This is meant as a continuation of my earlier works: My Promise, Acting,
One Day, and Scars.  The Ninja will take place before, during, and after
One Day and will go right through Scars and after.  Got all that?
None of these characters belong to me, with one exception.  As it stands,
this fic will take elements from: Ranma 1/2, Eric Van Lustbader's "Nicholas
Linnear" books, and will touch on information from the G.I. Joe comics.
*Warning* There is the possibility that some lemony-limeny stuff may work
it's way into here, but not much.
At least a passing knowledge of my earlier stories is suggested for maximum
understanding.

The Ninja.


        In darkness, there is death.
        It was the first thing they had taught him and he never forgot it.
He could move unobserved in daylight, too; in other ways.  But the night
was his special friend.
        Now the high piercing sound of the alarm cut through all other
nocturnal sounds: the 'dree dree dree' of the cicadas, the thunderous
crashing of the surf against the gray sand and the black rocks sixty feet
below, the wild cry of a disturbed crow farr off over the massed treetops.
        Abruply, colour gilded the leaves of the ancient spreading sycamore
as lights went on inside the house, but he was already away from the car,
deep within the concealing shadows of the carefully sculpted hedge.  There
was little need of this protectin now, for he was dressed all in matte
black: vest, gloves, and a hooded hask that covered all his face save a
strip across his eyes that had been smeared with lampblack mixed with a
fine charcoal powder to eliminate the possiblity of reflection; but his
arduous training had been too well ingrained for him to take any target for
granted.  This precluded the possibility of any error in judgement that
could lead to a lapse in security.
        The porch light came on, insects fluttering around it.  The noise
of the car's alarm was too lound for him to be able to hear the door
opening, but he counted off the seconds in his mind and got it dead on...
        Barry Braughm stepped into the lemon light of the open doorway.  He
was in jeans and a white T-shirt.  His open fly attested to the haste in
which he had dressed.  He carried a flashlight in his right hand.
        From this vantage point on the slight elevation of the doorsill he
played the narrow beam of light around the area of the car.  Reflected
light from the chrome lanced out into the night and, squinting, he swung
the beam away.  At this moment he was in no mood to go and fool around with
his car- or anything else for that matter.
        Not more than half an hour ago he had had a screaming match with
Andy, ending up, quite naturally, with him speeding off into the night.
'Back to the city,' Barry supposed.  Well, it damn well served him right,
cutting off his nose to spite his face.  But that was Andy, through and
through.
        'Honest to god,' Barry thought angrily, 'I don't know why I put up
with him.'  And then he shook his head.  'Yes, you do.
        He went down the short flight of flagstone steps, careful to give
the first one a miss.  It was cracked in two; just one of the things around
here Andy had promised to fix this week.
        He padded across the wet grass, thankfull for the warm slippers
that the japanese insisted were worn, over to where the car sat, dark and
hulking.  The wind shistled through the young maple to his left and,
farther on, he cold just make out the low barrier of the thick hedge.
'What the hell am I doing with a Mercedes?' he wasked himself rhetorically.
If it had not been for Andy- but Andy loved the creature comforts,
wouldn't go anywhere unless it was first class.  Including their move to
Japan two years ago.  'That, of course, includes me,' Barry thought
grumpily.  He looked off down the road for a moment as if he might catch a
glimpse of Andy's night-black Audi swinging it's headlights around the long
curve to flood his from lawn.  Barry turned away abruptly.  'Not tonight,"
he thought.  'He never recovers this quickly.'
        He thre the beam of the flash across the top of the hedge as he
moved, along the gravel drive to finally send a quick dazzel of liquid
light off the car's hood.  It grew in intensity as he came up beside the
Mercedes.
        'Goddamned heat,' he thought.  'Always setting off the alarm.  And
I do not want to sleep alone tonight.  Should have thought of that before
you called Andy a shit.'
        He paused for a last look around, then bent and freed the latch,
lifting the hood.  He gazed into the interior, playing the beam over the
engine parts, lingering for just a moment on the battery.
        Satisfied, he slammed the hood and went around the car checking
doors, one by one.  The seams of glass and chrome were illuminated as he
sought to find any sign of forced entry.  Finding none, he came back to the
left side and, bending again, inserted a small metal key into a fixture in
the car's side.  He turned the key with a quick jerk and silence descended
once again.  The sound of the cicadas returned and the hiss of the surf
gave renewed evidence of its tireless attack upon the slowly eroding shore.
        Barry had already turned away on his way back to the house when he
thought he heard a brief clatter against the rocks near the verg of the low
cliff fronting his property.  It sounded to him like the sof noise of
running bare feet.  He spun around, lifting the flash to scan the area.  He
saw nothing.
        Curious, he went across lawn and into the high grass which he had
never bothered to mow because it was so close the the cliff, emerging
seconds later on the slightly elevated portion of land studded with gray
slate rocks.  He peered along the ridge to both the left and the right.
Directly below him he saw the palely iridescent curl of the tops of the
breakers as they rolled noisily in.  'It's high tide,' he thought.
        The pain in his chest came totally without warning.  He was thrown
backward just as if a hand had come out and pushed and he stumbled along
the dew-slick rocks.  His arms flew out to the sides to give him balance
and the flash spun end over end like a miniature falling star in the night.
He heard quite clearlythe sharp _pang_ as is bounced off the rocks below
and arced into the churning sea like some pyromaniacal lemming.  His mouth
worked spasmodically.  He tried to scream but all he could manage was a
kind of gasp, insignificant and irrelevant, and he thought he knew what it
must be for a fish on a line.
        His arms and legs felt as if they were full of lead and the air
seemed to have run out of oxygen just as if he were lost on an alien planet
without the protection of a spacesuit.  He was incapable of coordinating
movement, balanced precariously on the faceted rocks, on the verg of the
long drop to the white and black sea.  Dimly, he thought he might be having
a heart attack and, desperately now, he tried to remeber what to do, how to
help himself.  He died trying to recall...
        With the absence of all movement, a shadow detached itself from the
wall of the hedge, coming swiftly and silently across to the rocks.  Even
the cicadas, the night birds, were left undisturbed by the passage.
        The shadow knelt over the corpse and black fingers worked at
something dark and metallic, embedded in the chest just under and to the
right of the heart.  With a last wrench, the thing was free.
        He checked the carotid first, then the eyes, peering intently at
the whites for what seemed a long time, then the pads of the fingers.
        Softly to himself, the sadow whispered something.
        He stood up, the corpse seemed as light as air in his arms.  With
barely any discernible motion of effor, he launched the corpse out into the
night, over the verge, far enough out so that it fell squarely into deep
water.  Immediatly the strong current took it.
        Within seconds the shadow had disappeared, having become one with
the darkness and having left no trace of it's ever having existed.

end prologue

Cory Holmes
gholmes@rodeo.sd27.bc.ca