Thanks
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Grimnick Groggle, goblin ninja, was frustrated. Beyond that, he was outraged. He picked himself up out of the mud frantically wiping away the dirt and grime from his Shozoku, cursing under his breath. He carefully adjusted his belt, repositioning the plethora of pouches and trinkets that hung from it. He tugged on the hard leather gauntlets on his wrists, making sure the concealed shuriken were still in place. Reaching over his right shoulder, he touched his fingertips to the wire wrapped hilt of his ninjaken, the traditional blade of the ninja.
“Damned humans think they own the world,” he snarled, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, snagging briefly on the tusks that jutted from his jaw. He reached into his tunic, feeling for the pouch that was concealed there. The soft clink of coin against coin assured him of its safety, and he straightened his jacket a moment before stepping back into the busy streets of Port Lindenton. The second the diminutive goblin stepped in between the two humans, he became the shadow of the portly, velvet-clad noble in front of him. He moved swiftly past the man, dodging in and out of the crowd as effortlessly as a feather floating through the air.
“Watch where you’re going, Redskin!” Almost.
“Shove off, Redling!”
“Up yours pal!” Nick shouted up at the men who had bumped into him. The larger of the two wrapped a massive hand around his forehead and shoved him backward, sending Nick stumbling into a side alley. The goblin caught himself by dropping a hand to the ground, discretely slipping the man’s money purse into his tunic before whirling around to face the humans, who had moved forward to block the mouth of the alley..
“Little bastard ran right into me, Karth,” the smaller human said, a wry grin working its way onto his face–he stood barely a head taller than Nick.
“Reckon he did, Garren,” the bigger man–more than twice the goblin’s height–rumbled slowly.
Nick smirked. “Best back off before I chop off yer stones n’ feed ‘em to yer husbands,” he said, drawing his ninjaken and holding it diagonally before him. The two humans paused a moment, then burst into uproarious laughter. Nick narrowed his eyes and crouched low, his calves tensing and his fingers tightening around the grip of his blade. “Fools! I’m a ninja!”
This only made the two laugh all the harder, and Nick felt his cheeks turn a brighter red as blood rushed to them. He let his lips curl down into a furious grimace as he narrowed his eyes. “I have a sword!”
The big man, Karth, chuckled once more and reached down to his hip, his sausage fingers wrapping around the hilt of a cleaver that was thicker than Nick’s arm and longer than he was tall. “Funny thing about that, Ninja-Boy...we do too.” As if on cue, Garren drew a small, curved sword and grinned.
It was then that Nick realized he had made a grave mistake. Ninja are shadows. Their victims do not know they are victims until they are lying on the ground in a pool of their own blood. We win our battles from the shadows, not on the streets. The words of Nick’s father echoed through his mind, and he loosened his grip on the blade a little. He came to the realization that this was not a fight he could win
“We’re gonna kill you and take your money, Redling,” Karth said. Nick dropped a hand to the largest pouch on his belt–a bluff, for it was filled with naught but pork jerky–and took a step back.
“If ye’re broke, I can give yeh money, you poor men,” the goblin said, his voice taking on a pitiful tone.
Garren giggled, an obnoxious sound even to Grimnick, who grew up around the maniacal, chittering laughter of goblin children. “Broke, he says. We ain’t broke, you dolt. We got plentya–uh–hey!” He looked down to his belt and the big human followed his gaze. “Little bastard stole my purse!”
The human’s cry of outrage fell on deaf ears, though, for the instant their eyes left him, Nick had melted into the shadows, expertly scaling the closest wall. “Stupid-stupid-stupid!” the goblin swore to himself, pulling himself up onto the roof. “Father would be ashamed! Dolt.”
He continued to grumble as he strode silently across the roof and lowered himself over the opposite edge. His fingers and toes unerringly found a grip in the most minuscule of cracks in the adobe, and soon he was back on the ground. He dropped soundlessly into another muddy alley, his only company a drunk, passed out in a pool of his own vomit. Nick dusted himself off and stepped back into the street a second time. He made a concerted effort to stay out of the big folks’ way, for they greatly outnumbered him and word of a ninjaken wielding goblin would spread quickly. As he looked around, though, standing on the tips of his toes to peer over the shoulders of the humans, leaning to see around the wide girths of wealthy merchants, he realized he no longer recognized any of the buildings around him. In getting lost in his own thoughts, he had lost himself in the maze of streets that was Lindenton.
