16)

Huh. “I guess, go ahead and grab it, but there’s too much glass and not enough room in here, let’s take it to the ballroom.”

She gave me a look of disbelief. “You have a ballroom...”

I nodded as I head out the door and gestured for her to follow, she trotted over to grab the sword on a stick looking Japanese pole arm from where is was hanging on the rack along with the monk’s spade and tetsubo.

Only needed a few more items to complete the weapon’s list from the oriental adventures book.

What? Every man needs a hobby.

“Most of attic is one big room, from what I’ve been told it wasn’t unusual in older houses, but I did put in ceiling fans instead of chandeliers, cheaper and I would think some good air circulation would be more important for anyone all dressed up and dancing then fancy lighting fixtures.”

She thought that over and nodded. “Yeah, and if their up high enough I don’t have to worry about hitting them, but I could just go outside after the repair guys leave.’

I gave the elevator a look, then another one at the seven foot long naginata, before turning to the stairs.

“Seems a shame not to use the ballroom for something, and I really don’t like the idea of you being alone outside right now, so just humor me on this.”

For once she didn’t even bother to give me one her standard teenager looks because she was too busy racing up the stairs ahead of me. “Hey, no running with sharp pointy things.”

She stopped at the landing and put a fist on her hip, “Your supposed to keep a a sheath on the blade, didn’t it come with one.”

I stopped a few steps below, putting me on a eye to eye level with her for the first time, weapon in hand, and a look of exasperated concern on her face.

Oh...my granddaughter is...beautiful. I could see a hint of my mother’s green eyes mixed into her hazel ones. She must already be breaking hearts.

She took a step back, looking confused. “Why are you smiling, stop it, it’s creepy.”

I chuckled and moved past her up the next flight of steps. “Sorry, kiddo. Just realized you look nothing like me, which means you lucked out and ended up getting to be pretty.”

I didn’t look back, but it took her a second or two to begin to catch up. “Don’t...I’m too dark.”

Huh? “You’re Japanese? On your mother’s side, you’re just about everything else on your dad’s, mostly white but some black and native, Canadian native. You’re supposed to have some color to your skin, you lucked out with the skin tone and the hazel eyes. I’m guess it might be a year or two to find out if you get my sides big boobs.”

“...What!?”

I turned around to see her looking up at me with a look of outrage on her face.

Oh yeah, her sister had said. “Sorry kiddo, but my mom, her sister, my cousins, my sister, and all four of my nieces are top heavy, nothing outrageous, just um...” I gestured vaguely at the front of my chest. “Healthy? You should be okay to compete with a good sports bra.”

She looked down at her own chest in horror.

Yeah, that’s about as much of this conversation, too much in fact, that I wanted to have with a thirteen year old girl. On to the ballroom.

I go upstairs and down the hall between the two bathrooms and into the ballroom, she caught up to me and stared around at the huge carved fireplace, the tall windows and the mirror with the railings.

In a flash, the naginata was laid out on the floor along with her shoes as she raced barefoot across the polished wood floor, doing a cartwheel, a forward flip and a jumping kick before looking around again and getting a good look at the height of the room, before finally giving me a excited look. “It’s huge.”

I nodded and grabbed her shoes and the polearm before walking over to hand it to her. “Plenty of height as long as you stay away from the sides of the room, so show me what you got.’

She look a little shy but nodded and grabbed the naginata, I head off back to the side and placed her shoes out of the way.

I wrestled in high school, did the normal hand to hand training in the army, more of the same in the police academy, and then some strip mall Judo and Akido.

I had also fought in the Society of creative anachronism, dressing up in homemade armor and using rattan clubs, but I still really didn’t know what I was looking at.

But she looked good.

She did a lot of fancy stuff, showing off, spinning the whole thing around, lunging, sweeping the floor in front of her with the non pointy end, twisting the blade when pulling pulling back, rapid poking. If nothing else I knew that this was something she had done before, a lot, not just fooling around.

And some of it, right out of a high budget Wuxia martial arts film. Jumping several feet forward with a stab, flipping over the top of the pole while whipping it around, literally bouncing off the walls.

I think she forgot I was there for a second as she came to a stop and then gave a startled little jump as I began clapping.

She went from surprised, to blushing embarrassment to glaring.

“I’m not fan of county music.”

Ah good, there was a look of utter confusion on her face. “But I know a good song when I hear it, so I might not be a good judge of martial arts, but I know you put a lot of work to get however good you have to be to do all that, and it looked good.”

I clapped and few more times while she blushed and squirmed.

“I’m going to leave and let you keep practicing without getting self conscious about me watching you.”

I headed out hoping I wasn’t going to have to tell her to take a shower afterwards, kids can be weird, and then realized the bag they had come with could not have that many changes of cloths, so I needed to get all three of them to a store to pick up some more, since I did not want to deal with wrong sizes or picking out girls cloths.

Which meant I might had to get the little guy a kid’s seat, not something I had dealt with before.

Oh well, looks like I got three stops tonight.