Chapter 27

I spend the rest of the day, the night and most of the following day scouring the streets, to no avail.

By then, I can't deny the obvious anymore: it's almost certain that by now, my apprentice is in custody of the Joes, which means I need to go get him back from the Pit. At least, with the amount of damage I intend to do there, I should be back in the Commander's good graces by the time Billy and I get back out.

I head back to the water tower first for a quick meal. I haven't eaten since lunch yesterday and I've been up all night – attacking the Pit like this would only serve to get myself captured as well and for both our sakes, I can't take that chance.

Approaching, I hear someone who is sadly not Billy already in there. Whoever it is sounds hauntingly familiar but I can't place him or her – my first thought is that Cobra tracked me down and someone was sent to approach me, but that seems unlikely: most troopers couldn't get paid enough to knock on my door at the base, there's no way they would have found one to ambush me in my hideout all by himself or herself.

I can approach this situation in several different ways. I could shoot the person through the wall on the assumption that it's an enemy, but that would be wasteful if it turns out to just be someone looking for shelter who stumbled on the place and downright damaging if it turns out to be someone from Cobra after all.

I could also crash in with my swords out and attack the person in a non-lethal way until I've assessed what they want. I can easily picture a homeless person seeking shelter having a heart attack if I did that, and a trooper would probably also react negatively. Given that I hardly need to have my weapons out already to take on any possible threat, I dismiss that option too.

This leaves me with the more gentle approach of just going in and confronting the intruder. I listen out to make sure the person doesn't move to attack, position myself so that I'll be able to throw back or at least dodge something thrown at me, and climb in.

The person waiting for me is sitting at the far end of the room in the lotus position, looking straight at me with an indecipherable expression. Despite the lack of actual threat, I instantly regret not having shot him through the wall: this man is part of the implanted memories as the 'uncle' who sentences me to death, which means he works for the Order and is probably here to help my enslavement along.

I take out my bow and shoot, aiming for his heart.

He catches the arrow with his right hand and turns that arm in such a way as to show me the symbol tattooed on it – the same one Snake Eyes and I share.

My eyes widen and I put my bow away. I can't imagine any scenario where I won't end up killing him within the next 20 minutes, but Billy might have seen the tattoo, assumed this man was part of my family, and directed him here. If that's the case, the old man knows where my apprentice is.

"Where is he?" I ask thunderously. "The boy who sent you here… where is he now?"

"Your apprentice is safe;" the man replies, "he's with Snake Eyes. To…"

I clench my jaw. So much for the faint hope Billy might not have been captured yet.

"That doesn't qualify as safe," I growl, interrupting him. "Where did he take him?"

Saying so, I advanced on him, and I accent my last question by pressing the tip of my sword to his throat.

Next thing I know, the sword is out of my grip and being flung to one side of the room. I jump back and unsheathe my other sword.

"You think I'm a threat to you," he says. It's an observation, not a question.

"I know who you are," I snarl. "You're all over the implanted memories, so you work for the Order and you're here to help ensure I soon do as well. I won't let you. You might live through this IF you first tell me where Billy is and then vanish out of here as fast as your legs will carry you."

He lowers his eyes and shakes his head sadly; he looks so miserable that it suddenly occurs to me that he might be just as delusional as Snake Eyes. The Commander has always insisted that the Order only flipped people rarely because of the cost, but who's to say they don't do it to several of one group of people when they find a group interesting enough? Like, say, a clan of ninjas? Perhaps the old man survived the mass murder too? Or maybe he was taken earlier, like Snake Eyes. It's even possible he was away at the time and was only flipped recently, following his being found by the Order. Alternatively, he may not be from my family at all – our symbol is not precisely difficult to reproduce.

I sheathe my sword but I continue to glare at him. "Who do YOU think you are?" I ask him. "TALK!" I bark when he doesn't respond quickly enough.

"An idiot," he sighs. "A blind old fool. A…"

He stops himself upon noticing my sword is back out.

"Don't waste my time," I warn him.

"I'm sorry," he says, "but you need to listen to me. Your student is fine, I swear it."

"At this point, I doubt you can be trusted to know your own name… which, incidentally, is the only reason I haven't killed you yet. You had better start giving me straight answers, old man. Who do you think you are?"

He actually smiles. It's a sad smile, and yet suddenly, he looks like an ally. I shake my head and tighten the grip on my sword, cursing under my breath. The Order's really got me messed up… I need to stop being silly, I can't let them play with my head by using this man.

I charge him. He somehow slips right by me and grips the sword he sent flying earlier. He adopts my usual defensive stance.

"If you were really from my past, you would not be stalling me like this," I growl. "Copying my technique will not help you confuse me – it's easy to guess you may have learned it from Snake Eyes or even from observing me."

He raises an eyebrow. "Snake Eyes, teach ME? No. I dare say that although he surely would have in time, he hasn't reached my level yet. You can't win a fight against me, Tommy."

I scoff. Snake Eyes and I are the best, no matter how much trash talking this fat old man does. "We'll see."

I attack again. He meets my attack, blocking it with no apparent difficulty, and keeps talking.

"I know your every move, especially your most advanced ones – I'm the one who taught you those. Tommy, you need to remember. GI Joe did not kill anyone from our clan, much less hundreds. By the time you left, there were 25 of us living in the compound." His eyes narrow and haze briefly. "24."

"Where's Billy?" I demand, ignoring the fairytale he's trying to spin and still attacking.

He continues to block me effortlessly. This is certainly starting to seem strange. I brush the thought from my mind, knowing my being confused is precisely what the Order wants, and decide that the exact reason for my opponent being so good against me is irrelevant.

"Listen to me," he pleads. "I can understand the attraction of not believing any of this, but it's still the truth. I KNOW that's what you want, so listen!"

I snarl at him but choose to concentrate on the fight rather than talk back – I need to get rid of him and get out of here to go find Billy. He blocks everything I do and keeps on talking.

"When my brother was killed, I was completely certain you were the murderer. All the evidence pointed to you and you alone. I was devastated that you had done such a thing, and I was heartbroken because you were lost to me just as much as my brother was, but there was no doubt in my mind that you had indeed killed your uncle."

I clench my teeth as his voice from the implanted memories plays itself in my mind, judging me guilty and ordering my brother to kill me or bring me to him for execution. It's not real, I know it's not, but he's managing to prevent me from suppressing the memory.

I scream and throw myself at him in a desperate attempt to shut him up. He slips under me and kicks me further away from himself.

I need to calm down, I'm being stupid. I can defeat him if I just concentrate. I force myself to get in a duelling stance – as opposed to just pouncing on him again – and try to attack him again, this time methodically, following the most complicated pattern I know, the one I was able to reproduce after Snake Eyes used it on me.

His eyes widen briefly but he still blocks my every move.

"I sent the whole clan after you, with instructions to kill unless they could capture you safely. Your brother reported three days later that he had found you and let you go. I almost killed him on the spot before he could reveal he had done it to repay a life debt."

"You're nothing if not consistent," I sneer. "It won't help: sheer repetition is not enough to make me believe those lies!"

"He went as far as trying to encourage you to run if you were innocent and come straight for him as opposed to someone else if you were the crazed murderer we believed you to be. He left a note on your chest saying nothing else than that his debt was paid, knowing you'd fill in the blanks and deduce that he thought you were guilty too, and that he would have killed you if not for his debt."

The man can certainly talk a lot while fighting. This is becoming downright eerie – I'm honestly doing my best and he's blocking everything while talking a mile a minute.

"We never did find you. You disappeared from Japan, and for eight years, your brother insisted it pointed to your innocence. For eight years, I told him he was deluding himself and made him swear he would not let you hurt anyone else."

Eight years… I wonder if that's how long he had been with the Order when they attacked our home. It would explain why the number does seem significant. I scowl at myself – I can't start imagining bits of truth in all the lies this man is repeating to me. Just because he believes them himself and is almost certainly a victim - like my brother - doesn't make his presence here less dangerous to me. I need to get out of here before he manages to confuse me; I need to go rescue Billy.

I edge towards the trap door, intent on slipping out and running away. It's not exactly my proudest moment to be trying to flee an old overweight man, but I can't stick around any longer: I'm in danger of falling to the Order and Billy is already in their hands.

Next thing I know, the man is standing on top of the door, staring at me. I glare at him and he smirks.

"I knew you'd try to run. As proud as you always were, you were also always practical. You're afraid I'm going to twist your mind, and you think your student is in danger, so of course you're going to try to flee."

"Move," I growl. "Get out of my way. I know you're just a victim too, there is a small chance you actually are part of my family, so I'd prefer not to kill you."

"I'm not so oblivious as to not realize you can't back up this threat. I've told you right from the start, you cannot defeat me. I know all your moves and I can read you like a book. I assure you, your student is safe and you will be as well."

He pauses for a quarter of a second and launches right back into his story.

"I just told you your brother spent eight years trying to convince me and himself that you were innocent. After those eight years, he saw you again: an agent of Cobra who had just kidnapped one of his team mates and who had been reported directly responsible for the deaths of dozens of soldiers, some of them from his own unit."

I don't bother answering. Instead, I attack him again.

He grabs my sword midway through my first strike and wrenches it away from me, throwing it behind him. There is not even a discernable pause in his speech.

"He was in shock. Your presence with Cobra was the final proof that he'd been wrong about you all along, that you were the murderer the rest of us thought you to be. He couldn't think clearly for most of your fight on that night, and escaped without having been able to set his mind to killing you, but desperate to reach that very resolution. He wrote to me to report he'd found you but had been unable to subdue you, expressing tortured regrets for not seeing the truth earlier, for allowing you to escape and to serve Cobra, for allowing you to kill dozens if not, for all he knew, hundreds of people."

We're still fighting while he's going on. I'm trying to ignore what he's saying and I can't – not a good sign. As if to confirm that, a new false memory hits me and it suddenly seems like I can remember the very fight he was just talking about – I remember being angry because Snake Eyes wouldn't talk to me, not realizing he was mute; I also remember that he was sometimes targeting vital spots and sometimes not, while the woman I'd have kidnapped was constantly aiming at my throat.

I jump away from him and shake my head, wincing in spite of myself. This can't be happening. He's going to bend me, he's going to make me believe the lies… I scream and jump at him again, trying to knock him from the door so I can escape.

He doesn't budge and pushes me back from himself, still talking.

"The letter reopened wounds that I had hoped were closed. I was furious at both of you, and I took the first plane I could to New York. I intended to make Snake Eyes tell me where to find you and to go take you out myself, but when I got there, he refused and swore he would kill you himself. I think he was worried about me taking on the whole of Cobra… carrying this weight around to make myself look deceptively harmless works a bit too well, sometimes. Do you have any idea how difficult it was for him to make that oath?"

"Seeing this idea is plucked directly from my attempting to put him out of his misery a few weeks back, yes," I growl as I start attacking him again. I use quick combos, not so much because I think they'll work as because I'm trying to tire him out. He's good, but he's still old – my best bet is to try his stamina against mine.

"When he saw you next, he tried his absolute best to kill you. Do you know why?"

I don't answer, concentrating on relentlessly attacking him. He continues to block and after a few seconds, he answers his own question.

"He didn't want to have to try twice. He believed he had to kill you, and was determined to do so, but he couldn't stand the thought of having to try and go through with it more than once. He wanted it done and over with."

I swallow. I can understand the desire, I felt the exact same way when I tried to kill him. In the end, I couldn't even go through with it once.

My eyes widen. What am I thinking? I'm sympathizing with emotions he's never had, associated with events that never happened! I narrow my eyes and increase the speed of my attacks. His eyes narrow as well but he continues to block everything.

"He even attempted to put himself in the Arashikage mindset, despite the absence of anyone who would have been able to take him OUT of it anywhere nearby. He didn't succeed, but I had a sore throat for days following my telling him off for even trying. You ended up being captured, thanks to another soldier knocking you out and bodily restraining your brother, who was at least not willing to go so far as hurting his team mates to spare himself the necessity to face you again some other time."

I start punctuating my attacks with shouts to drown him out. I feel like a child blocking his ears and singing loudly to avoid hearing something, but I'm desperate at this point. His latest blurb has me picturing the whole scene with crystal clear clarity, despite the fact his screaming at anyone seems out of character – an impression that is also only rooted in false memories. The implanted feelings are becoming impossible to fend off, and by now, the only thing I'm feeling that is not implanted is fear, quickly growing into panic.

"You were taken prisoner, and although you escaped within an hour, you managed to deeply confuse him," he continues. I can hear him through my shouts, so I stop them to save my energy. I'm still fresh, but judging by his even voice, breathing and pulse, so is he.

This can't be happening. I can't shut him up, I can't run, and the more he talks, the more difficult it gets to ignore the implanted memories and emotions he's stirring up with his fairytale. I know he's telling me all this to make me sympathize with my brother while at the same time correlating to the lies the Order is trying to sell me, but the knowledge of what he's doing isn't helping much right now. I increase the speed of my attacks again, giving up on form for the sake of speed, hoping he won't take the openings I'm creating since he's not trying to physically hurt me.

He immediately kicks me in the stomach, hard. I stagger back and barely block the next blow, directed at my head. So much for not having to worry about giving him openings.

"I told you, Tommy, I can read your every intention. I know you're trying to tire me out: I won't let you get away with sacrificing your defence in order to increase the intensity of your attack."

I snarl at him and throw a couple of shurikens at him. He catches the first one and uses it to knock the second one out of the air.

"While you were in captivity, you mentioned during an interrogation that you only needed the Cobra Commander for two more years. Your brother assumed, like his commanding officers, that you were just playing with them and thought nothing of it until the soldier who had been guarding your cell when you escaped was found unconscious."

My eyes widen in spite of myself – this is not one of the implanted memories, but it's seeping in as he speaks: I'm getting images of the Joe's General, Hawk, interrogating me in the presence of a small battalion of soldiers.

I scream and launch myself at him again, knowing it's not going to work but hoping to make him stop talking, if only briefly. He tosses me aside and starts again, having stopped all of two seconds.

"You used a balled up spring as a projectile to hit him on the sleeping point below his ear. The soldier confirmed, after coming to, that you had made him turn his head."

Once again, a memory that hadn't been implanted yet emerges as he talks. I 'remember' hardly being able to believe the Joes had been stupid enough to give me a spring mattress.

I continue to attack him but I switch to slower, stronger, more calculated attacks, no longer trying to tire him out because it's become obvious he'll have me eating out of the Order's hand before that happens. Instead, I'm just desperately trying to find an opening that will allow me to get him away from the door so I can bolt out of here.

He stops my every effort, but he's finally starting to be short of breath. That fact doesn't stop him from talking, however.

"In other words," he continues, "he was facing you and instead of aiming for his throat and killing him, you made him turn to knock him unconscious. This act of mercy was all your brother needed to believe all over again that we'd been wrong about you, that something was up. To him, it proved you weren't a monster, and he started investigating the other things you did with Cobra. Within a week, he was convinced that you only worked for Cobra because you somehow had no choice, and that for every soldier you killed, you had avoided injuring at least two more."

I'm completely powerless to stop the emotions that hit me when he tells me that. As if any of this were true, I'm overjoyed by the idea that my brother was finally on my side again. I actually stop moving for a second, and notice for the first time that I'm just as out of breath as my opponent is.

I can't let this happen, but I have no idea how to stop it. If I kill myself, not only will I not fulfill either of my oaths, I'd be abandoning Billy to the same fate as my brother. I'm not completely defeated yet, I need to keep trying until it becomes certain that my survival won't help me achieve my goals or rescue Billy.

"The next time he saw you, he had his mind set to drag you aside and make you explain everything to him. His unit was sent as reinforcement against Cobra, who was attacking the soldiers guarding the UN convention, and he was completely certain that he would find you involving yourself as little as you could while still saving appearances. Instead, just as he found you, he received word that you were directly responsible for most of the soldier casualties on that day."

I clench my teeth and shake my head in a vain attempt to clear the confusion away. Suddenly talking about things that did happen, presenting them as a logical continuation of the lies he was telling earlier, is making the false memories feel even more real. I make myself attack him again, but by now, I'm so concentrated on keeping my sanity that I'm not even sure anymore what my attack strategy should be. I keep going back and forth between actually hoping to defeat him and just trying to shove him off the trap door.

This is quickly going from bad to worse, and just to add to my troubles, I'm pretty sure I'm starting to panic: my pulse is quicker than physical exertion accounts for at this point, and I can't pretend my thoughts are flowing very clearly and logically right now.

"He was crushed," the old man continues. I suddenly find myself thinking of him as the Soft Master, an information I know comes straight from the implanted memories, and for an instant, I think my sword is shaking in my hand before I realize I'm the one shaking.

I hear myself whimper and clench my teeth tighter to stop myself. I can't believe this is happening… after over three years, the Order is finally beating me down, with a delusional old man.

He continues relentlessly.

"He again tried to kill you, but this time, his attempts were relatively short-lived: you managed to make him doubt again by asking him who he was and acting as though you didn't recognize him. He thought at first you were just playing with him, but when you expressed sincere shock at realizing he was part of your clan, he finally concluded something was up and he eventually let you escape."

Let me escape, did he? More like I just got away from him. I narrow my eyes at myself, furious that I'm still paying enough attention to care about how he tells things.

"I know the rest, grandpa," I sneer. "Shut up and let me go already, before I run out of patience and kill you where you stand."

He chuckles. "Empty threats aside, you're not going anywhere until I'm done with you," he says.

Author's Notes:

Sorry for the awkward stop… it's actually the least awkward one I could come up with unless I doubled the chapter, and if I did that, my buffer would be too small for comfort.

Story related notes:

1) The Arashikage mindset eventually kind of becomes the all purpose trance in the comics. I based my interpretation on the time where Storm Shadow helps Snake Eyes achieve it and when, as a result, Snake Eyes becomes completely focused on his mission, forgetting about Scarlett – who is thought to be dying - completely. It is implied that he would not have been able to get into the mindset by himself and that he will need assistance again to get out of it. In later comics (beyond the Marvel run IIRC), the Arashikage mindset can be achieved by one's self and the Arashikage ninja do it routinely as an exercise, with no ill effects. Nowhere near as fun a concept, in my humble opinion.

2) Way, way back, I wrote that you'd eventually find out what was going through Snake Eyes' head each time he met Storm Shadow. There you go, and I hope this is answering some questions.

Next time: a bit less talking (key words: a bit - you may have noticed I like writing dialogues) and more action!

The bonus for this chapter is the third and last part of the clan war story.