Janna Banana said:
Dipper and I got jumped at the scrapyard
Jo said:
WHAT?
Mabel said:
OMG ARE YOU OKAY??
Janna Banana said:
Dipper got beat up but hes good. Nano helped us out.
Jo said:
WTF WHO DID IT?
Janna Banana said:
Some dbags from the bike track. They chased us around the scrapyard, but they were after him.
Jo said:
Drew said that its the Vanderhoffs!
Janna Banana said:
Where are you guys?
Jo said:
We are almost at the scrapyard. 5 minutes.
Janna Banana said:
We are going back to Dipper’s place. His grandpa will pick you up. Is Marco with you?
Jo said:
No, Marco’s still at the dojo.
Janna Banana said:
Why?
Roland said:
Getting his red belt.
Jo said:
Is he not reading his messages?!
Roland said:
I’m gonna call him.
Roland said:
Straight to voicemail. I’m gonna go back to the dojo and let him know. We’ll catch up.
Mabel said:
Sorry for long response! We just left the Bounce Lounge and are at Sherpa’s!
Marco had not answered his phone because it was in his backpack at the dojo, and he was a few blocks away at Sensei’s home. When Sensei said they were taking their training out onto the street, it was actually out to here–and since their arrival he’d finished mowing the front lawn of the house, sweeping the driveway, and now he was washing the windows.
He wasn’t kidding about this being tough. He thought as he scrubbed at a particularly stubborn wad of grime with a soapy sponge.
“Remember: sponge on, squeegee off. Let the two work in harmony, like yin and yang, and the balance will do the rest.”
Marco looked down at Sensei then back at the window. “There’s a lot of gunk up here… like someone hasn’t cleaned these for a while.”
The yard was the same way too, at least the lawnmower was in good shape to tackle it.
“You can give up any time if it’s too hard, Mr. Diaz.”
Marco scrubbed harder. “No, Sensei!” He scowled into his reflection in the glass. “I’m getting that belt.”
Sensei brought a hand to his chin, rubbing his goatee. “Hmm… when you’re done with the windows, next you’ll have to clean my–guest room. I just hosted an AirBnB and it is grody.”
“Yes, Sensei!” Marco shouted back, as Roland came riding down the street. Spotting them, he pulled a turn and rolled up into Sensei’s driveway.
Sensei saw him and nodded in greeting. “Mr. Williams.”
Roland gave him only the briefest nod back, before calling up to Marco from the seat of his bike. “Hey, Marco! Where’s your phone, cuh?”
Marco stopped and looked back. “Roland? What’s going on?”
“Dipper and Janna got jumped at the scrapyard.”
Marco dropped the sponge and squeegee into the bucket and leaped down from the ladder, landing in front of Roland. “When? Are they okay?”
“Dipper got the smoke, but he good. We’re all linking up at his crib.” He stepped closer. “It was just like Lars hitting him up Monday.”
It wasn’t some great mystery that needed Sherlock’s intellect to solve. “… Trip and Van.”
Roland nodded. “… Yeah…”
Marco turned to his Master. “I have to stop for today, Sensei.”
Sensei folded his arms. “If you do now, then you will have to begin the trial all over again.”
“That’s fine, one of my friends got beat up and I need to make sure he’s all right.” Marco stopped. “Wait, start over? Can’t we pick up where we left off?”
“No can do, Mr. Diaz, the trial requires discipline and the determination to follow through with a difficult task. Just like in real life, you cannot merely press the pause button and pick up later at your own convenience. It is a disgrace to the art and to the journey.”
Roland spoke up. “Hol’ up, that’s not what you said at the dojo.”
Sensei looked at him. “Come again?”
“You offered Marco to take the rest of the day off and said that he could pick it up tomorrow,” he pointed out.
Marco looked at Roland, then at Sensei. “Yeah. What’s up with that?”
“Uh… well you see, that was before you truly immersed yourself in the trial. You have already taken care of the difficult tasks such as the lawn and the front windows.”
Roland turned to Marco. “Man’s been having you do his housework? Cleaning the dojo is one thing, but this belt test shit can’t be all this.”
Marco took a moment for Roland’s point to sink in. “Hey… Sensei, what’s going on?”
Sensei recoiled, his eyes darting left and right as his mind raced. “Well… you see, that is…”
A car pulled up into the driveway at that moment, and the color drained from Sensei’s face when the boys turned and saw a small old woman emerge from the car and walk over to them. She was looking, impressed, at the well mowed lawn.
“Oh my goodness, Brantley! The lawn looks lovely.” She looked up at the front of the house, specifically the windows. “And you finally got to the windows too.”
She turned her attention to Marco and Roland. “Oh, your little friends from the dojo came to help? That’s so sweet of you boys-” She stopped ad adjusted her glasses to better look at Roland. “You’re Nano’s grandson, aren’t you dear?”
Roland nodded. “Uh, yeah…”
“I was wondering if you were ever going to start going to his school. I’ve suggested it to Nano so many times over at the salon.” She flashed the boys a warm smile. “You all sit tight, I’ll make you up some sandwiches for all your hard work.”
The old woman walked up to the house and unlocked the door. Marco’s gaze moved from the woman to Sensei. “Uh… your mom lives with you?”
“N-no, she has her own house. She just visits, because she worries about me.”
At that moment, his mother called out. “I hope that while you’re on this roll, you’ll get your room cleaned, Brantley. I’m having some guests over Sunday, and I’d like to have the house spotless.”
Sensei looked back to his students, and he withered under their stares. “All right… the truth is… yes, this is my mom’s house, and I am indeed… having you do my chores that I’ve been behind on.”
Marco closed his eyes, and took a long deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Why…?”
“Because… the truth is, Mr. Diaz…” Brantley hung his head. “… I am a green belt, too.”
“I don’t understand,” Marco said, the tone of his voice detached.
Roland’s reaction was much stronger than Marco’s. “What?!”
Sensei gestured for them to follow. “Allow me to explain… the terrible truth.”
Roland looked at Marco, then back at Sensei as he walked away. He palmed his face and got off his bike. “I cannot believe this…”
Marco was at a loss for words but centered himself and went after Sensei. “Come on.”
They followed Sensei upstairs to his room. Like his mother suggested, the room was in dire need of a cleaning, and to Marco’s chagrin it looked every bit as disorganized and sloppy as his wasn’t. Sensei sat down on the floor beside his unmade bed and pulled out a dusty cardboard box full of old VHS tapes.
“You see, after I had finished my training under Nano… I dedicated myself to teaching the martial arts. So I picked up these tapes in order to teach students.”
“You can’t teach Karate by video tape,” Roland began.
“Sure you can, they’re like lesson plans,” Sensei pointed out. “What courses to teach for each level, from yellow to black belt and junk. Unfortunately… I have not been able to watch past the green belt video.”
“… Why?” Marco asked, after another noticeable deep breath.
He gestured across the room. Both looked and found an old VCR/DVD player combo holding up a broken leg of the table. Sticking partially out of it was a VHS tape labeled “How to Karate: Red Belt Test and Training Guide.”
“The tape got stuck in the VCR, and I’ve been unable to remove it. I tried to watch another tape to learn how to unstick it, but… that got stuck, too.” The VCR and stuck tape in question were supporting the computer table’s other leg.
“That’s literally it?” Roland pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a groan. “YouTube, my guy… YouTube…”
Sensei looked up from his knees. “You think I haven’t scraped the internet high and low for it online? I searched so deep into the web that I had to throw my last two hard drives into the LA river to get rid of that web history.”
“No, I mean to unstick…” Roland shook his head. “You know what? Forget it.” He looked at Marco. “Can we go?”
Marco took a third deep breath. “Sensei, I need to get my phone and clothes from the dojo.”
Sensei, cowed by Roland’s exasperation and Marco’s disappointment, nodded and rose to his feet. “Very well, we shall depart at once.”
@@@@@
Roland walked his bike alongside Marco, his expression flat as the two trailed behind Sensei, who was slowly pedaling his own BMX style bicycle up the shop-lined road towards the strip mall. Marco was using Roland’s phone, explaining to the others via the group chat that they were going to be late to the meeting.
“Hey, I don’t want to be the one to say it, but…” Roland said in a hushed voice.
Marco glanced from the screen at him. “Hm?”
“Sensei’s kind of a mess, cuh.” Roland remembered Nano’s shocked reaction to Brantley’s dojo still being open.
Marco looked down at the sidewalk ahead of them. He clenched his hands into fists and took another deep breath. “Kind of, yeah.”
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
In front of them, Sensei glanced over his shoulder at the two, looking like he’d just seen someone punt a sack of puppies into a river. Both noticed the look, and all averted their gazes.
Roland rested a hand on Marco’s shoulder. “At least he came clean about this whole thing.”
“Yeah,” Marco sighed. “I wish we could get that tape working.”
“Jo could take that VCR apart blindfolded, but… if it’s been like that for years? It’s probably ruined.” It still bothered Roland that Sensei just gave up on something so minor.
Marco cast his gaze downward. “It’d be nice if we could get another tape or find it online… huh.”
The two strolled to a stop in front of the giant VHS mockup standing on the sidewalk, advertising rare video tapes. They looked up at the store it stood in front of, proudly advertising itself “VHS Depot.”
Marco tilted his head. “You don’t think they’d have it, do you?”
Roland shook his head. “I’d rather we link up with the crew.”
“I know but,” Marco looked at Sensei, then back to Roland. “Let’s just look?”
Before Roland could protest, Marco called over to Sensei. “Uh, Sensei! Can you hold on a second?”
Sensei looked back. “What is it, Mr. Diaz?”
“Roland and I are going to check out this store real quick, we’ll meet you at the dojo.”
Sensei nodded. “Do what you must, I’ll get the door unlocked.”
He continued on his way, and Marco headed inside the store. “Trust me, this won’t take a minute.”
Roland shook his head again and followed. “On God…”
Right away they were greeted with shelves and shelves of VHS tapes, video game cartridge boxes, and banks of CDs–relics of an era before their time, as alien and mysterious to early 21st century teenagers as the ruins of ancient Egypt to the first archaeologists to witness them.
“God damn, this place got me feeling like I’m eight,” Roland muttered, “This a museum.”
Marco was a bit distracted from the age of the material, by its quality. “Yeah, but the film selection…”
He picked up a VHS tape box, a display model, and gasped. “Oh wow, a VHS copy of The Rock, starring Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery. This is one of the greatest movies ever made.”
Roland looked at it. “Really, cuh? By the Explosions guy?”
“He used to be good,” Marco said with a bit of defensiveness. He looked at the price. “And it’s only 65 dollars. I can afford that.”
He looked at the shelf and gasped. “Is that a copy of Con-Air?!”
Before Roland could question Marco’s taste further, someone else did. “Ah, I see that you are a man of culture as well.”
Marco and Roland both looked towards the cash register of the VHS Depot, where a short, messy-haired and round-faced man sat with his hands folded on the counter top, the plate on his shirt reading “Manager.” More importantly, on the shelf just behind him was a familiar VHS cassette box–the “How to Karate: Red Belt Test and Training Guide.”
The Manager chuckled and snorted. “Yes, the 90s were Nicholas Cage’s finest era. Con-Air, Face/Off, and I see you’re already interested in The Rock.”
“Face/Off was good too, while not a prison movie, I can’t say no to a John Woo film,” Marco said as he walked over, his eyes on the Red Belt Tape.
The Manager snorted and laughed again. “I could tell you a thing or two about his older works. Face/Off is nothing compared to-”
Marco rested his arm on the countertop. “A Better Tomorrow? The Killer?”
This threw the Manager off. “Ohohoho… someone who knows what they’re talking about, if you’ve come here to make a bargain then you’ve started on the right foot.”
“As a matter of fact, I am.” Marco gestured to his gi. “As you can see, I’m big on karate, and it just so happens that you have something over your shoulder there that I’d like to get my hands on.”
“Huh,” Roland said, not expecting Marco to be this big on movies.
The Manager looked back. “Ah yes, the How to Karate Series Red Belt test. You’d be surprised how rare this actually is. Apparently only a hundred copies were ever sold, before the FBI confiscated the unsold inventory.”
Marco recoiled a bit. “Wait, there’s nothing illegal on it, is there?”
“Oh no, nothing of the sort. It’s more a sordid tale involving the school the tapes teach from. The tapes are all clean, and very rare.”
He picked up the tape and set it down in front of Marco. “This copy has only been viewed once, and tightly rewound back to the beginning. If you want it, for an aficionado like yourself? I’ll ask for twenty-four hundred.”
Marco looked at the tape, then at The Manager. “Wait, dollars? You’re joking, right?”
The Manager sniffed loudly through his pig-like nose, tilting it up to look down it at Marco. “It’s one of only a dozen copies known to exist, maybe even less than that.”
The Manager tapped on the glass countertop next to the tape. “You can’t even find it online. Well you might, but you don’t want to go looking for it.”
He looked aside. “I had to destroy two hard drives…”
Marco didn’t want to know where people were looking for their karate videos. “All right, say I don’t have twenty-four hundred on me. Is there another way we can do this?”
The Manager brightened. “Of course. Fight me for it. Win, and it’s yours.”
Roland’s face fell. “What.”
Seeing the short, overweight Manager in front of him, Marco calculated his odds. “Yeah, I think I can do that.”
“Uh, Marco?” Roland knew they didn’t have time for beating up some store clerk. Especially over a VHS tape.
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,” Marco said back to him. “I just have to go one on one with-”
He stopped when The Manager rose to his full standing height. What Marco mistook for fat shoulders and arms were, to his chagrin, bulging rippled muscles tightly attached to a 220cm tall frame built for speed and striking power, like the man had trained his entire life in Muay Thai and Kickboxing.
Roland did a double-take. “… What.”
Peering down at Marco from on high, The Manager grinned and chuckled. “Changed your mind?”
Marco recalculated his odds and assumed a fighting stance. “… I’ve fought worse.”
Roland moved between the two, as The Manager raised his arm to chop through his own counter and attack. “Okay! Hol’ right the fuck out! You must be out your god damned mind if you’re about to throw hands over a tape–when we got bigger shit to worry about!”
He looked over at The Manager. “And what’s your problem, wanting to run a fade with a high schooler over a video tape?!”
Marco gave him a flat look. “I’ve seen Alfonzo and Ferguson get into literal fist fights at Zoom, Roland.”
“Zoom?” The Manager repeated in recognition. “Roland?”
“That’s different,” Roland argued. “Alfonzo does Versus Debates IRL and Ferguson thinks walking up to anyone wearing a Batman shirt and telling them The Long Halloween was bad will provoke thoughtful discourse.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Marco said.
“Look, that’s not the point. You need to set your priorities, cuh, why is this belt so important that we’re here and not over with our people?”
Marco hesitated, before he stopped and looked down at his feet. “Because…”
He trailed off again, hesitating a little longer. “… I first started taking lessons at the dojo when I was nine. I saw Sensei demonstrating in the park, and it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I thought if I could learn karate, I’d be stronger and I could impress, you know… people I wanted to impress… but the thing I wanted the most was to be like him.”
Marco lowered his shoulders. “When Sensei just asked me if I wanted to be his assistant, I was so excited because I thought that this was another step towards me being closer to that.”
He looked to his left. “And… I admit it, being an assistant teacher would mean I’d get to rub it in Jeremy’s face and I was really looking forward to that, too. Now, though…? After seeing how he is? I want to help Sensei rank up, too.”
Roland paused, thinking about Drew’s own inner conflicts and how he’s gone out his way for him. “Oh.”
With that, he relented. “Well, shit, cuh… I can’t argue with wanting that.”
The Manager picked up the tape and offered it.
“Take it.”
Roland and Marco stared at the tape. Their eyes slowly trailed up to The Manager’s face.
“Huh?”
The Manager nodded solemnly. “It’s yours.”
Marco brightened. “My story of seeking to strengthen the bond with my Sensei moved your martial artist’s spirit, and you’re giving the tape to see it through?”
“What? No.” The Manager said as he offered the tape to Roland specifically. “I owe Nano a lot for helping me keep my business afloat. So take the tape as a token of appreciation.”
Marco and Roland cycled between gawking at The Manager and searching one another for some kind of explanation. After several loops, they stared at each other.
“All right, how does your grandmother have so much clout in this town?”
Roland shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, but when it works? It works.” He took the tape and gave it to Marco. “I think we’re almost done here, cuh.”
Marco took the tape. “Almost?”
Roland smiled and looked at The Manager. “Hey man, you got a VCR we can borrow?”
“New or used?” The Manager asked.
@@@@@
Ten minutes later, Sensei opened the door to the VHS Depot and stepped in with caution. “Hello? Mr. Williams, I got your text, did something happen? Did the store get robbed?”
He stopped when he found Marco standing in front of a tall cart with an old CRT television and VCR combo sitting on it. On the television, the “How to Karate: Red Belt Test and Training Guide” was paused on the title screen. Roland and The Manager stood off to the side, waiting patiently for Sensei’s arrival as Marco was.
Sensei stepped towards Marco and the TV, his eyes wide and shining. “No way…”
“That’s right Sensei. The wait is over, we have a copy of the Red Belt video, and it works.”
Sensei lit up. “Marco, dude! This is awesome, how’d you pull this off?!”
“Turns out, with a little bit of help from my friends.” Marco nodded to Roland, who threw a salute back to him. “Now we can take the Red Belt test and level up, together.”
Sensei was practically beaming. “Marco, you are truly epic!”
“And when we complete the test, I can become your assistant and we can make the school better, together.”
The light left Sensei all at once. “… Oh.”
It didn’t escape Marco’s notice. “… Uh, Sensei?”
Sensei’s shoulders slumped, and he turned away. “Mr. Diaz… I’m afraid there’s something we must discuss.”
Marco felt a cold anxiety building up. “What is it?”
Roland didn’t like how the atmosphere changed either and walked over. “Now what…?”
“Mr. Diaz… Marco…” Sensei took a deep breath. “… Even if you were to become a red belt, I literally cannot let you become my assistant instructor.”
It felt like a punch to Marco’s stomach. “What? You literally can’t? Then why did you tell me that I needed to be a red belt first? Why did I go through all that work for the trial?”
Sensei groaned and turned to face him. “Because I wanted you to quit, okay?”
Marco went stock still, staring at his teacher. “… You what.”
Sensei heaved a sigh, and sniffled. “I couldn’t just say that you’d never be my assistant after I said all that in class!”
His eyes welled up with tears. “S-so I made up all that junk for you to do today because I hoped you’d get tired and forget about the Red Belt, but you’re like… super determined and junk! I was running out of things to make you do because you wouldn’t give up.”
Marco remained unmoving. “You… what…?”
Roland was trying to fight the haze of red that was falling over his vision.
“I can’t explain it right now, but you’re just not… er… I want you to be my assistant but I-”
Marco cut him off. “You know what, Brantley? It’s okay.”
He untied his green belt, opened his gi, and tossed it onto the floor at Brantley’s feet. His former teacher stared at the discarded gi, then looked up at Marco. The young man’s eyes were dark with anger and betrayal, but also wet with fiercely held back tears.
“You wanted me to quit, so I quit,” he said in a dead calm, before he walked past Brantley and out of the VHS Depot.
“Mr. Diaz!” Brantley called after him. “Marco, wait!”
Roland snapped. “Yo, shut the fuck up.”
Brantley turned around in surprise and backed up as Roland slowly advanced towards him. “Who the fuck do you think you are, gassing up my nigga for the whole fucking day like that?”
He walked Brantley backward until he was up against a shelf of VHS taps, the Karate instructor pressing his back against them.
“We could’ve been anywhere else but playing this stupid fucking game with you, but nah, you had to be on some fuck shit, because your ass was too pussy to be a man and tell him straight.” He raised a finger and jabbed it in Brantley’s chest. “The fact that you thought that he would give up easy like you do when shit gets hard says exactly how sorry you are. You’re not worthy to teach that piece of shit Jeremy, let alone a real nigga like Marco.”
He turned around, walked five steps towards the door, and then stopped to look back at Brantley. “And you definitely have no right to even speak my Grandmama’s name. She should’ve left your sorry ass to get jumped, fuck nigga.”
Roland marched out of the store. Brantley, staring straight ahead, sank to the floor at the base of the shelf and looked down at his feet. Across the room, The Manager watched the door swing closed, then turned to the fallen teacher.
“If you’re not going to buy anything,” he said with a stiff, threatening voice, “Get out.”
Outside, Roland rode his bike down the street, catching up with Marco. “Ayo! Marco! Marco!”
Marco kept walking, his eyes straight ahead. “We need to go meet with the others.”
Roland dismounted from his bike and jogged alongside him. “Look, man, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything, it’s fine.” He grit his teeth. “I was the idiot.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Yes, I was. I should’ve realized something was up sooner. I was so excited about becoming his assistant that I didn’t think he was leading me on.”
Marco let out a bitter laugh. “I mean, yeah, I thought it was weird. But come on, he was the one who wanted me to be his assistant! Why wouldn’t I trust him?!”
He shook his head, tears beginning to run down his face. “Who I guess thought so little of me… that he figured I’d give up as easy as he did when he couldn’t get a stupid tape out of a VCR.”
Reaching up he rubbed his face. “Wow… I’m so stupid.”
Roland has been here before. “Marco, cuh…”
He draped an arm over his shoulder, stopping him, and pulled him in close for a tight hug. “This ain’t your fault. Stop blaming yourself, or calling yourself stupid, or any of that shit. You’re his student, you trusted him, and he betrayed that trust. That’s not on you, and never was.”
He pulled back, and Marco stood there, weighing on that. After a moment he looked up from his feet at Roland. “That… you’re right.”
Roland shrugged his shoulders. “Look cuh, I wish this was my first time with this shit… but I’ve seen my fair share of shitty authority figures in my life, and what they do to the people near and dear to me.”
He stepped back and patted Marco on the shoulders. “We gotta be better than that.”
“Nano seems pretty cool, though.” Marco pointed out.
Roland looked to the side. “She’s the exception, but we can talk about that another time–we got people waiting for us.”
Marco agreed. “Yeah, we can get my phone and junk later.”
As the two continued on down the street, Brantley left the VHS Depot with his head low. He looked down the street where Marco and Roland left, and his eyes welled up with more tears.
Directly across the street, an expensive-looking black SUV left the curb and pulled a U-turn over the two-lane street to park in front of Brantley. The driver of the car, a balding man in a tuxedo, emerged and walked around the front to open the front passenger door and pull out a set of stairs. Then he opened the rear passenger doors and set them down–allowing Jeremy Birnbaum to step out and onto the sidewalk in front of Brantley.
Jeremy, holding a small bucket of popcorn and conspicuously wearing a pair of binoculars around his neck, looked in the direction Marco went, then up at Brantley. “Wow, he actually quit. This went better than I thought.”
Brantley looked down at Jeremy, and he took a deep, long breath as he glared at the boy with all his impotent fury.
Jeremy looked up at his sensei and popped another handful of popcorn in his mouth. “I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. You’re the one keeping your dojo open.”
Brantley’s glare vanished, replaced by a beaten, downcast look to the ground. Jeremy smiled, blithe and cherubic. “That’s right. Thanks for making this the best Saturday ever.”
He tossed the half-full tub of popcorn at Branley’s legs, spilling the contents onto his feet, and turned around to climb back into the car. As his butler buckled him in, Jeremy looked over him to wave at Brantley. “See you Monday, Sensei.”
The butler shut the door, walked back around and climbed into the vehicle. Soon the SUV pulled off, leaving Brantley standing alone on the curb.
On the roof of the VHS Depot, the massive snake slipped its tongue into the air to taste it. Satisfied, it turned and slithered off.