The sound of blood dripping on the ground repeatedly ran through the ears both of a young woman kneeling and struggling to keep her body on her feet and a bratty teen behind her. Hisako looked at the expanding red stain on her shoulder and grinded her teeth in frustration. The technique that the brat used was way too advanced for him, once again it must’ve been something he was showed by his tutor but something he never perfected by himself. Both his execution and follow up of the technique was highly questionable, for a moment it may have gotten dangerous but the Yoruma assassin was ready beat that technique of his.
He used chakra manipulation, people untrained in manipulating their chakra could do it, obviously, but their control was all over the place. They couldn’t sharpen their techniques, their degree of polish was pretty much non-existent and they wasted much more chakra on the simplest of techniques. It was only because of chakra’s nature as an energy that all living beings produce using their chakra network and chakra nodes inside their bodies that this kid can even use such impressive moves. Most likely he himself had no idea of what he just did. Losing against someone like this would’ve been pathetic at best.
“What’s the matter? Your heart gone soft?” Hisako taunted the kid by grunting out her insult through her grinded teeth. That fool leaped at her right when her blow was absorbed by the pillow of air that his strange sword movements formed. It was an impressive technique “ using circular motions of one’s sword to form a pillow of air by combining natural air circulation with chakra manipulation. The pillow was at its toughest at the sword’s tip and got softer as it went deeper, that meant that it was perfectly crafted to absorb all blows and thrusts “ the tough shell blocked and softened the blow while the weaker air mass inside absorbed the shock.
“No, I just felt like showing you the superiority of my form over the lacking one of my tutor’s…” Yellow returned the reply after a brief moment “ he was breathing much more heavily, as suspected even a single small use of chakra drained his untrained body and taxed it unreasonably. Had this kid listened to his teacher he may have been a pretty tough swordsman, he has impossible one-in-a-million kind of talent for it but he lacks desire to hone it, he also is incredibly arrogant considering his own flashy but stupid moves to be superior to those of his tutor’s.
“You fool, you could’ve stabbed me straight into my heart the moment you absorbed my blow, that’s the way in which the technique is used “ you form the wall of air to cushion the blow and then when the enemy is open you thrust it. You could’ve killed me yet you played around.”
The brat reacted with arrogance to Hisako’s explanation. He remained on his knees even going as far as to sheathe his sword for a moment and turn back at her. “Oh, so I assume that now you can understand my complicated forms and counter them?” the kid asked with a confident smile. Hisako was wondering what to do further. The arrogance of this kid made him impossible to fight, he was basically giving up. He wasn’t strong enough to beat Hisako even at her worn out form, even if he took it seriously but he was toying around too. This fight was completely useless and so stupid that it completely squished any desire of Hisako’s to kill this idiot. She’d probably do it anyways but she’d take no pleasure from it. Murder just for the fucks of it, that was a new one for the raven haired assassin.
“I do, I know how to beat it too” Hisako informed the kid deciding to end it quickly. The young woman pulled two throwing knives from her belt, the knives that the Yoruma used were not the usual kunai knives, they were much thinner, almost like made from a thin single layer of steel. That way they had much stronger penetrative power than the usual kunai that rarely went all the way in. Swinging the knives around her hands on the rings at the end Hisako quickly launched them at the boy. Yellow drew his sword and blocked the knives, Hisako repeated the movement tossing more and more projectiles at him.
Eventually the kid spun his rapier once again and blocked the knives using the same technique again. The tips just barely broke through the thickest layer of air and got bounced off by the softer part of the protective cushion. The knives were flung right back at Hisako, the woman leaned to the side to dodge her own deflected knives, one of them hit the wall and fell down far away from Hisako but the other one hit her in the cheek leaving a cut. The Yoruma touched her cheek and looked at the blood on her fingers. She was getting slower, her reaction time was falling significantly. Fighting two strong opponents would do that to a person, even if the second one is more lucky and talented than he is skilled.
“I guess you got jack squat after all” Yellow laughed out before breaking into a streak of huffing heavily. He may have noticed it already “ his untrained body failing to keep it up.
“Nope, I got you. Usually I’d just stand here casually bombarding you with knives from afar, shrieking like an Academy girl on her first date each time you tax yourself to that technique trying to block it until you eventually either die of exhaustion or a knife is stuck into your eye. Then I’d just come in closer and disembowel you like a hunted down animal up close. Strangely I feel little excitement about killing you so I guess I won’t play the enjoyment game, I’ll just end it…” Hisako spoke out in a cold and indifferent tone. The assassin spoke of murder as if it was just as casual as washing her dishes.
The brat swung his sword around and tried to force an arrogant smile. “I’ll believe it when I see it” he replied. Hisako drew both of her blades and playfully spun them around in her hands pointing their tips right at her opponent.
“Yoruma Hidden Technique: Dance of the Night” the woman mumbled under her own nose, her lips twisting so briefly that one who didn’t listen carefully would’ve missed the woman naming her technique. The dangerous thing about weaponry techniques and taijutsu techniques was that some of them used no hand seals which made them difficult to see coming. One had to be looking for signs on one’s body or one’s mouth, pronouncing the name of one’s technique to alert their own body, to sort of use it as a mantra to get one’s body into a mode fitting to perform the technique.
Hisako’s figure leaped forward, almost twice as slow as she was before, incomparably slower than the flashing dark blur she was when fighting Cony. However this decrease in speed was not due to her exhaustion or numerous injuries, it was instead because of the technique she used. She was purposefully moving slower, she wanted her blade thrust to be blocked, it was how Dance of the Night worked. A single block would cause Hisako to quickly boost her speed, forcing the opponent to block again and again, causing them to be locked into an eternal circle of blocking until they tire or open up for her finishing strike.
The boy blocked the first strike from right, he was as dumb as the Yoruma perceived him to be, or perhaps more arrogant, those two often treaded side by side. Using her second blade Hisako swung from the left, blocked again, then another swing from the right which was blocked also. The boy was at least smart enough not to use his dangerous defensive air wall technique “ he realized that Hisako saw it. She saw through the technique, she knew that techniques that focused on less concentrated strikes and much more on continuous combinations of strikes had chance to outlasting the technique and also leaving the enemy without a chance to counter the first block.
Hisako’s lean and strong frame jumped slightly up in the air, letting her blades and arms extend and spin. She acted like a masterful dancer, her strikes were so precise and while she gave the boy a lot of openings she was picking speed up. That was the nature of her Dance of the Night “ while the technique was incredibly slow to begin with it picked up speed at dangerous pace, within moments it made the speed even greater than the maximum speed of the user was before. A skilled Yoruma could contend with even the highest ranked opponents. Even a sword-wielding Sannin could’ve found the technique troublesome to keep up with. Still, it came at the price of reduced speed early on, as well as taxing the user’s chakra and body continuously even during its early stages.
The spinning attack was also attempted to be blocked but Hisako’s accumulated strength was too great, each attack that was blocked, avoided or otherwise did not hit its mark only boosted her speed creating an endless offensive loop. The puny and thin sword of the boy bounced off hitting him in the face, if it hit him with its blade and not the blunt part it’d have cut into the bone, quite likely, now it only drew some blood from the areas that were cut by his own blade. Within seconds, no, fractions of seconds Yellow’s face was covered with blood. Hisako’s momentum could no longer be stopped by an easy block. She was becoming a problem.
The Yoruma swung from the left, Yellow leaned back, his defenses opened up. Hisako could’ve finished it right there, just thrust her sword lower and stab him in the chest. Still, she wanted to finish the dance, if she attacked him right now she risked leaving him alive, she didn’t want that, she’d finish the dance, she’d let it go until her momentum can sever the boy in half, then she’d cut at his limb and chop him down with an annoying weed.
Double slash from the right beat the sword out of the boy’s hand, using both of her swords and both of her arms doubled the increased momentum crumbling the boy’s blade. Yellow pulled a short shoto blade from behind and tried to use it to defend himself. Hisako leaped into the air, spinning both her arms and legs, functioning almost like a horizontal propeller. There it was, the air pillow again “ while Yellow avoided possible decapitation and evisceration he still used out his ace defensive technique, his shoto was too slow and short to properly counter Hisako and the woman had gained far too much speed. It’d all end there.
Another double slash slamming the boy’s shoto out of his arms and making him scream in pain from the shock of the impact. It caused small shockwaves to emanate and bust smaller wooden debris into dust further away “ it must’ve busted several bones which was the source of the boy’s violent reaction. Hisako spun again, Yellow ducked and moved in behind her but he didn’t have time to properly counter. Even if he did, what could he have possibly done being stuck in this endless loop of death? While he was still winding up his punch Hisako’s speed which had gathered to degrees no longer comprehensible to the boy helped her already leap onto her arms tossing the sword up and catching them by their handles using her thighs and shins. Using her arms to spin her upside body around Hisako made a powerful tornado of death. Yellow squealed like a pig being thrown backwards and falling down covered with wounds. Blood started accumulating on the floor forming a small pool.
Hisako breathed out and kicked her own swords up, flipping back on her feet and catching them. She took a small breather to catch her breath and approached the boy, ready to finish it by thrusting her blade through his heart. Just one effortless motion and all this bullshit, all of this suffering of having to put up with those two other bitches would be over. Hisako raised her blade and thrust it right at the boy’s chest. It’d all end here, this useless mission, her having to put up with Mana and Hisako, everything! Technically it’d be considered as a failed mission because their only objective is to bring the boy back alive, still, Hisako was never the one to care much about objectives.
The woman’s arm froze for a moment. Seeing the boy frozen in place, beaten and awaiting for her finishing blow to end it all reminded her so much about her first mission. It was common among the Yoruma to invite youngsters like Hisako had once been, right after Academy, to accompany an older and more experienced assassin into their assassination mission. It wasn’t that the kid did much, mostly the dirty assistant work, sometimes the older assassin sacrificed their little assistants if they got caught and booked it themselves leaving the youngster for a painful session of torture, humiliation and death.
The man that Hisako accompanied was this really big and important assassin. He was old, maybe closing in on a hundred years yet his lack of facial hair or any hair in general combined with his strangely small amount of wrinkles made him look twice as young. The man had trouble walking which made Hisako wonder just how could he assassinate someone. His cane had a hidden blade inside and he used a lot of strange knife sealing and unsealing techniques to compliment it but that was for fighting scenarios. Assassinations required one to be lightning fast, agile and incredibly fast on their feet.
And so the man did the usual Yoruma thing, he activated a seal in the middle of a town square unsealing bunch of hidden blade dispensers firing knives straight at the target, enough to kill him multiple times over. The target died before realizing what had happened however just as Hisako suspected he sacrificed her to grant him escape, pointing at her and informing the guards that she was the assassin and just carelessly walking away. Why would the assassins not buy it? She had hair of such dark hue of black that it was weird enough to be that of a Yoruma, Yoruma were known for their exotic and extreme shades of hair colors. Her face tattoos and multiple scars over her body also testified it, who cared about something a Yoruma said or did, right? Who cared if the girl pleaded and swore her innocence? She was just a Yoruma, just a child born in a filthy clan of murderers and assassins who had no human feelings, what could she have ever felt? Yoruma had no right to feel fear or pain, just kill or get killed themselves, being bad mouthed by their living clansmates as being “useless”.
Hisako killed them all, each and every guard, the more they badmouthed her, the less they thought her to be a human being with emotions and feelings, feeling betrayed and afraid of her own life. The less they treated her a human, the less human she was. With each offensive word her hatred increased, with each drop of hatred her strength flared up even hotter. That was a trait very common to Hisako, she felt like a person, she felt pain, regret, wanted to love and hate like normal people but the less she was treated as such, the more she rebelled. If someone called her a “monster”, “Yoruma filth” or similar, they only saw that same side of Hisako. People expected her to be a monster, someone beyond the range of human emotions and so she acted like that. Entire life just stretched to fill the human expectations of her. Sacrifice of her own humanity, trying to please everyone around her, trying to fit the grave dug for her and failing. The more monstrous she became, the more other people treated her as monster. An endless cycle of losing her own humanity.
Hisako’s blade was thrown out of her arm by a small projectile accelerating and hitting right at the place between the blade and her arm. So close to her arm that it left a small annoying cut on her hand that held the sword and was exposed to the assailant. Hisako quickly leaped back picking the sword up on her way and turned at the source of light that came from a corridor. Just outside that corridor and having just entered the basement floor stood a girl.
A relatively short girl, even if Hisako was short herself, a slim one. The girl’s hair was black, not as black as Hisako’s but much messier, maybe she was running for a while before she got here? Her clothes were torn up, she once must’ve worn a white shirt of which now only strips remained, she had some strange mechanisms around her arms and several on her chest, they were connected to other pockets, other mechanisms, it looked like some early stage of an exoskeleton suit designed to help a person to walk but it was filled with small switches and boxes. The boxes had small traces of projectiles being placed inside them, the projectiles looked like… Cards. Hisako’s glance turned at the card that got etched into the ground after cutting her hand and making her drop her sword. The girl who looked almost like a magician, wearing a top hat which strangely enough avoided any damage that ruined her attire and left her body covered with bleeding wounds and bruises was just standing there, angrily staring at Hisako with pouted lips.
Mana finally got to the lowest floor and faced Hisako, stopping her from killing the boy…
[Reviews - 0]Chapter or Story
Table of Contents
- Text Size +