Ninja Girl

Light poured in through the window and into the barren room. The room was almost completely empty, save for a couple small pieces of furniture and a mat on the floor serving as a bed. In the bed lay a solitary figured.

The figure stirred. After a moment, they rolled over and opened their eyes. Sitting up, she looked around in surprise. She recognized the surroundings, but something felt wrong. Very wrong. It took her a long moment to realize just what, and why, that was.

This was not where she was supposed to be.

She rose, shakily, leaning heavily on the wall for balance. The room rocked back and forth, as though it were a boat out on the open ocean. For a long moment she thought she was going to be sick, but it never came.

Finally able to move again, she started forward, one shaky step at a time. She kept her hand on the wall until she ran out of wall. At that point she moved quickly from one sturdy object to the next as she made her way out of the room and outside of the building.

Outside, she could see beautiful, verdantly green grass stretching on and on into the distance. Bright, colorful cherry blossom trees lined the valley. She leaned against one and sighed. She finally was here.

Home.

Up ahead she heard the sound of scuffling, and she rounded a corner to find Nick and Ryoichi. They were slowly battling one another, Ryoichi training Nick in the proper motions for fighting. When they noticed her watching them they immediately stopped what they were doing and ran up to her.

“Anya!” Nick called, excitement written clearly on his face. “You shouldn’t be up! The doctor said you needed more time to rest.”

“I… I’m fine,” she said, almost reflexively. She felt a lot better than she expected to, but truth be told she really did not feel fine. “What happened? How… how did I get here?”

“You brought us here,” Nick replied. “You don’t remember?”

Anya stared at him in confusion and shook her head.

“Yeah,” he continued. “Right as you were passing out, as I was holding you, suddenly ‘whoosh!’ Here we are.” Nick motioned around him at the valley. “I mean, clearly you hate hospitals so much, you brought us to the middle of Nowhere, Japan just to keep away from them.”

“I… I don’t remember doing that.”

Nick shrugged. “That’s okay. You seemed pretty out of it. The scary part was when your clansmen came down on me and threatened to kill me. They thought I was some kind of invader or something. Once I finally got them calm and explained what was going on, they got someone in to tend to your wounds right away. They also threw me in a cell while they considered what to do with me. Luckily, Ryoichi showed up before long and testified on my behalf.”

“What little I could account for, anyway,” Ryoichi added.

“And the lab?” Anya asked.

Ryoichi nodded. “Gone. All of it. That scientist there, Greely? I got him to show me how to set off a self-destruct. It was something similar to what must have been used at the warehouse lab you two found. He wasn’t too happy about it, but I didn’t give him much choice in the matter.”

“Nick,” Anya said, suddenly turning back to face the young man. “Kokatsu! You… you knocked him off the building! You killed a man!”

“Yeah…” Nick shifted nervously. “That… actually… wasn’t as badass a moment for me as it maybe initially seemed. Turns out, Kokatsu survived the fall.”

“What!?”

“It’s okay, though. I mean, he survived, but he was in pretty terrible shape. Ryoichi found him and finished him off. He won’t be coming back to bother you. For good this time.”

Anya breathed a sigh of relief. “So it’s over? It’s really… it’s really all over?”

Nick nodded. “Yup. We did it. We won. Like I was saying, now it’s the time for the rest of our lives. Post-Ryerson.”

Anya suddenly lurched forward and wrapped Nick in a hug. This time, Nick didn’t hesitate. He wrapped his own arms around her back and squeezed her tight.

“It’s okay,” he whispered into her hair. “It’s okay. We made it.”

For the first time in as long as she could remember, Anya smiled a real, genuine smile.