“Hey everybody I’m here to get my big-I mean, here to train!” Honoka shouted as she dragged Kenichi into the front yard behind her. “Oh, and big brother came with me!”
“Time for training runt,” Sakaki said after he dropped down behind Kenichi to snag him up and haul him away.
With her brother out of her hair, Honoka headed for the Furinji household and found Miu. As expected, she was cleaning up the breakfast table in her martial arts suit underneath an apron. “Dairy cow!”
“Oh, hi Honoka… um, what’re you doing?” she asked when the girl up as if to hug her, then pulled out a tap measure and wrapped it around Miu’s chest.
After making sure she was doing it right, Honoka took a look at the measurements, and nodded to herself. “Let’s see, if you’re that big, then I need to be…” she scooted her hand twenty centimeters down the tape measure. After that, she looked back to the taller woman. “Okay now stand up, I gotta measure that butt of yours!”
“Just what the hell are you doing?” Miu asked again with a soured expression.
Since it seemed the dairy cow wouldn’t be cooperating, Honoka sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Listen, you don’t know what it’s like for a girl my age not to have big boobs, nice legs, and a killer butt like yours. I’ll be starting high school soon, and there’s no way that I’ll get a guy’s attention looking like this!” she said while gesturing to her little boobs.
“… Oh,” Miu replied, not really getting it. “Wait, I thought you had a crush on Tanimoto.”
Honoka rolled her eyes at the question, as if the answer was obvious. “Of course I’m going to make him marry me when I get older, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to take a look around to see my other prospects!” She took a breath and turned around to look out towards the yard. “So until then I need to get my body ready to be a proper, sexy wife that doesn’t get laughed at by all the other girls and has no offers from any of the guys since her boobs are too small! That’s why I’ve come to train!”
After the rather… bizarre explanation, Miu patted Honoka on the shoulder after standing up. “You know, training here as a woman is way more than just exercise and learning how to fight.”
Looking up to meet Miu in the eye, Honoka choked back tears when she saw the girl having to peer between her breast to look down at the younger girl. “But… I suppose it would be criminal to not leave anyone to take care of these guys. They’re worse than babies sometimes.”
Right around the corner, Akisame and Apachai hung their heads in shame.
“It’s said because it’s true,” he mumbled.
“Apa,” the other man agreed.
Miu cleared her throat and put her hand on Honoka’s shoulder before turning to face the dojo with a finger pointing towards the horizon. “Alright then! Miu’s super special Martial Arts Housekeeping Disciple Training… BEGIN!”
“Since you’re already a woman, we’ll skip the parts about cooking, laundry, basic first aid, accounting, and manipulating children to think they’re in charge while you’re actually the one calling the shots. That kind of stuff,” she told Honoka.
But, I don’t know first aid, Honoka thought to herself as Miu continued on.
“The biggest problem this place has is rounding up enough money to pay the bills,” Miu told her. “I managed to earn some money to take care of a lot of our problems for now. So, you’ll have plenty of time to hone your technique before we’re in the red again.”
The other girl nodded as Miu brought her into the older girl’s bedroom and pulled out her ledgers, calculators, and various other accounting tools to help with her explanations. “Now, the best way to do it is to use what you’ve got.” She directed Honoka to look out her window and down at the yard where Kenichi was being forced to do push-ups over a small fire under the gaze of several of his teachers. “They might look pretty useless, but each one has plenty of secret talents to earn money, if you can manage to make them agree to help, or tick them into working for you.
“They’re all pretty good at demolition, and you can sell it to a businessman wanting to bulldoze some property by saying that the lack of dynamite will be good for the environment and reduce the noise pollution complaints,” Miu explained.
“Then there’s the individual peoples dos and don’ts.”
(-Sakaki-) “Even though he’s got a body guarding job sometimes. The best way for him to help is when debt collectors try coming in person.”
After hearing a knock at the door, the 100th Dan Karate master moved to open the gate. Since he knew no one would try knocking on their door unless it was a stranger, he threw open then large wooden door and threw out a wave of intimidating ki. “What Do You Want?”
The two men in business suits trembled at the request, then quickly turned away and ran.
“But whatever you do, don’t make him go panhandling again.”
Sakaki sat on the street corner with an empty hat held out towards passers by. As a person passed him without dropping a single yen, he frowned at the lack of charity. Then another came and went, and another, and another. Finally, Sakaki couldn’t take it anymore.
“GIVE ME YOUR MONEY!”
“GAAAAAAH! Here! Here take it! Take it all,” a man in a business it screamed before throwing his wallet at the impossibly large man and running away.
The next day…
“Oh Mr Sakaki, I’m so glad to see you. We’ve been getting reports of a mugger around this area,” the policeman said. “Have you seen anything?”
(-Akisame-)
“Akisame is a little trickier, but worth it.”
The jujitsu master sat in his room reading when Miu suddenly opened the door with a great deal of paper in her hands, and a pathetic look on her face. “Akisame, I need help in my calligraphy class, could you give me a hand please?”
“Again? Oh, very well, what characters do you need help with this time?” he asked.
A few hours later…
Akisame picked up his brush and nodded. “You see, the trick is all in the amount of the brush you let make contact wit the paper. Push down hard for broad strokes, and then bring it up when you need a thinner stroke,” he said while showing the girl for the fourth time that evening.
“Oh, thank you Akisame!” Miu explained before hugging him. “I’ll just get these out of your way now.”
The man with the pale eyes let out a tiny ‘heh’ and crossed his arms when he noticed Miu collecting everything, her work as well as his own. “Just don’t try and give the ones I made to your teacher. I put my name on the bottom corner, see?”
The day after that…
“Get your very own Akisame Koetsuji calligraphy art, sighed by the artist!” Miu shouted as she stood on the street corner and held out the various pictures. “Act now! Supplies are very limited!”
(-Apachai-)
“Apachai… umm… well. We tried a babysitting thing one time before in the park, but… let’s just say it didn’t end well.
All the children cheered as they watched Apachai show off his martial arts skills. He kicked the air, did a back flip, and then started on his rapid punching on nearby trees, then benches, a fountain… and a couple of lamp posts.
(-Ryozanpaku-)
“There’s some other stuff too but, you really need to just use your head and be creative,” Miu explained with a smile. Suddenly, she looked up as if remembering something, and then dug in her desk. “Oh! One more thing, don’t ask Shigure to try making any cutlery, or anything like that. It’s become a real big headache for her over the past few months.”
Honoka blinked. “Huh?”
A minute later, Miu pulled out one of the things Shigure made and showed it to the girl.
“Cool! It’s a tiny katana!” she exclaimed before trying to grab it, but Miu drew he hand back to keep it out of Honoka’s reach. Instead, she just pointed it down at the floor, and dropped the thing.
It stuck into the wood all the way up to the hilt.
“… it’s as sharp as a katana too,” Kenichi’s little sister mumbled despite her shock.
Meanwhile, down on the house’s first floor…
Hayato looked up from his shogi game with Kensei to see that Shigure was wearing her long coat. “Ah, found another one of your father’s swords Shigure?”
Instead of a yes or no, the kunochi held up a picture for the two men to see. From the scale the hand in the picture provided, the kunai it depicted was barely longer than a finger, and the grip was a bit oversized. “Letter opener.”
As she started to depart, Kensei sighed and shook his head. To think that all those people after that woman’s head and her sword were reduced to turning the simple items she made into weapons so they could lure her out… kind of sad really. “What is this world coming to?” he mumbled while shaking his head.
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(Posted Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:38)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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