Keep Training

Remo Williams, ex-soldier, ex-cop and now secret government agent carefully placed the nickel on its edge on the floor in the converted warehouse that was now his home and school. Gingerly, he removed his hand just a fraction of an inch and watched intently for any signs of movement. The coin wavered but remained upright. Remo breathed out a sigh of relief, and the coin started to role. He instinctively tried to grab it and knocked the coin next to it over, starting a chain reaction that caused all 257 coins placed previously to topple over. He hung his head.

"Typical American. Always trying to grab the money when it would have far better to let it slip through your hands." Chiun, Master of Sinanju shook his head slowly in disgust.

"It was just an automatic reaction Chiun."

"It was your automatic reaction that undid all your pitiful work. If you had allowed the coin to harmlessly roll away, you could have replaced it with little effort. Now you shall have to start again before you can complete the exercise. You automatically breathe, do you not? But you are able to hold your breath, even if for an unacceptably short time."

Remo sat back on his posterior on the floor. "And after I complete this exercise, what have I learned?"

"Quite frankly, I do not know if you will learn anything even if you complete it. In Sinanju you must master your reactions; not eliminate them, but control them so that they will not be the cause of your undoing. You have already learned to conquer your fear of heights; learning to conquer your other limitations will be just as easy."

Remo thought about running around the edge of the warehouse roof, and climbing around the Statue of Liberty. That certainly wasn't easy. "Speaking of reactions, I've never asked about your former students; were their reactions the cause of their undoing?" Remo asked. His boss Harold Smith spoke of working directly for the President and several before him, enforcing the 11th commandment: Thou shall not get away with it. There must have been agents before him.

"Their reactions were all the same in the end…they stopped breathing. He he he he" Chiun giggled.

"Come on Chiun, you can't be that cold. You can't tell me you didn't like any of them."

"I never said I did not like any of them! I just get tired of them dying before they show some of their potential. The Emperor Harold Smith sends me a new student and I try my best, but it is like trying to make a kite with wet clay. I understand that they have been denied a noble Korean birth, but they all suffer from the same problem: imperfection."

"But everyone's imperfect!"

"Perhaps you speak the truth, loathe that I am to admit it. My imperfection is that I live in this country, breathe its air and drink its water. It is a weakness I am not proud of, but I have promised the Emperor Smith I will not return to my home until after my replacement is trained."

"CURE doesn't have an emperor, I keep telling you. Smith is just the head man that reports to the President. Mac wasn't your replacement?" Mac was the man that recruited Remo.

"Mr. MacCleary was a fair student, but he did not stay with his studies. In the end he let his attention waver and couldn't dodge the bullet on your mission."

"That bullet came from behind at night while we were being chased by guards and attack dogs, AND he only had one arm."

"Does the bullet care if it is night? Is it distracted by the dogs? Deal with the swiftest enemy first, and then consider the others" Chiun admonished. "Besides, it was not in the arm that he was shot."

"Okay, what about the student before him?"

Chiun thought. "Grandy. He had great promise, but he was too arrogant. After he learned to jump off a five story building without harm he attempted to do so from a six story building without instruction. There is a great difference in technique between the two and I am afraid he was not up to the challenge."

"What about before Grandy?" Remo asked.

"LeStond? He listened to me even less than you do. He never mastered the floating run and perished trying to traverse quicksand. A complete waste of time for me."

"And before him?"

"Johnson was before that. He was an excellent student and I thought that he might have been my replacement. He died while carrying out the assassination of Upton Sinclair."

"The writer? He died of natural causes when he was 90...in a rest home!" Remo said disbelievingly.

"Is 90 so old? A redwood of that age is little more than a sapling. No, that was one of CURE's perfect assassinations. The details are not important, but Johnson died in the escape when he couldn't hold his breath for another 20 minutes; we were able to remove his body before it was discovered. Had I been younger I would have carried out the mission myself. Still, the mission succeeded and no sign of foul play was ever discovered."

"That was in 1968…just how old are you?"

"I think I age at least a year every time someone asks me that. Do not think of how old you are, but of how much more you have to learn my son."

"And if I should keep training and overcome my imperfections enough to master Sinanju?" asked Remo.

"If that should happen you must awaken me for I will have fainted from shock; for then you will be my replacement and I can finally travel back to Korea and maybe start a family" Chiun said, with a glint in his eye as his mind traveled to his village back home. "I regret in that case I must give up my stories." Chiun considered the soap opera America's one contribution to great art.

"Then I shall do my best to speed you on your way, Little Father" said Remo with a smile.

"I expect no less! Now back to your lesson; you must set up all 500 coins as I have instructed" Chiun directed.

"And what then?"

"Then I shall topple them over and watch the pattern develop as they fall. I like to watch such a demonstration, but using dominoes would be such an easy exercise a child could do it. After you master this you will someday repeat the attempt with sewing needles."

The End

A/N: A modest movie that wasn't very popular and even failed to launch a TV series with a forgotten pilot. But based on a book series (The Destroyer) that numbers over 200, they did a good job of getting the relationship between Remo and Chiun right, something even the first book didn't do until they put out a new edition with a preface. As for the fake martial arts, it was done tongue-in-cheek and still provided some great quotes from Chiun and his far from PC attitude.