Ninja Girl

Nick made it about four blocks before he slammed on the breaks and pulled off the side of the road. He pulled the key from the ignition and sat there, breathing heavily, as though he had just run the distance instead of driven it.

“We should probably leave the car,” Anya was saying, though he hardly noticed. “If they check into who was living in the apartment they may figure out you drive this vehicle and they may come looking–”

“What the HELL is going on?” Nick practically screamed, cutting her off mid thought.

Anya stared at him in surprise, somewhat hesitant to respond. “It’s best…” she started to say, but Nick cut her off again.

“Not good enough!” He pointed behind him, out the back window of the car. “My home, my LIFE, has literally just gone up in flames back there. And you know why, don’t you? They were there because of you, weren’t they? You at least owe me an explanation.”

She shook her head, “I don’t–”

“Bullshit!” He shouted, cutting her off once more. “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Bullshit!” He pounded his palm on the steering wheel in time with each repeated word. Then he paused, took a deep, steadying breath, and let it out. “You know what’s going on, I can tell,” he continued, more calmly. “It’s written all over your face. I don’t know how but somehow you’re caught up in all of this, and now because of that I’m caught up in it. Now out of nowhere there’s people lighting my home on fire and sitting out on rooftops with assault rifles waiting for me.”

“I don’t think they were waiting for you.”

“For you then! What’s the difference? You’re with me. And probably the only reason either of us is still alive right now is because I randomly decided to take you to that hospital. If I hadn’t, we might both be dead. So, in that sense, you owe me! So you can tell me this: what the hell is going on and who the hell are these people?”

Anya swallowed. There was fear in her face, though not from Nick. Something about the situation alarmed her. “Fine,” she said bleakly. “I don’t exactly… that is, I can’t say with complete certainty that it is who I think it is. But there’s really only one group I can think of that it could be: the Ryerson Corporation.”

Nick blinked. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Ryerson?” He echoed. “As in, Ryerson Communications?”

It was Anya’s turn to look surprised. “You’ve heard of them?”

He scoffed. “Are you serious? Who hasn’t heard of them? Like, only half of the world gets their internet and T.V. through them.”

“They’re more than just a service provider.”

“Yeah, well, I mean, obviously. They probably own about half the world. Movie companies, fast food chains, probably a sports team or two.”

“No, I mean serious things. Military research and development. Bioengineering. Those kinds of things.”

“Ryerson? Come on.”

“You’re the one who wanted me to explain.”

“Yeah but I didn’t want you to make things up.”

“I’m not making this up!”

Nick opened his mouth to argue, but something about Anya’s tone and her stare made him stop. There was an intensity there, and… something else…

“How…” he said instead, fumbling a bit over his words as he tried to recover, “how do you know about this?”

“I’ve been dealing with them for years.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said simply, and then let out a sigh. She turned to stare out the window, her eyes focusing on something far away. After a long moment of silence she spoke, her voice soft, “What do you know about ninja?”

“Ninja?” Nick asked, somewhat taken aback. “Um, I know that they’re assassins.”

“Yes, they’re assassins,” Anya snapped somewhat harshly. “Anything else?”

Nick shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting a pop quiz or anything. I guess they’re not just assassins. Their skill was legendary. They could vanish into thin air, wrap themselves in shadows, shoot fire from their hands… that kind of stuff. They were supposed to turn the tide of battle before the battle ever started. Things like that. Why?”

Anya was nodding her head. “Not bad. Sounds like a description from a movie, but…”

“Video game, actually,” Nick said without thinking. Anya cast him a confused look. “I… I play a lot of video games,” he added sheepishly.

“Right…”

Nick cleared his throat, suddenly very uncomfortable. “Anyway, go on,” he prompted.

“Yes. Where was I? Years ago, in the early days of the ninja, we were servants to the daimyo.”

Nick did not miss that Anya had said “we,” but decided not to mention it.

“The daimyo battled each other for land, power, and money. When they needed… discreet assistance, they would hire from a ninja village to achieve their goals. The ninja were not just assassins. They obtained information, they carried sensitive messages, and performed other tasks as well. Whatever the daimyo needed done in a capable and discreet manner, the ninja provided.

“However, a little over one hundred years ago the daimyo ceased to exist, as did, for the most part, the ninja. Those of us that remained became very secluded and conservative in our ways. Without the masters of old, we were forced to ask ourselves who our new masters could be. Who was worthy of demanding the loyalty of the shinobi? No longer are there great generals who follow the way of the blade. No longer are there noble heroes fighting for their noble causes. All that is left is greedy CEOs and corrupt politicians. It was not a world worth fighting for, and so we instead withdrew from the world and kept our own counsel on where to use our skills.

“There was dissent within our own group, however. There were those that thought we should play a bigger role in the outside world. Those who thought that advances in science and technology could only make us better and stronger than we were before.”

“And that’s where Ryerson comes in?” Nick asked.

Anya shook her head. “Not at first. And not directly. To appease some of this outspoken group, whenever we saw fit to intervene in the affairs of the outside world, one or more of them would usually get to be the ones to do so. On one of these occasions, the group’s leader, Kokatsu, discovered an underground fighting ring. We didn’t know it for a long time, but he joined in it, and would sneak off sometimes to participate in it. With his skills as one of our best he quickly rose to the top in the tournaments. His plan was to earn enough money to be able to leave the village permanently and disappear.

“When his activities were discovered, he was brought before the elder council and sentenced to great punishment for his crimes. However, Kokatsu did not accept this punishment. He disagreed so heavily with how the elders ran the village that he fought back. With the help of his followers he overran the village, killing many, setting much of the village ablaze, and he…” She paused here, her voice breaking a little bit. She turned away and stared out the window. “Eventually,” she continued without looking back at Nick, “they managed to force him out and run off or capture all of his group. Kokatsu escaped, however, and disappeared.

“As it turns out, the underground fighting clubs were used as, essentially, talent pools for Ryerson recruiters. They were looking for the best fighters to research and experiment on. Kokatsu would prove a very willing participant in their research, so long as they kept him safe from our village’s retribution. So they took him and vanished, and for many years nobody saw him again. Then one day he suddenly returned, bringing Ryerson troops with him and they again attacked our village. This time their goal was different. They did not come to conquer but to kidnap. They took most of our best warriors with them and vanished into the night.

“As retribution, a group of us was sent, me among them, to hunt Kokatsu down and bring our people home. It took some time but we succeeded, infiltrating a Ryerson facility.” Anya turned her head and stared at her hands in her lap, turning them over as if expecting to see blood still on them. “What we found was not what we expected, though. Our people had been changed… mutated. They were monstrous mindless aberrations. We put them out of their misery, each and every last one of them, finally ending when we brought down Kokatsu. It was a nightmare made flesh.

“Do not underestimate Ryerson. They are capable of unspeakable evil.”

Nick swallowed hard, unsure how to respond to Anya’s revelation. The information was a lot to process. “So… you think that’s what is happening right now? Revenge for destroying their pet ninja project?”

Anya shook her head again. It was difficult to tell in the dim light of the car’s darkened interior, but Nick thought he saw tears in her eyes. “No, I doubt they would know who to target based on that one event. We are ninja. We attacked in the night. We were not exposed. We disappeared with hardly a trace. That is what we do. That is what we have trained our lives for. But our contact with Ryerson did not end that night. The village elders decided that Ryerson was too dangerous to be allowed to continue, so it became the duty of our village to bring them down. To gain more information on them, some of us entered into the same tournament rings that Kokatsu had fought in just years earlier. It was a dangerous move, as it left us much more exposed than we normally would allow ourselves to be, but it also brought us into contact with many from Ryerson.”

Nick was nodding his head. “Yes, of course. That must be when they… did… whatever it is they did to you.”

“Did to me?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, a confused expression crossing his face. “I mean, it had to be them, right? That caused you to teleport?”

Understanding dawned across Anya’s face, as though she had never even considered the possibility before that moment. “You really think they managed to… what? Inject me with something? That allows them to control me like that?”

“Well, you said you didn’t do it intentionally. And I certainly didn’t do it. So who else does that really leave?”

Anya thought about that for a moment. After a time she turned a sly look on Nick. “I thought you didn’t believe me?”

Nick could feel his face burning red with embarrassment. “Yeah, well, let’s just say, that, uh, you have a very… convincing… tone of voice.” He cleared his throat and adjusted in his seat, trying to turn away from her as much as he could to hide his embarrassment. “Anyway,” he started, and found himself needing to clear his throat again as his nervousness seemed to be making it too hard to speak. “What… what I’m trying to say is, it probably would be a bad idea to go back to Japan.”

“Why?”

“Because, think about it. There wasn’t that much time that passed between you appearing in my bedroom and them showing up, in force, and burning down my home. Maybe, what? Thirty minutes or so? And that’s without knowing just how long they were there before torching the place. They could have been there minutes after we left. Or seconds. If those people are with Ryerson, they knew to look for you there, which means they were either in control of the process, or at the least expecting and monitoring for it. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. And the fact that they showed in force means that they were looking for you. Which means, more likely than not, that they want you. Probably to fill the gap left by this, Ko… uh… Ka…”

“Kokatsu,” Anya clarified.

“Yeah, uh, him. The fact that they didn’t get you means that they’re probably going to try again. They probably already have. That’s probably what that explosion thing was right before you collapsed in my living room. That was probably them thinking their process failed and attempting to run it again. When that failed, they somehow managed to locate you and hunt you down hoping you would be possibly incapacitated or at least confused enough that they could trap you. My guess is, now that they’ve failed at that, too, they’re going to attempt to figure out what went wrong and then try once more.

“Now, if I’m right, and you go back to Japan, then when they try again there will be nothing anyone can do, and this time they might transport you to the destination they actually intended. Which, who knows, could be some kind of inescapable death trap or something, and with no one who knows where you went and no one around to help you. But if you stay, then maybe, you know, together, we could, I dunno, investigate them and possibly stop them?”

Anya blinked, her expression a cross between surprise and remorse. “After all the pain my brief appearance in your life has caused you, you’re still willing to help me?”

Nick half shrugged and half nodded, not sure exactly how to respond. “Yeah, well, it’s not exactly like I have somewhere better to go now. My entire life is up in flames, literally, as I said. Besides, that makes this my fight too now. I’m not just helping you here. I’m getting revenge of my own.”

“You don’t have to stick with me though. You could go to the authorities.”

Nick scoffed. “And tell them what? A random ninja girl suddenly appeared in my life and because I attempted to help her an evil corporation bent on world domination through mutant ninja experimentation has set my apartment on fire and might now be trying to kill me? Yeah, that will certainly end with me being anywhere but a big padded room with white walls.”

After a moment he noticed Anya staring at him again, and his embarrassment suddenly shot through the roof once again. “Not, I mean, I don’t mean girl. Woman. Ninja woman. Obviously. I don’t mean to say you’re a girl. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a girl, obviously. I mean, I don’t mean girl like little girl. Just like, you know, guy, girl. Guy, girl. Same thing. I just mean…”

“You should probably stop talking now,” Anya stated, her voice cold and solemn.

“Yes, right, definitely,” Nick agreed. He slammed his mouth shut to keep from saying anything else. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to slip through a hole in the bottom of his seat and melt into the pavement below his car.

There was silence for a long moment as Anya thought over her options. “You make a good point,” she said after a while. “If I return home without doing anything, I very likely will be risking being under their control again. Right now, I have somewhat of an advantage. The fact that they were able to mobilize so quickly gives us an important clue. It means that they must be running the experiment from a location very close to your apartment, most likely in the same city. If I can locate any facilities they might own in the area, I can shut them down. That way I can return home and not have to worry about them trying anything again.”

“Exactly,” agreed Nick.

“I do feel the need to warn you off again, Nick Lombardi. This will be very dangerous. You could very possibly die in your effort to help me.”

“I realize that, but like I said, I’m not just doing this for you. This is for me, too. I owe Ryerson for what they’ve done to my life. Also, the possibility remains that they’ll go after people I know. I can’t let that happen. And please, just call me Nick.”

“I’d rather not,” she said, echoing her words from earlier.

Nick frowned. “Fine. Whatever. So what do we do first?”

“We will need to find one of Ryerson’s physical locations. Do you know of any offices or laboratories they might have in the area?”

“No,” Nick answered honestly, gritting his teeth and furrowing his brow as he considered it. “But I think I know how to find one.”