There was this gnawing nibble in the back of Mana's head – a chakra signature in the vicinity which the magician could only vaguely identify. She had sensed it before though she hadn't committed it into memory just yet, likely because the circumstances were direr than doing so being on her list of priorities. Could it have been one of the "others" that this curly-haired ex-Kumogakure kunoichi was talking about?
No. It was rather large and there was not even a passing attempt at hiding itself as there would have been if it was confused about their reason being here or if its owner fostered any ill will or any intentions to ever join the fray.
"That chakra back there," Mana mumbled.
"Oh, you've sensed it? That's Nakotsumi Mana for you, yeah, I've gotten the permission for us to spar from the HQ staff just in case things go awry during the recruitment process." The curly-haired woman beamed a smirk at Mana as Endo buzzed his double-blade sword around, switching between his two hands while showing similar if not matching mastery of controlling the weapon with each hand.
Endo dashed in a deceiving manner. He didn't rush at the pair of kunoichi immediately but moved in controlled, quick, and deceptive sideways dashes. The pupil of one of the Four Godly Swords switched the distances of each successive dash, making it hard to impossible to trace or read him as he engaged both young women at once.
With arms emanating with blue flares of bursting chakra, the curly-haired ringleader engaged her would-be recruit before he could slice both of them into two, serving as the vanguard of their group. Despite demonstrating an ability to deal with the mastery of the two-bladed weapon with just her fists before, streaks of red following a fleshy, rending sound that filled the air demonstrated that this might not have been the case here.
Endo passed through the vanguard with a diving slash at her abdomen, completely eluding the kunoichi's attempts at blocking his assault while he proceeded to rush toward Mana. That was where he found his challenge for despite his astounding aggression and skill with his unique weapon – he was all that – aggression. It was exactly the type of approach that Mana knew how to deal with at close range as it was the one thing she expected to be countered by her entire career. In short bursts, as long as the enemy didn't have much time to scope her movements out and wear her reads and evasive moves out, she had such an engagement in the bag.
The curly-haired kunoichi charged in from behind, attempting to apply a hold and choke the aggressive swordsman out while he was losing his patience attempting to as much as scratch Mana and her elusive and disorienting approach to this engagement. It was as if Endo saw that exact attack coming as he threw a backward push kick straight to the young woman's chest and sent her flying back while he insisted on skewering Mana with at least one side of his blade.
Grabbing the middle section of the two-bladed weapon, where the hilt of it was, Mana weaved a hand seal, allowing a surge of Lightning Release chakra to pass down her body and shock her opponent away before his aggressive and acrobatic offensive could press her to a corner and reduce the odds of successful evasion. Endo skid back, slamming the blade of his weapon into the ground and imbuing it with chakra to avoid wearing and dulling the blade as he skid back from the rather violent pulse of the shock that stunned him. Smoke lingered from Endo's shoulders and back as he struggled to rise off of his knees.
"Comet Suplex!" the Kumogakure recruit yelled out as she wrapped her arms around Endo's mid-section from behind and tilted his body off the ground in an attempt to arc it and slam it behind her while she fell on her back as well. An alarming amount of chakra surged through her body, making Mana believe that the young woman placed a great deal of faith into the young swordsman to be capable of surviving such a slam.
There was little to nothing that Endo could have done in his situation but tuck his chin and brace himself for the worst to come. The ground swallowed his body up to his waist with only his braced legs dangling in the air, letting out a grisly twitch once in a while as the woman kicked up and returned to her feet before approaching Mana with an extended hand.
"Name's Shige-H, that was an awesome jutsu, we seem to be working together just fine and you're just a treat to team up with. Let's work together from now on!" she beamed a smile in Mana's direction. The magician extended her hand in return before it froze mid-motion.
Just what was she getting into here? What was it that she was signing away by accepting this handshake? Did this Shige-H truly know about Mana's past, would she be nearly as accepting if she found out what it was that Mana took the blame for? Was she just in it for Nakotsumi Mana or if she wanted the notoriety of the Konoha's Sorceress on her squad? No… She was one of the few around these parts to refer to Mana by her real name, not her stage name. Also… Mana promised and she was forced to learn that lesson over and over again – she needed to learn to trust people once more. Form new bonds and let go of the past.
"Nakotsumi Mana," the magician smirked with a subtle tilt of the corners of her lips as she answered the tight handshake with one of her own.
"What are you two prancing and hugging around for?" Joshipa tilted her eyebrow. "Kick that bastard to the curb while he's down!"
"You abhorrent cultist ratchet!" Endo bellowed out as he burst forth back to life and thrust his foot into the air, about to catch Joshipa unprepared and send her flying with just one good kick before Shige's hand locked around his heel and flung him aside.
"I'd rather you didn't involve Joshipa into this," Shige-H clapped her palms as if dusting them off before taking a shooting fighting stance and putting her dukes up. The flow of chakra that lacked any nature lit up in flares around her fists again, enhancing her power through the standard Chakra Enhanced Strength technique that the medical ninja used.
"She is a wicked wretch that needs to be slain!" Endo insisted, swiping his sword-holding arm behind him as he lowered the upper section of his body to be closer to the ground in preparation for his pouncing slash.
"I won't judge that as I barely know her but the matter of fact is that she isn't involved in our spar officially – therefore any attack on her person violates the rules that I've agreed with the staff upon," Shige-H replied with a stricter tone than she employed usually, more befitting of a leader who was keeping her goons in line.
"And why should I care about that? You're a walking corpse I intend to put down, same with the Konoha witch as well. Your wishes do not worry me," Endo yelled out. He appeared to be a hairline away from charging and cutting both of them down, Mana's look slipped onto the wound that still occasionally spouted out blood on Shige's side. Some augmentation was involved in keeping the bleeding in check but Shige was better off healing it as soon as she got the chance.
"And what good would being kicked out of the Allied Ninja be for you? Is that why you ran off from your master? To be kicked out and homeless again, wandering the world without a place to call your own?" Shige clenched her right fist, putting out the flare on her left hand and focusing all of that strength into just one of her hands.
Endo appeared to have taken that into the heart as he no longer looked to be too excited to jump into action and cut Joshipa down. Mana turned to the gothic youth and nodded her head, asking her sparring partner to end their training session early today so that she could settle this without putting Joshipa in danger.
"B-But… What if you get in trouble? You might need help, do you know what a drag it is finding a good sparring partner!?" Joshipa flipped out.
"You won't be able to help me either way," Mana shook her head. She could sense more chakra signatures propping up nearby, likely belonging to the other members of Shige's gang that she wanted to recruit, "You'll just be putting yourself in trouble with the staff if you interfere. You guys are already in trouble with the Allied Ninja so you'd just get yourself kicked out for something like this. Let me handle it."
"You guys?" Joshipa deflated as she turned around with a hunched back. "I thought that it'd be "we are" with you at this point."
"Shall you cease your incessant whining and remove yourself at once? Consider yourself lucky to have avoided your slaying here and now, ratchet!" Endo pointed his blade at Joshipa's back as the young woman proceeded to walk away toward the hive-shaped headquarters of the Allied Ninja.
"Are you sure you still want to go like this?" Mana wondered, observing Endo's half-torn off gi and countless bruises. The bags over his eyes were now overshadowed by a few shiners decorating his face. The boy's forehead was cracked open and bled in a couple of crimson streaks all over his face.
"Silence your deceptive wiles at once!" Endo raised his blade behind his back by bending his arm backward and over his leaning body, in preparation for another attack. "Lest they be silenced by blood."
"Am I intruding something here? I feel like I'm intruding something… Did you guys already start without me?" a cloaked tower of a man wondered in a rather unusual-sounding, mechanical voice. It might have been a voicebox that this shinobi was using though because of his decent attempts at concealing any details other from the outrageous mask over his face, it was tough to tell anything about him except what Mana could read from his chakra signature.
"Walk away, jester, or that pretty mask shall roll on the ground separate from your shoulders!" Endo pointed the tip of his blade at the intruder. The confused man wore a plastic cylinder over his head that had a painting of a face on it – that of a famous and handsome man. Because of the proportions being somewhat stretched due to the face being covered by a cylinder-shaped mask and not a natural shape of the human face, the overall features of the mask left a rather creepy impression because of the smile and the gorgeous eyes smiling on the cover of the cylinder being so pointless and artificial.
"Look, man, I'm not trying to intrude on anything here but I was told to be here, apparently someone wanted me on their group and, I don't know if you've noticed, but a guy like me doesn't get invited into many groups so whatever's going down – I'm in." a limb appeared from underneath the cloak, an artificial one to be sure. Bone and vessels made of solid steel frames and wire while the muscle and sinew were strung together from some gelatinous substance coated in plastic of similar texture to the mask that the man wore. The limb only made a thumb pointing toward the chest of the enigmatic ninja as if to gesture and seal the deal of the man's acceptance of the deal.
"Excellent!" Shige-H beamed a smile of excitement. "Normally I wouldn't ask you to fight for me so soon before you even got accustomed to us as I know all too well about you but… Perhaps you would lend us a hand in settling down Araki Endo here?"
The tall, masked man appeared to skid across the grassland as he joined in on the group of three. It was tough to say what he was thinking or about to do with his successful efforts of concealing as much of his body as possible though every sign of his body language relayed the fact that he was willing to fight alongside the pair of kunoichi.
"As I've said, I'm just happy to be included!" the man's mechanical voice boomed.
"Hmph… I'll take it that this stooge is fair game to disembowel?" Endo looked up at Shige-H with a scolding glare.
"Yep, he's going to be part of our crew." Shige-H nodded while splitting the chakra enhancements evenly throughout her two hands again and taking a boxing-style stance.
"How apt that I would end up in a crew of corpses…" Endo muttered before launching himself at the entire group, seething with untold hatred as one of his hands weaved hand seals. The talent of performing hand seals with one hand was a rare one though it made sense that Endo would have developed it given the nature of the weapon he uses. "Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!"
Endo's skill with ninjutsu was significant for someone who excelled at fighting with a blade. Even Mana was caught relatively unprepared by the rushing gale that sent all three of Endo's opponents flying and struggling to retain their fighting stances so that they could respond to potential follow up. Just as Mana's Mystical Wings activated to settle her in the mid-air levitating position, a scarlet blur passed her, and Mana's black hair fluttered in the wind as her head rolled off her shoulders.
The two-bladed assassin would have rushed away from the headless, still jerking body but something halted him in place. Endo looked down only to see a shuriken embedded into his heel, spraying blood from his Achilles tendon. It was only then that the pain of it set in and the swordfighter noticed the swarm of rose petals blowing through the air, transforming into shuriken and whizzing right at him from seemingly thin air.
"Madness! Foul sorcery!" Endo bellowed feeling the shuriken cushioning his body and leaving it just a numbed pulp rushing with blood. The man looked down, witnessing the grisly transformation of his body into some twisted version of a hedgehog that had star-shaped steel projectiles covering his entire body instead of mere quills.
"Oh, but isn't Mana just a treat?" Shige exclaimed in joy as her entire body lit up with a surge of blue aura around it.
"Allow me, captain!" the masked ninja stepped out in front of Shige as blue jets of chakra shot from underneath his cloak, flinging his entire body drilling at the twitching and confused opponent who appeared perfectly normal to them, though hesitant to react or move out of the way of incoming attacks. The artificial arms erupted from within the cloak of the masked ninja in a rapid barrage of blows before one, good uppercut sent Endo off the ground.
The sound of reeling steel wire filled the air as the artificial arm hiding underneath the cloak of the masked ninja extended into the sky, pushing Endo with it before it snapped back into place in an instant. Blue jets lit up underneath the cloak of the masked ninja as he soared up into the sky with an uppercut aiming at his airborne opponent. The velocity of the strike, fueled by the enigmatic ninja's excitement to be taking part in this brawl, resulted in his cloak slipping off his body and falling onto the ground daintily.
Mana's feet touched the ground from the cover of the surrounding woods where she had slipped away after encasing Araki Endo in her illusion. She looked up at the landing member of her newfound group who appeared to be donning prosthetic arms and legs, the latter of which howled in amortization as they softened the man's landing. The only part made of flesh and blood of the man was his body. It was all covered in scar tissue as if the man had been at some point burnt to a lump of coal only to be brought back to life by some manner of ground-breaking medical ninjutsu but the scarring he bore must have been impossible to fully heal, similarly to his loss of limbs for without his prosthetics, this man might have very well been just a human-caterpillar of sorts.
"Well… I guess now you've all seen it, no way back now…" he muttered from underneath the cylinder that still hid his face. Likely just as affected by whatever had happened to this ninja as the rest of his body was. It somewhat explained the handsome man image stuck on the cylinder disguising him though it also made his image a lot sadder than if he came the way he was, without it. There was a man who still hasn't deal with the bad hand that he drew in life and Mana found that heart-wrenching.
Endo yelled out in pain after falling, clutching at his busted ribs, the young man had lost his gi, revealing only layers upon layers of bandages to be covering his body underneath, some of which had been in tatters as well, leaving them dangling in the wind and the moving air. With the aid of his twin-bladed sword, Endo rose on his feet and his eyes looked as determined as ever to go through the clash he had started.
"Well, if anything, this fellow doesn't seem to lack willpower…" Shige-H sneered, though she appeared to have expected to be already finished with this.
"It's not even that, it's that he appears to be growing in power…" Mana observed as her chakra sensory caught a whiff of something more sinister in the air – as if the young man had concluded in crafting his Killing Intent in the middle of this battle and had been looming over them all with his seething hatred for them and the desire to murder them all.
"What's wrong?" the masked member of their group wondered as he stretched his prosthetic arms to the sides. "No quip about what you see?"
"It is unfortunate what you have gone through and I have nothing but respect to a warrior who rises above and beyond and powers through such hardship. But as an aide to foul wretches such as these two, you are nothing but a demon that you appear as in my eyes and you shall be slain as such!" Endo exclaimed as he seemed to have lost none of his ability to wield his twin-bladed weapon despite taking a nasty pummeling. Quite the contrary, his lethality might have very much grown out of proportion because of this heat of battle as if though something the young man wanted to be forgotten and burrowed had begun resurfacing the more and more that the newly found group pummeled at the façade keeping that tormented darkness hidden.
Vision became inverted, the black outlines that defined the visual world became white while all other colors became pitch black as air stopped circulating inside Mana's lungs, and not even a single neuron in her body could twitch to send the appropriate impulses. Only her eyes fostered the strength to glance down, at tendrils of shadows consuming the entire trio, branching out from one massive shadow on the ground belonging to a figure as of yet hidden.
"I'm not sure what's going on here but when I see three people ganging up on one guy, I tend to take the side of the outnumbered," a weak and apathetic voice filled the air coming from the Nara clan ninja lurking and striking from the side at the rest of the group.
Author's Note: Thanks to everyone that takes the time out of their day to read my story whenever I get it together and update it. I can't believe that there are people that have read it twice now! I'm really grateful for your input and take the constructive criticism to heart, in fact, I'm quite thankful for it 'cause it helps me out to grow as a writer more than writing a 100 chapters would. Thanks to everyone who's reading it and especially those that take the time to also leave their thoughts in the reviews. Reading Guester's review honestly made my day and got me pumped up to write more and write better.