10-Way To Tall

10

Way Too Tall

Cathleen slowly came around.  Her head was pounding and her vision was blurred as she opened her eyes.

She had momentary memory loss, the kind you get after waking up from a night of binge drinking.  Suddenly, with a rush, it came back to her.  Her body surged with quick adrenaline, forcing the soreness and pain out of her mind for that second.  She remembered the ninja and the fight she had just been through and she snapped to a couched position expecting an attack.

Her instinct slowly wore off and was replaced with logic.  She realized that if someone was going to kill her they would have done it while she was knocked out.  She was where she had fallen in the middle of the upside down forest.  Zachariah and Mel were gone.

Awesome.

That was twice she had lost track of her Rognaithe, which forced her to wonder if any other druid had had such difficulty.

Zachariah continued to surprise… and annoy.

She heard a groan to her right and spun, noticing the ninja she had battled.  The ninja was slowly coming to, vulnerable.

Cathleen had a passing thought of running her through before she awoke.  It would be one less ninja in the world, one less obstacle….

****

Zachariah and Mel stared from the tree line in awe.

The forest had stopped and fifty or so yards in front of them, across a field of bright orange grass, was the opening to a temple, or at least this is what Zachariah guessed it to be.  The cave they had been traveling in stopped and a temple opening had been literally carved out of the stone face.

“That’s it.”  Mel said with a hint of fear.

Zachariah nodded.  “I kinda figured that much.”

“Somewhere inside that temple is a nearly indestructible force of magical descent.”  Mel said ominously.

Zachariah turned toward him and frowned.  “That was a little over the top, don’t you think?”

Mel shrugged.  “You’re the one that wants to walk in and say ‘hello’.  What do you want me to say?  ‘Inside is the cute cuddly wyvern who wants to eat you happily’?”

Zachariah thought about this.  “Your sarcasm has a point.”

“My sarcasm usually does,” Mel replied.

“You don’t have to come.”  Zachariah said.  “You just met me, and I’m not sure why you have stayed this long.”

Mel laughed.  “Are you kidding?  The hopes of thousands of people rest on the shoulders of a twenty-five year-old, loser, dishwasher, who lives in his dad’s basement, somehow defeating or being consumed by a wyvern.  How the hell am I going to walk away from that?”

“I want to get mad, but I see what you mean.” Zachariah grumbled.

Zachariah began to move and Mel grabbed him.  “What the hell are you doing?”

Zachariah looked confused.  “Ancient death machine, dishwasher hero?  Remember?”

Mel nodded.  “Yes, yes, I don’t mean that.  I mean all the ninjas that place is going to be crawling with.

Zachariah raised his eyebrow in question.  “How do you know that?”

“The ninja woman came alone.  Where do you think she would send the rest of them? She didn’t give them the day off.”

Zachariah saw the logic in that.  “Okay, so what do we do now?”

Mel smiled.  “I have just the trick.”

****

Kahn awoke in a rush, angry and in pain.  Standing over her was the druid who had put the pain in her.

“Morning.”  The druid said with a smirk.

Kahn tried to move and realized she couldn’t.  Her hands were bound, outstretched around the trunk of the tree her back was against.  “Damn it.”

“You’re not going anywhere, because you and I both know that ninja magic of yours needs two-handed gestures.  I have made sure your hands can’t touch.”  The woman said with knowing smile.

 “Bitch.”  Kahn growled.

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”  She asked rhetorically.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a prophecy to fulfill.”

The druid turned to leave and Kahn’s eyes narrowed.  “Why?”

The question, for some reason, got to her.  “What do you mean?”

“Why leave me alive?  You could have run me through while I was out,” Kahn explained.

The Celtic woman turned back toward her.  “I’m not a murderer, killer or assassin.  I am a force of good.”

“Ha!” Kahn scoffed.  “Is that what you call what you people have been doing?”

Her eyes narrowed.  “That is different.”

Kahn shook her head.  “How?  You are feeding people to a monster.”

“You kill for money!” She fired back.

Kahn only smiled.  “I also never called myself a force of good.”

The druid frowned and looked away.  Kahn knew she was getting to her.

“You know this is wrong.  The ‘needs of the many’ is and has always been a lie.”  Kahn said with force.

“You have no right to lecture me.”  She replied.

“I don’t do things for the future, I do things for the present,” Kahn began.  “Your druid leaders are not here in the present.  The hundreds you claim are in danger are not right here in the present.  The only person here in the present is you and the only thing that matters is right now, and right now you are sending an innocent man to his death.”

There was a silence after Kahn’s rant and the druid seemed to take it all in.  Finally, she took a deep breath and brought her gaze up to lock eyes with Kahn.

“I live in a bigger world then you.”  She said and then the song of the robin rang out before she vanished into thin air.

****

“..then she came up to me and said she thought Asian’s were hot.”  Shinji’s stories were always disgusting and inappropriate.  That never seemed to stop him from telling them while they were on a mission.

It seemed to be Kyo’s turn to have to endure them.

“She said she had some taxes back at her place I could do!  This Nubian princess was all over me!  She told me if I bought her another drink she would let me prove that all Asians can do kung-fu!”

 Kyo sighed, trying not to focus on how ridiculous it was to hear a man in full ninja garb speaking of things like this.  “Kung-fu?  Kung-Fu is Chinese.  You’re Japanese.”

Shinji shrugged.  “I know that, but she had an ass like… BLA DO!”

Shinji’s Japanese was perfect until the ‘Bla Do’ which was in grotesque English.  Shinji also gestured with his hands when he said it.

Kyo tried to keep his calm.  “She sounds racist.”

Shinji shrugged.  “Of course, she was black.  All black people are racist!”

Kyo’s eyes widened.  “Now you sound racist.” 

It was at that point that a third ninja in full garb walked by, but something was very interesting about this particular ninja.

He was over six feet tall.

“Hey you!” Kyo called out in Japanese, but the man kept walking

“I said you.  Stop!”  Kyo called out again in Japanese and the large ninja stopped.  He did a half turn and pointed at himself questioningly.

Kyo nodded and the ninja turned, looking awfully nervous.  “What’s your name?”

The tall ninja looked confused, then responded in Japanese.  “Monkey cheese vagina, power flower in the sun killed chunk of skunk butter scotch.”

Kyo and Shinji stared at him and he nodded at the end to emphasize his point.

“That’s Zachariah isn’t it?” Shinji asked in Japanese.

Kyo nodded. “Yep.”

“And that was him trying to speak Japanese, wasn’t it?”  Shinji asked, grinning under his mask.

Kyo nodded again.  “Yep.”

Shinji turned toward Kyo.  “Want me to kick him in the face?”

Kyo shook his head.  “Go with him and make sure he doesn’t enter the spiral.”

Shinji nodded and motioned for Zachariah to follow him and Zachariah did.

****

Mel, who was invisible next to Zachariah, stared in disbelief as the ninja on the right offered to show them the way.  “Damn, Zach.  You speak Japanese?”

Zachariah smiled.  “All that anime watching really paid off,”

Next week:  With Kahn trapped and Cathleen on her way, things look bad for Zachariah, especially since he has no idea how to speak Japanese!  Will he and Mel figure out they are being tricked?  What is the spiral?

Raishū!

Stranger Things.

TO BE CONTINUED….