Remo grinned. "And now I'm going to wipe the ground with your stupid face."
The sumo stamped his feet like a toddler throwing a tantrum and, shaking the house walls with his roaring, he crashed around the ring as if trying to get up a head of steam.
"We're even, blubber butt," Remo said as they circled one another like belligerent binary stars.
"The shogun slept peacefully for many weeks," Chiun said, resuming his tale.
The sumo grunted like a mad bull, eyes turning fierce. "Not so cocky now?" taunted Remo.
The sumo said nothing. He was all business now. He dropped into his grunting crouch and wriggled his pudgy fingers at Remo in a come-on gesture.
Remo began circling, looking for an opening. Hitting below the belt was out. Punching was out. Not that any punch less than a death blow would fell the big behemoth. Couldn't do him. Couldn't kick at the vulnerable ankles and bring him down like a big tree. The power of a Sinanju Master lay in his ability to deal swift and sudden death. But in this arena, Remo's best moves were forbidden.
Chiun's remote voice resumed speaking.
"Long nights the Master of Sinanju slept under the stars, fretting over this new foe that seemed invincible to all of his wiles and skills."
Remo ducked between the sumo's legs suddenly, catching the man unaware. Coming up on the other side, he tried something simple. He grabbed the fat ankles and pushed hard. The sumo stood his ground. Bent over, Remo redoubled his effort. Little by little the sumo's feet began to slide along the moist clay. He refused to budge. He simply held his stance.
The sumo's feet scraped an inch of clay. Then two. Three.
Remo got him to the edge of the clay when abruptly the sumo reached between his dimpled knees and grabbed for Remo's wrists. Remo evaded a hand as big as a TV screen by fading back.
And Sosumi calmly lumbered back from the edge of the ring.
"This could take all night," Remo grumbled.
From the shadows Chiun intoned, "You are Sinanju. He is only sumo. It is too bad you did not beg me to tell you how the sumo came to be."
"Aren't you telling me now?"
"If I had told you before, the bout would not be even, and you would not now be frantic with worry that you are going to disgrace me against this fat tub of entrails."
"Hey, I resent that," Sosumi said in a hurt voice.
"If the diaper fits," Remo said.
The sumo wriggled his fingers again, mocking Remo's impotence.
Remo called over to Chiun. "I'm open to broad hints."
And the Master of Sinanju resumed his tale where he had left off. "Master Yowin thought long and he thought hard. And in time he realized if to strike fat was to be foiled, he must therefore strike not-fat."
"There isn't any such place on this blimp's body," Remo complained.
"Tell it to my momma," Sosumi said.
Remo called out, "How about another broad hint?"
"It is up to you not to disgrace me or the House," Chiun said.
"Can I stick him in the eyes?"
"You stick me in the eyes, runt," Sosumi growled, "and I'll wrench your head off, plant my mouth on your exposed windpipe and inflate your dead body like a puffer fish."
"You cannot strike him in the eyes," Chiun called out. "But you are getting warm."
"Warm?" Remo wondered, searching the sumo's broad, fleshy face.
A knowing grin coming over his face, Remo began weaving his hands in the air with casual menace. Sosumi blinked. "You better not be thinking what I think you're thinking," he growled.
"Come on, let's go. I don't have all night," Remo said.
"Sticking me in the eyes is against the rules."
Remo continued weaving.
"This time I'm going to nail your big fat butt to the ground," Remo warned. "No outside-the-ring stuff this time."
Perspiration began forming on the sumo's high, furrowed forehead. It drooled down. His topknot, coated with linseed oil, began to droop.
Lifting one fist, Remo popped two fingers. And drove them forward at high speed.
Sosumi saw the forked fingers coming at him like pink arrows and did the only thing possible. He clapped both hands over his eyes protectively.
And so never saw the flat heel of a hand that bopped him on the cartilage tip of his broad nose.
The resulting howl would have done justice to a wounded elephant.
And the sound Sosumi a.k.a. Beef Blast-san made as he fell into the clay was like a big wet smack of a whale's kiss.
"So much for Baby Huey," said Remo as the big sumo lay there quivering. He turned to the Master of Sinanju, who offered him a forty-five-degree bow. Remo returned it equally.
"Is that how Master Yowin did it?" Remo asked.
"No," said Chiun as they walked from the courtyard. "Yowin used his killing nails to gouge out their eyes. For what good is a wall of protective flesh if it is stamping about in circles and bumping into one another howling that it is blind while the Master of Sinanju steals up on the waking shogun in time to slice open his unprotected throat?"
And Remo laughed.
Chapter 14
Remo found that by pretending to sleep all the way from Tokyo to Honolulu, the geisha-style flight attendants of the JAL flight kept their hands to themselves.
It was hard not to sleep. He felt like he had circumnavigated the planet at a dead run.
When the plane landed in Honolulu, they bowed him out of the cabin, and when Remo neglected to bow back, ambulances had to be summoned when it was discovered that the flight attendants had all repaired to the gallery and tried to sever their wrist arteries with knives.
Since all the cutlery available to them were butterknives, there were no deaths and only minor stitches were needed.
Remo and Chiun were entirely oblivious to this. Hawaiian girls had accosted them in the terminal, cooing "Aloha" and decorating their necks with sweet-smelling leis of pink carnations mixed with white-and-yellow ginger flowers.
When Remo said "Thanks" in a deliberately uninterested voice, they tried to anoint his face with kisses. When he evaded their lips, they removed their own leis and showed him their bountiful breasts.
That caught Remo's attention. The fact that these weren't technically stewardesses probably softened his attitude somewhat.
That and the fact he couldn't immediately recall if he had ever slept with a Hawaiian girl or not.
"How long are we staying in Hawaii?" he asked Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju passed among the grass skirts and bare breasts, and although he seemed to keep his hands to himself, the Hawaiian girls began grabbing at and covering their grass-covered bottoms as if spanked by unseen paddles.
"Hussies," he hissed. "Begone! And bother us no more."
"Hey!" Remo complained, watching six gorgeous pairs of breasts bounce out of his life. "What happened to me siring a son?"
"You have no intention of impregnating those flaunting ones," Chiun sniffed, moving on.
Reluctantly Remo followed. "How do you know?" he asked.
"You would only have held back your sperm."
"Maybe. But I seem to recall you were the one who taught me how."
They walked out of the terminal into the heavily moist and jasmine-scented air of Honolulu.
"So you didn't answer my question. How long are we going to be in Honolulu?"
"Ten, possibly twenty minutes."
Remo frowned. "That's not very long."
"It is long enough," said Chiun, gesturing for a cab. He was ignored. When Remo inserted two fingers into his mouth and whistled, a cab pulled up with alacrity.
"Long enough for what?" Remo asked dubiously, holding open the door for Chiun.
"Long enough to acquire a vessel worthy of conveying us to our destination."
Remo got in. The cab got going. "Which is what?"
"Which is a boat."
"I meant the destination, not the vessel. And where are we going that can be reached by boat?"