A light tap echoed through the nearest acres of the forest. Mana gently kicked off of each branch in her way just to keep her moving. She was looking around and trying to see where the woman she was pursuing had gone, the swinging lady was incredibly agile and fast, she flipped around and must've possessed some degree of superhuman strength to swing around as she has been, she easily traversed the forest by perfectly adjusting her leaps using whatever it was she was using, it may have been a whip, a rope or a chain, either way, the degree of speed, precision and agility was unmatched.
Strangely enough, for the most part of their little game, the woman didn't even try to escape Mana's sight, quite the contrary, the woman even taunted the girl, hanging on a branch upside down and gesturing for the magician to come closer. The more she taunted the more intimidated and afraid Mana felt, she was now all alone with none of her friends even close around to help her. She was chasing someone much faster and possibly stronger, this woman must've been in her early twenties at the very least since her voice sounded quite sultry and mature.
Sometimes when Mana got lost her voice came in to guide the girl, just something really weird and creepy like a joke or a direction where she should head. This woman could've been luring Mana into her trap or selecting a favored combat environment. Either way, it wasn't good. The magician did her best to look out for any traps but, with the speed she was moving in and the absolute darkness around her, it was impossible. If she stepped on a tag placed below the branch it would've been set off and Mana wouldn't have noticed it until her leg was shredded to pieces and the magician was already in mid-fall. Mana always assumed missions would be dangerous but she never thought she'd have to rely on luck and chance like this...
Mana stopped for a moment, she's been moving at the speed of a moving vehicle, leaping and flipping over branches, desperate to reach another branch on another tree which may have been ten or twenty meters away. The girl was tired, she may have been leaping around and running for an hour or maybe even two, this was getting to the point of ridiculousness... Was the woman intending to run away from Mana or to fight her? Did she have the boy or not? Most likely she didn't, several times Mana had come quite close to the woman but then the rogue just dropped and swung to the other end of the forest. It was getting quite ridiculous.
Mana was also quite worried about her friends. She had no idea how was Hisako or Kiyomi doing, despite Hisako's most genuine attempts to make Mana hate her the girl still cared for the raven-haired assassin and treated her as a friend. There was this thing that the magician had noticed in the woman, no matter how disgusting her swearing was, no matter how nastily she spoke or how she threatened everyone, when the time came Hisako did what was right all the time.
She helped the three girls not to get themselves murdered when they first entered the mercenary camp, she saved the two from Hachi and had them healed, she listened to Mana's reason. Maybe this nastiness of Hisako's was just a façade, otherwise, why would she have done everything right when things came down to it?
"Awww... How cute, what's the matter, are you lost, little girl?" the woman's voice picked up. Mana heard the voice of a young man shouting in pain following the woman's taunt shortly, her eyes shot up in surprise so quickly that the girl's tired eyes shot out some tears. Mana hadn't slept at all that night, she was running for an hour or two at the speed that surpassed her usual limits just to catch up to the woman... Did she have the hostage with her? That changed everything! Mana leaped towards the voice.
Sharp pain emanated through Mana's abdomen, she looked down and saw a cruel smile, the woman was dressed in all black, the girl didn't even notice her jumping in from below and driving her elbow into her abdomen. The woman then grabbed hold of Mana's shoulders and flipped over the girl using them as her support, throwing the magician after her feet landed on something solid. Mana felt a cold breeze and the howling wind close to her, what amazing strength! Then she moaned pathetically when something made of leather wrapped around her neck – it was that thing that the woman used to swing around the forest.
Mana realized what was going on, the woman tossed her down and wrapped this whip of hers around the girl's throat, she counted on Mana passing out after hitting a tree and then her neck-breaking or her getting hanged on the whip. The grey tree bark was closing in quick, Mana thrust her legs and activated the "Art of Tree Climbing" to stick to the tree. She then grunted again and felt something warm like blood or slobber shooting out from her throat when the woman pulled the whip yanking Mana off of the tree and once again falling down.
"Get out of that loop, get it off of you, you'll die... Come on... Come on... MOVE IT!" Mana ordered herself in her mind as her childish heart was pounding relentlessly inside her own chest, it felt like it'd hop out at any time, honestly. Finally, the loop tied around Mana's neck went off just in time, Mana made some hand seals and activated her "Mystical Wings Jutsu" to break her fall with a powerful gust of wind. After Mana fell onto the soft mossy dirt she took a moment to catch her breath and calm her pounding heart, she almost had a panic attack there and it wasn't helping. Had it not been for Mana's experience with hanging devices and deathtraps during her magic shows she'd be hanging lifeless with a broken neck off of a branch right now...
Mana swung her arms wildly tossing some steel-tipped cards at where the woman was, Mana heard the sound of tearing and the woman grunting – she hit her! The woman leaped down, Mana noticed her jumpsuit having been torn up but it didn't seem like Mana's cards opened any bleeding wounds yet, she just scored some lucky close shots. The magician girl shoved her arm deep into her hat and activated father's seal, she was just about running out of her cards and Mana didn't intend to clean her resources just yet, she had to use some tools she sealed into her father's seal.
The girl pulled out a new box of cards and shoved it into the device inside her sleeve, the intricate holster was now exposed since Mana's uniform was all burnt up and had holes in it. The girl still felt cold and a bit ashamed to be walking with a torn-up attire but that was not the time for being embarrassed. While cold could eventually kill her but currently it was only slowing Mana down, it was not yet a problem but the time when it'd be one was approaching.
The magician tossed another card, the woman leaped up and tied her whip around a branch up above pulling herself even higher up. The seal on the card activated firing off three shuriken at the woman from the back of the card. All three dug into the woman's back and she hissed like a cat whose tail was stepped on. The woman hung herself upside down on the branch. Her hoodie slipped off and her short ginger hair finally slipped out, strangely enough, two bangs right near her face were brown, while the rest of her hairdo was bright orange. She had some strange whiskers on her face and her teeth looked pointy, she reminded Mana of a cat version of Inuzuka.
"You play dirty, little mouse, this trap was meant for your delicate neck reaching in for the cheese..." she pulled out a radio from her back pocket showing it off to Mana and playing a recording of the hostage yelling in pain.
"I didn't know Inuzuka also bred cats..." Mana bumbled back, scratching her aching neck, honestly with how close that call was a little neck ache was the least of her problems...
"I'm no Inuzuka, I'm a member of the Nekomata clan, just like my brother." The woman angrily replied, it appeared that being confused for an Inuzuka was a pretty sensitive subject since there would've been no other reason for her to reply.
The woman then gracefully leaped on top of the branch and unwrapped her whip swinging it around, letting it crack and break off several pretty large branches of the trees and sending them crashing down. That whip may have killed a normal person if it as much as hit them once, even a hit on a leg or an arm would've sent a shockwave throughout one's entire skeleton shattering bones where it made its way through. This was dangerous, Mana didn't want to use chakra augmentation so shortly after using it to traverse but this may have been unavoidable.
The woman also was smart enough not to pull out the three shuriken that were stuck in her back, that'd have caused pretty intense bleeding. The woman then laughed seductively and lashed her whip at Mana, the girl leaped back but the end of the whip bounced off and hit the girl in her chest tearing off more of her uniform and opening a gruesome gash, blacking the area around it almost instantly. Mana screamed in pain as her body froze, it hurt like nothing she had ever felt before...
"Does it hurt? I bet it does, you've been a pretty bad girl hurting me like that, I'm afraid I'll have to whip you around for a while before I kill you!" the woman then laughed as she swung her whip again. This time it lit up with chakra, piercing through the trees as it passed them, Mana leaped away from several falling trees and avoided the whip's snap, while she avoided the tip of it, the middle part leaped off of a tree it was close to and once again hit the girl making her fly back into the rubble of fallen trees and screaming in pain.
Mana desperately tried to crawl away from the rubble she was thrown at as she was a sitting duck in there. She took a brief glance at the wound – it was a pulsing reddish and black blunt force trauma. So concentrated but so strong! It wasn't meant to kill, maybe if it hit her directly yes but... The bouncing was made to torture. That whip was impossible to avoid entirely.
Suddenly, the leather tied around Mana's neck again out of nowhere, the woman yanked the whip pulling the girl in and applying pressure. Mana grunted pathetically, she had to get that stupid whip loose, she had to escape, do something about it or she'd die. She'd die when the woman felt like letting her die, after gruesome torture. Now Mana realized the point of that weapon – show the enemy that avoiding it meant to torture yourself. Make them refuse to avoid it and choose death by their own choice... Such a cruel way to go...
"Well? Do you like my "Cat's Tail", just relax, stop kicking around and I'll hang you like a good little girl, I won't need to whip you again!" the woman yelled at Mana, the girl kept kicking around and grabbing for stumps so that the woman didn't drag her in close enough to actually hang her.
"As you can see, I am a long-range fighter, I use my "Cat's Tail" to keep my enemy as far away from me as possible. Long-range is a pain in any ninja's butt... I've killed many chuunin like this as well so don't feel sad about dying here, you've done well, now just stop struggling and accept it, it'll come faster that way..."
Mana kicked around, her vision was becoming blurry and she felt like going asleep, no, that couldn't happen, not now not ever, not until Mana finally changed the world! The girl pulled a card out of her hat which she still clutched in her right hand, the other one was looking for a stump to hold to before the woman yanked her so hard that Mana's bleeding left arm couldn't hold on any longer. The magician swiped the steel-tipped card at the leather whip, luckily enough it wasn't enhanced with chakra then, the woman didn't want to behead the girl, just to strangle her.
Finally... Freedom, Mana tore the leather off her neck and coughed frantically, for the second time that day she almost died... All that training she did, all that struggling and she almost died again. She became so much stronger but it still wasn't enough. The magician stood back up once her blurry vision lined up and looked at the furious Nekomata woman.
"Actually, long-range is just fine for me... Now I've shortened your range by cutting your whip in half. I'm really more of a long-range ninja myself, I usually have to use my legs to keep the enemy at a much more comfortable range but you actually prefer long range which is great. I'm what you'd call your counter..." Mana huffed out once she regained the use of her voice.
The woman laughed maniacally, "Don't joke around, kid, you should've just been a good little girl and died, now I'll have to mess up your pretty body, that's of course if they'll even find it!" she shouted after raising her palms into the air and activating something – short chakra flames lit up on the woman's fingernails.
"Man-Beast Formation: Cat Mimicry!" she yelled out as the chakra flames formed long claws where her nails would've been, her hair also stood up as spikier and the woman leaned forward standing on all fours. Chakra was shooting off in jets of blue flames all around the woman's body, it must've been quite the costly technique to sustain.
Mana's arms went through the hand seals and shot forward. She had something new to try out, an improved version of her mostly visual "Magic Spark Jutsu".
"Magical Sphere Barrage!" she yelled forcing lightning chakra to light up and crackle around her body before forming several sets of dozens of small lightning chakra spheres and shooting at the woman. The Nekomata leaped at Mana trying to slash the girl but the spheres started collectively bombarding her, pounding into her body with enough strength to crack bones and then shocking her leaving nasty burns. A combination of small loud thuds and crackling lightning echoed lighting up the night's sky briefly before the lifeless Nekomata woman fell from where she was.
The tree she was on as well as several others and some of those she cut down were ablaze from Mana's technique, the girl smiled, this version was so much stronger than her previous one, it actually dealt some damage and had some lightning properties, it wasn't just all sparks and no burn...
Mana gurgled up some blood and stumbled back, suddenly the burnt up and injured woman just appeared right up close to her and slashed her chakra claws, she was so fast! One moment she was lying around and the other she was up and close to Mana. The woman started wildly cutting at Mana, the magician tried to leap back and avoid everything but more and more cuts opened wounds on her, Mana was tired, injured already.
This wasn't looking good. The girl made hand seals but then changed the last one, she planned to repeat the previous jutsu, just try and power it through but the Nekomata slashed at her gut with enough reach to let Mana's guts out, wind chakra shot from the girl's legs throwing her backward after she activated her "Mystical Wings Jutsu" again and landed further away.
The girl coughed some blood up and clutched her injured abdomen – the woman cut her pretty deep, not yet guts-out deep but one more cut would've done it. The woman leaped forward. Mana closed her eyes and felt her body tense up. This was just like with the Demon back in Konohagakure – she wasn't strong enough, wasn't fast enough. She mastered her kicks just for situations like this, where she couldn't keep her opponent at range.
Right before the woman's claws dug into Mana's intestines the magician's knee dug into the woman's cheek so incredibly fast that the woman who invested all of her efforts into offense had no time to respond. Mana smiled as her eyes shot back open, her opponent was hit, stumbling and dazed. The magician continued to keep up her wild kicking combination, aiming for the burned areas, for the sensitive spots like the abdomen, face, and nose. With a final jump kick to the woman's gut, Mana sent her tumbling back. She looked completely out.
Mana looked down, she heard her own blood tapping onto the leaves and grass below, the wound on her abdomen was pretty deep. Mana took off her covered with holes jacket and tore off her blouse tying it around her waist, almost instantly the white cloth dyed crimson red, then Mana wrapped the jacket around just to have some cloth on her so that she didn't freeze to death. It was known to the magician that her natural ninja metabolism should've kept her going for a while, maybe just long enough until that wound didn't bother her as much. Mana knew a lethal wound when she saw one, over that last year she pushed herself to the limit many times and this was not the kind of wound that the girl was ready to die because of.
A loud pop alerted her, Mana turned at the beaten Nekomata but she saw nothing else but a cloud of purple smoke. The magician stumbled back, worried it may have been poisonous but then when the smoke split there was nothing there but a small puddle of blood and torn black cloth. Mana weighed herself back and hit her back against a tree, she grunted as more bruises opened up when she slid down against the rough tree bark. Mana breathed heavily, waiting for the Quack or Hisako or Kiyomi to come... Ten minutes passed, fifteen, half an hour... Mana was all alone, left alone to die here.
"Well, if I'm gonna die, may as well die moving..." Mana thought to herself forcing to pick herself off of the ground and starting moving towards the camp. The night was already passing, soon the Sun would rise. Mana was moving so slowly, she didn't know if she'd make it back to the camp or if anyone was even there. This was what the life of a ninja was like, this was the world that Tanshu-sensei warned her of.
Mana wasn't about to prove Tanshu-sensei right by dying with a bleeding gut wound in the middle of nowhere.
And so the agonizing walk back began...
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