Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Don't Lose Your Head

Finding Sekita wasn't a particular problem that Mana had to worry about. The recruit had a chakra that soared leagues above most around her that was slowly fading out with every step and movement that the giant made. Even if she wasn't a walking beacon, it wasn't like Sekita was trying to hide and the entire ground shook from each love tap of her foot. The floor was still soaked with puddles of poison, making contact with skin dangerous, Mana floated using her Mystical Wings jutsu just in case.

"Sekita!" she yelled out. Seeing how the brute was unmoved by Mana's vocal plead to stop, the magician curved out and stepped up in front of her. She expected her appearance to at the very least slow Sekita down but the jumbo-sized juggernaut kept on walking, only taking a mean glare with her whited-out eyes to acknowledge Mana's presence.

Mana tsked and slipped a white card out from her sleeve, allowing Lightning Release chakra to pass through her body, the magician extended the card and channeled the molded chakra through it, using it as a sort of a lightning rod that helped her shape the chakra into a beam like a laser.

"Magical Shock Jutsu!" she chanted out. Sekita grabbed the beam of lightning with her hand, like a whip, and tore it to sparking shreds, continuing to walk forward in a threatening trajectory that would have led the giantess to walk right over Mana.

"Rebellious Twist Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, going through hand seals in a blink as only she could. Her sleight of hand movements had almost returned to her heyday before imprisonment. A wind current formed beneath Mana, spinning the magician and throwing her diagonally up on a collision course with Sekita's looming foot that Mana grabbed and moved together with the current of the whirlwind, flipping the brute over and down on her back.

Rebellious Twist was meant to deflect stray ninja tools and other projectiles, though this unorthodox idea that popped right into Mana's head for an alternative way of using the whirlwind in a different angle for a very different purpose did its deed. Sekita popped up on her bottom and rose from her fallen position. She looked to have finally been humbled enough to notice Mana now that the magician proved to be capable of stopping her strut to the HQ.

"I always knew it," Sekita mumbled, throwing a lightning-fast jab of her supersized arm. It was anything but a proper way to throw a punch but given Sekita's unnatural size and mutated source of power, she didn't need balance or proper arm movement to pop Mana's head clean off her shoulders with even such a puny blow. Fortunately for Mana, she'd not have been caught unaware by an even faster and more skilled physical combatant as evasion was second nature to her.

"I knew it that you were strong," Sekita continued her train of thought after gripping her hands together and throwing them in a spinning double-ax-handle slam aimed to send Mana flying up. Mana used a little bit of turbulent aid of the elements to boost her crescent-shaped vault over her opponent's attack, landing on the other side and slipping a full hand of cards from her sleeve that she flung at Sekita while she was open.

Whether the cards exploded or sent a jolt of electricity, unsealed a windstorm filled with more steel-tipped cards dancing inside it, or performed some other elaborate trick sealed inside one card, Sekita not only didn't appreciate Mana's resourcefulness but she didn't appear to at all be touched by it either. None of Mana's attempts to find a natural weakness to Sekita's ability other than the unnatural burn through her newly gained resources, nothing appeared to have any effect on the mutated Akimichi woman.

"You lied to me. You're just like Regimental Commander Harcel said!" Sekita yelled out, unleashing immense air pressure and airborne droplets of poison that brewed within her gut after she had ingested all of it that was on location. "You pushed everyone else away because you alone were strong! They'd have dragged you back!"