How Ninja Brush Their Teeth
By R.A. Hobbs
Copyright © 2013 R.A. Hobbs
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Acknowledgements
One
Tetsuo set his glasses on the counter and splashed cool water on his face. It had been a long drive home and the escape not as smooth as he had hoped. Someone had seen him as he left the mansion, a dark, shadowy figure he had glimpsed running after his vehicle as he sped off.
The job had been easy: a clean, silent kill. The ex-governor, with limited security had no idea what had hit him. Tetsuo had waited for him to finish his last meal, take a long hot shower and fall asleep before putting a single 22. round into his head. There hadn’t even been a messy exit wound—just a small dark round hole through the inside corner of his eye and a pool of blood collecting on the pillows.
He was concerned about the witness, but he had taken all the proper precautions: fake plates and a car switch later down the road. Hours before, he had shed his disguise and now looked like a bookish, slight-framed business man in a tan jacket.
Tetsuo rolled his neck along his shoulders in a long, slow deliberate sweep, popping out the latest kinks. He took a cleansing breath, letting his body settle, feeling injured muscles pulling tight around his ribs and bunching up along the spine, all testimony to the hours he had spent in the disguise of an old gardener at the ex-governor’s estate.
The door of the bathroom stall behind him crashed open with a loud bang. He caught a reflection in the mirror of a woman with reddish brown hair and pale skin. One glance was all he needed to know she was there to kill him.
Ducking just as the mirror above the sink shattered down upon him like glitter, he spun, whipping out one of his legs to trip her, but her feet had already left the floor and she came down hard on the back of his neck with one solid, pointy elbow.
Surprised by the pain, he grunted, falling to the floor while she quickly straddled his back. Instinctively, he tucked his chin hard against his chest, bringing up his hands up to cover his face just in time to block the cord she attempting to wrap around his neck.
He shifted his knee and rolled his hip to knock her off balance but she anticipated the move and counterbalanced, but not quickly enough. He had only needed a small opening.
Knocking her off him, he rolled backwards and onto his feet in one fluid movement—well, not as smoothly as he hoped—the bathroom was small and his shoulder clipped the hand dryer as he stood.
She leaped from the floor, gritting her teeth in frustration after losing her grip on him, poised for another attack.
“Why?” he asked, eyeing her warily.
“You killed him,” she said through clenched jaws. There was a rawness to her eyes as if she had been crying. She was a trained fighter, obviously, but she was off balance. Too hot-blooded. Had she loved this man he had killed? Was this his mistress? If that was the case, this fight for her was a personal one and it was her biggest weakness. He decided to take advantage.
“Did you love him?” he sneered.
She answered with a forward feint, striking out with a small jab to his throat. He reacted with a quick staccato of his own blocks and elbow strikes, exchanging blows with her in a flurry of cat-like moves. She tried to push him back with a kick and set him up for her final move but he read it, and moved his leg back to avoid her blow and countered with a quick jab to her face.
His fist met its mark and rocked her head back. That was when he noticed the barely visible tattoo of a black beetle below her ear. It was a Russian criminal tattoo, the symbol of a thief. She most likely was a member of the Rogov Klan, the only Russian clan in the region. No wonder she was so ferocious. He was about to finish the job when the door to the restroom opened and an elderly man took a large, wheezy intake of air.
Tetsuo and his assailant froze in their tracks. The last thing they needed was a call to the cops and an eyewitness to one of their murders.
“Oh, excuse me,” the man said, cow-towing as he backed out. He hesitated, glancing around the bathroom, eyes straying a little too long on the broken mirror, the cuts on Tetsuo’s face and the blooming bruises under his opponents eyes.
“Oh dear,” the old man said under his breath as he quickly backed out and shut the door.
Tetsuo and his cold-faced enemy eyed each other in silence for a moment.
“Time to go,” she said, and gave him a forceful kick to his chest that knocked him back against the hand dryer, again. Jumping up, she somersaulted herself backwards through a small open window facing the back parking lot.
He stared after her for a moment, admiring her acrobatic escape until he heard sirens.
“Well,” Tetsuo grunted as he struggled to regain his breath after her parting blow. “Time for me to go, also.” He collected his glasses, shook off the bits of broken glass and slipped out of an emergency exit before the State Patrol arrived.
***
Grimacing, he reached for the toothbrush and toothpaste, his right shoulder protesting loudly, a reminder of the hand dryer he had banged up against the night before. He squeezed out an inch of paste, and began brushing; his mind left to contemplate his latest narrow escape.
He began to scrub his teeth, slowly working his way forward, giving each tooth a thorough scouring before moving on to the next. He studied his reflection, gingerly touching the small cuts on his shoulders and neck from the broken mirror that had shattered above him in the men’s restroom at the truck stop. The Russian would have been a formidable opponent, deadly even, if she hadn’t been clouded by emotion. He leaned over the sink and spat out a mouthful of toothpaste.
For years, the Rogov Klan had been protecting the ex-governor from Tetsuo’s clan, White Viper. Unfortunately, his clan had found some of the ex-governor’s business practices to be a liability to their own. It was only through careful negotiation between the rival clans, both groups decided it would be best to eliminate him.
Apparently, no one had told the mistress the news that Tetsuo had been green-lighted by her own clan to kill her lover.
How she had found him later that night at the truck stop was still a mystery to him. Whoever this mistress was, she was one of the best trackers Tetsuo had ever encountered.
He began to rinse his toothbrush when he felt something change in the air of his apartment.
It was slight and unnoticeable to the untrained, not quite a breeze but more of a shift of air pressure.
She was here.
He continued brushing, using the mirror to try to peer into the hallway.
The mirror was probably useless by now. If she were anywhere near the hallway, she would have noticed him and ducked out of sight, probably creeping slow and low to the ground like a puma poised to strike its prey.
He spit loudly into the sink again and quickly rinsed his mouth. Leaning over, he turned on the shower as hot as it would go and began to undress. As he did, he shut the door to only a crack’s width.
He w
aited a few seconds between opening and closing the shower curtain to make it sound like he had entered the shower. Hopping onto to the counter, he vaulted himself above the bathroom door, holding his position with his feet placed on opposite walls, waiting. By now, the steam had done its job and fogged up the mirrors. If she tried to use the mirrors, she would only see a shadow above the door. But then again, she was a cunning enemy who had been able to track him to his own apartment, even after all the double-tracking and car changes he had used to throw her off his scent. A shadow above the door might be all she would need to know he was there.
His legs began to tremor slightly with the effort of holding his position over the door while beads of sweat began to roll down his face. The temperature was much higher this close to the ceiling as it collected the steam from the shower. He waited for what seemed an eternity, but taught to be patient and perseverant, he settled in and began a breathing exercise to occupy his body and calm his mind.
The bathroom door moved slightly, as if by a light breeze.
With detached calm, breathing slowly in and out, he watched and waited for the perfect moment to strike.
Again, the door moved, a little bit more this time and looking down through the widening crack he could discern a crouching shadow below him, cautiously and silently, pushing through the doorway.
He dared not move, though he was tempted to, if only to wipe the beads of sweat forming on the tip of his nose and chin that were threatening to drip down upon his enemy.
Cautiously she slunk in further, creeping low to the floor. He waited for her to come in so she was directly beneath him before making his move.
She paused, as still as a statue, listening.
She wasn’t buying it.
Tetsuo could see a bead of sweat quiver on the tip of his nose before dripping off and falling. He watched in dismay as it fell and landed on her wrist.
She twisted, drew a silenced pistol, pointed her gun and fired three quick shots in one fluid motion.
Tetsuo gasped as he felt the swarm of bullets whiz through his legs spread-eagle over the doorframe, the last shot biting into his inner thigh.
Tetsuo didn’t wait for her to take more careful aim; he dropped down behind the bathroom door and kicked it against her as hard as he could. Instead of hitting her with a solid thump, which he was expecting, the door slammed shut. She had moved. Just as he was about to turn around, he felt the cold steel muzzle of a gun press into the nape of his neck.
He could feel the raw emotion coursing through her body as she pressed the gun into his neck. He wouldn’t be able to negotiate out of this one. He was going to have to fight his way out.
He spun, catching her arm in his and trying to grab the gun with his other arm to keep it as far away from his body as possible.
With both of his hands occupied with her gun, she took advantage and hit him solidly in the neck with a knifed hand.
The strike sent a wave of blood and light into his brain. He fought to keep conscious as his grip weakened on her arms, but he fell to the floor. He looked up only long enough to watch her raise her arms as she struck him on the head with the butt of her gun. Then everything went black.
***
A cold female voice, hard as granite said, “Wake up,” as his face was rocked to the side by a hard slap of the back of her hand.
The world was a dark, blurry mess when he managed to open his eyes. As they slowly came into focus, a cruel pair of eyes stared back at him.
“You didn’t kill me,” he muttered as he tried to sit up, only to find himself firmly bound to his own bed.
“No, not yet,” she said, in a quiet voice, but one that could barely hold back an underlying tone of rage.
“Why?”
She ignored him, apparently preoccupied rifling through the contents of a small duffel bag of his.
“Who sent you?”
“You know why I came.”
“Does your clan know you’re here? That you are off mission and on a revenge kill?”
“What clan?” she spat. “I have no clan.”
“The Rogov Clan.”
Her lips tightened as her hand went to her neck, and she scratched lightly at the small tattoo below her ear.
“Other than the tattoo, the Rogov Clan and I have nothing to do with each other.”
“Did you go rogue?”
“I left.”
“I have never heard of anyone leaving a clan on good terms.”
She gave a barely discernible shrug as she tossed his duffel bag across the room, hanging on to his wallet and smart phone.
She plugged a device into the phone, apparently downloading its memory while pulling out all the cash in his wallet.
“What are you doing?”
“Robbing you, what does it look like?” she replied in a bored voice.
Tetsuo was getting impatient and flustered—which was dangerous for him. After all his training, his many successful missions, and it came down to this? Some heartbroken rogue gets the best of him, ties him up and openly robs him. It was shameful.
She tutted at him, “What’s wrong, Tetsuo? You seem troubled.”
He ignored her as he tried to wrestle his mind into submission. He controlled his breathing and relaxed his neck, shoulders, and upper torso. He needed to think, he needed to find his next move.
But there were no other moves. She had tied him up with such sadistic expertise that there was no wiggling his way out of it, no matter how many double joints he had.
“I don’t like to wait to die,” Tetsuo said.
“Patience,” she reminded him, with an ironic smile.
“Patience to stay alive, yes, but never for dying.”
She let out a long slow breath and looked up from the device she had plugged into his phone. “And what do you live for, Tetsuo?”
“Honor.”
“Honor?” she raised her eyebrows. “Whose honor?”
“The honor of my trade, my clan, myself.”
She shot him an accusing glare, “What makes any of those things honorable?”
“Must I defend my trade with you? Were you not a participant just recently before this—,” He curled his lip, “—this affair of yours?”
His face immediately stung with a sharp slap from the back of her hand. “You’re not even worth killing,” she scoffed. “You are an empty shell filled with the lies of the clans.”
“You’re delusional,” he retorted.
“Am I? At least I don’t pretend what we do is honorable or we somehow create balance to the universe by killing.” She adjusted the sleeves of her black, skin-tight tactical suit. “One last question before I finish, Tetsuo.”
Tetsuo rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. One bullet or two? In the eye or in the heart?”
Ignoring his retort, she asked, “Have you ever loved?”
The question hung in the air for a moment before Tetsuo scoffed and shook his head. Love? She should know better than that. Whatever point she was trying to make before she killed him wasn’t going to work on him.
“You were an orphan, correct? Your clan is your family?”
He nodded, “As it is with you. Yet, how easy was it to turn your back on them for a target?”
She jammed the blade of her tactical knife into the thigh that had been grazed by her bullets. The cords on his neck strained with the pain, as he bit back the scream crawling up his throat.
“Watch your mouth,” she chided. “You speak in ignorance. Besides,” she smirked, “I doubt you have ever really loved.”
This time, it was Tetsuo’s turn to laugh, despite the pain.
She continued, “Oh, I’m sure you’ve spent the night with a pretty girl here and there, but nothing that risked the safety of your heart.”
He answered, “You of all people should know our kind can’t settle down and have families. It would be dangerous to love anyone in that way—not for us—but for them, as I’m sure you are aware.”
<
br /> Her lips thinned, but she kept silent for a moment. Tetsuo took the time to glance at the blood slowly oozing out of the two-inch wound in his leg and pool onto the bed sheets. She had avoided the main arteries.
“You can’t hide from love, Tetsuo. Maybe you’ve been able to escape it for now, but it will find you eventually. It always does.” She stood and pulled her balaclava down over her face and started walking out of his bedroom. Heading to the door, she glanced back, “And when it does, I will find it and take it from you, just like you took it from me. Then I will kill you.”
She slipped out the door and was gone.
***
Tetsuo sat alone, bound and bleeding in his own bed. He’d survive, although it would take some time to loosen the bonds she had bound him with.
Her last words now echoed in his mind as he struggled against the ropes.
He couldn’t imagine finding any woman that could hold his interest long enough for him to fall in love with and threaten his loyalty to the clan. Perhaps a fellow female clan member—but he considered them sisters—raised like siblings from such a young age.
Then, with a bruised and torn mouth, he smiled, his teeth flashing briefly in the moonlight that shone through his bedroom window. If he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit the most interesting woman he’d ever met so far had been her.
Two
Tetsuo’s life had become as tame as the administrative assistant sitting next to him on the bus, chatting happily about her workday, which included: planning meetings with high ranking executives, ordering catering that had to appeal to two vegans, a peanut allergy sufferer and twelve normal appetites. Apparently, according to his chatty neighbor, this was not an easy thing to do.
He nodded, and frowned at all the appropriate times until he saw his bus stop and yanked rather forcefully on the bell cord, relieved for the escape.
It was late summer and he walking past a small grove of trees on the way home, a rich earthy must of dry, decaying pine needles and other forest undergrowth invaded his senses. He welcomed the smell, reminding him of his childhood and the nights he was sent out alone and forced to learn to live off the land to survive. He loved the thrill and the fear and the self-sufficiency.
He missed his old job.