For a brief moment the entire room where Mana faced off against the Inuzuka was completely silent and the two remained perfectly still. While Mana was afraid, somewhere, on a very deep level, she didn’t let it affect her too much. The fear she felt was not the kind one always naturally felt when a battle was about to break out, this was not the natural threat of dying that was inevitable when one decided to fight someone. This felt more like a test the likes of which the girl had never had yet.
Mana was a little bit tired, she didn’t have much sleep those couple of last days, she also faced off against Hisako and Hachi, also she had that nasty brief run-in with the black jumpsuit wearing purple haired woman with that peculiar whip. While the injuries from the first battle were healed by her medical food pill and those from the second one were taken care of by brief rest and Eiju’s best medical ninja efforts, the third one still gave her some weight to trip over. The injuries from those battles were patched a long time ago and her natural ninja metabolism was quickly patching them up every second the girl was not engaged in exhausting use of chakra manipulation, that being said, they still ached and kept her down.
The knowledge that Mana was not at her best wouldn’t have been nearly as frightening if this young man wouldn’t be, at least according to Hisako, her natural counter. The three exchanged information before coming here, they were formulating complex strategies and battle plans only for it all to go to waste after they fell for this strange game. The enemy completely dictated the rules, even if she would’ve gotten the upper hand, what could’ve stopped the Inuzuka boy from just activating the seals that’d kill the boy anyways? This was the worst situation there could’ve been, greater ninja died in such scenarios than Mana.
“It is a custom for ninja to exchange names when they face off in a fair one on one fight, it is so that once one of them survives they can spread the tale of the other and if the other becomes someone special, his opponent, if they survive, can brag about having faced that person in battle. I am Inuzuka Noji and this lovely doggy here is Sunomaru. We fight as one, as do all Inuzuka clansmen, as a Konoha ninja you should know that, my kind hails from the village, so don’t feel like this is unfair that we’re taking you on two-on-one.”
Mana remained silent for a moment, just trying to stare her opponent down, her wounded and cut up lips then gently moved.
“I’ll give you one chance to back away, one last chance to leave, I am no longer the girl who left the village several days back, I no longer hold back. If you decide to do this I will cause harm to you, as much as possible but not enough to kill. You may not enjoy your life after facing me but that pain will be on you. I am Nakotsumi Mana and I am the one who will beat you to save that child, that is the only reason we are here and I don’t care if you walk away from this. Capturing rogue ninja does not interest me.”
Noji’s body blurred, Mana knew what it meant, this boy moved so fast that he left an afterimage but this was no longer the Konoha’s Sorceress who played around. The magician’s thigh lifted up to block the entire barrage of blows tossed at her using her feet while keeping the Inuzuka at her leg’s reach. This was an efficient strategy, she didn’t let him get too close, always kept kicking at his blindspots and kept Noji at her foot’s reach. It was then that the dog joined in on the offensive. Mana started dashing back, giving space. She skipped a couple of punches, the dog’s teeth went dangerously close to her chest and neck a couple of times and tore several holes in Eiju’s coat which the magician still wore.
Mana huffed heavily after their exchange of blows ended, this was hopeless, this young man was leagues ahead in terms of hand to hand combat, while keeping him at leg’s length was a pretty good way to go the dog joining in changed it, Mana couldn’t keep up with both of them and had to lower her legs for balance, she had to move around and for that to happen she couldn’t kick around. It was either stand in place and let the dog maul her, or move around until she runs out of breath and let the Inuzuka deepen his advantage.
A powerful shock of pain emanated through Mana’s chest, the girl coughed and fell on her knee, several drops of blood dripped from her mouth. Mana shook in pain and stood back up. So this was the “Chakra Absorption Technique”? The girl had heard plenty about it in the Academy, it was a very well-known and somewhat common technique among hand to hand experts, it wasn’t too great on higher levels because it required its own style, in order to sip one’s chakra at relevant amount one needed to make full palm contact, in other words, the more of one’s arm contacts the opponent’s body the more chakra was taken.
This was bad, the outcome of this battle was inevitable, even the way things were Mana would run out of breath, she’d tire and get completely sapped of any semblance of her chakra within several dozens of brief contacts like this, even worse, chakra was her life-force also, the more this teen would absorb out of her the more her body would break down like this. In the most extreme cases she would barely be able to move which meant he could easily come in for the kill.
Mana’s arm went into her pocket, quickly she pulled a card and tossed it at the Inuzuka, she wasn’t fast enough and the boy just leaned to the side smiling. He saw that it was a desperation move. This was bad, without her uniform Mana couldn’t utilize the card holsters, she couldn’t use her dispenser devices “ she was just a kid reaching into her pockets to pull out tools, that was significantly less tricky and much slower. While Mana’s uniform was called out to look very impractical and stupid it was another weapon of hers, it didn’t matter that it was very tight and hard to move in, it had a bunch of card holsters, hidden pockets, small switches to shoot cards out from her sleeves etc.
The card Mana tossed emitted a loud beeping sound and then a loud pop came out of it. Transparent gas started emanating from it and the Inuzuka grabbed his nose shouting in pain, his dog started howling and rubbing his nose with his little paws. While it was spectacularly cute and Mana was barely restricting herself from shrieking she had to treat that dog as an enemy. It was large and able to kill her with a single bite.
Without wasting any movements Mana leaned forward and dashed at her opponent, Noji’s arms lit up with the same blue flame that signaled that he activated his “Chakra Absorption Jutsu” but Mana knew that as an Inuzuka he was impaired and his dog was completely disabled. The girl caught his punch in between her powerful thighs and leaped over him flipping over the boy’s shoulders behind him. Something snapped and Noji yelled out loud in overwhelming pain. Mana’s arm shot forward to keep her from bashing into the steel floor face first and her legs started working on Noji’s back sending him tumbling forward. After that the girl simply swiped at the dog who was still writhing, augmenting her lower body strength to send the dog into a bunch of crates further away.
Mana jumped back at her feet and caught her breath, this was an impressive attack but it was unlikely it’d work again. The Inuzuka smell was impressive, it was many times superior to that of a normal man or even of a ninja, it was approaching that of a canine and the senses of an Inuzuka dog was even beyond that of a normal canine. Inuzuka were unmatched in terms of their smell and that served as both their strength and their weakness.
“What the hell was that!?” Noji grunted, shouting as if he was in a loud room despite the fact it was dead-silent.
“It’s a smell-card. I use it when I fake my own death, it’s usually used in my magic shows.” Mana humbled her opponent by responding to his attempts to get her talking for the simple reason of needing to take a breather, she just performed a pretty impressive movement for someone who wasn’t known for their physical prowess.
“Shit, I guess I should stop taking you lightly…” Noji cursed, his face suggested that he was really serious and he looked to the side looking at his dog trying to get up and walk away from all the wooden pieces of the boxes he slammed into. The Inuzuka leaned forward and stood on all fours, chakra started flowing from him erupting from the teen’s body and forming an aura like burst around his body, it was wild and powerful. Mana didn’t like it one bit.
“Come on, Sunomaru, get out of there!” Noji yelled at his dog who was still inside the boxes, then the dog yelped and walked out covered in purple goo, the canine shook frantically getting the strong hitting perfume off of him.
“What the…!?” Noji suddenly broke out of his stance and covered his nose again, wildly scratching at the point on the back of his head as the powerful smell sensations took his body over.
“Shit, Suno, you hit the fucking perfume supply! Goddang it, go find somewhere to wash yourself, I can’t sync with you like this!” Noji complained yelling at his beloved dog who just barked with a small speck of guilt in his reaction. The intelligence of those Inuzuka dogs was really something else! They could easily understand human speech and respond to commands as the dog quickly ran off somewhere leaving Mana alone with Noji and finally giving her a chance for once.
The girl didn’t even have time to get serious as Noji leaned forward again and resumed his strange chakra concentration technique. His voice got more feral and rough again, reminding much more of a wild growling dog, a large one.
“Don’t think you stand a chance just because you lucked out!” the young man growled out at Mana. He reached for his back pocket, Mana tried to intercept him with a quick draw from her upper left pocket which contained the simple steel tipped projectile cards but she was once again too slow “ this coat was making it all so slow!
The young man popped a smoke bomb and soon a dark cloud started to cover the entire area. It wasn’t poisonous as poisonous clouds all had a clear purple shade to them for some reason. It didn’t really make sense for all poisonous clouds to be purple but they were, as someone who didn’t even dabble at the medical ninja arts and had little knowledge with poisons Mana didn’t dig too deep into it but it was just common knowledge and taught in the Academy. The cloud dissipated at the point where Noji was only to reveal him activating some sort of technique.
“Four Legs Technique!” Noji growled as the smoke once again covered him. Mana placed her projectile back into her pocket as there was no way she’d hit anything with this smoke all around, fighting in an enclosed space made smoke bombs just that more powerful.
Mana hunched over and flew backwards from the force of Noji’s impact, once again the pain in her chest pulsed all over her body as her chakra was torn from the girl’s body and absorbed by the Inuzuka. This was bad. This technique that the young man activated made him incredibly fast and dangerous, it was like chakra augmentation of one’s speed and strength without the actual downsides. It was all just because of his clan heritage!
Mana felt a sharp pain in her back, by the time her body recovered from the last hit she managed to augment her endurance but she couldn’t believe how fast and strong this Inuzuka was. He was completely dominating her in close quarters by closing her vision while he could easily keep track of her by smelling her in the smoke. Noji continued to kick the girl around, his single kick sent her to the other side of the room making Mana hit the steel walls with such force that her body bounced off of them but the Inuzuka was fast enough to already be there for the follow up kick, he was just playing around kicking Mana all over the place.
With each hit the magician had to re-augment her body because each hit absorbed the chakra she spent augmenting it, it was incredibly dangerous to use chakra augmentation against an absorption technique user because they were able to absorb not only the amount of chakra they usually absorbed through contact but also an excess of chakra one spent to augment their technique. In a blinding blitz the Inuzuka continued to juggle Mana in the air before growing bored and kicking her up, Mana ran out of augmentation and she felt a powerful blow from the man’s elbow to her back. She screamed in pain as her powerless body flew right down but before she hit the floor the Inuzuka’s knee dug deep into Mana’s gut almost making her throw up. The only thing that kept her from dying instantly after that final hit was her pathetic attempt to re-augment her body again.
With another weak kick the Inuzuka sent Mana to the other side of the room, rolling on the steel floor pathetically. She stood no chance. Still, the thought of a boy trapped in a cage of hardened glass and stuffed into a container with acid all around him with no hopes of escape motivated the magician, it gave her strength to stand back up and fight. Mana’s shaking arms got her body back up, the smoke started to clear, finding even the smallest crevices and vents to dissipate into.
“Just know, Mana, that I take no pleasure from this. I only fight to regain the chakra I lost previously and because Yellow told me to. It hurts my heart to kill you, it really does but it’s either you or Sunomaru…” the young man growled back at Mana, the girl reached into her pocket and pulled out a card. She wasn’t about to honor this man with a reply or pity him, he chose this fight, she would fight until she either ended it or died trying. This was Mana’s new way, protection of those she loved by beating the enemy but never crossing the sacred line.
A loud bark from behind her froze the girl’s heart in her chest “ the dog was back and he must’ve not smelled so much because Noji smiled and welcomed the canine back to his side. Mana’s arms flashed through a bunch of seals, still clenching that card in her hand so hard that the steel edges cut into Mana’s own delicate childish hand sending a couple of drops of blood down her hand.
“Just give up, let me take what’s left of your chakra and I’ll kill you fast, you won’t have to suffer any more than it is needed. Sunomaru is a born hunter and he can end it fast, just one bite and it’ll be over.” Noji asked her, no, he almost begged Mana to give up, looking right into her eyes. His eyes were kind, they were genuine and it was clear that this Noji was a very kind man, had Mana been who she was before she’d have completely shut down, just like she did with Sugemi… No more.
Mana would no longer make it easy for her enemies by talking to them, by letting them hurt her and by extension her friends. Her friends would no longer have to fight the battles that the magician lost because she was too scared to injure her opponent too much or just too scared of her own strength in general. This was the time she proved that she had grown, that she not only became stronger but also that she was ready to fight the hard battles.
“Look, I know you don’t want to give up but this is just cruel, Yellow has the supply of perfume that cures Suno’s sickness, he was born with a disease that needs a really hard to get herb, they’re no longer even selling that herb, it’s only found in that one kind of perfume which Yellow has and I need it, I need it to keep Suno alive because he’s all that I have left! Please, don’t suffer anymore and just give up, you fought bravely, you’ve done all you could and stood up to an opponent you had no hopes of beating but… Come on…”
Sunomaru barked, he wasn’t angry, it was a bark of agreement to what his master said, it was strange, Mana couldn’t remember the last time she fought a battle like this, a battle in which her opponent was not her enemy, who didn’t want her to suffer and die. This was not a conflict between a good person and a bad person, this was a conflict between a person who needed to save one person and another who wanted to save his friend, his soulmate. Hisako was right, Noji was Mana’s natural counter but not because of his skillset, it was because he was a genuinely good person. The Mana whom Hisako thought she was would’ve never fought such a person and died needlessly. Hisako must’ve counted on that, it must’ve been the assassin’s plan all along…
Mana’s arm moved up, her steel tipped card still being held firm. Slowly the girl moved her arm right up to her throat and swiftly pulled the card. Blood exploded all over the cellar, splashing all over Noji’s face and spoiling Sunomaru’s snow-white fur. It was almost like a petal storm of roses all over a field of daisies. Noji just kept standing still, completely dazed and still struggling to believe it.
Mana slit her own throat and collapsed on the floor.
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