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

Nowhere To Go But Up

A burning soreness forced Mana's consciousness to snap back to the cruel reality. A reality of which she could not see all too much of. A reality in which a great number of something sharp and rough pressed against the magician's body to the extent where she almost felt her insides being forced out.

The miserable mistake of movement made Mana grunt in pain and feel the taste of blood in her mouth. A taste which she had somehow manage to forget since the last hour she's very nearly been killed by the very same creature. Even as the magician's temples twinged with blood pressure and her mind felt hazy and unresponsive, to say the least, she could recall the fact that a building decided to use Mana as its pillow.

Normally it'd have been of little issue. With enough augmentation, Mana could have shifted some debris around and freed herself, with enough stamina she could have augmented herself to survive a hundred buildings just like this one falling on top of her and with a mere feat of chakra control, Mana could have blasted all of this rubble aside with a simple ninjutsu technique. Problem was that chakra was a luxury Mana ran out of when the building so conveniently crumbled.

Just how much time has passed since Mana got taken out? This sarcophagus of concrete and exotic as they are durable steel alloys may just have saved Mana's life. Had Honda found Mana's unconscious body somewhere within his infuriated reach, he would have popped her head like a pimple. Especially without any endurance augmentations to resist his unfathomable strength. Just how many people has Honda killed by now? Just how many more specters will haunt Mana's dreams and just how many more failures will she have to face before fate finally lets her die?

It was a dark thought but Mana had just been bested twice by a monster she declared her own responsibility to stop and she had run out of any ounces of strength, leaving her effectively useless in any future attempts of stopping Honda as well. It would take hours if not an entire night for Mana to regain any scraps, anything resembling what was necessary to get out from this mausoleum of destruction she was trapped under.

It was a dark thought but everything around the magician was pitch black as well, she was trapped under what could have been dozens of floors of rubble during nighttime when the last thing on anyone's mind would have been to look for people under the rubble. The priority right now was stopping Honda, evacuating people and salvaging those that could still be saved, not turn over rocks.

Mana closed her eyes and tried taking as deep of a breath in as she could. She felt the wetness of her clothes, the cold brush of some semblances of the late spring breeze brushing against her cheeks that felt chilly. Chilly in a way that suggested that her entire face was covered in something wet – she was bleeding pretty badly. That meant that time was not a luxury Mana had either, she could not afford just rest here for weeks or months, she could most likely not afford to sit tight and wait for her chakra to return. She had to get out from this deathtrap and do it within minutes.

The kunoichi was not entirely sure where exactly she's been bleeding from. She was properly compressed and felt her muscles burn up and get proper bruised whenever she moved them by the rough debris around her. At the very least, the building on top of her had the decency to provide pressure on some of her wounds as the magician doubted if she had it in her to move any of her limbs at that moment. Any sudden or reckless moves could have caused a shift in the fickle balance that the concrete and steel rubble had settled on in their negotiation with gravity. The best choice was not to panic.

Mana breathed in and out. The air was stuffy, something was running and dripping farther off to the right but Mana was not sure if it was water. It ran from slightly above her so it could not have been her own blood – at least she was certain she was not bleeding that hard just yet. Either way, while Mana's familiarity with composure and self-mastery in both physical and mental states was sufficient to grant her serenity in this painful and humbling moment, it did not raise the rubble from above her and draw her out in the clear.