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

Tales of a Ninja Magician Annual

A powerful explosion shook the Junkyard District of Konohagakure, bubbles of blaze erupting outward lit up the night's sky and swatted away the small raindrops that ceaselessly fell from the gloomy skies above. A young girl, couldn't have been much older than twelve years of age grunted in pain.

The shockwave ragged her around pretty badly, her quite fancy uniform got burnt up and torn, chips of wood were sticking from all over her body, dirt and fallen rainwater covered the girl head to toe making her hair look and feel sticky and get in her way. One thing was for certain, the magician girl was a fighter. Grunting in pain and yelling, she managed to stand back up.

Along with the agent of Kirigakure that caused this explosion, the cold rain and her own failing body she was also fighting her sticky, long hair getting in her way, continuously having to be swept aside. The black blazer that she wore atop of her soaked shirt hung awkwardly in a half-torn state forcing the girl to rip it off and shake involuntarily from the cold.

A demonic-looking shape walked out from the burning wreckage, a well-trained and athletic young man wearing a dark gi atop of the fishnet shirt. Rusty and bloody chains covered up the assassin's strong arms while an intimidating, horny mask covered his face. The lower part of the man's mask looked like a bloodthirsty mouth of a fiend but was actually just a fancy-looking voicebox that made the man sound like a cybernetic, lifeless doll whenever he spoke.

And the assassin did plenty of speaking. Perhaps it was his arrogance at seeing his opponent trembling in cold, bleeding out and twisted in pain with her entire body, maybe he was still hesitating to finish the job. Either way, the Kirigakure Demon was making sure that absolutely no part of his clever plan escaped the girl's understanding. Knowing that she would soon be dead, clarity of such a high order seemed like an odd virtue to bother with...

A loud roar completely overwhelmed the assassin's calm and robotic voice. The magician launched herself at the enemy in a fit of rage that looked completely unlike her. It was a fair assumption to make looking at how unnatural these aggressive movements looked on the girl's pose.

A speedy blur of kicks followed the initial one, one that threw the assassin's head to the side from its sheer force. It was tough to say just how effective they were for the Kirigakure Black Ops trainee did not appear to be trying all that hard to avoid them or to counterattack the cornered and desperate opponent. Oddly, neither did he use any of his weapons to exploit thousands of openings that his opponent provided him by wildly flinging her limbs about.

The arms and legs of the magician weighed down. Whether it was the exhaustion from her own relentless barrage of attacks or the blood-loss and the collective effort of her injuries kicking in, she was just about done. That was when the assassin finally attacked. He used his arms as well, instead of finishing the magician off, he just displayed his own superiority over her by repeating the manner of attack she had shown him except at a level that dwarfed hers completely.

The fists of the assassin ran rampant across the magician's body, like a machine-gun almost. The girl did not fall, she stumbled and hunched over, blood trickled down her busted face and her injuries made what remained of her soaking clothes die crimson. A clanging sound suggested that the Demon of Kirigakure may have grown sick of this little domination game. The young assassin vaulted over his helpless prey, leaving only chains that wrapped around her neck while he pulled on them from behind the girl, dragging the girl's tired body over and flipping her over his back while she slowly asphyxiated.

At least the Kirigakure rogue had the decency to snap her neck when her remaining chakra failed to sufficiently sustain her struggle to stay conscious and alive. The assassin was quite ruthless, once the girl's body went limp, he flipped her over and slammed it into the ground head-first just to check that her neck was truly broken and that there was no life rustling in her. In his line of work, with these type of opponents, one could have never been sure...