Mana's little finger twitched, a momentary reaction to her thoughts continuously introducing new, clashing conclusions. That powerful lightning bolt was faster than Mana could avoid, had she not sensed it in its forming stages and taken evasive action before it fired at her, she'd have likely gotten hit. She needed to make a decision and make it fast now, to attack or to try and scope some more information about her opponents.

Attacking them knowing that she had no idea about the weapon or fighting style of one of the two, the leather jacket woman and that the speed of the jutsu of another was surpassing even her own fastest evasive capabilities was foolish. Then again, standing here and waiting for death may have been just as foolish as well. Mana closed her eyes, focusing on her sensory, her opponents stood in complete tranquility. Farther ahead, inside the building, there were at least fifty-seven signatures Mana could pick up – just like Index said before, the Diamond Hand preferred not sending their fodder out to wear Mana out at the expense of their labor force.

A disruption in one of the chakra signatures, Mana's eyes snapped back open only to see the erratic movements of Index picking up, almost in complete slow motion even though most would not have even registered them. The woman's hands pulled out a kodachi blade, flinging it at Mana like an arrow at impressive speed. It was so immensely fast that Mana could not even evade it, she could merely choose where she would be hit, adjusting her body and shifting it around so that the short sword only left a nasty cut on her side instead of driving into her and nailing Mana to the ground beneath her feet.

That was just a distraction. Right after Mana's perception stopped working on the blitzing blade they picked up the woman herself rushing at Mana from up on the museum roof where she was positioned before. She was quite an experienced fighter, she clearly knew that if she had just lunged at Mana from where she was she'd be countered and beaten, no matter how much faster than the magician she was. Instead, Index chose to use the blade projectile attack as a distraction and that distraction alone had already drawn blood from Mana.

This was not an encounter Mana could brush off easily!

Index threw a powerful cross downward, only for Mana to leap back and avoid it. A silver, almost metallic blur and a sharp pain in the area slightly above Mana's chest and just lower than her throat followed by a trickling feeling of warmth running down her chest informed the magician that Index had a second short blade on her, one Mana's eyes could barely even follow. Not only was this woman incredibly experienced and skilled but she was also immensely fast, not many people without great cred in the ninja world could have landed two hits on Mana after two attacks with a perfect rate of success.

That blasted lightning! Mana registered it too late, her sensory inputs were overloaded by dealing just with Index alone and she only registered that scary feeling of Ring Ring's chakra signature swelling up with crackling lightning before it spilled out of his seals without hand seals or spoken name of the jutsu when it was all too late. When the only thing Mana could do was brace for pain and hope she'd not get electrocuted instantly.

The pain was intense, dominating and leaving nothing else to think about. Crippling and forcing Mana's body to lock up in pain and fall down on her knees, the lightning crackled all over her body, overloading her own neural signals and burning the magician out long after the lightning bolt had ceased. It was not only as fast as a natural lightning bolt but, possibly, a thousandfold as intense.

There was no time to feel bad about herself or to lament the numbness all over Mana's body. That dreadful sound of steel buzzing through the air, informing Mana that Index had taken a quick evasive roll forward and removed the secondary kodachi she had lobbed at Mana before, then taken a mad flip backwards and attempted to nail the downed opponent with both of her weapons, forced the magician to work some of her own magic.

With the Audra wand slipping out for the seals inside Mana's hat, as it rolled around nearby, having fallen off of the magician's head when she was being shocked earlier, Mana found her salvation. Using the wand with confidence that it was stronger than whatever quality steel Index's blades were made of and would absorb any differences in speed and built up momentum force inside them due to Audra's natural properties, the magician deflected the stab that was meant to nail Mana to the ground and bleed her out like a pig.

With an impressive for her degree of fatigue and rushing adrenaline feat of acrobatics, Mana picked herself off the ground, ready to launch an attack of her own. She was quite lucky to possess some mastery over her own Lightning Release jutsu after the training in the Rabbit Caves, without a doubt these two would have been fast and perceptive enough to deal with Mana trying to speak or weave hand seals. Mana thrust her wand forward, channeling Lightning Release chakra through her wand and having it build up at the tip before firing it all off in the shape of a beam of Magical Shock Jutsu.

The idea was to have the weak shock penetrate her opponent and have her momentarily stunned, giving Mana ample time to wail at her opponent with powerful kicks, ones that had within them all the force and aggression Mana could muster up as she needed to hit hard and fast if she was to come out of this encounter alive. She could under no circumstances face off against both of these two, even while the second guy was just providing long-range Lightning Release support.

Mana's eyes widened in shock as her beam bent around the woman before completely collapsing into crackles and sparks of lightning that all gathered around the sparkling palms of the Ring Ring. It appeared like all of the lightning she had fired off got redirected and absorbed by the man from farther away.

"Hmmm, I guess you're a Lightning Release user too? That's too bad…" Index lamented as she launched a barrage of a powerful elbow and knee strikes and outright stiff kicks to soften Mana up and condition her for a finishing strike from her kodachi. The magician placed her blocks and redirected the woman's strikes the best she could, but quite a handful of incredibly painful and stunning attacks did land regardless, the woman was an amazing hand-to-hand combatant as well, possibly matching if not exceeding the mastery of the martial artists of the Sun Disc in Wind Country.

"I'd have counted on a kunoichi knowing of Lightning Release's properties!" Ring Ring laughed out wildly atop a small wall surrounding the museum yard meant for art demonstrations during the warm season. Currently, the only arts it had to show were of the martial and deadly varieties.

Mana wiped the blood from her lips, she was not hit in the face hard enough to crack her lip or her teeth, it was blood that came from inside. Internal bleeding was much more dangerous than just a cracked lip or a kicked out tooth. What did Ring Ring mean by that?

He was not nearly a skilled or powerful enough ninja to use ninjutsu without hand seals or words, he did not even look like someone who was ever a ninja at all, likely being just a crook who was taught the arts by someone who was and went rogue. He must have stored the jutsu inside seals, those glyphs on his palms were the glyphs of the sealing jutsu he used. If only Meiko was here. The seal looked sloppy enough to be able to be forcefully unsealed, forcing all of the sealed Lightning Release chakra out from the man's arms at once. Something like that would have destroyed Ring Ring's arms completely, whoever taught him this method of fighting was either not too bright or merely did not need Ring Ring to last too long.

That meant that Ring Ring spent time separately, absorbing Lightning Release jutsu, storing them inside the seals in his hands to be unleashed in infinitely larger quantities compared to what he was able to muster. Store the equivalent of a lightning bolt every day and one day you'll have an entire cosmic scale storm stored away…

Just as thoughts worked their magic inside Mana's strategic, yet at the moment very tired and clunky, mind, Ring Ring extended his palms again, sending fissure-making lightning blasts scattered all across the yard and spreading out from his position atop the yard wall. The lightning blasts looked almost like shark fins splitting the ground apart due to their intensity and sharpness, yet when they approached where Mana and Index were fighting each other, they scattered into smaller electrical coils.

Index backed up, releasing some of the pressure she was applying on Mana, the magician was not a complete idiot. If Index was fleeing, that meant she was giving space for Ring Ring to continue his rampage. Sky splitting pillars launched from the ground, rising up in the air and incinerating all in their path. Gently and with precision, Mana danced around them, managing to evade them as she was able to sense where the pillars would form ahead of time due to her chakra sensory, even if it was often a bit lagging behind. The advanced warning of her sensory may have just saved her life right now as there was no way for the magician to dodge multiple lightning storms as compressed and astonishingly fast as the ones used on her by Ring Ring.

"Farewell, young lady…" Mana heard a gentle farewell, luckily for her, she had suspected Ring Ring's attack to be just a distraction to throw Mana out of her formation so that Index could finish her off. The blade that was aimed to pierce Mana's heart from behind the magician, where the clever Diamond Ring assassin had sneaked up, only cut through a pocket of thin air left behind after Mana's desperate for survival movements.

"Spear Kick!" Mana shouted out, dusting off all the old techniques and using all sorts of forgotten tricks in her book just to survive. Index contorted her body sufficiently to catch Mana's heel with the X formation of her blocking kodachi and allow them to absorb Mana's kick. Mana's powerful kick sent Index sliding back, her kodachi having taken a noticeable bump but the assassin herself still relatively unharmed.

"This is bad…" Mana thought to herself. "Trading fists was never my style but I can't use my ninjutsu or else it will just get redirected and absorbed by Ring Ring. If only I had a higher ranked Lightning Release technique, it is unlikely that whatever charge Ring Ring is putting out could absorb it."

It was counterproductive to think about these things in the middle of battle. It was not like Mana could just learn a new technique or somehow manage to drive herself out of the corner she was driven into, being forced to fight Index close range while Ring Ring just slings lightning bolts at her from afar.

Index thrust both of her hands forward, sending her kodachi spinning like buzzsaws in their travel towards Mana. The magician bounced sideways, using her left hand as a spring to throw her body away from the second buzzing weapon projectile meanwhile her side dive allowed her to avoid the first one. This was less than ideal and Mana acknowledged it, she was so desperate to avoid these swift attack that she left herself open and exposed in the standing on one arm position. There were few defensive options left to her in that stance, at least until she could place both of her feet firmly on the ground.

A metallic string reeling sound made the thick blood vessels around Mana's heart freeze up and pump liquid, chilly fear instead of blood. With a strong yank on the handles of the blades, where the steel strings were attached, Index returned both of her kodachi almost in an instant and lunged straight at Mana. Planting both blades firmly within the kunoichi's heart and liver.

Mana's body dispersed into flower petals that scattered across the battlefield. Just as a scattershot of lightning bolts blasted all around Index, likely a precaution had Mana somehow managed to survive Index's previous attack.

The magician was lucky that Lightning Release was not only not her only skill but also not even her only elemental affinity. Mana's body was quick to return to form after the lightning bolts only hit thin air due to Ring Ring being similarly unable to find Mana's real hidden body, only seeing her illusionary self that got stabbed before dispersing. As if Mana would make such an amateur mistake as leaving herself open in a questionable pose like that…

By the time Mana's shape appeared to both of her opponents she was positioned in between Ring Ring, who was still atop the yard wall right behind her, and Index who was standing to the side of the main entryway. It was a dangerous position to be in as Mana could no longer see visual ticks from Ring Ring whenever he conjured up another blast to take at her, however, she still had her sensory which was reliable enough for the short while.

Mana pointed her hat's opening towards Index, allowing a flurry of cards to fly out from inside it and scatter pointlessly in the air, the woman covered her face up as the steel tipped cards provided ample annoyance and irritating cuts all over due to their wide spread, not to mention the visual cover they provided for the short while. Then the magician pointed her wand at the cloud of cards, activating her Friendly Gust Jutsu without words or hand seals, letting the training in the Rabbit Caves mastering her old weakling jutsu pay off once more.

The swirling vortex of fireballs and small explosions added up to quite a significant, rumbling inferno that would have surely incapacitated someone of Index's caliber. While the woman was an unmatched martial artist and a swordswoman proficient enough to hand Meiko a good beating, Mana was lucky to face her in the wide open where she could let her devastation out instead in a compact space where she would be forced to play Index's lethal blade dancing game even more.

All sense of balance slipped from under Mana's feet, the magician turned her head sideways, seeing vague blurs of her female opponent through her own messy raven hair scattering in the air. Index used her own arms as a tripping mechanism, tripping Mana over by driving them right at the magician's heels and sending her down. Before Mana could figure out how to pick herself up fast enough to avoid getting skewered by Index's kodachi, a stiff kick slammed her gut and chest, planting the girl firmly onto the ground and making her intestines let out a loud churning and wrangling noise.

The taste of blood in her mouth did not let Mana fall asleep and pass out in peace, Index had such an insane experience edge on Mana. The assassin knew quite well that she'd be too slow to stab with her kodachi as it would have required a complete repurposing of her bodily momentum so she just redirected the one she had gathered to throw her body into a whirling tornado kick, a less lethal attack but one more certain to land firmly.

Complete white enveloped Mana as her consciousness appeared to fade out. An odd metallic taste switched out the disgusting feeling of her own blood gushing from inside her body in her mouth. Only a few moments later did the magician realize that she was hit by one of Ring Ring's Lightning Release pillars, a much weaker version apparently as the one before would have surely killed her. The girl worked with the adrenaline rushing through her body to get her body back on her feet but the ugly sound of her own body letting out smoke from the spots where her augmentations were the weakest leaving burns and the intense pain only let her writhe helplessly.

"You almost hit me with that, do it again and I will kill you." Index turned at Ring Ring, her voice was tired and winded. She was pacing herself quite nicely before, it must have been the spontaneity of Ring Ring's attack that threw Index on edge. More so, Mana was beginning to understand the nature of Ring Ring's seal now.

It was a storage seal after all. Storing Lightning Release jutsu inside only to be fired at some point later in the shape of differently formed lightning bolts. That was why Mana was so surprised by the power of the first sky-scorching pillar of lightning but the second one only caused her intense pain and a momentary white out instead of just disintegrating her to a cloud of ashes. Ring Ring had used out a significant portion of his charged up techniques and each successive jutsu was weaker than the ones that came before.

"Oh, come on. You wouldn't dare to kill a whole Ring, Middle Ring would be so pissed, he likes keeping his members alive so much!" Ring Ring teased the woman. He appeared to share a more playful and teasing personality with Thumb, except one a bit more to the murderous psycho side.

"As if a Ring of racketeering and other roughhousing crime managing Finger is so tough to replace. You're a newcomer, aren't you? Ever wondered what happened to the guy you replaced?" Index suggested. It was something that creeped Ring Ring out as he promptly shut his mouth and leaned back. The disagreements between the two gave Mana time to push her face off the ground and get herself together, sadly, it also gave time for Index to regain her breath.

This fight was not looking good. Mana was approaching her limit, forced to fight a type of battle she did not do favorably fighting while being chipped bit by bit until once when brought down, she would not be able to stand back up. She needed to change something…

Her sleepless, fatigued mind had completely shut itself down, nothing of substance, nothing but delirium came up…

Mana could not die here. So much depended on her right now, this entire town did! That very thought may have been what gave her the willpower to even remain on her feet at that moment of exhaustion mixed with pain all over from the beatings and shocks she had received so far.