Cat in a Dog's Job

Year 3416.

Leta was suffocating, her heart felt as if it would explode. She tried to ask for help, but nothing came out of her mouth. The vision was darkening, and she wasn't feeling her legs and arms anymore.

It was just slightly, but the girl could hear as someone shouted her name.

"I... re... ne..." She managed to say.

"You'll be fine, princess!" The witch gathered a few items around her shop.

First, she made Leta drink a healing potion; it would be able to heal internal bleeding. But that didn't seem to be the case.

"I see now. You used Spirit Armor, huh?"

In that case, she probably had a heart attack and a malfunction on the brain. Unlike other kinds of sorcery, that used mana from the items and surroundings to fuel the magic, Spirit Armor stacked that mana inside the user's body rather than spreading it back to the world.

That was a very uncommon, really rare condition around the magicians community, but it was already diagnosed 500 years ago as "Unscattered Mana Disease".

People wasn't able to use their own mana/life energy into their magic, it would kill them. But putting too much outside mana inside your own body was just as bad. It killed you slowly and very painfully.

Leta Astarte Igvar de Rosé probably wasn't even able to breathe anymore.

Thankfully, Irene Ostrich Forwound was fast.

She threw Fairy Dust in the air, casted a dispersion spell and made the girl smell garlic.

"HOOOOFPH!!? Coff, coff!" The girl jumped up, sat in the wooden floor of the witchery shop.

"Are you okay now?" Irene asked, kneeling down next to Leta.

"Y-yeah... Thank you... My vision is still blurred, though..."

Irene Ostrich Forwound nodded and sighed in relief, taking a seat at the wooden table.

"But to think you'd awaken the Spirit Armor in such a peaceful village. What happened?"

"What do you mean...?"

"You see, power doesn't come by will. It comes from a necessity. That's a principle for life, but that's also true for your new power; Spirit Armor is like a defense mechanism." Irene explained.

"Oh... I see now. I was attacked by some people, and time stopped when they were about to kill me."

Irene leaned back in her chair, looking thoughtful.

"Did... did you kill them?" She asked.

"Uh? No, of course not."

"Ah... Okay, then. Well, we'll be fine here. But you have to be careful if you leave the house, alright?"

The girl nodded, and then went upstairs to sleep.

...

The squad had left. They knew where the target was sleeping in, but decided to leave her be for now.

The four ARC Troopers sat in a reserved table, in a strategic point for infiltrators in Rosé.

"What the hell was that? She moved absurdly fast!" Jesse Didjarin couldn't contain the laughter.

The 8 foot tall Armstrong Arthur ArcHall had an aloof expression as he said: "Yes... I thought she was going to take off your head with that lightsaber."

"But I didn't expect her to escape from us that easily." Drago Morgana adds. "Now that we know her capabilities and skills, we can make a counter plan."

"Hm..." Captain Novella nodded, thoughtfully.

The group kept chatting about the mission, but the captain didn't seem to be paying much attention to it.

"I'll go take a walk. Don't wait for me." He said as he left.

"What's wrong with the Cap'an?" Jesse tilted her head.

"Probably he's frustrated because that was our first failure in a mission." Armstrong stated, staring at the ceiling.

"Or maybe he has a crush on the target." Drago suggested.

"Hahaha! No way, mate!"

And the group kept on for the whole night.