KILL KILL KILL

by Mike Leon

  Tetsuo stands in solemn silence. He puts his hand on the ray skin grip of his blade.

  It begins.

  Yoshida leaps into the air while drawing his blade. He brings it down in a wide arc that sends a ripple through the air.

  The Jounin moves to his side, narrowly avoiding the vicious guillotine strike. He attacks with his sword and catches Yoshida in the guts with a forward thrust, but what sticks on the end of his sword is only an effigy made from straw.

  “Over here,” Yoshida calls out from far behind his uncle. Tetsuo spins as Yoshida throws a collection of shuriken at him. Tetsuo bats them from the air with a single sword swipe.

  “Dishonor!” he claims. “You have brought hidden weapons to this honorable trial!”

  Tetsuo throws a triple bladed spinning disc at Yoshida, which he leaps over.

  “It is a trick I learned from you, uncle,” he answers.

  They stand, keeping good distance now, each reading the other’s stance and eyes. Yoshida searches for any weakness, any hint at what might come next. Could the old ninja have any other throwing weapons hidden in that silk? Certainly he does. The real questions are how many and what kind.

  Tetsuo does not give him any more time to think about it. He darts forward. Yoshida rushes to meet him and when they clash, their swords whirl and spin like a tornado of killing steel. Yoshida quickly gains the upper hand in this. He is quicker than his uncle suspected. The old ninja must be disheartened, he thinks, to find that his young protégé has surpassed him – and will kill him.

  With Tetsuo on the defensive, Yoshida attacks relentlessly. He makes a series of downward strikes that Tetsuo avoids with no retaliation. Then he mixes in a slice to the shins, which the old man leaps over, returning a strike of his own, which Yoshida parries on the side of his blade. He turns that into a brutal swipe at Tetsuo’s hand, whilst holding the end of his uncle’s sword in hand, a technique he learned from a Fillipino – a technique that is not common to a ninja. It works, and though he does not sever the old man’s hand, Tetsuo does have to let go of his sword to avoid such a maiming. Yoshida throws the sword like a javelin, far over the garden wall. Now, victory is certain.

  Then, as he is about to strike the killing blow, his sword becomes entrapped in something. The blade grinds against steel and he realizes Tetsuo has drawn a set of nunchaku to tangle his sword in the chain. Tetsuo flips in the air and twists the sword free from Yoshida’s grip. Then it is catapulted from the garden.

  “You are skilled with the katana, but how do you fair with a more primitive weapon?”

  In the jounin’s masterful hands, the nunchaku twirl like a helicopter blade, pounding the air as he passes them back and forth from hand to hand.

  Yoshida weaves under a strike at his head and has just enough time to draw a kunai to jab into the spinning death rotor as it comes at him again. It catches in the chain and the nunchaku tangles around it. He tightens his grip as he pulls the old man in close.

  Tetsuo draws a kunai of his own in his free hand and stabs it at Yoshida’s face, but the young ninja catches his hand. Now the two of them are locked in a standstill. It lasts only for a brief few seconds, for the way of the ninja is not the way of brute force.

  Yoshida releases the kunai, throws a smoke bomb, and vanishes into mystical ninja shadow. He emerges outside the garden with a plan. He must act quickly if he is to succeed. He will have only seconds until Tetsuo figures out where he went and follows. He searches the ground.

  When he reappears in the garden, he has his sword in hand. Tetsuo nods with approval. Not even the jounin expected him to retrieve his weapon in such fashion.

  “Now, uncle, you will die by my blade!”

  The jounin remains stoic at the sound of Yoshida’s proclamation. He stands twenty paces away like a statue in the silence of the rock garden. Then he moves, not to attack, but for something else. He reaches, with the first three of his fingers, into his mouth. He pulls forth something that is not at first identifiable, but slowly emerges; black wrappings of ray skin, then a golden disc, then shining steel – his sword. He has pulled his sword up from his throat. Yoshida can’t believe it. He thinks he even hears a gasp from one of the ninjas in the garden. The hidden sword throat technique has long been lost to the great ninja houses. Some say it was only ever a myth. It would seem that is not the case.

  “Your hidden sword throat technique is very impressive,” Yoshida says.

  “It was taught to me by a long dead ninja master,” Tetsuo answers. “The secret is known only to me.”

  “And it will die with you.”

  Yoshida leaps forward. Tetsuo dashes to meet him. Yoshida’s strike is made carefully. He feints high, but comes in low with a lateral strike. Tetsuo moves to switch sides and slices up high like a clothesline.

  The garden seems more silent than ever to Yoshida as his feet return to the ground. He stands with his back to Tetsuo, sword outstretched in follow-through of his perfect strike. The old ninja remains behind him, holding his stance as well.

  And there they stand.

  And stand.

  Finally, Yoshida turns and drops his guard.

  “I got you,” he says.

  “No you didn’t,” Tetsuo answers, turning around as well.

  “I thought you were doing the thing where we both stand still for a moment, and then you fall down.”

  “You have seen too many American movies. I, in fact, got you,” Tetsuo says. He points at Yoshida with an outstretched index finger.

  Yoshida looks down at himself and sees nothing unusual. He pats himself down a bit, checking for any massive lacerations. Then he shakes his head.

  “No. You missed.”

  “We both missed?” Tetsuo says, his brow furrowing in disbelief.

  “Yes.”

  They remain in their places, looking each other over and contemplating what just happened. Yoshida wonders if it could be a sign. Perhaps fate has intervened here, this day, to prevent the bloody end of this combat. Perhaps neither of them was meant to die here. Perhaps his uncle was telling the truth.

  “Again?” he suggests.

  Tetsuo raises his blade in quiet affirmation.

  They fly at each other again, head-on like raging bulls. Yoshida is more reckless than before. He angles his blade down like a spear, but then brings it around into a mighty overhead swing that comes down on Tetsuo’s shoulder. His uncle’s sword point glances from his cheekbone and slides along the side of his face to leave a straight red line that drips blood. This is hardly a flesh wound compared to the damage he has done. His own sword finishes its deadly arc, having cut through Tetsuo’s arm and right leg, severing them completely. The jounin falls and Yoshida has won.

  Blood runs from the old ninja, filling up the gaps in the pebbles beneath him, and creating a pool that contrasts brightly against the serene earth tones of the garden. He chokes on more of it as he calls out to Yoshida from the ground.

  “Yoshida! Stop!”

  Tanaka is deaf to his calls. The turncoat cannot be trusted after his actions. He is likely to have some other hidden weapon; a kunai up the sleep or even a blowfish needle tucked under a fingernail. He kicks the old ninja’s sword away and prepares to finish him off with his own blade. He raises the sword to strike and Tetsuo’s face fades into complacency.

  “You are now master of the Tanaka clan,” he says. “Do not fail your father the way I did.”

  Yoshida hears that part – a fitting admission of guilt. It is good that Tetsuo has chosen to die with honor, rather than taking a lie to his grave.

  Yoshida’s sword falls and takes his uncle’s head off in one stroke.

  When his uncle’s retainers approach him, he nearly lops them into pieces with his sword, thinking they intend to attack. Instead, they bow to him. All of the other ninja in the garden bow to him. He had almost forgotten that control of the clan would be wrested along with his vengeance. The retainers follow him from the garden like dogs.

 
; He begins the walk back to his chamber with them at his sides. The palace seems darker than when he left today, because it was so bright outside. When he turns to go left at the first junction, the retainers turn right. They all stop. Kazuya Murakama eyes him curiously.

  “Lord Tanaka, where are we going?”

  “To my chamber,” Yoshida answers. He is immediately suspicious and puts his hand on his sword pommel. This could be some sort of plot to assassinate him. Murakama and Domoto were known for their extreme loyalty to Tetsuo.

  “The master chamber is the other way,” Murakama answers.

  Of course. How could he be so stupid? The jounin of the Tanaka clan occupies the master chamber – much larger than his previous accommodations.

  “You are correct, Murakama,” he says. “Please lead the way.”

  The retainer bows and turns down the corridor. Yoshida follows.

  The master chamber is lit with candles – Tetsuo’s preference, and contains a double size futon, a small wooden desk, a luxurious bath, a full length mirror, and many bookshelves. Many surfaces are crowded with open books. In some places, books pile on top of other open books. Tetsuo was lazy in that way, not returning his reading to the shelf when he was done with it.

  He dismisses the retainers and lies down on the futon, though he stands up again in a moment. The futon does not feel right somehow. He will need to get rid of it. He stands in the middle of the room, exploring it with his eyes. He sees himself in the mirror and notices the cut on his face, still running with blood. He forgot about it. He barely noticed when it happened.

  He washes his face with a white cloth from the bath and considers whether he will need to stitch the cut shut. He decides that if he presses the cloth to it long enough, it will stop bleeding. He sits down at Tetsuo’s little desk to hold the cloth against his face. Then he notices something there on the desk in front of him.

  It is a letter addressed to Tetsuo. It is in his mother’s handwriting.

  (Editor’s Note: You probably don’t speak Japanese. Here is an interpretation.)

  Dearest Tetsuo,

  I can no longer go on living with this shame. Every time Katsuhiro is cold to me I fear he has discovered our secret. Every time he touches me I fear he knows my thoughts are of you. Every time he looks at our son I fear he will see your eyes looking back at him. My world is now nothing but fear and it is time for me to leave this nightmare behind.

  I have written a note explaining my death as an act of madness. Be strong and look after our son. No one must ever learn the truth, for the shame it will bring to my memory.

  Goodbye, Tetsuo. Perhaps, in the next life, we may be together.

  Boring Exposition III

  Buzzing. Annoying, grating, buzzing. It jostles Walter out of the black and he lifts his head. The familiar components of his office surround him. He doesn’t remember how he got here. His face is greasy and when he touches his forehead, he feels a line left by the edge of his desk. What the fuck happened?

  He spots the open bottle of Dewar’s White Label on the desk in front of him and that centers him again. No headache yet. He must still be a little drunk. Good. He picks up the bottle and knocks back a swill. Better keep that going as long as he can.

  The buzzing again. The phone on his desk is buzzing. His secretary is paging him. He smashes the button down and responds.

  “Yeah?” It comes out half a whisper and then a croak.

  “Walter,” the secretary’s voice emits from the machine like a shrill bat shriek. He covers his ears. “There’s a Victoria Russell here to see you.”

  Here? What the fuck is she doing here? He thinks.

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Did I say that out loud?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Fuck. That scotch hits like a right hook.

  “You said that out loud too.”

  “I meant to say that.” He didn’t.

  Victoria never visits the Graveyard building. None of them ever do.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” he says.

  Walter sits straight up and his gut feels like it’s full of rocks. He must have had two thirds of that bottle. He stands and his right leg is bombarded by the pokes of a million tiny needles. It fell asleep while he was blacked out here.

  He hobbles to the bathroom, dragging his right foot behind him, slouching forward and clutching his gut like it might explode any second. He drops his slacks in front of the toilet and he has to grab hold of the nearby shower curtain rod to hold himself up while he pisses. He pisses for two straight minutes. When he’s done, his leg still feels like needles. He hops up and down on it a few times and then tosses some water in his face before he walks out to Judy’s desk.

  Judy is the frumpiest possible woman Walter could find to fill the last secretarial vacancy he had. In a departure from conventional man law, Walter strives to hire the least attractive women to work in his office. He has a few good reasons for this. Hot chicks are trouble in the world of high level espionage. Too many national secrets have slipped away in the purses and notepads of sultry ladies willing to get dirty to get what they want. Vixen has great stories about that. Aside from that obvious issue, ugly chicks are just better at what they do. They have to be. No one ever handed them anything.

  “Where is she?” Walter says, squinting because the lights hurt his eyes.

  “In the lobby,” Judy says, pushing up the giant glasses that are always sliding down her nose. In person, her voice is booming in the mid-range, a bit deep for a woman. Walter has always joked to himself that she sounds like Ann Coulter. He hasn’t let anyone else in on it – mainly because it isn’t funny. Ann Coulter doesn’t sound funny, just distinct.

  His leg comes back to him fully on his way to the elevator and he steps through the sliding doors to mash the button for the second floor. The ride down is like a ride to Hell as the last three days come rushing back to him.

  Deadeye did get the kill shot on his first try. He nailed the center Apache pilot, he still contends, square in the throat. Nobody could see that but him through that giant scope on his rifle. It didn’t matter. With a gun that size, any hit would be a kill shot.

  The other choppers opened fire on the building for all of three seconds before Delta’s stinger smashed into one of them and turned the whole thing into a pyrotechnics show.

  Then it got nasty.

  The chopper Deadeye hit crashed into the building. They should have known better. The pilot was gunning it straight for them when he took that bullet. Not much else was damaged to stop the damn thing and it just kept coming. It hit and took off some of the roof and a couple guys. Walter saw a rotor cut somebody in half.

  Then the last one opened up with hellfire missiles and that chain gun. Damn that chain gun. It was chaos. Most of them were shooting at the blasted thing with rifles and that wasn’t doing much. Hitting it with the AT4 launchers was like trying to hit a fly with a Nerf dart. It turned the whole god damned building to swiss cheese in minutes.

  It was finally Morgan who went up to the roof with an MGL he scrounged from a dead operator and shot the chopper down head-on, the crazy bastard. The guy had a serious death wish. He was acting weird since Blood Drinker, and it didn’t stop there. After the slaughterhouse, he locked himself in a dorm room down on level five with a little black TV and an old Super Nintendo that was brown from smoke damage. He’s still there. Keeps talking about speed runs through Super Metroid. Whatever that means. He let Zap in for some reason none of them could figure, and Zap was worried when he came out. He said Morgan was covering the walls in some kind of maps drawn with color coded markers. He was talking like a twelve-year-old. The term acute psychotic break was used. Frank Overton stationed Matt Hanneman and Gary Neil outside the door in shifts and told them to leave Morgan alone, but not to let him near any guns. The last thing Graveyard needs is one of Walter’s guys going postal in the building. They already lost enough.

  When the smoke cleared at the slaughterh
ouse, thirty-two guys were dead. A full third of his people. They were already down Alpha and Echo teams and then Walter walked the rest of them all into a trap. Thirty-two guys. Thirty-two good guys. One of them was Carl Jourgensen. Walter went to tell his wife in person. The sight of that baby was what set off his drinking binge. Another child will grow up fatherless, and likely end up in jail or doped or on the dole. But Kill Team Two walks out unscathed. Of course they would. It’s always the most vile pieces of shit that keep on going. Why the fuck did he leave that scotch upstairs?

  He steps off the elevator and spies Victoria leaning against the rails that overlook the front door and the sentries that run the metal detector. She is wearing a red and white sun dress and heels. He can just barely see through the white parts of the dress to make out the berry speckled panties underneath. The bitch does that on purpose. She stands in front of a mirror checking to make sure just enough shows through. He knows she does. He saw her do it once.

  They are not alone. An operator Walter doesn’t know is leaning over the railing nearer the stairs, and some paper pushers from upstairs share lunch on a bench by the elevator.

  “Walter, I heard there was some kind of accident,” she squeaks, putting a hand to her chest. “You look terrible!”

  “Who told you?”

  “Come again?”

  “Who told you about an accident? What motherfucking accident?”

  “One of my security team said there was a gunfight. A lot of contractors were killed…”

  “Who was it? That motherfucker’s fired. Tell him he’s fired.”

  “You’re drunk!” she gasps.

  “You’re damn right I’m drunk! And I know everything!”

  “No one knows everything, darling.”

  “I know you people have a way to shit gold bricks.”

  “Oh…” She stops. Her complexion fades to white. Yeah. He caught her off guard.

  “That’s right, bitch! I know you people are making gold out of thin air and paying me to knock off anybody who might throw a wrench in the works.”