Both kunoichi stared at the bounty hunter for a while after the revelation was made. Kiyomi tried objecting first, effectively entering the denial stage, she couldn’t really be blamed though. Being told that one’s own distant relatives from another village were responsible for trying to have you killed was a tough pill to swallow.
“Wait, I thought you said you did it? It made sense “ you placed a bounty on my head to justify coming after me in the eyes of your organization.” Kiyomi objected.
“That is true, it’s a much more believable scenario” Mana nodded in agreement.
“I lied, it was to raise a false sense of security, let you think that you’ve rid of the only threat you need to care about. It is a common trick amongst assassins, even if the other killers had nothing to do with me “ it’s only common courtesy between us throat-cutters. I am no longer tied to the Nekomata clan, I do not have the resources needed to rile up every bounty hunter and assassin organization to kill a child, let alone a future heiress of one of the most important clans of Konoha” Roe growled by lowering his lower lip, clearly annoyed that his revelation was even being questioned.
Mana stepped up and extended her hand to touch the man’s shoulder and try calming him down, she saw that they acted slightly out of line for the courtesy they were shown. When one receives sensitive information like this they shouldn’t try and make the one betraying their principles look like a liar. The bounty hunter showed his teeth to Mana in a primal show of aggression making the magician’s hand freeze in the middle of the reach and withdraw.
“We are grateful that you let us know this. This information may have saved my friend’s life and that leaves us in your debt” Mana tried to show that the bounty hunter’s effort to walk into the clear was appreciated, she even bowed her head for him, a common cutthroat.
“It’s fine, if you have any valuable substance in those heads of yours, you’ll head home to Konoha and will not leave the walls until it all brews down. There are many assassins skilled enough to operate inside village walls too so don’t even approach the door and hire only the best in the biz to watch over you. With a little luck we can match wits and blades again one day” Roe growled out but this time in a more melodic and friendly tone. Just like that the bounty hunter’s silhouette blurred and disappeared completely as he pounced high up into the treeline and disappeared from sight or any other manner of senses. When the Nekomata wished to be unseen, they remained hidden.
Kiyomi looked down, she was shaken by the news that her own clan was trying to get rid of her. The magician felt for her friend. She had no idea how it must’ve felt knowing something like this but she has felt undesired and hated in her life, she has felt like her very existence was hated and that her birth may have been pointless. Such dark thoughts never lead to anything good, she once almost gave up on herself because of them.
“Were you close to the Kirigakure branch? Do you have any potential suspects in mind?” Mana asked, while she wished to leave the matter alone and lead her friend back to the village, something like this had to remain in the centre of attention at all times. Kiyomi could never again underestimate this challenging time of her life or else it’d be the last time of her life to remember.
“Not really. We’re relatives only by last name and some distant bloodline. Some Yamanaka in Kirigakure fled during the wars because they supported the village’s stance, some of them moved because they weren’t important in the clan’s hierarchy here and wished to build something new… Some of them in there are pretty close, brothers and sisters of our parents meanwhile others are distant cousins of our uncle’s fathers and so on. It’d be impossible to tell who did it…” Kiyomi recounted what she knew, still totally confused.
“I see…” Mana cut in after the silence became too awkward to tolerate.
“Seeing you getting injured like that, risking your life for me… Now I know how you feel all the time, if you care about every life as much as I care about yours. I’ve seen enough, let’s go home” Kiyomi uttered as her eyes began to dampen and it became apparent that the older kunoichi was going to break down.
“Can you find out who did it from inside the village? Do you have archives, records of your clan in there maybe?” Mana asked looking at the slowly getting incinerated and falling apart inn that Roe blew up and burnt to a crisp.
“No. The archives inside the village only have records on the members that are part of Konohagakure. We couldn’t allow the sensitive information on members working in other villages to fall into the village hands, even our own village, our loyalties lie first to our bloodline, then to the village administration because people in charge change and our family stays the same. Records on the clan members in other villages are in the other archive in the Yamanaka Resort” Kiyomi explained while whimpering and struggling to talk straight over her great emotional distress.
“Then we shall do no such thing. We will go to that resort and find out who is responsible, we’ll go through every member of your clan and see who would have the most believable motive to see you dead. We have no time to leave this investigation in the village’s hands alone. That would be to do as genin do things “ follow the objective, do what is told. That’s how children live their lives. We are no longer children, we’re ninja! Ninja take such things into their own hands and as your friend I’ll support you the whole way through” Mana firmly explained looking onwards the cold and broken road of fallen and burning trees ahead.
Mana felt painful pinches on her cheeks that began pulling them off like an alligator trying to tear flesh apart from bone.
“My soft-cheeked friend!” Kiyomi laughed out through her tears before hugging Mana from behind. The magician was a little bit shorter than her future teammate making the entire scene seem like an older sister embracing her younger sibling while teasing her at the same time.
“Cut that out!” Mana cried out in pain, “I was having a cool moment there!” she complained before smiling in sync with her friend. A painful sensation made the magician examine a couple of bruises and cuts that didn’t get treated solely from the medical pill.
“You’ll need to patch that up, can’t just medicate yourself until all the smallest scratches are healed” Kiyomi worryingly exclaimed.
*****
Mana grunted out in pain after Kiyomi finished sewing up the final untreated cut on her body. Thankfully the medical pill she had taken almost completely patched up the backstabbing wounds, save for the scars that will probably stay as a reminder for a long time to come.
“You know most cucumber-cheeked girls don’t have kind teammates to sew their wounds for them, you should be more grateful, really” Kiyomi winked at Mana before settling down on the other side of the fire. The girls weren’t too far away from the resort, maybe a good four hours more in a casual pace. They could’ve most likely reached it faster but too much chakra was spent on fighting off Roe. It would’ve been dangerous to augment their abilities further just for travelling purposes.
“I guess, but you really don’t have a steady hand, you know. You’d make a terrible medical ninja!” Mana complained looking at the strangely crisscrossed wound on her shoulder.
“Yeah, I suppose even my sober sewing hand won’t come close to drunk as balls Eiju’s sewing hand… Maybe his drinking was the key?” Kiyomi made a playful thinking face before settling down on a rotten log on the other side.
“Nah, it was the problem…” Mana smiled finally moving her eyes away from her wound and back at Kiyomi. The girl picked up her shirt and got dressed as the autumnal nocturnal breeze was too chilling for her undershirt to fend off alone.
“One he often solved with more alcohol” the two girls replied at the same time as if they were thinking the same thing. The coordinated manner of finishing the same sentence made the two laugh out loud for a good couple of minutes.
Kiyomi’s uneasy look broke Mana’s fun and lyrical mood. Once the blonde noticed that the magician was curious about what got Kiyomi so riled up the Yamanaka just wiped her nose before pointing at Mana.
“You got a whole bunch of scars in that fight. You’ll get to visit that douchebag in the Hospital…” Kiyomi noted, Mana looked down at where Kiyomi was pointing and noticed cuts and bruises everywhere where her uniform was damaged and she didn’t even have the bravery to see the scars on her back and her gut where Roe’s blades came out.
“Nah, I don’t like removing scars unless they’re a bother” Mana shook her head before uncomfortably looking away, “Feels like a waste of the medical ninjutsu you know. A ninja uses their chakra just to remove a cosmetic problem when there are people they could help with it instead…” The magician’s mood then quickly fixed when she remembered Kouta, “Plus I’ll have my own guy in there soon, no need to see that self-destructive Quack”
Kiyomi laughed out, “I guess that’s one way looking at it, Hanasaku-sensei was always pretty understanding about fixing wounds on females, then again, me and her were the only girls on the team… Plus, I wouldn’t trust that woman on my broken nose in a lifetime, for an S-Rank ninja she’s actually terrible at treating others”
“Yeah, Hokage-sensei nearly killed me during our first meeting. I’m kind of worried for Meiko… Whereas I am careful in combat that one likes to match her opponent fist to fist, she has the skill and brawn for it. The two are very similar when you think of it” Mana laughed out imagining the two fighting.
“I wish the Gods to be merciful on any fool matching Chestnut Hanasaku fist to fist, didn’t you hear about that guy she punched outside the known Universe during the war? Who knows what the hell happened to that guy!?” Kiyomi waved her hands before placing them on her temples as trying to imagine and calculate the woman’s strength made the blonde’s head hurt.
“Actually I’ve been beyond our universe. I’ve been in another one even. Even in there they’ve got ninja, we’ve faced guys from even another universe. Apparently they didn’t have chakra in their universe so as powerful as they were they couldn’t damage me even through the smallest chakra augmentations. I’ve always thought “chakra over matter” principle was sort of theoretic, I’ve never seen it hit so close to heart.” Mana recounted, for a moment there Kiyomi sat in awe and even respectful disbelief of Mana’s story forcing the magician to retell the tale of her being affected by a multiversal anomaly and sucked into what she only thought of as “the Naruto Universe”.
“Wow… That’s a… I’d really doubt that story if it wasn’t so crazy that I’d doubt the capacity of your imagination to make it up!” Kiyomi exhaled in disbelief. Her entire world was shaken that day with her being told that someone of her own clan wanted her dead and that there was an infinite number of other universes out there, some of them didn’t even have that singular universal force that stuck everything together and made everything work, the force obtained and mastered by the First People and handed down onto humans.
“So what do they use in those other universes? How could those “Gods” of those other universes be so powerful without any chakra at all?” Kiyomi shouted out in disbelief.
“I don’t know,” Mana shrugged, “Apparently they were just really strong, they also had those weird concepts like “negative speed” and stuff like that on their minds… It was pretty confusing, plus even the ninja in that other universe knew science like I’ve never even seen before “ that’s where all that tech came from recently, I was given some samples by Shikamaru-san to bring back to my universe so we could catch up a bit”
Kiyomi had a devilish grin before revealing what made her so happy, it was a biting thought really. “So it’s cause of you every stupid lowlife has a visor analysing and giving them information and all those hi-tech gadgets, huh?” she tried to annoy Mana.
“It’s not like it was impossible to get before, thanks to our very own Hokage-sensei” Mana grinned as the two kunoichi remembered that time a mercenary group leader started snagging a whole bunch of military technology from caravans coming to Konoha and due to the Fifth’s poor paperwork management skills this thievery got lost somewhere and went completely unaccounted for.
“Ladies…” a loud and confident voice broke the friendly conversation making the two jump up and direct all of their attention into a briefly lit forest path where a suspicious and well-armed and armoured man was walking through.
The man was pretty tall but not nearly as bulky as Roe, even if he was just as well-equipped and looked like bad news in general. Mana and Kiyomi instantly prepared for combat as this man couldn’t have been anything other than another bounty-hunter. His approach however was foolishly arrogant “ to prance out right in front of them and declare his presence was very stupid or very bold. It was either a very foolish approach or he simply thought very little of the two kunoichi when compared to his own skill.
“Now, I’m only here for the head of the Yamanaka-hime, you little lady can sit down and consider yourself lucky.” the bounty hunter finally revealed his nature by continuing to slowly advance towards the two girls, completely careless to move his hands onto any hidden weapons. It was like he was just having a stroll, so confident and so scary, something about this man projected fear. He was fear itself. A lot like Tanshu used to be like but nowhere close as potent.
Mana’s hands began going through the hand seals, her hand seal weaving speed was second to none, even the higher ranking ninja she had met rarely compared with her on that regard.
“Ah, an illusionist…” the bounty hunter uttered quickly weaving a single seal.
Mana looked at her hands as they began floating around, suddenly she felt awfully dizzy and nauseous as her balance brain centre must’ve been hit. She tried dispelling the illusion as she fell down but the man closed the distance in an instant. Back when Mana was a normal civilian, in terms of her strength, she saw movements of ninja as flashes and blurs, now this man’s moves looked like instantaneous movement to her enhanced perception.
The man stopped right beside Mana as the magician collapsed on her knees. She felt a bloody taste in her mouth but she held her mouth down while on her knees so that she didn’t throw up. The man hit her balance centre, as well as other centres, that she actually threw up making her incapable of uttering the needed “Dispel” words to dispel his illusion. It wasn’t really an illusion even, it was a genjutsu technique however, similar to the brain targeting techniques Mana used. A tad bit less advanced however, Mana felt like she could conquer them as while they targeted the brain they didn’t exhibit any illusionary effects, only crushed her balance and made her feel dizzy and nauseous.
The speed of that man’s seals was impossibly fast “ Mana realized that he must’ve been a high ranking bounty hunter, nowhere close Roe’s league. This was the man who would’ve been sent to take out Chunin or Jounin. This was running in with the predator of the higher league, it was a completely unfair match up!
Mana wanted to scream for Kiyomi to fight or run or… The bloody vomit just kept on coming, the magician couldn’t focus on anything but that as she was completely crippled, too much to even properly dispel the genjutsu affecting her. It couldn’t have been high ranked genjutsu, it would’ve had more differing effects if it was, it was low ranking yet effective.
Kiyomi tried to move but the assassin closed in so fast that it could only be described as an instant, even by Mana’s supernatural senses. The man grabbed the girl’s elbow and shoved it gently placing the kunai that the Yamanaka was about to pull out back in its pouch and punching the girl lightly in her gut before pulling out a broad yet relatively short sword with teeth-like spikes on the side, made for cutting and maiming and not stabbing, without a doubt.
Mana closed her eyes and focused, she was a genjutsu specialist, she’d not be conquered by a genjutsu technique so primitive! Her focus paid off as she made her body rapidly burn through chakra in order to accelerate its flow, blow off the cork that the man placed on her chakra network by opening all of the floodgates “ break his illusion through superior understanding of her own chakra network, through greater skill.
“Mind Body Switch!” Kiyomi shouted in panic, pointing at the man point-blank and trying to switch her mind with the man’s but by the time her corporeal form moved out from her body, at the speed of a thought, the man was no longer there. The bounty hunter locked in Kiyomi’s arms with one hand and kicked her in the shin sending her on her knees just like her teammate was so ungraciously positioned.
With a rude and strong pull on Kiyomi’s hair in the moment of weakness before the Yamanaka’s mind wandered back into her own body the bounty hunter exposed Kiyomi’s neck ready to saw at the blonde’s neck with his peculiar blade.
Mana appeared behind him with a kick, she moved as fast as she could, kicked as hard as she could augmenting her body just at its limits but the man blocked the kick by raising his hand up without even having to see Mana behind him. Only once the man came in closer to the fire did the magician see his surreal features. Covered in black hi-tech armor, light enough to move around but durable enough to withstand weaker blows and attacks without much damage. His face must’ve been severely injured at some point in his life as it was now just a plate, some strange mesh of steel, technology and mangled human flesh. Almost like a mask made by infusing what once remained of his face with some living metal alloy. It made the perfect skull-shaped structure look that more ghastly and terrifying.
Without uttering a word the bounty hunter turned around and smacked Mana with his elbow driving her body to the dirt in a small crater.
Kiyomi recovered and wrangled out of the man’s hold, rushing to her friend who looked unconscious, her eyes white and rolled back and blood still coming out from her mouth from the crushed internal organs damaged by the back of the bounty hunter’s elbow.
“What a kindred spirit, about to die and worried over your teammate?” the man curiously looked at Kiyomi, hesitating to kill her once her back was exposed and he was handed a chance to do so.
“She’s not involved, she doesn’t deserve to die! It’s me you want!” Kiyomi cried out trying to desperately find signs of life in Mana.
“Agreed. That is why I just knocked her out, just because I hit her hard enough to split the planet doesn’t mean she can’t take it. You two are about Chunin level, correct? That’s what the intelligence said, a higher skill than her rank Yamanaka heiress with a possibility of some low ranking ninja getting involved” the bounty hunter estimated before lowering his sword and looking at the crushed bounty he was about to collect. Now that the girl had given up on her chances on beating this man there was no rush to kill her.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re just an unreasonable scum who only cares about money, so go on and kill me! Just know that you’re killing a future heiress of the Yamanaka clan, a woman with honor and more money than whatever faggot paid you off, know that you kill the source of your inspiration for a lesser source. Go for it now!” Kiyomi shouted out after standing up and extending her hands, exposing her chest and her neck for being cut open. It was a brave statement, one that the bounty hunter must’ve appreciated as he sheathed his sword behind his back.
“Go on…” he growled out.
“What? You want a better offer? What sort of scumbag backs down like that? Kill me while I am generous enough to give you a chance!?” Kiyomi shouted out like a little berserker.
“Eh, I usually charge so much for my services that not many can suggest anything better, I suppose if you’re a princess or a clan heiress or something, you could. So can you give me say… Fifty billion ryo? At least a hundred thousand up-front?” the bounty hunter stood there static yet the Yamanaka knew that he could draw that sword and shred her body in half with that odd thing before she could realize the pain of that motion.
“Yeah…” Kiyomi nodded removing half a million ryo from her wallet and slamming it into the bounty hunter’s face.
“Well then… I guess this is your lucky day, I’ll come to collect the rest in the Yamanaka Resort in two days then. Enjoy what few hours remain of your second birthday” the bounty hunter saluted Kiyomi before slowly collecting the money off the ground, turning around and walking away.
Shaking in fear Kiyomi collapsed on her knees and broke into tears, she remained curled into a ball until the fire died out, then picked herself back up and took Mana’s unconscious body beginning her slow and gruelling walk towards the Yamanaka district.
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