"Shige!" Mana screamed out, reaching for the terrifying image of her friend impaled on a spear sliding down its surface. The leader of Stars let out puny coughs, bringing out splats of blood with each attempt to breathe. A senseless grunt defined by Skaven's voice made Mana lean back and avoid a windmill shuriken that aimed to split her horizontally in half.
"Does Shige still have a chakra signature?" Skaven asked Mana while throwing windmill kicks to fend off the rabid felines with skeletal armor. It was as if that elementary question had revived Mana and returned the will to fight back to her lungs and reset her breathing. Flame still lingered in Shige's heart, spreading warm pulses of blue in a void of blackness. Shige was still alive. If a medical ninja was still alive, that meant that they merely needed time to get back into the swing of things.
Damisan's psychotic wail overwhelmed the atmosphere. A metallic click signified the release of the shinobi's dignity as he opened up his mask and flopped down on the ground. The sightless beast continued to thrash about with Damisan's mask in its jaws, wondering why all of a sudden the weight it was throwing about became so much lighter. Damisan leaned down and reached under his collar, yanking on a piece of steel wire and pulling on it as if his life depended on it. Just in time for the murderous jaguar to drop Damisan's mask with a metallic clang and reach with its bloodthirsty fangs for the fallen and seemingly helpless ninja.
A deafening clang. Flocks of sparks to add to the irritation that resonated through the beast's skull and all the way through its nervous system. The jaguar growled with a prosthetic fist, forcing its way inside of the throat of the enormous cat and clogging its airways. Damisan yelled like a madman, jumping up and grabbing the limb with his teeth before flopping on the wet, swampy ground and rolling aside while he pulled on another string of steel wire.
A rain of blood colored the swamp as Damisan's limb detonated, still stuck in the jaguar's throat. What remained of the beast's torso twitched with vigorous ticks before dropping dead. The puppeteer grabbed hold of his other prosthetic limb as he directed it to come to its master with his mouth and screwed it by his side. Because what the Stars faced was not human, they lacked compassion or fear for their own life. None of the beasts could see the violent demise of one of their own, because of their skull masks clouding their vision.
All they could sense was blood in the air and lots of it. Blood was a particular type of trigger for these magnificent yet murderous animals, one that drove them wild and sent a handful of them rushing at Damisan. A few too many for the one-armed puppeteer to handle, though. Endo rushed in, extending his Sword of the Thunder God to impale one of the rushing beasts though to no avail as it sensed the error in its single-minded rush and dodged out of the way of imminent death when the beam of the thunderous blade hummed in its direction.
Skaven raised his hand over the head, gripping a marble of a flash bomb firmly in his hand. He would have a split of the second while the flash spread and illuminated the area to use his Nara hijutsu. Before his hand could smack the marble and crack it on the ground, a loop tightened around Skaven's arm and pulled him upward. With a primal snarl, a dark shadow lunged at the airborne young ninja struggling with weightlessness.
"Spear Kick!" Mana yelled out as she flew onward to intercept the enemy. Her knees nearly crumbled from the shock. Whoever this person was, their physical strength and chakra augmentation skills were top-notch. Regardless, the lurker in the trees had been repelled from thrusting his knife into Skaven's chest and opening him up from top to bottom. With the assassin's moment having passed, Skaven swung and cut himself down with a kunai of his own, preparing to defend himself, offering no more openings to the enemy.
"Fire Style: Fireball Barrage!" Mana chanted out after weaving her hands together and pointing her intertwined fingers and connected hands all around her. While the beasts appeared to be oblivious to the fright of fire because of their training and lack of vision, the pain of searing still drove them wild and snuffed out their murderous spirit.
That was the edge that her team needed to push back the surprise attack. With resounding clangs, two more limbs connected to Damisan as he scooped the felines up and smashed their skull helmets and their heads into the dirt and his own prosthetic knees before swinging them about, just like they treated him earlier.
Skaven dashed behind his friend, deflecting a handful of windmill shuriken hurling from the treetop right at his friend. The beast-master that lurked in hiding had been using some sort of method to conceal his chakra though with warm cinders lighting up after Mana's technique, soon enough he'll have nowhere to hide and will have to come out and face the Stars or flee.
Endo worked methodically, slicing the beasts up to meek chops that reeked of burnt fur and boiling blood. Despite working them by the handful, the feline giants didn't retreat. Time seemed to freeze while an iron net spread wide on its trajectory to subdue Endo, but the swordsman turned around, styling on the steel wire gadget while Mana finished weaving her hand seals.
"Fire Style: Blazing Soul!" with Mana's breath leaving her chest, it ignited and formed a head-sized sphere of flames surrounded by a comet-like tail. The fireball bounced around, burning and cracking the armor that protected the beasts, liberating them from their protective restraints and revealing their true situation to them once the ivory plates masking their eyes shattered.
With hisses that were as flooded with fear as they were a wrathful warning, the leopards that Mana freed dived into the bushes. They weren't native to these parts, not nearly so. Though something told Mana they knew enough to head northwest, where it was warmer and the forests were thicker. Like a speedy rodent with a tail on fire, the Blazing Soul sphere continued to chase the beasts and scold their advances with speed and precision far surpassing their own. It was only once their formations shattered completely that Mana allowed her will-o-wisp like technique to dissolve into transparent flames that dissipated into thick and moist swamp air.
Suddenly, the Stars felt the frigid trepidation of solitude, like long and pale fingers creeping up from their hips all the way to their shoulders and necks, making one wonder if those fingers would continue to massage the tired shoulders or grab tight hold of one's neck and never let go.
A rod of metal splashed on the gooey, molasses-like swampy ground while Shige-H gargled up wet torment. Emerald light lit up from her side as the woman placed both her hands over her solar plexus. Endo turned his head up and looked at a singular point, almost as if meeting the assailant eye-to-eye, though even with his fighting instincts such a thing couldn't have been possible.
"Is he gone?" Skaven wondered, dragging his weary sandals closer to Shige while he still pointed the tip of his kunai outward.
"We'll never know. Not until he lets us know." Shige-H replied with a complexion far too pale for her. Pulling the spear out of her gut had caused tremendous blood loss. Once the immediate damage to her organ systems had been dealt with, Shige-H reached for her pouch to gobble down a couple of sanguine pills. "This guy's for real. He's an assassin. Laser-focused too. Hit the bullseye with little effort, his instincts, and pristine too. He withdrew knowing that he could play the long game with us."
"That's too bad!" Damisan punched his open palm, looking around for his split mask. "I was in the mood for punching something after that disgrace."
"What the fuck, woman?" Endo turned to Mana. "How did that asshole leave you guessing?"
"I don't know…" Mana admitted. "There are ways to suppress one's own chakra signature but it comes with the nasty side effect of doing exactly that–reducing one's combat potential proportionately. This assassin appeared to have been operating in prime condition while fooling my chakra sensory."
"He came prepared for Mana. He knew what he was doing–he's here for her." Shige-H summed it up after standing up and examining the degree to which she could move after this elementary battlefield patch-job.
"Cursed witch, is there a cutthroat out there not looking to kill you?" Endo winked at Mana with an ironic grin.
"I will not sit in the Allied Ninja camp and live in fear! We've seen already that it doesn't work–those people will just come after the Allied Ninja hosting me. The only way is to confront them and beat them, every step of the way, all of them." Mana clenched her fist as her apologetic eyes softened. She pressed her fist to her chest, trying to convince herself of this as much as she did her comrades. "I won't just give up and die for them. Even if that would protect the people around me."
"I'm beginning to seriously like you, Mana." Endo laughed out. "You're like a good luck charm. Bringing everyone I need to eliminate for my title of the ultimate No. 1 to me. I'm not letting you out of my sight as long as guys like that are gunning for you."
"No one's asking you to die to protect us, Mana," Shige-H spoke in a somber tone. "Though we won't be getting a second of rest, either. This dirtbag is watching us. The moment I try to heal my injuries completely and put some effort into it–he'll strike and finish the job. The moment one of us or all of us close our eyes–we won't open them ever again. The only way is to leave this swamp behind and find our plane where our assassin can't lurk as efficiently. Leave the camp supplies, they're tattered anyway, pick up your backpacks, we're moving."
"When we get our hands on that bastard, I'll stab him with Sword of the Thunder God and just wait until his blood boils from the inside for forcing us to skip sleep and keep dragging our feet through this shithole bog!" Endo seethed.
"I don't see why you allowed yourself to get so rattled, Endo." Damisan pointed out. "Ninja don't need sleep as badly as civilians do. It might feel like we do but our metabolism can sustain us for days."
"It's not a matter of need, it's a matter of want!" Endo shook his clenched fists before him, focusing his hateful stares until the vessels in his came close to bursting. "Sleep is basic human comfort. Forcing us to skip it is a declaration of war and a step of dominance over our backs. A freak like you may be used to being trampled, but not me! Only one can trample on others and that one is the true No. 1. I'll die before letting an assassin like that guy claim a position that belongs to me!"
"I for one wouldn't mind sticking around the bog a little longer…" Damisan sighed. "My mask's falling apart. If it takes too much more damage–I'll just need to dump it and…"
A razor-wire net shot out from underground, surrounding a wide area around all the Stars and shooting up to scoop them and slice them into square sticks of flesh as the razor net squeezed them together. A human fillet. The Stars turned back and pressed their backs to each other as it had appeared as if the net had missed them entirely. Logs swung from the upper layer of trees with cubical stones attached to their end, looking to shatter bones or flatten ninja in their way, but once again they missed the Stars by a few inches, swinging past them.
Sealing glyphs activated underground, lighting up the bog and making it bubble with emission of energy from underground. A split second later, a forest of shooting spears skewered the swampy field, though. Miraculously, the spears had all missed as much as leaving a scratch on a single ninja.
A piercing bolt of light split the gloom of the early morning with a white slash. It had attempted to shoot a scorching hole through Shige's chest. The same flash then targeted Mana's head to pop it off the magician's shoulders and complete the assassin's job. Mana took a few bolt steps toward where the beams of Lightning Release came from.
"You must wonder: why am I missing, right?" Mana's voice rung from behind an armored head-to-toe, muscular figure of disproportionately bulky upper body and comparatively normal lower body. Like a cat that had frozen water trickled on its back, the armored assassin took a dash away from his current position, wondering how Mana had got his position.
With the mystery assailant all out in the clearing, his appearance became clearer than the blurry shadow that Mana saw during the attack of his animal companions earlier. The killer donned full steel body armor all over. Luscious dreadlocks hung and flung about from underneath his spacious helmet, with only a cross-shaped split in the front with a vizor to cover the gap in armor up.
"You may have a reputation for never missing your mark, your skill suffices to stroke that ego of yours and justify such reputation." Mana's voice continued to send chills down the assassin's spine as he dashed to yet another corner and out of the hiding. Once his feet landed on a harder branch, they launched him in a wild dash toward the group of huddled together Stars whom he so far failed to hit. "Though it is difficult to hit those precision shots with your traps you've so carefully set up when you don't know the exact nature of your surroundings, isn't it? That's where my illusion comes in."
With a lion-like roar, the dreadlock-donning assassin thrust a carved knife into the bog's floor, missing either of the Stars with his pounce. Pulling it out, the assassin looked around, trying to anticipate which of the young ninja would attack him next, now that he had revealed himself after long last. All of them stood perfectly still.
"Genjutsu: False Surroundings is a genjutsu technique that is a well-known beginner's illusion. Normally I wouldn't use jutsu I hadn't invented, it just doesn't feel original enough for me. I am an artist, after all. However, with protecting my own life or that of my friends, I wouldn't hesitate to be unoriginal for a second." Mana concluded once the version of her that had been chasing the cornered to the wall assassin this entire time landed beside him.
With a snarl, the assassin reached out and grabbed Shige-H by her throat, pulling her in and positioning his carved knife over the kunoichi's chest.
"Don't move! I'll carve out her heart in a second! Pull out your kunai and slit your own throat. I'll take it over from there. Once your head is mine, your friends can walk away from this. Their bounties are insignificant to me compared to yours." The assassin finally spoke with a cybernetically altered voice box ring to it.
"Go ahead, it'll backfire on you though." Mana shrugged. "I don't plan on dying and I definitely won't let you hurt anyone else ever again."
The assassin roared in defiance, flinging the knife at Mana's eye level as if attempting to keep her eyes away from him where she could initiate an illusion. Instead, the assassin grabbed Shige's chest and ripped her apart with his bare hands, holding a pulsing heart in his hands, the assassin was about to display it proudly over his head but a shrill howl filled the air, a pop and a cloud of smoke revealed the ruse before the whole card house toppled on top of the assassin.
"Transformation?" was all he had the time to growl before the solid clones of Mana's production that she had transform into duplicates of her friends, going as far as to roleplay and lure the assassin into this trap of her own exploded in a chain reaction. The one that the killer ripped apart was a simple explosive clone, the others that body-piled the armored dread soon after were elemental clones, dispelling with a lightning storm and a fiery inferno, then a hurricane of slashing wind currents.
A collection of bark-like covers dropped, revealing the rest of the Stars having kept a close notice on the situation, having used the elementary Academy Disguise Jutsu to cloak themselves in front of the gloomy swamp trees until the ruse was up and they needed to play some kind of role.
"Roe-san…" Mana muttered, staring at the panting and writhing in pain assassin. His armor peeled off of his body with violent rips that tore chunks of his own flesh off or melted over him. Once the armor was over with, the ninja magician felt the vibrant yet dipping in luminosity with each passing pulse chakra signature coming from the assassin.
"You know this asshole?" Endo wondered.
"He is someone who promised to meet me in the future a long time ago. Back then he was after the bounty of my friend Kiyomi, now, it appears, he's after my head." Mana sighed. Every time she saw someone whom she had hoped to see turning their lives around return to their villainous ways that led to them crossing Mana's path in the first place, it hurt the integrity of the dreams she fostered deep down. It was as if such a person truly plunged a knife into her heart.
"Konoha's Sorceress…" Roe said in a wet snarl. "You've become a frightening ninja, one to justify the astronomical bounty on your head. The most wanted person in the Fire Country and fourth-most wanted head on the world's black market. Even if I rose at the top of my organization, it seems I'm no longer able to tag your back like I could when we first met."
"It seems so." Mana turned her disappointed eyes away. "Though I feel personally responsible for every life you've taken to climb this high up, Roe-san. I'm afraid I no longer follow the collaborating ways I did back then and I will no longer allow you to use your hateful motivations as a weapon to propel you forward over a pile of bodies."
Mana kneeled by the helpless, injured assassin. The magician placed her hands over his head. If Roe was ever to stop carving out his way through the lives of innocent people who fell on the wrong side of the black market's favor, more aggressive means had to be taken. As the jolts of Magician's Touch circulated through Mana's body, the hope that Roe would turn his life around when he remembers none of what defined his strength and hatred until that point kept her going until Roe's eyes whited out and his tongue rolled out from the foamy mouth.