Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Gate of Opening! The Enemy is Jounin!?

The boy's injured body was drawn down to the ground, Shimo's hand shot forward to keep his body from slamming the floor like a sack of potatoes. "Are you... The Kirigakure ninja?" Shimo uttered some words, trying desperately to make the woman talk, just give him some time to get his pathetic ass off the ground and back into fighting shape. Shimo knew he could take this, all of what this woman had and more. All he needed was just a short break, just catch his breath and keep swinging back. She was clearly more skilled at ninjutsu, there was no use fighting her that way - anyone with the ability to shape elemental chakra into such complex shapes and at such numbers should've been beyond even Chuunin level.

Shimo's wall melted into a large puddle of water, the woman must've hit his chakra point which forced him to release any active techniques like this ice wall. The woman looked at the side, she was concerned about something, what could've been so important to her?! Never mind her concerns, Shimo got his chance to attack, gathering what he still had of his strength the boy leaped forward charging at the woman using all of his speed, that was what he trained all this time - his speed. That was what Tanshu-sensei told him, he spoke in what sounded like a riddle, he said that Shimo had the lock to his power-up already in his palm and that speed was the key. The genin figured that sensei meant that his body had the speed needed to impress sensei but he still needed to train it to achieve that speed so he spent those days running and pushing his body and ability to spend a great amount of force into quick leaps. Just focusing his chakra into the right muscles, making it work for him to transcend what even peak human condition could offer, all ninja were at peak human condition, it took a very special one to break that wall!

Shimo slipped and fell on the ground, that was impossible, his feet weren't even touching the ground! As the boy looked at what happened he saw water wrapping around his leg as if it was some kind of a whip or something. "Enough of this, kid, I'm not your enemy." The woman spoke, she was still looking at some point at the wall, her full attention was still somewhere else and she managed to counter Shimo's last resort attack? Just how strong was this woman? Finally, her cold gaze returned to the genin laying on the ground, breathing heavily as the hard fall reminded him of all of his injuries from before. He quickly started forcing his body to lift off of the wet floor - she completely embarrassed him but he won't give this woman the satisfaction, he won't follow his own advice, he won't run! This woman must've had her eyes set on Mana's or Sugemi's location, she must've been a sensor and wanted to go. Shimo will keep her here, she won't get to where she wants to nor will she get the pleasure of dominating him, he will fight her as an equal to the end!

"I said enough, I'm a jounin of Konohagakure..." she nonchalantly added as the woman's eyes returned to wherever they were before. "W-What?" Shimo grunted out, still affected by the pain. How could this make any sense? Why would she be fighting him in that case, did she know about the Kirigakure deal? What was going on? "I and my partner were both undercover here, we were on a mission to find out just what and how much of it was this district pulling in terms of criminal activities. Today was when we decided to blow our cover and take it all down - we couldn't allow this Kirigakure deal to go as planned but the man was close, I didn't want to tip him off and so me and my partner volunteered to keep you guys occupied and act like we're killing you when we got the tip from Hanada that you'd be coming. Going to that guy for help was a REALLY bad idea..."

Finally, all of this started to make a little bit more sense to the genin. So this woman and whoever she was working with were already on Ooguchi's track and working on taking him down. Team Oak was given the low ranking mission of busting one crime, to just win a battle while this squad was working with winning the whole war! They really must've made all of this difficult for the two by getting involved... Shimo looked away, he was really ashamed of himself and that he got involved, also disappointed that he was so weak and didn't give this woman a good fight at the very least, he wasn't an asset in this mission of these two high ranking ninja at all, just a kid that was in the way... "I'm... Sorry..." he uttered, the woman tsked with her tongue.