Kiyomi clutched the middle section of her arm and raced her opponent to get some air back in her lungs. Her chest was burning and her muscles felt so weak, so numb – she was fighting to survive and her entire body was running out of juice. She was facing an opponent she couldn’t survive fighting alone. He had already placed several nasty injuries on her, with each small cut like that, even if Kiyomi manages to contain the damage by augmenting the affected area and making the passing blade leave just a shallow cut, her speed dropped down even more, her will to fight on lingered due to the collection of pain all over her body she was in.
Her opponent was no longer fooling around, he was no longer trying to slip into the shadows as there were too few of those left in the surrounding area – the several small fires he had caused took care of those few shadowy corners, he only relentlessly tried to strike his target down. He was succeeding, slowly but assuredly, one cut at a time. There was one particularly nasty cut on her back, obtained shortly after Mana was stabbed from the back, that Kiyomi couldn’t even reach, that warm sensation of sticky clamps of blood running down her back annoyed the blonde to no end
“Mana, where are you?” Kiyomi wondered to herself without trying to reveal to her opponent that the Yamanaka still counted on her friend lending a hand here. The magician got caught from behind, her injuries looked pretty gruesome but it wasn’t anything a ninja couldn’t keep on fighting with. It would’ve continuously leaked chakra to keep her standing and in fighting shape but it would’ve let Mana fight. The blonde knew that her friend wished that more than anything. So why was she not up?
Roe pointed his wrist at Kiyomi grabbing it with his other free arm, the blonde knew what it meant so she rolled aside to avoid another trio of the bladed projectiles coming at her. The bounty hunter obviously predicted her roll and rushed in from the side trying to kick her in the face – force Kiyomi to waste more and more chakra on keeping her body from breaking down so that when more cuts land on the target’s body she’d be caught unprepared by a chakra shortage.
Kiyomi blocked the kick with her healthy arm while spinning around, using all of the momentum granted to her by the kick and all the weight behind it to her disposal. With a kunai knife in her hand the girl turned around trying to stab at an unprotected spot on her assailant’s wrist – if he got careless and didn’t notice the knife, if he didn’t augment his arm to minimize the depth of the cut, he’d get a nasty injury, one worth retreating for.
Roe’s wrist disappeared from sight, Kiyomi suspected that he’d try to counterattack, she didn’t really see his attack clearly so she predicted that he’d go for her abdomen. After her knife swipe missed its mark, swiping only empty air, responding to the counterattack became the priority. Lifting her knee was the only action she had time for, anyways. A deafening boom followed by a shockwave that tore leaves off the trees and shook the ground beneath the duo’s feet erupted as Roe’s quick jab to the gut collided with Kiyomi’s knee. Suddenly the blonde felt a huge upsurge of momentum sending her back and utilizing it she flipped back delivering a weak and weightless jab with her feet at Roe’s chin.
Furious due to the fact that he skipped a blow exchanging fists with a weaker and slower opponent the bounty hunter roared in fury but didn’t quite lose composure or rush at the blonde.
Kiyomi’s eyes widened a little as her eyes shortly glanced at where Mana laid. Now the girl knew why the magician was taking so long and expressing so much pain over her injuries – she wasn’t augmenting her body when needed. She wasn’t trying to protect herself from that backstab, what would’ve normally been barely an inch of steel breaking her skin now went all the way through like a heated knife through butter. Kiyomi wanted to feel anger but her eyes only shifted diagonally in compassion – she felt Mana’s fears and somewhere deep inside she understood them.
The magician once got burnt from overstretching herself, walking past her limits and ignoring them outright. Chakra control meant to Mana more than her own life, it was quite literally everything to Mana. The magician only cared about her dream – to protect all life, make the world change into a world which treasured life through example. Without her chakra control she couldn’t achieve that. By extension possessing chakra control meant being able to reach out for her goals. Losing it meant losing her goal.
A spine-chilling scream of pain unlike any Kiyomi had heard before reached her. This time even the bounty hunter looked at the magician in awe.
Mana was standing on her feet, her knees and lower legs still trembling as drops of blood weak yet numerous ran down them. The raven haired kunoichi’s eyes wavered and shook, dazed yet bloodshot. Right in front of the eyes of the two the girl reached in and pulled out the third blade slightly above where the previous two had went in.
“Mana…” Kiyomi tried to utter, she tried to shout out, to scream that she understood her friend’s dream and why she was so afraid to use the gifts she had regained recently to their fullest.
“What use is my chakra control if I can’t live my dream out with it?” Mana shouted out as the wounds in her gut stopped spouting out blood and began steaming as the passing chakra flow aggressively restrained the wound and kept Mana on her feet and running.
Kiyomi nodded, her friend’s made her decision and that decision was understood loud and clear. Frankly knowing that Mana had conquered her fears by disassociating them from her dreams made the older kunoichi a little bit calmer. Still, she would’ve been foolish to confuse Mana’s chakra augmentations for actual regeneration – the magician wasn’t healing herself by pouring senselessly large masses of chakra into her wounds. She was merely postponing the harmful effects and once her chakra resources grew dimmer and dimmer still she’d have to pay up what she had postponed paying up.
Mana followed her friend in their offensive. The two had finally recovered from getting caught off guard and pressed their offensive back onto their opponent. Kiyomi jumped in right in front of Roe, jumping into the air with a jumping cross punch. Roe crossed his blades but didn’t protect from this attack. He was being smart – ninja did not come out into the open like that, Kiyomi was slower, weaker and running out of chakra, slowly but surely. Attacking in such a clear manner would’ve been suicidal and so Roe kept on the lookout standing prepared for a follow-up attack.
With a thunderous boom Kiyomi’s fist connected to the left cheek of the bounty hunter spinning him around in the sheer force going through it. Kiyomi had snapped her leg back while throwing her cross increasing the punching power greatly – the Yamanaka’s taijutsu game was on point. Roe’s eyes whited out as the bounty hunter couldn’t comprehend how bold such an attack was, he could no longer think clearly as pain and confusion muddled up his perception. Strategies and battlefield thinking no longer worked right.
Mana threw a jumping kick to the bounty hunter’s chest, her gut wound coughed up a couple of droplets of blood forcing the magician to use her hands trying to clutch her wound out but she wanted to not waste this opportunity. The kunoichi rushed onwards after her sliding back opponent with a combination of kicks from her right leg, she hit multiple areas both plated and unprotected. Where armor was hit it bent and tore like cardboard, where unprotected limbs were hit bones cracked and snapped. Roe may have been stronger than each one of them individually but he wasn’t stronger than their teamwork. Far from it.
Kiyomi jumped in with a combination of punches, each aimed at the chest or face and switched up from jumping crosses and diving punches to standing firm boxing-like jabs and hooks. Roe finally regained his composure and managed to stand his ground carefully blocking and avoiding each strike before he noticed Kiyomi leaning and Mana rolling over Kiyomi’s back with a stomping barrage of kicks. Roe roared out proudly, like a true big cat of the northern wastelands and slid his wrists in to block the attacks. His wrist protection and all of the wrist blades he held inside the armored gauntlets peeled off and shattered like delicate porcelain.
The bounty hunter was disarmed and greatly distressed. He continued to grunt as blood gathered on his lip and ran down his mouth and chin beginning to pool on the ground beneath his feet. Surely by now he must’ve realized how well these two worked together and that he couldn’t possibly hold his own against them both, not even until one of their augmentations fail and they collapse from their wounds. These two young girls were just too accustomed to one another.
Mana thought that it would’ve been the moment when the bounty hunter began to speak. The exact manner of speech sort of depended on the kind of man he was, some liked to brag about how losing was a part of their plan, their full intention. Some liked to deny being beaten before they were actually beaten even if the fact was being seen well before that point. Surprisingly enough that wasn’t the case, Roe just shouted out a wild battle-cry before slamming at his chest.
This desperate motion revealed a strange one time function of his armor. Each remaining and functional armor piece peeled off its steel and positioned in a way that made it a cutting tool, having obtained this improvised hedgehog layer of armor blades the bounty hunter leaped into battle.
Mana and Kiyomi were prepared for his attack but not for how fast it was. Kiyomi pulled out two more of her kunai blades in desperation to try and deflect as many of the attacks aimed at her vital points, like her neck, as possible. Mana threw a card with a sealing tag out that erupted with a gust of wind chakra. She had hoped that the cutting winds matching a weak Wind Release jutsu would’ve stopped her opponent but it merely slowed him down as Roe powered through it. Still, the initial shock and awe of his speed and killing power was greatly diminished. After the wind gust was broken through Roe simply dashed past the girls in a blurry flash appearing behind them like an honorable samurai having cut down all of his foes before they could blink an eye.
The eye of the bounty hunter glanced at his prey, Kiyomi appeared to have successfully blocked most of the strikes and avoided with minimal injury what she had not blocked successfully. She had a couple of scratches and blood stains over her grey dress and her fishnet which was beginning to get completely torn down and becoming a hindrance over the multitude of small injuries and damage to her clothes sustained through the scuffle.
Mana, on the other hand stood completely still. Her gut then trickled with red, spitting out more blood a couple of times before the augmentations restrained the bleeding again. The magician’s skin paled as she stumbled forward a couple of steps. A smile covered Roe’s face as he noticed the signs of a ninja being cut down right through their augmentations, ultimately augmentations functioned either like a reserve of one’s life force, one’s very vitality, taken from one’s chakra, or like a makeshift coated force field but either use had a finite amount. A punch with more chakra augmentation would always break through a defense augmented by a lesser amount, similarly with blades – a blade with more focused and stronger augments would always break through the shield of a lesser augmentation.
A smile, matching that of the bounty hunter, then followed up on Mana’s face as the magician quickly turned around and wiped downwards with her fingers as if they were a fan. Roe instinctively rolled aside avoiding a bunch of his own armor scraps slamming into the ground, potentially with enough strength to impale him while his augments were down. Only after avoiding the armor pieces attempting to cut him down did the bounty hunter notice a shining string of steel wire attached to them.
Mana felt proud in her own follow-up, even if it had failed – she had acted out getting hit by the injury, momentarily weakening her chakra sustaining her life and letting some blood out from her wounds for a more dramatic effect, to make her act more believable. She managed to use another card from her sleeve – one with basic ninja tools sealed inside. One of these tools was a good dozen of meters of steel wire which she managed to attach to parts and pieces of the man’s loosened and sharp armor. Once the attack concluded Mana only had to swing the dislodged pieces and fling them at the opponent while he lowered his guard.
“Wow, working with you is gonna give me a stroke one day…” Kiyomi complained, she was clearly distressed by Mana acting out her own demise again. While Mana did do that a lot, to lower the opponent’s guard and kick them right into a false sense of security, she only did it so often because it always worked. It was too bad that the opponent was too fast this time…
“Sorry. I just like sometimes bringing my stage performance on the battlefield” the magician smiled through her pale and weak face.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood, you need a medical pill? I’ve got a handful of green ones and a couple of yellow ones in my kit” Kiyomi suggested, those would’ve helped a great lot with Mana’s injuries, maybe even stopped her bleeding completely. The magician nodded happily. The Yamanaka began burrowing in her pouch attached to her thigh but Roe shouted out in rage before jumping at the distracted Yamanaka heiress – he was clearly set to not letting the two exchange items.
Mana weaved a single hand seal. Kiyomi felt a card appear in the hand where she held the medical pill so she swiped it in the air, making a simple hand seal to unseal what was inside of it. An explosion of confetti in ridiculous amounts covered up Kiyomi making the bounty hunter’s swipe at her with his feline claws miss his mark. While Mana cracked the yellow medical pill in between her teeth and chewed it up Kiyomi emerged from the ridiculous cloud of confetti and pummeled her confused opponent before kicking him hard enough to roll back.
“Nice substitution, I wasn’t sure what this card you gave me was, we need to really practice this move more” Kiyomi gave Mana a thumb up without losing a track of their opponent. The blonde referred to the substitution technique which allowed Mana exchange a card in her sleeve with Kiyomi’s medical food pill without Roe’s attack interrupting the exchange.
“That’s why I fight in my uniform – I know which cards are in which compartments and which pockets. It’s almost like an extension of my own body” Mana nodded with a smile, now that her pain eased up and the wound on her gut closed but didn’t yet disappear she feel much further away from dying. The yellow medical pill was a far cry from the rare but miraculous black pill but it actually managed to heal one serious injury at the least or a whole bunch of smaller injuries.
Kiyomi then clenched her fist and pointed it at Roe, glancing at Mana.
“Well, ready to finish this, then?” the Yamanaka smiled at Mana surely alarming their opponent who had almost stripped completely naked with the last use of his armor. Roe had used most of his tricks by now, his gear was not meant for extended confrontations as he was a bounty hunter – an executioner more than an assassin.
Mana politely shook her head.
Roe squinted at her as the magician walked out in front of him, standing up in between Kiyomi and him. She looked into the bounty hunter’s eyes as seriously as she could, for a moment there she could even see the hunter’s eyes wavering – in those few stares, prematurely broken off, she understood that her opponent knew he had little hope in fighting off both of the two kunoichi, not with them working together so well and having battlefield experience with each other.
“What is the name of your “order”? Surely it doesn’t just call itself “order”, right?” Mana asked a simple question.
“We don’t tell our name to anyone but to the other hunters and our targets, our name does not matter, only what we do” Roe growled out like an enraged dog.
“Sounds like an impressive organization, I don’t particularly like an order centered around hunting people for money, one day I’ll be sure to end it. But for now… You’re done here.” Mana composed the entirety of her inner strength and looked her opponent right in the eye, chasing after his fleeing eyes even as they wandered off. He had to know she was serious.
Roe laughed out, Mana heard dirt clamping behind her – Kiyomi must’ve taken steps at her to move her out of the way or away from the bounty hunter who could’ve only been bested by their most impressive teamwork and not any one of them alone.
“Our elders do not tolerate retreat!” Roe growled out with much more fun behind his tone and voice as Mana’s suggestion must’ve entertained him.
“Mana, there’s no need to bargain with him, we can beat him, both of us!” Kiyomi encouraged the magician to keep on fighting.
“No more.” Mana shook her head, “This entire confrontation is taking place because you fought him before. Fighting your enemy and even defeating them, even killing them does not resolve anything. I’ve fought and beaten enemies for too long, I’m going to try another way” she spoke without moving her eyes away from Roe – a single microsecond of her attention fleeing could’ve lead to her instantaneous death or grievous injuries as Roe clearly didn’t wish to kill her – as per his organization’s rules.
“Bounty hunter, do your elders tolerate defeat then? You said the point of this encounter is seeing if you could leap over the barrier of Kiyomi’s strength. You’ve done so. You’ve marked both me and Kiyomi on our backs – the greatest injury to the pride of shinobi and kunoichi alike. You’ve shown your superiority to us clearly, we’ve shown you that we can survive you, however, so I say we end this. You proved your point to yourself and us, we’ve proven that we can ultimately stop you together” Mana strictly laid down her thoughts. She wished a compromise, the only way to permanently silence an opponent was not killing them. That would only incite his kin to strike back on their behalf, the only way to silence the enemy was to let them win. However that victory had to be on your terms, those that you dictate them but those that do not cross their own terms. That way everyone won. It was how Mana wanted to end all conflicts from now on…
“I see…” Roe closed his eyes, breathed in and… Out. He laughed out before his eyes opened again but those were no longer the eyes of a killer. “You know I can see there’s no way to kill my target now, if I walk away with my freedom intact I’ll face my organization’s punishment but only grow stronger from it, as I’ve grown from hardships before. Whatever scolding I receive for failing to kill my target is not worse than that of defeat and shaming the organization. You’re smarter and stranger than your peers, magician girl. I’d be careful if I were you, people tend to dislike your kind and one day you’ll be the target of one of us”
Kiyomi blinked a couple of times in rapid succession, “What?” she uttered in confusion surprised that Mana’s bargain worked. It had never occurred to the blonde that convincing the enemy he got what he actually came for would work. Roe may have been ordered due to the bounty but he actually fought not because of his organization’s rules – he fought to know if he had what it takes to leap over Kiyomi’s barrier of strength.
“Oh well, I’ll deal with that person when he comes for me” Mana smiled with a friendly nod at the assassin. “For now I can only feel thankful that you see reason” the finger she held at her cufflink button which would’ve slipped a card into her palm, one she could use to finish the fight off if Roe decided to recklessly attack her, loosened and moved away from it.
Roe turned his back at Mana and prepared to pounce away from sight. He stopped and turned around.
“I must warn you before I go. I was not the one to actually place the bounty, I lied… It was a Yamanaka clansman, one from the Kirigakure branch of the clan” Roe revealed much to Kiyomi’s surprise.
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