Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Gear-Man Sentai Tokusatsu

A bitter mouthful of water got tossed out violently from Meiko's lungs after an erratic series of coughing. Had Kiyomi looked back she'd have noticed that a considerable amount of blood was present in the water running down Meiko's body, clothes and out from inside her body. It was tough to see exactly how much blood was present for Meiko as well seeing how the beating she took made her right eye well swollen up and her entire face was busted in several places, her messed up ribs made breathing hurt.

"Thanks..." Meiko gathered enough air in her lungs at last to let out an expression of gratitude. After all, Team Walnut was after her all along. "Pulled my butt out of the fire", she admitted.

"You probably could've taken Chominu, when the others interfered it just got too hot for that", Kiyomi angrily dismissed her teammate's sensitive moment.

Meiko looked up sadly at her friend who was just looking away at a random point in the moist cave system, occasionally the blonde reached her hand up to wipe her nose or to get her wet loose hair out of her face. The blacksmith stood back up, staggering considerably as she did so before reaching out and touching Kiyomi's damp cold shoulder.

"I know what this meant for you. You really wanted to show up that Lithia girl but you chose to run away to save me. Thanks for that", Meiko quietly muttered before scratching the itchy cold swelling on her eye.

"Whatever, I'd be a lousy leader if I couldn't step over petty nonsense for my own team", the Yamanaka dismissed the notion on the outside, even if she clearly still hated herself internally.

Little by little, Kiyomi was beginning to understand what being a leader was all about. Often in her past she had to step up to do the right thing properly when her own sensei messed up or simply didn't know how to do the right thing, still, this exam and her stepping up during it gave the girl perspective. Another point of view about how difficult things would be from here on out, after she became a chuunin.

"So... What now? They may come after us", Meiko wondered before looking around. The cave system they'd ended up in looked pretty narrow and straightforward. The ravine's lake of water appeared to have a channel that lead into a long submerged tunnel, which dropped water on the lower level of the underground caves. The room where the girls were in was a round cave with only two ways out - to swim and scale up to the fall the stream tossed them out from, swim upstream through the tunnel or head onwards through the caves.

Looking ahead through the darkness ahead Meiko blinked a couple of times rapidly before looking up. The redhead then looked down at her clenched fist.

"You know, I could probably bust us out. Probably wouldn't even need augmentation, my natural strength should easily bust through a good kilometer of rock", the blacksmith suggested.

"No. We'd cause a downfall of the whole thing. Maurlon's bugs have already weakened the soil as it is. You'd cause a ruckus that'd attract attention and we'd risk getting buried under the rubble. Having in mind that a large amount of teams wants us dead... Well, you know...", Kiyomi shook her head before looking on ahead to properly weigh all of the options.

"Yeah, I guess my idea sucked", Meiko bit her lip.

"It was a good idea just... Don't rush this, you've taken a beating, focus on getting through this and resting up", Kiyomi sighed after seeing Meiko frown a bit too much for her liking. The redhead was by far at her strongest and most beastly when she was enthusiastic and not looking down on herself, that was the version of Meiko that Kiyomi wanted to have around about now.

"Alright, let's go on ahead then, we don't want to sit around here and get followed", Meiko sighed before slowly walking up ahead and into the tunnel, walking far enough for the complete darkness of the cave to envelop her and too far on ahead for Kiyomi's enhanced ninja vision to be able to track her sufficiently.