Once the living signal of doom faded in the black void of space, both the representatives of the Earth Clan and the Sky Clan stared at the stars as if waiting for the nightmare to return. It was just that by then the Chaser had returned from what would have been certain doom, like a lingering, unwavering dread that would have surprised no one to see him appear and mock their combined efforts.
As more and more time passed, the collective fears proved invalidated and one by one they popped and dissolved in a bog of a complete deal of different feelings.
Mana looked around at the blood, inky entrails, and detached limbs, and lifeless stares of the poor, uncanny and majestic people that looked similar to the people she knew enough for her to feel somber at witnessing such profound carnage around her. A light press of a hand touched against her elbow. Mana turned her head without moving her eyes too far away from another signifier of their collective failure.
"Endo?" she said, feeling as if this was the last person she'd have expected to comfort her.
"Holy crap, we couldn't even stand up against one of those guys and here this guy went tearing them up like wet paper…" Endo's words cut like a razor across Mana's nerves, sliding across her throat as if trying to skin her veins and making the hairs around her neck stand up.
"This isn't what normal people take from this sight, you know," she replied with a firm tone before approaching Seikuwo, who was the last one to pull his unique pair of eyes from the cosmic void over his head.
"So, I guess my secret's out. You saw my clone, right?" Mana brushed her arm with unease, fully expecting the head of the Sky Clan to punish her and hoping that he wouldn't lash out fast enough for her not to have a chance to convince him to spare her teammates.
"Not much of a secret," Seikuwo replied, still looking at the sky. Almost as if he was hoping a little to see that horrendous, mocking entity with abstract grimaces staring down at him. "You admitted having come here to free the workers. I already presumed you've paid them a visit first. Are they okay?"
"From what memories I've got from the clone, they're waiting at the sky beam device you use to travel between Earth and the Moon," Mana took off her hat and scratched the back of her head. She was wondering how she was best to approach the subject of asking Seikuwo's permission to use the device to get home.
"I think it would be for the best if you all joined them," Seikuwo finally accepted it that the plague of his people had been gone. "You've played a major part in getting rid of the Chaser. That earned you enough of our respect for us to take your word that you aren't here to act hostile or declare war on us. You must keep in mind that the monster came from your planet, to begin with, so you shouldn't presume too much about our relations."
"As far as Earth and the Moon are concerned, the status quo is back–that of lukewarm peace. You are free to wage war on the measly barns you've built atop of that bog of scat. Given the trouble that your business usually means for everyone involved, we'd prefer you didn't involve us in it anymore," Tairunto crossed her arms.
"Huh…" Mana breathed out. "So I guess this quick beam back down is just as much a sign of gratitude and goodwill as it is your own convenience of getting us off your home."
"Sensei…" Ishikeru grumbled, chipping pebbles and rough edges off his stony forearms and fists. "If it's any consolation, I'm sad to see you go. I'd rather you teach me your craft of shits and giggles yourself."
"Well, you can always watch me. In fact, you better do!" Mana pointed her index finger at Ishikeru's mountainous ridge of a head before lightly flicking an edge that seemed the closest thing he had for a nose. "It'll be flattering to know that I'm being watched from the actual Moon, it's a new audience. In any case, I'll be holding you up to making these stiffersons lighten up. Magic has that kind of power. It lightened you up, didn't it?"
"I mean… He literally looks like he still weighs a good forty billion tons," Skaven squinted. From the nervous ticks such as scratching his temples and combing through his hair with his fingers, it became apparent that the Nara couldn't have felt to have gotten off this rock soon enough.
"Come, I'll show you to the device and since you've gotten so attached to the Earth Clan, Ishikeru, you may even be the one to run the machine," Seikuwo pointed with his staff toward a faraway location beyond the horizon where the wonder that would bring them all home laid.
"Humph… This accursed trip is finally over… Jeez, what a hassle…" Endo crossed his arms with a sulky expression. He looked half-asleep even before getting to the actual sky beam device.
"I hear you. It has been… Something," Shige-H chuckled into an open hand, recalling all the wild speculations, plans, and crazy encounters they've had in the meantime.
"I'll say…" Damisan stared at his open hands. This time ones made of bone, flesh, and blood, wrapped in a silky-smooth skin that looked as sun-kissed as it was the day when a madman desert tyrant had it singed, boiled, and peeled off of his bones.
"What's up with you?" Damisan peeked through a half-closed eye while nonchalantly shuffling beside the group, addressing Mana who was dragging her feet across the weightless expanse of the Moon's surface and the sifting, featherweight and so pure moondust covering it. "You actually look bummed out to be leaving this place…"
"Hmm… I guess it's because I am," Mana admitted, looking up at the stars. At least, with the casual pace, they were moving in, they had plenty of time to absorb as much of the magical trip to the Moon itself as they could. Seikuwo wasn't just kind to lead at such a pace, he wanted to examine the extent of damage to his home. "I've always dreamed of coming here. It was our dream date location… Way back when we were just kids, I and Kouta dreamed of just jumping here from Earth just to see if we could do it, hold our hands, and look down at the Earth from up here…"
"Kouta? Why do I feel like I know who that is?" Skaven pondered, scratching his cheek. "He's a Juugo Clan kid, right? The son of one of the current Konoha Sannin…"
"Okay, that's… How did you know that?" Mana dropped her session of daydreaming before turning to confront Skaven about it. Even if Kusagoro's status as a Sannin would have made him a celebrity amongst ninja of all countries and his reputation as a barbarian brute on the battlefield would've made him an adversary just as feared, his family matters should have been a mystery to all but those familiar with it.
"I… I don't know…" Skaven shrugged before pocketing his hands and looking away in embarrassment. "You may have mentioned him once or twice, who knows?"
"I don't recall Mana mentioning a Kouta… Who was he? You haven't told me anything about your dating life. We seem to have time and now that you mention it, the mood is quite romantic up here, what with all the silence and grace of this place… If you ignore the ruins and the craters," Shige-H looked around. Her case was something much more devious. Mana didn't know it but she could sniff it, it may have been the only thing she could sniff out right now–Shige's acting.
She knew exactly who Kouta was, which made a dangerous precedent of way too many people hanging out with her who knew an alarming number of personal things about Mana, despite the magician never having entrusted those memories to them. What was the most baffling thing–she had no clue why Skaven knew so much, even if she could figure out how Shige-H scooped it out.
"It doesn't matter…" Mana grumbled, pocketing her hands and turning away as well. "It's a silly childhood romance thing."
Seeing the ridges, craters, and fissures littering the planet made Mana sigh. She recalled the tranquil serenity from inside the Hollow Moon and its many golden worlds that it hosted. It was a snippet of a graceful dream she could've wrapped herself in and never let go of. It was the kind of warmth and peace that could have gotten one through a torture session because of the sweetness of the memory alone.
Oh, how Mana would've loved to explore all of those golden worlds, see all the casual wonders of clockwork and gears that not even the locals knew how to build. To read all of those abandoned and archived scrolls of their ancestors and work out the mysteries of the world and its history that never ceased to amaze those who wanted to know of it. Just imagining the sort of miraculous marvels that one could have stumbled upon in those archives made Mana get goosebumps and not even because of the failing artificial atmosphere letting in some of the space's natural chills into the bubble.
"You can come out now, Earth Clan peasants. We've struck a deal with your ninja," Seikuwo proclaimed, turning to gesture back at the Stars who didn't look bound or too blue about their current state. It was likely because of that general mood in the air that the humans concealing themselves behind various wreckage peeked once or twice before revealing themselves. "Ishikeru…" Seikuwo turned to the one that was meant to keep these people enclosed but would end up setting them free and sending them home in the end.
"Um… Yeah… I'm pretty sure there's meant to be like… Two more parts to this thing, way bigger than this heap of scrap…" Ishikeru sent rocky pebbles chipping in all directions while he scratched his head, looking at a meek rectangular collection of gear and pumping steam. Near the sole surviving gadget, a rubber wire swung and lashed about, spitting hot air in all directions and blowing clouds of moondust everywhere. A remnant of the damage the machine had suffered.
"Is anything going to go right with this damned mission?" Endo grumbled, rearing a canine at this troublesome situation.
"Yes, it does seem like much of the plasma bridge has collapsed into the Hollow Moon somewhere," Fuyumara pointed at a massive crater that cracked through the shell and may have contained the missing parts deep down, all the way at the other end of the Moon's side. Given the tremendous altitude, who knew in what state the scrap would be in. Especially given its already ancient age. "Perhaps I can take the Earth Clan and their peasants home? A Bailong lives in the upper layers of the atmosphere in between both the Earth and the Moon. If those weaklings would survive the trip, Taiyosei could swoop in and out in no time at all. Not as fast as a beam of plasma, I'll admit, but it should do the trick."
"Hmm… A Bailong's air sac is completely empty. The puny Earth humans could travel inside it and survive. It wouldn't be a comfortable trip but… It beats their presence here," Seikuwo stroked his chin. "I intended on just leaving them behind on the Moon after we took off in our spaceship. Compared to being the Chaser's food, a few shakes and tumbles are a mercy."
"He what…!?" an engineer pointed an accusatory finger at the head of the Sky Clan before his colleagues restrained them from offending the head honcho of ancient ninja gods and making them flip their lids.
An entire platoon of ninja dressed in dark grey flak jackets blitzed up, hiding in the treetops and going through the hand seals in preparation to unleash Fire Release ninjutsu in sync at the descending shape of a white, wingless dragon that appeared to be massive enough to take bits of the very mountain that it descended on.
"When I said, aim for the large mountain with stone faces on it, I didn't quite mean on top of the actual mountain…" Mana deflated before stepping out and in-between the advancing party of ninja who were seeing this as a declaration of war of an unseen enemy and the Sky Clan ninja. The white dragon opened its jaw, forming a fleshy corridor for the engineers and workers that it was taking back to leave and finally set their feet back on some home Earth soil.
"That's… Konoha's Sorceress…" a ninja with a black bandana and a standard flak jacket pointed at the descending party and raised his fist to alert the ninja on standby to hold their attacks for now.
"What are we doing here?" Endo rolled his eyes. "You should have asked the dragon rider to put us all the way back home in the Allied Ninja HQ."
"We have to surrender the remote tunneling device to the Hokage. Plus… I've got a few matters of my own still unfinished here," Mana crossed her arms.
"This is dangerous, Mana. The Hokage does not know about there being anything wrong with any of the workers or engineers. Now all of those ninja are going to report us having shown up riding a Bailong alongside all of them…" Shige-H pointed out while gesturing at an entire leafage swarming with medium to high ranking Konoha ninja.
"I can ask Taiyosei to devour them all," Fuyumara pointed out. "That would eliminate all witnesses for you, Earth Clan. It would be convenient for me too. Sky Clan isn't meant to set foot on the Earth as per our covenant."
"Yeah… Not too many people are aware there was a covenant…" Mana pacified the Moon kunoichi before taking off of the Bailong and seeing the rest of the Stars get off before helping all the workers and engineers get out from its air sac. "To you, centuries may have been as close as yesterday. To us–it's been forever and there's always plenty of political and military strife to occupy our attention. Your existence is pretty much a legend only historians and professors are aware of. These ninja won't know what they're looking at."
"Plus, didn't the Supreme Leader say those workers are from Land of Earth and Land of Wind?" Damisan pointed out. "None of them are faces that these guys will know."
"Alright then, if all of your peasants have left my dragon's air sac, I'd rather no longer defile myself by spending one more second on Earth. It's only because you've helped us deal with the Chaser, Earth Clan. It meant more to some of us than others that you spared us of having to leave our home," Fuyumara nodded and jumped on top of the white dragon's head. Despite the desperate yells of the Konoha ninja for Fuyumara and her Bailong to remain where they were, the Moon kunoichi crossed her arms and saw the dragon shoot for the stars, disappearing from sight in one tunneling air-dash.
"Great… Now we've got this whole shitshow to deal with," Endo sighed.
"Holy crap, Mana… Holy crap…" Meiko tapped her armored boot at the moist and mossy floor of the Konoha Police Force HQ. "You know, when you left to join the Allied Ninja, I'd have never imagined that you'd come back to actually invade the village. I mean… Plenty of people were talking shit but… Wow…"
"You know I didn't invade the village. If I wanted to attack Konoha, I'd have done it with an actual army rather than a bunch of service staff," Mana waved her hand.
"Uh-huh… Service staff…" Meiko crossed her arms and made her lips extend horizontally in the world's most obvious doubting grimace.
"I'm surprised Lord Seventh is taking this so direly. Didn't he himself approve of my departure to perform at the other universes?" Mana sighed, placing her chin on her knuckle for support. She truly hadn't counted on things getting this serious with Konoha locking everyone up behind bars. Mana and the civilians were having it easy. The others may have faced the Intelligence Division and advanced interrogation. If they get mind-read, their entire operation might have gotten in jeopardy.
What an ending… Visited different universes, saw the surface of the Moon and spoke with Moon ninja, faced an invincible chakra-eating man-monster and lived to tell the tale and rode a giant, white dragon back to Earth only to get done in by law enforcement just doing their jobs.
"I don't quite get what you're talking about but… On the flip side, I finished working on that thing you wrote to me about," Meiko waved a paper tag out in front of the bars. Perking her head up with interest, Mana jumped up and ran up to the bars to scoop the sealing tag right out of her hands and slip it into the sleeve of her shirt. They probably still weren't done discovering all the hidden compartments and pockets of Mana's blazer so this was all she had to hide it in.
"Thanks, Meiko. You're… You're my best friend, whatever happens, I hope you know that." Mana pressed her forehead against the bars and groaned before stumbling with a drunkard's shuffle back to the bench and pressing her stupid rear against it. "I actually mostly came back to Konoha for this, believe it or not. Didn't even need it all that much anymore."
"Do I even want to know?" Meiko made a stoic face.
"Moon ninja magic…" Mana sighed and shook her head.
"Moon ninja magic…" Meiko concluded, unsure of what the conclusion was.
The door clanged and opened, dragging with a heavy, metallic shriek across the stone floor as a party of ninja walked in. Half of them had been cloaked, another half wore matching short black and grey jackets with red straps and were armed with tanto blades. Their hair had been orderly and trimmed to make them more like faceless drones and less like their own thing. Skaven stood out from amongst them like a sore thumb, but he seemed to walk alongside them and not be handled by them, which Mana would have thought to be the case.
The strapped ninja drones approached Mana's cell. The cloaked ninja formed a wall in front of Meiko while the lawman ninja blacksmith wasn't sure if she wanted to oppose them or to stand out of their way just yet.
"It's okay, those guys are with us, I think…?" Skaven scratched his head. "Those guys just burst into the interrogation room and just started pushing and bossing around like they owned the place, they're oddly cooperative with me though. I think that I'm either with them or I'm their leader…"
"What you did was very unwise, Sorceress. We'd rather you didn't do it again," one of the cloaked ninja spoke up. Mana saw flashes of a grey beard from under the point of the hood, obstructing the view of the man's face.
"We'll gather the rest for you. You can return to your Allied Ninja business. We've straightened out the civilians' identities and checked their memories. Since they're not a threat to Konoha, you can take them back to the Allied Ninja," another, much shorter hooded figure informed Mana in a voice similar to that of an elderly woman's before peeking slightly at Mana and letting a pointy, wooden nose of a tengu mask slip out.
"Oh, you've got to be some of the Overcoat's buddies…" Mana stood up and stretched her shoulder after the mysterious party opened up the cage and moved aside to signify that Mana was free to go.
"This one works for the VP," one drone with a matching haircut and uniform turned to Meiko with a cold-blooded look. It was the type of looks that were the last ones one got before going to the Pure Land.
"Does she? She must not be too important since I don't know her name," the hooded old lady in a tengu mask turned to Meiko while the attention shifted to her.
"Let this go. I'm not letting you guys hurt Meiko," Mana insisted. "This is a hill I will absolutely die on. You know how easily I can squander friendships and burn down bridges."
"Ours is not a friendship you wish to tangle with, Sorceress," the grey-bearded old man turned to face Mana with beady black eyes penetrating through from under the hood and freezing Mana in place in how sharp his look was. "It might be your good standing with us that has kept you alive for so long."
"Look, whatever creepy cult shit is going on here with those matching haircuts and bowl cuts, as long as you're looking out for Mana and not gonna murder her in her sleep or something, I'm fine with it. I'm still struggling to comprehend Moon ninja magic at this stage, so all this is just… Noise…" Meiko scratched her head and shrugged.
"Stand down," the old lady turned to her wall of nigh-identical drones, all of whom relaxed and nodded, letting Meiko pass. "You should leave and forget that you ever saw us here, young lady."
"Whatever," Meiko shrugged. "It's not like you're going to stay stealthy, walking with hoods and those creepazoids in broad daylight… Be seeing you, Mana. Hopefully, under less "Moon ninja magic" circumstances."
"We'll assemble the rest for you," Overcoat revealed himself from under the hood when Meiko left by sliding it off his head with a sigh. "We're keeping Skaven though."
"Wait, what? No!" Mana objected. "What is this about? You've probed some of our workers so you know that nothing in our business had anything to do with harming Konoha's interests!"
"No, you don't get it, girl…" the old lady shook her head. "Skaven was one of ours."