How Ninja Brush Their Teeth

  He was still a member of the clan, they assured him, but it was clear he’d been demoted.

  “You’ve been compromised, Tetsuo. It’s best you stay out of the Circle for now,” Kenta, his unit leader had told him after he reported in last month. Tetsuo had vaguely described his narrow escape with the rogue ninja in the truck stop restroom (of course, declining to mention how she tracked him home, tied him to his own bed and stabbed him in the leg before disappearing. He wasn’t stupid.)

  The Circle was what they called the more sensitive duties of their occupation, including the contracted espionage and assassinations, and now, for the near future, he would no longer be a part of what he had trained his whole life to do. Instead, he would be working a regular nine to five like any other citizen, although not for just any company. The White Viper Clan had their hands in several kinds of businesses, and this is where they would keep him until they decided he no longer remained an inconvenient asset.

  The job he had now was appallingly boring. Now, a supply chain manager at a warehouse, keeping the books and organizing the stocks and arrangement of goods, he was beginning to get an idea of what the clan was up to on a worldwide scale. It appeared, for the time being it was a massive amount of arms trafficking. To whom and to where they were smuggling—he didn’t care, although he supposed it was all a part of White Viper leader Goemon’s ‘broader vision’ he had announced for the clan. He distinctly remembered meeting him once before when he had taken over the clan after Minamoto, the current leader, had died earlier that year. Tetsuo extremely disliked this new man. He missed Minamoto, his old mentor, almost as much as he missed his old job. He may have been a ruthless leader when it came to business, but be had taken him as a child after his mother died of a drug-overdose, and when it came to rescuing many parentless children from a harsh life on the street, Minamoto had been as blameless as any saint in Tetsuo’s eyes.

   

  Tetsuo entered his apartment complex, walking past a manicured grove of maples, when he felt her presence. She was here. Watching him.

  A thrill went through him. As much as he hated to admit it, he missed her. He wondered what she could possibly be up to. If she had been watching him at all lately, she would have known how impossibly boring his life had become.

  He turned to his building complex, ambling up the wooden staircase to the second floor, and keyed the door to his small one bedroom apartment, all the while feeling her eyes following him.

  As he opened the door, he turned to look into the grove of trees, squinting, in hopes of spotting her. However, if she was out there, she was well hidden from his eyes. But, on a whim, he smiled and waved, just in case she was watching, and stepped inside.

   

  “Hello, Tetsuo. How’s the leg?” his enemy asked as more of a reminder than a question of interest. She sat backward in one of his dining room chairs she must have dragged into the entryway to sit and wait patiently at his door. She was dressed plainly as a civilian, as he was. Her white button down shirt hugged her natural curves as it tucked into tight-fitting jeans.

  She hadn’t startled him, but he was disappointed he hadn’t anticipated her being in his apartment. He was losing his touch and blamed his clan who had locked him away in a warehouse instead of utilizing his natural abilities.

  “You may put that away,” he waved dismissively at the gun she was casually pointing at him from her hip. “I’m no longer in the Circle. Just some nine-to-five regular Joe now, thanks to you.”

  “I’ve heard. I’m no longer in the Circle, either, but it doesn’t stop me from playing,” she replied.

  He walked past her, brazenly brushing against the gun she had leveled at him as he made his way to the kitchen. He cracked open the fridge, peered inside and seeing nothing but a half-eaten cucumber, a jar of pickled mangos, and dried out bowl of rice and mustard, he slammed it closed again. He had forgotten. Things were going to be tight until payday. Another aspect about his job to hate.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Why, may I ask, are you here?” Whatever fascination he had entertained with her before had now evaporated as he felt her cold, domineering eyes follow him across the apartment. She was playing with him, like a bored predator, batting injured prey but with no intention to finish the job and devour it.

  “Just checking in.” She pulled the chair back to the dining room table and sat back down, watching him.

  “Haven’t you been paying attention? I thought you were waiting for me to “fall in love” so you could deny me the happiness I had so rudely taken from you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Are you done then? You may leave, now.” He pointed to his front door.

  “No, I need your wallet again.”

  He snorted, “Well, you should know I don’t have anything worth stealing.”

  “Maybe I just enjoy taking what little you have, rather than taking from your wealth.” She held out her hand, beckoning him with her fingers.

  He hissed in disgust as he threw the wallet at her, hard. He could have fought her. But what was the point? Risk death over twenty dollars? There would be a time, but not today. He would have to be patient.

  She snatched his wallet out of the air without much effort, and began rummaging through it, finding the crumpled twenty-dollar bill, the very last of his money, and shoving it into her front jean pocket.

  “This’ll do,” she said, casually tossing the wallet back to him.

  He stood in the kitchen, fury rising up his neck as he did his best to breathe it down. He didn’t need money—he knew how to survive without it. They all did, including her. But she wasn’t stealing his money; she was stealing his dignity.

   

  She left as suddenly as she came, and as furious as he was at her, he was surprised to find the emptiness she left behind in his apartment was far worse than her being there.

  He had been alone before—many times. It was the nature of his job. He had always felt more comfortable alone and away from people, but now…it was different. Something had changed.

  ***

  One day bled into the other, a deadly mixture of boredom and eagerness for the next encounter with his enemy. He had found signs of her in his apartment on occasion, left behind for him to find, of course. There was that bit of paint missing from his bedroom window sill, a towel slightly askew, even a knife missing from his silverware drawer.

  She was merely toying with him again, trying to assert her control over his life.

   

  But it wasn’t his enemy’s persecution that bothered him—it was his clan’s betrayal. For one mistake, the clan he had so loyally served had discarded him as easily as a torn garment.

   

  He needed to punch something—or someone—and punch hard. His apartment felt like a cage and he needed to get out.

  He grabbed his jacket and headed down to a seedy little bar down the street where all the motorcycles sat lined up like so many dominoes waiting to be knocked over. He went in looking for a fight.

  Three

  A typical burly-looking biker, bearded and with a belly that hung over his thick leather belt let out a loud belch and looked at Tetsuo with concern. “Did I do something to offend you or …?”

  Tetsuo hesitated, thrown off by the brute’s attempt at diffusing the fight. Tetsuo had insulted his mother after all, threatening to visit her before the night was over, the man’s refusal to get offended only made him angrier. How dare this buffalo deny him the fight he so desperately wanted?

  Tetsuo smashed his beer glass against the bar in response. The bearded man, who turned out to be much bigger than Tetsuo had realized, jumped up from the stool, holding his hands out, “Whoa! What did you do that for, brother?”

  “I’m not your brother,” Tetsuo snarled.

  Another man approached, tall, thin, with deep lines in his face and grey hair pulled back in a tight braid, “You okay, man? If yer lookin’ for a fight, you ain’t gonna find one her
e. We’re all brothers in this bar, including you if you’d just settle down and have a drink.”

  Tetsuo blinked, his eyes darting between the two men. Who were these people? They weren’t normal bikers, that was certain. The other men in the bar, just as bearded and gruff looking as these two, had turned around in their benches and stools, eyes locked on Tetsuo.

  The tall, graying biker held up a hand and shook his head at the bartender who was busily dialing on his phone, “Now that aint necessary, Flint. Put the phone down. Just put it on my tab, and as a matter of fact, why don’t you get my friend here another drink—on me.”

  Flint, the bartender thinned his lips and gave Tetsuo a wary glance before he finally nodded and reached for another glass.

  “I’m not your friend,” Tetsuo said between clenched teeth. But as much as he wanted to be outraged by this bizarre behavior coming from what he thought would be drunken bikers just as eager to get in a fight as he was, he couldn’t do it. Something about the earnest friendliness and lack of fear in the eyes of these men deflated his bloodlust.

  He was utterly confused and at a loss for words.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t call him that, Chuck,” the enormous, pot-bellied one said to his tall, wiry, companion. “It seems to aggravate him.”

  Chuck nodded, “Okay then. I won’t call you a friend—yet.” He reached over and grabbed the beer Flint, the bartender pushed down the bar with the tentative touch of a bear handler feeding a piece of beef to his prized animal. “What do you like to be called?”

  Tetsuo ignored the question. “Who are you people?” he demanded, a strange suspicion rising in his gut.

  Chuck laughed a wheezy laugh and jabbed his beer-bellied companion in the side with an elbow. “Didja hear that, T.B.? Poor guy don’t know what the heck is going on with all these mellow bikers.”

  T.B. chuckled and shook his head.

  “We’re not your average biker gang, in case you haven’t noticed. Our particular group is on a path of recovery from occupations and lifestyles which were detrimental to our health and spirituality. We’re all here trying to make a fresh start in life. This,” Chuck said, waving his hand over the group of bikers in the bar, “is our weekly meeting. And strangers are always welcome.”

  “Ah. I see. Not your normal bikers. Of course,” he nodded. He looked down at the drink Chuck had bought him and decided to down it as quickly as possible before leaving and calling it a night. Obviously, his plan for a nice bar-brawl was turning into a massive failure.

  But about midway through the drink he started to laugh, nearly choking and spraying his beer all over the bar counter.

  He laughed at the ridiculous comedy his life had become, he laughed at how far he had fallen in just one short month, he laughed at his ludicrous job and his spiteful enemy who stole his last twenty dollars the night before, and he laughed at these peculiar self-named ‘Recovering Bikers’.

  “You okay, man?” T.B., the pot-bellied one asked, patting him on the back as he choked, sputtered and laughed.

  “No,” he said with a crooked nod, “no, I’m not okay. But I don’t know what else to do,” he managed to say between coughs and sputters.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” Chuck asked, pulling up a stool on the other side of him.

  Tetsuo took a deep breath trying his best to control the laughter and took another long draw on his beer, “Nothing more than usual.”

  T.B. grumbled and shook his head. “If I didn’t know better, you seem like a man who has become disillusioned with life. Or you just found you was adopted.”

  Shrugging, Tetsuo finished his drink. When he was done, he stood up from his stool. “Well, sorry for the misunderstanding, and thank you for the drink.”

  “Hey now, you don’t have to leave. Maybe we can help—,” Chuck placed a hand on his Tetsuo’s shoulder, which was a mistake.

  Without thinking, Tetsuo came within centimeters of dislocating Chuck’s arm, but surprisingly, Chuck had his own arsenal of moves and countered, using Tetsuo’s momentum against him and reversing the arm hold before letting Tetsuo free and shoving him away.

  Tetsuo eyed Chuck warily, impressed at the old man’s technique. Clearly, he had training.

  Chuck stared back at Tetsuo just as warily, breathing heavily but standing his ground, arms at his side hanging loose, feet forward and devoid of any of the familiar fighting stances. He was a cunning fighter, not giving away his next move.

  Above the din of the rock music playing, Tetsuo heard the scraping of chairs, stools and heavily chained and leathered bikers beginning to surround Tetsuo and Chuck.

   

  “Okay, so you don’t like to be touched. I respect that and won’t make the same mistake twice. But we in no way intend you harm—quite the opposite. But we will defend ourselves in an unprovoked attack.”

  Tetsuo glanced about him, warily eyeing the growing circle of bearded, tattooed, bikers that surrounded him. He looked at each face, studying the lines between eyebrows growing from concern to anger rather quickly.

  This was what he wanted, wasn’t it? A nice bar brawl to let off some steam. And yet, the closer he came to fighting these strange men, the less he wanted to do it. Not out of fear—the thought of fighting people who were also trained in the martial arts excited him—but emotionally, he just didn’t feel good about coming to blows with this group.

  One biker, a dwarf, bald, tattooed and covered in a thick layer of reddish brown hair said, ticking his fingers off one by one, “He tried to pick a fight with T.B., he smashed a mug of beer against Flint’s bar, and he just tried to dislocate Chuck’s arm.” The dwarf looked around at the nodding bikers, adding, “That sounds like three strikes to me.”

  Chuck held up his hand, “That may be the case, Vince, but if we’re wrong about him, then it’ll be because we gave him the benefit of the doubt. I think there’s more going on here than we can see at the moment, so for now, I want to leave the door open to this stranger.” Chuck looked back at Tetsuo and folded his arms, a sad but stern look in his eyes. “We meet every Wednesday night. You’re welcome back on that day. But if you try and start trouble with Flint when we aren’t here, we’ll hunt down your ass and make you pay.”

   

  Tetsuo rubbed his chin, grateful for the door Chuck opened—not only for him to leave, but also to come back through. He felt strangely fascinated by this odd group of bikers. It was probably the most bizarre day he had ever had. And he was beginning to like it. Tetsuo didn’t answer, but smiled and nodded slightly before turning around and heading out the door.

  He just might take up Chuck’s invitation.

  At least it would break up the boredom.

  Four

  Vasha sat at the bus stop watching the various rummage of empty water bottles, plastic grocery sacks and potato chips bags swirling in the mini vortex of traffic-created wind. She glanced with a bored awareness at an empty cellophane bag of cat-nip as it slipped from beneath her foot and caught the current and lifted out into traffic before it was sucked beneath a semi-truck and taken out of sight.

  She was dressed in an old sweater with a worn picture of a howling wolf she had bought at a local thrift store. She also wore tight-knit faded pink stretch pants and worn leather flats, topping it all off with a wig of loose, curly brown hair underneath a sky blue Old Navy baseball cap.

  Around her neck was a thick, neon yellow lanyard with a lifetime bus membership attached.

  Tetsuo wasn’t the only master of disguise, she thought.

  Her eyes narrowed onto to a short but fit Asian man walking briskly away from a seedy looking bar called Flint’s Beer & Bacon. He was handsome, with an angular face and long nose, his hair was black, short and slightly ruffled, and he was dressed in a plain white t-shirt, dark jeans, and black and white sneakers.

  What had he done in there? Gone drinking? He must be desperate, she thought. Or he was clever. No, not clever. She had seen what the White Viper Clan had done to him, the d
ullness in his eyes, when she had surprised him in his apartment the day before.

  She almost felt sorry for him, until she remembered the all-too-clear vision of Michael, her lover for the past six months, dead and lying on a pillow, soaked in his own blood.

  A much as she wanted to, she wouldn’t follow Tetsuo this time. She only watched until he turned the corner and was certain he was heading home.

  ***

  For the first time in a long while, Tetsuo was glad to be heading home. What had happened at the bar confused him, and he longed for something familiar—even his cheap, dreary apartment.

  Walking up to his apartment door, he stopped in his tracks. There waiting for him was a small, orange and white striped cat, who upon seeing Tetsuo, meowed loudly and pawed lightly at his door.

  “Move,” Tetsuo grumbled, trying to scoot the cat away with his shoe. Ignoring Tetsuo’s foot, it began winding itself in and out of Tetsuo’s legs, purring loudly.

  “No,” he said firmly, kicking a bit harder and causing the cat to cry out and run away a few feet. Tetsuo keyed his door and opened it, but before he could shut the door, a blur of white and orange fur streaked into his apartment.

  “Hey, no, no, no,” Tetsuo said, chasing the cat into the living room. The cat was now rolling luxuriously around in his shag carpeting. He scooped up the cat, noticing how remarkably light and thin it was as he carried it to the door. “Go!” he scolded, as he tossed it out the entryway. The cat landed lightly on its feet and began running back toward the door, almost before Tetsuo could shut it again.

  Leaning against the door, he sighed, listening to his stomach rumble and wondering if he had any Ramen left to eat.

   

  A ghostly howl came from outside of Tetsuo’s apartment. Throwing off his bedcovers, he held himself crouched and ready. It came again; a horrific yowling accompanied by frantic scratches on his front door. Then, almost immediately following, three solid thumps reverberated from beneath his feet. It was his downstairs neighbor pounding on his ceiling.

  “Get your damn cat!” He heard his neighbor yell, muffled by the floor between them.

  Tetsuo sighed. Of course, it was the cat from earlier. He had forgotten about the terrible noises they made.