PD-Universe Eternal Ch. 5

Chapter 5
Night of Ninjitsu


“What the heck do we do, now? They’re an official Midspace Guild. Now they can officially strike us at any time! If what you say is true, this could mean trouble for our Empire!”

“Shut up, we’re not in any danger. They barely passed, according to spies deep within the space station. Besides, if they begin to cause any trouble, I’ll take care of them.”

“Not particularly. We’ve hired some assassins to kill the group right now, before they start any missions.”

“Ah, Gemni and Kei? Only one of them is worth anything, and the animosity between them will probably make them fail. This plan bites. Why don’t they just let me take care of them?!”

“Calm down, Gahlis. I’m sure you can handle them. I’ll inform the boss that you’re ready. For now, however, I urge you to see how this plays out.”

“Whatever. This better work. I can’t stand all these half-wit plans that the Shadoh Empire’s come up with lately…”
*******************

A cloaked ship flew through space with tremendous speed. Its only occupants were invisible to the naked eye, but anyone with the proper equipment would see two normal space-bound travelers. There was a tall, pale, skinny one tapping away at the ship’s computer, the curved screen glowing as faces and profiles blinked on and off.

Both were dressed in mostly loose black clothing, with only their heads uncovered. By their facial features, anyone who could see past all of the ship’s camouflage features could tell that there were both a boy and girl on board, the former appearing older.

The boy had long, black hair that reached down past his ears. He also wore a concentrated, calculating expression, his thin, dark blue eyes seeming to gaze not only at the holographic monitor in front of him, but into the void of space itself. Every stroke at his keypad was precise enough to actually scare people.

The tall, skinny male typing on the computer stopped, bent his head down, and shook his head, off of which fell a top hat that he had not remembered putting on.

“Kei, for the love of…CEASE YOUR ACTIONS NOW!” the male yelled loudly.

Immediately, in a quick burst of smoke, the hat changed into the form of the female passenger, who began rubbing her head lightly. Unlike the other passenger, she had a more playful quality. Her green eyes were teeming with pure energy, and her long, oddly orange hair almost looked as if it were alive as well.

Kei grinned brightly at the boy, “Awww….come on, Gemni! You don’t understand how BORING it is to be cramped up in this ship for days!”

Gemni growled, and turned back to his keyboard.

“You know the code of our home planet. It is against our teachings to reveal our ninjitsu to anyone other than our allies,” he explained impatiently. “Besides, we must concentrate. Our mission came from the Shadoh Empire. We must complete it without fail….Kei, I said STOP!”

The female ninja had begun tossing throwing stars at a target in the back of the control room, ignoring everything Gemni was saying, and making dents in the metal where she had missed. Upon Gemni’s shouting, Kei threw all of the stars at once, three of which hit various equipment around the ship, and turned around.

“You’re always talking about the mission…you bore me! How long until we get to our target destination?” Kei asked, adopting a bored facial expression.

“Until we reach Space Station Midspace? We have approximately nine hours, thirty-five minutes, and eighteen seconds. Our targets are…Camis Mersane, ‘Aaron’, and Tiejaz Boes,” Gemni explained, calming himself and talking in a professional manner.

“Awww…that’s a really long time! I can’t stand being cooped up like this!” Kei whined.

Gemni typed faster, growing more annoyed with every word Kei uttered. He hadn’t come to baby-sit some hack ninja who somehow ranked evenly with him, despite how poorly she performed in every single Chunin exam she took. He couldn’t understand how the loser had risen so high in rank by revealing absolutely nothing of her powers to anyone, and hated Kei with all his heart.

“Here’s the deal,” Gemni said without turning around. “I will set all the traps while YOU distract them and get them out of the way.”

“Ha, yeah right. I’m gonna take them out before you!” Kei said brightly.

Gemni’s mouth turned from a deep frown to a very cold smile in the computer’s reflection. The spark in his narrow eyes that classified him as a killer flashed briefly.

Kei, the second you let your guard down, and my traps are set, I WILL kill you, with absolutely no exception. You and those new guildsmen, Gemni thought to himself, chuckling quietly so Kei wouldn’t hear.
********************

“Ahahahahaha!!! You said it, you actually said it!” Aaron laughed loudly, flinging himself backwards onto a couch, causing the frame to creak loudly.

“It’s not like it’s entirely MY fault! It was a suggestion, not an answer!” Camis cried from the corner of the room, embarrassed to the core.

“Ohhhh…now we’re stuck with this LAEM guild name! I could have thought of a million better titles!” Tiejaz whined, falling to his knees on the floor with a look of defeat on his face.

“Ah, it wasn’t that bad. Just think, he could have said something worse,” Andy optimistically stated, sitting in a chair in front of a rather large computer.

Only moments after the final portion of the test had been passed, Uhilon, the shadow-being Demosian quickly ushered the four examinees out of the exam hall with their Official Guild Passes. Attached to these small credit card-sized objects was a 3-D map of the entire space station, complete with a marker for their guild headquarters. Upon arriving at their door, the group found that before entering, they had to vocally choose a guild name, and to be warned that the first name that triggered the activation would forever be the name of their guild, and was irreversible.

So, of course, Camis messed it up when he rather loudly threw out the name “Planetary Defenders.”

“Guild name received. Processing…processing…” the door’s computer said, its electronic voice crackling from overuse.

“GAAAAH! What did you do?! I’ll kill you!!!” Tiejaz had screamed, grabbing Camis by the front of his shirt, lifting him, and shaking him violently.

A good few hours later, the group had settled in, customized the room with video game posters and a vending machine, and had unpacked all their stuff into their own respective bedrooms after moving it all from the waiting room they were in before the exams. The main room, which was a flat square prism, had an average of six rooms per wall, most of them bedrooms, a bathroom, and a storage area. Since it was standard Midspace procedure to keep guilds to less than 16 members (to avoid clutter and utter dominance of any one guild), there was only enough room for exactly 16 people to live in at any one time.

The center room was pure white, so much that it actually hurt your eyes to look at a certain spot for too long. A few monitors protruded from the walls, each of which having a different function. Andy and Aaron had combined their resources and built something which had a function close to that of a small supercomputer.

Arranged around the monitor that acted like a plasma-screen television were a large amount of couches and chairs. Relaxing after moving what appeared to be all of their personal belongings into their respective rooms, the group of four had relaxed in that spot, which the monitor turned off.

“So…um…now what?” Camis asked, relaxing on one of the couches. “What do we do after we’ve become a guild?”

“Simple, we take up missions and earn extra cash, and annoy the crap out of the Shadoh Empire at the same time!” Aaron exclaimed.

Camis looked at Aaron for a moment, and began to get up.

“Where’re you going?” Tiejaz asked, raising a flaming eyebrow.

Camis looked slightly confused.

“I thought Aaron said we were going to do a mission?” he asked.

“Pfff, not yet. Don’t get so excited…we’ll have plenty of time later,” Tiejaz replied lazily. Camis gave him another confused look and sat back down and relaxed.

“So, where’s that Andy guy?” Tiejaz asked.

“He said he had something to do before he was able to relax. Something having to do with a spud…or something like that,” Aaron replied. “Wait…no…it was his ship, the Golden Potato. He said he was going to download the Midspace Guild mission information, since he offered it as the official ‘PD’ ship of choice.”

“Awesome! But…what about that ship you picked me up in?” Camis asked.

“It’s a piece of junk,” Aaron explained, smiling. “Absolute and total garbage. The only reason I actually used it was because it’s a Food Inc. delivery car, and so, of course, it was free for me! Andy’s ship…Andy’s ship runs on a boot! An actual rusty, hobo-chewed boot, filled with antimatter and my very own Kaffo Kaffo! That’s almost perfectly free energy right there!”

Tiejaz’s eyes grew wide, the cindered eyes in what he used as his head growing into full ovals.

“You’re kidding! You can pass through an entire uninhabited star with that engine, no problem!” he exclaimed, excited.

“Yeah. I can’t wait to ride in it!” Aaron laughed.

Staring at them, Camis smiled a bit. It reminded him of his friends back on Lycania. They always used to get obsessed over things like this, and though Aaron and Tiejaz both were of a different species entirely, they had that same aura to them.

It was something Camis had thought about since the moment he was captured. It seemed like ages ago, after all that had happened, but it was actually only more like three weeks. At first, he had began to miss the vast forest that he enjoyed exploring, and the school he had gone to, even after his parents had vanished. Being in this guild setting made Camis miss his childhood, slightly, due to the fact that he knew things couldn’t go back to the way they were.

“Why are you being so silent?” Tiejaz asked quizzically, breaking off his spaceship conversation to utterly confuse and surprise Camis.

“Wha…oh…um…,” the young half-wolf replied, suddenly caught off guard.

Suddenly, something else caught him off-guard. A very sharp pain spread quickly from the back of Camis’ neck, sending him flying forwards onto the ground, just barely catching himself on the floor.

“Ahh…ahh…gah!” Camis groaned before collapsing to the ground. All he saw was Aaron and Tiejaz looking at him in astonishment before he blacked out.
*********************

“That was remarkably easier than I thought,” Gemni whispered to himself.

After waiting for a ship to begin entering a Space Station Midspace docking bay so he could slip in behind it and dock his cloaked ship, Gemni had immediately left without telling Kei anything, the way he usually preferred to work. He had then gone immediately to the ventilation systems, and despite a detour to Midspace’s central computer core to get the location of the targets, had set up right in front of the room they were supposed to be in.

Following his set-up, Gemni carefully and silently loaded a round of poison-tipped micro-needles into his silenced air gun, specially designed to lodge itself deep into the target’s skin, already too small to remove without increasing the spread of the poison. Gemni directly aimed for a nerve on the Lycanian’s neck, making sure that he was temporarily paralyzed and unable to extract it with his own aura.

That was the best assassination of my entire career as a ninja, thought Gemni. Flawless in execution, even the Aquari had no idea what was going on!

Through the holes in the ventilation shaft, Gemni saw Aaron and Tiejaz dash over to Camis’s body, sprawled across the floor. They turned him over to check for any wounds, but Gemni knew they’d never find a trace. The poison and the needle were also designed to deteriorate into their basic components, untraceable by most modern machines.

Gemni began to load his gun again when he, too, was surprised. Camis opened his eyes slowly, and began rubbing the back of his neck. He also slowly began to stand up as his strength gradually returned.

“That…that’s impossible! The poison was supposed to work instantly…the paralysis…there’s absolutely NO WAY he could have survived!” Gemni muttered furiously to himself.

His ears suddenly picked up the arrival of another person into the ventilation shaft. From the clumsy gait, Gemni could also tell who it was as well.

“Go away, Kei, you fool. I’m not in the mood to put up with your antics,” he growled without turning to face the female ninja.

“But Gemni! You forgot your bag of poisonous needles back on the ship!” Kei fake-whined, shoving a bag full of tiny hexagonal objects in Gemni’s angry face.

“What?!” Gemni seethed, barely holding out a full yell. He quickly grabbed the bag full of needles from Kei. Grabbing a knife from his side-belt, he pivoted and stabbed at Kei’s forehead…only to stab right into a large slab of wood.

Gemni was about 5 steps away from going berserk, but he quickly calmed himself.

Anxiety is the ninja’s downfall, Gemni thought to himself. Someday I’ll kill that Kei.

Gemni closed his eyes to calm some more, and finally looked down at the bag he had used to load the air gun. Reaching in, he pulled out a soft, white hexagonal and domed object that looked like it divided into six sections. It was easily bendable, and pulling a piece off, the fragment of the object immediately turned blue. Looking at the bag’s front, he saw writing that said “Kei’s Ninjaz Candy.”

Gemni growled under his breath, “DAMN THAT KEI…!”

********************
Camis woke up groggily, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck. Aaron and Tiejaz were standing over him with interest, but Camis only returned a look of confusion.

“What happened?” Camis asked, wincing at the pain in the back of his neck.

Aaron smiled and showed him a small piece of what looked like flattened candy.

“This flew out of the ventilation and seemed to strike a nerve in your neck,” he explained.

“Man…getting knocked out by a piece of candy…must have been pretty embarrassing,” Tiejaz laughed.

Camis smiled. He was slightly embarrassed, but not enough to show it on his face.

“So, where’s Andy? Is he back yet?” Camis asked.

Aaron shook his head.

“He’s been taking a long time,” he replied.

“Don’t you find that strange…especially with…?” Camis said, interrupted by a loud knock at the metal door to the HQ.

“Andy…?” Camis said quietly as Aaron walked over to the door’s control panel and opened it vertically.

Standing on the other side was a girl with bright orange hair, wearing a very stereotypical black and white maid’s outfit. She was pushing a moving cart filled with Kaffo, other beverages, and a large array of snacks in shapes even Aaron hadn’t seen before.

“Room service! Would you like a pois…er…I mean drink, perhaps?” she said, smiling bright enough to blind a person.

From inside the HQ, Camis and Tiejaz both looked at the ‘room service’ girl incredulously. Aaron however, looked content with the tray of edibles that had arrived.

Tiejaz looked at Aaron with the same incredulous look he gave to the girl.

“You’re actually going to eat that stuff?” he suspiciously asked.

Aaron handed the girl a small plastic electronic card worth 1000 universal credits before responding, “Of course! It’s just food!”

Tiejaz just sighed and waved him off.

“Alright, it’s your funeral,” he said bluntly, shrugging and walking towards his room.

The girl smiled even brighter as she allowed Aaron to take the cart from her.

“Have a nice deat…er…day!” she yelled in appreciation, suddenly seeming to vanish into thin air. In her place, there was a block of wood with a face on it.

“Weird…hey, Aaron, are you sure you should be eating that stuff?” Camis asked as Aaron sat down on the couch with the cart in front of him, picking random things off of it and placing them on a nearby table after opening them.

“Yeah, I can handle poisons like these. Man…some of that stuff tastes great,” the Aquari bluntly reassured Camis, not taking his eye off of the 12 cans of Kaffo he had opened and placed in a strange formation on the table, as if reenacting some strange rock formation.

“Poison?!” Camis jumped backwards in shock at the word.

“Yeah, didn’t you, realize that the girl was a ninja?” Aaron asked.

Camis sighed, still nervous.

“Well, yeah,” he said. “It was pretty obvious. Why do you think we’re being targeted?”

“Could be for any reason, but it’s probably the same reason you were kidnapped by that mech-using flunkie from the Shadoh Empire. You must have something they want.”

“So, if we both know that girl was a ninja, why didn’t you even try to stop her?” Camis questioned.

Aaron thought a minute and replied, “She doesn’t look like she actually wants to kill anyone. I mean, of course she’s a ninja, but she didn’t have that cold-blooded aura that I sensed earlier when you were shot by candy. I think she just wants to succeed at her job, but she doesn’t care what it is.”

Camis was amazed. Aaron had known all of this since Camis was first shot? That means Aaron must have known the entire plan all along, or he had at least guessed it quickly.

Something different came to Camis, however.

“Oh crap! That means Andy’s been a target since the beginning!” Camis yelled, suddenly turning and running out of the door.

Well, he’s going to fall for the trick, Aaron laughed inwardly.

“Hey, Tiejaz, we have to go bail Camis out of a trap!” Aaron yelled towards Tiejaz’s room.
********************

Kei had just finished covering a hole in the metal floors of the Space Station hallways she had cut as she heard the Lycanian dashing along the station corridors. She had quickly switched out of the maid’s outfit into her usual black ninja garbs right after leaving a room, so it gave her a perfect costume for hiding behind a nearby door’s shadows. Holding a control in each hand, Kei was ready to press the button that would activate the trap doors she had set only moments before. This was only a portion of her plan, however.

Quickly, she pulled a cube out of her pocket and threw it quickly on the ground. Instantly, she could feel a faint tingling as another costume began to enclose her. She threw down another cube, and felt a large, sword-like weapon appear in her hands.

“Ready,” she managed to exclaim quietly, under her breath.

She jumped out at the nearing Lycanian, who was still a good 40 feet from her, and was promptly beaten over the head by a blunt object.

********************
Camis had quickly dashed out of the HQ room and out into the hallway, only to see Andy jump out of the shadows with his Axe-Saber out, only to be confused when that Andy was hit over the head by another Andy’s blunt end of HIS Axe-Saber, which had appeared with its owner, who had a look of pure anger on his face directed at the first Andy.

As the first Andy slowly stood up, rubbing his head, Aaron and Tiejaz arrived behind Camis, only to stop, both sporting the same utterly baffled look that Camis had.

The second Andy pivoted towards his three friends, not dissipating his anger.

“WHERE WERE YOU THREE?! This imposter tied me up and locked me in the Docking Bay Storage Area! Didn’t you guys find it STRANGE that I went missing for hours on end?!” he yelled at them in an exaggerated way, but still making his point.

The first Kei stood up, brushed himself off, and said calmly, “Don’t listen to this weirdo. He’s OBVIOUSLY a deadly ninja assassin bent on killing us all under direction of the Shadoh Empire who dressed up like me to slowly trick you into deceit and make you think he was out to get you.”

Everybody, including Second Andy, looked at First Andy.

“What?! I wouldn’t do that! Besides, how would you know all of those plans unless YOU were the killer all along!” Second Andy retorted frantically, angrily waving a finger at First Andy while looking at Camis, Aaron, and Tiejaz for support.

“Ah, but only the real Andy has an Axe-Saber!” First Andy exclaimed cheerfully, holding his up.

Second Andy tried to raise his, only to discover by looking at his hand that it had been replaced by a 2’ by 4’ block of wood. Contorting his face in fury, he jumped at First Andy, only to have First Andy dodge and send him skidding along the ground.

“Ha! It’s so obvious that you’re not the real Andy!” First Andy exclaimed, suddenly tuning around and emerging with a thick, brown tuft of hair above his lip. “You don’t even have a mustache!”

“Um…” Camis intervened, “Andy doesn’t have a mustache…”

First Andy was taken a back, but only for a short moment. She turned around again, and in a blur, the other Andy had recieved a mustache identical to the one First Andy had.

“Um…exactly! Only a fake Andy would wear a mustache!” First Andy said enthusiastically.

Standing up slowly, his anger not receding, Second Andy ripped the mustache from his face, grabbed the 2’ by 4’ and placed his palm against it. Immediately, the wood began to change, becoming somewhat of a spiked gauntlet over his right hand. Looking at First Andy, his eyes blazing, he thrust the strange device he had created at his other, who, despite attempting to dodge, was still grazed as the spikes dislodged themselves from the wooden glove and cut him on both of his sides.

Immediately, bizarre things began happening to First Andy. His clothing first changed from his normal silver jumpsuit into a black cloak. The Axe-Saber he carried shortened himself into a deadly-looking short sword. Finally, the Andy went from his normal Bobeune appearance into a girl with bright orange hair.

Landing on the ground, the girl began tenderly rubbing her right side.

“Oww…how was I, the greatest ninja of the entire universe, Kei Yuki, defeated by a Bobeune!” she whined.

“And why did you just reveal your name, profession, and self-proclaimed title to us?” Tiejaz asked, still slightly confused, though the total effect was nullified by insanity.

“Also, I care to ask why none of you have bothered to sense my presence at all while I set traps right underneath your noses…” a voice said mockingly from the ceiling.

As everybody, including the real Andy and Kei, turned to look at the voice’s originator, the floor seemed to open up underneath every single one of them. Caught off guard, everyone, even Aaron, was dropped into a 20 foot deep pit with slick, non-climbable metal walls. Each hole was separate, and gave each person too much room to be able to extend their arms and climb out via limbs.

Tiejaz just let out a short laugh from his hole.

“I’m amorphous…a pit like this can’t hold me!” he boasted.

Concentrating on his back, flaming bird-like wings suddenly burst forth. Jumping, he tried to gain enough lift to clear the hole, but as he neared the entrance, an invisible force shocked him. Grimacing in pain, he fell back down to the bottom of his hole.

From over Camis’ pit, a pale, slim man appeared in a black cloak, similar to Kei’s. He grinned in a purely evil way, striking a tiny bit of fear into the Lycanian.

“Well, that was TOO easy. I just had to let my weak partner distract you with her simple ninjitsu and then set the trap doors RIGHT UNDERNEATH YOUR FEET!” the man happily explained.

“Who are you?” Aaron calmly asked from his hole. He had landed in a meditation position at the bottom, unlike the others, who had mostly been thrown into a crumpled heap.

“Why should I tell you?” the pale man mocked. “Oh, I suppose since it doesn’t matter anyway, I could tell you a bit. My name is Gemni. I was hired by the Shadoh Empire to kill you all. Apparently, they see some sort of ‘potential’ in your little guild. I can’t see why…I got you simply by stealthily setting simple trap doors. I didn’t even have to do any of my real jutsus! What’s better, I actually got Kei, too! This was definitely too easy.”

“Oh, shut up. You and your over-inflated ego…” a familiar voice said, also from the ceiling.

Kei dropped from the metallic overhead and gracefully landed, dodging the holes. She began to walk towards Gemni, who in turn glared at her in annoyance and anger, his jaw dropping.

“What the hell?! I dropped you into that pit! You should be trapped!” he seethed at the female ninja.

“Ah ah ah! You forgot about the Replacement Jutsu! I can anticipate stuff like this, ya know. I knew you were after me from the beginning!” Kei said, still beaming.

“What? You never even showed that you were on to me! That’s impossible!”

“But it’s a ninja’s duty to disguise everything about them! Can’t you even disguise your emotions?” Kei mocked further.

Gemni looked like he was on the edge of his sanity, but he quickly calmed himself.

“It doesn’t matter if you disguised how you looked. I’ll still kill you right now, and then I’ll activate the death traps in each one of the pits,” Gemni said, reaching into a small pack around his waist. “I’ll strike you down where you stand!”

Gemni, with ferocity, dashed angrily at Kei, tossing several shuriken in her directing.

Kei just sighed and said, “Gemni, that trick didn’t work at the Ninja Academy, and it won’t work now…and if you wanted a fight, you should have challenged me outside of a mission…”

Without seeming to move, Kei suddenly began sinking into the floor. Gemni knew this trick; it was Kei’s Shadow Fade technique, where her body could physically hide within the very shadows themselves.

“I know what you’re going to do, Kei,” Gemni said, tossing some more shuriken behind him without turning around.

Thuck, thuck!

To Gemni, the impact of the projectile objects didn’t sound right. Turning around, he briefly saw the image of Kei vanish, and replace itself with a metal tile.

He knew now that he had been too late to see through the attack. He braced for impact as several sharp objects lodged themselves in his back, blood trickling almost instantly from the wound. He was caught off balance, and promptly fell to the ground, catching himself with his hands on the cold, metal floor.

Rolling onto his back, Gemni saw the face of Kei staring happily down at him.

“How’d you like that? It was my Shadow Fade technique, plus my Shadow Clone technique, PLUS my Shadow Shuriken!” she smiled. “Look, your aura’s trickling out with your blood! You should really close those wounds…”

Gemni scrunched his face in fury.

“SHUT UP, you HACK!” he screamed, grabbing a smoke bomb from his pack and slamming it down on the ground.

Kei jumped back and gagged a bit on the fog, but when the smoke cleared, the other ninja was gone.
********************

No more than an hour later, Kei had helped Camis, Aaron, Tiejaz, and Andy out of the holes, and they all found themselves back in the HQ, sitting in the couch and chair circle. Kei had explained everything, from the mission to the squabbling with her partner. Aaron and Camis seemed very intrigued, and were sitting cross-legged on one of the couches, listening intently. Tiejaz seemed positively bored, however, and was igniting tiny pieces of paper repeatedly. Andy, still annoyed at the girl, had gone back to do more ship modifications.

“So, obviously you can’t return to your Academy, right?” Camis asked. “Join the club.”

“Nope,” signed Kei. “Attacking a former classmate means expulsion, or possibly even some worse sentence. I’m not going to go back.”

“Well, in that case, it’s settled!” Aaron exclaimed. “You can work for our guild! We can never have too many assassins.”

“What? You mean it?!’ Kei said excitedly, jumping out of her chair. “Sweet! That’d be great!”

“Yeah, of course!” Aaron said, smiling brightly as well. “Besides, if you didn’t, we could always reveal you as the assassin who not only ruined Space Station property, but also tried to kill guildsmen!”

Kei was shocked for a second, but loosened up.

“He’s kidding, right?” Kei nervously asked Camis.

“Sometimes I don’t even know…” he replied.

The conversation was suddenly interrupted by a loud beeping noise emitting from the HQ computer.

“What’s that?” Tiejaz asked lazily.

“Oh…man…it’s our next mission!” Camis yelled in excitement jumping up. “Finally!”

To be continued…in CHAPTER 6!