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Providence and Happenstance	By : CrystalEllinon Category: +G through L > G.I. Joe Views: 2565 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own G.I. Joe. I do not own any of the characters of G.I. Joe. I make no money from this work.

Chapter List
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Tommy slept on the couch. This was after a good deal of protest on her part (“You’ve already done enough for me! I can’t take your bed!”) and then only after he’d reassured her about four times that no, he wouldn’t have any trouble sleeping. (“It’s more comfortable than the floor, and I could sleep there too.”)
            He didn’t mention that there had been a few points in his life where he would have happily given up a month’s wages for a good soft sofa to sleep on for a night. Miserable moments during the Southeastern Asian rainy season came to mind. Rain should not be allowed to fall sideways. After the first week or so of storms, he’d been quite certain that he’d never be properly dry again.
            Snake Eyes, proving yet again that he was far smarter than most people gave him credit for at first, had sent his parents and sister a letter requesting that, in lieu of the usual care package offerings of cookies and toiletries, they send him dry socks. Lots of them. Wrapped in layers and layers of plastic. Invariably, when they came back to base after a patrol, there would be a box or two waiting.
            There’d been a thriving black market trade on the base in foodstuffs, cigarettes, pornography, and alcohol. During the wet season, however, dry socks had trumped all of this. Snake Eyes had eaten better than just about anyone else on the squad. Tommy, as his best friend, had also benefited in the form of choice treats and dry feet.
            Concerning sofas, however…well, it was one thing that Western culture definitely had over Japan; while futons were quite serviceable and comfortable, they had nothing on a good squishy sofa. Tommy’s father had gotten quite attached to overstuffed living room furnishings during the short few years he and Tommy’s mother had spent in California, and as a very young boy Tommy had appreciated the fact that you got much bouncier results jumping on a couch than on a futon. To this day, he preferred western-style living room furnishings.
            However, despite the fact that he had assured her that he’d be okay, despite the fact that he wasn’t in the least uncomfortable, and despite the fact that he was tired, he found sleep to be slow in coming. His mind was working, thoughts racing ahead at a thousand miles an hour, checking and double-checking his actions, figuring where they fit into things, figuring out what would happen next, what had to happen next, what the next moves would be. Keeping himself out of trouble and alive…that was one thing, and while he wasn’t always successful at the ‘out of trouble’ part, he’d always been very good at the ‘alive’ part. Keeping another person out of trouble and alive…that added another order of complexity into the equation.
            There would be people looking for her. Not just Hyata’s hitmen. She’d come from somewhere; there would be people wondering where she’d disappeared to. In all probability they’d report her as a missing person to the police. That led to faces on posters, offers of rewards, and well-meaning citizens drawing attention when you went out to buy groceries.
            The immediate, obvious solution was to just keep her hidden. But how long? Forever? He couldn’t keep her in this underground apartment forever, and wouldn’t want to. She was…what was she? A friend? Certainly not a prisoner.
            He could deal with Hyata’s hitmen. However good they might be at hunting someone down, he was better. But that would take time, and she really didn’t seem the type to be happy to hide away and let someone else take care of her problems.
            Skip town. Yes, that was it; Tommy had done just that many, many times in his life. It was why he had a dozen different passports under a dozen different aliases. Disappear, become someone else in a city that didn’t know you.
            Or, still better, retreat to a place where the city knew you, but not as you, and where the few people who did know who you were would say nothing, just as their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had known but had said nothing, because it would be a foolish move indeed to sell out the ninja clan that lived four miles from you. Besides, that would mean that that nice monthly bribe that the family had been enjoying for the last three hundred years would dry up, and that money had paid for many a wedding, car, home, and education.
            There were a few doctors, police officers, and other important figures that made almost as much by systematically ignoring the Arashikage as they did from their salary. The system had worked for hundreds of years, and showed every sign of remaining effective into the foreseen future.
            He hadn’t been home in quite some time anyway. The compound was likely in need of maintenance and repair. His aunt did her best, but she was busy with the multitude of businesses that she owned (none of which knew that the main shareholders were nonexistent, and the profits were fed into the coffers of a ninja clan.) Obake didn’t do wet work anymore, but she arguably made more money than any field agent ever had.
            Right. So, leave Tokyo until things cooled down, back to the compound for a bit. If she wanted to return to a normal life, Tommy could commit some acts of sabotage to vital police systems, go have some extremely pointed, ahem, words with a few Yakuza hitmen, and pay a few visits to old contacts who owed him favors. A person could be erased from public knowledge, if you knew the right people and had the right skills. A name change, some fake ID and documents, and no one ever need know who you once were. He could do that for her, if she wanted it. Give her a second chance.
            Like I never had.
            He rolled over yet again, flipped his pillow to find a cool spot, and settled down. His brain, having settled matters more or less satisfactorily, finally settled down as well, and he finally fell asleep.

            It was Junko’s ribs that finally woke her.
            It wasn’t that she’d never broken bones before. Her father had started training her at seven, and in thirteen years of martial arts practice it was almost a foregone conclusion that you’d break something. Toes were a common casualty; almost every student broke a toe or two at some point, despite multiple warnings from sensei about what would happen if you didn’t start curling your toes back during snap kicks.
            (Curl them back. Seriously. You’ll break your toes. It’ll hurt. I mean it. Curl them back. Curl them back more. More. I’m not going to tell you I told you so. I told you so. Yes, it‘s going to hurt for a bit. Just tape them up, you’ll be fine. Go to a doctor if you want, all he’ll do is tape them up and tell you to take it easy for a while. Okay, now let’s try this again. Maybe you’ll listen this time, hmmm? Yes, like that! They all have to learn the hard way…)
            Ribs were another common victim, usually of either falls or overenthusiastic sparring partners. However, while she had fallen victim to the I Told You To Curl Your Toes Back More, Maybe Now You Actually Will phenomenon, she’d managed to avoid cracked ribs.
            It hurt way more than broken toes. For one, broken toes didn’t hurt when you breathed.
            She groaned and rolled over, trying to find a more comfortable position.
            It was about at that point that her brain actually started to boot up and notice things. The mattress was softer than her bed in the geisha training house. And the bed was bigger. And the room smelled different.
            In a flash, the events of the previous night came back to her. She opened her eyes.
            The room was still almost utterly dark, save for the little light coming in under the door from the hall. She fumbled for the light beside the bed, clicked it on, and gingerly levered herself upright.
            She hurt. And her ribs weren’t the only thing. Her head ached. She knew she must have a lovely bruise on the side of her face from where one of the hitmen had caught her with a right cross. Every muscle below her neck ached, and she could feel several more spots that must be sporting ugly bruises. She gingerly touched the gauze pad that Tomisaburo…Tommy, he’d said he liked to be called Tommy…had applied over the cut on her cheekbone. That hurt too.
            And none of that mattered. None of that mattered, because she’d just slept soundly for the first time in five years.
            “I promised you I’d do it.” She whispered. “I promised you, mother. And I did. I did. He’s dead. You and father can rest quietly now.”
            A light rap on the door.
            Ah. Yes. Her mysterious benefactor. Who claimed to be a ninja, and certainly had enough weapons about the place to support such a claim.
            It was a ludicrous claim. Ninja were stories. Perhaps once they had existed, long ago, but now they lived on only in action movies and video games. If she’d had an ounce of sense, she would have thought he was utterly, and perhaps even dangerously mad.
            But…images of him tearing through Hyata’s bodyguards flashed through her mind.
            Junko’s father had been a professional martial arts instructor. He’d been widely acknowledged as a very good one. He’d started training her at the age of seven, as soon as she’d shown interest in it. He’d continued training her until his untimely death, and she’d dabbled in other styles as well. Junko knew, without conceit, that she was very good. Before the murder of her parents, she’d had three shelves of trophies won at several dozen assorted competitions. She’d seen a great many martial artists, many of them extremely good.
            But in all her life, never before had she ever seen anyone move like Tommy had. There was a certain beauty to any accomplished martial artist; watching a truly skilled master perform any sort of skills had a knife-sharp sort of grace to it. The very term used to denote the Eastern fighting styles recognized this; martial arts. Beauty from violence.
            To the eyes of a martial artist, what Tommy had done had been a masterpiece. A brutal, terribly efficient, bloody masterpiece. Junko had only caught glimpses of it, as she’d been rather occupied with trying not to get killed herself, but what she had seen had been, for lack of a better term, brilliant.
            And he’d been so casual about it. Shrugged it off like it had been nothing at all. He’d flat out said that part of the reason he’d saved her was purely because he wanted a fight.
            Another rap at the door. A pause. “I know you’re awake. If you want breakfast, it’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”
            She didn’t hear him walk away, but when she opened the door he wasn’t there. She blinked. How…he’d known she was awake?
            Ninja. Right.
            If she’d had an ounce of sense, she would have thought he was dangerously mad. It probably said more about her psyche than she really wanted to think about that she actually believed him.
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Providence and Happenstance