a self-esteem punk

Close the door, silently, brother. It seems the last of our number has arrived. Put your feet up and give your kimono a rest as we intone the sacred wisdom of NINJA HORRORSCOPES!

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Aries: This could be a difficult week. While scaling a vertical castle wall to assassinate a powerful land-owner, your mobile phone somehow gets pressed and you end up butt-dialling your girlfriend. She hears a few minutes of breathing and grunting, then somebody shrieking while you yell “NOW YOU FEEL MY WRATH!” - She immediately assumes that you’re balls-deep in the barmaid. When talking doesn’t solve things and you become tired of dodging thrown kitchen-ware, you reluctantly deploy smoke pellets and disappear into the night like a shadow.

Taurus: You meet a tall, dark stranger beneath a silvery moon. In accordance with your training, you immediately execute a spinning leg-sweep, then a high cutting blow to the larynx before finishing them with your Sai. In this instance, it turns out to be a courier bearing something you bought from Amazon. You deploy smoke pellets and disappear into the night like a shadow.

Gemini: This is a good week for your finances. Neptune dominates the skies, ensuring the flow of gold into your pockets as local warlords pursue their blood-debts. Your clan is in high demand and you double your profits by fighting for both sides. Tuesday is marred briefly when, due to administrative cock-up, you accidentally end up in a vicious rooftop sword battle with your own nan. Well, one ninja does very much look like another, especially at night. An unexpectedly slippy tile prevents accidental nanicide: as the silly old mare tumbles off the roof, you take the opportunity to deploy smoke pellets and make a like shepherd.

Cancer: Consider the crab you are named for, Cancer-san. He hugs his body low to the ground, keeps his eyes upon the subject of his hunger and moves sideways, never directly forward. Like a crab, you must become hard on the outside, yet remain delicious on the inside and good with a lightly salted salad. Consider the crab. The CRAB. The stars say you have crabs. Deploy smoke pellets now.

Leo: Decisions, decisions. Lower ventrical, neat (if powerful) burst over the painting, or in underneath the ribs and pull the whole kaboodle out and to hell with the priceless rug? You’ve heard about porn magazine editors that become so inured to their work that they spend most of their time agonizing over the interior decoration behind the shot than the myriad wangs and their improbably destinations. Now it seems you’re more concerned with protecting works of art than turning your enemies into walking sashimi. Perhaps it’s time to get into porn. Do ninjas do porn? You deploy smoke pellets and are ruminating so deeply you almost forget to disappear.

Virgo: Some days, you wonder if you should ever have abandoned your dreams of opening a barbecue-chicken restaurant on the Champs-Élysées. Making a silent, internal decision, you deploy your smoked poulets and disparaissez.

Libra: Hubris, venerable Libra… hubris! You are so busy laughing at the sight of another stupid samurai falling upon their sword on the battle-field that you slip on some entrails and fall on your keys. Oh, sweet-and-sour pork, that’s a bastard. Disappearing is out of the question, so you glide mysteriously sideways, clutching at an area between your leg and your balls.

Scorpio: Ah, you seek the next challenge, do you, unenlightened one? After many years of working in the night, at one with the shadows, you seek greater meaning? Then yes. You have achieved a great victory in the inner battle all must face and you have earned this advice: Search out the temple of the Golden Wonder. Once you defeat the guard and make your way inside, fill your pack with the ultimate reward - the SPICY TOMATO WHEAT CRUNCHIES. They will see you well through a massive hangover. True say. If you can’t find them, get your laughing gear around some Nice and Spicy Nik Naks. Deploy your smokey-bacon Wotsits and disappear.

Sagittarius: It is a strange week. Your master, Shredder, has pitted you and your brothers against what he claims is your greatest threat to obtaining a foothold in the valuable and lucrative criminal underworld of New York. In a showdown planned for months, your forces are finally unleashed and you face: four teenage mutant turtles. You’re told they’re ninja, but really, they look like cos-players. Well, they look like cos-players for about 30 seconds, then they start to resemble something very much like lasagne. You feel sort of guilty about this, particularly if they were just teenagers. This is about one step away from crashing a kids birthday party, stabbing them up and nicking the cake. You deploy slightly more smoke pellets than usual to avoid looking your brethren in the eye as you disappear.

Capricorn: Concentrate! Be always alert and give your all to your path, lest the spirits of the elders seek to tutor you! A few moments of self-indulgence are really going to come back to bite you this week as your clan brothers, sick of hearing you complain about the state of your barnet, have secretly paid the sensei’s munting daughter to dress up as your missus and take you down a peg or two. As the old saying goes, the whingey ninja with the ginger fringe that makes him cringe misses the minge and fingers the minger.

Aquarius: Another day on the Ninj. You’ve been ninjing it up good and proper lately, but somebody always wants to take down a good, honest evil mercenary killer-for-hire who trades in indiscriminate, clandestine slaughter. Bruce Lee. Chuck Norris. PIRATES. Drunken singers from promising local industrial bands inexplicably hunting ninja in music venues in northern fishing villages. You thought you had met and fought them all, until today, screaming from the skies came that infernal Irish bint, gabbling about whales and Robin Hood. ENYA. Which she just explained at considerable length is some kind of fucking Irish acronym for ENemY to all ninjA. Then she drank all your sake and did a wee on your best ceremonial rug. She is fucking insane. If you see her again, you’re going to rip her nipples off.

Pisces: Dreams have been chasing around your mind, where only thoughts of silent destruction should dwell. Can a ninja be dissolved by vinegar? Was Belinda Carlisle the first true ninja? Does it make you MORE ninja to do your ninjing while listening to the Wu-Tang Clan? Is it true that ninjas cannot surf? Can ninjas become zombies? Does that make them slow, obvious ninja (lame) or quick, invisible zombies (Shit!)? What about ninja with tentacles? Could Uhuru plus a Zulu create Cthulujutsu? Or is it just you? You should possibly not be swallowing your smoke pellets, little ninja, they will make your mind disappear.

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Let yourself out, brother, for the night curls arounds us and… oh right, you all just fucked off, did you? I see.

I’ll close up then, shall, I? Charming.