"You can't just give in to this guy, Mana," Damisan turned to his friend as she hesitated to attack or straighten her back and leave her fighting stance.
"We won't let her either way. Once a Star, always a Star!" Shige-H clenched her fists.
"I don't plan on getting killed," Mana shook her head. "The Five Pillars Seal is an artifact from archaic times. It means that it follows the most archaic laws as well. If we beat this man and take it from him by force–he won't command the Seal anymore."
"Somewhere deep down I was hoping you'd say that," the armored killer admitted with a slight nod of his head. His Sword of the Thunder God hummed and crackled with stray sparks while the two parties prepared to clash surrounded by wounded Allied Ninja with a massive titan obliterating the rest of the Allied Ninja forces in the background.
"Let's go, the sooner we beat this man senseless, the more lives we can still save," Mana looked up straight through the lower two glass orbs which the armored killer viewed the world through. While she was addressing the Stars, requesting their aid to save as many lives as possible, she was also addressing this man in a way too–letting him know she was going to take this as seriously as she's ever taken a matter because of what this man put at stake.
Mana's hands moved in closer to one another aiming to form a clone technique hand seal. The man was like a bolt of lightning himself, diving in a straightforward charge, ignoring all threats around him, and rushing directly toward Mana. Something flashed inside of his helmet. It was a bright light that shined through the spaces in between sheets of armor, but rather a more ethereal glow. It was chakra being set-off and only Mana, as a sensor, could feel it.
It wasn't the sword that the man attacked Mana with. In that way, it was not an attack that she had anticipated. Mana moved her crossed arms to block the sword's swing, but it was just a feint. The killer's true attack came as sharp and swift double-finger pinches that stung like heated nails pushed through the skin. The man didn't intend on letting go either; he flung his crackling lightning sword into the air while using his freed hand to grab hold of Mana's collar and pull her in while his thrusting hand continued to pinch and strike at her.
Lightning bolts of silver and emerald shades blitzed in from the left and from the right as Shige-H and Damisan both dashed in to attack the man from both sides. The grizzled assassin grabbed hold of his falling Sword of the Thunder God while letting go of Mana's collar and striking her in the chest with an open palm, only to swing his sword around him and form a donut-shaped ring of light that sent Damisan and Shige-H staggering back in fear of being cut down.
Vision doubled. A sharp pain resonated through her nerves, rising from the heart, and something vexed her chest and forced Mana to cough up. Two drools of crimson extended down her lips and touched the grass underneath her feet as the magician slipped her jacket off and tossed it aside to look at her arms and her upper chest. Her eyes fixed on a myriad of nasty, red dots that suggested subtle internal bleeding localized in very specific areas.
"Tenketsu?" Mana muttered to herself. Almost at the same time as she's put her finger on the manner of the man's taijutsu style, she felt a grave weakness in her joints. Shige and Damisan weaved around wild swings of the Sword of the Thunder God but all of those were feints too, having trained in martial arts in the Sun Disc arena, Mana recalled what skilled feints looked like and this man was placing the two right where he wanted them, positioning them for a finishing blow he had already planned for ahead of time.
"Shadow Prison Jutsu!" Skaven's voice rung from behind the man, but he flipped his sword over his head and allowed it to imbed into the ground and expel a wild discharge of electricity that dispelled Skaven's shadow technique at once. Blades fashioned after bear's claws burst out from the killer's gauntlets as he thrust them toward Damisan's neck.
It hadn't been the kill-shot that Ion's father had hoped for as Damisan moved aside some, but he punched through Damisan's cylinder and slashed somewhere deep enough to send a splatter of blood squeezing through the hole and the claw plugging it. The killer's foot socked Shige-H right in the throat, sending the medical kunoichi wheezing in shock and skipping past the pale phase immediately to going blue. An elbow strike cracked through Damisan's cylinder, exposing a patch of his mangled face before the man whirled in mid-air and slashed at Shige-H, sending the leader of the Stars rolling back with a gash on her chest.
"Watch out for his taijutsu. This man is using the Byakugan, he's targeting your tenketsu!" Mana warned the Stars while rising back up for a round two. It was tough to believe that this man could be swift enough to interrupt all of her attempts to trick him or outplay him while handling all the Stars at once. It was as if he had taken his time studying them and planned this entire engagement thousands of times over, incorporating every eventuality into his mental simulation before executing it right now.
"Presumptuous," the armored killer grabbed his weathered hilt and undid the emergence of the Sword of the Thunder God before reigniting the sword once more in his hand once it was no longer stuck through the ground. "Yet feeling so sure of yourself, the folly of youth."
Having no more sleeves to slip cards from or her magician's uniform and all of its hidden pockets and mechanisms bit Mana in the ass right now. Her sleight of hand allowed her to slip cards out of the pair of pouches behind her waist while in mid-rush to meet her opponent who wouldn't let her use any ninjutsu unpunished but it was a far cry from how effective she could have made it while properly dressed for the occasion.
A card slammed right into the center of the assassin's helmet, releasing a loud clang and bouncing off of it, but it wasn't just a steel-tipped projectile. Once the sealing glyphs masquerading as a mosaic on the card's back lit up, a puff of choking smoke burst forth from the card as it burnt up on the spot as fuel for the noxious smokescreen. The killer leaned thrust his left arm still armed with gauntlet claws through the smoke, impaling Mana in mid-air but he kept his right arm on the ready as if aware that this was nothing more than an illusion.
To prove the man's primary instinct correct, the clone dissolved into flower petals, but the man's gleaming vizor shut down with iron lids covering it up. He turned around with his upper body still sunken inside of Mana's flashy smokescreen to cut behind him with the Sword of the Thunder God, which froze a version of Mana rushing in from the back and split her in half.
"Useless, my helmet comes equipped with noise and vision insulation. My vizor picks up on chakra signatures and warns me ahead of time. Your illusions are useless against me. You're just wasting more human lives you lie about caring so much," the assassin responded before the clone he had just slashed down twitched, and burst into a turbulent gale. "Wind Style Shadow Clone?" the killer grunted in surprise as his sword choked out of electricity when contacting the Wind Release reaction to slaying the clone.
The knockback also sent the ruthless avenger sliding back on the ground wide open as the erupting hurricane spread his arms to the side, deflecting them thusly. Now Mana found her time to rush through hand seals. It was a precious time, one she might need to work through blood and sweat to earn in the future.
"Mass Summoning Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, digging her teeth into her thumb while pressing her bleeding finger and her entire palm onto a rocky protrusion on the ridge and sinking in a cloud of picked-up dust. Once the dust had cleared out, a quartet of rabbits stood lined up in front of their summoner, willing to put their lives on the line as both parties have done on multiple occasions before.
Usuvilme bid his chompers on a large dagger he clenched in between his teeth while brandishing two entire handfuls of throwing knives in each hand. The chubby bunny looked like he could fully inflict some damage even without them. A female rabbit of pure white fur with a rippling blade encrusted with a line of gold on its blunt side and deep-blue gemstones resting on her puny shoulders turned to Mana.
"Dis has 'ta be dire for ye to call on me, Mana," Usukari observed as she had been one of Mana's rarer summons.
"Yeah, I know we've struck a deal and all, but I just kind of felt embarrassed to call you guys, anyway. I was just really used to fighting alongside Zoku and Bane-chan," Mana nodded. "The opponent is fully aware of my skills this time, however, I need to innovate a bit."
"Is dat da goddamned Four-Tails!?" Usuzoku freaked out, pointing his claymore in the distance at a thrashing, red ape breathing jets of all-decimating jade flames from its nostrils and its mouth while its rampant fists made the ground shake all throughout the continent.
"We'll deal with him later. This man might have an answer for that, so unless you want to fight Four-Tails on even terms, I suggest you take this fight seriously," Mana quickly put Usuzoku back in his place.
"If we do a good job here, Mana-san is going to call on us more often! We must prove ourselves!" Usubane clenched her tiny fists and waved her hard-tipped ears she used as an alternate pair of fists or flexible hammers of living tissue about.
"You could have used just about any technique under your belt and you called forth these soon-to-be fur coats?" the killer regained his composure and dragged his gauntlet to feel and correct his helmet and force the lids obstructing his vizors open with his hand as they malfunctioned after taking a hit from Mana's Wind Style Shadow Clone blowback.
"Wind Release shorts his blade out," Mana turned to her fellow Stars. "It's an incredibly dangerous sword that can cut through anything but it is still just really intense Lightning Release so a Wind Release jutsu of enough kick to it will shorten it out for a brief time."
"I guess we're lucky Mana's so well-read-up on things…" Damisan raised his right arm, taking aim at his opponent now that he was in mid-distance from each of his comrades and Damisan was free to attack him however he liked.
"Ninja Style: Lotus Arm Bloom!" Damisan chanted out while his arm segmented into separate rings and propped up rings of miniature missiles from in-between the separate segments. The missiles all took off in a series of barrage attacks, putting the assassin on the defensive though, despite his rather cumbersome-looking armor, the man had been skilled enough to dance around the missiles and put himself far enough away to dodge the blast of the resulting explosions as well, all except one missile, that flanked him and hit him on his right arm, forcing him to drop the ancient-looking hilt of the Sword of the Thunder God.
Before the cornered assassin could come up with a ruthless putdown while a minor scrape on his armor smoked from his shoulder, Shige-H blitzed in with a gleaming, wind-back fist and eyes looking for bloody murder. The killer thrust his crossed-up hands to intercept the attack at the central joint and redirect Shige-H's fist to the ground. A pillar of destructive energy boomed out from underground, sending both combatants sliding back with both their ears ringing.
It had only been once all the smoke had cleared out that the assassin looked around him and noticed that all the powerless hostages he could have used against Mana in the area were gone and that the Stars were now utterly alone against the enemy waging war against the entire Allied Ninja corps just to get to a pair of ninja he hated more than anything.
"This sucks…" little Tomi dangled her feet in mid-air, sitting atop of a tree. "Why do I always have to be on hostage clean-up duty?"
"Because you have potentially the highest number of available hands, feet, hooves, wings, backs, and trunks to pitch in?" Skaven scratched the back of his head.
"I see, perhaps not even I am beyond making miscalculations…" the killer admitted after a brief crack in his cool facade as a momentary chuckle.
"All you've been doing so far is miscalculate," Mana replied. "All because of your hatred. It makes you short-sighted, it makes you take foolish risks. The reason no one had ever beaten or captured you before, the reason you're so feared and respected in your circles that you used to not hate or get attached to anyone. Nothing you ever did was about the way you felt. It's only now that you hopped atop of a Tailed Beast and challenge the entire Allied Ninja head-on just so you could pick a fight you're not favorable to win in the first place."
"Maybe you are right, but it's all the same to me. After all the lives I've taken all the hits I've completed and all the money I've earned, all the skills I've picked up along the way, my daughter was the only thing to stay behind after me and make sure that what I did mattered at all. She was to inherit all of my skills, all of my reputation, and pass it down to her own descendants down the line. You've rendered my life worthless, you've pressed me to a corner and, frankly, I don't much care who lives and who dies, win or lose, the only thing that matters is that I have my retribution," the detached a tube from his chest and pulled off its lid to slip out a scroll. After unraveling it and placing his hand over it, he had unsealed a large, two-handed sword with two diamond-shaped blades to each side of the main one.
It made sense that he'd switch away from his Sword of the Thunder God now that Mana had shown she knew how to deal with it and let everybody in on that secret.
A bipedal elephant of sage-green skin bust through the woods and the rocks, grabbing hold of the first chunky boulder on its way toward the solitary target and swinging it to smack him aside. With basic chakra coating rushing up his blade, the armored veteran slashed through the stone, chopping a chunk off of the improvised weapon and kicking it aside while aggressively pressing on his advantage and fading out from view as he blitzed and flickered around the bemused, white-eyed elephant until the killer appeared behind the animal and lowered his large sword, allowing the dozens of cuts littering the ninja animal to open up all at once.
Another, violet elephant decorated with war paint burst roared and rumbled in the distance as it charged onward, the armored killer prepared to confront it just as he had fended off the other elephant but a roundhouse kick to his back sent the man fumbling onward and threw him off-guard. Mana's ninja rabbits and Tomi's own bunch had played together long enough to learn how to work together, and they did their best to watch out for one another. Because of Usubane's quick displacement attack, Zokaka's stout trunk swatted the killer aside and threw him in the center of a circle where the Stars and their summons surrounded him from all sides, resolute to beat the living daylights out of him until he lost control of the Five Pillars Seal.
"Fire Style: Fireball Barrage!" Mana chanted out, extending her hands out in front while she sent a flurry of head-sized fireballs rushing toward the assassin just to wear him out further, the man waved his triple-blade, diamond-shaped sword about, deflecting the attacks before leaving himself one-handed as he blocked another one of Usubane's flying kicks and promptly turned to block a combined push from Usuzoku and Usukari.
Leaving just one hand to compete with both ninja rabbits, the killer waved his gauntlet blades over his head to deflect Usuvilme's downpour of throwing knives before succumbing to Usuzoku's and Usukari's forceful push and stumbling back. A massive volume of earth hit the stumbling killer head-on as he grunted and dug his feet into the ground to struggle against the rushing force of mother nature punishing him. Against all odds, the veteran assassin lifted the building-sized earth dumpling over his head before Shige-H's triumphant roar resonated above it.
"Unmaker Fist!" Shige-H yelled out, as she threw her Advanced Bloodline enhanced punch straight into the core of her own dumpling and split it in half like a crashing bolt of heavenly lightning while her punishing fist dug into the man's fancy helmet and shattered it into steel shreds that melted away while the man himself rolled back with greasy hair of black and grey alike flashing before the Allied Ninja recruits.
"Your eyes…" Damisan noted, resisting to point his finger at the grisly sight only because he himself had been the target of such finger-pointing his entire life.
"That's right, taken from me by my own clan," the weathered assassin mustered up the strength to return on both feet as his face now laid exposed to the elements and his enemies. A face of a wrinkle-ridden man in the later stages of his life, strict and angular of facial features with shoulder-length, greasy, black, and grey hair split evenly over the middle. His eyes were white with silver irises and non-existent pupils, covered in a membrane while the surrounding area was covered in a line of scar tissue as if the man's eyes had been burnt out by pressing something scorching against his eye line.
"That spike of chakra you saw earlier, girl, it was not my Byakugan making its miraculous return. It was my helmet relaying information to me about your location. Your tenketsu, your vital points, I have them all here," the man pressed his fingers against his temple. "Unlike those stubborn fools of the Hyuuga clan, I don't need my eyes to show me my opponent's weaknesses anymore. Fortunate, because they don't show me much of anything at all."