"I still have one good hand…" Tomi whined out through torment. The kid cradled her skewered, bleeding hand like a mother protecting her child while her eyes examined her functional hand.
"Forget it," Endo dismissed it, spinning his double-bladed sword, positioning it behind his back in preparation to finish off the fallen assassin if she ever gathered the courage and fortitude to challenge him again.
While she had taken a mean one from their earlier clash, Endo who had pushed through injuries a hundred times worse would have been the last person to underestimate the toughness of an injured ninja and their will to go on. Still, he couldn't shake off the feeling like he had the enemy on the ropes, no matter how hard he tried to quash it.
The spirit in the Hawker's eyes flared up moments before she powered through her injury. The young woman lobbed her saber at Endo. Despite the orderly, buzzing spin of the weapon, the apprentice samurai could not shake off the feeling that he was being set-up. That feeling was justified when he saw Snipe Hawker weaving hand seals and moving in to connect her hands. Using his free hand, Endo completed a single hand seal and blew a mouthful of air at his opponent.
"Wind Style: Wind Prison Jutsu!" he exclaimed with spite polluting his tone as the gale that burst forth from his lungs enveloped his opponent and tilted her off the ground, immersing the Snipe Hawker in a feeling of weightlessness as she floated surrounded by a hefty bubble of air. When she tried to speak, not a whisper left her lungs as the air was being slowly drained from her lungs, and every attempt to speak only fastened the process.
"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!" Endo yelled out, weaving another handful of hand seals while his previous ninjutsu technique dissipated, leaving the Snipe Hawker momentarily suspended in mid-air before gravity set in once again. A ripping stream of electricity slammed right into the assassin's chest, sending her rolling back while jolts of electricity shook her for a minute after the jutsu ended.
"String Reeling Technique!" Snipe Hawker grunted while rising off the ground. The ear-piercing noise of reeling steel wire caught everyone's ears as she had attempted to reel her saber back to her hand from the distance that she flung it to. Endo noted how close Snipe Hawker was to the exposed back of Shige-H and Mana. Too close for it not to be the woman's prime target.
With a resonating stomp, Endo pressed and mixed up the steel wire strings, disrupting the faint chakra flow present in them and leaving the saber skidding on the gravel floor. The apprentice samurai took a bountiful leap toward his grounded opponent, thrusting the end of one side of his blade down to pin the woman to the ground for what would have been her approaching end but Snipe Hawker rolled forward, ripping the steel wire off of the steel compartment on her wrist.
Time seemed to freeze over in mid-air as Snipe Hawker took a rolling dive toward Shige-H, looking to tackle the medical ninja to the ground so that the accursed magician from Konoha could finally kick the bucket for good. A resonant thud made it all go white for the airborne assassin as her body flipped over in mid-air from the collision of opposing forces when a wooden, curved projectile hit it right in the face. Snipe Hawker fell on her back, making the wound in her gut spout blood as the pressing instinct to cough it out from her mouth to prevent her from drowning in it awakened the fallen assassin.
"A… Boomerang?" the woman grunted as her floaty and blurry vision focused for just one snap of a moment to identify what Tomi had hit her with from aside.
"You're goddamn right!" Tomi pumped her fist with a determined look on her face. "Don't you dare think that summoning is all that I can do. My friends wouldn't have trusted me if I wasn't able to protect them myself when it counted!"
"Not bad, shrimp…" Endo smirked. Still, his seething anger resumed its consuming boil when he turned back to the assassin who had now twice tried to attack Shige-H and finish Mana off. Her attention was elsewhere, she must have accepted the fact that she'd be unable to beat Endo by herself so she at the very least tried to complete her mission now. It was a matter of pride for her. Unfortunately for the desperate young woman, the pride of an assassin meant nothing at all to Araki Endo.
"Shadow Clone Jutsu!" Endo weaved a clone jutsu seal with his one hand while forming a single Shadow Clone and splitting his chakra in half. The doppelganger vaulted over the enemy as if walking on air if the altitude of his feat of acrobatics was to be taken into consideration and landed on the other side. The doppelganger weaved a hand seal of his own.
"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" he chanted out, exhaling a wind nature shockwave that flung his fallen opponent toward the original version that put up its double-bladed sword to attempt and run it through her once again. Despite flailing wildly in her state of weightless helplessness, Snipe Hawker drove her foot down, directing the tip of the blade down and using it as a platform to vault over to Endo's backside. The apprentice samurai put up the other end of his blade to try and impale the assassin on her landing but it appeared as if though his opponent had read that.
A tight grip of feminine thighs wrapped around Endo's throat as Snipe Hawker rolled forward, using that momentum and riding force to fling her opponent over her, resulting in an involuntary backflip that shook Endo's sense of balance. By the time that Endo had recovered, Snipe Hawker gripped her saber back in her hand and rushed at him. Due to the nature of her weapon, she only needed one hand anyway, being able to afford the second one to prevent as much blood loss from her grave wound as possible.
"G-Guys… Mana's not doing too well, I think I'm losing her…" Shige-H declared with a desperate plight in her voice that was meant for whoever listened to it. Damisan lowered his chin. Tucking his face down, he let his cylinder roll off of the impaired shinobi's head and roll aside. This brave notion ended up revealing his face to both the infiltrator assassin who was too busy to collide with Endo to notice and his shocked gang mates.
Tomi's eyes shook as a minute layer of moisture overcome them. She covered up her mouth so that she didn't say something mean or cry out though she continued to look at her determined comrade just so she didn't push him away and crush his resolve in doing so by looking away. Shige-H blanked out too, the emerald light gleaming from her hands shook up and stopped for a second, making space for a massive pulse of blood from down below to blow up and remind her that she was in the middle of keeping her treasured gang member alive.
With a mouth of uneven, yellow teeth, Damisan grabbed a shattered part of his limb – a golden capsule and tilted it up into the air by manipulating his true face as he began grinding his teeth over it in an attempt to destabilize it. As the saliva of the self-puppeteering ninja made it inside the unstable capsule, it popped, firing off a violent warning shot out of it. The desperate ninja bent his body up and down like a scared caterpillar, flinging the capsule up in the air. After a moment of silence – it blew up. This was the explosive part of his prosthetics that was responsible for detonating them when the puppeteer demanded it.
The bright flash and loud, popping noise halted Snipe Hawker in her resolute collision with Araki Endo as her horrified eyes glared at the colorful dust sprinkling from the air. This was it. There was no way that the HQ didn't hear this and knowing how jumpy they were about students fighting each other without permission and moderation of a staff member – they'd hurry right up here. Knowing that they were looking to part an ongoing clash between two recruits, it was inevitable that there would be an Allied Ninja amongst them.
Snipe Hawker collapsed on her knees, covered in cuts that resulted from the aggressive sword fighting style of her opponent overwhelming her up close. She knew when she was beaten. Her saber rolled off of her trembling hands. She'd hate nothing more than for her father to have to tear this place down with his bare hands and pull her out of trouble but that must have been what it would all amount to. She hit a brick wall, everything had gone wrong.
How did the blasted witch even survive the shot!?
"You think you're readying for your penance…" Endo closed his eyes, accepting his opponent's surrender before fighting spirit ignited in his spiteful eyes once more. "But not yet," he declared. "When the ogres are flaying your skin as you hang helpless on their hooks, you'll have an entire eternity to repent!"
While none of the Stars seemed to approve of Endo's violent slash that left Snipe Hawker slumping lifeless on the ground, her chakra too taxed on keeping her going with the stab wound in her gut to augment her body enough to prevent sudden death this time, they understood it. It wasn't too long ago that they all felt confused and betrayed and wanted nothing short of violent death for the assassin and Endo was the most noxious and trigger-happy out of their lot. When he got mad, his wrath only grew hotter and more intense.
"Recruit Ion!" a ginger-haired woman in elegant, sky-colored chainmail gasped upon setting her sights on the corpse of a recruit and the entirety of the Stars surrounding her. Endo approached the rolling, masterless cylinder that Damisan wore and slipped it onto his gang mate's face to cover it up.
"Th-Thank you…" Damisan muttered.
"Don't get me wrong, you abortion, I'm merely covering your freak face up from being seen by the staff. You're right to be embarrassed by it, it's grotesque," Endo whispered back to him.
"What is going on here? One of you better answer at once!" a short and plump woman in a black suit of armor and two pigtails for hair, a pale face, and intense, runny, black make-up growled at the weary recruits that scurried on to Mana. Seeing the desperate state at which Mana was in, the ginger-haired woman dashed beside the magician and examined her.
"The other one is obviously dead, how is this one?" a dark-skinned man with white face paint and apparel befitting the colder regions of the Snow Country turned to the medical ninja from the Allied Ninja staff examining Mana's condition. Understanding the profound importance of Shige-H's non-stop healing session, the woman did not interrupt it but examined the fallen magician around it.
"She looks stable. The immediate critical threat to her life is over but I'm not sure we can move her," the woman reported back.
"I believe you lot were asked a question," Regimental Commander Hallam himself pointed his finger to the gathering of Stars forming a circle around Mana. "From where we're standing, you've been caught brawling it out without authorization or supervision!"
"That's okay, you must be tired, I'll take over now," the woman with the cerulean chainplate gently butt her shoulder to Shige-H's, nudging the young medical kunoichi out of the way as she took over sustaining Mana's life until a better way to keep her alive and work toward her recovery could have been figured out.
"What the heck!?" Tomi pointed her finger at the Regimental Commander. "If we didn't come here to check up on our friend, that killer lady would've killed Mana!"
"Can someone above the age of fourteen explain it, maybe?" the dwarfish woman clad in obsidian armor let out an irritated growl. "Regimental Commander just put it how it looks, no need to show your teeth over it, brat."
"R-Right…" Shige-H nodded, looking at her trembling hands, the woman must have been feeling quite dizzy, or at least her pale skin suggested such a predicament as she stumbled onward, covered in bloodstains that soaked her fur coat and stained her face. Shige's curly hair felt greasy as they stuck to her spoiled face, forcing active effort to peel them off and out of the way of her vision.
"Mana wasn't in the best of team spirit moods lately. I've noticed it as a leader and I know why – she and Endo, our newest member, didn't get along. She must have been having second thoughts about joining the gang and as the team leader, I felt responsible for keeping her around. Having noticed her missing out on yet another gang evening, I decided to tackle the issue. Figured showing up with the whole gang, looking functional and chipper, and inviting her to join us on some fun leisure time would suffice but… We've asked around and people told us they've seen Mana in the training grounds, she's been doing nothing but training these last couple of days and either by her lonesome or with some other recruits outside of the gang. Naturally, that felt like a red flag to me so we've all hurried up and… When we next saw her, she was laying on the ground with a hole in her chest, not even a heart left to pump the blood for her…"
"She might be a mutt, criminal witch but she's tougher than most," Endo smirked when looking at Mana's peaceful, blood-stained face. "I gotta say, I've never had a hole blown out in my chest and I'm not sure if I'd even survive such a thing. I'm beginning to like having her around the gang…"
"It is highly unusual that such a wound wouldn't kill a ninja outright. Her guard must have been down, no chakra augmentations opposing the wound – she got hit hard and fast. It's a hit for sure," the medical ninja staffer working on keeping Mana alive remarked.
"Yeah… Recruit Ion… That isn't even her real name… She's an assassin who infiltrated this place just to kill Mana," Damisan turned his head to the Snipe Hawker's lifeless body, looking at her with a sorry expression. He hated the whole affair of this, trusting this pit viper for one but also the way it all turned out. This was by far the hollowest victory he's ever experienced.
"That's ridiculous!" the clad in black armor woman spat to the side. "For an assassin to pull a stunt like that… She must have been really skilled and highly paid. Someone with the skill to do this can't be your usual grunt who'd off someone for a pack of crisps. I've barely even heard about this chick, she can't possibly be worth that much money…"
"This is odd, I have heard of Nakotsumi Mana being a notable entertainer back in her home village, one would assume that she would be useful to hold over her village for a ransom but even then… Since the news broke all over the world about her implication with Guru Ayushi, nobody would pay a sizable ransom for her anymore," Regimental Commander Hallam stroked his massive, rubbery armor in a pose of intense thinking. "Still, this is alarming news. If an assassin can just slip into our ranks to kill this young woman, that means that our HQ is no longer safe for her. I'll bring this up to the Supreme Commander's attention first thing next morning, let's just hope that Mana's condition stabilizes…"
"We're in a bit of a pinch here, I can't move her. If I leave her unattended for a few seconds – she'll slip into a coma she'll never awaken from, followed by death soon thereafter. If we move her – she dies for sure," the medical ninja validated Shige-H's earlier judgment on the situation.
"You're making it sound like her survival was miraculous in the first place, how come she even survived that attack in the first place?" the dark-skinned and thickly-dressed man grumbled, observing the sprawled out and dying recruit with a mixed feeling of awe and confusion.
"She must have been meditating…" Shige-H muttered. "I've noticed her being pretty impressive at meditation. She's able to simulate training sessions and meditate so intensely that she starts floating off the ground and flowing with a sapphire aura when she gets serious."
"What's that got to do with anything?" the black-armored staff member wondered.
"I see… Indeed, if recruit Mana was meditating, it might have helped her avoid shock. No shock – no violent reaction of missing her entire chest cavity. Her mind must be stuck inside, she's got to be manipulating her bodily functions mentally. She's doing as much work at keeping herself alive as both of us," the medical kunoichi from the staff smiled, looking impressed. "It's quite a feat, controlling your body like that, bypassing the parts of blood circulation that would cause a ruckus and force her to bleed out, making do without the vessels and organs that are failing."
"Still, I take it that recruit Mana cannot sustain her own life alone?" Regimental Commander Hallam inquired.
"No, as impressive as her mental sustenance is, her life must be sustained from both sides, I'm afraid," the medical kunoichi shook her head.
Tomi bit the thumb of her healthy hand and weaved a few hand seals, placing it to the ground. "Summoning Jutsu!" she chanted out, now that life had been absent from Snipe Hawker's bland expression and it felt safe to place her hand without having to fear makibishi spikes and other traps again. The ground underneath the medical ninja and Mana's body quaked as it began to rise up.
"T-Tomi!" Shige-H scolded the little friend to all living beings as she stretched her healthy hand and cradled her injured one again. A large tortoise carrying the patch of land on its shell where Mana was lying with the shocked medical ninja looming over her rose from underneath the ground and shook off the dirt from its face and the lower half with a few good yanks.
"Kamera, get Mana-nee and the nurse back to HQ, please…" Tomi looked at her summon with the eyes that brimmed with emotion so deep that her ninja animal partner wouldn't dare of contemplating the option of failure when confronted by such tremendous need.
"Right!" Kamera let out a low-pitched proclamation that sounded dry, almost as if dirt and gravel were still stuck in the tortoise's throat somewhere as they ran out from its mouth in streams when the tortoise spoke up.