The Greatest Samurai in Old Japan (death in the bath house)
Sokaku Takeda, fifty-two years of age, settled back into the steaming, hot water. Sighing...he considered his position. He had been called into this wilderness town two weeks previous, but so far nothing had happened.
Where were all the vicious gangsters who ran the gambling and the smuggling? He had seen much evidence of their despicable slave labor operations, but of gangster he had seen nothing but a pair of low lifes who had spied on him from a respectful distance. Where were all these criminals that destroyed entire police stations and scared the police so much that they had called to him for help?
Where were these--CRASH! The door to the bath house banged open and six thugs barged into the room. They held their swords in the ready position and advanced around the edge of the large bath.
At the first sound Sokaku had scrambled from the water. He grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which was a towel, and scowled at it. Fortunately, in his hands absolutely anything could be made into a potent weapon!
"We're going to teach you some manners," one fo the thugs snarled as he held his sword ready for the attack. Snarling insults, the rest of the gangsters began to move forward. They knew that if they could encircle the samurai, then they could rush him and kill him.
Interestingly, the old man only had a towel, but no one was willing to take a chance with a samurai with a reputation like his. They were not samurai, after all, and they knew that he had killed dozens of skilled samurai. They knew that their beat chance was to rush him from all sides at the same time.
"Dogs teaching people manners, eh?" Twisting the towel to make it more effective, Sokaku glared at the gangsters. Moving forward, he dropped the tip of the towel into the pool.
One of the gangsters, giving a shrill scream, leaped forward. Sokaku stepped to the side, kept a sure footing on the slippery tiles, and snapped the towel fiercely. Crack--and the thug grabbed his ribs in agony and fell to the floor.
Two more thugs dashed towards the naked samurai. Whack! Crack!
Sokaku sidestepped like a wraith and flicked his towel like lightening. Crack! Crack!
All but one of the criminals lay on the floor now, either unconscious or groaning as they held their cracked ribs. The last gangster, realizing that he was severely outnumbered, threw his sword down and fled the bath house. Sokaku looked at the towel, dropped it, and went to get dressed.
About the Author
Al Case has studied the martial arts for 40 years. You can see him disarming weapons at http://www.monstermartialarts.com/index.html. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service
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