The Morbidly Obese Ninja (6 page)

“Fuck honor,” Crow said. “This is about revenge.”

Crow yanked on Keigo’s arm and pulled him closer. As Keigo was reeled into range, Crow swung his iKatana and carved a wedge of meat out of Keigo’s thigh. Blood mixed with his burgundy uniform.

Keigo cried out and slashed at Crow with his iKatana, but Crow’s new body was faster than his old one. The sword passed over his feathered head and decapitated the screaming armless ninja beside him.

Crow back-flipped onto the conference table and swept the room with his chain sickle. Keigo ducked, but the other Gomen ninja coming up behind him was not fast enough. The chain wrapped around the ninja’s neck three times and then the sickle stabbed into his throat. The Gomen wheezed and drooled blood, struggling to free himself from the metal noose.

Keigo took the opportunity to lunge at Crow. He jumped up on the table and slashed at Crow’s chest. The red suit ripped open and black feathers spilled into the air. Crow’s red tie dropped to the ground. The front of his suit slid off like a slice of cheese.

“You don’t deserve to wear that uniform,” Keigo said.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m Gomen now.”

With that, Crow yanked on his chain sickle, ripping the Gomen ninja’s head from his neck. Keigo dodged the severed head at the end of the sickle as it swung toward him, giving Crow a chance to click his iKatana into
nano-poison mode
.

The head fell off the sickle and rolled down the table. Keigo saw an opening. He hacked down on the chain of Crow’s signature weapon in an attempt to render it useless. But Crow managed to spin the chain, wrapping Keigo’s iKatana, disabling Keigo’s weapon instead. Then Crow stabbed Keigo through the belly with his sword.

Keigo fell to his knees.

“It’s the end,” Crow said.

Crow stepped away from his ex-friend as blood leaked out of his body and tiny nanobots began spreading through his bloodstream.

Keigo could feel the poison. It was a sparkling sensation that crawled through his wound and up his spine.

“You and Arashi Industries are a thing of the past,” Crow said, hopping off of the conference table and turning on a wall monitor.

The monitor displayed a scene of the Arashi lobby. Two dozen ninjas in red suits were battling perhaps a hundred Gomen ninjas. The Arashi were falling quickly. They fought in three inches of blood.

Crow went back to Keigo. “I wanted you to see this. Those are your men dying out there. All of the Arashi men who were loyal to me are now in Gomen uniforms, fighting against the Arashi.”

Keigo tried to build up his strength, just enough strength to swing his sword one last time. If he could defeat Crow he would be able to die with honor. But his strength wasn’t coming back to him. He lay on his stomach, holding his iKatana tightly beneath him.

Crow made him watch as the Gomen defeated his men. He waited until every last one of them was dead. Then he turned the monitor off. He went to Keigo.

“It’s too bad it happened this way,” Keigo said, then coughed up a line of blood. “You were my closest friend. I wish circumstances never would have led you on such a dishonorable path.”

Crow lifted his sword.

“Honorable or dishonorable,” he said. “It’s still progress.”

Then Crow swung his sword. Keigo push-upped off of the conference table, elevating his body three feet off the surface. Crow’s sword missed and gave Keigo an opening.

Keigo’s iKatana swung out to his side, slicing across the right side of Crow’s face. It cut through his feathered cheek, through his forehead, through his beady black eye.

Crow screeched and stepped back. Keigo ran. He didn’t have the strength to fight anymore. He just ran. He had the nano-poison running through his veins and he knew the only way he could survive was to eat. He had to eat as much high-calorie food as he possibly could.

Basu thrashed himself awake, clutching his chest. He threw off the sweat-stained covers and sat up on the edge of the octagon-shaped bed. He leaned over and took deep breaths, holding his heart to make sure it was still beating.

Chiya sat up behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. She pressed her naked breasts against his sweaty back and leaned her cheek on his shoulder.

“You’re still having your attacks,” she said.

Basu took a few more deep breaths before answering.

“It’s just sleep apnea,” he said.

She rubbed her fingers through his hair and down the folds on the back of his neck.

“That’s what you always used to say,” she said, her voice like a hum against his left ear.

Basu closed his eyes and fell backward in the bed, breaking free of her embrace.

The anime woman laid her head on his chest and listened to his heart. “You can’t keep going like this. It’s going to kill you.”

He placed his baseball-mitt-sized hand onto her back. “You know I’ll die if I stop.”

“You just need to eat less cholesterol,” she said. “Eat more sugars. Cut out the saturated fats. Try eating foods with omega-3 fatty acids like salmon and tuna. I have some ahi tuna steaks in the freezer if you want some.”

“I already ate them,” he said.

“Yeah, with bacon and sausage . . .” she said.

Basu let out a long sigh.

“You used to be so sexy,” she said, rubbing the hairs on his chest. “I wish you didn’t make me call you Basu.”

“That’s who I am now,” he said.

“I’m still working on a way to extract the nanos,” she said.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ll be long dead before you can figure that one out.”

“I’ll do it,” she said. “You know I will.”

Her tone of voice told him she didn’t even believe the words herself.

Basu grunted.

“Why don’t you stay with me?” she said. “For good this time.”

Basu slid his arm off of her back. She lifted her head from his chest and looked at him inches away from his face, eye to enormous eye.

“That piggy bank we got there in the other room has to be worth a fortune,” she said. “We can sell it and retire. We can move to Hawaii or somewhere in the Caribbean. I’ll figure out how to extract the nanos and you’ll get thin again. We’ll live in paradise, just you and me.”

Basu pushed her off of him and stepped out of the bed. Then he pulled his pants on.

She blinked her wide eyes at him.

“I can’t just sell him,” Basu said.

“Why not?” she said, her eyebrows curled and her mouth stretched wider across her face. “He’s going to die anyway, no matter which company ends up with him.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It would go against the ninja code.
My
code.”

“Screw your fucking code,” she said, throwing a pillow into his face and pulling the covers over her head like a 5-year-old.

Basu put his shirt on and went into the other room. Oki wasn’t asleep on the couch where they had left him. The blanket was on the floor. The front door of the shop was wide open.

The bus hovered in open space between two buildings, so Oki could not have run away. Basu walked through the front door out onto the porch. Oki was sitting on the edge, staring down at the abyss below.

Basu sat next to him. His weight rocked the bus back and forth as he plopped down. He put his finger up to Oki’s cheek and wiped a tear away.

“You heard us?” Basu said.

The machine boy nodded his head, still glaring down into the abyss. Basu was surprised he had been able to hear them. He wondered if the Kakera Corporation supplied the boy with superior hearing, perhaps so he could hear danger when it was coming his way.

“She wants to kill me,” Oki said in a croaky voice.

Basu grunted. “I won’t let her.”

“You want to kill me, too,” the boy said.

Basu looked away.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said. “But I don’t have a choice. It’s my duty.”

Oki’s watery eyes shivered at Basu. “But why? Why is your duty so important?”

Basu slapped Oki across the cheek.

Oki jerked with shock, then trembled beneath the ninja’s fat angry face.

“Have some dignity,” Basu said to the scared little boy. “Just as my role in life is to follow my company’s orders without question, it is your role in life to be a piggy bank. You were born to hold information and you will die once that information is needed. Accept your fate. It is the honorable thing to do.”

Oki took a breath and wiped tears from his eyes. Basu stared down into the abyss below, watching his plump feet dangling in space.

“It’s a long away down, isn’t it?” Basu said.

Oki nodded.

“What’s down there?” Oki asked, his eyes still tearing.

“Miles down are the old streets,” he said. “We don’t use them anymore, except for waste disposal. You can still see the streets in smaller towns, outside of California, where buildings are far apart and only thirty stories tall.”

“Thirty stories tall?” Oki laughed through his tears. “You’re making fun of me.”

“No,” Basu chuckled. “There are many buildings out there that are even shorter than that.”

Oki smiles. “I wish I could be on a building less than thirty stories high.”

“Why?” Basu said.

“So I could see the ground,” Oki said.

“There’s nothing great about seeing the ground,” Basu said.

“I don’t know,” Oki said. “I’ve never seen it before.”

Basu looked down into the abyss. After a hundred stories, all he could see was a single point. The ground was farther down than his eyes could see.

“There are a lot of things I’ve never seen,” Oki said.

Basu didn’t know what to say to him. He lifted his arm to put it around Oki’s back, but changed his mind at the last second and leaned it against the post that held up the green canopy over the shop.

“Bus?” Oki said.

Basu grunted.

“If I have to die,” Oki said. “Can you make sure that I get to see the ground first?”

Basu grunted.

The boy smiled up at the giant ninja and leaned against his shoulder. Basu looked down at him and patted him awkwardly on the head. He noticed that the boy’s ticking was beginning to slow, so he wound him up as far as he could.