Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → The Way of Moderation has ended (page 566)
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Blue.
Like the blue you used, but more lighter. A wee bit.
Okay, nice then.
To the Photoshop-mobile!!
Round 1: Enter the Chinaman
The single whip. Grasping the bird's tail. The powerful wrists of the drunken flute. The master moved in harmony from one posture to the next, in motions not laboriously slow, but not hurried in the slightest.
It was as Sun Tzu said two millenia ago: "Subtle and insubstantial, the master leaves no trace; divinely mysterious, he is inaudible."
From the heavens, the clouds opened up. The master looked up at the sun breaking through the clouds...was this a sign from heaven? Such a thing had not been heard of for centuries since Song Jiang and his 108 outlaws received their mandate from Heaven. A single leaf of paper fluttered down from the sky. Slowly it fluttered down, floating from one side to the other like a pendulum.
The master lifted his hand to catch the paper, when suddenly...
"HOLY BOB SAGET!" Parsat cried as he leapt three feet into the air, then crashed back down onto his bed. The noise and his subsequent landing caused the high stack of bootleg VCDs arranged precariously on the shelf above his bed to topple all over him. Not exactly the most subtle and insubstantial thing you could imagine.
As if wading through the sea of pirated goods wasn't bad enough, the paper flew over and promptly stuck itself to his face. He stumbled over to the window, pulling the piece of paper off and staring intently at it. It was a poster with a picture of Carlie on it, as well as a few questions that Parsat knew were rhetorical, but couldn't give a crap about that and answered them anyway.
"Yes, yes, yes. Sure, what the hell, might as well."
But first he had to put on some pants. This was a ceremony in itself, not so much in choosing the cargo pants he would wear, but deciding what he would put in his pockets. The items in his right pocket were always fixed: his cell phone, pen, and notepad. His left pocket always had his wallet and something else, which today would be a pocket-sized version of the Art of War.
Then there were the lower pockets. To his lower right, he carried his book of ad hominem attacks, as well as a vial of paracetamol. Generally he carried it with him just in case he hurt himself free-running or did something really stupid, but today he had a weird feeling about the tournament. Best to be prepared than in pain, of course.
In his lower left pocket he carried some illegal goods...an Armor City master key he had cut by a foreign keysmith, a deck of cards with inconspicuous markings allowing him to cheat, and a bamboo tube full of a mix of ashes and chili powder. Parsat had seen it in too many ninja movies to count, so he had decided to make some metsubushi of his own...that stuff definitely worked, as a day of blind staggering and vigorous eye rinsing demonstrated.
He went to his closet and picked up his sword, which had been given to him by his great-grandfather. It was in a leather sheath, and he
carried it with him always. Why he didn't choose a handier weapon was anybody's guess, but Parsat was a man of habit, however eccentric, and he always carried it in his hand. Capping the ceremony off was the wearing of the belt.
Parsat stretched for a bit before leaping out his open window, landing on a trampoline on the rooftop of the building below him and jumping down onto the street below, rolling to break the fall. Parsat never left out the door, because jumping out was infinitely more BA. The first time he had done this, he had crashed through the roof and into the bathroom of the tenant below. Many apologies and $300 later, he had fixed the roof and put a trampoline on top to sustain his way of life, against the wishes of the homeowner but very much in line with the wishes of Parsat's very sharp sword.
Since he lived close to the center of the city, the amphitheater wasn't too far off. Still, free-running with baggy pants and a crapload of stuff in your pockets while carrying a sword makes any excursion a tiring one. Nearing the place, Parsat realized that he was really hungry. Usually he would bilk a few delicious flapjacks from the owner of the nearby pancake stand with a trick or two, but today was a special occasion: He actually paid for his pancakes this time, and corrected the owner when he had given him too much change.
Walking over to the amphitheater, still munching on his pancakes, he couldn't help thinking with some amusement that he had lured that pancake owner into a very false sense of security. Until next time...