Time seemed to slow as Roni and Kanjou exchanged looks. They were both thinking the same thing and had felt the incredible explosion of ki she had used against her opponent.
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t jump to conclusions, Roni.” The brunet looked back at where the female ronin was standing over her fallen foe with confidence. He noted that her chest was heaving as though she had run a marathon and a frown crossed his face.
Tiger received a bag from the man in black and was heading toward the bar. The swarm of drunks gave her a wide berth, and no one attempted to congratulate her. She sat down at the far end of the bar, alone. The bartender was immediately with her, setting a glass in front of her. The two talked for a few minutes, but Roni and Kanjou couldn’t hear their conversation over the music that had begun again. She opened the bag she had received and handed half of the contents over to Tony, which was far more than could have been necessary to pay for her drink. The bartender walked away to help another customer, and The Tiger began to sip at her drink.
Roni jumped enthusiastically off her stool. “She’s got to be the one, Kanjou! We haven’t seen anyone with as much power as her, and we’ve been all over Hinomoto the past few days! If we can convince her to join the Aka Ryuu, then we can win for sure!” Roni headed off in the direction of The Tiger, and Kanjou had to leap off his stool and run to catch up to her.
The silver-haired fighter didn’t acknowledge her, so Roni repeated herself. Still not a word out of the tournament winner. So, Roni jumped up onto the stool next to the fighter. “Hi!” she said cheerfully.
“Whatever you want, I don’t have it, can’t get it, and don’t need it, so go away.” Tiger’s voice was cold and devoid of almost any emotion. She sipped her drink, not even looking at the two rebels.
“You don’t have to. I’m not interested in whatever scheme you want me to participate in, I won’t train you, and I won’t come to your pre-school Show-and-Tell.” The blue-eyed
ronin
turned her head enough to shoot a cold look at Roni. The younger girl shied away a bit. Those ice blue pupils seemed to have the power to freeze someone’s insides.
Kanjou stepped forward and spoke up. “How about a chance to legalize Martial arts and save Hinomoto from a corrupted government?”
Tiger looked over at Kanjou as though she hadn’t seen him standing there before. After giving him a once-over with her eyes, she glanced around at the patrons of the bar, noting that none of them were paying attention to them. She turned back toward her glass, took another sip of her drink, then said, “Say what you have to say. No promises. And keep your damn voices down.”
Roni bounced on her stool. “Okay!” She quickly dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “We’re in charge of a group called the Aka Ryuu.”
“Red Dragon, huh? Interesting name for a group.” Tiger’s lips stretched into a mocking grin. Roni hesitated nervously for a moment, then continued.
“We’re a group of
ronin
who are fighting to free Hinomoto. The Shogun of Hinomoto is a kind and just man, but one of the Daimyo is using and blackmailing him. He has to ignore unfair laws and the way that the police brutalize the citizens! Kunota is a puppet, but we’re struggling to overthrow the Daimyo and restore the freedoms of Democracy to Hinomoto!
Tiger glared at Roni from the corner of her eye. “You want me to give up my current life and not only become a rebel, but an
assassin
? I’m already involved in too much illegal activity, I don’t need to start killing off the government on top of it,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down as much as possible. Tiger took another drink and slammed her mug down. “Absolutely not! I take no responsibility for the government and what it chooses to do to the ‘law-abiding citizens’ of Hinomoto. It’s not my place and it’s not my concern. Now go away, before somebody hears you talking about this crap and I get in trouble for it!”
At the other end of the bar, Tony was watching Roni and Kanjou as they talked to the local champion. He couldn’t believe they’d gotten more than three words out of her without being thrown across the bar.
Tony turned from watching the silver-haired fighter and glared at the man who was yelling at him. “You’ve had more than enough, Bear. I wont serve you any more tonight.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
Bear was a large man with a bushy beard hanging off the chin of his jaggedly angled face and long, dark, greasy hair that fell down his back nearly to his waist. His clothes were brown, shapeless things that looked like they hadn’t been washed in about a year. He was tall and built like brick wall with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. He narrowed his already small, dark eyes at Tony. “What do you mean, ‘more than enough’? I’ve barely had any!” Bear stood up from his stool, lumbering to his full height of nearly 2 meters and grabbing Tony by the front of his shirt, pulling the bartender halfway over the bar. The young black-haired man sitting next to Bear was nearly pushed over by the drunk man’s elbow. He glared at Bear from one visible green eye, adjusting his denim jacket before he got up and walked out of the bar.
Down at the other end, Tiger’s head snapped around as soon as Bear had touched Tony. She jumped up immediately, her fists slamming down on the bar. “Bear!” she barked over the loud music.
The entire place became quiet at the drop of a hat. The music ended and all conversation ceased, as though Tiger’s raised voice was enough to demand instant silence from every patron. Kanjou and Roni watched curiously.
Bear released Tony, more interested in beating up on the bar’s current champion than its proprietor now. “Why don’t you mind you own business, Tiger?”
The woman chuckled. “You think you can take me? You’re drunker than an otter, Bear. Foxfire didn’t even
touch
me, and he was dead sober.” She started walking toward Bear, while people scrambled to get out of her way.
“Now,” she commented as she stopped right in front of Bear, dwarfed even more than she had been when facing Foxfire, “Get out of here before I have to ruin Tony’s nice clean floor.”
The two faced each other for a long moment, then Bear lunged at her suddenly. It was a wide, off-balance swing but it didn’t distract Tiger from the gleam of metal in his hand.
She jumped straight up, tucking her legs under her and letting Bear’s swing go beneath her. Then her right leg shot out and she snapped it down as she came down from her jump. Her foot connected with the top of Bear’s head, which sent him straight to the floor.
The thud of Bear hitting the solid wooden planks was drowned out by the sound of the door slamming open and hitting the opposite wall. The Tiger landed with one foot on either side of Bear’s prostrate body and looked up.
That set nearly everyone in the bar start running in panic while others attacked the cops in an attempt to get away. The cops shouted a warning, bringing their guns up to their shoulders as the crowd rushed them.
Tiger looked over at him. “What about you?!” she cried. “Don’t worry about me! Go!”
Andrea nodded quickly as she turned and ran toward the back of the bar just as the police opened fire on the crowd. A few of the bar patrons in the back booths were pulling out guns of their own as people began to drop to the floor under the bursts of bullets. The guns roared as return fire started, making some of the police either duck for cover or go down as they were hit.
Roni screamed as Kanjou swooped down and picked her up. He turned and followed a few yards behind Andrea, praying that they wouldn’t get hit by any stray bullets. Andrea disappeared into the back room, and Kanjou came running around the corner just in time to see her drop through a trap door cut into the floor. He ran over and jumped through as well, landing knee-deep in rancid, slimy sewage.
Every few feet a dim light illuminated a small bit of the sewer. Kanjou followed the sound of splashing and saw Andrea hurrying down the sewer pipe, foul water spraying from every step. He swallowed his disgust, tightened his grip on Roni, and followed.
They hadn’t gotten far when they heard splashing behind them. A shot came from behind, ricocheting off the walls nearby. Andrea started running even faster, swerving back and forth a little so they couldn’t target her. The tall, brown haired man following her decided to do the same. Another shot hit the slime at their feet.
Kanjou noticed that the lights ahead of them had been systematically taken out. The Tiger went into the darkness, just enough of her visible as she turned to the left before disappearing. Kanjou dove into the blackness and headed left as well and entered another tunnel. The lights had been taken out at the junction of two tunnels to allow Martial Artists to confuse the police when running.
Rather clever,
he thought.
A few yards in front of him, Kanjou saw a patch of light opening in the wall, highlighting Andrea just enough to let her be seen. She ducked into the wall, and Kanjou sped up. He dove through the hole right before it was closed back up.
Andrea leaned against a concrete wall, breathing heavily. Kanjou set Roni down and looked around. Three small rooms made up the little apartment-like section of sewer tunnels. The main entry held a few broken crates and one exercise mat that was starting to become unstuffed. The room to the left contained a small camping stove and a couple of cracked plastic containers that held a few dishes. To the right was a cramped room with two futons and more plastic containers filled with clothing.
“I don’t know. You three, go that way. Maybe they ran down the other tunnel. You two come with me.” The voices and splashing went off in two different directions. The three Martial Artists didn’t move until the sounds were gone, then Andrea turned and slammed her fist into the concrete wall.
Kanjou and Roni stood there, silent
.
The silver-haired Martial Artist was terrifying when angry. They both nearly jumped out of their skins when she turned, her blue pupils flashing with anger.
“You two are the biggest idiots I’ve ever met! If you knew how to run a rebellion, you’d know that talking about it in public makes you either a fool or a target- and the police don’t care about the difference!” Andrea stomped off toward the room to the right, muttering something about “troublesome idiots”.
The two members of the Aka Ryuu stood exactly where they were, listening to Andrea in the back tunnel, slamming things and ranting about being wanted by the police. “Probably won’t live until morning!” she screamed at one point, causing Roni and Kanjou to jump. They could now see why no one at the bar had wanted to be near her when she’d started yelling at Bear.
Roni and Kanjou both exchanged glances and raised their eyebrows when Andrea came back out. She had changed clothes, but her new outfit looked exactly like the old one. Even the shoes were the same.
Andrea noticed their looks. “What? Do you two have some sort of problem with me having more than one fighting outfit or something!?”
Andrea strode past them and opened up the cement wall again. “I’m going back to find Tony. You two can be eaten by sewer rats for all I care.” She went back out into the tunnel, holding the legs of her pants up some while walking on a dry strip close to the tunnel wall.
The sounds of dripping water accompanied them as they made their way back along the sewer pipes. Roni had somehow gotten Andrea to agree to let her speak about their mission, so long as they could keep up the pace at the same time.
“See, Shogun Kunota is the one rightfully in charge of the government. He’s who the people elected to lead, and if he actually got to do his job, then things would be much better for all of us. The police won’t be able to kill whoever they want to, and Martial arts will be legal again. Imagine, being able to show your face on the streets and admit that you practice Hinomoto’s oldest tradition, and not being arrested for it. This could be the return of Hinomoto’s greatest age, instead of continuing to live in these dark times.”
Andrea glanced back at the little girl. “And you actually
believe
you can pull this crazy idea off?” she said, disbelief in her voice.
They walked along in silence for a few minutes. Rats squeaked in surprise as they came by, scurrying to get out of the way of the humans. In the center of the tunnel the rancid water and refuse slowly went by, trickling along to wherever its final destination was.
“Simple. We need someone strong to help us. Our current numbers aren’t enough, and none of us are as good as you are with ki attacks. So, we decided to go out and try to find someone that we can trust and that is powerful.”