With a stagger, Mana haunted the few steps between the closet and the sink in the bathroom chamber. Ignoring the crimson water in the first, Mana belched a mixture of blood and bile and wiped her mouth, staring at the mirror. She had abandoned the fool's quest of covering up all of her bruises with plasters. A row of bandages covered up her neck and it seemed like her entire body wore a layer of bandages as well underneath her uniform.
It felt at times as if they were a frame that kept her gelatinous body in shape. Stretching her aching limbs, Mana left the bathroom and stretched her arm and shoulder before the Stars that looked ready to leave on their mission.
"Are you sure you're good to go, Mana? I know you told us your training is complete but… You don't look too good." Damisan pulled the collar of the ragged cloak that covered his scarred body and prosthetic limbs.
"Speak for yourself. You're in far worse condition than I am." Mana replied. Even though it shut Damisan down rather effectively and a tad too cruelly than Mana would have liked, she scored a cackle from Endo's direction.
"I've done as much as I could do yesterday. I'll patch you up some more when we have some more time. Right now, we need to leave this version of Konoha." Shige-H nodded, acknowledging Mana's condition.
"We need to do it quietly too. The Hokage thinks that we're using the bridge to promote Mana's tour. If someone from the administration sees her in this condition, our previous excuses won't do." Skaven noted.
"Humph… How can anyone confuse Mana for anything else, her face is all over the buildings, the fences, and gates. Who could have known that being a superstar and a ninja would be a hassle and drag us down?" Endo sighed with irony in his tone.
"What else is new?" Mana said before weaving a hand seal and using the Transformation Jutsu to disguise her appearance. This simple technique should do for concealing her true state from the public, though if she ever had to use chakra for any other purpose and would disturb her concentration on keeping the jutsu active–she'd blow her cover.
The Stars hurried off the same hallways that they've roamed for the past four days. The leather-bodysuit-clad representatives from the Yamanaka informed the Stars recently that their job was done and that the right universe in the right timeline had been located already. A meek man in a lab coat roamed the chamber in the mountain where the elevator with a windmill shuriken-shaped ring stood. He had configured everything already by the time that the Stars got there.
"I take it you have found the right universe?" Shige-H inquired of the man.
"Yes, ma'am!" the man bowed. "Your contacts in Universe No. 2016 were a bit off the mark, though. It only took the locals a few years to invent a handheld version of the bridge technology."
"It must have helped that the people who had originally built it wore it as a decoration of their armor. It had been half-built by the time Shikamaru-san and the Advanced Technology Research Institute got to work." Mana noted. The magician approached the scientist and pressed her hand against his forehead, feeling up for potential influences left in the man's mind by Kiyomi or her men. Mana's eyes opened up in surprise as her focus on the man's mind made her lose focus on keeping up her transformation and her battered appearance returned.
"The Yamanaka… I don't sense any of their influence on you." Mana looked the scientist in the eyes.
"That's because they did not have to employ their methods of convincing me. There was no need. The roots of your work had entangled around my heart and seeded into it, Mana-san." The scientist bowed before Mana. "I was glad to help. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavor with the Allied Ninja."
"The roots?" Mana muttered to herself. She turned to Skaven, who looked similarly puzzled over the man's riddles. The Nara dared not speak it though, not even to himself. That was for the best, most likely.
"Yes, yes… We're all very grateful. Can you please now get into the elevator already?" Endo yelled out at the pair of Stars still lingering around the scientist and his configured control panel. The haze surrounding her mind didn't let Mana hurry. The magician still pondered on the subject long after entering the elevator and after the blades of the windmill shuriken shape began rotating around it while the elevator left their vicinity and plunged into a tunnel beneath it, crackling with cerulean electricity and glistening with shimmers of similarly colored energy.
Did Kiyomi find a scientist loyal to the organization that had arranged her deal with Mana? Was it an accident or did Kiyomi know more than she let in on? Could she perhaps had also been cooperating with that mystery organization? If so, just how much did Kiyomi know? What if she had always known that Mana didn't do the crime that she served time in Jigoku for? Maybe that was why Kiyomi was so quick to forget and forgive? Though the head of the Yamanaka-Inuzuka Zaibatsu also had an act to keep up, that was why she acted the way she did when she and Mana met again…
"Ah… Mana-san and the Allied Ninja?" a stumpy-looking scientist with a square jaw and otherwise unimpressive features greeted the arriving Allied Ninja. "We've been waiting for you. Everything has been prepared for a few days now but we were worried that you might still arrive decades in the future because of the speculation we gave you about how long it would take for us to complete the preparations."
"Everything is fine on our end." Mana relieved the scientist who yelled out to his subordinates to send out the messages to the other ninja.
"I can check up on your injuries while we wait for the locals to gather and join up with us," Shige-H suggested. "I may as well treat your scars as well since you'll have to look presentable when we return from the mission and when we leave Konoha for the Allied Ninja HQ."
"Right." Mana nodded, settling down on a nearby bench.
"If you guys need a space to check-up on your supplies and ready-up, the female dressing room is right there." A scientist woman with thick glasses pointed to a nearby closed room. "Though if you need anything, you may want to visit our local ninja tools shop. We invent scientific ninja tools here, we don't sell them."
"Scientific Ninja Tools?" Damisan's interest piqued.
"Yes, they're the cutting-edge of ninja tool technology. It's the ultimate fruit of civilian and ninja cooperation. After the Fourth Great Ninja War, all ninja military technology was declassified for civilian research and researchers came up with technology far surpassing anything that the ninja would have been able to come up with for decades." The scientist replied.
"I'd be very much interested in checking those out and updating my arsenal." Damisan turned to Shige-H, who just nodded in response.
"That's a good idea. Seems like something that's perfect for you." Shige-H agreed before following Mana to the dressing room.
Once in the dressing room, Mana could slip out of her uniform and settle down on a nearby bench while Shige-H checked up on the sum of her injuries and wrapping. Until now, Mana had been stuck training with Hanshin, which meant that Shige-H could not treat Mana's injuries since the Stars were just dealing with her Shadow Clones. This may have been the first opportunity for Shige-H to sit down and find a few moments to check up on Mana properly.
"So, you've completed your training on Armor Ninjutsu?" Shige-H asked one more time. "The Sannin won't be a problem for us anymore?"
"I've completed the training, yes. Though the only thing you can be sure of with Hanshin-san is that Hanshin-san will do whatever he feels like. That is the type of person he is." Mana sighed while Shige-H pulled out a pair of scissors and sliced through her bandages to expose her bumps for a proper visual inspection.
"And this Armor Ninjutsu… I know it isn't something you aimed to learn, but… Do you think it might be an asset for us?" Shige-H wondered while nuzzling her hand over Mana's skin. After an elementary check-up, the medical kunoichi started a proper Diagnosis Technique scan.
"It is powerful and has its own uses for sure. Someone like Hanshin-san could not only devise their skill set entirely on it but also rise above the rest of the ninja that way. That must mean something." Mana replied, trying her best not to disturb the leader of Stars with her reaction to burning sensations resonating through her body from just having her bruised skin exposed to air.
"I can sense that you're not entirely on that boat," Shige-H noted.
"The reason I took so much damage and took this long… Well… In a way, it's the same as with my Advanced Bloodline training. I just… I possess the skill to complete it. I just lack the imagination when put on the spot to devise the technique I want. In the middle of a battle I… Don't see it in front of me, even if I have the range of my hand to reach it." Mana breathed in and out slowly, testing just how much her chest could inflate and deflate without agonizing the young kunoichi.
"You must have passed that flaw to complete the training…" Shige-H wondered.
"Hanshin-san wouldn't have let me half-ass my way through. I can only hope that my breakthrough with Armor Ninjutsu will help with my Advanced Bloodline training too." Mana shrugged uncomfortably as Shige's treatment with the Mystical Palm Jutsu invited some unease, as it resonated all over, refreshing her body from within.
"So… We're traveling back from this universe, huh?" Mana said.
"Yes, Lord Seventh told us he could pass on to the moon by using a local portal located inside an underground spring but, as far as we could find, such a thing does not seem to exist in our universe, either that, or it has also been destroyed, just like it was in this one," Shige-H replied.
"Makes sense, I suppose," Mana sighed. "If such a portal existed, the Sky Clan would have no reason to use their giant sky lasers to descend to Earth."
"Alright, looks as good as it's going to get. Those scrapes shouldn't give you much trouble now." Shige-H tapped Mana's shoulder and left the magician to get dressed up and join them outside.
"What the heck!?" Endo seethed, shaking his fists and desperately searching for someone to express his wrath on. Since the only people around were the members of Stars and local scientists who by now had become used to the novelty of interuniversal guests and moved on with their day's work, the swordsman couldn't help but settle down. "Seriously! Just how long are they going to make us wait?"
"Calm down, Endo. Maybe one of our squad members is still occupied on a mission? We showed up unexpectedly, and they had no reason to expect us here so soon." Shige-H tried coming up with excuses for the locals.
"Whoa, Kakashi-san still isn't here?" a tall woman with twin blond ponytails at the bottom of the back of her head, a pair of simple, pearl earrings and donning a nightshade-color long-sleeved dress and a beige belt with white polka dots around her abdomen area walked into the room and struck a sassy pose after examining the ninja present.
"You must be Temari-san then?" Shige-H turned at the kunoichi who would have had very few reasons to be in this building if she was unrelated to the mission at hand. "We are a unit of Allied Ninja from a different universe, the Stars."
"You have some serious nerve accusing that other guy of being late when you yourself took your sweet time to prance over here too…" Endo squinted, giving Temari an accusing look. The woman revealed herself to be somewhat of a hothead too, as she instantly strut to the swordsman's location and got all over his face.
"What is that supposed to mean? You realize I've got a family to take care of, right? I've got no time to sit around here waiting for Kakashi-san to show up!" Temari ground her teeth, rolling back her sleeves as she prepared to pound Endo's face into oblivion for his crude behavior.
"Wait, you mean you knew that Kakashi-san was going to be late, so you intentionally came late too!?" Endo jumped up on his feet and stood his ground and the two began firing bolts of lightning from their eyes at each other, ready to jump at each other's throats. Just as Endo was about to apply a headlock, he tripped over himself and planted with his face hitting the floor with a square and straight smack.
Temari inched her lips downward with a petrified scare on her face, disturbed by the grisly manner of the young man's collapse when Mana stood up and nonchalantly approached the woman with a straight bar of obsidian steel hanging on her back and extended her hand. The single-hand seal that Mana still held her free hand in suggested that she may have had something to do with Endo's sudden loss of balance.
"My name is Mana. This woman right here is Shige-H. She is our leader. We apologize for Endo's behavior. He tends to get a bit hotheaded but his heart is in the right place, as hard as it is to believe it at times." Mana did her best to pacify the situation.
"I seem to recall that there was ought to be one more of you…" Temari observed after answering Mana's greeting with a polite smile and shaking her hand. "If you're looking to tangle with Ootsutsuki, you're going to need every bit of manpower you can get."
"Damisan must still be shopping for these Scientific Ninja Tools of your universe. He is a puppeteer ninja from Wind Country." Shige-H replied.
"I see… From what Lord Seventh told me, my role is to provide you guys with intelligence and all the help you may need as far as the Sands of Time are concerned. If this Damisan is from the Wind Country, he should know that legend and know of at least one artifact capable of controlling the Sands too." Temari expressed moderate surprise.
"We're afraid that we don't really know anything about the Sands of Time. The legend appears to be much more obscure in our universe if that anomaly even exists there…" Mana said. Just as they were discussing it, Damisan's chakra signature began moving in their general direction. It was hard to determine just how much stronger and more diverse he had become with the addition of the Scientific Ninja Tools to his arsenal since his chakra signature didn't directly correlate to the increased potency of the shinobi's arsenal but just the fact that Damisan thought this was enough weaponry signaled that he had been armed to the teeth.
It wasn't long before Damisan walked into the room. The self-puppeteering ninja had been clad in a skin-tight black bodysuit and had fitted pearly-white lines of metal stretching over his body. It appeared as if though he had changed his prosthetic limbs too, to where they looked fully cybernetic and innovative. Shiny to the point of glistening, though, knowing Damisan, they must have been also just as dangerous as they were impressive.
"Wow, you guys didn't leave me behind! I'm so flattered!" Damisan clapped his hands and bowed, forming a small booming airwave as he clapped his mechanical palms together with massive hydraulic force in his mechanical joints.
"Wow, what a weirdo…" Temari whistled out. "You said that this guy was a puppeteer, but I can't see a puppet on him. Are his puppets stored in scrolls or something?"
"No, Damisan is a unique type of puppeteer. He is his own puppet." Shige-H explained.
"I'm not sure I understand…" Temari scratched her head.
"It's very simple," Damisan approached the kunoichi, looking the most excited to explain his own abilities and origin story out of everybody, even though his excitement could have only been determined from his body language as the entirety of his body had been covered up with the black bodysuit weave underneath the cybernetic armor and prosthetics. "I have lost my arms and legs in an… Unfortunate and devious accident. That left me with very few options to feel useful to my teammates. Luckily, I was a puppeteer when I still had all my limbs, so getting used to manipulating my own prosthetics with what I had left wasn't that hard to pick up."
"Don't bring up his face or his skin, though, it's a touchy subject…" Skaven mumbled to Temari quietly while the woman stepped back to the inactive control panel she rested her bottom on while waiting for the team to assemble.
"That thing you said about the Ootsutsuki, Sasuke-san has mentioned them as well. We're not quite sure what we'll be encountering on the moon. Mana called them the "Sky Clan", which might suggest that what we're facing is different. Could you explain a bit as to what these Ootsutsuki are and what we can expect from them?" Shige-H asked Temari.
"It's a tough thing to explain, honestly. I've never really fought one directly, only helped. As far as their abilities go, you have to expect the unexpected. All textbooks and explanations of how we understand the world go out the window. From what I recall, they're some sort of aliens from somewhere far away in the cosmos or something…" Temari winked her eye in an effort to recall as much as she could and to provide all the messy intel she had concisely but it became apparent that something this off-world couldn't really be abridged so simply.
"Humph… So ridiculous. The Sky Clan is nothing like that. We should just drop this subject and focus on what's ahead of us." Mana crossed her arms and turned away.
"What's up with her?" Temari wondered, pointing with her thumb at Mana.
"Aliens are a bit of a bitter subject with her, I'm afraid…" Shige-H stretched her face out to better suit her widely smiling lips. "Aliens and ghosts… Mana seems to be terrified of ghosts and she hates aliens, I believe. Other than that, she's a polite and reliable young woman."
"I see…" Temari's left eye twitched a few times.
"Yo!" A man with wild and spiky silver hair, oriented to his left side and dark-grey eyes waved his hand standing in the doorway. Had it not been for his elastic face mask extending from the collar of his bodysuit and his hairstyle, he'd have looked like an unimpressive and standard Konoha ninja as he wore the simple flak jacket over his black bodysuit like most Konoha ninja. Even through his concealed face, his relaxed and lazy expression beamed right through his gaze and body language. "Sorry I'm late, everyone. I was helping Tono-san test out his new ninja-mini-gun. Then an entire cast of hermit crabs had to migrate south, so I had to wait while they all moved out of my way."
Despite appearing as nobody special and the general goofy outlook that this man created, also the unimpressive excuses he provided for being late, Mana's chakra sensory couldn't stop flicking the magician's forehead about not underestimating this man. By now, her chakra sensory had pretty much taken its place at the top of Mana's sensory system, so while the man's chakra signature size had been considerable, it wasn't the key feature that made Mana's heartbeat pick up a few paces. There could have been not a single doubt of how skilled this man was by how well-defined and tempered his chakra signature's form was and how perfectly he controlled his aura.
At least the squad had been assembled now, and this man was on their side.