Lemons

Now, I ain't gonna stop fightin them or nothin, but I gotta admit there's one advantage a person could get from bein a ninja. Them guys know when opportunity is knockin at the door with a box of girl scout cookies and a check from Ed McMahon. That is to say, they know how to take the lemons of life and turn it into hard lemonade. This kind of behavior ain't always good for people who isn't ninjas, but I imagine it'd be pretty darn good if you was a ninja yourself. You ain't a ninja, are ya? I don't want no ninjas readin this here thing. It's got all my plans and deepest thoughts in it. I mean, it's got ninja killin words in it. It's full of words so powerful that, if you happened to be a ninja and someone just told you about this here blog, your head would blow like you had stuffed your nose full of m-80s just before you remembered you was allergic to gun powder. So, no ninjas readin this.

Like I says, them ninjas can make some great lemonade out of life lemons, and that Hiroki Hatayama kid represented one heck of a lemon. He was sittin his sad, cryin butt on the ground, just wishin one of his parents would come back and give him some food or help him wipe his nose or whatever it is abandoned kids think about, when a couple of members of Clan Platypus, who was out for a head clearin stroll, happened to spot him. I know, you think I'm bein too hard on the kid. After all, you say, that poor kid was just left by his parents. But I would have to point out that you forgot that I myself went through this same sorta thing. Sure, my parents didn't turn into hideous creatures, and my pa fell through the crust of the Earth instead of giving me an existential dilemma before leaving, but other than that, it was just the same. And let me tell you, when your parents have left you to fend for yourself with nothing to take care of you but ninjas or, in my case, harbor seals, you gotta wipe away the tears, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and grow the heck up.

It may just be me, but I think that is he hadn't wanted so badly to be coddled, things woulda turned out mighty differently. But things weren't different. Things happened exactly as they happened, which is how things always happen, if you notice. And as it happened, in this case the kings that was happenin was that the ninjas was bein super nice to the cryin kid they found because they remembered him from the family picnic and they knew he was the son of the most famous killer in the universe.

So, the ninjas picked him up, wiped the boogers off his upper lip, offered him some milk and cookies and took him to their underground volcano base. Now, at the time, Clan Platypus was still pretendin to be a friendly, happy corporation that was just tryin to do good for the world. I gather they was tryin to look like a manufacturer of paper plates what could be washed and stored after use. If it were real, it woulda been a pretty solid idea. Sadly, they was actually makin the plates out of plastic that had been made to look like paper because A) it was cheaper and B) they was plannin on slowly replacin the plastic with woven meth. But, at the point in time as these happenins was happenin, they was still just usin plastic. I ain't sayin they was right in doin that or nothin, but, if you ask me, havin a plate made of plastic is a whole heck of a lot better than havin a plate made out of a drug that's gonna keep you up all night and eat your bones. Maybe that's just me. But, because the Clan was still tryin to act like responsible corporate citizens, and so they had themselves a pretty nice Child Care Center inside that volcano base.

It was into this Center that they put little Hiroki while they went to talk to the CEO, Ted, about what they should do. He responded by calling them a couple of idiots and told them they had to run down, collect that kid and make sure they oversaw every aspect of his education and life until he was grown up enough to do it for himself. They agreed that was probably a good idea (mostly because their other option was dying in a pit full of grizzly bears covered in razor blades) and ran themselves right back down to the kiddie room.

When they arrived, they were met with a hail of missiles that had been quickly, but efficiently, carved out of bottles and wooden blocks. The child care technicians had mostly been taken hostage and the security guards were trying to negotiate with the terrorists who had taken over the play room. In the end, Clan security lost eight good men, two of the baby sitters suffered irreversible psychological damage and it was discovered that the mastermind of this situation was none other than the young Hiroki Hatayama. In the fifteen minutes it had taken the ninjas to get yelled at by Ted, Hiroki had organized the children into a well equipped and disciplined army that was attempting to secede from the rest of the company and form their own country with Hatamaya as Great Grand Poobah In Chief.

When they saw this, the ninjas who had picked Hiroki off the beach knew they had something special, but very, very dangerous, like a Christmas package filled with nitroglycerin. They took charge of the situation, removed Hiroki into his own apartments, arranged tutors for him and raised him as if he were their own, very dangerous, son.