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

From Intense Flames, Diamonds are Born

The scene of Kiyomi staring at the fading smoke and shifting layers of ice, Meiko breathing heavily and struggling to stand up from her kneeling position and the third Iwagakure spy staring blankly at the scene of Hanshin beating the life out of his comrade appeared frozen in time. It was not the first time that Kiyomi had killed someone and yet... This was the first time that she's felt this guilty about it even though her rational mind couldn't quite explain why.

The hand of the Iwagakure spy reached out into thin air, like an arrow piercing the shadows and seeking another life to take. Meiko leaned her head back, avoiding the grip of the enemy ninja just barely. The blacksmith threw both of her thighs forward and wrapped her legs around the arm of the enemy before applying a powerful hold onto the arm of the spy.

The third ninja grunted out in discomfort as Meiko's remaining strength was nowhere close where it would have done significant damage on his limb. Kiyomi let her body fall forward, releasing all of the weight, all of the conscious control she had over it before the very last moment. The momentary bliss of plunging down felt so terrific... If only it had lasted a few moments more...

All of the relinquished strength returned at once, Kiyomi shot off like a rocket, propelled toward her opponent. The enemy was very thorough at using only long-range ninjutsu attacks. Relatively simple ones, nothing stronger than B-Rank, very few techniques crossing even that line. He was a fighter that wore the enemy down from afar over longer periods of time, meaning his main weakness was if the enemy exploded in his face from up close with quick and devastating attacks.

The Yamanaka concluded her dash with a frontal palm strike, aimed directly at the right side of the enemy's jaw. The neck of the spy extended far back from the transference of force behind Kiyomi's wicked strike, devastating the man's jaw to the point where speaking would have been out of the question to him. The man's arm flailed around so quickly that Meiko lost her grip and tumbled onto the floor, just barely peeling her bleeding face off of the ice to continue watching the transpiring brawl.

Kiyomi did not stop. Stopping would have meant a reset of the battle conditions, it would have provided her enemy with the time to look around for objects to substitute with or to think up of a decent defense. If this man reset the engagement, giving himself space, there may not have been a next time for Kiyomi to close in. After all, close-range explosive combat was this man's only weakness, meaning he was prepared for this eventuality the most and would not allow easy passage again.

The Yamanaka threw a pair of stiff, direct palm strikes, turning her palm to the side to hit with the side of the palm, make her hits sharper and hit into the softer parts of the man's joints. By now she had already devastated the enemy's jaw, the following pair of strikes went for the ribs as well as the softer areas of the lower gut. A hard resistance hit the wrists of the young woman, the enemy was resisting – he did have some taijutsu skill after all.

The man slapped both of Kiyomi's palm strikes away, opening up the chest of the Konoha kunoichi for a quick attack of his own. Using the weight of his entire body, the man threw a palm strike of his own, aimed right at the center of Kiyomi's ribs. The hardest and the most protected area of her body, but the most devastating one if the attack succeeded in the initial goal of busting Kiyomi's bones. Their fighting styles were rather similar, however, whereas Kiyomi relied on her twisted palm strikes getting into joints and pressure points – the man chose to simply drive them with sheer force and destroy any defenses in his way, no matter where they landed.

No, he purposefully drove them at the toughest areas with the most natural protection, he aimed to break the enemy's entire body through brute strength alone.

Kiyomi's eyes whited out. The successive palm strike sent the Yamanaka sliding back with her consciousness hiding away somewhere else so that she did not have to confront the imminent pain of multiple fractures. Her entire body may very well have broken after this strike. The enemy continued their relentless assault with a pair of backhanded fist strikes, these packed significantly less force given how the man's weight was already invested into the first strike but it would not have mattered.