Attack of the Ninja Frogs

by Ursula Vernon

  “If you agreed to be their queen, you could open a ninja animal hospital,” said Danny hopefully.

  Suki actually appeared to think about this.

  Whatever thoughts she was having, however, stopped at the sight of the gate.

  The gate was at least twenty feet tall and had big iron hinges and giant door knockers like steel chrysanthemums. There were inset panels on the frame, showing stylized geckos.

  Danny would have preferred something with rusted metal spikes, possibly dripping blood, and the bones of the geckos’ enemies lined up on top, but he had to admit that was more a matter of personal preference.

  Neither Wendell nor Suki moved.

  “Are we sure this is a good idea? ” Wendell asked. “If they’re the oldest enemies of the Spurtongue, and you’re the reincarnation of the great Spurtongue leader, it doesn’t seem like they’d be very happy to see you.”

  Suki chewed on her lower lip. “I don’t know . . .”

  “You worry too much, Wendell,” said Danny, and reached for the chrysanthemum ring.

  Wendell rolled his eyes.

  The booming of metal on wood had only just faded when they heard footsteps, and the door creaked open.

  There didn’t seem to be anything Danny could say to this. Fortunately the gecko warrior opened the door, saying, “Well, cheater or not, any friend of Dragonbreath . . .” He gestured them inside.

  They filed through the door, and froze in their tracks.

  “Finally . . .” breathed Danny.

  The home of the Geckos of the Golden Chrysanthemum had no metal spikes, no piles of bones, and in fact, there were several cherry trees planted around the compound, blossoming despite the season.

  But the geckos themselves made up for it. There were a half dozen strolling around the courtyard, all of them in elegant armor, carrying tall halberds* or lacquer-sheathed swords. Even Danny, who had seen every martial arts movie ever badly dubbed into English, was impressed.

  Maybe they wouldn’t have to name this Savage Fist of Boredom after all.

  “So what brings you here? ” asked the gatekeeper. “If it’s about your great-granddad’s lawn mower, tell him he’s not getting it back until I get my hedge trimmer—”

  *COOL SAMURAI FACT #3: A HALBERD IS A TRADITIONAL SAMURAI WEAPON, CONSISTING OF AN AXEBLADE ON THE END OF A LONG POLE.

  “We need you to make the Spurtongue Clan leave Suki alone!” Wendell blurted.

  It wasn’t as if all the armor clacked simultaneously or anything. Not exactly. It was just that Danny became exquisitely aware, without even looking, that they had everybody’s full attention.

  He looked anyway. Sure enough, all of the geckos were watching. One or two had even drawn their swords.

  “I think,” said the gatekeeper, sounding more like a samurai and less like somebody worried about a hedge trimmer, “you need to talk to the lord.”

  The leader of the Geckos of the Golden Chrysanthemum was actually a little shorter than the gatekeeper and quite broad for a gecko. His black lacquered armor was very bright, but not as bright as his eyes.

  “Lord Takeshi,” said the gatekeeper, putting a fist over his heart, “I have brought you the great-grandson of Ryuu Dragonbreath and his companions.”

  Lord Takeshi nodded to Danny. “Your great-grandfather is a good friend to us. Although he cheats at—”

  “Trivial Pursuit,” Danny said wearily, “yes, I’ve heard.”

  “Well, enough of such concerns. What brings you here, scion of Dragonbreath, with the name of Spurtongue on your lips? ”

  Danny brightened. Now this was more like it!

  The story didn’t take long to tell. Suki told most of it, although Danny had to explain about the bus and the Spurtongue shuriken, and Wendell kept interrupting with inconvenient facts and arguing that Suki wasn’t his girlfriend.

  Lord Takeshi mostly listened in silence. But when Danny got to the bit about his great-grandfather discovering Suki’s past life, Takeshi held out a hand. “Come forward, daughter.”

  Suki’s gills fluttered nervously, but she lifted her chin and approached the kneeling gecko.

  Lord Takeshi put his hands on her shoulders and peered into her eyes, the way the eye doctor peered into Wendell’s when deciding if the iguana needed new glasses. “Leaping Sword,” he said. “I can see her at the bottom of your mind . . .”

  Suki gulped.

  “Don’t worry, daughter.” The old warrior patted her shoulder kindly. “The Geckos of the Golden Chrysanthemum have not fallen so far that we would take vengeance on a child.”

  “She’s not going to try to take over my brain or something, is she? ” asked Suki nervously.

  Takeshi shook his head. “She is you, and you cannot take over your own mind.”

  “So what do we do about Spurtongue?” asked Wendell. “Can you help us? ”

  Lord Takeshi rubbed his chin. “Perhaps. Unfortunately it is not so simple as one might wish. I and my warriors have the might to battle Spurtongue, and we would be glad to do so . . . but we do not know how to find them.”

  “Essentially correct,” said Takeshi. “But you might be able to help us.”

  “You want us to find the ninjas? ” Danny frowned. He might be almost just about a kung fu master—really close, anyway—but tracking ninjas seemed like a different sort of job. If a whole fortress full of samurai geckos couldn’t do it . . .

  “Not precisely.” Takeshi grinned. “I want the ninjas to find you.”

  NINJA BAIT

  “This is a stupid plan,” said Wendell as they tromped through the bamboo forest. “I mean, this is really a bad idea. I don’t think we should have agreed to this.”

  “I don’t think we had any choice,” said Suki. “Well, I didn’t have any choice. You shouldn’t have come, though. If anything happens to you because of me—”

  “Oh, for cryin’ out loud,” said Danny, hoping to head off any mushy stuff, “will you two lovebirds give it a rest? ”

  Wendell and Suki both glared at him, then sighed simultaneously. As horrible as the notion of losing his best friend to love’s saccharine clutches was, Danny was starting to think they were made for each other. How revolting.

  “He’s right,” said Suki.

  “I know,” said Wendell.

  Danny thought he might throw up.

  Best friend or not, Wendell was starting to annoy him. When Lord Takeshi had explained his plan to let the ninja frogs capture Suki and thus lead the geckos back to their ninja lair, Wendell had immediately claimed it was too dangerous for her to go alone. And when Danny had pointed out—completely logically!—that since it was Suki the frogs wanted, she was the only one who was safe, the iguana had given him such a look!

  It’s not like Danny had been suggesting they let her go off and be bait by herself. Danny wouldn’t have missed the chance to see a real ninja fortress for the world.

  “A net trap! That is so classic! It’s just like the one in Shao-lin Renegades! This is awesome!”

  “If you’re quite done,” said Wendell acidly, trying to get Danny’s foot out of his face, “maybe you can tell us how to get out ?”

  “Oh.” Danny chewed on his lower lip. “That might be a problem. I don’t think I know the Freezing Wolf Fist move, so I can’t freeze the ropes and shatter them, like in the movie . . .”

  Wendell tried to put his head in his hands, but his hands were pinned between the rope and Suki’s tail. He groaned instead.

  “Well,” said Suki philosophically, “at least we know the ninjas are somewhere around here.”

  Danny considered. He could try breathing fire, but he was wedged at such an awkward angle, he’d probably fry both his friends and his own knee. On the other hand, he still had that shuriken. He began trying to work his fingers toward his shirt pocket.

  “This was a horribly bad idea,” moaned Wendell.

  “If you’d just move your knee out of my back—”

  There were four ninja frogs. T
hey stared at the trio with large, goggling eyes, and then finally one spoke.

  “The oyabun will be pleased to see you.”

  “What’s an oyabun? ” whispered Danny.

  “The head of an underworld clan,” whispered Suki. “The one in charge.”

  One of the frogs leaped up onto the net—Wendell recoiled from a face-full of slimy toes—and cut the rope. He leaped clear. The trio of kids crashed to the ground with a thud.

  The frogs surrounded them. Strong, slick fingers grabbed Danny’s arms and hauled him backward. The one who had spoken before nodded to Danny’s captor and said, “Tie their hands.”

  Another frog grabbed Wendell and produced a rope.

  It occurred to Danny that while it was all very well to talk about being bait and being deliberately captured and so forth, once it was actually happening to you, it was a bit alarming.

  As the frog pulled Danny’s hands behind him and began tying them, Danny realized that if the geckos didn’t show up, they might be in very serious trouble.

  Still, maybe he wasn’t entirely without resources . . .

  “My great-granddad is Ryuu Dragonbreath, so you’d better be careful!” Danny said, trying not to sound as nervous as he felt.

  The leader paused, his gaze sharpening. “Ryuu Dragonbreath? ”

  Danny nodded. Let this work, he thought, and I will send Great-Granddad a handwritten thank-you note like Mom’s always nagging me to do—

  “Tie that one extra tight,” the ninja leader ordered. “His great-grandfather cheats at Trivial Pursuit.”

  Great.

  THE FROG-FATHER

  Danny was bitterly disappointed.

  He’d gone to all this trouble. He’d been captured and tied up and marched through the woods, during which he’d had to listen to Wendell ask Suki if she was okay approximately once a minute. (Even Suki had apparently gotten tired of this, finally answering: “I’m STILL FINE, Wendell.” It had gotten them a snicker from the ninja frogs.)

  And this would all have been fine—it was an adventure, after all, and these things happened—if he could have finally seen the ninja fortress of Spurtongue Clan.

  But no. The ninjas had blindfolded all three of them. There were probably weapons and pointy things and ninjas doing fabulous secret ninja stuff all around them, and all Danny could see was the inside of a piece of cloth.

  The only reason he even knew they were in the fortress was because the ground underfoot had stopped being snow and had started being rock, and then gravel for a little bit, and now was some kind of slick, cold tile.

  The hand on his back stopped pushing him forward. A moment later, the blindfold was removed, and Danny, Wendell, and Suki stood in a row, blinking in the light.

  They were in a hall that looked a little bit like a church without any pews. There was nothing to indicate that it was the home of a diabolical secret ninja clan. Danny sighed.

  Before them, behind a moat of dozens of flickering candles, sat the oyabun.

  Presumably the oyabun must have been a ninja himself at some point, but it was hard to believe. He was gigantic, bulging out in every direction, his eyes as large as Danny’s head. If he had tried to leap lightly along a rooftop, he would have taken out several stories.

  “Well, well, well . . . Leaping Sword’s current incarnation. So considerate of you to save us the trouble of finding you,” purred the massive frog, steepling his webbed fingers in front of him.

  “If this was my ninja fortress, I would totally put up some posters,” muttered Danny under his breath.

  “I came to ask you to leave me alone!” said Suki, stepping forward. She looked very small in front of the giant amphibian.

  “We aren’t going to do that,” said the oyabun. “We need you to be our next leader, after I retire.”

  “Nothing fancy,” Danny said, to no one in particular. “The movie poster for Nine Nights of Ninjas, maybe. Recruitment posters. Something.”

  “I’m very flattered,” said Suki, obviously trying to be polite. “But I don’t think I’d be a very good leader. There’s been some kind of mistake.”

  “No mistake,” said the oyabun. His voice was thick and bubbly, like warm mud. “You’re going to stay here, and you’re going to be a ninja. This is really not open for debate.”

  “I don’t want to be a ninja,” said Suki, clenching her hands into fists. “I want to be a veterinarian!”

  “Please, Mr. Oyabun,” squeaked Wendell, bowing awkwardly. “Suki knows what she wants to be, and it’s not a ninja. You said that your predecessor wanted to be a firefighter. Isn’t there something you wanted to be as a child? A dream you still wish you could have followed?”

  Danny turned and stared at Wendell. He hadn’t known the iguana had a speech like that in him, even if it was kind of corny.

  For a second, it looked like it might work. Wendell was practically trembling with earnestness, and the ninja frogs fidgeted and wiped at their eyes.

  It occurred to Danny that one did not become the leader of a diabolical ninja clan by giving in to sentimental speeches.

  “Well, I tried,” muttered Wendell, deflating and hunching his shoulders.

  “Good speech, though.” Danny punched his best friend appreciatively in the shoulder. “Maybe you can try it out the next time Mom grounds me.”

  “If you are quite through,” said the oyabun, sounding bored, “we can see about assigning you your quarters and fitting you for something in black tabi—”

  Suki took a deep breath.

  “I won’t do it!” she yelled, staring defiantly up into the face of the oyabun. Her thick tail lashed. “You might be able to keep me prisoner, but I won’t be a ninja! I won’t be your leader! You’ll have to let me go ! ”

  The giant frog tilted his head to one side and smiled a slow, slimy smile.

  HOT LAVA

  “What I want to know is how the ninjas got a live volcano!” said Wendell.

  Danny sighed. Here they were, about to die, and as usual, Wendell was preoccupied with trivialities.

  The volcano in question was a perfectly respectable smoking volcano, the sort where primitive islanders throw human sacrifices in order to appease the gods in a certain type of movie. The ninjas had erected a platform on one side, and there was a long walkway out to the middle.

  Danny and Wendell were tied together and had been dumped onto the platform like a sack of potatoes. The side of Danny facing the volcano was getting uncomfortably warm.

  He had a bad feeling that the walkway was going to figure prominently in their future.

  “And there are no hand rails,” said Wendell, a slightly hysterical edge to his voice. “That’s just not safe.”

  The ninja frog guarding them leaned over. “It came with the fortress, actually. Japan is really very seismically active, and since we bought the whole place from a mad scientist who was looking to retire, it came with its own volcano.”

  Danny and Wendell stared at him. The ninja smiled in a friendly fashion, notwithstanding the fact that he was holding them prisoner at the edge of a pit of roiling lava.

  “Once we cleared out the old lawn furniture, it was a very nice place to relax in winter.”

  Unable to stop himself, Danny added, “Plus you can throw prisoners into it!”

  From where they sat, Danny could hear Suki and the oyabun talking. Suki was being held between two ninjas, and the massive figure of the oyabun loomed over her. The ninjas had decided that Suki should be dressed more appropriately for her station, and had given her a black kimono and an elaborate headdress. Danny was not sure how many ninja frogs it had taken to wrestle her into the thing, but judging by Suki’s expression, he was betting on double digits.

  “This is really very simple,” the giant frog said. “In a few minutes time, we will drop your little friends into the volcano. Now, if you were willing to accept your place as our leader, you could, of course, give an order to prevent that.”

  Suki looked pale. “What
if I agreed to be your leader, and then ordered you to let me go?”

  The oyabun sighed. “Then you would no longer be our leader, and we would recapture you immediately. You would all wind up back in the volcano, everyone would be put to a great deal of trouble and annoyance, and I would be very put out.”

  “D-don’t do it, Suki!” yelled Wendell, determined to be brave despite trembling uncontrollably.

  “Being a ninja might be really cool, Suki!” yelled Danny.

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about,” said Danny. “The geckos should arrive any minute.”

  “Then where are they? ” Wendell hissed.

  This was an excellent question. If the geckos were going to come charging to the rescue, they were certainly taking their time about it.

  “I’m sure they’ll be here,” said Danny. “Relax. Suki’s buying us time.”

  “Push them over the pit,” ordered the oyabun.

  “No!” squeaked the salamander, then promptly kicked the oyabun in the ankle. The oyabun rolled his eyes and waved a hand, and one of the ninja frogs said, “Excuse me, scion of Leaping Sword,” and pulled her hands behind her.

  Danny didn’t see what happened to Suki next. He was a bit preoccupied with the ninja frogs hooking the ropes to a pulley and swinging them out over the pit. A blast of hot air roared off the volcano, like standing in front of an oven, only a lot worse.

  It occurred to Danny that possibly it was time to start helping themselves.

  The ropes fell away. Unfortunately, since those ropes had been holding Danny and Wendell together, they had only a split second to grab for handholds. Wendell shrieked.