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

Taking a Bump

With most of her Lightning Release jutsu disabled by Ring Ring simply using a more intense lightning technique to neutralize and absorb them, Mana was quickly running out of options. The only jutsu in her arsenal with enough intensity and rank to possibly overpower Ring Ring's absorption was Magician's Touch but it was a very close-range jutsu anyways. It would have been risky opening herself up to use it when the risk of it being utterly useless again and charging up Ring Ring's seals as well was out there.

"Shit, I'll need your help, Zoku-chan" Mana looked down at her discarded wand that was laying around a couple of meters further from her. Likely she had lost it from her grip during one of the multiple beatdowns she took. Her chakra and well-being were approaching their tipping points and if Mana did not bring out a breakthrough she'd soon be fighting a completely pointless losing battle.

The magician swiped her hand, raising it up. A typical projectile tossing motion that made Index crouch a tad bit and stiffen her muscles up in preparation for an incoming projectile before she realized that Mana was faking out. The assassin lunged at the magician only to see a grey mosaic glaring right back at her right on top of a back of a card that Mana had pulled from her sleeve. Before Index could act on her notes an irritating cloud of smoke overpowered the assassin, sinking the entire yard in smoke.

Mana dragged her thumb through her mouth, leaving a little bleeding bite on it while she worked on her hand seals as fast as she could. Before she could finish them, an iron grip locked around her wrist and another one around the middle point of her other arm, keeping the two limbs from connecting into a hand seal that would have finished the combination.

An overpowering kick that drove all the air out of Mana's lungs threw her sliding backward on her knees, busting them open and leaving dragging blood trails on the dirt and stone track present in the museum yard. Her chakra augmentations were slipping, normally being dragged through stone would not have hurt this much, leave alone open up wounds as grievous as the ones on Mana's knees.

"You were too fast for your own good, the sound your hands made moving at such immense speed betrayed your location." Index swiped her kodachi, cutting through the fading smokescreen as she left it and playing with her blades just to keep her hands busy and combat-ready.

"She's too trained to combat ninja, she knows that hand seals are of great importance. She's not looking right at my eyes either, knowing she could fall for an illusion." Jumbled and disorganized thoughts ran through Mana's head. The only way for her to perform jutsu she had perfected without hand seals or words would be to channel them through either her own hands or the wand. Channeling them without her wand would require a little bit of setup time, time that would undoubtedly be enough for her to be interrupted.

Mana crossed her arms over her face before swiping them aside again, this time a pair of cards did come out from her sleeve as projectiles, explosive ones. As Index became covered up by the explosion and overwhelmed by the concussive force and the flames that swallowed her Mana dove for her wand. A single illusion may have helped her slow the pace down.

A sharp tip of a boot dug into Mana's cheek, throwing a gruesome arc of blood spraying from her mouth and rolling back into one of the stone lanterns present in the lawn areas of the museum yard. Mana's eyesight became blurry, she could just barely pick up her scattered cards all over the yard. The girl glared at her sleeves and felt a sharp stabbing sensation at her wrists. The devices dispensing cards on her sleeves must have been busted and the inner pockets of her uniform holding spares busted. There went her weaponry and tool arsenal...

"I almost thought I would need to intervene there..." Ring Ring taunted his partner, the man was crackling with an alarming amount of lightning sparks all over. Likely he was spending the off-time charging up his seals with his own techniques, it was not a very impressive battlefield recharge as he spent chakra for techniques he stored for future use but it was still something.