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

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"Well participated, my collaborator, now you Konoha ninja perceive the sturdiness of our Will of Stone! With what we stand to capitulate if this undertaking flounders, there is not even the slenderized speck of a contingent that we shall abdicate!" the pickaxe-wielding ninja swung his massive, weaponized tool over his head and slammed it into the floor.

"Earth Style: Chainsaw Ridge!" the redneck yelled out with enthusiasm and admirable patriotic feelings overflowing throughout his body. Kiyomi noticed her right foot taking an involuntary step back, begging its owner to choose to gain some distance for a proper reaction to the enemy's attack.

The Iwagakure spy drove his pickaxe into the ground at a rather precise, diagonal angle, one that looked awkward upon seeing it at first but one that seemed impressive, given how rudely and violently the strike was initiated. For the man to be able to form such a precise angle after starting out the attack so suddenly and with such brutishness it would have required intimate familiarity with the technique.

Similarly to Kiyomi's own Earth Style ninjutsu, the smash of the pickaxe compressed and pushed forward a layer of rock and minerals, forming new stone blocks from the underlying buckets of dirt and pebbles and forcing them to harden and polish the stone residing even deeper underneath. The chakra transferred through the conductive tool and the additional pulses leaving the man's own circulation through his feet helped him shape a collection of sharpened, tall stone pillars that burst from the deepest layers of the underground, where the contents of the soil were the hardest. Even more, by taking in the Earth Style chakra, the separate chunks of ground stone became singular, rising pillars that rose and split the ground on their trip toward the enemy just like the teeth of a chainsaw.

"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar!" Kiyomi muttered out the name of the technique that she identified in the enemy's own attack. Hers was the technique from which this attack was derived from, Kiyomi was sure of it. Her own rising rock pillars burst from a deep layer of cracked ice and moved in to clash with the attack of the enemy.

There was no doubt in Kiyomi's mind that the jutsu of her enemy was superior to hers – it would have made little sense to derive a weaker jutsu from another Earth Style technique for a ninja of such a high rank. However, this did not necessarily spell out doom for her, her affinity and familiarity with using the better known, generic Earth Release technique may have just had some degree of compensation for the other disadvantages of the jutsu.

The two jutsu crashed against one another with a thunderous echo, just like Kiyomi feared, the technique of the enemy tore through her earth pillars like wet paper and continued its destructive path forward, by that point Kiyomi had invested all of her possible responses to the enemy's attack... The resolution was inevitable.

Another deafening crack laid siege on Kiyomi's eardrums, when sight returned to the blanked out eyes of the Yamanaka heiress she witnessed Hanshin in mid-leap, punching through the Earth Release technique with a single strike and pushing onward in the direction of the enemy. Now it was the pickaxe wielding, smart-mouthed Iwagakure ninja who was out of responses and overly invested into his attack...

A whistling sound in the air alerted the blonde, her eyes moved faster than her entire head, noticing the whizzing, heated, metal sticks that were moving in on Hanshin – the long-range, explosive weaponry of one of the Iwagakure spies. Black Vicious formed from behind Hanshin, one of its hands, the one used for the punch to overpower the Earth Release technique of the Iwagakure ninja revealed itself, while some other hands that were tearing apart the feminine-shaped chakra armor of Hanshin's let go of the armor's "flesh" and turned for the incoming explosives.

A stream of bursting flames erupted from the center of each hand bothered to intercept the supporting attack of the enemy. Upon being exposed to the highly compressed jets of fire, the explosives flew off in the whole other direction and detonated prematurely, shaking the foundations of the Eternal Fire once more.