Our Place in the Food Chain: Part XXVIII
Ron was finding himself in a position he did not expect to be in. He came to Japan figuring he would spend almost the entire time in intensive training, with the odd side adventure thrown in as things went for him.
Instead he was in much the same boat he had been when the school year started and Zita reappeared. He came in completely mis-reading the Yori situation, figuring since these people seemed to know so much about him it would be common knowledge he was in a committed relationship with Kim. At least Zita had apparently gotten the message and had backed off, if she ever even wanted to restart her relationship before she learned about Kim. She saw the relationship as unassailable.
It was now starting to dawn on him that perhaps certain types of people would see his being in that kind of situation as a challenge.
He just didn't know how to deal with that sort of thing. In the past every single girl who liked him did so because they saw through his plain exterior and goofy, random behavior but by the same token none of them had ever pursued him. Even with Kim, it was his words that had finally sparked the relationship and he knew quite well that if he didn't have the courage to speak them when he did they may never have taken that road. In the end, though, the rest left him alone because he either was afraid to make the first move or just simply oblivious to their interest.
After that morning Ron was not sent to run the Dragon Course in the morning with the rest, even though he did want his crack at Hirotaka. Sensei had other things in mind. He started teaching him meditation through movement, seeking balance between body and soul while gathering the mystical energy that surrounds you. What that had to do with learning to harness his powers was beyond him. He simply had to put his trust in his teacher. It was all part of a whole, though it did bother him that it had now not been mentioned since he made his breakthrough on the run.
To him it was just like Kim teaching him Tai Chi. In fact, besides some of the more specialized fighting techniques, they weren't showing him much more than Kim had been teaching him, making him wonder what exactly was up with all this mumbo-jumbo about Ninjitsu. Was it all smoke and mirrors and being dressed completely in black? Of course there was Sensei's mysticism, but he didn't see him passing that on to any of his students, not even Yori or Hirotaka who were now more instructors than actual students.
He thought about asking Sensei about Yori, but decided in the end that such matters were beneath him, even though the situation was bothering him and threatened to undermine his center.
Things could have been worse. Their chance meeting at the bath house was embarrassing at the moment, at least for Ron. At least in hindsight it wasn't so bad. They had no shame about their bodies and there literally was nothing that could be inferred from them sharing the water. The tub was very large, almost fifteen feet across, so they could both enjoy soaking without even being close to one another.
Ron had to make a quick decision. He either had to flee and deal with the lingering residue of his filth and the soap left behind by the scrubbing or he would have to join her in the tub. Making things worse was the fact he had been thinking so much about Kim and fantasizing about sharing this sort of experience, coupled with the fact he was now alone in a fairly dark room with a young woman who was quite obviously naked under the water, his body did things his mind had no conscious control over. Not wanting to give her the wrong impression he slipped quickly into the water which was just barely below scalding level.
Fortunately for him it had much the same effect as a nice cold shower.
"Uh, yeah, Yori. Hi." He said, rubbing the back of his neck after dunking his head to rinse the last of the soap out of it.
She smiled brightly at him, not the least bothered by his proximity.
"I am so pleased with the progress you have shown, Stoppable-san. Your skills you have mastered after such a short time among us does us great honor."
"Yori, let's be honest. You've been here since you were a little girl and I, well, most of my 'career' I've been nothing more than the distraction."
"You are too modest, Stoppable-san. Even when it was your job to be the 'distraction' did it not serve its purpose for the greater good?" She said sweetly, closing her eyes and leaning her head back again.
"Yeah, that's what Kim said." He admitted.
Yori opened her eyes and looked straight at him. "Possible-san does not respect you properly. You are a warrior-hero. What's more, she is a hero simply because it is her nature. You are even more a hero because it is not your nature."
He was a little miffed at her not-quite-so-veiled insult directed at Kim. "Kim does too respect me. She respected me enough to bring me along when I had no business being there."
"Did she respect you when you went along with me to rescue Sensei?"
"That was different." He answered, a little too defensively.
"Different how? You chose to do something and she quickly followed because she believed you would not be able to handle it."
"Well." He said, glowering at her, slowly going from miffed to angry. "She was right. DNAmy's giant mon…apes…gorillas would have kicked our biscuits if she wasn't there. We found Monkey Fist's hideout without her help, and we would have been captured anyway whether she was there or not."
"I did not wish to offend, Stoppable-san. I am sorry." She bowed her head slightly toward him. "It is correct for me to insult the one you love."
"Got that right." He said, the vapors rising from the water weren't the only source of steam.
"Perhaps I should go. While this," She gestured at the bath with her hand, "means nothing, from your perspective you are sharing a room alone with a woman while we are unclothed. I should have realized how uncomfortable this makes you feel. I have soaked long enough, I should go."
"Yori, don't leave on my account. I'm the one uncomfortable, but that's just because I was thinking about doing this with Kim, that's all."
"No, I must go before I look, as you say, like a prune."
Ron quickly averted his eyes as she started to rise from the water. Even so, he caught a glimpse of her and had to admit she had an absolutely gorgeous body.
Part of him wondered what was so wrong with having a beautiful young woman with a gorgeous body interested in him.
The answer was easy enough. He had a beautiful young woman with a gorgeous body who he was in love with and was in love with him.
He kept going through the motions of the 'dance' (as he thought of it) Sensei was guiding him through. He was sure the master knew that his mind was not completely on his task, but he felt that if it became a problem, he would certainly correct him on it.
He had to do something about the problem, and do it quickly, not only to be fair to Yori and true to his love for Kim, but because in just over a week Bonnie Rockwaller would be here and boy wouldn't she love to go back home and tell Kim about his conquests in the land of Sumo Wrestling and Anime.
A katana was a single edged sword, but this situation was like the great blades of legend, with two cutting edges along their great, straight blades. On one hand there was Kim. He was, in his heart, perfectly faithful to her. He loved her with his whole heart, yet, she was quite capable of great fits of anger when something truly upset her. Like when she kicked Shego into that tower, something that would have killed a normal woman instantly. Hell Hath No Fury, and all that sort of stuff.
Then again, hell probably has nothing on a fully trained ninja woman scorned. He had to tread lightly and let her down easily, convincing her that it had nothing at all to do with her and everything to do with the way he felt about Kim.
He essentially had to do something that almost nobody had ever been able to do. He had to find a way to tell her 'let's just be friends' without it coming out like 'let's just be friends.'
He had some time on his side, about eight days. He also had the benefit of her being naturally shy, to the point she would never make the first move.
Or at least he hoped so. There had been moments in the tub before she had made him angry his male mind was filling with unwanted images of the nubile young ninja gliding across the water to merge her body with his, something that would be far, far worse than a stolen kiss from a friend who had no other intentions beyond that.
There was something to be said for the nice, private shower stall in his bathroom at home. There might have been certain fantasies surrounding that too, but that wouldn't be by accident and/or misunderstanding.
Sensei suddenly spun on his heel and slammed an open palm into Ron's midsection. The force of the blow sent him flying halfway across the room. Reflexes he didn't even know he had took over, allowing him to land in a roll, coming up on his feet in a fighting stance.
"Begin again." He said, resuming the stance he had been in.
Ron slowly moved back into this original position and tried to emulate the graceful moves he was being shown, forcing his mind to concentrate on just that, trying to see how his teacher's body moved in his thick flowing robe. For a moment he reflected that in a fight, his relatively tight turtleneck might give his opponent a clue as to what he was doing, at least lately since he was starting to fill it out.
Kim, on the other hand, always wore her cropped turtleneck tight, showing off the shape of her small but perfectly formed…
Another blow came seemingly out of nowhere. A couple gears clicked into place in his head. Sensei was indeed correcting him when his mind drifted elsewhere. He had never witnessed the teacher correcting a student this way, but he suspected he never had a student to teach this way before.
There was also the strange thought that the world's foremost expert on Tai Xing Pek Kwar might have utterly no idea what he was doing in trying to foster it in one of only three beings on the planet to possess the power. Really how could he? The secrets had been hidden away by the very people who developed it in ancient China, the power trapped within the four statues until Monkey Fist unearthed them.
Ron realized he wasn't so much being trained as he was a lab rat. Sensei wanted to learn what he was capable of while looking for that mysterious way to pass the power on to others. In his mind's eye a slight smile spread over his face. He was careful to keep his real face passive and serene.
He let his mind go back to Kim, thinking of her in that tiny bikini she wore last summer, the one that left her with a serious sunburn and interesting tan lines he was glad her father would never see. He merged that image with what he remembered from the time his mind inhabited her body. That was something he almost never let come to the surface, but he was wanting to be a little bad so he let it out. There was going to be a time when thinking of Kim wouldn't be bad, but very, very good.
Then for extra measure he added Yori into that vision, right along with Kim. By then he couldn't keep the smile off his face.
As if out of nowhere a third blow came, only this time he was not sent sailing across the room. His arm flashed down in a classic block, deflecting the blow.
His teacher stood there, his tiny eyes open as far as they could in utter shock. "How did you do that?"
"I've got to be honest with you, Sensei, all I did was deliberately think of the things I was when you hit me before, so I was ready for it."
"Still, having the knowledge that a blow is coming and having the speed and reflexes to defend against it are two different things. In three blows I used a different technique each time, yet you used exactly the right block to stop my last blow. I ask you again, how did you do that?"
"I…I don't know. All I was thinking was getting my arm down fast enough to block. I wasn't thinking about technique."
Sensei nodded. "We have made good progress today."
"Sensei," Ron asked cautiously. "I get the impression you don't know how to train me, at least to use my mystical monkey power. Everything seems so…random."
The old master cocked his head at the teenager. "Come with me."
Ron followed him out into a rock garden. They walked out onto a small wooden bridge so they may not disturb the carefully raked patterns of the gravel.
The old man bent down and picked up a single pebble, handing it to Ron. "What pattern is this stone in?"
"I don't get it? It's not in a pattern, it's just one little white rock." He answered, scratching the back of his head with his free hand.
"Indeed." He took the stone back and carefully placed it back where it had been before. "Now what pattern is it in?"
"Uh, kinds of a swirly thing."
Sensei nodded. "Do you see what it is I am trying to show you?"
"I think. These gardens are supposed to be some kind of harmony between man and nature sort of thing, right?"
"No, Stoppable-san. The stone by itself can be only one pattern, a pattern of one thing, but here with all its brothers it becomes part of the greater whole. It is a small part, yes, but it is indeed a part and the whole is different and incomplete without it. In school, do they not teach you language as well as math?"
"Sure, though I don't see what they have to do with each other."
"Ah, but they do. Without the skills of language, how would they teach you the skills of math, which a language itself."
"Huh? Oh, I get it. They're teaching me everything because I can use all of it together."
"Correct."
"But we've done so little with my power, we don't seem to be getting anywhere."
"Oh? So, you're deliberately summoning the power is not 'anywhere?' Your ability to perfectly block a blow you had no way to correctly anticipate? Is this not progress? Tell me, how long have you been here now?"
"Almost two weeks."
"If I thought we could do what we must in two weeks, would I have brought you here for an entire month?"
"I guess not." Ron admitted. "Hey, what is the deal with having Bonnie come here anyway?"
Sensei looked at him like he had no idea what he was talking about.
"You know, Bonnie Rockwaller. When they announced the students participating in the exchange program, they said she was going to come here during the last week."
"Yes, Rockwaller-san is coming here. Have you considered that her selection might not have anything to do with you?"
"Uh, no, but that's an awfully big coincidence and you've had a lot to say about that sort of thing." Ron said, grinning a little as if he caught his master in a small trap.
"Yes, that is true, but the my reasons for inviting her are my own." He said, turning away from his student to return to the campus. "That will be all for today. It is time for you to resume your school studies. Barkin-san has emailed your latest assignments and he expects them on time."
"Wait a minute, you've got computers here? I thought this place didn't even have electricity."
"We do not have such modern conveniences here, but we do have runners going back and forth to the nearby villages on a regular basis. Some of our graduates maintain homes there and they forward such things to us. Now, I do believe you need to employ your language skills and study the applications of the quadratic equation."
A couple hours later darkness was claiming the mountains of the region and he closed his textbook, rubbing his eyes. Four in the morning seemed like such an early hour, but the nights were getting long and most of them did not stay up long past sundown unless they were studying the use of night in their arts. He found himself quite ready for a good night's sleep before the exercises resumed the next day.
"Stoppable-san?" Yori's voice came from outside.
"Come in." He said, putting his trigonometry book back into his pack.
"Yori slid the screen aside and bowed to him slightly before entering. It was a little surprising to see her wearing a light sleeping kimono. It seemed he had only ever seen her in her training garb, her black ninja suit or the short, sexy Japanese school girl outfit she had been wearing when he first met her.
A very odd though occurred to him, as if out of nowhere. When he had been at Kim's uncle's ranch the summer before last he noticed a Japanese girl in one of her cousin's pictures (well, he thought it was him at first, it was Rufus who pointed out what it really was.) For some reason he was now certain that had been Yori, right there when they had stopped Duff Killagin in Tokyo.
He shook his head to clear that image. He must be mistaken. It had been a while since he had seen that picture.
"Stoppable-san. Ron-san." She amended, smiling shyly at him. "Would you honor me by accompanying me into the village tomorrow morning?"
"Uh, sure, as long as it's cool with Sensei. He might have other plans you know."
"I have already asked him for your assistance. It would also be a good chance for you to perhaps call home. I will take you to lunch. It will be, as you say, my treat."
"Okay, sure. Uh, I'm kind of sleepy, is it okay I see you in the morning?"
"Of course, Ron-san." She got up from her seat, leaning over toward him. He had a bad moment when he thought he'd have to tell her he couldn't promise any secrets, but she only lightly kissed him on the cheek as she had done when she took his leave of him the last time.
"Uh, are we going to borrow Hirotaka's motorcycle or something? I think the nearest village is some ten miles away."
"No, Ron-san. It will of course be our honor to walk."
The way she smiled as she closed the shoji made him think somebody else was developing an American-style sense of humor.
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