Ninja

The rain poured down on the helpless African diamond miners like the tears of those sent to heaven by Andrew Bradley’s bullets and grenades. A whole line of skinny workers were on their knees with their arms bound behind their backs and their heads down in shame. Some of them were so skinny that their bones were visible. Some of them didn’t have arms or hands. Some of them were as young as seven years old. All of them shivered at both the sensation of cold rain and the fear of the mercenary for hire standing behind them with an AK-47 in hand.

“Alright, you little wankers, listen up!” said Andrew Bradley in his tone-deaf English accent. “I came here for one reason and one reason only: the Ninja Ruby is here in this exact diamond mine. I’d better get some answers as to where the hell it is or else all of you are getting bullets! Not excuses, not questions, but bullets! Bullets in your head! Bullets in your back! Bullets up your arse!”

With his muscular and hairy body, black tank top, camouflage pants, and eye patch over his right eye, Andrew was a specimen of intimidation. The worst part about that? He could back it up. When he wasn’t getting answers from the bound up miners, he took the butt of his rifle and smashed it in the back of a random worker’s head. The worker screamed in pain as he laid on the ground with his wound bleeding like crazy.

“Consider that your final warning, you little twerps! If I don’t hear an answer soon, I’m going to start shooting!” screamed Andrew as he fired his automatic rifle in the sky and laughed his ass off.

And then a shuriken flew past the scene and lopped off the tip of the AK-47. Another one flew past and exploded the ammo card. One more flew by and was centimeters away from taking off Andrew’s trigger finger if he didn’t drop his weapon in time.

One of the workers smiled up at Andrew and said, “You want to know where the Ninja Ruby is? You can find it on that cave. There’s just one problem: you won’t make it out alive!”

“Is that a threat? Huh? Is that a threat?!” Andrew roared when he pulled out a bowie knife and held it to the smiling worker’s throat. “You’d better wipe that god-awful grin off your face or else you’ll get a Columbian necktie! We’ll see if you’ll be smiling after that!”

A blowgun dart whizzed by and struck Andrew in his thick leg. He hopped away from the “smart-assed” worker and grimaced in pain. With one swift jerk, he pulled the dart from his leg and allowed it to bleed minimally. He stared down the cave with gritted yellow teeth and a death grip on his knife’s handle. “That’s it! You want to screw around with me! I’ll slash your fucking head off and drink your nigger blood!”

Andrew marched into the cave and lit up his club-like flashlight. No matter where he shined it, he couldn’t find even the slightest clue as to where the perpetrator might be. “Alright, you little pansy!” shouted the mercenary. “I’ve had just about enough of your smart-assed trickery! If you won’t come out of here with your hands raised to the sky, I’ll blast this goddamn cave back to the Stone Age! I’ve got enough dynamite in my truck to shake the entire earth to its core!”

“That won’t be necessary, my friend.” Andrew turned around and saw that the source of the deep-voiced dialogue came from a man dressed in multi-colored robes with a demon’s mask over his face and a katana in his hand. “My name is DJ Rouge. You wanted to know where the Ninja’s Ruby was. Here it is. Come and take it.” DJ removed his eye patch and revealed a beautiful red gem in his socket.

Andrew looked at the ruby with O-mouthed awe as it shined brightly enough to illuminate the whole cave. DJ pulled the gem out of his eye socket and threw it out of the entrance to the cave, darkening the atmosphere yet again except for Andrew’s flashlight. “What are you waiting for? Go fetch, you hideous dog!” said DJ.

“You cheeky little bastard!” yelled Andrew as he charged up to DJ while swinging wildly with his bowie knife and flashlight. Every blow he threw scraped dust off the cave walls and ground, sometimes even taking whole stones. But never once did Andrew hit his target, who was moving with acrobatic quickness and calm stealth.

“You can’t play defense forever, you little swine!” yelled Andrew. He was right. DJ slashed the mercenary’s flashlight in half with his blade and darkened the room once more. The only light remaining was at the entrance, which was still somewhat dim due to this cold weather. “Where are you?! Where are you, you little bastard?!” bellowed Andrew.

With darkness as his ally, DJ threw knees and elbows to Andrew’s ribs, stomach, and face. Each blow shook the brute’s body and made a resounding thud. But even with a few crunches here and there, Andrew boldly said, “Is that all you’ve got?!” DJ then threw a sweep kick and knocked the British warrior on his ass.

Instead of growling in pain, Andrew did so in frustration and got up immediately to throw random punches and kicks in the dark. Not one of them found its target and instead all he got were DJ’s kicks to his thick legs, almost buckling his knees. “Where are you, you little creep?!” yelled Andrew Bradley.

The mercenary threw another uppercut, but this time hit the ceiling with such force that a rock came down and bonked DJ Rouge on the head, prompting him to let out a small “Ow!” That one mistake was enough for Andrew to grab DJ around his throat and pin him against the wall with brutal force.

The mercenary squeezed with such force that he could feel DJ’s throat becoming thinner and his neck bones popping. “You hear that, you little shit?! That’s the sound of your own undoing! Are you ready to tap out?! Are you ready to give up?! Huh?! Huh?! HUH?!”

DJ was on the verge of passing out or having his neck snapped when the sound of a loud explosion boomed across the mine fields. Andrew’s grip weakened as he started to worry. “Oh no!” he yelled out before releasing the chokehold and running out of the mine. He could hear DJ coughing violently with bloodily, but the music to Andrew’s ears was ruined when he saw his truck bursting into flames.

“No! No, no, no!” yelled Andrew. He dropped to his knees and cried pathetically, though the African workers would have no sympathy for him. They stood around the explosion with their arms folded and their expressions angry.

“What was that you said about having enough explosions to shake the earth?” said one of the workers in a mocking tone.

“Oh, go to hell, you little jerk-offs!” cried Andrew. “All I wanted was a little ruby for my bosses! It wasn’t personal! It was just business!”

“Ruby? You mean this?” said the worker as he pulled out the brightly shining stone. “Go ahead. Take it. It’s yours.” Except he didn’t just hand it over. He threw the gem right into Andrew’s good eye and caused him to scream pathetically some more. His eye was squished like an olive and all he could do was roll around like a wounded animal.

And then the gem was ripped from Andrew’s good eye and a blade was held to his throat. DJ’s familiar voice said, “These people you held captive. They were never meant to be slaves for your corporate banks. I came here to free them. They’re not just ‘cheeky bastards’. They’re hard workers who deserve much better than the treatment you gave them today.”

“I’ll give you whatever you want! Just don’t hurt me! I’ll never come by here again!” pleaded Andrew.

“Anything I want, huh? Alright then. Tell me who you work for and I might let you go.”

The next morning at Babylon Bank, the chubby, white-haired CEO received a package in his office. He smiled at it with his saggy jowls and opened it up like it was a Christmas present. It was delivered by Andrew Bradley, so he was expecting a brightly shining Ninja Ruby. Instead all he got was pieces of Andrew’s hair and his heart. A bloody, sloppy heart that would have been cold even without the dry ice. The CEO screamed in a tone-deaf voice that would have woken up the dead, including Andrew Bradley.

Caribbean Cutthroats (DJ Rouge and Riff De La Luka)

CANON: Caribbean Cutthroat


NAME: DJ Rouge
AGE: 21
OCCUPATION: Cocaine Harvester


NAME: Riff De La Luka
AGE: 25
OCCUPATION: Street Guitarist


Let me ask you all a practical question. How is it that a West African drug worker (DJ Rouge) becomes part of a team called The Caribbean Cutthroats if those two locales are separated by a big fucking body of water like the Atlantic Ocean? Maybe Mr. Rouge is a Caribbean transplant. Either that or the whole thinking behind this would-be anime series was completely misguided and uneducated.

The idea for the weekly television show Caribbean Cutthroat was conceived after listening to “Peruvian Cocaine” by Immortal Technique and misinterpreting the lyrics. Immortal Technique is an articulate speaker; how exactly does someone like me misunderstand what he’s trying to say?

Because when I first heard the song, I was 19 years old and had the maturity of someone half my age, which meant no research and an unwise worldview. For further insight as to what the hell I was thinking, here’s how the series was supposed to go before I pulled the plug after two episodes.

For the first ten episodes of the anime series, DJ Rouge and Riff De La Luka were going to venture around the Caribbean and into South America drumming up as much cocaine business as possible. This unlikely pairing of the quiet and introverted sword-slinger DJ and the loudmouthed and boisterous capoeira fighter Riff had to constantly watch each other’s backs despite DJ being highly annoyed with his partner’s loud ways. American and Columbian assassins both wanted DJ and Riff’s heads on pikes. Sometimes the two governments had to compete with each other just to see who got the kill.

But DJ and Riff weren’t killed. They were sent to a Colorado prison for all of the drug charges as well as the murders of several government agents. The next ten episodes of Caribbean Cutthroat were supposed to document their time in jail. All the sodomy, all the beatings, and all the heartache of growing old behind bars would have made for a depressing anime series. Sadness and anime weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but this was taking it to an entirely different level. And this was going to be for ten whole thirty-minute episodes. That’s 300 minutes of brutal prison action. All for what? A small sense of false hope?

Even though only ten episodes were ordered for Caribbean Cutthroat’s prison point, several decades went by before DJ and Riff were released into American society. They could have been deported back to their respective home countries, but that would have actually made sense and my 19-year-old self wouldn’t have wanted it that way. Instead, old man Riff De La Luka, who somehow retained his positive charm throughout his many decades in prison, found delight in being a toilet cleaner for a local school. If he ever did have pain on the inside, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it.

DJ Rouge made no attempt to hide his own pain. He was miserable upon being released. He somehow found work pumping gas despite the fact that he could never smile or put on a brave face for his customers. Naturally, he didn’t get any tips, only derision from the jerk-off customers. Even his boss thought he was too melodramatic.

All the rage and sorrow boiling inside DJ’s body would eventually explode in the final episode of Caribbean Cutthroat, where he would attempt to commit suicide and make a public example of himself in the process. He wanted his death to have a huge impact on society, but the one person who was finally able to talk him down was old man Riff De La Luka. It was Riff’s positive charm that bonded the two former drug runners together after all this time of being annoyed at each other.

Oh, and can you guess how many episodes were ordered just for this miserable display of sadness? Ten. Altogether, that’s 30 episodes building towards Riff and DJ finally becoming best of friends (Riff had no problems with their relationship, but DJ did). The first ten episodes were fun and adventurous. The next twenty episodes were about sorrow and pathos. You think any TV executive in Japan is going to take this would-be anime seriously enough to produce it? I don’t think so.

Even with all of my fantasies of publishing this anime under a new division of Gracie Films called Gracie Anime, it wasn’t going to unfold. The logo for Gracie Anime would have been a samurai shushing people with his katana instead of his finger while the words “Gracie Anime” would be superimposed on a full moon in the night sky. Good fantasy, but not good enough for reality.

DJ Rouge and Riff De La Luka need new jobs and those jobs aren’t cleaning toilets or pumping gas. They probably won’t be drug smugglers either. These two warriors are the closest things to gaijin samurais I have. Wait a minute. Gaijin samurai? Oh, that opens the door to a lot of possibilities! We already have street samurais in Shadowrun canons and hip-hop samurais in the form of Mugen and Jin from Samurai Champloo. Do you think DJ and Riff deserve a piece of the pie? I do! But sometimes it’s better for the main characters to nibble on the pie crust before eating the whole fucking thing. Wouldn’t want them to get upset tummies.

　

***RANT OF THE DAY***

“There’s a market for everything, man! There’s a market for pet psychologists! There’s a market for twisted shit fetish videos! For nipple rings! For River Dancing! For chocolate-covered roaches! But you can’t find one for hardcore hip-hop?!”

-Immortal Technique-