Legacy of the Grand Master. William Speir

jumped out at you?”

      “That’s correct.”

      “Did they say anything?”

      “No, they just tried to grab me.”

      “Did you know that they intended you any harm?”

      “Well, they raped my best friend about two months ago and two other girls since then. Given the way two were blocking my path and one was coming up behind me, I’m fairly sure that they weren’t just stopping me to ask for directions.”

      “How do you know that these men were the rapists?”

      “How did I know that they weren’t?”

      “How were you able to take them down?”

      “I’m a nationally ranked third degree black belt. I train with multiple opponents all the time. Taking these losers down was easy.”

      “So you say that your friend was attacked two months ago?”

      “Yes she was.”

      “Isn’t it more likely that you decided to get some revenge for her and went out looking for three men to beat up?”

      Jamie laughed at that. “If I were just going to beat three random men, I’d have done that long before now. They attacked me. I defended myself. End of story. Why would you even ask such a thing? Is one of them related to you?”

      At that moment, the door to the interrogation room opened and a senior police officer stuck his head in.

      “I need to see you now,” he said to the officer sitting across from Jamie. The officer stood up and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

      “What do you think you’re doing?” the senior officer asked.

      “I’m interrogating a suspect in the assault of three individuals,” he replied angrily.

      “Are you out of your mind?!” the senior officer demanded. “That girl was attacked by three men – probably the same three men who have been gang raping women for months near the campus. She’s not a suspect, she’s a victim who got lucky and took them down before they could do something even worse to her. She deserves our thanks and our praise, not our suspicions and accusations. Your investigation ends now. Go thank her for what she did, congratulate her on helping us solve this crime, and make sure that she gets home safely and quickly. Got it?”

      “Yes, sir,” the officer responded sullenly as the superior officer stormed away.

      An hour later, Jamie was back at her dorm talking to her friend on the phone. “Guess what?” she asked.

      “What?” her friend responded.

      “Those three guys who hurt you got a serious beat down tonight.”

      “What happened?”

      “Oh, they decided to attack someone who was ready for them. They lost.”

      “You didn’t…”

      “I did.”

      “Where are they now?”

      “Still in surgery I suspect. From what the police told me, one has a broken lower jaw, two have ruptured testicles, and all three have broken ribs, not to mention some other broken bones, cuts, and bruises here and there.”

      “You did all that?”

      “Well, I was mad. I was mad at them for what they did to you, and I was mad at them for what they were trying to do to me. I guess it’s a good thing I’m a nice person or I might have really hurt them!”

      Her friend laughed. It was the first time Jamie had heard her laugh since before she had been raped, and it was a welcome sound.

      “Are you okay?” her friend asked.

      “Perfectly fine,” Jamie replied. “They never laid a finger on me.”

      “Thanks, Jamie. I think I might actually sleep tonight without the nightmares.”

      “That’s what friends are for,” Jamie replied.

      “That’s what best friends are for,” her friend corrected her.

      Over the next two years, Jamie found other opportunities to help people who needed justice, although none of those opportunities ended quite so dramatically as the first one. The years she had spent playing surveillance games with her Mom gave her a unique talent to get into places unseen where she could find things and learn things that would help other people. As her grandfather predicted, she enjoyed helping other people – even when it was done anonymously. It wasn’t praise she craved; it was knowing that someone was better off because of her actions that made her feel good about what she had done. As much fun as she was having working on her own, she wondered what it would be like to be part of a team working together to help someone. That must be what Granddad meant when he said I’d need the Order to move forward.

      During her summer breaks, Jamie spent most of her time at the martial arts studio learning Em-An-Jitsu. Tae kwon do was a great sport and a great discipline, but Jamie now wanted to learn a combat style of fighting. Her mom taught her as much as she could, given that she had never documented her fighting style, and the owner was able to fill in the rest of the blanks. Her dad also helped out, teaching Jamie some of the techniques he had learned in the military and showing her how to blend that with the other techniques she was learning.

      “The key is to adapt on the fly,” the owner said to her one morning when they were upstairs training. “You have to be able and willing to abandon an attack mid-stream and totally change your strategy to take advantage of an opening that wasn’t there an instant before. Never get so locked into one train of thought that you overlook opportunities to dominate your opponent that present themselves unexpectedly.”

      Jamie’s naturally aggressive style, coupled with her ability to read people, made her adept at Em-An-Jitsu. The week before she was returning to campus to start her senior year of college, the owner decided that it was time to see just how good she had become.

      Tom, Emily, and the owner were all kneeling in a circle around Jamie, who was kneeling in the center of the mats in the upstairs room. Her parents had wooden practice swords, and the owner held fighting sticks. Jamie was unarmed, but there were weapons all along the walls that she could use if she could get past her opponents to reach them. Knowing how fierce the sparring could be, everyone wore special gear to protect themselves. Jamie wished that she didn’t have to wear any protective clothing, preferring to feel the exhilaration of total vulnerability, but the owner wouldn’t allow it.

      She heard the owner draw in a breath and surmised that he was about to announce the start of the match. She immediately rolled into a handstand and launched herself with her arms toward the owner, kicking his sticks out of his hands and knocking him backwards onto the mats. She grabbed two medium sized fighting sticks off the rack on the wall and turned to attack her dad.

      Like Emily, Tom was carrying both a long sword and a short sword. His long sword was above his head and his short sword was across his chest, ready to defect or attack with either sword. Jamie ran towards him with her sticks crossed in front of her, but just before she was close enough to attack her dad, she turned and swung her sticks straight at her mom’s swords.

      Emily wasn’t prepared for this change in attack, and her short sword was sent spinning. She clutched the long sword with both hands and counterattacked. Jamie watched her mom closely, looking for an indication of where the next attack would come from. She read one of her mom’s “tells,” and Jamie shot out her left foot behind her, catching her dad in his stomach as he was coming at her from behind. Jamie swung the stick in her right hand in a reverse arc and caught the owner in his shoulder. Jamie continued to parry her mom’s sword with the stick in her left hand. Reading one of her mom’s tells again, she dropped into a split and swung both of her sticks straight out to hit the owner and her dad in the knees. She rolled backward, jumped to her feet, and launched herself back at her