By Mana's estimates, Endo may have had around three more minutes until his muscles recovered enough for a burst of speed needed for a successful substitution. That left her with around one and a half minutes before she can start focusing on the environmental clues for a prediction where her friend would substitute himself off to and which object he would use. The battle had stripped him quite bare, meaning he will most likely need an object that already exists. An alluring and outstanding piece of debris, perhaps?
Endo knew too well that Mana had him beat in terms of ninjutsu. If he overextended himself by attempting a ninjutsu attack, he'd end up hit by one many times stronger before he completes him as a comeback, in addition, he may just as easily end up stuck inside of a crippling illusion that costs him the entire duel. In terms of options, Endo was trapped and had only one viable approach to this fight.
Emboldened by her advantage in terms of viable strategy, Mana sprung into action, eager to disable the threat from her opponent and defuse his ambition to become the best. Endo followed his own thirst for violence triggered by Mana's attempts at weaving hand seals. It was a viable and legitimate fighting style to go for interrupting the hand seals with ninja tools and other mid-to-long-range attacks. However, if one performed said interruptions non-stop throughout the entire battle, it made one predictable.
As Endo's body stretched and leaned out, his arm shot forward, releasing a handful of shuriken rushing to Mana while Endo himself raced through hand seals. It might have seemed like utter madness to perform a ninjutsu attack faster than someone with some of the grandest sleight-of-hand abilities in the entire world, however, Mana knew immediately what Endo's game was–his jutsu only needed a couple of seals, which was why he even attempted this interruption to begin with.
"Lightning Release: Electromagnetic Murder!" Endo yelled out. He must have been quite skilled with the technique, as it was a standard Lightning Release ninjutsu used around the world. Being rather educated on the matter of various ninjutsu techniques, it was like a student attempted to surprise their professor with a proverb of their own native language to Mana. And yet, Endo surprised her by having adapted this jutsu to only require two instead of five hand seals it usually took to perform it.
"Wind Release: Faith's Judgment Jutsu!" Mana chanted out as a ring of accumulating dust a few meters wide spun around Endo the moment the first spark left his fingers. Before Endo's field of Lightning Release chakra could even reach out toward the ninja magician and attempt what its name implied, the spiraling ring of dust enveloped Endo and lifted him off the ground, scattering the Lightning Release technique of his employ through the natural weakness of the nature transformation. The coils of lightning snapped like twigs, tugged in all directions, and snuffed out.
Endo attempted to ignite his Sword of the Thunder God from within the rising whirlwind mayhem that he found himself stuck inside of. He had a precious few seconds to decide on what he'd do before Mana's technique began its adverse effects and he had chosen his actions poorly as, despite his best attempts at igniting his blade, the powerful gale of a turbulent cyclone kept the Lightning Release inert in the blade and effectively neutered it.
That was when a flesh-rending sound made Endo widen his eyes long before he even felt the pain. By the time the painful twinges of a sharp cut reached Endo's brain, another slice of the razor winds found its mark, spilling his blood inside the gale. Faith's Judgment was for all intents and purposes a torturous technique, it was hard for the wind to cut deep enough for a lethal cut and most people would have passed out long before the blood loss and the sum of the thousands of cuts it performed would have killed them. It was a soul shaver meant to drive the hardy opponents to the shores of surrender.
Mana, however, fostered no false hopes of ever hearing Endo mutter those words, or scream them for that matter. The man's willpower surpassed his own vitality and Mana would in no way be surprised to see his body continue fighting long after his own death just because of how crazy his innate fighting instincts were. Even now, with more and more blood-letting cuts opening up all over his body, Endo was wrapping steel wire around a kunai for a makeshift grappling hook that would reel him away from the torturous zone and get him back into the fight.
Although it would have been near-impossible for even a shinobi of a matching skill to her own to see her perform the combo of Tiger–Boar hand seals, Mana just weaved a single seal as the Many-Faced Jutsu had been one of her first illusionary techniques she had learned. One she had perfected in the Rabbit Caves long ago to no longer require hand seals or proclamation of its name anymore. However, it rarely saw much use outside of training and magic shows because of its limited potential in combat. It was odd that Mana could find no better jutsu to rely on twice already in this bout.
A meter-wide area lit up around Mana, booming with a fuchsia glow as ethereal, feminine shapes began plunging outside of it, leaving the illuminated circle before their shapes completed and set into stone and before they became exact duplicates of Mana. Entirely illusionary and lacking any substance. The clones rushed onward to the roaring and slashing vortex to give Endo something to think about while the flash of light swallowed Mana up. Endo's kunai left the Faith's Judgment tornado and phased through one clone, surprising and dissolving her in a rippling illusion, almost like a mirage.
Mana's hands continued to work magic on the entire another side of the whirlwind. Her sleight of hand had dropped almost by half its usual speed after Endo had injured her hands, however, it was still leaps and bounds above ninja who didn't train their hand seals at all.
"Fire Release: Immolation!" Mana chanted out, inhaling deeply before she breathed out a concentrated steam of Fire Release chakra which arrowed in a straight, blazing line toward the raging whirlwind and expanded into a twister of fire of its own. Seeing how Faith's Judgment had begun to dissipate slowly as Mana no longer paid the appropriate focus to keep the jutsu going, it took a response as rapid as Mana's to combine the two nature transformations properly for the effect of stupefying devastation as the bubbling blast of capricious flames that became of the molding Fire and Wind Release techniques.
Endo rolled and flopped about like a weightless sack. Flying backward where the howling blast had sent him tumbling as if he were a mannequin propelled on a rocket that came to a sudden and complete stop while it continued moving onward at the same speed. Endo's chakra had taken a noticeable plummet in that resonant blast, it wasn't that hard to realize that he had augmented his vitality and fortitude before the chain reaction hit him head-on but it still took a spirit as mad and rich with grit as Endo's to even dream of standing back up after this.
"Give it up," Mana pocketed her hands as she slowly approached wherever Endo had finished tumbling away in. There was not a single doubt in her mind that this flash and rumbling noise had notified the Allied Ninja as the destructive effects had leveled whatever remained of the old headquarter ruins. "I've not a single doubt that even with your pitiful state you can stand back up and keep going, but your chances at winning this are non-existent. When the Allied Ninja hurry to this location, looking for what they believe to be the next case of a beat down of a talented and promising newbie, it will be a lot easier to explain the whole thing if we aren't trying to cripple each other."
"You… Ask me as if… I have a choice…" Endo panted as his body returned to a standing position entirely uncannily. The young ninja avoided putting strain on bones he knew to be broken. Endo's calves were the first to take a static rise, followed by his knees and thighs and it was as if the rest of the body just flopped back up, even though the samurai apprentice stumbled clutching at his ribs and drowned in trickling blood despite his constant upkeep of chakra meant to delay passing out from blood loss.
"I am warning you that I am very much interested in hiding your involvement in this affair from the Allied Ninja because I don't want to lose you from the Stars and sent you spiraling on any alternate life path out there for you. I wish to see you flourish as a man and a ninja and I wish to see Shige help you do so as much as I want to help you myself. That is why I will knock you out if I have to. Both you and the animal that keeps you going after you're out." Mana let her intentions be known as she pulled at the other end of her torn-up leather glove. Her face telegraphed just how genuinely she believed that declaration.
"Heh, always looking out for others, huh? That's why you won't ever be the best. The best tramples those beneath them instead of letting them drag them down…" Endo muttered with a weak voice as it became apparent that he was already switching in and out with fighting using strategy and forethought, fighting consciously and letting instinct and blood-thirst drive him.
The more rational side of Endo flung a kunai with a fluttering explosive tag attached to its handle, expecting Mana to use hand seals and attempting to detonate an explosive tag in her face to throw her off-guard while Endo's half-mindless, all-aggressive fighting style unravels her close-range defenses and lets him grievously injure her, evening up their odds and opening up an astronomical chance for Endo to do to Mana exactly what he had done to Skaven.
However, he abandoned whatever odds to win he had when he switched to pure instinct. Mana crossed her hands over her chest and allowed the Wind Release chakra current of the Rebellious Twist Jutsu to carry her spinning across the field of their duel like a spinning top, swatting the kunai away with the spinning gale aura around her. Endo vaulted over it with an unintelligible grumble. His eyes were whited out which formed a frightening visage when combined with his blood-soaked muscles and well-defined body.
Mana carried the wave and momentum of her defensive ninjutsu technique, one that she had carried here all the way since graduation from the Ninja Academy. The young woman repurposed it into a spinning roundhouse kick while Endo soared upward and out of balance from the blast of his own explosion flinging him up high, although he vaulted over the explosion and avoided losing his legs or shattering his calves, he still submitted to the inertia flinging him up. That was where Mana's roundhouse socked him in the jaw and her double ax handle slam to his head sent Endo crashing down.
The ninja magician fully expected her friend to show inhuman and even in-ninja toughness. Thusly he propped back on his feet and snarled at her, igniting his sword, but Mana thrust both her palms down, catching his sword-wielding knuckle and spinning with widely stretched legs up and over him. Endo continued to glare at her in confusion with whited-out eyes, this was where he would have benefited from a strategic and sharp mind as opposed to fighting instinct as Mana's Magician's Touch Jutsu passed down Endo's body and from the point of their contact and despite disappearing into the Sword of the Thunder God, it still had to circulate all throughout its owner's body to do so.
Landing on her feet, Mana smacked Endo with the back of her hand just to make him flinch and win herself a few milliseconds. Another back-handed, spinning slap, a stronger and more malicious thrust of her palm to Endo's nose meant to make him tear up. This was all just a setup for an illusion as Mana's free from slapping hand performed a one-handed seal version of the hand seal meant to comprise her illusion while the other hand slapped her opponent into flinching away from noticing it. Endo was no fool, he'd have noticed it for sure if this berserker state wasn't behind his wheel.
It was time for the illusion to take hold and for the rug to be pulled under the feet of Mana's currently mindless and unconscious audience. Just as Endo stopped stumbling back and snarled back at her, rushing at her with his sword in hand, Mana's hands settled in the position of the final hand seal.
"Magical Time Jutsu!" Mana chanted out in the shape of a yell. Endo's eyes widened in the state of pearly white and his mouth remained ajar. In such a primitive state, he was especially susceptible to mental attacks, leaving him helpless in the face of Mana's temporal illusion.
She'd have loved to show Yushijin this technique. It wasn't the fact that the genjutsu technique she sought after for entire years was a temporal genjutsu–by far the most complicated illusion to perform, one that affected the target's sense of time passage. It was that it combined all the incredibly complex genjutsu types and categories: sound medium, temporal illusion, the ancient, brain-targeting type. Mana was working on polishing this illusion to where it could be performed without hand seals or proclaiming its name as well, though she didn't feel confident in attempting it here and now.
For someone who tricked her opponents into illusions deceiving them about passaging time, Mana felt like she had excellent timing at the moment–it was exactly when her comrade had frozen up in an awkward, mid-swinging pose that the sandals of the Allied Ninja troupe rushing on to the scene of a potential assault touched the surrounding ground. Had it not been for Mana's chakra sensory using their proximity as a sort of timer for when her duel had to end–she'd have flunked this perfect timing without a doubt.
"What is the meaning of this!?" an Allied Ninja Mana didn't know yelled out in an accusatory tone. "Are you two brawling? We've seen that massive blast all the way from the camp! The Supreme Leader is assembling an entire task force here!"
"No use, the perp already got away." Mana pocketed her hands, stretching her aching neck muscles.
"What do you mean?" the Allied Ninja took a step closer, imposing his presence and the number of his response team on Mana as a demand for an answer. One that he would find satisfying. "What is going on here and what's wrong with him?"
"Endo was training here on his own. You know how he is. Despite the warnings and threat of whatever befell the other recent graduates, he must have welcomed the challenge and hoped that the assailant would find him here." Mana turned to Endo. She hated how bad she was doing at lying right now. Her eyes were wandering all over the place and she could feel her body temperature elevating even beyond the heated scale of someone just having stopped a vicious brawl that could have claimed her life.
"Really? And what about you?" another Allied Ninja approached Mana as their loop closed and made her feel like the area was becoming stuffy while shortness of breath persisted no matter how hard she panted.
"Me? I… I followed Endo and planned to watch him train. I… I've had a bit of a crush on him ever since both of us joined Stars." Endo's unexpected mid-battle kiss gave Mana a clutch straw to pull on for her deceit. From the looks on everyone's faces, nobody bought that Mana crushed on him. To be fair, they probably have met Endo before.
"We've seen a massive blast. That had to be an S-Rank jutsu or multiple higher-ranked ninjutsu techniques, causing a chain reaction. Endo doesn't know a single ninjutsu technique of such a high rank nor do his elemental affinities have enhancing properties. Was that the attacker?" the lone woman among the Allied Ninja who only settled on the decision that Mana must have been lying when she saw the young woman lying about being in love and called that bluff inquired.
"No, that was me. I tried helping Endo, but the attacker slipped away. He must be targeting lone ninja and he felt that two ninja was too much heat for him. I kind of meant to be alarming with my combination, to be fair…" Mana butted her fingers together, wondering if she had portrayed herself as hopeless of a fool as she felt deep down.
"And the two of you failed to prevent his retreat? Keep him busy?" the fourth Allied Ninja looked away into the horizon as if trying to catch something like a dust trail from a ninja on a speedy retreat.
"You know Endo, he didn't like the idea of me butting into his fight so we kind of started arguing…" Mana shrugged. "That's when the enemy placed him under this illusion and fled."
"So, he's under an illusion? Seems hard to believe… I've never seen a genjutsu that works like that before." The first Allied Ninja poked Endo's forehead, wobbling the frozen in place ninja front and back.
"Oh, I wasn't aware that you're one of the best genjutsu specialists in the world with a knowledge of all commonly used genjutsu techniques and the ability to weave simple illusions in the heat of battle without them belonging to any particular technique in your arsenal…" Mana stabbed at the Allied Ninja who became flustered and scratched the back of his head, slipping his red bandanna off of its resting place and exposing black, spiky hair underneath while his face soured like a withered prune.
"This is incredibly suspicious, though, it appears that Endo needs medical help, regardless." The female Allied Ninja sighed. "I'm sorry to do this, Mana, but we'll be placing you under tent arrest and we'll be monitoring Endo until Skaven can corroborate your story and the Supreme Leader's task force can properly interrogate you and Endo and make sure your stories match."
It wasn't the treatment someone who had saved the entire encampment from being wiped out by a Tailed Beast deserved, but, in their defense, it was only because of that circumstance that they even offered Mana a benefit of the doubt as they all unilaterally agreed that she was lying with nobody speaking up to that out of respect for Mana. What they now wanted to uncover was why she was lying and what she was covering up exactly.
"This isn't looking good, for you or your pal here," the first Allied Ninja said in a grungy tone of profound vexation. "The black cloud of your crime against Guru Ayushi makes your involvement in this chain of assault incredibly damning and your alleged boyfriend here is a loose cannon of great renown."
At least the storm was over. Now all that was left was to pick up the pieces and see if they still make the house that the storm pulled them from to stand still.