Now, anybody who knows the three Tendo Sisters can immediately tell you that they're fairly distinct individuals. The passionate and straightforward Akane, the sly and sarcastic Nabiki, and the motherly and sweet Kasumi. However, a closer observation reveals that they share several traits in common. There is their charisma, all three don't even have to try to become popular. Everyone in town knows Kasumi can mediate any conflict, Nabiki will do her best to advise you for any problem (for a price) and that Akane can be trusted to help out for any "Weird Shit", as the phrase goes. There is their pride. All three are Good at what they do, know they're good at it, and take great pleasure in doing them. And of course, there is their sharp observation skills. Nabiki's is the most obvious. With Akane you don't become a good Martial Artist without being able to read a person. But if you asked most people if Kasumi was observant they'd just look at you in surprise.
After all, Kasumi doesn't put her observational skills into direct use most of the time. She's subtle, a trait her two sisters lack compared to her (Akane's about as subtle as a brick to the head, and even Nabiki isn't that sneaky, she just knows how to take advantage of idiots.) It took some time, since she didn't pick up the whole picture for a while what with her own schoolwork and all, but she began to notice a change in Akane.
Sure, most people wouldn't think there was a drastic change. To most people she was the same cheerful, sweet girl she always was. Akane had always been slightly clumsy even, especially when she got nervous. Yet, that cheerfulness and sweetness hid a temper, a stubbornness, and her slight clumsiness belied her incredible martial arts skill. Yet… there had been little trace of the temper for some time… and Akane seemed to have gotten so clumsy it became almost comical. Not a day passed where she seemed to trip over nothing. This even extended to her times in the dojo that Kasumi had peeked in. Sure, she'd occasionally do a Form that Kasumi was more familiar with, but quite often she seemed to be tripping, stumbling, and muttering to herself.
What had gone so wrong? What had made her little sister seemingly lose such an important part of herself? So Kasumi began to dig, using her social connections (and she had a lot of them) to see if she could piece it together. Finally, she figured it out. The incident at the martial arts club early on in the School Year. With the benefit of hindsight Kasumi could see that this was the catalyst for Akane's change.
However, here we see the problem of making assumptions based off incomplete information. A major element of Dojikko-ken is, of course the fact that it doesn't look much like fighting. Now, Kasumi was not one for direct confrontation. Openly asking Akane about her problems was just something that was not done. After all, being direct might lead to hurt feelings! If Akane didn't want to talk about it, then Kasumi would at best drop subtle hints. (This is, of course, a direct contrast to Akane, who is all about direct confrontation.) So, Kasumi put together the information she knew about people, about her little sister, and missed what she did not know about Martial Arts, especially the esoteric and weird martial arts that exist in this world. So with that, she came to a completely wrong conclusion.
The public and humiliating rejection in front of countless peers, mixed with her own father's neglect of her talents lead her to just… give up on martial arts. She went for trying to learn more traditional womanly things, thus explaining her sudden interest in cooking. Yet it wasn't enough. As she fell out of practice she lost the grace she had, so her clumsiness came out to full bore. And now, too late, she tried to get back what was lost only for it to be unrecoverable!
Poor Akane! Kasumi thought once it finally hit her, If only I could have been there for her!
The irony is that if Kasumi had just made a direct confrontation and asked, Akane would have gladly explained it to her.
It was a lovely day, so Akane was sitting outside doing her homework.
"Akane?"
Akane looked up from math to see Kasumi standing beside her. "Yeah?"
"You do know that I'm always here for you, right? If there's anything you need, I'm ready to help." Kasumi said in her usual sweet tone.
Akane, having no idea what her oldest sister was on about, just gave her big sister a smile. "I know that. If I need help, you'll be the first person I'll ask." She turned back to her homework, a big smile on her face.
And why wouldn't she be? Life was getting better and better for Akane Tendo now. She had at least one serious challenger now, she was getting better and better at the Martial Arts, and she was even improving in skills she had never really focused on before like cooking and sewing! (Many Dojikko-ken techniques use stumbling over yarn and thread to tie up the opponent.) For the first time in years, Akane felt good about her progress in the Martial Arts.
But what about the middle sister, Nabiki?
A few days past Kasumi's wrong epiphany, Nabiki was heading off to the arcade with a boy at Furinkan who Nabiki considered a sort of friend. Namely, Tatewaki Kuno.
Granted, to Nabiki Tendo, "Friend" means "A putz I can take advantage of long term" mixed with some slight platonic affection. Sure, he was kind of an idiot, but an entertaining idiot. And a prime opportunity to practice her snark. At the moment Kuno was heading off to treat her to some arcade games, due to having lost a bet.
Of course, as they walked past a small alley, Nabiki's gaze couldn't helped but be drawn to the sight of four older delinquent types.
You know the type, big, rough, mean looking. Loved to talk a big game and show off how "badass" they are. This is mostly done through picking on people weaker than them. The victim in this case being some pale, scrawny middle school boy Nabiki couldn't place a name to. They were wearing animal masks for some reason Nabiki couldn't fathom.
"I-I don't have any lunch money!" The poor sap protested. Which just got laughter from the bullies.
"Well then you're in debt to us, aren't you Gosunkugi?" One of the bullies laughed. Nabiki noted the name, then promptly forgot it.
"P-please…!"
"Well now, since you owe us, how about we collect?" Another sneered.
Typical scene, really. Not one Nabiki wanted to get involved with. So she would have normally kept on walking but something popped up that made her stop.
"Excuse me!" It was Akane. Nabiki watched as her little sister ran like a woman possessed, she seemed to be in a hurry for something. Didn't surprise Nabiki, Akane was always running late recently. "Excuse me I woooaah!" And just like normal when she was running late, Akane tripped. Nabiki could swear that Akane had become more clumsy over the past year. Upon tripping, Akane's bookbag flew out of her hands.
But through sheer unfortunate luck, the bag slammed into the back of the head of one of the bullies. The bag hit him so hard he was smashed face first into the ground.
"Sorry!" Akane immediately ran over to the fox masked delinquent and bent down to help him up.
"Grrggaah you stupid bitch!" He growed pushing himself and reaching out to grab her. Except that, somehow, Akane managed to stumble at the last moment. Arms flailing in panic, the punk's attempted grab was caught in said flailing. This somehow combined with his forward momentum to fling him into the alleyway wall, where he decided that nap time was more fun.
"Oops!" Akane said.
"Boss!" The other three goons said in unison, before charging at Akane.
"Ah! My bag." Akane bent over and picked up the bookbag that had previously hit the leader as they rushed her. "Gotta be careful with my homework." She said, standing up straight just as the first delinquent in line reached her. The back of her head hit him in the chin, this knocked him flat on his rear. Just in time for the two remaining idiots to collide with him and get themselves all tangled up.
"Sorry!" Akane bowed, "I'm just so clumsy!"
The delinquents groaned, untangled themselves, and picked up their still napping boss. "We'll remember this!"
Meanwhile, Nabiki was trying her best not to laugh. Only her little sister could literally stumble into beating a bunch of punks up. "Man that was rich, don't you think Kuno-baby…?" Nabiki's smile faded once she noticed Kuno's expression.
His eyes were wide, and he was staring right at Akane, his mouth hanging open.
Akane turned to the scrawny boy. "Are you allright?"
"I-I-I w-w-will y-y-y-you go on a d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-" The boy stuttered, unable to complete his sentence
"Oh! Nabiki!" Forgetting all about the boy she had unwittingly saved, Akane noticed her older sister. "Hi, what's up?" She said, cheerfully approaching her.
"Hey Akane." Nabiki waved, smirking at Kuno's sudden gobsmacked expression. "Going to the arcade with this guy. Kuno-Baby, meet Akane, Akane meet Tatewaki Kuno."
A grin formed on Akane's face, and she adopted the universal testing tone all little sisters seem to instinctively know. "Ohhh are you on a date?"
"No." Nabiki replied flatly and with an air of finality.
"Aww… well, see you!" Akane skipped away without a care in the world.
Nabiki watched Akane vanish into the distance, before turning back to Kuno. He was staring at the corner Akane had turned, as if she would reappear if he looked hard enough. "Kuno-baby? Are you-"
"Who is she!?" Kuno grabbed Nabiki's shoulders, shouting. "Tell me, Nabiki Tendo, who was that Valkyrie? That Goddess of War? That warrior maiden without peer!?"
"Uh… what?" It wasn't often Nabiki was confused, Kuno erupting out of nowhere like this was one of those times. She knew he was a flirt and decently popular with girls, but this was the first time she had ever seen him act like this.
"Do you not have eyes, woman? Did you not see? The skillful way she dispatched those ruffians. Those brilliant tactics, that unstoppable martial form!"
"Uh… what?" Nabiki asked. "Kuno-baby, she klutzed out and the idiots beat themselves up."
"Bah. You truly could not see? Every move she made was calculated, cunning, a a masterful attack!"
Nabiki wondered what the hell Kuno was talking about. She didn't know any martial arts beyond the basic self defence lessons her dad had taught her, but she knew what it looked like at least.
"You know her Nabiki Tendo, you must tell me everything you know about her!"
At hearing that, a grin formed on Nabiki's face. She may not get why Kuno seemed so interested, but she knew an opportunity when she saw one. "Tell you what, Kuno-baby, get me some ice cream, then we can talk."
Three girls were on their way home from school. One was skipping, happy, carefree, while two others stalked closely behind her with a more melancholy air.
Then out of nowhere - more specifically a tree branch - a boy wearing running gear leaped out while yelling "Akane Tendo! Go out with me!" at the top of his lungs.
"Whoopsie doopsie, I made an oopsie!"
That was said by the girl in the lead, whom the boy was specifically diving towards, when she tripped over seemingly nothing at all. Her foot went up into the air, causing her shoe to fly off upwards, and her rucksack to swing in a similar direction. The shoe caught the boy under the chin, making him an enemy of his own momentum, and making him land on his back next to and behind his target.
"Akane..." one of the other girls sighed.
"No, ignore him!" said one of ten other boys to appear, all in a variety of sporting equipment, charging en masse towards her. "Date me!" they all cried in unison.
"Akane!" the other girl rubbed her forehead.
Suddenly she snapped back up to standing straight. "Did someone say my name?" she coyly asked - and her bag finished its arc, travelling down in time to strike the first boy as he was sitting back up, and sending him flying off towards the other ten for the perfect, accidental, clumsy and cute strike. Eleven boys down in two simple moves.
Oh, yeah. She was really into this now. Her martial arts skills were improving by leaps and bounds. She had plenty of sparring partners to practise on. And it was fun! Discovering this weird and esoteric martial art was the best thing to happen to Akane in years!
"Akane, are you feeling alright?" Yuka asked all of a sudden.
She blinked at the unexpected question from her friend and turned around, putting on her best smile. "Of course I am," she said, cutely rapping the top of her head with her fist and sticking out her tongue. "I caught myself before I tripped! Not even a scratch."
"That's not what we mean," Sayuri sighed. "You've taken being turned down for the martial arts club pretty hard, and, well..."
"You've not been behaving like yourself recently," Yuka reluctantly finished. "All clumsy and oblivious! It's not like you at all!"
"When Kuno made that announcement this morning, we expected you to blow your top!" Sayuri said, stepping forward to place her hand gently on Akane's shoulder. "Now all the boys in school are going to try to beat you up in order to date you! That doesn't make you mad?"
"Oh, he was being a little stupid is -"
"You smiled! You want things like this to keep on happening? You won't be this lucky every day! One of them is going to get a lucky hit in, and then - And then something terrible will happen!"
"Do you want to talk about it? We're here for you, so just let it off your chest."
A great weight of guilt settled upon Akane's heart. She had been so caught up in mastering this new form of martial arts that - that her friends had gotten the completely wrong idea. Look at them. Yuka. Sayuri. Her emotional support. A pair of girls that could put up with the weird things that her family sometimes had to deal with, but couldn't bear the thought that something was wrong with their friend.
That guilt was more effective than any punch of kick. Akane stepped forward, took her friends by the hand and guided them off towards her house. "Come with me," she said, a touch bleary eyed. "There's something I want to show you."
Well, that didn't go as planned. Instead of putting some snotty, pseudo-clumsy, uncute fool in her place, Mariko was the one made to look like the fool. Now here she was, sitting in front of her mirror while a comically oversized ice pack was strapped to the top of her head. So embarrassing! So humiliating!
"Akane Tendo," she growled, absently reaching out to twirl a pen between her fingers with perfect precision. "How dare you B-E-A-T me twice now? How dare you pretend like it was no big thing, while smiling innocently and, like, carefree and stuff? Next time we meet, you're going D-O-W-N! Mariko, Mariko, you're the chick, Akane's butt will soon be kicked!"
The cheerleader rose, wobbling, to her feet and threw open her bright pink wardrobe. One might expect it to contain a series of adorable girl clothes, floral dresses, bright colours and so forth. Instead, what swung down was something a little bit... Different.
To understand what it was first required a basic and core understanding of what exactly martial arts cheerleading was, and what made it such a deadly dangerous thing to try to fight under normal conditions. To put it simply: Martial arts cheerleading was the fighting style designed to push the one you were cheering on to victory at any cost. It could be a soccer team, a boxer, a gymnast, a racer or any manner of sport you can think of. All that mattered was that your cheered one won, and all others fell before them.
This requires something rather unique, when you really step back to think about it. In order to be a truly effective martial arts cheerleader, it is absolutely necessary to understand the rules, tactics, psychology and - well, everything about every sport.
Every. Single. Sport. In the world. Consider that. Consider the dedication to the craft this requires. Consider the mentality, the obsession and the drive to win that a true master of this, perhaps the most difficult to learn martial arts ever developed has to, has to have.
Which is why Mariko's pretty, pink, stereotypically girly wardrobe was stuffed to the brim with sporting equipment. It was as if someone had found a sports-obsessed boy's room and then condensed it into the corner of a room belonging to the girliest girl to rock a cheerleader uniform. The contrast is, shall we say, a striking one.
"But I've been, like, too careless and stuff," Mariko said. She stuck a stick of gum in her mouth and started chewing... And just like that her body language transformed instantly. Gone, the feminine cheerleader. Enter, the very image of a tomboy complete with a baseball being tossed between her hands. "Someone oughta teach her a thing or two 'bout who the cutest chick is 'round these parts. 'Cept how do I go about doing that when she's pretending to be so damned cute and innocent?"
A thorny question indeed, and bouncing this ball between her hands and pacing her room while chewing gum always helped her think this sort of thing through. Even though she didn't much care for the answer. It seemed to her that her problem was, she'd done the opposite of what a martial arts cheerleader ought to do:
She'd run right at her opponent without knowing the rules of the game.
"In that case..." Mariko said, stopping to blow a bubble, put down her ball and retrieve her large pompoms from beside her bed. Each one of them was bigger than her head, which suited her purposes just fine and well.
"Before our martial arts cheerleading contest next week, Akane Tendo! I'll just have to learn your rules so they can be broken! I'll just have to arrange for a little friendly competition... And I know exactly what school will do the job!" Mariko broke out into a pseudo-cheerleading chant, waving her pompoms around to and fro, watching herself in the mirror to pump herself up. "D is for Defeat! I is for Isn't! E is for Enough!"