“Yeah, I mean the vibe coming off her is like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” her Mom continued.
“Vibe, Mom?”
“She is just one cool customer. I bet nothing fazes her.”
“Mom, you have no idea,” said Wendy, very satisfied with herself for having a secret she shared with Emily.
Later, as she was lying in bed, Wendy went back over the events of the day in her mind. The bike ride, screaming up and down the mountains, the afternoon relaxing on the ridgeline soaking up the scenery, the encounter with the toughs in the gas station, and finally the evening in the hot tub with her family. This may have been the best day of her life. Her mind kept returning to an image of Emily changing into that bathing suit. It hadn’t ever occurred to her that human beings could look like that. They were roughly the same dimensions, wore the same size, but Wendy was pretty sure she didn’t look like that. “Sure, she’s beautiful,” Wendy thought, “but it’s more than that. It’s like she’s made of steel or something.” Wendy fell asleep dreaming of cyborgs and samurai.
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Chapter 15: A Familiar Face
Things quieted down for awhile. Emily heard nothing more about the incident at the gas station. She guessed that those guys realized they would look ridiculous if they told the police a girl had beaten them all up. The weeks slid by with no more suspicious sightings, no one seemed to be following her. She spent Thanksgiving with Wendy’s family. They were very pleased to have her at their table. Danny and his Mom visited family in West Virginia for the weekend. Gradually, the work of the semester wound down as the Christmas break approached. Emily had sent off a few applications to colleges around the country. So far, she used the name Emily Kane, since that was the only name her teachers knew her by, and they had to write letters of recommendation about a student they knew. Fortunately, Emily had taken the SAT under that name too, and done quite well. Given her grades and scores, she was likely to be a much sought after student. She would have to figure out how to solve the problem of her name later.
Emily enjoyed her time in the dojo more than ever, even though she was beginning to see Sensei less as a teacher and more as a fellow traveler. He was “one who had gone before,” but now her own experiences had brought her pretty far down a similar path. She still had lots to learn from him, but he was beginning to see her as a colleague as well as a student.
“Sen,” he barked at the class. “It means being decisive, taking the initiative. But it doesn’t mean being reckless. It means controlling the situation and yourself by taking the initiative away from your opponent. There are three basic ways to do this: attacking first, attacking at the same time as your opponent and attacking after your opponent has attacked. In each case, you deny the initiative to your opponent. None of them is passive. Even in the last one, you don’t just wait for your opponent to attack. You watch for his attack and take your initiative from within it. That’s called go no sen. Those of you who have had the pleasure of sparring with Emily, I’m sure you know what go no sen looks like.”
Emily had heard this speech in one form or another many times. But this time, it seemed to her that Sensei was needling her about something. She understood herself primarily in terms of go no sen. She found her initiative within the action of her opponent. It wasn’t just that she was comfortable with this way of thinking. It seemed to her to reveal a fundamental truth about herself, about life, about the world. She certainly knew how to take the initiative in all its forms. She knew how to attack the attack, to punch through her opponent’s attack or even to meet it head on. She knew equally well how to provoke her opponent, to attack first so as to force him into an attack prematurely. This was how her father tended to think. She saw it that night in the tunnel. But it was also a perfect description of how he would track her in the woods, moving swiftly and directly to wherever he thought she was hiding, flushing her out so that she had to fall back to a position chosen in haste. Sensei called it sen sen no sen. It wasn’t just aggressiveness. In some ways it was no more aggressive than go no sen. It also found the initiative within the opponent’s action. But it sought to deny him the time and space to take his own initiative freely.
For Emily, all forms of sen found their clearest articulation in go no sen. They were variations of it. As she saw it, initiative was fundamentally a matter of recognizing opportunity. Inopportune initiative was not truly sen. It was mere recklessness. To her, that meant even anticipatory initiative, attacking first, was at its heart a mode of go no sen.
But Sensei seemed to be trying to tell her something more about sen. What exactly was he getting at? Had she misunderstood something? Had she become passive without realizing it? She certainly took it easy on her classmates in sparring. Could that be what Sensei was thinking about? She had been involved in so many fights in earnest over the last few months that the etiquette of sparring could not help but seem to her like a narrow set of limits on sen. Perhaps Sensei wanted her to be more aggressive in class.
They did bo sparring for the second half of class, using a padded version of the bo staff, which was ordinarily a heavy, six foot long tapered hardwood staff. It is a traditional martial arts weapon, and the first one Emily mastered. She decided to use this occasion to go in the direction Sensei seemed to be nudging her, to tilt her sen towards sen sen no sen. The beneficiary of Emily’s resolve this evening was Danny. The instant Sensei signaled the beginning of the match, Emily lunged toward his groin forcing him to block down. She used the force of his down block to rotate the other end of her bo into a strike to the top of his head. When he raised his bo to protect his head, she planted a side kick in the center of his chest, sending him sprawling backwards. The entire exchange took less than a second. Danny noticed the difference in her approach to the match. He tried to seize the initiative first with a lunging strike of his own. Before he had even fully extended his arms she had already spun outside his strike, swept his right leg out from under him and landed a strike across his face and chest. The efficiency of her move was truly impressive. Everyone in the dojo, even Sensei, stood with their mouths agape. One last time, Danny tried to initiate a swinging side strike, but it was much too slow. She had already struck him twice, in the head and groin, before he realized what had happened. Finally she spun her bo between his hands and sent his staff sailing across the room. Danny smiled at her, put his hands together and bowed. Everyone in the room laughed. There was nothing else to be said.
Emily turned to Sensei with a questioning look on her face. He smiled, patted her shoulder and let her sit down. She sat cross-legged at the back of the dojo and watched the rest of the matches. Most of the kids were unable to genuinely take the initiative. For the most part, they tried to initiate action with a sudden reckless attack, or they waited too long for their opponent to make the first move. In neither case were they able to control the conflict. Wayne came the closest to achieving something like sen. Perhaps because of his size, he didn’t feel threatened by any opponent, except Emily, of course. As a result, he was able to act calmly and decisively. But even this wasn’t quite what Sensei meant by taking the initiative, since he still allowed his opponent too much freedom to control his own action. It was just the accident of his size that created the appearance of sen.
While Emily was watching the matches, she noticed a familiar face out in the parking lot watching as well. She was leaning against the driver side door of a large sedan. It was the woman who attacked her at the university a few weeks earlier! It was clear she had been watching Emily. Why else would she be here. Emily could see there was no point waiting or putting off this conversation. She got straight up and walked to the door, stopping only to bow slightly at the edge of the main room. She pushed the door open and strode directly toward the woman. She was fully prepared to fight it out with her right there in the parking lot. She was aware of every detail of her body, but paid special attention to her hands. The woman visibly flinched as Emily approached. It was clear she would ha
ve preferred to turn and run as soon as she saw the look on Emily’s face. But she swallowed and held her ground, trying not to make any move that could be misinterpreted.
“Is this a threat?” Emily growled. The woman shook her head nervously.
“No. I just came to talk.”
“How did you find me?” Her eyes moved quickly around the parking lot, but saw nothing suspicious.
“It wasn’t hard. You had to train somewhere. I just tried all the dojos in the area. Don’t worry, Meacham has no idea. He isn’t even looking for you anymore,” she said, trying to sound reassuring. Emily was unmoved. She just glowered at the woman. It was very unnerving.
“Look, I just want to talk. Is there a private place we can go?” Emily looked her up and down. She felt like she was being frisked.
“Office,” Emily grunted and nodded back to the dojo. But before she would let the woman pass, she required her shoulder bag. They stepped into Sensei’s office and Emily closed the door behind her.
“Sit over there,” she said motioning to a spot on the floor in the corner. There weren’t any chairs in the office anyway, so there weren’t a lot of other options. Still, Emily wanted to be able to control this woman if she had to. She stood over her as she looked through the bag. There was almost nothing personal in it, a key ring, a brush, a head scarf, a chapstick and some lifesavers. There was a thin wallet with a driver’s license for someone named Constance Matthews, two credit cards in the same name, a card with nothing but a single email address on it, and a blank electronic access card. “This woman’s definitely an agent,” Emily thought. “There’s nothing real in here.”
“Do you have a name? I’m guessing it’s not Constance Matthews.”
“Can we just go with that one for now?” she asked with a distinct note of sorrow in her voice. Emily found her quite perplexing.
“Fine, Constance,” she said menacingly. “What was so important that you had to track me down?”
“Meacham, he’s not a threat to you anymore. He suffered a setback a few weeks ago in Taipei. A major embarrassment. He’s on the run for now. I don’t know about Burzynski, but I don’t think he was ever really a threat to you.”
“That’s all well and good, but you didn’t find me to tell me that.”
“No. There’s something else. I’m not the only one looking for you. In Taipei, Meacham’s group was ambushed by a Chinese hit squad. I only narrowly escaped by hiding in a sewer. I overheard them talking about a girl they thought Meacham was pursuing. They didn’t seem to know her name, but I think they’re looking for you.” Emily listened impassively, trying not to betray any interest to this woman she hardly trusted.
“They mentioned the name ‘Kagami’, who’s somehow connected to Michael Cardano. But that can’t be you since you’re obviously Chinese,” the woman continued. “But from the way they described the girl they’re looking for, it’s got to be you, even if they have the name wrong.”
“Why do you think it’s me?” Emily asked. She supposed the woman was right, of course. The mistake about the name offered some reassurance, but that wouldn’t deflect them indefinitely. She was also bemused by her conviction that she was Chinese. Perhaps that ambiguity would prove useful at some point.
“They’re looking for a warrior, a super soldier. You’re the only person even remotely connected to Cardano who fits that description.” Emily mulled this last bit of news over for a few moments in silence.
“Where are they looking now?”
“They were headed for the southwest. Apparently they think Cardano’s hiding there.” Emily turned away, hoping to hide the distress that must otherwise have been visible on her face. From the information she just heard, it was difficult to tell what the Chinese really wanted or who they were looking for. Was it her or her Mom? Did they know who her mother is? She tried to collect herself and turned back.
“How long will it take them to come here?” she asked, hoping in part to create the illusion that her anxiety was for herself.
“I don’t know, a few weeks, maybe months” the woman said. “But there’s a security cam video on the web of a fight in a gas station somewhere. It’s pretty murky, but it shows a girl beating the tar out of three guys. I’m guessing it was you. If the Chinese see it, they’ll find their way out here sooner. On the plus side, there’s no vehicle or license plate visible in the video. That’ll slow ‘em down a bit.”
“You found me a lot sooner.”
“Yeah, but I already knew who I was looking for.”
“And just why did you take the trouble? What do you want from me?” Emily demanded.
“I don’t know, honey,” she said feeling a tiny bit more confident. “I guess I just got a little religion back in that bathroom stall.” Emily glowered at her. The woman backtracked, visibly shaken. “Look, I’m sorry. I owe you. I know. You kicking the crap out of me, well, it gave me a little perspective. You don’t have to trust me, I wouldn’t blame you.” Emily nodded. “But if you want me to meet you somewhere, send a message to the address on the card in my wallet. Just put a time and a place, but give a date one day late. I’ll be there.” Emily said nothing. She put the card in her pocket, handed the bag back and helped the woman up. She walked her out of the dojo just as class was ending. The woman opened her car door, then turned back to Emily.
“You can call me Connie. That part’s real,” she said, looking into Emily’s eyes. Emily thought she saw genuine sincerity there.
“Thanks, Connie,” she said turning back to the dojo. She stood in the doorway and watched her drive away as the class filed out past her.
Once everyone had left, Sensei stood behind her and cleared his throat. Emily turned and looked into his face.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“I’m not sure. Have you seen her hanging around before this evening?” Sensei shook his head and grunted no.
“What did she want?” Emily paused for a moment and considered what she should tell Sensei.
“She says she’s a friend. She warned me about Chinese agents who might be looking for my Dad and Mr. Cardano.” He grunted his understanding. Some part of what she said was true. She was reluctant to explain any more to him about what these men might be looking for. “Have you seen any men like that?”
“No, no one like that. Chinese agents would have a hard time blending in around here.”
“We need to be careful. They’ll probably check out the dojos in the area, if they do show up here. Sensei, we need to be very careful around these people.”
“Do you trust this woman?”
“No. But I’m still gonna take her warning seriously, at least for now.” Emily thought for a moment and then said “Sensei, I may have to take some time off after Christmas. I may not be back at the dojo for a while.” He grunted, clearly unhappy but resigned.
It was getting dark, but Emily thought it was important to discuss this news with Michael. At the same time, it occurred to her that if the woman’s story had been a setup, its purpose might be to trick her into making a quick call to Michael so they could somehow trace him. She didn’t understand how the software on the thumb drive really worked, and whether it would provide a secure connection if Meacham’s people knew what terminal she used. And she was concerned she might not be able to see if she was being followed in the dark. She decided to wait until the next day to make that call.
When she got home, she found the guys installed on the front porch drinking hot cocoa and laughing. Wayne and Billy were ribbing Danny about how Emily had completely dominated him in bo sparring. When Danny’s mom saw her arrive, she brought out one more cup of cocoa for her.
“Oh... My... God, Em,” Danny sputtered in mock seriousness. “I’ve never seen you spar like that. You were amazing. It’s like you were possessed!” Emily would have laughed, but her mind was still focused on what Connie had told her.
“What happened tonight?” Danny’s mom asked in all innocence.
�
�Oh, nothing much, Mrs. Rincon,” Wayne chortled. “Em just gave Danny a serious butt-whipping in class.” Billy started giggling. Danny blushed.
Emily remained impassive. She was still a little uncomfortable joking about their match, since it seemed to her to be caught up in something Sensei wanted her to see about sen. She wasn’t sure she had fully understood him yet.
“Well, good for you, Emily,” Mrs. Rincon piped up. “I’m sure he had it coming.”
Emily smiled, glad to see an opening to shift the conversation away from the sparring. They were all happy to talk about holiday plans. Billy and Wayne were spending Christmas in town. Danny and his mom were visiting relatives. Emily said she might be going out of town. She really had no plans, but wanted to prepare the way in the minds of her friends, in case she had to move quickly. In the back of her mind, she halfway hoped Michael would react to her news by moving his family and Yuki. That could well mean she would be able to meet them somewhere along the way. It would be sort of like a holiday family reunion. She mused on the prospect of seeing her mother later as she lay in bed. Eventually, however, her thoughts turned to sen.
What had Sensei meant for her to see this evening? He could see events were guiding her to a new relationship to her own skills. She was becoming tougher, even more focused than she had ever been. He didn’t know the details of the encounters she been having over the past few months, but he must have sensed a change coming over her. She began to think along these same lines, too. She saw the temptation to cling to certain techniques and patterns of behavior under pressure. They would become entrenched habits rather than true initiative. It was refreshing to break out of her usual pattern in the bo sparring. Perhaps that had been Sensei’s point, not that she should choose a different approach to sen, become more or less aggressive, but that she should reconnect with her sen in a genuine way.
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Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Page 14