Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

The Magical Stage Armor

For the first time in a decent while after the collapse of the monstrous mechanical arachnid crawling toward Boulder Town from the northern side, silence set in. Then it came with a subdued bubbling sound. Almost like boiling water. The dirt around the massive pile of debris turned wet and surged through the cracks. By the time a puffy, sludge mass began to inflate from within the debris, the mud had become something else entirely. The accumulating pressure blew a chunky piece of the once sky-roaming vessel off like a shooting lid.

"Gwirlon, are you alive, you brainless, goddamn moron?!" an injured ninja yelled out after crawling out from the wreckage and sprawling out awkwardly as the sharp protruding edges of the devastated war machine dug into his spine but he lacked the strength to flop his body off of the painful ridges.

A slick thud emanated from the vicinity as a blade emerged from underneath another collapsed sarcophagus of debris. With the blade carving the tomb up like an armed sardine trying to escape the tin can into the fresh air outside, trails of black smoke broke out and began fuming while the mechanical piece popped with localized chain blasts and the failing systems and parts added to the smoky spew. Once the blade had carved once enough of the steel prison out, a devastating thud blasted the carved top off while a hand decorated with blades and tools that simply stuck out from the entire arm like splintered parts of it busted out. The arm was of the thickness of an entire person. The man that pulled himself out attached to that arm was far more massive.

"Find out if Gloyfan is alive. Cut her out from the wreckage if need be," the ninja grumbled while the pile of sludge drowning the part of the collapsed vessel began giving rise to humanoid mud soldiers. The rising sludge army began scouring the area for anything to use for cover. Some of them squeezed their way into a compartment of the destroyed war machine to pull out its many parachutes and parted each of the massive cloth sheets for one another. Others used leafage to give them a more concrete, humanoid shape. The ninja with a neck infused with his chest and overgrown with muscle staggered on his feet before pulling out some bandages from his pouch and flinging it to his army.

The sludge humanoids began frantically grabbing and tearing the strings apart and wrapping them over their sludgy bodies. The sausage-shaped ninja then pulled out a pair of scrolls and unraveled them, unsealing glass jars filled with human teeth and various other smaller bones, while the other had complex assemblages of severed human fingers positioned for showcasing on iron pins. Each of the mindless swarm of sludge humanoids picked their weapon of choice. Some dipped their malleable bodies into the teeth jars, moving them across their entire shape to assemble rows of chompers where humans normally would've formed teeth. Others formed makeshift knuckle dusters from the myriad of tiny bones offered, while others attached stiff corpse fingers both as their own replacement and just spike-type accessories to give them a more horrifying appearance.

An unintelligible fit gargling and chuckling came from Gwirlon's direction as the towering ninja loomed over a cradled and semi-conscious body of a young woman whose entire body had been littered with bruises and cuts. Her once excellent and well-maintained hairdo now was in complete chaos, while her face had swollen up some from the blunt force damage of being within this war machine when it collapsed after being hit by an ungodly amount of destructive force. Gwirlon couldn't stop drooling and licking his lip while he stroked the woman's cheek gently, doing the best he could to wake her up. After all, in Gwirlon's experience, when he put force into something, things usually broke and he didn't want to break this lady he knew from her sticking around the places he was usually in and talking about things he couldn't understand all the time.

Gloyfan screamed out from the shock of awakening to the sight of Gwirlon looming over and stroking her face. She immediately kneed the simple-minded man in the groin but was surprised to see little to no reaction from the hit. Still, as if recognizing this gesture as a command to back off, Gwirlon straightened his back and stepped aside, giving Gloyfan the space needed to stand up.