"So what now? Isn't this kind of a dead end?" Thumb wondered. She was fostering some sort of passionate emotions deep inside and appeared to be itching to get her hands on Raitoncide. "Did he at least tell you anything before you let your fists fly?"
"I rarely, if ever throw fists. My hands are important in my other job." Mana pouted her lips having found an opportune moment to tease her companion before looking back at Thumb with a grin. "He did tell me everything we need to know though. I know where Yokotomo-san is holed up in and I am heading to end this right now."
"We can't really put anything resembling an operation in such a short time." Shira objected. He observed his colleagues placing the injured and tied up Ring into the carriage and rolling away.
"There is no need. Process and keep Raitoncide and Index detained. Let them go through the system, I'll be sending them company soon." Mana objected. She had no time to wait or for complex operations to be put together.
"With all due respect, you're repeating your mistakes, ma'am." Shira tried to oppose. "You may need us there. Middle Ring is likely to have all of his remaining men protecting him."
"That would be very convenient. All of the remaining Diamond Hand in one place…" Mana smiled before clutching her bruised ribs and dashing onto a roof of a nearby warehouse with a single leap. She was nowhere near her maximum and the encounter last evening certainly had sapped plenty of chakra all by itself, regardless, she had to have had enough to deal with a bunch of lowlife thugs.
Mana sensed a spike in a nearby chakra signature, Thumb dashed to her side.
"I'm not your ordinary Security officer. Let me assist." The burglar grinned.
"That would be preferable to nothing at all…" Shira relented at last.
With the Shukuba Security's approval, Mana and Thumb disappeared in a swift dash towards the mansion where Ring Ring said Middle Ring would be. Even if her wounds sustained in the lost battle against Index and Ring Ring still prevented Mana to travel the fastest she could or even let her move at all without any sharp backlash from her body, as aggravated by Mana's low remaining chakra, she had the willpower to go on.
"Do you think Raitoncide told you the truth?" Thumb wondered as she stayed by the magician's side, managing to keep up with Mana's building-to-building dashing she had not used in a while. Such speed of movement was sure to consume even more chakra but Mana was very careful not to augment her body in any way, just emit weak pulses of chakra from her feet with each landing that would throw her body onward.
"He had no reason not to. Judging from what I've gathered of Donyoku-san, it fits his profile too. The Middle Ring is someone of sophisticated artistic tastes. He spent his entire life dealing and studying art, scamming the town with lost and found treasure and buying useless property he soon turned into historic sites after treasure was found there. That was before he acquired a specific taste for high-rolling as a criminal." Mana voiced her own thoughts on what Raitoncide had told her and why she took his word seriously.
"That's odd… You usually refer to people with more respect than they're worth, you don't seem to refer to the Rings that way though, not always…" Thumb noted.
"It does not feel right adding honorifics to made-up names. But sometimes I think these might be the only names of the Rings I will ever get. That is why I feel glad I found out Donyoku-san's name. I know exactly how to refer to him…" Mana smiled through discomfort in her injuries and slight fatigue. Letting her remaining chakra approach such drastic lows as she did last evening made Mana's sleepless nights and streaks of hunger and thirst slowly catch up to her and remind her of just how fragilely human she was.
It was certainly an odd thing to be reminded of when traveling at breakneck speeds over rooftops and electric poles of the pleasure town, heading to the exact other side of the town and covering these distances within minutes or even seconds.
"You know, Thumb-san. You would really be better off heading to Konoha or one of the Fire Country law enforcement facilities to have your taboo seals looked at. I have some personal friends skilled at sealing techniques but I am afraid none of them are quite at the sufficient level to dabble in taboo seals yet…" Mana scratched the back of her head. Now that she was reminded of it, referring to Thumb with an honorific did feel really weird.
"If being unable to tell anyone my real name for the rest of my life due to a fear of a supernatural force strangling me as I do so is the worst I have to remember being a part of the Diamond Hand by, I'd be lucky…" Thumb noted as the two darted off with the mansion fully in sight.
Just a single glance at the luxurious dwelling house warranted the realization that Raitoncide was very unlikely to have lied about the place. The building was outright massive, a good four, spacious floors in size or classical architectural style. The building fit its function as a classy, spiritual retreat for the well-respected and admired Fire Temple priests very well.
"This is hilarious, what do priests that spit on material possessions have to do with this luxury? While Middle Finger is an A-Class prick, I am almost convinced not to consider taking it off their hands a crime…" Thumb joked as the two settled on a strong branch of an ancient and tall oak. Before they infiltrated the place, proper observation of it was in order.
"There are plenty of signatures in the front yard. Not only are they not priests, they are most likely waiting for an attack." Mana confirmed after opening her eyes back and breaking the intense concentration required to wrap her mind around all of the signatures present inside the place.
"So now you can tell how spiritual someone is with that handy third-eye of yours?" Thumb elbowed Mana's side just strong enough to send uneasy nerve pain sensations up and down the magician's body.
"Chakra signatures have a certain feeling, more profound ones have even a certain color to them, depending on how much a person lets a trait of their character define them. The chakra of a priest should not feel completely normal or be this small. Fire Temple priests' bodies and minds are temples all by themselves." Mana explained.
"Makes one wonder how they took this place off of them in the first place…" Thumb observed.
"Fire Temple priests may be formidable but they do not concern themselves with petty criminals, nor should they care much of the luxury of this place. There should not have been too many priests present this time of year at a place such as this. I reserve my predictions as to how it happened exactly but… There may not have been much of a struggle at all." Mana answered.
It was true that Raitoncide suggested that Donyoku may have paid the monks to let him use their building as a headquarters but Fire Temple monks would have cared little for ryo. A much more likely case would have been if the two parties struck a deal over a very spiritually important piece of art which Donyoku had in his possession. While both Index and Raitoncide were decent threats when together, they would not have fared too well against multiple monks…
Reluctant to begin the final siege, Thumb darted off like a sky-splitting arrow fired off from the heavens. Her nimble foot knocked down a guard present on the top of the wall surrounding the mansion yard with grace and subtlety. So much so that the rest of the crew did not notice the burglar before she leaned below the stone rail and concealed her presence.
Letting the wand in her hand lit up with sparks of lightning as chakra channeled through it, Mana joined her companion onto the wall. Opting to first deal with the guards with the advantage of the stone railings and the higher ground before advancing to the mansion through the yard. For now, Thumb's skillful touch allowed the two to evade detection and with some luck, such would be the case until at least their feet touched the floor yard.
With a wave of her shimmering with Lightning Release chakra Audra alloy wand, Mana fired off flurries of sparks that spread out across the entire wall, hitting the targets and encasing them with powerful shocks of lightning. The magician was lucky to be in such a dire shortage of chakra, that made the power of her techniques much weaker, sufficient enough to down these men without them losing their lives. Giving them a chance to answer for their crimes and reform in the future.
While Mana was at a shortage of chakra approaching critical, having less than one-tenth of her normal resources at hand, using her low ranking "Magical Spark Jutsu" was the only way to quickly dispatch of over a dozen thugs manning the wall around the yard. The bad news was that Mana's approach was really flashy – as was her nature as a stage magician – making her shows of ninjutsu incredibly noticeable to both the guards up on the wall and down below.
While the wall was a bit outside the reach of the rushing outside guards, the yard quickly was filled with formations of thugs unleashing flurries of blades from their kunai dispensers. Feeling them whizzing past her ears or bouncing off the stone rails while leaving ugly chips and dents in them did not feel that great at all, especially when Mana felt so sore all over and short on chakra that a direct blade contact would likely no longer just bounce off her body barely breaking her skin.
Strangely enough, Mana noticed a similar flurry of blades coming in from another side and as she noticed that particular detail, a quick glance back made her jaw drop from a sight of a familiar berserker giving hell to the remaining atop of the wall guards.
"I was high on painkilling goodness, cashed out all of my favors in the hospital and using illegal dispensers I picked off of a crime scene of a nearby alleyway, firing hell upon the assholes who nearly put me in the coffin and caused this drugged up rampage of an addict's sick version of justice, to begin with. Atop was a stage magician who may or may not have used actual witchcraft to magic the shit out of those bastards, accompanied by one of the lowlifes I was so busy putting down. To some, this may prove weird but there was no place I'd rather be in right now, for a good pair of minutes anyway, until the painkillers wear off and I realize what I'm doing proper…" Itemi's voice thundered from down below fueled by both pride in his abilities and the pain that firing from two kunai dispensers at once put on his ribs and all the stitches it opened up.
After a few silver-colored flashes and the unpleasant sight and sound of the Diamond Hand thugs screaming bloody murder, they fell down adamant about their "do not get up" policy. Mana realized that the wall was conquered. The gate to the yard opened up as the thugs guarding the yard meant to put Itemi down for good. Before they could do that, Mana and Thumb leaped down to confront them on their level while Itemi found himself a nice stone shrine to hide behind.
Then started a hellfire of around forty people opening fire of whizzing high-velocity blades at all three assailants. It was a reckless formation with an even more reckless strategy, they were not sweeping or lined up, it did not matter who would have gotten skewered with kunai as long as someone's blood was shed and it was done in the name of protecting the Middle Ring.
"This is good." Mana thought to herself as she danced and hopped around the blades that filled the garden like the raindrops filled the sky during a storm. Painful cutting sensations interrupted her train of thought, she felt the warm trickling feeling of blood raining down her skin and soaking her clothes but these were cuts, not direct hits.
Thumb, on the other hand, was a beast. Whatever skill she had when she first met Mana in the Shukuba Security office, she retained. With the added benefit of the untold and uncontrolled passion of a woman who wanted out, a woman who craved freedom like a wild animal unleashed and clawing at their keepers because if the cost of freedom was returning to their wild untamed roots, it was a cost worth paying.
The burglar not only managed to avoid being tagged by any of the blade flurries as she advanced at the rushing men, she managed to fling her claws around, bounce and flip kicking and clawing a good dozen of men in a blink of an eye. The only thing that was lacking for Mana to think of the burglar as a master swordsman was a sword in Thumb's hand. The magician made sure to note just how much of an influence sheer desire for victory and passion had in a battle because it was something she could have very easily underestimated in the future.
While the stone of the shrine that Itemi used for cover began crumbling slowly, bits and pieces of the structure being blown away by the force of impact of the incoming blade projectiles, the man found the opportune moments and, frankly, sheer madness within him to peek out and fire back. Landing a good plug into the chest of an unfortunate Diamond Hand grunt that fell on the ground almost immediately without signs of life.
Mana did not like it that the man was so determined and mad about killing everyone he set his sights on or that he was this efficient at doing it but she lacked the opportunity or the time to stop him. She just had to count on her own skill of chasing down her enemy and taking them down non-lethally before they fell from Itemi's streams of blades.
"I was beginning to realize that my supply of kunai to fire at my demons, the literal sort, mostly, as booze and pills made poor target practice, was not as infinite as I counted on. I had a good five more belts worth of steely, flesh-shredding goodness in me. At that moment, I realized how the kid felt when she couldn't gift enough hugs or save enough lives… Who said polar opposites did not understand one another? Those who say that just lack the imagination…" Itemi rambled to himself as he removed and straightened out a belt of kunai blades. The officer attached it to a modified dispenser he held so that it did not require as much loading as it usually did and instead continued to fire.
Mana wanted to talk to the man, tell him to stop tempting luck and return to the hospital before he caught a stray blade or tore too many stitches in his mad rampage. Something told her that those pleads would have only fallen on deaf ears as, to a certain extent, Itemi always craved death. Maybe not death exactly but release. Maybe he fostered false ideas about meeting his partner and lifelong friend in whatever plain he took for an afterlife, Mana lacked the time to make sure.
After Thumb's vanguard proved so effective at distracting the marching on thugs, Mana joined her companion at attacking the thugs, swift kicks that were nightmares to her own ribs dispatched of a pair of armed Diamond Hand criminals before the magician used her wand to break through the two kunai dispensers that were within her reach. Whatever steel was used in manufacturing these made a poor match for Audra alloy and Meiko's craftsmanship.
While Mana felt a bit nauseated by her own swift movements as her body provided less superhuman immunity to the speed and power of her own actions, she persevered somehow in taking out four more opponents before reaching the position to which Thumb had advanced to. Bringing her along may have been a good call. Shira was right, this was exactly like the time Mana was unrelenting about confronting both Rings herself in order to protect the officers and almost ended up dead. Had she come here alone she would have been likely to either end up dead or so wounded that she would be in a poor state to travel home.
Diamond Hand adapted. These were no street thugs, these were the remains of Raitoncide's Finger joined up with whatever forces the Middle Ring protected for himself when the organization split up. The men retreated a few steps, joined up and regrouped before taking a more careful aim at their invaders. A significant amount of fire targeted Itemi, the frailest member of the invading force and the one whose cover was the most compromised as while Thumb and Mana required none, they demonstrated the ability to evade fire near point blank.
Mana and Thumb moved in to intercept the barrage of blades and gave their unwanted companion time to relocate to a better place. As a sign of gratitude, the Security officer provided the two young women with a murderous barrage of suppressing fire upon the force that attempted to adapt to their actions and switch their target on them instead of the Shukuba Security officer.
"You should have brought the whole force…" Thumb breathed heavily. While she was showing the best feats in this battle, those surpassing even what Mana had seen from the burglar up to now, she was being worn out by those feats which troubled Mana. The soil was ready for one of them to get sloppy and skip a blade or two and injuries like that were not something Mana wanted or needed.
Thumb disarmed a man that attempted to press a dispenser to the back of her head in close range and make her head pop by the sheer air pressure as well as the high-velocity blade bursting through it. As a reward for the sheer ambition, she threw a rapid back-hand elbow strike that must have caved the poor guy's skull in despite shedding almost no blood. The crunchy bone-popping sound his head made was not sitting too comfortably on Mana's consciousness. She'd have much rather avoided all of this but it was far too late for that.
All she could do now was ensure a swift end to this conflict with as few casualties as possible. With this newly invited vigor to her kicks and the reckless abandon for observing her own health, Mana's approach bolded up and became more vicious and more direct. To the poor eight that she threw flying all over the garden her legs must have disappeared from their vision completely. Just sheer and mighty concussive force shattering their ribs and sending them flying was left.
After Itemi had successfully relocated, his long range, almost berserk blade fire sent a handful of the Diamond Hand who were in process of changing up formations before Thumb's acrobatic people-scaling skills utilizing her elastic body and surgical augmentations to her joints and bone structure allowed her to finish cleaning up the yard.
Only the den of the greedy one remained…
Author's Note: Hey everyone, hope you've been enjoying the final parts of the Shukuba Arc! In this chapter I had the opportunity to explore a little an odd case that some of you may have noticed and/or criticised - Mana's and everyone else's uses of honorifics. Ever since I've begun working on the story I tried to refrain from as much of the Japanese wordings usually used in fanfiction about anime properties as possible: no "Kagebunshins" or "Shinra Tenseis", if you will. However, I did seldom include the honorifics that the characters used, not because of the need to satisfy the inner "weeb" in me but for the desire to show off the more unique ways that characters may feel about one another or interact with each other. For example Mana was always supposed to talk in a very respectful manner, always "san'ning" everyone whenever she referred to someone while Shimo always used to refer to Mana and (ideally) most females with the "chan" honorific that, in this case, took a more "demeaning" meaning of him placing an obligation on himself to "serve" every woman he meets how a medieval knight would have taken upon themselves to serve their lady.
The problem is that oftentimes the honorifics may not have been present because initially my intention and opinion on them was more as an unnecessary "Japanism" only necessary to include once to show off how a character NORMALLY refers to the other character with the continuous use of the honorific is just implied. That also has not really been uniquely the case as some characters continuously utilized an honorific in my own story despite it having been long established which honorific they may use. With some characters that may have suggested a different meaning behind the honorific, like the "chan" in Kouta's speech when referring to Mana emphasizing the cutesy crush he felt for her ever since they met etc. I hope that this cleared my standing and use of the honorifics up a little bit. I do my best to only include the honorific to a character's speech when they are referring to another character with an honorific they would not normally use, to establish which honorific they do use when talking to that character or to emphasize some special meaning to the honorific and the feelings behind it. Usually, when the honorifics are not present in speech, one is to assume that characters interact in a normal manner, using honorifics they normally would use when speaking with the honorifics being removed from the "final product" during the transition period of me "translating" the fictional dialogue as an author to the readers.
Once again, if anyone has gotten to this point, thank you for your attention and support or criticism this far.