Calamity Hoppers ~Reprise~

by Christopher R. Martin

Chapter 2 – Underneath the Sun

I let out a small sigh as I lie on the grass with my head rested on top of my hands. My eyes are trained intently on the sky, where the sun showers its brilliance on the world below. The absence of clouds up there means that I can bask in this light more, a source of comfort when everything else seems to fall short.

The gentle breeze of the wind caresses me from top to bottom. My already still body is lulled and brought closer to slumber. Any intent I have to do anything is flushed out. Well, if I ever had any intent at all, anyway.

Weekday afternoons are set aside for training, a top priority for a Woo Foo Knight such as myself. I was planning on getting some of my usual exercises done—or at least I convinced myself that I was—but given my previous track record, my laziness has gotten the better of me once again. The punching bag and straw-made dummies on one side of the dojo's front yard have not been touched. The bars I am supposed to use for pull-ups are equally untouched, equally still. And on top of all of this, my bamboo sword, my most valued tool, lies idly on the ground, a fingertip's length away from me.

Casting once-overs on these pieces of equipment, I shut my eyes and deliberate on this. If I don't get some practice done, I can expect to face quite the repercussions. Not from one person, but two of them.

"Jeez, what a drag," I say underneath my breath following a slight groan, picking myself up after slapping the soil I'm lying on. I then pick my bamboo sword up by its hilt, tapping the palm of my rabbit paw twice with its flat. "Here's hoping the old man doesn't completely bite my head off."

After a long, deep breath and a few stretches, I start off by practicing my swordplay, swinging my weapon in controlled, fluid motions. Parry, thrust, horizontal and vertical slices, somersaults, my feet shuffling about. Every move is executed with finesse, precision, accumulated in the many battles I've faced. My quickened movements slice the air around me, the sound of my blade as it rushes from left to right, up and down and back again, an ecstasy that I revel in. It pours in with each subsequent slash, igniting my senses as if I were actually in the heat of battle.

Oh, how I love the rush of it. The acceleration of my heart as I land one successful attack after another whilst parrying that of my enemies' with the grace of a swan and the instinct of a lion. The adrenaline pumping into my system when the situation seems bleak. The sweet taste of victory as the last of my adversaries either falls before my feet or concedes. And the battlefield itself. How I love every bit of it all, all the same.

Fifteen minutes elapse, and I wrap things up with the coup de grâce: a downward, diagonal cut with both hands, strong enough to slice one arm off of the straw dummy. I brandish my bamboo sword and withdraw it, feet together, pleased at what I can do.

Up above, the sun begins its descent, indicated by the skies now having turned orange. It is then that I realize I've wasted too much of my time relaxing. But given the results of my training, I suppose it'll suffice. I search the front yard to see what I can do, eyes jumping from article to article, marking off a checklist in my head. Soon they land on the bars on the other side.

"Ten, perhaps?" I ask myself, leaning my chin on my fist. "Yeah, that'll do."

I then approach one of the bars—the middle one, the tallest amongst them. Cracking my knuckles and neck eagerly, I grab hold of it and begin. Each pull is accompanied by my counting.

"One…"

"Two."

"Three."

My pull-ups aren't meant to be second-to-none, but they're robust nonetheless.

"Four."

"Five."

I'm able to level my chin with the bar.

"Six."

"Seven."

More importantly, this exercise, like everything else, builds me up.

"Eight."

"Nine."

Everything is going along smoothly.

Until…

"Yang!" a high-spirited, feminine voice calls out, the utterance of my name entering my ear.

This isn't good. I'm just about to come down from my tenth repetition. My right hand fumbles upon hearing her, and I dangle from my left. I reach for the bar to regain my position, my finger just a millimeter away. Almost there…

"Yang!" the voice repeats, and I force myself to ignore it. "Dinner time! Come inside!"

One by one, the fingers on my left paw start to slip. As the last one releases the bar, I feel the full force of the grassy ground whacking me behind the back. Nothing is broken, thankfully, since I can at least arch my back and roll on my side, but the pain is immense and pervades my body so much that any other form of movement is currently out of the question.

When I am hurting a little less, I manage to rise on my feet rather slowly, with my hand around the hilt of my sword, and turn to the dojo, which is but a blur right now.

"Are you deaf or something? Hurry up!" the voice utters once more, now with its usual demanding tone. I swear if I have to hear it again, I am going to throw this sword at someone.

It would seem that she does not notice my predicament at all. That, or she does notice but does not care in the slightest. I'm more inclined to believe the latter.

Sighing, I limp my way back to the dojo, holding the small of my back all the way. My posture is clumsy, pairing well with my snail-paced gait. I've had worse injuries than this, and I usually shrug them all off. In time…

Past the front doors, I proceed to the kitchen. There, my twin sister Yin busies herself with preparing the dining table, laying out plates, utensils and glasses on the placemats, humming as she does so. She and I are almost identical in appearance except for a few distinctions. Whereas my fur is blue, hers is pink, and her eyelashes protrude more than mine. Unlike her, I don't have a bow adorning my head all the time.

Setting down the third and last set of tableware down on the…well, table, Yin pivots where she stands, her blue eyes meeting with my violet ones. They then scan my whole frame – my disheveled fur, my crooked ears and a tiny cut that has opened on the edge of my lower lip. Her initial expression at the sight of me is one of shock.

"What the heck happened to you?" asks my twin, her hand over her mouth matching her concern. And then comes a snicker. "You look awful." There's the giggling. "Like someone chewed you and spat you out." And now it's full-blown guffawing. Great, just great.

I look on as she slinks to her knees from her laughter, impassive towards her jeering. Eyes squinted, unamused. I feign my own laughing and tell her, "Hilarious. So funny I forgot to laugh," all while preserving my stony countenance.

Yin is still laughing, struggling to catch her breath. I then drop the pretenses, brushing off blades of grass from my arms, and add, "You do realize that this is your fault, Yin."

She inhales as much air as she can, wipes a tear of hysteria from the corner of her eye and stands up. She still wears that smug smile, the kind cracked by those who take pride in their achievements. Too much pride, in my sister's case.

"You've got no one else to blame for your laziness but yourself, bro," says Yin with a shake of her head. She takes to a pot on the stove, where a faint aroma flutters about and disseminates all over the place. "Should've done as you were told immediately like I did." That statement is said in sing-song, and it provokes the urge in me to break something. Anything. The dining table, the chairs around it, the cupboard, whatever I may lay my eyes on.

But I restrain myself from doing just that. Instead, I fold my arms in a snap and a huff, feeling wounded. A thought crops up in my mind. A pernicious musing, its purpose to cause ruin to whoever conceives it.

Clenching my hand into a fist, I furrow my face into a scowl. This one thought dictates my next move. What I am about to say.

"Well at least I'm not the obnoxious, know-it-all girl in this family!" I exclaim, the whole place falling silent. Funny thing is that's only half of the truth. I could have added that she's too smug for her own good, but that would be overkill. Not only that, but I don't want to risk giving her any ammo to use against me.

If my sister ever had any buttons that shouldn't be pushed, I know that I've definitely just pushed one of them. I know it because she is motionless along with the dojo, wringing the handle of her ladle. She breaks from her stupor, screaming at the top of her lungs, and points a finger at me. And here comes another one of her long-winded rants on how I'm an immature, sexist punk or something along those lines.

"You know something, Yang?" shouts Yin, stamping her feet straight for me. She pokes my chest with her paw. "There are times where I am honest-to-God ashamed to be your sister. Sometimes, I'm disgusted to know that I share the same DNA as you! You probably don't know it, so I'm spitting it directly at your face!"

I may not have gotten that rant that I was suspecting, to my surprise, but what she had just said now is equally scathing, if not more.

Furious, I slap her hand off of my person like a fly, and hold my ground.

"Well, that makes two of us," I say, leaning my head in. And my sister and I hold our gazes on each other, our respective scowls burning into the other's mind.

I keep telling myself that Yin and I, like any brother and sister out there, only say these things out of anger. And our state of mind is temporarily thrown out the window. That neither of us really mean these nasty, unpleasant things we say to each other.

It's what siblings do, after all. Tease, bicker, play harmless jokes and pranks on each other, and just get on each other's nerves in general.

However, this doesn't seem likely now. We were just lying to each other then, right? And this will all come to pass, and the slate will be wiped clean.

Right?

Our master and father Yo, an elderly panda pushing one hundred and thirty-odd years, enters the kitchen-slash-dining-room, a mug in his hand. A blessing in disguise; him being here saves me the trouble of deducing what the true feelings behind my words are. I don't know what they were, and I don't want to know.

He sees us in yet another one of our squabbles. Having seen so much of us arguing, though, the surprise of it is now lost on him. So he simply rolls his eyes and sighs.

"Do you two ever do anything else but grope at each other's throats all day?" asks our father, taking a sip of his coffee. Irritated. He's clearly trying to act the parent part, with that stern gaze on his face.

I tear my eyes away from Yin's to face the panda. She and I bow to him, humbled by his presence.

"Sorry, Master Yo," I say. I then correct myself with a, "I mean, Dad."

Seven months after our victory over the terrible griffon Eradicus, after discovering our parentage, and I still can't refer to him as 'Dad' or 'Father'. Not without feeling an odd pang in my tongue. And as it appears, neither can my sister.

He, however, is growing more accustomed to this knowledge, displaying his affection like any father would. Rubbing our heads to tell us job-well-done during our training exercises, kissing us on the forehead as we're about sleep for the night, even offering to bathe us. I restrain a shudder at that last image. He does all this and more while still being the eccentric and wise Woo Foo Master we know him as.

"That 'sorry' had better mean something," he says, saunter deeper into the kitchen. Yin and I part to the side as he passes right between us. "Now I might just only be getting the hang of this whole parenting business, but I do know that that's no way for siblings to behave. Are you kids ever going to clean up your act?"

Acknowledging his words, both of us twins bow again, this time only with our heads. The silence does the talking on our behalf.

Our master redirects his attention to the dining table, where he claims a seat for himself. I join him over at the table while Yin goes back to the stove. He sniffs three times, sighing euphorically from the smell coming out of the pot. I rest a cheek on my fist and observe the dining area to pass the time, noticing that my sister has set up three bowls instead of plates.

"Dinner ready yet? I'm starving," Master Yo remarks.

"In a sec, Dad," says Yin with a small wince.

A few more fleeting minutes, and she is done with her pot. She turns the stove off, dips her ladle in and out of her concoction and pours it into one big bowl.

"So what are we having tonight?" I ask dryly, now playing with my fingers by drumming them on the table.

Whatever Yin just made, it could be anything. I have a hunch as to what it might be, but I ignore it and say that it could be anything, over and over again.

"It's my personal special," says Yin proudly. She lifts the bowl with her magic and crosses over to the empty chair opposite of mine.

Burying my head beneath clasped paws, I close my eyes and wince. That way, no one hears me as I speak to myself. "Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it, don't say it…"

A clank sounds from the table. Inside the bowl Yin had brought over is a brew consisting of meat chunks along with a blend of beans, peppers, garlic, onions and other vegetables, soaked in a reddish liquid.

My sister, having taken her seat, gestures at her creation with pride. As her hands are outstretched, she says with glee, "My original recipe for chili con carne. Bon appétit, everyone!"

My father and I air our respective reactions, with him going first.

"Ooh, that looks nice."

"Yay…" I say, half-heartedly, unenthusiastic. What creature besides my master could find this edible?

Yin leans her head to one side, a dull stare on her. "Seriously, Yang?" she says, knowing me well enough. She is my sister, after all.

She fills her bowl to the brim with her cooking, pours it all into her bowl and helps herself. I take my time in getting my serve, trying hard not to retch – the immediate thought that springs when I look at her 'chili'. And just as hesitantly, I feed myself spoonfuls of the stuff, soon adapting to the taste. It's not bad, and I've tasted worse than this, but it's not some culinary masterpiece, either. Nothing to be proud nor ashamed of.

"Always outdoing yourself, Yin. Well done," says Master Yo, shoveling the chili into his mouth rapidly.

"Glad to see someone's appreciative of what I do," Yin adds, squinting at me.

All I give her is a chuckle as I maintain my slow-paced eating. She is not—I repeat, not—getting a single complement out of me.

Dinner time wears on slowly. None of us pay mind to it until after a brief look at the clock on the wall near the kitchen. A quarter to six. We are quiet. We keep to ourselves. We focus on our own food. On our respective thoughts, not sharing them at all.

The quiet ends after Dad sets his tableware to the side and rests his head on his hands with his elbows on the table. He eyes us intently. First Yin as she herself is finishing up with her last serving, and then me as I only make it halfway in my first and only bowl. His gaze towards her is short, a smile on his face as a cherry on top, but his eyes stay on me. They burrow in me. Into my brain.

"So how was training today?" he begins, eyes shifting to the flower vase in the middle.

"Oh, it was great. Finally got the hang of my Foo-portation," says Yin, her grin spanning ear to ear. "Here, check it out." She vanishes from her seat in a burst of light and reappears in the kitchen, directly in front of the pot she used a while ago. She repeats the spell a few more times, materializing in the living room and out the backyard before reclaiming her chair.

My father nods to show his approval. He pats her head. He turns to me, his smile disappearing completely.

"What about you, Yang?" he asks, folding his arms. "You certainly got your training for today done, given how unkempt you look. How did it go?"

I nod and follow it up with a calmly spoken, "It went well, Master Yo."

"I see, I see. So tell me."

"Tell you what exactly?"

"Don't get smart with me, young man." Really? 'Young man'? Is he really playing that card with me? "What exercises did you do? Tell me, otherwise I'll say that you're lying."

"Fifteen minutes of sword practice and nine chin-up reps," I tell him, swirling my chili with my spoon out of disinterest.

"That's it?" says Yin. What a smug little punk, I swear she takes every opportunity she can to have a go at me.

"Was I talking to you?" I return bitterly.

Dad, obviously not pleased, exhales and lowers his head. Already, I'm hating where this conversation is going.

"I asked you to do thirty minutes of sword practice, ten chin-up reps and fifteen minutes of Magic practice," he starts, his mounting expectations of me pinning me to the floor. He's gotten stricter now that Yin and I are Grade Two Woo Foo Knights. "I made myself perfectly clear to you, Yang."

"I kept telling him. I swear to God, I told him over and over," says Yin, raising her hands up in a shrug – her pride taking shape. "But did he listen? Of course not."

"Shut up." So close. I am so. Close. To snapping.

"How many times do we have to go through this same damn conversation?" My father's voice sounds stricter now, and he slouches slightly on his chair and folds his arms. He strains his face and sits upright. "Just because we've conquered one of our most fearsome enemies does not mean the end of our duties as Woo Foo Knights. You'll never know when the world is going to need us again, and I am not going to have you push your share of the burden on your sister's shoulders. When are you going to get it, Yang?"

Yin's and Dad's eyes dig into my brain, and I have no choice but to take it in. A bitter pill for me to swallow, and an unneeded—unwanted—one at that. Dad stares at his empty bowl while Yin keeps her eyes on me.

And that's the last straw. That's the problem right there. I understand our responsibilities. What being a Woo Foo Knight entails. It is more than a means to sate my desire for battle. More than a vice to revel in. I know this from everything I've been through. From my wounds to my battles to the steep costs that I sometimes had to make; once in a while, just a mere glance at my sister's eyes is reminder enough.

So I certainly don't need to be told of what I must do at my expense. I don't need this crap from anyone, especially my own family. Yes, I'm the wisecracker. The goofball. The slacker. All smiles, laughs and off-hand remarks. But there's more to me than just this. My dad has to know, since he's known me for a long time now and he's…well, my dad. And my sister has to as well because she has been with me my entire life, since when we first entered this world.

But no. That is not what I get. And no, these aren't repercussions I'm facing. These are annoyances.

I want to point out my master's own laziness…only to realize that he's not as lazy anymore. And I want to turn my sister's goody two shoes tendencies against her…but relent there, as well, in fear that she may do the same to me.

I have nothing. No retort, no response. I am cornered. But, as a saying I once heard goes, a cornered mouse can bite back.

My hand balls into a trembling fist underneath the table. And then I slap my palms on the table so hard that everything on it jumps two inches high. Setting my placemat and its contents to the side, I stand from my chair and make my way to the stairs.

"Where are you going?" demands my father.

I do not look at them, only on the path ahead. "Lost my appetite," I say in a low tone, drained from the 'conversation' just now. "I'm out of here."

I stamp my feet violently as the staircase comes to view. Upstairs, I head to our room, leaping onto my bed while bouncing from my sister's.

For a while, I stay unmoving on my bed. The time now is seven in the evening, as said on the clock on my nightstand. Dusk has made its entry outside of my window, the moon and stars above watching us as though we are ants. This day just can't seem to end.

As I lie on my bed, my thoughts start to stir. They are unruly, pounding my head and screaming inside. I don't bother shutting them out. There's no point.

"Why?" I whisper, eyes flittering shut. "Why does everyone always have to be on my goddamned case?"

My tightly-clenched fists tremble on the fabric under me. I need something. An outlet for this frustration.

"I hate it." That outlet dawns in my head. I've said it before, and I'll sure as hell say it again.

"I hate it… I hate it. I hate! I HATE IT!"

The louder my voice grows, the more satisfied I become. Not quite like punching a hole through a dummy, but it'll do. It's a much-needed relief, indeed.

Rolling to my left, I gaze at the window, at the moon espying me. Eventually, my eyes close slowly for one last time today, and I drift off.

Maybe, for the time being, I can rest…