Ooooooh boy.
Ohboyhoboyohboyohboyohboy....
WHAT IF MINMEI HAS A GRANDMOTHER!?
Grandmother Lynn - her Paternal Grandmother - suddenly shows up on the SDF-1 along with the sudden influx of Civilians. She heard that they were looking for members of the Lynn family and decided to come along. After all, the young ones are gonna need someone with wisdom to help guide them along. This is especially felt so by those that know about the Mayflower Contingency - the elderly are living history, so those that are elderly, but hale and hearty are encouraged to come along.
Grandma Lynn is definitely a repository of history. She remembers the Japanese invasion, the American 'Flying Tigers' that came to help them, and then the sudden spread of Communism in China - especially Mao Zedong and his platitudes of change and bloody violence.
So imagine everyone's surprise when she shows up.
Especially Kaifun's.
Why?
*EVIL-ASS SHIT EATING GRIN(tm)*
Because Grandma Lynn was Kaifun's first Sifu!
The idea is that Grandmother Lynn was the oldest daughter of a man that ran a school of Kung Fu - one that had fallen on hard times. To help ease their financial burdens, Grandma Lynn had been married off to a wealthy local restaurant owner. (We're gonna be nice about this and say that the man was truly smitten by her and eventually did win her affections.)
When the Communists came for her husband and her family, they fled, relying on her husband's clever mind to give the communists the slip, and her strong fist for the close calls. Unfortunately, her father's school was destroyed as he had opposed the socialist regime for its moral bankruptcy.
She never reestablished the school, though she taught Kaifun for a time before he went on to a formal school. This would be why she never got to disciplining him for his attitude problem.
But now... Well...
Kaifun will at first pay lip service to his Grandmother. But word of the things he says and does gets back to her, and she then goes and just about breaks Kaifun into two. No, really. She completely destroys him with hardly any effort on her part. And she makes damn sure to do it in front of Minmei, forcing him by provocation to reveal just how ugly he had become because, as usual, it was no secret to her that he wanted Minmei for himself.
And then Grandmother Lynn turns her gaze to Minmei and gives her this LOOK. Minmei knows this look. It is one that communicates quite clearly that her shit is fucked in a most profound manner.
"Granddaughter. You will come to me at dawn. It is all well and good that you have secured your future, but the time has come for you to learn to fight for yourself as my father had taught me."
Minmei will learn Kung Fu. It will not be easy, but Minmei has inherited her grandmother's natural grace, so she has that working in her favor. In the end, no one will be able to mess with her - not without walking away with a severe limp at the very least. Or, in the worst case scenarios, her making sure that such persons can never bother anyone else ever again.
Oh, and she's just gonna fucking love Garrick. His kind-hearted-warrior schtick reminds her strongly of her own father, and once she hears about how he shut down Kaifun in the first place, she'll fucking laugh her ass off. Really, she feels that one of the best things about Garrick was how he was able to recognize Kaifun's attitude for what it was and go immediately on the offensive. She'll start calling him 'Grandson' right away.
You know how normally an in-law is harped upon by Grandmother's such as Grandmother Lynn? Garrick does the right thing. He pays her the utmost respect in their first meeting and makes a good impression of himself. He knows how things work: she is The Matriarch and her word is law in the Lynn family, and woe betide those that go against it - as Kaifun learns to his detriment. Though it helps that she knows that American men tend to treat their women quite well, Garrick takes it to another level by honoring the cultural tics.
But the most impressive thing takes place when she goes sniffing around and learns that her younger son and his wife know more than they're letting on (at some point soon here, Garrick decides to let them in on the whole thing so he and Minmei can quit dancing around eggshells), and then calls him onto the carpet to explain. She then learns about Garrick being a slider, and one who is eventually to come into a great deal of power once he makes it home.
And then there's THAT LOOK again. She goes straight to Minmei and tells her to quit screwing around - that she was correct in her original assessment of Garrick and that she should not even be giving him a chance to slip away.
"I don't care if it's another dimension or Heaven itself, you will bring that man into our family, you will push yourself to become the best that you can be, and you will establish ours as a Clan of the Stars, or I will tan your backside from beyond my own grave!"
Poor Minmei.
Ohboyhoboyohboyohboyohboy....
WHAT IF MINMEI HAS A GRANDMOTHER!?
Grandmother Lynn - her Paternal Grandmother - suddenly shows up on the SDF-1 along with the sudden influx of Civilians. She heard that they were looking for members of the Lynn family and decided to come along. After all, the young ones are gonna need someone with wisdom to help guide them along. This is especially felt so by those that know about the Mayflower Contingency - the elderly are living history, so those that are elderly, but hale and hearty are encouraged to come along.
Grandma Lynn is definitely a repository of history. She remembers the Japanese invasion, the American 'Flying Tigers' that came to help them, and then the sudden spread of Communism in China - especially Mao Zedong and his platitudes of change and bloody violence.
So imagine everyone's surprise when she shows up.
Especially Kaifun's.
Why?
*EVIL-ASS SHIT EATING GRIN(tm)*
Because Grandma Lynn was Kaifun's first Sifu!
The idea is that Grandmother Lynn was the oldest daughter of a man that ran a school of Kung Fu - one that had fallen on hard times. To help ease their financial burdens, Grandma Lynn had been married off to a wealthy local restaurant owner. (We're gonna be nice about this and say that the man was truly smitten by her and eventually did win her affections.)
When the Communists came for her husband and her family, they fled, relying on her husband's clever mind to give the communists the slip, and her strong fist for the close calls. Unfortunately, her father's school was destroyed as he had opposed the socialist regime for its moral bankruptcy.
She never reestablished the school, though she taught Kaifun for a time before he went on to a formal school. This would be why she never got to disciplining him for his attitude problem.
But now... Well...
Kaifun will at first pay lip service to his Grandmother. But word of the things he says and does gets back to her, and she then goes and just about breaks Kaifun into two. No, really. She completely destroys him with hardly any effort on her part. And she makes damn sure to do it in front of Minmei, forcing him by provocation to reveal just how ugly he had become because, as usual, it was no secret to her that he wanted Minmei for himself.
And then Grandmother Lynn turns her gaze to Minmei and gives her this LOOK. Minmei knows this look. It is one that communicates quite clearly that her shit is fucked in a most profound manner.
"Granddaughter. You will come to me at dawn. It is all well and good that you have secured your future, but the time has come for you to learn to fight for yourself as my father had taught me."
Minmei will learn Kung Fu. It will not be easy, but Minmei has inherited her grandmother's natural grace, so she has that working in her favor. In the end, no one will be able to mess with her - not without walking away with a severe limp at the very least. Or, in the worst case scenarios, her making sure that such persons can never bother anyone else ever again.
Oh, and she's just gonna fucking love Garrick. His kind-hearted-warrior schtick reminds her strongly of her own father, and once she hears about how he shut down Kaifun in the first place, she'll fucking laugh her ass off. Really, she feels that one of the best things about Garrick was how he was able to recognize Kaifun's attitude for what it was and go immediately on the offensive. She'll start calling him 'Grandson' right away.
You know how normally an in-law is harped upon by Grandmother's such as Grandmother Lynn? Garrick does the right thing. He pays her the utmost respect in their first meeting and makes a good impression of himself. He knows how things work: she is The Matriarch and her word is law in the Lynn family, and woe betide those that go against it - as Kaifun learns to his detriment. Though it helps that she knows that American men tend to treat their women quite well, Garrick takes it to another level by honoring the cultural tics.
But the most impressive thing takes place when she goes sniffing around and learns that her younger son and his wife know more than they're letting on (at some point soon here, Garrick decides to let them in on the whole thing so he and Minmei can quit dancing around eggshells), and then calls him onto the carpet to explain. She then learns about Garrick being a slider, and one who is eventually to come into a great deal of power once he makes it home.
And then there's THAT LOOK again. She goes straight to Minmei and tells her to quit screwing around - that she was correct in her original assessment of Garrick and that she should not even be giving him a chance to slip away.
"I don't care if it's another dimension or Heaven itself, you will bring that man into our family, you will push yourself to become the best that you can be, and you will establish ours as a Clan of the Stars, or I will tan your backside from beyond my own grave!"
Poor Minmei.