Life Isn’t So Simple Anymore.

‘I don’t know why the fuck I thought that water gun wouldn’t do shit to me...’ Zoey sighed at her stupidity. 

  She hopped back up with an ache in the middle of her chest, glaring at the girl with the water gun. Channeling her mahna, she began teleporting all over the place while quickly advancing toward the group of young magjistars. Zoey was unsure if these guys were prodigies like all the others, but she would fight them all the same. Especially after that ponytail bitch shot her. 

  Ponytail with the water gun tried shooting her as she came at them. An average-looking girl wielded a samurai sword and a mask hanging on her waist. The monkey-masked boy hopped from side to side like a monkey, hollering. Zoey decided to target the most annoying threat first instead of the strongest.  

“You chose the wrong girl to mess with!” Cassie grinned, raising up her water gun and aiming directly at Zoey.  

  Cassie realized she didn’t need to waste her ammo by trying to predict where Zoey would appear. All she had to do was wait for the most opportune moment to fire. That was either in front of her, in front of Kara, or in front of Timmy. She had a feeling that the girl was going to come after her first since she did shoot her. 

“Can you handle me at 20%?” Zoey did appear in front of Cassie. 

  But not in the manner she expected at all, before Zoey blinked in front of her, she dropped real close to the ground, and as she reappeared by Cassie, she was completely in her space with her arms opened up wide. Zoey lifted Cassie in the air with her arms wrapped around her waist. Cassie’s rifle-shaped water gun was too big to fire at her from such a low position without knowing exactly what she was going to do. 

“Kara! Timmy!?” Cassie cried out. 

“Oooh! Oooh! Ahh! Ahh!” Timmy flew through the air with his feet leading first. 

‘Can I take it and finish my slam?’ Zoey debated it for a split second. 

  Eh, why chance it? Zoey swung Cassie around before tossing her right into Timmy’s incoming side dropkick. An action that surprised both magjistars but despite what Zoey was expecting, her plan didn’t work out. Cassie blasted a large amount of water at the ground and tossed herself high into the sky while Timmy was helpless to stop his own momentum. It was only thanks to Cassie that they avoided colliding with each other at all. 

“Did you forget about me?” A sword came flying from Zoey’s blindside. 

  Zoey narrowly dodged the blade that almost pierced a hole through her side as she leaped off the ground into the sky. Her target was always the ranged fighter from the beginning. In video games, they are usually the most critical targets to aim for. If not them, the mages and supports. Zoey’s already identified monkey boy as the tank or fighter. Sword girl was the assassin and/or fighter.  

“Really persistent, ain’t cha...?” Cassie frowned, bringing her rifle up and shooting multiple barrages of water at Zoey. 

  Each water blast was capable of breaking bones. Zoey rapidly blinked with her magji tool to avoid them, severely draining her mahna more and more. Cassie pulled out a toy knife from her pocket and readied herself to handle Zoey at close range for a second time. A sight like this made Zoey quite happy. Who knew of a ranged fighter that was also good at fighting up close? 

“This is a punch from me at 30% of my full power.” Zoey shared as she appeared in front of Cassie’s face. 

  Both of them attacked at the same time. Cassie thrust her knife out, aiming for Zoey’s chest. Zoey’s spiked boxing glove fired off toward Cassie’s unprotected face. At this range, it was difficult to tell for those on the ground whose attack landed first. But in the sky, it was all too clear to see. 

“You didn’t think you were the only one holding something back, did ya, ya idjit!?” Cassie cackled before Zoey’s fist landed on her face. 

  Cassie went soaring through the sky into the distance as Zoey fell to the ground with a deep cut in her abdomen. Zoey frowned during her free-fall. Could she continue to fight in a condition like this without worsening her injury? It wasn’t like she could heal herself, either. She didn’t know any magji like that or had any magji tools for it. Maybe she’ll have to wrap this up quickly to get treatment for herself. Her mahna is already running low, and she could probably only blink once or twice before she can’t use it anymore. 

  Zoey blinked in the middle of her fall right above Timmy. Timmy, who was excitedly anticipating her fall, was unable to react as Zoey landed on him ass-first. He screeched as he was crushed into the ground with the combined weight of Zoey and gravity working as one. Zoey felt tempted to break one of his limbs due to how vulnerable he was right now but immediately caught herself. This guy wasn’t a daemon but a human. She knocked him out with an overhead hammer fist to the back of the skull and stared at the last remaining person. 

“I’m not coming to you, by the way,” Zoey told her upfront while casually sitting on the back of Timmy. 

“Tch! You think I'd be afraid of someone with one foot in the grave!?” Kara could see the severity of that knife wound. She rushed with her sword, ready to slash Zoey apart. 

“Thank you.” Zoey softly shared. This made things easier for her. 

  No one told her how much it hurt to be fucking shanked! Zoey could barely keep herself from shaking. Sure, she suffered some horrible beatings from daemons as part of her training with Victor but a wound like this? Never. And seeing a similar-shaped weapon coming toward her to inflict a similar wound on her body sent an unfounded amount of rage through her body. Pain hurts! 

  Zoey blinked with her last remaining mahna and swiftly dodged the vertical sword slash that seemed to anticipate where she was going to blink! She growled in anger from the massive burst of pain from her injury and nearly lost control of herself. Her fists split the air as they headed toward Kara’s face like homing missiles. Each punch combo’d into the other, preventing Kara from flying away due to the heavy impact of her hits. It started from a left hook into a right hook that switched into an uppercut before finishing with an overhead straight punch that buried Kara into the ground. 

  Zoey fell to her knees as soon as she dropped Kara. 

“Fuck, it hurts! It really fucking hurts!” Zoey cried out, clutching her wound. In a moment of helplessness, she tried blowing on it. That didn’t do much of anything, but swearing and complaining did help just a bit in handling the pain. So, she swore her little heart out until she remembered there was a stupid fucking voyeur bastard with a phone recording her somewhere! 

“VICTOR!!!”  

“Okay, okay. I’m here. Let’s go get you fixed up.” Victor suddenly appeared in front of her and slowly walked toward her. 

“Don’t you fucking dare teleport me when I'm like this. I swear I'll kill you. I’ll fucking murder you into the ground.” Zoey’s eyes turned bloodshot and murderous. 

“Can’t you see, I'm only doing this for your health? Its an emergency, ain't it?” He grinned. 

“I promise I will beat you with only an inch of your life left...” Zoey vowed as she was teleported without her consent.