The 4½ Tatami Mat Flip

Swordplay and Shuriken

Prodded over the PA by an irate General White, Ninja Murasaki finally abandons his earlier stunts and draws his katana, vowing to end Goku on the spot. Goku plants the Power Pole upright in the dirt and steps clear, letting the leaping ninja impale himself on the staff as he descends. Murasaki hops away clutching his backside while Goku howls that the ninja has grown a tail of his own. The katana duel that follows ends just as quickly: one downward swing from the Power Pole snaps Murasaki's blade clean off, and he sheepishly proposes a bare-handed contest instead.

The offer is a ruse. Murasaki hurls a curved blade that Goku easily leaps over, calling him a cheat, only for the weapon to loop back and crack him across the skull. Murasaki crows over his Boomerang Shuriken as Goku crumples.

The Tatami Countdown

Goku shakes off the blow and charges Murasaki back into Muscle Tower, seething. The ninja flings shuriken to cover his retreat, but Goku simply plucks them out of the tree he ducked behind and follows him inside. Murasaki kneels smugly over his tatami floor, ready to unveil his final trick.

Ninpo Tatami Gaeshi

As Goku flings the recovered shuriken one by one, Murasaki flips up individual mats to catch each throw, calling it his Ninja Arts Tatami Counter. Four full mats absorb the first four blades, and a narrow half mat deflects a fifth. Then Murasaki's grin falters. The room holds only four and a half mats, and Goku still has one shuriken left. The final throw buries itself squarely in the ninja's forehead, and a dazed Murasaki laments that the fight would have gone differently with a proper six-mat room.