Things weren’t going exactly as Tanimoto had planned. When he first arrived at the Tendo house, he hadn’t expected the old man’s children to give up their father, but the rather roundabout way of how they were trying to delay him was pretty bad.
Although, the crappy way the woman in front of him was trying to talk Tanimoto into believing her was even worse.
“See, our dad has been gone for over a year!”
Tanimoto looked around and frowned before turning his attention back to the girl. “It’s just an empty room.”
The rather expected reply made Nabiki roll her eyes. “That’s because we pawned all his stuff,” she told him as fiercely as she dared. “You want to look around some more, go ahead, check the whole house. He’s not here.”
He took a moment to digest the comment as he looked around the bare room. There were small telltale signs that furniture had been inside it for a long time, but it had obviously been gone for awhile. Since he’d already seen inside most of the upper floor when scouting around the place and saw that most of the room obviously belong to girls, Tanimoto looked out the window and frowned.
They wouldn’t be allowing him to look around if there was something to hide. Unless… it was a delaying tactic.
A second later he spun around and pointed to the building on the other side of the Tendo’s property. “Then show me what’s inside the dojo!”
Nabiki could only sigh, and agree. “Fine.”
After a short trip down the stairs, they made their way over to the dojo, and Tanimoto found a third girl going through striking motions rather haphazardly. It was obvious that she’d had some training, but the way she shifted her weight and moved from one attack to the next said that no one had taught her very much about just how to make the movements flow together. In short: her defenses were terrible, especially while attacking.
“See, he’s not here either,” Nabiki told him.
At the sound of her sister’s voice, the girl stopped her practice and turned around to face the pair. “Oh, Nabiki… who’s this?”
The question made Nabiki roll her eyes. She really didn’t want to go through the while stupid boyfriend thing again.
“Where is Soun Tendo? Tell me where he is!” Tanimoto demanded.
Akane blinked at the rude tone, then frowned at the suspicious man standing next to Nabiki. “Hey! Don’t just come into other people’s houses and start making demands,” she told him with a raised voice.
Now that he looked back on things, Tanimoto should have guessed the man wouldn’t be home. Although Niijima said he was wanted by the police, Tanimoto had believed that much like his own master, everyone just left him alone out of fear. Still, Sougetsu had ended up leaving China because of his crimes. Although the man said his reasons had mostly been because of his younger brother, law enforcement had to have been a factor.
That just meant he’d need a way to lure the man out of hiding.
It took just a few seconds to formulate the plan. He had noticed that the dojo had a handful of students thanks to the names on the wall, so it had to still be operating despite the apparent lack of a master. The girl couldn’t be teaching classes at her current level, so it was more likely Soun Tendo was hiding out somewhere and only showed up to teach when the cost was clear.
Since he couldn’t wait around long enough for the old man to come home…
“You there, your name’s Akane Tendo, right?” Tanimoto asked as he pointed to the plaque that read ‘assistant master’. It was an obvious ruse to anyone at his level who’d seen the girl fight.
“That’s right, who wants to know?” Akane demanded.
“I’m called Hermit, and I challenge your dojo for it’s sign!” Tanimoto declared before he went into the basic opening fighting stance of his style.
Nabiki blinked, and the looked over to Hermit with a frown. Was that what he was here for? She could certainly understand if someone had a grudge against her father, but this was a little much. “Oh come on! Nobody does that nowadays except morons and rude assholes.” Immediately after she was done, Nabiki blinked and realized that this guy might very well fit into the latter category.
While her sister had given up martial arts and the older traditions, Akane still held onto both. “Fine! I accept your challenge!”
“Just one second,” Nabiki told Hermit before she crept over to where Akane was taking her position. On the way she glanced back and saw the other man was also inching more to the inside of the dojo, but he was still in that strange fighting stance.
When she reached her sister, Nabiki bent in close to talk quietly. “Akane, are you sure about this?”
For her part, Akane just looked more offended. “Nabiki! I can beat some occult otaku wannabe,” she grumbled back. “I’m not some freak.” Images of several people that had thankfully long since disappeared flashed through her mind and made her frown. “But, I’m better than most people. Don’t worry.”
“All I’m saying is those stupid classes you’re giving are the only things that’s keeping this family above the red,” Nabiki told her in a whisper. “Don’t go risking anything just because you’re getting a little ticked off!”
“Then maybe so should get a real job if you think what I do is so dumb!” Akane shouted into Nabiki’s ear, making her back off.
With Akane’s anger turned towards Nabiki, she knew there was no dealing with her little sister.
Nabiki didn’t know a lot about the whole ’honor’ thing when it came to martial arts, but… Although a dojo without a sign wasn’t all that respected, it wasn’t like it lost its students, right? Martial arts were popular again, and from what she heard Akane’s teachings were pretty effective on showing how to beat people up.
Then again, I suppose we could always just make a new one with some wood and a little ink if worse comes to worse, Nabiki told herself. Not that she was 100% she’d need to, Akane was right when she said that she was better than most other people, and this guy didn’t look too far apart in age from the sisters to give him several years more training.
“Since you’re the challenger, I’ll make the rules. First one to submit or gets knocked out looses. Go!” Akane said in a hurry before she rushed forward in an attack.
What followed seemed to be like one of those weird martial arts movie showdown scenes to Nabiki. Although it was probably her imagination, even the world seemed to go ultra-widescreen format for a second.
Akane charged forward, letting out a cry along with her attack as she drew back her fist. The other guy didn’t even move until they were a couple arm lengths apart.
Hermit to one step forward and seemed to just twist under and around Akane’s punch. His cloak came up and blocked the view of what happened next.
Akane continued forward with her feet off the ground, and her unconscious body hit the floor and slid a few centimeters before stopping. Then the world went back to normal definition, and Hermit lowered his hands.
Attacking me without any care for defense… how foolish, Tanimoto thought to himself with a shake of his head. A quick whipping strike to the back on the neck had knocked the girl out and sent her flying. It would hurt for a few days, but there’d be no permanent damage. “I win.”
“OH COME ON, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?” Nabiki shouted after looking to Akane and saw that she was still breathing. One punch KO? Since when did freaky martial artists do away with their fancy and impossible moves?
The young man ignored the question and headed for the exit. “If you want your sign back, tell Soun Tendo to come to…” Tanimoto froze for a moment in contemplation. Now that he was halfway done, he realized he had overlooked something when he came up with this idea.
Ah crap, I can’t tell them to come to my place, he thought with a frown. This Soun Tendo guy was wanted for the destruction of property. Tanimoto didn’t want his house knocked down. Personal possessions were the few real things of wealth he had left after his adoptive father’s business partners stole the corporation.
It wasn‘t exactly inspiration, but it was the only place Tanimoto could think of off the top of his head that wouldn’t sound like an obvious trap, like an abandoned building would. “Come to the Ryozanpaku dojo,” he said before taking out a pen and small notebook to hand the older sister the address.
If they did show up, Kenichi could just call him over.
Meanwhile, at said dojo…
Practicing his strikes on the punching pole, Ranma suddenly froze mid-attack as a chill went up his spine. He blinked, and looked around. “Huh… that was weird.”
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(Posted Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:41)
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