With most of her Lightning Release jutsu disabled by Ring Ring simply using a more intense lightning technique to neutralize and absorb them, Mana was quickly running out of options. The only jutsu in her arsenal with enough intensity and rank to possibly overpower Ring Ring's absorption was Magician's Touch but it was a very close-range jutsu anyways. It would have been risky opening herself up to use it when the risk of it being utterly useless again and charging up Ring Ring's seals as well was out there.

"Shit, I'll need your help, Zoku-chan" Mana looked down at her discarded wand that was laying around a couple of meters further from her. Likely she had lost it from her grip during one of the multiple beatdowns she took. Her chakra and well-being were approaching their tipping points and if Mana did not bring out a breakthrough she'd soon be fighting a completely pointless losing battle.

The magician swiped her hand, raising it up. A typical projectile tossing motion that made Index crouch a tad bit and stiffen her muscles up in preparation for an incoming projectile before she realized that Mana was faking out. The assassin lunged at the magician only to see a grey mosaic glaring right back at her right on top of a back of a card that Mana had pulled from her sleeve. Before Index could act on her notes an irritating cloud of smoke overpowered the assassin, sinking the entire yard in smoke.

Mana dragged her thumb through her mouth, leaving a little bleeding bite on it while she worked on her hand seals as fast as she could. Before she could finish them, an iron grip locked around her wrist and another one around the middle point of her other arm, keeping the two limbs from connecting into a hand seal that would have finished the combination.

An overpowering kick that drove all the air out of Mana's lungs threw her sliding backward on her knees, busting them open and leaving dragging blood trails on the dirt and stone track present in the museum yard. Her chakra augmentations were slipping, normally being dragged through stone would not have hurt this much, leave alone open up wounds as grievous as the ones on Mana's knees.

"You were too fast for your own good, the sound your hands made moving at such immense speed betrayed your location." Index swiped her kodachi, cutting through the fading smokescreen as she left it and playing with her blades just to keep her hands busy and combat-ready.

"She's too trained to combat ninja, she knows that hand seals are of great importance. She's not looking right at my eyes either, knowing she could fall for an illusion." Jumbled and disorganized thoughts ran through Mana's head. The only way for her to perform jutsu she had perfected without hand seals or words would be to channel them through either her own hands or the wand. Channeling them without her wand would require a little bit of setup time, time that would undoubtedly be enough for her to be interrupted.

Mana crossed her arms over her face before swiping them aside again, this time a pair of cards did come out from her sleeve as projectiles, explosive ones. As Index became covered up by the explosion and overwhelmed by the concussive force and the flames that swallowed her Mana dove for her wand. A single illusion may have helped her slow the pace down.

A sharp tip of a boot dug into Mana's cheek, throwing a gruesome arc of blood spraying from her mouth and rolling back into one of the stone lanterns present in the lawn areas of the museum yard. Mana's eyesight became blurry, she could just barely pick up her scattered cards all over the yard. The girl glared at her sleeves and felt a sharp stabbing sensation at her wrists. The devices dispensing cards on her sleeves must have been busted and the inner pockets of her uniform holding spares busted. There went her weaponry and tool arsenal…

"I almost thought I would need to intervene there…" Ring Ring taunted his partner, the man was crackling with an alarming amount of lightning sparks all over. Likely he was spending the off-time charging up his seals with his own techniques, it was not a very impressive battlefield recharge as he spent chakra for techniques he stored for future use but it was still something.

There was no point fighting Index in her own battle. Mana was no bruiser, she wasn't like Meiko and not even like Kiyomi. Meiko could go throwing fists for days before fatigue or bruises showed up, Kiyomi had her extra years of experience and survival skills training with Chestnut Hanasaku forced her to learn to back up to. A couple of skipped punches and kicks and Mana was almost done…

Sore all over, bleeding internally and externally. She couldn't keep this up. At this point, her speed had dropped at least a good dozen of times due to injuries and how sore her joints and her gut was. Index was not stupid, she hit Mana's abdomen to make every twist and turn an agonizing experience, she hit the ribs to make breathing excruciating and she busted Mana's knees open to reduce her kicking off speed. With her being trained by the Ninja Rabbits, Mana used the ground for balance and needed her legs and knees fully functional to gather speed.

"I need to pick Ring Ring off." Mana rushed at Index, holding her burning in pain abdomen with one spare arm as she scooped any cards from the ground she could get her hands on. Her mind was too tired to focus on specific colors on markings she could have normally picked out before Index even noticed her reaching for them. She would have been more subtle with her attempt to reach for them too, under normal circumstances.

Index swiped her kodachi by Mana's throat, seeing the magician completely open in the neck area and splitting her throat open. With her head partially separated from Mana's body, the girl collapsed on one knee before dispersing into flower petals. This was the second time Mana had used this jutsu within forty-eight hours or at least a second time she could remember currently. Given her lack of sleep, judging the period of forty-eight hours was quite difficult.

To go after her wand again would have been too predictable, Mana would have to just work channeling her jutsu and revealing herself and her target a little earlier than she would have liked. Mana channeled the Lightning Release chakra through her body, going back to the techniques she started off using as a genin, ones she invented just messing around with ninjutsu with a textbook in hand. She pointed her finger forward before wrapping the other hand around her wrist.

Mana saw Ring Ring's eyes widen in surprise when she just popped into the view, with her illusion being canceled by her own concentration on another jutsu. Her pointing finger was centimeters away from his nose and he should have felt the intense Wind Release buildup emanating from her.

"Finger of Fate Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, propelling a thin stream of Wind Release chakra from her finger in an attempt to pierce it through Ring's body. The jutsu was weak, even on someone of Ring Ring's caliber, it would have merely bashed in between his eyes leaving a bleeding gash as it was not quite enough to penetrate through his skull, if it was, Mana would not have used such a jutsu from close range, to begin with. She just really needed to make sure it hit.

The field of Lightning Release generating around Ring Ring intensified, blasting Mana back before the stream of wind chakra could even reach her opponent, with her finger going up and driving the stream through the scalp of her opponent, leaving a scratch on the left side of his shaved part of the head. The white took over again, the voices of people talking in her head picked up again, too silent for Mana to tell just who it was that she heard inside her own mind.

Push away. Just push all that nonsense away and rise to the surface… Blurry and in pain from the light rushing in, Mana's eyes opened. The girl turned her head aside slowly, a large track she made sliding back after the expanding field of lightning coming from Ring Ring tossed her aside and shocked her again. Stand up… It will not be long until Index recovers from just almost losing her partner and comes in to finish the kill. Mana could hear her feuding with Ring Ring in the distance.

She just wanted to snap her head back and fall asleep so much…

"Shit, she's moving!" Ring Ring yelled out, pointing at the magician.

"Whose fault is that, using your ace too early…" Index objected again. The woman proceeded to pull out her short blade from the inside of her jacket and beginning to walk towards Mana.

"I can't get up…" Mana thought to herself. It has been a while since she was beaten to a point where she could not even stand up. Something was wrong, she should not be this beat. It was like her entire body was not only sore from the beatings and the wounds she has sustained but also completely numb. Her muscles could not tense up and she could not focus her body on completing any action except meaningless flapping and writhing about.

The magician grunted in pain when Index picked her up by her collar and lifted up. "I'm not usually this bad at killing people. Feel certain that I will kill the traitors and your Security squad much quicker." The woman mumbled out for Mana to just barely hear as she pulled the magician's body in for the finishing thrust with her short blade. Mana closed her eyes and focused her chakra on her perceptive abilities. It would make time feel like it had completely stopped which helped when fighting against speedy opponents.

It would prolong the pain of the killing blow to an entire eternity but if Mana wanted to notice a moment in time before she was finished off when her body could move again, this was her best shot.

Instead of the sharp and burning sensation of being stabbed, all too familiar to the magician, she felt complete weightlessness. When Mana opened her eyes, Index was no longer there. She was no longer holding Mana up by her collar and the magician was floating in front of a beam of blinding white light.

A thick beam of concentrated lightning blasted through Mana's abdomen, the magician's eyes whited out and rolled back as she fell lifeless on the museum yard lawn. The heat from the blast was so intense that it had cauterized the massive hole it left in the girl's lower body completely with it dropping only a few extra trickles of blood.

"You bastard, were you trying to kill us both with that beam?" Index gave her partner a death glare, turning back at him.

"I'll never tell…" Ring Ring placed his pinky fingers on his lips playfully before pouting them at his colleague in crime.


Index walked up to the magician before placing two fingers on her neck and examining her for life signs. The blast should have been intense enough to kill her immediately as it blasted through even her shoddy augmentations. Fighting this girl was different from what Index was taught about ninja by mercenaries. Her augmentations were not skillful or strong, in fact, this one appeared to be keeping herself from augmenting her abilities at all. Was she holding back? If so, her hubris cost her her life this time…

"Is she dead?" Ring Ring yelled out from atop the wall.

"Yeah." Index replied while sheathing her swords and looking down. Her weirdly androgynous partner whistled out loud, after being given a signal a bunch of men scurried into the yard, surrounding Index and the dead girl in two separate circles, waiting for further orders.

"Kill Index!" Ring Ring put his tongue out before licking his lips and blowing his eyes out wide in an almost maniacal fashion. After his men trembled in their boots and did not obey the order, the Ring just leaned back, thrusting his pelvis forward and biting on his index finger. "Just kidding…"

"Clean up the yard, we need to have this place presentable as an actual museum in an hour before it opens to the public." Index ordered after closing her eyes back after they were radiating deadly glares at her partner.

A strong-armed and broad-shouldered thug picked Mana's lifeless body before dropping it back down. Index turned back and raised an eyebrow.

"Ma'am, I think she's still alive, I can feel a heartbeat." The man mumbled while the rest of the crew took careful steps backward. While their allegedly deceased opponent was a teenage girl, she was also a ninja, of the very few professions that drove fear into the hearts of anyone around.

"You cheeky murderer, you, you lied to me, didn't you?" Ring Ring leaned forward, almost losing his balance and toppling over and down the wall.

"Of course she's alive now. That's how ninja work. Their bodies do their best to keep them alive for a short while, even through fatal injuries. Look at the gapping hole in her abdomen. Not even ninja can survive that, her short-term survival instinct will soon fade." Index answered with a hint of irritation in her tone.

"B-But what if she wakes up and kills us while we're disposing of her body?" the thug quaked in his boots.

"Out of the two of us, which one trained with a mercenary band and has killed ninja before?" Index turned back, reaching inside her leather jacket before her hand froze as an intimidating gesture, halfway to pulling out her weapon.

It appeared that the gesture was successful as a pair of thugs agreed to dispose of the girl's body while the rest got busy fixing the yard by doing their best to make the garden, the lawn, and the various stone yard accessories look presentable to the public.

"She used illusions of some sort before", Ring Ring noted after jumping down from the yard surrounding wall and doing a pair of bunny hops just to warm his feet up and make the slight discomfort in his feet go away. "Are you sure we're not being duped right now?"

"It's been way too long. It is possible that she pulled a switcheroo of some kind but she looked too adamant to beat us. Even when it became clear that she'd lose the fight she made risky gambles and continued to struggle, it is unlikely that she would have just dropped everything and fled. If her goal was killing us, after she pulled the illusion off, we'd already be dead right now and in no condition to discuss if it was an illusion or not." Index explained her reasoning.

"Can I kill Thumb and Pinky?" Ring Ring slapped his palms together, bending his knees a bit to playfully beg his partner.

"That's not your department. You'll leave too much of a mess and drag it out for no reason. I'll do it quick and spotless." Index rejected him.

"But they deserve to suffer, a little bit, maybe?" Ring Ring energetically pinched his fingers right up his partner's face, something that annoyed the woman a little bit, judging by her expression alone as even her cold and detached façade was crumbling. Her androgynous fellow Ring had a habit and a unique skill of getting under people's skins.

"Middle Ring is looking for their replacements. We have no time for games, if they find charred corpses, they'll probably suspect Raitoncide, the wandering serial killer, won't they? You are incapable of killing without imitating your exact M.O." Index blocked her colleague's advances to take up the task once more.

"If we slaughter the whole Security force, who'll suspect anything?" Ring Ring, or Raitoncide, as Index referred to him, leaned back. He pouted his lips like a spoiled child.

"Do you think Konoha will let a death of one of their own go? Things may get a bit troublesome in the future, we may need to go deeper underground than we normally are." Index rubbed her tired eyes, at this point she regretted not having been killed in that last fight, she was beginning to utterly detest the new Ring Ring.


"Do you think we're the bad guys sometimes?" the man carrying Mana's body wondered before grunting out loud as he tossed it in an alleyway.

"I mean… We do work for a literal criminal organization..." his friend tried to enlighten his pal to the concept.

"Yeah but… I always looked at us like… The honorable outlaw types. Isn't the whole point of the Diamond Hand to gather riches and get ahead in an unfair system? Look at this kid, she's about as old as my daughter. I wouldn't appreciate if someone left my own girl like that." The man scratched his bloated belly in discomfort.

"We're whatever someone seeks in the Diamond Hand. Some guys got in just to get ahead, sure. Some just want a free chance to kill and hurt people. Either way, Diamond Hand is all of those things because it serves all of those functions." His buddy slapped his partner in the back before turning around.

"I hate it when you get all philosophical on me." the soft-hearted criminal sighed.

Just a dull thud separated the moment in time where the two criminals were standing and talking to the one where they fell to the ground knocked out cold. A young man landed by their side after both men were downed in an instant and examined Mana's body, feeling up her vitals before removing a pair of green food pills from his pouch and placing them inside the girl's mouth, cracking them using the girl's own teeth and then forcing them down her throat.

Yushijin flipped Mana's lifeless body over his shoulder and disappeared in the alleyways of the Shukuba pleasure town.