huh?" the man mocked them, pulling his jacket aside and showing off a black pistol tucked in his waistband. "Forgot to bring your own piece to the party huh?"

"Hey man, we don't want any trouble," Josh tried to placate, standing taller in front of Hailey.

All three of the men laughed, spreading out enough to prevent them from escaping easily. It wasn't a very narrow alley, but it wasn't very big either. There were no doors in the brick walls either, just a chain-link and wood-slat fence behind the dumpster, cutting the length of the alley in half.

The one with the gun walked right into Hitomi's personal space and she pulled up her satchel as though it could protect her like a shield. The man sneered at her and pulled his gun out, aiming it towards her and commanded:

"Let's see those hands, c'mon, UP!"

Hitomi nervously put her hands up, letting her laptop bag drop down on its strap, tugging on her shoulder and sending a painful jolt through her chest. She whimpered in pain.

"Toss me the wallets," a moment passed, and he yelled, "I SAID TOSS YOUR WALLETS!"

They were all still holding up their hands, afraid to move and give the violent thug a reason to shoot them.

Thankfully Josh spoke up first, because Hitomi didn't know what to do, and started talking with a smooth but firm voice. He was incredibly calm. Hitomi could imagine what he was doing as he talked, but she was partially turned away from him, more to the other side of the alley and in front.

"OK, OK man, look, I'm putting down my left hand, left hand going down, to my wallet, in my back pocket," he kept talking, carefully explaining what he was doing, "I'm reaching for it, I've got it-"

"Aint nobody got time for this shit. HURRY UP!"

"OK, be cool, I'm pulling -"

The other guy, the Black one, stepped past Hitomi and sidled up right next to Josh, cocking a fist menacingly: "Shut up, fool, or I'mma gonna break me off a piece."

Josh went silent and held his wallet out in front of him.

The mugger snatched it out of his hands, then reached over and roughly grabbed at Hailey's long luxury women's wallet from her outstretched hand. It was pink and gold, but didn't look like it had much in it, being very thin.

"Hey!" the spiky-haired mugger reminded, twitching nervously and shifting his weight from foot to foot, "Get their phones yo, their phones!"

The leader was so close to Hitomi she could smell his breath. Ugh. It had that nasty smell you get from not taking care of your teeth.

Minako always said Meth-heads had terrible teeth.

She made the mistake of looking down, thinking of where her phone was in her own bag.

"Hey! You! Gook with the bag! Open up it up, lemme see your phone- nah, just give it here!" he yelled at her, reaching forward with his other hand while keeping the gun trained on her chest.

She shrank away without thinking, pushing up closer against the alley wall.

"HEY!" he screamed at her, aiming the barrel of the gun straight at her forehead.

No! She hadn't meant to flinch back like that.

She WOULD'VE given him the bag! Stupid Hitomi, she thought, STUPID!

She loved her laptop and her phone, but they weren't worth her life! She was just scared! She had backed away on instinct. She didn't mean to make everything worse!

Oh god, her whole body had just turned cold, the blood was pounding in her ears. Her vision was getting dark around the edges. All she could see was the small black void in the middle of the gun barrel.

It kept waving around unsteadily, tracing an invisible trail to her head.

"Shit," mumbled Josh, realizing that he wasn't close enough to intercede for Hitomi even if he could.

"Wait!" Hailey yelled. The guy with the gun glanced over at her, but his finger twitched off the trigger guard and onto the trigger, he was going to shoot: he was going to shoot her over a laptop bag!

Everything went hazy in Hitomi's vision.

Her companions watched, unable to follow the lithe Japanese girl's movements, as in a split second she had reached over to the pile of debris, lifted out a thin section of plumbing pipe, whipped it around in an arc, crushed the gun wielder's hand, and then reversed the movement and smashed him across the head.

SWISH. SMASH. KER-SWISH. CRACK.

One smooth, blended burst of sound. Wind, flesh, and metal.

The entire time Hitomi's laptop satchel swung around on her hip in perfect sync with her movements, avoiding hitting the brick wall or falling off her shoulder.

It all ended as soon as it had begun.

Hitomi looked down in shock. The leader of the muggers was laid out on the ground, a nasty gash on the side of his head. There was a dark purple bruising already bursting into color around the ripped flesh near his temple.

What happened? She realized she was holding a long, thin plumbing pipe that had a U-bend on the end.

How had she gotten it? When had she swung!?

For just a moment she saw it again: the "flicker."

She saw an image of herself on the ground, bleeding out from her chest from a bullet hole. Urgh. It was like the crazy lady the cop had shot; the wound was deceptively small but there was blood pouring out of her back onto the concrete.

But it wasn't her.

That wasn't her.

Hitomi was standing, holding the pipe: she was fine.

The not-her flickered out of existence.

The pool of blood disappeared.

Only her attacker was left on the ground, unconscious, not moving. Was he dead?

She could see a dent.

In his skull.

Did she just kill a guy?

She looked up with worry, just in time to see the other two hoodlums take off running out of the alley yelling obscenities. They sounded scared. Good.

"Whoa," Hailey managed to say, stepping gently towards Hitomi.

Hitomi dropped the pipe.

"Holy mother of... Hee. To. Mi! You just SMASHED the SHIT out of him!" Josh bent down and grabbed the gun from beneath their assailant's crumpled form.

Hitomi had a hard time hearing him - she was still staring into her hands.

She was sure she had dropped the pipe.

So why was she still holding it?