Chapter 7 "Johnny Shiba"

Chapter 7
Johnny Shiba

PLANET INU

“So, is that where you want me to go?” Knapp asks. “Is the warrior who explodes in this building?”

Kawaii is pointing at a stone wall with barbed wire mesh. Beyond the wall, there are a few guard towers with men either looking or sleeping. Three large buildings - one is for administrative offices and visitor center and the second one is for jail cells with prisoners.

Kawaii lifts himself into the air until he lands his feet on the top of the stone wall, not touching the barbed wire at all. Knapp follows him by leaping onto the wall as well. The child form of the Fifth Universe points his finger at the third building, which is poorly structured with pieces of broken bricks nearby.

Knapp raises an eyebrow. “Do you want me to go to that building? I don’t know… It looks abandoned or something…”

He glances at Kawaii and realizes that he is completely gone. He sighs lightly and mumbles, “Why didn’t you speak like last time? It would’ve been helpful.”

He takes one more peek at the third building before he returns to the spaceship and finds Zack in the training room.

“Hey, Zack. I need your help.”

“Oh, sure!” Zack grins widely.

“I’ll need Logy too… perhaps Clear as well,” Knapp rubs his chin with his forefinger. “So, Zack, I need you to switch me with a warden in one of the buildings in the prison… the abandoned one.”

“But if you switch with a warden…”

“That’s when Logy or Clear will knock him out,” the Universe Warrior answers right away, already knowing what Zack is going to ask. “I need twenty minutes before you switch us back. No less or no more.”

“Yes, sir!” Zack gives him a quick salute. 

~*~

Sybil is still asleep as she gets tired pretty fast from getting a recent meaningless vision, which only shows her a graveyard. Jade still needs some time to train before he catches up with the entire Dark Team. Clear is too busy with maintenance for the spaceship, so only Zack and Logy end up going with Knapp to the prison. 

It takes several minutes for Zack to sense a presence from within the abandoned building. He asks, “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Knapp says firmly.

Zack places his hand on Knapp’s shoulder and then closes his eyes in concentration. Soon, the Universe Warrior disappears from his touch and is replaced by someone else. Logy quickly knocks the warden out by giving him a hard chop to his neck.

Knapp appears in the middle of a hallway, full of empty jail cells. He takes a quick look at the area. The pieces of wallpaper are peeling off from the wall. Toilets in the jail cells are unclean and stained with something brown and yellow.

Then, he finds a steel door, so he quickly makes his way heading straight for it. He places his hand on the door. Not even an open window on the door or something like a glass panel. He asks out loud, “Are you there?”

“Who are you?”

Knapp flinches at a soft male voice. He was expecting some kind of tough, loud, booming voice. He clears his throat and then answers, “I am Knapp. Do you want to get out of here?”

“First of all, I don’t trust you. I’ve never met or heard of someone like you.”

This is going to be harder than I thought. Knapp frowns almost in frustration. “I apologize for asking you so suddenly. It’s just that I am going to be here for only a few days. If you do not want to get out of here, that’s fine. It is up to you.”

He waits patiently but receives nothing from the sole prisoner. He decides to resume the conversation, “It looks like you’re the only prisoner in this building.”

“Yeah… It’s because I have an exploding energy. Everyone is so afraid of me.”

“Exploding?” Knapp asks curiously. He is so happy that he found someone with the power of exploding but first he needs to befriend him. Fast.

“Yeah… If I handle it the wrong way, it can easily destroy a city.”

Knapp sits down on the floor with his back leaning against the cold steel door. “That sounds terrible. Is that why you are imprisoned?”

“No.”

Knapp blinks in surprise at the unexpected answer. “Exploding energy isn’t the reason why you are in jail?”

“Correct.”

“So, you are probably wondering why I am here. Why did I ask you if you wanted to get out of here?”

The warrior with exploding energy does not say a word once again, so Knapp continues, “I am the Universe Warrior. I am gathering warriors for the Dark Team. So far… I have six people in my team right now. All of them have unique abilities. One of them even controls gravity! Pretty amazing, eh?”

“Y-yeah…”

“So, basically, our job is to protect the universe,” Knapp shrugs his shoulders. “To make sure nobody is threatening our universe.”

“I see… What kind of powers do the others in your team have?”

He’s curious, eh? Knapp smiles a little. “Sybil is a seer. She foretells the visions of the future. Although, they can be vague sometimes. They can change sometimes. We will never know. There’s also one person who is not with us… rather, she is a spy hiding on Earth. Maybe when I come back tomorrow, I can explain more. Anyway, thirdly, Logy is deaf but can read people’s minds, which is pretty awesome!”

“Deaf?”

“Yes, but we use sign language to communicate. Sometimes we write if we don’t understand each other.”

“How is he supposed to fight without hearing…?”

Knapp beams a big grin. “If you meet him, you’d understand. Nobody should underestimate him at all. I mean, he even defeated his opponent with insane strength! Without getting hit at all!”

“He sounds very interesting. Can you bring him here?”

“What?” Knapp raises an eyebrow, unsure if he has heard him correctly. “Are you asking me if I can bring Logy here?”

“Yes.”

Knapp looks up at the ceiling with a frown on his face. I don’t want to bring him here yet. Logy may accidentally read his mind. I want to talk to Johnny first without peeking into his head.

“Hello?”

“Sorry, I am still here,” Knapp responds. “I told you that Logy can read people’s minds, right?”

“Yeah…”

“I don’t want him to peek into your head just yet. Sometimes he does it by accident. I want to get to know you… the old-fashioned way.”

The prisoner does not respond back for a minute, so the Universe Warrior continues, “Anyway… There is also a woman on my team who has the power of lightning! Her name is Clear. She is also a genius when it comes to technology and engineering shit. She can get hot-headed sometimes,” Knapp laughs heartily. “But she really cares about us, even if she is trying not to show it --”

His watch suddenly beeps a few times until Knapp presses a button, stopping it completely. He says, “My time is nearly up. I will be back tomorrow, okay? Until then, please think about my offer.”

He gets switched back after not getting any answer from the prisoner at all. That is also when he realizes that he did not get his name.

~*~

“So?” Clear asks curiously.

It is dinnertime, so everyone is eating at the same table. Knapp glances at the engineer and gives a sigh. “I don’t know yet. He denied my offer to get out of the prison and join us. He mentioned that he has exploding energy.”

“Exploding? Doesn’t that sound dangerous?” Jade asks worriedly.

“Yeah… It can literally destroy a city,” Knapp mumbles after he takes a sip of green tea. “But of course we will not use that power to do something destructive like that. I’m pretty sure he… he can control it. Besides… The Fifth Universe wants him in our team. He specifically led me to him in the first place.”

“That explains why everyone is so afraid of him,” Sybil says before she takes a bite of cooked sweet potato. “But this planet looks so peaceful, doesn’t it?”

“That’s true…” Zack nods his head in agreement. He laughs heartily. “Besides, that guys sounds like he is suspicious of us.”

“Either way, we are not leaving without him,” Knapp half-smiles only to get scolded by Clear.

“We are leaving in two days.” Clear snaps. “I don’t care if he joins us or not. I don’t want anyone to find this spaceship."

Knapp claps his hands together, pleading. “I need a little more time! I didn’t expect that he would refuse the offer right away.”

“Why don’t we find someone else?” Jade suggests.

Knapp ponders at first. Normally, he would not force anyone to join the team, but the problem is that Kawaii led him to the prisoner with the power of exploding. How could the Fifth Universe feel if they decide to find someone else with the same power?

He answers after some thoughts, “Give me two days. If he still doesn’t want to join us by then, then we can find someone else.”

~*~

“You’re here again?”

“I told you I’d be back, didn’t I?” Knapp says almost cheerfully. “Have you given some thoughts about getting out of here and joining my team?”

“I told you no.”

“But —“

“No means no.”

Knapp frowns in frustration. He places his hand on the steel door and asks, “You plan to live out the rest of your life here?”

“Yes.”

The Universe Warrior lightly bites his thumbnail. Now what? I really need to get to know him rather than talking about the team…

He tries again, “You know what? I had told you about the first half of my team yesterday, but we didn’t have time to talk about you. I will tell you about the rest of my team, but I would like to ask you a question first. So, you said that your exploding energy is not the reason why you ended up in prison… What was it exactly?”

The prisoner does not answer Knapp’s question.

The leader of the Dark Team asks once again, “How long have you been in jail? Months?”

“Twelve years.” The prisoner finally answers.

“What?!” Knapp cries in surprise. “H...How old were you when you ended up here?”

“I was six years old at that time,” The prisoner mumbles. “And to answer your first question… I was imprisoned because I killed someone. The… The government thought that I was better off being kept and isolated in this empty prison… Your turn. Who is the spy… the one currently on Earth?”

Six years old… Sweet Cosmos, he was barely a child back then! Knapp sits down and then leans his back against the wall next to the steel door. “Her name is Danielle. When I first met her, she was working for the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on a squad called Sunny Wing Squad. She has the power to make people forget someone or something… thus her codename is Forgotten. Amazing, isn’t it? So, that’s all for Danielle. It’s my turn to ask you another question. What was your life like before the prison?”

“The happiest days I had ever known…” Knapp could feel the prisoner’s smile. “I was just a normal child… with a normal childhood with two parents who loved me very much. My favorite memory was going to the beach with them every day during summers.”

Knapp cannot help but smile as well. He waits patiently, not wanting to push the prisoner any further.

The prisoner continues, “That night… My mother was sick, so my father took me to a pharmacy to get some medicine for her. After that, instead of going straight home, he wanted to take me to an ice cream shop that recently opened. But then… Two bad men stopped us and tried to rob my father. I watched them beating him up, and…”

“It’s ok. You don’t have to continue. Besides, I didn’t ask you --”

“That’s fine. You’re not going anywhere for the next ten minutes anyway. My father was getting beaten up, and I wanted them to stop. But they wouldn’t listen to me… or even acknowledge me. At that time, it was my first time using the power of exploding. It didn’t kill anybody, but it did burn one of the bad men really badly. The second man started to advance on me, and I used my exploding energy… At the smaller gap between us, it could have killed him, but my father somehow got in between us. I didn’t know why he did that. I think he didn’t want me to hurt anyone, no matter how bad they were but he…”

The prisoner stops for a brief time. Knapp stays quiet for a while. 

“My father… He was gone. The second man ended up getting away. And… next thing I remembered was that I was in a jail cell for a few days before the trial. I cried all night. I didn’t even see my mother until the court. Then, I was found guilty and have been here ever since then.”

Knapp remembers that back on Planet Fantasy, Logy had a mother and would not likely leave her at all if she was still alive. He asks, “Is that why you don’t want to leave? Is it because you don’t want your mother to be alone?”

“N-no… She is also no longer alive.”

Knapp raises an eyebrow. The more he thinks about it, the more he realizes that the prisoner is afraid of returning to the real world. “What happened to her?”

“Ever since I got imprisoned, she always visited me… She always stopped by everyday after work at precisely 5 pm for one hour. But then… when I was 14 years old, she stopped visiting. I did not know the reason why she did that. It was two years later that my aunt on my father’s side finally visited me and told me the truth.”

Knapp clenches one of his hands into a fist.

“My mother remarried to a guy… when I was only nine years old. From what she told me, I thought he was really a nice guy. They then had two girl children… My half-sisters. But one day… I saw a couple of bruises on her arms. She told me that she fell, and I believed her at first. But then over a few years, I could tell that she was not happy… even though she tried so hard to smile for me. So, I asked her to leave him. I was pleading with her to leave. She… She looked very terrible and bruised. It was a few days later that she decided to take the girls and tried to run away, but her so-called husband chased them in the car until he hit them, instantly killing all of them. I was numb for weeks but my aunt’s visits helped a lot.”

The Universe Warrior is about to ask about his aunt, but the prisoner gets there first.

“Ever since then, my aunt tried to visit me as often as she could, but she runs a restaurant. With her busy schedule, I don’t blame her at all. But… I feel so guilty. I… I shouldn’t have told my mom to leave… I shouldn’t have used my exploding energy to save my father... I don’t have any power to save anyone, no matter how much I want to.”

Knapp pulls back his knees so he wraps around them with his own arms. He does not know what else to say. He wants to tell him that he can still save anyone, but… how can he convince him after the prisoner failed to save his own parents?

“What is your name?” He asks softly.

“Johnny.”

~*~

Knapp is rubbing his forehead. His head has been throbbing for the past hour, and does not seem to ease a little bit anytime soon. 

He has been considering asking Logy to come with him to the prison so that he can find out what the hell Johnny is thinking. There has to be a way to get him on the team.

“Johnny.”

Knapp jumps startled at the distorted voice as he quickly looks up to find the child with half black and white hair. He asks almost harshly, “What are you doing to my head?”

Kawaii points his finger at the Universe Warrior and says in one full sentence, “You’re suppressing the power of the universe.”

The scarf. Knapp thinks to himself. He places his hand on his black scarf. He has not taken it off ever since he got back from the future. He tried a few times, but the back of his neck felt like it was repeatedly stabbed. Exactly just like the Divine Sword when it pierced through his chest cleanly.

After he blinks once, Kawaii is facing even closer to him. It is so sudden that Knapp yelps in surprise. The child form of the Fifth Universe puts his hand on the scarf. He then pulls the mixture of black and white energies into his hand.

Knapp gives a relieved sigh, suddenly feeling better. The constant pounding in his head stops completely.

“Knapp, are you in here?” Logy asks from the distance outside the room.

Kawaii glances at Logy who steps into the room. He runs just like most of the kids do until he grabs the deaf warrior’s hand.

Logy feels something tugging at his hand. He gets startled at first but when he glances back at Knapp’s frowning face and notices his unusual body language, he realizes that there is someone else in the room.

“Let him go,” Knapp snaps.

“What?” Logy asks in confusion, unsure what the leader of the Dark Team just said.

Knapp, having realized that he just said out loud, quickly waves his hands. He says with sign language, “Sorry, I wasn’t talking to you.”

The feeling of pressure on his hand is completely gone, as Logy lifts his hand to take a look at it for a few seconds. He looks back at Knapp and asks, “Um… Are you ok? Jade told me that you weren’t feeling too well, so I came to check on you…”

Knapp gives him a small smile. Without using voice, he says with sign language,  “I am fine. No need to worry about me. Thank you for being concerned. So, how is it going with Jade and his sign language lessons?”

Logy blushes lightly at the question, suddenly losing eye contact with him. “U-um… it’s going good. He’s a fast learner. I mean, not as fast as you did, but he learned basic introduction and basic words… like ‘how are you’.”

Knapp narrows his eyes dangerously the second he notices light blush on Logy’s face. First Clear… now Jade? He decides to change the subject. “Hey, do you want to come with me to the prison tomorrow? I am hoping that you can peek into Johnny’s head a little bit and see if there’s a way for us to convince him.”

“I thought you didn’t want to use --”

“We are leaving tomorrow. With or without Johnny. Clear is stubborn like that. So, please…”

“If you say so, then okay,” Logy scratches his face cheek nervously. “So I will just come into the prison with you? But who will knock out the warden --”

“Jade will do it!” Knapp shouts before he thinks twice. I just wanted to see how they react to each other… No. I have Sybil. Why am I doing this?

“Ah, okay,” Logy shrugs his shoulders. “I will look into the prisoner’s head for you tomorrow. As long as we make it back here before Clear decides to take off.”

“Yes!”

~*~

This time, Jade uses his gravity power to knock out the same warden for the third day after Zack switches him with Knapp and Logy. Before then, Knapp has watched how Jade and Logy interact. Nothing has happened at all. Knapp is unsure if it’s just Logy’s little crush or not but either way, he is relieved.

Standing in front of the steel door in the large hallway once again, Knapp uses full sign language without using his voice, “Please hold off your mind-reading power until I ask you to.”

Logy gives him a quick friendly salute.

“Johnny?” Knapp starts to use his voice along with sign language. For the entire conversation, he interprets what Johnny is saying.

“I was just starting to think that you are not coming back,” Johnny responds back quickly.

“Actually, we have just a few hours before we leave,” Knapp says. “Have you given any thought… about joining us?”

“Is there someone else with you?” Johnny dodges the question.

“What?”

“I’m sensing another presence besides you.”

Knapp nervously glances at Logy, who returns a nervous look as well. “Yes, I brought someone with me.”

Suddenly, the steel door gets blasted away, barely missing Knapp and Logy by flying straight between them. They quickly get in the fighting poses.

The tall man with short brown hair calmly steps out of the room. He places his hands into his jeans’ pockets under the hem of his long, bright green Hawaiian shirt. He says tiredly as he scratches the back of his head with calm and narrow yellow eyes, “Sorry. I wanted to see what you guys look like before you leave forever.”

“Fuck! You could have given us a warning!” Knapp’s heart is still beating fast from high adrenaline. 

“Oh hey there,” Johnny notices Logy without changing his stoic facial expression at all. “My name is Johnny. It’s nice to meet you.”

“H-hi, I am Logy. You’re not wearing a jumpsuit?” The deaf warrior asks curiously.

“My aunt sometimes brought me clothes. I never get out anyway so the superiors did not see the point of giving me a jumpsuit.”

“You’re taller than I thought,” Knapp says in awe. He is looking with his head tilted back a little bit at Johnny.

Johnny lazily shrugs one of his shoulders. “So, um… Now that I’m out here… I guess I will take your offer then.”

“Great!” Knapp exclaims in excitement before he realizes what Johnny had just done. “We just have fifteen minutes before we get switched back. Your blast must have alerted everyone in the close range.”

“Ok, then. I’ll just blast away the walls,” Johnny yawns sleepily. He turns to the peeling wall and lifts his open palm but has not powered up for an exploding orb yet. He says softly, “For a long time, I felt so guilty… I killed my father. Even though it’s indirect, I still killed my mother. I… Even so… I have always wanted to move on. But it’s been so hard. Some days I thought I deserved to be in prison… Or die alone.”

Logy starts to cry. His tears freely sliding down his face confuse Knapp so he tells him, “S-sorry. I accidentally took a peek into his head without your permission. There’s so… much sadness and loneliness.”

The wall gets blasted, allowing the sunlight to come inside. Johnny quickly shuts his eyes at the brightness, having not seen the sun ever since he was imprisoned at the age of six. He hears loud gunshots, but it is so bright that he cannot even see anything a few inches away.

Knapp easily stops the bullets in the air with the power of the universe and yells, “Let’s go!”

As soon as they reach the stone wall, Knapp quickly directs Johnny where to blast. The stone wall explodes into large pieces, startling Zack and Jade.

“Just get the hell out of here!” Knapp yells. “We are leaving right now!”

“Hiya! Name’s Jade!” The purple-eyed gravity controller exclaims.

“Zack here!” 

“I am Johnny. It’s nice to meet you guys,” the tall man says sleepily.