The Thirteenth Death

[Sia]

"Big brother can you tell us a bed time story?" Asked one of the little ones.

"Well," Said the oldest.

"Do you know how it came to be that Granny Ikanbi owned this building?"

Only one of the children nodded, the second eldest, they and the eldest were some of Ikanbi's first students in the Cresecent Coalition. She had taught them the arts of ninjutsu almost immediately from day one, a feat which changed their lives on the spot. Magic was real? Sign them up! Who were they to question a wizard willing to impart them with powers? That's how the orphans had seen it anyway, but, before that there were even wilder things before their eyes. Oh yes, the four children that Ikanbi had adopted first had seen her perform great and powerful miracles to protect them from a great and powerful evil.

"A few months ago...." The eldest child's voice dropped to a dark whisper as he held the candle close. "There was a witch, a terrible and powerful witch named Maido, you know the one, the blood witch, the red mist, the red death, the red plague. We've all heard the stories, we'd all seen her poking around here and there, right?"

It was true, they'd all seen Maido slinking around with a weird Lion man at one point a while ago, they had stuck out in memory because of the bizarre colors, they hadn't fit in with the rest of the area at all, the red was just so...brazen.

"Maido and another shinobi got into a heated battle that destroyed a good chunk of the city and Granny Ikanbi showed up from out of town and stopped both of them and saved us!" Said the eldest with a grin. "Wow!" Gasped a few of them and the eldest child continued as the other children struggled in from the other rooms, everyone was eager to hear this bedtime story, they had all been looking forward to it.






It started when Maido first attempted to strike Shuichi from across the table with a cheeky jutsu that caused a red tendril to erupt from his soup whilst he was attempting to take a sip from it. He responded by violently grabbing the tentacle and whacking it against the side of Maido's head which in turn prompted her to produce two tentacles from either side of herself and slam them together towards each other with Shuichi's head in the middle.

Shuichi's response was to transform his head into a metal helmet covered in spikes which caused the tentacles to slam into the spikes and immediately recoil, squeel, and hiss chiton mist back at him slowly. She did it again, but aimed them around the spikes and twisted the helmet clean off but another one simultaneously began to take its place, metal sharding flying upwards form his body to fill in the missing space almost as quickly as Maido created it, but not quite.

"Oh, we're playing games today huh?"

Shuichi's jutsu caught Maido by surprise, the spear materialized and pierced upwards straight through her tongue and upwards through the top of her skull, continuing upwards and spearing into the ceiling of the restaurant and alarming the customers.

The hole in Maido's head began oozing red mist but filled back in on itself quickly as she returned fire and caused a red spear of her own to pierced from behind Shuichi through the chair and through his back and into the table they were sitting at to pin him to it before the red spear suddenly opened up, spikes forming along its length. "Ughh." Shuichi coughed, Maido smiled.

Shuichi flexed the wires in his body and grabbed the spear, contorting it carefully out of himself and sending a spool of wires outwards to snap the spear and toss it across the table back at Maido whom reacted by turning into a cloud of red mist and dispersing amongst her side of the table before forming back together again and assimilating the red chiton spear back into her own body.

"I'm going to do it anyway you know, it's time, you refuse to give me your body, so, I'll just move on, why wouldn't I pick a Fukusha? They're obviously the perfect host body."

"No!" Shuichi's voice raised and he slammed his palms against the table and rose from his seat. "I said no, Maido!"

"I'm not asking."

Both of their bodies began to surge with chakra in unison, Shuichi's rifling out a dull grey while Maido's filled with a dark red.

The impact of what happened next splintered the table, the bowls on the table, the cups, the tea and soup went all over the place, the other customers gasped and screamed and scurried away, though a few of them that were curious stayed and watched with a mixture of glee and fear plastered into their hearts. One of the children began to cry, a sound which alarmed Shuichi and made him reel himself in a little bit, but it was a sound that didn't phase Maido at all.

A red surge of mist suddenly erupted from Maido's face, it streamed outwards slowly at first as it billowed from her eyes, mouth, and nose, but the pace at which it was produced and encroached quickly began to pick up and in no time at all th entire room had been blanked in the red mist. The civilians couldn't help it, try as they might they breathed in the vapors and were immediately subject to Maido's influence. Her right hand came upwards and three of the men suddenly lurched forwards and launched through the air towards Shuichi at a frightening speed.

"No!" Screamed the men as did Shuichi at roughly the same time and he sent out several suits of dull grey metal armor to gently catch them and place them back on the floor to the side. "Maido no!"

"Maido YES!" She screamed and both of her hands slammed together, causing two of the men to violently smack into either side of Shuichi with incredible force, te suits of armor crumpling and bending the men into shapes they were most certainly not comfortable in and one of thems chest caved in in such a way that he immediately started dying, though the only sound that escaped from him was a wheezy "Unnnhhh." Before his eyes closed and he began to drift away.

Shuichi released the metal suits and sent them towards Maido in an attempt to enclose her, he knew killing her would be likely impossible but trapping and sealing her away was certainly doable, he had been told it had been done before.

Her body burst into a cloud of red mist and rolled out of the building. "Absolutely not." Her voice teased him, she was well aware of what he was attempting to do.





"Do you hear what you're saying?!" Shuichi said to her as his eyes widened and his octave raised, color flushing into his cheeks where there had been none before. "Yes! And who the fuck do you think you are to stand in the way of progress?" Maido spat back, her teeth growing visibly sharper as the conversation dragged on and the reds of her eyes began to glow more and more.

"It could kill her."

"It could not."

"That's not good enough Maido what the, what?!" Shuichi's voice raised even higher in the middle of the walkway now.

Maido the blood witch and Shuichi the Iron Prince were having a go at it in a manner that suggested they had both completely lost their senses. That is to say...neither of them was no longer paying much of any mind to what or who happened to be destroyed, their only intention was the complete an utter annihilation of one another, they had been completely overcome with bloodlust well, at least that's what it looked like to the onlookers that happened to not die from witnessing the event.

It started in the restaurant, or at least that's what they had heard.

Shuichi's voice raised suddenly and alarmed the other customers inside the restaurant, but Maido's poised response chilled them to their bone when they

Nothing could stop them. The restaurant had been destroyed first, even though they had taken their argument outside of it when it had begun to grow heated, it hadn't somehow mattered. Shuichi and Maido had gotten into a very heated argument over the bowls of ramen and been told to leave the premises if they could not stop yelling...so they had.

Yet here they had come outside and the yelling just hadn't stopped. They were in each others faces, chakra leaking very visibly from Maido and Shuichi as their baser instincts came over and they became irate and twitchy. The two of them were primed, ready to cut each other's throats. "She's too young." Shuichi said to her. "No, that's why she's perfect." Maido responded and Shuichi could have slapped her.











It was an incredibly horrible day. Ikanbi had woken up to the sounds of explosions, screaming, and crying. Smoke and soot filled the air, she bolted awake with a start and alarmingly shot off of the bed and surveyed her surroundings, slapping herself awake twice.

Then harder and pinching her cheeks. No, she wasn't dreaming, she was awake, so what exactly was happening? Exiting the room of the inn, Ikanbi stumbled as the building shook violently and she crashed into the wall as the rafters above her fell down in a blaze of fire and yet still another blaze of fire was very noticeably flying towards her from down the hallway.

"Shit, shit, SHIT!" Ikanbi took a hard dive towards her left as her body began to surge with chakra and she began, well, flying. Kuuton chakra rifled outwards from her feet, her cores, her very soul, her very being. It permeated the area around her and was what it was, a force of her willpower. It lifted her, it guided her, it shot her through the fire and the flames like a cannon, she did in fact carry on.

Into the lobby of the Inn Ikanbi then found herself and yet try as she might she saw no real reason for the chaos around her. The innkeeper was slain, it didn't particularly appear to be murder, it seemed an accident, what a shame, Ikanbi had thought to herself.










Blood, acid, and iron filled the scene. It littered the ground, the river, the very air was polluted with particulate stink dust, a horrible and toxic mixture of the three. To breath it in even at all was surely fatal to a regular human, which to Ikanbi's dismay, she could see had been the case for the bodies were lining the street in the number that she'd lost count of some few blocks ago.

She could hear them, how could she not... Maido and Shuichi's metal clanged against each other as equals now, the sound was ripe and wrong and right at the same time. It wrang and cracked repeatedly through the air, Shuichi and Maido's metal blades slapping against each other as neither of them found appropriate footing upon the other. "Give it up Shuichi, you'll never win." Maido taunted him, Ikanbi heard it.

A spear shot through Maido's chest without warning, a surprise blast from Shuichi that she hadn't expected but her body burst into a cloud of red mist before his and Ikanbi's eyes and for a moment Ikanbi could have sworn she'd seen Maido bleed, but maybe her eyes had been playing tricks on her.

Maido? That couldn't possibly be right. She was dead, right? That's what Ikanbi had been told, that's what the reports had said, that's what she had read with her very own eyes. Yet, if she hadn't seen the technique performed in front of her herself with her own very eyes she would not have believed it. As she watched, Shuichi's body also burst outwards into a particulate cloud except his appeared to be shards of metal rather than a liquid vapor.

Straining his body together carefully, Shuichi lifted his arms. Shards of kouton and chalk flew about the red mist, circling around it hastily and closing in around it, not letting even a single droplet of vapor slip through its grasp eventually. It was hard, very hard, one of the most difficult utilizations of this particular jutsu that Shuichi had every performed, but, he was certain that it could work if he tried hard enough.

He was just sure of it. Surely if he maintained his control, he could piece together the shards of metal so that they formed a fishtank around the gaseous form of Maido and he could seal her inside of it and prevent her escape.

From a distance, Ikanbi could barely see with her own eyes what was happening. That is that she could see it but the comprehension of the finer workings of the battle at play were lost in her, it was occurring to fast for her to process. However, what did work to her advantage was that she could hear every single thought that Shuichi and Maido were having at and about each other during their fight, so whenever one of them was trying to do something to the other one, she could hear their thoughts on it and then in turn hear thee other one's thoughts on what they were doing in response and so on and so forth.

The box that shuichi had been forming around Maido's red mist form suddenly burst open from the inside and the red mist escaped quickly outwards onto the streets, coalescing itself back together into Maido's form as the metal shards too pieced together back into Shuichi.

[Sia]

It was when Maido used her jutsu to puppeteer the children that Ikanbi finally lost her cool and an incredibly violent wave of Kuuton suddenly blasted Maido so hard it literally removed the top half of her body and left the legs behind. The blast of Kuuton sent the top half of Maido along with the core inside it through the building and out the other side where she went flying through several trees before finally coming to a halt after hitting a particularly large one. The top half of Maido's body fell to the ground as Maido reeled in shock from the experience.

"Well...that was new." Maido said as she looked down at her distinct lack of legs and her body began surging with chakra.

Shuichi had as it were seen the entire thing, having up until that point not particularly noticed Ikanbi having arrived, he had figured her as background noise, his sensory jutsu had picked her up as civilian, which, Maido's must have too or she would have seen the blast coming beforehand. When he finally looked in the direction of where the blast had come from what he saw was a woman in a sun hat staring at Maido with a face contorted into what must have been pure and unadulterated rage.

"Hmm...That doesn't look good." Shuichi said to no one in particular gently under his breath and began to surge with chakra himself, willing shards of Kouton to begin to collect together into a mass that enlaid upon his body into a suit of armor.

Shuichi wasn't sure if he should involve himself in what he thought was about to take place, truthfully. He stood there contemplating it for a moment as Maido's legs suddenly began moving along the ground towards Maido's direction as though she were recalling them. They rolled, clumsily and slowly towards her but Ikanbi had other plans. As Shuichi watched Ikanbi through a singular kunai empowered with dark black chakra that he didn't particularly recognize the style of. When the Kunai hit the one leg a crate immediately formed into the ground around both of the legs as though an incredibly large invisible boulder had been crushed into them, which....by all accounts, save for the fact that the boulder was nowhere to be seen, is exactly what it appeared like.

That is to say that Maido's legs were now smashed flat into ribbon by an invisible force that Shuichi hadn't been able to see. "Interesting." He said though his eyes were incredibly wide at the site of such things.

Maido frowned at the site of her destroyed legs and surged with chakra for a mere moment before a new pair sprouted from her torso.

"Ikanbi, Liivduntiz, was it? You're in my book." Maido said loudly enough to make sure Shuichi could also hear as she floated slowly closer towards Ikanbi a few mere inches off of the ground.

"Your kind is not welcome here Maido, these people are under my protection."

Maido scoffed at Ikanbi.

"Do you know who I am?" Maido asked her with a hiss.

"Yes....and you and your kind, those that prey upon the innocent, you are not welcome here." Ikanbi said sternly.

Ikanbi's body continued to surge with a powerful force of chakra that Shuichi could see was making Maido nervous in a way that he had never seen her nervous before. "Maido what is she using I can't see it?" He asked finally.

"Kuuton." Was the singular word that escaped Maido's lips as she made eye contact with Shuichi, before she turned back to Ikanbi.

"And if I refuse?" Maido asked Ikanbi pointedly.

Ikanbi's response sent a chill down Shuichi's spine and equally unnerved many of the civilians that happened to be nearby.

"I am built to protect and destroy."

The words escaped Ikanbi's lips and Maido looked at her quizzically. "Wh-?" Maido didn't even have the time to get the word fully out of her mouth before her Ikanbi had afflicted her with her Kuuton grip. Maido choked, gasping for air?! She had never felt such a force applied onto her false lungs before. Such power, such pressure, was this even humanly possible? The overwhelming weight on her core suppressed her and she felt sluggish immediately, exhausted even, as though gravity had multiplied itself horrendously and infinitely specifically onto her and her alone.

Maido's face slammed into the ground almost instantly and entirely against her will, the force of the Kuuton Ikanbi had used was too much, there was no escaping it. Face down in the dirt, Maido was powerless to stop Ikanbi as she merely walked forwards and unsheathed her blade of detempering. She was about to stab it directly into Maido's core but Shuichi had decided to intervene. He'd grown attached to the old hag after all.

Shuichi's metal sword met Ikanbi's and her blade bounced back. "I have no quarrel with you little one, get out of my way." Ikanbi said to him.

"She is my master, I cannot allow you to kill her."

"Then you may perish here beside her or go back home with a message."

"Yeah? What would that be?"

"The people of this village are under my protection...If you bully them....I will avenge them tenfold."

Ikanbi's left hand shot forwards and sent Shuichi flying away harshly into the nearby building where he slammed against the wall. Acid sand began to erupt from the ground nearby and circle around him, grabbing at him and sinking its way into his shards and crevices and bogging him down before hardening into stone and merely holding him in place.

Her other hand did the same to Maido except it brought her towards Ikanbi instead of taking her way. Maido was unable to move, unable to react. Ikanbi had put a horrible Kuuton jutsu upon Maido's core, the effects of gravity were growing increasingly worse upon her with each passing moment. It probably wouldn't be too much longer before Maido merely passed out.

A blast of chalk and metal shrapnel blasted out of Shuichi's chest and mouth simultaneously and pierced through Ikanbi's grip on Maido, releasing Maido to the ground and causing Ikanbi to loser her focus on the technique.

Almost immediately Maido responded by transforming her size, suddenly becoming the massive two hundred meter tall chiton monster that Shuichi and Ikanbi had only ever heard of and immediately causing the entire village to go into a panic. Anyone that hadn't already been aware of the fighting taking place was now definitely becoming so, it was hard to miss a two hundred meter tall red bipedal wolf that produced red mist with every breath.

Maido roared a vicious roar and the acidic chiton mist that emitted from her lungs blanketed the village, indiscriminately beginning to eat away at everything in its path.

"Maido that's too far!" Shuichi screamed at her from down below on the ground and Ikanbi couldn't help but agree with him, suddenly appearing in a flash immediately next to him with her hand on his should.

"Say kid, you seem like you might be in with the wrong crowd....help me get these civlians to safety an I'll let you go after I take care of Maido, deal?"

Shuichi wasn't entirely sure what to say at first but as he looked over at the two hundred meter tall nightmare before his very eyes his decision was made much easier. "Okay lets evacuate everyone and then deal with Maido....together." Ikanbi looked him in the eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Shuichi's body surged with chakra and shard after shard after shard began to form from inside of his body and flutter out like butterflies. Flying towards the civilians, they formed into a series of umbrellas that orbittd around the civilians and began intercepting the flying debris from Maido's rampage. Building fell, crumbled by the acid mist, and Maidos giant claws smacked into the sides of them and sent them sprawling down the road.

He couldn't even tell where the screaming was coming from anymore. Where wasn't it coming from? Everywhere he looked now was destruction. Was that all Maido ever was? Destruction?

The civlians were out of the way finally and so Ikanbi began surging with chakra to perform her forbidden jutsu.

Ikanbi jumped into the air and stood sideways, parallel to the ground and taunted Maido. "He big bitch over here!" She screamed loudly.

Snarling, the giant wolf form of Maido turned and caught Lii's most ridiculous jutsu clean into the side of her face. The orb expanded and chaos erupted in the sky as a giant sixty meteral ball of black and pink death began sucking Maido into it's center. It dragged her through the acid and sand and ripped into her chiton form, tearing into her transformed body with ease and sucking her into the center of the gravity well. Shuichi could only watch from below with amazement. He had never seen anyone do such a thing to Maido, let alone more than once.

It became obvious that Maido didn't know how to deal with the technique. Her limbs clawed at the ground and nearby buildings trying desperately to find something to grab onto and pull herself out of the gravity well but it didn't matter. Slowly, surely, Maido was being tucked into the acid sand black hole where she would be dealt with appropriately for her crimes.

The orb faded away eventually and Maido's frail human form began to fall gently from the sky towards the ground. Snapping to, Maido's face contorted with rage as she produced a blade of acidic chiton and launched herself at Ikanbi. "Let's fucking have a go then!" She screamed at Ikanbi, whom parried Maido's strike with her own blade made of acid and sand.

Some more civlians had shown up now and what they and Shuichi watched was a sight to see. Ikanbi and Maido were rather evenly matched in the way of the sword it would seem, or at least, they both had a rather interesting series of tricks up their sleeves that made it incredibly difficult for either of the two of them to do particularly anything of significance to the other.

Maido struck, Ikanbi parried.

Ikanbi struck, Maido parried.

Maido struck, Ikanbi dodged.

Ikanbi struck, Maido dodged.

Maido struck, Ikanbi let it and then returned a strike.

Ikanbi struck, Maido let it and then returned a strike.

The both of them stepped into position and pierced their blades precisely where they thought their opponent's heart should be and the both of them smiled at each other and laughed when they realized exactly why both of them had failed to kill each other just then.

"You too?" Maido said.

"Of course." Ikanbi responded.

Of course they had both relocated their cores to somewhere other than where their heart should be. Why wouldn't they?

The two of them traded swords, ripping the blades out of their chests almost in unison and then going back at it again with the swinging, parrying, and dodging.

Ikanbi and Maido swung at the same time whilst channeling chakra and a blast of acidic chiton met a blast of acidic sand and the force of the impact created a crack in the ground that extended all the way down the road. The two of them began going at each other faster now, it seemed to Shuichi that they were actually enjoying it.

It was becoming harder for the civlians to keep up with their movements as Ikanbi and Maido began increasing their speed, pushing themselves further and further in an attempt to overpower the other. The nearby buildings were beginning to be affected, the civilians had to dive out of the way to avoid shrapnel of sand, chiton, acid, and debris. Chunks of road were torn up and tossed around, windows shattered.

Even Shuichi was having a hard time following their fight now, for the speed at which the two of them were moving had increased even further, they were on a level that he just wasn't at yet, his eyes just couldn't keep up. The only evidence that were even two souls fighting at all was the resounding clang of their swords against each other and the destructive effects of their jutsu colliding against each other.

The world around Maido and Ikanbi was being destroyed. What wasn't on fire was crumbling due to the affliction of acid mist rolling around and weakening the structure.

"What the hell am I watching?" Shuichi said finally quite loudly from below after this sort of behavior had gone on for a few minutes.

[Sia]

Maido reached out into the crowd with a surge of chiton chakra, a red plume of mist escaping from her fingertips towards their nostrils in an attempt to takeover control of the body. Ikanbi caught the act and decided she was just done with Maido, enough was enough.

"I said NO!" Ikanbi slammed her two palms together hard and a surge of chakra shot out of them so loudly it terrified those nearby, the loudest thunder they'd ever heard. The combined Kuuton and Fuuton dissected Maidos body into several dozen pieces at once, leaving her core exposed to Ikanbi finally, but she pieced herself back together with an encroaching red mist that spewed out from between the pieces of herself and filled in the blank spots, causing bits of Maido to merely fall to the floor while other bits of her healed in and repaired itself. Ikanbi actually had a terrible time trying to decipher where she could strike through to get to the core, it was proving to be quite the chore after all.

Surging with chakra, Ikanbi had only a few ideas left. Again a loud thunderclap as she slammed her hands together and Maidos body was forcefully splintered into many many pieces, though this time Ikanbi dashed through the mass of it with the aid of her trusty boots and grabbed Maidos core directly out of her body, then took another step and planted her foot onto thin air and jumped, bringing Maidos core away from the rest of the body as the red tendrils reached out from Maidos core and began to wrap around Ikanbi, though found that touching Ikanbi was actually incredibly unpleasant in every sense of the word, being that she was made of acid and sand.

"Shit shit shit what are you made out of?" Gasped Maido in pain as her red tendrils recoiled from Ikanbi's body and Ikanbi continued to carry her core away from the rest of her body.

"Acid Sand."

"What the fuck?!"

Jumping higher and higher into the air with the assistance of the boots of Springhill Jack, Ikanbi took Maidos core high above the tallest building before she began her work.

Her body surged with chakra and black rings began to form around herself. One at a time they reached around Maido and her core and bound themselves tightly to it.

"NO!"

"Your time is over Maido, it ends today!"

"STOP!!!"

"It's over."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"

Maidos final defiant scream was cut short as an incredible force of Kuuton crushed her core from every side and compressed it to the size of an eraser tip, killing Maido on the spot and releasing her soul from its ruby prison. From where Shuichi had been standing below he and the civilians could see the entire thing. They all saw the red mist escape from the tiny gem as it was compressed.

They were all witness to the thirteenth death.

Ikanbi began slowly walking back down, carefully utilizing her boots to create false platforms for herself so as not to fall too quickly, she stopped in front of Shuichi.

"I'm sorry, it had to be done." Was all Ikanbi said to him before she turned and smiled to the civilians, whom were busy cheering and screaming and hollering Ikanbis name through the streets.

To Shuichi, a great blow had been dealt but to the world? A great gift had been given. A world without Maido was a better world indeed, Ikanbi knew this to be true, especially after having seen the way the blood witch so brazenly used random civilians to fuel her jutsu. She shook her head. "I guess we better get ready to start making repairs." Ikanbi said to Shuichi.

"No, no...I think I can help with that." Shuichi said with a grin and began sending out waves of Kouton and doton chakra to piece back together the damaged buildings. It was a slow, tedious task, but it was the least he could do to help out.

Ikanbi hadn't meant to become a hero of the people, she had merely just been in the right place at the right time. She hadn't noticed the streets had been flooded with people watching the great fight, she hadn't known that Maido had been terrorizing the town for weeks. She'd had no idea at all, she'd just merely arrived that day and immediately put a stop to Maido's antics without hesitation.