Sokaku Takeda, fifty-two years of age, settled back into the steaming, hot water. Sighing…he considered his position. He had been called into this wilderness town two weeks previous, but so far nothing had happened.

Where were all the brutal criminals who ran the smuggling and the gambling operations? There was lots of evidence of slave labor operations, but all he had seen so far were a pair of skinny tramps who had trailed him from a distance. Where were the gangs of thugs that burned police stations and terrified the constabulary so much that they had called for his sword?

Where were these–CRASH! The door to the bath house banged open and six thugs barged into the room. They held their swords in the ready position and advanced around the edge of the large bath.

At the sight of these thugs Sokaku scrambled from the water. The only thing near him was a towel, and he snatched it up and looked at it. A towel, well, in his hands it would be more than a towel, it would be deadly weapon!

“We’re going to teach you some manners now,” snarled the leader of the gangsters, and he lifted his sword high. The gangsters began to edge forward then, and the air was filled with their snarled insults and they made dire predictions of what they were about to do to him. It was obvious that they were trying to surround him so they could rush him en masse and kill him.

Interestingly, the old man only had a towel, but no one was willing to take a chance with a samurai with a reputation like his. They were not samurai, after all, and they knew that he had killed dozens of skilled samurai. They knew that their beat chance was to rush him from all sides at the same time.

“Dogs teaching people manners, eh?” Twisting the towel to make it more effective, Sokaku glared at the gangsters. Moving forward, he dropped the tip of the towel into the pool.

Giving a fierce scream, one of the thugs, rushing forward. Sokaku sidestepped, keeping a sure footing on the slippery surface, and snapped the towel. Crack–and the thug fell to the floor and grabbed his ribs in agony.

Two thugs glanced at each other, then they jumped forward. Crack! Whack!

Like a wraith Sokaku sidestepped, and he flicked his towel like lightening. Whack! Crack!

Five of the gangsters lay on the floor now, moaning and holding their cracked ribs, or entirely unconscious. The sixth gangster, seeing the way of the wind, dropped his sword and dashed out of the bath house. Behind him, Sokaku Takeda tossed the towel to the side and began dressing.