Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

One's Own Growth

The sounds of explosions, rumbling thuds and shockwaves emanating from ground shaking punches and steel clanging followed anyone who would have spent a day in the Konohagakure Training Grounds complex. Smells of smoke, burning, sweat and packed lunch both annoyed and caressed one's nose as they passed by a duo of old friends working out together or a team of newly graduated genin in their team survival drills.

The smell of someone's egg and bacon sandwiches tightly packed together made Meiko's stomach churn and her mouth water, the blacksmith just kept rubbing her tummy, despite having eaten maybe a good thirty minutes ago. Thirty minutes spent wandering around Training Grounds and looking for one particular person. Ever since the blacksmith saw the Eight Gates technique and heard about the fact that it was easy to pick up, she thought it was a perfect jutsu for her. Now all she needed to do was pick it up in the over seven days that she had for preparations.

After prolonged searching, so long, in fact, that Meiko considered finding Mana first and asking her to use her chakra sensory to help the blacksmith out, the redhead finally found Sugemi's team training in one of the training grounds. In the cold season the whole place was different – the ground was rougher, frozen solid, grass was rare and greyed out and the lakes looked oddly calm and waited for the surrounding weather to drop one more degree so it could freeze over.

Daidao pointed his armored arms at Sugemi and fired off a blindingly excessive cloud of smoke in his general direction, which was supposed to surround the Nara and blind him completely. Sugemi barely even resisted the smoke surrounding him. He just calmly looked around and listened in, as his teammate charged in, using the sounds of clanging armor pieces, turning gears and smoke getting pushed out to enhance the speed and strength of Daidao's strikes to aid him in tracing the direction, angle, number and velocity of his opponent's attacks for a successful evasive dodge.

"You should've joined into the attack. Sugemi is a taijutsu user, my sole efforts won't be enough to push him sufficiently for an actual work out", Daidao objected, staring angrily at Nanaba who just sat on her butt, capriciously, and pouted, firing blazing glares at the boys who were working out as if they were to blame for the reason for her ire.

"I told you! I lost my arms! I can't fight without them, I feel like I'm naked without them!" Nanaba shrieked out in a rather annoying pitch, which made Meiko rub her ears, figuring that the high-pitched screech would make them actually bleed.

"I... I don't even..." Daidao twitched for a moment trying to comprehend a single response for this utter insanity.

"You invented those arms like... Months ago, you've been fighting for over three years completely without them. You're a goddamn Jinchuuriki, to top it all off – your chakra pool surpasses that of anyone in the higher ninja ranks by at least couple of hundreds of times, or something..." Sugemi noted as he sat down, feeling annoyed about the lack of good challenge.

"Ummm... Sorry to intrude..." Meiko let Team Hawthorn know that she was present seeing how neither one of them bothered to notice her, their quarrel must've been so intense and people must've been passing by so frequently that arrival of another ninja passed completely by their radars.

"Oh... Sorry, do you have this place booked, or something"? Sugemi squinted at Meiko dismissively. "Because if you don't, we'd really like to keep on training here. We won't mind if you just train somewhere nearby".

"Uh... No, I... Wanted to ask you something", Meiko rubbed her foot in the dirt, still trying to figure out if asking Mana's past teammate for a favor was that smart of an idea. Did Masen-Z not give the blacksmith that weird idea for a potential future technique she could use? No, that technique utilized concepts that may have very well been in space, from where Meiko was staring. Imbuing weapons with that much chakra sounded like fiction to Meiko, pretty good one, yet fiction nonetheless. She needed this.