First Rule Of The Ninja 1-4

Three weeks…

Three weeks of mud sucking at the soles of his sandals, the old pair of Tazuna’s oddly comfortable. At least when they weren’t threatening to get lost in the marsh and muck of Wave Country, that is.

Thick and greedy ground pulled at his feet with every step even now, the wet dirt so eager for his shoes despite not having any feet of its own.

Three weeks.

The filled basket dug into his ribs, woven fabric that made it up stinking of damp rivery weed and the sharp scent of a good peppery daikon. Sharp enough to keep him focused, at least; the aroma did its unintended job at helping him stay on-target as he walked deeper into the market district. 

That was good, at least.

Tsunami had warned him of pickpockets.

Yet, for all her warnings, Koda had to wonder if they were really all that necessary as he made his way through the market itself. The place was just a long stretch of wooden stalls and storefronts on a muddy dirt road, each one sagging or rotten or sagging and rotten; leaning into the street like they had given up on the concept of standing straight.

More than anything, the place looked almost too poor to have pickpockets.

After all, for pickpocketing to be worth it, you had to actually have people to make money off right?

Otherwise, you might as well just get a job.

Then again… Koda frowned, the taste of low tide and desperation in the air as he kept on trudging his way through, doing his best to pick up his steps to keep his sandals where they belonged. When you’re desperate enough…

That much was true, too.

He sucked his teeth, calloused fingers twitching as they rose to rub the base of his neck. The empty air above his collarbone was missing something. Dratini…

No smooth scales on him or near him for him to rub for comfort, his little girl was off at the house for today while he ran his errands. After all, Tsunami needed to repair nets out on the water and Inari needed someone to watch him.

It made sense.

He rubbed his neck again despite himself, though. 

As much as it did, it still felt wrong.

Stop. Just stop. Koda forced his neck straight, hand  dropping back to his side as he clenched it tight into a fist. All that emptiness was just a gap in the armor, something he needed to fix up before it could turn into a problem. Walking around with a giant blue sea serpent draped all around him like a security blanket was just… not good.

For one, he was a man. 

A man.

He didn’t need any sort of security blanket, after all.

On top of that, it just wasn’t low-profile at all. If I’m gonna survive in a place like this, I’ve gotta blend in… He realized how dumb that sounded already as soon as the words formed in his head. When he stood a hand taller than the average guy he’d seen here — the less said about his skin or hair the better — there was no way he was going to do anything like blend. Okay, different idea.

Pushing that first one aside, Koda shook his head. If I’m gonna survive in a place like this, I’m gonna need to be able to walk down a street on my own.

He nodded slow. Yeah, bette-

A wet thud echoed into the air, a just-as-wet cough rattling loud before someone groaned in pain. What the h-

Koda froze where he stood, sandals sinking a good half-inch into the muck. His eyes went left and right, the gap between two dilapidated storehouses drawing his attention. He stared down a narrow alley, the space shadowed and the ground littered with crates both somewhat broken and completely ruined.

It didn’t take long for him to spot them.

Three of them stood there; each one mismatched in leather armor over cheap stained shirts. An older man was pinned against the wall, a club to the side of his head; weather-beaten face lined with grooves and skin pulled tight over bone in a way most of the villages — the older fishermen, most of all — seemed to share.

The men holding him didn’t look starved, though.

A bit wiry, at worst, but each one of them definitely had a good meal at least once or twice in the last few days. Fed or not, they stood with a lazy slouch, predators playing with food that had already given up.

Considering they were all armed — one with a rusted shortsword, another to the right with a thick bladed knife, and the one in the center looming over the fisherman with a brown club stained dark at the heavy end — it made perfect sense why they felt untouchable.

“-t-told you… I paid the toll. Paid it last week.” The fisherman wheezed in their clutches, hand grasping at his own stomach. Spit flew from his lips, the stuff sticking in a gray beard as ratted as some of the fishing nets Koda had seen off the shore. “The catches… they’ve been terrible since. There… t-there’s nothing left to give.”

The club tapped the wall by the fisherman’s head, each meeting of wood on wood enough to make the older man flinch. “Shame, shame, shame, old man.” The one in the middle leaned in close, Koda able to make out a jagged scar that cut through his upper lip. “But Gato updated the tax code this week. There’s a new fee for using the docks out east.”

“N-new?”

The club tapped out a harder rhythm, shutting the old man up. “So, let’s check your pockets. If they’re empty, we take our payment out of you. How’s that?”

The club went high and so did the fisherman’s arms, both of them thrown up over his face as he shrinked back against the splintered wood wall.

“H-hey!” 

The word cracked, splintering right down the middle on its way out of his throat. No deep booming authority like he was looking for, it left him sounding hollow and almost childish, the single syllable echoing off into the damp alley space.

Four heads snapped toward him as Koda set his basket of groceries down. “He said he doesn’t have anything.” He stepped deeper into the alley, the alley drier than it had been on the main street. “So, leave him alone.”

There was the bass.

A bit late, but at least it finally arrived.

Water dripped off the roof off the nearest storehouse, the sound of it splashing against the ground counting the silence for them as it stretched.

“Who the hell is this?” The middle one stepped away from the old man, full scarred face turned toward Koda as the club lowered to rest on his thigh. “When did Cloud start moving down south?”

“I’m just a guy buying groceries.” Koda licked his lips, suddenly well aware of how alone he was without Dratini at his side. Heart hammering in his chest, he held up his palms in the universal gesture for ‘calm down’. “Just let the old man walk away. It’s not worth it.”

“You’re right.” The man with the knife stepped out of the shadows, metal catching the dull light from the street as he grinned. “He ain’t. But I bet a tourist like you got some ryo in those pockets.”

The one with the club moved.

No yell, just nothing but motion as six or seven splashing strides closed the distance. Koda’s eyes went wide as the wooden club blurred in a dark arc aimed straight for him. Fuck!

He jerked backward, the movement a sloppy flinch rather than anything practiced or neat. His right sandal caught on something in the muck, stealing whatever balance he had left.

White flared behind his eyes, a flash of pain he saw more than felt as something clopped him on the side of the skull. The world tilted, taking him with it, and — before he knew it — cold mud slapped against the back of his neck, soaking through his hand-me-down clothes. The sky spun above his head as he stared up, the taste of blood — hot, thick and full of iron — flooded his tongue.

“Look ..is idi…”

The voice drifted in and out, ears ringing too loud for him to make out anything. Still, he could see well enough through the spots in his vision to make out the shadow that blocked the gray sky above him. Sandals on either side of his chest, the thug raised the club higher than ever with both hands.

“..et’s see …at breaks first.”

Koda didn’t think.

His right leg did it almost all on its own, snapping upwards from the mud and connecting square between the thighs spread out above him; full force and zero restraint.

The man’s eyes bulged from their sockets as air left his lungs all at once, the sound of a crushed rat all that managed to escape him. The blood-stained club slipped from suddenly-limp fingers, clattering into a puddly by Koda’s ear as the man collapsed back.

As his knees hit the mud, both hands clutching below the waist, the scarred thug began to empty everything in his stomach.

It wasn’t much, but it still came out anyway.

Koda stared, eyes wide and chest heaving as he lay there in the half-dried mud.

“You’re dead!”

The roar broke the ringing as the knife-wielder and the swordsman rushed down the alley and right at him. 

Elbows dug into the mud as a panicked Koda began to scramble for his life, palms slipping on the wet debris. A wall scraped against his shoulder and his heart began to thunder in his chest as he realized he was stuck in a dead-end alley of rotting wood and charging metal.

I… I can’t do this!

The words were a prayer to no one, screamed silently into his own skull as his mouth refused to work without air. I can’t! I need help!

Something answered.

Ice water trailed down his spine, Koda gasping clouds of thick white fog as the temperature around him dropped to near-freezing. His chest shuddered, from cold and exhaustion both, as something reached inside him and scooped out a chunk of his stamina; Koda blinking as he felt like he just sprinted a half-mile all at once. Wh-

Before he could even think about that, his head snapped to the right; the air visibly rippling over his shoulder. Blue eyes went wider and wider as the ripple shifted and a serpent hung in the space behind his neck. As thick as his wrist, ghost-pale and see-through, its scales shifted like smoke as it undulated in the air with barely any sound to it, just a soft hiss; eyes alight with a blue-white glow.

What the hell?

The hallucination didn’t wait for him to acknowledge it as it suddenly launched itself forward, a streak of frigid fog tearing through the space between them as fast as he could throw a baseball.

Without a sound, it sank into the chest of the knife-wielder as he covered half the distance to Koda. There was no impact, no wound even; no sign at all that what had happened just happened.

“… the h-”

A scream interrupted Koda’s confusion, a raw sound tearing free from the man with the knife as his momentum nearly threw him to the ground, sandals flying from his feet as he pitched forward. Color vanished from his face as he caught himself, skin suddenly a pale sort of sickly while his friend froze in place and simply stared.

“J-Jiro?”

Jiro shook his head, the man barely able to answer.

Barely able to do anything but stand, it seemed.

…he’s weak?

It was the first full thought Koda had in seconds but it was all he needed.

Adrenaline fought off exhaustion as he pushed off the wall, sandals sending him forward with as much speed as he could push into shaky legs. A wild punch left him, desperate as any he thought he’d ever thrown in either life, the entire weight of his shoulder behind the swing.

Knuckles met the shuddering man’s jaw.

It was a terrible hit.

Sloppy. 

Ugly.

Messy.

No form and barely any function.

Yet it hit like a hammer blow all the same.

Jiro’s jaw might as well have been a tree branch for all the resistance it offered as his head snapped back with a wet crunch loud enough to echo. The man’s eyes rolled back, knife falling from his hands as his body finally gave up and dropped down into the mud.

Before Koda could stare in shock at his own hand or the downed man, the ghost-snake tore out of Jiro’s groaning body with a near-silent hiss. It darted off immediately to the third thug, rusty shortsword shuddering in terrified hands.

He swung at it.

The blade did nothing to the ghost as it passed right through and the pale serpent met the swordsman’s chest. The thug gasped, sword dipping toward the mud as his guard dropped, face going nearly as pale as Jiro’s.

Koda didn’t waste the opportunity as he rushed in with a second wild punch.

His fist met the man’s body, burying deep into where Koda figured was the kidney. Where Jiro’s jaw had been thin wood, this might as well have just been half-dried clay as the thug screamed like he was being murdered.

A ragged sound tore from his throat as he dropped to his knees, one hand clutching his side. A second later, his mouth opened; red-splattered vomit painting a puddle with the ugliest colors Koda had ever seen.

Silence slammed back as the last thug collapsed, the cold returning to a normal Wave Country damp-chill.

“What…” Koda blinked as he looked up, mud and blood smeared across his cheek with the back of one hand. “…what.” It was all he could say, all he could think even; no other words came to mind as he stared off at the only person still conscious in the alley. “Wh… I… I mean, hey?”

The fisherman was pressed flat against the far wall, eyes huge as he stared at Koda like he’d just seen a demon.

Koda held up both hands, palms open. “Hey, I… I stopped them. You’re sa—”

The fisherman didn’t bother to say thank you.

Instead, he peeled himself off the wood and bolted down the alley, boots slapping the mud as he sprinted faster than any man his age should be able to.

Koda blinked again, eyes dropping down to the three thugs. “…well, damn.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The front door of the house slammed open and Koda stumbled across the threshold with as much grace as he could manage, which was very little.

Basket of groceries in one hand, his sandals smeared the floorboards with thick dark streaks of mud and even worse. The bruise above the ear pulsed with a dull heat but the physical pain was secondary. I… I need a nap.

Something about that fight had drained the… well, the fight out of him, weighing his bones down and making his knees want to buckle. It was honestly a miracle he’d made it home. 

Tsunami stood at the low kitchen table, a wooden cutting board in front of her as she looked up, the knife frozen over a half-diced carrot. “Koda!” 

The knife fell to the table, dark eyes sweeping him as she rose to her feet in a rush. “What happened to you?”

Koda leaned against the doorframe, wood doing him the courtesy of holding his weight as he let the basket drop to the floor.

“There were men.” He pushed off the frame, forcing himself over to the sink in the kitchen. “A couple of… no, three men.” The handle turned and water poured out, enough for him to splash on his face; pink-stained water swirling down the drain. “Gato’s men. They were hurting a fisherman in the alley by the market. Extorting him.”

“And you….”

“Stopped it, yeah.”

Dark eyes blinked at him. “And they hurt you… like this? Normal men?”

“One of them hit me with a club and I… I…” He struggled to find the words, head still ringing from the club to the head. The memories were barely in one piece, that entire encounter in the alley already jumbled up. “Tsunami… something happened. I tried to help, and something… I did something.“

The woman stiffened. “What do you mean, K… shinobi-sama?“

“A ghost.” The word felt ridiculous, tasting like a lie even as he spoke it, but it was the closest to truth that he had. “A snake. A ghost-snake. It came out of me or around me and it… when it touched them, it made them weak and when I hit them… it did too much damage. One of them threw up blood… I think?”

Silence filled the kitchen as Tsunami simply stared at him. “A jutsu, shinobi-sama?”

Jutsu? He blinked back at her, mouth open with an unasked question.

She answered it anyway, lowering her head. “A jutsu is… shinobi magic, I suppose. Their techniques. The things ninja do.” 

A small smile touched her lips, expression uneasy as it faded away just as quickly. “People say there are more jutsu than people in the nations. Calling fire or walking on water or creating copies of yourself. Shinobi… shinobi can do nearly anything.”

Koda looked down at his still-dirty hands. “…it might have been that, yeah.”

Tsunami let out a trembling breath, unsteady hands gripping the table in front of her. “Gato is going to hear about this by morning. Rumors are going to spread, shinobi-sama.”

“I was just trying to help the… the old guy.” Koda shook his head, not even bothered by the ‘shinobi-sama’ from her anymore. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

Tsunami blinked, her head jerking back slightly as she swallowed a mouthful of nothing. 

“A-alright.” After a second or two, she pushed herself up from the chair, slightly trembling fingers going back for the knife. “Go wash the mud off. Dinner will be ready soon.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Baby’s First Brawl – 100 NP
Defeat your first enemy with your bare… feet.

I Don’t Like Bullies – 150 NP
Stand up in the defense of another.

Three At A Time – 300 NP
Defeat three enemies in a single fight.

Bad Aura – 200 NP
Terrify someone with your presence alone.

Superior Being (100 NP) [Wonderland No More] {Traits}:
Queens in Wonderland often stand out by being the best (in some ways at least) of the “species” they represent and rule over. Your basic stats are enhanced to be slightly above the average member of your species; any additional boosts to your stats are stacked up on this initial enhancement. In addition, the perk makes those of the same species of your current form more willing to follow and obey you; if you change species between forms, you also change who you affect with your charisma for this perk.

“Yo! Champ in making!” (50 NP) [NPCs of Pokemon] {Traits}:
When you see someone who needs advice, and you have the knowledge that could help them, you’ll know right away. You’ll know what they need to hear, and why they need to hear it (so don’t worry about accidentally convincing someone to commit a crime).

Birth Sign (0 NP) [Elder Scrolls: Skyrim] {Traits}:
The Warrior

Born under the Warrior, you are a good bit stronger than the average man, with greater stamina to match. Your body is made for battle, taking naturally to the hard lessons of combat. You learn violence quickly, whether through formal training, battlefield experience, or the simple necessity of survival.

Recovery (100 NP) [The Elder Scrolls] {Traits}:
Wounds gained during battle can hamper your chances of victory, even minor ones. While you won’t be visibly regenerating, you can heal from most minor wounds within hours, and fatal wounds will be completely fine after a week. This effect can be heavily boosted through the use of Restoration spells, and whatever scars don’t disappear will always look aesthetically pleasing.

Nexus Points: 500