Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

What Lies Beneath

Kouta rubbed his aching behind while looking around the primal lair he ended up in. After the unexpected and far too powerful for a human throw that the little made-man pulled off on him the young man almost fell down breaking every single bone in his body. That would've left him paralyzed and broken, just laying down there waiting for whatever fate befell all those mangled victims of whatever was haunting this mine to also reach out to him.

Luckily enough, Kouta managed to take control of his fall, flip over and touch the wall with his feet which allowed him to stick onto it. The shock and inertia of the fall sent his knees crashing straight into the wall tearing up his ragged pants and opening some nasty feeling bruises. The medical ninja may not have been overly agile under these conditions so stealth was his only option at that moment.

The place that he ended up in was impressive, it was a gigantic cave with the usual cave structures like stalactites and stalagmites all over the place. A careless fall may have made the boy get impaled on one of them which would've been a very nasty injury for his exhausted state to take care of. Most of his chakra was spent on Mana and her healing, the medical ninja didn't regret that for a moment.

After his eyes got used to the pitch black darkness and the quiet, which was occasionally interrupted by a powerful quake sending small pebbles down from the ceiling and then an occasional water drop from above pecking into a small pebble that must've formed from a collection of such raindrops, Kouta started slowly moving forward. His knees hurt when he was leaning down to sneak around. Must've been due to the injuries.

Kouta's tired eyes then saw a strong and concentrated source of light, the young man rushed to a wall of salty stones and hid behind them. Letting his eyes peek over for just a small occasional glance. Deafening screams and even louder quakes shook the place. One of them lifted the medical ninja off the ground and then smashed him back down once the gravity took control of the situation again. A small group of miners ran out hiding everywhere behind similar structures to the one where Kouta was hiding. An even smaller group of mobsters ran out firing their strange kunai dispensers at something still remaining in the darkness of the cave which was not illuminated by the Audra ore shining its purplish-blue light from above.

Kouta tried to peek again but when he did he could not believe his eyes. Humongous red eyes shined through the darkness and a colossal snout at least a meter larger than Kouta himself pierced through the veil of the darkness. The creature's nose slammed into one of the mobsters with enough force for the poor man to explode into a combination of guts and blood splattering everywhere, perhaps it was good that the place was so poorly lit, that made the gruesome scene hard to see.

"Give that fucker all ye got, pin-cushion him!" another mobster shouted before he was splattered into a bloody stain by a demonic paw of the creature. Just briefly the young man hiding behind the rocky structure saw glowing orange fur on the creature that was slaughtering the remaining below mobsters and miners. Another mobster tried to use an explosive kunai on the fox-like creature but it didn't appear to do much damage, it barely even registered with the monster at all. The fox leaned up, half of its immeasurably large frame was already in the blueish light of the Audra ores shining their natural light which the chakra particles in them emitted.

Its monstrous snout breathed out, the torrent of air coming out from its snout looked so easy and effortless and yet... The poor mobster screamed in agony as his skin and flesh got torn off by the immense pressure of the creature's breath. Kouta looked at it in awe, "It's the Nine-Tailed Fox..." he realized, most genin knew of what exactly the Tailed Beasts were but not all of them.

The reason why genin may have known of the Tailed Beasts was that they were a bit overzealous. Jinchuuriki, the ninja with Tailed Beasts sealed inside of them, were some of the most wanted people to be captured by a village so that their immense power could've been used by the village. However, genin never engaged in combat with Jinchuuriki, only the most curious and excited to grow in rank ones bothered to read reports on the wanted alive posters containing information on the mysterious Jinchuuriki and then a little bit of extra research in the archives let one get the full picture.