forsyth | Nanowrimo - Day 14 (Reply)

I'm still about 2500 words short of where I should be today, but I'm slowly catching up, still. Gonna go out to eat for my brother's birthday (which isn't today, but today works for timingwise), so will probably do more when I get back.

And in other news, I played Halo 2 with six other people last night, till like 6am. Now, I may get flamed for this, and the "played till 6am" part might seem to not match up with what I'm saying, but I don't see the big deal about Halo 2. Seems like most any other FPS pretty much to me. The graphics are good, and gameplay's pretty good (except for how some people seem to magically not die when you unload two full SMGs into them), but I don't really see it as "the best game EVAR!" But that's just me.

Jayridge and Midas circled around the first building they came to, inspecting the outside. Several of the paper walls were damaged, a few it looked like sliced through, one had been utterly burned away, probably thanks to a plasma weapon, and they ran into one wall they stopped and looked at for a minute. The wall was intact, except for three perfectly clean tears, two in the shape of squat pirates (they could tell by the peg leg for one and the hook on the other) and the third in the shape of a parrot. Jayridge peered in one of the holes and found herself looking at a hallway, with another paper wall, also with pirate and parrot shaped holes in it. They both blinked and looked behind them. The outer compound wall was undamaged. I almost thought there'd be pirate shaped dents in it, Jayridge thought.
"Feathers," Midas said, picking some up from the ground.
They were feathers, though Jayridge had no idea how to tell if they were parrot feathers or not. They were metallic green and waved gently as their breath hit them. "Bionic parrots?" Jayridge asked.
"Aye, a status symbol among many pirates," Midas replied.
"What's wrong with plain old parrots?" Jayridge asked.
"Expensive, rare, and illegal to export. Plus they're of absolutely no use in combat, especially in space."
"I guess," Jayridge said and looked back at the wall, "Looks like the ninja didn't get taken without a fight."
"Of course not," Midas said, "That's why ninjas are constantly in demand in many fields from espionage to bodyguarding to childcare."
"Childcare? And it's ninja."
"Whatever. Some of our best agents have been trained at Vocational and Technical Schools of Ninjitsu. The Illustrious Order of the Winged Coconut has ties to them going back centuries."
"Yes, you said. Let's check out the building now," Jayridge said.
They slid a paper door aside and stepped onto the bamboo flooring of the building. Jayridge strode forward down the hall that opened up in front of them. Midas followed behind, peering suspiciously into every shadow. They stopped at a side door and slid it aside noislessly on oiled wooden tracks. Beyond lay a room full of low beds each with a small wicker box at the foot. Jayridge looked around then stepped carefully inside. "Careful," Midas said.
Jayridge didn't respond, instead she walked slowly down between the rows of beds. At the heads of several were posters, some regular ones you'd see in any college dorm, others abstract, or oriental letters she couldn't translate. She stopped and looked at one, in the style of old propaganda posters, a masked ninja's head peering out from an orange background. At the bottom, it read "Got Real Ultimate Power?"
Midas followed her in and peered around. "A dormitory of some kind, probably for students. Doesn't look like there was any fighting here."
I want to be here. Well, not here, this looks like the boys' dorm. But first we need to find them... "Come on," she said, "And don't touch those, the first thing ninja students would do is trap their stuff."
"I'm not stupid," Midas said.
"This way," she said, heading back out into the hallway. They walked a bit further, passing a wide open door that led to another dorm. The outside wall there had several slashes in it, like people had cut it and jumped through. "Wait," Midas said, putting a monkey paw on Jayridge's leg. "See that raised panel there? It's probably a trap."
Jayridge started to creep forward to look at it, but paused. The thing with ninja is being tricky. Tricky enough to set something to look like a trap, and have the real trap be where you'd stand to look at the bait trap. Or thinking like that, make the fake trap the real trap, figuring people would think it was wrong... Hang on a minute, she was making this far too complicated. This was a dorm, where they had students staying, most of them probably new. It wouldn't do to kill off students, who'd pay you then? So if there were traps, they were probably relatively obvious and to get the students to learn to spot them. Or some kind of master "In Case of Invasion" switch that would make the whole place deadly, but that'd be more likely around whatever was important. So take it at face value, then, but be careful. "Right," she said after making sure there weren't any other triggers there, "Just don't step on it."