Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

The Field of Muffled Screams

Swiping with his primal, bony hammers that had formed over his forearms and his hands, Rukan lashed at little Tomi. The young lady seethed with silent rage as she rolled aside, dragging her hand across one of the two kunai-shaped, sharpened stone knives, and left a smear on the grass and dirt below her. The Allied Ninja recruit flung the stone knife at the object of her hatred, who only deflected it with a swipe of his ax-tail.

Hitting him with the knife was not what Tomi was looking to accomplish here. It was to buy herself a few moments to weave her hand seals and place her cut open hand onto the ground again to call forth her contract. An armored ground-crawler with a good pair of dozens of sharp limbs emerged from the smoke with a tail matching that which Rukan donned.

The scorpion's tail rammed the ground where Rukan was standing, knocking the prowling mercenary on his back as the metallic tail extended, spreading a dreadful clanging noise as the separate chunks of its tough as steel armor rubbed against each other as well against the dirt it worked to borrow through. With his enemy having fallen down, the many-legged, giant scorpion crawler began scurrying with a creepy tatter of its many limbs to position itself over the enemy of his summoner.

"Don't get too excited, Sasoseki, the ninja scorpions aren't the only ones that this man is mocking," little Tomi pressed her hand against the top of the giant scorpion's frontal armor piece making the upward-pointed eyes blink a few times. As the creature blinked, armored layers moved over its eyes and back like a biological shield that it could raise and lower when needed. Every time the armored eyelid close, it clicked with a metallic rattle.

Rubbing her bleeding hand across the scorpion's upper shell, Tomi summoned again. Revealing a bipedal, feline warrior with streaming, spiky hair of glistening mahogany shade that looked almost like a showy headpiece of feathers to be inside the cloud of smoke. The warrior let out an irritated growl and clanged two scimitars that it clenched in its hands as it began looking for its opponent.

The cheetah-warrior leaped and thrust its blades at the prone mercenary, swinging its swords that, while on the shorter side, looked like they could chop a man up to a salad sum of its limbs. Crawling like a frightened insect, the transformed mercenary fled underneath the armored scorpion himself. Because of how close its belly was to the ground, Rukan must have thought that the ninja cheetah would not have followed him down under.

He was right, in a manner of speaking. He did not find ninja cheetahs underneath that ninja scorpion though, if his blood-curdling scream was of any sign, he found a death more horrible than the one he sought to escape from. Tomi jumped off of the scorpion partner of hers and pat its front while rubbing the chin of the ninja cheetah with the other hand. Both of her partners seemed to enjoy it with the ninja cheetah, even leaning down for a more efficient scratch.

"Thank you, Sasoseki, Hyota. Let's play after this mission is over, okay?" Tomi's voice softened and the ire that she once blazed with disappeared from her soft and childish gaze that only became more serious and bitterer than anyone her age had a reason to be when she turned back at her peers.

"Tomi-chan can be seriously scary sometimes. I'm glad I didn't insist on her giving me food now..." Damisan seemed to shake underneath the rugged cloak of his and rub his scarred skin from frightful itches that plagued him after imagining just what it was that Rukan found underneath that scorpion's belly.

"And you know all of their names?" Endo leaned his head to the side, raising an eyebrow as he inquired this of little Tomi.

"Of course, they're not my tools, they're my friends. Don't you know the names of everyone dear to you?" Tomi replied, missing any of the childlike wonder that she had when talking to her partners.