My Ninja Girl 4 by Gideon Caldwell (latest novels to read .TXT) 📕

“That’s a weird question to be asking me,” Micah said.

“Like I said, I’m just curious. I never thought my sister would marry anyone, and I especially didn’t think Bunni would, yet here I am in the future, and both of them have married you. Pardon me, but it just doesn’t make sense.”

“Just a normal guy like me, huh?”

“Something like that. And it leaves me wondering if perhaps I have been, or I guess I should have said, perhaps I had been, looking in the wrong place all along. I always thought if I did get married, it would be to a soldier, or even one of the clan hunters, or maybe…” She didn’t finish that statement. “Who knows?”

Micah heard Bobi rattle off some facts about what the tunnel was once used for, his grandmother adding the occasional salacious comment, which Choro and Bunni usually picked up on.

“Have you ever been to Heian before?” Milsung asked, changing the subject.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Then you may be in for a surprise.”

“If it’s anything like Jokamatchi, I guess I’ll have to just get used to it.”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing like Jokamatchi. For one, there are men, and it’s a very…” Milsung paused for a moment as she searched for the right word. “It’s a very open society, I will say that. People are very forthcoming. This is one of the reasons they have issues with Jokamatchi. You see how kitsunes are,” she said as she gestured toward Soraya, whose ears twitched.

“I heard that,” Soraya called back to them.

Micah looked to Milsung and nodded, and even though it was brief, he felt good at that moment. They had finally been able to connect on something, even if it was at the expense of the kitsune.

Chapter Two

Micah didn’t know what to expect from the country of Heian, especially its main district, Muryane, which covered the entire ground area of the country and stretched beyond what the eye could see. He was instantly surprised at how dense the cityscape was, the skyscrapers towering, and any buildings over four stories shaped like rabbit ears and lined in lights, the floating districts Lepus and Tapeti illuminating the sky.

The tunnel from Woodsaka had brought them directly into a drainage ditch in a small, urban park with several designated sport areas. The trees here looked different, their leaves absolutely enormous, the canopy higher than it was in Neo-Hokkaido. Like the floating districts above, the park was well-lit, yet there was enough shadow near their current location to disguise them for the time being, to give Micah and his team a moment to acclimate to the new environment.

He helped his grandmother off her moving vehicle, the elderly woman already complaining that she was going to have to do some walking. As soon as she was off, the vehicle turned and headed back toward the tunnel, offering a little toot before it spoke. “I’ll be waiting here for you,” came Bobi’s voice. “Don’t forget about me.”

“Listen to this thirsty AI…” his grandmother said under her breath.

“So we stick with the plan,” Micah told the group, finishing something he had started to say just moments ago, “and hopefully it will work until we figure out a way to get some funding.”

“You could always prostitute yourself out.” Bunni passed in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “The women here would be absolutely thrilled to be with a strapping young Neo-Hokkaidan such as yourself. I will allow it, but I don’t know about Yuri…”

Micah’s grandmother cackled at her statement. “We could pimp him and Choro out.” She slapped the side of Choro’s belly with the back of her hand. “Isn’t that right?”

“Hey!”

“One of you is muscular, the other is a bit thicker. That gives the people some options, the customer always being right and whatnot. It’s good to give options. That’s business.”

“That was never part of the plan…” Micah said, but then he realized in the looks on Bunni and his grandmother’s face that they were teasing him.

Yuri came forward and connected her arm with Micah’s. “Before we start along that line of thinking, we need to find a place to rest for the night. And we need to stick with the plan, like Micah said. There’s no room for improvising here.”

Once again, her leadership of the group became apparent, the three other ninjas—and Liza, for that matter—falling in line behind her. For Micah’s plan to work, it was important that Soraya’s kitsune features be on full display. However, going through the streets until they found a place to stay could prove difficult, even in a diplomatic area.

That was how scorned Jokamatchians were in Heian.

To counteract this, Soraya had wrapped the scarf Micah’s grandmother wore over her head to clamp down her ears. It was going to be impossible to hide her tail considering her current outfit, so she simply kept it up and tried to stick to the shadows as they made their way out of the park into the main thoroughfare.

They immediately ran into a problem: it was exceedingly bright on the streets, the cobblestone roads lit by lanterns and roaming drones, which cast cones of soft orange light from fifteen feet above. It was a lively area, Micah coming to realize that they had stepped out of the park and into a busy section of the district full of nightclubs. Young Plains Dwellers were already out and about, men and women with rabbit ears, many of them tall like Bunni. Most didn’t pay any attention to their group, but a pair of men all huddled together and sharing a bejeweled metal flask happened to catch sight of Soraya’s tail.

“Hey,” one of them said, a crooked grin taking shape across his face. “What’s the kitsune doing here?”

“I don’t