Oh Reinaka, what will we do with you?

By this point, anyone else would have booked it, high-tailed it home, and made a beeline for the cushy armchair by the roaring fire, all with a piping hot mug of hot cocoa in hand, but her? Forget about it! She wanted to stay at thsi godforsaken bistro and have it out with complete and total strangers over what amounted to nothing really, so at the Baratie, she’d stay. Besides, she’d have hours and hours, and oodles of time with which to drink hot cocoa. Later. Always later. Just like that training day she'd been meaning to have for three days now, and that four hour phone call – minimum – she'd been putting off her momsie and popsicle. Oops. She made a mental note to herself: send the damn transponder message, stupid, even though she knew perfectly well she’d remember it for mere minutes, only until the next interesting idea popped into her head, which wouldn’t take very long at all. In fact, it barely took ninety-six seconds before the laughter of this pirate found its way to her mind, infiltrating and subjugating all else that was there, for the time being. Her humming along to her memory’s recollection of Neil Peart’s voice proved only to distance her thoughts further from anything related to her parents, and instead turned her attention to the dark waters before her.

She followed the laugh outside of the double doors of the Baratie, only to find a biggest man she’d ever met standing in front of her, laughing that ridiculous snarl of a howl he called a laugh. Was this the leader of this reckless band of vagabonds? Pirates? Please, this wasn’t what a true pirate crew looked like! You don’t become a pirate because you want to, because you want license to raid and destroy and pillage and do harm. You became a pirate because you didn’t have choice! You became a pirate because they only way you were going to free yourself from the tyranny of this oppressive world was to remove yourself from it. You fight when cornered, you steal when you’re hungry, and you die when it’s your time and not a second before. The girl had not been a pirate for very long, granted, but she had been struggling for freedom for a lot longer than she’d even acknowledged what she was doing.

“Run along little girl before you I make you a slave on my ship! I’ve got vermin to killlll KEKKEKEKE”

“Watch it, yo… I’m the Captain of those vermin.”

“Wuh.. KEKEKEKEKE…. A little scrawny thing you look is pretending to be a pirate!? KEKEKEKE! I thought my men were getting beaten up in there, not enjoying the satisfying touch of a pretty little thing like you! KEKEK No wonder they wanted me to come down.”

“Oh they got a taste of my hands all right!”

Reinaka assumed the general stance of a Chi Blocker, very similar to that of a Muay Thai fighter: slightly on the tips of your feet, arms up and close together. Perhaps this would be all she needed to defeat this behemoth. She hadn’t exactly mastered the Praying Lotus stance yet, but she doubted she’d need to take it that far judging by the strength of this other men.

“Ooh, look at you! Hmm you must not know who I am! I’m The Raccoon, you stupid little bitch. And Unless you want to feel the weight of my hammer I suggest you move!”

“Not a chance, you dog.”

His eyes instantly lit with a fuel that Rei-Rei hardly knew was there. He was running up at her before she’d even realized he was serious. It wasn’t so much his speed as much as his speed with a huge fucking hammer in his hands. How much did that thing weigh? He lifted his arms and smashed the hammer into the spot that she’d been standing, easy enough to dodge but she didn’t expect what was coming next. The weight of his strike didn’t even phase him as he immediately swift the hammer to the left a swung it like a baseball bat, hitting her dead on and sending her flying in the direction of the swing. It felt as though she’d been smashed into by fucking train. Her vision went white and she could hear her nerve endings screaming in pain. Her body remained airborne for a second, before her wings began to twitch more so than flap, trying to break the speed of her fall. Her body hit the wooden deck, one, twice, and three times before she managed to grab a plank. Her body fell into the icy water, only holding on to end of the deck so as to not completely submerge. She gasped for air, shocked by the pain of the strike combined with the stabbing of icy water. She reached another hand up to steady herself enough to herself back up onto the deck.

She found the extra strength would be unnecessary, however, as a Raccoon was already upon her, pulling her out of the water by a ponytail. The man must have wielded incredible strength, holding her up and out of the water completely, though she really did weigh any more than 120 pounds, very soaked and wet at this point. The man’s full-belled laugh roared outward again, shaking his whole body and hers subsequently. He grinned his teeth like a Cheshire cat, eyeing his prize as he held her up for inspection. He looked as tiger must look when its finally cornered its prey, playfully dancing and cat walking from side to side, giving the semblance of opportunity for the gazelle without actually doing so. Reinaka struggled in his grip, holding on to his wrist so as not to put all the weight on his hair, wringling and swinging against his iron grip. She needed to think. She was panicking, she was playing into his hand. She was a close combat fighter and he had opened his guard entirely to her, thinking her defeated and weak. Now was the time to strike. Her body ached, blood oozed from a cut in her scalp, but she had to keep fighting. For them.

She inhaled and swung her body upward, locking her legs around his extended arm. His body was exposed to her and his pressure points were vulnerable. She stopped gripping at his wrist and focused, jabbing her thumbs into the underside of his forearm and pressing. The wrist was a deadly place to expose to a Chi Blocker. It held five critical points in the body: the Heart Point (H-6), the Lung Point (L-6), the Pericardium Point (P-6) and L-10, just over the primary muscles of the thumb, the Large Intestine Point (L-10). Reinaka exerted her Chi and pressed into each point, locking his arm in a rigid and fixed position. She could feel the panic in him, the shifting of his breathing from the inertia that had just taken control of his arm and slowly crept into the whole of the left side of his body.

His hand seized open and she left from his grip to behind him, falling and rolling over. She clutched the back of her sore head. Damn, she was going to have split ends after this motherfucker. She suddenly coughed up blood. That hammer had done a number on her, and it was all she could do to not pass out right then and there on the wooden deck of the Baratie. Raccoon had fallen to one knee, the left side of his body completely paralyzed by her technique. But he wouldn’t stay that way forever. He would get up eventually, and he would smash her into nothing if she let herself fall asleep.

She shakily got to her feet and prepared herself. She had to end this fight or she was going to pass out before she could get to safety. Rei ran across the platform to the man's fallen hammer and pulled on the handle to almost no avail. The man's creeping laugh caught flame again and his evil chuckle sent goosebumps across her skin. His chuckle turned into a cackle as she tried to pull the hammer away from him. The thing really was heavier than it looked.

"You stupid little girl... you couldn't lift my hammer if you tried!"

Fuck that son of a bitch. He didn't fucking know her, or her strength. Sure it was heavy but Rei-Rei was clever. You didn't need brute strength to accomplish anything. Her teachings had taught her that, if nothing else. The girl grabbed hold of the handle with both hands, bent her knees, focused her chi and prepared herself. The wind started to blow, or at least it felt like the wind. But it wasn't. It was her. She pushed off the ground and launched herself into the air, her wings paired with the force of her chi lifting her and the hammer some 200 feet into the sky. THe hammer was still heavy, but the gust of energy pushed and pushed until she'd reached her limit. She would begin to fall. No, she wouldn't just fall. With all her energy she did the unthinkable: she used the technique again. Her energy might not hold up after this, but that didn't matter.

She soared back down to the ground like a rocket, pulling the hammer back down with her.

"SOARINGGGGG BLITZKRIEGGGGGGGGG"

She lowered more than swung the massive weapon down and the metal impacted the now mobile Raccoon with such force that it felt as though an explosion had been set off on the deck outside the Baratie. As far as she could see, the man had swung a punch upward, hoping to thwart the force of the attack. They seem to pause in time when his fists impacted the hammer before it all went to hell. The building shook more violently than any wave could have caused and wood and water soared into the air. When the wreckage cleared there was nothing more than a gaping hole in the deck were the Raccoon had once been.

Reinaka was thrown backward on to the deck and rolled to a halt. Exhausted, in pain, delirious, but... hopefully in the clear. She could rest now. A faint smile dawned her mug before her eyes closed and she drifted into something between sleep and unconsciousness.

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