Ninja Will
It’s all fun and games until someone shows up with a katana.
My friends and I held regular gaming sessions of Dungeons and Dragons. A game that typically consists of one person creating and running the game session, and the others playing. We came to a point where no one from our group wanted to run the game, everyone wanted to play.
Eddie recommended his adult cousin, Will, saying he was an excellent DM (dungeon master) and would leap at the opportunity. He warned us that Will was eccentric. It turned out that we did know Will, not by name, but by reputation. Most everyone in town had at least heard of the strange young man who liked to dress up in a full ninja costume and roam the streets.
We met Will outside his (mother’s) house. He was short, round, disheveled, and surly. Perfect for our needs. He ushered us into his lair of fantastic delights.
The table was set up. There was a dungeon master’s screen with a foot tall stack of manuals on the side. There were bags of Cheetos and 2 liter bottles of Coke. He had a pewter statue of a dragon and a wizard with a crystal ball. This guy wasn’t messing around.
However, before we could start playing, Will made us watch these truly terrible martial arts movies for like two hours. During the course of our forced ninja-movie marathon, he would glance at us during various scenes with a really unnerving smile. Like there was something we should be seeing, but we didn’t see it. We played along; I mean, none of us was equipped to deal with this.
Eventually we got to the game. In all fairness, he was a good DM. It was one of the best gaming sessions I ever had. We never went back.
We took a break after about three hours. Will went to make himself a drink, and the rest of us stepped outside into a narrow alley out back. We were standing around, making jokes about Will, while Eddie scowled. And then Will came out to join us.
He had on the full regalia, head-to-toe ninja costume. Nothing but the eyes showing. He had a machete in his hand. He must have found it at the bottom of the ocean, because it was absolutely covered in rust.
“Better make sure it’s sharp,” he said, while he brushed his thumb across the blade’s “edge”.
He walked over to an old withered cactus next to the house and reared back, machete held high. With the strength of ten toddlers Will brought that machete down and across that cactus. The blade stopped about 3 inches into the body of a plant that’s 90% water.
We finished the game and went home, laughing along the way. Weeks went by, life went on, and we forgot about Will. But Will didn’t forget about us.
It was a hot June day, even by Lake Elsinore standards. The last bell on the last day of school rang. I was free and looking forward to a summer of gaming and leisure days by the lake or running around the hills. I left my Social Studies class and headed out to meet up with my friends for the walk home.
Our junior high campus was relatively large. As far as I knew, there was only one way out or into the school. There may have been more, but I never bothered to look and apparently neither did anyone else at the school, because it seemed like everyone left the same way.
You headed through a wide gate of the chain-link fence surrounding the track and field area. Then you walked across the field. Finally, up a set of stairs set against an incline and up onto the road where the buses lined up to pick up and drop off kids.
I met up with my friends and we merged with the horde. It was slow going to get through the first chokepoint. Hundreds of kids packed together under the blistering sun. We shuffled our feet, inching our way toward freedom.
The sound of a girl shrieking, and then another, was followed by laughter growing louder as it rippled through the crowd. Me, Eddie, Sherman, Rob, and the McPherson brothers strained onto our tiptoes to see what the commotion was.
Over the heads of the horde we could see the kids heading up the stairs parting like minnows around a shark. I hooded my eyes with my hand and squinted, trying to block out the sun for a better view. And then I saw him. It was worse than a shark. It was a ninja. It was Ninja Will.
I could feel the same panic rising in my chest emanating from my friends. Even Eddie’s face was contorted into a grim mask of terror. Blood may be thicker than water, but it’s 2% milk compared to teenage reputation. We didn’t need to say anything. We turned as one and pressed against the immovable object that is kids leaving school.
We hadn’t made it more than a few feet when I looked back. Will was now halfway across the field and closing fast. It was obvious that for every inch we made, Will was clearing a yard. We weren’t going to make it. Our lives were over. Then Rob lost it. He actually had a girlfriend, so maybe he felt he had more to lose. Whatever the spark was, the fire inside him sent him into a frenzy of flailing arms. Wide-eyed with fear, he cut a path through the mob.
Once in the open, it was every man for himself. I still don’t know if the school has another exit, because I scaled the first fence I could get my hands on. After crashing to the other side, I took off at a sprint.
We met up about a week later at Sherman’s house. Eddie said Will’s mother had to pick him up from the police station. Still in full ninja costume, minus the katana.
