Recreational Holidays

The Greatest Samurai (death in the bath house)

Sokaku Takeda, fifty-two years of age, felt his strong muscles relax in the steaming, hot water. With a sigh…he considered his current position. Two weeks had passed since he had arrived in this wild town, 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?

CRASH–and Sokaku straightened up! Six thugs barged through the door to the bath house and into the room. They advanced around the edge of the pool, holding their swords in the ready position.

At the sight of these thugs Sokaku scrambled from the water. The only thing near him was a towel, and he snatched it up and looked at it. A towel, well, in his hands it would be more than a towel, it would be deadly weapon!

“We’re going to teach you some manners now,” snarled the leader of the gangsters, and he lifted his sword high. The gangsters began to edge forward then, and the air was filled with their snarled insults and they made dire predictions of what they were about to do to him. It was obvious that they were trying to surround him so they could rush him en masse and kill him.

The old man didn’t even have a sword in hand–he actually held a stupid towel–but his reputation was so great that none of the gangsters were willing to be the first to start the fray. He had, after all, killed dozens of skilled opponents, high able samurai, and the thugs were well aware that they were not samurai. So they planned to rush him with numbers and so kill him.

“So you dogs wish to teach me manners, eh?” Sokaku twisted the towel to make it more effective. He dipped the tip of the towel into the water.

Giving a fierce scream, one of the thugs, rushing forward. Sokaku sidestepped, keeping a sure footing on the slippery surface, and snapped the towel. Crack–and the thug fell to the floor and grabbed his ribs in agony.

Two thugs glanced at each other, then they jumped forward. Crack! Whack!

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.