The Ninja
2004-09-23 - 7:56 p.m.

Harold stared into the darkness, his eyes burning, and waited for his enemy to attack. Master had said that this was not the best way, to wait for your opponent to make the first strike, but it couldn’t be helped. His enemy had not yet arrived.

He tensed his body, and channeled all of his energy into a spectacular roundhouse, which he followed up with three dragon fists and a quick left jab. Any opponent, no matter his pedigree, would be choking on his own blood after that sequence. Harold stopped for a moment to draw a breath, and then began another round of attacks against his nonexistent sparring partner.

* * *

“Who the heck is that idiot out front?” Corey yelled to Eric. There was a full scale war being waged on the basketball count, and the cheers were only slightly less deafening than then explosion of an entire regiment emptying their artillery.

Eric looked at him and rolled his eyes. That was his stock response when he couldn’t tell what was being said. That, and nodding. He alternated, but not every time, so a conversation he couldn’t hear might go nod, nod, roll, nod, roll, roll, nod, roll again. With no pattern, it was harder to tell that they were preplanned responses. Eric had been proud of himself when he thought of the system to begin with, and he was proud of himself now, since he had obviously perfected it. He couldn’t remember anything Corey had said for the last two and a half weeks.

“Are you listening to me?”

Eric rolled his eyes again, and chuckled inwardly. This was a scream, a real scream.

“Hey, stop rolling your eyes and give me a real answer.”

Eric began a nod.

“And don’t just nod either. Geez, can’t you speak anymore?”

Eric caught himself in mid-arc and turned to face Corey. Obviously, he was going to need to expand his repertoire. Corey was just too sharp.

Realizing he had Eric’s attention, and that the moment might not last long, Corey continued, only louder and faster than before.

“You see that weird kid out front? The one doing all that karate stuff?”

“Oh, yeah. Funny.”, and he fell silent again.

Corey glared out toward the court. He hadn’t expected much of a reaction from Eric. That guy was so weird sometimes. Not as weird as the karate kid though.

“Looked like Tae Kwon Doe to me.”, Eric said.

And then he went back to watching the game.

* * *

Eric was wrong. It was karate, not Tae Kwon Doe.

“Hey karate kid! Where’s your sensei?”
Harold didn’t turn his head. Instead, he transitioned from a standing defensive position into a springing lotus, and back again. It was flawless, not that his heckler noticed.

“Wax on, wax off, huh?”

Harold’s mind vaguely registered that someone was speaking to him, but he was effectively disconnected from the world outside. He forgot the hundreds inside the gym, forgot the awkwardness of performing a standing roundhouse with an audience who thought it was funny, forgot everything except the necessity of his training, and his practice. His enemy was on his way.

* * *

“I can’t believe that spaz out front.”
Liz, Erin, and Kayla all laughed on cue. More talk about the karate kid, but who could blame them? He’d been outside attacking the wind for nearly two hours. It was longer than the three girls combined had spent studying last semester, but not nearly as long as it had taken Kayla to curl her hair, not that anyone noticed.

“I mean, he’s like totally just kicking at nothing. He’s probably some kind of retard., like special class material, or something.”

The girls laughed at this heartily, except for a brief moment while they considered that maybe they should feel bad for the poor derelict if he really did have a mental problem of some sort. It didn’t last long though, at least, not as long as the mental image of the slightly overweight kid out front cracking the air into bits with his axe-like hands. The actual words that their minds were using to describe the scene were “flailing like a moron”, however it was a moron flailed.

They made a couple more karate jokes, then began to cheer. Jerry Acer had just made a basket. He was such a hottie.

* * *

Harold could feel him now, tell that he was getting very close. His movements become faster and more efficient, his chops more precise, his kicks more powerful. His body was a loaded weapon, ready for action. He stopped for a moment, looked into the belt black night, and there he was.

Clothed in all black except for his exposed eyes, his enemy stood, dressed in full ninja garb. His black wrapped body blended in with the night so that the sky was like an extension of it, and his eyes were like the stars. It was impossible to tell where he ended and the heavens began. Except, of course, to Harold. He might as well have been wearing glow in the dark sunglasses and LA Lights.

Harold faced him, unblinking, clad in his Old Navy fleece, carpenter jeans, and Chucks. He reached up, removed his baseball cap, and laid it on the ground.

“So,” said Harold, “you’ve arrived.”

The ninja gave a slight nod.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to harm these poor people.”

Harold could have sworn he saw the ninja smirk, and then he saw four more shadowy shapes emerging from the dark, eight more stars for the sky.

There was a cry, and the sky attacked.

* * *

Corey stood up slowly, testing his limbs to make sure they still worked. Eric was asleep in his chair, so Corey gave it a good kick, and noted with some satisfaction that Eric jumped. At least it wasn’t a nod or a roll.

Liz, Erin, and Kayla stood and smoothed their jeans. They checked their lipstick in their pocket mirrors like their arms were attached to the same shoulder. They giggled a bit, and winked at a couple of boys walking by. One of them winked back; the other just rolled his eyes.

The doors locked behind the crowd as the headed out of the gym, and not one of them said a thing about the karate kid. No one even noticed the five dead ninjas stacked neatly behind the bushes.