LJ Rabbit Hole Day was yesterday.
(I happen to be on Blogger, and it's currently today, so screw it. This is what my rabbit told me.)

A ceiling tile moves. Carefully, cautiously, a crack appears at the edge, where gyprock meets scaffolding. Nobody notices, of course, blinded by fluorescents and monitors. They only see the corporate landscape upon which they work. Deliverables and action items stand out like signposts on profit margin plains and engineering process roads.

It is through this landscape that the ninja creeps. Unseen in the ceiling, he searches relentlessly for his quarries, propelled by two different daimyos whose aims happened to coincide. He seeks a particularly juicy tidbit of information, buried in the laptop of his other prey, a manager who caused various complications in leaving his last company to join his current one. These complications were of such import that the ninja is now under contract to deliver retribution. This avenue of attack, this physical espionage, is his last option. He has already attempted access through the insubstantial vistas of cyberspace, creeping past IP addresses and DNS servers not unlike the way he moves unseen above cubes and water-coolers now, but with less grace. The forging of a digital entrance proved to be less than fruitful, for the enemy had hired specialists of their own, modern shugenja who dwelt almost exclusively in the abstract realm where code is king and those who can write the proper incantations have abilities of barely-constrained power. The ninja knew he was no match for them in that world, and so it was that he settled on his current choice of action. Should this attempt fail, he will resort to something else, set back but not defeated.

It is not far. The ninja can see the light of day glimmer through crack of corner office's door. Here in corporate tree, where productivity is the sap that runs from root to leaf, even the sun has become enslaved and turned subservient to energy-efficient halogen tubes. The closed blinds help the employees stay focused, they say. The ninja snorts in disgust at this thought and lets the ceiling tile inaudibly drop back into place. Having regained his bearings, he progresses onwards, moving like a spider through the web of scaffolding attached to the bones of the building, for the tiles below him have no more strength to support him than wet bread.

Getting down into the bowels of this bureaucratic nightmare was an ordeal. Everyone thinks it's as simple as finding the ventilation duct on the ceiling, rapelling down the oversized shaft and dropping into the room of your choice through the convenient grate. No, the ninja was forced to take a far more circuitous route, a duplicitous affair involving the embarrassment of disguising himself as an unnoticed cube-dweller. To pose as a common worker drone, walking the Path of the Upturned Tie, keeping eyes lowered and purpose in mind, always productive, never questioning. A ninja is none of these things, and he would that the job did not require such actions. Wishing otherwise, however, is a waste of time and he has a far more important task at hand. Such memories are banished from his mind.

The wall looms, insomuch as a wall can loom in the twelve-inch space between false ceiling and genuine. The ninja re-aligns his harness to allow for better positioning above the door to the office, scant feet below him. He thinks of what might have been, had he been able to smuggle his ninja-to into the building with him. With his sword, he could have sliced his way through the weak stone floor beneath him and attack with surprise and fervor, seizing the information he seeks by Way of the Blooded Blade. To his dismay, this organization has had the audacity to install metal detectors, claiming to maintain the security of the expensive technical equipment stored in the laboratories. Thus forced to resort to craftier weapons made of polymer and glass, the ninja turns to them now, pulling a small wedge from somewhere on his person. It is but a simple thing, glass cut into a triangle and having three slender threads running from each corner. The ninja has fixed a scrap of black cloth to one face, forming a crude-yet-effective mirror, and sharpened one edge to form a blade that rivals the finest razor. He takes hold of the threads and carefully arranges them so the glass can be hung at an angle. Checking that his scouting will go unseen in the immediate vicinity, the ninja lowers the glass down past the safety of the suspended ceiling. He rapidly confirms his suspicions - he is alone for the moment, for while a great many bodies abound, they are safely tucked away into their cubicles, stationary, metaphorically screwing widgets onto wongles day in, day out. They are powered partly by coffee and cigarettes, but mostly by cash, and for that reason they work diligently, never looking up.

To any observer, it would be obvious. It is not often that the ceiling opens up and a person drops out. The workers do not observe though, keeping eyes fixed on glaucoma-inducing rectangles of light, relying on their ears to warn of approaching management. It is this early-warning system that betrays them, for the ninja creates naught but minor disturbances of air. He almost smiles as he does so, behind his cowl and his mask, knowing that it will take the executives years to figure out the secrets he employs to move tiles and unhook fasteners soundlessly. They will never learn how he replaced the tile after dropping six feet into a silent crouch and darting behind the open door to the corner office.

The Inner Sanctum. The ninja has no idea when the manager shall return, but he is patient. He drops the second of his tools, a one-hundred dollar bill, on the ground next to the lavish mahogany desk which serves as both the center of the manager's world and the ninja's chosen point of ambush. He drops into the Folded Orchid, his preferred position from which to strike, and he waits.

Time passes.

The manager must have a lunch meeting.

The sun, unhindered here in the corner office, slowly paints the walls a darker shade of rose.

Close of business, the Final Moments. The ninja hears footsteps and a far-too-jovial voice in the hall. Words of fiscal policy and potential terminations drift in on carefully climate-controlled air conditioned draughts. The conversation eventually dwindling to trivial matters, one voice finally says good-bye and departs. The ninja tenses, waiting for the steps to turn and enter, waiting for eyes to fall downwards, pulled by the unvarying gravitation of cold, hard cash ripe for the taking. Just as inevitably, the manager's hand reaches down to investigate the answer to the question: Why is there money on the floor of my office? His findings are not to his satisfaction.

The next events are swift and silent. The ninja strikes thrice, first at a particular vertebrate near the pelvis forcing the executive's legs to become as wet ramen noodles, second at a carefully chosen point near the shoulder blade, inducing the same paralysis of the arms. The third and final blow comes in the form of nylon thread connecting two cheap plastic rings, looping around the throat and suffocating the only method of obtaining aid remaining to the now-doomed man. It would not matter, of course, as by the time the idea that an assassination is taking place registers, it is effectively over. As the last impulses of life course through his body, the manager hears a final whisper in his ear, naming those responsible for bringing about his end and the reasons why. The manager's last thought is "Well, fuck."

The ninja is nearly finished. Silently invoking a prayer for the soul of his fallen mark to be judged fairly in the spirit world, he obtains the laptop he is to obtain and fastens it securely to his belly. It would not do to lose it during the part of the mission that is to come. Wielding his final tool, a telescoping fiberglass rod with a pivoting rubber foot at one end and a carefully cut diamond at the other, he prepares himself for the leap. It took months to prepare for this leg of the journey, and he is determined not to lose his nerve, but nonetheless there resides a wholly irrational fear within his chest. Supressing as much as possible, he looks down to the edge of the window, seeing the parcel he planted there the night before, its handle outstretched and ready to be grasped.

After but a moment, for few remain, he exhales, steadies himself and sets about the final task. One surgical cut here, another there, the heel of his hand snaps out and it happens. The glass snaps in a nigh-perfect circle just large enough for him to fit through, while the silence he has adhered to almost religiously thus far is shattered by the perimeter alarm. Originally intended to be silent and for the purposes of maintenance and safety in case a large bird or other foreign object manages to break a window and force an orifice into the building, it has been renovated into a state-of-the-art security tool. The ninja knows it does not matter, however, since he will be gone long before a response can be prepared. Foot-first, he extrudes himself through the window and leverages more and more of his safety into the fingertips of one hand, while the other slides down to free the parcel containing his life-line from the side of the skyscraper.

The doorway to the office is filled by corporeal shadows. The elite security team employed by the company, clad all in black and armed with the latest in smart-weaponry has arrived far sooner than expected. Seeing the ninja, the barrels of their armaments raise and open fire as the ninja lets go. The window explodes with the impact of a thousand steel-tipped hailstones, and down below, plummeting, an aluminum frame blossoms into wings of origami. Like an invisible, deadly Mary Poppins, the ninja is borne away through a forest of steel and glass by a westerly wind.
  ¶ 4:21 p.m.