Hanasaku’s strange transformation surprised all three of the students. It was unlike anything they’ve seen before. It didn’t look like an illusion, granted, they’d not have known that until they’ve tried dispelling it. It didn’t really abide any laws of what ninjutsu usually was capable of. It could’ve just been a fancy Transformation Jutsu but there would’ve been no point for that, it wouldn’t have enhanced the Sannin’s abilities if it was as simple as that. The closest explanation at least somewhat touching the grounds of reality seemed that this was an odd variant of the Transformation Jutsu, one on a much more advanced scale.
“Catch you?” Kiyomi wondered.
“That’s right…” Hanasaku growled out through her teeth. Her voice became more wild and howling. It was like her entire essence had completely transformed. “Lay your hand on me and touch me, that’s all it takes for you to pass this test.”
Meiko gave the two girls an affirming stare before she darted off. Halfway through her charge the blacksmith touched her armored boots only to set off the sealing glyphs on them. In a powerful burst of chakra the girl was propelled forward. Mana had to hand it to her friend “ she was fast. While the magician could still see the blacksmith move, while she may have had what it takes to survive and avoid any attacks delivered at that speed in a race Meiko would’ve blown Mana and Kiyomi away.
“Blockbuster!” Meiko yelled out as she pointed her shoulder and tensed her upper body for impact. It must’ve been a newer taijutsu technique as the magician couldn’t recall seeing it before neither in the mission she had with Meiko nor during one of her several training sessions with Meiko afterwards. A painful pinch woke Mana up from admiration of her friend’s impressive ram, she didn’t need to hurt Hanasaku with that, just have it blocked or at least connect…
“I think she is acting as a distraction, she trusted us to come up with a plan of attack.” Kiyomi murmured out trying not to draw attention from Hanasaku.
Meiko’s shoulder charge completely phased through Hanasaku, like the woman wasn’t even there to begin with and yet her image didn’t blur as it used to do if a ninja was so fast that they left afterimages. It was like Meiko should’ve hit but then just phased through the woman completely.
“You can’t do that! Human beings can’t phase through objects coming at them!” Meiko shouted out before delivering another punch. Strangely enough the woman didn’t just allow it phase through her. This time Hanasaku just vanished into thin air, moving so fast that neither of the students could follow her movements until the leaves rustled by her sudden dash gently twirled and settled down on the layer of their peers. “Damn it! I thought I had her…” the blacksmith cursed with a playful snap of her fingers.
“It’s not about you, she’s teaching us teamwork. It’s a common exercise, we need to work together!” Kiyomi suggested.
“I don’t think that even working together we can catch her, or even tag her to begin with… What even was that ability? I thought Meiko’s punch connected and I didn’t see Hokage-sensei move a bit… To top it off “ that transformation…” Mana scratched her chin before her headache acted up. That skull crushing pain that interrupted her chain of thought and got in the way of relating all those new and unseen things.
Meiko’s hand tapped Mana’s shoulder with all the subtlety and restraint of a country sized asteroid.
“Don’t twist your head. I figured her out during our first meeting “ sensei’s skills defy human logic. Her mind is so out of sync with reality that she just does whatever she thinks she can do, when you point out to her that humans don’t function like that, when you tell her the limits she can’t do that anymore. That’s why I thought I had her after the first failure…” Meiko pouted.
“Huh? We worked with Hanasaku for years and we’ve never found that out… We just thought she was so strong and fast and durable that she did whatever she wanted… I never thought there was a sense to that madness, well, as much sense as Chestnut Hanasaku can make…” Kiyomi looked surprised. “Nice job! Way to contribute to the team!” she smiled at the blacksmith before playfully punching Meiko’s chest plate.
“Still, we lost her, now we’ll need to find her to begin with, even if we do find her “ how do we hold her still long enough to tag her?” Mana complained still rubbing her aching temples in annoyance.
“True, it’d be really awesome to have a sensor on our team…” Kiyomi dreamily looked at the sky.
“Aren’t you one? I thought Yamanaka had by far the highest percentage of born sensors out of all other clans?” Meiko curiously looked at Kiyomi, it was odd thinking that the blacksmith thought that Kiyomi was a sensor this whole time.
“Sadly…” Kiyomi shrugged, “I either don’t have it or I still haven’t awakened it…”
“Still… We have an advantage here.” Mana suddenly realized once her headache cleared out and only left an aftertaste of burning synapses in her brain. “This training ground isn’t that huge, that limits Hokage-sensei’s territory, she can’t move too fast or use her speed for an extensive period of time and still fit into the training grounds. Also, it narrows down the area we need to search, I think finding her won’t be a problem…”
“Yeah… How about we just track the trail?” Kiyomi smiled pointing at several broken tree branches and a narrow tunnel of torn off leaves.
“Yes! If we analyze the altitude where the leaves are torn off, we will know what altitude she moved in, then we can follow that same level of height to where her trail disappears and draw her out. This training grounds is maintained in a constant season of late autumn. That means the leaves on the trees are exceptionally fragile, she won’t be able to use the trees to hide or move away limiting her to the ground level!” Mana yelled out, excited by Kiyomi’s discovery of a beginning of a trail.
“You know, I kinda hoped you two would think this thing through while I distracted sensei… That’s why I charged at her head-on, you know!” Meiko pouted.
The three kunoichi began slowly tracing Hanasaku’s trail, treading carefully and as silently as they could. Kiyomi had no problem sticking to the ground, barely making a sound as she walked even in a tight forest with endless layers of fallen trashy leaves beneath her feet. Mana was not the greatest in the art of stealth, her talents were at distraction, battlefield entertainment and enemy displacement. That was why she made an occasional trip, from time to time leaves rustled as they got picked up and rustled in an endless chain of autumnal murmuring. Meiko, on the same note, was a walking bulldozer, trampling and breaking any branches she passed by, crushing any twigs and actually damaging tree bark she banged against. Even when she stepped into small webs of little creeks it didn’t appear to disturb or annoy the blacksmith at all. Not to mention the revealing sounds her armor constantly made by squeaking and clanging.
“Just a thought, maybe it’d be for the best that we figure something out. You know… What we do once we do find sensei?” Meiko wondered poking her cheek with her finger, continuously making her shoulder plates clang and jingle as steel plates clashed with each other.
“It may be a good idea to use your sword.” Mana suggested, “If that phasing ability has anything to do with that transformation and isn’t just an element of her astonishing speed, an Audra blade should cut through that or at least fare better against it than your bare hand…”
“I still don’t get it, what’s so special about that sword?” Kiyomi shrugged, questioningly looking back at her two teammates.
“An Audra sword doesn’t break as easily against chakra, it partially resists the chakra over matter principle.” Meiko explained.
“Wow, I was hoping Mana would explain this to me, no offense, but I didn’t take you for a brainiac…” Kiyomi smiled affectionately at Meiko.
“Meiko is really smart about mechanics and sealing techniques and weaponry.” Mana explained. “She has a very specific circle of interests she is very passionate about.”
“Also music!” Meiko pointed out.
“Also music…” Mana nodded with a smile.
“It’s a hobby…” the blacksmith shrugged, “Blacksmithing is my life!”
“You got place for a boyfriend in that life?” Kiyomi wondered.
“Ummm… I don’t think her dating situation will help us catch Hanasaku…” Mana quickly steered the subject. While it made sense for her Yamanaka friend to scope out Meiko’s interests and abilities, as well as the full extent of her fields of knowledge and degrees to which she was educated in them, the depths of the blonde’s interests were a bit baffling for the magician.
“What’s there to catch? You two just hit her, displace her, do what you do best. Meiko - smash things, Mana - blast them! I’ll hit Hanasaku with a Yamanaka clan technique and we’re done!” Kiyomi grinned with alarming confidence in her abilities.
“Aren’t your techniques as fast as a thought? Slowing Hokage-sensei down to such an extent will not be easy, you should use your hair trick first…” Mana suggested as the three kept on following the trail that their sensei left carelessly traversing the trees at immense speeds without caring to think a moment about the state of its leaves. Be as gentle and silent as she may have been, with how weak the season made those leaves they’ve have all fallen from a lightest breeze.
“A new rule…” Hanasaku’s voice made Mana jump up in fear as she simply didn’t expect their sensei to find them instead of other way around. “A ring-out clause, if at any point anyone leaves the training grounds “ they’re out. If I as much as step out “ you win…” the woman explained in her growling voice, with her transformation still intact.
“No way!” Kiyomi was still shaking, she didn’t expect the woman to sneak up on them from the exact opposite side they were tracking her to.
Meiko only whistled in shock before laughing out. Somehow the blacksmith still found the test highly entertaining.
“This… It changes everything…” Mana uttered. “There was no way for her to sneak up on us from behind if she was the one who caused those holes in the leaves up there… That means that somehow she doesn’t touch them or even travel at that level.”
Meiko leaned down and carefully and overly dramatically examined the leaves on the ground and burrowed a bit deeper to the dirt under them, right below the tree where their sensei snuck up on them.
“Hmmm… I don’t think she travelled on the ground level either…” the blacksmith whined out.
“Then how!?” Kiyomi shouted out beginning to get frustrated from how little of grasp they had on the situation. It seemed that this transformation had unlocked a side of her mentor that made her defy the laws of logic and reality even more than she usually did.
“She’s still phasing…” Mana concluded.
“That’s impossible, I told her the limit on that ability, she can’t do that anymore because it’s illogical!” Meiko reminded the magician before settling down and resting by the tree.
“We need to stay aware at all times. Do you know why she declared that extra cause? It’s because Hanasaku is impatient. She’d never allow us to lose by waiting whole day “ she needs an escape clause if she grows impatient. If that happens, if she reaches her wits end “ she’ll just ring all three of us out.”
“But… Wouldn’t we win if she carries us out?” Meiko wondered.
“Not necessarily, not if she does it so fast that we aren’t fast enough to perceive her action and tag her while she carries us. Having who we’re dealing in mind, do you really want to bet on yourself?” the Yamanaka explained with a somewhat apocalyptic tone, as if everything was as good as over already.
Mana looked around, all of a sudden her friends were nowhere to be seen, nothing around her but an unclear distance of forests and trees. The magician couldn’t understand where her friends may have gone, the area she was in currently was completely different from the one where she was before. The girl looked up to notice the human-wolf hybrid shape of Hanasaku sniffing the air and licking her snout up right above.
“Did I lose, did you carry me out of the bounds?” the magician wonder.
“No. I didn’t want to risk that much, your perception is the fastest out of the three. I had the mission report from the Box mission skimmed through to me. You’ve been trained by Wakizashi Meiko, Kouta Juugo and the Sun Disc martial artists to perceive hits and deflect them or avoid them even as a normal human. I have no idea how amazing your perception is currently but knowing you kept up with an underground Black Ops unit operative recently I didn’t want to risk losing the test “ not to you.” Hanasaku howled out before playfully snapping her teeth at a fly buzzing around her nose.
“So did you eliminate the others already?” Mana put her hand into her ninja pouch, her eyes kept constant contact with her sensei’s eyes trying desperately to make her focus on the magician’s alluring emerald orbs and not where her hand travelled.
“Heh, no. If I just wanted to win I’d have established the rule and eliminated all three of you to begin with. I want to teach you guys something, see how you function both as a team and separately. They’re all on different corners of the training grounds…” the woman replied with a more primal, rougher voice than she spoke with normally.
“Sweet Lullaby!” Mana chanted after her one hand, hidden in the empty ninja pouch on her thigh, made the one handed hand seals. A gentle melody filled the air, a testament of brain targeting illusion that overwhelmed one’s body with pleasure. Something like that would’ve completely crippled the woman and made her tumble from the tree branch, if only the melody reached her ears… If only…
Hanasaku was gone. She ran away faster than the sound waves that carried Mana’s illusion. Not only that, the woman recognized that the magician was using an illusion and then she still managed to avoid even a single sound wave reaching her. Speed like that was insane! There was only one ninja firmly rumored to be faster than sound itself, capable of pulling off such a feat of speed, that was the current Raikage but Mana just assumed that was Kumogakure propaganda meant to scare other villages from conflicting or going to war with Kumo. Seeing her own sensei pull something insane like this off was… Equal part scary as it was inspiring.
*****
At the very same moment, on the completely opposite sides of the training ground Meiko and Kiyomi were waking up. Each of them met with same looking transformed version of their sensei lurking in the trees, receiving the same explanation of what happened that Mana got. So far neither of the kunoichi knew the extent of how badly they were being played. None of them knew that their sensei existed in multiple places simultaneously without the aid of clone techniques or anything that would’ve split the limited supply of Sage Chakra she had in her system. The woman simply existed in front of all three girls and spoke to them simultaneously at the same time.
“You can’t run faster than sound!” Kiyomi’s raised voice filled the air, a plead desperate to reach the woman and inform her that she couldn’t move at the speed that she moved in. The Yamanaka merely supported Meiko’s hypothesis of a weakness the blacksmith may have discovered during their training session and limiting Hanasaku’s speed would’ve greatly assisted the three young kunoichi.
*****
Mana kept on walking forwards, she pulled out a card with apple motifs and red colors on the other side, covered with sealing glyphs and looked at it. She could’ve used it, thrown it up in the air and alerted her allies to her location with its colorful red explosion. Then something her sensei had said occurred to the magician “ they were being observed and they weren’t being tested randomly in this test. Hanasaku implied that she wanted to test their skills operating together as well as separately. That meant that there were whole different standards to how Mana needed to behave.
The girl didn’t want to fail her authority figures anymore. No more failing Hanasaku as she had failed the woman before, no more failing her like Mana had failed Tanshu-sensei long time ago. Mana stared at the card before putting it back into a compartment in her sleeves. Using the explosive seal card would’ve alerted Meiko and Kiyomi to Mana’s location but it would be a bad move when working under these conditions in the field “ it’d just as equally betrayed Mana’s position to the enemy.
The magician had a feeling that once she’d have used the card Hanasaku would’ve moved Mana outside the training grounds and declared she had actually failed the test. The girl sighed and looked around, she still needed to alert her friends of her position somehow. She had no idea where they’ve been taken. It probably wouldn’t have made much sense just leaving markings on the trees, Hanasaku mentioned something about taking the other girls to different parts of the field. Mana wondered if that may have meant different corners or different edges. That meant that as long as the magician progressed towards the center of the training grounds, she’d find her friends. Obviously if they came up to the same conclusions…
“Training grounds No. 32 is in the northern exit from the village… That means it’s located north to the village. There is a large pond in the most southern point where the entrance was, if I listen in…” Mana closed her eyes hoping to hear a gentle rippling of a little creek, there were many webs of creeks around that lead into the bigger pond down in southern part of the Training Grounds. Mana had no idea in which point exactly she was so locating that landmark would’ve helped her understand better where she was taken.
Nothing.
Not a single rippling sound which was alarming, she must’ve been right at the edge of one of the sides of the Training Grounds. Mana had to choose a direction to travel in very carefully. If she walked up to the fence signaling the edge of the training grounds she’d have wasted plenty of time walking the wrong direction.
Suddenly Mana’s eyes shot wide open as she grabbed a nearby stick and began digging through the leaves and then the sludgy mud layers below them. An underground splash of water drowned the magician’s dirty hands as it began bursting through the cover of mud and leaves. The magician then ran up to one of the trees and observed the direction where the vegetation grew at. That was it “ the underground springs were all going the side opposite from north “ where the vegetation was.
“That means I am at the lowest point below sea level, that’s why the springs are so weak and why they’re running opposite direction to where the pond is “ most southern point of the training grounds. If I am at the most northern point, farthest from the hills and artificial foundations of all those buildings down south “ where we entered, as long as I head south I’ll reach the center. Right… Opposite to the vegetation on the trees…” Mana thought to herself almost like she was her own partner to communicate with.
At least now she had a direction. Direction was all she could’ve asked for!
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