fanfic- This Life is for the Birds

By me, of course. It occurs mid-late in the series. Bad Bird fights the Pizza Cats and muses on the way his life has gone.

This Life is for the Birds

It was the sound of steel on steel, the rush of movement in the final rays of twilight; two figures framed against the purple sky, far above city streets. These were the moments that Bad Bird lived for, as his sword met his opponent's, he felt the kind of adrenaline rush that made him seem unstoppable.

"Give it up pizza cat!" he sneered, thrusting his sword toward the white armored figure.

"Fat chance birdseed breath!" the cat quipped, parrying the blow. He came fast at the ninja crow with a series of quick slices. Bad Bird dodged them each in turn, his wings providing extra balance on the steep roof upon which they battled. Speedy had backed him to the edge of the roof, but the cat knew better than to expect surrender.

The crow fluttered just out of reach of Speedy's ginzu blade. "Nyah, nyah can't get me," he taunted.

"Oh yeah? Why don't you come hear and say that," the cat grinned.

The banter was light-hearted, but each swordsman knew that the battle itself was deadly serious, and that if either one had their way, this match would be their last. Below them a gang of Bad Bird's ninjas took on Speedy's two team mated. Even Bad Bird had to realize that it wasn't much of a match and that if he didn't wrap this fight up soon he'd have two more pizza cats to deal with. Not an ideal situation.

Luckily, he found his opening as Speedy left himself momentarily exposed. Bad Bird swooped in close and brought his sword down in a deadly slice to take off the white cat's head. Or it would have had it actually worked. The 'opening' had been a ploy. Speedy deftly parried the expected attack with his blade, and with his second katana struck a blow to Bad Bird's shoulder.

Bad Bird winced as he felt the sword cut through his armor and into his flesh. he backed off quickly so that the cat wouldn't get in another blow. It was time to beat a hasty retreat.

Clutching his shoulder, Bad Bird pumped his wings and got airborne. Below, his troupe of ninja crows lay defeated on the ground. The sight angered him further.

"We'll finish this next time, Pizza Cats!" he promised with a snarl. One of them shouted something in response, but the crow wasn't listening, he was deep in his own embittered thoughts.

Time after time he lost to those stupid samurai.. Why did he even bother trying at this point? All hie was was a failure, a failure and a disgrace to the Flying Skull clan. He'd fought essentially the same battle hundreds of times it seemed like, and always it was the same. Always he ended up beaten and humiliated. So many times he had come within a heartbeat of triumph, only to have it snatched from his claws. After this many battles shouldn't he have won just once?

He was as good a fighter as that miserable cat any day of the week, better, even! But somehow luck seemed to conspire against the crow and his masters. And so the Samurai Pizza Cats always came away the winners.

Near the heart of the city Bad Bird descended into an abandoned alley that was the secret entrance to the Flying Skull's underground complex. Miserably he remembered that he'd be expected to report to the Big Cheese before he could even tend to his wounds. He sighed, and stepped onto the small trolley that would transport him to the bulk of the compound.

Bad Bird had never imagined his life would be this way. he'd wanted to be important, famous, universally feared and beloved. Unfortunately the recording industry seemed to discriminate against ninja pop singers. He'd thought that serving the clan as warrior would be a noble and prestigious life, but now he was stuck playing third banana in a low budget political coup. He didn't even hold any real power, he just got blamed when things went wrong.

Bad Bird stepped off the trolley at the end of the line and took the elevator up to the main palace, specifically to the Big Cheese's private audience chamber. He winced; the Big Cheese was gonna blow his top, and the crow could already feel blood trickling down from his wound and matting his feathers. He took a deep breath, and knocked on the door.

"Come in," a nasal, supercilious voice commanded.

Bad Bird opened the door, and knelt on the floor in front of the Big Cheese and master Jerry Atrick.

"Well? Was the mission a success, Bad Bird?"

He hung his head. "It was a failure, sir."

The Big Cheese's beady eyes narrow."What?! A failure?! I ask you do do a simple little thing like rob a museum of its precious artifacts and you can't even do that properly!"

Bad Bird gritted his beak. "It was those Pizza Cats, sir! Someone must have tipped them off about the robbery!"

"Whaaaaaat?! Those wretched, wretched Pizza Cats!"

"Calm down my lord," a quiet, aged voice, warned. "Remember your blood-pressure."

"Aaaaaaragh! I don't give a damn about my blood pressure Jerry! Those Pizza Cats just make me so mad! And your stupid ninja crows can't even do a stupid single thing right!"

Master Atrick caught his underling's eye, and nodded, letting Bad Bird know that yes, now he could leave. With immense relief, Bad Bird dragged himself out into the secret hallway. He leaned heavily against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, the tingle of pain infecting his whole body.

"I hate this," he hissed to no one in particular, and then he began to limp off toward his private chambers. It was the one concession that was made to his rank. The other crows slept in tightly packed barracks, but he got a room that was all his own. He pulled the key out of his pocket, and practically fell inside, his despair weighing him down more than his wounds.

The room was large, but sparsely furnished, its spartan considerations consisting of a bed, dresser, armour rack, shelf, a low table, and a tatami mat to sit on. The real luxury was behind the door across the room, where Bad Bird now headed. Inside was a spacious, blue tiled bathroom; as a testament to his vanity one whole wall was a mirror, and in the center of the room was a wide, deep, round bath like a hot tub. Bad Bird knelt down and turned on the taps, which steamed and filled the room with the echo of rushing water. He upended several nearby bottles into the tub, adding bath salts and bubbles

The crow stood up again and began to slowly remove his armor, trying not to agitate the deep cut across his shoulder and chest. His helmet came off first, and Bad Bird tugged his feathers out of the tight bun that concealed them beneath his head gear. The crest feathers on his head were fine like spun threads, jet black and long, down past his shoulders. He shook them out and fretted at the split ends of rough treatment. Then Bad Bird unlaced his shoulder guards, one now broken, and his armored gloves as well. He took off his breastplate and his shin guards, knee-pads, and all the rest, until he stood only in his soft, beaten-leather under armor.

It was ripped, of course, and blood leaked over it in dark stains. He eased the shirt off, and inspected his wound in the mirror. It had bled a lot, and it hurt quite a bit, but it wasn't as deep as he'd imagined. He pressed his fingers gently to it and winced. He'd had worse, and eventually, he swore, he'd take each and every one back in the blood of Pizza Cats. For now he'd settle for a bit of physical relief. He opened the medicine cabinet and got out ointment, bandages, and a razor. He turned the water on in the marble sink, and rinsed his wound with a wet cloth.

He sighed. The short, dark blue down feathers in the region around the wound were already matted beyond repair, and if he was going to bandage he wound there was no help for it. He cleaned the area as well as he could, and then shaved off the feathers around it, leaving only dark, shiny skin. He clenched his beak as he applied rubbing alcohol that fizzed and burned, but above all, reduced the chance of scarring. Then he dressed the wound with a peppery smelling ointment, and covered it with a large adhesive bandage. He sighed, stroking the bandage, and pulled something else out of the medicine cupboard, a bottle of sake liquor and a small glass.

Bad Bird finished disrobing and stepped into the now three-quarters filled bath full of hot, steamy, bubbly water, smelling of spicy lotions. The heat of the water was shocking at first, and he clenched his beak in response, but has he sunk his body and wings deeper in, he became accustomed to the heat, and the water began to soothe his knotted muscles.

He sighed deeply, leaning his head back, soaking in the heat and trying to relax. It wasn't easy, but the sake he sipped helped him numb his anger. He thought about the city, and about the joy of flying over it with the moon and stars above him. Bad Bird had grown up in the country, which had its own kind of charm, but he thought that it was dwarfed by the beauty of high towers and twinkling city lights. He'd come to Little Tokyo almost seven years before, after a long trail of travel and odd jobs. He'd left his home, run off really, from his near-abusive, impossible to satisfy father, and in the beginning hadn't known or cared where he was going to, just that he wouldn't come back until he could prove that he wasn't worthless. He'd been quite a few places before he got to Little Tokyo, never staying long, and met quite a few people. Fate seemed to conspire to keep him from settling down in any of them, but it was best not to dwell on that.

He was eighteen when he set foot in the capital city, young enough to be impressed, but not wise enough to take it seriously. He'd ended up joining a gang, and once again doing odd jobs to get by, albeit of a rather more sinister nature, mostly deliveries, body guarding and the like. He'd been the bouncer at a local club for a while too, which was where he was working when the word went out the the Flying Skull was recruiting.

The Flying Skull was serious business, the only real organized crime that still operated in Little Tokyo, and they were descended from one of the original warrior crow clans that ruled the island before modern day. Needless to say every two bit punk who thought he was hot stuff showed up looking for a job, including Bad Bird, who by then had acquired quite a reputation around town.

Jerry Atrick, the master, had liked him, and so just like that Bad Bird had been a made crow. It was great for a while, money, perks, a real ego boost. But then, two years ago the Big Cheese had decided he was through with ruling the underworld, he wanted to rule the whole of Little Tokyo. And just like that Bad Bird's life had gone down hill.

Two years of take over attempts later, the Flying Skull was practically in ruins, they'd lost most of their interests around the city, funds and moral were low. It was senseless. The Samurai Pizza Cats defeated them at every turn. What was their deal, anyway? Bad Bird wondered. He'd never seen any evidence that they were paid for their efforts, as far as he could tell they defended the city purely out of altruism. But why did they bother? The Emperor was mad, the royal heir a spoiled brat, and the bureaucracy a tangled mess. Why did they even care who was running the government? Someone had to be paying them under the table, was all bad Bird could think. Bad Bird loved Little Tokyo, really, but he recognized that it didn't really matter who was in power, the city would go on in any case.

He was sick of it. Sick of this pointless, humiliating fight. He hated the Pizza Cats. Hated their holier than thou attitude, and how they always beat him, and their stupid, sniveling fans. But in the end, they didn't really matter. They were just pawns, like him, pawns of the other side.

The person he hated the most, the person who was responsible time and again for his wounded pride, the person who drove this stupid war on and on without a cause while everything else crumbled around them, was the Big Cheese.

The Pizza Cats, Bad Bird wanted to beat them in honorable combat, but the Big Cheese? Oh how Bad Bird longed to stick a knife in his back while the rat slept. The only reason he hadn't was his own stupid sense of honor. Jerry Atrick would know it was him no matter what precautions were taken, the old crow just knew things like that, so he'd be out of the Flying Skull and on his own again. What did it matter? Bad Bird loved Little Tokyo but there were other cities, and he could defeat any assassins that were sent after him.

But in the end he couldn't kill someone in cold blood like that. The heat of battle was one thing, but murder was another, at least to him. He could resign from the Flying Skull of course, but quitting felt too much like another failure.

That was why he'd done it. He'd be killed if anyone ever found out; but he thought, just one more failure and the Big Cheese would quit. Just one more battle and he would defeat that samura in white.

That was why Bad Bird had tipped the Cats anonymously about the museum attack.

It hadn't been the first time, and it wouldn't be the last.