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Volume 2, Chapter 18: Worthy of Carrying On That Name. The First Friday of October.

“I finally found you, Hanzou-sama,” quietly spoke a ninja girl, a chain wrapped all around her body.

She was in the above-ground section of District 22. Unlike the other districts, almost 100% of District 22’s functionality as a city was underground, so the above-ground area was entirely covered by a wind farm. A metal framework that was built up to about thirty stories above ground spread out in every direction like a jungle gym, and wind turbines were placed all over it.

Standing amid that odd turbine-filled scenery was a boy with a bandana wrapped around his head.

His name was Hanzou, and he was leaning up against a piece of metal framework that was standing up on end like a pillar. He was staring at a girl named Kuruwa who was wearing a yellow mini-yukata that had a see-through midriff.

“Really. I went out of the way to disguise my status and hide in this city, yet you still spend half a year running after me. What has you so intent on hunting me down?”

“The revival of the pure line of Hattori and the revival of the Iga,” Kuruwa responded without hesitation.

However, Hanzou only sighed when he heard that.

“I think you’re a little confused about what a ninja is.”

“...”

“A ninja was originally a bandit hired by some powerful military commander; it wasn’t something that had ‘pure lines’ or anything. Sure, some of that started later, but the farther you look into our origin, the more it becomes clear that a ninja can really just be anyone.”

Hanzou put his hands in his pockets as he spoke.

“Listen up, Kuruwa. A ninja should be like a weed and think like a poisonous insect and have a supporting role... By the time we have ‘pure lines’, we can’t survive in this world. Do you know why? We live hidden in the darkness, so if we give off that much light, people will send a concentrated attack on that light and kill us all.”

“That just shows that we ninja are afraid of influential people. But an age where we can move on more efficiently has come.”

“Do you want a place to be that badly?” said Hanzou, shaking his head.

What was truly unfortunate was that he thought she was an idiot, yet still understood how she felt.

“Look, let me give you a tip: learn to be like a weed, think like a poisonous insect, and honor your own supporting role. Weeds are everywhere, we will never be rid of poisonous insects, and the supporting roles blend into the background. Taking all of that together and condensing it gives you the essence of what a ninja is.”

“So, you refuse to understand.”

“Well, you’re not putting much effort into convincing me.”

“Then...”

A metallic noise was heard from Kuruwa’s sleeve. Her left arm was bare up to the shoulder, but her right one was covered by a long sleeve. When she moved even slightly, the chain wrapped around her body could be heard.

“If I cannot convince you, I will force you to surrender and make you become a part of the Hattori revival by my own hand.”

“That’s a rather extreme proposal. Do you want to have my babies or something?”

“If it is necessary, yes. Even if it is by force.”

Hanzou sighed at Kuruwa’s completely serious response.

“Are you going to pull out a gun?”

“I-I stopped doing that. I was told it was not ninja-like.”

“?”

“A-also, guns are complex, so their operation can become unstable, and there are ways for others to intentionally cause such instability.”

Hanzou looked puzzled, and Kuruwa spoke as calmly as she could.

“There are some guns that can be made to fail by bending the magazine by as little as 1 mm. I felt it was better to face you with something simpler.”

A loud metallic noise rang out.

A sickle about 30 cm long flew out from Kuruwa’s sleeve. The chain wrapped around her body came off, and the end was connected to the sickle. The other end of the chain was at the metal shackle around her ankle.

“A kusarigama.” Hanzou narrowed his eyes with his hands still in his pockets. “That isn’t a ninja weapon. It is an unconventional hidden weapon, but it stands out too much.”

“...”

Kuruwa did not respond.

However, this was not because she was trying to defeat him silently without exchanging words.

It was because Hanzou had leapt straight towards her with tremendous speed.

Kuruwa gasped and attempted to fall back, but Hanzou had already taken his final step forward. At some point, he had taken his right hand out of his pocket. He brought his hand back as if readying a punch.

However, there was something shining up his sleeve.

By the time she noticed that, his five fingers were already soaring towards her face.

“!?”

He was moving too quickly for her to move her entire body out of the way, so Kuruwa moved her head to the side, barely managing to avoid the incoming attack.

“An uchine...!!”

“This is a ninja weapon.”

In Hanzou’s hand was an extremely short arrow only about 15 cm long. This arrow was used for stabbing, not throwing. Because of this, this type of assassination blade was known as the world’s shortest spear.

As Hanzou’s next strike came, Kuruwa had no choice but to wrap the thick chain around her hand and use it for defense. The proper way to use a kusarigama was to create centrifugal force, throw the weighted chain, and then strike with the point of the sickle once the chain had been wrapped around the enemy’s weapon. However, with multiple attacks coming from right in front of her, she didn’t have time to swing the chain around to create centrifugal force.

Kuruwa gritted her teeth as she was forced to go on the defensive.

Hanzou wasn’t fighting seriously.

A true ninja technique would kill on the first strike, and if that failed, the ninja would quickly flee. If Hanzou was violating that theory, he must have been intending to quietly take care of her in order to silence her.

“You’re taking me lightly...!!”

Kuruwa abandoned her polite manner of speaking and swung the chain while she held it in both hands. The attack had no centrifugal force behind it and was a bit like a jab, but Hanzou still had to swing his head back to avoid it.

In the opening that was created, Kuruwa managed to put a good amount of distance between them.

She moved behind the metal pillar to one of the wind turbines perhaps in order to get behind cover.

“...!!”

Hanzou immediately moved forward.

Without even giving Kuruwa a chance to compose herself, he used the momentum he obtained from swinging around the pillar to attack from the side.

The uchine’s arrowhead stabbed forward, tearing through fluttering yellow cloth.

However, Hanzou’s face darkened.

All that was there was the abandoned yukata.

He heard the sound of air being sliced.

He looked over and saw Kuruwa coming around the other side of the pillar as if she had gone around at the same time he had. She, now only wearing her underwear, had used the time that she had bought for herself to start swinging the chain around. The chain was travelling in a circle with a meter-long radius. Hanzou felt a sense of danger as he saw the weight go around again and again, building up speed and force.

Here it comes!!

The thrown chain was used for being wrapped around weapons, and the tip of the sickle was used for attacking once the enemy’s movements had been cut off.

The one good thing about the kusarigama was that it was easy to guess its timing. As it swung around, amassing power, it had to be released at the right angle with the right timing or else the weight would fly off in some odd direction.

As the weighted chain spun, it made a whooshing noise.

Hanzou concentrated, and heard a conspicuously louder whoosh.

Dodge...!?

He moved his center of gravity to the side in preparation to jump, only to realize that Kuruwa hadn’t let go of the chain yet.

The louder whoosh he had heard had just been Kuruwa mimicking the noise with her mouth.

“Oh, shi—”

Hanzou had realized what had happened, but he couldn’t correct his altered center of gravity instantly. Due to this hesitation, when the chain actually soared towards him, he couldn’t move in time.

When she released the weighted chain, Kuruwa was convinced of her victory.

Hanzou could not avoid her attack. The thick chain would wrap around his right arm, and seal his movements. Then, Kuruwa just had to pull hard on the chain to unbalance him, and finish it with her sickle.

She had the absolute advantage, but she was wrapped in a kind of loneliness.

Was this all that Hanzou’s power, the power of the Hattori line, was?

As she ground her teeth, her chain headed accurately for Hanzou’s arm.

The chain headed for the area between his armpit and elbow, and started to wrap around his arm, clothes and all, like a snake.

However, the chain slipped right through Hanzou’s arm, and continued on at an unexpected angle.

“Wha—?”

Kuruwa stumbled forward from the momentum of the chain continuing on unexpectedly.

Instead of wrapping around Hanzou’s arm, the chain had flown right through it like it was made of Japanese paper. It took Kuruwa a second to realize what had happened.

Hanzou’s right arm swayed loosely.

He had taken his arm out of the sleeve, and Kuruwa had attacked the empty sleeve.

Hanzou’s actual right arm must have been in the main body of his jacket.

He couldn’t attack with his uchine like that.

However, there was no guarantee that he only had an uchine in his right hand.

Hanzou dashed forward. Kuruwa attempted to defend with the chain, but it didn’t work the way she wanted it to due to her body having been pulled forward by the momentum of the chain.

She only lost a split second due to that, but it was enough for Hanzou to make a decisive approach.

“E...”

In that instant, Kuruwa smiled for some reason.

As that strike approached before her eyes, the girl wishing for the revival of the Hattori line smiled.

“Excellent, Hanzou-sama!!”

Something was shining in Hanzou’s left hand.

Hanzou silently looked down at Kuruwa’s face.

The girl was collapsed on the ground wearing nothing but her underwear, but she had no obvious bleeding. At the last second, he had drawn in the uchine in his hand and struck her with his fist.

“...Dammit. Don’t look so happy when I defeat you.”

Hanzou clicked his tongue.

She did not live like a traditional ninja. Her willingness to even die for a single goal was more of a samurai bushido kind of thing.

He couldn’t do that.

He was a ninja that was like a weed, like a poisonous insect, and had a supporting role. Even though he had permanently lost his friend Komaba and at least temporarily lost his friend Hamazura, he was just living his normal life alone.

A ninja wasn’t particularly strong or remarkable.

As the previous fight had shown, the way of the ninja was to use some kind of trick to bring the rhythm of battle in their favor, and then use an opening to attack from a blind spot.

Because of this, someone who was no one special like Hanzou wouldn’t take part in fights where he couldn’t take out the enemy in a single blow. He understood the basics of living as a spy.

What a pain in the ass...

Hanzou shook his head, and picked up Kuruwa’s abandoned mini-yukata. Even though she was a kunoichi trained in those techniques, he couldn’t let her stay there half-naked. He started to drape the mini-yukata over her like a sheet.

“...”

But then he felt a piece of paper.

He searched through the mini-yukata’s sleeve, and found a small report inside.

A Gemstone list...?

Even within Academy City, there were rumors of natural espers known as Gemstones. Kuruwa may have been trying to create a new ninja group out of those people.

Strictly speaking, ninja were scientific people, and unlike Hanzou, Kuruwa was aiming to create a flashy, extravagant, and pure ninja group. With that goal, a unit made up only of Gemstones must have sounded pretty appealing.

However, that wasn’t what made Hanzou frown.

He held the list of Gemstones in his hand and thought,

...Why does Kuruwa have a classified Academy City document?

She was a ninja descendant, but it had taken her almost half a year to corner Hanzou. She may have specialized in blending into the background and mixing in with a group, but he didn’t think she had the ability to gather information from a wide area.

Whoever prepared this list was using Kuruwa to do something. But who? And what were they after?

He thought for a bit, but couldn’t come up with an answer.

...What is happening in this city?

The sound of the report being crumpled came from Hanzou’s hand.