Ion's father and Endo made their moves at the same time. Ducking under a wide swing aimed at his head, the killer kicked at the back of Endo's feet, tripping the young swordsman up while he switched legs and threw him off-balance. Despite the grand assault and battery that he had suffered through that day, the grizzled veteran could still pull off a backflip as mean as anybody else while drawing his diamond-shaped blade to catch falling Endo in a slice while the samurai apprentice was still airborne.
A splatter of red dyed the grey ground in a crescent shape as the killer's sword slashed through Endo's robe and the outermost layers of his skin. Despite his most genuine attempts to cut the young man into two, Endo's chakra had still been fresh enough to augment the swordsman's body and keep him whole with only shallow cuts when a sword carved into his flesh.
The scorned father went wild, swinging his sword in overhead slashes and rising upper swings that took both combatants up in the air. Ion's father grumbled while throwing both his feet out in a dropkick that sent Endo shooting off while the man flung a pair of throwing knives to stick them into his daughter's killer as he had stuck up the other Stars with grievous injuries. Endo thrust a thin wooden plate attached to the palm part of his gauntlet to deflect the knives while he prepared to engage his opponent in mid-air while they were racing to land back down.
"You're still holding the Sword of the Thunder God like your old, twin-bladed sword. You won't land a cut on me this way," the veteran assassin taunted his younger and much feistier opponent with a growl. The two clashed in mid-air, each pushing their own sword upon the other but Endo was a dirtier sword fighter, shooting his foot out right into his opponent's face which knocked Ion's father out of the correct falling posture and opened him up for punishment.
A line of shiny platinum extended in between Endo as his opponent as a string of steel wire connected to his opponent's scabbard pulled the assassin toward Endo while the young swordsman dashed onward with the speed that made his body blur and formed afterimages behind him.
"Twilight Swallow!" Endo chanted out the name for his swordsmanship technique while turning around to answer a potential counterattack but his opponent, still struggling against the forces of gravity and inertia that have been claiming him, spun in mid-air, spitting out blood while a V-shaped gash of plume-like color, surrounded with a scar lining of revolting burns demonstrated the nasty aftereffects of Endo's attack.
While Endo's feet touched the ground with a resounding thud, the killer flopped on his back, grunting in pain as he slammed his back against the stone and gravel down under. An enigmatic sound resembling a passionate drag of metal hook over shamisen strings widened Endo's glare and kept him on his toes as the killer's image vanished from the ground and Endo raced to turn behind him as that was where an assassin would slash him from if given the chance.
Endo may have turned in time but his opponent didn't slash him, a roundhouse kick dug into Endo's gut, bending the young man out of shape and forcing air out of his lungs as he flew back from the blunt force socking him in the mid-section. The elderly assassin jumped in the air, hooking Endo's neck with his foot while he threw a jumping side kick to Endo's cheek, front and back. After landing on the ground, the man spun his entire body and swept Endo's feet, kicking him up from down under him and stomping at Endo's back, which brought the fight right back into the air.
Another capricious drag of rusty needles over shamisen. Ion's father vanished again, blinking in over Endo with movement so rapid that he only left mirages of his image, like separate frames of existence all depicted at the same time in rather unremarkable quality. The assassin drove both his feet in a diving dropkick that sent Endo crashing down while the killer positioned his sword over his target and fell down like a swooping bird of prey homing in on its lunch.
Endo's eyes whited out and he spat up an alarming splash of blood when Ion's father's blade dug in between Endo's heart and his gut, deep enough to pierce right through and etch into the gravel. The man lifted Endo's unmoving body off the ground and gazed on his seemingly lifeless opponent perforated by his sword while the assassin tried to come up with a way of the youth's execution that would have ended him in a manner that would soothe his grief for the time.
A gentle whistle filled the air. The man's eyes widened and his resolute, judgment-executing arm trembled. Powerful impulses of pleasure smashed into the veteran's middle section and made his guts cuddle against one another in ticklish ecstasy while the man grabbed hold of his abdomen and folded like a sheet of paper looking to make an envelope.
"The target…" he hissed to himself as he weaved his hand seal and exploded in a pulse of base chakra, forcefully expelling Mana's Sweet Lullaby genjutsu out of his system at the cost of the equivalent to an arm and a leg in chakra.
"Come on, Stars, all together again!" Shige-H pulled back her glove, lighting her hand up in an emerald shine similar to that of the Mystical Palm jutsu but of a darker hue, while the radiating energy leaked out from her eyes and reflected off of the mirrors to her soul as well.
"You can die together too," stumbling and heavy with his stance, the killer turned around to face Damisan as he swung off of a nearby branch and landed alongside his fellow Stars, knives still sticking out from his body though they only seemed to ruin the puppeteer's mood.
"You've started trying to kill Mana, one of us, that wasn't ever going to fly but then you went on and pissed every one of us personally too," Damisan dragged his prosthetic limb across his face to wipe the blood, sweat, and dirt off of his face. "Your daughter acted like my friend, made me feel wanted, liked, and included, worst of all, she turned me against my loyal friends, making me think I didn't need them. If she'd have asked for it–I'd have betrayed every single one of the Stars, even though they were the only ones to truly accept me into their fold!"
Ion's father ducked down to avoid a pair of boomerangs crossing up and buzzing over his head before they returned to little Tomi's hands and the wild kunoichi took a pouncing leap off of the stray treetops to land in front of the lined-up trio. She growled with an open mouth while placing her returned boomerangs behind her and pointing a straight stick she had just pulled out of a tree to her opponent while tying a kunai onto it with steel wire and coating this impromptu construction with chakra.
"And that's twice now you've hurt my elephant friends!" she snarled, oozing with hatred toward the man who managed to remain unnamed. Despite being the lone face of most of the Stars' misery and troubles until that time, and the decimator of the entire order of Allied Ninja.
"We've already shuffled a bloody polka with this guy and got our asses handed to us," Skaven's grumbling voice joined in on the pre-brawl banter. "We'll need more of a plan than just doing our own thing from this point on. This guy knows too much about how we fight, he can counter and put us down while blind."
"Mana left him short on chakra, one can't dispel this many illusions without huffing and puffing," Shige-H suggested. "If we press on hard enough–he'll fold and run out of breath. Endo marked him with an injury that restricts his moves. We're set for victory, Stars."
"A game of attrition will take too long. People are dying and I'm done wasting my time validating some old geezer's revenge fantasy. Hold him down for him, I'll rip his connection to the Five Pillars Seal from the back of his brain even if I have to leave him as a vegetable in the process," Mana unraveled a couple of loops of steel wire and coated them in Lightning Release chakra. A configuration such as this might have left their enemy with a mean choice of either rupturing his body by resisting bondage enforced by chakra coating or remaining still for once.
"Pulling something like that out of his mind, that's too bold for me to even consider trying," Skaven smirked with the corner of his lips. "He can hold your mind hostage just as easily. This guy's anything but weak-willed."
"There may no longer be any Allied Ninja after this attack, and I'll just have to live with the fact that it's all because of me and whatever issues this man has with me. I owe nothing less than everything I have to lose if I can save just one more life amongst those still resisting the Four-Tails," Mana grit his teeth, finding herself boiling in an emotion she didn't submit too often to, at least not so publicly.
"We've got your back, Mana," Usuvilme and Usukari stepped in from both of Mana's sides, each tightening the grip over their respective weapons.
"Give me a chance to invade his mind, I'll deal with Four-Tails once I free it, you can beat this guy and submit it to Supreme Leader for some battlefield tribunal judgment for all I care, as long as he lives with the grief that's led him this far and the regret of what he's done today and his dignity that he's sacrificed plotting something heinous and destructive like this," Mana made her plight with the Stars.
The killer attacked first, vaulting backward to grab hold of Endo's head, looking to swipe with his diamond sword to behead his daughter's killer quickly, the one who had the gall to insult her legacy while facing him, the man's arms swiped with the blade all the way but Endo's head did not part, in fact, the assassin checked on his sword feeling that it seemed a good bunch lighter than it had always been.
"Eat this!" Usuvilme cursed from up over the assassin's head, flinging knives at him while Usukari had cut and sealed half of the man's clutch weapon away with her own fabled All-Mirage sword. As much as the shrouded in haze eyes of the killer wanted the weapon that Usukari clenched in her subtle rabbit paws, the rain of steel forced him to roll aside even though a husky grunt revealed more than a few knives to have found their way through the backside of the man's ribcage.
Shige-H drilled through over the assassin's head, crashing down with both her feet digging into the killer's back while she stomped him into a crumbling crater that grew ever so larger as the medical kunoichi forced herself deeper and deeper down and grind the man who looked to undo both the Stars and the Allied Ninja further and further into the dirt. Ion's father crawled, cursed, and hissed as his ribcage had been smashed to bits and his lungs skewered by both ninja tools and his own fractured ribs but the righteous cause of vengeance fueled his motion, even if that motion comprised groveling and trying to crawl his way out of the crater he'd been buried into.
"Secret Spring Move: Arm Flower Bloom!" Damisan yelled out, pointing his prosthetic arm downward while flying directly over the crater of Shige-H's making. As the leader of the Stars dived out from the hole, the flying self-puppeteering ninja allowed his prosthetic limb to collapse into a system of steel rings as circles of missile heads stuck out as the petals of these "rings" in multiple rows. All of them parted and took off at once, detonating in a chain reaction that all added up to an impressive yet hectic explosion.
"Shadow Prison!" Skaven took a knee, engulfing the crater in a black dome as it closed down like a looming, colossal hand and sifted through the heated gravel and pulled out the decimated and battered killer from down under, floating and helpless inside of the shadowy bubble prison.
"Summoning Jutsu: Rush Hour Destroyer!" Tomi yelled out, sinking her fangs into her thumb while she planted her palm onto the ground. Instead of right down under her, where she placed her palm onto, the cloud puffed around Skaven's Shadow Prison as two rushing ninja rhinos slammed one against the other from opposite sides and promptly collapsed under the crushing aftershock of their collision while the static and helpless assassin floated in between them just before the collision.
"It won't get any more helpless than this," Shige-H placed her hand on Mana's shoulder, encouraging the healed stage magician to make haste. Mana nodded in acknowledgment and gratitude as she dashed onward, riding her Mystical Wings just to hasten her step. Shige-H might have healed the double stab wound in her gut and the extensive damage to her wrists but the initial impact of the Four-Tails attack and a bunch more scrapes persisted to plague her with either complete numbness or flaring pains upon calling to specific muscle groups.
The man looked absolutely decimated and broken. His whole impressive armor suit, all the scrolls containing the countless artifacts he had looted to prepare for this battle and the revenge for his daughter, all of it was gone and the man had been reduced to just his broken albeit still muscular body and his broken sword laying by his side. The man's eyes had been whited out, his skin and his hair no longer recognizable even with their initial distinctive features of contrasting opposites raking at the eye as they now sank him in a layer of grim blood and dirt.
The eyes whited out and rolled back. His flesh almost peeled off of the man's torso while his left arm and right leg seemed to have been pulled off entirely. Despite the somber state of his body, Mana could sense a distinct flame of chakra still rustling in his central tenketsu point. Less of it than it would have taken for a powerful jutsu, which was why she was so hasty to move in and reach over his forehead with her hand.
"We'll die together, you'll burn in hell alongside me like the witches of old, except your flesh will singe forever down where we're going!" the man howled out with madness in his eyes as the assassin's lone arm that was still intact shot out and grabbed hold of Mana's corset, pulling her in and wrapping around her as sealing glyphs engulfed the man's entire body.
"Fire Art?" Mana noticed an ancient symbol that she could recognize amongst more than a few more. The man hadn't been gambling his chakra, he was about to burn up using his very life force, which was a desperation move Mana didn't expect. Why should she have expected it? Then again, this was a man who had nothing to lose, so burning up alongside the object of his loathing was a perfect end of him, almost as if he had planned it this way the entire time.
"She's been to Hell and back already, punk," Endo's snarl made Mana tilt her head just before flames set in and engulfed the both of them. A golden flash cut perfectly in between the man's bicep and his shoulder, separating Mana from Ion's father by separating the man's arm that he used to hug Mana and press her closer to him from his body. Endo stomped the man's face ruthlessly, rending a chunk of his cheek off of the jaw and forcing the man's neck to emit a barbarous cracking sound as his head limped to the side with an open jaw. "Probe away," Endo stumbled, clutching at his gut as he gestured his chin in the man's direction. "Left him alive for you," Endo smirked through his pain.
Shige-H rushed in to take care of her berserk teammate while Mana saddled over the limp and paralyzed body of Ion's father and placed her palm over his forehead. His mind would be at its weakest right now, unfocused and smashed to bits after this grueling engagement, and his last attempt at dragging himself and Mana down to popping cinders and eternal brimstone didn't quite pan out.
Despite not wanting anything to do with this man or his empty quest for vengeance, Mana had to dig through his mind and extract or sever the connection with the Five Pillar Seal in order to send the Four-Tails packing or to stop him from rampaging, at the very least. As little as she wanted to honor this man by spending lone time with him and his memories, as little as she wanted to hear out the mind of a man who felt scorned solely because Mana survived an attempt at her life and wanted retribution, she'd face all that misguided hatred if that meant saving even one more person than she'd save otherwise.
"Can't we just kill this asshole? Just like I killed his daughter?" Endo grumbled in pain, filtering gravel through his fingers while Shige-H scanned and treated his guttural impalement injury with Mystical Palm.
"We don't know if flat out murder releases the Four-Tails from his debt to Ion's father. Mana knows about the Five Pillar Seal more than any of us, if she says that she's got to sever the link from within his mind–that's how it's gotta be," Skaven collapsed on his behind and breathed out easier now that the enemy had been utterly broken. Seeing the assassin almost go up in flames alongside Mana almost made his heart collapse in of itself, as if his own life would have been in danger at the same time or something.
"Humph… I bet Mana's just trying to save that knave's life, that's why she's taking the dive. There's no way cutting this shitstain's head off won't let Four-Tails loose," Endo grumbled.
"It might, but are you sure you want Four-Tails loose? I think Mana's counting on seizing control and sending the Four-Tails away using the Five Pillars Seal on him again," Shige-H said while hard at work treating Endo's cuts and stabs.
"Using something like that against another living being, something to restrain their will like that," Tomi gritted her teeth and looked over the edge at the gruesome sight of the rampaging, four-tailed massive ape and the reduced resistance from the surviving Allied Ninja who were closing in on a complete wipeout.
"This ain't one of your animal friends, this is a goddamn Tailed Beast…" Endo tried scolding his little comrade, but it didn't look like it worked when she beamed an angry glare back at him and flipped him off. "We'd have long destroyed every single one of them if they could even die to begin with…"
The Stars turned their head at the blood-red sky that occasionally lit up with a jade gleam when the chaotic beast breathed out its noxious flames to decimate yet another platoon of Allied Ninja. All of this because of one man maddened by grief and employing his vast experience and skills… Natural forces of mass destruction working at his command, all because of just one man.