Morbylan

There was Michelle Turner, daughter of Ted Turner and heir to the Turner empire. Michelle was 5'7" with shoulder length brown hair and mild complexion. While she was known as Ted Turner's daughter, she had made her own way in the world as well. Michelle was a famous storm chaser for the news/weather stations and was very good at what she did. The secret to her success was that she could not fail when it came to this particular line of work. Having a unique control over the weather made it all very possible. The thing not many people knew about Ted Turner's daughter was that she had been born a mutant. To the outside world, she appeared completely normal, but she actually had a few extra abilities the general population were not so blessed with. Michelle could control all factors of the weather, from temperature and precipitation, to wind speeds and direction. She could also use her mind to probe the thoughts of others. It wasn't always successful but it was definitely useful. 

Next to Michelle was Tenshiro Kikojunichi, commonly known as Shiro.  Tenshiro owned one of the biggest genetic research companies in the country. While he had gone to college with Michelle, he still missed Japan and didn't care much for American culture. Shiro looked very much like your typical Japanese man, and carried a very old walking stick with him wherever he went. He, too, had secrets of his own that not even good friends like Michelle knew about. On an average day, he was a wealthy tycoon. But when the winds changed and there was justice to be done, he was Kenshi: ancient samurai warrior. 

Finally, there was Kit. More a professional student than a professional, Kit didn't have a set career. He had gone to school to learn about law and psychology but never quite had the follow through to pick just one and finish out his masters. He had been coming out from an interview when he ran into Michelle and Tenshiro in the waiting room. 

The three sat and chatted for a bit, catching up. While they did, a news story played on the tv in the waiting room. The local baseball team, the Braves, had just won their 5th consecutive world series and Luke Wilcox, their star player, had hit a record 5 home runs in the last game. This was baseball history in the making! Michelle and Shiro didn't much care, but Kit was pretty excited about it. "I don't much care for American baseball. Now if it was Japanese baseball, then we'd have something to talk about," Shiro said with a grin. As Kit opened his mouth to give a retort, Michelle's phone rang. Looking down casually at her phone, Michelle saw her father was calling. As their relationship wasn't exactly close, she was surprised to see him calling her in the middle of a work day. Answering the phone, she said, "Hey dad, what's up," and listened for a reason for the phone call. 

"Hey, I have tickets to one of our AA games, if you're interested. It's one of our minor league teams, and I, uh, have tickets for you and your friends to go."

"That's great.." she said. Looking to the two next to her, she offered up the tickets. Kit was more than happy to accept, while Shiro accepted politely out of respect. "Will your dad be attending?" he asked. 

"Uh...yeah, probably," she responded.

"Then I'm definitely in," Shiro said. Tenshiro was all about making business contacts, and Ted Turner was cream of the crop. While it wasn't his only reason to have made friends with Michelle, it was definitely one of the perks. 

Grabbing hold of his walking stick, he felt it reverberating with the power that was about to take control of him. There was a mellow tone almost coming off the stick as the air around Tenshiro got hazy. The sound filled his ears and bounced off the walls in the room as a slight wind seemed to pick up from nothing, to surround Tenshiro in a mass of wind and sound that became almost deafening to him. Suddenly, it all stopped as quickly as it had begun. Everything in the room seemed untouched and it was silent. Where Tenshiro Kikojunichi had once been standing, there was now Kenshi, an ancient samurai. Where Shiro's walking stick had been, there was now a katana, as great and beautiful as it was deadly.

Kenshi appeared to be in his early twenties, with long black hair pulled back in a ponytail. His face was every bit as pleasing to look at as the rest of him: chiseled perfection. It was obvious when one looked at Kenshi, that in another time, fathers would have had bidding wars to get this man to marry their daughters. He was wearing a white karate gi with hakama pants. He sheathed the sword on his hip, and disappeared from where he was standing instantly. 

Being an ancient samurai spirit, Kenshi had special abilities at his disposal. He could essentially teleport himself anywhere, although he could only do so within a two mile radius. He was uniquely skilled with his katana and had incredible strength when wielding it. He had perfected the art of kinetically controlling his attacks so that he could pick and choose how much damage he caused at any given time.  He also had an iron will about him, that allowed him to take a lot of damage and absorb it. This would allow him to continue battle in the worst of times, and reserve the physical consequences of it for a later time. Unfortunately, when this was needed, he would have to rest for quite some time before he'd be fully functional again.

The two of them stood in silence, neither moving for several minutes. Finally, yet another officer joined them. This one's badge read Seargant Jones. Jones was the linguist of the local police force and had arrived to act as translator and handler of Kenshi. "Good evening Kenshi," he said with a slight bow, "What is it you needed?"

Kenshi explained that he was there to stop the robberies. Jones questioned how he was going to go about doing that. Kenshi patted his sword in response.  Jones looked away for a moment. Something caught his eye, and after another moment he said, "Look, this IS a police investigation, but we understand that you mean well. The best I can give you is a couple minutes.

"That's all I need," Kenshi replied, "Thank you." He gave a slight bow to Jones, and turned to the officer who had not previously allowed him to pass. "KEN-SHI," he said importantly, and grinned as he entered the building.

Michelle, who'd been filming again ever since Kenshi showed up, had the cameraman shooting the whole encounter and was commentating into her microphone. Seargant Jones was no fool. He knew that Kenshi might be able to help. He also knew that to turn away a local icon, and on television for that matter, might be counterproductive to everyone involved. So when he saw her, he had decided to allow Kenshi a few supervised minutes on the crime scene.  With a slight professional nod in her direction, Jones swiftly followed Kenshi inside.

Michelle could tell something was wrong. The man was pale and obviously shaken. She walked up to the officer and checked to see if he was okay. He reluctantly told her what had just taken place, much to Michelle's disappointment. She had been hoping to get an interesting shot involving Kenshi. If she was really lucky, she hoped, she might be able to get an interview. No one had been able to accomplish that feat yet. It could potentially launch her into a career free of her father's shadow. 

"What was in there that scared a samurai?" Michelle asked. Jones replied, "Oh, he wasn't scared. I sure was after that display, but he wasn't." He explained to Michelle about the trace evidence found inside. Michelle thanked Jones for his assistance, and began packing everything back into the network truck. She headed back to the station to edit the additional footage for a follow up piece to air later on.

Tenshiro steadied himself and gathered his surroundings. He wondered, as he often did, where he had been this time and what great adventure might have been had while he was "out". He could hear Hitomi calling his name, and he slowly made his way toward her voice. Hitomi brought Shiro up to speed on what had been going on and the latest in what she liked to call "The Kenshi Chronicles". She had placed the sand Kenshi gave her into a small vial and now she placed it in his hands. "He had hoped you would be able to find something in this sand to help with the case," she said. 

Looking around, Michelle could see that another officer was talking with an older, red faced, balding man. She waited for the interrogation to be concluded, and then sauntered up to the gentleman. 

"Hi, I'm Michelle Turner, would you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

The man replied hastily, "It's late, I'm not really up for much more, I'm sure the police can tell you what you need to know."

Michelle wasn't going to give up that easily, "I'm sorry, I know it's late, but why were the police talking to you?"

"Well I'm the owner of this place, and the damn cameras weren't working tonight. I've been meaning to get those things fixed, but business hasn't exactly been booming lately. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go home and get some sleep." He walked away in a bit of a daze.

"Well that was a bit of a dead end," Michelle thought to herself. She tried to head towards the entrance but was stopped by a couple of police officers. After listening to a lot of red tape being spewed at her, she finally gave up on trying to go in the front way. Feining the understanding they were looking for, she backed off and found her cameraman. "They're stonewalling us hard tonight," she said, "Let's just do this."

After doing the little bit of reporting she was able with the information given to her (which wasn't much) she headed around to the back of the building with the cameraman trailing behind her. She had been hoping to find a back door, but she was sorely disappointed when she found nothing but a brick wall. Hanging her head in disappointment, something caught her eye. 

In the next moment, he was standing next to the officer leading the investigation. The officer jumped about a foot off the ground when he realized there was suddenly someone standing right next to him. "Woah, where'd you come from buddy?" he asked nervously. Kenshi, just as before, started to walk towards the entrance of the building. The officer, a bit miffed that he was ignored, stopped him. "You can't go in there sir. This building is closed until further notice. You'll just have to buy your weapons elsewhere for now." Kenshi stopped, sighed, and began explaining who he was and what he was doing there. After about two and half minutes, he stopped talking. The officer was looking at Kenshi, trying to look like he knew what was going on, and not quite pulling it off. Kenshi realized that this was not the same officer he had spoken to earlier and that he obviously didn't know japanese. Speaking a bit more slowly, Kenshi said "Kenshi wa Seargant jōnzu ni hanasu," which was a very basic and chopped up way to say that he wanted to talk to Seargant Jones. At first the officer shrugged it off and continued to block the way. Now Kenshi was getting irritated. "This cop must be slow or something," he thought to himself. 

"Kenshi..." He pointed to himself. "Ni hanasu..." He used his hand to mimic talking. "Seargant Jones!" He attempted to hold back his frustration as much as he could. Kenshi couldn't stand having to barbarically use his language, all so an American police officer would get out of his way. Luckily, the officer caught on and went off to find Jones. Kenshi watched as he walked up to Seargant Jones and leaned in to speak. A second later, Jones was once again in front of Kenshi. They exchanged bows. "I'm the only one on the force that knows your language, Kenshi. I apologize for his behavior. I know that must have been difficult for you," Jones said. Kenshi, being in no mood to dwell on this meaningless encounter, accepted the apology and walked into the building with Jones.

This scene looked quite similar to the scene before it. Everything in sight was smashed to smitherines and the automatic weapons were missing. Kenshi could see bits of sand here and there as well, and pointed it out to Seargant Jones. After a few good minutes of looking about, Kenshi found a large splinter of wood. He picked it up and showed it to Jones. "So?" Jones said, "Everything in here is smashed to pieces. What makes this so special?"

Kenshi replied, "Perhaps the fact that this establishment seems to be what I believe you call....contemporary? Everything in here is made of glass and metal. The building itself is brick, not wood. There isn't a wooden structure in here, so where could this have come from but the burglars?" 

"Nice of you to join us Officer," Michelle said, greeting the two as they came out. "I found these footprints and followed them here, but they seem to just end." She pointed to a few clumps of dried mud on the road. 

Jones radioed back to the station, "Be advised, perps exited back of the gun shop to Byer Street. Suspected they got into a vehicle heading east judging by scene." Looking back at Kenshi and Michelle, he said, "Obviously they kicked off the excess dirt as they were getting into the car, and judging by the tire marks on the street here, the vehicle headed that direction."

Seeing that there wasn't much else to be done at this particular location, Kenshi asked Seargant Jones where the next target of attack might be. "We're not really sure where that would be Kenshi," he replied, "We only know the type of establishment, and there are seven more in town."

"What would be the closest one to this location?" Kenshi asked. Seargant Jones wrote down the name and address of the closest gun shop that hadn't been hit yet and handed it to Kenshi. 

Michelle reached to stop him, "Officer Jones, aren't you going to get a better look at the prints? I know his disappearing like that threw you off, but maybe it could tell us something."

"Well aren't you Nancy Drew tonight?" he said sourly. Michelle looked taken aback and he immediately regretted saying it. "I'm sorry. Off the record, it's just been a long night. These robberies are getting more frequent and we don't have as many leads as I'd like. It seems the ones we are getting are coming from a weather girl and a samurai, of all people. I miss the days of good ol' poice work."

Michelle looked at him as patiently as she could and replied, "First, I'm not just a weather girl, and second, as long as the bad guys get caught, then you should be happy. Besides, a warrior like Kenshi isn't about to take credit for it anyways."

A minute later the forensic team was there making a plaster mold of the footprints. Michelle couldn't tell what kind of shoe it was, but she did notice that it looked a bit odd. "Hmm," she thought to herself, "not exactly your normal running shoe, and not a boot...I wonder..." Shaking herself from her thoughts, she asked Jones for the location Kenshi was headed to. He gave her the name of the store and went back to his investigation.