Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

The Bell Which No One Heard

It didn't take long before the whip-wielding Nekomata youth named Cony started her offense. The woman winded her whip around and smacked it at Hisako's location. The raven-haired swordswoman didn't wait around, she decided to utilize the time that it took for Cony to wind up her whip and before it made a full circle and to gut the young woman before it happened. 

It was a good plan, normally the whip user would've had the advantage of long range on Hisako but Hisako could still utilize her speed right? Kill her enemy before they could press on that advantage. This cat-lady must've had some impressive abilities to rough the magician kid up, after all, Hisako always knew that Mana had it in her to be a pretty powerful ninja.

The main reason why the Yoruma thought like that was because of the magician's skillset. She just used the least normal and the weirdest ninja arts: ninjutsu and genjutsu. Ninjutsu techniques were some of the most destructive ninja arts utilizing chakra to perform supernatural larger than life abilities. Most of the ninja considered the best by today's standards were also ninjutsu experts at least on some level.

The other one was equally as tricky. The girl used illusions which was an exceptionally annoying but also a complex subject. No one knew that well about it, everyone just knew what was passed on by their ancestors but few bothered to delve too deep into the art of illusions, there were some Jounin who focused in it but their illusions were just meant to be distractions for their main techniques. No one used it as their main skill quite like Mana. 

As much as Hisako hated Mana, she acknowledged that the kid would one day make an exceptional or, at the very least, very annoying to deal with ninja. For that reason, anyone who could inflict those injuries onto the girl deserved at least Hisako's actual effort to gut them for having earned that amount of skill.

A brief sultry laughter broke Hisako's mad dash, the girl felt pressure on her feet and suddenly a blunt shock on her head – she was tripped. Hisako looked down glaring at the whip and seeing a knot tied around the Yoruma swordswoman's leg. The raven-head decided to cut at the whip but with a strong yank to the side wall, the effort was interrupted. Hisako just couldn't get a mean enough swing, her half-assed swings seemed to bounce off of whatever that whip was. It wasn't ordinary leather that much was for sure.

"I really wish I could bash you more and more but... Sadly you seem to have eaten one too many butter cookies." Cony playfully taunted the Yoruma. It was a big mistake to taunt a Yoruma, those people only knew hatred and violence, taunting only made them delve even deeper into their own insanity.

Cony moved to the side and grunted in surprise and shock – a knife dug deep into the steel wall. A knife of exquisite Yoruma bladework, thrown using the unnatural strength of an assassin.

Cony looked back at Hisako trying to find her opponent but the black-haired woman was already gone from the loop, she was leaping all over the place, her body was just a blur and her continuous leaps were just distractions. She moved at such inhuman speeds that her body wasn't even visible, only loud clangs and thuds on the wooden boxes and the solid steel structure alerted to Hisako's movement.

"My father used to say..." Hisako's voice echoed ominously from multiple areas in the room, while she finished that brief sentence she managed to move all over the room making her words more ghostly but also much clearer.

"It's not how you throw, it's how you stab and twist!" Hisako's body blurred and flashed up to Cony finally confusing the woman with her upwards thrust of the two blades that the raven-haired woman wielded. Her leather jacket tensed and emitted most awkward grungy squeak from the pressure.

While the whip-wielding rogue managed to avoid the impaling double thrust, Hisako's foot followed almost instantly digging itself deep into Cony's stomach and sending the woman back into a bunch of boxes, the woman's body bounced off from one box to the other before painfully bashing into a wall and then back on some of the boxes she fell on. Hisako leaped forward driving her shoe down to slam Cony and crush her into the box and whatever was in it.