Niddegetta Mygalla was working with great focus. He had to finish the weapon and delivery system at the earliest. Maha-Don would be around for a long time to receive punishment, but he might get lazy like his moniker. Mygalla had a tendency to be forgiving if he overslept. He ran the risk of letting Maha-Don’s insult go unanswered if he did not do this now.

Mygalla worked his magic furiously. The base sketch was ready. He felt a hint of pride at his own drawing abilities. He would now layer this with many layers of realism. That would be followed by layer upon layer of exaggerated additions to increase the weapon’s fear mongering ability. Fear was a vital element of his plan after all. He would then add gory details with tactically placed light and shine with his VFX wizardry. Lastly he would scale it up to a gargantuan size. One that would induce mind numbing madness proper.

He would then focus on the delivery system. The projection system was minute, like the button on a shirt. It would deliver the weapon without the intended victim ever realizing it. The delivery involved a sound component as well. This in Mygalla’s opinion was the simplest part of his design. It was a looped run of a sound that triggered a frequency in the victim’s body that triggered a paralyzing dread.

Mygalla wished he had trusted his instincts and not given into his ego earlier in the day. That would have prevented the need for this entire endeavour. He had seen Maha-Don torturing a pup during his morning drive. He could have just taken the pup to the veterinarian and then to the animal shelter he frequented as a volunteer.

But no, he had driven up to Maha-Don’s compound after his good Samaritan act to confront the man. He looked like a wannabe movie star as he did so. Tan leather jacket, designer sunglasses, neatly trimmed beard, elegant artwork on his helmet and of course, super rugged bike. Of course, one had to discount the fact that the bike was too large for his small frame.

He had started off admonishing Maha-Don aggressively and ignored his surroundings. Maha-Don had his security retinue looking on amusedly at a Gubachhi taking on a Garuda. Maha-Don looked at him with the same predatory relish. Eventually one back handed slap had sent Mygalla sprawling.

All of Mygalla’s self-righteous indignation had evaporated in that instant. All his martial arts training failed him. He had not had much training to lean on anyway. He had relied on his moral high ground a little too much and had been “grounded” harshly in return. He would have been subjected to much worse had it not been for sheer luck.

Maha-Don had stepped forward menacingly to stomp him into the ground but had held back and hastily pulled back his raised leg. A cowering Mygalla took the opportunity to high tail it out of there and sped away. He could hear the jeering laughter of the men behind him and he burned with humiliation. But he had had not realized all that he had accomplished in his stupid adventure. That realization would come later.

Mygalla thought back to his epiphany as he continued work on the weapon. He had been shivering in fear and rage at home as he thought back to the events of the day. The more he thought, the more he remembered. The reason Maha-Don had not crushed his leg with the stomp became evident and with that the foundation of the weapon he was building had been laid.

A large Cat’s Paw spider had scurried across the ground between Mygalla and Maha-Don and that had stopped the villain in his tracks. Mygalla now realized that he had seen genuine fear in the man’s eyes as he saw the spider. Maha-Don suffered from arachnophobia. Mygalla had saved an animal, and another had saved him in turn. What goes around truly does come around.

Mygalla finished the weapon after days and nights of relentless work. It was his masterpiece. The projection system was ready. It only needed to be delivered to Maha-Don. Mygalla’s friend came home with the trained parrot. It was like his friend’s kid. They attached the projector to its leg, and the bird flew away to its destination.

The parrot, named Hasiru, landed on the grill of Maha-Don’s room. The parrot had been chosen as the delivery system as it had the ideal claws to hold on to window grills by dint of its evolution. The bird plucked the button sized sphere and dropped it into the room and flew away. It returned to its master and parent. No one on Maha-Don’s security detail suspected any sinister machinations. A bird was a bird to them, if they had noticed it at all.

That night as Maha-Don slept, the projector came to life like it had been programmed to. It had been unnoticed all day. At 3 am when the human mind is at its weakest it started emitting the low hum. The looped frequency was one that initiated a sustained dread in humans. It awoke Maha-Don to his doom.

Maha-Don awoke in a cold sweat with a deep sense of all pervasive dread. His throat was parched and he was on the verge of paralysis due to fear. As he slowly took in his familiar surroundings, the projector launched its final weapon. A massive spider flashed into existence above Maha-Don!

It filled the room and glowed a sickly green. It was a hairy monster and some of the hairs seemed to fall around Maha-Don’s bed. The villain’s heart raced to unsustainably high rates. The luminescent green monster slowly lowered its head towards Maha-Don. Its multitude of eyes gazed at him, they blinked and gazed again, seeming to grow larger with each blink. And then its beak like maw opened with a hiss that was felt more than heard. Lines of slime separated from the mandibles as the great maw opened and lowered further. This was Mygalla’s masterpiece, the pinnacle of his artistic and VFX abilities, his Mona Lisa, his Sholay, his ton of tons.

Maha-Don’s brain fried. His heart became weakened for good. The Maha in Don was lost. Don became a vegetable. His perverse pleasure in hurting animals had come full circle. An animal, not even real, had taken its toll on him, a toll owed to animal kind. What goes around comes around.

All images are generated with the WordPress AI, based on descriptions by me. The story is entirely by me, with no AI input.

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In 2020 when we were on lockdown due to the pandemic, a few friends of mine and I used to have calls once or twice a week to keep in touch. All of us were practitioners of the Bujinkan and we shared our thoughts on training by ourselves. Sometimes, we shared different works of art that each of us worked on. These included poetry, sketches, music compositions, vfx projects and videogame updates.

My personal contribution was short stories. I wrote one for each of the 6 who used to join regularly. These short stories can be called action sequences. I wrote these based on what each of them was going through in life at that time, their physical appearances and abilities and their professional lives.

I also wrote one sequence based on the oldest action sequence I had ever dreamed up, as a child of around 7 years of age. This was based on my regular visits to the Bannerghatta reptile exhibit section in the late 80s. There was one other story/sequence that was centered around Jallikattu. I am sharing these 8 stories over the coming 3 odd months. I am currently busy with a lot of things at work and in life. So, I am digging into old works to keep my posting discipline going. I will be unable to write detailed posts relating to Hindu culture, the Bujinkan and martial arts in general, for a month or two. So, I am sharing these stories instead. I will return to the regular theme as and when possible.