Sins, Debts, Years, and Foes--Chapter 21

The Shredder sat in his meditation room, trying to breath his rage away,  with the rendering of the renditions of oni towering over him, their eyes glaring.  He was surrounded by fools!  All of them, imbeciles.  Not a one of them could do their jobs properly.  This was the best he could get?  The pathetic, sniveling halfwits!

Nikka told him she was going to test his computer's’ integrity.  “I don’t trust Stockman to put up proper cybersecurity,” she said in that dead voice.  

Indeed, Stockman was found wanting.  

He was angry at everyone.  He had beaten Stockman for his carelessness.  He had beaten Xever for his failure.  He had wanted to pummel Bradford, but he had done what he was he was told.  As the dog mutant reported to him, Raiku was on her way to Tokyo,  then Sado.  He wanted to shake Nikka until her teeth chattered in her head. This shadow that she was most of the time was becoming tiresome to deal with, especially with the glimpses of her true self that shone through when she played music or when he took her in his bed.  But he had to step lightly, yet.  I am patient, he chanted.  I am present.  He had waited for 15 years, he could wait a few days longer.  Everything was moving as it was supposed to, as he’d foreseen it since his childhood.  Because it was not moving in the way he planned did not matter.  It was the destination that mattered, not the journey.

Again, he closed his eyes, his anger abating slightly as he let it slide from him, like silk on the skin.  He was not here to dwell on his rage at his own people.  He had others at which to rage.

Flames burst around him, cleansing fire.  The heat penetrated his armor, the Kuro Kabuto gaining warmth, his closed eyelids shining red instead of resting in blackness.  He had summoned the oni that he had painstakingly sculpted from his memory for his meditation room, quelling his rage, chanting his patience, his presence, stretching his perception to other realms that existed about him and through him, but no ogres came to him, either in his mind’s eye or the eyes in his head.

He knew why.

He suppressed his rage once again, now was not the time for it.  I am patient.  I am present.  None of his teachers had come to him since Nikka's phone call saying she was coming to New York City.  He hadn’t brought her down here, he had not yet felt the time was right.  Part of him derided himself, it was not time, it was courage that he lacked.  But he let that thought slide from him also, like spittle from a baby’s chin.  He needed her for the oni to come to him again.  And she could not help him when she was only half present.

He hated that he needed help.  He was powerful.  He was nearly indestructible.  He had monsters at his command.  Yet here, in the simple task of calling a demon from its hiding place, he needed this woman’s help.  Despite the fact that he knew he would eventually need it, that it meant he had attained a higher level of mastery, that visions and prophecies were being fulfilled, he hated that he could not do it on his own.  

Taking deep breaths, he chanted, I am patient.  I am present.  You have waited 15 years, Saki.  You can wait for as long as you need.

The flames receded, and he was left cold, the black of his eyes sudden and absolute.

“It is your turn to tell me a story,” he heard, almost in his outer ear.  A story?  Then he remembered.

He was in the forest that surrounded the Asakami Estate.  He and Nikka had only two days left before their month was up, before he could be out of this god-forsaken forest and actually do something again.

The garden had long been cleaned up, the two of them made quick work of the Morning Garden, a mistake on their part.  It left the rest of the month with nothing to do but sit around and wait for their tenure to be over.

He sat in meditation, the sun high in the sky, sweat beading down his temples to his jaw.  The tickle of it was vibrant on his skin, his entire attention in that little drop of salt water.  Then he felt a thwack on his thigh.  “It is your turn to tell me a story,” Nikka whined.

He opened his eyes and scowled at her.  She had been sleeping on the grass, complaining that waking up so early to join him in the dojo left her exhausted.  “Laziness leaves you exhausted,” he’d told her.

“I’m not lazy,” she’d groused.

She wasn’t, he knew, but it did not stop his ire from rising when she flopped down on the grass and began to doze.  Now that she was awake, she needed him to entertain her?

“I am busy,” his said quietly.

“No, you’re not.”  She sat up and glared at him.  “You’re just sitting there.  You can’t tell me you are meditating.”

“I was meditating,” he corrected her through clenched teeth.

“You can’t meditate all day,” she replied.  “Only monks meditate all day.”

He closed his eyes again, ignoring her.

“Saki, I’ve told you all kinds of stories when you asked.  It’s your turn to tell me one.”  Her voice was insistent, and he wondered if she was trying to suggest to him with it.

“You are the one reading all those scrolls,” he said.  “You tell me story.”

“You don’t want to hear about anyone, but Koga Takuza,” she complained.

What other stories would he want to hear?  Children’s fairytales? It was the great founder of his Clan that he wanted to know about.   He listened to stories of Koga Tamayori in order to glean the thoughts of his ancestor.  Otherwise, he wouldn't have listened to them, either.  “Then tell me a story about him.”

“I’ve already told you all the good ones.”  She flopped back down again, staring up at the blue sky.

“Then tell me a not-good one,” he ordered.  

“Uhg,” she sat up and huffed.  “Once upon a time, there was a great hero named Koga Takuza.  He had many adventures, some big, some little, and this is a little adventure.”  She recited the beginning impassively.  “As he was walking alone on a path in the forest one day, as a virile young man, he came across a woman on the side of the road playing a biwa.”  Her voice became more animated as she spoke.  Having an audience for a story, even an audience of one, was too much of an opportunity to perform for her to let pass by.

“She was sitting, obviously, because she was playing a biwa, and wearing a gorgeous blue kimono made of silk.  Her hair was pulled up with golden combs, and her face was painted with red and black around her eyes.  Her lips were like rubies and her dark eyes shone like obsidian.

“‘What are you doing out here alone?’ asked Takuza.

“‘I am playing my biwa,’ she replied.  ‘For I am lonely, I live all by myself here in the wood.’”

Saki looked at her dubiously.

“What?” Nikka asked.

“This is an obvious story,” he said.

“It is a classical story that all heroes must endure,” she said haughtily.  “You want your ancestor to be a hero, don’t you?”

“Hnnnn,” he replied with a scowl.

She smiled smugly and took that as an indication that she should continue.  “‘You live alone?’ asked Takuza.  ‘How is it that you live alone in this place?’  

‘My father died many years ago,’ she said, blinking her eyes becomingly.”  Nikka did as she explained, looking more like a fool than a becoming young woman found in a wood.  Saki had lessened his scowl at the sight.  “‘Her father died many years ago?’ Takuza thought, as men are apt to do.”  She gave Saki a knowing glare.  

He seriously doubted she knew what the glare was supposed to mean.  He didn’t believe that she’d ever been alone with someone of the opposite sex, except for him out here.  And she didn’t seem to be making any attempts to be alone with anyone.  In fact, she worked to get out of being with him, and he must have been a thousand times more interesting than any other man on this boring estate.  

The look lasted only a moment.   “‘Do you live with anyone else?’ Takuza asked.  ‘Your mother, your brothers?’

“‘No,’ she answered, standing up, holding her biwa against her chest.  ‘I live with no one, and am so very lonely.’”

Saki snickered at how she said it.

“You are not taking this story very seriously,” Nikka said in between small giggles.

“It is an obvious story,” Saki said, rolling his eyes.

“You want Takuza to be a great hero or not?” she crossed her arms about her chest.

It was his turn to glare at her.   After a moment, he waved his hand at her dismissively.

Again, she took it as an indication to continue her story.  “Takuza thought the maiden was so lovely, her lips so red, her eyes so rich, like tea, her hair so dark, like night, that he walked to the side of the road where she stood.  ‘If you have nothing here,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘then come back with me, and I will make sure you are treated like a princess.’

“She looked at his hand, a small smile on her red, red lips, and shook her head.  ‘I cannot go with you right now,” she said, ‘for I must get my father’s sword from my cottage.’

“‘Then I shall accompany you to your cottage,’ said Takuza, ‘and keep you safe in the forest.’

“Now why,” Nikka looked skeptical, “he wouldn’t have thought it strange that she was out and about in the woods alone without her father’s sword already, only he knows.”

Everyone else besides you knows, you stupid girl, Saki had wanted to say.

“But, apparently, she must have had something going on in that kimono, because he followed her to her cottage.  As they walked deeper and deeper into the dark woods, she played her biwa.  The song was dark and lonely, like the woods and herself.  She sang to it, whispery words that promised knowledge of earthy, dusky places.  He was lulled into a trance, of sorts, so that his only thoughts were of her and her beautiful music.  

“‘When I take her home, I will make her one of my prized concubines,’ he thought, ‘In a higher honor than any geisha in my court.’  

“She looked back at him, smiling with her ruby lips, and lead him into the forest until the dark of her hair was almost indistinguishable from the dusk of the woods.   Then her shack emerged.

“‘This is where you live?’ asked Takuza, his voice betraying his disgust.

“It is,’ answered the maiden. ‘Do you not think that I have a beautiful cottage?’

“It was pretty obvious that Takuza did not think it was a beautiful cottage.  It was a falling down thing, it didn’t look like it had been lived in for generations. How could her father’s sword be in this ramshackle building, much less anything else that one would need to live?”  Nikka raised her eyebrows as she muttered, “Now, Takuza, like his descendant, was not one to lie.  However,” she said matter-of-factly, “he did not want to insult the beautiful maiden with whom he had become so enamored.  He decided that he would tell her the truth, the entire truth, and if she did not like it or did not want to come with him because of it, he would simply overpower her and take her away without her consent.  

"‘It is not a beautiful cottage,’ he said.  ‘It is a shack.  But, I will take you to a palace, and you shall live like a queen, and have servants at your beck and call.  You can leave this hovel behind.’

“She was quiet, so that the only the woods made any noise at all and Takuza thought that she might deny him.  But then she smiled and motioned him toward the entrance.  ‘A queen?’ she asked.  ‘Honestly?’

Takuza put his hand to his armored chest above his heart, ‘I promise,’ he said.

“‘Come then,’ she said.  “I will retrieve my father’s sword, and we shall be off to your palace.”  Nikka narrowed her own eyes, turning her head to the side in a facsimile of what she thought the young maiden must have done.  It was one of those looks that women, throughout the beginning of time, had given men when they knew they had the upper hand.  Perhaps girls are born knowing how to do it, Saki had mused, and that is why it keeps showing up in my women...    

“So he followed her into the shack,” Nikka’s voice was soft.  “When his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that there was no furniture in the place.  No eating items.  No food.  Not even a chamber pot.  It was covered in spider webs and from each web hung the skeleton of a man!

“He turned to leave, but the woman was now behind him, blocking the door.”  The almost-woman’s voice sped up as she spoke, her big blue eyes wide and bright.  “In front of his eyes, she transformed from the beautiful maiden whom he had followed into a terrifying jorogumo!  Her legs disappeared to turn into the bulbous body of a spider, with six stick legs emerging from it.  Her beautiful face turned round and stretched, her teeth growing to become dripping fangs.  She hissed at him, her mouth open and covered in green venom.

“He knew he had only a few moments before he, too, would end up like the maiden’s other ‘lovers’, a sack of bones having been sucked dry by the spider woman.  So he took his sword, and beheaded the evil creature before she could bite him and leave him defenseless.  He then burned her, and the shack, to the ground, before returning to the road, to continue on his way.”

“That was not Koga Takuza,” Saki replied.

“Then who was it?” Nikka asked, tilting her head to the side, her light brown hair falling about her face.

“A stupid hero,” said Saki to the common fairytale.     

“I can tell you the story about when Koga Takuza met the ittan-momen and it tried to smother him to death,” she laughed.

He reached out, trying not to smile, and slapped her on the shoulder.

“Ow!” all signs of laughter now gone.  “That hurt, Saki.  You hit hard.”

He rolled his eyes and turned from her.

She smacked him in the bicep, as she had done earlier, “It is your turn to tell me a story,” she demanded.

Again, the words were almost on the outside of his ears, as the great statues of devils stared down at him with their stern faces.  A story, the words bounced in his head.  Were they memory or the whisperings of the trolls about him?  A story, what story?

"Go back to sleep,” he had told her after her tale, his light mood leaving him.

“I told you one!” she whined.  “Now you tell me one.”

He snapped his head in her direction, but instead of backing down, the almost-woman returned his scowl.  They stared at each for a long time, he felt a bead of sweat drip down his neck, in between his shoulder blades to tickle him to the small of his back, like the touch of a lover’s fingers.

Her face softened first, her expression pleading.  “Saki, you haven’t told me a single story, at all.”

“I have told you plenty of fairytales,” he replied.

“I’ve told you fairytales and then you’ve dissected them with me,” she corrected.

He had sighed.  Fine, I’ll tell you a story, you little rapscallion.

“Once upon a time,” he began,  “many years ago, there was a great ninja clan.  There were few true clans left, and those that did still exist fought each other mercilessly.  During a great gathering, another clan came  and decimated them.  They killed everyone, men, women, children, and ninja alike.  In a bloody frenzy, they left none of their ancient enemies alive.”  He paused in the story then, his chest clenching at the thought of his father’s name at the tip of his tongue, No, Hamato Yuuta is not my father!  “The leader of the Hamato clan, who lead the raid, while looking upon the destruction he had wrecked, heard the cry of a baby.  It lead him to the leader’s house, where everyone in it lay in their own blood, save for an infant, sitting next to its mother.  Feeling guilty for the destruction he had caused, he took the child in, raised it, lied to it and told it he loved it, that it was his own son, until one day the child found out.”  He was quiet, the words seemingly not want to come out of his mouth.  “So the child left.”

Nikka tilted her head to the side and regarded him in a way that made her look much older than the 15 years she was.  It had reminded him of Tang Shen, when she was contemplating something and wanted him to know it.  He felt his heart clench at the thought, and was unable to relax when Nikka replied, “I know that story.”  She straightened her face, her blue eyes passive.  “It is the destruction of the Foot Clan.  Only, I heard it told differently.”