"Yeah, I'd kinda like it if someone here explained what the heck's going on here…" a slim male with a blue top and brown, baggy cargo pants appeared from the cover of the woods as he wiggled his finger inside his ear. A static ponytail remained standing when the position of the young man's head shifted from left to right.
"I do not need your help…" Endo grumbled rising from his fall and stumbling forward, doing his best to regain and maintain the grip of his weapon well enough to execute his subdued enemies all at once. "Though rest assured, if your soul is wicked, I will slay you next as well."
Just as Endo kicked off the ground, aiming to charge through the subdued crew and behead all of them with one mighty dive, something stopped his in mid-air and quickly grounded him once more. Unable to manage the amortization, the youth's joints caved and made him kneel before the stationary Nara clansman. It had been a shadowy tendril that wrapped around Endo's heel, preventing him from acting upon whatever twisted idea of justice he might have had.
"Can you take it down a notch, dude. What's this about slaying people? I just got some random note inviting me here and, sure, technically, I'm a bit late to the party but I think if someone can give me a brief rundown of what's going on here, that'd be just great…" the Nara clansman ran his hand over the back of his head as he shifted between looking a bit guilty about being late and forgiving himself and accusing the rest of the crew of cutting it loose without him.
A lightning storm erupted outward, bursting forth from the shadowy blob that held Mana in the air, decimating the dark prison that the Nara held her up in, making the very casual and nonchalant expression of the Nara ninja change as his eyes widened upon Mana's disappearance. The young man grunted in pain as a kick to the back of his knee sent him kneeling and a jolt of lightning from Mana's Magician's Touch jutsu passed down his body, disabling him for Mana to press him down to the ground from behind.
"That woman there, Shige-H, is recruiting you into her crew. She seems to have intentionally antagonized some of those she recruited to test their abilities which is why Araki Endo there is acting so aggressively," Mana explained to him as she held the arm of the Nara ninja in a lock. Being someone who had resolved to never take any lives, the magician had ample ways of holding people down and forcing them to change their minds.
"Ah, I see…" the Nara ninja smirked with the right tip of his lips as his shape became floaty and incorporeal. The youth's back opened up in a black abyss as that lashed about with shadowy tendrils that aimed to both skewer and subdue anyone caught in the vicinity. Mana dashed back, disengaging her own armlock as it was no longer fruitful and riding an air current back to safety.
And here she thought that she'd be impressive showing off nature affinity type of shadow clones. A mesh of jutsu that ranked up as an A-Rank technique at the very least but this Nara ninja seemed to have been capable of sealing his clan hijutsu into shadow clones too. Moreover, he seemed to trick Mana, as if knowing that she was a sensor – transferring most of his chakra into the clone and leaving little reason for Mana to doubt the reality of what she had subdued. Now that she observed the reach of the shadows of the woods leaking into the cover of the forest, she realized that the Nara ninja had methods of returning at least some of the chakra they invested into this diversion back.
"I see… So you guys are just sparring then? That's lame, I'm out," the Nara declared while walking out from the forest and falling by the nearest tree, pressing his back to it as if he was preparing to take a nap there.
"It seems that we will need to work some more on convincing Skaven. As much fun as it's been tangling with Endo, he's becoming a nuisance…" Shige-H looked back at the enraged pupil of one of the four legendary samurai of the entire world.
"Leave it to me," Mana muttered as she stepped back to back to Shige-H.
"Are you sure, Mana-san? This man seems dangerous…" the masked ninja warned Mana with good-willed advice.
"He looks like a hardened manslayer seething in hatred. Just my type of opponent," Mana declared. "You're still to prove your chops as the leader of this gang, you can do so by convincing Skaven-san to join."
"Those are some hardcore eyes you've got. I'll remind you that you'll have to work alongside Endo when the time comes," Shige-H smirked, agreeing to Mana's proposition.
"I'll cross that bridge when I have to," Mana admitted.
As the massive cover of Skaven's shadows retreated, removing the danger of it getting in Endo's way again, Endo flung his blade right at the three people he saw as people to destroy rather than crewmates at the moment. Mana leaned to the side, feeling a sharp slit in her forearm as the buzzing blade covered a massive distance due to the size of the sword-staff. The all too familiar reeling noise of steel wire made Mana's hair stand up as she took more drastic evasive measures to avoid the returning swing of the double-blade sword attached to steel wire.
"I wonder how well you'll be able to engage in your witchcraft with that injury on your wrist," Endo hissed in a hateful tone. Without answering with anything, Mana looked her opponent in the eyes with a strict pair of eyes.
Endo was too proud of his skill with the blade, his strategic approach to disabling Mana's nuclear battlefield potential with one very well-placed attack, and he clearly enjoyed this too much not to allow Mana to beam her spite back at him with her eyes. That would prove to be his downfall in this sparring session. Endo flung his weapon buzzing vertically again. Missed Mana by a mile.
A rough yank on the steel wire manipulated his tool for murder into etching into the ground, something that allowed Endo to pull himself toward Mana with a push kick. Something that Mana blocked flawlessly with a cross-armed block and skid backward. Pulling his blade out, Endo let out a battle cry to power himself through his injuries and the daunting task ahead to slay the young woman he saw merely as a wicked witch that beat down a revered legend of the ninja world just for the kicks.
Despite his best attempts, his most honest swings, and attempts to pressure Mana into making mistakes, that was not what he saw. Endo roared again and again in frustration as his opponent seemed to deceitfully control the speed and rhythm of her evasion to almost a supernatural degree as not even a single hit of his landed. Every kick aimed at throwing her off balance for a thrust to the heart, any of drawing slashes aimed at her calves to stop her in her tracks, nothing at all connected.
Worst of all, the wicked witch countered with painful and well-placed jabs. She saw him right through better than he had ever been seen. Read him better than his master ever did. That was impossible. She was never this good, this perceptive and prodigious in the realm of swordsmanship and close-range combat to be this good. She had evasive moves before but that was just about it. He had dealt with evasive types and they fell every time. One good trip, enough pressure to make their hearts beat in overdrive and their bodies cave in to the unrelenting rush of sheer, edgy hatred coming their way was all it took to bathe the edge of either of his blades in the juices of their hearts.
Not this one.
She punched, kicked, and threw weapons at him at just the right moment. She attacked as if she was inside of his mind, reading through the weaknesses that he himself thought of when he attacked. Every time a fighter threw a cross, they prepared for an eventuality that the opponent might have countered and strung together a sequence of events to follow their attack up. It was as if Mana saw all of that if Endo thought that his swipe left his mid-section too open – that's where her next kick would come, digging her heel right into his liver. If he thought that a spinning motion was too cumbersome for someone so swift and evasive – Mana's kunai thrust into his kidney.
Dripping with sweat Endo collapsed to the ground, unable to hold his sword-staff any longer but still burning without a glimpse of temperance to his enmity toward evil. Eyes of hellfire and brimstone tried to stare Mana to death. With a bird-frightening bellowing, Endo rose from the dirt and continued to hack and slash at his opponent.
"Ummm… What's he doing?" the masked ninja wondered pointing with his thumb at Endo slashing at thin air. Not only that but he seemed to be grunting, roaring, and cursing at absolutely no one as Mana had joined their side in talking to Nara Skaven, clutching at the dripping with blood wrist of hers.
"It's an illusion of mine, one of the older ones I've not yet had the chance to use. He'll be fighting what he perceives as a perfect opponent, a nightmarish version of his enemy that taps into his own thoughts and fights him until he cannot fight any longer. Either that or he dispels the illusion already," Mana replied as Shige-H took her hand to quickly patch up the cut. It was a pity she couldn't have done anything about the scarlet stains on her white gloves, it wasn't like those were easy to come by in the middle of a rocky wasteland.
"Huh… Didn't he cut your hand? How did you do your hand seals?" Skaven pointed at Shige-H who at last finished gleaming her shine of emerald light at Mana's wrist, washing resonating pain away with a cold, flushing sensation as if it had cold water poured over it and it felt sweet and fresh through her very pores.
"I didn't need to. He looked me in the eyes and once I'm done molding the chakra for my Worthy Foe Jutsu – all the conditions for it are met," Mana replied. Seeing someone ask just the right questions and look as excited about her breakthroughs in the field as she was after stumbling onto them made it so it couldn't have been helped without her cracking a grin.
"You've got a pretty impressive bunch ganged up here," Skaven sighed and leaned his head back in the resting place made out of his own two interweaved hands. "It's just that I'm more of a loner-type of person."
"Look around you, do you think that many people wanted to hang around Araki Endo? He spent the last eight years of his life continuously fighting for his life in an active volcano," Shige-H pointed back at Endo who might have spent entire days sparring with his most dreaded version of Mana that his own worst fears continuously added on to.
"Shige-san is right, I've got to constantly worry if anybody ever saw a glimpse of my real body, wrap myself in sheets and curtains and make sure to hide my face at all times. I'm just so glad to have ever gotten the chance to be a part of something including anyone else but me," the mysterious ninja clad in prosthetic limbs pointed out.
"It's Shige-H, we're not yet close enough for you to call me Shige, and if you abbreviate it to just H – I'll rip that mask off your face and sock you right in your nose," Shige-H squinted at her much taller crewmate who instantly became flustered and began pacifying the situation and excusing himself, waving his prosthetic limbs around.
"What about you though?" Skaven pointed to Shige-H with his chin. "It's easy to point at people and tell everyone how dysfunctional they all are by their lonesome. What's your condition?"
"There is a chakra signature incoming from Skaven's direction," Mana stated before Shige-H could answer. She's been wondering it for herself as to what exactly prompted this outright obsession of Shige's to put a gang of these specific ninja together though she doubted that her esteemed leader would just answer it flat out. Still, what was even sadder was that Mana wouldn't much care either way – she just needed to work on stopping pushing people away and begin to see them more than just potential sources of danger and hatred. This gang was her shot at that.
"Nobody takes me too seriously. The Raikage, the other ninja I work with. They all look down and make fun of me, think I'm trouble just because I tend to be a bit obsessive and jumpy at times," Shige-H gleamed with a sheepish grin. "They don't think that I can amount to much, despite what I'm really good at, and they're right – alone I can't. If you want your footprint to be noticed, you can either be a big guy with a really massive footprint or you can have a bunch of people make footprints all around you."
"You're still hiding something, I'm out…" Skaven stood up and let out a lazy yawn before his voice became drowned out a sound of thrashing and the root of the tree he was just leaning to pushing him forward and making him stumble closer to the crew that Shige-H has been putting together. It appeared that not even that could make Skaven even remotely mad as he just looked at the massive mammal that rooted the tree out and flung it aside like a mere chew toy as if an excited young girl of spiky green hair seated atop of a massive, purple elephant with kanji markings painted all over it in red paint was something you'd see every Tuesday.
"Yo!" the energetic girl pumped her fist into the sky. As she opened her torso and chest up for examining with such an open gesture, Mana noted the belt of wooden boomerangs hanging over her body. Each boomerang had a stone with a sealing glyph and a smear of dried out blood on it, pre-packaged for something that came sealed within to come out without the ordinary delay and hassle of unsealing. "Where's the meanie that wants to carve himself out a manatee helmet?"
"Manatee helmet?" Mana looked to Shige-H.
"From what intelligence I could gather on young Tomi – she seems enthusiastic about animals, even more so than fitting girls her age. This goes far beyond your usual pony phase. Manatee seemed like the first animal to come to mind," Shige-H shrugged.
"I think Mana-san is more interested in the fact you lied to her about why you invited her here," the masked ninja pointed out.
"Who in their right mind thinks about manatees as the first animal to come to mind?" Skaven squinted while looking to Shige-H who just chuckled to herself while her blunders were being recounted before her.
"Okay… So… The thing is… You're incredibly late to the sparring session I had prepared for us," Shige-H butted her index fingers together while working to explain it to the hyperactive young lady sitting atop of a ninja elephant about why the curly-haired kunoichi had lied to her in the letter.
"It's not my fault that Zokaka here loves peaches so much that he needs brisk walks so that he doesn't get cramps while fighting," Tomi placed her hands over her hips as she directed a scolding glare toward her massively superior in size partner that towered over the entire battlefield. "I'm here now though, I hope that the poor manatees weren't already murdered or else I couldn't bear it!"
There was no need to test this girl's skills. As jealous as it made Mana to admit, if someone her age was capable of not only acquiring an animal contract with a ninja animal species but also impress someone the size of this specimen to fight alongside her – she had skill in spades. The strongest creature from the ninja rabbits that would agree to fight alongside Mana was a psychotic nitwit terrorist of the species who would have been a blow to her reputation to unveil now rather than something to behold.
"Don't get yourself worked up," Skaven looked up at the teen girl. "This woman here lied to most of us to get us to come here so that she could recruit us to her gang. At least in your case, your elephant got to eat up whereas it's all losses in my book…"
"Huh? Gang?" Tomi leaned her head lower to where her braid fell down over her head. The childish soul then fell back and began cackling as she pounded the back of her partner in a fit of hilarity. "Sorry, I'm more of an animal person. I hate most humans I meet."
"In that case, it might be for the better if you do join," Mana looked up to young Tomi with a genuine smile. "I used to love hanging around people, listening and talking to them, entertaining them, I've lost all of that at some point and I want that back. Working alongside one another might be a healing experience for both of us."
"You? Entertain people?" Tomi blinked a couple of times. "No offense, ma'am, but you look kinda boring to me… Like a… Waitress or something."
"B-Boring?" Mana's eye twitched though her sentiment appeared to be mirrored by the masked ninja to her left.
The magician flicked her hand, tossing her top hat to the ground as the hat rose back up atop of the head of a Wind Release clone that now hosted it on her head and saluted the little girl atop of the elephant only for the little bugger to erupt in childish giggling as she clapped her hands like a monkey toy. For someone in her early teens, there was a sense of childish glee and wonder. An apt lack of maturity for someone who didn't interact with people much.
"That's fun, I'll hang around with you guys if you show me more tricks!" Tomi yelled out without breaking the rhythm of her incessant clapping.
"Well, that's four out of six, well done, you…" Skaven congratulated Shige-H with a hint of sarcasm in his voice and a very uncertain thumb up as he walked away from the scene. If one drew the line at a colossal purple elephant of having seen enough for the day – who could have blamed them.
"Four?" Shige-H looked back at Endo who still tried chewing his opponent's limbs off after being utterly unable to lift or move his arms and legs anymore and bleeding all over the place from his wounds. "Well, I guess Araki Endo is still a work in progress…"