The boy ran hard down the alley, clutching the bo he had snagged before running for his life.
Suddenly they were in front of him. "Going somewhere?" one of the Seki School students taunted. "Your school is a waste. We already defeated your Sensei."
"This...this doesn't make any sense!" the boy panted. "This is modern Japan! Schools don't go around challenging each other, beating up students!"
He held up the useless bo. "I do this for the work-out, you understand?"
"Work this out, Ginzu School!" the two laughed. They moved in.
The boy shifted his grip. Only one thing might save him; the Ginzu School's secret technique! The secret technique, unfortunately, that he'd never quite mastered...
The bo slashed around in a complex, spiral pattern. The boy had a brief moment of exultation -- when one of the Seki School stopped it between two open palms. The hardwood staff flipped from the boy's hands and went into the air like a child's pinwheel toy.
The boy sobbed. Fists came up.
"Just a moment!" a voice said. The toughs turned to look. A girl had just stepped from the entrance of a nearby shop. The bo fell past her -- until her hand whipped out, catching it, bringing it to rest in a light guard position along one pleat of her old-fashioned hakama.
The boy blinked. There should have been a shakuhachi -- the bamboo flute -- like the score to an old samurai movie. The girl stood in calm challenge, her black eyes flashing.
"Beat her up too!" the taller of the Seki school shouted.
They tried. The first one lunged and got nothing but hardwood between his arms -- plus a rap on the nose for his pains. As he stumbled back, the other collided with him.
The girl was a whirlwind of long black hair and flashing eyes, looking like an ancient warrior in her white kimono and billowy hakama trousers. She whacked both with the long hardwood bo, driving them far from her, knocking them over, bowling them along the ground.
One up-ended in a pile of rubbish. "Who, who are you?" the other gasped from the ground where he lay. "What school has defeated us?"
"Idiots!" the girl snapped. "I'm from the Hikawa Shrine!"
She tossed down the bo and turned her back on them to stride away. Once again, the boy was sure he heard the lonely sound of a bamboo flute...
THE SEARCH FOR THE MOON PRINCESS
Episode Ten : Challenge of Vengeance!
The shrine was so peaceful, Darien thought. He had been coming here quite a bit in the past few days. He needed the peace and quiet here to think. A shrine was a good place for meditation, wasn't it?
It was a lovely place, up here amid the cherry trees. And the shrine priestess he'd seen about wasn't hard on the eyes, either.
Of course it was lovely. For that was at the heart of Shinto; the awe and veneration one felt for a very old tree, a grand mountain, or a perfect little grotto about a burbling stream. Buddhism had its scriptures and observances, but Shinto was much older, and spoke without official texts and mediating priests to the bond between man and nature, and to the spirit world so close to the observances of daily life.
The sanctuary had the extended roof poles and gently curved eves of the Nara style. About it in no particular order were auxiliary buildings and quarters for the priests and assistants. Darien had, as had the other visitors, done the ceremonial ablutions at the little pavilion near the sanctuary. And had this been a weekend, there would have been stands in the courtyard where one might cast one's fortune or buy a good-luck talisman. Assuming, of course, one could push through the crowds of giggling schoolgirls.
"Mind?" Darien looked up. The young man was about his age, and dressed in the loose kimono and skirt-like hakama pants. He held a straw broom in his hands.
Darien gestured lightly, meaning he didn't mind the company. The young man sat with obvious relief, resting his broom against the stone bench. "Chad," he said.
"Darien," he nodded in return. They sat quietly then, not needing further conversation.
The young man sighed deeply. Darien looked up, and saw the dark-haired shrine priestess was just crossing the court. He's in love with her, Darien realized. He was oddly pleased with himself for noticing. Maybe Andrew's people skills are starting to rub off on me.
Chad sighed again. "Doesn't even know you exist?" Darien ventured.
"If only!" Chad said. Darien wondered what he meant. Then the shrine priestess caught sight of them.
"Chad! What are you doing sitting down? You haven't even started on the storage rooms! And this courtyard is filthy!"
"Yeah, I mean, right away..!" Chad jumped to his feet, one hand grabbing for the broom and the other reaching for his head. He dropped the broom, stumbled after it, shook his head again and ran off towards his chores.
One look from her and he turns clumsy and tongue-tied, Darien thought. Just like I lost myself when that schoolgirl bumped into me. I'm so ashamed of the way I reacted to her! It seemed like all I could do to create some distance. I think I made fun of her hair; it kept me from accidentally saying something more personal.
For days now he had been turning the incident over in his mind. My fantasy life is getting out of control, he thought. First those recurrent dreams. Then that sleepwalking, or whatever it is. Now I almost make a move on a girl four years my junior.
He sighed, almost as Chad had. He propped his chin on a fist and slouched, still trying to make sense of it all. He almost missed the strange little group of visitors.
There were three of them, all young men, all dressed in martial-arts uniforms in black and crimson, white hachimaki headbands tied about their heads. They went without hesitation to the largest building, the sanctuary, and disappeared within.
Now what, Darien wondered, is all that about?
"You what?" Raye snapped.
"We offer challenge to the Sendai Hill School of Martial Arts," the spokesman for the three young men said patiently.
Raye's eyes flashed. She opened her mouth, closed it again, then spoke sharply. "There's no such thing as the...!"
"Your challenge is accepted!" Grandpa burbled. "What school did you say you were from, again?"
"Grandfather...!" Raye hissed.
The spokesman continued calmly.
Raye glared at her grandfather. What did he mean, taking these idiots seriously! And what did he mean by claiming they were a martial-arts school? They were a Shinto Shrine! Sure, Grandpa had once had a few students, back when he was younger...
Then Raye's eyes narrowed. She wasn't a Shinto Priestess for nothing. There was something intangible but definitely wrong about these young men. She thought she had sensed a shadowy evil about them the first time they had fought; it was far stronger now. Was this the work of some Earth-demon? Maybe it was the Negaverse again!
Grandpa was about to speak. "I'm the school's best student and I accept your challenge!" Raye said swiftly. She shot Grandpa a look; he was too old and frail to be fighting!
"Ah, Granddaughter..." He wouldn't be silenced.
"Don't worry so much!" Raye chided. "This is what I was trained for," she added meaningfully.
"You may not be ready," he said unhappily.
Raye wondered what he meant by that. "In two days time?" she turned back to the challengers. "At six? I'll be ready!"
"You need a second," someone advised.
"She'll be there!" Raye said swiftly. She'd get someone from school, or one of her friends.
The challengers left. After a bit Grandpa wandered off and Raye was finally alone again. This would be a good time for mediations, she thought. I wonder if my visions will have anything to say about this.
And then a thought struck her. "I don't know anyone from school," she said ruefully. "I've been a little stand-offish," she admitted.
Well, there was one girl she knew. The girl with the weird hair, and the talkative cat... .
Suddenly, for no reason at all, the unflappable Raye Hino began to shiver.
"Look at me, Raye! Are you watching? Are you?"
Raye Hino rubbed her temples. "What have I done?" she muttered.
Her young friend pirouetted, showing off the gi Raye had found for her, shouted an imitation of a martial arts yell, kicked high in the air...and fell sharply on her bottom.
Raye sighed as Serena started to wail. "Stop that!" she said. "You're not hurt!" she added, unconvincingly. "I'll teach you some basic moves," she tried.
Serena stopped wailing instantly. "You will? Really? You're such a good friend, Raye! Really!"
And she meant it. Once again Raye was touched by the depths of her friend's feelings. She may be clumsy, and be a bad student, Raye thought, but she has loyalty and heart to spare.
"And what is this?" Serena was already heading for more trouble.
"Leave that bow there!" Raye snapped. "That's the Spirit Bow," she said sharply. "Very powerful against demons. Very dangerous to handle if you haven't the proper training!" Raye didn't mention that Grandpa had decided she herself wasn't ready, despite her archery medals, to take up the Spirit Bow of the Hikawa Shrine.
"So when does this thing start, anyway?"
"Oh, for...!" Raye resisted smacking herself in the forehead. "It's almost six already! Straighten that gi, Serena; they should be here any moment!"
To Raye's dismay, others were coming in as well. Grandfather, looking unusually serious. And Chad.
Raye wondered with a frown if he was attending to represent the honor of the shrine, or to take some time off work to watch a fight. Well, no time for that; the challengers were arriving.
They came in a tight group, moving with the deliberation of a slow-motion scene in a movie, and the leader wore those dark sunglasses with the round lenses. All they needed was the Wong Fei-Hung theme blaring from a soundtrack.
"The Seki School presents its champion," one of the seconds said, then stepped back again.
"The Shrine School presents its champion," Raye's grandfather replied, and gestured loosely in her direction.
The black-haired Shinto Priestess sized up her opponent as she walked deliberately to the center of the tatami mats. She was wearing black hakama, not her Miko garb, but her hair was still worn loose; the black wave of it reached below her waist.
The Seki School guy tied a hachimaki about his forehead. His eyes gleamed with secret amusement as he did so. A strange rune was blazoned on the white headband and Raye's eyes narrowed again. Something was up, all right.
Soon they were but paces apart, across the center of the mats. They bowed, slowly. Paused.
"Begin!" Grandpa cried.
Raye moved in with a direct attack. She struck clean, using the basic hira-ken fist, and let her weight bring her rear foot up; if he fell back she would be able to close with a follow-up, and if he fell to one side she could pass him with a powerful back-fist or elbow strike.
He did neither. Raye looked up into his grin, losing her concentration for a critical moment. She ducked just in time, popped up a block that Serena could probably better, and shuffled quickly to grab some range.
He stepped deep and sent a crushing hammer-fist through her block.
Raye cried out as it caught her on the collar. She threw herself sideways. Follow through, she urged herself silently. Never stop moving! Out of the corner of her eye she placed her opponent. With her next stride she tucked her knee into her chest, then fired her heel back at him.
It connected solidly and he went back. Raye spun on her other leg to regain her balance, brought up a guard and dropped her center of gravity low. She paused, panting for breath. Her shoulder burned. She shook the long black hair from her eyes and glared at her opponent.
He smiled. "A little over-confident?"
Raye gave up any hope of regaining her calm. That was an old man's way, anyhow; all this "harmony with the world" stuff. All she needed was to focus the strength of her anger, and beat the stuffing out of this goon!
Raye ran at him again. He moved toward her as well and they crossed in the center of the tatami mats.
She turned without lifting her heels from the mat, her hands in the last block they had held. Now her chest was burning as well. She'd scored on her opponent as well, though. He was shaking one wrist and looking dolefully at it.
But he seems as strong as ever, and I'm already tiring, Raye thought. Strange. I've spent longer than this in morning kata.
They crossed again, in an echo of the preferred style of the old samurai. And had there been steel in their hands, the match would have been over then.
Raye doubled over. This blow had been more powerful yet. And she hadn't as much as touched him. Somehow, her strength was becoming his. With each blow she took she became weaker, and he stronger. At last, she began to understand the meaning of the strange hachimaki, and why they were challenging other schools.
He wasn't waiting for her this time. As he closed in Raye blocked, jumped, kicked his arm down away from her, spun to elbow another blow aside, ducked under a swinging leg. The sweat was burning in her eyes and the blows she had already taken throbbed with blood.
He struck again. And again. The blows were becoming crushingly powerful. They cracked into her guarding forearms, threw her palm back into her face, forced her knee back to the floor. Raye stumbled and fell. A foot landed on her. Another just missed as she rolled desperately. Somewhere in the distance she could hear Serena screaming, and Chad shouting something.
Raye was outclassed. Completely. But she knew the fight wouldn't end so soon. They needed to take her energy, all of it, to feed the Negaverse as well as their own strength.
The Seki School champion chopped down, a savage back-hand across her head. The room went black for Raye. "YAME!" Grandfather wheezed.
"'Yame' yourself, old man!" The Seki School man came around again, lifted his foot to bring it down on the fallen girl...
And fell hard. Somehow a sake bottle had rolled under his other foot.
"Ah, he, he!" Grandpa said. "Sorry about that!"
"You'll pay for that, old fool!" the Seki School champion yelled. He left Raye lying where she was and ran towards the little old man with the bushy white eyebrows and perpetually bemused expression.
And fell heavily, cracking his jaw on the wood flooring. "Oh!" said Grandpa, startled. "You tripped over my stick!"
"I'll do more than that!" The Seki School man took a wild swing at his diminutive opponent. Grandpa blanched and stumbled back. The blow missed utterly; the champion spun about with the force of it and fell noisily into the tokonoma.
Raye propped herself up. She watched, in wonderment. "Drunken Style?" she breathed. "Can it be...is Grandpa really using Drunken Style, and fighting him?"
"Sorry!" Grandpa said again, ducking in a clumsy way and accidentally smacking the man hard with his walking stick. "I didn't mean...!" The Seki School man had tried to grab the stick, and somehow got it in the eye instead. "Why don't you...?" Grandpa gestured towards the door, and the poor man followed the gesture and fell across one of the old man's big feet.
The Seki School man was as outmatched by Grandpa as Raye had been by him. And it was his own strength that Grandpa used against him. At last he stopped trying to attack. He sat on the floor, rubbing his bruises.
Raye looked up at her grandfather with a new respect. Their eyes met, and she realized she had been looking past him, or through him, too often. After this, we will talk, she promised herself.
But it wasn't quite over.
Mists were flowing around Raye's erstwhile challenger. Cries came from the mists, the clapping of wooden sticks, the sonorities of brass gongs.
"Raye?" Serena asked tremulously.
"Stand ready," Raye warned. "There's some serious Nega-vibes here."
The mists parted and a creature hopped from them. It looked like a little old man, except for the dirty black wings and the long nose.
"Tengu!" Raye hissed. For once, she was facing a properly Japanese monster. A Shinto beast, to boot.
The Tengu bowed shortly from the waist. "A pretty little training hall," it observed in a cackling voice. "A proper place for a few basic lessons."
Lessons? Raye wondered.
"Hontai," said the Tengu. He kicked and the sake bottle Grandpa had tried to slide under him took off like a shot, slamming into the stomach of one of the Seki School seconds. "To remain calm and focused, gaining full awareness of all that happens about one."
Raye pulled herself to her feet, slowly, and painfully.
"Yomi," the Tengu said. A shuriken appeared in his hand and buried itself in the sword rack Grandpa had been about to reach for. "To read the intentions of one's opponent before they move."
Raye stopped dead where she was, ceasing her attempt to sidle around the Tengu. It turned to leer at her, wing edges twitching.
"You leave Raye alone, you big dirty bird!" Serena cried.
"Ki-ai," the Tengu said. It shouted. Serena flew backwards, slammed into the wall of the dojo then slowly slumped to the floor. "The use of a shout or cry to focus one's energies, also, the direct use of those energies in combat."
"This is between you and me, Tengu." Raye glared. "Leave my friends be!"
"Atemi," the Tengu said, turning towards her. "The technique of striking at those vital points that bring great pain to, or cripple, one's opponent."
Raye shivered, despite herself. She raised her hands in what she knew was a useless attempt to guard.
"Hey, windbag!" a voice shouted. "You know how to fight, or do you just know how to talk about it?"
It was Chad. The young man leapt from the raised platform and strode across the tatami, fists doubled. His face was terrible.
Raye's mouth fell open. She'd never seen Chad mad. She'd never thought she would. He was distracting the Tengu; sacrificing himself to help her. "He's got more courage than I thought." Raye murmured with a grudging respect.
"Kyotetsu-koga," the Tengu said, producing a weapon from one of its flowing sleeves. The thing had two short blades, and a short chain with a weight hanging from it. It looked very, very nasty to deal with. The blades glimmered as they aimed at Chad.
Raye leapt at the Tengu's back. The steel ball cracked into her wrist and a big foot in wooden geta rammed her into the mat.
"Really, now," the Tengu said. It reached forward to slap Chad hard across the face a half-dozen times and withdraw before the stunned young man even knew he was hit. It kicked Raye in the ribs with its hard wooden sandals. Then it reached into its sleeves again and sent a pattern of shuriken across the room, pinning Grandpa by the sleeves and trouser legs to the wall.
"Don't you dare..." Raye gasped, "...hurt my Grandfather...!"
The Tengu gave her the look of a dedicated bird watcher finding a migratory species out of season. "My, but you're a tough one," the Tengu said. "Don't the words 'give up' mean anything for you?"
"Never!" Raye gasped. She pulled herself up on her elbows, gathered her feet under her. The Tengu flicked the kyotetsu-koga, Raye's legs went out from under her, and she crunched into the mat.
"No!" Serena screamed. "Leave her alone!" Raye saw her young friend running towards her, tears streaming, pigtails fluttering behind her.
"Naginata," the Tengu intoned. From a capacious sleeve came the full length of the deadly spear-like weapon used by warrior monks and the wives of samurai. The glittering meter-long curve of blade lined up on the breast of the running girl...
A red rose shattered the blade into glittering fragments. Tuxedo Mask appeared in the shadow of the rafters as silently and suddenly as a Ninja.
"Bonno," the Tengu muttered. "A momentary distraction, a moment of weakness an opponent may profit by."
"Oyama Masutatsu amazed the world by defeating and throwing a much larger man at an international exhibition," said the young man in the black tails and white mask. "As the man fell, Oyama-sensei rushed in -- to place his hand beneath his opponent's head and protect it from striking the floor."
Tuxedo Mask came down from the rafters, opera cape fluttering like the sound effect in a bad dub. "That is the true mark of a gifted martial artist," he said. "Not boasting of skills, not hurting the helpless."
"This is the busiest fight I've seen since old Oda sent his men into the mountains after the Iga Ninja," the Tengu remarked. "Who is that masked man?"
"I am Tuxedo Mask! Warrior of Earth, eternal champion of the Moon Kingdom! He that threatens my lady love is ever my enemy!" He slowly drew his cane, and took a dramatic pose. "On behalf of justice and love, I'll punish...!"
The Tengu gurgled and dropped its arms. An armory of weapons fell clattering from its sleeves.
Raye Hino wavered unsteadily. In her hands was the Spirit Bow of the Hikawa Shrine. The string still shivered from the release.
"Couldn't you have waited for my speech to finish?" Tuxedo Mask muttered.
"Tuxedo Mask!" Serena cried. "You saved us!"
"Tuxedo Mask," Raye murmured. She lowered the bow. "Thank you for distracting him."
"When the one I love is threatened, I will always be there," he said. There was another rippling sound of fabric as he leapt for the rafters, then vanished into darkness.
"Sigh," Raye said, blushing deep.
"SIGH," Serena said.
"A nice little victory," the Tengu said, holding its side. "But you might care to wonder, descendent of Hino Tomoe, just whose it is."
With a great flapping and much gasping for breath it took off and plunged into shadow as well.
The Tengu, Raye thought. Boastful, and great tricksters, but never liars. Masters of all forms of martial arts, and sometimes teachers for mortal warriors. Legend had it Minamoto no Yoshitsune had learned his marvelous skill from the Tengu. Other legends say they created the Ninja.
Interesting, Raye thought then. When the Negaverse calls a youma into life, they do not control the form it takes. That Tengu acted according to its nature -- not towards their plans. This may be something we can use against them.
"Raye? Raye?" Serena was plucking at her sleeve. "I didn't expect all this hitting! Is it all over?"
Grandpa came up to her as well, and his expression was more serious than she had ever seen. He looked at the ancient bow held tight in his granddaughter's hands. "It has just begun," he said.
Next -- Grandpa and Yoda; separated at birth? Raye takes up the mantle of her demon-hunter ancestors, but first she must face three challenges -- and her most dangerous enemy!