Luffy and Ludo's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Smoke still hung over the treetop dojo when Luffy pulled the arrow from the door. The clan was dead. The warlord's dogs had come at dawn, killed everyone, and taken the ancestral scroll of shadow techniques. Ludo knelt on the raked gravel of the ruined garden below, one paw pressed to a stone that no longer marked anything. Two fat flame-point Siamese in torn ninja gear, the last of a family. Both wanted the same thing. Get the scroll back. Make the warlord pay. "Sitting here won't do it," Luffy said. He climbed down the rope trunk and dropped beside his sibling. "We need to reach his lands. We don't know the way." Ludo wiped his eyes and stood. "The tribute road. Everyone pays the warlord. The carts all go to him." That was the answer. A tribute caravan crossed the valley below every season, loaded with grain and coin bound for the warlord's fortress. Slip aboard, and it would carry them straight into his lands. Miss it, and the next chance was months away. The scroll would be gone deeper by then, harder to ever find. They ran. Below the trees, the caravan was already moving. Ten oxcarts groaned along the low road, guarded by spearmen who walked at the wheels. Dust rose in a long brown ribbon. The last cart was pulling past the tree line. "Now," Ludo whispered. "Before the road bends." Luffy studied the guards. Two watched the rear. One dozed on the tailboard of the final cart. "The oil jars," he said. "On that cart. We hide under the tarp." They split. Luffy darted low through the tall grass and reached the roadside ditch. Ludo circled wide. When the sleeping guard's cart drew even, Luffy tossed a pebble into the brush across the road. The two rear guards turned toward the sound. That was the gap. Ludo sprang first. He caught the tailboard and rolled under the tarp between the jars. Luffy jumped after him. His paw slipped on the wood. A jar tipped and cracked. Oil spread across the boards. The dozing guard woke. He yanked the tarp back and stared at two masked cats crammed among his cargo. "Stowaways!" he shouted. Luffy did not wait. He kicked the broken jar into the guard's chest and shoved him off the moving cart. The man hit the road hard. The caravan kept rolling. The other guards heard the shout and ran back, but the carts did not stop for them. "Pull the tarp down," Ludo hissed. They yanked it tight and pressed flat. The caravan carried them past the last of the trees and out of the valley. They were aboard, hidden, riding toward the warlord at last. But the guard they threw had seen their faces. He was running to the front of the line right now. By nightfall, the whole caravan would be hunting two cats among the jars.