The lunchtime rush was well over. The streets of business district were quickly becoming deserted as the last few stragglers hurried back to work. Most of the street vendors were closing down for the afternoon lull or had already left, but a few holdouts remained hopeful. A grizzled vendor stood behind one yatai, slowly wiping down his already spotless counters. Occasionally, he would glace around to check on the six-year-old child playing in the empty lot behind him. His patience was rewarded when one last customer hurried up to the stand.
"Welcome to Kuonji's Okonomiyaki! What would you like today?"
"Do you have anything extra spicy?"
"Yes, in addition to a selection of sauces, I have a fresh batch of kimchee style yakisoba. Would you like to try some?"
"No, on second thought, I would like fried spam and eggs."
Kuonji eyed his customer closely: dull suit, plain face, small plastic shopping bag—in a word, nondescript.
"I'm all out, but I can offer you this." The chef slid open a small compartment to a reveal roll of film and a cassette tape.
The customer quickly retrieved the items before replacing them with the shopping bag. "Per agreement," he said before turning to leave.
The chef frowned at the man's abrupt manner, but he decided to shrug it off. With well-practiced ease, he quickly closed down his stand. Trays of ingredients were sealed tightly and loaded onto insulated racks. The counter and seats folded up onto the side of the cart with a snap. The awning rolled up smoothly to be tied under the edge of the cart's roof. In less time then it takes most people to clear the breakfast table, a restaurant had been replaced with an overgrown travel accessory.
"Usagi, let's go," the chef called as he finished.
From behind him, the response came as a sing-song whine. "That's not my na-ame."
He turned around to look at his daughter. She was working on something that involved shifting around dirt with an beat-up old spatula. It might have been mud pies baking or landscaping; it was hard to tell given that she was hardly taller than her tool. "I'm certain your mother would be surprised to hear that. She spent months picking your name out for you."
The girl rolled her eyes in disgust. "It's just so, so..." she paused, her nose wrinkling in thought, "girlie girl."
"As hard as it is to believe it at times: you are a girl,.your name is Usagi, and there's nothing you can do about it. Now, pick up your stuff so that we can get out of here."
"Just a minute. I have to finish my extra special okonomiyaki sauce." The chef watched with a mixture of irritation and amusement as, with great formality, his daughter finished scooping a runny mixture of leaves and mud into a jar. After she had collected a full batch, she tied a cover over the jar's mouth and set about gathering her supplies. After a little bit of juggling, she managed to balance everything in her arms long enough to carry it all over to the yatai.
"And what are we going to do with all this 'special sauce?'' he asked as he tried place her stuff where it wouldn't contaminate his cooking area.
The little girls eyes lit up at the question. "I'm going to give it to Uncle Ran," she said. "He agrees that Usagi is a stupid name, and I'm sure he really needs some good home cooking. I mean, last time we were there, he had this stuuuupid woman for his assistant, and she was serving him like microwavable terriyaki, and he smiled at her like he was grateful and everything. He's so nice; he deserves to have a real woman around that can cook and take care of him and everything, not someone who sits around putting on makeup all the time. I think..."
As the cart pulled away from the curb, it was the chef's turn to roll his eyes, this time at little girls and first crushes.
Toy Dojo
A Ranma ½ Fanfic
by Wordblindness
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Chapter 2: An Old Friend
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I first met Happosai during a job in Okayama.
I had been hired as a last ditch effort of a developer who had been trying to gain control of a property near Kurashiki. He had been pushing for this deal through for several months, but every effort had been foiled by a particularly tenacious breed of local opposition. He had tried PR, bribery, intimidation, and blackmail; all of them failed. I was brought in because I had shown a talent for navigating the gray areas of the law in other endeavors. Real estate was, no pun intended, new ground for me, but the arsenal of conventional tactics had been depleted. He was willing to try a fresh approach.
One night, after an evening of productive snooping, I had returned, along with three of my associates, to the old granary that was serving as my base of operations. Anxious to move on to more entertaining pursuits, we quickly set about breaking down and storing our equipment.
As we were finishing up, I looked up and noticed that we were no longer alone in the room. A small figure lurked near the doorway, quietly cackling as it peered out into the night. Wondering how a kid had gotten in without arousing any attention, I caught the eye of one of my assistants and signaled for him to take care of the pest.
The rest of us moved quickly to complete our task, and I had just locked the storage closet when the entire rear wall rattled from a solid impact. I turned to the front door, ready to scold my employee for his excessive use of force, but instead I froze in shock.
I was looking at what had to be the most singular person I had ever met. It was not his small stature that was so surprising, nor was it his faux ninja suit. The fluid manner in which he twirled his pipe was did give me pause, as did the monstrous bag over his shoulder, but they were not truly strange (just odd). What puzzled me was the glowing vitality that contrasted so sharply with his advanced age.
He was clearly old, perhaps as old as anyone I had ever met. He carried all standard signs of age: white hair, wrinkled and spotted skin, missing teeth, and swollen joints, but this didn't seem to slow him down. There was something in his eyes, his posture, and a hundred other small details; something in me screamed that this was not a man to dismiss. He just seemed more...solid than he should be.
It was like looking at an old painting. Over time, pigments had faded. The canvas had gained a wrinkles and sags. With the passage of time, every single point had gone through some metamorphosis, but the image of proud warrior could still be seen, with eyes that could pierce through the veil of time. Right below the surface of this old man, there was a spirit completely undiminished by age. Perhaps it was trapped in the body of a mummified monkey, but it was there.
I made a mental note to leave enough of him for questioning. If he used some sort of herbal remedy to achieve the effect, I could make a bundle off the information.
Still, no matter how spirited, twenty kilos of wrinkled gnome shouldn't have been able to throw around a hundred kilos of solid muscle. Perhaps, I would have to revise my hiring policies; given the recent trend toward technical operations, I had been starting to favor brains over brawn. This is what I got for forgetting that clichés become cliché for a reason. Thugs should be large, strong, cruel, and stupid; these qualities assure the proper aptitude in breaking small objects.
A quick glance behind me confirmed that my soon-to-be-ex-employee was slumped, unconscious, against the far wall. My two remaining men were moving to surround the intruder. I adjusted my position it give us each the maximum possible room to work.
"Who are you? What are you doing here?" I barked at the intruder.
Clearly unimpressed, he gave a sort of uninformative wave of his pipe. "Oh, you know. Just your average elderly citizen, out for a nighttime stroll through town," he mocked. "At my age it's always good to get in some light exercise." His scornful gaze made it clear that we rated somewhere below Jazzercise.
Snarling at his subtle show of contempt, the three of us moved forward to teach the little wise-ass a lesson: there are lines that shouldn't be crossed. Our property line was prime example.
The fight started at weird, and it quickly moved on to surreal.
As my team closed in on our opponent, he paid us no heed. All of his attention seemed to be focused on his spinning pipe. I couldn't help wondering what he was doing. The pipe spun faster and faster, until it seemed to morph into a solid disk. Strangely, the surface of the disk was not symmetrical; various marks and stains seemed to cover its surface. When I concentrated hard enough, I could see flickering patterns. They almost seemed to form images, but every time I tried to make them out, they would shift to a new form. The overall effect was...almost...hypnotic.
Damn!
I managed to shake myself out of the trace just in time to feel the blow that sent me spinning across the room. A couple of bruises earned me enough control to roll back onto my feet. A glance around the room convinced me that it might have been a better idea to land on my head. My two allies were laid out across the floor.
My opponent gave me an amused look as I staggered into a wall. "What the matter? Don't want to fight without your boyfriends' help? Can't bully a poor defenseless old man without outnumbering him three to one? That's youngsters these days—nothing but a bunch of whiny little pansies. Why, in my day..."
Disregarding his gibber, I moved forward for my next attack. This time, I made damn sure not to look directly at that pipe again.
Wham! Pulling a couple pieces of the closet door from under me, I paused to reassess my situation. Apparently, ignoring an instrument of blunt trauma was an unsound tactic. I was starting to suspect that I was slightly outclassed in terms of martial skill. I needed some sort of an edge. I unconsciously reached for the small piece of string that held back my hair, but I pulled my hand back at the last instant. This situation was not that drastic. Looking around the closet, I tried to find something I could use. Picking up a container labeled "flash powder," I started to formulate a plan.
I have never considered waking up to be anything more than a necessary evil. It is one of the few things I detest more than self-righteous politicians. Regaining consciousness in the middle of what sounded like campaign speech was like touring my own personal corner of hell. Sitting up, I identified my impromptu pillow as a somewhat spindly bar table. After almost losing my balance on my first attempt to sit up, I contented myself with slumping against the wall in a somewhat vertical manner. As I slowly regained strength and clarity, I turned my attention to my surroundings.
"...and unwilling to see a senior citizen come to harm, he selflessly threw himself into harms way, single-handedly driving the gang of hooligans away from me. Yet, your establishment refuses to serve him because of a few scuff marks he picked up in..."
Just great. Apparently the geezer didn't need a pipe to pull off his little feats of hypnotism. A full barroom of men sat spellbound as the little demon, now dressed in a frumpy suit, harangued a sheepish bartender. Every few seconds, the orator gave a theatrical pause so that the audience could roar its approval.
Looking down at myself, I considered the collection scorched rags that hung off my body. If I was a bartender, would I admit someone who was wearing this? After mulling over the question over for a bit, I decided that, yes, I would. Who could possibly need a drink more than me right now? Satisfied with my impeccable logic, I started hunting around for my rightful bounty.
As if summoned by my thoughts, my own personal angel of mercy came toward the table, bearing a carafe almost as large as himself. Hopping up onto another stool, he produced cups and poured us each a drink. With a wordless toast, we each threw back our first of the evening.
"I gather that, after all that fuss, we will not be bothered by a bill this evening," I quipped.
His face froze, and for few uncomfortable seconds, he focused on me with an intense gaze. Then, his face broke into a grin. "You're a quick one, Ran, but Nodoka always does say that about you."
"Ah, yes. Nodoka." That certainly explained a lot. It would have only taken one look at my face to see the resemblance. Nodoka and Ran: Calm and Chaos—way back when, someone had pinned us the ironic nicknames. I shouldn't have been surprised that she kept hers; I still used mine. "How is Little Sister? I have heard so little of her since she threw in with the Great Pervert."
If Happosai was surprised by my knowledge of his own sardonic title, he didn't show it. That was a shame; it had been a pain getting even that much information on Nodoka's whereabouts. His only response was a vague "well enough."
"Hmm. That's good." I put on an expectant expression, hoping to force out more information.
Happosai gave me a sly look over his cup. "Sometimes, I do worry about her overactive imagination."
"Ehk?" I choked. "Nodoka? Imagination?" I wouldn't have been surprised if he had called Nodoka overactive, but her imagination was another matter.
"Yes, she seems to get confused every time a fight fails to reduce a building to rubble. She tells these crazy stories about fights where, say, burning a building down would make a good diversion."
I was not breaking eye contact; I just needed to scratch an itch on the back of my head. "I was just going for a blinding flash. Somehow, the fights always seem to get a little out of hand."
"A little? That building was over a hundred years old."
"I know. I had to put down the cash deposit."
"You could have killed your friends."
I shrugged. "They're cheap thugs. That's what they're there for."
Over all, it was a pretty good night: a good fight, some explosions, and a lot of booze.
While basking in his own martial superiority, Happosai was an amusing drinking partner. He had millions of little stories and anecdotes that he would tell any time the mood struck him. They might be obscene or inspirational; he didn't seem to care as long as they could gain a laugh.
The ones I found the most fascinating where the ones that he claimed were first hand. They invariably started with "about ten year ago," but this was more of a storytelling convention than an actual statement of setting. They shared a common theme of fantastic—demons, ghosts, gods, heroes, curses, blessings, fate, destiny, and true love—but that was not what caught my interest.
They were about a philosophy in life. It was not an especially proud or noble way, but it had a sort of simple appeal. The hero, Happosai, would walk, unprepared, into a bizarre situation and win, not because he was better, but because he was willing to totally disregard the laws of men, gods, physics, and common sense to win his prize. I didn't know how far to believe him, but that didn't stop the alternating waves of amusement and horror that I experienced at his tales.
About ten years ago, he and two of his pupils embarked upon a night of debauchery so great that—well, it should suffice to say that, three countries subsequently banned the ownership of any piece of tobacco paraphernalia longer than the owners arm.
About ten years ago, he had found a way to ascend to a higher state of being, where he beheld the true nature of reality in all its terrible glory, and he immediately returned in disgust after realizing that it had nothing to do with booze or young women.
About ten years ago, elegant geisha would ride up and down the canal outside, plying their wealthy clients with expensive delicacies, and it was still technically illegal for him to come within arms-length of the waterway.
He had won frivolous lawsuits, and he had saved entire species from extinction. He had led and trained armies. He had started and foiled rebellions. He had explored places were no other human being has set eyes. It wasn't really clear what he feats he had yet to accomplish, but I imagined most of them required staying in one place for any amount of time.
In return, I told him a little what I did. As some things are not discussed in a public setting, it eventually turned into a discussion of my current assignment.
"So," I narrated. "The audit revealed that, while the area's supernatural reputation had cast the shrine owners in the role of its stewards, their original grant gave them ownership of only a small portion of that area. Legally, there was little they could do to stop the sale."
"So, what went wrong?" he prompted on cue.
"Politics as usual. The locals were already riled up about the 'greedy thieving real estate bastard.' Anything smacking of further interference with the shrine's priest or his duties would have immediately blown the whole deal."
"I think I see where this is leading. Go on."
"Over the centuries, the whole basin has become riddled with various sites of religious significance. Naturally, as they are on 'his' land, the priest from the shrine handles the upkeep on all of them." I arranged several containers to demonstrate. "If this is the shrine, then this a holy tree. Someone fought a demon here. That spill is the spring traveling pilgrims used to use, and so on, and so forth. There is no sizable piece of land that isn't within a stone's throw from his weekly rounds. Given the current situation, there is no development plan that would be acceptable to the public.
"That's were this comes in," I said, slipping a small cup into the pattern, "A natural amphitheater, this hidden alcove heard the sermons of several 16th century Jesuit missionaries. I see it as our duty to see that this important memorial return to the hands of its rightful owners—"
"So that you can ride in on their coattails," finished Happosai.
"Everybody's a cynic these days. We just want everyone to have a place to worship freely and a place to call home. Is that so wrong?"
It is impossible for me to fully describe the man I came to know over the following years. It took me a long time to even start to understand Happosai, and that was through firsthand experience. He was one of those rare people genuinely outside of the normal limits. Mere words can not lend the insight needed to understand someone like him; you must experience the laughter, embarrassment, hope, and disgust that his mere presence can inspire. There are labels I can paste on him, but they are just pigeonholes, invitations to underestimate, misunderstand, and dismiss him. Never the less, I will attempt to describe why I was both fascinated and repulsed by his activities.
Happosai's deepest, most cherished belief was that every person is born with unlimited potential. There is no challenge that can not be met, no limit that can't be surpassed, and no enemy that can't be vanquished. The problem is that nobody ever realizes even a small portion of this potential.
In Happosai's eyes, the sole cause of this failure was self-imposed limitations. In particular, he blamed the structure of society. He had an utter contempt for most laws, rules, and taboos; they were means of limiting freedom and crushing the spirit. Science and mysticism were just useless appendages of technology and magic; they were used more useful for explaining away possibilities than expanding them. The only worthwhile civilization would be one that allowed the individual to achieve ever greater heights. Happosai was ready and willing to do whatever it took to make that place a reality.
What did that make Happosai?
Eccentric? Possibly, but there was not a large baseline of multi-centennial martial arts masters to compare him against. Perhaps it was normal for them to want to change the world.
Superstitious? I once thought so, but I eventually learned better. He could and did prove that there was more to the world than I was ready to accepted. Each time, he would laugh at my attempts to fit new facts into a scientific framework. If I were to condemn him for his belief in magic or his indifference toward science, I would have to take a good look at what that made me.
Anarchic? Somewhat. He showed an utter contempt for most laws, rules, and taboos, but this was on a case by case basis. Some would call him culturally insensitive, and I think he would wear the title with pride.
Megalomaniac? Yes, but only by the strictest definition. He didn't really want wealth or power, he just thought everyone else was really, really stupid. He was sure that if he didn't make the grand gestures, then nobody would.
I was never really taken in by Happosai's vision, but I had nothing against it. I had traveled enough that I could see hypocrisy inherent in far too many existing institutions. If he thought he could do better, more power to him. I wasn't an idealist, and I didn't want to get involved. As good as the payoffs could be, I learned to be weary of Happosai's plans. You can't really trust anybody that likes to play with random magical artifacts and untested technology. His followers were worse—especially my sister: I never met anyone else with such a talent for riling people up. The whole incident with the pandas just drove the point home.
That does not mean I didn't do any business with Happosai. On occasion, he would ask me for some small favor, and in return, he would offer me a valuable piece of information. I made a fortune on one temple alone. That engineering firms were really interested when they verified that those clockwork traps had lasted for over a thousand years. Imagine the fool that made his way through that death trap for a few pieces of gold!
It was a good arrangement, and things would have stayed that way if I hadn't make the mistake of dealing with the wrong reporter.
Disclaimer: Ranma ½ and all associated characters and concepts belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogakukan, Kitty, Fuji TV, and Viz Communications. I am borrowing them for non-commercial entertainment purposes only.
Author's Notes: I'm not quite happy with parts of this chapter, but I want to push on to the meat of the story before I get bogged down in the details. It I get that far, I may rewrite this chapter later.
