As the Team Hokage graciously danced around the various centipedes, humongous wolves and snakes and other manners of beasts of excessive sizes Mana offered a glance at Kouta's team which was engaging a humongous flock of predators that were focusing down on an unintentional grouping of genin. These beasts were smart. They weren't the species that commonly cooperated however now they engaged their prey in a manner that drove large groups of genin together. That meant that each genin got into another's way whenever they overextended themselves. That also made them a larger serving for a predator that would eventually succeed.
"Come on, Mana!" Kiyomi hurried the magician along as she was beginning to slow down. The magician's figure began falling down to the edges of speed that was intelligible to the various creatures hunting for an influx of genin, none of whom possessed an Intent ability that was needed to keep them at bay like the older and more experienced ninja could.
Seeing how Kouta stopped the charge of an underground viper with his bare handed slap, absorbing and deflecting the entirety of the forty plus ton weighing snake. How his angered and desperate yet controlled chakra cannon blasts blew off the upper half of the snake's body and how it broke right through the hardened shell of the giant centipedes that immediately rushed into the fray, how his immense honed speed and agility allowed him to evade the scythe-like cuts from the giant praying mantises that stalked the genin by the entrance gave her confidence in her boyfriend's abilities to handle it. Even if his team's choice was to fight through the hordes of predators that engaged the entering genin right out of the bat.
While Mana's affirmed confidence allowed her to boost her speed and once again become nearly untraceable to the many predators that flocked in great quantities by the southern entrance, Kiyomi however did begin to lag behind, becoming lightly entranced by Kouta's cute looking teammate and how effortlessly his two handed sword split the attacking predators of the Forest of Death to pieces. Having finally understood and agreed to the retreat plan, Meiko just grabbed the blonde's ear and began dragging the Yamanaka away by force, in a manner similar to that which was required to drag the blacksmith away from the battlefield before.
Finally the girls found a solid straight line to speed up in, without needing to circle around smaller scale battlefields they could finally just leap with a single powerful dash and distance themselves properly from the southern entrance battlefield. With the final sight of Mana's brief glance back at it being a giant centipede stepping into a wire trap set up by Kouta's female teammate - Budoki before being cut to pieces by his male teammate the girls dashed away from the utter madness that greet them.
Everything around them blurred. Green and black environment that surrounded them began brightening and mashing together into a sick milkshake-like esthetic and any sounds of yells, grunts or reptile hisses became dulled out and monotonic shrieks in Mana's ears. Almost instantly she felt her chakra burn up inside her system, it was like someone had set up a combined system of needles that pierced her body in multiple select vital points and drained blood itself out of them leaving small painful fires where blood once was that slowly simmered and discomforted the young kunoichi.
"That was one mean dash…" Kiyomi panted before patting her messy and dirty grey dress and fixing her black vest from completely slipping off her body. Their dashes weren't perfect – all three of the girls had small bruises from where they failed to completely move out of the way of all the smallest branches and thick and sharp edges of cutting leaves and grass below. Focusing so much on speed augmentations and integrity of one's own body in such intense speeds left one's overall endurance augmentations a bit shoddy.
"Yeah, if we get attacked soon we won't be our full selves…" Meiko nodded before beginning to whine over her scratched armor paintjob. It was no branch that left those marks, these were tooth and claw marks as well as acid melting large chunks of it. Most ninja had the ability to extend their chakra augmentations a bit past the point of their own bodies and cover their entire clothes, Meiko's augmentation abilities may have still been a bit raw, her control was quite shabby and her armor pieces intricate and extensive which didn't let her offer her armor the same degree of protection she could afford to grant herself.
"Let's slow down the pace and keep moving, it's a good one and a half day of casual trekking before we reach the northern exit…" Mana suggested before putting her hand on the file that was hidden in an inner pocket of her jacket and pressing the file's corner hard in fear of what may have laid within it.
"We still need to take on three teams to hunt down our targets. Ideally some of our names will be in the same teams, that way we'd only need to fight two or less teams before we reach the exit." Kiyomi sighed pulling out her own file from under her vest and lightening the belt on her abdomen that she had tightened before to secure the file to her body.
Meiko removed a partly molten file from her pocket, the yellow cover of the file was halfway corroded from all the acidic goo dipping the blacksmith had done earlier in her quest to slay as many gigantic wasp creatures as she could, the file inside of the cover was just barely visible and barely even "confidential" anymore by the strict meaning of the word.
The trio slowed down before looking at each other and peeking at their respective files. Meiko clacked with her tongue before slipping the messed up file out from the burnt cover as most of it was exposed anyways. The blacksmith then looked with genuine reservations and some respectable composure, for her at least, before showing the file to her team. The lighting in the area was limited but some details could've been made out with effort, once the day got darker they'd likely need some illumination for pretty much anything. The picture had a young boy of more western darker complexion and a somewhat devious looking smile and shades.
"Qarsufly from Team Maruf, Sunagakure…" Meiko grinned as if that revelation really meant anything else but a person she was supposed to defeat or take out with deceit. "I think I accidentally melted off the second name of the poor guy…" the girl innocently rubbed the back of her head making a mess out of her blazing red colored hairdo.
"No, people from Sunagakure usually only have one name unless they hail from a clan. You've salvaged a surprising amount of information." Mana comforted her friend even though judging from the genuine composed and contained hype of the blacksmith she needed none of it.
"Oh yeah… Tala, Tiwul and the others had none…" Meiko scratched her chin while her eyebrows were continuously emulating impressions of smart people when they thought really hard.
"Alright, let's see what I got!" Kiyomi smiled demonstrating more of Meiko's hyped out nature in that one expression than the blacksmith did during the revelation of her target. The girl opened up the file and as carefully as it was possible while leaping around a gigantic dark forest, at least they were located in the upper layers of the trees where limited sunlight still broke through. After reading through her file the Yamanaka showed it to Mana and Meiko.
"No fricking way! It's Othello G from CWF – Cloud Wrestling Federation! Apparently he's in Team Cumulus from Kumogakure. I guess names like that are normal in Kumogakure too, Ms. Historian?" Kiyomi cheeked at Mana after the team got a better look at the dark skinned young man with feint clues of a facial hair and a silly looking green woolen hat.
"No, it's not his real name. Kumogakure doesn't prohibit uses of nicknames and stage names in personal documents. It must be his wrestling stage name, you're the authority in that…" Mana smiled, she was glad that at least two of her teammates didn't receive any names she wouldn't have liked to see in there. Not only that, Kiyomi found a name in her target file that was a known to her wrestler which meant she'd be vaguely familiar with his abilities.
"Come on, Mana! Show us yours!" Meiko hurried Mana, a sentiment of pure hype which Kiyomi soon joined in on.
The magician held her file ahead of herself, hesitant to take a look. Even while the passing trees and branches passed by at great speeds and the trio of genin kunoichi evaded them while focusing entirely on the files in their hands, the magician's utmost attention was fixed on the yellow neatly packed file. Slowly she removed the rubber band off of it and clicked a metal pin to open up the file, not because of any desire to know what's inside but purely because of need to do so.
"Junipu-R. Team Cirrus, Kumogakure." Mana finally sighed in relief as the worst case scenario of finding Kiyomi's or Meiko's name, or even that of Kouta or any of his teammates was just that – her silly worrying over too many things, anxiety for anxiety's own sake.
"Huh… I guess we really will have to take on three teams in total. Too bad…" Meiko wondered before realizing that the prospect kind of excited her. "At least we'll get to see a whole bunch of different genin from different countries and see how they fight and operate!" the blacksmith then rubbed her itchy nose.
"G and R… What kind of last names are that?" Kiyomi expressed her annoyance over foreign customs. Likely they were made up parts of the nicknames that the young Kumogakure ninja adopted as their own. Historically no Kumogakure ninja had similar names, even if the legislation regarding nicknames in documents was ancient, so it had to be a newer fad. Some old Kumogakure ninja supposedly used to shorten their credentials to avoid the humanity of having an actual name – that was the whole purpose of the previously mentioned law. The current generation must've used those laws for the sole purpose of giving themselves stage names that sounded weird and loud…
"Don't make fun of foreign customs. The only reason why allied countries even take Chuunin Exams together is to promote cooperation and friendship between different countries." Mana pouted giving Kiyomi an uncomfortable glare one gave their older and quite fascist relative who held the century old opinion that all ninja countries needed to wall themselves off from the surrounding world.
"I just wanted to come to the conclusion that we need to find them and ask them directly, mom." Kiyomi shrugged without skipping the opportunity to cheek Mana.
"Could you guys stop talking already?! I want to fight." a loud grunt right behind them alerted the three girls and made them freeze in place, or at least feel like all time had frozen whereas their bodies moved forward out of sheer instinct. Kiyomi didn't waste any time to bend her body backwards and throw an elbow strike that hit someone right in the nose, Meiko followed by dragging her arm down her armor and unsealing a short fingertip to elbow length one handed sword which she swung backwards and having it collide with a flock of sparks with another sword.
A strong shockwave nearly threw Mana off the frail branch she was on at that moment. Whoever the woman who taunted the trio of Team Hokage was – she was equally as physically mighty as Meiko which was terrifying in of itself, her blade was also made from quite valuable and expensive materials as it could clash with Meiko's own well-made blade and not break.
Meiko and the mysterious sword wielding kunoichi assailant disappeared from sight. Dozens ranging into hundreds of small clashes with sparks and shockwaves downing trees and blowing them into storms of chips firing off like shrapnel followed before light taps made Mana's ears twitch and realize that the duo had landed firmly on the ground level below. The only person still up there and curiously glaring at Mana and Kiyomi was a young and very short brat grasping at his nose which got pounded by the Yamanaka heiress' elbow strike.
It was such a curious looking fellow – clearly ready for a harsh winter as he wore a pompous looking, fancy, dark blue detective hat with furry ears buttoned to the sides with golden colored embroidery and a uniform-like looking attire that was purposed for colder weathers. The little thing was almost as large as the duffel bag that he wore by his side and was quite similar to a little male snow fairy as the boy's white as snow hair directly contrasted the bleeding nose that was spouting blood excessively all over his knitted woolen gloves with beautiful golden colored stars that were now tainted with his own blood.
"You guys again!?" Kiyomi's jaw dropped to the ground as she appeared to identify the individual. Having in mind that once the little boy lifted his face and Mana saw him wearing a fake black as tar moustache and even faker glasses that lacked any glass inside their rims at all the fact really interested her. "I thought we kicked your asses back then enough… You were lucky Meiko didn't feel like bringing you guys in!"
"Shuddup, you old hag! It's not my fault that Teia wanted to fight you idiots again! She dragged me with her!" the young boy freaked out lifting off the ground almost like he could fly. After looking at the rustling moss and leaves beneath his feet the magician identified a Wind Release ninjutsu similar to that of her own but on a much more casual and weak scale – the young man was very light in weight so weak wind currents he generated casually could've levitated him easily like a plastic bag.
"Teia? You know this guy?" Mana curiously looked at her friend who just sighed and began running down the tree they were in stuck to the bark using the Art of Tree Climbing technique, an elementary exercise jutsu known to most ninja and generally used to hone their chakra control. Needless to say the magician had to follow her friend to get her answer.
"Yeah, they attacked us when Hanasaku-sensei left us two to train alone for a while during our training trip. The big blonde bitch is Yoruma Galateia and the little brat's called Aoi Yuki. They weren't really up to no good, they just wanted a fight but they're technically missing ninja, at the time they had Kumogakure headbands. The girl he referred to is actually a Yoruma clan member from Kumogakure, she's different from Hisako though, this one's much more numb-skulled but hundredfold less sadistic. She's a fighting-obsessed nutjob but she's not really up to murder or anything like that. Me and Meiko kicked their asses but the bigger conflict was when we feuded over bringing them in, I wanted to either kill them on the spot or bring them in but Meiko resisted and… Who can argue against that cute smile of hers." Kiyomi blushed before looking away with a very suspiciously angry face, angry not for any other reason but for the fact that Meiko's puppy eyes affected her own decision in any way at all.
Finally once the two girls landed down firmly on the ground near Meiko, followed shortly by the floaty little brat that the similarly fully armored to Meiko Yoruma girl was accompanied by the magician could get a better look at those two. Actually there were three people – the duo must've gotten some other guy to tag along to fool the village that they were actually taking part in the Chuunin Exams. This kind of thing was not unheard of entirely but it was really not going to reflect too great on their prison record once their fraud was exposed.
"Look, Galateia, we don't really want to do this right now. We have a whole Chuunin Exam ahead of us. We have no stamina to spend on you…" Meiko tried to reason with the opponent whom she slowly walked towards, mirroring the swordsman's own movements before the two clashed their blades again. The duo pushed their blades onwards, desperately struggling to overcome their opponent but it was a deadlock – Mana was surprised to find out that there was another person about her age that perfectly mirrored Meiko's physical strength and skill with a sword.
"Wait, didn't you imply there were two of them? So who's that guy?" Mana pointed at a western darker complexion young man in a red tracksuit and spiky dark hairdo that was staring at Mana and Kiyomi with his dark brown stare and very refined and puffy lips.
"Oh. This is just Gwido." The young white haired brat pointed at his comrade.
"Hi, I'm Gwido." Gwido introduced himself by raising his hand and yet his face showed no emotion. Gwido was brutal and cold, from where Mana was standing, he smelled of onions too.
"We needed three people to fake our entry into the exams, Gwido here was eating ramen when we found him. Galateia liked ramen so she automatically liked Gwido and a team of three was born." Aoi explained.
Mana's eyes moved away from Gwido and onto Galateia – a very bright and almost golden shade of blond haired girl that was clashing with Meiko. Her technical skill with a sword was actually a notch above Meiko's, it was just that Meiko appeared to be faster in general that she managed to respond to Galateia's highly acrobatic and swift assault. That Yoruma woman troubled Mana the most, while Aoi may have been just as powerful, he very clearly had little to no wish to even be here.
After a powerful spinning slash that was mirrored perfectly by Meiko the two young women slid away from each other and panted as the clash took more than just a couple of breaths from them. Even so, they were very clearly still warming up.
"How did you three idiots even fool the Administration? Aoi is wearing a fake moustache and he's like what… Eight? Galateia is wearing shades that have an actual honest to God plastic moustache. You'd have had better chances at hiding if you didn't try to disguise yourselves at all!" Kiyomi grunted out as she didn't appear to like Galateia and Aoi very much, her opinion of Gwido remained to be seen. Then again, anything about Gwido was still to be seen as Gwido was yet to do anything at all.
"Alright. Leave me alone to fight Meiko. You two do whatever, if those two girls interfere you can beat them up!" Galateia appeared to be immune to Kiyomi's belittlement as she just gripped her man-sized two handed sword and prepared to re-engage.
"Right. If anything happens I fight the blond Yamanaka, you, Gwido, you can take the hotel receptionist." Aoi ordered his friend. Or whatever Gwido was in this case.
"Me? I can't fight…" Gwido shook his head with an equally as cold and brutal expression as he had when he introduced himself.
"Well then… Stay here and just be Gwido. I'll take them both on…" Aoi scratched his eyes in irritation.
Mana was suddenly broken out of the most unbelievable daydream she was blasted into by these even less believable events transpiring in front of her that offered little to no chance of a breather to comprehend what was even going. The feeling that broke her out was her own a bit chilly fingers clutching into a fist and her thigh muscles tightening in anger.
"I'm a stage magician, actually…" Mana interrupted Aoi with an irritated and ready for an engagement tone. This was the second time she was treated as less than a member of the Team Hokage and things had to be proven. The magician disliked violence but in this case it needed to be quickly resolved before their team wasted too much stamina fighting these goofballs.
"I apologize, ma'am. I happened to be wrong." Aoi politely nodded his head. Something truly was off about these missing ninja, they didn't act or feel like one's usual batch of criminal rogues…
OOC: The character of Yuki Aoi was created by Joe Dupras and was incorporated into the story by his suggestion.