The Tales of the Ninja Coder

We have gone back to another meeting with Clan Higatsuke. They are very active in the town of Ningu now, and establishing themselves as a major part of its power structure is crucial to their strategy.

This is unfortunate, because Ningu has very strict rules against carrying weaponry. They will allow the kama, because it is "merely a farming tool", and I have found that the guards can often be bribed to allow a length of chain and a grappling hook, if you wear a mountain man's clothes and claim to need it for survival in the nearby forested mountains.

Of course, with a length of chain and a grappling hook, one can get to the rooftops... and then, a great many things are possible. Even if one's opponent is an armed and armored samurai, dropping off a roof onto him with a kama can be startlingly effective.

Jinsei has observed something about Higatsuke's Lord Jun: "He always needs to be in motion, even if it is not towards the actual goal." If we needed to get to Edo (east of here, as we are near Heian-kyō), he would be unhappy if we debated whether to take the Tōkaidō or the Nakasendō, because we would not be moving... but if we set off to the west, he would be pleased with our progress.

However, his money is good, so I am willing to smile, nod, and go along with his plans. While I make a great show of "progress" for Lord Jun to keep him happy, Jinsei will work on getting him to look at a map and see the larger picture.

I have had my first meeting with Jinsei, the leader of the Totemo Akarui-gumi — my new boss. My first assignment is to do a job for a Shingon Buddhist temple near Heian-kyō. In this age of perpetual war in Nihon, even priests need fighters.

The enemies of the Shingon temple are many. To begin with, there is a small warlord of western Yamashiro, who must be slain. He is a suspicious man, and his security will not be easy to penetrate. I must spend some time learning his security arrangements, observing the movements of his guards, and learning the layout of his castle. There will only be one chance to strike.

Yesterday was a very bad day for ninja coding. Commander Kobushi took me aside for a talk.

It should come as no surprise that I have been having trouble at Clan Nettobuku. I have not been keeping up on my assassinations, and it has taken me much longer to accomplish them than any of the other ninjas here. Clan Nettobuku is dissatisfied with my performance, and I cannot blame them.

The clan needs another Sōtō Zen monk to assist Airi, and so Commander Kobushi says that if I desire, I could don a robe and learn the sutras. Of course, I would not earn as much gold — for each eight gold pieces I am paid now, I would make only five as a monk. But it would be something.

I have spoken with Akane, and we have decided that it is not right for me to try to become a monk. More importantly, it's not right for me to stay there. I have already spent a few afternoons at Castle Nettobuku silently thinking to myself: "I hate it here." If I go back now, it will only be worse — especially as I'll be trying to learn a completely new trade, in a situation where I have already failed. And I wanted to leave Nettobuku anyway, and time spent in their castle is time that I can't spend in Yagyū, meeting with members of other clans.

So, on Monday, I will go back, hand them back my sansetsukon and retrieve my other pair of tabi, and take my leave of Clan Nettobuku. And then I will devote all my time and energy to finding a new clan, as fast as possible.

 
I have written before about the steep and slippery rooftops of Nagoya, the city of woe. Today, my duties take me back to Nagoya, but I will not need to deal with the rooftops. Instead, I must do some work in the streets.

Of course, nothing in Nagoya is easy. The streets are small and cramped, and there is often no room to swing a chain or use a staff. Today, I am trying to get past the guards by carrying no weapons at all — only a kama, the scythe carried by so many peasants as part of their farming duties. It has very short range.

Daigo is having a bad day, too. He had hoped to turn the clan's yamabushi duties over to Ishin, the new addition to our numbers. However, Ishin has been quite ill of late, and so he had to leave us. Daigo is now going back to clearing the mountain trails, so that the Nichiren priestesses can meet with some merchants of Sakai to help continue to fund our operations.
 

 
In our morning meditation today, Saimei said "Yesterday was a frustrating day for me. But the nice thing about frustrating days is that they are often followed by breakthrough days."

Airi reported that there is trouble in the small town of Aikontō, where Bunmei was working yesterday. Bunmei is ill today, so I left the castle and went quickly to Aikontō. There, I found a couple of Ayamari that Bunmei must have missed when he was there yesterday. A few quick moves with my hooked manriki chain, and I was able to slay them.

And Jimon knows that I did something. I did something useful, and I did it quickly.

Maybe it's not just frustrating days; maybe it's also frustrating weeks. And maybe next week will be a breakthrough week for me. I pray to Kannon that it may be so.

 
We are done with our Hitotsu Nanako campaign. Astonishingly, all of the territory we planned to take... we have actually taken, successfully! Usually, there is some left over at the end of a campaign, but not this time.

Commander Kobushi is proud of us. I feel that my own efforts contributed very little to our victory. Practically every kill I made, and every target I slew, required far too much time spent in trailing, sneaking, and laborious covert-entry.

Tomorrow, we will have a day of meetings with the Nichiren priestesses and the high lords, to review what we have achieved. The next day, we will plan our strategies for the upcoming Hitotsu Hakko campaign. On Friday, we start combat operations.

In the meantime, today is to be spent practicing more acrobatic techniques and defensive rolls, in the Arusupekku style that Benjirō has just explained to us.

I must continue to study hard and increase my skills this winter. I am tired of feeling like an amateur.

 
I have performed an extremely useful task for Clan Nettobuku, which will make life much easier for all of the clan's ninjas whenever we need to work in Nagoya, the chief city of Oda's lands. After much sneaking and infiltration in the city guard's headquarters and even in the regional lord's castle, I have secured some of the special grappling hooks that can gain a purchase on the city's rooftops. The city guard keeps a very tight grip on these hooks, and the penalty for being caught with them is death by torture.

But with these hooks on our manrikigusari chains, Bunmei, Jimon, Benjirō and I can go anywhere in the city, instead of being restricted to the streets and alleyways — and the city guards' many checkpoints. True, the rooftops themselves are still steep, slippery, and dangerous. But we will persevere.

My reward for bringing these valuable items back to the castle? The Nichiren abbess, Jīya, demanding to know about my plans for wintertime holidays, so she can plan the most auspicious times for company meditations. "I needed to know this yesterday!" she said. Truly, it is good to have one's efforts given the proper importance.

As further improvement of my day, I then attended a meeting in which Jimon taught the rest of the warriors about his new kata, which will be important to our work in the central provinces of Kawachi and Yamato. Of course, Jimon's kata are very pure examples of the Living Stone style. Perhaps I am simply overreacting to a slight overdose of Living Stone (and maybe also to Jimon himself), but his latest kata remind me uncomfortably of the Sturdy Pillar ryū that so annoyed me at Clan Iwinaga.

And, beyond that, Jimon... is not the best instructor. A good instructor can make difficult and complex matters simple and easy to understand. Jimon's presentation is disorganized and cursory, and may actually make simple matters seem more difficult than they truly are. He admits that he will not be writing any instructional scrolls, and that we all will simply have to study the movements on our own.

But no matter. I will study, and I will learn what is good in the Living Stone ryū, and I will not let what is bad in it cause me to reject the entire path.

And tomorrow, I will use the special Nagoya hook to track down and slay a merchant in Nagoya, a man who it turns out is aiding both our Ātosugijei and Reki enemies. I will keep my skills sharp, and when the new year comes, I will find a better clan.

 
I have improved my knowledge of the clan's new and special kata, so that I no longer feel that I am useless to Clan Nettobuku. Yesterday, I was even able to aid Bunmei by taking out one of the targets he was too busy to handle on his own.

In Henshukoku, I have been continuing with my ninja-ken kata, ensuring that I am still adept with it in case I find a clan that needs blade-work instead of sansetsukon experts. For now, I am doing my kata in the Journey of a Thousand Steps ryū, so that later I can revise the whole sequence into the style of the Living Stone school and compare the differences.

However, I am already starting to figure out some ways to use acrobatic rolls and other defensive techniques that are new to me. Not all the time, but I've managed to slip a few in here and there, and I'm getting better at them. This is a good thing, as more fighting groups are starting to see the uses of acrobatics.

At Clan Nettobuku... in addition to Benjirō, who joined us just over a week ago, we will soon be adding another ninja. He is a young, untested fighter named Saimei. He seems likable enough, but I am not sure that he has enough experience in dealing with larger teams. When the new year comes, I look forward to finding a different clan.

And I am revisiting Ōtsu, to see how the city has changed under the new Lord Mitsuhiro's rulership. The rooftops are as flat and inviting as ever, and I think it will be a most excellent place to practice my skills.

 
Today is a day of many meetings at Castle Nettobuku. We are attempting to use more of the techniques of the Flowing Motion school in our strategy, and we have just had a session in which Commander Kobushi, Jīya, and the Sōtō Zen priestess Airi explained to us how to carry out some of the Flowing Motion techniques — from individual kata up to broad strategies. (Airi previously worked with a clan that used the Flowing Motion school to great effect, so she has useful experience with it.)

Also, today we are starting our Hitotsu Nanako campaign. In some ways, this is a bit of a disappointment for us, as we were hoping to move on to the Futatsu Ikkō region after taking Hitotsu Rokko (our most recent sortie). Sadly, there is still resistance, and our victory is nowhere near complete. The Ayamari-gumi still confound our efforts. (Indeed, we have some hopes that the new Flowing Motion techniques will help us to defeat the Ayamari, and to be more effective in general.)

 
[This is going to be a weird mish-mash of ninja-speak and modern tech parlance. Sorry. I haven't got a lot of spare time, and it's hard to figure out how to say some of this stuff, so I'm just typing it up and posting it as fast as I can.]

I have finished taking care of all three of my targets in Nagoya, where only skilled ninjas succeed, and Jīya says I'm on schedule with my assassinations. On Sunday, Jimon checked in some changes that broke everything, and he had to spend all of Monday (and I think part of today) fixing it.

I need to tell myself that I am not messing up.

I feel bad because nearly all of my code winds up getting rewritten into some other format and style. I'm sure the other ninjas' code gets similarly rewritten, but since I'm not one of the ones doing the rewriting, I feel like it's just "No, your code sucks and needs to be changed. All the time."

I wish I knew if I get to rewrite their stuff or not... (Not today. I have way too much catch-up to do.)