Ninja Girl

“I feel utterly ridiculous.”

Nick smiled and looked Anya up and down. She had removed all vestiges of her ninja gear and, at Nick’s prompting, had donned a very high class suit. It was a dark grey that was all curves and no sharp edges. The suit jacket gently hugged her neck then ran in a ‘V’ pattern down her front to where the two sides buckled together under two large, round buttons – one black, one white. The pants were simple, unadorned, and matching in color to the jacket. Beneath the jacket she wore a lacy black camisole. The whole ensemble gave the appearance of being loose but still somehow nicely hugged and showed off all her curves. She didn’t just look like she worked in an office. She looked like she ran it. The only parts that looked off at all were her insistence on wearing flats instead of heels – and Nick figured that part was probably forgivable – and the purple streaks in her hair.

“Don’t,” he assured her. “You look good.” Anya shot Nick a threatening glance, obviously not appreciating his appraisal. He cleared his throat and straightened up. “I… I mean, appropriate. You look appropriate. For the part. You look appropriate for the part. They’ll totally buy you as an employee of the company.”

“They better,” she growled, crossing her arms and striking her “annoyed” stance. “I’m not used to having to wear regular people clothes.”

“You’re a ninja,” Nick scoffed. “Isn’t camouflage and disguise part of your normal routine?”

A look crossed Anya’s face that just slightly betrayed her embarrassment. “Yes, but… it never really has come up before.”

“Well, look at it this way. Now you can add it to your Ninja resumé.”

“Ninja do not have resumés.”

Nick sighed. “Try not to be so literal.”

“While we’re on the subject of my looks, how long have I had this?” Anya grabbed a tuft of purple hair and held it up into the light.

“Had what?”

“This! The purple. How long has it been there?”

“Since I’ve known you,” Nick replied, his eyes narrowed in confusion.

“When were you going to tell me about it?”

Nick shrugged. “I didn’t know that you didn’t know about it. Honestly, it looks kind of intentional. I just thought it was… I don’t know… kind of punk rock or something. That’s big in Japan, right?”

“You thought I did this to myself intentionally?”

Nick shrugged again. “Uh… yeah?”

“Who would do this to themselves intentionally?”

Her voice was fast, and angry. It was forceful enough that Nick took a step back. “Well, look, it’s not like you dyed all your hair purple.”

“I didn’t dye any of my hair!”

“Right, no, I know. I just mean, at least the whole thing’s not purple. At least it’s just streaks. It looks unique without looking outlandish. I mean, it doesn’t exactly help with you trying to sell yourself as an employee, but it shouldn’t kill the entire plan.”

“How did I get it?”

“How would I know? Maybe it’s a side effect of whatever they did to you that allowed them to teleport you.”

“So you didn’t do this?”

“Oh, no, I totally did. You got me. When you passed out on my floor, I thought it would be super funny to just randomly dye tiny little streaks of your hair a random color.”

“Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t! I was making a joke!”

Anya stared at Nick for a long time, jaw set, then finally turned and started down the aisle. Nick had already paid for the clothes, but Anya had elected to change inside the store. Despite their public location, they had no qualms about openly discussing their situation. The store was practically dead. It had still been so early in the morning when they arrived that they had actually been forced to wait outside the doors until the store opened for the day. Between that and it being a weekday, they pretty much had the entire store to themselves. The clerk who had checked them out waved at them as they passed by her and exited out the doors.

“Have a nice day!” she called after them. Nick waved back his thanks, but Anya pressed on as if not noticing.

“It is nearly impossible for me to tell if you are being serious or not,” she said, returning to their conversation.

“Probably safest to assume I’m not being serious most of the time,” Nick replied.

“So are you not being serious about my hair? Does it look weird?”

“No, it doesn’t look weird. It looks… kinda cool, actually.”

Anya’s expression was doubtful, but she stopped arguing about it. As they walked, her attention turned back to her clothing. She tugged at the front of her jacket and pulled on the sleeves. “Stop picking at it,” Nick chastised. “You look fine.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Yes I’m being serious. You look fine.”

“I feel ridiculous. This plan of yours better work.”

“It’ll work just fine. Besides, if it doesn’t there’s plenty of room for error. If something goes wrong we can always fall back on your plan of just killing everyone.”

A confused look crossed Anya’s brow. “My plan did not involve killing anyone.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. Guess I was just thinking that, as a ninja, all your plans typical involve killing everyone.”

Anya stopped walking. This time she had not been pressing forward nearly as quickly, so Nick was forced to stop as well in order to stay with her. “You have known me for twelve hours already,” she said. “In that time, have I so much as suggested we kill anyone?”

“Well, no,” Nick admitted. “Except me, I suppose. But probably that was more just idle threats. On the flip side, though, I’m not sure it seems like a good sign that you think twelve hours is a long time to go without killing anyone.”

Shock flashed across Anya’s face, but it was slowly replaced by something else. Nick wasn’t sure, but she looked almost as though his words had wounded her. Then that, too, was gone and her jaw clenched tight as her face returned to her normal, solemn expression. “I have not killed anyone in five years,” she said. With that, she turned and resumed walking.

Nick stood in place for a long moment, too surprised to know how to respond. After a minute he shook himself awake and hurried after his companion. “Woah, Anya, look: I’m sorry. Okay? I’m sorry. I just… I’m used to ninjas in things being all super badass killer types. I shouldn’t have just assumed you were like that. I can see this is important to you so I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

Anya steeled her jaw and continued walking, but she slowed down a little to make it easier for Nick to keep up with her. “It’s not important,” she said after a time.

“You want to talk about it?” Nick prompted gently.

“No.”

“Fair enough.”

They walked on for a moment in silence. Then Anya let out a long, slow sigh. “I… I have just had a lot of darkness in my life. Perhaps too much to live with. I need to balance it out with some light or I’m afraid the dark will consume me.”

“Like karma,” Nick replied.

“What?”

“Karma. You’re worried about your karma. Like, yin and yang, balance between light and dark, good and evil. That sort of thing. Something like that, right?”

Anya was watching Nick with a funny look on her face, but she merely nodded her head and answered, “Yes. Something like that.”

Nick was nodding his head before she even finished. “Yeah, I get that.”

“You do?” Anya scoffed, the incredulity so thick in her voice it was almost a tangible thing.

“Yeah, I get that. I mean, kind of. After all, you’re not crazy. That is, you don’t seem crazy. I mean, your story is crazy. Your life story seems to be crazy, and my life has been crazy since you’ve entered it, but I don’t think that you, yourself, are crazy. You seem like a rational person. It seems to me that anyone who lives as an assassin, who spends every day walking that fine line between life and death, well, that only results in two outcomes. Either you go crazy and, as you say, let the darkness consume you, or you live your life full of guilt and grief over the things you’ve done. And like I said, you don’t seem like a crazy person. So that means that you’ve probably reached a point where the guilt is too much. It makes sense.”

Anya was watching him with a look that might have suggested she was highly impressed by this analysis. Nick, unfortunately, did not notice.

“Besides, I mean, that’s pretty much the character arc of every ninja in every video game with ninjas I’ve ever played. So, you know, I’ve seen it.”

“Video games,” Anya echoed, her voice full of venom and her expression changing to one of disgust. “Of course.”

“What I’m trying to say is…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Anya interrupted. “We’re here.”

Nick stopped in place and looked around in surprise. Sure enough, they were back at the Teller Communications building. Anya had only walked the path from there to the shop that one time before this moment, but somehow she had still managed to memorize the path and layout of the streets well enough to quickly and efficiently lead them back to their destination. Not only that, but she had managed to actually circle around the building to another alley on its other side, still across the street but affording them a better view of the front of the building.

From where they stood, Nick could see the entire front of the building. It was a fairly standard looking office building, fourteen stories tall. The side walls and last dozen or so feet at the top of the building were all solid concrete. The front, however, was almost entirely glass.

The lobby was in clear view from their vantage point. It stood two stories tall, with white marbled walls and a dark tiled floor. A security desk stood in front of a dark wood wall that housed the elevator entrance. Around this wall were open air staircases that wrapped around to the second floor at the back of the building where some cubicles and offices were visible. At the very back of this area, another open staircase wrapped around the entire stretch of the rear wall leading up to a third floor that served as a roof of the lobby. The second floor area, like the lobby, was at least two stories tall, and in fact from their current position the ceiling of it was not even in view.

“Fancy,” Nick said. “A little… too… fancy.”

Anya stood leaning against the corner of the nearest building, staring out across the street towards the Teller building. “There,” she said, motioning as she did so, “the security desk.”

Nick looked. The security desk was made of a dark brown wood, just a few shades lighter than the wall behind it. It was long and round, covering the entire distance of the wall holding the two elevators. From where he stood, he could make out some computer monitors and two security guards manning the desk.

“Yup, it’s a security desk alright,” he agreed.

Anya rolled her eyes. “I know it’s a security desk. But look. The guards are checking in people before they can get into the building.”

Nick squinted and watched as a lady in a dark dress walked up to one of the security guards and handed him a small card. The security guard checked something out of sight at his desk, and then handed the card back to the lady and waved for her to proceed.

“Well, shit,” Nick said simply, not really sure what Anya was getting at.

“I take it you didn’t have a plan to get past it then?”

Realization finally dawned on Nick and his shoulders slumped. “No. I didn’t know it would be there. What are you thinking? The old ‘I forgot my badge in my office’ trick? Or maybe you could, I dunno, flirt with one of the guards while I sneak past? Well, no, that would only get one of us past them. I could fake a heart attack and then you, oh, wait, no, same problem. What…”

Nick’s voice trailed off as he turned to look at Anya and discovered that she was not even there. “Uh, what?” He said, turning his head this way and that trying to find her. “Anya?”

“Over here,” he heard her call from behind him. He spun around to see her standing under the fire escape for the building she had been leaning up against just moments before. “We can take this.”

“Right,” Nick said, stepping over to her. “Wait, why are we going up the fire escape for this building?”

Anya stepped back a few steps and then ran forward and jumped into the air. She sailed easily up the ten feet to where the ladder waited and grabbed on. With barely so much as a grunt of effort she pulled herself up and onto the fire escape.

“Because,” she said in answer to Nick’s question, kicking down the ladder so that he could reach it, “the other building doesn’t have a fire escape.”

“Oh, right,” Nick said, stepping over to the ladder. “Wait, how do you know that?”

“Because you’re really slow,” she called down to him. She was already up a couple flights of stairs. “I had plenty of time to check this morning when we first arrived.”

“Are you serious?” Nick asked, incredulous, but Anya had already moved beyond ear shot. With a sigh, Nick grabbed onto the ladder and hauled himself up onto the fire escape.