Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Class Meeting

Meiko was quickly moving through the upper levels of the Forest of Death, even while she held Mana carefully on her back the blacksmith moved incredibly fast even without the aid of chakra augmentations as her physical shape was by far the greatest of the three in her team. For a while the girls dashed around in silence.

"You know, you really took your time with returning to your body. If I didn't know any better I'd have thought you just wanted to be a freeloader and enjoyed the free piggyback..." grumpy Meiko complained.

"Me? What? No!" Kiyomi blushed momentarily before switching the topic, a simple verbal riposte that always worked to disarm her simpleton friend, "You of all people should be more ashamed than you are!"

"Yeah, Meiko, we were worried..." Mana gently joined to Kiyomi's side of the argument.

Meiko laughed out loud from the bottom of her heart and only shook her hands defensively once the curious and judgmental stares of her friends turned her way.

"You guys suck at these pep talk things. Mana's too soft in general and Kiyomi isn't too good on letting me have it..." the redhead noted.

"I'm... Fairly decent at... Letting you have it." Kiyomi shrugged before looking away in shame.

"No, in all seriousness, I know that what I did was wrong. I left during my shift keeping guard and I made you guys chase after me like an idiot. I'm sorry, when we were told there's a guy here with a chainsaw sword I just wanted to see it really badly." Meiko looked down clearly showing shame and regret in what she did. It was good that she did realize what she did was wrong because Mana started to suspect that Meiko's remark before about the two being soft on her was sort of right.

"What's important is that you're back..." Mana smiled as she could do little else in her powerless state. She did feel a little dizzy after losing a bit more of blood before, luckily enough Meiko stopped temporarily to apply ointment and some of their remaining medical supplies before continuing their trip. "It kind of makes me wonder why you returned in the first place. Did you even get to see the guy's chainsaw sword?" she wondered.

Meiko nodded. "I did, though when I heard those three discussing coming after us I realized that you guys may have been in trouble. Instead of snagging that sword to check it from the inside and how it's made I'm stuck with just the outer visuals. I'm pretty sure I could replicate it somewhat but it wouldn't be an exact replica until I make it show me some skin inside of it. I'm just good like that..."

"What did you mean by them talking about coming after us?" Kiyomi wondered.

"Well, initially my idea was to steal Faeras' chainsaw sword and see it from the inside, make some blueprints before giving it back to him. Then as I kept watch on them, looking for my chance, I overheard them considering joining in on a hunt for our team. Apparently, a whole bunch of teams don't really like us for a whole bunch of reasons and want us gone, they're even all pooling some resources together to make a "bounty-pool" of sorts to whoever eliminates us." Meiko explained.

"What other teams have you heard about? Surely they should've mentioned some other names for us to look out for..." Kiyomi looked fairly troubled by this revelation.

"Well, Tala and Tiwul got eliminated by Team Fir. Team Fir apparently did express dislike of our team but they didn't join into the pool. That much those three discussed. Then there was a whole bunch of Hoshigakure teams who were friendly to Clarmac's team we've eliminated. They didn't mention any more names." Meiko shrugged.

"That means Yushijin and Budoki know about my betrayal. Tala probably spilled it out after being beaten just to spite me..." Mana bit her lip in anxiety.