Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

The Brutal Ramen Destroyer Gwido

As the Team Hokage graciously danced around the various centipedes, humongous wolves and snakes and other manners of beasts of excessive sizes Mana offered a glance at Kouta's team which was engaging a humongous flock of predators that were focusing down on an unintentional grouping of genin. These beasts were smart. They weren't the species that commonly cooperated however now they engaged their prey in a manner that drove large groups of genin together. That meant that each genin got into another's way whenever they overextended themselves. That also made them a larger serving for a predator that would eventually succeed.

"Come on, Mana!" Kiyomi hurried the magician along as she was beginning to slow down. The magician's figure began falling down to the edges of speed that was intelligible to the various creatures hunting for an influx of genin, none of whom possessed an Intent ability that was needed to keep them at bay like the older and more experienced ninja could.

Seeing how Kouta stopped the charge of an underground viper with his bare handed slap, absorbing and deflecting the entirety of the forty plus ton weighing snake. How his angered and desperate yet controlled chakra cannon blasts blew off the upper half of the snake's body and how it broke right through the hardened shell of the giant centipedes that immediately rushed into the fray, how his immense honed speed and agility allowed him to evade the scythe-like cuts from the giant praying mantises that stalked the genin by the entrance gave her confidence in her boyfriend's abilities to handle it. Even if his team's choice was to fight through the hordes of predators that engaged the entering genin right out of the bat.

While Mana's affirmed confidence allowed her to boost her speed and once again become nearly untraceable to the many predators that flocked in great quantities by the southern entrance, Kiyomi however did begin to lag behind, becoming lightly entranced by Kouta's cute looking teammate and how effortlessly his two handed sword split the attacking predators of the Forest of Death to pieces. Having finally understood and agreed to the retreat plan, Meiko just grabbed the blonde's ear and began dragging the Yamanaka away by force, in a manner similar to that which was required to drag the blacksmith away from the battlefield before.

Finally the girls found a solid straight line to speed up in, without needing to circle around smaller scale battlefields they could finally just leap with a single powerful dash and distance themselves properly from the southern entrance battlefield. With the final sight of Mana's brief glance back at it being a giant centipede stepping into a wire trap set up by Kouta's female teammate - Budoki before being cut to pieces by his male teammate the girls dashed away from the utter madness that greet them.

Everything around them blurred. Green and black environment that surrounded them began brightening and mashing together into a sick milkshake-like esthetic and any sounds of yells, grunts or reptile hisses became dulled out and monotonic shrieks in Mana's ears. Almost instantly she felt her chakra burn up inside her system, it was like someone had set up a combined system of needles that pierced her body in multiple select vital points and drained blood itself out of them leaving small painful fires where blood once was that slowly simmered and discomforted the young kunoichi.

"That was one mean dash..." Kiyomi panted before patting her messy and dirty grey dress and fixing her black vest from completely slipping off her body. Their dashes weren't perfect – all three of the girls had small bruises from where they failed to completely move out of the way of all the smallest branches and thick and sharp edges of cutting leaves and grass below. Focusing so much on speed augmentations and integrity of one's own body in such intense speeds left one's overall endurance augmentations a bit shoddy.

"Yeah, if we get attacked soon we won't be our full selves..." Meiko nodded before beginning to whine over her scratched armor paintjob. It was no branch that left those marks, these were tooth and claw marks as well as acid melting large chunks of it. Most ninja had the ability to extend their chakra augmentations a bit past the point of their own bodies and cover their entire clothes, Meiko's augmentation abilities may have still been a bit raw, her control was quite shabby and her armor pieces intricate and extensive which didn't let her offer her armor the same degree of protection she could afford to grant herself.