Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Do Squirrels Dream of Golden Showers?

Just closing her eyes while continuously moving at high speeds didn't work that well with Mana's latent and untrained chakra sensory abilities. She needed to stop, close her eyes and concentrate for that and even then she was looking at the ability to sense something up to a kilometer away. A distance completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of the massive vegetation which was the Forest of Death.

"You were away the whole night, I'd have thought you'd be covered with massive mosquito bites like Kiyomi." Meiko grinned after looking back at Mana, breaking the magician's concentration. Not that it mattered anyways since it clearly wasn't going anywhere.

"Yeah, they were annoying but I guess the food pill treated that." Mana shrugged while taking a moment to look onwards to Kiyomi. Her arms were covered with large and quite wide for a mosquito bite spots of red. Even her face, which clearly was an area of prioritized protection had a couple of spots on it.

After hearing the silence that took over the conversation Kiyomi looked back with wonder before squinting at Meiko, "I'm not taking a medical food pill just to treat a bunch of itchy bites..." she hissed out. "Don't you know how expensive those things are?"

"Kouta seemed to have them on him in great quantities..." Meiko shrugged.

"That's because he's a medical ninja, he can probably make his own himself from herbs and common spices. The medical food pills are actually pretty expensive and rare for non-medical ninja. The black ones are particularly difficult to obtain, I had to save up dozens of tool refill funds before I could get my hand on them and it still took a whole two and a half years to make enough money for just two of them." Mana explained.

"That doesn't seem right, food pills can heal people just like medical ninja, right? Wouldn't that make them a replacement for medical ninja, in a way?" Meiko bellowed in confusion.

"Food pills don't "heal" people. They accelerate and boost the ninja's own metabolism which is already far surpassing that of non-chakra manipulators. They have very specific limitations and shouldn't be taken in larger quantities or too often. It'd be better if me and Meiko refrained from taking them for a day or two. It's because of these limitations that they are so expensive, the Administration doesn't want non-medical ninja, who don't know all the factors involved, dealing with them."

"You'd probably be alright, you took the red one, right?" Kiyomi looked back. "Those are child's play. You could probably get away taking a couple of those at a time... My brother used to tell me about taking several of reds to emulate one yellow pill, I can remember at least several stories about his missions where he did that."

"Maybe, our best course of action is still to avoid picking fights..." Mana noted while she jumped up higher as she noticed a pair of giant centipedes crawling and wrangling up a tree. As their armored shell rubbed against the bark it greatly damaged the plant and if the insect really wanted to it could snap even the toughest trees in half by just pressing it harder.

*****

"Someone's following us..." Mana whimpered out as she sat above on a large tree branch. Kiyomi looked up at the magician in surprise. Meiko quickly zipped her pants back up and hustled and rolled out from the bush she was peeing in like a scared chubby penguin before fixing her clothes and fastening all the belts and harnesses of her armor.

"How do you know that?" Kiyomi wondered.

"Mind link." Mana whispered, she remembered how well she could hear a conversation when she tracked Team Phobos. If she revealed she was a latent untrained sensor she might trigger the people following them to attack. Kiyomi closed her eyes and weaved a hand seal before opening them and looking at Mana, momentarily the blonde's voice as well that of Meiko were linked together with the magician's mind.