Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

No Surrender

"For the next match we have – Yamanaka Kiyomi, a young lady of the Yamanaka clan – one of the most honored and well-known ninja clans of our village. She validates her clan's reputation in all the right ways, controlling and toying with the minds of her enemies both using her feared clan techniques and without them. Her feats include manipulating her opponent into disqualifying their entire tag team, resulting in her winning the match all by herself without even needing to resort to her famous clan techniques!" Overseer Oke continued to hype Kiyomi up.

Kiyomi wanted to have more tangible and amazing feats attributed to her name. Her clan background demanded her having eliminated a whole bunch of people, passing the paper test all by herself and carrying her entire team on her shoulders as well as being the prodigy ninja everyone feared of facing the most. Sadly, her ability to piss people off appeared to be the only thing worth mentioning, the only thing of mention that she has accomplished. She was no prodigy, just a hustler, squiggling and crawling her way onto barely surviving this long.

"Her opponent is the freak of nature, one of few known survivors of the mysterious disappearances that have been plaguing our village. Tanko Shigin used to be the most unimpressive ninja, now, as his sensei put it – "If there is a way to injure this young man, we have not discovered it"." Oke gestured at Shigin who just lazily picked his nose before shyly chuckling after he was caught in the act and pinched the boogers away.

The audience ate him up. Why would they not have? For one – he was the underdog, everyone always cheered for the good for nothing loser when they faced off against the elite because it was the ultimate fantasy for those people in the audience. A much more sensitive reason was that he survived. So many people just disappearing without any rhyme or reason, this one not only returned but also brought back amazing abilities which inspired hope that one's own beloved ones could also make such a miraculous return from the unknown.

"Do you remember anything from what happened when you were gone?" Kiyomi quietly asked her opponent before Oke walked back and prepared to declare the beginning of the match.

"Not really. All I can remember is our mission going wrong, everyone thought I was already gone so they left me behind to lure the enemy away. From what they told me when they returned to pick my body up – I was gone. Ain't it crazy!?" Shigin laughed out as goofily as he could. "Now I got all these amazing abilities, maybe that's what's happening to everyone disappearing, they're gonna return eventually just like me?"

"He comes back completely invulnerable one day and they say that I'm the favorite and he's the underdog. Othello G was right – audiences really are crazy." Kiyomi thought to herself minding her opponent's crazy unbelievable story of obtaining his invulnerability. Granted, she had only heard of it so it may have been just a story. It would have been a very ninja thing to do to make up a story of being invulnerable but too many people who had no reason to lie also went along with it. He had to be invulnerable and no one had any explanation of just how he pulled that off, or rather, what even happened to him while he was making the disappearance without a trace statistics...

Immediately, once the match started, Kiyomi moved her hand for her back ninja pouch, removing a prepared handful of explosives before weaving hand seals. She needed to scope out and witness this invulnerability first hand before she made any big moves for her victory. She needed to see if the invulnerability was biological and passive or if an additional technique needed to be used, if it was based on the toughness of his body or a regenerative technique.

"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar!" the blonde yelled out as a pillar of stone and dirt shot from underground, making the floating tiny explosive tags stick onto it and voyage at the opponent, splitting the ground beneath. Without even bothering to attempt to dodge the jutsu, Tanko waved his hands around playfully, as if he was warming up as the stone pillar smacked him right in the chest and his chin, throwing him up in the air and detonating all of the explosive tags right up in his face.