Martin J. Manco

Just Another Everyday

The tea ceremony began, as it always had.

Three men in kimonos were seated on the tatami floor in the tea house situated in a garden in suburban Japan. One, a white-haired young man with boyish features, garbed in orange with images of stylized flames and foxes, was using the silk fukusa cloth to handle to hot tea kettle, pouring for the three participants. The other two, seated next to each other across from the central tatami panel in the floor, were of similar age and garb. One had brown hair hair, cut in a feathery style, with flushed, reddish skin and a distinctly aquiline nose, and wore a sky blue robe decorated in elaborate clouds and birds, with a feather fan tucked into his belt. The third had long flowing blue-black hair, was strikingly handsome, wore black robes draped in coiling dragons, and spoke in a voice like gentle waves on the shore.

“The scroll you selected, Kari, is exquisite… simple and elegant, with the classic themes of harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility, and the illustrations of the five elements in the corners and center… lovely!”

“Why thank you, Tama,” replied the tea ceremony master in his high-pitched voice as he placed the sweets before them. “That is most kind. Since I figured we are a diverse group of yokai, for wont of a better term, it seemed appropriate. Please, enjoy the sweets.”

“My thanks,” came the rumbling tone of the long-nosed one, Sho, as he reached forward, using the kaishi paper to carefully lift one of the wagashi treats without disturbing anything else on the fuchidaka tray. Tasting it carefully with eyes closed in bliss, he hummed. “Exquisite! And may I say that the chabana flower arrangement is quite clever… snapdragon, foxglove, and bird of paradise, each leaning towards us… very fitting.”

“Of course,” said Kari with a mischievous smile that highlighted his vulpine features. “You are, after all, my favorite guests, and I so look forward to your visits. Now may I suggest the first tea? It is my own special blend… I call it Foxfire.”

The other two happily sipped the bright green tea, murmuring in delight at its lightness and flavor. It was then, however, that Kari’s ears twitched, Sho glared at the sliding walls, and

Tea Ceremony

by Martin J. Manco

Tama paused in between licking his lips to flick his tongue in the air, then sighed mournfully. “We never get an uninterrupted tea ceremony, do we?”

Kari commiserated, saying, “Ah well, at least this is nothing we haven’t dealt with before.” He then raised his voice. “We all know you’re there… you might as well come out now and save time.”

Smoke puffed around them, and the three tea enthusiasts, each kneeling in the formal seiza position, found the chain-and-sickle kusarigama blades at their throats as they were surrounded by black-clad ninja. Sho huffed. “Seriously?”

“Quiet, my friend,” replied Kari. “May I help you gentlemen?”

“You have made dangerous enemies, Yokai. Not all of them are patient enough to wait until your pretensions of civilization are done. Especially when you humiliated our grand master.”

Kari shrugged. “It wasn’t my fault he thought I looked especially fetching in a dress… though I admit I did help misplace the bride. She was awfully young for him, though, you must admit. Though I am sorry I deprived her of the pleasure of his kissing skills.”

The masked ninja somehow managed to express a sneer of disgust and their arms twitched at their weapons… only for green flames and purple lightning to blaze through the room, fanned from the nine fox tails fanning behind kari, whose eyes glowed yellow as his illusion of humanity flickered. Sho and Tama applauded as he slid open the panels of the tea house, and unceremoniously dumped them in the koi pond, watching them wake up and crawl away as fast as they could. “Next time, tell your grand master to stock up breath mints and marry a woman of his advanced age,” he offered cheerfully to the defeated and humiliated shinobi, before folding his array of tails away and resuming his human form.

Leaving the paneled walls open to enjoy the nice weather, the trio resumed the ceremony with an artfully-arranged selection of seasoned fish and meat, the kaiseki. After tasting appreciatively, Tama groaned, “Oh, I love the way surface people cook! Under the sea, we are woefully behind in such niceties.”

“You are welcome to visit any time, my friend,” replied Kari the kitsune, “but tell me, how does your father view your interest in the world above the waves?”

The dark haired young man winced. “Let us just say that we both have agreed not to speak of it, but the last time we did, the words, ‘I’ll not lose another one of my children to those faithless, smelly barbarians’ were involved. So it could have gone better.”

Sho grumbled appreciatively. “Ryujin does have a point, I’ll give him that… but then again, if guarding and ruling the ocean was my duty and my children had a tendency to fall for surface dwellers and get into trouble, I might feel the same way.”

Tama nodded, taking a bracing sip of Spring Thunder tea. “You’re right of course. But his instincts are to keep us close… and ours are to explore. It’s not a problem that is easily solv… do you feel something odd, in the air?”

It was Kari’s turn to sigh in frustration as a blaze of multicolored light shimmered in the garden outside the teahouse, resolving into five figures in elaborate armor, with spiny masked helmets, futuristic armor, and ridiculous looking weapons.

“We are… the Teenaged Super Ultra Samurai Menagerie Sentai! Black Northern Tortoise! Green Eastern Dragon! Red Southern Phoenix! White Western Tiger! Gold Central Kirin! Hai yah! Beware, evildoers!”

The tea tasters looked at each other in confusion. Tama spoke up, hesitantly. “Um, I do not think we are evildoers, per se.”

“Mischief doers, maybe” suggested Kari.

“Oh, definitely that,” agreed Sho. “Your mischief is at an end, monsters,” yelled the samurai in pink-red feathery armor. “Watch as we summon our Giant Uber Combination Mecha!” The team immediate posed in dramatic (and not very defensive poses, and reached for cell-phone like devices, presumably to summon something big and noisy. “Ok,” said Sho, standing up. “That is quite

enough. We are minding our own business, and if you can’t respect that, then you are no heroes. You are not even remotely in our league, even with your fancy gadgets, and you should instead be focusing on dealing with the gang and drug problems in town, not interrupting tea ceremonies of people who don’t happen to be human. Good bye!”

A roar of thunder and hurricane force winds blasted across the gardens… and over the next town. Like a certain frequently defeated brother-sister duo and their cat, the Teenaged Super Ultra Samurai Menagerie Sentai were flung far into the sky, vanishing from sight!

Sho, now with a fully avian face resembling a kite, fanned the massive wings he’d used to

buffet the teenaged superheroes into the next prefecture, and sat back down, calming himself as he gradually resumed a more human appearance and fixed his kimono. “I apologize for that… I couldn’t contain myself in the face of their attitude. Teenagers… hmph!” “Quite all right,” said Kari to the tengu as he folded the walls of the tea house shut. “Shall we continue?”

“Please,” Sho and Tama chimed in unison, and turned to a discussion of the weather.

Some time later, as lagoon tea was poured, and the three friends were relaxing, they heard a loud boom in the distance… and noticed ripples forming in their teacups. Then came another one… boom! Then another, slightly louder… Boom! Then a third, even louder… BOOM!

Kari held his head in his hands while Sho rubbed his shoulder. Tama looked disgusted. “What is the sense of having a monster island if the monsters do not stay there. Oooooooh, I will be having a talk with my father about this!” He flicked the walls open, and the trio looked up to see an enormous creature, with the frill and horns of a triceratops, the huge, razor sharp teeth of a tyrannosaur, the armor plated back of an ankylosaurus, a scaled but gorillalike torso, a spiked and finned tail, and tiny pteranodon-like wings, too small to support the weight of a creature that towered above most skyscrapers. It opened its jaws and roared down at the tea house, uprooting several of the trees in the garden and forcing the kitsune and tengu to dive for the tea cups, trays, and flower arrangements. Tama, on the other hand, only shrugged and stepped outside, hands on his hips, looking up at the massive kaiju like a toddler about to scold an older sibling.

The newspapers the next day would feature a cover of two reptilian monsters clashing with the headline, “Imperial Dragon Trounces Triceramari, Citizens Rejoice!”

Afterwards, when the son of the dragon emperor beneath the sea had resumed human form, his fox friend turned to his two guests and asked, “Same time next week?”