Author's Notes:
To be honest, this probably doesn't quite qualify as a fanfic, given that it features my original characters almost exclusively. It does fit within my usual AU, however, and I've been told at least a few people may enjoy seeing more of Ayame and the Fearless Master. Besides, some canon characters do show up and I even gave them lines.
Many thanks to Willwriteforfics and TinySprite for pre-reading most of this for me!
Tomisaburo Arashikage smirked. His wife elbowed him, frowning.
"Don't be so complacent," she breathed, trusting in his amazing ears to allow him to hear every word clearly. "We're ridiculously outnumbered."
The two were hiding among the exposed duct work, about twenty feet above the criminals they had followed here to this abandoned factory. They had been hired to free a couple of prisoners this particular gang – the Dragons - was holding by said prisoners' own gang – the Golden Lions. As they had hoped, the men they had followed had led them straight to their quarry: the two lions were here, solidly tied up and looking distinctly worse for wear.
The Fearless Master shrugged, still smiling. "I kicked a hornet's nest once, and I was outnumbered then too. Still won."
Ayame rolled her eyes. "Insects or not, there are nearly a hundred of them. I don't want to fail this mission just because you got cocky."
Her husband looked like he might want to argue the point for a moment, but sighed and nodded.
"We're not going to fail, don't be silly," he whispered. "But all right, we'll play it safe. No point taking a chance on ending up with bullet wound scars; it'd ruin our perfect faces."
Ayame rolled her eyes again, but she was smirking this time and Tomisaburo distinctly heard a small snort. "Good," she whispered, "so, smoke bombs? They're not likely to shoot down where the hostages are."
The Fearless Master nodded. "Two bursts. They're going to shoot the first time, kill a few of each other and shoot less the second time. Easy peasy."
"Yep, just a few bullets to dodge, shot by blind men. On three then. One, two…"
Smoke.
Why was there still smoke? They had only used two bombs, and that had been... ages ago. Before he...
The Fearless Master jerked awake and, survival instincts kicking in, instantly took in everything from his surroundings he needed to know: the place was on fire, and the closest exit was a window ten paces to his right.
He listened for Ayame and had a moment of panic: he couldn't hear her. He'd have to find her visually, which wasn't going to be easy in this smoke. He pushed away the thought that he could hear just fine and that he SHOULD have been able to hear her, especially since he could hear one of the surviving dragons several meters to his left, and frantically looked around.
There were bodies everywhere. Most of them were the work of Ayame and himself, but a few had been killed in the explosion, as well. The Fearless Master cursed at the memory: the dragons had proven to be no more trouble than hornets, just like he'd expected, but they had misread the hostages' nervousness. They were scared, all right, just like they had sounded and just like you'd expect, but for reasons the ninja couple had not come close to guessing.
The fight had been almost over when one of the captured lions had screamed at them, asking why they couldn't just have died, and had immediately exploded.
The next thing Tomisaburo Arashikage remembered was waking up smelling smoke. Said smoke was getting to be a challenge to breathe in, at the moment; he went on all four to keep looking for his wife. She had to be here, otherwise she'd have dragged his unconscious ass out. He found her a few feet away from where the hostages had been.
She must have been standing right by the two lions: she was missing a large chunk of her midsection, and a piece from one of the chairs the hostages had been sitting on was sticking out of chest. Her face was frozen in a surprised expression, her eyes wide opened, and the obvious reason for her husband's inability to hear her could no longer be denied: the sharpest ears could not detect the beat of a still heart.
The Insane Master's mind went blank for a moment, and then was nothing but pain and crystal like clarity: he didn't know the details, but the hostages had been a trap. The lions who had hired them had planned this. And they were going to pay.
"Cash here," Cash answered his phone with a heavy sigh. He would have liked to yell at the idiot calling him when he was busy, but held back just in case the idiot happened to outrank him. "What's up? I'm working."
"Still alive? Good for you."
Cash thanked his good luck he hadn't been rude; that was his supervisor, a mountain of a man with the temper of a rabid dog who went by the name of Johnny. Cash owed his own name to the fact he worked with him: the guys had thought calling them Johnny and Cash was hilarious. Cash suspected they had been particularly high at the time.
"Alive and kicking, boss. What…"
"Shut up and go home if you want to stay that way. Damn ninjas are trying to kill us off. We're already down six guys that were out working, like you. I got other calls to make. This ain't a joke, I'm looking out for you here. Go home."
Johnny hung up, leaving Cash to blink at his phone in confusion. He knew who Johnny meant by the ninjas: the Ara-something-or-other were mercenaries and Japanese, and owned a martial arts school, so ninjas was what everyone called them. They weren't, obviously, but it was way easier to say than whatever their real name was. He scratched his head, wondering what to do: he wasn't interested in fighting the ninjas, but he wasn't interested in losing his sale, either. Maybe he could do his sale and then head home. But then Johnny had said to go right away and he didn't like it when people didn't listen.
He never reached a decision: a throwing knife lodging itself in his throat both highlighted and imposed a third, more final option.
The man known amongst his associates as Johnny was pacing his living room, getting more impatient by the second. The last report he'd heard put the death toll at 18 gang members, all killed right on the street while they were about their business. Of those, five were his, and he didn't doubt the higher ups would happily blame him and the other supervisors for the whole thing. They had to blame someone, and it was sure as hell not going to be themselves, even if it was completely their fault.
He didn't know how the Arashikage had figured out who was really responsible for the death of their agents, and chances were his bosses didn't either. What that meant was that they'd be looking for a leak, a traitor, and it would turn into a witch hunt. Johnny let out a loud string of curses and kicked the couch.
This should have been a night of celebration, as one rival gang was weakened by the loss of two important members and another was framed for it while suffering a ton of losses too, resulting in said two gangs going to war and being distracted from business and maybe, just maybe, removing each other from the picture altogether.
He flinched when the phone rang. He took a deep breath and answered it.
"Johnny here."
"Good news and bad news, buddy."
Johnny's hand tightened on the phone and his breath caught. That was Cerese, right hand of the boss when it came to discipline and executions. Nobody wanted a visit from this woman, or even a phone call. Ever.
Johnny's mind went into a spin, trying to come up with reasons why he shouldn't be blamed for the ninjas going berserk on them while trying to guess at how anyone could even think he could be.
"What bad news?" he managed to say. "Don't tell me you guys think…"
"Good news is everyone's home by now. We lost a total of 19 in the streets and that's going to be it."
"Yeah?" Truth be told, Johnny didn't care much for the other members of the gang at the moment, concerned as he was that he was going to be made the scapegoat for the whole mess and executed.
"Bad news is they know where we live," Cerese continued. "Number 19 on the street was just over two hours ago, and we're up to 3 at home so everyone's going to…"
Cerese was interrupted by what sounded like an explosion. Johnny reflexively moved the phone away from his ear but more deflagrations could be heard now, seemingly from a dozen places outside. He glanced out the window and his eyes widened: he could see the glow from several fires, and they were all located right around where some of their offices and meeting places were. He angled himself to look towards the corner of his own street and sure enough, the old abandoned ice cream parlor there was burning too. Remarkably, there seemed to be no damage to the building next to it. Definitely the work of professionals.
He brought the phone back to his ear to find the line had gone dead. He stared out the window for about twenty seconds before things clicked into place: the Arashikage were the ones blowing up their offices and meeting places: they weren't particularly well hidden since they met people from outside the gang there, so the ninjas would know where they were.
Looking at the fires and remembering that Cerese had said some people had been attacked at home, Johnny decided that it was high time to relocate to the closest safe place: thankfully, the Barber Shop was just a block away from his house and nobody, absolutely nobody, outside of the gang knew about it. He suspected it'd be pretty packed and that suited him fine. They needed to regroup, figure out the best way to take out the Arashikage with minimal further losses. He chose to assume, for now, that the big boss was still alive: Selwyn Langley would almost certainly have gone straight into deep hiding when the shit had started to hit the fan. Who knew, he might even be at the Barber Shop too.
His decision made, Johnny grabbed his car keys and bolted out of his back door towards his car: even for just a block, he wasn't walking tonight. He had a vision of the car exploding just as he turned on the ignition and held his breath, but the car started normally. He floored it to the Barber Shop.
He needn't had hurry: it was nearly another hour after his arrival before the place was attacked. Between the 12 gang members who had sought refuge in the barber shop, they managed eight shots. Johnny heard five of those and fired the sixth before his head was sliced clean off, and never found out whether any of them had hit the enemy.
Selwyn Langley sat at his desk and waited. He was not naïve enough to think the Arashikage didn't know where he was: the damned ninjas had known about every other place they had.
They had found the guys and girls at work on the street. They had found them at home when the streets had been cleared and they had set bombs on all their meeting places – those were where they met clients and associates and until tonight, Langley would have thought them fairly safe -and blown all 11 of them up nearly simultaneously, along with, Langley guessed, dozens of his men who had been told to go there when going home had turned out to be a bad idea.
That should have been the end of it. Once that had happened, everyone had been left with nowhere else to go but to the safe places. Those were local businesses they did not actually own, and whose owners had no idea they were involved with the gang in any way. They had simply acquired keys and alarm codes, and invited themselves in after business hours whenever they needed to. There were five such places: everyone had access to one, sometimes two, and never more.
Until tonight. The safe places had been attacked one by one so that by now, the only survivors were the ones here, in his private office, and whoever had just scattered rather than regrouping when the home attacks had started. Unfortunately, judging by the casualty reports he'd been getting, not that many had done that; probably thanks to the fact the very first victims had been by themselves and to the normally correct impression that there was safety in numbers.
He sighed. He wasn't worried for himself, but realistically, many of his personal guard – 20 heavily trained men – would die taking down the ninjas when they got here. He'd have to have the rest of the Arashikage killed, down to every family and extended family member, if he was to repair the damage tonight was doing to his reputation, and he wasn't even sure yet how he'd manage it with so few of his gang left. And after that, he'd have to rebuild everything nearly from scratch.
His upper lip curled up in a snarl. Every Arashikage who showed up here tonight would die slowly, he decided. They had been a concern all along, which was why he had tried to trick them into a war with a rival gang, but now? Now they had squarely identified themselves as his worst enemies, and enemies of Selwyn Langley did not live long lives.
The phone rang, startling him. He put it on speaker phone and narrowed his eyes at it. "What is it?" he asked.
"It's Clayton downstairs, Sir."
Langley frowned; the man's voice was low and shaky.
"Someone dropped bodies off," Clayton continued. "Seven. I think guys who didn't go to the safe houses. There's a note. They're not the ones we knew about, and they're not burnt."
Langley's fists clenched. "What does the note say?"
"You can't run. You can't hide. You can die," Clayton read. "These guys are nuts, boss."
"What they are is dead," Langley growled. He hung up and sat back, arms crossed, scowling and waiting. He didn't think there was much left of his gang other than the 20 waiting with him here, in his office, and Clayton downstairs who would hopefully have time to scream to give them a warning when the ninjas arrived.
It was nearly dawn: Langley swore to himself no Arashikage would see the next sunset.
A few minutes later, they heard Clayton scream. Langley narrowed his eyes and stood. His guards took their positions, most of them aiming their guns at the door but a few aiming at the window, just in case.
Nothing happened for about two minutes. There wasn't even a sound coming from downstairs.
Finally, there was something like a knock on the floor, quickly followed by eight more, and nine of his men fell, hit by arrows. The others reacted as quickly as their high pay level implied and immediately started shooting through the floor. Unfortunately, every last one of them did.
"The door!" Langley yelled. "Some of you idiots…"
He didn't have time to finish and his men didn't have time to obey: the door banged open and as far as Selwyn Langley's eyes were concerned, a white blur shot through it and zoomed to each of his men in turn. He shot at it, he wasn't sure how many times, and he was fairly certain that the two last men managed to shoot at it too before they were taken out. It didn't matter either way: they all missed.
When the blur stopped in front of him, in the shape of the very man he had tried to have killed, his gun had somehow moved from the Golden Lion's boss's hand to the ninja's. The man who had just killed his twenty best men tossed it aside and snarled at him, his eyes narrowed to slits by his frown. The overall effect was downright feral.
Langley swallowed. He wasn't dead yet; that meant he could buy his life.
"Anything," he said. "Yours. I can get you 10 millions by the end of the…" He stopped and whimpered; the man's sword tip was suddenly at his throat.
"My wife is the one who could be reasoned with," the man snarled, "and you killed her."
Selwyn Langley did not get a chance to answer: the sword moved briskly forward, with the results you'd expect from a professional's work.
Tomisaburo Arashikage senior collapsed to his knees by the futon on which he had earlier laid Ayame and took her hand, cold, burnt and unmoving, in his. He avoided the sight of her torso and stared at her face; it was burnt too, but at least it was whole. He tried to see past the ruins of the explosion, to find the beauty he remembered, and couldn't.
They were in the Blind Master's apartment, on the upper floor of the Arashikage Martial Arts School. He hadn't wanted to go all the way back home with Ayame's body and he hadn't wanted to risk waking up the baby, so he'd come here. He had known the Blind Master would look after everything, too, freeing him to go avenge his wife.
"I hope you saw all that," he said, his eyes moving to the hand he held between his own, "but I'm going to tell you anyway, just in case. It's worth it." He briefly removed his left hand from hers to buff his nails on his shirt, but couldn't manage the cocky grin she liked. He put his hand back on hers and ignored the fact he could barely see it by now, so blurry was his vision. He was pretty sure she'd be able to make out what he said even if he was tearing up, so it didn't matter.
"First, it was the Golden Lions," he started. "I'm sure you figured out that much, but just so you know, I did too. So I read their file. Your handwriting was all over it, so that was hard." He stopped: his throat had just closed and he found he couldn't do anything but sob for over a minute.
"Anyway," he started back once he could talk again, "that gave me all their names and where they hung out, plus a bunch of their home addresses, and everywhere they met people, plus the spots they thought nobody knew about. Including their panic room or whatever they call it. Where the boss hides."
"I figured I'd encourage them to get together first, instead of just scattering, so I went after them one by one in their usual haunts. It's not like they're hard to spot with those big lion heads on the back of their jackets. I just picked them out with throwing knives and arrows. When I hit three spots in a row with none of them around, I figured word had gotten around and they'd gone into hiding."
He stopped for a moment, wondering whether to get into details on the kills. There really wasn't much to tell beyond what he'd already said: the lions had been completely unprotected and not a single one of them had even heard or seen him coming; even the ones who had been receiving phone calls warning them had been completely oblivious.
"I went around all their meeting places next, hid bombs with remote detonators. I used up half of our stock, actually. Then I went to their homes, but most of them were empty; I went from place to place for a full two hour and only got three of the scum: one married couple and one more woman. She tried to hide behind her dog, believe it or not. Literally picked up the thing and held it in front of her. And I mean, it's not like it was going to work; it was a damn Chihuahua. I bet he's still barking his head off over the body. So! After those two hours, I set off the bombs in the meeting places. I really hope you saw THAT. There's no way I'm not making the news."
He paused. He was trying to make an exciting tale, and objectively, he knew it should have been easy, but it felt… flat. It had been the same while he'd been doing it all, too. He had expected it to be enjoyable; he had thought at the very least, every death would make him hurt just a bit less. Instead, he had felt numb the whole time and he still did now, retelling it.
He sighed and continued. He wanted to tell Ayame, just in case she'd missed some of it. He wanted her to know. "After that, I went for their so-called safe places. I didn't blow those up because their owners don't even know the lions were using them, and they haven't done anything to us, and it's not like I couldn't take those bastards out without explosives. Anyway, I did all five safe-ish houses one after the other. Went in, killed everyone, got out, drove to the next one. I used the bike all night," he specified, suddenly realizing he hadn't explained how he had been getting around as fast as he needed to. "I don't think those idiots even managed to tell each other to watch out for a rider."
"One of the guys in the third safe house mentioned that he should have gone to the docks with… some name. I assumed it was a member of the gang too so after I was done with the safe places, I zipped by the docks to see if I couldn't catch a few more of the backstabbing pieces of trash, and I did. One of them was STILL wearing his lion jacket, and they were all going on about us. Way to hide, right? Idiots. Anyway, I delivered them to Selwyn Langley's place once I was done with them. I hijacked a truck at the docks and just dumped them on his doorstep, then waited a bit before I actually went in. I wanted him to sweat a bit."
He paused again, strictly for effect. "Langley had his twenty favourite cronies with him, plus a guy at the door on street level. That one was nice enough to scream when I got there, and his buddies upstairs trampled around to get in position. You know, it turns out Langley's hidey hole really relied a lot on secrecy, because it's far from fortified. Thin walls, thin floors… I could hear everything easily even one floor down. So I went to the far end of the room right under the one they were all in and ran through shooting up at them. I was out the door just as they started shooting back, and running up the stairs!" He forced some life into his voice, desperate to make the story exciting for Ayame: she liked over-the-top, which was the exact reason he'd gone so far in his revenge. Nobody else could really appreciate the scale of what he'd done, on his own, in one night, for the sheer beauty of it. He assumed there'd be admiration, but it wouldn't be because of what he had done, he'd be because he'd succeeded. Only his dear deadly flower would regal in the very madness of it. The reasonable thing to do would have been to get the clan involved, but the end result would have been the same, so what was the good of reason?
He took a deep breath to finish. He could do this, he could tell the story well. It was just a matter of talking, and that was one of his strongest suits.
"They were still shooting at the floor when I crashed into the room. I think I did better than even my brothers would have: it was all about speed. No finesse, no strategy, no thinking. I don't actually remember it all that well, except I was just mowing through them as fast as I could so they wouldn't have time to shoot me too much and if they did, I'd be a difficult target. Worked like a charm: there were only a few shots and they didn't come near me. So between the arrows through the floor and my swords, that was Langley's elite 20 gone. I went straight to him and did my scary face - the one that you always have a hard time not laughing at. He tried to buy his life, I'm pretty sure. He was definitely talking, but I wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying, just that he was trying to talk me down and I was thinking he had killed the wrong one of us for that. I told him so, and I put my sword through his throat."
He swallowed. He wasn't sure what to say next. The Blind Master had come in around the time he was talking about taking down Langley's personal guards, so he seized on the potential distraction, although he didn't let go of Ayame's hand. His eyes were closed – he wasn't sure when that had happened – and he didn't open them: he didn't want to look at what was left of the love of his life, yet he didn't want to look at anything else, so this seemed a good compromise.
"Who's with Tommy?" he asked. It was a stupid question: his little sister was in town and was the closest relative around by far.
"Misao," the Blind Master confirmed patiently. "She'll bring him here later today. I talked to your brothers as well… they're en route. They'll be here later today too."
The other man grunted in acknowledgement. He didn't want to talk about people coming here. He didn't want to think of why they were coming here. His hand twitched; he wanted to let go of Ayame's cold hand, he didn't want the constant reminder that she was gone.
"You need to sleep," the Blind Master continued. "If you will not leave her side, there is another futon rolled up in the closet."
Sleep sounded good. Turn off his brains for a while, forget everything. He opened his eyes again and locked them on Ayame's once beautiful face. "I won't be far, okay?" He let go of her hand and tried to put it down gently, but rigor mortis had started in his wife's arm, and the hand stayed slightly off the mattress as if his own hand was still under it.
He felt his upper lip curl up and a nearly irrepressible urge to punish more people for the murder of his wife, quickly followed by the memory of how it had felt to kill the Lions; the flat and empty feeling that didn't even come near to any kind of satisfaction and that offered no relief at all from the pain; the sense that anything else than this dull throb was forever out of his reach, and that all that was left was to do his duty and give his wife the best justice he could.
Killing more people wasn't going to help. Being with his brothers or Tommy wasn't going to help. Sleep wasn't going to help. Nothing was going to help because nothing could help. Ayame was dead and she was going to stay dead no matter what anyone did.
He screamed. It didn't help either, but he couldn't stop. Still on his knees, he started pounding the floor with his fists and found out he was crying when his tears fell on his arms. He realized he was throwing a tantrum and decided he didn't care.
The Blind Master left the room; he doubted any comfort he could offer would be noticed right now and he was fairly certain it wouldn't be safe to try.
The Insane Master woke up without any knowledge of how he'd gotten into a bed. He had been moved from Ayame's room, too. The thought of the name was like being stabbed by a pillow: a sort of pressure that you thought would hurt, at first, but that just sort of existed without really accomplishing anything. Maybe he was just too numb.
He could hear his brothers talking to the Blind Master in the kitchen. He listened in for Tommy and Misao, but they weren't there yet. He got up and went back to Ayame's side. She'd been wrapped up, ready for immolation. The pang hurt more this time, and he pictured a pillow with a brick tucked inside it.
He closed his eyes, bent his head down and clapped his hands. "Good morning dear," he said. "I miss you."
He sighed and turned around to go join his brothers, blood and otherwise, in the kitchen; he wanted company. They all greeted him and presented condolences. The Soft Master hugged him and so did the Hard Master. That was a bit of a shock and normally, would have elicited quite a bit of teasing. This time, however, nobody commented.
The Fearless Master sat down and almost by magic, a bowl of rice and a cup of his favorite tea appeared in front of him, quickly followed by a bowl of miso soup and a plate with rolled omelette and dried seaweed. He recognized the Soft Master's cooking, but it would have been an easy guess anyway: the Hard Master would have been more likely to serve him some kind of whole grains and the Blind Master, take out.
He took a spoonful of soup, discovered he was starving, and worked his way through the breakfast in no time flat before he bothered to make eye contact with anyone again.
The Hard Master cleared his throat as soon as his younger brother looked up from his empty breakfast dishes, commanding the attention of everyone around.
"I would like you to come ba…" he started.
"Of course I'm coming back home," the Fearless Master interrupted. "I'm not leaving Tommy alone with myself."
The Hard Master nodded, relieved. It was the only sensible decision, but that was never a guarantee it'd be the one his youngest brother would make.
"Are you going to tell me off for last night?" the Insane Master asked. His voice was flat and low, devoid of any real defiance. "Tell me revenge is useless, that I shouldn't have gone alone, that I almost made Tommy lose his father too?"
The Hard Master shook his head.
"If you had only been after justice, going after the Lions alone would have been incredibly stupid," he said, "but I'm told that was not your only goal. Ayame did always like the grandiose..." he sighed. Truth be told, he had serious doubts on any sort of continued existence after death and therefore, on the ability of dead people to appreciate anything the living did. "She would have loved it," he settled for saying.
The Fearless Master snorted and for a brief moment, he was almost smiling. "Of course she liked it," he said. "I was magnificent." He paused. "The pillows are really stabby today."
Both the Soft Master and the Hard Master had long since perfected a glance they shared that basically meant 'don't ask' and they both gave it to one another then. They were here to support their brother, not to futilely try and make sense of him.
Fifteen Years Later
The Arashikage compound
The Insane Master noiselessly slipped back inside the house he shared with his son, doing his best not to wake up the teenager. It was nearly six, which meant Tommy had to get up soon anyway, but trying to be unnoticed even by the boy's incredible ears was good practice and training himself to wake up at the slightest noise from an intruder was good for Tommy.
He bit his lip when some cat meowed outside, and automatically froze. He went into a partial version of the Phoenix Trance, slowing his breathing and pulse, and waited. Tommy's pulse changed; the cat had woken him up. It was now a matter of whether or not he'd noticed his father was back home before drifting back to sleep.
"'Morning Dad," the young Shinobi called out sleepily. He yawned and the Fearless Master heard him getting out of bed. "Mind if I join you?"
The older man relaxed and chuckled. "Not at all. I'm telling your mom you're cheating and paying off spies, though."
Tommy emerged from his bedroom grinning. "Is it my fault some local strays have taken to like hanging out near the house in the morning?"
The Insane Master ignored him, turning to the altar. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, and clapped his hands once. "Good morning dear. I miss you." He paused for one moment before he continued. "Sorry I was boring tonight. I hate it when I have to guard something and not a single soul shows up to try and steal it. I hope you found something more interesting to watch. Tommy is doing well. He's been feeding cats to use them as an alarm system to warn him when I get home, and he thinks I haven't noticed. Say good morning, Boy."
The younger ninja's pulse had quickened, but to his credit, he hardly looked shocked at all at the fact he was busted. He bowed his head, eyes closed, and clapped his hands just like his father. "Good morning, Mom. Using cats to make Dad feel better about being incapable of coming home without waking me up worked like a charm. We're both doing well, so please don't worry."
The Fearless Master chuckled at the obvious lie and picked up the dagger that lay next to the picture of Ayame. "Do you want a turn?" he asked.
Tommy snorted. "No, thank you. You're the one with the grudge."
The Fearless Master shrugged and viciously stabbed the decorative pillow located under the altar. It would soon be time to get a new one: pillows didn't last forever when you stabbed them every morning.
Fin