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

Crawl Through Fire

It used to be quite complicated at the start to tell just how injured a ninja was based only on their chakra signature. After all, chakra was not directly linked with one's well-being, injury to one's physical or spiritual self merely obscured one's chakra control, not one's signature directly. One's life force and one's chakra were essentially two different things and they only crossed paths in one, very specific case – death. Only death affected the size of one's chakra signature, that is to say – snuffed it out completely. Death removed all traces of what is both physical and spiritual without return.

With time Mana had learned to tell the approximate amount of injury that a ninja's body has suffered, however, while only needing to peek at their chakra signature. It had less to do with how large or small the signature was, but rather how intense it was. The chakra circulation of a healthy person was vivid, like neon paint flowing through a series of transparent tubes, flushed out and then pushed back in at great speed, quenching the bodily need for spiritual and physical energy.

The chakra circulation of an injured person was just like the one of Mana's mysterious Iwagakure opponent – slowed down, it was as if the bodily and mental bile was tired of its one job and therefore flowed at the pace of snail that was not even particularly hungry. The chakra resources available to the ninja remained somewhat the same, however, their control may have greatly faltered because of the thirst for efficient circulation.

It was because of that relative familiarity with how the chakra of someone hurt beyond the fighting point would have felt that the magician stayed floating where she was. The use of her Mystical Wings Jutsu was beginning to slowly chip at her remaining chakra but the interest in her opponent's state and the vigilance of a possible attempt to counterattack forced Mana to remain afloat in mid-air and just stare at her opponent. Something changed fundamentally in her chakra...

A bang derailed Mana's thoughts and forced them to center on the woman once more, a task made vastly more difficult by the clouds of dusty smoke spreading from the woman's location. The change that Mana detected in her opponent's chakra was not that of increase or decrease, it was the complete halt of that which was slowly consuming it. The end for the spy's Transformation Jutsu. Finally, with her doubts and worries ended, the magician pressed her feet against the wall of the Eternal Fire and began scaling the tall, boiling hot, metallic surface of the structure, looking for an entrance that would have allowed her to catch up to her comrades.

A violent shake followed by a cascade of deafening, tolling clangs made Mana bend her knees in a struggle to maintain her balance while standing in an unnaturally static angle on the surface of the structure. The semi-conscious opponent of hers slipped off of the platform and plummeted from above. After having seen what emerged from the cloud of smoke Mana got confused for a moment, wondering if she was perhaps attacked by another enemy. The magician was so worked up, in fact, that she missed the timing of when the falling shape whizzed right past her and plummeted to the lake below.

Mana kicked off of the platform and dove down, having to use the Mystical Wings once more to break through the limits of terminal velocity and catch up to the slim, masculine shape of the plummeting true form of the Iwagakure spy she had just fought. With a firm grip of the spy's belt, the magician changed her direction and lifted the man back up onto the platform. With a confused glare, she looked over the real shape of the bloodthirsty spy who managed to rile Mana up so much.

A pale and slim body, decorated with sloppily maintained, greasy, shoulder-length hair that may have given someone an illusion of the man being somewhat feminine or androgynous in body build from a significant distance or if one lacked the necessary eyesight to really tell. Mana sensed the rumbling inside, the chakra of Kiyomi, Meiko, and Hanshin were all fluctuating, slowly but surely depleting. It was not a reason for great alarm, such was natural if they were involved in a fight.