Kenji Nobu stood on the dirt floor in the middle of the corrugated tin shack he lived in, looking a little defeated, his shoulders sagging slightly under the brown robe he was wearing. His wizened old face was tilted down, showing the top of his head, covered in short, white hair. He swayed a little, in his square wooden clogs, and grumbled under his breath as he surveyed the mess around him. “This constant hassle by PABs around here will be the death of me. We absolutely must meet up with Hanyo Soor in the Morongo Valley. He’ll help us get back to Ojai quickly and undetected.”

Rosa Jardine stepped up to the old man and put a hand sympathetically on his shoulder, feeling the rough material as she squeezed it gently. “I don’t know if I should be mad at you or hugging you,” Rosa said quietly, and then resolutely, “No, I should stay mad at you.” She let go of Kenji’s shoulder and lifted up one of the knocked over chairs and put her bloodied, yellow hoodie over the back of the chair.

“Mom, you shouldn’t be mad at Kenji! He’s helping us out… look at what he told us about my grandfather and that beautiful place you’re from!” Theo said, the young boy stepping up beside his mother, and wrapping his arms affectionately around her neck. Arfie, the blue-eyed, white Husky with black and grey markings rubbed up against Rosa, nuzzling his wet nose into her hand. 

Rosa gently patted Arfie on the head, and then smiling, put both hands around the Husky’s neck to scratch him behind his jaw. As she scratched him, his dog tags jangled, the sound of which making Rosa stop suddenly and grab his silver and blue collar. “The pendant!” she exclaimed and cradled the silver five-petal rose that Leanna had attached to the collar before being apprehended and taken away into the desert night. “I forgot all about it! Leanna wanted us to bring this to you, I think.”

Rosa carefully removed the pendant from Arfie’s collar and handed it to Kenji, his stooping posture purposefully straight again and the fire back in his soft brown eyes. “Aha! I think I have a good idea what this is all about!” Kenji said excitedly, taking the silver rose pendant from Rosa and turning it around in his hands. 

Theo rushed over to Kenji, putting his face up to look closely at the pendant. “What do you think it means, Mr. Nobu?”

The old man peered along the edge of the silver pendant, and held it from each side, as if to try and open it. “There’s a trick to opening these pendants… they don’t have a clasp you can twist. Wait – it looks like one of the petals slides out to release the two halves… and – oh!” Kenji said as the front of the rose popped up as he slid one of the petals with his thumb.

“What’s that inside?” Theo asked. “It looks like folded paper?” Kenji put the opened pendant on the kitchen table in front of Rosa, still sitting on the chair, and hurried over to an opened drawer next to the sink. He rifled through it, feeling around until he found what he was looking for, a pair of tweezers and a pair of wooden chopsticks.

“You keep tweezers in your kitchen drawer?” Rosa asked, eyebrows raised. “The chopsticks at least I can understand.”

Ignoring Rosa’s question, Kenji went back to the pendant on the table and shifted his position so that the light from the setting sun coming through the shack’s window was full on the opened silver rose. With the tweezers, he carefully pulled out the neatly folded wad of paper and put it on the table next to the pendant. He lifted one layer of the fine paper, holding down the layer below it with the tip of a chopstick, and carefully teased it out to unfold it. The layers weren’t folded in a simple square pattern, but rather an intricate five-point star pattern, with the layers interleaving with each other.

“Is this like origami?” Theo asked Kenji, “I can’t believe how tightly it was folded!”

Kenji answered, “Yes, or rather, reverse-origami. It was intended to be unfolded in a specific pattern, otherwise the paper will shred at the slightest tear and destroy the message on it.” Kenji wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, and looked over at Rosa, saying, “It looks like your friend got a hold of something very important to the CIM cause.”

Rosa leaned over and looked at the partially unfolded paper, and the complicated, detailed drawing beginning to be revealed on it. “What is that? It looks like a street map.”

Kenji finished, and carefully flattened the paper out, and stood up to stretch his neck from the concentrated effort he put into unfolding it. “It looks to me like a technical drawing. I believe these are the stolen plans that Preacher Bob was refering to in his broadcasts. These plans are for some kind of secret sea-going battle station, floating off the coast of California!”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***