The Tale of The Frog Kings.

Nibou's gang, such as it is, began when a small group of ne'er do wells tried to beat up Nibou outside of their school.  In order to ensure that individuals from the Ninja Village could function in the real world, they had 'shadow-enrolled' their students into real schools.  One of a ninja's earliest missions was to make a show of going to the school occasionally, passing the tests, and finding a way to explain away their constant absences.  Nibou simply refused to show up on occasion without excuse, and the truants were jealous of his ability to pass tests without studying (of course, in reality he was simply going to a different school).

Nibou beat them up.  Initially, they planned revenge, but they were unusually bright school thugs.  Pretty soon, Nibou found himself the unofficial leader of a gang.  Soon after that, when he'd finally grown to like a couple of them, he became the official head, and the gang's grew from there until its members entered high school.

At this point, Nibou's group was thrown into competition with other groups from other schools.  After a few bloody brawls, Nibou got sick of the trouble of fighting in groups and decided to start challenging other groups' leaders, who he inevitably beat senseless. Typically, the gangs would then join Nibou's larger group, although some would just get out of the game altogether.  In addition, its numbers were bolstered by wizards in similar situations to Nibou's joining up as their 'cover'.  This lasted until the middle of 11th grade, when two events shoot the group to its VERY CORE.

First, Nibou got beaten up by a leader of an even larger group.  This, in a way, turned out to be a blessing in disguise: The larger group was headed by a number of young men and women, all of whom were known in competitive circles for their martial arts.  They had united under a strong leader to avoid getting facerolled by ANOTHER group, who were kind of flat-out evil, and now Nibou didn't have to deal with them alone.  In addition, Nibou now had people to train with that were at his martial arts level and NOT also members of the village.  Finally, as part of the new group Nibou's gang were prevented from doing anything too illegal, which ended up meaning that they've lasted a lot longer and ended up a lot better off (as people) than many other groups would have.

Second, a few of the gang's members vanished into a casket.  The gang quickly alerted Nibou that an abandoned building in their territory had become 'haunted' : everyone who goes in vanishes.  Nibou goes in, Nibou comes out with gang members (this is also how he met SM-1), Nibou becomes known as someone who can solve SUPERNATURAL problems (though nobody has any idea what's really going on, except the other fellow wizard members).




The FROG KINGS' operation:

The Frog Kings run what might be called an extortion racket, requiring protection money from places in their territory.  They primarily target places like manga or hobby shops, bars, and gambling halls.  The downside is you're paying money to a local gang, the upside is that shoplifting, vandalism, and other such crime or inconvenience tends not to occur.  None of the businesses who have refused to pay have had anything happen to them beyond the normal wear and tear of that business type, but since the fee itself is rather cheap a good number of businesses consider it worth it to pay up, knowing they won't have to worry about people stealing from their machines or drunk old men harassing their wait staff.  Nibou's group occasionally clashes with smaller groups on the periphery of their territory and has had the occasional dispute with organized crime, but is generally left alone other than that.

Nibou's group does tend to be extraordinarily vindictive towards those who harm or offend members of the group.  A restaurant that refused to serve a few of the members due to their dress was trashed overnight, a group of cigarette smugglers who'd been known to do business in the alleys and parks of the area were found outside of town missing most of their teeth and wondering what size truck had hit them.  Their name comes from a particular event, where a group of junior high thugs had been causing trouble in a local park - littering, knocking over benches, and tormenting the local frog population by throwing them against a toolshed.  They were found later, beaten black and blue, stripped down to their underwear, tied to the shed and painted green and brown.  In none of these events have members of the Frog Kings been arrested, as often even the victims have only vague memories  of being hit hard in the back of the head before waking up as a mass of pain.
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Oddly enough, many of the Frog Kings have real-people jobs somewhere despite being absolute thugs.  In some cases, this was even the business' entry fee - agreeing to give someone a job.  Other times, the stigma against having a job simply isn't present, since Nibou has one.  It helps that businesses know not to shortchange or unfairly treat a member of the Frog Kings.

The Frog Kings have become remarkably efficient at identifying casket locations despite most of them having no goddamn clue what is going on.  They just know that if people start disappearing around a certain area (being spirited or demoned away, kamikakushi and all that) they might want to let Nibou or one of his 'generals' (other wizards or ninjas) know.


DRAMATIS PERSONAE: