4William Wallace Was a Ninja
Prompt: Southern-fried, Shakespeare, Samurai, Scottish, School
Add Ninjas and
"Death"
This story begins with me payin' back a favor.
Y'see, favors are the only real currency honored by members of the Etone Brotherhood, us infamous travelers of time an' space. Any Brother worthy of respect pays back what he owes, even if it looks like he might get himself killed in the process.
See, there are lots of ways to die in Multiverse, some bad, some a little worse. Good ways, I don't think there are any. I speak as an authority on the subject, bein' Death.
That's right, I'm Death. But it ain't like ya think. I don't collect souls, and I can't kill with a finger poke. I ain't immortal. To be honest, I can and do die with alarmin' regularity.
Of course, no matter what happens to me… I always come back.
I think sometimes, right before the whole world goes dark, that maybe this time will be the last time, and when I open my eyes, I'll find myself in some glorious hereafter with fluffy white clouds and cherubs an' shit.
That ain't actually happened yet. But I don't rule nothin' out... on account of some of the weird shit I have seen.
"This is the worst idea you've ever had, Tadakatsu," I told the samurai.
"Give it a rest, Death. I heard you the first eighty-seven times," Tadakatsu snorted.
I was cold, and that made me irritable. I pulled my scarf up over my nose and called the samurai some choice names under my breath.
Tadakatsu ain't my favorite person. There's lots of reasons why, but mostly they boil down to the fact that he likes to be in charge, and he ain't got one ounce of patience reserved for anyone. Also, his "traditional" clothes draw a lot more attention than I feel comfortable havin' on me, especially in rural Midlothian. The last town I remembered seein' was called somethin' like Auchendinny, a name which brought to mind visions of endless sheep and maybe a haggis.
To be fair, Tadakatsu wouldn't blend in with the locals if he was wearin' a kilt, cause he's a loudmouth dick.
My breath bein' a lot warmer than the air made smoke, and that reminded me I was out of cigarettes. I bit my nails instead, at least till my fingers started goin' numb.
I stared up at the old building loomin' over us, my hands in my pockets and my scarf up over my ears. I was sure that nice bit of warm tartan was makin' me look like a turtle, or maybe one of those little asshole kids in that cartoon.
You know which cartoon I mean. The one where the kids cuss all the time and wear their parkas indoors? That's the one.
The sign above my head read "Wellington School". Place was boarded up. So far as I knew, it had closed its doors three or four years ago, after more than a century of teachin', moldin', and probably whippin' the snot out of every last rich boy in Scotland.
Wellington wasn't no Antares Rehabilitation Center, but I still didn't like the thought of waltzin' right in there. See, I spent some time in a reform school myself, and I still have nightmares about it every now and again. Mostly, I find myself dwellin' on the scary old nuns and their ruthless whackin' of fingers and pullin' of ears.
Tadakatsu produced a pair of bolt cutters. He did this sleek, kung-fu theater walk right up to the gate, like he was thinkin' about drawin' his sword and avengin' the death of his master, not just breakin' and enterin'.
Seven looked nervous. Strictly speakin', he don't like breakin' and enterin'.
"Why aren't we aren't going in the usual way?" Seven asked.
The "usual way", for the uninitiated, involves crackin' a Gatekey to bend the fabric of space-time, essentially makin' the place you're tryin' to get to fall precisely in line with the place you're currently at.
I watched Tadakatsu try an' fail to cut the lock on the gate three times. Each attempt got a little funnier, and on the last one, his bolt cutters broke. I laughed. He scowled at me.
"Seems like it would be easier to just use a Gatekey," Seven said, still talkin' about the usual way.
Tadakatsu rolled his eyes at Seven. "Have you ever been in there?" He demanded.
"Can't say that I have," Seven replied, cool-as-a-cucumber.
"Then shut up, baka," Tadakatsu finished. "You don't know shit."
I didn't like his way of shuttin' Seven down, but Tadakatsu was right. Gatekeys ain't an exact science. A Brother can will himself halfway across all of creation, but if he's shootin' for the roof of a building, he's a more likely to end up in a janitor's closet. Gettin' into a place you ain't never seen the inside of is basically impossible. I mean, you could always club your way through the drywall from somewhere amongst the insulation and the wirin', but… it's generally better not to risk it. Break in, Gatekey out.
"There's one thing I don't understand about this situation," I admitted. "If Chaucer knows this sword is here, why ain't she come to get it herself?"
Tadakatsu didn't answer, but he didn't have to. The look on his face said it all. I would've guessed the heist was all his idea, even if I didn't know his reputation with the dames. Namely, those of us that don't like him too well sometimes call em' "Captain Save-a-Ho".
Course, Chaucer's no whore. She's one of the best Sisters I've ever known, and completely outta Tadakatsu's league. Not that I was gonna tell him so, when he was about to steal for her the honest-to-goodness sword of William Wallace.
You know, the William Wallace. Like in Braveheart?
To say that Chaucer's got a thing for the British Isles is an understatement. She lives an' breathes pretty much everything that happened between the Norman Invasion and the end of the Tudors. The fact that I know how to place the chronological bookends on her era of interest really clarifies just how obsessed she is. Bein' basically immune to death, I've tried to learn some history myself, but most of it don't stick too well. My memory ain't the best, probably on account of how many times I've pulled bullets an' rebar out of my brains. I don't care too much about the details either. As I see it, when you look at the whole of time from beginnin' to end, you basically get the same shit happenin' over an' over again on different days.
"Anyway, Chaucer sent help," Tadakatsu reminded me.
A flashlight on the top of the hill opposite us came on twice, and then went dark.
"Cyrano and Quixote ain't help," Seven said, very matter-of-fact. "They're a goddamn liability."
"Seven's right. Cyrano's gonna blow our cover, and Quixote is gonna kill someone on accident, probably me. If I didn't owe you a favor..." I began.
"But you do," Tadakatsu reminded me. "You do owe me."
"Yeah, I do," I said, wishin' I had a cigarette so I could take a real long drag off of it. "And after this, we're square. Also, I ain't killin' anyone in there," I told him.
"Not in the contract," he admitted gruffly. "Though I'm not gonna lie. I sometimes wonder how you got your reputation when no one's ever seen you actually fight."
"Keep wonderin'," I told him, smilin' just a little. Lots of brothers would give their right arm to be "Death". As it is, I do more dyin' than killin', but I can't say I haven't earned my name.
I even have a scythe.
Since Tadakatsu's bolt cutters were garbage, I heaved myself up over the spiky fence. Seven tried a few times to stick his boot between two of the posts, and I eventually had to climb back to the outside and give him a leg up.
"Can't you do anything useful?" Tadakatsu demanded when all three of us were finally on the inside.
"I'll be more useful than you once we get inside. You're the one bringing a sword to a gunfight, samurai," Seven replied. He unzipped the bag he carried over his shoulder and started puttin' together his fully-loaded TK-94 plasma rifle. It's a big damn gun used by most dimension-hoppin' Tearsoldiers to shoot moons outta orbit and shit like that. Seven loves that thing. He'd probably put a weddin' ring on it if that weren't against his own particular beliefs concernin' the institution of marriage.
We shuffled through the snow. Tadakatsu was the only one actually slinkin' on account of all his extensive martial arts trainin'. Seven's too damn big and too heavily armed to be stealthy, and I was too cold. I found myself almost hopin' I'd get shot in the head just so I could just be dead for awhile and not have to listen to Tadakatsu anymore.
About halfway across the grounds, maybe twenty feet from the front doors we ran into our "help".
To be fair, they were actually the ones what ran into us.
"Watch out! I can't stop!" Cyrano hollered, slidin' on his ass at eighty miles an hour, plowin' up snow every which way and makin' a line straight for Tadakatsu's legs. The samurai leapt right over him an' landed on his feet, on account of bein' very, very agile, and Cyrano hit Seven like a brick wall. On account of him bein' about as agile as whale on the beach.
Seven made an "oof" sound. Cyrano only stared up with a shit eatin' grin on his face. If he was in a cartoon, he would've had stars swimmin' around his head. Course, that's how Cyrano is most of the time. He ain't the sharpest tool in the shed.
"Cyrano!" Quixote hollered. He came runnin', his flashlight lightin' up the night sky an' every window of the Wellington School. Cyrano was dumb, but Quixote was out of his damn mind, whippin' that tactical-grade light around like it was Tinkerbell on speed. About five feet away from Cyrano, Quixote slipped and fell, pitching his light behind him. I heard glass shatter as it went through a second-floor window.
A Brother's name is usually a pretty good indication of what he's known for. Me, I'm Death cause I die, but I don't stay dead. Quixote, as I understand it, got his name for tryin' to kill inanimate objects.
Needless to say, if there was anyone on the grounds, we weren't gonna be surprisin' them.
Tadakatsu looked real disappointed, starin' down at the two idiots lyin' in the snow at his feet.
"Told you," I said, cause I could.
Quixote and Cyrano stumbled a couple more times as they tried helpin' each other up. When they were both finally standing, they saluted Tadakatsu. Quixote stared for a long while at me, maybe wondering if he was really lookin' at Death buried under a whole lot of winter clothes.
Neither of Chaucer's lackeys were dressed for the weather. Like all her boys, they looked real flashy in faux velvet cloaks, tall boots, and Elizabethan doublets. Since their usual business was smuggling and low-budget Shakespeare, that all made a certain kind of sense. Cyrano's slippin' and slidin', I figured, was on account of his stupid costume boots.
"Are we gonna fight the ninjas?" Cyrano asked eagerly. He had a sword on em', a great big thing that had to be a prop. It looked like it was actually made of metal though, so maybe he could defend himself with it.
"We're going to fight anyone we have to," Tadakatsu replied.
Tadakatsu notably hadn't said anythin' about ninjas when he'd called in the favor I owed him.
I don't like ninjas. They carry too many sharp things that they're real good at throwin', and you never see em' till it's too late.
More importantly, those two brothers wearin' tights weren't gonna do us much good when it came to re-stealin' valuable pre-stolen property from ninjas. I didn't have much faith in Tadakatsu either.
The three of em' all looked stupid, and that made me resent em' a little more. I take pride in my appearance, and when I ain't freezin' my ass off, I always wear a shirt and tie. Dressin' like I fell out of a Tarantino flick means that even when I'm covered in blood, which is fairly often, I still look like a card-carryin' badass.
I glanced at Seven. Didn't say nothin', but I didn't have to. Seven knew I was out of cigarettes, which meant my patience was wearin' thin.
"Git er' done," Seven said, adjusting his sunglasses and his cowboy hat.
That meant he was goin' in.
Y'see, Seven's a Texan, originally hailing from the southeastern most corner of a state known for its love affair with firearms. He was an officer of the law till his whole world bent sideways, on account of me and a stupid game. Since then, he's kept his sanity more or less by findin' interesting things to shoot, or shoot at.
I stayed close behind Seven. I have three guns myself, but none of em' actually shoot bullets. My main objective was to get the sword, and then key out before I got killed more than twice.
Really, anyone could have done it, but Tadakatsu had clearly taken the gig up out of unrequited love, and he wasn't payin' shit. I was sure that was why he'd to resorted to callin' in "favors" instead of contractin' Brothers who actually wanted to work for him. I wasn't sure there were Brothers who wanted to work for Tadakatsu, but if he waved enough money around, he would've fooled somebody.
The five of us stormed the school, three swords flashin' and Seven's TK-94 chargin' up with the whirrin' sound of a thousand wasps. The sound of it firin' was even spookier, somewhere between poppin' bubble wrap and a full sonic boom.
The doors of the school exploded off their hinges.
"Yippee-ki-yay," Seven said, staring into the smoke.
He says that every time he blows some shit up. I ain't got any idea what it means.
It was too damned quiet as we stepped inside, pieces of ceilin' plaster rainin' down on us like slightly-warmer snow. Tadakatsu did his snake-walkin' thing again, shiftin' his feet across the floor, his guard not movin' an inch as he searched the room with his eyes.
Quixote was jumpin' around like a grasshopper swingin' his sword at nothin', and Cyrano was whistlin' the first part of the theme from Braveheart.
Just the first part, over an' over. Either he didn't know the rest, or he couldn't whistle it right.
"The sword probably ain't here any more," I said. "If the ninjas who stole it have half a brain between em', they keyed out of here when Quixote chucked his flashlight through the window."
"Oh, I need that flashlight back!" Quixote decided.
"Well, la-de-dah," Seven rolled his eyes. "Go upstairs and look for it! Idiot," he grumbled.
Without hesitatin' in the least, Quixote ran upstairs. I waited to hear em' get shot or stabbed, but all I heard was runnin'.
Lucky bastard.
"Follow em'," I ordered Seven.
Now, Seven ain't exactly my minion, but he knows that I've got more experience than he does when it comes to gallivantin' around the Multiverse. Also, of his original three travelin' companions, I'm the only one that hasn't abandoned em' yet. That buys me a little loyalty from em', which I maybe don't deserve, since he's only in his current position because he tried to arrest me for bein' drunk and disorderly. "We'll check the first floor," I added.
"You're not in charge," Tadakatsu reminded me.
"Piss off," I told him. "I owe you a favor. You don't own me! I think you're forgettin' who you're dealin' with."
Though it was almost as cold in the school as it was outside, I took off my winter coat and scarf. I reached into the pocket of my slightly-dusty black suit jacket, combed my hair back till it was slick and adjusted my skinny tie.
What would've made the picture perfect was if I'd had my scythe, and a damn cigarette. I took out my most convincin' gun instead. It's actually a water pistol, but it looks real enough that Seven took it away from me when we first met, back when he was still a cop.
Seven smiled slightly at my water pistol and followed Quixote up the stairs. Cyrano followed me down the hall to the left.
Tadakatsu cussed in Japanese and stomped on a piece of fallen plaster with his goofy wooden sandal. He always wears those stupid-lookin' shoes. To be honest, it scares the hell out of me that he can run as fast as he does while wearin' em'. Get the man a decent pair of sneakers an' he'd be settin' land speed records.
I realized not more than five steps down the hall that I'd picked the right direction to search. Each old classroom was empty, except for the desks that hadn't been worth moving. In one room, there was a map of the world hangin' loosely from the ceiling along with a projection screen. It looked like nothin' at first, but then I noticed there was a page from an encyclopedia tacked to the bulletin board.
"Hold up," I told Cyrano. "I'm checkin' this out."
The door was locked, so I kicked it in. Given my usual business, I'm pretty good at kickin' doors down, and I got that one in one hit without actually lowerin' my gun. Looked good, probably. Samuel L. Jackson would've be proud.
Cyrano followed me, starin' over my shoulder at the bulletin board. Somebody had drawn on the old-style print with permanent marker. They'd put a ninja mask on William Wallace.
"Chaucer told me William Wallace was a ninja," Cyrano observed. He said it like he figured that was a fact.
"Hold on. Chaucer told you that William Wallace was a ninja?" I stared at him.
While some dimension-hoppers like Cyrano might think that ninjas belonged in medieval Scotland, Chaucer knew her history. Of course, there weren't no point in gettin' Cyrano to try an' explain. It's hard enough for em' to talk an' walk at the same time.
If Chaucer had told Cyrano that William Wallace was a ninja, I was sure she'd been inside the Wellington School. And if she'd been inside… why hadn't she taken the sword?
Tadakatsu had missed somethin' awfully important. I needed to figure out what that was.
"Start searchin' this room," I told Cyrano.
That Brother started diggin' around like a rat on all fours, producin' nothin' but a dried-up husk of a marker. "There's nothing here," he said.
It didn't seem that he'd looked too hard, but I held my tongue. I realized we weren't alone. Someone was watchin' us, and I heard em' take a sharp breath and then go scurryin' down the hall.
"Seven!" I yelled, hopin' my Brother could hear me through the floor. "Tadakatsu! We got a live one!"
I didn't have to yell that twice. Tadakatsu was past me before I was back through the door. He was runnin' so fast that everything behind him could've been motion lines, just like in a Japanese cartoon. The rays of moonlight cuttin' through the window gave him a perfect silhouette as he jumped into the air with a "ki-yah".
He looked pretty damn cool, at least until his sword collided with another blade and snapped right in half.
The blade that broke Tadakatsu's was in the hands of a man dressed in black. He had a mask over his face and he was even wearin' those stupid shoe-sock things you always see in the movies.
"A ninja!" Cyrano exclaimed, as if he'd just gotten what he really wanted for Christmas.
"I see that," I grimaced. I know a thing or three about ninjas.
Namely, there ain't never just "one" ninja.
That was when Seven came runnin', his plasma rifle still smoking and at least twenty more ninjas right on his tail. It was a whole sea of ninjas', pourin' down the hall. Some of em' were even up all on the walls with their crazy-ass parkour, and one was flipping through the air like he was ridin' a wire. I'm talkin' special-effects shit, and all I had was a goddamn water pistol.
Quixote had lost his sword, which was probably a costume piece not gonna hold up against Japanese thousand-times folded steel… but he'd gotten his flashlight back, and the way he was wavin' that thing, it was liable to blind or kill somebody, most likely me.
I took the flashlight right out of his hand, and bonked him on the head with it. Not so hard that I was gonna knock his dumb ass out, but with enough force to get his attention. He scowled and stopped flailin' around.
The ninjas had us surrounded, but they kept some distance from Seven's plasma rifle. He couldn't shoot em' all, but anyone he did shoot wasn't gonna be gettin' back up.
Tadakatsu said somethin' authoritative-soundin' in Japanese. The ninjas didn't respond.
The silence was killin' me. I figured I was only waitin' to die horribly, so I took my water pistol and shot the ninja I thought was the boss, right in the face. He sputtered, and I just kept on shootin' em' an' grinnin' like a maniac till I ran out of water.
"Who are ye bloomin' bampots?" The boss ninja demanded, still spittin' water. He was speakin' English with the notable addition of a very bad Scottish accent. "Bampot", as I figured it, was Scottish for "crazy idiot". He might have been talkin' to any of us, but I figured I'd let Tadakatsu try an' talk his way out of the mess first.
I gestured to Tadakatsu where he stood, still mopin' over the remains of his broken sword.
"We came for the sword of William Wallace," Tadakatsu admitted. "But we may have underestimated our… ah, honorable adversaries."
Tadakatsu, bein' a samurai, had just uttered one serious bullshit line. Samurai didn't think ninjas were honorable. All he was tryin' to do was keep himself alive.
The ninjas glanced at one another, and then they all laughed.
"The sword of William Wallace?" The boss ninja sighed. "Oh, ye poor fools! If that's all ye want, ye can have it, though ye might be a little disappointed. It's only worth about four hundred quid."
He took off his mask. The boss ninja had bright red hair with a little salt an' pepper. Looked as Scottish as could be. "I'm William Wallace," he said, offering his sword to Tadakatsu.
It was a Japanese style sword. Maybe pretty old, but not what Chaucer was after.
"And ye've wandered into Scotland's only real school for trainin' in the art of Ninjutsu," he explained.
"William Wallace is a ninja," Cyrano said, grinnin' like a madman.
"What?" Tadakatsu sounded worried. It seemed he was slowly figurin' out just what kind of fool he'd been.
"Ask Chaucer about it," Seven replied, saying nothin'.
"Anybody got a cigarette?" I asked.
One of the ninjas obliged. He even lit it for me. I took a long drag, and let all the madness just sort of settle. I was real thankful to not be meetin' my untimely end on the point of a katana, although I knew a lot of Brothers and Sisters would probably be laughin' about our little adventure for a long while.
Findin' a secret Scottish Ninjustu school in an abandoned buildin' was strange all right, but I'd walked in the door with a samurai, two shitty Romeos, and a gun-totin' redneck ex-cop.
And all of them, they'd walked in the door with Death.
Suffice to say, the multiverse can be an interestin' place.
I gave Quixote back his flashlight and walked right out.