A merciless shove of the wasteland winds tested its fortitude against the wreckage of the Allied Ninja HQ. A handful of stationary pillars with some rooms that it used to house stood mostly intact, connected with a singular passageway. Stripped and exposed remains of a corridor that had been marked with the removal of a rooftop and the decimation of its walls. The glass that the corridor passageway used to contain now glistened in pieces some fifty meters below on the scorched Land of Lightning stone.
A dapper man blew into a handmade instrument made of carved wood and leaves stuffed inside of it to produce a mellow tune once one blew either into the back end or one of several holes over it. The musician stood on one end of the decimated remains of the building, taking a figurative position atop of a part of the ruins with no further use to it. Just a standing tower of orderly debris that hadn't fallen yet and still the man stood at the end of the bare passageway as if protecting the entryway to absolutely nowhere.
The wind picked up, irritating the lone gentleman. He opened his eyes and looked off over the passageway and away from his handmade instrument that had occupied the entirety of his attention before. This gale had been strong enough to pick a man up and fling him over the ruins, all the way down. Of course, the man dressed in an ivory coat to match his vest and trousers had never been worried about wind, rather of what it may have brought about.
Flames lit up in thin air, sparks ignited seemingly by the caprice of the wind itself. These little pests didn't behave like any ordinary sparks. They burnt downward as if they had some fuel to burn up when in fact they burnt on thin air. In what made the dapper gent pocket his little blowing pipe, the sparks burnt in reverse, shaping playing cards that they un-incinerated into a shuffling shape of a human. A young woman.
"What's the matter, now whom you've expected to see?" Mana pocketed her hands in her jacket and looked up at the red-haired man on the other side of the passageway who gazed at her with surprise and slight alarm to his expression. "Well, you'll be surprised to find out that Shige and I talk sometimes. Granted, she spoke to me about some grand emergency and lives in need of saving but I didn't tell her when I pulled a simple misdirection genjutsu on her and sent her the other way. You need to work on your deception game."
"I've planned to take you on as well." The man tried to bounce back from being cornered. That he told the truth just now may have been the only thing that kept him from straight out attempting to flee the scene.
"I don't doubt it." Mana shrugged. "But I don't have the luxury of time. I don't particularly fancy you hurting people too. What particularly pissed me off is how you use the name of a comatose man trying to instill paranoia that will get that man killed."
"Really? It's the fact that a lowly assassin will get killed that makes you get off your ass and act and not the beating your comrades took? That's cold…" the man with the red chops smirked, swinging his cane around over his left arm before smacking its tip at the floor under his feet in between his spread boots. "And yet it's also so sick and twisted it's just right enough to be you."
"The difference between us is that I don't need to hide my face when I risk making mistakes nor do I hide behind the names and accomplishments of other men, Endo…" Mana closed her eyes, knowing full well that she was sticking a knife up her friend's ribs with that callout.
"Tsk… I haven't figured how to fool your sensory yet. And yet… It's almost as if you walked in here already knowing…" the fine-dressed man at the other side grabbed hold of his forehead and dragged his hand across his face in vexation.
"I don't need to sense what's hiding underneath that Transformation Jutsu to know my own friend's handiwork. You've been active with this quest to prove absolutely nothing for too long, you've left too many hints. Despite the sensory barrier being up, despite the Allied Ninja being on full alert, nobody noticed anything–that's because there wasn't anything to notice. Nobody snuck in or out. You were always here, switching in and out of your personas when needed, acting like you were training and that was where you got all the bruises. Your reputation as a berserker didn't give anyone the basis to warrant a second look." Mana pointed at all the breadcrumbs.
"Absolutely nothing!?" Endo growled, still maintaining his disguised form as he charged across the passageway, looking to drive his stick straight into Mana's face and pin her to the ground. The man succeeded only in bursting through flower petals, dispelling Mana's illusion, but just as the ninja magician tried to move in from behind, she felt a pull against the back of her neck. Endo had scooped her from behind without even seeing her.
The apprentice samurai flipped backward, kicking Mana in the back of her head as he dragged her body across the wing of the building she ascended to and kicked her hat off the ruins while pressing his cane against Mana's throat and increasing the pressure bit by bit. Faced with this burly yet handsome gambler-type, Mana could recognize Endo's primal expressions and killer's instinct.
"You're not the only one who knows me in and out, you know that I'm in it to break and batter you so don't you dare hold back and act like you can talk me down or act high and mighty as if you can scare me!" Endo warned Mana by snarling up in her face with a look that didn't quite suit the elegant features of his transformed face, it made up for an uncanny effect that sent the creeps up and down Mana's compressed throat.
Endo blinked rapidly, realizing that he was pinning a man-sized fur-ball with two long ears and red-glistening eyes. Before he could back out, the illusionary rabbit exploded, making Endo's body jump high up as if the shock wave from the explosion would have sent him soaring that way but Mana's firm hand grabbed hold of Endo's tie and slammed him against the ground, pinning the transformed deviant with her heel as she showed a scarlet, shimmering gemstone in her hand. One large enough for Mana to not be able to wrap her fingers around it properly. One she lifted from the pocket of Endo's coat.
"So, is this what it's all about? The Ruby Supernova? If you found it, you may as well just claim it. You always wanted it, didn't you?" Mana pressed her foot down harder, just like Endo did on her before she slipped away with the guise of a genjutsu technique.
"You just don't get it, do you!?" Endo bellowed, swinging his cane at Mana's calf in an attempt to hook her and trip the magician up to where he could recover and get a more favorable position over her. With Mana flat on the ground, the infuriated brawler slithered over her like a serpent and raised a bent forearm over his head. Without warning, he slammed his elbow straight into the side of Mana's head, cracking it open and spilling blood. It had only been because of the awkward turn of the magician's head that her black hair covered the crack and soaked a decent chunk of the blood yet Mana's emerald eyes still stared from the black shroud of her messy hair.
Endo drove his elbow down again, howling in pain as he hit only solid rocks and fell out of balance since he didn't expect his elbow butt to slip right past Mana and slam into the wreckage down under her. The sly brawler was holding back a bit. He hadn't been augmenting himself hard enough to no-sell pounding a chunk of building ruins or to decimate it into rubble with a strike. From a position over on her feet, Mana swung her leg to punt at the bottom of Endo's chin, right where she knew from her time in the Sun Disc some sensitive nerve centers to be.
The still-disguised Stars member flipped over his back from the kick, whining out with only a half-assed attempt to keep a proud and masculine tone as his fingers twitched without control or order and his legs thrashed about in pain. Mana waved her Ruby Supernova hand and mingled it with her free hand, making the exuberant gemstone disappear as she placed her now emptied hand over her hip.
"Oh, I understand alright, Endo. You may not have realized this but I've been trying to understand you better this whole time we knew each other. That's because I wanted to help you. I saw how angry and hurt you were, and I wanted to help Shige fix you. At some point, I realized that Shige and I might not see eye to eye on some things so I wondered if it'd be all on me to help you. This need to prove you're the best, it's just a dumb macho thing that'll get you thrown out of the Allied Ninja. It'll leave you stranded, unwelcome, and without purpose again." Mana replied, skipping on her chance to attack while her opponent was down. She knew the entire time that this would be a handicap that she was the only willing applicant for, as Endo would show her no such mercy.
"I don't need fixing from you!" Endo grumbled as he returned to both feet and pulled out an ancient-looking stone handle. He wasn't in this just to fool around, he was using his true fighting style. This was one mistake that he had never made before, always beating everyone up in a way that couldn't be traced as a signature style of his. "You're a criminal, a foul woman crying for forgiveness and roleplaying as a part of the people that kicked her out. You'll never fill those seats again because you're no longer the person you were when you used to do that back home!"
A synapse snapped in Mana's temples. Everything went red for a second, and the next thing she knew she was rushing toward Endo. What happened? Why was she charging at him!? That was never her style, she'd barely know what to do with him once she got his hands on him! And yet, surprising herself as much as her opponent who had hoped to psyche her out of her comfort zone, Mana vanished in a flash of light, forcing Endo who was about to thrust his Sword of the Thunder God through her solar plexus to hiss and cover himself from temporary blindness.
Illusionary clones from Mana's Many-Faced Jutsu burst forth from the flash of light that persisted long after the real Mana had moved away from where she cast it. The light weaved like strands of fate, creating intricate and elegant lines that appeared bright and orderly, like constellations, and filled with the radiant chakra to form shapeless and entirely illusionary clones of the caster. Endo was an individual easily consumed by his wrath, as someone who cast the hook to reel Mana in, he ended up being the one growling and snarling as he slashed madly in all directions, only slashing through reflections of light, hoping to hit flesh and shower in blood with each successive swing but scoring no such success.
Mana turned around with a backhanded chop to the back of Endo's neck that snapped his head back in a painful twitch and made his entire body stiffen. The Many-Faced Jutsu clones still holding the vanguard flickered and fell away into twinkling little stars and dust of solidified light while Mana jumped and shot her knee to the same pressure point she struck gold on earlier, blanking Endo out and flinging him upward before Mana drove her palms back and leaned on her back foot.
"Magician's Touch!" she yelled out as she initiated her crackling bodily aura to shock and blast Endo away with wicked, bone-shattering violence but nothing of the sort had occurred as Endo disappeared in a cloud of smoke and Mana ended up only snapping a cane into two that then shredded into sawdust from the shock of Mana's Lightning Release aura.
Endo had retreated with his Sword of the Thunder God handle in his right hand as the samurai apprentice kneeled on the ground with his hand clutching the back of his neck. Sweat poured down Endo's forehead as the pain he must have been in after Mana jabbed a painful center of nerves not once but twice before striking him in the nape of his head with the full intent of crippling him with that attack must have been severe enough to drive even this raging lunatic to his knees.
"I've done nothing you haven't done a dozen times over," Mana answered with defensiveness in her tone that made it feel like she wasn't talking just to Endo anymore but every judging and demeaning villager pointing fingers and ready to cast stones at her.
"I only batter the Scum of the Earth. People that would be better off dead. Being too weak to kill them is the only sin I'm guilty of. It's a drowning pit of guilt that I have to live with for the rest of my days." Endo replied, faking his recovery as he stood on two wobbly feet, still pale as exposed bone.
"What crimes was Skaven, Damisan guilty of? Any of the other recruits that survived the attack of the Four-Tails only to have to fight one of their own?" Mana insisted on her righteousness in this.
"Please, you know I held back every bit I could. Skaven is the only one I regret going overboard with. Then again, he was strong. He actually knocked me out and left me with nothing but mindless instinct behind the wheel." Endo looked down at his numbed hands. Now would have been the best time for Mana to press on her advantage. Yet the magician stood back. She wasn't sure yet if she wanted to beat Endo the way he would beat his targets, or if she wanted to reason with him.
"He broke your transformation…" Mana summed it up. "Drove you to cover up your tracks like a true criminal."
"I wasn't in control. I wasn't thinking. You don't know what it's like. If I hadn't developed this uncanny ability to move my body long since my consciousness had passed out, fight with instinct, past pain, and long past my breaking point, I'd have never lived long enough to meet you all. I have no control or say in the matter, my body fought as hard and as long as it could, I didn't know what state Skaven stayed in until I recovered and went back to the camp and saw him in the medical tent." Endo replied.
"You're right–I don't know what it's like. Maybe you were justified and didn't have any control in beating Skaven to an inch of his life. Just like I had little choice…" Mana pressed her hand to her chest, wondering what she was referring to at this point. She initially had hoped to point her finger at the crime that the entire world believes she had committed, but the closer she moved to the end of that sentence the more sights of injured and dying people flashed before her eyes.
Just like Endo blamed himself to be too weak to kill the people he wanted dead, Mana was too weak to save everyone that needed saving all too often.
"If you're trying to stall for time until someone comes to save you, don't bother. A fight between ninja of our caliber takes just a flicker of candlelight. By the time you'll see help, you're going to need it. Don't worry though, I'm not looking to kill you. All I want is to prove that I'm the best. That I'm the one who deserves this gemstone and may claim it as his own now that its owner has perished. In my hands, I have a chance to correct my failure to win it in the first place. Do you even know what that means to me?" Endo raised the handle of the Sword of the Thunder God and ignited the blade again.
"I'm afraid I do…" Mana looked down and away with a glint of sadness in her eyes. "That's exactly why I have to stop you. Because I know how much it means to you and how far you're willing to go. It's my responsibility as your friend and someone who wants you to make better decisions in life to stop you from continuing down this path."
"So, you're finally going to put your shoulder into it? Good. You know, Mana, even though I looked down on you and mocked you when you failed, I must admit, I've been looking forward and couldn't wait to have my fair shot at you. I've feared so much that you'd just lower your arms and waste that crazy strength of yours trying to prove something by not fighting back. It makes me shiver knowing that you'll actually come at me trying to stop me." Endo's smile stretched all over his face as he took a low stance, positioning his humming lightning-blade diagonally downward to where its very tip touched the scorched part of the ruins by sending wild sparks scattering all over.
Just like Endo felt like he was too weak to win against everyone he wanted to beat, Mana felt herself too weak to manage to deal with misguided people in any other way but stopping them with her own skill. In a very twisted way, the two were both similar in their plight and yet the exact opposite.