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

Blind and Breathless

As the reality of the upcoming conflict dawned and appeared more and more inevitable with each word exchanged between the three participating parties, time seemed to freeze as if it was actually Mana who was capable of manipulating the perception of time with her illusionary abilities and not the leader of the squad.

The four, previously airborne ninja from before: the mechanical man and the tattooed, shoulder-length, black-haired kunoichi on one side, the short, dark-haired swordswoman and the lumbering human-tank on the other, for now, were the only two aware of the Konoha party but that was subject to change. And yet... While their chakra were collectively impressive, it was not any of these four that bothered Mana, it was the pair fighting at the bottom of the valley.

Down at the bottom stood a single shinobi who was holding off an entire group of other ninja, one of which was also worrisome as ruled by Mana's gut and assisted by her chakra signature. The man deserving Mana's fear was almost as tall as the armored man on the Blood Lagoon side and sized up to about half of what the dome-head stood at. He wore a black, metallic plate on his chest, his arms and feet remained unprotected except the vital spots: the armpits strapped with leather, the shoulders and the wrists covered with guards that had multiple swords attached to them.

For the second time that day, Mana wished to show something to Meiko, not just the impressive, sword-switching device on the wrists of the mighty ninja, but his fighting style too. At any given time one of the six swords, three at each hand, was switched to where the man's hand could grip it while the others remained stuck vertically to the man's wrist, forming oversized wrist-blades that could at any time be switched out. The swords differed in shape, style, and even steel alloys, from what Mana could tell.

The most curious attribute of this fearsome man was the helmet that he adored on top of his head. It looked like a furnace: two massive, round plates at the top and the bottom interconnected by steel bars, forming a lantern-like shape on the man's head, as if the shinobi chose to wear a personalized prison cell on top of his attic.

The man was singlehandedly fighting off the other troublesome kunoichi – a woman of jet-black, flowing, long hair who was swinging at her enemy with her bare hands, swiping with crooked yet steel-hard finger swipes that threatened to tear entire chunks of flesh out. Mana felt glad for a moment that the adrenaline rushing through her body allowed a few curious sights of the woman's style as if she ever lunged at the magician that way with no first-hand experience from the magician's side, the sheer unpredictability of the curious martial art would mean Mana's downfall at close distance.

It was not that the three ninja fighting alongside the taijutsu-using woman were weak combatants. The fact that the lantern-helm was holding off all of these ninja by himself did not speak ill of the skill of the four, it spoke credit to the immense lethality of the man on the defensive. By his lonesome he'd be able to carve through any single ninja around, but confronted by these four, he was held permanently on the defensive.

"The four down there, they are Blood Lagoon as well, they have the red eyes as well." Erumo noticed, speaking out loud and breaking Mana out of the trance of fear and rising tension. "We would most likely have the greatest chance at survival aiding them."

"No. We won't just survive. We've come this far, may as well do the right thing. What's going on here? Depending on your answer, we will determine which side we will help." Mana declared. She could almost feel the piercing gawk of Yushijin from behind her but it did not matter. They would use all the power they had to ensure that nobody died, but they'd make sure to find out just what was going on here as well.

"To hell with this!" the tattooed assassin cursed before sheathing her two wakizashi and pulling out a pair of sai. In an unexpected move, she rushed at the Konoha team all by herself, intending to kill them in a single attack and then proceed to fight the Blood Lagoon group.