The Secret Service are the first to formally request that Soun Tendo fully train and certify a "Anything Goes" teacher. They send their civilian Martial Arts adviser Frank Nash. The man already a grand master in Lima Lama has black belts in at least four other forms.  Including what is considered to be grand master skill level with a Bowie knife. Frank is not happy when his promised 3 SA enhancement is suddenly put on indefinite hold until he can become a certified instructor in some unknown minor martial arts school in Japan. Frank hoping to win his certificate immediately challenges the school's master Soun Tendo to a match. The next five minutes are very bruising and embarrassing as he quickly realizes just how outclassed he is and that Dan and several other agents whose skill he has "polished" in the past recognized this and have settled in to watch eating popcorn.

Agent Dan Barr watched as Frank Nash paused at the gate slowly reading the sign posted on the Tendo's outer wall. The confident smirk that was creeping onto the martial arts master's face replacing the irritated look was very familiar and made Dan smile.

Every member of the Secret Service had been anticipating what Frank would do when he saw the sign. There was quite a betting pool running about every imaginable aspect of this first encounter.

Dan fought to keep the look of anticipation off his face as his friend changed course and following the sign's instructions headed for the rear of the Tendo compound. He was going to do it, fighting the urge to float off the ground saying YES! Dan instead schooled his features and followed a step behind.

The man who had been wiping the floor with any five Secret Services agents for the past fifteen years wasn't known to have a fondness for the agencies leadership and the idea of some beauracrat deciding he needed more training to keep his job hadn't set well with him. Frank had liked it even less when they pointed out that the training had placed his anticipated 3 SA enhancement on hold until he was certified a Qualified instructor in Anything Goes. After that particular revelation, one of his kinder descriptions of Soun had been "Idiot master" and it had degenerated from there.

Still trailing along a step behind his former instructor and current friend Dan mentally commiserated with Frank's plight, but he could understand the reasons for Soun's refusal to train or certify any instructor that was already enhanced. He hadn't understood at first, at least not until he remembered a over heard conversation between Soun and Kasumi.

Kasumi had pulled strings in both nation's government to get several enhancements approved and had traded a donor session with General Winston and Lucille to open three 3 SA enhancements for her family and two 10 SA enhancements for Japan. Naturally it hadn't been Kasumi that had made the offer to her father, but the girl had been fit to be tied when she found out about Soun's refusal. Dan had actually heard Kasumi almost arguing with her father as she begged him to take the low level enhancement. Soun's replies then, made it clear now, the Anything Goes Masters reasoning.

In spite of his fluency in Japanese Dan hadn't fully understood most of the their discussion on Ki, but the core of his argument seemed to be that for the first time in nearly sixteen years his Ki abilities were improving and he wasn't going to risk that. Overhearing that conversation had been very fortunate. Even understanding part of Soun's reasoning Dan had spent nearly two hours just getting permission for the new Anything Goes instructors to receive a post certification enhancement. Even then Soun had made it clear that permission was only being given on a trail basis and might be removed at any time. The Anything Goes Master would not give up his conviction that he needed to the keep his human Ki. Soun also felt that his instructor needed to have a unmodified human aura and a deep grounding in Anything Goes aura manip...

Dan was jerked from his thoughts by Frank's sudden stop and the unexpected sound of him banging on a door. Looking at his friend in confusion Dan's hearing immediately started tracking the movement of the Tendo's house keeper an eyebrow rose as he heard the sound of a weapon's mechanism. Taking a quick glance through the wall Dan decided he didn't blame Ami, they were expected, but Frank's knocks were not the normal announcement of an guest or the ringing of the bell for a dojo challenger. In fact they bore more than a passing resemblance to an attempt to beat the door down. A moment later he heard a second click and saw the security agent's hand release the Dragon Fifty back into it's hidden holster as she glanced at the kitchen's security monitors and turned to answer the back door.

Turning from the house Dan automatically scanned the area pausing to nod to Rising Sun who was hovering at 18,000 feet and nominally watching the city, but actually paying more attention to her home and dojo. Lowering his eyes from the sky Dan glanced through the dojo walls and noted Soun calmly reviewing a move with one of the embassy Marine guards. Several other students were headed back from the dojo entrance rearrangeing themselves to watch the coming challenge.  Moving his focus to the surrounding residential structures Dan easily picked out several hidden presidential class agents. Most were on the nearby roofs and were accompanied by a couple of unenhanced agents, popcorn, a laptop and a small Yagi antenna. The last no doubt set up to record the secure digital video about to be broadcast from the dojo.

The eyebrow went back up when Dan realized just how many Presidential Ultramen were present, after a moment the eyebrow came down and he smiled at his own blessing. By chance Frank's introduction was also his day to attend a training session and he hadn't had to make any promises or call in any favors. From the look of things Superman, Waldeker, GI Jane and Ultrawoman were going to be collecting favors from the other Presidential Ultramen for the next few months.

A smiled crossed Dan's face changing quickly to a frown. The smile had come at the thought of Arnold or one of the other agents having to spend his weekend lifting a supertanker into orbit and had vanished as he remembered what several reporters were calling Agent Waldeker. The video of his long crawl into orbit with the first zero gravity factory hadn't helped, he couldn't believe it was actually still driving down the stocks of the companies bank rolling the project. No question about it stock market speculators were a flighty airheaded lot, but why couldn't they see past the comedians using the video for cheap jokes to the value of what Waldeker was doing? There was no question that the video of the first few hours of Waldeker pushing on the huge hull with almost no descernable motion looked stupid and as one reporter put it "That has to be the most boring job on the planet, it's even worse than watching paint dry." Dan's hands tightened into fist at the memory of the joke that always seemed to follow in some variant about "This was a job for Captain SPACED."

Dan made a mental note to take some of his free time and help the shy superhuman with his chosen dream. Despite what the comedians were saying Dan couldn't shake the feeling that Agent Waldekers brainstorm and self created career might be more important than the work of all the other enhanced agents combined.

Forcing his mind off Waldeker Dan instead looked at his friend's back reviewing what he knew of Frank's life history. The fifty-eight year old martial arts instructor had been hired nearly twenty years before to take the edges off new agents and keep the "polish" on active agents. His training methods invariable left his students humbled, bruised, battered and improved.

There wasn't an agent Frank trained that didn't dream of seeing him taken down a peg. Sadly there hadn't seemed to be a way to do it in the last ten years especially when you considered the fact that it took at least six agents to beat him in a "fair" fight.

Dan listened as Frank apologized in accented Japanese bowing several times before he finally pulled the cord to the challenge bell and turned to head for the dojo. Following his friend and thinking about the last challenge to Frank Dan experienced a moment of doubt and he fingered the Arkansas Bowie knife just over a dozen other agents now carried.

Despite his ego and habit of demonstrating just how good he was Frank had hidden depths and skills, such as his knife fighting style. Who would have thought that a man who was a master in so many empty hand forms would have been developing an original knife fighting style that was a match for an olympic class fencing style.

It had been common knowledge that Frank was a Grand master in Lima Lama and that he also held high level black belts in several other empty hand forms, but no one suspected he had an interest in weapons.

Frank had regularly demonstrated how to disarm or disable people brandishing everything from an Axes to Whips, but he was never seen to actually use the weapons himself. He always used a couple of assistant teachers or one of the more skilled students to attack while he demonstrated disarming techniques. Eventually Dan and several other agents had noticed this reluctance about weapons and put two and two together coming up with four. Shaking his head in rueful memory, the plan would have been dropped if they had known there was an additional skill to be added. The proper equation was two and two plus one killer of a knife fighting style. It never crossed Dan's, Arnold's or anyone elses mind that Frank was the type of person to focus on something to the point of refusing to handle any other weapon.

Setting Frank up for a challenge match with a ringer had seem like the perfect idea and Arnold's friend in the French embassy seemed perfect. She had won a bronze metal fencing in a previous Olympic Game and she could do things with a sword that Dan hadn't seen, even in the special effects of a Zarro movie. Setting Frank up for the challenge had been child's play given his ego and he had fell for it hook line and sinker. The look on his face when he had found out it was a fencing challenge had been priceless and made the agents acting as go betweens regret not having him under video surveillance.

The actual match had made the conspirators regret they had used professional surveillance to record the fight. Their shocked faces were clearly visible around the challenge ring as Frank used nothing more than his knife fighting style and a pair of Bowie knives to beat a French fencing champion armed with her sparring blade and a skill that had taken her to the Olympics. The match had lasted roughly fifteen minutes and ended with the woman admitting defeat and then requesting training in the style. Dan wasn't sure how, but all twenty agents present were "volunteered" to help. It seemed the last thing Frank needed to get his knife fighting style ready for students was about twenty well trained dummys to work out the final kinks and bugs.

Soun watched the man remove his shoes and enter the dojo using the most complex and ancient form of the challenge. His body reacting on auto pilot following the correct forms as his mind raced judging the other man's chi and skill. There was a fading tinge of embarrassment still evident even as the anger and determination slowly reasserted itself in the man's movement and chi. Soun fought down his own irritation as he saw yet another master who was completely ignorant of his bodies life energy. It was quite evident from both his movements and chi that Mr. Nash Frank was master level in no less than six forms of martial arts and yet his chi control and focus was worse than a ten year olds, specifically Akane's.

Soun, unaware a smile had graced his face, at the memory of time spent training his youngest daughter, decided to start the match with a few chi techniques. He had seen several short videos of Frank fighting including an impressive match where he defeated an excellent swordswoman with nothing more than very large knives. He had used unknown style that was admittedly rather rough, but looked to hold great promise.

Soun had been warned that Frank might challenge the dojo, not that he needed such a warning he had already decided it was a likely after seeing the echoes of his style in Dan and the other agents. That belief had firmed into certainty after viewing the fencing video and had prepared for this day accordingly. When he watched the fencing match he had thought the man was making unconscious use of his chi, but looking at him now and the poorly focused aura that surrounded him Soun's determination to make him a student increased. He hadn't thought it was possible to reach the levels this man had with a Chi that unfocused. Silently studying his new students aura for several seconds he decided it would be best to start the fight with a high level demonstration. It would cut through the anger and give Mr. Nash a clear hint at just what the Anything Goes school could teach him.

His decision made, Soun focused and the wistful smile turned sinister, his hair started to flutter in an nonexistant breeze as his facial features along with the rest of his body seemed to slowly distort into something horrifying. After a moment observing his challengers body and Chi Soun stepped inside the man's stance and effortless flipped the frozen man's body.

Frank climbed to his feet for the sixth time swaying slightly as he slowly wiped the blood from his cut lip, careful to keep his eyes focused on Master Tendo's feet his gaze never climbing above the knees. He had found out the hard way looking at a larger portion of Soun's body invariably pulled his eyes to the face and to him being frozen.

Soun watched his student wipe away blood and frowned he hadn't meant to hit him that hard. His challenger was good enough that when he moved Soun was finding it hard not to react like he was one of his current batch of embassy students with the beginnings of a three percent kryptonian enhancements.

After a moment's thought Soun decided to end the match by taking a page from Genma's book and mix it with some of the new techniques his long time friend had returned with. Taking a deep breath and a moment to focus his Chi Soun leaped easily clearing Franks head as his body tucked into a spinning rolling ball that ended with him landing a step behind his challenger and facing his back. Soun frowned when he had to take a half step back to maintain his balance almost missing one of the pressure points as he forced his chi into selected nerve junctures on his students back.

Frank's mind raced as he watched every twitch in the Anything Goes Master's feet and lower legs. He had to come up with some way around this so called Demon Head attack, how could he fight someone when he couldn't look at them. It's first use had left him frozen in shock, defenseless and a moment later sprawled on the ground. The martial arts master in front of him wasn't using it continuously, but he had used it enough times to make clear the only thing Frank was safe looking at was the legs. Frank had never even imagined such an attack and wouldn't even have known the name if he hadn't heard one of the marines blurt it out before being silenced "Is that the Demon head? Didn't he use that to freeze GI Jane?"

Not that knowing the name was helping and finding out it had stood off a Kryptonian was disheartening in the extreme. He hadn't believed Dan and the other's agents veiled hints at the abilities associated with an Anything Goes Master. Frank's own meager sources in Japan hadn't prepared him for this, nothing like mind attacks or maybe instant hypnosis. Silently he vowed to look up his old Japanese Sensia and find out why they had told him the Anything Goes School was nothing more than perverts, thieves, conmen, flimflam artist and fakers using tricks more appropriate to a carnival side show.

Frank blinked as Soun's legs suddenly vanished followed a moment later by gasps from several students. He had just started to spin around in his search when he heard a soft thump and felt a almost simultaneous series of sharp burning stings across his shoulders and lower back. He tried to react with a spinning kick and a combo to his attackers chest and head, but instead collapsed when only his torso moved his legs frozen and his arms flopping numbly. He seemed to fall slowly as his unbalanced body tipped over hitting the mats on his left shoulder.

Dan watched Frank fall yet again and looked down at his half empty bag of popcorn in embarrisment, so he didn't see his friend twitch several times, but he heard him say "I yield Master Soun." Leaving his bag of popcorn Dan jumped to his feet and hurried over to his friend as Soun rolled him over and pressed several spots on his back. He nervously bowed to Soun as Frank let out a hiss and clumsily came to his feet and staggard a slow circle shaking his arms and feet. Finally the man seemed to feel confident enough in the control of his limbs to give Soun a deep bow and say "Master Soun I humbly request permission to train in Anything Goes."

Formally accepting his new student Soun studied his Chi and felt vindicated. The respect he could see in Frank's aura wouldn't have been present and more importantly this hatchling instructor would be convincing himself that it was the almost mythical power of a kryptonian enhancement that had beaten him.

Turning down a enhancement and ignoring his oldest daughter's attempts to convince him otherwise had been the hardest thing he had done in years. Sighing Soun watched as Frank was almost mobbed by agents each trying to be among the first to rib him about his loss.  Soun wanted an enhancement, but he didn't feel right in getting one. Not when he was going to require all potential Anything Goes instructors to do without. He wasn't a hypocrite like his cursed master taking every advantage over his students. He didn't equate fearful disgust with respect. He wouldn't place his own desires ahead of the future of the school. He wasn't his best friend a prodigy in the art almost hamstrung by his own lazyness.