Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Dolls Feel No Pain

"Can you sense Purini-D anywhere, Mana?" Shige-H turned to the magician who kept on turning her irises in each direction. It was both because she expected the far goofier ripoff of her own gig to jump out from any corner with an attack and because she found this specific chosen battlefield to be quite interesting. Every time her eyes settled on a rundown prop, she became entranced by thoughts of how one could have used that prop for some fine stage magic.

It's been far too long since she's been on the stage, and Mana longed for it to where it was distracting her.

"Yeah. He's using clones. Purini-D's signature's all over the place." Mana replied.

A flash of light so candy-red that even without its shocking luminosity it would have etched into one's eye merely because of the shade of its color alone stopped the group in their path. Mana had heard the noise that followed before. She knew that noise to define steel-tipped cards whizzing in the air though, judging by their noise, they weren't coming anywhere near the dazed Stars.

"Ninja Style: Suppression Arrows!" a sharp voice pierced the grave silence that reigned in once the blinding flash took hold of the ninja and they realized that with their eyes shut they'd need to guide themselves through other senses which was why they didn't obstruct each other by talking. The cards lit up with sealing glyphs in a tactic that was not alien to Mana's own fighting style.

Instead of a low-ranking jutsu or some other effect, however, the cards all collectively unsealed a blitzing arrow that buzzed down to pin the nearest target. Mana's body stiffened as she stared down at a hole inside of her abdomen where the arrow penetrated and etched itself into the floor. This revealed itself to be an illusion as the body stiffened in agony soon dispersed into flower petals that scattered all throughout the room.

A powerful bubble of emerald chakra burst forth from Shige-H. The green energy that could have only been some sort of modification on the Mystical Palm technique that medical ninja used reduced the arrows into rusty tips that clanged onto the floor useless as their wooden shafts turned to dust. Resonant metallic scrapes and thuds came from Damisan's direction as the puppeteer used his prosthetic limbs to shield himself from harm using their stalwart blocks. Despite his wide-reaching guard, his limbs received some mean-looking scrapes as a monument of blocking Purini's attack.

Tomi whizzed a pair of long bolas before her. The rope Tomi tied them out from and their velocity proved sufficient to shield the young lady from the downpour of arrows homing in on her. Purini-D became exposed by using a sealing technique right in front of them. His primary candy-red flash only kept him safe for so long and with Mana's illusionary rose petals flooding the backstage battlefield he was open for assault.

"Petal Shuriken Jutsu!" Mana clapped her hands together after half of her shape manifested from a whirl of moving airborne rose petals. The scattered remnants of gorgeous flowers transformed themselves into shuriken as they all spun in pursuit of Purini-D who remained stuck upright to the ceiling. The man screamed out and covered himself up as the illusionary shuriken skewered his body. While neither the shuriken nor the flower petals they came from were real–Purini-D's body very much believed them to be.

"Eek!" the riddled with shuriken man exclaimed before collapsing to the floor and gasping in pain. He would take far less time to identify an illusion given how this might have been a clone of his, and it hadn't suffered enough damage to dispel. "As expected from Konoha's Sorceress, as I expected," the copycat whined out.

"Don't undersell yourself, you've still got us in for a loop, don't you–this is just a clone, after all," Mana shrugged as the remaining flower petals whirled into a vortex that revealed her true shape once she undid the illusion.