Damisan's back splintered with interconnected blades forming wings of smaller razors bonded in the shape of propellers. The self-puppeteering shinobi yanked on puppetry strings with his prosthetic hands to set these curious gadgets off and propel himself toward the giant gate-keeping crab while he cocked his free hand back for a pound to its carapace.
Looking around her, Mana noticed the others had readied themselves to dispatch of the guardian of the passageway with no sense of responsibility that their actions here could have caused to the entire timeline. The tiny spark of distrust and unease that was born within the back of Mana's mind grew and festered into an entire network of malice and terror.
Naruto and his team or Toneri not being able to use this passageway in the future was the least of their problems here. What if they tore this entire timeline asunder and doomed their own timeline in the process? After all, that this entire universe's history transpires the same way was integral to Mana's own maturity and journey and her own universe, as the timelines of the two universes were interconnected in a way.
By ruining this timeline, the Stars may have threatened the integrity of the entire omniverse as who knew what the adverse effects of such a calamitous event could have been. Time and space were inseparably linked, so irreversible damage to one might have ruined the other all the same. Feeling the desperation within her but also the need to warn her team growing direr by the second, Mana took off her hat and flung it upward, weaving a hand seal.
The storage seals inside of her hat's sealing dimension still had some space, it seemed. A robust whirlpool filled the underwater cavern in a rumbling howl that transitioned into a booming quake as the water pooled inside Mana's hat and her sealing dimension, taking the entrapment marbles with it. Seeing the cavern free-up somewhat, the ninja magician swam toward the top and emerged onto the surface.
Just as Mana turned down to alert her team to emerge and listen to her, the sight of Damisan's arm popping off and giving way for an entire sprout of iron sand construct hands emerging from the stump and battering the gatekeeper all at once made the magician grab her head in despair. The cavern rumbled and the armored gatekeeper rattled in agony as its entire fleshy bits scrambled inside of its tough carapace. Damisan had more than enough wallop behind his punch to make a mush out of the gatekeeper with a single blow.
Though it didn't seem like the Sasori puppet coating that Damisan used had enough endurance to withstand Damisan's own inhuman strength. Upon contact with the guardian's shell, the iron sand limbs scattered to powder as the puppeteer's own Sasori arm unraveled as if someone had placed a high-powered explosive into the stump and cracked it with a sledgehammer to set it off in the most violent way possible.
Seeing Mana emerging, Shige-H rushed toward the ninja magician, while Endo chopped the fallen guardian to tiny bits as it sank toward the cavern floor. That beautiful, completely oblivious bastard. With that violent and abusive action, he might have salvaged this timeline and the entire omniverse. Mana bit into her fingernails and squinted in terror as the chunks of the filleted alien crab sprinkled onto the underwater cavern floor.
"What's the matter? Were you short of breath already?" Shige-H wondered.
"No, you don't get it!" Mana objected. "We can't mess anything up here! This version of the past, it's not like traveling to other timelines and other universes. This is the exact version of the past of the Naruto universe that we know and the one we've interacted with. That means that our actions here actually matter!"
"Wait… What?" Shige-H seemed to be on the verge of understanding, though she purposefully held herself back from the full brunt of it.
"We can't destroy this cave. In fact, we shouldn't have killed this gatekeeper either. We need to leave as much of this place intact as possible. Toneri and Naruto traveling through this place is integral to this universe's history," Mana explained.
"What are you two doing here?" Skaven peeked his head from the water, quickly stepping onto the surface of the water and crouching so that he didn't hit his head at the surrounding stalactites. "Avoiding picking fights is usually my deal,"
"Mana says we have to be more careful. This entire spot of the timeline is linked with the universe we've cooperated with," Shige-H explained. "Apparently, using the Sands of Time differs from just jumping to different places of time in different universes using technology."
"It was really mean of you guys to just tag out. I wrecked my whole arm fighting that giant enemy crab, you know…" Damisan complained, emerging after his team as well with a vocal objection.
"Yeah, you may have doomed everybody while doing it too…" Skaven ran his hand across his wet hair to whip it back into place.
"Huh? What are you guys going on about?" Damisan shook his head.
"When we used the technology to jump to different timelines, we weren't time-traveling, not really," Mana explained. "We were finding different universes that were experiencing time from a certain point of their timeline. What we're doing now is very much different and far more dangerous. I think I now understand why the Sands of Time were so anomalous and well-hidden and why only divine artifacts could control them."
"So, are you guys going on or not? I don't get it…" Endo emerged from underwater and pulled himself onto the surface.
"Shush!" Shige-H hushed her teammate. "Let's hear Mana out. This could be important if I'm getting this right."
"I've missed everything you were talking about. Can we start from the beginning?" Endo took a hefty breath after pulling himself out of the water fully.
"Yeah, can you also elaborate a bit more? I don't think I quite get it yet…" Damisan scratched his fake red hair.
"Ugh…" Mana groaned. "Look, imagine the timeline of a universe being as a ruler. It's a wooden plank with numbers 0 to 10. As time progresses, the pointer moves from 0 to 10. 0 is the beginning of that universe's time and 10 is where it ends. In the past, when we used the universal bridge technology, we didn't truly travel across that ruler. We just found a different ruler, that looks the same, but where the pointer is pointing at the specific number we need. Using the Sands of Time, however, doesn't do this. The Sands of Time actually forces the pointer to go backward."
"Okay… So, what's the difference?" Endo grumbled.
"The difference is that if we mess things up and have that pointer go in a different direction, it'll leave the ruler entirely. The worst part is that the globe as we know it is standing on top of that ruler. So, if there is no more ruler–the globe falls down and breaks too. Also, because we've gone around looking for so many rulers, we've accidentally wrapped threads all over them, meaning that if one of them goes down on the floor–so does everything!" Mana was beginning to lose her mind just trying to imagine the consequences of their presence in this point of time and space.
"Holy shit…" Damisan rubbed the back of his head, accidentally chipping off a part of Sasori puppet's scalp that stayed in his free hand until Damisan discarded it to drown underwater. "Wait… Should I pick that up? What if someone who wasn't supposed to find it finds it? Have I just doomed the whole omniverse!?"
"Relax," Shige-H placed her hands on Damisan's shoulders, halting his quivering. "Do we have any solid proof things are as you say they are, Mana? Because stakes like these may require us to contact the HQ and reassess our mission objective. Risking the entirety of existence as we know it may just be a bit too high for the stakes to be at for just a group of engineers and architects."
"No. Though we don't need that much proof or worry. As long as we alter nothing drastic, we should still be fine. All we need to do is to be as careful while we're here as we were so far before entering this cave, and we'll be just fine. All we need to do is reach the Moon, our moon, and we'll stop threatening the integrity of everything ever and everything that's ever to be or has been." Mana dusted off her hands and placed them on her hips, trying to force her thoughts away from the tremendous stakes and act normal. She might have been her least normal now, though.
"Okay so…" Endo grumbled, looking down at the rippling depths that curved the neon lights emanating from another section of the cavern.
"We keep heading forward and avoid doing anything drastic. The cavern must stay intact. I assume we can't defeat this Toneri either or set him back too much," Shige-H caught on to Mana's warning quick.
"Killing the gatekeeper is already a problem, but…" Mana started talking before all the frustration broke out from her chest in a sigh. "I don't think he had that important of a role. From what Kakashi-san told us, Naruto must have fallen for his illusionary marbles. Since those are still present all around us, he can and still will fall for them. It's just that he won't get to fight a giant enemy crab at the end…"
"Alright, we lucked out this time. Let's keep moving on but more carefully," Shige-H nodded and plunged underwater. The rest of the Stars soon followed. The group swam past the collapsed shell of the filleted gatekeeper and swam toward the light. At some point, they must have passed it though as everything went black and cold, except the refreshing embrace of the liquid filling the cavern still brushed against everyone without soaking them through.
Then, all at once, light and solar warmth decked Mana in the face all at once.
The magician scrambled to cover her face up, feeling around her with her hands and finding some dry stone to help her climb out from a cave opening and into a ruined, ancient city that seemed to spread out on the horizon.
"What the shit?" Endo scratched his head after all the Stars surfaced to examine this location. "It just took us somewhere else. Where the heck is the Moon?"
"Hm…" Mana looked up, covering her eyes once more as she struggled to adjust to the sudden shift in lighting. Despite it being rather chilly and gloomy back where they entered the cave, this place seemed to be rather stuffy with heat, and the sunlight showered brightly. Looking around, the abandoned buildings of this ancient city reflected sunlight with a brilliant shimmer, almost like the fresh snow powder reflected streetlights the night after the first snow.
These conditions looked natural in this place. This city and its architecture were like nothing like Mana could recall seeing before. It looked almost like a tropical haven, though there was no sight of water anywhere and it didn't seem like this place could have been in the Fire Country. While it still hosted the thick, centurial oak trees native to the Fire Country, it wasn't as if those trees spread naturally, it looked more as if they were spread out and planted in very specific spots which wasn't the case with most of the Fire Country.
Both Konoha and the plentiful minor settlements found throughout didn't have the vast forest masses grow around them. They found themselves inside of the already rampant and prosperous woods. This city appeared to be the master while the oak trees were just scenery, a decoration.
"I sense some chakra spread out all the way to the edge of my sensory range," Mana reported. "Some signatures are too far away to tell much about them, but the closer ones actually feel more like clones or puppets. Dead objects, devoid of chakra signatures of their own, though operated through a stream of foreign chakra signatures from another location."
"Clones? So there won't be any harm in cutting them to pieces?" Endo double-checked it.
"Probably not, however, we should avoid being sighted. It's more than likely that these clones act as guardians just like that giant crab earlier," Shige-H said.
"I agree, their positions and movement patterns would suggest them to be patrols," Mana nodded with her eyes closed, wanting to feel as many details about these curious signatures as she could.
"This is so confusing…" Damisan whined out. "We were in the Fire Country, then we swam through a cave and we're somewhere else… Where the heck is the Moon?"
"There's nothing else to do. We've got to explore the place and find out if this is some extension of the portal or if something had gone wrong. Mana, are you sure we're not under some sort of genjutsu?" Skaven turned to Mana.
"If we were, we'd each be in our individual genjutsu. There is no available method to link people under common genjutsu that I am aware of," Mana shook her head. "Of course, if you were under a genjutsu and asked me, an illusionary projection, this, I'd likely tell you something similar because I'd be interested in prolonging your trap for as long as possible."
"You just had to ruin it…" Skaven sighed.
"That's genjutsu for you. You can probe my mind if you want to. It might help you determine if I am an illusionary projection or not, though it might also open your mind up for a foreign chakra to lay a siege on it while you're trapped under an illusion. It's not a situation you'd want to be in," Mana shrugged.
"Goddamn it, Mana…" Skaven groaned, smacking his face. "I think I'll trust you for now."
"I see, I'm glad. It's probably for the best," Mana smirked, enjoying her little tease, even though the information she told him had been genuine.
"Okay, I should shoot up and see how far this whole thing goes and what's the general lay of the land," Damisan suggested, raising his hand.
"You'll attract the puppets," Endo replied. "We're trying to avoid being seen. Did you forget?"
"Damisan raises a fine point though," Shige-H scratched her chin. "We don't know where we are or where we should be headed. This location doesn't look much like anywhere on the Fire Country. We might need that help in scoping the place out."
"Then we do this the old-fashioned way," Skaven suggested, pointing at the tallest bunch of trees and a handful of tall building ruins in the ancient town.
"Did you truly think of sneaking past me? I could sense you from all the way down in that cave," an ominous voice spread from behind the punk ninja, making all members of the Stars jump up at once.
Skaven turned around to face his sneaky assailant before receiving a roundhouse kick to his back. Black blurs followed by the noise of rustling cloth joined in on the fray. These were tall, thin men dressed in concealing, baggy clothes with just a pair of closed eyes on a path of pale skin visible through a minor crack in their facial shrouds and black turbans.
"No use in hiding now, I'm going up!" Damisan yelled out, seeking to dash up into the sky to where he could see the surrounding environment and suggest a direction for the team to follow but these mysterious, highly flexible figures crawled all over him and began slipping their dead fingers underneath the cracks in Sasori's armor.
"What is this?" the watchmen of the ancient city mumbled in an identical, husky voice. They found the fact that lumps of scarred flesh pulsed from underneath the layer of this puppet that looked like an attractive man from Sunagakure rather intriguing as they tore chunks off of Sasori layer off of Damisan in mid-air. This proved to be a competent diversion as Damisan's trajectory steered off-course as well, making him race widely all over the place.
Mana kicked one of the men charging at her aside, feeling a wooden thud and something heavy rattling under. Evading flurries from oncoming puppets, Mana crushed an arm of one of them in between her thigh and her calf and broke it off its joint before pulling it off and smacking one puppet aside with it. Thusly she revealed to the Stars just what was attacking them.
"Puppets? But I can't see any strings?" Endo grumbled as he kept on slashing the oncoming barrage of men, dressed in outlandish, concealing, and baggy outfits, down by the handful.
A green sphere shot out from the wreckage of the puppet that Mana had totaled, slamming into her chest and detonating. Mana heard her own scream echo as she rolled backward and into the rocky wall of the cave they just left. The puppets all swarmed her like bees, their punches lacked much sting though they were many and their swarming tactics knowing that they had nothing to lose while offering their artificial lives like this had thrown Mana off.
"You look tougher than I thought…" the same voice that spoke from the lips of each of these assailants muttered, noting the lack of any injuries on Mana after dozens of his puppets threw their meanest strikes at her.
"We have no quarrel with you, Toneri," Mana grunted, taking a shot in the dark. "We just need to get to the Moon. We won't stand in the way of your mission, we just need to return home from the surface of the Moon."
The puppets levitated off of Mana, giving her some leeway to dislodge herself from the stony wall and get back on her feet. The fact that she knew who he was seemed to make Toneri allow her this luxury, at the very least.
"Who are you?" he wondered through the mouth of an entirely different puppet.
"I'm not sure we can tell you without ruining everything. We just need to get to the Moon and we'll be gone. You can carry on doing whatever it is you're doing here," Mana tried reasoning.
"The Moon? You're already on it," the puppet spread its long and slim arms out, letting the baggy cloth covering them up flap in the light artificial breeze. "You've walked through the portal and you had no idea you're on the Moon? Are you sure you know what you're doing? You lot seem stronger than any Earthling ninja I know of and you talk about something I've no knowledge or understanding of either. That won't do. I'll get that intel out of you even if I have to beat it out of you or leave you stranded here long enough for you to surrender it to me willingly."
"Well…" Mana sighed, "We tried."
The magician kicked her back off the ground and back into her hands, snapping her fingers and undoing the seal that kept the water from the cavern she had taken in to get some air and space to talk to her team in. The torrent boomed out, flooding the town and washing against the walls of each building but ultimately evening out somewhat. The colorful, gem-like marbles began floating in mid-air, freezing the puppets in place. The men in turbans all stared up with dazed expressions toward the nearest marbles while Mana stumbled from their formation and regrouped with the rest of the Stars.
"What did you do?" Damisan wondered, picking himself off the ground while unwrapping the cloth over the face of a Toneri puppet while trying to slip his disfigured face that barely had any Sasori left concealing it inside of the Toneri puppet's head. It wasn't easy doing it with one arm, so Damisan laid the nearest puppet out, planning on borrowing as much from it as possible before leaving.
"One flaw of seeing everything…" Mana panted. "There are some things you may not want to look at."
"Hurry, I don't think this will hold him busy for long," Shige-H hastened Damisan to wrap his sloppy replacement up as quickly as he could before they could move on. "At least we know we're already on the Moon."