First Rule Of The Ninja 1-5
Koda expected to wake up feeling like he had been run over by a carriage.
The wooden club to the side of his skull yesterday had left his head scrambled like eggs, and the raw drain from whatever that ghost-snake had pulled from left him dead on his feet. Even after Tsunami had fed and watered him, Koda had collapsed onto the thin futon in his room.
After it all, he’d fully been expecting to be bedridden for a good three days.
“…huh?”
Blue eyes blinked open instead as he rolled onto his back like it was just another day. Arms stretched over his head as his mouth opened with a wide yawn, joints popping loud enough to make Dratini shift in her sleep.
Those same arms fell back to his side as Koda blinked again, looking down at himself. No soreness in his shoulders, no blood in his mouth…
Sure, he hadn’t expected his ears to still be ringing, but… I should be feeling something, right?
Mouth in a flat line already threatening its way into a frown, Koda reached two fingers up to gently feel out the side of his skull — the exact same spot where the thug’s club had landed hard.
There wasn’t even a bump.
Not even a scab.
That’s… Just a dull tenderness that faded almost as soon as he pulled his hand away. That shouldn’t be possible. He had taken a full swing from a grown man. He should have a concussion, at the bare minimum.
…alright.
Well aware he wasn’t going to get any answers sitting around and waiting for Dratini to wake up and unravel herself, Koda pushed himself up and padded barefoot into the small, drafty bathroom out in the hallway. The water in the sink was freezing, but he splashed it over his face anyway, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes before pulling his faded shirt over his head to wash his chest.
Only to pause where he stood, cloth dripping in his hand as he caught his reflection in the warped glass of the mirror.
For maybe the third time that morning, Koda found himself blinking in confusion. The hell?
He leaned closer, squinting through the cloudy glass. He had been skinny before. Underfed even and wire-thin, with ribs that pressed visibly against his skin. But the more he wiped the condensation away, the longer he stared at his own torso.
The hollows beneath his ribs had filled out, leaving a subtle definition to his chest and a denser thickness to his shoulders and arms that definitely hadn’t been there yesterday. One hand pressed at his stomach, the dark-skinned man blinking at the firm resistance where there used to be a gentle give.
“…I have muscle?”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
The smell of steaming rice and salted fish greeted him as he walked into the kitchen, but the atmosphere in the room was somehow anything but welcoming.
Tsunami stood at the sink, a small pile of dishes in front of her from last night’s meal. She didn’t look up as Koda walked in, but the stress radiating off her was… noticeable.
Mostly in the way she seemed to be trying to torture the pot in her hand with a scrubbing brush. Dratini was coiled under the table, lifting her head to let out a soft trill as Koda sat down to pet her on the head.
“Morning.”
Tsunami stopped scrubbing, the woman setting the brush down to give the cooking pot a needed rest. “Twelve, shinobi-sama.”
“Excuse me?”
“Twelve.” She turned around to face him, dark eyes exhausted as she repeated the same number and only that. “That is how many ronin they are saying you fought in the alley yesterday.”
“Twelve?” Koda stared back at her. “Tsunami-san, there were three guys. One of them had a rusty sword, one had a knife, and the other hit me with a stick.”
It was a pretty hefty stick, though.
“Twelve.” The same number left her in a whisper almost, the woman shaking her head. “Twelve men who have supposedly been brutalized so badly that the local clinic couldn’t even identify them. They are saying the Cloud Demon of the Waves uses a spectral demon to devour his victims’ souls before breaking every bone in their bodies.”
…Demon of the What? Confusion was something common to having amnesia but Koda found he was wearing it on his face far too often as his mouth hung open. What?
“I kicked a guy in the nuts, Tsunami.” Koda rubbed his face, groaning into his hands as he tried to pretend like he hadn’t heard whatever nonsense name she dropped on him. “And I threw two sloppy punches. I don’t even think they landed all that hard. And the hell is a ronin?”
The woman looked his way, searching his face for the lie even as she answered. “A masterless ninja. A wandering mercenary.”
Koda tilted his head, nodding as he filed that information away.
“But…” She crossed her arms. “Did you have to kill them?”
“Kill?” Koda dropped his hands, eyes wide. “I didn’t kill anyone! One guy threw up, and the other two got knocked out. They were still groaning in the mud when I ran away.”
“The market district is saying you left them in pieces.” It was clear as day she didn’t believe a word of his defense as flat as her voice sounded. “If you are going to draw this kind of attention, Koda-sama, we need to be prepared for… for…”
“…for?”
Tsunami opened her mouth to finish, but the front door banged open before she could get a word out.
“Oh, this is rich!” Tazuna stomped into the house with a grin spread wide on his face, bringing the smell of sawdust and cheap sake with him as always. More than just grinning, the old man was practically vibrating with a hacking rasp of laughter.
“Father!” Tsunami blinked up at the bridge-builder, more confused than she was worried all of a sudden. “What… what’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Tazuna wheezed out another laugh. “More right!”
“Huh?” Both Koda and Tsunami shared the same word as it left their mouths.
The old man shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you!” With a slap, a crinkled piece of cheap parchment hit the table in front of Koda. “Look at this, boy.”
Koda leaned forward, eyes slowly widening as he took in the crudely-drawn bounty poster. No…
As much as he wanted to deny it, the sketch vaguely resembled him; wild dreadlocks with white patches, dark skin, and a massive serpent coiled menacingly around his neck as he sneered viciously in the artist’s rendition of him.
Beneath the drawing, bold black ink read out: 50,000 RYŌ.
“Fifty thousand!” Tazuna’s cackle was as loud as Koda had ever heard from the old man even in his deepest cups, as he dropped his butt into a chair. “Gato put a fifty-thousand ryō bounty on the head of a vagrant who chops my firewood!”
I’m a dead man. If his skin could let him go pale, Koda was more sure than anything that he’d be the same shade as Tsunami right now. His heartbeat stuttered in his chest even as Dratini rubbed herself up against his leg, her cold muzzle trying to comfort him. …sorry, Dee. But that’s not doing anything right now.
Judging by her annoyed grunt and huff, she clearly heard that thought.
And, even still, he couldn’t bring himself to care about that. “I’m so… soooo dead.” Not when he was staring at a badly-overdrawn version of his own death warrant, that open-mouthed sneer staring him right in the face. “Everyone in this village is going to be coming for my throat.”
“Dead? You really don’t get it, do you?” Tazuna wiped a literal tear from his eye, one hand reaching for the tea kettle. “You think these street thugs are brave? Gato just broadcasted to the whole island that he thinks you’re dangerous enough to be worth fiifty-thousand ryō. His own enforcers are terrified.”
Koda blinked, the panic stalling in his chest. “They are?”
“I walked through the eastern docks this morning,” Tazuna snorted around his cup of tea. “Saw three of Gato’s collectors. They took one look at me and walked the other way. You’re a local legend, boy. A monster.”
Koda’s mouth hung open. “…huh?”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
As much as he hated to admit, the old drunk was right.
Sake-soaked grumbling aside, he had been more right than Koda could even understand and his words were still bouncing around his skull a couple days later. The bounty might have just been a piece of cheap rain-smeared paper tacked to the side of a couple walls, ink already bleeding and the sketch itself overdone, yes.
But the dark skin was obvious.
The white patches in his dreads, even moreso.
And the giant blue snake occasionally wrapped around his shoulders… well, you’d need to be blind not to put two and two together.
Which is why Koda found it so surprising that all the local enforcers seemed to have come down with a sudden case of temporary blindness every time he showed up.
He raised his head as a thug with a rusted sickle strapped to his waist stopped dead at the end of the dirt road, the man’s eyes locked onto Koda and the blue snake at his side. All of a sudden, the man pivoted where he stood, sandals slipping in the muck, and found something else much more interesting down a nearby alley.
Koda just kept walking, Dratini triling by his side as she undulated along the road. Idiots.
If he walked down a street with a couple criminals, suddenly there was no sign of trouble. Gato’s men made sure to find excuses to become sudden birdwatchers, or to cross the road, or to disappear behind sagging wooden doors.
It was nice, honestly.
Especially when the villagers noticed too.
The wooden planks of the pier groaned a little as he shifted his weight, overcast gray sky hanging low enough to almost press down on the choppy water. Legs dangling over the edge enough to catch the spray on his bare feet, a wooden bucket of bait fish sat clamped between his knees.
With a hum, he tossed a silver piece of headless scrap into the dark water.
MINE!
Dratini broke the surface like an arrow from the deep, bright blue scales a blur as she snapped the fish out of the air before it could even touch the foam.
MORE!
“Yeah, yeah…” Koda rolled his eyes as the demanding baby-voice spiked straight through his forehead, the snake-keeper already grabbing for another piece. “Keep your scales on.”
A shuffling sound scraped against the damp wood behind him, the noise enough to distract him from his feeding duties. He turned his head to see an… old lady?
She stood a few feet behind him, gray hair hanging almost as loose as her faded kimono, the thing patched at the elbows. “Excuse me, Koda-sama.” The ‘sama’ was bad enough but the way she folded perfectly in half made it so much worse, the woman bowing so deep he heard her spine pop over the waves. “I know a shinobi of your caliber is very busy and far too occupied to bother with simple tasks like this…”
Tsunami, what have you been telling these people? Koda let out a slow breath.
It had only been a couple weeks ago that he even found out what ‘sama’ meant and Koda found himself understanding Tazuna’s annoyance with his presence when he realized that Tsunami had been calling him ‘lord’ the whole time. “Don’t worry about the… the sama. What’s your name, ma’am?”
She blinked his way, wrinkled face looking a good five years younger from sheer surprise. “…I am Fuku. Fuku Sato.”
“Well, Sato-san, what can I do for you?”
“Th-thank you. Thank you for hearing me, shinobi-sama.” She bent at the waist again, already forgetting what Koda had just told her; the sight of another deep bow from a woman old enough to be his grandmother sending an arrow of embarrassment right into his heart. “My… my late husband’s boat… Gato’s men vandalized it, splintered the hull too. It needs to be dragged to shore so I can sell it. I…” She swallowed, hands twisting the sleeves of her old kimono. “I cannot pay you in ryo.”
“Okay, look…” He shook his head as five fingers found the back of his neck, Koda rubbing at the heat he could feel rising up his face. “No need to pay me, Sato-san. I… I’ll just help you.”
“No.” The old lady flinched like he’d just slapped her, dark eyes darting around the empty pier like someone was listening in. “No, a shinobi must be paid. I… I have information.”
Koda blinked. Information?
“My uncle… he was a chunin of the Mist.” Her voice dropped to a whisper, a hand over her mouth as she kept glancing around. “Well before the bloodline wars. Old maps he left me, notes he made of his time in Mist.”
Mist. Bloodline wars. Chunin.
Uhhhh…. Koda didn’t really care about any of that — the words hitting the empty spaces in his brain and sliding right off — not sure how it could help him but the way the woman was almost shaking as she stared at him broke him down. “Okay.”
He pushed aside the bucket and stood up, wood clattering against the pier. “Fine. I’ll help you clean the boat, and you give me the maps. You got a deal.”
The old lady stared at his dark calloused hand for a second.
Just one, before she reached out with her own pale papery fingers.
Skin met skin and Koda felt his breath hitch.
The moment their skin touched, it happened again. That supernatural click locked into place deep within Koda’s chest, a steel vault slamming shut as the physical weight of the obligation flooded deeper than just his thoughts.
Mrs. Sato gasped, eyes flying wide as she staggered back half a step. “By the Kami…” The whisper left her lips shaky as her legs, one hand on her chest. “A chakra seal…”
“A what?”
“You bound the contract with your chakra.” If the look of reverence was bad before, it was somehow so much worse now as the old lady folded down toward the damp wood, head nearly touching the pier. “I… I will have the information ready tonight, Koda-sama.”
She scurried away, sandals slapping planks, before Koda could explain that he didn’t even know what chakra was.
The dark-skinned ‘shinobi’ looked down at the hand that just touched the old lady, dirt and fish guts still under his ginfernails. “…huh.”
[FOOD!]
Blue eyes blinked as Koda jerked his head back to where Dratini hovered near the pier, eyes glaring up at him purple impatience.
“Sorry, girl.”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Curiosity getting the better of him, Koda started doing his best to test the deal-thing. Day after day, he made as many bargains as he could with the locals.
A villager with a bad limp stood below a sagging roof, muching on a piece of straw. “Fix the thatch. I’ll get a basket of vegetables over to Tsunami.”
“Deal.”
Click.
The vault door slammed shut in his chest.
That same afternoon, the street stank of rotting daikon and nervous sweat as two wannabe thugs with badly-done tattoos and bald heads took one look his way and crossed the muddy road. The fishmonger behind the stall wiped a bloody knife on an apron that hadn’t been clean in years as he took in the sight with a raised eyebrow.
“You keep them away for two hours, I show you the proper cut. How to leave the guts done good.”
“Deal.”
Click.
An old man, missing at least half his teeth, sat on a stump as he handed over an axe.
“I cut the wood. You tell me everything you know about shinobi. About chakra.”
The nod and a shake was all Koda needed for the vault to lock.
Click.
The old man was only the first.
Click.
Click.
Clickety-click.
Every time, the terms had to be clear.
Explicitly, even.
Both parties had to be willing, too.
But once all that was over and done with, both were bound by something Koda didn’t understand. Sooner rather than later, Koda became known throughout the village for his ‘shinobi contracts’ simply because he had no better explanation to offer them.
It was weird, sure, but he really had no idea what else to call it.
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Then, four days after the bounty was posted, Koda woke up to a ray of oddly bright sunlight through his window.
His jaw popped with a yawn, the sound hollow through his room as he threw the thin blanket off his chest. As he rolled over, arm slapping out wildy in his search for a shirt, four fingers and a thumb brushed against something cold and heavy.
Koda froze.
He sat up, blinking the grit from his eyes almost immediately, and stared.
At the weapon resting on the wooden floorboards, directly beside his pillow.
The blade was wide.
Brutally thick, too.
The steel was shaped like it was made to hurt — a hybrid between a butcher’s cleaver and a combat knife, with a handle carved from dark wood polished to a shine and a thick guard separating the grip from the cold steel made of even-darker black fur.
He reached out.
It was heavy, but the moment his fingers wrapped around the wooden grip, the weight seemed to fit his own hand like it was made for it; a natural extension of his own wrist.
Koda kept his grip tight as he looked around the room, wooden door clearly shut and latched from the inside. Dratini was a massive mound of coils at the foot of his futon, the sea-snake still snoring softly.
Nobody had come in. He had absolutely no memory of finding it, forging it or filching it.
But he knew more than anything…
It belonged to him.
“What the hell?”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Piss Off Gato — 0 NP
Not a hard task, man.
Congratulations, Criminal – 50 NP
Have a bounty placed on your head.
Small-Time Wanted – 150 NP
Gain a bounty large enough to draw attention from opportunists.
Name Gets Around – 100 NP
Have your reputation spread past people you personally scared.
No Longer Guessing – 50 NP
Stop using an ability blindly.
[!FAIL!] Ten Shadows Technique (600) [Jujutsu Kaisen V2.5] {Methods} [!FAIL!]
[!FAIL!] Blessed by the Sun God (600) [Demon Slayer] {Talents} [!FAIL!]
Remove Curse (200) [World of Warcraft] {Support Spells}
Cleanse harmful curses from yourself or an ally, breaking the magical bonds that cause ongoing suffering or impairment. The spell works on most curse effects but requires you to touch the afflicted person.
Humanities GREATEST Loser (300) [Records of Ragnarok Gauntlet (Humans)] {Talents}
Take note of the emphasized word in this Perk. Even you are not invincible, especially in this world. However, through loss and error and failure, we rise to new heights. With this perk, any loss you suffer will only make you greater. You might learn to dodge better or a new technique but an improvement will always be there should you fail at something and it will always make you greater than before.
Slaughter Demon (100) [Jujutsu Kaisen] {Destructive Items}
A wide-bladed dagger, shaped almost like a cross between a butcher’s cleaver and a combat knife, with a wooden handle and a guard of black fur. A basic cursed tool, Slaughter Demon does little more than act as a weapon capable of harming cursed spirits, even in the hands of a non-sorcerer. It won’t be of too much use against a powerful curse, but against an average or weaker one? It’ll slice or stab through them with ease.
Nexus Points: 250