Skaven and his challenger took off at each other at the same time, almost as if they were men of the same blood. Brothers in arms, of a sort. Both started out with the same move as well, taking it up and throwing a backward sole stamp while turning. The Sharp Palm was a subtle style, a scalpel amongst stones, swords, and hammers. This particular move was the lone hammer in the fold–an opener of even the stoutest defenses so that the fearsome assassination style could reign free.
Much to his surprise, it was Skaven who flew back and fell flat on his back, doing his best to repurpose the momentum into a back roll. Such was truly the case that the skill of both him and his challenger was on par. The deciding factor of this collision wasn't a difference in skill. It was brute strength. This dandy ginger just threw a meaner foot stamp, that was all. That was why Skaven flew back and his opponent fumbled back on his feet and salvaged his descent, rushing in to exploit his opening.
A loud pop demanded Skaven's attention as he hustled to get into a proper stance to defend himself. It came from something that hid behind a cloud of dust at the moment but when a stiff, hardwood object swung with the aerial shriek of a mallet in-motion and socked Skaven right in the back of his head, jerking his belfry downward, the challenger literally hammered the point of his fighting style of choice inside of Skaven's head.
"A cane?" Skaven thought to himself. "The man fights with a walking cane?"
Seeing how such a crude yet simple tool, not meant for the task at hand, was not sufficient for bringing Skaven down entirely. The dapper challenger kicked with his left leg, aiming low. A stiff shot at the back of the middle section of his right leg tripped Skaven up and further squandered his balance. That was when the air began brushing against Skaven's hair and ears and his head began wringing. Only the pain in the Nara's chin reminded the punk of the flawless backflip kick that his opponent performed before striking a pose with his cane. Just an inch away from landing, the classy man swung again in an uppercut, as if aiming to cut Skaven through in half with his walking stick.
Skaven coughed up blood as if felt like his eyes and his teeth would check out and walk away right out of his sockets and mouth. The Nara grunted down on his knees as he clutched his busted gut while his challenger swung his cane around and deposited it under his armpit, punching and kicking from the shoulder with a stout sense of balance to his footing. Skaven hadn't met a hand-to-hand combatant with such perfect footwork. While important, footwork was more essential to swordsmen rather than brawlers who could grapple from a low position or perform acrobatics from high and didn't rely nearly as much on balance for perfect execution of their techniques.
Tossing his cane up into the air with a showy manner, the dapper gent grabbed hold of the other end of it and strut onward, swinging it around bravely, intending to knock Skaven out with his walking tool. It became difficult to follow the flurry of strikes as Skaven stumbled back, seeing stars from the various points of impact. With each strike, the cane let out a gruesome thud that appeared to test its own integrity at all times. Had it not been for chakra coating, such brutish impact would have shattered the cane into shreds needle-thin.
The man wasn't entirely without a flaw in his form. However, Skaven caught a moment when he delivered an upper strike, rising from the floor to the bottom of Skaven's chin. While the Nara punk took the impact and fell the despicable, iron taste of blood in his mouth from it while the crunch of it shook up the teeth in his gums from their roots, the trajectory was flawed for it allowed Skaven to reestablish his own sense of balance and stand back up on the ground in term of the footwork of his own. Immediately after this strike the Nara shifted his feet around and brought himself back into the bash.
With a rushing upper palm strike, Skaven disoriented his opponent, smacked his head back, and distracted his eyes just for a moment. Skaven knew it wouldn't last, for he had just recovered from just such an assault. That was why the Nara used his hard-earner time of his opponent's daze better by jumping up and sole-butting with a spinning sole stamp, shattering his opponent's stance at once while Skaven jabbed with his palms as if they were the tips of knives that he was relentlessly thrusting at the throat of the spry sir.
Evening his upper body with a perfectly static thrust kick, Skaven socked in the center of his opponent's chest and threw him back. Not content with just this much punishment, the Nara punk rolled right back into the mix with palms raised up. The dainty challenger tried to respond to Skaven's aggression with thrusts of his cane, but Skaven rolled around the object, weaving like a true close-range bruiser until he moved in too close for comfort when fighting with a cane.
An upper smack threw his opponent's attention off. Skaven repeated it twice to strengthen the effect because he needed time to execute his follow-up. What he started as yet another upper slap, the Nara transitioned into a rotational chop with palms of both his arms before transitioning further into a windmill kick and taking a kneeling stance.
"Shadow Slam Jutsu!" Skaven chanted out, sending a wave of shadows rushing toward his opponent but the man was no longer there when the wave washed in his previous location, having moved out of the range and avoided being entangled into the wave and crushed to the dirt alongside it before it dispersed. "So, you've finally shown me something? You're a genuine mystery, you know that? Wearing a storage seal around your wrist, under the sleeve of your shirt yet storing nothing but a walking cane that isn't custom made for fighting inside it. I'm not sure if you're mocking me or testing me for something."
"You're right to a point. I may have underestimated you. I've never been a fan of you so I may have let my personal feelings think that beating you down to a pulp won't be that much of a challenge. This will teach me I need to prepare better in the future." The clean challenger cracked his neck and knuckles while holding his cane under his armpit and slipping it into his hand as he poked it out like a rapier after he was done whipping himself back into fighting shape.
"In the future…?" Skaven muttered to himself.
Just as his opponent prepared to lunge at him with his cane in hand, Skaven weaved his hands together while taking a knee and sent a line of his shadow extending toward his opponent. While the man's eyes clearly followed the line of shadow, the object of his close observation warded off to the side, prompting the elegant cane-fighter to falter in his resolve to keep on advancing. By the time that the ginger turned to his right to follow the line of shadows, it was too late for him.
"There is more than one thing that has a shadow to connect with. Shadow Prison Jutsu!" Skaven yelled out, expanding the shadowy mass into a bubble, carrying boulders and debris right out of the ground. The young trees cast a feeble shadow over the ground they covered in hair-thin shade, though the Nara hijutsu were more than capable of expanding that shadowy area, as long as there was a shadow to connect with.
The challenger braced for impact, taking a mean brush of a ripped chunk of the dirt that carried him away and left the dapper gent covered in dirty scrapes. The man picked himself off the ground, wiping dust and dirt off his face, picking his cane back up, and taking a fighting stance. For how dashing the man had tried to make himself out to be, Skaven would have believed him to be of a frailer fighting spirit.
"Your breathing is picking up. What's the matter? Used a decent bit of your chakra already, haven't you?" the challenger noticed. Skaven raised his eyebrow. While the man formed his address as a question, it certainly didn't sound like much of an inquiry, rather it was somewhat of a mockery that didn't require confirmation.
"Does he know my approximate chakra capacity? How? I can't be giving out that many signs of chakra exhaustion yet…" Skaven wondered to himself before the man took off again. With a crude grunt, the Nara took a knee again and weaved his hands together, sending out a line of shadows toward his opponent. Once again, the man's eyes darted off toward the floor. It was as if he knew what he had to look out for and when Skaven's jutsu would have connected with him.
Somehow, the Nara had to use all the tricks in his book to succeed. The shadowy line splintered into a spark-like shower of thinner threads, and all of them disappeared in minor crevices in the dried dirt underneath. Thinking he had evaded the shadowy embrace or rather having figured out that he needed to rush through this, Skaven's challenger lunged further, dashing past the shadowy line as he threw himself toward Skaven while he was still using his Nara hijutsu.
"Shadow Prison Jutsu…" Skaven chanted, as the emerging shadowy treads molded back into a singular mass, emerging from crevices where bulbs of trees not yet planted will go soon enough. A massive, dark bubble lifted off the ground with Skaven's challenger still inside it. "Release!" Skaven yelled out, dispelling the shadowy mass in a hefty blast. It was as if it was a water balloon flung against a wall as it imploded within itself with immense pressure, squeezing anything or anyone trapped within out from the rising, tremendous crushing force.
"You're using Transformation Jutsu, aren't you?" Skaven fixed the collar of his jacket as he stood back up and observed his fallen opponent. "Your clothes, your appearance, no matter how much damage you take in this bout, it all seems the same. Almost as if you're not actually wearing them and you've transformed into them. It's not a dazzling idea to sustain a Transformation Jutsu during a fight, it sort of ties your hands behind your back in terms of other jutsu you can use."
That was when the pleasant popping sound followed by a lively cloud of dust swallowed Skaven's challenger. As the man had suffered huge damage from Skaven's improvised dissolution of his usually more supplementary and supportive Shadow Prison Jutsu, he had fallen into a state where he could either no longer sustain the transformation or he merely realized what Skaven had been telling him this whole time–that he couldn't win against his opponent while under hefty handicaps such as having to hide his true fighting style and disguise his appearance.
"N-No way… You? What the hell are you doing here, you dumbass?" Skaven beamed a serious glare at his opponent, having shaken off the apathetic squint that he carried himself around with. A twitching, ghastly figure rose from the ground, bleeding profusely but expelling powerful chakra that molded with the man's dark nature and sustained his miraculous return to fighting form. The true face of Skaven's battered challenger twisted in wrath like that of a growling dog and it became apparent that the Nara ended up facing a violent and rabid animal and not a man.
Shige extended her hand to Mana. It was difficult to see it at first, as the magician's vision had become blurry from the roughhousing that she suffered at her sparring partner's hand. While deep down Mana knew Shige wanted her to stumble into the concept for her Advanced Bloodline and successfully use it in battle, some part of Mana wondered if this wasn't also a genuine attempt of Shige to get back at her fellow Stars member for having humbled the leader of Stars earlier.
"You know, it'd be a lot easier to think and work my magic if you weren't beating on my face the entire time." Mana accepted Shige's hand, and the leader hoisted her ally and friend back up on her feet.
"Doesn't feel so great when you're the one being handicapped, huh?" Shige smiled at Mana, looking as rich as someone whose face someone had etched onto a coin.
"Just saying…" Mana winked a few times of her own will, decisively, trying to shake off the feeling of multiplying vision and wobbly legs. "I'm not sure I even know what I want to accomplish with my Advanced Bloodline yet."
"I didn't want to tell you this but there was absolutely no chance that you'd make something work right now," Shige-H sighed with hands over her hips. "Talented as you are, if you just started using an Advanced Bloodline release out of nowhere just because you knew what you wanted to do with it, it would have squandered all the luck and goodwill you had reserved for the rest of your life. It took me an entire year until I could make the Unmaker Fist work even after I knew exactly what properties of what elements it would borrow and what it was meant to be."
"I just… I don't know where I should even start with the concept for my Advanced Bloodline ability. Using the devastating and shocking power of Lightning Release with the free and flexible nature of Wind Release might be an interesting combination…"
"That'd be a pain. Wind Release is supposed to be strong against Lightning Release, so you'd have to strike the right balance of the two where your Wind Release doesn't dispel the Lightning Release. You have no idea how difficult it is to make Wind Release and Fire Release work together without blowing everything up in your face." Shige-H said while stretching out with awkward, weary moves and nodding back toward the compound of the Allied Ninja.
The place had currently become just a fenced-off camp filled with tents of varied sizes as the Four-Tails had blown away more than half of their previous hive-shaped facility and it would have been simpler to rebuild than to repair the old one and still make it safe for educational and administrational usage. For now, the Allied Ninja were just a military compound under the wasteland sky. The organization had been at their weakest they've ever been and around half of the surviving members had to scout the various directions of the wasteland for potential raiders of one of the ninja villages had decided to wipe an organization that defied their authority out for good.
It was especially a headache-inducing worry knowing how gung ho Kumogakure had been lately. Having recently completely conquered and submitted Iwagakure to their will, they may have been looking for their next challenge to flex their impressive military might. Especially given how the remains of the Allied Ninja were situated right by their doorstep, in the Land of Lightning wasteland, the same one where Kumogakure was in as well.
"Well, at least I have some more clarity and direction in my training now. Even elementary spoken instructions from someone who knows what they're talking about can easily peel off years of fruitless training so… Thanks." Mana nodded in gratitude.
"Don't mention it. Things are going to get pretty wild soon enough when the Supreme Leader gets the handle of administrative matters and the paperwork and starts sending us out on missions and all. I'm just looking out for all the Stars, actually." Shige-H shrugged, looking mighty proud of herself even though Mana hadn't really shown any progress in displaying an Advanced Bloodline ability from where she started.
In terms of intelligence and proper mindset, however, Mana had been leagues ahead from the initial point. Mana must have looked quite sullen on their way back into the compound as Shige-H kept turning her head at her friend and building up strength for the big shot.
"Say, are you sure you don't have an idea about your Advanced Bloodline concept? Because you look troubled and since it's only been a while since our training, I figure it has to be related." Shige wondered.
"Well, now that you…" Mana shrugged her shoulders before seeing some action in the medical tents and sensing some familiar chakra there. Since it had been at a diminished level, worry instantly sparked in the ninja magician's chest and she punted the question off into the distance, taking off and dashing toward the medical tents.
"H-Hey!" Shige-H yelled out, surprised by Mana's sudden dash. "Whoa!" the leader of stars gasped when she saw Skaven covered in bruises and wrapped in bandages. "He definitely wasn't this way when we left him…"
"Yes. Skaven was one with common sense not to come and pick a fight with the Four-Tails. What happened to him?" Mana inquired of the handful of medical ninja tending to his wounds. "Is he going to be okay?"
"Please, just let us work and don't get in our way…" a grumpy medical ninja in a stuffy bodysuit and a full medical equipment including a hat and a facemask gently moved Mana out of her way before another medical ninja scolded her and removed his mask and hat.
"Hey, do you have any idea whom you're speaking with? You wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for Mana-san. This is one of your friends, right, Mana-san?" the medical ninja with ash-colored spiky hair pointed to Skaven while Shige-H unraveled her sleeves and jumped in to assist with the treatment.
"Y-Yeah, what happened to him?" Mana nodded, covering her mouth at the sight of rather grisly injuries. The poor guy had ribs and other fractures, bones sticking out and his face looked swollen, sick as if bashed a thousand times with a hammer before being flung face-first through a mountain.
"We're not sure yet. His life is not in danger. In fact, his injuries appear to be restrained, almost as if whoever did this to him avoided fatal injuries on purpose. He is in rough condition, though. I don't think he'll be telling us what happened to him exactly soon. The group restoring the woods around the training grounds area found him beaten to a pulp like this. We know little more than this." The medical ninja explained.
"Go back to the tent, Mana," Shige's tone became stricter as it became apparent that she had ample work to do and their sparring had left a taxing mark on the medical kunoichi already. At this point, it was a sense of personal responsibility for her own ally and a member of her squad that kept Shige going and her Mystical Palm Jutsu beaming. "I'll tell you everything we can put together when we do everything we can here."
It hurt. Seeing a friend of hers battered and broken like this, pummeled to a pulp and being unable to help at all. The only consoling thought was that Mana hadn't lost him, other than that–it was all envy of Shige and her ability to be helpful in times like these.
"Do you guys need anything? Water, tools?" Mana turned to the medical ninja, who shook his head and put his gear back on.
"Listen to your squad leader, Mana-san. Go back and try not to worry yourself sick. Your friend will make a full recovery, in time…" he replied.