“Try again, you old fuck!” Zoey didn’t even raise her fists.

The only form of defense in her Playful Boxing form was avoidance and offense. Zoey waited till the old man was in range. She flared her mahna around her to sense when he was coming, but he didn’t even bother to act all assassin-like. He came straight toward her like a mad bull.

Zoey shrugged as she didn’t mind it. In fact, this would make things a lot easier on her. An assassin that’s lost their cool wasn’t much of an assassin at that point. He was just another opponent that needed a beatdown!

His sickle came flying to her throat in an instant. Zoey responded with a full-power uppercut, only for the old man to go all ghost-like. As soon as he passed through her, he quickly landed and turned back around to decapitate her again. Zoey met him once again as she threw a downward punch from a high angle to demolish his skull. Just like before, he went through her.

The two then engaged in multiple false exchanges with each other. Zoey danced around with her fists while Hayasaka turned into an uncatchable blur. No matter how much he used his mahna to increase his speed, Zoey seemed to be able to stay on his level exactly. It didn’t matter if he came at her diagonally, horizontally, or vertically. Her fist would always be ready to meet him wherever he was coming from.

“Are you going to kill me or dance with me? I don’t know about you, but I'm getting pretty bored of playing tag with the wind.” Zoey mocked him as she held her gloves on her waist, looking down on him in an arrogant manner. ‘Wait, wind?’ Zoey suddenly had an idea.

“...” Hayasaka didn’t bother to waste his breath on the child that was soon going to die by his hands.

Hayasaka tossed multiple shurikens as he dashed forward. With a flash of her fists, Zoey’s gloves easily swatted the ninja toys out of the air. Her eyes always focusing on Hayasaka’s position. She gave a mocking grin when he threw the chain attached to the sickle toward her but missed. It flew over her shoulder, and Zoey ignored her inner self’s instincts to laugh at him for missing.

She wasn’t a bad guy! Zoey was like the protagonist! So, that meant no stupid decisions in the middle of a life-or-death fight! Instead of mocking the old man some more, Zoey grabbed the chain after it flew past her and pulled with all her strength.

The old man immediately let go after his weapon was caught, pulling out the ninja blade on his back. It was when Zoey saw this that she got confused. Then she thought about it and realized it made sense. Like with Hayato, the connate magji of the Hanma Clan doesn’t allow them to go intangible when they are in contact with someone else. He probably wasn’t expecting her to grab the chain he missed, and because she did, he had to get rid of it or risk harm to himself.

“Am I really that scary, Mister Head Assassin?” Zoey couldn’t help but let out a haughty tone. “One punch from me isn’t going to kill ya, you know?” She was a little pissed off trying to catch this old ghost, and the strain from Overdraft was hurting like a bitch.

“Annoying child!” Hayasaka raged.

“How about this, we’ll both exchange a single hit at the same time. You hit me, and I hit you. If you’re lucky, you might even kill me in one hit! Does that sound fair?” Zoey tried to scam him.

Hayasaka didn’t seem interested in her scam as he ran forward with his dragon-engraved katana blade. Zoey sighed as she couldn’t even fight to her full strength against someone like this. Combo magji was useless since he wouldn’t even go out of ghost mode. Twisting Force was useless since he wouldn’t go out of ghost mode. Tracking him through his mahna from Mahna Gathering Bomb didn’t work since he wouldn’t go out of ghost mode.

Like a repeat of before, the head assassin flew past her without going tangible once when she could follow him step-to-step. Zoey’s fighting spirit was quickly draining by the second. It was going to be annoying, but she didn’t see any other way of handling this motherfucker. She just had to make sure she didn’t faint afterward.

In a matter of seconds, the two continued their dance at speeds normal people wouldn’t even be able to react to. Even some magjistars would be hard-pressed to see everything that Zoey and Hayasaka were doing. But their dance soon ended with a decisive spray of blood that shot into the air. Like the arc from the moon’s crescent, Zoey’s blood flew into the air. A deep cut sliced down Zoey’s back, but it wasn’t without a cost to the assassin that did so.

With an unnatural twist, Zoey snatched Hayasaka by the throat and forced him to the ground as the searing pain from her back enraged her. That was definitely going to leave a fucking scar, and Zoey had no clue if the magji world’s healers were good enough to eliminate scars. But that was for later. Now that she had this annoying old son of a bitch in her hands, she wouldn’t let him go until all her frustration was removed.

Hayasaka tried to stab his katana into her side but Zoey put an end to that by smacking it away with the back of her glove using Twisting Force. His hand twisted into something horribly mangled as he gritted his teeth. The old man tried to buck her off, but Zoey wasn’t trained by a former world champion just to get tossed off by some old man that probably didn’t even know the existence of ground fighting and submissions. She held her position and raised her left fist with an unnerving grin on her face. Another quick pang of pain came from her chest but quickly vanished once again.

“Someone as old as you couldn’t see a bait as obvious as that? I guess I wasn’t the only one eager to end this.” Zoey smashed her left fist into his old face.

The ground cracked beneath them. Zoey adjusted herself on top of the old man and began to let him have it. She mangled his other arm and legs just for her safety before getting started. Now it was time for the pounding. Her fist crashed into his side, and blood shot out from his mouth. Zoey’s bear mask was sprayed with his blood, but that meant nothing to her.

A punch to the liver caused him to let out a violent wheeze. A punch to the shoulder sent them burrowing slightly into the ground. A hammerfist to the forehead increased the depth of their small crater. Both normal Zoey and Inner Zoey couldn’t help but laugh as all of her frustrations and joy at winning the fight were released onto the old man’s body. To finish him off, they alternated lefts and rights to his face.

‘Hey, I think he’s going to die if we don’t stop.’

‘Die? Do you think someone that’s the head of an assassin clan would die to some punches from a girl probably not even half his age? Let’s just punch him some more!’

‘He pissed me off too, but I don’t think he deserves to die...’

‘Don’t be such a fucking poser. We both know that if someone tries to kill you, killing them back is only normal. It’s called self-defense for a reason.’

‘There’s a such thing as excessive self-defense! Which is a crime! Look at him, he can barely breathe!’

‘Fine, ya fucking wuss. But we ain’t going to go give him medical treatment. Leaving him crippled for life is probably worse than death anyway.’

Zoey lifted herself off Hayasaka and climbed her way out of the crater she had made. She met face-to-face with Hayato and nearly fell from shock! He grabbed her arm before she could fall and pulled her up. As Zoey was about to thank him and tell him that he scared her, he didn’t even look at her as he crouched down and looked at Hayasaka. Zoey’s social skills weren’t all that good, but even she could tell he was going through some tough stuff. Well, when the place you call home gets destroyed and the person who did it standing right next to you, anyone would get emotional.

“How strong was he in comparison to you?” Hayato suddenly asked after a few moments.

“Gimme a second...” Zoey was suffering from overusing Overdraft, and her body hurt like absolute fucking hell right now.

She was trying to keep herself from screaming as the toad ring she got from Victor licked at her wounds. The inanimate toad on the ring became animate and grew in size to the size of a normal toad. It happily licked at the fresh sword wound on her back with eagerness in its actions. This nasty frog’s saliva had regenerative properties. Once it ran out of saliva, it would shrink down, jump back on her ring, and turn into stone again.

“He’s my father,” Hayato revealed. “And I hate him, but I can’t watch him die like this...”

“Yeah, that’s fine or whatever. Get him healed but keep him crippled. If he’s not, I'll cripple him again. See ya later, Hayato. Thanks for sticking around even though you definitely could’ve teamed up with your dad to kill me.” Zoey could barely focus on Hayato with her body screaming at her in pain.

“... See you later, Zoey...” Confliction ran through Hayato’s mind and body as he grabbed his father and made his way to the Star Clan. The only magjistar group known for their connate healing magji.