The Bath Episode

Oliver ducked Apollo’s swipe and delivered a palm strike to his solar plexus, forcing Apollo to stumble backward and hunch over. For several minutes, he took short, quick breaths until he recovered.

When he looked back at Oliver, he had a genuine smile on his face. “So you can fight. Good instincts.”

In contrast, Lea’s face looked like an oni mask. I’d never been frightened of her before, but I cowered as she stepped past me toward Apollo. “Who’s a mate stealer?” She slapped him across the face, just hard enough to make a sharp smacking sound. “You broke up with me, remember? Honestly, what goes on in that head of yours?”

“Just wanted to make sure he was good enough for ya… And to see if we could rely on him next time we get into a fight.”

“Whoever I choose is good enough for me, got it?”

“Yes’m.” The pained expression on Apollo’s face made it clear Lea’s rebuke hit harder than Oliver’s palm strike, but after a moment, he recovered. “Let’s get goin’, yeah? Like you said, we ain’t outta the woods yet. Well, I guess we did just leave the forest, but you know what I mean.”

To show he had no hard feelings, Oliver reached up and gave Apollo a friendly pat on the back. Neither said anything, but when we started walking again, the tension faded away, as if we had left it behind in that spot.

After walking a few blocks, we hopped on a tram. The few other passengers on board all had ragged clothing, rough faces, and cold, hard eyes, but when they saw us, they pressed themselves into a corner as far away from us as they could get.

This caused Lea to let out a sardonic chuckle. “Guess we must look even more miserable than them.”

“We’ll have to do something about that,” Oliver said, “otherwise they won’t let us into the next dome. Keep your eyes out for a bath house.”

Several minutes later, Lea pointed out a window. “Up ahead. Sign says ‘Federation-style baths.’”

“Alright, let’s be quick,” Oliver said. “Don’t let yourself relax too much.”

The inside of the bathhouse was as dilapidated on the inside as it was on the outside. An ancient woman sat alone at the cash register. She adjusted her glasses and squinted at us as we entered. “My, aren’t you some strapping lads? Do you have your vaccine cards?”

“Vaccine cards?” Oliver asked.

“For the recent Nexura outbreak. Market settled this morning, so you can only enter public baths and pools if you can prove you’re immune.”

“Why just pools and bathhouses?” Oliver asked.

“There’s a market on restricting travel that’s still open for a few hours, but the virus is waterborne. I’d be surprised if there were any further lockdowns.”

“Well, you don’t gotta worry about us,” I said. “Nekomimi don’t carry Nexura.”

The old woman adjusted her glasses to get a better look at us. “Nekomimi you say? Oh! So you are.” She chuckled to herself. “Never seen a cat volunteer for a bath, but you’re welcome to it.”

After paying the entrance fees, Lea and I passed under the curtain to the women’s side. It was completely empty, and it didn’t take a genius to understand why. The soap dispensers were covered in dry soap scum, and there were mold stains on the walls.

The bath itself looked clean enough, so after giving myself a good scrubbing, I set the suitcase on a nearby stool, stepped into the bath, and let out a contented sigh. They say that cats are actually liquid, and at that moment, I felt like I might melt away into the water.

I was pulled out of my reverie by a sharp rebuke from Lea. “Hey, remember Oliver’s warning.”

“Sorry.” I quickly stood up. As much as I wanted to enjoy the bath, Lea was right. She was already drying off, and I needed to catch up.

“I can’t believe you actually enjoy that. Maybe you really are a human after all.”

“And here I was, just thinking about how nice it must be to be a cat.” I gave my tail a few good shakes to get the water off and then changed into a new pair of clothes.

Of course, we hadn’t had time to pack any spares, so all we had were Federation emergency jumpsuits and protective suits. I wasn’t going to waste a protective suit, so I put on a baggy white jumpsuit, made sure my tail was sticking through the hole, and pressed a button on my belt. With a quiet whooshing sound, the jumpsuit shrank to a normal size around me.

Although Lea had started dressing ahead of me, she was still having trouble by the time I finished. “Sprout, help me out here. I can’t get this to zip all the way.”

“You tryin’ to brag again?” Of course, she was having trouble getting the zipper over her chest. “Hold on, you can loosen it like this.” She raised her arms and I stepped toward her and turned a dial on her belt.

“Ow!” she yelped. I had accidentally turned it the wrong way, causing the jumpsuit to tighten. This, in turn, pulled her arms down and around me, pushing me into her. It was uncomfortable, but at the same time, she was so soft that I was tempted to drift off to sleep.

“Hold on.” My words came out muffled, but it wasn’t long before I found the dial again and loosened her hold on me. After that, the jumpsuit was big enough for her to zip up, but when she pressed the button to adjust the size, it looked less like a jumpsuit and more like one of those skintight numbers you see in mecha anime.

If Lea had this much trouble, I could only imagine how Oliver and Apollo must be suffering. I nearly rushed out right then to check on them, but as I grabbed my backpack, I realized I felt too light. I’d nearly left the nuke behind.

As I picked the suitcase back up, I again felt the immense weight of the responsibility of the mission, but this time, my burden felt just a little lighter. Maybe it was because I felt refreshed by the bath, or maybe it was because I didn’t feel quite so useless anymore.

The guys were waiting for us by the time we returned to the lobby, and sure enough, the jumpsuit was so tight on Oliver that I feared it might rip at any second. Lea stopped in her tracks behind me when she saw him, and I can’t blame her. It didn’t leave much to the imagination. From the way he blushed when he saw her, I could tell her suit had the same effect on him.

Apollo, meanwhile, had given up completely and wrapped the jumpsuit around him like some kind of loincloth. I was the only one who looked somewhat normal.

“We should probably get some new clothes,” I suggested.

“What? Oh.” Oliver shook his head to bring himself back to reality. “Good idea.”

⁂

It took us a good half hour riding west on the tram to reach the other side of the dome, and along the way, we didn’t spot a single clothing store. As we approached the guards stationed at the tunnel between domes, they didn’t even try to hide their laughter.

“You folks get robbed or something?”

“No,” Oliver assured him. “We’re tourists from the Federation, and we, uh, planned poorly.”

“Tourists? In this dome?”

“Like I said, poor planning. You gentlemen wouldn’t happen to know where we might buy clothes in our sizes around here, would you?”

“Yeah, sure.” The closest guard smirked. “For a price.” He handed Oliver another one of those devices, but this time, instead of haggling, Oliver put on a big dumb smile and scanned his retina. Afterward, the guard gave us directions to a market in the next dome.

“Why didn’t you haggle this time?” I asked once we were out of earshot.

“I’m glad you’re paying attention to things like that. Humans are masters of deception. If you want to beat them, you have to be better, both at deceiving them and seeing through their lies. If we behave inconsistently, it might help throw our pursuers off our trail. At the border gate, we were shrewd negotiators. Here, we were clueless tourists.”

We emerged from the tunnel and into a cleaner, decidedly more upscale neighborhood. The buildings here were more modern: large skyscrapers made of glass and steel stood near the center of the dome, surrounded by smaller neo-futurist structures closeby and postmodern townhouses further out.

True to his word, there was a store with clothing synthesizers in the market. The machines were slower than the ones from the village, but half an hour later, we were all dressed in smart business suits, another attempt to avoid being tailed.

As we were walking in the direction of the next tram, I spotted another nekomimi a block ahead of us. I didn’t recognize him from the village, but aside from his white hair and black tail, he could have been Apollo’s twin.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed him. Apollo waved his hand in the air and shouted, “Hey, Ar—!”

Lea quickly put a hand over his mouth to muffle him. “You idiot. Did you forget he’s with the enemy?”