by Caleb Karger
“Why do you let the humans control the world? Why live in secret? With all of these powers, if the ninja just took control, wouldn’t that make it easier?”
She set the board down beside her and traced her fingers with her thumb. “People like power and they fear the things they can’t control. If they knew about us, despite all we do for them, they’d turn against us. They’d see us as racist dictators. That because we have stronger genes we think that gives us the right to tell them what to do.”
“But isn’t that what you do?”
She shook her head. “Our relationship with the humans is more like a parent. Of course the child is going to think they know better, but they don’t. When your mom asked you to do something, and her reasoning was, ‘because I’m the adult’ did that make you want to listen?” she asked.
“No, it just made me mad.”
“Humanity is no different no matter how old they are,” she said. She threw another log into the fire pit. The flames fought each other for the right to engulf it.
“It’s hard to imagine that every single one of you wants to devote their lives to serving humans forever.”
She sighed. “Trust me; they don’t. You remember the masked people I was protecting you from?”
“The lightning arrow guys.” I nodded.
“They used to be on our side.” She watched the fire in a daze. “We call them the Betrayals—Betrayals not Betrayers; betrayer is used to describe a person.” Her eyebrows drew closer together, and her eyes turned to slits. “Whatever happens to them when they leave…they become less than human. They are evil, manipulative things. All they care about is themselves and getting whatever will benefit them.”
For a long time, she looked like she remembered something terrible. Whatever it was, it was bad enough to make the most caring girl I’d ever known, fill up with pure hatred. I was afraid she’d lash out and break something.
“They do whatever they can to prevent us from helping people. They try to kill or convert any potential apprentices, which is why they came after you,” she said with a rigid jaw. “They were behind the Nazi movement; they unleashed the black plague and thousands of other disasters.”
For the first time, I wanted a history lesson. I wanted to know what really happened, but I didn’t think this was the time to ask. So I waited for her anger to subside.
“I’ve got something for you,” she said and handed a black book to me. In gold letters across the cover read: The Essential Guide to Ninjutsu 7TH Edition by Genevieve Florence. “Everything you need to know is in there. I suggest you read it in your free time and don’t lose it.”
“At this rate, everything I own will be something I can’t afford to lose,” I said.
“Good, you’re starting to catch on.” She smiled. I tried to laugh, but all I could do was yawn. “I think I’ve already stolen too much of your sleep for one night.” She slipped out of the blanket and came to her feet.
“I wish I was more awake to be able to deny that,” I said. I felt so torn between my need to sleep and my desire to be in her company.
She took the lantern and led the way back to my room. We stopped in front of my door. “I suppose this is goodnight,” she whispered.
“Sweet dreams,” I said as I cracked my door open. She took a few slow steps backward. She looked surprised by the words like no one had said them to her in a long time.
“You too,” she said and turned around. I watched her go to the mysterious doors at the end of the hall. I wondered what lay on the other side.
Chapter 9
Origin
R unning was almost bearable on the third day. I was slightly less sore and groggy. I couldn’t know for sure, but I thought I was able to go just a hair faster. During the stretching hour, my mind seemed to have gone on a soothing vacation. Lily had to shake me back into awareness.
Before I knew it, I was back on the patio for my night lesson. Katherine had brought a plastic bin this time. When she opened it, there were stacks of jars containing all sorts of liquids. Some of it looked like juice while others resembled boogers.
“We’re going to work on your sense of smell and your hearing,” she said. The corners of my mouth fell.
“You mean I’ve got to sniff all that weird stuff?” I pointed to a jar holding a lumpy goo.
“Practice makes perfect.”
I froze as she tied a blindfold around my head. Without my sight, I became aware of just how close she was to me. I could feel her body heat. I noticed she smelled like freshly cut lumber or a forest after it rained.
“Not too tight?” she asked.
“N-nope, just right.” I gave her a thumbs-up.
“I want you to identify the smells.”
“I suppose I can do that,” I said.
While I waited for her to open the first jar, I listened to the crickets and the crackling fire. I’d always been sensitive to smells and sounds; it bugged me when Hannah left her TV on all night, or when my mother wore perfume. I was constantly pulling my shirt over my nose and plugging my ears over things other people didn’t seem to notice.
“This one ought to be easy,” she said and held something up to my nose.
My mouth watered. “Mmm smells like a muffin,” I said.
“Mmmhmm indeeff iff ish.”
“Hey, you could’ve shared!” I swatted somewhere in her direction. She laughed as my hand went through the empty air. “I hope you’re happy, muffin hog.”
She struggled to swallow. “Maybe you’ll get one if you’re good.” She held up another jar.
“Uh, I want to say…glue?”
“Correct.”
“So how is—hot sauce—smelling random things improving my nose?” I asked. “I smell stuff all the time, but I’m no match for a bloodhound.”
“It’s not,” she said. “Some of your senses don’t need to be improved per se. It’s more a matter of becoming aware of what you’ve learned to block out.”
“Carpet.”
“As you can tell, you’ve got a firm grasp on what things smell like,” she said, and I nodded. “What I want to work on is being able to take in multiple scents and scents that have been masked by others.”
A flurry of smells hit me; there had to be more than one thing in the jar. The mixture had a fart scent, like garbage that’s been sitting out too long. I gagged and tried to cover my nose. Katherine slapped my hand away.
“Focus.”
I breathed all funny to avoid the stench. “I dunno, there’s too many things.” I tried to move away. She jerked my head back into place. I grumbled. “Maybe eggs. Um, rotten blueberries and chicken?”
“It’s a good start,” she said. I took in a deep breath as she covered the jar.
“Can we do my hearing now?”
“That’s going to be your homework. You apply the same method to your ears. Close your eyes every once in a while, take in the sounds around you. You’ll start to notice more over time,” she said. She opened another combination scented jar, but this time it wasn’t foul; it smelled like she jarred a mini beach.
“Sand, shells, and seaweed.”
“Got them all that time.”
She held up a dozen more jars. My mind started to linger elsewhere. I wondered if Katherine had to do this when she was an apprentice.
“So…I’m curious. To be a commander, you must’ve been a student, like me, right?”
She giggled. “Uh, yes.”
“How do you become a commander?”
“The only way you go up in rank is by recommendation. Every commander is different when it comes to deciding if someone is ready to move up. But in the end, it is the jonin who decides who becomes a commander,” she said.
“Why did you get recommended?”
She fell still. A long awkward minute passed. Maybe I asked something too personal. “Does it matter?” she asked.
“Well, sure, they could’ve promoted you for rescuing a kitten from a tree. I have no way to know if
you’re qualified.” I smiled.
“You’re silly, you know that?” she said. I heard jars clinking as she put them back into the bin. “Let’s get you to bed, shall we?”
I pulled the blindfold down. “I’m sorry if my question bothered you. I just wanted to know more about you.”
Her hands were on the bin, but she didn’t lift it yet. “Why?”
“Because we’re friends, aren’t we?”
“You can’t be friends with someone you don’t know,” she murmured.
“Exactly, that’s why I was asking.”
She sighed. “As much as I’d like to be friends, we can’t be.” She stood up.
“But I don’t understand.”
She shifted the bin to balance on her hip. “Look, the thing is if I shared my past with you, you’d have no desire to be my friend anymore.”
I jumped to my feet. “That’s absurd; there’s nothing you could’ve done that would make me feel that way.”
A cold breeze swept by and it seemed to strip all of the warmth from her expression. She looked incapable of feeling anything as if she was hollow inside. When she brought her eyes to me, I felt like I should’ve run away.
“You’ve seen me kill people, I’ve done worse,” she said.
Shaking, I put my hands on her shoulders. “I’m not going to run away if you tell me. I won’t judge you,” I said. “Since the day I met you, you’ve been nothing but caring and compassionate. Sure, maybe you weren’t always like this, but all that stuff you had to go through got you to this point. Whatever happened was worth it, because the world would be lacking someone great if you weren’t who you are now.”
She chewed the corner of her lip and searched for something in my eyes. “Why can’t you be like the others? They’re content not knowing anything about me.” She jammed her finger into my chest. “But you have to poke and prod and see what makes me tick.”
I kept my ground and held my shoulders up. “Because they don’t see what I do.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you don’t want to be alone anymore.”
She was about to protest, but her mouth snapped shut. She lowered her head. “I’m exhausted and so are you. We need to go to bed, okay?”
I wanted to stand there all night until she caved in, but if living with my mother and sister taught me anything it was that girls are stubborn. So I knew when to give in. I stepped aside. Katherine must’ve used her super speed because she was gone in an instant.
I had a lot of headaches over the following days. At first, I wished I could keep on ignoring the way everything smelled because it was overwhelming. Somehow I kept at it. By the end of the week I was familiar with everyone’s scent; Lily smelled like fresh linen, Castile had a strange metallic scent, and Wolf smelled like water.
Despite all of our sweating, no one ever had a bad odor. I wanted to ask Katherine how that was possible, but I couldn’t gather the courage. Thankfully, I didn’t have to because one day Spaz asked why his armpit wasn’t smelly anymore.
Katherine had answered, “Well, your armpit produces different oils than other parts of your body. The stinky smell comes from the bacteria in your armpit eating the oil. It no longer smells because your body has evolved to be germ-free.”
One morning, I went to brush my teeth only to find they were clear. It was like my teeth incinerated food particles. I never had to bother with a comb, either. No matter how wild I slept, my hair remained the same.
Even though Katherine told me to practice listening during the day, I found it was too difficult with all of the things that were going on. So, every night before I went to bed, I lay still and tried to pick up as many sounds as I could.
In the beginning, the most I heard was the air coming through the vents, or a fly that had somehow gotten stuck in my room. Then, one by one I picked up more sounds. I could hear the wind disturbing the trees outside, Hot Stuff sleeping in the next room, and what sounded like pages turning in a book.
I wondered who had the energy to be up so late reading. Finally, I had to poke my head out into the hallway. I saw light coming through the cracks of the double doors at the end. I should’ve known it was Katherine.
I was both relieved and surprised at how fast my body was changing because of the extreme regime. I’d gone years barely able to get through a gym class, but after a week of this, exercising was starting to get easier. I wasn’t so worn out at the end of the day anymore.
So instead of inhaling my food and passing out, I could eat slowly. I started to notice that every meal was lacking meat, dairy products, and eggs. I always thought food needed those to taste good, but Katherine’s food was easily the best thing I’d ever eaten. Since she was the strongest out of all of us, I didn’t worry that the lack of animal products would make us weak, either.
After I had finished eating, I sat around my room with nothing to do until Katherine collected me for my night lesson. Sometimes I watched a movie or wrote a letter to my family. The only phone in the house was Katherine’s, and there was no internet.
I guess most teenagers would’ve gone insane being so cut off from the rest of the world, but to me it was great. With no city noise around, it was all so quiet and peaceful. For once, I felt like I could think.
That night I stretched out on my bed and stared at the ceiling. Out of habit, I’d opened my ears up until I heard Katherine flipping pages and mumbling things to herself. A smile cracked across my face.
I saw the black handbook she’d given to me on my bedside table. I figured it was about time I looked through it. I opened it to the contents page. There were numerous chapters. All of them had interesting titles, but the one that caught my eye was titled “History.”
When I turned to it, there was a long prelude explaining that the following excerpt was written by Master Enki…
I have decided to write this account for the sake of preserving my history in the event of my death. Before now this knowledge was passed on orally to potential masters, naturally, because they were the only ones open minded enough to believe it. I have no doubt that many who read this passage will dismiss it as fiction. All I can say to you is: the truth is never easy to understand or believe.
I cannot tell you why I created the ninja without first telling you why they needed to exist and that means going back some two millennia—back to the dawn of life on Earth.
Life did not crawl out from under a rock. It was created in an instant, by an all knowing being that exists outside of time and space. My people, the Anunnaki, were the first to walk the Earth. We were designed with perfect bodies. We did not grow sick, nor know the waste of old age.
For eons, we lived in paradise. Our civilization spanned the entire globe. Over time, we noticed some of the apes trying to mimic us. They learned to walk and talk. They lost much of their hair, but they were still governed by their primal instincts. The Creator forbid us from mating with them. Unfortunately, one man didn’t listen.
In secret, he married an ape woman, and she gave him many children. The Creator was furious and ordered the children to be killed at once. The Anunnaki were horrified. How could one so loving demand the death of innocents? So, they too disobeyed. Not only did they let the children live, but they also allowed more pairings with the ape people. Thus, humanity was born.
As the human children grew older, they began to display their ugly nature. They were selfish, greedy, and violent. No matter how hard the Anunnaki tried to educate them in the ways of peace, the humans didn’t listen. So, they were banished from our great cities to fend for themselves in the wilderness.
Humanity spread across the world. Their population swelled like termites. They destroyed entire forests and turned mighty rivers into streams. They slaughtered the ape people until there were no more before declaring war on the Anunnaki.
My people didn’t want to result to killing. They begged the Creator for guidance, and the Creator answered, “You have brought this upon yourselves. Through
your disobedience, you have unleashed great suffering on the Earth. For this, I declare that you will struggle to undo your sins for the rest of your days, but all of your toils will be in vain.”
Even with our speed and strength, dozens of Anunnaki died when the humans attacked at night using fire as their weapon. It was the first time we encountered death. Loved ones who had been with us for centuries were suddenly gone. A tremendous and terrible pain struck us, and we became obsessed with revenge.
Before I lost my mother, I had been a priest. Once she was gone, all I wanted was to know warfare, and how to defeat my enemies. My rage fueled me. I trained night and day until I mastered every weapon.
We assembled an army and marched into the humans’ cities. They were no match for us, killing them was easy. Those lucky enough to escape fled into the mountain caves to hide, but our thirst for blood wouldn’t be quenched until every last human was dead. We sent out scouting parties to hunt whoever remained. Year after year, there were less of them.
I was out searching alone one day when I heard a cry. A girl had fallen and broken her legs trying to cross a river. I stayed back, hidden in the trees, and watched her for a long time. She kept screaming for help. When no one came, she gave up and started crying. I still don’t know what it was about her that changed something in me, but my anger vanished. I wanted to help her.
The girl was terrified the moment I approached her, but I gathered her into my arms. I asked her to show me the way to her home. At first, she refused, probably sure that I would kill her family. Eventually, she gave in.
I expected her family and the other humans she lived with to try to attack me, but they didn’t. They were afraid, yes, but tried to show me they meant no harm. They offered me food. I was going to refuse because I knew humans ate the flesh of animals—only these didn’t. Something about them was different, so I stayed for an entire week just watching them. I learned that they were flawed; they argued over small things, they made avoidable mistakes, but at their core they were good. All they needed was guidance.