At the end of the school day, Rot jogged down to the gym where he thought he'd have a half-dozen kids interested in learning martial arts and probably the whole football team waiting to see Coach Phillips turn Rot into ground beef.
He was right about the football team but almost the entire school was there. Rot suspected that most wanted to see him get beat up but having them there meant there would be witnesses if Coach Phillips did anything underhanded like sneaking in a knife. And once they saw how martial arts worked, maybe some of them would be interested enough to pursue the sport. In 1971, Bruce Lee was filming his first movie and, although he'd appeared in The Green Hornet, was little known in the States. With many American servicemen stationed in Japan, Japanese martial arts had some popularity but even they were little known.
Rot had first considered Brazilian-style jujitsu as it offered a practical approach to grappling but had decided on a combination of Aikido and the type of close-in self-defense that would be useful in a car or other enclosed setting.
First, though, he'd need to survive Coach Phillips.
And Coach Phillips, wearing gym shorts and a t-shirt, waited for him.
Coach Phillips could have lost fifty pounds of fat with no problem, but his biceps were the size of two-liter Coke bottles and his head seemed to descend to his shoulders without the need for a neck at all. Rot had sparred against plenty of big and muscular men, but none of them had actually been trying to injure him. Worst, should he seriously injure Coach Phillips, he'd be expelled from Aaron Burr and sent to reform school where girls were scarce and his do-over life would likely end up worse than the one he'd left.
Comments