Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Games of Body and Soul

What Monsters Fear

"I've figured out how to stop Honda." Mana declared to the surprised special jounin. "His healing..."

Honda did not let Mana finish. He let out an uproar and lobbed his entire body at the group of ninja. After the entire day fighting off ninja, killing some of them, bringing down reinforced buildings with his own bare hands and regenerating from all the countless ways that Konoha ninja have learned to kill a person, Honda was still as fast as he was completely fresh. Apart perhaps from a small difference in speed that the flailing growths all over his body caused by making Honda less aerodynamic and shifting his balance about.

"Fire Style: Fenghuang Tail!" Santei grumbled as he leaped forward to halt Honda's acceleration as much as possible. He knew that in his current state, he stood no chance at properly matching the rushing force of his opponent but if he could only slow him down enough, that would have been just fine.

Flames erupted from Santei's airborne body, concentrating around the leg he used for his jumping spin kick. The shinobi aimed his kick at the monster's face. It was not an attempt to hurt Honda but instead of add onto the imbalance of the flailing voiceless growths and derail the monster. Honda just soldiered on, through the imbalance of his own healing factor acting out in curious ways, through Santei's kick hard and fast enough to tackle the already injured ninja fast and hard enough to send him spinning and falling aside.

"Earth Style: Core Polymer!" Idaru shouted while he slammed his palms together. The storm of black minerals burst from underground, bonding together into a thick cloud almost instantly. Honda felt his feet leaving the ground as the immense density of the swarming mineral dust bent the very space around him momentarily and drew him into the heart of the storm he had no hopes of busting through. After a couple of nasty yanks and spins, Idaru's technique simply spat Honda aside like a piece of gum that had lost its taste.

"Nice instinct, Idaru." Kunshei commended his teammate. "The monster does not appear overly fond of this girl. Nasty history, I assume?"

"Something like that..." Mana gulped, realizing just how close to dying they all were just now. She had no hopes of reacting to an attack like that, let alone defending from it. She was long past the point where she could dodge and weave around the monster and toy with him, try and worry over the monster's life instead of her own.

And yet the magician's convictions did not waver. She felt just as determined to have Honda survive this and be captured alive as before, no, perhaps she felt even more determined now. It was in testing moments such as this one that one's true devotion to their principles revealed if it was something meaningful or just fluff to fill pointless stories with.

"I can't take all the credit, had Santei not... Damn... Who would have thought that he'd leap into someone's aid like that?" Idaru grinned like a monkey while he mocked his bruised and stumbling teammate who slowly made his way back into the formation having risen from a bunch of rubble and stray trash bins he had crashed through before crashing into yet another building.

"You fool... You think I did this for you? If this girl has answers that can help us stop Honda, we need to hear them now! I won't let us die to a pathetic freak like this without at least taking it with us." The ninja grumbled looking at Honda's flat, lumbering body with disdain.

"I had hoped that I would relay this intelligence to ninja capable of exploiting it but I don't think you guys are. You need to withdraw and bring this intel back to the village so that the reinforcements can properly use it." Mana advised the bunch, noting that their condition was not much better than hers when she dove right back into her second clash with Honda. That type of recklessness had cost her dearly and Mana was not quite done paying the price for it just yet.