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

Do Water-Men Dream of Star-Reactors?

With a spreading, circular gust, Mana's feet touched the ground. Despite the controlled and kept back terror plaguing the magician, one that came out from the subconscious desire of a body to draw breath, the magician's landing was soft and silent. The panic was difficult to contend with, it only added to an endless list of disadvantages that Mana's body currently had going against it. Her speed, her combat prowess all were now just a meaningless fraction of what they should have been if this battle was set on a more favorable battlefield, under better conditions.

"Your suit is..." Mana uttered.

"Amazing, isn't it? After all, a genius like me designed it. I felt disappointed by the body that was given to me by fate, I found it feeble and living inside that shell – a joke. For that reason, I have made my own body, one that was able to fix any injustice committed against me, even that of fate..." the mechanical man replied.

"A despicable tin can." The magician finished her thought. "One that spits not only at the art of ninjutsu but one that rots your own strength and instincts as well."

The mechanical ninja opened up its stance and straightened its body, lowering its hands and extending its legs by the joints, allowing thick, steel plates to shut over its knees – protecting the weak points where all the weight of the armor accumulated, no doubt. A compartment that reminded the magician of a safe from the inside opened up, revealing a lab tube with a bunch of water connected to a system of vessel-like tubes. It was not entirely clear what the system of tubes fed into the water or what it extracted from it, the magician turned her head in confusion.

"Tell me all about my strength, my instincts... Tell me again how my existence offends your principles!" a voice spread from inside the robotic armor and, despite the magician being utterly unable to see anyone or anything talking – it came directly from somewhere inside or behind the water container.

It took a while for Mana to realize what the man was talking about. The puppeteer was not lurking somewhere deeper within the suit of armor nor was he behind the container of water – he was the water. This abominable, mechanical eyesore was the only way for the mutant to talk, walk and interact with the environment in any meaningful way.

"Or... Better yet... Just die!" the water-man growled in a great amount of offense as the top-center compartment slammed shut while one lower than it opened up. Mana had to turn her eyes away from the intense light emanating from inside the mechanical suit of armor almost immediately. It was like the man was holding a compressed star inside his costume and using it to fuel the suit's every twitch.

The core of the suit fired off a cascade of flares, the emanating energy merged into a single, focused beam of artificial star energy. The beam simply deleted every bit of stone in its way from existence, carving out a deep ridge on its devastating path to the magician. Where before the water, mixed with the iron dust ever-present in the air around the Valley of Hell was washing the valley, now it evaporated in a far-reaching distance from the beam itself.

The magician hunched over, from the outside perspective it did not look like she had the time to accomplish much before the death ray swallowed her up completely. The highly destructive and infernal attack of the mechanical man began at a slightly off angle but the living tube of water quickly diverted his beam higher up, having it cross as far out as light could cross in the mere moments of its existence before dissipating away.

The heat present in the air made the iron dust in the air turn to sparks, creating a rain of flickering flares in the nearest vicinity. The first few moments after the beam's end, only a curious howling noise could have been made out. Something unnatural that made the dust and smoke surrounding the area dissipate much faster than it normally would have. After the smoke cloud shrunk considerably, it revealed a transparent orb of rotating wind chakra – a protective bubble around Mana with the magician still standing in her crouched over position with her hands placed at her sides.