Without offering much speech, Omase raised her arm up. Her long sleeves scattered and fluttered in the wind. Kiyomi's sharp eye could pick up on a blur of white under her sleeve. Another talisman she tried to conceal. All too familiar vortexes of invisible wind gusts began picking up rubble and dirt off the ground.

If Kiyomi's memory served, these particular vortexes lacked the killing potential of the wall of wind that Omase used previously. They were quite easily avoided by simply giving them space to absorb enough, grow in size and change in appearance. Once the vortexes became fully visible by absorbing enough rubble from the environment – Kiyomi could freely move in.

Something stuck the Yamanaka as being off. Why would Omase attack her like this? The blonde took a pair of dashes back to give the whirlwinds some space to do their thing. Did she not figure out how this technique worked and how to beat it the first time she saw it? Unless… Kiyomi backing up, thinking she's safe was the point and the goal of using this technique.

The Yamanaka heiress moved her eyes away from the twisters to focus on her opponent, who took more and more gentle steps to the side, closer to the dent she left in the building behind her. Then, with a strong thrust of her palm, the woman opened up the cracked wall by having it crumble in a circular hole. Using weak chakra augmentations instead of any of her talismans to preserve chakra.

This was bad. Just what kind of goal could have been served by moving into the black market point? Were long-range ninja not stronger outside where they could move with more freedom? Unless… Perhaps some reinforcements lurked indoors, or maybe Omase wanted to exploit the tight underground corridors to use her long-range attacks without risking Kiyomi dodging?

Completely clueless about the true intent of her opponent, with simmering unease in her chest, Kiyomi waited the technique out before moving through the opening in between the twisters to chase her opponent into the black market building. She had this rogue cornered. She would not let them escape. Even if some reinforcements lurked inside, they would be puny quacks or black market dealers. Even if the corridors were tight and long, Kiyomi would be in just the same advantage as her opponent in terms of her own long-range jutsu.

With a strong dash, Kiyomi made it through the hole and looked around. The hallways reminded her of the Ninja Academy back home. Long, sunk in total darkness and appearing almost completely abandoned. Only cracked and dirty rectangle windows hanging by the edge of where the walls merged with the ceiling providing extremely limited lighting.

The blonde waited for her eyes to get accustomed to the dark better. She gave her opponent ample time to execute her plan and that did not please Kiyomi but the thing was that if she rushed ahead and ran into a cleverly laid trap – she'd be even less pleased and possibly play into her opponent's hand even more. A rushing hunter whose eyes were focused solely on the prey missed too many things, too many for Kiyomi to afford to miss. She needed to play this slow and steady, work for her reward.

With a careful step, keeping her eyes and ears open, Kiyomi began to tread toward the corridor to the left. She was not sure if she'd run into Omase that way but she saw her opponent move in a diagonal leftward direction when she leaped in and got swallowed up in the darkness. Then, if she knew the architecture of these types of buildings well-enough, that is to say, it was the same style of a building as the Konoha Hospital and the Ninja Academy, the corridors would loop in circles giving her a chance to meet her opponent even if she turned the other way.

A white-wearing man jumped out from the corner. A dark, silver blitz nearly blinded Kiyomi as the man swung what appeared like a scalpel in complete darkness. The Konoha kunoichi locked her arm around the man's wrist, careful not to crush it, she flipped the man over with a single motion while she swept her leg to aid that throw. Once the man was down on his front, still trying to take swings at the girl holding him like a hypnotized loony, the Yamanaka removed a talisman on the man's shoulder.

"Where did she run off to?" Kiyomi gruffed. At that moment her opponent only took in a limited sight of her, that gave her some hopes that he did not see the fact that he was handled by a teenage girl and that he'd give her an honest answer.

"Further down the corridor." The man grunted in pain. Kiyomi did not let go of the lock she had on his arm, a single yank would have completely dislocated his shoulder, applied force on the middle would break his arm by the elbow in an open fracture.

"You're awfully willing to coordinate with someone you're seeing for the first time." Kiyomi hesitated to trust the man. While his attempts to carve out her eyes settled down after the talisman was removed, the man still did not seem very trustworthy from the first sight.

"Look. I'm regretting staying here. All the other dealers bolted after you guys attacked and shook the building the first time. They left all their bodies and equipment behind, someone claimed that some big shot was involved in the operation, like a Sannin or the Hokage himself… I dunno. I just wanted to… I'm pretty down on money and rep already, I risked staying behind," The man appeared honest in his confession.

Kiyomi should have killed him. He was a black market dealer. He did shady quack dealings on the side and dabbled in evisceration and sales of organs of worthy corpses. He paid criminals bounties for dead bodies of ninja they brought them. Coins for genin, just children that got unlucky, then proceeding to more worthy paydays as their rank and fame went up. He was a quack… Kiyomi should have killed him, a criminal just like the sort that killed her brother.

"Get out of my sight. If I see you again, I'll take it you've been caught and that you're a threat again and I'll kill you immediately." Kiyomi instructed, keeping her voice down as she did so. Maybe it was her past fling with Eiju, another quack and a criminal, that softened her attitude a little towards this scumbag but… It just felt more right letting this weakling scurry off to whatever hole he normally hid in before shouts of paydays and headhunting echoed his way.

The man did not say anything, he must have seen the determination in Kiyomi's eyes that the reflected limited lighting which broke through the slimy, small windows of the place provided. He knew it was better if he ran off before the girl changed her mind.

The man said "left their bodies behind". What previously Kiyomi took for determination to take Omase down and confusion due to her strange actions, now was replaced by fear. This was a black market point, she had ample of dead bodies to play with, dead bodies of unfortunate ninja sold off to these dealers. In many ways, this place was even better than that rotten battlefield cemetery.

Kiyomi hurried along, running into the downward staircase that the black market dealer pointed at when he told her of the direction where Omase rushed off, before applying her talisman on the man she happened to come across with hopes he'd stall Kiyomi off for a short while.

"You caught me off-guard there, young lady," Inaka grunted in pain. While Meiko's successful attack did take him down and ring his knocker plenty, not a drop of blood trickled down his forehead. His cloak defenses were pretty notable, or Meiko's skill in imbuing her own tools wasn't strong enough. "Not every tool can be imbued with chakra. I expected you only to have one or two weapons you could light up."

With her short sword still blazing, Meiko charged forward with an angered roar. At this point, it was no longer about strategy, about looking for openings and exploiting them or otherwise trying to wear her opponent's chakra out. She just wanted a piece of him for busting a treasured weapon of hers. She couldn't have cared less about his peaceful intentions, his ass was just begging to be kicked for what he did.

He was scary-good. Evading Meiko's strikes and punishing her openings. Even while feelings of warm, trickling blood kept irritating Meiko more and more, she continued to rage on without changing her strategy. Her augmentations and armor offered poor protection against her opponent's attacks, had his weapon been longer it would have possibly killed her after exploiting a single opening instead of just leaving long and deep gashes on her sides, back and face.

Inaka's footwork was amazing. Meiko couldn't even notice the foot that tripped her and shortly after, his leather gloves wrapped around her face, driving it up close for a knee strike. Disorientation. Was she falling or already down? Another forceful impact on her gut drove all air and semblance out of the blacksmith's body. Her opponent kicked her away by delivering a running kick to her stomach. She felt the taste of iron and blood in her mouth. One of the two she loved tasting but the other one meant that her augmentations were failing…

Meiko was almost accepting towards her impending doom. She felt the inevitability of her near-invincible opponent rushing in and she could not for the life of her figure out a way she could stop him. By the time she regained her senses of up and down and stopped feeling nauseous, feeling the bitter attraction of mother Earth down into its depths that prevented her from getting up, Meiko dreaded to be already dead. Truth be told, she was not.

With tremendous effort, the blacksmith peeled her body off the ground that attracted her, in cahoots with her own dizziness to keep Meiko down. Her opponent's armor was no longer blazing. For that reason he did not advance for a finishing blow on Meiko, if the blacksmith had an ace up her sleeve, she could have finished the bout then and there.

"Yeah." Meiko wiped the blood from her cracked lip. "Not many weapons can be imbued. Lucky for me, I'm a blacksmith and I don't buy generic weaponry. I build my own out of scraps and leftover materials from what my dad builds on custom orders. Almost every weapon in my arsenal can be imbued with chakra."

She needed some time to stop the world from spinning but every passing moment let her opponent get the wind back in his lungs. He was weary. Imbuing so many armor pieces all at once, in addition to one's gauntlet blades was insanely taxing on one's chakra. His supply was not yet fully recovered after their last battle as well, now he put even more strain on it again. Not all was lost, as long as Meiko stopped letting her emotions control her…

A clanging noise made Meiko's perception sharpen and focus on the source of the sound. Inaka's gauntlets let go of their blades. As they did so, the blades plummeted almost completely to the ground and revealed chains holding them attached to the gauntlet. The man improvised a medium range weapon out of a close range one.

The blades moved in a deceitful manner and were swift in a combination of the two that Meiko was not used to facing. The blades flew straight like projectiles to start off the combination but in a blink Inaka could change their direction, using them as a swinging, slash type weapon. The fact that chakra ran down the chains and covered the blades only made them that much deadlier. Even as she attempted to block the incoming attacks, the blades wrapped around her own sword and cut into Meiko's muscles and hands making it tough for her to hold her weapon properly.

Normally the blacksmith would have simply cut these chains, severing the link between the gauntlet and the weapon and leaving her opponent unarmed. These chains, however, were near invulnerable and just as invincible as the man's armor before. Without much trouble, Inaka wrapped the chain around Meiko's blade and pulled hard on it, making it leave the blacksmith's already injured hands while yet another chained claw left a gash on her cheek just in case she tried to rush after her weapon after her disarmament.

There were so many blitzing and buzzing blades to keep track of too… Three for each hand, making it six chained, invincible, medium-range weapons to follow, Meiko's senses got overwhelmed. It was at that moment when she felt a hard pressure around her throat, noticing one of the blades she thought to have dodged having wrapped around her throat. With a strong yank, Inaka threw Meiko over his shoulder and slammed her into the ground behind him. The length of his chain grew and rolled back according to his will.

If the blacksmith did not do something and soon, Inaka would smash out all the air from her lungs with this brutal swing and slam maneuver…

Hanasaku exchanged a combination of blows with her much more massive opponent. Despite lacking a good bunch of tons on her opponent, she found her strength more than sufficient to give Chitabo a good run for his money and plentiful enough to protect her from all of his blows without having to rely on her newly rediscovered phasing ability.

"Get outta the way, you dumb fatso, I can't hit her when you stay on her!" Yutsubu complained verbally and quite vocally.

"So what's his deal, besides being pretty strong?" Hanasaku wondered, wiping some slobber she got knocked out of her after a nice blow she had skipped while exchanging blows with the gigantic goofball.

"Oh, he doesn't talk which makes it difficult for Chitabo to use jutsu. The society has rejected him, I just couldn't help but take him in." Hihei laughed while rubbing the back of his head as if he felt a little embarrassed about his sentimentality. It would have been quite true that other criminals would have found his empathy for the giant pathetic. They were a ruthless folk, after all.

"I've never seen him phase through things before, do you think you could do it with my Degeneration Art?" Yutsubu wondered, this time with a bit more respect to the flabby man. The giant just blundered about, looking intimidated and unsure about that question. For some reason the girl's technique did really inspire fear into this childish man, Hanasaku took note of that.

"So what you're saying is, that he has never phased through jutsu before?" Hanasaku wondered, noting something interesting she heard.

"Yeah, then again, Chitabo doesn't talk and he's quite stupid so we may have simply missed that ability in him." Hihei shrugged.

Hanasaku's chestnut-brown hair colored her flashy movements their own shade while she moved in on the blundering giant in a blur, throwing a strong and properly winded up straight right into his core.

"Yottaton Punch!" the woman roared, she actually put in a bit of effort into this simplistic taijutsu technique. Mid-way through, she lifted her punch up, transforming it into an uppercut while retaining some of its force and momentum. Whereas before Chitabo just shouted out in pain and whited out, with the completed movement he got thrown rolling aside after the ground left his feet. Hihei and Yutsubu appeared shocked by the speed and power of the Sannin's movements.

Hihei thrust his hand forward, allowing Water Release chakra to burst from his wrists again, this time combining into an entire arm instead of just forming blades and rushing at Hanasaku to capture the woman in his grip. Syncing up with the moves of her leader, Yutsubu launched her "Decay Bullet" again, aiming at the arm construct made of water.

The tight colossal grip of the water arm exploded with force as while Hanasaku got caught in it initially, her power was sufficient enough to burst the construct, overwhelming whatever integrity and durability the water arm had. What she did not see coming, however, was Yutsubu's technique that pummeled her relentlessly as she burst out from the pan and right into the fire. Hanasaku put up her hands to block but Yutsubu's jutsu looked pretty powerful regardless, throwing the Sannin back and displaying a great deal of pain and damage being taken.

"It was a mistake to challenge us, Sannin!" little Yutsubu yelled out, it appeared that her voice had become even brattier after she used her technique a pair of times. If one was particularly sharp with their perceptive abilities, they may have even been able to tell that she had become frailer and shorter as well, as if each successive use of her unique ability drained age from her body more and more.

"It is true, you are pretty tough but we saw through your trick. You did not really move Chitabo. You stomped your foot on the ground, shifting the ground beneath his feet and leaving him airborne because of that before you delivered the second part of your punch." Hihei wiped his nose in a bratty manner, feeling pretty good about the fact that three dangerous nukenin managed to apply pressure on a Konoha Sannin. "You OK there, big guy?" he asked while glancing back at Chitabo.

The giant stood up, stumbling and tripping over. Hanasaku's blow appeared to have left some damage on the man. Then again, neither of the fellow nukenin were surprised, the enemy was one of the most powerful ninja alive.

"I was testing a theory." Hanasaku's voice came from farther away. Her Konoha flak jacket was burnt off and her black undershirt had what appeared like chemical burns on it while her skin and flesh appeared completely unharmed. "I figured that if I shifted the ground beneath his feet he would be very much movable."

"I-Impossible!" Yutsubu yelled out, feeling completely awestruck and baffled that the Sannin just stood up after her Degeneration Art technique hit her head-on. The girly even started wetting her eye like any good little girl would have been when a mean and loud dog stood in her way while she was going home from school.

"Huh? I've never seen anyone stand up from Yutsubu's Degeneration Art. She's a Senju who is able to channel the decay of her own cells into ninjutsu and completely age the other people she hits into nothingness with them. It's like being hit by the equivalent of millions of years of aging packed into a little sphere!" Hihei smacked his own cheeks in an overblown expression of surprise. He was clearly having a blast even while his opponent was breaking all sort of rules of common sense.

"I… I can't believe it… Every jutsu I use takes age out of my own cells, I can mold and expand that aging like a Fire Release user can blow an inferno out of the smallest spark. I can turn a year of my own age into an eternity of aging… You should be dead!" Yutsubu flipped out. The little girl fell on her butt and started crawling back in fear.

"Oh… It seems that little Yutsubu is having a panic attack. That happens when she ages herself back too much, the mind of kids is so sensitive." Hihei snickered to himself.

"N-Now that you say it…" Hanasaku coughed out, "It doesn't really feel that great inside…" she noticed. The Sannin fell on one knee, clutching her stomach area and her sides. Her vision began to blur and her mouth started to feel all dry and brittle, like munching on actual dry hay.

Something bad was happening to Hanasaku after all. Up in the hiding spot of the trees, Waiso kept a very careful look at the Konoha Sannin's reaction and the battle she was having with the three dangerous rogues. Somehow, despite being on opposite sides, both young Waiso and Hihei appeared to have noticed the same clues at the same time and taken a great interest in them. Clues that would define the future of the Ninja World and change the course of it forever from that point on.

Author's Note: So... I guess I have some splainin' to do...

The way I interpret the Senju abilities and how they work in the canon of Naruto is Earth Release + Water Release = Mokuton or Wood Release. I, for the most part, kept all this intact except Senju in the canon of TONM have much greater importance and ties to the First People (I mean, for all everyone knows, the Ten-Tails was BORN out of a Senju tree so their cells are kind of special). In TONM canon, Senju possess something extra, something that binds Earth Release and Water Release called "the Spark of Life". Spark of Life is a special ability, the inherent power laying dormant in their cells. So I guess in Tales of Ninja Magician: Earth Release + Water Release + Spark of Life = Wood Release.

I always kept the nature of Hanasaku's quantum abilities like being in two places at once, phasing through objects etc. a bit vague because there was no natural way of explaining it - nobody understood what it was in the canon, not really. The Spark of Life is an ability to play around with one's own life, one's own genetics and cells, it is the power of life and part of the Creation and Destruction duality. That is why when Senju mold Earth and Water Releases they don't get a bunch of mud, but, instead, give birth to actual plant life. That is why Hanasaku is capable of doing most of the remarkable things she does - she unwillingly is messing about with her own cells, rewriting the way they build her body. That is also how little Yutsubu is able to literally fire her aging at other people, making herself younger in the process.

I just wanted this special triangle of Senju to clash: Hanasaku who is a Senju incapable of using Wood Release but adept at Earth Release, Hihei - a Senju incapable of Wood Release because he lacks Earth Release in his Chakra Nature and Yutsubu - a Senju who lacks both natures but has a remarkable control over her Spark of Life. They're all freaks compared to what makes most Senju but together they comprise a complete Senju genetic set. It was supposed to be kind of symbolic, something that unifies the three more than their chance encounter.

I get it that despite my purest intentions, this interpretation might piss off a lot of people but that's kind of this story, in a nutshell, I guess :D

Also "Spark of Life" is by no means an official name, it's just something to make it easier to wrap one's head around the general concept...