He spun the little knob.
He paused, and spun it back the other way.
Another pause, and he spun it forwards again.
Genma was getting a little perturbed. He’d been spinning the knob backwards and forwards for several minutes now, and the lock had yet to release. He had also not figured out what he was supposed to be listening to – the clicking from the lock drowned out any noise from inside the locker, so it seemed a little pointless to be courting a crick in the neck by pressing your head against the safe door like this.
Locker door. He had to remember it was a locker door. Reliving those fantasies of being an international man of mystery, cracking open safes and bottles of sake with equal ease and regularity was not something to indulge in in the middle of a vital martial arts challenge like escaping from unjust imprisonment.
Another noise distracted him, and he realised he had left the kettle unattended for those minutes as well – it was now boiling vigorously, spitting occasionally. The thermostat had just turned it off.
‘Well, poot,’ thought the panda. ‘Now I’ll have to let it cool off before I can turn back. Oh, well, I put a bit more water in there than I’ll need – perhaps there is some tea out. That would be better than the water in the cage, and I need to get the taste of bamboo out of my mouth.’
Leaving the locker for the moment, he wandered over to the cluttered table and peered at the detritus covering it. He shifted a discarded newspaper and a doujinshi desultorily, uncovering only a discarded mug, before bringing the other sense enhanced by his transformation to ursine – scent. Sure enough, the smell of no less than two blends of tea came to his nostrils, along with that of a packet of biscuits. He followed his nose to the supplies, peered into the mug and deemed it sufficiently clean for immediate reuse, and set about preparing his snack. Getting the lid off the tea caddy was unreasonably difficult, but the cardboard packet of teabags yielded to his claws without spilling more than a couple of them on the floor, so he used one of them instead. He tipped out a few of the biscuits on the doujinshi, in the absence of a plate, peered at the newspaper headline as he sat down on one of the chairs, and reached for the kettle to make his tea.
Something tickled at the back of his mind as his paw curled around the hot appliance, but it wasn’t too hot to handle for the brief moment it would take to pour so he ignored the half-formed misgiving and lifted it towards the table. Which is why when the cable pulled taut, he was completely unprepared and continued his movement long enough to pull the kettle from his grasp and tip it over in midair.
Secure in the knowledge that the building was empty other than himself and the other pandas, he was able to express his feelings on this event freely.
“Ee
The Blue Thunder threw himself once again at the bonds his captors had placed on him. It was inconceivable that one so puissant as he might be long restrained by mere mortals, and so he was assured of freedom in due course. It was no more than a matter of time before the bands strapping him to the thin bed sundered, and then he would set himself to the task of opening the door to this noisome cell.
Once that was achieved – and once the straps broke it surely would be, for the minions who operated this den of iniquity concealed in the Imperial City of Tokyo would be too timorous to enter once he was free to move about the cell and strike freely in his own defence – it would be a trivial affair to strike for freedom. Depending on the resistance, he would almost certainly have the time and strength to break open the cells of the other prisoners he had heard crying in torment elsewhere in the base.
Truly, the weakness of the evil mind was manifest; for any man of honour would realise the divine duty of a samurai in such straits was to free himself and any others likewise incarcerated, and so fight a great warrior such as the Blue Thunder to the death rather than pandering to false ego illustrated by the hubristic notion of keeping such a heroic samurai captive.
Indeed, it would have been better for their insidious plans had they murdered him as he lay in their hands, instead of these foolish attempts to interrogate him. Having failed to perform the action dictated to any noble samurai with a prisoner upon his hands, it was inevitable that they would likewise fail to perform the other tasks mandated in the service of even so evil an overlord as the sorcerous mastermind who called himself Saotome Genma!
Genma sneezed explosively, interrupting the pained whine he was still making after the spillage. It also distracted him at just the right moment that he didn’t notice the outside door opening.
“Is anyone in… Hey! Who – what…”
Instinctively, Genma replied quickly. [I’m just a cute little Panda]
The newcomer paused, staring at the naked man steaming in the hallway. From the expressions crossing his face, there were two questions circling in his mind – ‘Who does he think he’s fooling?’ and ‘Where did he get the sign?’
Genma, meanwhile, was taking a better look at the other man. He wore a pair of dark trousers and a pullover with epaulettes and a rather ostentatiously discrete gold logo. A belt carried a clunky radio and a single tonfa at the hips. Genma’s long experience of awkward situations informed him that this was some sort of security guard – a creature easier to deal with than police officers, but less so than, for instance, septugenarians.
The guard gathered his wits and stepped forward, reaching for the radio. As he opened his mouth to speak, Genma made his move.
“Don’t Move!”
After all, he had never told anyone he was sealing the techniques, had he? Really, he knew that back when he gave the scroll to that pauper whatshisname. Of course, the Yama-sen-ken was complete overkill against a security guard, but it was best to end conflicts with persons in positions of authority as quickly as possible, and then leave promptly. The Fierce Tiger Opens Gates would surely do that…
The guard flew backwards, even though Genma had pulled the move somewhat, and hit the door, slamming it shut. The radio flew from his fingers as he struggled for balance, and Genma stepped in for a straightforward chop at the side of his neck.
“Hrmm,” he rumbled, giving the man a second punch to the back of the head, “must make these rent-a-cops tougher than when I was with the…” He broke off and looked around cautiously, “the Master.”
His brow furrowed as he thought, worrying over the interruption to his escape that the guard represented. Unless he did something, the guard would raise the alarm as soon as he came around, which should be in just a couple of hours at most. Of course, if Genma was still in the Panda House when that happened, he could knock the man out again, but that would mean losing that many hours of his head start. From experience, head starts were very useful things when one was being pursued, and it would be nice to have enough of one that he couldn’t hear the mob behind him.
The youngest male panda rattled the shutter as he sidled into his cage. Genma jumped at the sound, and froze as he heard the following noise of a bundle of bamboo shoots. Then, as rustles and crunches indicated the adolescent was settling down for a bedtime snack, inspiration struck.
“Of course! Only a Master martial artist could escape one of those cages – if I leave him there, he won’t be able to raise the alarm!” Quickly, he stooped, picked up the guard, and carried him back towards the empty cage.
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(Posted Sat, 17 Nov 2007 15:22)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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