Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Games of Body and Soul

Perfect Rate of Success

Mana's little finger twitched, a momentary reaction to her thoughts continuously introducing new, clashing conclusions. That powerful lightning bolt was faster than Mana could avoid, had she not sensed it in its forming stages and taken evasive action before it fired at her, she'd have likely gotten hit. She needed to make a decision and make it fast now, to attack or to try and scope some more information about her opponents.

Attacking them knowing that she had no idea about the weapon or fighting style of one of the two, the leather jacket woman and that the speed of the jutsu of another was surpassing even her own fastest evasive capabilities was foolish. Then again, standing here and waiting for death may have been just as foolish as well. Mana closed her eyes, focusing on her sensory, her opponents stood in complete tranquility. Farther ahead, inside the building, there were at least fifty-seven signatures Mana could pick up – just like Index said before, the Diamond Hand preferred not sending their fodder out to wear Mana out at the expense of their labor force.

A disruption in one of the chakra signatures, Mana's eyes snapped back open only to see the erratic movements of Index picking up, almost in complete slow motion even though most would not have even registered them. The woman's hands pulled out a kodachi blade, flinging it at Mana like an arrow at impressive speed. It was so immensely fast that Mana could not even evade it, she could merely choose where she would be hit, adjusting her body and shifting it around so that the short sword only left a nasty cut on her side instead of driving into her and nailing Mana to the ground beneath her feet.

That was just a distraction. Right after Mana's perception stopped working on the blitzing blade they picked up the woman herself rushing at Mana from up on the museum roof where she was positioned before. She was quite an experienced fighter, she clearly knew that if she had just lunged at Mana from where she was she'd be countered and beaten, no matter how much faster than the magician she was. Instead, Index chose to use the blade projectile attack as a distraction and that distraction alone had already drawn blood from Mana.

This was not an encounter Mana could brush off easily!

Index threw a powerful cross downward, only for Mana to leap back and avoid it. A silver, almost metallic blur and a sharp pain in the area slightly above Mana's chest and just lower than her throat followed by a trickling feeling of warmth running down her chest informed the magician that Index had a second short blade on her, one Mana's eyes could barely even follow. Not only was this woman incredibly experienced and skilled but she was also immensely fast, not many people without great cred in the ninja world could have landed two hits on Mana after two attacks with a perfect rate of success.

That blasted lightning! Mana registered it too late, her sensory inputs were overloaded by dealing just with Index alone and she only registered that scary feeling of Ring Ring's chakra signature swelling up with crackling lightning before it spilled out of his seals without hand seals or spoken name of the jutsu when it was all too late. When the only thing Mana could do was brace for pain and hope she'd not get electrocuted instantly.

The pain was intense, dominating and leaving nothing else to think about. Crippling and forcing Mana's body to lock up in pain and fall down on her knees, the lightning crackled all over her body, overloading her own neural signals and burning the magician out long after the lightning bolt had ceased. It was not only as fast as a natural lightning bolt but, possibly, a thousandfold as intense.

There was no time to feel bad about herself or to lament the numbness all over Mana's body. That dreadful sound of steel buzzing through the air, informing Mana that Index had taken a quick evasive roll forward and removed the secondary kodachi she had lobbed at Mana before, then taken a mad flip backwards and attempted to nail the downed opponent with both of her weapons, forced the magician to work some of her own magic.