The Story

Chapter 4

It seems to me as though every chapter I write is a little shorter than the last…how strange.

Um…I hope you enjoy it, but I'm not promising anything, guys…R&R, 'kay? Please?

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha, DBZ, Yao Ming, or anything else I may have forgotten to mention.

Ki Elements

I made money very quickly in the fighting business. Sometimes there'd be some punk-ass kid come up and challenge my reigning title, but in ten seconds flat I could have him down on the ground, begging for his mommy.

With every victory, I grew stronger.

I soon developed a habit of pulling my hair up in the back before a fight. But I didn't use a rubber band usually; I held my hair together with a small connecting band of my ki (spirit energy, ya know?). I was defeating my opponents at such an astonishing rate that I soon was scouted for one of the large martial arts tournaments coming up. They offered plenty of money for the prize.

I readily accepted.

As some readers may know, to enter some large martial arts contests, one must have his strength tested by a machine so that a.) the sheer number of participants may be narrowed down and b.) no exceedingly weak contestants can enter and embarrass the committee.

I'm certain that some of you recall a certain someone that is able to break one of these machines by a mere tap.

Yeah, you guys all know who I'm talking about: the great and almighty Vegetable.

Veggie was actually one of my sparring partners when I was training with Gohan. He always beat me, but I hold to the belief that it was only because he was willing to go all out, while I wasn't.

Well, speak of the devil; he had figured he'd enter into the same contest (not knowing I was there as well) just to have a bit of fun. It wasn't the Tenkaichi Budokai, after all, but all of the contestants here certainly weren't just weaklings.

I hoped I wouldn't have to fight Veggie, but I knew I that I would if I wanted to win.

Throughout everyone else's fights, I tried to stay as far away from him as possible so that he wouldn't know that I was competing as well. I quickly realized my stupidity, however, when I figured out that he would probably be watching all of my matches. Even if he weren't, he no-doubt would not fail to hear my name announced in one of the matches.

Still, I tried my best to keep my presence a secret until the last possible moment.

That last possible moment, unfortunately, was not too far away. I was to participate in the seventh match, so I wouldn't have a lot of time to try and contrive a plan to conceal my identity.

I had registered as 'Kei,' so I found no reason for him to recognize simply my name. I thought about I t for a few moments, then realized that Vegeta had probably never seen me with my hair up. All the time I was training I always kept it down because I thought it was cool for my waist-length hair to swirl around me as I fought.

Vegeta would never think about it being me as long as I kept my hair up.

However, I thought about the possible things that would cause me to have to take it down. Whenever I fought an opponent that made me work hard enough to really sweat it out, I would remove the constant use of energy that was my hair-band.

Without that drain on my ki, as well as the concentration that it took away, it was much easier to defeat my quarry. If I hat to fight Vegeta, I would most certainly have to take my hair down.

I finally came up with a solution. I had completely forgotten about the talent I had recently discovered that I had. My mind and body were able to perform various abilities that were virtually impossible for a normal human to achieve. These abilities were very slight, but incredibly effective.

See, I had the talent to warp and alter things.

Let's take a plastic box, for example. I could make the box larger or smaller, I could change its shape into a sphere or a cylinder or any other shape, or I could even change the color of the box. However, I could not change the actual material. This means that it couldn' t be changed from plastic into metal or glass, nor could it become liquid or gaseous. But there was one more thing I was able to do.

I was slightly telepathic; I could thus speak with my mind as well as transport things from one place to another, to a certain degree.

Back to Vegeta…well, he didn't' see me until the seventh match. Fortunately, he didn't recognize me, either.

From early on I had had my hair died blonde so as to stand out; Vegeta had never seen me with black hair, and so obviously thought I was a naturally blonde-headed, blue-eyed beauty. Now, however, I used my power to warp my hair back into its original shade of raven-black, and I quickly grew my bangs out a little longer to cover my blue eyes.

I was to fight a very short man with spiky red hair and purple eyes. He looked up at me, loath to see me, his challenger, and I glared back down at him in strong distaste.

The ref yelled "Fight!" and we jumped at each other, dodging not-so-friendly blows. I finally landed a punch and he swung off-balance. I knocked him in the jaw, a nice uppercut, and he went flying across the fighting arena to skid across the platform and slip over the edge.

I winced in sympathy, then scanned the crowd to see if Vegeta had been watching the match. I saw that he had been, and that he was now on his way out of the stands to prepare for his match in a few minutes.

I watched his fight, but it wasn't very exciting because there wasn't much to see; it didn't last very long. Veggie didn' t quite appreciate the weakness of his opponent and glared at the referee afterward for thinking of pitting him against such an unworthy adversary.

I laughed at the sight of Vegeta stalking moodily out of the arena, then left to get ready for my second match. When I reached the prep room, I saw Vegeta himself sitting on a small bench and looking up at me expectantly.

I ignored him and continued on to a spot where I could sit comfortably while studying my up-coming opponent. Vegeta walked over to my bench and sat down next to me, clearing his throat pointedly.

When I ignored him once again, he raised his hand in annoyance and cuffed me violently on the side of the head. Staggering slightly, I leaped up and glared at him.

"Do you wanna start somethin'?" I asked roughly, attempting to disguise my voice. Vegeta snickered softly then stood up to look down at me disdainfully.

You may now laugh at the picture of someone having to look up at Vegeta. He may not be the shortest man on the planet, but he's not quite up to par with Yao Ming, if you know what I'm saying…

"So waddya want?" I asked after a few long moments of pointless staring. If you can imagine it, he now made this weird giggly sound, and his face spread into a wide grin as he lifted one arm slowly to point at my hair and begin laughing hysterically. It didn't take me long to figure out that he was chuckling because of my hair, so I asked him what was wrong with it.

"Nothing," he managed to squeeze out between bursts of laughter, "except that I can't believe you changed your hair color to the exact same shade as mine!"

I stood looking at the man blankly for a moment as he began rolling on the floor, alternating between trying to stop laughing and pointing furiously at my hair. I admitted to myself that I had been concentrating so much on returning my hair to its original color and disguising myself from Vegeta that I hadn't considered what he would think if he found out…

Scowling, I quickly returned my hair to its sunny shade of blonde, turned on my heel and headed toward the nearest ladies' room to make sure I had gotten it right. I was nearly there when I spotted a head that seemed awfully familiar.

The head, which belonged to a man of medium height, had a receding line of hair that was halfway in between black and gray. I turned to him questioningly and asked, "Excuse me, sir, but may I ask your name?" He seemed not to hear me at first, but then he turned toward me and pointed at himself, saying something I didn't catch.

"Could you repeat that, please?" I asked him, and listened with light amusement as he stumbled through his Japanese as though he hadn't used it in quite a while and apologized, asking me to repeat my own question, as he hadn't quite heard me over the rumble of the crowd.

"I asked for your name," I told him, and realizing suddenly that the man must have considered me rude, I added, "My name is Keija."

"How nice of a name," he told me. "And my name, although it could hardly be of any use to you, is Higurashi Hideyoshi."

It took me a moment to register the name, but then my body went into momentary shock. I stared at him in disbelief and repeated the name; he nodded.

Like any good Japanese student, I had been faithfully studying my English. While I was for some reason better at it than most, I still had a long way to go before I got really good at it. However, I chose this golden opportunity to try out my skills.

In English I said, "How nice to meet you, Higurashi-san. I hope you enjoy your stay in Japan? If you excuse me, what is reason in Japan? Fun? Business?"

He smiled at my slow speech, then returned in Japanese, "It is fine to speak this way; I was from Japan originally. You have not insulted me," he added quickly at my horrified expression, "and your English isn't bad, either; thank you. And it is nice here, Keija-san, as it was when I was here last. I am here currently for business in my job. This is my last day here, though, because I've just learned I have problems at home that I need to attend to."

"Problems? I'm awfully sorry," I told him. I looked at him sadly for a moment, then smiled and said, "I will be fighting soon, Higurashi-san; look for me in a near match!" and ran swiftly into the ladies' room.

Assuring myself that my hair was back to normal, I put it back up with a shot of ki and walked out into the ring to face my next opponent.

However, he did not appear. In fact, after several minutes, the referee showed me back out of the ring and told me he was a no-show; my next fight wouldn't be for a while.

I was kinda pissed about all of that and went to see if I could find my absent opponent. I had gotten one glance of him earlier before Vegeta distracted me; he was pretty tall, with strange, flowing clothes that didn't allow one to guess his build, and spiky black hair with blood-red highlights. He looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, but it was hard to tell from so far away, and he had the lower half of his face covered as well.

My guessing didn't matter much, however, because sooner than I would have liked, my next round in the competition was coming up. I wondered to myself if perhaps Mr. Higurashi thought that I had been pulled out of the tournament or something, since he hadn't seen me fight so far. I wasn't sure that he would catch what had happened.

Not that I had much time to worry, of course, as my next opponent was none other than the infamous Vegetable.

Yao Ming: very, very, very tall; plays in the NBA.

Erm…So, was it good? Do you care that I put in a cliffhanger? Is it even considered a cliffhanger? Well, review then, and tell me, gersh dernit!