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

Bug in the Rug / Dogs Can Go To Heaven

One advantage of having her sensory in total fritz and going off at all times was that it was the only thing that Jigoku as of yet had not taken away from Mana. It was that uncanny genetic trait of hers, as unfocused and off as it was at the moment, that warned her of the drastic increase in numbers against her and Anika. These prisoners weren't just mad animals, they were cleverer than the stereotype would have suggested.

They hid behind these Agors for once... Given the current battlefield assessment, perhaps any metaphors involving forests one might have drawn were not as ridiculous as initially taken.

The bloodthirsty inmates moved at once. A handful of them swung their hands about attempting to beat the shit out of anything falling into their path. These men did not look nearly as skilled as they were violent but they weren't the real threat here. That dreadful sound of unsheathing... Mana could have identified it anywhere, even woken from her sleep. Not only were some of these inmates armed with whoever knew what, but some of them may also have been hiding all over the place, shuffling in between the Agors, making retreat impossible as Agors seemed to favor activity and this spectacle was turning the dropzone into quite a scene for the faceless moaners.

The enemy swung rapid and often, Anika swung wide and strong. Lariats, smacks from the front and the back of her hand as well as stiff and rounding kicks. It was like this woman lived her entire life handling large crowds of people that did not like her all too much. She was large, that meant she had the necessary range and with her perfect, wide-reaching moves could dispatch of the meaningless fodder without much struggle.

A handful of them fell through the membrane, so much could have been assumed, given the nasty tearing sound that signaled it and the endless screams. While Mana stayed mostly behind her larger and more experienced attempted owner, she had noticed that the screams had come to an abrupt stop but then resumed. The men that have plummeted down have run out of breath before finishing the fall.

Mana's glance moved to target a nearby would-be assassin. She did not cower behind Anika just to have the brutish woman protect her, she did so to focus on the armed enemies while the weaklings and the overly ambitious ones could have been left to the amateur strongwoman.

These inmates knew how to stab. They did not prance around or show any impressive trickery, they were all ruthlessness, all attempting to close their space and then jerk their armed arm around until whatever at the other end was just a messy pulp of swellings, cuts, scratches, and lacerations. That was why the handful found it surprising when Mana's limbs locked around theirs. The magician's wrist had successfully locked around and restrained one of the stabbers without even needing to look at them.

What the young woman failed to take into account was the massive loss of power in her current state. She may have had the skill and training but she was nowhere near a match for a fully grown man who ate the meat of his less fortunate compatriots daily and therefore observed the proper calorie intake for a man engaging in daily active physical activity.

While in a hallway or a dark alley this would have ended up in multiple stab wounds, the struggling killers forgot that they were not standing on the ground nearly as stable as one of an alleyway. While through a good yank and push they managed to leave some red gashes over Mana's body, the intensive physical struggling sent them plummeting down following a bone-chilling tearing sound of the membrane beneath.

This was just another thing Mana had to keep track of – the areas where the ground was not just an abyss covered up with a paper-thin layer of stuck together slime. The magician turned to Anika, just to check if the big lump of muscle and fat was not hurt, she was facing off against the few of the inmates that harassed them earlier.