Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Desert Warfare

While the round fiery light moved along its cycle, Damisan checked his puppetry scrolls one by one. During some downtime he had in between his return to Earth and him leaving Allied Ninja, as well as during his trip back to Wind Country throughout most of the continent, Damisan rebuilt a few of his puppets from scrap and higher-grade materials he could barter from traveling salesmen. The re-inventions of his past laid sealed within scrolls positioned around his waist.

Almost like he could feel Shakhra approaching the gate, Damisan picked up his step, hearing the uneasy rumbling behind him as more and more settlers picked up their farm tools and prepared to join Damisan in attacking Fahzad. Then came the rowdy rumbling of shifting gears and the gate budged. The hefty rectangular stone blocks that would've been just essentially a wall had they not been parted and been augmented with gearwork that moved them to open and slam them shut, dragged back, leaving a grievous ridge of lacerated sand tracks on the ground.

Shakhra's rich face peeked from the right, leaning from the side, before springing out in the open to greet Damisan and the approaching bunch of settlers that looked as terrified as they were determined to earn their freedom and the dreamy "good old life". Just as Damisan was about to ask Shakhra about how things were going, he saw the fires and heard clangs in the distance. Sparks of supersonic warriors clashing against one another hundreds of times each second before one of them fell, or the two found themselves on equal ground and parted to greet other assailants.

Fahzad was in the middle of fighting for survival. More than the iron clangs, the sounds of fleshy scratches and gargles stood out the most to Damisan. A handful of injured, bandaged grunts rolled up a long cannon and aimed it at the rushing group of settlers. Judging from their sloppy body builds, lack of signature weaponry, and bitter expressions, they were settlers of Fahzad that bargained for their lives by accepting them back as a loan.

Damisan pulled out a scroll placed inside of an iron lid that required a twist and a pull from both sides to free it. Like a yolk inside of an iron egg. Spinning the tool around in his arm to get a better grip on it, the puppeteer flung his sealed scroll into the barrel of the cannon, blocking it off and causing a misfire that sent the already battered settlers flying about like sacks of bricks. They grunted and moaned and checked their busted ribs and backs. They didn't look like they could get back on their feet, but they were alive. They'd stay that way if the rushing settler brigade would let them keep their lives.

"See? I still have friends at Fahzad. You're welcome..." Shakhra teased Damisan after seeing him dispatch the immediate danger to the entire settler platoon rushing inside the lower town.

No reply returned to her. Damisan's eyes were already scanning the enormous mountain and various structures embedded in it. A hanging artificial garden oasis, a bath complex that its architects modeled after a colossal seashell. Damisan leaned down to build up force in his calves and shot off into the air. The puppeteer's feet stuck to the wall of a hall building and Damisan darted off higher while keeping his eyes open for a following point of interest that'd have helped him climb.

"Should've asked Mana to teach me Mystical Wings, seemed like a simple enough jutsu. Didn't she say she learned it before graduating from the Ninja Academy or something?" Damisan mumbled to himself before casting out a loop of his puppetry strings. The chakra-enhanced strings wrapped around a column, letting Damisan zip himself closer to it and swoop onto the platform. It looked like an open tunnel with a perpetual staircase leading up to some building higher up.

Almost immediately, three better-armed grunts ran down the stairs and brandished their weapons at Damisan. These were better armored and better armed than the poor settlers down on the ground level. The one with a spear thrust it at Damisan, but the puppeteer vaulted over it by pushing himself off of it while redirecting the thrust into the floor. Damisan's feet slammed into the grunt's face, dropping him. The toughness that met his feet suggested to Damisan that these warriors were capable of chakra augmentation to some degree. These three would've easily kept a genin occupied in a fight for their life.