The Morbidly Obese Ninja (9 page)

As Basu came out of the cavern and examined his surroundings, he saw a pink cyber-chickadee fly past him with a big cartoon smile on its face. He grunted with confusion. Then he looked up and saw Crow in the sky, flying overhead on a hover-bike, chasing after the chickadee. Basu then realized the chickadee was an iPet that was going after Oki.

Basu leapt thirty feet into the air across a garbage ravine and went after the floppy pink chickadee. He landed knee-deep in refuse. Then he launched himself upward again, trying to ignore the pain within his intestines.

Crow sliced through the sky above him, his black tie rippling over his shoulder. He pointed his beak downward at Basu and squawked at him.

The obese ninja jumped into the air and swung his iKatana. Crow’s hover-bike tilted sideways to avoid it. As Basu fell back down, Crow tossed three mine-shuriken at him. The projectiles exploded at Basu’s feet. Rubbish burst into the air and a mountain of garbage avalanched on top of him.

By the time Basu pulled himself out of the refuse, the pink chickadee was too far away for him to see, and Crow was out of his range of attack. Four more Gomen ninja flew overhead on hover-bikes, catching up with their leader.

Basu got right back to his feet and jumped frantically through the garbage landscape after them. His breath was becoming heavy, his heart was feeling squeezed within his chest, and his intestines felt so rotten that he imagined they were ready to turn into mush and slide out of his rectum.

By the time he caught up to Crow and the Gomen ninja, Basu was ready to collapse. He was a powerful killing machine when fighting in quick bursts, but he didn’t have a lot of stamina. Running long distances took a lot out of him.

When Crow saw the state of Basu, he squawked a laugh. “You’re not the warrior you used to be, Keigo.”

When Basu looked up, he saw Oki was with Crow. The boy was backed against a wall of ancient washing machines. The wrecked hover-scooter he had used to make his escape was on the ground twenty feet away. He was holding Basu’s smiling cyber-frog in his arms like a teddybear, tears falling down his cheeks. When Oki saw the obese ninja, his face lit up.

“Bus!” Oki cried.

Crow held the struggling child still.

Basu stood up and held out his iKatana in one hand, his other hand holding the stab wound on his hip. Even after he developed his weight problem, he had never failed a mission before. He would not let Crow get away with the piggy bank.

“Kill him off before he catches his breath,” Crow told the four Gomen ninjas next to him.

The Gomen came at him quickly. The way they weaved through each other, flying like jets in formation, Basu could tell these were not ordinary ninjas. They were elite assassins. One of them wore a blue hood tucked into his polo shirt, one wore a red hood, another wore yellow, and the last wore purple.

Although he would have no trouble dispatching any elite assassin in single combat, Basu knew it would be suicide to fight a group of them while they were in formation. In any other circumstance he would have chosen to retreat and wait for backup to arrive, but this time he didn’t have any other option but to fight them head on. If he could kill just one of them, that would weaken their formation enough to give Basu a chance. This was the strategy he chose as they swooped in on him like vultures.

The lead assassin with the red hood broke away from the group and darted toward Basu as the others circled around him. Once he was in range, Basu took his hand from his hip wound and splashed blood into Red Hood’s eyes. Then he swung his iKatana.

As the iKatana was about to make contact with Red Hood, Basu’s heart began to pump hard in his chest, as if the organ was struggling to break free from his ribcage. The force of Basu’s attack weakened. It felt to Basu as if his arm had started moving in slow motion. His horrible blood pressure had finally caught up to him.

As the blade came down toward Red Hood, the assassin’s body exploded into black smoke and disappeared. Basu’s sword fell through the smoke without making contact. Then Red Hood reappeared on the right side of Basu and drove his iKatana through the obese man’s sword arm. Basu cried out, pulling his arm off of the blade. Then he sloppily swung his sword at the assassin, breathing rapidly as his heart pounded. Red Hood disappeared again.

Before Basu could see him reappearing on his left, the assassin knocked Basu’s iKatana out of his hand and then pierced the blade into his enormous belly.

“Bus!” cried Oki, struggling in Crow’s arms as the morbidly obese ninja fell to the ground.

The assassins hovered over Basu as a pool of blood formed beneath his mountain of flesh. Once they agreed he was dead, they started back toward Crow. But Basu was not yet dead. He had so much fat on his body that even though the assassin’s sword went all the way into his body, the blade still wasn’t long enough to hit any major organs. The morbidly obese ninja pushed himself up onto his hands and knees.

When Crow saw him struggling to stand, he found it amusing. “You still have fight in you, eh Keigo? How many times must I have you killed before you actually die, you fat piece of shit?”

Basu grunted. It was a soft wheezing grunt. As his heart continued to pound, rivers of sweat poured down his mounds of flesh, mixing with his blood, drenching his clothing.

Crow flicked his beak at his men and the elite assassins returned to finish the ninja.

As the assassins closed in around him, Basu got to his feet, staggering like a fat drunk. Without a sword, he would have to fight them barehanded. The blue-hooded assassin whipped around him, crossing the yellow-hooded assassin who whipped around to the other side. They were spinning their swords like batons.

It was Purple Hood who struck first. He went for a decapitation strike, aiming for his neck, but Basu bent his body all the way back in order to dodge it. As his head leaned back, Basu’s belly swung forward, slamming into the assassin’s chest, knocking him ten feet off the ground. When Purple Hood fell, he landed on his feet unfazed and charged back into action.

Blue Hood spit glowing green sludge on the back of Basu’s head. Like acid, the radioactive spit melted through his hair, burning his flesh. Green smoke billowed out of the wound. Basu charged head-first into Yellow Hood, hoping to knock the assassin down and wipe the toxic sludge off on him at the same time. But just as he made impact, the yellow-hooded assassin’s skin turned a white color and became as hard as stone.

When Basu’s head slammed into Yellow Hood’s rock flesh, blood sprayed from his forehead and he tottered backward, his vision spinning, his rolls of fat flopping and jiggling as he staggered. He wasn’t sure if his dizziness was due to concussion or because his heart was becoming tighter and tighter inside of his chest.

Blue Hood slashed Basu across the back as he was falling. Then smoke exploded in front of him as Red Hood appeared, slashing Basu across the chest. The four assassins surrounded him, taking turns striking, slashing into his hundreds of pounds of blubber. They didn’t go for his head or heart, just for his rolls of fat, as if they were toying with him, making a game of it.

Oki watched from the crow man’s clutches as gash after gash appeared on Basu’s body. The boy looked up at Crow, who was watching with wide-eyed pleasure, licking the edges of his black beak with his pink human tongue, savoring the demise of his old friend.

As he was being sliced to shreds, Basu felt the fishy yellow discharge oozing out of his rectum into his pants. That was the final straw. He finally felt utterly hopelessly pathetic. He thought about how much of a wreck he had become, how much of a grotesque pile of shit he was.

While staggering between the assassins, Basu grunted at himself. He wondered if he was just kidding himself when he thought he could still be a great ninja after gaining over five hundred excess pounds. Being that freakishly obese was a serious handicap for a human being. Of course he couldn’t take on the likes of the Gomen Corporation. He didn’t have the stamina or the agility of a ninja anymore. He was nothing but a blob with a sword.

But as Red Hood stuck him in the ass with his sword, Basu snapped out of it. He stopped feeling sorry for himself. He wasn’t an overweight pile of shit. He was Basu. He was seven hundred pounds of total destruction. Nobody could defeat Basu. Not Crow, not anyone.

Once Basu became morbidly obese, he decided to turn his weakness into a strength. He understood putting seven hundred pounds behind an attack was an incredibly powerful blow. He understood that he could kill a man just by landing on top of him. There were things he could do that no other ninja could do. He refused to give up and die. He would not let the assassins defeat him, nor Crow, nor his lack of stamina or his pounding heart. He would not give up. He was ninja. He was Basu.

At that moment, the four assassins dove forward to deal their final blows, but the morbidly obese ninja leapt high into the air. As their swords clacked together, the assassins looked up at the man-blimp in the air above them. Three of the assassins dodged out of the way as Basu came tumbling back toward the earth.

The fourth assassin, Yellow Hood, didn’t notice Basu’s enormous body falling on him until the last second. Yellow Hood used his power to change his skin into rock, to protect him on impact. But as Basu landed on Yellow Hood, the rock skin was not enough. Basu’s massive weight crushed Yellow Hood’s rock body into the ground, his innards splattering out of cracks in his sides.

When Basu stood, brushing guts and crumbles of rock skin from his belly, he stared down Crow. He wiped the green toxic sludge from the back of his head, pulling off a wad of his melted scalp and tossed it aside. The acid had burned all the way to the bone, exposing part of his skull. He paid it no mind.

“Kill him,” Crow yelled.

Red Hood hesitated. Without all four team members, the assassins felt lost, flawed.

“I said kill him!

Red Hood and Purple Hood charged the ninja. Blue Hood circled around his back. Red Hood disappeared into black smoke and then reappeared with his sword mere inches from Basu’s throat. But the sword stopped just before piercing the flesh. Red Hood was staring into Basu’s eyes. The morbidly obese ninja grunted at him. Seeing Basu’s hands resting on his waist, Red Hood wondered what had stopped his attack. He looked down to see that it was Basu’s flabby breasts that had caught the blade, reaching up like an extra set of limbs.