Game Over

Chapter 10





IF I HAD realized that the Gygaxes had been watching me on a giant video screen as they ate the last of some poor endangered (now extinct) species, I might have been a little more thorough about checking my surroundings for the equipment they must have been using to track me. But I was a little busy at the moment, squaring off with a rather unlikely opponent.

“You can’t lose touch with your key like that,” said the little girl, Miyu, Eigi Murkami’s daughter.

The little she-devil had just delivered a sharp blow to my solar plexus, knocking all the air out of me and making my vision go gray.

“Actually,” I said, wincing as I got back up off the dojo’s bamboo floor, “I don’t have a key or even a wallet, for that matter.”

“Not k-e-y; ki!” she barked at me.

“Ah,” I said. “You mean it’s another word. Can you please give me the language of origin? And use it in a sentence?”

I guess she hadn’t seen any National Spelling Bees lately because she gave me a look like I’d lost my mind. I had been hoping to distract her with a laugh, but this would have to do. As she grimaced, I lunged forward and locked her in a jujutsu embrace, setting her up for a devastating fulcrum throw.

But she was having none of it. She countered with a piece of kansetsu waza—joint-locking technique—a leg swipe that made my left knee buckle, and the next thing I knew I was looking up at her from the floor.

“In English, you would spell it k-i. Ki,” she said. “It sort of means energy. Now, do you submit?” she asked, driving her heel into my windpipe even harder than before.

“Restraint, Miyu,” urged her mother, turning to us as she waited for Dana to get back to her feet. Dana seemed to have had about as much luck sparring with Eigi’s wife, Estuyo, as I had been having with their daughter. And Joe, Willy, and Emma also seemed to be spending an inordinate amount of time on the bamboo floor—sparring, as they had been, with Eigi and his son, Kenshin.

Both for company and because generally there is safety in numbers, we had invited my fellow Alpar Nokians to spend the night with us before they headed off to Narita Airport in the morning.

The smart thing to do would have been to get some sleep—I had some aliens to hunt, and the Murkamis had a long flight ahead of them—but I guess I was just excited about having people from my home planet around. And what with us happening upon an abandoned martial arts studio, it seemed only natural that we would start talking about the martial arts. I’ve had quite a bit of training over the years, and the Murkamis professed to be slightly expert themselves—black belts, in fact, just like me. So, from there, it was only natural that all nine of us would end up on the dojo floor in a friendly little tournament. Right?

The only problem was that even though I had thought I’d be the one giving pointers, the clinic was clearly shaping up to be for, not by, me.

“Tell me,” I said, rubbing my neck and getting back up as Miyu resumed a defensive crouch. “Exactly what part of Alpar Nok are you guys from?”

“We learned these martial arts here on Earth,” said Eigi, helping Joe and Willy back to their unsteady feet. “Just as you did.”

Well, that much I believed. If people on Alpar Nok had known how to fight like this, there’d be a lot more of us alive right now. Seriously, these guys knew every move in the book, and a bunch I’d never heard of. I guessed maybe that was the advantage of getting your training in Japan instead of from your imaginary father in America, as I had.

I untied the black belt from my waist and offered it to Miyu. Some may say I’m stubborn to a fault, but, believe me, I know when I’m outclassed.

“Honorable Alien Hunter,” said Eigi, coming over to me. “There is no need to turn in your belt. You are a worthy opponent for any black belt of the second or third degree.”

“So, you guys are like seventh degree or something?”

“Miyu is forty-seventh, but she is still young. The rest of us, as you might expect, are higher degrees than that. Would you like some training?”

I shrugged and looked over at my exhausted, demoralized friends. They were nodding their heads as vigorously as they could through the pain. I guessed it wouldn’t hurt us any to pick up some tips.