Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Games of Body and Soul

The Mother of the Mind

The inside of the monks' mansion was decorated with statues of divine figures, donning plentiful limbs, even faces, and eyes. Given how the welcoming party was all concealed, fostering false dreams of evading Mana's chakra sensory as they hugged the nearest statue in an attempt to hide, the magician had the chance to marvel at the spiritual respite and its artistic treasures.

While Mana did find herself often talking or relying on a greater power, whether it was completely faceless, or just hidden behind the vague term "Magic", she had always found these deities to be ridiculous. They just appeared so overblown and needlessly excessive that they reminded of something that a little kid designed, justifying their lack of creativity with the number of faces and arms that their deity sported. Their origin stories also seemed quite ridiculous. Even so, they provided plentiful entertainment value so the magician had to hand those vaguely historic and more religious in nature text that much.

With a raised pair of fingers, Mana signaled to her party of companions all of whom shared her passionate dislike of the Diamond Hand to keep their guard up and prepare. Out of nowhere, or so the assailants thought, a good pair of dozens of people flooded the vestibule from around various statues and paintings where they had kept themselves hidden previously. Their weaponry appeared different from the quick firing dispensers used by the men outside...

Mana stayed back, feeling wary of these new weapons and she decided to scope them and their mode of fire out a bit better. They looked a lot like the close range weaponry used by the Syndicate in the Katabami gold mine but longer and overall larger. Thumb rushed ahead, Mana did not need to feel worried about the burglar, she was nimble enough to avoid the kunai outside and acrobatic enough to dispose of these men in very distinctly impossible seeming manners.

Itemi once again rolled for cover. Kicking an unfortunate thug who was a pair of moments too slow and was concealed behind the statue that the Shukuba Security officer intended to use for cover. Before the unlucky man hit the ground, his body was shredded by following the burst of fire from Itemi's dispenser to finish him off.

Thumb's claws left their silver and crimson red streaks in the air, blood splattered across the red curtains, which, in retrospect, were aptly colored. The blood left a very distinct kind of red from a cheap emulation that the architects and decorators intended so it was still easy to tell which curtains had tasted the juices of someone's downfall.

The fire that came out of these peculiar looking dispensers was one of a very short range. The weapons did not fire kunai in series, one after the other, instead, they fired out packages that erupted on impact releasing kunai shrapnel all around them. It would have been troublesome to evade at close range as the air friction alone appeared to discomfort the spheres fired out enough, at a certain distance traveled after being fired, that the projectile set off even after missing its mark.

Luckily enough, Mana had kept her distance and found herself more than capable at tracking the projectiles, evading the shrapnel was profoundly simple when she kept her range with just a tad of unease on her aching ribs being placed for good measure. Getting in might have posed a problem but as long as Thumb, who had successfully infiltrated the enemy lines due to her amazing speed and sheer willpower to eradicate her employers, does her thing – Mana and Itemi may not need to.

Itemi did not appear willing to let the women do all the work as he, quickly and as cleverly as only he could have, dispatched of all the remaining thugs with just a couple of quick bursts of fire as he moved from one statue to another to prevent being pinned down and have his cover be compromised and destroyed.

"There are two sets of stairs..." Thumb stated the obvious, looking at Mana and asking her chakra sensory to help the girl make some highly educated guesses without voicing those requests.