Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Mending the Broken Bridges

Taking Joshipa on was troublesome. Even if the young woman wielded a weapon large enough to force her to use her entire body for its swings, making every blow telegraphed to a skilled evasive specialist as if she yelled it out from the top of a mountain with a megaphone, Joshipa had fought Mana plenty of times during their training sessions and knew some of her moves.

That was why Mana needed to pull out some new ones. The ninja magician raised her hands up and crossed them, flicking her fingers and slipping out a pair of steel-tipped cards from her sleeve. The two cards touched their edges down in the middle, traveling in a crossed trajectory and sparked a blast that was more smoke, flash, and noise rather than concussive force but it gave Mana the time she needed.

The literal white glove came off her hand as the magician flipped it over her head with a violent jerk and bite her finger, shuffling through hand seals at the fraction of a second and planting her hand onto the ground beneath her. Joshipa felt aggressive that day, just as Mana completed her motion and opened herself up, the guitar-swinging Jashinist charged through the smoke and flickering, flashy sparkles ready to crush Mana's skull but her swing was blocked halfway.

A claymore sword blocking the guitar at its neck from the right while an iron leg crossed in from the left, forming an adamant cross-shaped block out of two rabbits that Mana had called upon.

"Ya've got some nerve callin' on us now, Hatchling..." Usuzoku grumbled, looking as if it didn't take him much effort to intercept the assailant looking to do his summoner harm.

"Sorry, I hope you guys recovered okay from the last time, I needed moves that Joshipa hadn't seen before and you were the first thing that came to mind," Mana nodded her head with a blank expression.

"Mana-san! Where were you!? We were so nervous! You didn't call us for months and then just summoned us out of blue to... I'm not even sure, honestly... It hit us so hard and we've poofed away before even getting to say hello!" Usubane reacted with a more favorable reception of seeing her idolized summoner after a long break.

"Summons?" Joshipa exclaimed in shock and withdrew with her weapon in hand, choosing not to challenge these two rabbits in a struggle of power, especially since she had no idea what their skillsets were all about.

"I'll take it that you absolutely must settle this now? You won't just stand down and wait until one of our comrades returns with an objective?" Mana wondered with the advantage of six eyes being focused on Joshipa's reply instead of just her own natural pair.

"You've lied to me..." Joshipa quivered with a proclamation leaking with profound sadness. "Drove a wedge between me and Lord Jashin. Now the only way for me to ask him for forgiveness is to bring carnage on the battlefield. Maybe if I kill all of your crew in the most imaginative, vicious way I can think of, maybe then he'll forgive me?"

Mana closed her eyes as she didn't want the disappointment that she felt for this young woman to gleam right through from her look. Usuzoku gave Mana a wary, creeped out stare but the magician didn't even humor it, choosing instead to open her eyes and greet Joshipa's weeping and maniacal face with sternness.

"Stop looking at me with those eyes!" Joshipa roared out, flipping the table of her emotional stability and moving from crushed to absolutely livid in a flick. She shouldn't have opened herself up by raising her bludgeoning, spiky tool for murder over her head. Usuzoku moved in a brown blur, stepping past her in a gentle air tunnel that followed his swiftness that only rustled a few clouds of dust and gravel around the pair and shook the rings of flowers planted as decorations of the simulated village street.

"Double-Draw!" Usuzoku let a calm breath out while sheathing his claymore on his back and another, slightly smaller and more traditional blade to his side.