Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

Penance

"I still have one good hand..." Tomi whined out through torment. The kid cradled her skewered, bleeding hand like a mother protecting her child while her eyes examined her functional hand.

"Forget it," Endo dismissed it, spinning his double-bladed sword, positioning it behind his back in preparation to finish off the fallen assassin if she ever gathered the courage and fortitude to challenge him again.

While she had taken a mean one from their earlier clash, Endo who had pushed through injuries a hundred times worse would have been the last person to underestimate the toughness of an injured ninja and their will to go on. Still, he couldn't shake off the feeling like he had the enemy on the ropes, no matter how hard he tried to quash it.

The spirit in the Hawker's eyes flared up moments before she powered through her injury. The young woman lobbed her saber at Endo. Despite the orderly, buzzing spin of the weapon, the apprentice samurai could not shake off the feeling that he was being set-up. That feeling was justified when he saw Snipe Hawker weaving hand seals and moving in to connect her hands. Using his free hand, Endo completed a single hand seal and blew a mouthful of air at his opponent.

"Wind Style: Wind Prison Jutsu!" he exclaimed with spite polluting his tone as the gale that burst forth from his lungs enveloped his opponent and tilted her off the ground, immersing the Snipe Hawker in a feeling of weightlessness as she floated surrounded by a hefty bubble of air. When she tried to speak, not a whisper left her lungs as the air was being slowly drained from her lungs, and every attempt to speak only fastened the process.

"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!" Endo yelled out, weaving another handful of hand seals while his previous ninjutsu technique dissipated, leaving the Snipe Hawker momentarily suspended in mid-air before gravity set in once again. A ripping stream of electricity slammed right into the assassin's chest, sending her rolling back while jolts of electricity shook her for a minute after the jutsu ended.

"String Reeling Technique!" Snipe Hawker grunted while rising off the ground. The ear-piercing noise of reeling steel wire caught everyone's ears as she had attempted to reel her saber back to her hand from the distance that she flung it to. Endo noted how close Snipe Hawker was to the exposed back of Shige-H and Mana. Too close for it not to be the woman's prime target.

With a resonating stomp, Endo pressed and mixed up the steel wire strings, disrupting the faint chakra flow present in them and leaving the saber skidding on the gravel floor. The apprentice samurai took a bountiful leap toward his grounded opponent, thrusting the end of one side of his blade down to pin the woman to the ground for what would have been her approaching end but Snipe Hawker rolled forward, ripping the steel wire off of the steel compartment on her wrist.

Time seemed to freeze over in mid-air as Snipe Hawker took a rolling dive toward Shige-H, looking to tackle the medical ninja to the ground so that the accursed magician from Konoha could finally kick the bucket for good. A resonant thud made it all go white for the airborne assassin as her body flipped over in mid-air from the collision of opposing forces when a wooden, curved projectile hit it right in the face. Snipe Hawker fell on her back, making the wound in her gut spout blood as the pressing instinct to cough it out from her mouth to prevent her from drowning in it awakened the fallen assassin.

"A... Boomerang?" the woman grunted as her floaty and blurry vision focused for just one snap of a moment to identify what Tomi had hit her with from aside.

"You're goddamn right!" Tomi pumped her fist with a determined look on her face. "Don't you dare think that summoning is all that I can do. My friends wouldn't have trusted me if I wasn't able to protect them myself when it counted!"

"Not bad, shrimp..." Endo smirked. Still, his seething anger resumed its consuming boil when he turned back to the assassin who had now twice tried to attack Shige-H and finish Mana off. Her attention was elsewhere, she must have accepted the fact that she'd be unable to beat Endo by herself so she at the very least tried to complete her mission now. It was a matter of pride for her. Unfortunately for the desperate young woman, the pride of an assassin meant nothing at all to Araki Endo.