Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Mana's Gamble

The blood that splattered over the wasteland dust rose up, together with the lifeless body of a stage magician girl, skewered by knives, joints broken and twisted by steel wire. Together the gruesome sight transformed into crimson rose, white apple and pink cherry petals and scattered across, dancing gracefully wherever the wind carried them.

"Finally you're fighting for keeps", Doma grumbled to himself sarcastically after landing firmly on his feet and preparing for the petals to reassemble into the magician's shape. He had seen this illusion before, the genin had full knowledge that Mana could reappear anywhere instantly. Her stealthy walk while disguised by the genjutsu was near untraceable while her spirit remained calm.

Just like that, Mana had revealed her strongest defensive escape technique. The girl scolded herself internally for showing it off any more than she already has. If she showed it a couple more times, both Doma and Stea would have figured out that its chakra cost grew progressively with each use.

Mana appeared from behind Doma, the genin had anticipated such bold approach and successfully deflected a bunch of crippling kicks, packed with chakra augmentations that would have shattered his body and while they would have loaded up his damage seals, they would have also made his body too battered for that stacked damage to be of any use. The magician was persistent, however. She managed to force in one good kick right in Doma's abdomen before leaping into the air and shifting the weight to make it into a push kick.

"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch"! Mana shouted out as she felt the strain of focusing so much Lightning Release chakra in her body and augmenting it to withstand the charge running through her body before being channeled right into her opponent's hurt her rusty network and muscles. A strong lightning pulse fired off and out Doma's body, running over his chakra network and interrupting all sorts of bodily functions before sending the Getsugakure genin rolling aside and smashing into the mountainous structure farther away, shattering it into bits from the force of impact.

Her chakra control was lacking. This was dangerous, even after all this time this jutsu was difficult to pull off. Of course, it was, not only Mana pulled out a B-Rank technique, but also she did it on a high enough level where she neither took additional time to focus and channel her chakra nor perform any hand seals. It was a dangerous method of using ninjutsu, even ones she trained with for as long as she did with the Magician's Touch.

A flash of lightning emanated from the messy rubble of rock and dust, splitting the larger pieces of debris that covered Doma up once the mountainous structure collapsed. Overloaded with the force of chakra coming from the strikes, the rock just exploded into smaller pebbles after being cut into pieces instead of just falling apart. Looking excited, Doma burst from the rubble and landed in front of the magician.

"So that's your strategy...", he mumbled.

"You, of all people, can't blame me", Mana huffed forcing her strained body to straighten up and stop betraying her moment of weakness. "I'm being efficient, am I not"?

Yes, she was technically storing Doma's seals with damage by attacking him but that was inevitable. She needed to inflict damage to beat him, that was the essence of battle. Mana's answer was the way she damaged him – hit him with all of her strongest techniques, aiming to take him out quickly. Risking both missing her most costly and powerful jutsu and running out of chakra in the process, it was the most gambling strategy one could've employed. Still, odds were tipped slightly to Mana's favor once one remembered her larger than usual chakra pool.

"Efficient"? Doma cried out with a hurt voice, it must have played a note deep somewhere, so much so that the young man did not exploit a visible momentary weakness after Mana had just used her Magician's Touch with less than completely optimal success. "What do you know of efficiency"? He asked longingly as his eyes looked down.