At the Academy I’d Been a Member of the Ninja Defense League
no self-respecting parrot- thousands of dollars of helicopter lessons
- did not seem to match any of the furniture
- sees nothing but fish-belly white skin
- the possibility of saliva
Tune in next time part 179 Click Here for Earlier Installments
At the Academy I’d been a member of the Ninja Defense League. Our name might make it sound like we defended ninjas, but I can assure you they need no help with that. No, we practiced techniques to defend ourselves from ninjas. One of the secrets that I learned was that, due to their near-total silence, ninjas have incredibly sensitive ears.
Before these alleyway foes could bundle us off to our dooms, I filled my lungs and let loose a deafening squawk. No self-respecting parrot would make half the noise I did over the next minute. I chirped and shrieked and hooted and whooped until every last ninja had fled the scene. Or at least until I no longer felt any hands on me.
I bent forward and shimmied my shoulders until the pillowcase fell off my head and fluttered to the ground.
Setsuko, tangled in a sheet, sat across from me, leaning against a pink brick wall. The ninjas were gone. Or so it seemed. Ninja camouflage is the best camouflage.
I used the rough corner of a bright pink brick to chew through the ziptie around my wrists, and then I was free. I wanted to rub my back across the bricks, like a bear scratching itself on a tree, to rid myself of my constrictive, itchy jumpsuit, but resisted.
I pulled the sheet off Setsuko’s green-haired head and found her smiling at me in a way that made my heart purr. She bounded to her feet and threw her bound wrists around my neck, pulling me into a kiss. It felt amazing, like finally getting to use thousands of dollars of helicopter lessons all at once in a daring escape.
She pulled me behind a heart-shaped dumpster and shed her clothes, a feat which she somehow managed without unbinding her wrists. I was surprised that the carpet, being green, matched the drapes. But I was more surprised that they did not seem to match any of the furniture.
Imagine a man who, upon undressing his lover, sees nothing but fish-belly white skin. That man was me, except that Setsuko’s skin was more of a mime-belly white. And her body parts weren’t strictly the ones I’d been led to expect.
Still, her face was lovely, and I was sorely tempted to take her up on her offer. The only things that stopped me were the likelihood of the ninjas returning, and the possibility of saliva from my tongue activating some psychotropic or narcotic properties in her heavy mime body makeup.
“Sorry,” I said. “I really have to find Tessa.”
bonus points for using them in order