HAPPY HAPPY GO GO
("Kill Bill" Fan Fiction)
[DISCLAIMER: Go Go Yubari, O-Ren Ishii and the Crazy 88 are, obviously, Quentin Tarentino's characters. The Ryu-Kaze Dojo was named by Timothy Stone. Sensei Horiuchi is mine.]
People always asked Go Go why she was sad. "A pretty girl like you," they'd say, "should be smiling! Come on and smile for me!" Sometimes she'd plaster on a big fake grin just to shut them up. More often, though, she'd just harden her already sullen stare; dark almond eyes glaring out, half-hidden behind her straight black bangs. "Cheer up, sweetie!" She heard that one a lot too, and "It can't be as bad as all that!" Just because she didn't skip around the mega-mall, chattering and giggling like some vapid Ko-Gal, adults seemed genuinely alarmed. The prospect of an unhappy Japanese schoolgirl, she thought, must threaten their carefully crafted delusions of reality.
For as many of her sixteen years as she could remember, Go Go had felt disconnected from the rest of the world - or at least from the rest of the people taking up space in it. She seemed immune to emotional highs and lows. She carried no warm and fuzzy memories of childhood loved ones. Never nursed any girlhood crushes on J-Pop boy band singers, like all her classmates. Never giggled with delight over a pet puppy, or even laughed at one of the ridiculous TV game shows. Nothing. Nothing at all. When her mother died shortly after Go Go's sixth birthday, the little girl didn't understood what all the boo-hooing was about. If Mommy really was in a better place, like the old people and the Kiritsian priest said at the funeral, then what was there to be sad about? Sure, life would be different now, but that's just the way it is, so why cry? Even at six, Go Go knew she was different from other people, and decided that most adults were probably stupid and definitely said things they didn't believe. For the next ten years, when her father, the "salary man," came home on the weekends from his office job in Kyoto, Go Go would dutifully meet him at the train station, ride home with him in the taxi, then watch him spend his days off wallowing in loneliness and American whiskey. Every Monday morning, she would get ready for school early, then order a taxi and deliver her hung-over, bleary-eyed father to the train that would take him back to Kyoto for another week of doing something she didn't know or care about for a company that was a subsidiary of another company whose name she could never remember. Every week, just before the taxi pulled away, Go Go's father would fight back tears, kiss her on the forehead, and say she looked more like her mother every day.
It all seemed pretty stupid to her, to make himself miserable weekend after weekend after weekend. When a Buddhist Death Cult set off a saurin gas bomb on Mr. Yubari's Friday train home, killing him and everyone else in the business class commuter car, Go Go figured it was probably for the best. Either her old man was finally in a better place with mother (which she doubted) or was simply cold, dead and gone, and at least his misery was over. At the very least, she wouldn't have to clean up after his weekend binges any more, and she figured that had to be a good thing.
The only place Go Go came out of emotional neutral was at the Ryu- Kaze Dojo ("Dragon Wind Martial Arts School.") Sure, she'd tried booze and drugs and had even gone through a phase of much illicit sex with boys and old men and even a few girls, but nothing ever made her feel really alive until she began training at the dojo. From her very first lesson, Go Go was hooked on the ritualized violence of the ancient fighting arts. First two and three times, then finally five and sometimes six times a week, Go Go would rush from school to the little tile-roofed training hall with the white, half-timbered walls and spotless, hardwood floor. There, she would trade her blue and green school uniform for a white cotton gi and engage in an exercise of elegant carnage.
No mistake about it, it was the violence that she craved. Sure, her teacher, Horiuchi-sensei, made much of the notion that "the martial arts are for defense, only" and "we train to forge our bodies and discipline our minds" and all those sorts of Mr. Miyagi clichés, but Go Go figured that Sensei was just one more example of an adult spouting high-sounding platitudes he didn't really believe - just trying to talk himself into a truth his heart knew was false.
Go Go knew better. She knew that the samurai arts were developed by warriors who killed and died without remorse - without hesitation - without thought. "The way of the samurai is death," were the first words of the Hagakure, not "The way of the samurai is defense, only" or "The way of the samurai is to forge our bodies and discipline our minds." Death. Violence. Bloodshed raised to the level of fine art. Other students came to the Ryu-Kaze Dojo looking for peace, or serenity, or confidence, or any number of other bullshit, feel-good philosophical goals. Go Go just liked kicking ass. Not only did she like it, but she was good at it. Night after night, she showed both talent and enthusiasm for the ancient and honorable ways of dealing death.
Go Go loved everything about the ritualized combat of the dojo - the sweaty uniform, the clack of wooden weapons, the sting of a bamboo shinai (practice sword) when she failed to block a sparring partner's attack and - most of all - the satisfying crunch of a classmate's ribs on the receiving end of a perfectly delivered side kick, or the yelp and subsequent THUD as her perfectly executed aikijujitsu throw sent her opponent flying high then crumpling into a heap to the unforgiving floor. She wasn't sure if she felt a connection to her samurai ancestors, or felt pride in her rapid mastery of their battle-born skills, but she knew that she felt something when she punched and kicked and hacked and slashed her way through thru Sensei's nightly pantomime of battlefield carnage, and that was enough for Go Go. As she rose thru the Ryu-Kaze ranks to become his uke-deshi, or "favored student," Go Go felt more and more like the rest of her hours were a dull, numb blur, and the only time her soul sprang to life was on the dojo floor, moving through ancient dances of death while beating her classmates senseless. Sensei spoke to her several times about taking too much pleasure in aggression; even though she did her best to hide it, the sheer glee she took from inflicting bodily harm came shining through again and again. Her thrill of victory was, with frustrating regularity, cut short by a stinging lecture from Sensei Horiuchi. While Sensei went on and on about "the sword that does not kill" and "seeking peace in the heart of danger," Go Go kept her eyes lowered in what she hoped would pass for humility. In reality, her feigned shame was a desperate effort to hide a growing contempt for her Sensei's pacifist platitudes. Though she nursed a growing suspicion that her teacher was a naïve fool like all the others, the idea of being turned out into the street – of being denied her nightly dance with death – terrified Go Go, so much so that she suffered Sensei's admonishments in silence and pretended to take his words to heart.
It was just such a reprimand that had kept Go Go late at the dojo after a somewhat overly enthusiastic evening of sparring, over an hour after the last of her classmates had gone home. As she stuffed her sweaty (and now, after the incident that had so enraged Sensei, bloodstained) gi into her backpack and pulled on her navy blue school blazer, Go Go heard unfamiliar voices coming from the main training hall. Curious, she peeked out from behind the sliding shoji screen that separated the women's changing room, and saw a half-dozen men in black suits and "Kato" masks, standing in a circle in the middle of the dojo floor. In the center of this human orbit stood her Sensei facing a beautiful woman, who was dressed traditionally in a fine white kimono printed with cherry blossoms and wrapped with a pale pink obi sash. Odd clothes aside, the strangers' most noticeable accessories were the curved katana swords that all seven, including the pretty woman, were carrying. Incongruously, Sensei held only a bokken – a heavy wooden practice sword.
Holding her breath and straining to hear, Go Go could barely make out the polite but obviously unpleasant words that passed between her teacher and the strange lady.
"You misunderstand me, venerable Sensei," said the woman, in a voice so low and even that she might have been discussing the falling spring blossoms. "This is not a negotiation. We are not here to collect money."
"What do you want, then?" Sensei growled through gritted teeth. Go Go could see him tightening the grip on his bokken – he was ready to fight at a moment's notice!
"As my... associates... informed you before, Sensei-san, the Yakuza once more have need of your skills. However, I have been told that you no longer wish to instruct the Crazy 88 in the warrior arts. "Surely," she smiled faintly and cast her eyes downward, "this rumor is false."
"As I told your predecessor a decade ago," Sensei grumbled, "I no longer teach killers. I no longer train gangsters. Let the Crazy 88 learn killing from someone else. My sword is sheathed forever."
"Although my... 'predecessor,' as you call him, may have allowed such disloyalty from a former retainer, rest assured that I will not." Though she still gazed from beneath lowered lids, the kimonoed woman's voice took on an edge that cut to the quick of Go Go's soul. "That sort of lax discipline is one reason I am now Oyabun and he is only a head in a basket." With a slight raise of her delicate chin, her onyx dark eyes locked with Sensei's. "Consider the last ten years a leave of absence that has now been rescinded. No one quits the Crazy 88. You are one of us for life. Like the samurai of old, the only way out is death." She stepped out of the circle of black masked henchmen, leaving Sensei surrounded by sword-wielding killers. "Please," the lady Oyabun said, "reconsider."
"Go to hell!"
"So be it."
Go Go's heart leapt into her throat as she heard the distinctive sound of six steel blades sliding from six wooden scabbards. Before the blades had cleared their cases, though, Sensei's bokken had sprung into a blur of destruction. One masked assailant fell to the ground, his sword still half-sheathed, his right ear torn and hanging free, pumping blood onto the polished wooden floor. The gangster to his left caught the second half of Sensei's first strike full in the face, and fell back cursing and spitting teeth.
Spinning around just in time to parry a sword thrust from behind, Sensei Horiuchi smacked his wooden blade hard against the would-be back- stabber's hand, breaking the coward's thumb and forcing him to drop his katana. No more gripping and holding today for Number Three.
Leaping past the masked hoodlum with the shattered hand, Sensei tucked and rolled away from the remaining three thugs and towards the dojo weapons rack. Go Go assumed that her teacher was looking for a better weapon than a hardwood practice stick against three samurai swords, and expected him to snatch his 500 year old ancestral katana from its place of honor before the school's altar.
To her surprise, his leaping roll took him past the small shrine and to a wooden wall hook, from which he pulled an exotic Chinese ball and chain weapon – a "meteor ball," she'd thought she'd heard it called.
Holding the long chain with one hand, Sensei let fly the spiked ball on the other end and struck his lead pursuer squarely in the mask, turning it inside out and caving in the face beneath. The man fell with a THUD that Go Go imagined to have a tone of finality.
Pulling on the chain, Sensei snapped back the heavy steel ball and began swinging it in wide circles around and figure eight circles in front of him, holding the two remaining "Killer Katos" at bay.
"Your skills are as impressive as ever, old man," the lady Oyabun called from across the room.
"Your killers are of much poorer quality than I remember," Sensei answered, still keeping the ball and chain swinging between himself and the woman's remaining two enforcers.
She smiled. "They were not trained by the great Sensei Horiuchi, as were their predecessors. Had they been, your blood would stain the floor, not theirs. It is an interesting dichotomy."
The old man snorted, "Had they stayed home tonight and left the 'great Sensei Horiuchi' in peace, their blood would not stain the floor, either."
"Sadly, that was not their karma," smiled the woman, almost to herself. Then, louder, she shouted, "Enough of this! Hajime! ATTACK!!!"
Launching himself in what Go Go could only call a kamikaze attack, the masked thug on the left leapt into the meteor ball's spinning arc and took the spiked steel weight full force in the ribs. Go Go heard the all- too-familiar sound of ribs cracking and air whooshing from the lungs. "Lefty" went down gasping. His sacrifice play, however, stopped the chain's swing and gave "Righty" the opportunity he needed to pounce into the old man's defensive zone and nail him with a lightning-fast slash of the sword.
Only a desperate twist of Sensei's torso prevented the cut from taking off his arm below the shoulder. As it was, the blade cut deep and blood sprayed in an eight foot arc – and, as bad luck would have it, directly into Righty's eyes, blinding him. Cursing and rubbing the sticky, stinging redness from his eyes and mask holes, Righty never saw Sensei's chain snake around his throat, only felt it snap tight to garrote him from behind. Holding the spiked ball in his good hand and the chain in his teeth, the old man pulled tighter and tighter around Righty's neck until the last of the evening's evil henchmen turned purple and stopped kicking.
From her hiding place, Go Go saw her sensei, gasping, sweating and bleeding, drop his chain and take a single, three-pronged metal truncheon – known as a sai – down from the wall. A good choice, she thought. The sai was an Okinawan tool, originally used by farmers to catch and break the swords of their samurai overlords. Staggering past the beaten and bloody black-suited bodies, Sensei took a defensive stance in the center of the dojo and gestured for the elegantly dressed lady crime boss to come to him.
She obliged.
Seemingly oblivious to the carnage around her, or to the bloody defeat of a half-dozen of her retainers, the kimonoed woman moved with the all the grace and delicacy of a Noh drama performer. Her long white sleeves flowed in perfect counterpoint to the drawing of her sword. As the deadly katana slid free from its sheath, her kimono rustled like fresh sheets on the line in a gentle spring breeze. Go Go thought that she had never seen anything so beautiful.
The faintest of smiles played across the Oyabun's rode petal lips. "A samurai should not fight a death duel using a farmer's weapon, Horiuchi- san. You should meet your fate with your father's sword in hand."
Sensei's stance did not waver. "While you may dress up and play at being samurai, O-Ren Ishii, you are nothing but half-breed Yakuza scum. You are not worthy to face my blade."
O-Ren's smile withered, replaced in an instant by a mask of murderous hatred. Knuckles whitening around her katana's braided handle, the Oyabun's stance shifted into a coiled posture of attack. Either she or the sensei would not outlive the next minute.
"Besides," Sensei continued, as the two combatants slowly circled one another, searching for a single moment of weakness in which to end the other's life, "as I have already explained, my sword is sheathed forev...."
Sensei's vow was left unfinished, cut short by the foot of sharpened, 500 year old Muramasa steel that burst from the center of his chest. Looking down in confusion, he dropped the sai and struggled to turn. Before his eyes clouded over in death and he went to a better place (probably not!) or just went cold and dead (obviously), the great Horiuchi- sensei's last sight on Earth was that of Go Go Yubari, his star pupil, staring down at him with blood-covered hands and, behind her, the empty sword stand on the dojo altar.
Funny, he thought. It was the first time he'd seen Go Go smile.
Stepping over her sensei's already cooling corpse, Go Go tugged the ancestral sword free from his back and wiped it clean on the old man's sleeve. Picking her way between the bodies of the fallen numbers of the Crazy 88, she crossed the ruined wooden floor to the waiting O-Ren Ishii. Bare-kneed in her plaid school-girl skirt, Go Go Yubari knelt in a pool of blood at O Ren's feet and offered up her teacher's katana to the most beautiful killer she had ever seen.
"My lady," said Go Go, holding up the sword while bowing her head.
The oyabun in white took the sword of her vanquished enemy, bade the girl to rise and, without another word, the two women left the Ryu-Kaze Dojo, leaving delicate, bloody footprints behind them.