It didn't take long before the whip-wielding Nekomata youth named Cony started her offense. The woman winded her whip around and smacked it at Hisako's location. The raven-haired swordswoman didn't wait around, she decided to utilize the time that it took for Cony to wind up her whip and before it made a full circle and to gut the young woman before it happened.
It was a good plan, normally the whip user would've had the advantage of long-range on Hisako but Hisako could still utilize her speed right? Kill her enemy before they could press on that advantage. This cat-lady must've had some impressive abilities to rough the magician kid up, after all, Hisako always knew that Mana had it in her to be a pretty powerful ninja.
The main reason why the Yoruma thought like that was because of the magician's skillset. She just used the least normal and the weirdest ninja arts: ninjutsu and genjutsu. Ninjutsu techniques were some of the most destructive ninja arts utilizing chakra to perform supernatural larger than life abilities. Most of the ninja considered the best by today's standards were also ninjutsu experts at least on some level.
The other one was equally as tricky. The girl used illusions which was an exceptionally annoying but also a complex subject. No one knew that well about it, everyone just knew what was passed on by their ancestors but few bothered to delve too deep into the art of illusions, there were some Jounin who focused in it but their illusions were just meant to be distractions for their main techniques. No one used it as their main skill quite like Mana.
As much as Hisako hated Mana, she acknowledged that the kid would one day make an exceptional or, at the very least, very annoying to deal with ninja. For that reason, anyone who could inflict those injuries onto the girl deserved at least Hisako's actual effort to gut them for having earned that amount of skill.
A peal of brief sultry laughter broke Hisako's mad dash, the girl felt pressure on her feet and suddenly a blunt shock on her head – she was tripped. Hisako looked down glaring at the whip and seeing a knot tied around the Yoruma swordswoman's leg. The raven-head decided to cut at the whip but with a strong yank to the sidewall, the effort was interrupted. Hisako just couldn't get a mean enough swing, her half-assed swings seemed to bounce off of whatever that whip was. It wasn't ordinary leather that much was for sure.
"I really wish I could bash you more and more but... Sadly you seem to have eaten one too many butter cookies." Cony playfully taunted the Yoruma. It was a big mistake to taunt a Yoruma, those people only knew hatred and violence, taunting only made them delve even deeper into their own insanity.
Cony moved to the side and grunted in surprise and shock – a knife dug deep into the steel wall. A knife of exquisite Yoruma bladework, thrown using the unnatural strength of an assassin.
Cony looked back at Hisako trying to find her opponent but the black-haired woman was already gone from the loop, she was leaping all over the place, her body was just a blur and her continuous leaps were just distractions. She moved at such inhuman speeds that her body wasn't even visible, only loud clangs and thuds on the wooden boxes and the solid steel structure alerted to Hisako's movement.
"My father used to say..." Hisako's voice echoed ominously from multiple areas in the room, while she finished that brief sentence she managed to move all over the room making her words more ghostly but also much clearer.
"It's not how you throw, it's how you stab and twist!" Hisako's body blurred and flashed up to Cony finally confusing the woman with her upwards thrust of the two blades that the raven-haired woman wielded. Her leather jacket tensed and emitted the most awkward grungy squeak from the pressure.
While the whip-wielding rogue managed to avoid the impaling double thrust, Hisako's foot followed almost instantly digging itself deep into Cony's stomach and sending the woman back into a bunch of boxes, the woman's body bounced off from one box to the other before painfully bashing into a wall and then back on some of the boxes she fell on. Hisako leaped forward driving her shoe down to slam Cony and crush her into the box and whatever was in it.
After a deafening thud, the swordswoman fell into a bunch of bottles and flasks, most of them got crushed and instantly Hisako felt being submerged in some sort of sticky purple fluid. It smelled... Weird... To a trained Yoruma assassin only the most normal things like flowers and pies felt weird and unnatural. This goo was... Perfume? Why would these rogues have an entire basement loaded with this purple goo?
They kidnapped this kid, this perfume tycoon's heir but they already had an entire basement filled with perfume shipments. Something here felt off, Hisako's mind started wandering away from the fight, trying to desperately put together what could've happened there.
The woman heard something loud and screechy, Hisako tried to leap outside that horrible mixture of glass and perfume but the explosion sent her body blasting off from one side of the room to the other. Cony must've avoided Hisako's stomp and then moved in back to having the tall ground advantage as well as being able to just attack the assassin with her projectiles.
"You know..." Cony laughed looking at Hisako standing up and tearing the burning and torn leather jacket off of her body, looking back at the rogue with the furious stare coming from a face covered with blood from cracking her head into the steel floor and perfume.
"You don't really strike me as an assassin. I mean looking at your weirdly dark shade of hair, those scars on your face, and those clan tattoos on your face and cleavage... You're Yoruma, huh? Anyone could recognize your foul stench. Strangely clear and exotic hair color, clan tattoos, and love of scars. There's a reason why people treat you like dirt. Because you treat all life as dirt. Right now you threaten the life of me and my brother and I'm having trouble deciding if I want to kill a Yoruma shitstain or a woman whom I was ordered to kill by a man holding my beloved brother ransom, forgive me if my feelings confuse you, Yoruma. Emotions are something only a human would understand, not a Yoruma trash like you."
Hisako's body was shaking with sheer rage. "I'm not an assassin. Assassin is just a word for simple-minded fools who fall by our blades to call us!" Hisako lashed out straight out shouting her words.
The woman's body flashed forward, no more distractions, no more leaps, or anything silly like that. Her body was injured by the explosion, she had multiple broken ribs and several burns. The glass of those perfume bottles cut Hisako up pretty nastily when the assassin just tried to use her senseless aggression to kill Cony. None of those things mattered. Yoruma were rage, pure desire to kill. Mere pain was one level below that.
Hisako's leg swept at Cony's before the woman even noticed Hisako having moved a finger. "I am a murderer," The Yoruma's leg then kicked Cony upwards bashing straight into the ceiling of the lower floor with utmost ruthlessness and violence "I am a slayer, decapitator, and a ravager,". Hisako's bloodthirsty frame kicked off the ground dashing right at the plummeting opponent and passing through her in mid-air "I desire to kill everyone I see except those I want to fuck with, that is the Yoruma way. The word assassin doesn't fully capture that". A heart freezing scream pierced the temporary silence as a nasty X shaped gash covered Cony's chest, from her groin over her chest and ending by the neck.
It was far too fast for the woman to even have the time to augment her strength and endurance. Taunting Hisako was something she really shouldn't have done. While in mid-air Hisako pulled two scrolls out of her belt and unsealed them, she attached it to the wiring device that held it with two wires and spun them like one of those spinning toys that the young ones liked to play with trying to see which one would spin the longest.
"Secret Yoruma Hijutsu: Blooming Petal of Death!" Hisako shouted as just when her body started to land down the rotating scrolls started to fire off automated barrages of weaponry: kunai, shuriken, various small daggers probably meant better for opening letters than killing but all of that fired off all over the basement.
It was like the woman's whip rose up and formed a protective twister deflecting each and every projectile thrown by Hisako. The assassin kept emptying her supplies, firing off everything she had sealed inside those scrolls, literally thousands of small weapons but all of them just bounced off and fell by the woman's sides. Right when the technique ended and the scrolls together with the detached strings fell off of Hisako's wrists the woman pulled her blades back out throwing them at the circling whirlwind of leathery whiplash.
The blades bounced off as well flying back at Hisako but the woman caught them in middle air and then with a wild roar dove back down, if she couldn't penetrate this wall with her onslaught of these weapons she accumulated after emptying her wallet in the Yoruma Black Market she'll gut the bitch herself. Personal was always her approach anyway!
It appeared that Hisako was especially lucky, the woman's skydive back down appeared to time properly with Cony's whip running out of its supernatural juice and falling down the boxes below where Cony could reach. The woman moved to the side skipping just one sword. Hisako's left sword penetrated Cony's side making the woman scream out in pain and spit out some blood into the assassin's eye. Hisako staggered back giving the injured cat-woman some time to drop down for her whip.
Cony's laughter echoed through the basement, it was this bloody and terrifying combination of fear, pain, and also pride and joy. It was clear that the woman was injured, probably close to dying, and in a lot of pain but she also felt really proud of something even while being afraid to die at the same time.
"So this was my mother's will then?" Cony's voice echoed.
Hisako cocked her head and cracked her knuckles picking her swords back up and licking the blood off of her sword. The woman always did that, it helped her realize if she was back from her murderous rage. If she cut her tongue that meant she was hyperactive, too jumpy to act straight, still in a rampaging mood. A clean and soft lick without injury meant that Hisako's mind was back to being its bitchy cold self. "The fuck are you on about now? I don't think I stabbed you in a spot where you'd start to get delirious." The assassin asked.
"This whip is made from my mother's hair. Yellow hired mercs to take me and my brother from my family several months back, those mercenaries separated me and my brother giving us just a couple of final words with our mother, our father was killed after he opened the door. Mother just gave us her hair, she didn't say what it was for or anything but she was a ninja and we felt the chakra in them, then they burned our house down even after her death the hair continued to harden my whip, act like it had a will of its own."
So that was it? That was why Mana was so busted up then? The dumb kid-idol just couldn't deal with the whip having a mind of its own while also being coated with chakra and completely invulnerable during those moments of free will? If that was all it took the kid was of no challenge to Hisako, not even worth staining the blade of her sword with the kid's blood.
"I didn't realize it up to now but... Mother's goal was to protect us, it must've been some special seal she placed in them, to not fade before it saved both of our lives. If I died right now Yellow would've killed my brother too because without me he'd have no use for him. Because of that my mother's will inside that seal acted by itself and protected me, now that both I and my brother are safe her soul moved on to the Afterlife. Her lifelong goal of protecting us is complete."
Hisako laughed out in the most ironic and sarcastic laugh she's ever had and lunged back at where the woman's voice came from. A nasty flesh-tearing sound followed Hisako's flashy assault, the woman managed to augment her chakra right before the blade entered her body making it just inflict a wide but incredibly shallow cut, barely passing the skin. The second cut was blocked by Cony's knife. The woman leaped back dropping several more marbles with explosive notes stuck all over them. Hisako rolled back avoiding the explosion.
A powerful whiplash hit right into Hisako's jaw from the smoke, then another and another one. The ruthless combination continued before the whip wrapped around the assassin's neck and the rogue ninja slammed her opponent's head into the ground again and dragged her body up close.
Cony's foot slammed on top of Hisako's head leaving a large dent in the steel floor and making the young woman's body twitch creepily and emit a powerful scream of pure pain. Hisako managed to augment herself to avoid having her neck snapped but Cony continued to stomp on her face. Again and again, until the augmentation could barely even protect Hisako until her nose broke and fired off wild torrents of nosebleeds.
With a strong backroll Hisako stood back up and then dove forward slashing right at Cony's shoulder, augmentation helped the woman only receive a small cut to what would've been a nasty injury. Cony twisted her whip around once again in a wide circle whipping at the Yoruma's jaw again sending her broken nose into blood spilling overdrive. Another whip hit Hisako straight into her groin. The woman yelled out in agonizing pain and fell on the ground scratching the cheaply placed shot.
"What's the matter? I didn't know you Yoruma felt pain at all? What was that bullshit about you being all-killers before!?" Cony shouted out in a pathetic voice of an injured and desperate woman who was ready to reach out to dirty shots for survival. The woman swung her whip up in the air aiming straight at the last hit spot.
"Let's make sure the world sees no more filthy Yoruma babies!" she grunted out before stumbling back in shock. A sword was etched into her gut, one thrown in a desperation move by Hisako.
"Shit, fuck, cunt, ass... You fucking sodomized pirate whore cunt licker!" Hisako writhed on the floor before picking herself back up off the ground and dashing to her opponent, with a swift movement she pulled the sword out of the woman's gut and then grabbed hold of her whip cutting it in half using her other blade and kicking Cony back to die in agony.
"I'll suck the cocks of a clusterfuck of dickwhistling dead men before I'll let you win!" Hisako yelled out completely having lost all fucks to give.
Cony appeared to not even plan to die yet, the woman kept crawling back, leaving a bloody trail for the raven-haired assassin to follow. She must've used chakra augmentation to keep her blood loss contained as much as possible, in the most extreme cases chakra could've been used to prolong one's death but it was rarely ever used that way in battles, it was used as a last effort to receive medical help whereas in this case there was little to no hope.
Cony's arms raised up and blue flames flared up where her nails were forming long chakra claws. The woman's body burst up with chakra, transparent blue flames of pure chakra started flooding off from her spiking up the woman's hair, straightening and sharpening her whiskers and her cat-like fangs.
Cony lunged forward, wild red stripes started cutting everything to pieces, Hisako leaped back a couple of dashes looking around. The impossibly fast claw swipes seemed to pick up an object and utterly shred it into the smallest chunks. They appeared to be somewhat random so the assassin barely felt threatened but she had to make sure, the shredding barrage of Cony's chakra claws intensified, the barrages started multiplying and suddenly it started seeming like there were more and more of Cony as if the woman was so fast that she started leaving afterimages.
Hisako leaped into the midst of that clawing madness and raised her blades up. With a bold right step forward and raising her blades as a wall, Hisako managed to impale Cony onto her swords. The chakra flames went out, Cony was just about to die, her wounds were too numerous and deep even for chakra augmentation to sustain. Hisako dropped Cony's powerless and weeping body on the floor. Tears started gathering in the woman's eyes, her previously seen pride in her mother's final will was now gone after finding just how pointless her mother's sacrifice was.
"Come on... Tell me how pathetic I am not to welcome death..." Cony started crying in her final moments, "Tell me how inhuman I am to not desire death upon myself!" she tried to scream but she only spat up more blood from her torn stomach.
"There's nothing inhuman in not wanting to die. I've never met anyone who wanted to die when I killed them. Death is the ultimate bad ending, it's only normal to hate it, to wish it upon everyone else but you. In some ways, that's where I and the magician-bitch are really fucking similar. We both accept that death is bad, the worst, in fact. I don't know what sort of monsters you imagine Yoruma to be, but even we know that. That is why we kill so much – because death is the worst we can give our enemies and life is the most precious that we can take from them."
Cony tried to move but she managed to only twitch pathetically. "At least I'll meet my mother in the Afterlife... I just hope Roe makes it..." she uttered.
"There's no Afterlife, you die – that's it, nothing beyond that. No praise-hungry God to suck his dick off for eternal salvation, no meeting your lost ones. To say that there is something like that is to diminish all that the Yoruma do. To belittle a killer." Hisako picked up Cony's whip and looked at the woman.
"What are you doing?" Cony cried out in horror after Hisako wrapped the whip's remains around Cony's neck and started applying all of her superhuman pressure, just barely holding herself back from snapping the woman's neck.
"Being the kind of monster you think I am. Wouldn't like for you to be a liar in your final moments now would we?" Hisako snapped back at Cony angrily and held the pressure before the woman stopped moving, after a powerful press on the whip the leather snapped and so did the woman's neck already after her death.
"Well, that's demented. Even I wasn't that twisted..." a voice reached Hisako from the back of the basement, it belonged to a short cloaked figure with strings of blonde hair.
"You fucked up her life by making it a living nightmare, you were a fucking creditor of her fucked up slaving life and if I hate one thing more than being whipped into my genitals that's fucking creditors. At least I had the decency to finish her off, I was just as sick as this world is and not sick enough to be the sick fucker in this room..." Hisako replied pointing her blade at her next challenger – the mysterious dwarf called "Yellow"
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