Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Defining Insanity

Kiyomi clenched her kunai blade tightly. Her body ached from the little bruises she got from being thrown around by a compact yet immensely powerful explosion. Whatever that combination was – it was made to kill ninja. Crafted to overload a small area with awesome explosive power, created to exploit the moment of a downed guard. An exploitative measure.

"Mana?" the Yamanaka uttered, her voice was too weak to reach anyone in the thick forest surrounding her and the slowly burning inn behind her. Kiyomi was too worried about her friend's well-being to have her voice listen to her commands.

The only reason her friend even got involved in this was that the blonde was so desperate to kill those that placed a bounty on her head herself, as well as those that came to cash in. She was no lousy target for anyone to put a price on, she was someone who wanted nothing more but to punish people like those that put a price on her head and those that allowed their moral norms to be suspended indefinitely just after seeing a bunch of zeroes with a ryo mark close to them.

Still, even if Kiyomi didn't see her fault in all of this she felt bad, she felt like Mana's disappearance was somehow on her. The absurdity of it all only added to her anger, her desperation. She was a cornered animal who was both afraid and angry at the same time. Maybe that was why this assassin didn't dare show their face?

Kiyomi turned aside to avoid a kunai thrown at her from a dark upper layer of trees, the firelight danced on the steel blade's surface giving her a visual cue, the Yamanaka knew how this technique worked, it was just like before. She had seen an Uchiha teammate of hers use such a technique in the past. It was supposed to be one of their signature Fire Release techniques.

The blonde grabbed at a point slightly further away, farther from the tip of the kunai grabbing hold of steel wire and with a confident smile she wrapped it around her arm. Concentrating all of her anger and feelings she yanked the steel wire augmenting her palm so that the steel wire didn't cut into her flesh opening up grievous wounds. With that gut-wrenching sound of reeling string, a figure flew out from the trees flying straight at her.

Kiyomi made her set of hand seals, her speed has improved enough to allow her to perform several hand seals fast enough for the yanked ragdoll of an opponent to reach her.

"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" she chanted out releasing a powerful gust of wind blasting straight in the assailant's face in concussive force strong enough to dent even the toughest steel or that with chakra augmentations inferior to the strength of the technique. A loud bang sound made anyone in the nearest vicinity want to cover their ears, the sound of concussive force from the gust of wind blasting the enemy away with enough force to grind toughest minerals of the mountains into dust hit the armor of the bounty hunter.

"Die!" a cybernetic sounding voice, edited through artificial sound enhancers, without a doubt came from the attacker's body. Kiyomi realized too late that it was too easy – why would she get attacked from the front? Why would the attacker maintain hold of the kunai string if it got caught? The bounty hunter made too many amateur mistakes to be forgiven, they must've been made on purpose to lure her in.

Only then did Kiyomi's lagging perception notice that her gust of wind wasn't blowing at the assassin's face or chest – he had lifted his knees and pressed them against his chest slamming into the wall of concussive winds with his boots. The bounty hunter pressed against a specific trigger on his boots making a crimson sealing symbol light up on his boots.

A powerful deafening explosion sent Kiyomi and her attacker away. The bounty hunter had sealed a Fire Release technique into his boots to use as a make-shift jetpack, by unleashing it right at the last moment when his boots hit the powerful Wind Release ninjutsu technique the bounty hunter ensured a volatile chain reaction – one he must've felt like his armor could withstand whereas the light treads of the Yamanaka heiress would not.