Nabiki hurled herself to one side as the massive cat lunged in her direction, and stared in much the manner of a rabbit in front of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler as it leaped over her and crashed across the living room in the direction of freedom. It made a particularly emphatic crash as it exited the room into the garden, shards of shoji frame and scraps of ricepaper fluttering in its wake.
“You’re not getting away!”
“Mewr!” agreed the second visitor, bounding ahead of Akane in the tiger’s wake and revealing itself to be a rather cute and curvy redhead with a downright feral expression.
Nabiki noticed that the visitor left through the hole the tiger had already made, whereas Akane knocked the shoji off it’s tracks altogether and cracked the next one along besides, providing a much better view of the rainswept back garden. Sounds of the continuing pursuit filtered into the house.
“Oh, my.”
Nabiki’s head snapped around to look at her sister, sitting across the hallway and looking just as frazzled as herself. ‘Well,’ she thought detachedly, ‘if it’s weird enough to disturb one of us, no surprise we’re both out of it…’
“Greeagh!” yelped the tiger, barrelling past the demolished shoji.
“Mereew!” threatened the redhead in hot pursuit.
“Slow it down so I can hit it!” yelled Akane, who seemed to have salvaged a substantial baulk of timber from somewhere and was waving it enthusiastically.
“Ro Rear!” exclaimed the tiger.
“It’s heading behind the dojo! I’ll cut it off the other way!”
“Brrreauw!”
CrAsH crash crash CRASH
“Yow!” “Myow!” THUD “Hey! It smashed up the dojo!”
Nabiki thought she heard a faint whimper from her father, and turned to see if he was still alive – between the redhead, the tiger, and Akane (especially Akane, given the vigour of some of the blows she had landed), that was in no way assured. Seeing tears draining down the sides of his face was curiously reassuring.
A sharp intake of breath drew her attention back to her sister, and from her to the figure slinking silently into the room from the garden. Like Kasumi, she froze. The tiger likewise froze, staring at the Tendo family.
“Where’d it go? It’s going to pay for smashing my dojo!”
Galvanised into action, the big cat surged forwards, head swinging from side to side. It darted towards the table, got its head halfway under before deciding that wasn’t what it wanted, and turned towards the kitchen. Kasumi stifled an inarticulate protest, but after a few seconds of blundering the animal emerged once more with a distinctly panicked air and a wok perched jauntily on its head.
“Merew!”
“What? Hey, wait for me! That mangy rug owes me!”
Sighting salvation (or desperation), the tiger lunged across the living room and surged powerfully over the couch. So powerfully, in fact, that the heavy piece of Western-style furniture flipped completely over in its wake, coming to rest with an expensive-sounding groan over the animal cowering against the wall. A stillness fell upon the house.
The redhead entered. Nabiki noticed a remarkable similarity between her stance as she entered and that of the tiger. However, she moved onwards without waiting for outside encouragement, darting around the room on all fours as she peered into everything. She studied Kasumi for a moment, and then stared into Nabiki’s eyes from an unnervingly short distance (Nabiki found her eyes crossing involuntarily) before bounding away to peer behind the inverted couch.
The couch gave another expensive creak. The tail sticking out from under it became utterly, rigidly still.
Akane charged into the living room, casting her gaze around for sign of their prey. Nabiki was relieved to note a fractional relaxation of her shoulders as she saw her sisters, but the mental processes which felt that were apparently unconnected to the ones controlling her body; all she was able to do was sit and wait for her little sister to deal with the invader.
Akane stepped further inside, her eyes performing a more thorough search of the room than the redhead’s aimless but energetic bouncing. With no immediate sight of the tiger, she stalked onwards, past the fallen form of her father, checking the kitchen before passing onwards towards the staircase. The redhead, after making a cursory examination of the male figure collapsed in a slight hole in the hall floor, followed, bounding in the wake of her hunting partner.
Sounds echoed down the hallway, of the odd couple checking the bedrooms for stray tigers. The one in the living room was evidently cold, because it was shivering so hard the couch shook.
Further sounds reverberated down the hall, as of a sturdy young martial artist bounding down the stairs. The tiger froze.
“Oh, who left this fish in the hallway?”
“Mew!”
“Hey! Careful, save that for the tiger…”
“Mwrew!”
“I don’t want it, silly. But if that’s yours, you’d better apologise to Kasumi for getting her floor all dirty.”
“Rrrrwww.”
There were further rattles from near the front door, overlain by muffled feline comments from their strange guest. Then Akane’s footsteps returned towards her sisters.
She was preceded by the redhead, who stalked past the elder girls with a large salmon clasped in her jaws and continued onwards into the garden once more. Nabiki felt her jaw unhinge again at the sight of the fish flopping from the girl’s mouth; as a martial artist’s daughter, she was well aware of the many arts derived from animal movements, but none she knew of extended this philosophy outside combat.
“We can’t find it, did it go – hey, it’s under the couch!” Akane sprang forwards, aiming to land on the tail protruding from under the upturned furniture. “Why didn’t you say?”
The tiger lunged into action, attempting to reprise its earlier departure through the shoji. The couch once more emitted expensive noises as it was carried through a pair of shoji, and again as, with an loud outburst, Akane sprang atop it and forced it to a skidding halt in the gravel of the yard. The redhead, startled in the process of curling up in a sunbeam with her salmon, surged to her hands and feet.
The tiger, ejected from the grounded couch, slid to a halt directly in front of the salmon.
The redhead hissed. Angrily. Nabiki could swear she saw her tail, puffed up like a bottlebrush. The tableau held for a microsecond, before the redhead lifted a hand, insubstantial claws gleaming ominously…
…and the tiger dropped it’s forequarters, whimpering “RraRarrryRraRarrryRraRarrry” until Akane hit it on the back of the head with the baulk of timber. Then it just whimpered, “Groooo…”
The redhead regarded the tiger for a moment, then she batted it experimentally with the raised hand, sending it sliding through the gravel a half-metre. She tried again with the other hand, a little more vigorously, rolling it over. Mewing interestedly, she gave it a third belting, sending it tumbling bonelessly across the yard into the pond.
She stopped her happy charge after the hapless big cat. “Meh,” she opined, disgustedly, and shook off the water splashed in her direction.
“Hooh,” breathed Akane, lowering her weapon to the ground as she came down from her adrenaline high. “We did it.”
“Mrrrw.”
She turned her head to her family. “Are you all alright?”
“Yes, thank you, imouto-chan,” replied Kasumi. “I think Father is a little winded, though.”
“I’m fine,” added Nabiki, pushing herself to her feet.
“Good,” puffed the youngest sister. “Now I’ve – we’ve got it under control, what do we do with a tiger?”
“I suppose I can call Animal Control,” suggested Nabiki. “Although I’m going to have one heck of a time persuading them I’m serious. ‘My little sister just knocked out a tiger in our back garden, can you come over and take it away before it wakes up, please?’”
Akane giggled. She started to move towards the house, but her attention returned to the baulk of wood now leaning against her shoulder. “Um, do either of you know where this belongs?”
“I can’t say I do, Akane,” said Nabiki evenly. “Where did you get it?”
“I don’t know – I just needed something, and I grabbed it, but I don’t know where from…”
“Well, Loofa?”
“I have no idea. It felt just like when someone takes a weapon from the village armoury, but why anyone would want part of the main gates I don’t know,” replied the burly woman.
“Hmp,” said the Elder. “We can’t have gaps in the gate. It’s inviting attack by the Musk, if no one else. You sure it’s not your son doing something stupid?”
“Mousse is not that idiotic,” replied Loofa with restraint. “Besides which, he has most of last year’s timber crop in his left sleeve anyway.”
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(Posted Fri, 18 May 2007 21:36)
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