First Rule Of The Ninja 3

Hn. Thwak!

Hn. Thwak!

Hn. Thwak!

Chopping wood was… 

Easy wasn’t the right word. Not if the sweat slicking his body and the ache in his arms had anything to say about it.

No, it wasn’t easy, but it was definitely familiar.

All the way down to how he knew how to hold it so his palms wouldn’t blister.

He didn’t know why he knew.

But he did.

It wasn’t just the wood alone, no; it also had a lot to do with the way the axe handle felt in his grip. For one, the handle was polished slick by years of other people’s sweat but it still sat in his palms like it had never been anywhere else. 

The weight of it didn’t surprise him and the swing was far from a guess.

Not before, and definitely not now when the old iron head bit into the block with another clean hard thwak! Halves of the log tumbled into damp dirt, the thing split right down the middle in clean pieces.

Koda let the axe head rest against the chopping block, forearm dragging across his forehead to catch the sweat before it could sting his eyes. Eyes…

He’d caught his reflection in Tsunami’s bathroom that first night two weeks ago. The dark skin was familiar enough, and so were the irregular patches of stark white in his dreadlocks, but the eyes… he wished the eyes were less familiar; bright blue irises staring back at him in the cloudy glass. 

He’d stared for a long time.

Too long, almost.

Even if he recognized the person staring back, it still felt like a stranger. 

Felt like a… a target.

Koda let out a breath, long and low, the sound coming out hollow in the small clearing behind the house. That’s enough of that. 

Grunting to himself, Koda bent down to pick up the split halves of the last few logs, picking them all up and stacking them against the side of the house with all the rest. Tsunami had him doing pretty much the same chores since the second day; water out of the well, wood on the pile, fish scales scraped clean by the black door. 

She said the labor was supposed to be payment for the mat to sleep on and the food on his plate but honestly, he’d be asking for something to do even if she didn’t give him a list. At this point, it was all that was keeping his brain from eating itself out of boredom. 

When his hands were moving, he didn’t have to think about the blank spaces in his head.

“Shinobi-sama.”

Koda raised his head toward the voice, Tsunami standing by the back door as she wiped her hands on an apron that had seen better months. Even after using him like an errand boy, she still kept her eyes low and toward the ground when she spoke to him, a respectful dip of her head that made the back of Koda’s neck itch.

“Koda. Just Koda.” He bit out the second word sharp, voice hardening for a single breath before the rest of the sentence loosened into his usual hollow drift. “Thought I said that before.”

“Of course, Koda-sama.” She nodded her head again as Koda bit back a sigh. “Just wanted to tell you that the water basin is low. When you have a moment.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t look at her as he already started reaching for the buckets, too used to this to ask any dumb questions. “Got it.”

Koda brushed the doorframe as Tsunami went back inside, his reflection in the warped glass of the window staring at him again — those eyes staring back like two chips of blue ice. He looked away just as quickly, unsure what about his face was so different when he was sure he still looked exactly the same. Don’t look too long. 

Nothing good came from staring too much at a stranger wearing your face.

The walk to the well was short, dirt path smoothed down and made obvious by years of the same frequent footsteps. With a grunt, he lowered the wooden bucket into the well, barely holding the rope as the bucket fell fast and with a splash.

A few seconds later, Koda hauled the bucket up, water sloshing over the sides and splashing cold against uncovered shins. He set it on the stone edge and turned to pick up the second bucket. 

Seconds later, both were full and back in his arms, meaning that it was time to head back to the house.

By the time he got back, Tazuna was sitting on the front porch, the old man nursing a bottle of something that Koda was sure would burn his nostril hairs.

“Cloud village bastards.” Tsunami’s father was muttering like usual, words slurred and bunch up at the front of his mouth before dropping off into a barely audible grumble. “Think they can just walk in… sniffing around… bridge ain’t even half done…”

Koda didn’t bother to slow down, having learned pretty early on that Tazuna wasn’t actually talking to him. It was just the bridge. That was the old man’s whole thing; the only way to bypass whoever this ‘Gato’ was. 

Koda didn’t care about Gato. 

He didn’t care about shipping monopolies or anything like that.

His worries were a lot closer to home. …or I guess a lack of home?

“…why are all my jokes so bad?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The marshlands were thick with the smell of rot — dead plants and dead animals both — and of course the smell of brine. This close to the ocean, it was a rare day that you’d smell anything other than that.

Mud sucked greedily at his toes as it tried to suck the sandals right off his feet, the sounds of his steps sounding too close too slurps for his liking. But that was all the marsh back here was full of; stagnant water, decaying reeds and plenty of mud.

At the very least, it was a good enough distance from the house that Tazuna’s grumbling couldn’t find him, and definitely far enough that Tsunami’s half-respectful and half-scared looks couldn’t make his skin crawl. 

Water cold against his calves, Dratini glided past his hips.

HUNGRY.

As always, the word was a pressure in his skull more than any simple sound; a feeling he could define as easily as he knew the sky was…

He looked up, eyes narrowed at the murky gray cloud cover of Wave Country.

Well, the sky was usually blue.

“No food right now.” His muttered words were enough to get Dratini to poke her head above the water, pale blue scales catching the afternoon light as her big purple eyes locked right onto his blues. “We’re testing.”

He lifted his head, attention focused on a rotting tree stump sticking out of the muck a good thirty feet away. Koda jabbed two fingers at it. “Wrap it up!”

Dratini was a blur of blue as she vanished beneath the water, reeds parting violently in her wake. A second later, the serpentine body was a kinetic projectile as she erupted out.

Koda didn’t flinch as the oversized snake banked hard around a rotting stump, the living muscle spiraling her long body around the thick trunk of a dead tree. Scales grinded against bark nearly as loud as the stump itself groaned, timber splintering under the crushing force.

A second later, the stump imploded; shards of rotted wood splashing into the water. 

Wh- Koda blinked for all of a second, mouth almost falling open. Whoa. He caught himself a second later, hands coming together in a few quick claps. “Good girl, Dratini!”

She cooed back at him, tail over her face.

“We’re not done yet, though.” They weren’t, especially considering Dratini had ‘told’ him about what she knew how to do. ‘Hearing’ about it was one thing but he still had to see it for himself to be sure. 

Two fingers came out again, aimed at nothing in particular this time. “Gimme a Twister!”

Dratini reared back, unspooling from the ruined stump as the tip of her tail began to glow a bright blue. A full second later, a miniature hurricane — a proper whirlwind easily as tall as Koda himself — lashed out across the surface of the marsh. Eyes wide, the young man watched as it tore up cattails, mud and stagnant-water, sending them high into the air as it tore a small trench through the muck.

“Oh…” Koda swallowed slowly as the whirlwind died down fully, Dratini beaming feelings of pride his way as she tilted her head side to side. “That… that definitely wor-.”

Koda froze, Dratini’s head snapping up as well, as a quiet crunch of dirt sounded behind the both of them. The blue-eyed man didn’t bother to turn all the way around. He didn’t need to, not as Dratini lit up and started cooing again in a way he recognized. Goddamnit…

“Kid, does your mom know you’re following me around?”

Inari froze in his peripheral, the boy at the edge of the muck.

The eight-year-old was always there. 

Even when he didn’t need to be. 

Especially when he didn’t need to be; trying to take up as little space as possible so Koda wouldn’t notice him around.

“I.. I-I-I wasn’t…” The kid’s voice was pitched higher than normal, words tripping over themselves in a familiar way that had Koda wondering how drunk Tazuna really was. “I was just looking.”

Inari’s eyes went down, shoulders hiked up to his ears and hands deep in his pockets.

…don’t be a jerk, man. Koda almost bit his tongue. He’s just a kid.

He was just a kid, yeah. 

But he was also the kid of his current benefactor and, as much as Koda didn’t feel like being left with idle hands, babysitting while playing around with Dratini’s magic was a whole new hell of responsibility and risk.

Much worse than fish-scraping. 

CURIOUS. Dratini swam up, the sea-snake lifting her head as the small white wings at the side of her head twitched. CURIOUS. 

Yeah… He bit back a sigh as Dratini offered her two cents. I know. 

“Can all ninja beasts do that?” Inari took half a step forward, shoulders still high. “Things like that?

“No.” Koda opened his mouth, jaw working as he realized he instinctively answered something he didn’t have the context to even shrug at. “I mean, I… I really don’t know, kid. I just know she can do that.” Couldn’t even tell you what a ninja beast is.

Honestly, the context clues were there, but Koda knew what they said about assumptions.

“Oh…” Inari’s expression solidified into a frown as he looked from Dratini to Koda, then back down again. “Can you talk to her?”

Koda tilted his head to the side. I mean… “She can understand me, if that’s what you’re asking?”

“N-no, I mean with words.”

Blue eyes flicked down to Dratini making slow circles in the stagnant muck, the mythic-looking animal having her own little fun. But she wasn’t an animal.

Animals couldn’t understand you the way Dratini could and they definitely couldn’t make themselves understood either.

Not like this.

Attention.

Dratini’s head snapped up, purple eyes locking onto Koda again. The snake uncoiled smoothly as she slithered forward, a smooth S-track in the muck behind her as she nudged her slick snout against his bare knee. A wave of mild satisfaction rolled his way, warm and heavy in Koda’s chest.

“…not really.” Koda shook his head. “But we talk.”

Inari just stared for a second longer, his mouth opening and closing like he wanted to say something else. Instead, the kid just turned and bolted back around to the house, small sandaled feet slapping against the dirt.

Koda watched him go, blinking slow as a few airborne leaves and reeds finally fluttered their way back down. Weird kid.

Weird, sure, but the kid had a bunch of questions that only left him with even more. 

He sure as hell wasn’t a ninja and, to this day, he still didn’t know what a chakra even was. It sounded familiar but he was pretty sure it had nothing to do with breathing fire or controlling water or running on walls. 

A lot of that sounded more like wizards than what he knew of ninja anyway.

Either way, he had no idea what the hell the people in this world did. All he knew was that he had a monster tied to his brain or soul or whatever and the monster was way stronger than anything this cute had a right to be.

Koda blinked down as a ripple in the water near his leg drew his attention.

Another snake…

It wasn’t the first time he’d seen one of them — a little snake no longer than his hand banded all in black and white — swimming slowly around his ankle. It didn’t try to bite or slither away or anything normally snake-like. 

Like the ones drom days ago, it just weaved through the water, small dark eyes fixed right on him.

“Hey, little gu…”

Another ripple breaking the surface had him swallow his words.

Then another.

A few seconds later, half a dozen little snakes gathered all around his legs in a silent slithering escort; drawn by the gravity of whatever bonded him to Dratini, he was guesseing.

Koda reached down, fingers brushing the surface of the water. One of the banded snakes didn’t even hesitate, swimming right into his palm.

Koda let out a slow breath, blue eyes staring down at the creature in his hand — its scales smooth and cold.

“This place… is so fucking weird.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Tsunami plated Koda another serving of rice as Tazuna drank slow, the old man staring at nothing. Inari picked at his food, eyes darting between his plate and Koda, the newest member of the household sitting at the far end of the low table.

As usual, dinner was a quiet thing.

“Gato’s men were at the docks again today…”

Correction, dinner had been a quiet thing. 

“Bastards!” Tazuna grunted again, voice thick with spite and sake both as he slammed his small cup down on the table. “Think they can starve us out.”

“Father, please,” Tsunami raised her head from her own bowl. “Not at the table.”

“Where else am I gonna say what I gotta say?” The old man grumbled, bloodshot eyes fixed right on Koda. “A shinobi sitting right here. In my house. Eating the food I worked hard to put on this table. Might as well hear what the hell is going on, right?”

Koda chewed his rice slowly, eyes off the old man. “Not a shinobi.” He still didn’t know what he was, but he knew he wasn’t whatever Tazuna thought he was.

“Right, right.” Tazuna waved a hand with a scoff. “Secret missions. Undercover. You ninja are all the same, whether you’re from Cloud or Sand or the Leaf. Think you can just hide out here spying on us while we bleed out.”

Koda set his chopsticks down, wood clicking against the ceramic bowl as blue eyes landed firmly on Tazuna. “I chop the wood.” 

His mouth turned down in a frown. “I pull the water.”

“And that’s pretty much it.” He shook his head. “Don’t put your wars on me, old man.”

Tazuna opened his mouth, then closed it, jaw working silently. He looked away, reaching for his sake cup with a hand that wasn’t entirely steady.

Koda picked his chopsticks back up and returned to his rice.