SAVAGE (REMIX)
Then again . . . This was my favorite ramen joint.
All eyes in the restaurant watched my every motion, but I took my time using a cloth napkin to dab the ramen broth from my mouth that burned deliciously at the corner of my lips. I took one, two, three refreshing sips of water before finally bringing my hands to the table to stand up. I glanced over my shoulder at the scrawny thief and his two friends.
If these aspiring thieves were out here demanding ink, that meant they were involved in something bigger than just petty crime. The lot of them wielded petty knives and wore pink bandannas over their faces. What was this? Some new gang I didn’t know about that went around stealing ink and shouting about breast cancer awareness?
The ramen chef glanced in my direction, and the attention of the trio’s apparent leader soon followed. The thief glared at me where I stood and gave a pubescent trill of a growl, “What the fuck do you want, you old bitch?”
The shamisen stopped playing. The patrons froze with ramen hanging down their chins. A cat meowed. The entire restaurant held a collective breath.
I didn’t bother grabbing Fuck-Around and Find-Out. No point wasting good ink or dulling an edge on these squids. I reached for a different tool instead.
“Did you fucking hear me? I said—” The thief choked. Too bad the rest of his words were garbled on the bloody chopstick sticking out of his throat.
I had some damn good aim.
Blood spurted as he toppled backward. The poor patrons close to the shower scrambled away from their tables with ramen bowls hoarded in their arms, faces speckled with blood and hot broth. The thief’s friends shouted in alarm, pointed, and then charged toward me.
I kicked an empty table between us. It skidded forward and slammed into their knees. They stumbled, and I kindly helped their momentum by grabbing the closest one by his manbun and slamming him into the wood. With the second chopstick between my fist, I punched through the man’s ear. A squelched pop. The light in his eyes burst like a shattered oil lamp.
The last thief hesitated where she stood, unable to decide if she should help or run. I raised a pointed eyebrow, daring her to try. Proving to have more intelligence than her friends, she tripped backward and raced out the door. No doubt to blab to her employer about what had happened here.
A frown marred my expression as I tried to make sense of it all. Most criminal activity in Chigakure was rather benign, and as far as I knew, free of the organized crime that had infected Edolanta before it collapsed.
But . . . Chigakure might just be a big city now, or quickly getting there. I noted the pinpricks on each of the corpses’ wrists and the black fingernails that identified the thieves as having worked at the local ink factory. I stripped the corpse, the one with a chopstick through his brain, of his pink scarf and studied the paisley design on the cotton.
“Heard one of dem warlords trying to move into town,” one of the restaurant patrons, the nice man who always carried his cat everywhere, explained. That fluffy cat was currently curled atop the man’s green, yellow, and red conical bamboo hat. “Lot of businesses being robbed of dey ink lately, nah mean? Peoples sayin’ he calling himself the Pink Diamond Warlord.”
Never heard of him. No surprise, though, as it was hard to keep up with what warlord was in charge of this territory or that. Most of them were nothing but upstart roadside robbers when Edolanta fell, but there was something in particular about this one that rubbed me the wrong way.
I crumpled the pink bandanna in my fist.
Pink was the color of The Clan of Illustrious Sistah Samurai. Everyone knew that. But the clan was gone now, and the color was free to be reinvented and re-imagined. Still, I never thought someone would have the gall to distort it this way—to change a color associated with power and protection to one of fear and oppression. Despite all my own complicated hang-ups about the color, this didn’t feel right. This was my Sistahs’ legacy someone was fucking with.
And yet, I forced myself to bite down on those sentimental emotions. I couldn’t afford to be no justice warrior. I was nothing but a woman with a tight schedule to keep, and all I wanted to do was mind my business. After all, I had already failed my Sistahs so much; what was one more failure? What was one more snowball on that mountain?
I returned to my now cold ramen.
The son, at behest of the chef, brought me over a new steaming bowl of ramen. Bless him. The boy even gave me a clean pair of chopsticks, although he was a little hesitant as he did so. The musician continued her song, a bluesy enka this time.
“Thank you, Sistah Samurai,” the boy said, all pimply and gangly. I winced when he slapped a rag down on the floor and began scrubbing up the blood. One of the patrons, the one that had spoken earlier, assisted in moving the bodies. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to the young server once a warlord moved into town. It was youth like him that got swept up in the ensuing violence first.
Several of the patrons resumed eating, but nothing was the same as before.
The ramen hit different. The music sounded more solemn. The air felt heavier, tinged with the iron of blood that normally tainted the air outside the village walls. Despite the village’s best efforts, violence had swept in to ruin the fragile peace I had always known would pop eventually.
I slurped down my ramen.
Ugh. Who was this so-called warlord extorting my favorite restaurant? Slurp. Who dared to have the audacity to mess with my not-so-little-anymore village? Slurp. Whose lackeys had no respect for their elders? Slurp. Who dared to rebrand my color? Slurp.
I didn’t have time for this. Clink.
I looked down at my empty bowl of ramen. I liked to savor lunch. It was the only time of day that I could slow down and enjoy a brief peace, but look at that—now I was finished early. I glanced at the thinning light from the window and huffed.
Fuck it. I got time today.