A frightened Rosa Jardine looked up at the gentle old man reaching down to her with a leather-gloved hand, his short, white hair and beard almost glowing in the desert sun. He had calm, alert brown eyes that only few moments earlier were wild and threatening, making Rosa hesitate a bit and still hold tight onto the now relaxed Arfie, the white Husky who had just helped the old man fend off her would-be captors. “Who…” she whispered warily, then more loudly, “Who are you?”

“A friend. Indeed, a friend of a friend, if I put the CIM and PAB reports together correctly,” the old man answered. He crouched down to be at eye-level with Rosa, showing underneath the hooded robe he was wearing, a white shirt closed with a black sash over simple white shorts. For shoes, he was wearing square wooden clog-sandals with black cloth between the toes. He crouched before Rosa, unwaveringly full of strength and wisdom in his posture. “We should go,” he urged her.

Rosa stood up and let go of Arfie, who immediately went to the old man and started sniffing his outreached hand. The old man pet the Husky’s head gently, and noticed the silver rose pendant clasped to dog’s silver and blue collar and stood up. Rosa asked again, “Who are you? You didn’t answer me the first time.” Rosa could see now that the old man was shorter than her, and his face was lined with wrinkles. He had rather large ears and his dark complexion was that of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun.

“Are you Kenji Nobu?” Theo called out from an opened window of the silver Datsun 280Z that he was hiding in. “We are trying to find a Mr. Nobu. We have this map here-“

Rosa turned around to Theo, and gave him a stern look to stay quiet. Ignoring his mother, Theo got out of the car and came over to the rest of them.

“Kenji Nobu? There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” the old man answered Theo. He looked over at the silver car behind him, “Does your vehicle work? I can bring you to him, he’s not far from here.”
Rosa relaxed a little, with some surrender in her eyes. “Yes, it runs fine. I guess I should thank you for rescuing me from those PABbies, or whatever you want to call them. Are you part of the California Independence Movement? I can tell you right now that I don’t want anything to do with it or whatever trouble my friend Leanna-,” Rosa said, here voice rising. She stopped talking on saying her friend’s name.

The old man moved towards the silver car and opened the driver-side door, saying, “We can talk more on the way to Kenji Nobu’s house.” Theo and Arfie jumped into the back seat of the car. The old man took his wooden sandals off and threw them along with the sheathed sword into the back of the vehicle, and got behind the wheel of the car.

“What are you doing! That’s not your car!” Rosa called out, nervous and angry as the car started up. She went around to the passenger’s side and got in, muttering, “What did I do to deserve all this…!” and slumped down, folding her arms.

“It’s going to be OK, Mum!” Theo reassured her. “I will follow the map and let you know if we’re going in the right direction. We’re actually not that far away now.” They sped off into the desert, the old man clearly following a path between the rocks and cactus, heading towards some low hills on the horizon.
Rosa looked ahead to see where they were going, but kept an eye on the old man driving confidently through the roadless desert. She could see them coming up on a corrugated sheet metal shack with metal tanks next to it, surrounded by a wire fence. They pulled up to a gate in fence, and the old man turned off the car, pulling the keys out of the ignition and handing them to Rosa. 

“Welcome to my castle!” the old man said, with a twinkle in his eye. He looked at Rosa’s skeptical face and winked at Theo, still clutching Leanna’s map. “Yes, I am Kenji Nobu. Now, you can tell me who you are and why Princess Argentum has sent you to find me.”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***