Author's Note: Third set of ficlets. This one is very, very ninja-centric, with one throwaway piece on a character who doesn't get nearly enough love—but with a name like the one the G.I. Joe writers gave him, it's sort of understandable.
The first ficlet in this chapter was inspired by my college work. I'm currently studying Buddhist philosophy, and we were reading the encounter dialogues of a particular Zen master—IE, the stories about the various conversations he had with his students. Enlightened people in Zen encounter dialogues sometimes do bizarre things, and when I read one where a master cracked a student upside the head with a staff . . . God help me, I thought of Storm Shadow. I started wondering about how the various things that go on in Pit training sessions would look as encounter dialogues and koans.
This bit is meant as an affectionate parody; it's not intended to be disparaging to Buddhists or the Zen tradition. Frankly, I just love mocking the kind of pompous academic writing you get in college-level classes, and it never ceases to amuse me how analysis texts will read huge amounts of significance into the tiniest details. Plus, the idea of a Zen tradition being based around the Arashikage was irresistible. Please understand that I'm not trying to offend anyone.
"No humans allowed" was a stab (so to speak) at the psychology of the early Snake-Eyes. He wasn't born as a commando, after all, but the fairly idyllic upbringing he seems to have had contrasts sharply with his Withdrawn Badass persona in Vietnam. Also, I liked the idea of Tommy giving him the nickname that we all know him by.
"Swiss Army ninja": because being useful isn't always a good thing. And because I love to mess with Kamakura.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: G.I. Joe and all associated characters and concepts are property of Hasbro Inc, and I derive no profit from this. Please accept this in the spirit with which it is offered—as a work of respect and love, not an attempt to claim ownership or earn money from this intellectual property.
That word does not mean what you think it means
An excerpt from The Shadow of the Storm: The Encounter Dialogues of the 20th-Century Arashikage Masters and their Context within the Modern Zen Tradition, by J.F. Wright. Published June 2856.
. . . however, the problem remains that these were not dialogues intended for public consumption. As with many of the ancient sutras, the so-called Pit Dialogues have been pieced together from stories passed down by members of the Arashikage Zen tradition, an extremely secretive sect. (Since the late twentieth-century Masters of the tradition were not recognized as buddhas within their own lifetimes, the sect is very sensitive to criticism.) A few key parts of the Pit Dialogues were collected from the remaining diaries of the eponymous Phoenix Master, and these comprise the group known as the Hand-to-Hand Sutras—the texts followed by the Unbroken Line division of the Arashikage Zen school. These are the only proof of the Phoenix Master's existence: his fellow teacher, known to followers of the school as the Silent Master, does not appear within the historical record.
However, the Hand-to-Hand Sutras are also rife with confusing descriptions, and their vagueness is one of the main causes of religious schism within Arashikage Zen. In recording the diaries that would become the Hand-to-Hand Sutras, the Phoenix Master mixed accounts of daily life with musings and deep deconstructionist philosophy. Unlike the encounter dialogues of Ma-tsu or other famous Zen masters, the Phoenix Master therefore engages in conversation—and combat—with not just humans, but with animals (the most common being the 'rat who lives in the tunnel,' possibly some form of local pest), inanimate objects (a chip of flint, the rock which rolls) and the land itself. Indeed, the land appears to be one of his most talkative opponents. Witness sutra #56 (translated from the 20th-century English by Dr. K.G. Ward):
When it came time again for hand-to-hand, the Phoenix Master was approached by the sandy beach. "Tell me this, o master," said the beach in a most disrespectful tone. "Why is it that you persist in the tormenting of me upon the course of many obstacles? Is it not enough for you that it is my wish that all warriors might survive again to fight another day?" (See note below.)
"Even the mighty beach must learn that it is fallible," replied the Phoenix Master. "For the beach is made of sand, and can be swept away by the storm."
"When we meet again amongst the obstacles, you will be forced to lever yourself many times against the ground," the beach warned.
(Note: The original text for sutra #56 has been lost. The Broken Line faction of the Arashikage Zen has a different version of this exchange in which the beach speaks in a barely coherent dialogue tentatively identified as late-twentieth-century Southern American; however, the Unbroken Line faction uses the version as excerpted above. The latter claim that to give the beach this accent is to stereotype it in the manner of the Americans of the day, some of whom associated the accent with unintelligence: an enlightened being such as the Phoenix Master would not do this kind of thing.)
After the Phoenix Master, the most common figure in the Hand-to-Hand Sutras is the Silent Master. Academics have contended for some years that the Silent Master is a metaphorical character, created by the Phoenix Master to symbolize the purity of the enlightened experience; however, the death imagery associated with the Silent Master (he is spoken of as having an inhumanly-scarred face) and his consistent appearance even in the earliest texts, including his apparent disagreement with the Phoenix Master in several sutras, leads adherents of the sect to claim that he was in fact a real person. The Arashikage Zen temple in Fresno, California even has enshrined an ancient Uzi semi-automatic which they claim belonged to the Silent Master himself.
True to his name, the Silent Master does not speak. He appears to have a female aspect or better half, the figure known as the Red-Colored Woman, who is constantly seen to engage in dialogue with him despite his silence. The Red-Colored Woman is considered one of the founding bodhisattvas of the Unbroken Line tradition, and is in some circles revered even more than the Silent or Phoenix Masters. Her adherents claim that, with her apparent ability to control the Silent Master without threats or violence, she embodies the union of both love and warrior spirit within all women. With the Silent Master, she appears gentle; with the Phoenix Master, less so. Consider sutra #117:
The Phoenix Master was then alone, meditating upon the world and all its many aspects, when the Red-Colored Woman sought him out. "Enlighten me, Phoenix Master," she said, disdaining all signs of respect or obeisance. "Why is it that, even though you were once at war with the Silent Master, you now embrace him as a brother? He has your marks upon his skin, where your knife has injured him many times."
"We were brothers before we were enemies. Now we were brothers again. It is not important. Can you not see that I am trying to meditate?" replied the Phoenix Master.
"I can see that you are trying to meditate, Phoenix Master," said the Red-Colored Woman. "This does not mean that I will respect your wish for meditation. How is it that any can be certain you will not be an enemy of the Silent Master again?"
In this questioning, the Phoenix Master was most disturbed. "I have sworn an oath," he said. "I love him as a brother, as you love him as a wife. Is this so difficult to understand, Red-Colored Woman?"
The Red-Colored Woman was not satisfied in this, but she went away again. Seeing that she had departed, the Phoenix Master was most relieved.
Sutra #117—more commonly known as the Injury of the Other Half Sutra—is considered crucial by both the Broken and Unbroken Line sects of the Arashikage Zen tradition. The Broken Line sect considers it indicative of the nature of man towards enlightenment; the Phoenix Master had apparently undergone some spiritual crisis, losing his enlightened self ("we were brothers before we were enemies") before regaining it. It also highlights the role of the Red-Colored Woman—the figure of female strength, a true defender of enlightenment, warning the Phoenix Master about losing his faith again. The Unbroken Line sect, which reveres the Phoenix Master as a true enlightened being, points to this sutra as a confirmation of the essential Zen belief that all material things are empty of self. The Phoenix Master's former enmity to a brother figure is immaterial, because it occurred within the empty cycle of death and rebirth (samsara).
Discussion questions:
1) Reread the excerpted sutras above. What do you think is the real nature of the Phoenix Master? Is he fallible or infallible?
2) The Red-Colored Woman is described as loving the Silent Master "as a wife." Can this be taken as an argument for the Silent Master's existence? Can the Red-Colored Woman be considered a disciple especially devoted to enlightenment?
3) Read the sutras on page 27-34 and consider the sandy beach. Why do you think the Phoenix Master chose this particular landscape feature for his philosophical discussions? Why do you think the beach is always angry?
There is a ninja on the roof (continuation from Old-fashioned ninja)
Snake-Eyes might not have had the Ear that Sees, but he could tell when his apprentices were still lurking about. He waited, not quite tense but listening hard, for a few moments after the window had been shut. Finally his shoulders relaxed, and he allowed himself to be pulled back down onto the rug with Scarlett.
"Don't run them too hard, huh?" Scarlett said quietly, laying her head on his shoulder. The ninja sighed a little and ran his fingers through her hair.
[They were just doing what I asked them to . . . following Tommy's orders.]
"But you're still annoyed," she added. Snake-Eyes nodded.
[It's ridiculous. What does Tommy think he's going to accomplish by sending my apprentices—or stray Ninja Force members—down here to harass me? It's not as if I take too much time off.]
Scarlett grinned a little wryly and planted a kiss on his cheek. Snake-Eyes wrapped an arm around her, sighing again as he looked down at her.
"That's true," she murmured. "You are a workaholic in some respects, Snake. But that's not what's bothering you, is it?"
[You know me too well.]
"It's in the Girlfriend Handbook. Subsection two, 'Managing Your New Ninja.'" A snort from Snake-Eyes, and Scarlett stifled a laugh at his almost mock-indignant expression.
[It's strange, Shana. But you know—I didn't have a brother, growing up. You've got, what, five?]
"Three."
[I could've sworn it was five. They make enough trouble for five.]
She smiled a little. "I think they're just annoyed that they can't beat you up. When Siobhan was old enough to start dating, they used to scare every boy that came to the house for her."
[Maybe they should have scared Siobhan,] Snake-Eyes signed shortly. It was no secret that he would never like Scarlett's older sister, and given the circumstances under which they'd all met, Scarlett wasn't going to force the issue. [But that's my point. My sister's idea of annoying me was having six or seven of her friends over and gossiping at ear-splitting volume. And we were twelve at the time. Tommy, on the other hand . . . ]
"Storm's a bastard," Scarlett said, but without any real malice. She nestled a little closer, and Snake-Eyes tightened his hold on her. "But Snake—you guys were in Vietnam by twenty. And God knows we've all seen our share of horror. Your face—" Her voice hitched a little, and Snake-Eyes knew she was remembering her role in the accident. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and she took a calming breath. "And how many times has Storm been brainwashed? I think he's mischievous because he's just happy to be alive and in his right mind."
[And that gives him license to interrupt our private time?] Snake-Eyes signed, but with less irritation this time.
"Or I could be wrong. Maybe he's trying to keep one of the senior masters of the Arashikage from being seduced by a woman of no clan at all."
Snake-Eyes couldn't help it: he laughed. [Because, yes, that's exactly what Tommy's worried about,] he signed when he could manage to breathe again. [Clan outsiders corrupting the Arashikage!]
"You always need to look out for those mischievous, traitorous gaijin," Scarlett teased. "I could be distracting you from your duties—acting as a corrupting influence-"
[God forbid.]
Fall-down kinda guy
When your real name is Tormod S. Skoog, your life is going to be interesting. The man now known as Tripwire could only chalk up his continued existence to luck, skill, and far more good karma than anybody who was still human could possibly have.
In ordinary life, he was a disaster waiting to happen. Two years in a Zen monastery had come to an abrupt end after young Novice Tormod managed to trip over nothing at all and dump an armful of expensive china dishes down a thirty-foot flight of stairs. Granted, he'd managed to keep from falling himself—but only by grabbing hold of a valuable tapestry, tearing a large strip out of it in the process. The fact that the abbot had been coming up those same stairs didn't help either. With no place else to go, Tormod had gone into the Army. Subsequently being rechristened Tripwire had been a blessing; anything to escape the terror of "PRIVATE SKOOG! FRONT AND CENTER!"
"Skoog." Family records stated that it had originally been Scheügowski, the kind of mixture you got when Polish and German families intermarried during an age of inconsistent bookkeeping, but when Grandpa Brzezslaw hit the beach at Ellis Island his descendants' fate had been sealed. An incompetent official had decided to shorten it for ease of spelling. Someday, Tripwire hoped that Cobra would invent a time machine, just so he could have the privilege of hijacking it and taking out decades of "Ha ha! Skoog!" on that same official.
Tripwire was one of the few Joes who had no problem talking to Psyche-Out, and the psychologist had theorized that Tripwire's clumsiness might be the result of all that taunting. Tripwire didn't quite believe that—Psyche-Out used the word "trauma," which to Tripwire was what you got when you didn't drop the grenade fast enough—but what the hell, he liked the headshrinker anyway.
But that was just part of the essential weirdness of his life. Clumsy with dishes and stairs, he was a surgeon with high explosives. He couldn't find peace in a Zen temple, but he'd never been happier than when surrounded by career soldiers who routinely shot their way through mine-infested battlefields. He'd much rather have Tripwire's life than Tormod Skoog's.
Provided, at least, that Cobra didn't kill him. Or Beach Head didn't kill him. Or the ninjas. Or, on one memorable occasion, Cover Girl. (He couldn't help it—she looked great in those workout shorts.) It rather said something about his existence that the explosives were the least deadly thing he dealt with.
No humans allowed
Tommy was no stranger to silence and death, but even he had to admit that right from the beginning, the quiet soldier had unnerved him. They had been placed together in the LRRP unit purely on the strength of their scores, which had surprised Tommy when he'd first heard who he was shipping out with; he'd gotten used to being considered insurpassable, even when he was holding back to avoid attracting too much attention, and the notion of some Midwestern hayseed being his close second surprised him.
When the six fresh men were all introduced to each other, the tall blond one didn't say anything. Tommy had known the routine by then—act friendly but not too friendly, get to know the rest of the guys he'd be stuck with for a long while, don't let them mark him as anything more than just another new kid. They didn't need to know that he'd gotten his record-breaking hand-to-hand scores by holding himself back, or that "Tommy from Fresno" was a member of a ninja clan who'd been sent to war as a method of tempering his enthusiasm. The others were Johnny, Dan, Will, and Carl, and none of them would last very long.
The last man just stood there, hands tucked into his pockets, hat pulled low over his eyes. He didn't seem particularly lunatic, but he wasn't nearly as outgoing as the others. He made the cautious Tommy look like a socialite.
He seemed to pretty much answer to "Hey, you," although the commanders used his real name. His voice—when he used it—was as bland as his appearance, a Midwestern accent with all the corners rubbed off. Since it made him sound like the announcers on news programs back Stateside, the group had collectively christened him Radio.
"Radio" seemed to be the only other member of the squad who wasn't overreacting to the whole situation. Four of the six either joked their way through their jobs—humor as a defense mechanism, something Tommy was all too familiar with by now—or overcompensated, certain that every bush could be hiding a VC or an IED. (Unlike many of the local camp followers, who were usually hiding a VD.) But Radio seemed oddly self-contained: he was there, he had a job to do, he was doing it. Half the time it was as if he didn't hear anything any of the others said.
Privately, Tommy thought he looked ridiculous—as white, blond and stoic as a recruiting poster for the Wehrmacht. Not quite human, maybe. But he was a good soldier, and Tommy found himself wondering what was going on in the guy's head.
They got to talking. Radio was from one of those states in the middle of the country. After assaying a few names and getting blank looks from Tommy, he'd generalized it as "the corn belt," something a lot easier to remember. He had parents and a twin sister back home; they hadn't been happy with him joining up, but he'd signed the papers at eighteen and didn't need parental permission. He never said why he joined, and for a while, Tommy thought he was just another rookie looking for the college tuition Uncle Sam could provide. After a few days, though, he sussed out the truth. Radio, God help him, was an idealist.
Granted, not the bleeding-heart type. But maybe all the corn and small-town America and God, Country, and Apple Pie had done something to his brain, because Radio seemed to think people were good. Tommy had killed his first man at the age of eleven, and as the Young Master, was privy to the kind of work the Arashikage Clan had sometimes done. He had no illusions. His squadmate, on the other hand, could pick a Vietcong off a branch ("used to shoot squirrels" was his only explanation for his bizarre skill with a rifle) neater than anything, but still seemed to think that the whole mess could be straightened out somehow. He didn't like torture. Shot to wound when he could. The man carried a picture of his sister, for crying out loud!
And after a firefight, or during those times when they emerged from the jungle to find a bloated body lying by a roadside, he'd get more quiet than ever. Pull that damn hat over his eyes, never say a word. Tommy knew what that meant. An idealistic small-town upbringing was fighting it out with the reality of the last days of the Vietnam War, and one side had to win.
In the years following, Tommy could clearly remember the moment when he realized the winner. Dan was dead, and Johnny was laid up in the treeline with not much of an arm left. The four remaining men were creeping through the tall grass towards the edge of the clearing, trying not to make a sound and keep clear of the VC patrol that was less than a hundred yards away. Ambush—not even a big, frightening ambush like the one that would almost do for Wade Collins in the coming year, but the kind of inevitable skirmish that LRRPs were always risking.
Carl, in the lead, gave the signal to freeze. The rest of the men did so, ducking and flattening themselves against the ground as best they could. Their breathing sounded ridiculously loud in Tommy's ears. Despite years of ninja training, his heart rate was through the roof. The enemy soldiers were practically on top of them. How could they not hear the racket? He glanced back, stifling the urge to forcibly shut his squadmates up, and spotted Radio.
He didn't look like a Wehrmacht poster any more. Like the rest of them, he had dulled his skin with mixed smears of camouflage paint and mud. The hair was hidden under his bush hat. Just the eyes were left, and they stared out of the darkness at Tommy, gleaming like chips of ice.
You can be raised by a good, loving family, who try to teach you to be the best person you can be. You can have a twin sister that adores you. You can believe what you were raised to believe: that people are good, that transgressions can be forgiven. But after a certain point, all that goodness starts sloughing off. Vietnam . . .
The Phoenix Master of the Arashikage would always be a survivor. By the time he reached age thirty-five, he would have suffered through torture, clung to sanity despite brainwashing and betrayal, fought against the alien memories that invaded his brain when a mad scientist used him as part of a freakish genetic experiment. But he would still remember Vietnam, and he would still have nightmares that he was back in that dank jungle. If it did that to a scion of a ninja clan, what chance did the small-town kid have?
They looked like snake's eyes. Cold, glassy, fixed.
It would be a long time before Tommy saw them any other way. And the memory of those snake's eyes made him, as he was dragging the crazy squirming redhead through Destro's castle, stop to have a look at her. He got a nasty bite for his pains, true. But in a way, it was worth it.
You don't leave a man behind. And if that loony Red could drag his sword brother out of Vietnam, then more power to her.
Swiss Army ninja
Throwing spikes, whip chain, shuriken, poisons, spare clips, sharpening kit for his swords . . . Kamakura was loaded for bear. Gearing up for a mission meant being prepared for practically anything. A fully-stocked ninja would never be caught weaponless (though he could be in danger of drowning) and Kamakura, the apprentice of a legend, wouldn't disgrace his sensei by going unarmed in any situation.
"It makes you look like a bad Hong Kong action flick."
"Heather . . . "
"I'm not saying that's a huge problem. But you should know that. Especially if you walk around in public like that. And is that a fishnet sleeve? Seriously?"
Unfortunately, going armed wasn't a good thing. Especially if you wanted to kill your sister.
Heather Collins, formerly Heather Broca, was the sister of Kamakura—Sean Collins, when he was at home. She had offered to help him unpack his duffel when he had arrived at their mother's house, which in retrospect was a mistake; she had swiped his Halloween candy when he was eight, and while age had somewhat matured her, she still had an all-consuming need to pry into her brother's belongings. She had found, tucked into the lining of the duffel, a small photograph of Ninja Force. Now Kamakura was paying for it.
"They're perfectly nice people," Mom said warningly, pushing the refrigerator closed with a final-sounding thud. "If it wasn't for Sgt. Snake-Eyes and Sgt. Stalker, we wouldn't have been able to get away from Cobra when you two were kids."
"Mom, I said it wasn't a bad thing." Heather eyed the photograph, turning it sideways as she examined it. There they all were—sensei and the Phoenix Master, looking as proud as people could through heavy masks; Sgt. Scarlett, technically not a ninja but almost as good as any of them, standing with her arms crossed and a grin on her face; Kamakura himself in the front row with Jinx and Tiger Claw, the latter of whom was fulfilling the traditional apprentice role by being photographed in the middle of a yawn; and off to the side, T'jbang, who seemed totally unconcerned with the fact that he was the only one wearing a bright yellow mask. If Kamakura didn't know better, he'd think his sister was giving T'jbang a second look. "But I can't help it. There's no good way to say 'my brother's a ninja,' you know?"
"Ninja apprentice," Kamakura corrected automatically. "Technically speaking, only sensei, Storm Shadow, and Jinx are real ninja."
"Your social circle sounds like a Dungeons and Dragons group, little brother," Heather said affectionately. She sat down at the kitchen table and slid the photograph across to him. "I've been meaning to ask, by the way: is there some kind of ninja code about the use of your abilities for good or something?"
Kamakura eyed his mother. Mrs. Collins sighed a little, put down the bowl she'd been mixing bread dough in, and shook her head.
" . . . technically no," Kamakura said cautiously, turning back to his sister. "But if sensei thinks I've acted inappropriately, I'll be murdered in the name of improving my training." Heather's eyes widened. "Not literally. What's wrong?"
"There's this guy who works at my office. He started out really nice, and we went on dates a few times, but now he won't stop calling me. I tried ignoring him, but he won't get the hint. I think he's been going through my mail . . ."
Kamakura looked at his mother again. She was rubbing her forehead as if there was a headache growing there, and for a moment, Kamakura thought he understood the feeling.
"All right, he has been acting a little pushy," Mrs. Collins said. "But Heather, if you want to break up with Luke, you need to tell him. Siccing your ninja brother on him is not the best way to go about it. My generation had this little thing called a 'Dear John' letter."
Heather grinned. "But what's the point of having a ninja in the family if you can't use it?"
"To help you break up with a guy?" Kamakura said wearily. "Heather, the only kind of techniques I know are less 'break up' and more 'break into small pieces, preferably with maximum tissue damage.' And believe me, if there's such a thing as bringing your work home with you, that's it."
"Oh, come on, Sean. I just wanted you to scare him a little."
"Fine. I'd scare him. And then sensei would beat me into the ground for abusing civilians. And then General Hawk would beat me into the ground for possibly endangering the secrecy of the team. Then, if I was lucky enough to not get beat into the ground by Storm Shadow for being an idiot, Jinx and Scarlett would beat me into the ground for helping you do something that annoys the hell out of women who have the guts to just break up with their boyfriends themselves instead of getting a guy to help them do it." He rested his head on his hands. "So really . . . seeing as how I like my internal organs where they are . . . I'm sorry, Heather. Can't help you."
She sighed. "You know, Sean, you'd be a lot more fun if you acted like one of those bad Hong Kong flicks too. Would it get you vengeful if I told you he got drunk and kissed the secretary at the last office Christmas party?"
"No. No, it wouldn't."
"You're no fun."
"Sensei had the right idea. Maybe I should hide out in the end of nowhere too. Antarctica sounds nice."
Heather's brow wrinkled. "What?"
"Nothing."
