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ring.
    “Look at their champion,” Tsukino crowed. “This shows who they really are.”
    Kano yelled at him to stop, and ran over to Oleschenko, but with Emily in the ring, there was no one to translate for him. Sgt Ishikawa offered his services, such as they were, and translated into the English he’d learned from watching a few too many American movies.
    “Kano-san wonders if you haven’t lost your mind.”
    “Tell him that your man has made it necessary.”
    “And if she is hurt?” Ishikawa translated. “Sgt Tsukino is not a kind man.”
    “We’ll take that chance,” Durant said.
    Kano grumbled and looked across the ring at his own men, whose consternation at the prospect of this match was easy to see.
    “This is unwise,” he said.
    “Cooperation will be impossible as long as this hangs over my men.”
    “Sgt. Tsukino has not acted dishonorably.”
    “Maybe not,” Oleschenko said. “But he has acted foolishly.”
    “If you can’t control your man, Lt Tenno can do it for you,” Durant said, and Kano scowled at him.
    “Don’t worry, Kano-san,” Emily said, in Japanese, from inside the ring. “I won’t hurt him.”
    A few more minutes of growling and chin-rubbing brought no better solution to the quandary the commanders found themselves in, and Kano relented and let the match go forward. But first, he stepped into the ring and said, “You have created this situation. Do not make it any worse.”
    “Yes, sir,” Tsukino grunted. “Shame her without physical injury.”
    Kano shook his head, and said, “Just behave honorably.”
    “I cannot be judged by the Americans, since they have no idea what honor is.”
    “Focus on what I think honor is.”
    Tsukino grunted at these words and bowed his head.
----
    W ith her eyes closed , and her hands at her sides, Emily let the air move in and out and through, listening to the sound of her own breathing, and her thoughts slipped into focus. She heard the beating of her heart, at first made rapid by the exhilaration of the scene—in the ring again, surrounded by friends, and maybe a few enemies—then slower, as another side of the reflections in her heart presented itself. It almost felt like she could hear the breathing of all the people around the ring, a cacophony of winds, driven by all sorts of passions: fear, confusion, embarrassment, but also the hope of triumph, of vaunting glory, and anger in expectation of its reward.
    Her heart followed her breathing wherever it led, through the crowd standing nearby, and the more distant observers who’d found some better shade on a riser. Tsukino’s heart was there, too, on full display: focused and resolute, and driven by a seething resentment she recognized to be only partly directed at her. Her mind soared past him, and rose up through the heavy haze that pressed so much humid air down onto the crowd, always seeking something even more still, more serene, in the clear blue above the clouds. Finally, her thoughts crested the upper atmosphere, and her heart gazed into the black, where the deepest silence held sway. Silence, she craved it, any sort of respite from the turbulence of so many distracted souls, and she had not found it for some months now. Perhaps she would find it once again in the familiar place, in the ring.
    When she opened her eyes, Tsukino stood opposite her, his hands and feet in a standard fighting position. She felt his frustration—he so wanted to hit her, to smack her face, anything that would leave a mark, but something held him back, perhaps the puzzle posed by the prospect of fighting her as if she were an equal.
    “I see you can’t decide if there is any glory to be won by defeating a woman. I can assure you it is somewhat less than what you will gain by losing to one.”
    “This is not the time for words,” he said, and Emily raised her guard.
    He didn’t know how to start, she saw this much right away, so she settled on a very traditional karate technique, a front-kick to