Disclaimer: I know that I'm using characters that are not of my legal property but that of SABAN. Well, that's all for that.
Act I: Hamburger Chopsticks
Tokyo, Japan. March 1997.
Master Kenjibo Ishiwaka stared at the orange setting sun and wondered
just how it could have been that his most treasured student had been away
for that long. She was a very puzzling girl. She had arrived at his doorstep
almost out of nowhere; she was like a baby that had been dropped from the
sky like a stork.
She had come to him when she was seventeen; she had claimed to have arrived
from Switzerland to study the Japanese culture and its language. She insisted
that he teach her all that he knew about martial arts and spiritual manipulations.
She wanted to be his student. At first, Kenjibo Ishiwaka was very unsure;
after all, he usually started the training of his students at the age of
five; she was about to turn eighteen. But she was insistent and even challenged
to him a duel. He could have easily broken her back for her blunt audacity,
but he spared her because he saw potential in her. For the first time in
his life, he had broken out in sweat.
"Master," his second best student, Ryu Kentaka arrived with two
buckets of water at his back. "Here's the water you wanted me to fetch
for you." Ryu was also one of his favourite students. While the rest
of the world would have laughed at him and called him an idiot for not
turning on the faucet, Ryu understood Kenjibo's need to continue the old-fashioned
way. Fetching buckets of water from the ravine was one of the trainings
Kenjibo had received as a child and it was going to be the same for his
students.
"Master, when is she coming back?" Ryu asked.
"Is that concern I hear in your voice?" Kenjibo said.
Ryu saw a smile that was not evident in Kenjibo's serene stare and heard
teasing laughter from a mouth that rarely cracked a joke. Ryu blushed.
"She's an American girl and American girls love to shop," Kenjibo
said. and added, "no matter how disciplined they are. Mei was never
like that." Mei was his daughter and she had left him. The two of
them had drifted apart when Mei refused to live the old-fashioned lifestyle
and fled with her boyfriend to America. Her "betrayal" had caused
great dishonour for Kenjibo but deep in his heart he would always love
his dear Mei. His son Jokan was another story.
"I see her coming," Ryu said as a red Porsche drove up the unpaved
gravel.
"I see the wheels are being weighed down by her shopping bags,"
Kenjibo quipped with a straight-face.
The Porsche stopped and the front door opened. An eighteen year old female
stepped out. She had long black hair tied back to a ponytail; thin Calvin
Klein shades concealed her eyes. She was wearing a tight yellow top and
long tight black pants. She pulled her purse over her back and requested
Ryu to help her carry the shopping bags from the trunk. She bowed in front
of Kenjibo and said "Sensei".
"Welcome back, Trini," Kenjibo said. "I hope shopping had
created an appetite; Ryu had caught a whale for dinner."
