Kazuma was frozen in place, considering his options. Here, he had two of his friends and his teacher's insanely hot daughter. On one hand, he kind of wanted to stall so he could ogle her. On the other hand, he had much more to learn from his master in perversion.
Waving his hand, he tried to dismiss Renka, looking completely unimpressed. "You have to take that up with your old man. He could leave whenever he wants."
Renka fumed, stomping a foot before pointing at Kazuma angrily, again. "And he won't leave so long as he has such a 'promising' student to teach! I don't even get it." She paused, evaluating him for the first time. "You don't even look like you could take on a fresh student, let alone have real potential."
Kazuma shrugged, uncaring of her opinion. "Once again, take that up with your dad. He has his own reasons."
Renka scowled before she began grinning. "Well, in that case, I guess I'll just have to defeat you to show him you aren't worth his time! Then he'll surely come back home."
Miu, sensing danger, finally chimed in. "Um, perhaps we don't do that? Kazuma has only been training for a bit over a week after all and it sounds like you've been training since you were a child." Njiima, the good friend he was, had decided to be 'neutral' during this discussion, having instead started to record the shit-show that was brewing.
Renka took up a loose stance, motioning for Kazuma to come at her. "Please, if he's so special he should be fine. And if he isn't? Well, I won't kill him, at least."
"Don't I get a say in this?" Kazuma groaned, not looking forward to the beatdown he was likely to receive.
"Yes! You can take your beating, or surrender now while telling my father you quit" Renka offered, looking overly confident.
Kazuma pretended to think, stroking his chin. "A compelling choice. What do you think, Ma-Sensei?" He asked, looking behind Renka.
The blue-haired beauty spun around, panicking at the thought of her father finding her doing this. "Daddy! I didn't do-" she realized nobody was there and that she'd been tricked. "Haha, you made me-" Turning back around, she only found Miu and Nijiima, the latter of which was laughing like a madman. "Where did he go!"
Miu and Nijiima pointed down the alley next to them, Miu out of habit and Nijiima out of spite.
Dashing down the alley, she saw his backpack just as he turned the corner onto the street. Following behind him, she almost tripped over a broom that was blocking the pathway. Up ahead, she could see him running, looking over his shoulder occasionally. When he spotted her, he flipped her the bird with both hands before vaulting over a stopped car to cross the road. As she got to the intersection, the crosswalk turned red, traffic stopping her pursuit dead for a second. She could see him enter what looked like a work site, and she abandoned caution, dodging between the cars.
Once on the construction site, she looked around for any sign of him, determined to make him pay for making her look like such a fool. "Get back here, you honorless cur!"
Unsurprisingly, he didn't respond and give away his position.
The sound of a bucket crashing onto concrete and the muffled curse of Kazuma was enough for her to continue the chase, determined to put this scum in his place. Jumping over workers, machinery, and materials, she caught sight of Kazuma just as he left the other end of the site. Kazuma turned just in time to see Renka barreling down on him and panicked. Grabbing the support of the scaffold he was running under, he pulled out two support pins on his way. Renka was forced to a halt as the three stories worth of metal and wood crashed down ahead of her.
A large, burly man came up to her, looking beyond furious. "What the hell are you doing on our site and why did you break that?!"
Renka swore vengeance on that loathsome bastard at that exact moment.
Renka, frustrated and exhausted after having to deal with the mess Kazuma had left her, finally managed to trudge to Ryouzanpaku. It wasn't her plan to confront her father or Kazuma on 'home turf' but his evasive trickery had forced her hand. Thankfully, once inside the duo wasn't hard to find. They had been training right near the entrance, knowing she'd eventually show up.
Kazuma had a bucket in each hand, full of water held out at arms' length, trying to hold them up. Ma noticed Renka, turning to her with a smile, "Ah, daughter of mine. I see you finally found your way here. How was your flight?"
Renka had been prepared to be torn into for completely ignoring her father's orders. So much so, that when she was met with him being so down right pleasant, she was dumbstruck. "Uh, it was good?"
"Excellent, excellent. Would you mind retrieving Appachai for me? He is the large tan man in that building over there. I'll let him continue Kazuma's conditioning for a little while and we can catch up."
Ma had put his hands inside his sleeves, turning back to Kazuma, beaming with what Renka thought was pride. Not just at his student. Instead, it seemed to be a general smugness at how well his plan had worked. It slowly dawned on her that telling Kazuma to quit would likely only make him more determined to succeed.
After all, it's what she would do.
Renka blinked slowly, confused but uncertain how to retaliate. She walked away, leaving the men to their own devices.
Ma, seeing she was gone turned to Kazuma, looking serious. "While she's gone, I am going to warn you of several things. Firstly, she is just like her mother, fierce, strong, and more than willing to put you in your place. Secondly, what I don't know about, I won't hurt you for. Thirdly, she respects strength. The better of a martial artist you become, the better your odds become. Finally, good luck."
With no further explanation, he turned back to the approaching giant and his daughter. "Ah, excellent. Appachai, could you run Kazuma through some punching drills? I know you've been wanting to teach for a while and having a decent collection of hard strikes would do him well."
Appachai almost looked like he was going to cry as he pointed at himself. "You are trusting Appachai to be teaching your disciple?"
Ma nodded, patting his friend's arm as he walked by, grabbing Renka with his other hand. "You're a great martial artist, Appachai, and I know you'll be a great teacher."
"Appa!"The big man teared up as he pulled bandage wraps from his pockets to set Kazuma up.
During this whole exchange, Kazuma was more lost than anything else. He was fairly certain his teacher was up to something. Had he just set Kazuma up with his own daughter? Ma knew what kind of guy Kazuma was, surely he was misunderstanding, right?
"Okay Kazuma, we going to be learning how to punch good today, okay? See this dummy?" Appachai motioned towards one of the plethora of training dummies strewn around the dojo. "You are not punching where you are aiming, instead, you are punching-" Appachai pulled back his fist before letting it fly forward, almost faster than Kazuma could track, "Through it!" And indeed, the muay thai master's hand didn't stop at the wood, instead blowing a hole through the entire dummy. "Now you try!" He instructed, pulling Kazuma in front of an unscathed dummy.
Kazuma made a fist, putting the basics he'd been taught into practice. Winding up to punch, he's grabbed by Appachai.
"No, stand like this. Then twist like this" the large man explained, showing him the basics of throwing a muay thai punch, which was wildly different than the few strikes he'd learned from Ma so far. When he was eventually allowed to throw a punch, his reward was a hurt hand.
Once Ma and Renka were inside, Ma started preparing tea for the two of them, taking a seat at the small table in his room. "So, how's everyone back home?" He asked, still seemingly glad she was here.
Renka took the seat opposite him, nervous as if this were all a great trap. "You… you're not mad I came to Japan?"
"Mad? How could I be! I basically told you to come here!" He answered, leaning on the table.
"But your letter-" she mentally went over it in her head again, considering exactly how specific he'd spoken to her before she finally got it. "You tricked me!"
"Well, what kind of father would I be if I couldn't do that much? So, don't worry about being punished, I just wanted my daughter to come spend some time over here with me" he assured her, patting her hands as she tried to process just well he'd played her.
"So, all of that was a trap? Are you even really teaching that scum Kazuma? Coward wouldn't even fight me when I challenged him." It was clear she was sulking, sore about being made a fool of and left to deal with the mess he'd made.
Ma laughed, getting up as the pot started to whistle. "Of course! The boy might not have the raw potential of a lot of my students, but he reminds me of myself when I was your age."
Renka gave her father a dead-eyed stare at that, shivering. "I think I should be even more worried now, based on the stories Mom has told me."
"And yet she married me. Now, don't be so harsh. He only started training this last month and already he was able to escape you. Sure, it isn't traditional martial arts, but isn't the easiest way to not lose a fight to not get into one?" He asked, letting her stew on the thought.
Eventually she huffed, crossing her arms. "That doesn't mean I have to like it."
"Yes, yes, you were tricked once and you'll be tricked again. So, are you going to stay a while? I'd love it if you did. I feel it would do you some good to get away from home for a while and I could use the help training him." Ma waited, setting their cups up for the tea to seep, knowing that she was going to explode in 3, 2, 1-
"Help train him?! Why would I help train a piece of trash like him?!" She roared, standing up and slamming her hands on the table.
"Why, so you can make sure I'm doing it right, of course. After all, if you see he's responding to the training, you'd better be able to make a decision on if my time is being wasted, right?" He challenged her, knowing he had her now. The promise of being able to put the smackdown on Kazuma, either making him "good enough" or quit, was just too good to pass up.
Renka never got to give an answer before the crashing of wood, the pained screams of Kazuma, and the voice of a terrified Appachai interrupting them. "KAZUMA, NO DIE ON APPACHAI!"
Kazuma had been trying to get his punching to an acceptable level. Appachai, being a true master of the art, would accept nothing less. And if he was going to seduce the new hottie, he at least had to not punch like a girl. Er, a girl that wasn't Miu or Renka. After a few dozen poor punches, Appachai stopped Kazuma. "No, punch like this!"
His fist felt like it sucked the air out of Kazuma's lungs before it connected with the solid, wooden dummy, splintering it into shards of shrapnel. "See! Like that!"
Appachai turned around to check on Kazuma, only to panic at the piece of wood sticking out of his student's head. "KAZUMA, NO DIE ON APPACHAI!"
Ma, Renka, Miu, Hayato, Shigure, and even Sakeki came rushing out, distressed and worried by that combination of words.
"Appachai! Why did you kill him?" Miu cried, sliding next to the now frothing at the mouth Kazuma.
"Me didn't mean to! Piece of the dummy hit him!"
"Where is Akisame?" Ma asked, panic setting in.
"I believe he went to a sculpting convention of some sort," Hayato answered, not seeming at all panicked.
"How are you so calm?" Miu asked her grandfather, nearly crying.
Hayato, realizing he'd let his own dislike of the boy bleed out, coughs, feigning worry. "Oh, this is terrible, I was just trying to think of where Akisame was."
Kazuma wasn't aware of any of this though, instead visiting a place he'd become mildly familiar with since he'd started training. A black, lightless but lit room with a chair for him to sit on and a throne. Normally, a blue haired girl was there, but today she'd seemingly been replaced with a silver haired beauty.
"Huh, where is the blue haired chick? Usually she's the one in this weird dream," Kazuma asked himself, but caught the attention of the goddess on the throne.
Eris had been promoted to take over incoming souls from Japan and hadn't had too many issues. Then, anomaly Satou showed up, making her brain effectively crash. By the time he was finished asking where Aqua was (she assumed) she had gotten just enough brain power back to talk. "Ahem, hello Satou Kazuma. It appears you've died again. While this may be-"
"Yeah, yeah, I died again. And before I know it I'll be waking up with Akisame reviving me like every other time," he lipped back, having gotten tired of this after the third visit.
"So somebody has been reviving you!? That makes our problem much easier. Your inability to stay dead has-" She stopped mid-sentence as the boy started to fade, a cocky smile on his face.
"Welp, looks like my ride's here. Until next time!" He said as he disappeared, his voice reverberating around the room in the process.
Aqua had been tracking down Satou Kazuma using a holy device she'd proccured before leaving the holy realm. It could keep track of time, dates, access the internet, show maps, and even be used to contact people! In reality, it was a slightly magical cell phone with a nanny app for problematic mortals.
Her Kazu-tracker App was leading her towards the center of the city, not too far off from where Aqua had been spat out into the mortal world. The bigger issue was that she didn't have a single idea of how to read a map.
Aqua had been searching for nearly an hour, sometimes actively going away from the beacon, before she felt a twinge of death. Satou had died, again. Dashing at full speed, focusing on his dwindling life force. "Where the hell is that filthy NEET!"
She shouted at nobody in particular, ignoring traffic laws and common sense, leaving a wake of destruction behind her as she ran. Cars honked, babies cried, old men yelled, and a crowd of elementary students clapped and cheered after Aqua stopped to do a quick party trick.
Aqua skidded to a halt before two massive wooden doors. She didn't stop for long before barreling right through them, knocking the one open enough for her to pass through. Looking around frantically, she saw the gathered group of martial artists and her target, on the ground. "There you are!" She ran over to them, falling down to her knees and beginning to shake Kazuma's lifeless body. "How do you keep coming back to life? Tell me you pathetic loser and maybe I'll make sure to spare you from damnation!"
The masters, Renka, and Miu could only watch in shocked awe as this random woman was throttling their dying student/enemy/friend. Well, all of them except Ma, who had slipped behind Aqua and was more than glad to find out she didn't wear any panties.
"Not talking, eh? Going to try and just sleep through your interrogation, huh?! None of that, loser! Divine Heal!" She shouted, punching his cheek with a glowing fist.
Kazuma's eyes shot open, the previously dying teen coughing as he tried to get his bearings before noticing the blue haired woman shaking him. "Huh, I thought you were just that crazy chick from my dreams."
Aqua growled before cocking back a fist and punching him in the head again. Once more, darkness was all Kazuma knew.