The imposing figure of Saru Chounouryoku sat cross-legged in the bow of the sampan, as it rocked its way slowly through the teeming harbour towards the four moored junks. Only his impressive musculature moved, twitching and rippling spontaneously. That and his eyes...
Although his pose was statuesque, his eyes were swiveling anxiously from side to side, as if he were looking for something, but didn't want to be seen to look. And then, although his extraordinary anatomy continued to spontaneously ripple under his shinobi shozoko, one muscle near his waist seemed to ripple rather more than was entirely natural. That unnatural ripple took the form of a distinct bulge that moved slowly up his stomach and then across his left pectoral, until a small pink head emerged cautiously in the V at the neckline of his traditional ninja garb.
"Careful, little buddy! I sense that we are being watched from afar!", warned Saru melodramatically under his breath.
The little pink head vanished instantly, and he heard a whispered 'OK' from somewhere near his armpit.
Rufus had been able to move like a ghost past the massed ranks of the security guards and the various security scanners, before concealing himself initially inside Saru Chounouryoku's trunk after it had been scanned, only leaping athletically back into his shinobi shozoko as the luggage was being loaded into the sampan, and it would be disastrous if he were discovered now.
If he had known that the direct cause of all the hairs on the back of his neck standing up was a pair of giggling school girls fighting over who was going to stare dreamily at him through the coin operated telescope on the cliff top overlooking the harbour, he might perhaps have been slightly more relaxed. He had already come to terms with the quite disturbing effect he had on most people he met; he took the reaction of the two boatmen in charge of his sampan when he climbed aboard entirely in his stride, for example, as one grinned inanely at him with his mouth hanging open, while the other pouted angrily with simmering jealously. However, momentarily the telescope's shutter snapped closed on their last Hong Kong dollar coin, and the two school girls wistfully resumed their journey home, while the erect hairs on the nape of Saru's neck relaxed in sympathy.
He took a deep breath, as the tension relieved itself, and allowed his mind to wander. He found himself thinking about the bizarre sequence of events that had brought him to this precarious little wooden vessel, bobbing around on this vile smelling water in this giant harbour...
oOo
It was a nightmare, really. Ron had just got together...together, together... with the girl, the young woman, he had been best friends with since pre-school, the young woman he was sometimes, no often in awe of, the woman he had suppressed any and every possible 'other' kind of feeling for for so long that it had become almost as reflexive as breathing, but the young woman he had, if he was honest with himself, wondered about being closer to ever since puberty had snuck up on him. Simple curiosity? Teenage hormones? Something more significant? He didn't know. But he had always just known, instinctively, as surely as he had just known that the sky was up and the ground was down, that he wasn't good enough to have even the slightest chance with her.
Ever.
Except now he had discovered that the sky was down and the ground was up after all, and that he and Kim were... what... dating? Well, if the prom was a date, then yes.
In love? He didn't think so, unless what he had always felt for Kim actually was love.
Friends with benefits? That sounded kind of sordid.
He really had no idea what it was, or whether it was going to mess up the most significant relationship of his life to date. And now he wasn't going to have the time to even find out, let alone get used to the idea.
When Sensei had appeared to him in a dream and told him that Yamanouchi had need of him urgently for something important, he had rushed to pack and headed for the airport to catch a 6am flight to Japan without even thinking. It was the wheels coming up with a loud thump that seemed to break his trance and remind him that he was leaving Middleton and Kim behind with so much yet unsaid and undone between them. He remembered asking Sensei to tell Kim where he was going in his dream, but he hadn't even spoken to her himself yet - he didn't think she would appreciate a 5am phone call. He'd have to phone her on an airport payphone when he landed, which would make for a very short, very expensive conversation.
Having been woken in the small hours by Sensei invading his dreams, Ron needed sleep, and as soon as the seatbelt sign went out, Ron took the opportunity. And once again he dreamt about Kim. He had been dreaming about Kim when sensei had appeared to summon him. But fortunately, it had been like every other dream Ron had ever had that featured Kim. He dreamt about her saving the world. Fully clothed. It wasn't like he didn't have x-rated dreams, or anything, he reflected after he was awoken by the 'bong' of the 'Fasten Seatbelts' sign being illuminated. There probably wasn't another girl on the cheerleading team, apart from Bonnie obviously, that Ron hadn't dreamt about wrestling naked in jello with. He didn't know where that idea had come from, but he kept both the cheerleaders and the jello firmly to himself. And he had definitely fantasised liberally about Yori. One dream had her doing a highly erotic dance for him featuring her fans. And then having rough, Monkey Kung-Fu style, bouncing-off-the-walls style sex with him.
Actually, he didn't know if it was a coincidence, but it seemed like since he had been the recipient of mystical monkey power, his erotic dreams had become much more creative, and featured him doing or having done to him things that he'd never even heard of before, let alone imagined being involved in. For somebody still waiting to pop his cherry in real life, it was a little... alarming. And ever since he had first clapped eyes on her he had been periodically having the most wild dreams about Shego, which mystical monkey power seemed to have made much wilder, for some reason. In every scenario you could picture, realistic and contrived. Ron didn't ask to start dreaming about making the beast with two backs with his best friend's nemesis, and he didn't know how to stop it happening. It felt a bit like a betrayal, but it was completely outside Ron's control.
In the flesh, Ron acknowledged that Shego was physically attractive, but her personality, and the way she never failed to find a dismissive put-down to toss at him when their paths crossed, more than counteracted any physical attraction he felt.
At least, when he was awake it did.
But the one thing all of the women who inadvertently starred in Ron's erotic dreams had in common was that he had no problem at all imagining them naked. And the only one of them he had ever actually seen naked was Tara, when - despite his best efforts not to look while he was stuck in Kim's body and in the Cheerleaders locker room - he had walked straight into a trash can and opened his eyes at just the wrong (right?) moment as Tara walked out of the shower. That had felt strange - being turned on in Kim's body. Lots of strange sensations.
Ron shuddered.
In hindsight, Ron wished he had at least sneaked a peak in a mirror while getting out of the shower when he had had Kim's body. Because now, try as he might, he just couldn't imagine Kim nude in his mind's eye. He wanted to be able to picture her on her back, naked and sweaty, her fingernails dug into his arms, screaming his name, but he just couldn't form the mental image, either when he was awake or dreaming. And what teenage boy who found himself in the body of a super-attractive teenage girl for a couple of days wouldn't look, feel, poke, prod and play with it while he had it?
Answer: Ron Stoppable.
He didn't look down in the shower, he didn't touch anything he didn't absolutely have to and then no more than strictly necessary and he never even looked. He had no idea what Kim was doing with his body while she had it, and they had both never spoken of it, but he had a grumbling unfounded suspicion that she must have done more with his body than he had done with hers. Perhaps he just felt like an idiot for not doing more with the opportunity of a teenage boy's lifetime. For always looking away when Kim inadvertently flashed some flesh during a mission. For just being so... well... Ron.
This train of thought was rudely interrupted by the heavy thud of the main gear hitting Japanese tarmac, and before very long Ron was waiting for the baggage carousel to disgorge his luggage.
"Travel light, Ron-san", Sensei had said, so he only had the one hold-all to collect. It was first off the carousel, so he was able to beat the rush to immigration and customs, and before long he was emerging onto the airport concourse, looking for Yori.
Yori! He had completely forgotten Yori!
Kim had told him months ago that Yori 'liked him'. He had indeed long 'liked' her; enough to march into combat with Monkey Fist and his monkey ninja minions to rescue her, and to recover the Lotus blade. Perhaps if he had known that the attraction was mutual earlier, he might have done something about it. But then, he hadn't been in touch with her since Kim had told him, and he certainly could have written to her, emailed her, even phoned her! And now she was about to meet him off the plane and he was going to have to tell her that he had just now got together with Kim! He was tempted to turn around and get the first plane back to Middleton before he saw her!
But she wasn't here yet. And departures were downstairs. And he didn't have a ticket; or enough money to buy one. So that was pretty much that. But if he was staying, he really had to phone Kim, so he made his way first to the nearby Bureau de Change, and then with a handful of Yen to the massed banks of payphones on the far side of the arrival hall. Then he dialled Kim, getting the international code prefix right first time, for the first time ever. It wasn't a very satisfactory conversation, given that the call was diverted at the exchange from the direct line into
Kim's bedroom, via some of Wade's trickery and several satellites, to Kim's Kimunicator, and found Kim in the middle of one of her regular punishing ten-mile uphill training runs. But at least he got to speak to her, tell her where he would be, and apologise for leaving suddenly and for not being there for a while. All this while feeding a rapidly shrinking pile of change into the payphone as fast as his fingers could manage.
Kim sounded a little disappointed, as far as he could tell, in between gasping for breath, but said she didn't mind and would see him when he got back.
And then the money - and Kim - were gone. He wasn't worried about her; he knew that she could more than take care of herself, and he also knew that if she needed him - really needed him - that Wade would find him wherever he was. But he did feel like something very important had been rudely interrupted.
He turned and scanned the arrivals hall, again looking for Yori, and at first overlooking the thin, wiry Japanese man who appeared to be waiting patiently to use the payphone Ron had just finished speaking on. Then he realised that there were another thirty similar phones next to it, and that the man must be waiting respectfully for him.
He made eye contact, and the man bowed and approached him; as he got closer, Ron recognised him as one of the senior students at Yamanouchi. No Yori? Had something happened to Yori?
"Greetings, Ron-san, I am Kazuki, and I have been sent to meet you and escort you to Yamanouchi. Please follow me!" said the wiry man, picking up Ron's holdall and striding towards the exit.
Ron followed, somewhat concerned. "Normally Yori-chan comes to meet me. Is she OK?".
"Yori-chan very busy. Sensei ask me to come in her place today".
Ron was barely reassured by this. The mystery upon which he had brooded for the entire journey to the base of the mountain, and the climb up to the school, was quickly solved once he reached the top. He found a subdued Yori waiting for him on the far side of the final bridge leading to the school. Suddenly from being concerned for her safety, Ron was again wishing he could turn around and go home.
"Ron-san, there is something I must tell you", blurted Yori, without even looking him in the eye, and before he could begin his own confession. "In the last few weeks I have become very close to Hirotaka-san. I am very very sorry, Stoppable-san."
"Oh!" he exclaimed, relieved that his own admission wasn't going to be the bombshell it might have been. Then he realised that relief was perhaps not the appropriate emotion to express at that moment and added another "Oh!", in a more subdued tone. For a moment he toyed with not telling her about himself and Kim, but he realised that perhaps this was not either honourable or sustainable. He picked his next words unusually carefully.
"Yori, in the last week, myself and Kim have also become close... closer. Therefore I am happy for you, and glad that I have not brought you great sadness with this news...".
He watched Yori's face run the gamut of the full range of emotions in a few seconds, from relief to jealousy to anger, before settling back to relief. It was a tense couple of seconds, but afterwards, as Yori broke into a smile, he felt as if a weight was being lifted from his shoulders. He smiled back, and Yori said "I am very happy for you and Kim-chan, Stoppable-san!".
"Booyah!", he exclaimed happily. "Kim said Hirotaka was like super-cool, so I know it's all good!".
Yori bowed almost imperceptibly.
"Now, my world traveller watch says it's breakfast time in Japan, and I'm starving!"
At the mention of breakfast, Rufus suddenly stirred in his pocket for the first time since he had hoovered up most of Ron's last unappetising economy-class airline meal, and poked his head eagerly out into the daylight to smack his lips loudly.
Yori giggled "Always with the American style food-related jokes, Stoppable-san. Sensei has been waiting for you to arrive. I will take you to him.". Ron and Rufus groaned as one, as Ron trudged into Yamanouchi after her...
oOo
"Greetings, Stoppable-san!" said Sensei, warmly, as Ron was shown in to his small pagoda.
Ron grinned and said "Hi!", cheerily, and then felt a violent dig in his thigh from Rufus and took the hint to bow in the traditional fashion. Sensei returned the bow and then opened his hand serenely towards the steps leading down to his personal formal garden, to the rear of his pagoda.
"Stoppable-san, I have something of supreme importance to ask of you..." he said, gravely, as they made their way slowly down the steps and into the tiny oasis of serenity.
The sound of trickling water filled the air, accompanied only by the sound of birdsong and the occasional small splash as an ornamental carp broke surface of the large carp pond which was the central feature of the garden.
Ron's only reply came by way of a loud rumble from his stomach, which was vying for his attention with the sense of apprehension he felt at what Sensei might be about to ask of him. He was quite resigned to the idea that it would probably involve monkeys. He again followed Sensei's silent lead across a small, ornate wooden bridge over the pond. As they crossed the water, a startled frog chimed in with a loud 'Ribbet' and then leapt into the water from a lily pad with a splash.
Presently, they arrived at a pair of stone benches on a small flagstone island in the middle of the pond.
"I usually come here to meditate, Stoppable-san", he said, indicating to Ron that he should sit on one of the benches. Only once they were comfortably seated (or as comfortably seated as one can be on a rough stone bench), and Rufus had emerged from Ron's pocket to sit attentively on his thigh, did Sensei begin to speak.
"What I am to tell you now has been passed down through the generations, from each Sensei of Yamanouchi to his successor, for almost 17 centuries. It is the tale of the foundation of the Yamanouchi, and of the debt of honour that gave it first a purpose and then a name. It has been passed on, in the belief that one day the mystical monkey power might return, and also because that debt of honour could and can now never be fully repaid. Once this tale was told to all the recipients of mystical monkey power, and now it can be told again to a true mystical monkey master!".
Ron shifted a little uncomfortably. Partly because his stomach growled menacingly again, and partly because he was well aware that his flickering inner mystical monkey seemed to come and go without asking him first. Perhaps Rufus was a more appropriate audience, he mused.
"Listen well, Stoppable-san!", said Sensei. "In the year 306AD, the great warrior Toshimiru and his followers were on a long journey from the west that had them passing near the a village called Sosumiha, some seventy-five kilometres to the east of here. They had made an epic voyage across the East China Sea to the land then called Manchuria, where Toshimiru and his disciples had first found the monkey idols and the mystical monkey power..."
Slowly, and painstakingly, Sensei re-told the story of the village of Sosumiha, the selfless sacrifice of the head man Yamanouchi, and the sacred vow of Toshimuru. And as he spoke, Ron and Rufus were both captivated by the tale. And even though the story had been passed down by word of mouth alone, from outgoing Sensei to incoming over forty times since the death of Master Fujiwara, and allowing for Master Fujiwara speaking in early Japanese while Sensei re-told the story in English, nothing of any import, save the ravages of history itself, and the new chapters that it added, had changed in the epic tale.
"...and initiates from Yamanouchi continued to make the trek to maintain the grave of the head man of the village until the year AD 507, when the village of Sosumiha vanished from the map overnight. We now know that the rains were so heavy that year that they had softened the entire western face of Mount Hamkenjutsi. When the ground was at its most waterlogged, a small and unremarkable earth tremor shook the valley. Eight billion litres of mud slurry poured down from the mountain in just a few minutes, filling the valley and changing the landscape forever. Sosumiha was obliterated and entombed under hundreds of feet of rocky soil."
Ron and Rufus both sat slack jawed and misty eyed at this twist in the tale, but Sensei spoke on...
"When Master Fujiwara first rejoined his ancestors, the village Shaman noted that Toshimiru's magical armour did not turn to dust, as the armour that had been forged for the other original guardians had done upon their passing. It had not done so when Master Toshimiru had passed, because the Cuff of Sosumiha had ensured that for as long as there was Mystical Monkey Power in the world, there would always be somebody with the physical form of Master Toshimuru to wear the armour. But with the passing of Master Fujiwara, it seemed that mystical monkey power had gone from the world forever. Yet, the Shaman believed, correctly as it turns out, if the armour was still intact, that meant that mystical monkey power would one day return to the earth, and she reasoned that the Guardians would surely then return to continue protecting Sosumiha. In order to be ready for their return, the villagers built a shrine in the hidden cave where Toshimuru and his warriors had first been concealed by the villagers. The armour, and the Cuff of Sosumiha, were kept there, ready for the day when the guardians would return to the village. Sadly, the shaman had long joined her ancestors by the time of the cataclysm that overtook the village, a cataclysm that she might have predicted had the tradition of a village shaman been maintained. And thus it was that the entire population of Sosumiha perished, and the Cuff of Sosumiha was lost forever under hundreds of feet of mud and rock, along with Master Toshimiru's magical battle armour. The only living souls who even knew of the existence of these priceless artefacts were here at Yamanouchi.
"And here the ancient tale should end. But in 1962, the expressway you used to arrive here from the airport was built. An intersection was to be built right in the shadow of Mount Hamkenjutsi, but it was found that the ground was very unstable, with many voids; this was the very mud and rock that had covered Sosumiha almost one and a half millenia earlier. A young construction worker was assigned to the crew who drove in piles to underpin and stabilise the ground. One day he pulled his machinery up from a deep, deep pile shaft he had drilled to find that in amongst the earth and tree roots adhering to it was a rather unusual bracelet. He retrieved it, cleaned it and took it home to show his wife, who was not impressed. The construction worker put the strange bracelet in a drawer and forgot all about it. He did take it out one day years later to tell his young son the tale of how he had come by it, but it went back into the same drawer again until the father rejoined his ancestors earlier this year.
"Three months ago, one of our senior students, Master Hirotaka, who has studied the history of the Guardians of Sosumiha with great diligence in the past, was apparently doing some meditative research on something called... Ebay", said Sensei, struggling a little with the 21st century terminology. "At the same time, the son of that construction worker was clearing his sadly departed parent's old house and disposing of curios for which he had no space himself, via this Ebay. The... err... listing... caught the attention of Master Hirotaka, who upon reading the story of its finding, purchased the bracelet, suspecting that it might indeed miraculously be the Cuff of Sosumiha. Since he acquired the bracelet, our scholars have been studying it and we are of the opinion that Master Hirotakas instincts were entirely correct, and that this...", Sensei paused and pulled a small cloth bundle from under his bench, then reverentially unfolded the cloth to reveal what Ron considered a fairly hideous and chunky bracelet, "...is the Cuff of Sosumiha!"
