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

Occupational Hazards

"What's your deal, anyway?" Shigin yelled out as he leaped back through the hole he had made in the damaged gambling house building and started swinging his fists wildly. This reckless approach would have seen as suicidal if used by anyone else but the invincible genin.

"Human Bat!" Shigin shouted while he jumped up over Little Honda's head and stiffened his body up in a straight position. His legs grew in length again, landing firmly on the ground and using the balancing point of the ground beneath to swing the stiffened body about like an actual bat.

A deafening and horrid punch silenced the genin. It was incredibly fast and packed enough force to send Shigin flying upward and through the corner of the gambling house's ceiling. Damaging the building even further. The other genin had to clutch tighter to the surfaces they clung on to so that the shock to the building did not have them lose their balance.

"The idiot makes a point." Pagu smiled with a sly expression as he threw his backpack up in the air and charged at Little Honda into close-distance as well. The monster lacked the maturity and the baptism of battle to evaluate the fact that Pagu Aphonei of Team Hickory previously fought like a mid-to-long range fighter and had little to no reason to approach a superior physically opponent up close.

Honda just threw his hands up in the air and jumped forward in a maddened dash, throwing his hammer arms down at the charging genin, greatly surpassing the slightly sadistic youth in speed. However, once Pagu's body appeared to be crushed and mangled under Honda's arms, after a poof of smoke cleared out, a spray of green and dark purple gases spread around the monster's upper body with the object of Honda's destruction being revealed to be Pagu's backpack, which the genin had substituted himself with.

"Tranquilizers again?" Zephra looked at her teammate who, after succeeding with his switcheroo trick, rushed back into the safety of the most faraway walls in the long distance.

"It worked before. Maybe temporarily but it did slow him down. This time I put most of my stored poison gas into the mix as well." Pagu smiled, his lips twisted long and stretched all across the lower parts of his face.

Honda's body bloated out. Before the abomination looked like a monster sewn together from multiple body parts like a jigsaw puzzle, now the manmade horror inflated to the point of appearing almost like a balloon and greatly stressing out the stitches of obsidian black threads that held it together. With a mighty blow, the monster sent the collection of tranquilizing gas and poison gas that he had breathed in back in a concentrated stream.

Pagu tried to avoid the rushing flow of gas but the spread was too wide, it was aimed solely at his direction and dodging such an attack whilst in a corner was less than ideal given that movement aside at any direction only brought him a bit closer to the object he was ultimately trying to avoid. The genin grabbed his throat as his face twisted in a pain-ridden grimace while it dyed blood-red.

Even with all the filtering and tampering to the highly precise and lethal formula, which Pagu had concocted inside Honda's lungs, even with the unearthly concentration of carbon dioxide coming out from the monster's innards and flushing the formula up somewhat, Pagu fell without a sign of life on the floor.

"P-Pagu..." Zephra shrieked out, without thinking, the girl placed herself hallway into rushing to her possibly dead teammate just to check on his condition but a resolute scolding of Juhi Aburame stopped her.

"Don't move your eyes away from the enemy!" the Aburame yelled out. By now, most of the genin had realized that this was not an enemy they could defeat, not even all six of them together. The best they could hope for was to bargain for time, play this out until reinforcements arrive, hopefully, someone of distinguished rank and willing to put themselves into this mad meat grinder.