If all the stress keeping me off my emotional balance weren't bad enough, I had the unfortunate privilege, late that Thursday morning, of getting caught between Chris' two ... well, I never did get a good idea what to call them. "Girlfriends" wasn't *quite* the right word. "Paramours" implies more intimacy than their body language and verbal denials allowed for. "Steady dates" sounds too high-schoolish. "Harem" would have gotten me killed. Very slowly. "Bookends" might have been the most accurate -- they seemed to automatically gravitate to the opposite sides of everything, both physically and metaphorically. Whatever. All I know is that they were hooked up with him through a combination of honest attraction and divine fuck-up that could have had me laughing for even longer than the story of Chris' apotheosis did, if it weren't so twisted. As a result, Police Girl and Buffy Coed -- Ami and Rachel -- seemed destined to oppose and orbit each other as well as Chris.I didn't learn that right away. Oh, no. I had to make a mistake first. I had to *ask* them about it.It was almost lunchtime the day after the angel-related unpleasantness. I was still keeping myself more or less separate from the rest of the house's inhabitants, if only to spare them (and me) the effects of my still-hair-trigger temper. That meant I'd taken over the temple building proper as my personal domain again.I'd seen Megumi to the gate earlier, and not long after that watched from a distance as Skuld headed off toward the NIT campus by herself. Chris apparently had no morning classes on Thursdays, though, and I had not yet seen him by the time I ensconced myself in my temporary retreat for the morning. I spent several hours performing kata -- empty-handed, at first, to warm up, and then once I was limber and ready, while wielding a bokken. During the latter, I did my best to integrate what Chris had been showing me into a coherent whole. The fact that he had begun by working me in a single style to begin with helped me a great deal. I found, however, that I missed making up my own names for the stances, positions and moves. Somehow terms like "hasso hidari gamae", "chudan-no-kame" and "jodan-no-kame morote uchi kiri otashi kudashi", as descriptive as they were in Japanese, seemed far less interesting to me than coming up with something of my own like "Strike of the Wild Mallard" or "The Scarlet Pumpernickel Parry".Dull or not, though, I worked on those new moves all morning, both singly and in combinations. I concentrated on burning them deep into muscle memory, to make them as automatic as my unarmed combat moves have become. It wouldn't happen all in one morning, not by a long shot, but the key to the process was repetition. And the sooner you start, the sooner it's accomplished. I only stopped when Chris's bookends showed up and I realized that I was hungry.I heard them before I saw them, but then again, most of the neighborhood could probably have said the same. They were engaged in a calm and dignified discussion of important issues of the day. No, wait, that was somebody else. *These* two were all but screaming at each other at the tops of their lungs just outside the gates to the complex, which did nothing to mitigate their volume that I could detect. Even so, I had no idea what they were actually arguing about. Long before they'd gotten within earshot the two of them had already devolved into sniping at each other. The rather shrill exchange jolted me out of the state of intense focus into which I'd slipped, and reminded me that it was close to lunch time. As I started to debate with myself over how comfortable it would be for me to eat with the "family", I slid the bokken I was using into my belt and grabbed the towel I'dbrought in with me. I didn't really need it, but I wiped downmy brow anyway and then draped it around my shoulders.The two girls were just entering the compound when I stepped out of the temple. I was the only person in the yard at that moment other than them, and I watched as they crossed the flagstones so absorbed in their argument that they were completely unaware of my presence. From what I overheard, they were bickering about which of them was the better match for Chris, and it was already rapidly degenerating into the "so there!" and "I know you are but what am *I*?" level of debate. They weren't more than halfway across when I grimaced at the irritating stridency of their voices and decided that I'd had more than I could take. Taking advantage of their inattention, I blended speed and stealth to slip up behind them unnoticed. Staying just out of arm's reach I asked, very loudly and obnoxiously, "Just what the *hell* is it with you two?"
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...