The Morbidly Obese Ninja (3 page)

Basu picked up the boy and jumped down the elevator shaft. He fell like a cannon ball, his sweat droplets raining upward into the boy’s face.

On the way down, Basu grabbed the blue baseball cap, floating like a parachute in midair. Then he put it back on the boy’s head and the boy smiled, patting the top of his hat.

After about thirty floors, he pushed off the side of the wall and crashed through an elevator door. He flew out of the building, across another sky bridge, through a few more buildings and a few more sky bridges. Then they arrived in a crowded mall.

The mall was old world. It was a large open room lined with rows and rows of vendors selling over-salted meats and curly vegetables. The people walked like zombies from booth to booth, buying random trinkets and bottles of soup.

The machine boy grinned as Basu carried him through the mall like a football.

Basu looked down and wondered what the heck the boy was smiling at. He frowned at him in the same way he frowned at the cyber-frog. Then he grunted.

“You’re huge!” cried the boy, looking up at Basu with wide amazed eyes.

Basu grunted.

“You’re like the size of a bus!” said the boy.

Basu squeezed him tightly in his armpit for saying that, but the squeezing only hurt Basu. The iron boy didn’t feel a thing.

“That’s why they call me Basu,” he said. “It means
bus
.”

“Oh,” said the boy, flicking the brim of his hat. “They call me Oki.”

Crow and his remaining men entered the mall. Basu wasn’t surprised they were able to catch up with him. Crow was nearly impossible to escape. Basu knew he had to use a new trick, since Crow knew all of his old ones.

Basu squeezed into a small space between booths. He squished the boy into his belly and climbed backward up the wall. His black outfit spread out until he looked like a black tarp connecting the two booths on his sides.

Crow and his men split up and scanned the mall. One of the ninjas came up to the booth next to Basu, but he was looking behind the counter of the booth rather than above, as if he suspected the frizzy-haired vendor might have been hiding them. As the ninja stepped by, the machine boy started squirming against Basu’s gut. The sweat dripping onto the back of the boy’s neck was tickling him, making him giggle.

Basu flexed his arms to hold the boy still and squeezed his breasts together to muffle his giggles. He hoped that the sound of the crowd was enough to cover up the sounds of the boy’s ticking mechanical body.

The ninja didn’t notice. He lost interest and went back to the others.

Basu waited up there for another forty minutes. He wasn’t sure if Crow had left or if he had just pretended to leave and was really just waiting for Basu to come out of hiding. After forty minutes of holding the wiggling machine boy against his belly, Basu figured it was safe to get down. Once they were on the ground, the boy stretched and then wound himself up.

“You’re greasy,” said the boy, drawing a smiley face in the sweat of a love handle sticking out of Basu’s suit.

Basu grunted and swatted his finger away. Then he removed his hood and pushed a button on the neck of his shinobi shozoku ninja outfit. The ninja suit brightened and its colors transformed to appear as if he were wearing blue jeans and a white shirt. Even though Crow knew his true appearance, he figured he would have an easier time escaping the Gomen ninja if he blended in with the common citizens.

He took the boy by the hand and walked him to a food cart that sold salami and sauerkraut tacos. He barged through the line, knocking furry-fleshed men and fish-eyed women out of the way. The other citizens didn’t stop him. Even though his ninja suit had been transformed, they could tell by his iKatana that he was ninja.

The wrinkled bearded man at the stand was amazed at how many tacos Basu ordered. He ordered more than the man had. Basu ate the tacos as quickly as the man could make them. He squeezed mayonnaise from his pocket onto every bite.

Oki stared up at the obese ninja with amazement as he watched him snort and grunt and swallow tacos whole.

“Bus!” said the boy, tugging on his uniform. “Stop.”

Basu looked down at the boy with one eye as he gorged on the food.

“You can’t eat so much,” said the boy.

The vendor tossed up two more tacos and Basu folded them together and stuffed them into his mouth.

“Why?” Basu said with a full mouth, hairs of sauerkraut dangling over his lips.

“If you eat so much there won’t be enough for anyone else,” Oki said, pointing to the long line of people behind them.

Basu gave the other people in line a glance. They stepped back a little. Then Basu went back to eating.

“I have to eat,” said the ninja.

“But why?” said the boy. “No one eats that much.”

“It’s important.”

Basu had to consume at least 45,000 calories every day. If he didn’t he would die. Three years ago he was stabbed with an iKatana that was laced with a nano-poison. The poison was completely impossible to extract once it got under the skin. Those poisoned with it would die in less than 48 hours after it hit the bloodstream. The only way to keep the poison from spreading was to consume 45,000 calories or more per day. The excess calories stunned the nanobots, and kept them from eating apart his body from the inside out.

Although the poison could be survived this way, it was still widely used amongst corporate ninjas, because very few people were able to keep up with consuming 45,000 calories every day. And those who were able to eat so much food quickly became bedridden. They could no longer work and had to be taken care of by family members for the rest of their lives.

Basu was the first ninja infected with the poison to ever continue working as a ninja. He exercised twice as hard every day to be able to move around his mass of flesh. He figured out ways to make his weight work for him as a ninja, rather than slow him down.

He had to spend a lot of his day eating, but he grew to love the taste of greasy foods. He had had such a strict diet for most of his life, and now he was finally given a chance to indulge himself. The best part was that his company paid for everything he ate, so he could buy whatever his heart desired, as long as it was high in calories.

There were times when Basu thought the nano-poison was the best thing that ever happened to him. But, other times, when his heart felt like a lump of rusted metal in his chest, he wished the poison would just finish him off and put him out of his misery.

After the taco cart was out of food, the other customers slinked away from the line. Oki saw their frowning faces and tugged on Basu’s uniform.

“Look,” said the boy. “You made them all sad.”

Basu grunted and walked the boy out of the mall. They went a few buildings down and then took an elevator up to a rooftop.

“Where are we going?” Oki said.

“I need to get you back to my company.” Basu looked down at his iKatana. The screen was frozen. He couldn’t even get it to reboot. “But we can’t go back until I get my sword cleaned of this virus.”

“Oh,” said the boy.

Then the boy said, “Why not?”

“The Gomen will be waiting for us if we go back to my company.” Basu licked taco grease from the back of his hand. “They know who I work for.”

“Oh,” said the boy, nodding his head.

Then the boy said, “So where are we going?”

“I know someone who can help,” Basu said. “She’s the only programmer I know who I can trust right now.”

“Oh,” said the boy.

Then the boy said, “Who is she?”

“I’m not talking anymore,” Basu said. “You make my throat hurt.”