Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

War and Peace

While Usujitsa scurried away with its squadron of fumbling clones to intercept the rushing duo of chakra belonging to the members of Shogito's crew, Mana began scouting her surroundings for a mailbox. Despite the wear and tear of the place, the magician spotted the metallic dome resting atop of an aged wooden pole without much trouble. It was a tad bent and out of place but it appeared to be mostly intact.

Mana tried to hurry up and open the mailbox up with the password extracted from the safekeeping of Baiso's mind at once but just as she rushed on toward it she felt an aching in her ribs and a hot boiling sensation in her thighs and where she took nastier bumps than she expected. Even with Baiso barely laying a hand on her, Mana still didn't feel too good and might have needed some medical ninja attention after this. It was a dreadful thought just trying to imagine how this bout would have gone for her had Baiso actually gotten his hands on her.

The mailbox had a scrolling mechanism, not unlike the childish, playful bento boxes from magazines. Despite some safes having the same protection mechanism, for whatever reason, the toy bento boxes were the first thing to come to Mana's mind. Maybe because she didn't deal with safes all too often whereas those common additions to kid magazine issues used to be a common occurrence in her day to day life during her Academy days?

Just as Mana finished scrolling the password into place, the mailbox let out a sharp pinging noise and its nose fell open like a released tin hinge. Frankly, seeing how thin and shoddy the material that the mailbox was made out of made Mana wonder just how tough would it have been to break into this mailbox but it didn't matter. Unlike extracting information from someone who had it, Mana doubted that breaking the box would have counted. Inside the mailbox laid a black cassette tape, smaller than the magician's palm. With a whirl of ethereal purple, Mana sealed it inside of her top hat and placed it back on her head.

"Konoha's Sorceress!" Shogito's voice pierced the deceitful silence that had taken over for a little while after Baiso went down drooling. The leader of the squad of upperclassmen revealed himself just before Mana prepared to leave this place for a quieter spot where the objectives might still have been intact.

"You fool! You should have attacked her while her guard was down, not yell your lungs out!" Joshipa objected from a humbling position of lying down on the simulated village street.

"I know better than that, Konoha's Sorceress never lets her guard down! Plus, if you try to run, I've got better chances at stopping you from long-range," Shogito proclaimed. Mana noted a handful of twitching metallic stumps that looked like parts of mechanical limbs similar to the prosthetics that Damisan used though likely more outlandish in appearance as Shogito was far less sensitive about restoring the human appearance and, in fact, wanted to build himself up as anything but.

Mana tsked her tongue, realizing that another problem stood in her way, one that managed to bypass Usujitsa. Shogito looked like he had been through a rough battle, his jumpsuit had been torn and dirty in places and even his head had signs of a mean-spirited beating so it might not have been too much problem taking the upperclassman down but Mana didn't feel even remotely in a fighting condition either. Her chakra has been more than half spent and she took some mean brushes with defeat against Baiso. If she made a mistake, Mana couldn't have been sure that such a mistake wouldn't have cost her group this war game.

Still, if Shogito beat whomever he's beaten, he had nothing to worry about and had ample time to just sulk there and spout whatever he wanted at Mana while Usujitsa took on his other surviving team member. Mana was at a massive disadvantage and it was one that would only be aggravated by standing around. Mana weaved her hand seals and directed her eyes toward Shogito.

"Polymorphy Jutsu!" she chanted out as Shogito clutched at his stomach and collapsed on his side, shaking his hands and legs out in front of him before he appeared to have completed his illusionary transition and extended his legs out, walking on all fours with his body almost brushing to the ground like some sort of insect.