Tutor Mauma pressed his hand against the field while the recruits that weren't supposed to participate in the war game lined around it in a square formation. Lines of symbols and sealing glyphs extended from where Mauma had placed his hand all across the field, forming complex, web-like patterns around larger, central sealing glyphs that gleamed with intense light.
"H-Hey… I'm standing on prosthetic legs, you know!" Damisan muttered reflecting on the trembling ground that gave rise to a varied battlefield that split the field into multiple diverse areas that intermingled by their meeting spots. It was tough to see the entire thing due to the trees and different formations, manmade and otherwise clogging up the view but it was a suitable environment to host something like a war game.
"Why is he lumped in with us?" Mana pointed her thumb at Araki Endo. "If memory serves, he's opposed to being in the same room as us, as he's making it painfully obvious every time he is around us."
"Yeah, about that…" Shige-H chuckled with nervous laughter, dragging her hand over her fur coat collar and scratching the back of her neck. "You won't believe it when I tell you…"
"Recruits!" tutor Mauma yelled out with a stern voice that put a swift end to the small talk and minute negotiations that were taking place. "This battlefield is split into four parts. Your objective is to utilize the four objectives inside to win the war game. Only the successful completion of all four objectives will stop the war game. These aren't normal war game rules because there are four members on each team instead of five so you would be smart to take note of it."
"I won't believe what?" Mana leaned in closer to Shige-H, breaking her stiff and straightened out stance in the process.
"Now's really not the time, I'll tell you later…" Shige-H waved her hand in dismissal, looking relieved to have an excuse to play it off.
"First – there is an informant dummy inside of the makeshift prison building located inside of this complex. Inside of the dummy there is a B-Rank seal placed guarding a scroll with information inside it. It will tell you the password that needs to be used to open up a mailbox in the village street part of the complex. Inside that mailbox there will be a tool that, used in conjunction with a tool hidden inside a construction site part of the complex, will help you in retrieving the final object from the underground laboratory tunnels that extend beneath this complex. I hope you've got that memorized because I will not repeat it, ready or not, the war game begins now!"
Araki Endo twirled his double-blade sword, slipping the sheathes over each side off onto the ground as he passed it between his hands. Shige-H flickered away in a puff of smoke with the apt use of the Body Flicker technique while Damisan corrected the cylinder covering up his face, turning to Mana.
"We should really flee and make a plan, I think…" he muttered as if all hope to win this war game was already lost.
"We do, I had hoped to find out what the heck Shige-H was so secretive about…" Mana sighed. As the wind ruffled the collar of her shit and her blazer, tipped her hat to the side, it dispersed an illusionary body double comprised of flower petals, making Damisan jump up and make a hasty retreat.
"M-Mana! You should have warned me you've replaced yourself!" Damisan yelled out, fleeing into the woods surrounding the starting area with impressive leaps that only someone with artificial and well-crafted prosthetics could muster up. Not only that but the Land of Wind native zipped and rode steel wire that he managed to apply gently enough not to cut through the tree branches he used for support.
"They fled, cowards!" Baiso punched his open palm with a beastly growl.
"Of course, they fled, they're putting a plan together in who will tackle which objective," Shogito nodded while stroking his chin deep in thought.
"Then why aren't we doing the same? They're getting ahead of us…" Joshipa turned at her jumpsuit donning, goggle-wearing friend.
"Have at you!" Endo yelled out as he dived into the fray of all four Allied Ninja, swinging his double-bladed sword around like he was looking to send multiple limbs flying with a single rotating slash. Shogito's backpack ruffled before bursting into leathery shreds as a quartet of mechanical appendages with scythe-blades attached to the very end wrangled out and positioned to protect him from the incoming attack.
"What the… What's this guy's deal!?" Shogito grumbled as the sheer force of impact and the deafening clang overwhelmed him, sending him rolling aside on the grass. "You're supposed to go for the objectives, dude!"
Baiso smirked with a sadistic smile as he grabbed hold not of the twirling blade that was incoming but instead the hand holding it, therefore subduing Endo's swing as he flung the trainee samurai over his head and slammed him on the ground on the other side.
"Is he some sort of an idiot?" Joshipa wondered, approaching the face-planted samurai trainee and stomping his head a couple of times. This only seemed to drive Endo madder for the young man thrust his arms down on the ground and spun his legs around, kicking at everyone around him while his arms looked for his lost weapon while he created some space for himself.
Stein fell on one knee, dirt shifted beneath his feet as the young man submerged underground while surfing the soil underneath. Without sparing the time for words, the stalwart Allied Ninja recruit disappeared underground and scurried off toward one of the objectives. Shogito observed the disappearing jet of shifting ground with an approving nod as his own mechanical appendages bent to his will, enforced by steel wire, and their scythe-like ends rotated like a chopping helicopter blades in a unique way to ascend to the air and hurry toward another one of the objectives.
"I'm off too, try to pummel him to the nearest objective ground, okay?" Joshipa gave Baiso a look, entrusting the painful demise of this young man who knew no retreat or strategy, only wrath and the blinding trance of battle. Baiso nodded his head in acknowledgment and cracked his knuckles.
"Cowards!" Endo exclaimed a cry that spent out all of the oxygen he still had in his chest. The young man picked up the weapon that he had dropped previously having moved closer to it and prepared to dispose of the only one of the four enemies that remained.
A howling gust carried a swarm of rose petals together into a larger clump that soon took shape of Mana as the magician cancelled out her illusion to appear before Shige-H. The two were close to a clearing in the woods which only had a small, clay dome with wooden door on it. If one had to guess, it must have been the entryway to the tunnels, the final one of the five objectives.
"What are you doing here? It's best if we tackle each objective one at a time!" Shige-H addressed Mana out loud though her voice couldn't shake off the defensive tone that she had before.
"What did you mean to tell me about Endo?" Mana asked again.
"Look… This… Really isn't the time!" Shige-H emphasized, directing Mana to move to the north-west of her current position – where the field arena emulated a busy village street with the mailbox that was needed for the fulfillment of one of the objectives. Without saying a word, just an irritated click of her tongue, the magician took off with a wind current fueling her flight. She'd be an easy target ascending over the woods like that but at least she'd be fast.
"Ugh… I didn't quite see where the others have gone…" Damisan sighed to himself and shook his head. "Stupid, stupid, stupid… Stupid and ugly… Now they'll kick you off the crew for sure! Got to focus!"
The cloaked recruit looked up and pushed through the thick coverage of leaves to see an opening surrounded by a brick wall. It was a square-shaped barrier that surrounded one of the notable battlefields unsealed for them by tutor Mauma. Damisan's prosthetic arm slipped out from the coverage of his cloak, the hand from the wrist up shot off, attached to a thick steel rope comprised of many intertwined steel wire strings and pulled the self-puppeteering shinobi up and over the wall, temporarily exposing his scarred and prosthetic-limbed body as he vaulted over the wall and his cloak rattled behind him.
"The construction site. Tutor Mauma said that there's supposed to be a tool hidden here somewhere…" Damisan recalled as he looked around the ruined ground filled with wooden logs and steel beams all over, multiple incomplete buildings in various stages of completion decorated the sixty-four square meter subtle makeshift conflict ground. Finding whatever tool he was meant to find here would be difficult and clash with the enemy ninja looking to claim it was inevitable.
The ground shook underneath Damisan's feet as he extended his prosthetic arm toward the nearest incomplete building and zipped up to one of its exposed floors. Whenever Earth Release ninjutsu was at play – it was a wise decision to stay off the ground whenever such an option was possible. A tall and broad-shouldered man with strawberry-blond hair filled with chips of dirt and gravel appeared from underground and fixed his look at Damisan almost instantly.
"Damn, he must have noticed my vibrations while he was underground. Would've been nice to have the element of surprise," Damisan sighed in disappointment in his own performance as he jumped down onto the ground, using the sturdiness and built-in amortization of his prosthetic legs to take the tension of the fall like nobody's business as the ground beneath him moaned in dull cracks. "Hey, there…" the Land of Wind native ninja muttered.
He was not yet aware that Stein was not known for his eloquence.
Endo grunted in pain when his back hit against a light pole and bent it like a twig. Baiso rushed in, throwing stiff power blows all around, just toying with his unarmed opponent and throwing him all over the place. The trainee samurai extended his hand to the side, reeling in the steel wire that he had attached to his weapon to return it back to his hands. He spared a moment to look around and realize that Baiso had busted him through the brick wall and into the yard of the makeshift prison facility which was exactly where one of the objectives was.
Endo's wrist gripped tightly around the handle of his weapon as he stood back up, his gi dirtied and lightly torn up and his face swollen in a few faces and decorated with shiners as it tended to happen when somebody who flicked hundreds of tons like it was mere feather decked you in the face repeatedly. Still, despite his injuries, despite the pain, the wear and tear, Endo's face was full of determination to fight on. Against this burly man and then his entire goon squad, one by one.
"You're like a bruiser's wet dream…" Baiso cracked his knuckles with a rich smirk on his face. "No matter how many times I keep dishing it out on you, you just stand up and scowl at me begging for more!"
This time it seemed that Endo had taken enough. His eyes were different than before, sense and thought had disappeared entirely with only terror and madness flickering in a dimly lit lab where a cocktail for rage was being made and those two were the fundamental ingredients. Endo bent his knee, thrusting one side of his blade into the ground while he placed the other up and in the way of his opponent's hammer strike which sent splashes of blood raining all over Endo's hair and down his face when Baiso ended up hammering at the tip of his opponent's blade and skewering his own hand in the process.
"You are lucky that I do not mean to end your life, for you are not scum, merely a bastard," Endo yelled out with a face running down with his opponent's blood as he used his own sword's handle for a pole and vaulted with a pair of kicks aimed at Baiso's chest. Despite a neat effort, Endo's kicks bounced off of his opponent's body like peashooter's shots bounced off of a tank.
"You annoying little shit, I'll lay you out!" Baiso roared, charging with the shoulder of his now disabled hand's side and bashing Endo aside. Despite a rocking hit, the samurai trainee did not as much as grunt in pain. Vexed by the complete lack of input from his opponent's side in the mutual painful harmony they were making, Baiso turned to the sword that was once more left etched into the pavement and pulled it out.
With sadistic eyes the burly brawler watched Endo's hand twitch in response to the sword to which a steel wire attached the limb to moved. Baiso pulled the weapon in, whipping the fallen young man closer to him as he charged onward with a running clothesline that seemed to behead the samurai that had a penchant for punishment and spat out a tremendous amount of blood as he laid in a little pool of it on the floor just underneath Baiso's raised foot looking to squish him like a bug.
Just as Baiso's foot shot down, Endo, revitalized seemingly just by his own willpower to keep fighting, rolled on and wrapped his legs around the heel of his opponent as he positioned the brute face-first onto the cement floor in a leghold. The young samurai reeled in his own weapon back as he moved his body over that of his fallen enemy and stuffed his sword in between Baiso's teeth as he bent the brute's body backward in an intent to break the back of the monstrous taijutsu user.
Endo's eyes widened in shock when Baiso growled and snarled and bit through the center of his blade-like it was a biscuit. The samurai trainee dashed off of the fallen body of his opponent, holding what remained of his unorthodox weapon now merely two separate short swords for each of his hands. Baiso rose, wiping blood off of his mouth as his teeth had moved inward into his gums a few inches from the sheer physical effort it took to bite through a weapon of such fine craftsmanship and chakra coating.
While it appeared that Endo had met his match in terms of someone who was willing to push all boundaries of how far he dished out and took violence, judging from the stance of God Sword's pupil, he knew how to handle duel wielding short blades almost as well as his preferred double-bladed weapon.
"Are you seriously just goofing off?" Mana asked Joshipa who sat on a nearby table and stared at a couple of mannequins with fake food and empty teacups by their sides, looking bored.
"What am I supposed to do? My team doesn't have the password yet, meaning that there's no use in trying to nail the second objective, right?" Joshipa sighed, changing the order of legs that she had one over the other put on the table. The heels of her long, leather boots clanged like two knives brushed one against the other. "Plus, I can't even eat any of the food or drink anything because it's all fake. At least the people are all fake too so it's not a total bummer."
"You could make it easier for your team by finding the right mailbox in the first place," Mana suggested.
"Or, I could take you out and do my whole crew a favor!" Joshipa jumped off of the plastic chair, pushing it aside with her buttocks. "I should pull out your heart from your ribcage and stab through it while it's still beating, maybe then Lord Jashin will take me back to his ranks?"
"I think you're overreacting a little," Mana stretched out her arms, letting the steel-tipped cards in her sleeves all slip out from their holding spot and flex in a current of air formed in between each of her hand as a chakra molding exercise.
"You took a bite out of our crew and stitched yourself into it, then tore yourself right out, if anything, I should pull your body apart and make you see how it feels!" Joshipa took her taped up weapon off her back and peeled the tape off of it, revealing the spiky-edged guitar in all of its glory. Had Meiko been here, she'd have without a doubt geeked out how much that thing looked like an ax when taped up and hanging off of Joshipa's back.
"I wasn't aware you felt this close to me," Mana replied. "That's the problem with your crew, you're possessive whether the person you're obsessed with wants it or not."
This wouldn't be just like all those times sparring this past couple of months. Joshipa had gotten much better at using that thing without any of her Curse Jutsu while Mana picked up a trick or few of her own, completing plenty of what she was working on before her imprisonment.
Shige's screams filled the underground halls of the tunnel. She hadn't noticed that Shogito had hung himself over the ceiling and so he managed to get a drop on her. Now his scythe-blades got lodged into her shoulders, her back, and her sides. Something much punier but also much warmer wrapped around the injured body of the Kumogakure ninja as she tried struggling out of this deadly hold. Shogito had wrapped his own arms and feet around her while his mechanical puppet limbs removed and inserted themselves into Shige's wounds over and over again, stabbing at her repeatedly.
The floor was cold beneath the knees of Shige-H, made warmer by her own blood trickling down and accumulating beneath her as the possessive pest had his arms and legs fixed in a stranglehold while his puppetry tools continued to work on Shige-H, looking to wear her chakra augmentations thin so that the blades go all the way in and not just leave shallow gashes, maybe puncture something she needs and can't heal easily. Shige jumped up, slamming her back and Shogito clinging onto it back into the ceiling with her Chakra Enhanced Strength fueling her motion.
Shige-H wasn't a violent person, having trained most of her life to save other people rather than kill them or see them suffer but when this fellow that stabbed her sixty times with varied success croaked in pain – a wave of pleasure washed over Shige's nervous system. At least she got the bugger off of her at last.
Though maybe that was just the blood loss introducing itself to the young woman and warning her of her impending fainting if she didn't mend the situation she was in due to her oversight.