My Ninja Girl 4 by Gideon Caldwell (latest novels to read .TXT) 📕

Even though Micah was agitated by the way they spoke about Thunderhama, he realized then that this would be the distraction he needed. If they were all chatting when the coup kicked off, it would be much easier for him to take them off guard. So he joined in: “You should see my place, right near the shrine in Uyanga. It’s sweet. I even have an underground connection to it so I don’t have to deal with the general public at all. Best move I ever made.”

“You do?” the other nun asked. “I heard about places like that, but I was never able to nab one.”

“Lucky,” the man next to him said. “You could even go into work without any of your gear and just change there.”

“And that’s what I do, every single goddamn day. I go into work after a long bath—I should mention that I have a bathtub that has a world-class view of the skyscrapers of Sabine,” Micah said, using the rebranded name for the Golden Trash District. “Sometimes I just stand there naked and look out at the city.”

“What are you telling them?” Choro asked, on the verge of laughter.

“I would do that,” said the monk across from Micah. “It’s nice to not have to wear all this stuff, you know. I try to be as naked as I can around my place.”

“No one needs to know that,” one of the nuns said.

“You know how I am. As soon as I can get this bucket and this armor off, it’s off, baby. Heh. That’s just the way I am.”

“Grosssss…”

The moment came. Soraya tipped all of them off by saying the code word, one that Bunni had devised: “Princess Shortness.”

Micah, who had just been deep in a conversation about the best place to buy ready-made meals in Thunderhama, tensed. He was glad he wasn’t the one talking at the moment, and he knew that he only had a very short time to prepare for what needed to happen next. One of the problems he faced was that, as he had noticed in the past, his utilization of industria was tied to the intensity of the situation, to his adrenaline.

Yet moments ago, Micah had been chuckling, and had accidentally found himself in a relaxed state. He’d been trying so hard to blend in that he had gone too far with it, perhaps he’d become too comfortable.

Micah clenched his eyes shut, and steadied his breath for just a moment, visualizing what needed to happen next.

Go! he mentally shouted at himself.

He swiveled to the monk standing next to him just as a reticle appeared. He fired a shot at point-blank range right to the kill zone that Soraya had pointed out to him, the gap between his opponent’s neck and the bottom of his bucket. It had the intended effect Micah had hoped for, the man neutralized immediately, and it also flung the monk into the person next to him.

Triggering his industria, Micah brought his energy shield up and charged forward, ramming into the monk directly in front of him and taking the tall man down. He began firing on the others before he could even fully turn around, his energy shield blocking the first strike coming in his direction courtesy of one of the nuns. Micah didn’t know what was happening with the Yuri and the others; everything was too chaotic now, moving in a rapid-fire slow motion that defied logic, all coming to him at once.

One of the nuns reached for his energy shield with industria-powered gloves and Micah quickly brought it down as he sent his other elbow forward. He managed to propel her backward, the woman moving in a strange way as if she were a marionette operated by a careless drunk. She scissored into one of the monks just getting to his feet.

Aiming down at the man he’d just plowed through, Micah fired another lethal shot, his energy shield back up and protecting him from a volley of weapon fire by those still standing. Two were completely down now, and five now rallying together to stop Micah.

The hallways weren’t high enough to use industria packs to fly over him, but they were usable in a way that would allow his opponents to rocket forward, which one of them did, Micah not able to redistribute industria in time to fling him backward.

The impact on his lower back and tailbone caused a spark of pain to shoot through Micah’s extremities. It also had a way of deactivating his shield, Micah not able to focus enough industria into the protective gear to keep it powered on.

“What the hell are you doing?” the monk screamed in his face as he prepared to deliver a punch. Micah was able to tilt to the right just in time, his free hand coming to the energy dagger sheathed at his waist.

His next move was entirely primal, the spirit of Soraya moving through him as he drove the blade into the side of the man’s neck, his weapon activating just at the last moment. He pulled back and stabbed two more times, just as she had instructed him to do, and he would have gone for the femoral artery had it not been for other opponents, one with an energy gatling gun similar to his, and the other three with more traditional weapons.

Micah pushed the monk off him and quickly got to his feet.

Pew! Pew! Pew!

He managed to turn the very last second, the shots all hitting his shoulder, partially protected by the upper body armor he wore under his robes, but not fully, Micah instantly feeling the sting.

He had actually been hit, the pain a hundred times worse than what he was currently experiencing in his lower back.

“Get up, man, you got this!” he heard Choro shout in