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

Fire

"Just try something, I can cook you in an instant, what with the ring and the flames closing in and all..." Chogen warned the smugglers with a serious and determined face to not even attempt their transportation seals while trapped. It was true that the Akimichi was vastly faster and had the faster reaction time, letting him to enclose the ring of flames freely around the smugglers if need be.

There was nothing to gain in Mana standing around and letting this deadlock continue. Chogen had to strain his body to keep up his ring of flames continuously as without his chakra it would turn into a simple natural blaze, which would not be at all threatening to someone like these trapped smugglers.

Mana's hands flashed through a combination of hand seals after she drew blood from her thumb. She flicked her head forward. The top hat rolled freely and gracefully down the magician's hand only to be caught in Mana's hand while the kunoichi kept up the built up chakra for usage in opening the seal in her hat. The enemy was not about to stand around, however.

The bald mercenary moved in as if sliding across the ground, his body bent up and his right arm raised over his head while his left side leaned closer to the ground, twisting his body sideways and placing the spear diagonally. It was an odd stance but Mana was bound to encounter these while she was analyzing a new fighting style. Before Mana's arm could move into the bottom of her hat and open the seal to let the summoned rabbit out, a painful thud made her realize that her hand's been blocked by the other end of the opponent's spear.

The mercenary was quick to move in and even quicker to twist his spear around, aiming the sharper end straight at the magician's throat. Mana used the pushing force from the momentum still stored inside her body from when her opponent blocked her arm to drop back flat and shoot her legs upwards. It was just as unorthodox of a fighting style to a martial artist.

Because of the offensive slash of the spear, it was in no position to block the low-blow from Mana's part. However, despite the supposedly immensely painful weak spot that Mana managed to exploit, the enemy barely flinched. The man threw his lower body back in pain, as well as an instinctual attempt to avoid the blow but he was too late to not take the brunt of it. The pain did twist the muscles of the man's face but he did not relent.

Lit up with flames, the tip of the spear moved in on Mana's general direction once more, giving the magician very little time to get back on her feet. Once again, the kunoichi found her attempts to use the Summoning Jutsu interrupted by the rapid, twisting motion of the enemy's spear. From what little Mana had known about the weapon, she had assumed that thrusts would be her worst problem but this Aruseki fellow, as the smugglers referred to him before, used it in much more versatile ways than that.

This time the martial artist twisted the sharp end of his spear trying to get Mana. There was only one way for the girl to avoid this versatile and mid-range attack but a thought sparked in her slightly experienced mind that this was exactly what her opponent might have wanted – usually attacks with a simple dodging pattern were merely a setup for something more lethal to follow. Instead of dashing back to stay out of the range of the spinning spear entirely, Mana jumped forward with a dropkick as stiff as it was bold, thrusting both her feet right in the open center.

Aruseki grunted in pain, it would have hurt immensely to take shots from an actual ninja. He was lucky that Mana was both aware of his condition and did not hit him with enough chakra augmentations to outright splatter the man and that she held back in general. Not because of some specific reason, merely because it was inevitable when one fought without the readiness to end one's opponent. This was just a natural disadvantage of Mana's style that the magician has come to accept by this point.

Mana kicked back up from the floor. The eyes of Aruseki widened. He must have been familiar with this particular kick-up. It was almost textbook from a martial artist's school and he did not expect a random kunoichi in the middle of a ninja village to use budojutsu and moves more natural for the martial artists.