Ronbun Trails
Down in the sewers of Osaka, the turtles fidgeted and paced around in the living room of their home. It hadn't been long since the city got infested by mutated mosquitoes and left a mess for the guys to clean up. But without any leads on how to find these bugs, it was unanimously decided that it was better to start off small.
"Okay guys," Hiro rounded the guys together, "As new heroes, we gotta find real trouble to take care of. What do we know?"
Basho, as usual, was preoccupied with scrolling through his phone. "Well, I know that it's much too early to be calling ourselves that…" He took a moment to give his brother a side glance, "…especially as we 'heroes' are the ones behind that mess anyway."
Hiro gulped. "Y-y-yeah! That's why we're trying to find stuff for…cleanup practice! Gotta get those cleaner-skills up, right?"
"Well, I think looking around town for problems to solve is an easy enough start," Mon chipped in. He happened to be doodling a new drawing on paper on the living room floor as he talked. "I think it'd be fun to get another real adventure too!"
"Yeah, that's the spirit!" Hiro smiled. He lightly smacked a fist into an open palm. "Okay. We better get to it then. First step, we go out into the city and look for those mosquitoes. Next step, we check if those mosquitoes stung and mutated anyone yet. Step number 3, we fight down anyone who is mutated, snatch one of those mosquitoes for Basho to study, then make a cure along with some other stuff."
Hiro's three younger brothers blinked wordlessly. "How about we just stick with regular local trouble?" Hoku spoke up. "You know, the whole 'hometown neighborhood hero starting off small'-thing you mentioned earlier?"
Hiro paused. While he wanted to get right to the mosquito problem now, he had no idea how to go about locating it, let alone solving it. The bugs were small and spread out, not to mention that there was so much ground to cover. Osaka may not be as big as the capital city, but it was still big enough to get lost in. And he was expecting for those bugs to have mutated at least a few people already, so what else could he do? "Okay then," he conceded, "Where do we start looking for little town troubles?"
"The first and foremost source, my fellows," Basho interjected, holding up a tablet for everyone else to see, "the Internet." The other three brothers gathered around him while he got right to pulling up pages of several news websites. They all gave their input as they scrolled down article after article.
So far, it was a steady stream of 'no's' and 'too something's' as the list steadily got shorter and narrowed down, with even the occasional joking jabs at some of the most ridiculously trivial. Very soon, they were out of incidents to choose. It was even the same with several other news websites, much to their chagrin.
"On, saya!" Hiro complained. "Not a single one of these real town troubles look troubling enough to deal with!" He was practically rubbing his noggin sore.
"Told you real life is boring," said a deadpanned Basho who went back to checking his phone for updates.
Hoku, however, wasn't so nihilistic. "No need to sweat it. If you can't find adventures in the real, check for them in the unreal."
Hearing such a confusingly cryptic statement made the snapping turtle perk his head up. "Huh? What's that mean?"
"Hoku, we're supposed to be looking for 'real' problems to fix," Basho reminded his younger brother, "not make up more problems for everyone else."
"Noooo," Hoku dismissively refuted while taking out his own phone, "I mean, why don't we check out this website?" He held up his phone that was displaying a webpage for his brothers to see. Said webpage was host to a list of rumors and urban legends documented across Japan, uploaded from all kinds of sources. "I think here's where we found our goldmine."
Everyone carefully examined what Hoku presented on his phone. "M-hmm," Hiro slowly nodded, "and how are a bunch of high school tall tales gonna get us started on hero work?"
"Yuu teru dake ~e," Hoku shrugged his shoulders, "If you're not up to solving real life problems, this can't be any worse." Without giving his big brother time to object, he went right to scrolling through the list shown on the website to look for ones happening in Osaka. After a bit of time, he stopped, keeping a finger placed on one entry in particular. "This one looks promising."
The guys gathered around to read the entry:
From what could be understood from it, there is a rumor going around about a gang of ninjas skittering about in Nishinari ward, committing burglaries against small bookstores and donation centers involving books, additionally causing headaches for the ward's local yakuza groups. By the time the guys were reading the article, those ninjas had already stolen from almost every small business in the ward in just five nights, and it's said that they are doing this at such a breakneck speed that's proven humanly impossible.
"Sounds freaky," Hiro commented, now intrigued. "But are we sure we wanna be running around the streets looking for fairy tale stuff? I'm not a fan of tuckering myself out over nothing."
"Look, would you rather keep arguing about what small-time mischief to bust all night or just do something that at least sounds fun?" Hoku reasoned. Hiro thought about it quietly.
"Please?" Mon hopped while begging with his hands on Hiro's shoulder.
"Well, if my selections aren't good enough for the average hyperactive sensibilities, let's have a night out then," Basho sighed.
Hiro thought long and hard and eventually came to a decision…
"Here they come, guys! Let's jump 'em!"
Hidden in the shadows on a rooftop in Nishinari ward's Senbon-Kita area, the guys carefully waited for the right moment when their targets would walk right into their trap. It was a rough start, but they were sure their team coordination was a lot better this time.
Initially, they had first located those very ninjas in Nishinari ward's Senbon-Minami area, quietly reacting with awe at the fact that this rumor turned out to be true. Hoku certainly felt more confident at the validation of the website he chose and recommended.
"Well? What'd I say about this?" Hoku bragged to Basho next to him, a grin on his face and his eye ridges wiggling.
"Okay, so the confirmation or deniability of a rumor has some credence, but it was still a fifty-fifty anyway!" Basho rolled his own eyes. His only response from Hoku was a hand lifted to him with fingers rubbing themselves, asking him for his fifty.
As the team leader, Hiro directed the others to sneak up on the rogue ninjas and ambush them in the middle of their current latest theft, positioning themselves between two buildings to get the drop on them. Apart from the ones clad in body-covering garb, there were two members who stood out among the rest. One was of average height and had a lean build while the other was a head taller and appeared incredibly muscular, hulking even. Other than those details, they shared similar traits like being shirtless, baldheaded, wearing only baggy magenta pants, and had a footprint-like tattoo on their faces culminating in literal flames atop their scalps. Some of the guys couldn't help but point out these unusual features, however comically they expressed their curiosity.
After a bit of waiting, the turtles did try and get the drop on these ninjas, but it was more like they just dropped clumsily to the concrete below. Even before the mysterious thieving ninjas took off from the alert, the turtles were in too much of a tangled mess to even start fighting. The realization of the gravity of their failure sank in once they got back on their feet.
Fortunately, Hoku was the optimistic one that night, taking a moment to cheer up his brothers and remind them of the other ways they were still better at when it came to being their own ninja selves. Granted, the three didn't regain their chipper mood right away, but it didn't keep Hoku from devising a plan of his own in the absence of Hiro's planning. After some time and a great deal of salami later, the guys managed to set up a makeshift store made of pieces of cardboard and an empty alleyway. All that was left to do now was wait.
As they hid and waited, their senses were alerted to the sound of footsteps approaching. The 'door' of their cardboard storefront wall opened, revealing a familiar person they knew very well.
"Hi," the girl greeted the guys, "I'm here to apply for…" She blinked. The guys blinked.
"Uzuki!?" all four of the turtles exclaimed.
Uzuki smiled, letting out a sigh of surprise and put her hands on her hips. "Of course, it had to be you guys! I had a nagging question about who does hiring sessions after dark." The guys had nothing to say in their defense, opting just to confirm her affirmation with toothy grins and tiny handwaves.
In a moment of serendipity, everyone was now alerted to the sounds of more footsteps approaching. The guys immediately got to cover behind their hiding places, with the exception of Uzuki who still stood in the open. At the very least, Mon took a moment to fill her in with just part of him poking out of his hiding place.
"Uzuki, you're hired," he said to her while handing her a little slip of paper detailing some hand-scrawled notes. "Here are the instructions. Just follow the greeting and remember that the customer's always right." Without further waiting for Uzuki to ask him any questions, he ducked back into his hiding spot. Uzuki nervously stood as she watched herself being approached by a couple of unconventionally looking customers.
"O bandesu, 'Hokū no Antīku-Magajīn' e yau koso," Uzuki greeted the two men who slowly walked towards her as she tried to carefully read Mon's little script, the difficulty compounded only by Mon's rather chicken-scratched handwriting, "koko de ~eha, saishin-no-goshippu o hanbai shi, kasutamu-no-goshippu-komisshon o insatsu suru wa…MMMPHHMMPH!"
"What!?" Mon whispered with a screech, "That's not what I put in the script! What does 'MMMPHHMMPH' even mean?" By the time all four brothers decided to spring their ambush now, the perps were gone and so was all their salami, with Uzuki lying on the cement ground of the alley, tied up to the max. He looked through the window of their cardboard storefront to see their targets driving off. "They're getting away!"
Seeing the baddies they were supposed to nab get away yet again would have put another greater dent in their confidence, but this time, it was Basho's turn to save everyone's morale. "No worries, everyone. Thanks to my own genius intuition, I installed a tracking device in the stuff they stole." He pressed a button on the high-tech brace on his forearm to activate said tracker, which began blinking and beeping inside Hiro's gut – Hiro didn't look sorry in the slightest for taking bites out of the salami earlier. "Luckily, I put another tracker in another package we made," Basho salvaged, reconfiguring his gadgets to track that one. With an exchanging of nods, the guys moved out to follow where the perps were going.
"Hey guys! You mind getting me out of this bind first?" Uzuki called. The guys went right back.
After quite a bit of time following Basho's tracker, the gang eventually wound up in Taisho ward, having finally chased down the bad guys to a harbor-front in the Itchōme area of Kobayashi-Nishi. Just from poking their heads around the corner of an empty coffee shack, they could make out more of the dark-garbed ninjas moving some boxes of stuff into an empty warehouse.
"I wonder what they're hoarding all this stuff for?" Uzuki whispered.
"Well, with their masked looks, you'd think they're hunkering down for something," Hoku quietly suggested.
"Oh yeah, 'hunkering down', Hoku?" Basho jibed, "You would think that's the case, or rather, you know it."
The way Basho suggested it made Hoku get on the defensive. "Hey! That's just as much a normal mutant thing as it is a human one!"
Uzuki felt the need to butt in. "As the only human here, I can tell you I support that." Her statement was not only replied to with a smug smile from Hoku but also a hyper-enthusiastic nod from Mon too.
"Okay guys, here's our window," Hiro whispered. The five waited until the ninjas lifting things had their backs turned to the group, then hopped from one stacked pile of boxes to the next until they got close enough to the warehouse's front opening. Creeping around the corner to the box pile they hid behind, they could make out the two from before, apparently the leaders, doing something inside the warehouse, judging by what they saw from the shadows on the dimly lit walls. On Hiro's mark, everyone moved forward, and they would have gotten into the warehouse without a fuss if it weren't for Hiro accidentally bumping into a crate. The crate jostled but didn't fall. However, it did cause a ninja standing on top of it to fall over, right in front of the group.
The group had to act fast to prevent being discovered, mainly by grabbing the downed ninja and trying to knock him out. Once that was dealt with, the group then finally made their way inside. They immediately jumped up to the rafters of the warehouse in order to spy on what the two weirdos down below were doing without being seen. Looking down directly upon the pair, they saw what they were doing.
The two guys appeared to be sifting through a bunch of papers, a good number of them being books and even interspersed with a few scrolls in between. They looked like they were rather deep in whatever they were reading. Even though it was a little risky for their stealth, the guys couldn't help giggle at how petty these thieves turned out to be.
"Really?" Mon tried to stay quiet, "We got a gang of ninjas stealing books just for reading?"
"Okay team, we finally got 'em cornered," Hiro got back on track, "now let's nab 'em for good this time!" On his mark, the five leapt right of the rafters and touched down on the warehouse floor, standing right behind the two flaming baldheads.
"Hold it right there, book-snatching flame-heads!" Hiro called out on his signature confrontation language, prompting the two baddies to turn around, "You've been robbing our beloved writers and bookworms blind long enough!"
"Yeah, what he said!" Hoku added. "It's five against two, Mr. Skinny and…Mr. Unusually-Wide-Bodybuilder…so why don't you just 'paper-cut' your losses while you're still standing?" Hearing what he said, Hiro simply stared at him, Uzuki and Mon facepalmed, and Basho lightly bonked his head against his own staff.
The two guys were at least gracious enough to not comment on the pun. "You!" the big guy fired back in a low ape-like voice, "I'm going to fold you into knots!"
"Ooohh, that sounds inspired," his smaller and thinner partner praised him in a voice that sounded faint and raspy. He turned to look at the gang with a raised pointed finger, "We're both going to fold you into knots!" He watched as his larger partner then blew through a finger and a thumb to let out a loud high-pitched whistle, instantly prompting the gang to turn and look in all directions as they were instantly surrounded by the fully-dressed ninjas approaching them from outside.
"This is it, guys!" Uzuki said, readying a pipe in her hand, "Let's get hero-ing!"
All the five kids scattered, going after a few of these ninjas on their own. They mostly jumped and threw his with their weapons, knocking the ninjas away at best, but the ninjas didn't quite seem to let up in return. In fact, they looked like they were trying to land harder hits to the point of sizeable injury.
"Okay, that's it!" Hiro growled, poising his Tonfas, "Rafu ni purē shitai nen ka? Honma no rafu ninja o o mise suru wa!" Clenching a fist around one of his blunt wooden weapons, he charged and with a Tonfa raised high, threw a red-glowing punch right into one ninja's guy. He expected the ninja to fall to the ground and roll a bit before keeling over, but to his shock, the ninja suddenly burst into little pieces of thin scraps that drifted in the air.
"Hiro, did you just…" Mon gasped. Hiro felt a little mortified too, unable to stop himself from swiping away at some of those particles drifting down onto his face. But he fortunately calmed down once he recognized the taste and texture.
"Guys!" he notified the others. "It's just confetti! They're completely harmless!" He saw as his brothers and Uzuki had a double-take, then striking harder at the enemy ninjas, making them explode into confetti as well. In all honesty, they all seemed to feel better about what they were doing now. After several minutes of running, jumping, and seizing every opening to land their hardest hits, every ninja was reduced to fluttering bits of paper, boosting the turtles' confidence greatly.
Hiro turned his attention back to the now-lone pair of baddies. "Alright, clowns! You're out of play-cronies now! And if you don't wanna have a couple extra feet on your faces, you better tell us what you're doing with those books!"
The two guys said nothing, but grins slowly crept on their faces as they looked at each other. "Korera no henjin ni betsu no dageki o ataetai dekka?" the skinny raspy guy said first.
The bigger man gestured politely, "Tokuina ko tte o karera ni misete miya. All those books tell us nothing anyway."
The skinny man reached over and grabbed a page from a nearby open book, tearing it off while ignoring the gang's indignant gasps. With a fiddle of his fingers, he folded the page until it stood in his hand as a sort of miniature humanoid figurine, a product of origami.
"You're going at us with arts and crafts?" Mon loudly asked in confusion. Everyone else said nothing but mirrored his confusion.
The skinny man said nothing but maintained his devilish grin. With a little heave, he flung the little origami figure at the group, which inexplicably engulfed itself in a puff of colorfully-lot smoke. Without giving time for the smoke to fully clear, a ninja leapt out of the cloud, a new one that looked exactly like the ones the gang had just fought and dispatched a minute ago. While the newly created ninja, apparently made from a piece of paper, dashed at the group and proceeded to fight, the skinny man used the distraction to take several more sheets of paper and do the exact same thing. In under a minute, the gang was back to where they started.
At the same time when this happened, everyone was a little taken aback at the revelation that none of the ninjas they fought were real, that the two flaming baldheads were working alone the whole time.
"Have these guys been made of paper the whole time?" Hiro was able to utter before he got a roundhouse kick to the face by another new paper ninja.
"Let's just fight these guys first and save the curious amazement for later!" Basho loudly reminded Hiro and the others while fending off a few more with his staff.
Even with their lack of hesitation in shredding these goons, they just didn't seem to be in short supply. "We're not gonna get anywhere at this rate!" Uzuki let everyone know as she observed more paper ninjas replacing the ones she just bludgeoned to pieces with her pipe. "We gotta take out the source!"
"I'm on it!" Hoku responded first. He readied his Odachi and sprinted at the two bad guys fast enough in the hopes they wouldn't have enough time to make and throw more paper ninjas at him. Once he got close enough, he took a swing, but the big muscleman blocked the slider's strike with a weapon of his own. Hoku grunted a bit as he struggled against the guy's rather strong pushback. "Jibun wa sugure toru tte omoude ka?" he tried to taunt.
"Hai, seya na," the hulking man answered bluntly. He shoved Hoku back with nary a breaking of sweat, prompting the turtle to try and counter him with a kick. But he didn't move fast enough, as the big man caught the turtle's foot in his hand and after grabbing his ankle, threw him into the tall book pile they had originally made behind him and his partner. Hoku fell and slid down on his shell, dazed.
"Hoku!" everyone else yelled. They would have immediately run over to Hoku to help him up, but they were too preoccupied with taking down the continuous waves of new batches of ninjas the two bad guys, particularly the slender baldhead, threw at them. It was a good thing that the gang were well-versed in being quick on their feet as they swatted away every ninja their way as quick as they could. But then, as they ran to Hoku, the two flaming baldheads had yet another trick up their sleeves.
With extra waves of his arms, the thin baldhead commanded hundreds of paper sheets to swirl around himself and his partner, the paper traveling together so fast in a vortex that they gathered and bunched up around one another. Every bit of paper joined together to form masses very similar to parts of a body, with even those masses joining each other to form a bigger and more familiar shape.
The gang actually stopped running to gaze up at the construct standing in front of them. Once the air in the warehouse had settled, they found themselves confronted by a giant-sized version of the paper ninjas they had been fighting, only differentiated by its size, musculature, and the textures of multiple sheets of paper all over its body instead of the solid garb. None of them could help letting out an audible gasp. Disregarding their reactions, the giant was commanded by its creator to lean down and grab Hoku, encircling the turtle in its hand and slowly squeezing him until he began crying out in pain. Seeing his distress made the rest of his pals try even harder to rescue him.
"Okay, that's it!" Hiro growled from seeing his brother being hurt by the two tools he saw in front of him. He turned to address the people on either side of him. "Time to start 'Operation Bro-Saver' on the double!" Basho, Mon, and Uzuki nodded in fierce agreement, feeling the exact same synergy at that moment. "Basho, Uzuki, you get that big waste of paper from the back. Mon and I'll take him up front!" There was no reason for anyone to argue this plan out.
Basho flew around using his jetpack to drift in the air, with Uzuki riding on top. They swooped behind the giant perfectly, going upwards in the direction of where Hoku was currently being held and squeezed. With a look through his specialized goggles, Basho pinpointed that Hoku was in the grip of the giant's left hand. Signaling silently to Uzuki, he watched the girl stand on her two feet atop his battle shell, holding her pipe while she tensed her leg muscles in a ready stance that meant she was going for a jump.
Hiro got ready to charge and throw a few punches while Mon was planning another kind of trick involving his Kusari-fundo. Readying the energy in his Tonfas, Hiro ran towards the giant and clacked his Tonfas together to give him more speed. Mon, as he ran, spun the chain of his Kusari-fundo and kept a close eye on the giant's legs. Hiro continually upped his speed with Tonfa-energy and with a charged punch, smashed through one of the giant's legs. Seizing the moment of seeing the giant stumble from Hiro's strike, Mon whipped his weapon's chain to wrap around the remaining leg and pulled, knocking that leg off balance. The giant fell to its knees and caught itself from falling further by placing its hands on the warehouse floor, disregarding Hoku who panicked from the sudden drop from his place in the giant's grip.
It wasn't very convenient for Basho and Uzuki, however. It so happened that at the same time Hiro and Mon disabled the giant's legs, Uzuki had just leapt off Basho's back in order to perform a dive save in Hoku's direction. She free-fell through the air, all four of her limbs spread out in all directions like a whole-body parachute suit – the kind that looks like a flying squirrel – and aimed for Hoku while giving her signature "UZUKI ONISHI"-battle cry…and she still went that way even when the giant lurched forward out of her field-of-view, with Hoku going along with it. Uzuki was a fortunate girl to have Basho swoop in and catch her at the first second of witnessing the critical change. But things only got worse when the skinny baldhead controlling the giant, and the giant by extension, noticed the two flying in the air. The giant was prompted to try and swat them out of the air.
Down on the ground, Mon and Hiro noticed the giant's attention currently on Uzuki and Basho above. With its eyes away from them, they thought of this as a good opportunity to get Hoku without interference.
"Mon, it's distracted! Go for Hoku!" Hiro directed.
They rapidly made their way to the incapacitated blue-masked turtle but were interrupted by streams of paper flying right by them, catching them by surprise. They both witnessed as the flaming baldheads manipulated the new batch of paper to form around the giant's severed legs, regenerating them completely, and moved in on the two turtles once it stood upright again.
"Massa ka!" Mon gasped. He and Hiro panicked when they had to weave around the giant's fists pounding onto the ground in an attempt to squish them.
At the same time, Basho had just finished readjusting himself after catching Uzuki from falling while just barely avoiding a swinging hand from the paper giant. "Thanks," Uzuki panted when she got back on, but her eyes widened at spotting something else. "Basho, ki yotta!"
But neither Basho or Uzuki had long to try and make another move as the giant's hand moved right back and smacked into them, sending them spinning out of control and nosediving back down onto the warehouse floor. The purple turtle and human girl groaned dizzily after impact, unable to prevent the giant from reaching down and grabbing them too, resulting in them being trapped in one hand and Hoku still in the other.
"Guys!" Hiro cried out as he saw his friend and genius brother trapped in the bad guys' clutches with Hoku. Hiro was definitely getting mad now. He turned to Mon. "Let's get 'em!" he growled to his littlest brother who couldn't agree more.
Mon spun his weapon again, this time opting to attack from a distance. For a new strategy, the orange-masked box turtle activated his weapon, setting it ablaze with cackling flame. Once he felt he was ready, he used the chain to grapple to the ceiling and propel himself into the air, then swinging his chain again to latch onto the giant's wrists to keep the paper behemoth from crushing his comrades further.
As for Hiro, he really got fired up from seeing the thin baldhead sadistically pound his fists together, causing the giant holding Hoku, Basho, and Uzuki in both its hands to do the same, bashing them against each other with the intent of inflicting pain. Without further hesitation, Hiro went into another charging sprint, his Tonfas aglow with red energy that encompassed his clenched fists. As he rapidly got closer, the hulking baldhead stepped in front of his smaller partner, his own arms raised and poised to catch the big snapping turtle the same way he did with Hoku. Hiro didn't have time to spend on the bigger goon, so he concentrated, during up as much of the red magic in his Tonfas as he could think of.
Without paying attention, Hiro's arms became enveloped in larger holographic versions of themselves, looking somewhat bigger but did not cover the entirety of the limbs, acting as hard light gauntlets. He caught the two guys by surprise, even going fast enough to catch them in his grasp and encircle them both in his own two magically generated enlarged hands. With an aggressive heave, Hiro spun the two baddies around and threw them into the wall in the other end of the warehouse. They both smashed into the wall with a metallic-ringing impact, putting an end to their control over the paper giant.
With the baldheads no longer in control of the giant, said giant stopped moving and shortly began teetering slowly until it fell over backwards right on top of the downed pair. It tumbled to the warehouse floor with a crash, instantly breaking apart and letting thousands of sheets of paper scatter across the building's interior, with even a good number of these sheets blowing through the front doors and upper windows. After a few seconds, all the paper settled and all of the warehouse inside was an ocean of paper, occasionally dotted with several hardcovers of books.
Everyone, both friend and foe, poked their heads out of the mess, making a few sheets fly in the process, just to catch a glimpse of each other. The baldheads in particular growled at the gang, prompting the big muscly one to grab a sheet of paper and fold it, imitating his smaller partner's origami technique. He would have gotten to throw another paper ninja at the guys too if it weren't for him realizing he made a paper swan instead.
The guys knew they shouldn't wait around for the flaming baldheads to finish up. "Mon! Use you weapon!" Hoku yelled to his little brother.
"On it!" Mon replied, activating his weapon's flaming mode and swung it upwards at the warehouse ceiling, activating the building's conveniently present sprinkler system. As intended, the sprinklers went off, showering the entire indoor space with water and drenching all the available paper.
Observing their supply rapidly melting into mush told the two baldheads that they drew the short straw tonight. "You may have beaten us for now," the larger baldhead growled, "but next time we meet, you will feel the agony of a thousand feet!"
His smaller partner turned to him. "I'd say you're on fire tonight," he rasped, "but everything's kinda all wet now, so…" With a shrug, he pulled out a slice of salami from when he and his partner robbed Hoku's fake bookstore and did the same origami technique on it. Once he threw it, it poofed and transformed into a ninja, but it seemed to stagger like a melting zombie.
The guys couldn't help but recoil at the sight, with most of them reacting with sounds of disgust.
"Ugh! That's nightmare fuel, man!" Mon dramatically remarked. Fortunately for them and the salami ninja itself, it collapsed into a pile of little salami slices.
"Okay. Apparently, using salami for making ninjas doesn't work," Basho commented, taking note of the futility in making ninjas out of meat slices.
The mood was fixed straight away with Hiro pointing at where the bad guys used to be. "Guys, look! They vanished!" Everyone looked the same direction and sure enough, the two baldheads were no longer in the warehouse.
"So, what are we looking at now?" Basho asked sensibly. Hiro paused, but then his gaze trailed to the pile of salami in front of him. Everyone else caught on to what he was thinking.
Hoku spoke up first. "Hiro, no. Akan. No!" he tried to say while Hiro inched over to the pile of unattended meat.
"No! Hiro, look at me! Ore o mite! Akan!" Basho seconded, trying to dissuade him with his diplomatic approach.
"Hiro, shiyan de ~ehoshiin'yakedo! Nani shiton nen ka nitsu o tte kangaete!" Uzuki tried begging, looking rather concerned about her friend's behavior.
None of their protesting seemed to dissuade Hiro for one second. Without taking even another second, he grabbed a handful of the salami and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing it up with a slobber. Everyone was automatically cringing and making sounds of disgust.
"Iya ya," Mon groaned from the sight, stifling a gag.
Hiro only finally noticed the others' reactions once he swallowed his mouthful. "What?" he objected. "At least I was still standing and not walking! Besides, five-second rule!" No one had anything to say.
"So, did we win?" Mon asked curiously.
"Well, let's think," Hoku cut in with a smile. "Did the bad guys get to do what they wanted with the books they stole? No. Did they keep their paper ninja army and make it grow bigger? No. Did they get to keep their supply of paper for their army? No. Were they otherwise thwarted and us unscathed? Yes! Hero mission accomplished, baby!"
Hearing that made the rest of the team especially happy, unable to help but do a party pounce together on him. For a little bit, they were play-wrestling in a curled-up ball of limbs and torsos amid the soggy piles of wet paper until they got tired out, but even after that, they still shared a few laughs. It was rough and it didn't get them closer to getting a headstart on the mosquito mess, but it was a start regardless.
Introducing another couple of staple characters. The footprints on their faces should be a dead giveaway!
Fun Facts:
Nishinari ward (西成区) is actually home to two yakuza groups (Yakuza, 'ヤクザ': Japanese mobs/mafia/gangsters) operating in Osaka. One is the "Sakaume-gumi" (酒梅組) and the other is the "Azuma-gumi" (東組).
Taisho ward (大正区) is known for the canals defining its physical features and gets its name from "Taisho Bridge", which was built during Japan's 'Taishō Period'. A fourth of its resident population hails from Okinawa.
Not just in Osaka, but anywhere in Japan, one doesn't walk and eat/drink/smoke at the same time. If you feel like snacking, having a drink, or taking a smoke, you wait/stand at the side and do your thing, then resume walking. Ditto for running, obviously. People might not stop you if you do, but they'll let you know in one way or another that it's frowned upon.
Osaka Dialect phrases:
On, saya (おん、さや): "Oh, come on!" | Standard: Ā, sā (ああ、さあ)
Yuu teru dake ~e (言うてるだけぇ): "I'm just saying" | Standard: Itteru dake (言ってるだけ)
O bandesu, "Hokū no Antīku-Magajīn" e yau koso (お晩です、「ホクーのアンティークマガジーン」へやうこそ): "Good evening. Welcome to Hoku's Antique Magazines." | Standard: Konbanwa, "Hokū no Antīku-Magajīn' e yōkoso (こんばんわ、「ホクーのアンティークマガジーン」へようこそ)
Koko de ~eha, saishin-no-goshippu o hanbai shi, kasutamu-no-goshippu-komisshon o insatsu suru wa (ここでぇは、最新のゴシップを販売し、カスタムのゴシップコミッションを印刷するわ): "Here, we sell the latest gossips and print custom gossip commissions." | Standard: Kokode wa, saishin-no-goshippu o hanbai shi, kasutamu-no-goshippu-komisshon o insatsu shimasu (ここでは、最新のゴシップを販売し、カスタムのゴシップコミッションを印刷します)
Rafu ni purē shitai nen ka? (ラフにプレーしたいねんか？): "You wanna play rough?" | Standard: Rafu ni purē shitaidesu ka? (ラフにプレーしたいですか？)
Honma no rafu ninja o o mise suru wa! (ほんまのラフ忍者をお見せするわ！): "I'll show you a real rough ninja!" | Standard: Hontō no rafu ninja o o mise shimasu! (本当のラフ忍者をお見せします！)
Korera no henjin ni betsu no dageki o ataetai dekka? (これらの変人に別の打撃を与えたいでっか？): "Wanna give these weirdos another beating?" | Standard: Korera no henjin ni betsu no dageki o ataetaidesu ka? (これらの変人に別の打撃を与えたいですか？)
Tokuina ko tte o karera ni misete miya (得意なこってを彼らにみせてみや): "Show them what you're good at" | Standard: Tokuina koto o karera ni misete yo (得意なことを彼らに見せてよ)
Massa ka (まっさか): "No way/You're kidding"
Jibun wa sugure toru tte omoude ka? (自分は優れとるって思うでか？): "You think you're that good?" | Standard: Omae wa sugurete iru to omoimasu ka? (お前は優れていると思いますか)
Hai, seya na (はい、せやな): "Yeah, that's right" | Standard: Hai, sōda na (はい、そうだな)
Ki yotta (来よった): "Incoming!" | Standard: Kita (来た)
Ore o mite (俺を見て): "Look at me"
Hiro, shiyan de ~ehoshiin'yakedo (ヒロ、しやんでぇほしいんやけど): "Hiro, please don't!" | Standard: Hiro, shinaide kudasai (ヒロ、しないでください)
Nani shiton nen ka nitsu o tte kangaete (何しとんねんかにつおって考えて): "Think about what you're doing" | Standard: Nani o shite iru ka ni tsuite kangaete (何をしているかについて考えて)
Iya ya (嫌や): "Gross/I hate it" | Standard: Iya da (嫌だ)