Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Stripped Bare

"So, we've been pushed around by a senior blind guy," Skaven scratched the back of his head, looking visibly distraught. "Makes me feel lousy..."

"Not me, I've got no arms or legs..." Damisan pointed out. "If anything, this fight just proves the value of never giving up, even with a bad hand."

The killer with a face to his impressive gear turned his head, listening in not only on the small-talk that had been occurring in between the beats of the battle but also the subtle signs that betrayed everyone's location. His entire body appeared to be working toward that goal. He was damn good at it too, if the precursor to this moment was a sign of anything.

It was indeed the veteran's own hand that moved first, grabbing hold of one of many scrolls that comprised an impressive belt crossing over his front and back, over the shoulder, and down his chest toward the opposite hip on both sides. As Stars and their summoned allies attacked to interrupt the man, he flicked his hand while holding an end to a scroll, scattering paper sheets that whirled out from the seal drawn onto the scroll he had just revealed.

The paper tags burst with miniature flashes of light, together creating a harmonious blinding wall to which only he himself was immune to. While the Stars and their allies reeled in mid-assault, caught unprepared by this curious technique, the killer drew and brandished his triangular diamond formation shaped sword. A loud and hefty rustling noise met the Stars that cared to listen in. The assassin had removed yet another scroll, though this time he raised his sword over his head while unsealing yet another wave of these paper sheets.

"Hurts, doesn't it? Blindness. Which is worse, the pain and irritation or the fear that follows? Don't worry, this first flash was just to disorient you lot. This one is for real, though. If only the main family had figured out such a humane way of blinding someone when executing judgment upon me," the assassin grunted while weaving a hand seal and forming a turbulent vortex of Wind Release chakra around him, just to guide his seals into an orderly whirlwind formation.

"Stop!" Mana's voice pierced the grueling silence while the Stars worked to overcome their temporary blindness before their enemy could hurt their eyes for real with this curious seal he used.

"Nice try, kid. You've wasted your chance to surrender quietly though, now you and your friends will pay the price," the assassin raised his triple diamond shaped sword over his head to catch the rays of intense flashing and direct them in a way that sealed the temporary blindness in those that caught glimpse of his technique.

A wooden thud snapped the man out of the haze as he tried moving his head out of instinct just to look around and understand what had happened to him. He couldn't see anything, but a subtle noise of dripping water accompanied him from nearby. The screaming and grunting, the cursing of one's cruel fate to end up against a Tailed Beast and the crashing violence, the deadly chaos that the Four-Tails wrought had been absent from the symphony of noises around him. Just eerie silence, the dangling of chains and that accursed, dripping water.

The water rippled in unease, something sharp clacked against its surface. Had the trapped assassin the ability to turn his head to listen in–he'd have done so. No matter. Mana helped him out by speaking before he could reveal that he had put two on top of two already.

"We both know I can't let you do that," Mana stated after stopping in front of an old, black coffin made of solid steel, incrusted in fine silver and covered in a glistening, razor-sharp cross in the middle with the helpless face of her opponent stuck in her illusion looking through the cross' center.

"Auditory tick... You weren't pleading for your lives, you were casting the medium of your genjutsu through noise," the assassin smirked. Even when trapped inside of a steel cage and stuck under layers on top of layers of Mana's highest-ranking illusions, he still looked with that smug expression that challenged Mana to do her worst. A face with the smugness that proclaimed he'd be back no matter how hard he's hit for his vengeance.