Author's Note: The 365 Project is an experimental multi-fandom project to write and post at least one short every day for the next year, not including my semi-regular bi-weekly updates. For more details, see the relevent section in my profile. This is The 365 Project, 17 November.

In the immortal words of Samuel L. Clemens... "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR."

Disclaimer: "Love Hina" is the creation and property of Ken Akamatsu, used for entertainment purposes without permission or intent to profit.

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"Speed And Reflexes"
By J.T. Magnus, 'Turbo'

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Urashima Keitaro casually twirled the stick he held in his hand. Here, far away from tenants and family, out alone in the woods; here, he could be himself. Not the clumsy ronin that everyone believed him to be. It was foolishness, really. They assumed without knowing the reason for his appearant 'clumsiness'. The truth was both far simpler and far more frightening than they could ever know; they would never know how much effort it took him to move as slow as they did and how much he had to focus on doing it to the detriment of his situational awareness. Out here, he could move at his own pace, taking everything in and not having to worry about people and things around him. It was liberating.

Even the most worldly among the tenants were still foolish little girls, never questioning what they think they saw. They saw an estrangement from his family and his adopted sister as heir to the Urashima family's martial arts only as proof to support their own preconcieved notions that he was a 'worthless, perverted male'. They never stopped to consider other possibilities, possibilities such as the fact that he wasn't the heir to Urashima style martial arts because he didn't practice the Urashima style. As a breeze swept through the woods stirring up the leaves, he remember the words of the man who had founded the fighting style which he did use.

"Swords are used to kill, fighting techniques are ultimately used to kill... but you know what? You don't have to like it."

It had been a hundred-fifty years since he had said that, and his fighting techniques and more importantly his philosophy about fighting had been passed down from master to master's student ever since and Keitaro was merely the latest in that line. The distance from his parents wasn't only his refusal to accept less than Tokyo University, but also a simple matter of the discomfort they felt knowing that their son was easily among the most dangerous - most deadly - men alive. Few parents would ever be able to accept such a situation gracefully, he had long since decided, and that lay at the core of their insistance that he take a nice peaceful position working in the candy store. They couldn't understand that to deny what he had been taught would be to deny a part of himself. It hadn't been his second time as a Ronin that had been the cause of being cast out, no matter what they and he would claim, it had been their ultimatum that he leave his fighting style or leave their house. He had left their house.

"But you know what? You don't have to like it."

That was one of his problems with Aoyama - she enjoyed it, enjoyed the power a sword gave her and saw fit to use it whenever she could. The Shinmeiryu heir had no grasp of subtlety or restraint. She was the epitome of everything which Keitaro had been taught to not be, had been taught to work against... and if she continued to walk the path which she now was on, eventually he would have no choice but to shed his cloak of 'normalcy' and confront her. And before that could happen, Keitaro knew that he would have to ensure that he was at his best, unweakened by being unable to keep up his practice in the confining surrounding of the Hinatasou. Taking a deep breath, Keitaro picked a target tree and then launched himself into the air, bouncing himself off of first a branch and then another tree to send himself flying towards his target in true 'Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu' style.