by Mike Leon
Yoshida answers only with a hateful glare.
“Ah, yes,” Blood Drinker says. “That machine belonged to us. MURDER!!! MURDER!!!!! A simple dog – nothing more. I had it put down when it could not accomplish an easy task. If you could not stand against a dog, how can you hope to defeat its master?”
“What is your plan, Blood Drinker?” Kill Team One says, his knees knocking together and his voice wavering. “You imagine a new Reich? Like in the last great war?”
“HA HA HA HA HA HA!! Stupid insect. Your ravings betray your ignorance.”
“If you won’t tell me the truth, then I will beat it out of you!”
And with that, Kill Team One stumbles over in a heap on the floor. Blood Drinker bellows like a madman.
“Kneel, ninja. The time to die is now!” The Nazi brings forth a set of German infantry sabers that seem to appear from nothing. Tanaka has seen a technique like that once before, from a powerful ninja of the Yasunori clan. He readies his hand on the wrappings of his blade.
The Nazi dashes forward with both swords crossed in an X ahead of him. He leaps for Tanaka, slicing with both weapons in opposite downward arcs. Tanaka drops and slides under his leaping enemy. Attacking from behind, he draws his sword and slashes up through Blood Drinker’s thigh and lower back. Tanaka is on his toes again and ten paces away before the Nazi can turn.
The wound, which would have felled any man instantly, and bled him to death in only a few minutes more, seems hardly noticed by Blood Drinker. Tanaka watches as the bleeding stops and the wound closes up right there before him. This is what his father warned him about.
“You are very quick, ninja,” Blood Drinker says. “But you are still human, and inferior.”
Blood Drinker turns and moves for Tanaka, his sabers extended as he approaches cautiously. This time it is Tanaka who strikes first. He draws his energy together for the kamaitachi and then lashes out. The razor wind takes the Nazi by surprise and bisects his top half. Tanaka watches as a forearm falls to the ground, severed. The sabre clanks against the floor. The top third of Blood Drinker’s torso and head follow and land on top of it.
Then Yoshida meets the monster.
Twelve feet of scales and claws, he has arms as big around as telephone poles. A row of red and white feathers runs along the back of his head like a mohawk and continues down his spine into a long prehensile tail. His face is a pointed snout filled with razor teeth the size of daggers.
“Ninja magic,” Blood Drinker says. In this form, his voice echoes in a way no human could reproduce. “A primitive trick. It will not prevent your death.”
Blood Drinker howls and lifts his swords into the air. Both come crashing down on the spot where Tanaka stood, but the ninja is too fast to be decimated by such reckless attacks. He is already aside, though the lizard nearly catches him with the left saber. Tanaka leaps to attack, but the enemy is not incompetent, even if he is unkillable. Blood Drinker brings up a sabre to deflect Tanaka’s sword, and the ninja must leap away to avoid the vicious flurry of attacks that follows.
Tanaka backs away as the sabers whiz past his face. Slashing, chopping, stabbing so fast even he cannot find an opening to attack. He did, however, come prepared with more tools than just a sword. Tanaka has five smoke bombs, thirty poisoned shuriken, three kunai, and an ancient scroll of ninja magic best left unused.
Tanaka lets loose a handful of the little razor edged shuriken. The tiny discs spin at Blood Drinker’s throat with velocity that rivals any bullet. The lizard swats one from the air, but another two find scaly flesh and bury their points inside. Tanaka knows the poison will not kill Blood Drinker. The shuriken that stuck the beast before was poisoned and did not even slow him, but he hopes the distraction will buy time to cleave some part of the monster away with his sword.
His gambit pays off, Blood Drinker stops for only a second to brush away the little blade embedded in his neck and that gives Tanaka all the time he needs to strike. He ninja darts forward, working his way past those blades and inside the monster’s defenses. He executes one lighting stroke that slices through Blood Drinker’s neck – through scales and spine and thick arteries. A geyser of crimson spews from the wound and onto the ninja. Blood Drinker reaches up to hold his head on, and that gives Tanaka another opportunity to strike, and another, and then another. Tanaka hacks off a scaly green arm, then a leg, then another arm. Soon, Blood Drinker is reduced to little more than a collection of bisected extremities scattered about the floor in an ocean of shimmering gore.
Tanaka looks over the butchered mess for any remaining signs of life before he turns away and moves for Kill Team One. The bloodied old man lies curled up on the floor in the middle of the room beneath that single dangling chain. Tanaka turns him over.
“Kill Team,” he says. He smacks the old man across that coarse greying beard.
“I dreamed I was in the Trade Center again,” the kill team whispers. “It was a nightmare.”
“There is no time for that now. The nightmare is behind us.”
“INDEED IT IS!!” bellows Blood Drinker.
Tanaka turns to see the husky green beast, reassembled from all his diced parts. His head still knits itself back into place atop his shoulders as he reaches for his fallen sabers. This is impossible. Nothing could survive being cut into so many parts.
“Many centuries have passed since I battled a foe with such skill. DESECRATE!!! DESECRATE!!! Still, human, your abilities are no match for me. Behold, my true form!”
Blood Drinker flexes his muscles and hisses. He raises his arms toward the ceiling. His scales writhe. They begin to flip over all across his body. As they turn, Tanaka sees that the outfacing sides now glimmer with a silver sheen. His scales are made of steel.
“Tanaka, listen,” the kill team rasps. “His eyes are unprotected. Use your shuriken to blind him and run. Leave me here and I will deal with the monster.”
“No!” Yoshida says. “My father said there is a path to victory.”
Tanaka does take the first part of Kill Team One’s advice. He tosses two shuriken straight into Blood Drinker’s eyes. The creature drops his sabers and reaches to pull them out, and Tanaka uses that opening to attack with his sword. He dashes in and swings as hard as he can, with the aim to cut through even steel. His sword is no use. It only clanks against Blood Drinker’s arm and he is reminded of his fruitless efforts against the cybernetic man in the desert. He returns the sword to its koshirae at his side and moves away. If he is to win this battle, it will not be with the long blade.
The monster lashes out blindly with one of those tree trunk arms and Tanaka ducks under it. Another comes sailing his way, talons the size of bowie knives pointed straight at him. Tanaka sidesteps that. The thing was already slower than him, and seems even slower now that it is weighed down by so much metal-
SMACK!! Blood Drinker’s prehensile tail hammers into Tanaka and sends him flying into the concrete wall of the cell. The ninja reels as he stands. He feels a sharp pain all the way up his back as he pushes himself up the wall. The damn thing knocked the wind out of him. He should have seen that coming.
“Too slow!” Blood Drinker shouts as his eyes grow anew. He stares Yoshida down and licks his teeth with a forked tongue. He picks up his sabers again. “Don’t you understand that – MURDER!! MURDER!! KILL! KILL! KILL!! – your primitive weapons cannot harm me, insect?”
Tanaka has a plan. He draws his kunai and rushes Blood Drinker furiously. He stops short only millimeters from the monster’s blades and tosses down a smoke bomb. In a cloud of grey, he vanishes. He emerges behind his enemy and drives the kunai with all his might into the monster’s back, between his shoulder blades. The pointed kunai penetrates between the scale armor and sticks deep in Blood Drinker’s back. Tanaka leaves it there as he flips away from the beast.
Blood Drinker drives one sabre into the concrete at his feet and reaches back to pull the kunai free, but he cannot reach that spot. His gorilla arms are so burly that the
y lack flexibility. He will have to leave that metal stinger there and bleed. Anything to irritate the monster…
Raging, the beast rips his sabre free of the concrete and charges. Tanaka stands his ground. At the last second, he drops another smoke bomb and vanishes. He appears behind his enemy again, but this time Blood Drinker is ready. The monster’s tail whips straight up and bashes into Tanaka, catapulting him up over Blood Drinker’s head. He sees the lizard reaching up with his blades to dice him to pieces as he sails overhead. Tanaka reacts in a panic. He tosses another smoke bomb and disappears. He emerges from nothingness, clinging to the steel chain that dangles in the center of the room, high up, well above the monster’s reach.
Blood Drinker searches the floor for his prey. His head scans back and forth twice before he looks up and spots Tanaka hanging just inches from the thirty foot ceiling.
“Ah,” he says. “You can run, ninja. But you cannot hide.”
Then Blood Drinker does something equal parts astonishing and terrible. He walks over to the nearest wall, plants one of his shiny metal feet on it, then lifts his other foot from the floor and puts it on the wall as well. There he stands, on the wall, as if gravity means nothing to him. He begins to walk up the wall. He’s coming.
Tanaka throws three more shuriken at the monster’s face, but that does not stop it from moving up the wall. His only advantage over this thing is his quickness. Half his quickness comes from his footwork, and that means nothing up here hanging from this chain. He has one idea. He still has two of the smoke bombs left. He will need both. He will also have to employ a powerful ninja technique held secret by his clan for many generations.
Tanaka lets loose the chain and drops to the floor. Blood Drinker watches him fall, eyes following the ninja all the way down. Tanaka draws his sword and waits for the thing to come down the wall after him. It does not.
There is a puff of black smoke and the smell of brimstone and then Blood Drinker is gone. Tanaka whips around. He only has a fraction of a fraction of a second to dive out of the way as both sabers come crashing down at him.
“I told you before,” the monster says, “your tricks are primitive.”
Tanaka dashes away. He leaps high into the air and pushes off the far wall to jump even higher. He snatches hold of the chain again, but Blood Drinker is already there, standing on the ceiling. Tanaka lets go of the chain and draws his sword. He falls as he deflects an onslaught of attacks from the monster’s sabers. Then the thing is gone again. Tanaka looks over his shoulder to see it waiting for him on the floor below, sabers pointing up to impale him where he falls.
Tanaka grabs hold of the chain and jerks to a halt inches away from the swords. He dangles there in the middle of the room above the sabre tips for just a moment before Blood Drinker is on him again, this time from the wall to his left. He parries three attacks. Then from his right. Then the thing is behind him. The monster attacks furiously from every direction at once, it seems. Tanaka feels a saber blade cut into his arm and another scrape at his chest before he bats it away with his own sword. He cannot keep up his defense for long.
Tanaka throws down a smoke bomb and materializes this time, not behind, but above Blood Drinker. The monster will expect him to attack from the rear as with the last several attacks, but he will be caught off guard. This is a good tactic, and nearly works, but then Blood Drinker is gone again in another flash of acrid smoke and sulfur. The monster is already ahead of him with the same plan of action. He should have known the creature’s aptitude for three-dimensional thinking would exceed anything human. Too late, Tanaka realizes the monster is above and behind him.
Blood Drinker comes down with both swords stabbing through the ninja’s back and out his chest. Gore sprays the floor of the cell as Blood Drinker howls with laughter. Kill Team One, leaning on his elbows across the floor, looks on with hate as Blood Drinker tears one sabre free to hack at the ninja’s neck and sever his head in two furious chops. Black blood spills forth from the wound as Blood Drinker drops the cadaver to the floor.
It turns to dust.
The kawarimi is an ancient trick of the ninja master – to replace oneself with a decoy, a duplicate of sorts, exactly like the real thing in appearance, but meant only to act as a distraction for a few brief moments. Blood Drinker may have every advantage, but he is arrogant and that will be his downfall.
Tanaka falls toward him at breakneck speed, having used the final smoke bomb to ascend to the ceiling while leaving his doppelganger in his stead. He prepares to unleash the greatest power in his arsenal of tricks – a ninja magic never witnessed by any outside the secret clans. With his hands, he forms the nine ancient seals – a practice that crass tellers of tall tales refer to as cutting the kuji, but that Tanaka understands as much more than simply cutting something. He draws the breath of nature itself from around him, from all that lives and all that is dead. He draws energy from both of the men he considers his father, from Mitsuko, and the baby. He feels the five elements within his heart and slowly focuses all of that power into the ends of his fingers. The power grows into a titanic force strong enough to breeze through bone, shatter the strongest steel, or even smash down a reinforced vault door. When he is ready, he strikes.
The monster never sees it coming. The fury of the storm, the rage of flame, the wrath of the tsunami, the might of the quake and the terror of the void are all unleashed upon one focused point on the top of Blood Drinker’s scaly green head as Tanaka’s fist makes contact. In one instant, the thing is struck, crushed, vaporized and blasted to bits. Chunks of meat and steel scales explode in all directions, raining from the sky, smacking against the walls. Tanaka finds himself at the ground zero of a lizard guts detonation.
He stands, red ooze staining his pants to the knees.
“The fist of wrath,” remarks the kill team. “The greatest secret of the Tanaka ninja clan. You really are you father’s son.”
Tanaka walks over to the kill team and offers him a hand. The old man grasps his fingers and Tanaka pulls him to his feet.
“If only that were so,” Tanaka says. Then something catches his eye. A drop of blood splattered against the concrete behind the old man rolls along the wall, and this would be a normal thing if the little dribble were not moving slightly sideways. Tanaka’s eyes scan down the wall and to the floor. More specks roll along, even in amounts too tiny to bead or run. He follows the direction of their progress toward the center of the room – the spot where he annihilated the mighty lizard general.
“He,” Tanaka starts. No. It cannot possibly be. He has trouble forming the words. “He is regrowing.”
Kill Team One has already noticed. He grabs the ninja’s arm. Even in his weakened state, his grip is like a steel vice.
“You have to burn him, Tanaka,” the old man says. “He can’t come back if you burn him to ash.”
Quickly, Tanaka moves for the blowtorch he saw when he first entered the room. He picks it up from atop the stack of pokers and pliers coated with dried blood. Looking at the device in his hand, he realizes he has no idea how to operate such a thing. It is a metal nozzle of some type, with a spring loaded valve handle, not unlike a garden hose might have, but beyond that, it is completely unfamiliar. Two hoses, one red and one green, run from the handle to a set of tanks propped against the wall.
“Kill Team,” Tanaka shouts back to the old man. “How do I…?”
The old man is gone. The great Kill Team One is nothing but a coward.
Tanaka turns back to the growing red mass of slime at the center of the room. It is beginning to stack on height where it was only a flat puddle moments ago.
Tanaka presses his palm against the valve on the torch handle itself. It does nothing. Whatever gas is supplied to this thing in order to fuel the flame must have been cut off from the tanks. He reaches for the valves atop those tanks and turns them recklessly, having no idea which controls what. The red gore grows.
Tanaka hears hissing from the nozzle of the b
lowtorch. He presses down the handle again and hears a louder blowing sound, but there is no flame. Of course, he must light it somehow. He looks in the pile of tools again for anything to light the torch – a book of matches, a butane lighter, anything will do, but there is nothing of the sort. Tanaka glances over his shoulder to see a clawed hand forming from the mess, as if reaching up through the surface of a lake of blood. Pieces of shredded lizard flesh tumble across the floor and down the walls to meet their kin. He is running out of time.
He looks again to the collection of tools and then to the set of gas tanks connected to the torch. Something catches his eye. A shiny metal object that looks like a huge safety pin lies on the floor next to one of the tanks. Tanaka recognizes this thing as some kind of striker. He has seen one of these before. Snatching it up in his hand, he squeezes the primitive device to strike the flint in its cap and throw a spark. Again. Good. He holds it to the nozzle of the torch and squeezes again. The torch ignites.
Tanaka looks back to see Blood Drinker’s horrible lizard maw emerging from the crimson pool on the floor. He grabs the gas tanks behind him and drags them across the floor to that abomination.
He grabs Blood Drinker’s only formed hand. The time for honor and precision is over.
“Die, monster. DIE!” Tanaka shouts as he presses the burning red flame to Blood Drinker’s hand. The torch burns through scales and meat. The monster howls with his half grown jaws. When Tanaka has cut through the wrist and severed the hand, he tosses it over his shoulder and starts in on the face.
First, he burns the eyes, but the jaw still grows and the body still rises beneath it. Where the torch burns, the creature does not grow back, but the torch is small and Tanaka cannot burn all of the thing. Blood Drinker continues to regenerate.
Tanaka waves the torch in quick, sagging passes over Blood Drinker’s face. The monster screams. Tanaka burns its tongue as it bellows. He feels a clawed hand grasp at his throat and looks to see the severed hand attempting to choke him of its own accord. Tanaka grabs the hand and tosses it down against the body, but by then Blood Drinker’s other hand and arm have assembled from the muck. The monster grabs at Tanaka and pulls him down to the floor.
