At the other end of the tip of Hisako’s extended blade was the little man everyone was so afraid of and hating at the same time. It would’ve been just so easy for the woman to flash forward with all of her speed and cut that person down. Just when the Yoruma started wondering what was the use of having that hooded dwarf alive, Yellow reached for his hood while his other hand held firmly on the handle of his sword that he wore by his side. Hisako was pleasantly surprised that she may have had the pleasure of killing yet another person that day, by now she had made peace with the idea that she may have only had only the boring part of traveling back with the hostage to deal with.
“Aren’t you worried about your friends up there? Go on, rush to their aid, you won didn’t you?” Yellow’s squeaky voice came from under the hood right as he pulled hard removing it and tossing it aside in an overly dramatic fashion that made the dark cloth linger around his face in the air for a while.
“No offense but you’re a really bad fucking backstabber. I see your intentions from a mile away, the tip of my blade is all you’re getting, I’ll reserve my back for someone I decide to get fucked from behind by.” Hisako grunted angrily still pointing her sword straight at Yellow’s face from the other end of the room.
Finally the hood hit the floor, right on top of Cony’s emotionless corpse covering the poor young woman up. It wasn’t that Yellow cared particularly about that yet another victim of this cruel messed up world, it was more that his garment landed there by sheer luck covering the unsanitary and slightly frightening sight of death up.
Yellow stood there looking Hisako straight in the eyes. The dwarf behind the cloak turned out to not be a dwarf at all, his short stature was not because of a disorder that the man had but instead due to his age “ Yellow was just several years into his teens. His nickname must’ve come from the kid’s golden colored hair and strange, almost purplish hue of his eyes combined with his golden locks made the kid look almost a little majestic and regal. He wore quite unusual clothes for a rogue, wearing a white shirt and a strange leather vest, that was not an attire of a combatant, not of a ninja anyways. He looked like an overglorified jockey.
“Well?” Yellow shrugged his arms, moving them away from his long but incredibly slim sword sheathe. Hisako blinked a couple of times in confusion.
“I’m sorry, are you expecting a fucking compliment of your looks or something? Sorry, kids aren’t of my particular taste, between the categories of “fuck with” or “kill on sight” they lean more to the latter” the woman replied.
“You stupid bitch” Yellow cursed not really suiting his young age, “I can’t believe someone can be so incompetent! I mean I sort of expected ninja peasants to be as dumb as a cow shit sniffer but not to recognize your own mission objective personified is beyond hogwash!” the little runt yelled back at the woman angrily.
“Oh, so you’ve escaped captivity and dressed like a goddamn opera villain, good for you, let’s go home now” Hisako swung her swords around getting ready to sheathe them when all of a sudden Yellow leaped at her pulling his strange sword out and thrusting it right at her eye.
With a near effortless movement the Yoruma leaned out of the way, getting a bit of a better look at the boy’s sword. It was a sword possibly as long as two thirds of his whole body but it was as thin as a needle. Hisako was almost intrigued to see just what sort of toy-sword this toothpick was but she was surprised by how quick its thrusts were and how the blade became near invisible in mid-movement making it look like quite the trouble to block or dodge properly.
“You stupid poohead!” Yellow shouted out thrusting again and again, Hisako dodged each and every thrust without much trouble, resisting temptation to yawn playfully somewhere in the middle. “Is it that hard to understand that there is no crime lord named “Yellow”, it was me all along, me using the money of my father behind his back to hire mercenaries to intercept perfume shipments, to find me a rogue ninja band, to neigh like blasted horses when I tell them to!? I did this, it was me all along!”
Hisako leaped back with a graceful, almost dance-like pounce and straightened her hair out which was starting to get into her face from all the leaning to the left and to the right quickly. “Okay, “poohead”? We would’ve needed a lot of vocabulary training to teach you how to fucking curse. So wait… If you’re a criminal that means I can just kill you, right?” Hisako wondered to herself, barely even looking at the young man who was giving his all trying to kill her.
“That’s right, you could because I’m really dangerous! I managed to muck up father’s business enterprise by working through my mercs from behind the village walls, communicating only through children who were daring enough to venture outside for a hundred ryo or two. I am the worst criminal in the history of Konohagakure!” Yellow boastfully laughed lunging at the woman who just moved to the side and slapped the boy with the back of her hand sending him down on the floor.
“Well, you’re technically a “criminal” so at least you got that part sort of right…” Hisako smiled to the sight of the infuriated child getting back on his feet and grabbing his rapier again only to continue his offense. Hisako had to hand it to the boy “ he was sort of fast for someone not at all familiar with chakra augmentation or actual ninja physical training, he also had that strange thin sword that disappeared from her vision after reaching a certain speed of movement in mid-air.
“And now that I pit you three wenches against my band of unbeatable rogues who weakened you before you beat them I shall pick you off one by one using the skills I acquired planning for this day. This is all going according my plan!” the teen laughed out with the same degree of arrogance in his voice that he had made his own in those couple of exchanges of words with Hisako.
“It’s a terrible plan, you planned for your rogues to get beaten? What kind of a retarded leader plans like that? Why would you plan to lose?” Hisako taunted the kid dodging several of his thrusts again when one of them actually nicked her cheek, that invisible sword was starting to become a bother and she actually was getting slower despite what she may have wanted everyone else to think.
“You hypocritical wench! How dare you of all people, a Yoruma, tell me sacrificing one’s pawns is a disadvantageous move? That is exactly how Yoruma plan: sacrificing one’s allies to land cheap blows, getting hurt just to find an opening in one’s opponent’s body! I’ve read many strategic guides and those written by Yoruma were simply the easiest to understand, give up something insignificant for something great!” the boy continued thrusting again and again until Hisako was forced to draw her blade and actually block the boy’s attack or else she’d have had it pierce right through her mouth.
“And now that you’re weakened I shall kill you and leave the bodies of the three of you here, then I’ll melt one of my subordinates in the bath of acid I’ve prepared supposedly for the “lonely and scared hostage” so that everyone will think that I am dead. This will be the perfect withdrawal underground!” the teen started laughing as he continued to explain his plan, particularly acting up and mocking the part about him being the scared and lonely hostage. He finished his relentless assault of thrusts with a swing from his elbow right in Hisako’s abdominal area but she barely felt it, it was just because she had wounds from the previous battle that it forced her to stumble back a little and get even more on the defensive.
Hisako drew her second sword and took a fighting stance, it was about time that she showed this young brat what exactly he was dealing with. Hisako lunged forward pushing the boy’s counter thrust with one blade and elbowing him straight to the nose then kicking him to the other end of the room. She reckoned that’d have been enough to crack his skull and cause some serious injuries before the two other slackers got there and they could’ve decided what they wanted to do with this.
“Your “flawless” plan has one flaw, among many, I am not weakened. Not by a wide enough margin for someone of your skill to even leave an actual scratch. The only tags you can mark on me are those that I let you achieve” Hisako’s body blurred leaving multiple afterimages in the air wherever she moved. From each side the girl’s real body mixed into among the afterimages and started pummeling the boy using her punches and kicks, she pulled them severely, just what she deemed enough to teach this arrogant and murderous brat a lesson.
After Hisako finished her assault and watched the brat’s knocked down body for signs of fighting spirit she noticed him getting up again. With his nose busted up and bleeding, with several bruises and black spots all over his face and wherever he had skin exposed to hit he was standing.
“My tutor was a foolish woman, I hated her with all of my guts and told her many times I need no lessons from her. I kept fighting using my own style of fencing, I assume in this tough spot I may give her lessons a shot…” the brat mumbled out wiping blood off of his lip and nose. The boy’s body shot forward multiple times faster than he was before, Hisako’s eyes widened in surprise and adrenaline rushed her tired body to deflect the countless thrusts. Using both of her blades she managed to do that but the boy’s increase in speed surprised her, if he had this much strength in him, so much talent, this fight may have excited Hisako, this may have just been on!
What a strange boy this “Yellow” was. He had the talent and was taught skills of exquisite and quite exotic swordsmanship he called “fencing” yet he used his own stupid and sloppy style. Improving his posture and legwork according to the instructions of this “tutor” of his as well as holding the toothpick sword of his properly made so much difference he may as well have been a wholly different person. As blood and tension flowed through the woman’s body she realized that the excitement for battle would make her lash out, attack the boy with all she had and that would’ve only ended one way “ with his dead body by her feet.
A painful puncture made blood burst out from Hisako’s shoulder. The boy was reckless and in a lot of rush so he missed her vital blood vessel but he stabbed her successfully. Had his sword been heavier, had a wider edge, it may have actually taken the assassin out for good. No. Fuck holding back, this brat brought this, he was too good to fuck around with. Hisako decided to let herself off the hook, unleash herself and throw everything she had at the extremely thin and wobbly wall hoping to tear it down, no, she knew it’d fall.
Without even flinching the woman’s cheeks dyed red with rushing blood, her pupils dilated and she lunged forward with a swing of her curved sword. A single swing from the left, blocked, another much stronger from the right, blocked again but the boy was struggling, his small sword was quite puny and transferred much of the force right into his arm, he couldn’t have kept on blocking for long, some pressure would open him up like an Academy girl after giving her a daisy and calling her pretty. Hisako’s swings widened, she repeated her left and right double swing combination, this time putting more and more force into it and the boy stumbled back falling on his butt.
Hisako spun like a whirlwind making Yellow fall on his back and hope that her arc didn’t cut him in two. Bunch of his hair flew all over the place and were shredded to bits by Hisako’s two bladed spinning attack. Yellow crawled back and picked his sword up again. He was breathing heavily, yes, Hisako knew that face, those eyes, those pale cheeks and that tremble “ he was afraid to die. Had it not been for his much hated woman tutor he would’ve long since died. This kid had so much talent if he was able to defend against one simple combo from Hisako just relying on lessons he ignored during his training. He was so much talent and so much arrogance with no hard work put into it. Yoruma training would’ve destroyed the youth, it’d have killed him. Or it could’ve made him stronger, after all, Yoruma trained their children by fighting them for real, if Yellow picked his hated fencing lessons style up because of threat of death, maybe he’d have excelled being pressured all his life instead of being pampered…
“Tell me, kid, who is your “tutor”? If she was able to give you this much skill just on lessons you ignored, she must be quite formidable, sort of makes me want to fight her instead of wasting my time on you…” Hisako looked at a bunch of golden hair floating down on the floor with a cruel and devious smile. The kid gathered himself back up and took a more defensive stance.
“You would not know her, she is a swordmaster from the Land of Snow… The only person I’ve ever seen wielding this kind of sword.” Yellow replied preparing for another clash. “She was strong enough to thrust her blade so swiftly that she made air itself into small projectiles, she called it “Air Bullets”, to me it was quite stupid obviously, my own stances were quite superior to hers in all ways possible but I would like to try it now if I’m honoring her…”
The youth swung his slim toothpick of a blade around raising it above his head. Now he pretty much was just looking to get his gut itch scratched with a point of a blade. Hisako dashed forward with all of her diminished speed attempting to impale the boy on her swords at the very end just as she had nearly done so to that Yamanaka previously and as she finished that whip using woman before. All of a sudden Hisako’s blade just froze in the air, it was like air itself formed a cushion to absorb her sword. With a quick jump forward and a thrust aimed at her chest Yellow attempted to take Hisako out. The girl grunted.
A loud flesh cutting noise echoed through the floor, followed shortly by a noise of a liquid splashing on the walls. Only those that would’ve been close to the two combatants could’ve possibly seen what was going on inside there.
*****
Mana kept on running down, for some reason this shortcut wasn’t nearly as short as she had previously thought, it went around several different rooms, one had a large container filled with what appeared to be acid, at least Mana’s visual inspection of the large container could’ve explained that much together with the story that the band made up about the hostage actually being locked in a container similar to that one. It also had several strange empty rooms, some of them had dog hair and uncleansed dog poop, the other one was much different, much more personal.
It had two beds placed on the differing ends of the room. The rooms didn’t have much furniture but this one had two bed cases with pictures on top of them. While having little time for such matters the magician took the time to give the pictures a brief glance. They had strange images inside of them of some people she had never seen previously, a young boy with quite exquisite and excessive for his age body hair, looking similarly to that man which Kiyomi had knocked out on the second floor. The other people inside that photo were: a little girl, just a bit younger than the long haired young man and two people “ a man and a long red haired woman. They looked so happy… Mana could only wonder what may have happened for them, knowing the location where those photographs were held on only suggested that nothing good. Most stories in this twisted world had sick and depressing endings so the magician decided not to go too much deeper into details of the rooms. Maybe she was better off not knowing.
Mana continued to run down the staircase, she saw another room on the way down, some strange room that looked almost like a throne room of some kind, she saw several like that before. Sometimes the downwards spiraling staircase changed into a long round corridor leading her in circles and then starting to spiral down again. There were many of those strange confusing throne rooms in those corridors. Whoever designed this bunker really liked to sit on a different chair every couple of hours…
While rushing to her friend’s aid Mana wasn’t exactly sure what she was rushing for or what she’d find when she makes it down. She believed that Hisako could best her challenger, after all both Kiyomi and Hisako were such powerful and amazing ninja, if someone like Mana could beat her challenger who was perfectly placed there to beat her, so could those two. On the other hand could Hisako best the brat’s plan, what could’ve his plan been? Would he come at the assassin himself? Would she find the two at each other’s throats or one having recently killed the other? Mana dreaded that last thought the most. She was determined to save everyone’s life in this, she refused to even thing about the prospect of someone dying while she wasn’t there. She’d just blame herself, blame herself for not winning faster, for not going down there faster and not for preventing that death. Despite exhaustion and pain all over her body Mana kept on running…
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