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.
Having found her chance to slip away, Mana rushed on and past the crawling Shogito who would have likely taken a few more minutes to grow accustomed to his new, beetle body to even try to dispel this illusion. It was not a high-ranking one though so as long as he had the feeling and control of his body, he'd have likely succeeded without much effort. Those few minutes and shaking off the upperclassman's attention was all that Mana needed anyway.
Explosions resonated far off to the west, it was not a single occurrence but appeared to be an inciting incident of an entire chain. Mana sensed Usujitsa's signature disappear, suggesting that the oaf rabbit with terroristic tendencies had been dispatched and that her diversion had served its purpose. Further off to the west where Usujitsa had been taken care of, there was still a strong chakra signature to Damisan, another one was incoming from the south – it was Shige-H.
So, her squad hadn't been entirely outclassed and beaten, their opponents had merely outplayed them by capturing the objectives first. The plight of her hazy body sent Mana fleeting southward to join with Shige-H. A stream of pelting stones came rushing from the west, smashing through the trees and making an uproar as it dictated its tremendous advantage in toughness against the terrain. The magician took a dive down, she got sloppy, her sides hurt too much and she didn't have much time to react. Nothing to hold on to, she just plummeted down on her side.
Mana felt her own hand pressing against her mouth and muzzling her scream in pain. Something must have stuck an explosive note in her shoulder and blown it up, or so it felt. There was nothing to grab on to so the fleeting kunoichi just slumped off of the treetop onto her shoulder. Maybe she did have a gnawing sensation at the back of her head that told her about the fact that she didn't have too much chakra to augment her toughness over and over again, that's to say if she trusted her augmentations too much to begin with.
Stein landed with his feet stuck to the de-branched tree as most of its limbs had been shattered and trimmed by the stream of sharp-edged stones. The shinobi stuck to the tree bark, standing horizontally, and then looked right at Mana with a serious glint of his eyes – he knew where she was immediately. Crying and whining, Mana wriggled further like a worm, adding every meter of distance between her and Stein warranted that her opponent might come short of range and need to close in on her. At this point, Mana would have preferred him coming close rather than smashing her from afar with another rock.
He didn't have much chakra left either, maybe enough for a pair of decent, average rank jutsu but that would have been more than enough. With tearful eyes, Mana weaved a one-handed hand seal in an attempt to put an elementary illusion together and buy herself some more time but blinding pain in her useful arm made everything go white.
The pain came washing like a tide, tendrils creeping in and wrapping themselves around Mana's elbow and then slithering over the rest of her body. He broke her working hand to prevent any more hand seals. Her left shoulder – dislocated, her right hand – broken. Stein moved without skipping a beat, rushing in by Mana's side and slipping his hand inside of Mana's blazer, checking her sleeves. Neither one of Mana's hands listened to her.
"You can't win, I took Baiso out and he smashed the puppet, I'm the only one who knows the password from the first objective," Mana muttered.
Stein shook his head. Something dull bashed against the side of Mana's neck.
Shige-H noticed shades of black and white standing out like a sore thumb in this thick, artificial forest so she landed beside it. Mana laid in an awkward sprawl, her expression was blank but an elementary inspection of her vitals suggested that she was still breathing. Her breath was slow but it was rhythmical and monotonous. Her life wasn't in any sort of danger but she was out and not in a state that Shige-H could treat in battlefield conditions.
Realizing from experience and common sense that treating all of Mana's wounds to make her viable to continue her offense on the field would take more time than it would take for the upperclassmen to complete all objectives, Shige-H took off. She should have been faster, maybe she could have helped Mana out. Still, Shige couldn't rest wondering who might have taken the magician out. She was the second most useful and versatile and certainly the most dangerous member of this gang.
Then again, the enemy group seemed to have some sort of baggage with the magician so it was likely that they all ganged up on her. The sum of her injuries might have been an expression of the wrath they fostered toward her translating into excessive fits of violence but it could have also been them knowing exactly how dangerous Mana was and making sure that she didn't single-handedly sabotage their plans for success.
Stein sat with his feet crossed in the ruined village street simulated in a forest opening with a stone pillar having been raised from the ground and providing shelter to a fallen kunoichi. Upon seeing Shige-H enter the fray, Stein calmly opened his eyes and stood up on both feet, preparing to face the medical kunoichi. That was when a rushing stream of air ripped a tunnel-shaped opening for Damisan to enter through.
"So, I've caught up with you!" Damisan wriggled on his prosthetic feet seeing how he no longer had any arms to shake at his foe.
"He beat you to the objective?" Shige-H wondered.
"Yeah… He…" Damisan tried jingling the cement mixer that he now wore for a mask like a giant bell making Shige-H become flustered and turn back at their common foe.
"I see… It doesn't matter. Let's dispose of this guy together how they ganged up on Mana. I've left that Shogito guy helpless so he won't be doing us much harm," Shige-H replied.
Stein didn't look like he was capable of taking both opponents down but he took a fighting stance regardless, clapping his hands together as well as hopping up and clapping his feet. When his feet touched the ground again, large chunks of stone separated from the ground and stuck together over Stein's body, forming a sort of outer layer of armor and making him into a living, armored golem of stone.
"No way!" Damisan yelled out, raising his right foot up and having blue flames of basic chakra release pulse from his thighs as his right prosthetic foot separated like a missile, careening off toward the massive golem that rose before them and detonating with an unmatched ferocity that resonated through the entire city street, toppling the lovely little cafes and other closed facilities as well as felling the large stone pillar on top of which Joshipa rested. The punk's eyes were whited out and her body didn't even twitch, suggesting that she was in no condition for either combat or spunky comments.
The newly made golem of stone collapsed one battered stone piece at a time, leaving a beaten and wheezing Stein on his knees with his arms weighed down from exhaustion. He didn't as much as grunt though his lungs were working overtime to compensate for the breaths he had offered in exchange for a few more minutes of active combat. Damisan's final prosthetic limb flared up, elevating his limbless body from the ground like a human-rocket. The impaired shinobi manipulated his body in mid-air to blast right toward his opponent as he spun his lower body and his final prosthetic limb for an explosive kick at Stein while the enemy was still weakened.
"Explosive Missile Kick!" Damisan yelled out, kicking Stein right in the chest and slamming his opponent to the ground with a violent stomp as his final limb detonated like a missile, throwing Damisan with a violent jerk backward, completely limbless, with just a cement mixer covering up his face. Shige-H grunted from the physical effort of catching her ally. The woods around them began to tremble at once, symbols and sealing glyphs began gleaming on the ground in a complex, web-like formation.
"I'm pretty sure this isn't from your technique, right?" Shige-H wondered, placing her helpless friend on the ground as she looked around to absorb the sights of the forest becoming just an array of beacons of light that disappeared as they were reabsorbed into the ground and sealed away. The playground for the warfare course took its initial shape.
"Hmph…" tutor Mauma looked right at the pair of less experienced competitors as he raised his hand, pointing at Shogito on the farthest reaches of the training ground.
"Are you serious!? He got all five!?" Shige-H dropped her jaw.
"That's right, while you felt perfectly content taking the bait of the enemy team and accepting their offering of two members in a misguided attempt of taking out everyone, your superiors rushed to complete their collection of objectives," tutor Mauma pointed out before showing Shige-H an open palm of five fingers. "Baiso obtained the first objective, which was then taken over by Mana but, technically, Baiso still had it as well. To make matters worse for you, Joshipa also overheard and seen Mana input the password making your upperclassmen having completed the first objective twice. While Mana obtained the cassette tape, it was taken from her by Stein who was the first one to obtain the cassette player from the construction site. Then it was just the matter of Stein surrendering everything to his teammate and leaving the rest to him."
"That's on us…" Shige-H nodded and looked away, looking like she placed most of the blame on herself as the leader. "Though I'm still curious as to how could Stein have relayed such a complex scenario without talking."
"That's just it," Shogito proclaimed, pointing at himself with his thumb as he approached his fallen team that was being taken away by the Allied Ninja HQ staff to the medical facilities for some medical attention. A fate that also was waiting for the loser team as well. "We've become pretty tight over all that time that we've spent here being dead-last. I guess I've never come to realize just what a powerful team we've become all of us together."
"You're right, you will make amazing Allied Ninja," Shige-H nodded, extending her hand to congratulate the winning team of upperclassmen.
"Teehee, the best part is that nobody will see us coming…" Shogito chuckled looking about as proud of his own performance as it was suitable for someone who essentially just scored the winning goal and carried the hopes and dreams of his team to victory. Shogito accepted Shige's handshake, looking like he was about to rocket himself over the clouds over it.
"About Mana…" Shige-H mumbled. "We're already short of a few members. We didn't have a chance to showcase our little natural wonder – Tomi. Plus, Skaven is still a work-in-progress to recruit into our group. If you took Mana…"
"No, that's fine." Shogito shook his head. "You've sort of opened my eyes about something. I guess I did just geek out over Kono… I mean Mana, and I didn't view her as an actual person with her own feelings. That's one me. I wanted her on our band of misfits because I was a huge fan of her magic shows and not because we've formed a genuine bond. I think we'll always be friends but she belongs with you guys. Especially if you can do as you say and help her out with her issues."
"That is my goal," Shige-H nodded her head. "Healing all of us on the inside as well as watching over us physically."
"See, recruits, this is the difference in battlefield strategizing of someone who's graduated the preparatory courses and a complete newbie like all of you. That is why you need this class, you may be as strong as any of these here fine recruits and capable of pummeling any enemy in your way, but at the end of the day it simply will not matter." Tutor Mauma spoke to the bystander recruits.
"Hey, how are you doing?" Shige-H beamed a smile Mana's way the moment she appeared in between the door of the leftover unused room where the nurses stored the injured recruits and Allied Ninja that required medical attention. The actual nurse's office was for diagnostic purposes and immediate medical treatments only and Mana had a few broken bones, making the nurse suggest that Mana heals up in a more natural way rather than the radiant glow of the Mystical Palm treating her completely.
"My injuries will be gone after a pair of days, or so the nurse told me when she sold me the idea of letting my body heal this naturally," Mana looked down at her bandaged body with the stain of crushed pride leaking off of her face. It was a mean-looking sight, all of Mana's countless scars accumulated throughout her career where the bandages allowed for some skin to show and bandages wrapped in the special, medicinal ointment of the Kamizuru clan. Soon enough she'll be as complex-ridden to expose her body as Damisan was…
"That's great!" Shige-H nodded her head. "It's good for a body to heal some minor injuries naturally from time to time. Doing all the work for it with ninjutsu tends to numb the natural ninja metabolism which can wreak havoc on your body's natural toughness. It might lead to you taking as long as civilians to recover from ordinary injuries like broken bones and you wouldn't want to be out for months for something as trivial as that…"
"I guess not. Anyway, you've come alone?" Mana sighed before looking up and expressing her bafflement at the fact.
"Yeah, I guess I owe you an explanation for why Araki Endo got lumped in with us, huh?" Shige-H smirked.
"You had him join the gang, didn't you?" Mana's chest deflated as the magician collapsed back into her bed. It didn't take a mighty sage to figure this much out.
"He said that he could use your notes from countless courses as he's struggling with some of the more boring courses like history and geography. He agreed to work with us as long as he has access to your notes, this idea sprung to him when he heard us extending that deal to Skaven," Shige-H replied.
"He called me a witch and a mutt and tried to kill me a few times, you know…" Mana let out a whimper, knowing full well that it wouldn't impact the resolve of Shige-H to assemble her gang the way she always intended it to look.
"Yeah, he's a real dick at the moment but he's already softened up, can't you see it? He's no longer trying to kill us both so that's an improvement. Damisan isn't too hot on being called a tin-scarecrow, abomination, or a fugly-feature, whatever that is. Still, once he moves past the baggage of his upbringing, he'll be much more manageable, I promise you that as the gang leader. He'll apologize to you before you leave the bed, you'll see…" Shige-H gave Mana and energetic thumb up though the magician just switched sides with a painful whine as if to show her friend that she wanted to rest now and that the topic still lingered with a profoundly bitter taste on her tongue.
"If you say so…" Mana let a weak response out though it sounded more sad than honoring a trust between a gang member and her leader.