Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Come On And Slam!

"Come on! They have already eliminated Rere and Fazif! They were some of our better contenders! If they eliminate the big guy too, Fennec will see Agbarah like he sees his ears!" a short woman in a black and greasy mohawk, scantily clad in subtle armor plates waved a weapon that was a hybrid stuck in between a polearm and an ax over her head. A musclebound mercenary wearing the mask of a chipped human skull leaned and covered up, like a child protecting himself from a bully by the side of the rambunctious mercenary.

"Instead of barking orders you should start scoring eliminations yourself!" an agile and armored female mercenary spared a moment to look at her noisy comrade before resuming her barrage of arrows from the top of a morbidly obese, giant that was missing the top of his head all the way to the lower jaw. That shortcoming, while looking extremely morbid, provided Fennec's chosen mercenary an excellent perch point to rain arrows down onto the arena from.

"That's why I hate mercenary squads. No subordination..." the woman in black cursed while raising her weapon to defend against a sword-wielding attacker and swat him aside with her heel. "You're not entirely wrong, though. If I eliminate people faster than they can eliminate all of you, maybe we can still salvage this qualifying round!"

Having settled on this primitive strategy as her plan, the woman in black darted forward. She rolled and slid underneath several attackers that felt threatened by her rapid dash and defended themselves. Looking for the weakest of prey, the mohawk'd woman slammed the other end of her brass polearm into the ground and vaulted herself over a crowd of brawling warriors to get a better look at the available roster.

Almost immediately a tall and slender individual of a dark complexion, wearing a red flak jacket with white numbers and the name "S-Bone" slathered on the back of the flak jacket, stood out. Primarily because of the unnatural height of this one, and also, because the mercenary noted this one belonging to the group of athletes whom the announcer introduced as having no actual combat experience during their group's introduction.

"Mine!" she cried out, thrusting the front of her polearm down and aiming for the back of the slender giant. Alarmed by the focused battle cry startling him from right behind him, S-Bone jumped up and staggered back, falling flat on his rear and mumbling out a pathetic wail. The polearm's thrust embedded into the tiles right in between his noodle-like legs that spread apart in a snap.

The mohawk'd mercenary instantly pulled the blade of her polearm out and took a defensive position, expecting her opponent to kick up or try to sweep her and a dozen other competitors with his legs that could've served as a dragon's tail based on their length and slender build. Instead, the athlete just scrambled with a miserable crawl back and began bumping into other warriors that were duking it out between themselves.

"Sorry, sorry... I'm not too used to being on the ground and this is a kind of emergency..." he began babbling and excusing himself which, in terms, only made everyone around the curious denizen of the Lightning Country only scratch their heads in amazement how such an inexperienced competitor could've survived this long when some much more skilled and famed warriors bit the dust already. "What's your problem, ma'am, you could've split my head with that sort of reckless slash!"

"What's my problem?" Fennec's mercenary shriveled her face, looking utterly baffled. "You're in a life-or-death battle here. Splitting your skull is exactly what I was aiming for! It's literally what they pay mercenaries to do."

"What is this? Kindergarten league?" the slender athlete pushed his tall body off the floor and stood back up while picking a rubber ball only barely wider than his head in radius off the ground and tossing it up and down in his hand. "This is a competition. The terms are that eliminated competitors are out. Killing is unprofessional. Nobody benefits from that. You're hurting your own sport here, ma'am."