Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) (24 page)

She nodded and grunted, a little
bemused at how easy it was to join these guys. She had spent so much time
disdaining them from a distance, imagining they were phonies, that she felt a
little guilty as the recipient of their openhearted welcome.

“You gonna eat that, Em,” asked
Wayne, gesturing toward the other half of Wendy’s sandwich. Emily looked at
Wendy and they both laughed.

“You can have it,” she said with a
smile and slid it over to him.

“You guys go to the dojo every
night,” Wendy asked.

“Nah,” said Danny. “Just most
nights. You should come check it out. Sensei wouldn’t mind. He likes it when
people watch class.”

“But what if it’s meditation
tonight? She’d be bored silly watching that,” Billy caviled.

“You should come, you know,” Emily
offered. “But bring a book in case it’s meditation. You can ride over with me.”

Wendy was surprised to be the
subject of this much attention. She really was very curious about the goings on
at the dojo. But her old habits would have her turn them down with a sneer. She
struggled with this for a moment, but finally relented.

“Yeah, sure, what the hell,” she
said with all the grace she could muster.

Emily and Wendy drove over to the
dojo after school. They arrived about twenty minutes before class. Emily showed
her a bench on the side of the room where she could watch and sip some tea, and
then went to change into some athletic gear. Tonight she wore a form fitting,
black running outfit. Wendy almost snorted tea out of her nose when she saw her
come out of the changing room wearing what looked like some sort of cat suit.
She was reminded once again how fit Emily was.

Emily ducked into the office to
talk to Sensei. She wanted to tell him about her name change. He seemed
pleasantly surprised. She wanted him to understand fully her new resolution
about living a secret life.

“I’m just tired of hiding. That’s
not how I want to live, Sensei.”

“Are you sure that’s wise, Emily?”
He was genuinely concerned for her safety.

“It’s probably not, but I refuse to
let these people dictate the terms of my life to me anymore,” she said in a
decisive tone. Sensei could see there was no point arguing with her.

“What do you need me to do?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe nothing.
Maybe everything.”

“Well, if you’re no longer in
hiding, maybe you want to go to the tournament next month. It would certainly
inspire everyone in the dojo to see you there.”

Emily smiled at this suggestion,
but not for the reason Sensei had in mind. She thought it might be a way to
bring her pursuers out into the open. It might be the best way to come out of
hiding.

“Maybe I will,” she said slowly and
deliberately. “Let me think about it. By the way, a friend is here to watch
class today. Let’s not do a long meditation this time, for her sake.” Sensei
smiled and nodded his head.

As the rest of the class filed in,
Emily introduced Wendy to Sensei. He was gruff but kind, as usual. They worked
on leg sweeps and grappling for most of the night. Wendy found it fascinating
to see how much control a little joint leverage could give, even over much
larger opponents—like Wayne, who was Sensei’s demonstration partner for
much of the class. His huge bulk flew all over the dojo, much to his
consternation. Wendy couldn’t help but be amused.

For the last twenty minutes, they
practiced with
nunchaku
, a pair of
wooden clubs connected by a short cord. These are too dangerous for sparring,
but they allow for intense speed and reflex training. Sensei walked the class
through a few easy techniques that had the students swinging their nunchaku
around their shoulders, arms and waists. There were a few slight mishaps, but
nothing serious. Billy clunked himself in the head a couple of times.

At the end, Sensei asked Emily to
give a full speed demonstration of a particularly complex pattern. She started
slowly, letting the class get a good look at the sequence of moves, and then
went faster and faster. By the end, her hands were moving so fast the nunchaku
were nothing but a blur. Sensei brought a couple of target pads over. Emily
struck them several times in quick succession without breaking the pattern.
When she finally stopped, the entire room burst into applause. Danny let out a
loud whoop. Everybody started laughing, even Wendy and Sensei. It was a truly
impressive performance. Emily smiled and bowed—what else was there to do
under the circumstances?

When she drove her home after class
all Wendy could talk about was that last demonstration. Emily tried to draw her
attention to the other things she had seen, especially the grappling techniques
that had so captivated her earlier.

“Don’t get distracted by the flashy
stuff. It’s the simple stuff that really matters, like learning how to stand
your ground, even against someone bigger or stronger.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But what’s
wrong with enjoying the flashy stuff too?” Emily laughed. Of course, she was
right. There was nothing wrong with it.

“And what’s the deal with your
name? I heard you changed it. What’s the story with that?” Emily smiled. The
news was spreading, just as she expected.

“I didn’t change it. But Emily is
really just a family nickname. My real name is Michiko.
You
can still call me Emily if you like,” she teased. “or just Em.”

Wendy laughed at her little joke.
She sensed there might be something darker hiding beneath it, though she
couldn’t say what it could be.

“Well, aren’t you full of
surprises?” Wendy sat silent for a moment as Emily pulled up to the bed and
breakfast. “It’s good you’re back, you know,” she continued. “I really missed
you.”

“Yeah, without me, who’d make your
lunches,” Emily mocked.

“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
Wendy stopped for a moment, then said “Oh, and I like your friends. They’re
alright.”

“I think you
mean
our
friends.”

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Chapter 20:
The Tournament

Martial arts tournaments are
surprisingly common events around the country. In most states, some tournament
or other is held just about every month somewhere. These are often small, local
affairs, attracting mainly little kids, who make up the bulk of any dojo’s
students. A few times a year larger tournaments are held that attract more
adults and higher ranking practitioners. Mostly the tournaments are sponsored
by karate organizations, some local or regional, a few even national in scope.
But typically all fighting styles are welcome. Competitions are held in katas,
both empty hand and with weapons, and in sparring. For the kids and the adults
in the lower ranks, the sparring is narrowly controlled and heavily padded—no
full-force contact, no take-downs and no contact to the face. For the black
belts, some tournaments allow more open bouts, with little or no padding and
fewer restrictions on contact or take-downs.

Sensei and Emily were talking about
the East Coast Regional Martial Arts Competition, an annual tournament held
this year in Norfolk. Most of the competitors would come from eastern Virginia,
Maryland and North Carolina, some people would come from further away, some
even from abroad. Because of its proximity to several military installations,
it would also attract a lot of military personnel. This meant there would be a
large field of competitors in the black belt division. Emily registered for the
advanced kumite as a black belt. When the boys heard about it, they all wanted
to register for the tournament, too. She had some misgivings about this, since
she expected to encounter the Chinese there and didn’t want them to be caught
in the middle. But she also knew there was going to be no way to keep them away.

The next few weeks in the dojo were
devoted to tournament preparation, to polishing katas and to fine tuning
sparring mechanics. Emily spent almost every extra moment there working with
her friends, showing them in much more detail how they were making themselves
vulnerable inadvertently, going over every technique in slow motion as it were.
She seemed infinitely patient with them. Of course, they couldn’t get enough of
her attention. Fighting Emily was a very intimate affair, even if it always
ended with a humbling defeat.

Wendy became increasingly envious
of the boys for monopolizing her friend’s time. The only solution was for her
to come to the dojo, to cheer them all on and to poke fun at them, too.
Eventually, Wendy became a fixture there, even though she wasn’t a student.
Sensei did everything he could to make her feel welcome, since it was apparent
that’s what Emily wanted.

“I don’t see how I’m making any
progress,” Billy moaned after finding himself once again on his back after a
bout with Emily. Wendy giggled from the bench at the side of the room.

“You’ve improved a lot from just a
week ago,” Emily insisted.

“Not compared to you!”

“Billy, that’s not about strength
and speed. I’m not better at this because I’m faster,” Emily said for the
umpteenth time. “It really is all about
sen
,
just like Sensei always says.”

“Why can’t I get it,” he whimpered.

“That’s what the meditation is for,
dummy. Sensei wants you to learn to listen to yourself, even just your
breathing, so you can hear what your opponent is doing. That’s how I do it. I
listen to you, I ‘hear’ your decisions as you make them.” She could see he was
hardly persuaded by what she said, and she could hear Wendy snort in disbelief
from the side of the room. “Don’t worry about it. No one in the brown belt
division will be able to do that either. You’ll do just fine against those
guys,” she tried to reassure him. Perhaps it was unrealistic for him to think
he could train against someone like Emily. But she thought a little humility
would probably serve him well in the tournament.

As the day of the tournament
approached, decisions had to be made. It was going to be about a five hour
drive. Emily wanted to catch a flight out of Shenandoah Valley, but there was
no way Danny could afford that, and she didn’t want him to feel excluded. The
next best thing was to drive in a big group. They were going to need a couple
of hotel rooms, but Emily figured she could take care of that without
embarrassing anybody in particular. Since the tournament was being held in the
ballrooms of one of the big downtown hotels, Emily quietly booked a three room
suite for the weekend. Wendy’s parents let her have the minivan they used for
guests for the weekend. Friday morning they all set out for Norfolk: Wendy,
Emily, Wayne, Danny, Billy and Sensei. Before they left, Emily sent an email to
the address Connie had given her.

The hotel turned out to be a huge
complex a few blocks from the water. There were large parking lots on all sides
of a crescent shaped central structure as well as two smaller outbuildings
across the parking lot from the convex back of the main building. One was a
wedding center with a small garden reception area, the other was a taller, not
yet completed business suites wing the top floor of which was only partially
enclosed.

“Whoa, Em! How on earth did you
pull this off,” gushed Billy when they got up to their rooms in the main
building.

“Convention discount, doncha know,”
she dodged. “Wendy and I have this room, you three take that one. Sensei,
you’ve got the couch out here. Sorry about that.”

He grunted his assent, trying to
look put out, though he really couldn’t care less. Later, when they were alone,
Emily talked over the dangers with him.

“We need to be careful here,
Sensei,” she said. “If there’s trouble, keep those guys away from it.”

“What about you, Chi-chan,” he
asked, using her new name as he understood it.

“I have to find my own way through
this, Sensei. But I can’t bear to have my friends in danger. Promise me you’ll
watch out for them.” He grunted and nodded gravely, though with obvious
reservations about her safety.

After an early dinner at a nearby
restaurant, they went down to the tournament to watch the sparring finals for
the younger competitors. The competitions were held in the largest ballroom in
the hotel complex. It accommodated six separate rings, marked out by red tape
stretched along the carpeted floor. A wider ring was marked out around it to
keep the audience at a safe distance. There were rows of banquet style chairs
positioned around each ring. By the time they arrived, there were already eight
or nine hundred people present. Most of these were competitors and their family
and friends. There were also a few people who seemed to be there just as
spectators unconnected with any particular participant. By the time of the
final sparring events for the black belt division the following evening, the
audience would have swelled to a couple of thousand people. Even at that size,
the large ballroom still seemed roomy. It could easily hold twice that many
people.

The first competitions involved the
youngest kids, some as young as six or seven years old. As the day progressed,
the organizers included more and more of the older kids, until by the end of
the day, the final matches for the pre-adult division were held. Emily was glad
to see the courageous way in which the finalists faced their fears, overcame
them and won, or lost. If only her friends could attend to the same things she
did. She was nudging Wayne to notice this very thing when Sensei caught her eye
and, with a tilt of his head, indicated a woman standing by the door. She
glanced over and caught sight of Connie, watching the room from the door. A
quick scan of the room revealed nothing more suspicious than herself. She
walked to the refreshment stand across the room and Connie went to meet her,
while Sensei kept the attention of the boys on the sparring.