Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

The Price of Being Whole

The sound of her own unsteady breathing made Mana weakly raise her eyelids to check if her eyes wouldn't feel like getting stabbed at the mere attempt to glimpse at the immense light. The magician slowly opened her eyes and looked around, there was only an aftereffect of the unimaginable destruction that transpired before. If Kusagoro perfectly transferred the chakra behind his attack into his opponent,  how destructive an attack had to be to still devastate an area so large?

Mana looked around, the shielding that the Box provided to itself still was lighting on, yellow particles of unknown origin or content still floated outside the protective cube shaped field, like a swarm of glow-worms. Only after finishing witnessing these spheres of light that slowly dissipated did Mana notice the aftermath of Kusagoro's attack. Namely that she couldn't really see anything, the entire world around her, as far as the horizon stretched and who knew how much farther beyond was nothing but total blackness, not even a single matter was present.

The black as tar clouds thundered on, momentarily illuminating the abyss that covered the entire distance of a portion of the world blown to nothingness. From where the girl was standing it looked like the entire world was either destroyed or dying and about to go off, however from the rather stable eerie quiet of this destroyed landscape she could tell that the destruction must've still been contained. After the protective chakra fields dissipated around the Box, the magician took a curious peak down the corner. Her eyes could not see what remained of the ground and if there even was a ground beneath her feet. For all she knew, there could've only been the very exposed core of the planet somewhere deep, deep down.

"No way..." Mana heard voices nearby and what she first took as an expression of surprise over this fearsome annihilation soon was found out as what it actually was – frustration and disbelief. Further away on a sole remaining pillar of dirt that was slowly sinking into the black oblivion below stood Francho, battered, bruised and singed, entire patches of his beard and his hair were missing and what remained of his clothes had also, let alone few exceptions below the waistline burnt to nothingness.

How could a man survive such an attack? Mana was almost certain that anyone would undoubtedly perish in such a blast, well, maybe not the Kage or Tanshu-sensei, these categories of ninja were described as being so far ahead of the level of the rest they barely even compared but... Seeing the devastation around her made such statements difficult to believe.

A bright bluish glow caught the magician's attention – Kusagoro slowly and carefully descended from the layers of think tar-black clouds. The man was breathing heavily and one side of his body was without a doubt drawn to the ground, the Jugo's eyes wavered as they examined the destruction and it looked like the man was fighting himself over not collapsing or passing out.

"Even if we survive this, I don't feel like the Hokage will praise us for blowing up the entire Tako's Reach, probably even beyond..." Meiko spoke up killing the silence, the usually carefree and eternally hyped genin now sounded worried and almost in grief over the blasted to smithereens world she once lived in.

"Yeah, it'll take some serious work by the terra-forming ninja to repair this, it'll have to come out of Fifth's pocket if her involvement is suspected... Then again, few people venture into the Tako's Reach it may just be played down to a pirate war gone wrong." Shimo replied. Judging from Meiko's reaction the blacksmith may not have even known that ninja such as the terra-forming ninja existed. Special squads in each village's arsenal that possessed large-scale Earth Release or Water Release abilities and even Wood Release users from each village, even if those were far and few in between.

"Might take weeks if not months to repair this..." Mana finally spoke up looking in profound sadness at the ruined world and the oblivion above which the Box still floated.