Copyright © 2023 by Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Buena Vista Books, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion, 77 West 66th Street, New York, New York 10023.

  First Edition, April 2023

  Designed by Marci Senders

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Kagawa, Julie, author.

  Title: Shinji Takahashi : into the heart of the storm / Julie Kagawa.

  Other titles: Into the heart of the storm

  Description: First edition. • Los Angeles ; New York : Disney-Hyperion, 2023. • Series: Society of Explorers and Adventurers ; book 2 • Audience: Ages 8–12. • Audience: Grades 3–7. • Summary: Thirteen-year-old Shinji and his S.E.A. cohorts travel to a forgotten island in Polynesia in search of a lost culture.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2022014963 • ISBN 9781368074148 (hardcover) • ISBN 9781368075046 (paperback) • ISBN 9781368075176 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. • Magic—Fiction. • Animals, Mythical—Fiction. • Secret societies—Fiction. • Japanese Americans—Fiction. • LCGFT: Novels. • Action and adventure fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.K117443 Shm 2023 • DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014963

  Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Ninteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  TO NICK

  The thugs were closing in.

  Panting, Shinji gazed around the crowded marketplace. It was hard to see through the press of bodies meandering aimlessly among the dozens of stalls and booths, but he caught glimpses of the pursuers through the crowd. And they were coming right for him.

  “This way!” he hissed at Lucy, and darted between a goat and a stall selling chickens. Lucy followed as Shinji pushed deeper into the square. The throngs of the marketplace surrounded them, getting in his way and blocking their path. Shinji ducked and wove between bodies, darting under

  limbs and slipping through tight spaces, but he could still see the dark sunglasses of their pursuers bobbing through the crowds, getting ever closer.

  Heart pounding, Shinji ducked behind a fish vendor’s booth, pulling Lucy with him, watching the group of men comb the marketplace. Lucy was breathing hard. Her blond hair had come free of its ponytail and was sticking out around her face. Her cheeks were red, her blue eyes wide as one of the large men stalked past their hiding spot. Shinji and Lucy hunkered down and held their breath until he had passed.

  “I think the exit is that way,” Lucy whispered, pointing across the marketplace square. “If we can just get past those booths, we can hide in the city and escape.”

  Shinji peered in the direction she was pointing. He saw the opening, but he also saw a pair of large men standing menacingly under an overhang nearby. “There are two agents blocking the exit,” he said, ducking back. “If we run that way, they’ll catch us for sure.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here,” Lucy whispered back. “We have to do something. Come on, Shinji.” She gave him an encouraging look. “You have guardian powers now. You should be able to pull something off.”

  “Yeah.” Shinji took a deep breath. She was right. He did have guardian powers. Or he was supposed to, anyway. It had been a few months since a legendary winged serpent that guarded a mystical font had gifted him with magical powers.

  The tattoo of a serpent with huge golden wings still graced his forearm, marking him as special.

  There was just one slight problem.

  Ever since they left the jungle, Shinji had been having a really hard time accessing any type of magic at all. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried. Back at SEA headquarters, he would routinely try to call on the wind, or to communicate with different animals, or to summon a giant snake with magnificent gilded wings. All things that he had done in the Mexican jungle, when the Coatl had first granted him its power. Back then, when he and his friends had been in danger, he had been able to use the magic without thinking about it. Now he couldn’t even summon up a slight breeze.

  “Shinji!” Lucy’s voice pulled him out of his memories. One of the agents had noticed their hiding place and was stalking toward them with a murderous gleam in his sunglasses.

  “Run,” Shinji said, and they bolted from behind the stall, trying to lose their attackers in the crowded marketplace once more. But this time the agents seemed to converge around them. Everywhere Shinji looked, there was an enemy closing in on them.

  Desperate, he darted around a booth and plunged down an alley with Lucy behind him, only to be met with a high brick wall.

  “There’s no way out,” he panted. “Turn around. Go back.”

  They spun, only to find two of the men standing at the mouth of the alley. Another pair joined them, guarding the exit while the first two began stalking into the alley. Shinji’s gaze darted from side to side, as he searched for a way out, but there was nothing. They were trapped.

  “Up there!” Lucy grabbed his sleeve as the men came forward, pointing to something above them on the roof. Shinji looked up and saw several potted plants sitting precariously on the corner of a balcony railing. If he could make them fall somehow, the heavy pots might hit the men and give him and Lucy a chance to escape.

  Taking a deep breath, Shinji searched for the magic inside him. I’ll only get one shot at this. As the men stepped forward, closing the distance, he exhaled and flung out a hand toward the plants overhead.

  There was a pathetic puff of wind, barely more than a fart, from his open palm. That was it.

  The two men closed in, trapping Shinji and Lucy against the wall. One of the men raised an iron club overhead, sneering with contempt. Shinji felt Lucy tense beside him and braced himself for the club to come smashing down.

  The lights suddenly flickered, and the two men froze, as did the world around them. A voice, flat and robotic, echoed in Shinji’s ears.

  Pause. Simulation ended. Please remove your headsets and wait for further instruction.

  Beside him, Lucy slumped in relief. Bowing her head,

  she pulled off the thick VR goggles she had been wearing, shaking out her hair as the headset came free. Shinji reached back and did the same, stripping off the goggles and the headset attached to it.

  Reality came into focus as the goggles were removed. They were no longer in a crowded market square in some far-off, exotic country. They were in a very large room with no windows and smooth walls that stretched up more than twenty feet. Stalls and booths were scattered about to resemble a marketplace labyrinth even though they were indoors. The “agent” in front of Shinji was now a highly mobile robot holding a plastic stick in one metal clamp. But if Shinji peered at everything through the goggles, the men, the crowds, and the sunny marketplace overlaid reality, making him really feel like he was somewhere else. It was just a skin, though. An augmented reality designed to make everything feel real. And it had felt real, up to the point where Shinji had failed to call on his powers. If this had been the real world, he and Lucy would have been captured. Or dead.

  A familiar voice echoed over the speakers, the same speakers that had been playing marketplace and crowd noises in the background. “All right, kids,” said Oliver Ocean. “You’re done. Come on back.”

  Oliver didn’t sound angry or disappointed, but Shinji clenched his fists. Lucy gave him a look that was both worried and sympathetic, which only made him angrier. Glancing at the now-immobile robot, he resisted the urge to

  kick it in its tanklike treads. A sudden breeze rattled a vase sitting on a nearby stall, which made him grit his teeth. He hoped Lucy didn’t notice.

  Oh, now you show up, huh? Where were you two seconds ago when I needed you, stupid magic?

  “It’s all right, Shinji,” Lucy said, trying to be encouraging. “Like Oliver said last night, you’re still learning how to use your magic. You’re not supposed to know how everything works all at once.”

  Shinji’s jaw tightened. Lucy meant well, but she wasn’t the one with the power of a guardian inside her. He had accepted the mantle of the Coatl; he was supposed to be able to do something with this magic. So far, he hadn’t been able to do anything. At least not willingly.

  I’m a guardian now. Why doesn’t the magic work? What is wrong with me?

  When Shinji didn’t answer, Lucy’s brow furrowed. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fin
e,” he said flippantly, and rolled his eyes. “It’s not really a big deal.”

  Only, it was. He had been trying to master these stupid powers for three months now, and nothing was working. The Society had even gotten involved. Maybe because they felt responsible for him, or maybe because they were worried that a thirteen-year-old running around with the uncontrolled power of an ancient mythological creature was a bad combination. But for all their knowledge, research, and

  access to old books and artifacts, the Society didn’t seem to know any more about how his magic worked than Shinji did.

  This latest exercise in augmented reality had been their—or rather, Oliver’s—attempt to trigger Shinji’s powers, at least enough to study them a little. And though it had been super cool to run around SEA’s version of the “Danger Room,” it didn’t negate the fact that he had failed miserably.

  Shinji appreciated that Oliver and the Society were trying to help him, but at the same time, he wished they would stop. The Coatl had given its magic to him; it was his responsibility to learn how to use it.

  “Come on,” Lucy said, and turned away. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to notice the mysterious breeze from nowhere. “Oliver and the others will be waiting for us.”

  Still annoyed, Shinji followed her, walking back through the maze of makeshift stalls and booths. Without the VR goggles, the room seemed dim and cluttered. It still felt like they were walking through some kind of market square, only this time an indoor one. Even though the marketplace had been an illusion, the booths had been put together to look like the real thing. There were even a couple of chickens clucking away in cages and a goat tethered to one of the carts. The Society of Explorers and Adventurers had been to a lot of places; when they decided to re-create a marketplace of a distant foreign country, they did it right.

  Lucy was quiet as they wove their way through the cluttered room. Normally she would be talking excitedly about

  the robots or the VR goggles or other tech-related stuff, but today she kept it to herself. Clearly, she knew Shinji wasn’t in the mood.

  A green exit sign glowed brightly on the far wall of the room, showing the way out. They pushed through the door, climbed a long flight of metal stairs, and entered a room that overlooked the simulation chamber.

  There were two people in the room, standing in front of the glass wall that showed the marketplace on the lower floor. The slight, blue-haired woman in a wheelchair gave Shinji a bright grin when he and Lucy walked through the door. Even though he was feeling morose and irritable, Shinji smiled back. It was hard to keep a sour face when Zoe Kim turned her beaming grin on you.

  The person next to her, a lean, rugged-looking man in a long coat, did not smile when they came in. Young and handsome, he carried a walking cane in one hand, and its golden parrot head glittered under the fluorescent lights as he pointed it in their direction. “I am supposed to inform you that you did not, in fact, escape the Hightower agents,” Oliver Ocean remarked in his wry tone of voice. “You have been captured and are on your way to Hightower headquarters to be dissected for your magic.”

  “Oh good,” Shinji said flatly. “That was what I was hoping for.”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose. “Hightower wouldn’t dissect Shinji,” she stated confidently. “Not if they know he has

  magic powers. They would first try to buy the magic from him, and if that didn’t work, they would move on to threats and blackmail.”

  “Regardless,” Oliver went on, “Shinji would now be in Hightower’s clutches. And we would probably have to rescue you. Again.” He gave Shinji a knowing look. “So, what happened down there, kid? I saw you tried to do something. You were either attempting to use magic or you were shooing away a fly. Were the ‘agents’ not convincing enough? I know you felt you were in a giant video game, but still. This is real-world survival training. You’re going to need to control your magic if Hightower really is after you.”

  “I did try,” Shinji protested. “I just…” I can’t do it. I don’t know how to use the magic yet. “Maybe if the ‘agents’ looked more like humans and less like coatracks with wheels, I’d do better,” he finished with a smirk.

  “Hmm, maybe you’re right,” Oliver mused, twirling his cane in one hand. “Maybe next time we’ll run the jungle simulation with the angry velociraptors.”

  “Oh, give the kid a break, Oliver,” Zoe broke in. “I’m sure he tried his best.” She gave Shinji an understanding nod, which made him feel a little better. “Anyway, you can’t stay here; Priya wanted to see you all in the meeting room after you were done with the training simulation.”

  Oliver winced, and Shinji nearly did as well. Priya Banerjee was the chairwoman of this branch of the Society and essentially the person in charge. She had been nothing

  but nice to Shinji ever since he arrived at SEA, but she was also a strict, no-nonsense woman who everyone, even Oliver, was a little bit afraid of.

  “Go on, then,” Zoe continued as she wheeled her chair gracefully toward the exit. “I have things to do in my lab, but I told Priya I’d send you guys on. You don’t want to be late.”

  They left the training room, walking down the long tiled hallway toward the elevators at the end. On the way, they passed Zoe’s lab, where dozens of electronic and mechanical doodads were scattered over every possible surface. Other doors along the hallway led to storage rooms or small offices, though only Zoe had a permanent workshop down here. Shinji hadn’t even known about this part of SEA headquarters until recently. Lucy had, of course. She would disappear for hours, sometimes skipping meals, and when Shinji asked where she’d been, she would shrug and say she had been working with Zoe. Shinji knew Zoe had a workshop somewhere; he just never thought about where it could be. And since the elevators to the undercity, as Oliver called it, had been cleverly hidden behind an ordinary-looking bookshelf, Shinji hadn’t suspected anything was there.

  The Society of Explorers and Adventurers did love to hide things behind bookshelves.

  As they followed Oliver down the hall, Lucy suddenly tapped his arm. “Hey,” she began. “I don’t have guardian powers, but I do know a little about how magic works. I mean, just look at Tinker.”

  She held out her arm, palm facing up. The pocket of her overalls moved, and a tiny creature crawled out of it. It was a mouse made completely of metal, but it moved and acted like a real mouse. The tiny robot creature was one of Lucy’s own creations, a marvel of tech and magic fused together in a way only Lucy knew how to do. Tinker wasn’t just a cool pet, though; he was super intelligent and could do some very handy things, like open locked doors and turn off security cameras. And even though Tinker wasn’t really alive, he and Lucy were inseparable. Tinker’s copper ears and tiny copper feet glittered in the light as he scampered into Lucy’s palm and sat up, nose and whiskers twitching.

  “Tinker is a mechanical construct,” Lucy said, though Shinji had heard this all before, “but I still needed a little magic to bring him to life. I know more about working with magic than Zoe or Oliver, or anyone here at Society headquarters. Maybe I could help you.”

  “Thanks,” Shinji said, and he meant it. “But you can’t. I have to figure this out myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m the guardian,” he replied. “No one else has these powers; the Coatl gave them to me. I have to learn how to use them.”

  “You don’t have to do it by yourself,” Lucy began, but at that moment they had stepped into the elevator with Oliver, who immediately pressed the button for the top floor. The doors slid shut, and they started to ascend.

  Priya Banerjee was standing alongside the large, sturdy wooden table in the meeting hall. The room itself was enormous, with a high ceiling painted with depictions of numerous animals, both real and mystical. The walls were covered with letters, paintings, and postcards, and the numerous shelves held artifacts from around the world.

  Kali, Priya’s large, aggressively friendly black bear, lounged on the nearby couch, all four paws in the air. She huffed a greeting when Shinji entered the room and started to rise, as if to give him one of her infamous bear tackles. But Priya cleared her throat in a firm manner, and Kali lay down again with a groan.

  Priya’s dark eyes met Shinji’s for a moment and narrowed before they shifted to Oliver. “Oliver,” she greeted, “Zoe has already informed me of what happened, but I wanted to hear it from you. I take it the simulation did not produce the desired results?”