Meiko threw a sloppy punch, Mana leaned to the side, bobbing and weaving like a boxer would’ve. A slightly faster combination of blows followed this tricky displacement punch, the magician moved the weight over to her left leg and ducked spinning on it and aiming her right leg to hit Meiko on the shins. The blacksmith’s body blurred as she leaped backwards faster than Mana’s eyes could track her.
“You’re getting better, before I thought you should only redirect but you seem to start feeling comfortable with counters too…” Meiko smiled.
“Yeah well, I’m still done for if my opponent uses chakra augmentation…” Mana sighed fixing her messy hair and stretching out a little to let her weary muscles adjust the blood circulation somewhat to ease the tension.
“You can train for a hundred years and you’ll never prepare for that. As skilled as a martial artist can get they’ll never surpass elementary chakra augmentation, your redirection mastery should provide enough defence for those sloppy powerhouses so don’t hate yourself over it” Meiko used a towel to clean floods of sweat off her face.
“You two done? We need to move…” Shimo grunted. It didn’t take long to leave the caves for the four of them and start heading towards Sunagakure through the Land of Wind deserts, the closer they got to the Sunagakure walls the rockier the desert became, where before the layers of heated sand saw no end, at this moment the layer couldn’t have been thicker half a foot.
“Mana-chan is getting better…” Kouta smiled gently and packed his things as well.
Mana and Meiko took the time to train a little bit more with every smallest stop to eat or rest. Having the heat of the desert in mind the genin tried to only move during the early hours of the morning or the later hours of evening. At least the desert parts closer to Sunagakure had plenty of rocky blocks that resembled small mountains that served as great source of shade during the hottest parts of day.
“She’s wasting her time, we’ve decided to have her gain her ability to manipulate chakra back. We should focus on that instead teaching her how to fight in her current state. It feels like a Plan B type situation, we’ll get that Box for sure, there need to be no doubts or other plans…” Shimo arrogantly declared tying his sword to his waist.
“Maybe you should train your swordsmanship a little too during the break times?” Kouta laughed out cheerfully biting Shimo a little.
“That’d be a waste of energy and chakra, I use Ice Style to restrain my opponent and it won’t be too effective in the desert. My stamina is best reserved to deal with the pressures of travelling, look at those two, they’re winded and now we’ll have to move at a slower rate because of that” Shimo pointed at Mana who was sitting by the rock gasping for at least the smallest breath of air that didn’t heat her lungs. Meiko was also stretched out on the sand, normally she’d have little to no fatigue but not using chakra to supplement her stamina or her physical stats wore her out. Meiko severely restrained herself to make her a fitting and equal opponent for Mana to draw out her abilities and teach her proper fight planning and to challenge her accordingly to her skill.
“Well, at least with your Ice Style we’ll always have a proper source of water with us” Kouta laughed out flipping his flask over his face and spilling some icy water on his face before taking in a couple of gulps.
“Speaking of which, I need to take a leak…” Shimo snapped his finger and placed his bags on the sand again. The boy started rushing towards the other side of the large boulder they were resting close to before Kouta jumped up on his feet as well.
“I’ll watch…” he nodded with his cheerful laughing face diminishing into a friendly smile.
“Excuse me, you’ll watch?” Meiko huffed out still struggling to get her breath back into proper rhythm.
“Yeah, the desert is full of raiders and snakes and all that thing, peeing alone is dangerous. You always watch Mana-chan pee, don’t you?” Kouta curiously asked the blacksmith.
“Yeah but I thought it was a social thing, I wasn’t sure why we’re doing it…” Meiko shrugged and leaped back on her feet, weaving around and throwing a couple of quick jabs in the air to check if her breath was back for good and if she could again physically strain herself without tiring too fast.
Mana laughed and sat back up, she took a hairbrush out of her bag, angrily yanking it out from under loads of stuff they took from the raider camp they thought they’d need. The magician took a couple of seconds to brush sand and various small insects out of her hair. She then handed the brush to Meiko but the blacksmith shook her head.
“That’s why I have my hair stay short, I’m still astounded by your skilled head movements to keep your hair from slapping you in the face during spars, almost like it’s a part of your style, but if I was some genius martial artist it’d make your movements a little predictable. If you plan on slugging with people you better trim that mess” Meiko did a couple of squats and then jumped on her index finger doing a couple of upside one finger push ups just to see if her chakra augmentation worked fine. It appeared the blacksmith finished her warm up.
“No, I need it that way for my magic shows. As an entertainer I want to look good on stage and I’d probably look weird with short hair” the magician measured her hair and tried to imagine herself with half of that or even with shoulder length hair having never imagined herself with that sort of hairdo. There were very few instances where she ever cut her hair that short…
“I thought you hated that thing? I mean didn’t you leave because that magic thing wasn’t you? If you actually like that stage magic thing why would you risk your life for getting your old life back?” Meiko wondered curiously sitting on her knees and looking at Mana stretching out and packing her things.
“No, I love stage magic just as much as I do my life as a ninja. Truth be told, I kind of miss that. I miss being on the stage and performing. I wasn’t feeling depressed because I was a magician instead of being a ninja, I was crushed because I’m a ninja magician and I was forced to be only one of those things. If I had to be just a ninja I’d have a similar identity crisis as I do with losing my chakra control” Mana explained, a large smile covered her face as the girl imagined being on the stage again, recalling that sensation of making people laugh, making them look at her tricks with awe and finally seeing ninjutsu as a source of entertainment instead of fearing it as something that could have taken lives of their family of those of their own.
“Well, you’re doing just fine without it, you know… You’re pretty darned smart on your feet, if you perform like you did in the caves with those creepy crawlies you could still be a low ranking ninja even without your chakra control… You could even go a long way if you worked with intel or in the Administration offices” Meiko scratched the back of her head.
The blacksmith was right. There was a large quantity of ninja that only did paperwork and achieved moderate success even as genin and chuunin who had never before left on a single official mission and just managed paperwork and pushed files. There were people working in the office or handling intelligence, people interrogating criminals and captured rogue ninja, there were ninja who were drafters of peace treaties or spokespeople in the Ninja Tribunal and so on. They had their chakra control but weren’t overly impressive in battle so Mana’s disability would barely even matter.
“No, I’d hate working like that, reading about people dying and being unable to change anything. I’d rather work out on the field and perish being unable to beat an opponent with elementary chakra manipulation skills than have to file folders about how many children burned to death after the latest attack of rogues in a nearby settlement…” Mana’s head sunk down, she pressed her fists up to her hips and shook for a moment imagining that moment in her head.
“Well, you saved our butts, I’m not keeping count or anything but it matters and you’ve changed something. If it weren’t for you we’d be still paralyzed with insect eggs in our guts waiting to burst out and make us into goo that those creepazoids could slurp. Shimo can be a grump but Kouta is a nice person and I’m alright too, I guess, so technically the world is a better place already because you were born. Don’t think of yourself as useless or anything. Don’t hate yourself or think you don’t matter” Meiko gave Mana a thumb up to which Mana could only stare at her in shock. Those words really hit her where it counted. For the first moment in her life someone acknowledged what she was doing and said that she may have made a difference.
“I’m not going to stop, those insects taught me a lot about how ancient genjutsu worked, how it was before it evolved into what it is today… They gave me a key that will help me complete a technique I’ve been working on for the longest time. Genjutsu used to be something that assaulted the brain directly, when things evolved into creatures with those large chakra networks the illusions started targeting them instead of the brain but that means no one will know how to defend against those primitive illusions anymore. I’m going to become strong, I’ll protect everyone” Mana mumbled out under her own nose, still feeling some joy and pride in her heart from Meiko’s words.
“You know, you’ve got to teach me how to defend against genjutsu one day, I felt so helpless back then, I was hit with something I had no way of breaking, even Shimo and Kouta could only barely fight it” Meiko pouted her lips remembering how her mind was completely overwhelmed by that numbing feeling and how she was rendered helpless by something so simple as a chakra signal sent to her brain reacting to her own neural network.
“Most ninja can’t defend against genjutsu well, it might be a very useful skill for you to have but the primitive brain targeting genjutsu cannot be defended against. As long as you have a functional brain you’ll be hit by it, no matter how strong you are physically, no matter what protective techniques you have. That’s why they were so fascinating and dangerous to me” Mana explained.
“Wow, you really sound hyped when talking about that, you’re like a jutsu nerd of some sort…” Meiko laughed out rolling on the sand while she clutched her sides. Everything this girl did was kicked up to a hyperactive degree. Everything she did was supercharged with childish emotions, she was happy like a laughing baby, she was angry like a raging caveman and she felt sadness more profound than anyone else’s.
“Look who’s talking…” Mana sarcastically squinted at Meiko and just barely resisted the temptation to bring up a talk about some sort of crafting technique or a historically significant weapon to spark Meiko’s own passionate reaction.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about” the girl waved her large hand at Mana and then punched her own palm in excitement. “Very well then, you’ve gone as far as you can go at this level, now you’ll be training me!” the blacksmith cringed with almost aggressive level of excitement.
Suddenly the girl leapt up on her feet and pointed further away, Mana turned and witnessed a gigantic vortex of raging sand, almost like a super compact sandstorm. The raging whirlwind hit something as it appeared to violently explode. Loud yells, thuds and explosions shaking the ground beneath the girls’ feet could’ve been heard from where the boys left to pee.
“Come on, let’s go!” Meiko jumped up and just disappeared. Mana sighed as she was left to get to the battlefield the old fashioned way. Running on the sand was tough already and now she had that burning fear of her friends getting hurt in her heart that made her run that much faster.
Finally the magician figured that she’d have more luck looking at the battlefield and supporting her friends from above. She pulled out two kunai from her pouch she recently refilled from the supplies they took from the raiders’ camp and made her way scaling up the dry desert rock. It was a good thing that she was light and that those kunai were quite hard and high quality so they could be used that way. After a couple of moments scaling up the rock the magician found it much easier to run over rock than sand. She took a peak from the large rock that ended right above where the boys left and where Meiko momentarily dashed to.
Below there was a huge brawl going on. The assailants appeared to be desert raiders similar to those that Meiko beat but some of them used simple low ranking ninjutsu which Mana found surprising. Usually raiders had no such ability, at the very best, most high ranking threats coming from the raider ranks were ex-mercenaries who were trained to deal with some low ranking ninja but certainly not use ninjutsu themselves. Someone must’ve been tutoring the desert raiders on the ways of the ninja which was a scary concept to imagine. Rogue ninja were enough of a threat already, if any small time scumbag outside the village walls could raise sandstorms or use the crushing force of layers upon layers of sand it would’ve really challenged Sunagakure’s military prowess.
Kouta was all over the place, sonic booms were everywhere where he stopped to move as he accelerated from nothing to breaking the sound barrier in less than a second. He must’ve been using most of what he had, using his chakra augmentation to enhance his speed just so he could combat most of his assailants at the same time while using his medical techniques to enhance his strength through precise chakra control. The magician noticed how the boy was pulling his punches and yet the raiders were being flung around like ragdolls from his easiest blows. While those raiders knew ninjutsu they were unable to use chakra augmentation or chose not to use it having its risks in mind.
Shimo didn’t pull his attacks, he was barely even visible by Mana’s eyes and she could only tell of his blitzing existence because of the dozens of raiders that were cut down or lost their limbs in Shimo’s ruthless rampage through the battlefield. This was a young man who spent so much time beyond the village walls to hone his skills that he no longer recognized the value of holding anything back. These men were trying to use Wind and even Fire Style ninjutsu but the young swordsman outraced their flames and their fiercest and fastest winds. Several raiders formed entire projectiles or elongated their weapons with Wind Style techniques but Shimo wasn’t scratched once, several supersonic projectiles did scrape his messy desert cloak however but it only appeared to piss him off more.
Meiko seemed to relish this brawl, she didn’t appear to be moving too fast, maybe she was still a little winded from the spar before as Mana could see the red blurs from her movement. The magician could still track Meiko a couple of seconds after the blacksmith’s movement which was entire leagues below the speed that Kouta and Shimo moved in but Meiko appeared to be more skilled with her approach, she tricked her opponents into falling her slower but more powerful attacks, she used stomps to split the sands apart or cause fissures in the more rocky surfaces, she punched the sand creating rippling waves that tossed her enemies in the air leaving them suspended for Meiko’s crushing yet lightning fast blows. Almost like picking apples from a tree, if the apples were enemies and they had to be picked at supersonic speeds…
All of a sudden a loud popping sound echoed as five small sand projectiles hit the raiders in their chest making them pass out instantly. The Konoha three froze in their tracks and looked back on the same large rock where Mana was, the magician looked to the side only to see a friendly smiling young man extending his hand for her and another red haired man with an oversized white scarf and a toothpick with his index fingers extended firing sand projectiles from his fingers. That redhead was the man who was making those loud sounds.
“Sand Style: Desert Automaton!” the redhead chanted out as the deafening pops intensified to a barrage and Mana became completely oblivious to all the projectiles the young man fired but could see an entire field of put down raiders. Each one of them was cursing and grunting in pain so this youth just put everyone down without killing a single one of them and managing not to hit the three targets he didn’t want to hit as well.
A chubby female ninja standing to his side flicked her fingers. Her large backpack burst open with a great steel box shooting off from it and opening itself in mid-air. The young female made a quick hand seal with her one hand, not nearly as fast as Mana was able to but it was still completely invisible to the magician’s eye with her current impaired perception.
“Ninja Style: Tool Expansion Jutsu!” she shouted out as chakra threads coming from her fingers lit up and went all the way up to the large box-like tool she shot out. The container extended and opened what appeared to be its mouth, large steel tentacles fired off from its sides making the entire thing look like steel flytrap of some sort. The puppet then started to chug the fallen raiders into its enlarged “mouth” keeping them as prisoners. After the girl was done she once again reduced the size of the container puppet and moved up to it in an instant, placing her hand on it and sealing it into a scroll of her choosing.
Mana finally recovered from the shock giving her hand for the blond haired ninja with the Sunagakure headband who helped her get down from the rocky side of the mountain by simply walking down the side of it using the Academy wall climbing technique.
“We’ve had the entire situation under control. While Land of Wind desert may be your jurisdiction we were attacked…” Shimo crossed his hands on his chest, typical coming from an ex-rogue “ he didn’t appear to trust these three very much.
A man appeared behind him wearing the Sunagakure jounin west and a turban on his head with an impressive brown beard and equally as rich moustache but he didn’t need the facial hair to point his manliness out as his bulk and muscle could’ve done it by their own. The man must’ve moved so fast that even Shimo couldn’t register his movements and didn’t even know he existed. Judging from the sound of the man’s flashy and blitzing movement he used the high ranking “Body Flicker Jutsu” which was common among higher ranking ninja. It was a way to enhance one’s speed to near instantaneous movement without having to augment one’s chakra and risk tearing one’s chakra network apart.
“We are Sunagakure ninja under direct orders to pick you up and lead you into the safety of our village. Kazekage-sama was contacted by the Hokage and asked to do so because Lady believed you four may have been in trouble since you haven’t contacted her for quite some time. With Kazekage-sama wishing to improve his political situation with Konoha he immediately sent a team to retrieve you and here we are…” the man spoke standing back-to-back with Shimo with neither one turning around to face the conversant. Shimo’s mouth and eyes were still gapping wide open from shock of the speed of that man’s movement.
The frail blonde genin bowed his head to the degree that people used when referring to professional superiors.
“Please do not look at our intervention as a display of force. We merely wished to spare you the trouble of dealing with these raiders” the youth spoke with an apologetic tone never opening his eyes or wiping the smile off his face. He had very messy and spiky blonde hair and rather profoundly blown up cheeks and a double chin which would’ve been cringe worthy to everyone seeing it for the first time. The blood vessels around his cheeks also seemed to be quite evident giving the blown up cheeks some hieroglyph like blood vessel markings.
The chubby female fixed the bandana tying up her long tied up blond hair and then spoke up. She looked similarly on the comical side but mostly due to her t-shirt that had a futon on it partly covered up by the jeans that were held on her shoulders with straps. Despite her intimidating size physically she appeared to dress like a five year old boy.
“These men answer to a known criminal who calls himself Fennec, he is a big pain in Kazekage-sama’s ass and we apologize you had to deal with his lapdogs” the young woman also seemed rather polite and apologetic for something she had little to no control of.
“So Sunagakure knows of this Fennec already…” Mana realized as this information was something she really wished to report after finding out about him from those raiders back when they first entered the desert.
The third one who was the tallest of the three genin, just barely short from matching the height of their sensei, appeared to stay quiet. He wore a rather fancy desert cloak and had a large scarf which must’ve proved rather useful to tie around one’s mouth during a sandstorm or could’ve served as a decent turban to protect one’s head and hair from the blazing desert Sun or the raging sandstorms. His silence and strict stare truly looked a little intimidating. After a moment of awkward silence the redhead also opened his mouth, his voice was tougher than that of teens his age but also a lot huskier and a bit on the silent side.
“Don’t worry Leaf, Sunagakure has your back…” he uttered.
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