Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

Swords and Magic, Literal and Otherwise

The piercing glare of Hisako tried to kill her teammate before she could get her swords to do that. The assassin was infuriated that her kill was interrupted. Before that happened Hisako didn't care much about killing the boy, but now that Mana challenged her decision by attacking her and cutting her and disarming her temporarily it was personal. Seeing that unconscious boy now made Hisako fired up to kill him, not because he was worth it, but because Mana didn't want her to. That bitch dared challenge her decision and interrupt her battle and that gave the boy's death some sick rebellious meaning.

"The fuck you did that for, idol-bitch?" Hisako grunted out angrily at Mana, her tone was calm and cold, not the likes of which are used when addressing one's friend, much more like the one used in addressing someone you're about to murder. "Just 'cause you won your battle doesn't mean you have the right to butt into mine. I beat him fair and square, his life is in my hands and he's just too much of a dick to leave his throat uncut."

"I stopped you from making a mistake, I stopped you from making yourself the monster that the people around you think you to be. The monster I know you're not" Mana replied in an equally serious tone. She didn't know if she could take Hisako on, usually, if both of them would be at top shape, Mana would've stood a chance in her mind. 

The magician saw Hisako fight, knew how her skills worked and while she missed a couple of her more recent fights the one against her and Kiyomi gave her enough to work with. Now with her hidden mechanisms all exposed and her uniform with all of its hidden pockets burnt up and torn, with her chakra drained up and her body burnt, battered and bruised... This could've been problematic.

Even if Mana saw Hisako fight, even if she predicted that the assassin would become a problem at one point, foreseeing that exact scenario since they set Hisako free from her binds – the assassin wanting to kill someone on Mana's watch, even so, this fight wouldn't be pretty and the magician wanted to avoid it. While Mana knew how to fight her assassin friend that didn't make it alright, she'd still be hurting her friend.

Hisako kicked Yellow aside. Mana's hand twitched and a card appeared in her grasp almost instantly. Luckily enough for her, the strings firing off cards and placing them in her hands still worked. The magician thought that Hisako would try and murder Yellow but the assassin just kicked him further away, making space for the inevitable clash that the genin tried to avoid.

"Humor me..." Hisako grunted in a murderous tone, clashing her own swords against each other. Shaking bunch of blood off of them as well as a flurry of sparks. The assassin's blades were dyed rusty yellow, they weren't like that before – must've been a reaction to some nutrients in blood, something meant to intimidate an opponent. These weren't normal swords, they must've had quite a history behind them and it was unclear how Hisako got her hands on them, nor did it matter.

"This whole time I never viewed you as a monster, as a senseless killer. You were always just a ninja who wanted to do the right thing, just went about it differently. You go about things in usual ways, classic ninja mindset. You have no shame killing or offering your body if that gets the job done and those are the ninja values we've been told to work with. Even while you killed and cursed inventing a new way to express your rude thoughts through combinations of curses I never knew to be possible, you've always done the right thing. You wanted the same things we did, you just had your ways of going about it." Mana replied.

Hisako swung her swords at her lazily, Mana flicked her hands up shooting a bunch of cards and then another switch that hardened the string behind them, making an improvised blade of cards stuck together that clashed with Hisako's, the woman forced her swords forward, grabbing and tearing the device off of Mana's arm with her bare hands and crushing it without much effort. Only her cold murderous stare right into the magician's eyes.