Something about this whole thing felt wrong to Kenichi. Not the collecting money part, more than one bunch of people from a dojo had tried attacking before they paid their bill to avoid getting shanghaied by Kenichi’s masters. He had actually gotten used to being there when his masters showed up at their door looking to collect.
What bothered him was that Niijima seemed to know right where he was going without even a second of needing to get together with his little information hounds to sniff out just where this place was.
Once he thought about it though, Kenichi found the answer was obvious. He knew I was coming, and just researched it ahead of time.
After a quick ride on a few subways, with Niijima complaining about slow reconstruction on the direct route most of the time, they made it into the Nerima district on the other side of Tokyo. They took a bus into the suburbs and headed to the Tendo Dojo a bit before lunch.
Just outside the door, Niijima motioned Kisara and Siegfried to move off to the side where they wouldn‘t be seen. Then after looking at Kenichi for a moment, had Ukita back him up while Kenichi stood in the background. “He just looks more intimidating that a short redhead with no breasts-”
“Hey!”
“You Siegfried,” Niijima continued, ignoring Kisara’s comments about how she was the right height and build for a normal Japanese girl. “And of course Shirahama, who couldn‘t scare a toddler.”
“Hey!” Kenichi whined right on top of Kisara.
Ukita sighed, and waited for Niijima to knock on the door. A moment later, the door opened up to reveal the one sister Niijima was familiar with. He thanked the devil for his good fortune, and slipped his foot inside the door. “Hello again. We’re from the Shinpaku Debt Collection Agency. You owe an associate of ours money. Now pay up!”
Nabiki frowned and tried to slam the door shut, making Niijima scream from the pain of the door trying to fracture his bones. “Ahhhh!”
Ukita took that as his cue and reached in to grab the door and open it with one hand, and grab the girl with the other.
“H-Hey!” Nabiki yelled when she was yanked out of the doorway by the oversized goon. “Help! Rape! Assault by a martial artist!” Unfortunately, as she had witnessed many times before, the few people who passed by the dojo simply ignored such things. In fact they held up their briefcases, or whatever they could use to shield their eyes, and pretended not to notice.
While his minion was taking care of the girl, Niijima reached into her back pocket to grab her wallet. When he had the thing, the man turned to the commander/client. “Okay Kenichi, how much does she owe?”
This is so wrong, Kenichi told himself. “It’s ten thousand yen.”
Niijima blinked. At the announcement that they were going to all this trouble for roughly $16.00, he was already rethinking the whole debt collection agency angle. “… what?”
From her place in the air, Nabiki frowned. Wait a second… she thought after looking to the guy with the pointy ears. She thought back to a few days ago, when he had shown up the first time with… you got to be kidding me. “Okay, okay take the money! Take it! Just don’t come back! Ever!”
“Pleasure doing business with you,” Niijima said with depression evident in his voice.
And so, as the martial artists and the entrepreneur who commanded them vanished into the sunset, the great General Niijima’s plan for a debt collection agency were crushed… or at least put on hold until he could find some deadbeat with enough debt to make it worthwhile. When the final expenses for travel, the lunch he had to treat everyone to, and the bribe so that the narrator would at least try and paint the great General Niijima in a good light were done, he was in the hole more than fifty bucks.
Kenichi ended up having to pay for the missing money out of his own pocket, but since he didn’t have a life or a girlfriend for the longest time, it was easily affordable.
As for Nabiki, she kept her mouth shut and just cut a few things out of the budget for two weeks until her older sister got paid.
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(Posted Thu, 13 Aug 2009 04:03)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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