One with Nothing

Author's Note: Another Jhoira/Emmara/Ludevic situation? Here's me trying to fill in the gaps between Nashi's lore and his card. Enjoy the story and R&R.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.

Summary:

Acting out because of Tamiyo's abduction, a struggling Nashi is pulled back from a life of crime by the Turtle Teenager Ninja Mutants and their master.


Regardless of his tech savviness and residence above the clouds, Nashi was a nezumi, and would always be viewed by a disproportionate population of Kamigawa as such. A rat from the swamps, looked at with suspicion. Someone you didn't turn your back to, for fear he might have an energy blade concealed on his less-than-a-person person.

Since Tamiyo and Genku adopted him, he was a much happier and curious pup. But recent events showed him he was a conduit for tragedy all the same.

Tamiyo had been taken. His wise and nurturing, protective and unflappable mother, kidnapped and taken someplace he couldn't reach! A separate plane, like the worlds Tamiyo told him about in her stories. The infinite number of locales within the Multiverse only an exceptional few could see for themselves.

He wanted to find her. He told himself and Kaito he would, despite the distance. Despite the frustrating fact he didn't have Tamiyo or Kaito's unique power to "walk behind the air."

The name "Nashi" has an interesting history. In Kamigawan tongue, it means "pear," yet it is also a word meaning "nothing." As in "one with nothing," Nashi's present feeling toward his family's woeful reversal of sands.

Though he still had his adoptive siblings and father, with Tamiyo gone, Nashi felt a hole in his heart that cried out to be repaired.

Tamiyo wasn't here to tell him stories anymore, and he treated it as a fault of his own she hadn't returned.

If only he'd been older, smarter, and stronger, perhaps he could've gone along with her and Kaito to Towashi to assist in shutting down Tezzeret's Undercity op.

But what could a runt do before a planeswalker with literal worlds of experience? A mage who'd mastered the very artifice Nashi excelled at, and sharpened it into a weapon he used to stab his enemies?

Honoured kami, what did the monster have planned for Tamiyo? A fate worse than death?

Nashi didn't want to think about it.

Nashi wasn't old, smart, or strong enough, and in that believed vacuum of wisdom and competence, he explored the back alley avenues of his discriminated-against race.

Throwing on a neon graffiti jacket, the Moon Sage's scion worked his way into Kamigawa's legendary band of street thugs. All to better understand the mind of a criminal and acquire the necessary talents he hoped would one day be useful toward bringing Tamiyo home. At least, that was the idea. Really, he was a kid after the freedom to scream after losing another parent.

The Okiba Reckoners were united by defiant pride in their outsider status. Like the Asari Uprisers, they harboured no love for the Imperials.

The bankbuster Boss Greasefang ordered Nashi to hotwire for their heist got its limbs clipped in the bank's defence grid. The mech ran out of the bank, out of control, its driver forced to eject and escape atop the mobile emergency pod.

The cruisers on the "right" end of the law had trouble keeping up. The Okiba gang boasted the most advanced cyberbikes and the best riders of all the Reckoner gangs, save for Nashi, who understood a hoverbike's mechanical parts, but only began riding a hoverbike in a field setting recently.

While his tribe raced off through the night, the Imperial units chased the slower Nashi around long branches of highway. Eventually, they surrounded him and he skidded his bike sideways across the road, sliding to a halt with the branches of the ancient cedar Boseiju branching higher than any of the skyscrapers in the skyline behind him.

Next thing Nashi knew, a quartet of unusual fighters – green, shelled, five-fingered, with dishes of different coloured water on their heads – jumped onto his pursuers from the shadows. Each of them wielded a different weapon of choice, and absolutely wrecked the tech of the Court's machines.

"Follow us!" the eldest tech-wrecker (Blue) said, and Nashi followed them on his bike down a cramped collection of cloisters leading to the Undercity sewers.

"You are kappa, aren't ya?"

"That's right," Purple answered.

"We're the Turtle Teenager Ninja Mutants!" Orange introed.

"I heard kappa were extinct."

"You heard wrong!" Red reacted dismissively.

The four guided Nashi to their lair – an arch-filled area beneath Towashi – to meet their father.

Nashi expected a kappa. Instead, he was greeted by the bearded face of a cane-carrying rat sitting on a rotting piece of driftwood from the bark of a cherry tree. A rat wearing armour akin to Kaito's, with a katana lashed to his waist with pull rope.

"This is our father, Master Silver-Fur."

"Who have you brought to me today, my sons?"

"A member of the Okiba Reckoners."

"Not with that lousy piloting!" Red snarked.

"I sense a great struggle in this one. What is your name, child?"

"It's Nashi." He bowed like Tamiyo taught him. "Honour to you."

"Those manners definitely do not resemble the nezumi-bito of this city. Soratami influence? You're from Otawara?"

"I am…was."

"I see. You're adopted, then?"

"Yeah. Hadda big family."

"Something tells me you still do."

Nashi squirmed. The hole in his heart widened.

"As you can see, I myself have adopted these four kappa as my own."

Cool. Strays like him.

"What are you doing down here?"

"Kamigawa has pushed many aside. The kami pushed the mortals out of Jukai Forest. The nezumi were pushed to the fringes of society, where they may be hated guiltlessly."

The plane's prejudices were rooted deep. As far back in Kamigawa's past as Boseiju's roots.

"Ya good with that?" Nashi pointed at the old rat's sword.

"Are you willing to learn?"

"Gonna train me to be a ninja?"

"A more disciplined path than the path you're currently on. Would your family be proud of what you've been doing until now?"

Innocence and inaction wouldn't help locate Tamiyo.

"Nashi, do you know the significance of your name?"

"I'm a pear…no, I'm 'one with nothing.'"

"When nothing remains, everything is equally possible."

Did "everything" include finding his mother beyond the borders of Kamigawa?

"I will train you, Nashi. I only ask that you contact home. There are others who I am sure are concerned for you."

Yes.

He could do that.

Why else was Nashi researching, but to return to a home – his home – which included Tamiyo?