"So… Do you really think making an enemy out of the person whose room this is was a good idea?" Asuka ran her hand through her hair, glaring at Shige-H's twitching back while the frustrated Allied Ninja seethed. "I guess we still have the second room, but it can't be long before the guards notice their guest of honor is missing and we're freeloading this precious palace space."
"It doesn't matter," Shige-H dismissed Asuka's long-term worries, even if they had a modicum of Asuka's usual cynicism and irony behind them. "Because we're going after her right now."
"Heh, I can't say I'm too excited about attacking Mana, but if she's so insistent on going rogue, I'll treat her as one," Endo scoffed, checking up on his swords and if all of them were equipped, looking ready to go hunting for rogue ninja.
"We're chasing after her NOW?" Damisan objected, albeit without the aggression and malice that Mana used when she picked a fight with the squad leader. "Is that really a good idea? We've got no plan, you've spent most of the day treating the injured and I'm low on supplies."
"That's okay, we didn't count on you to deliver the decisive blow on your girlfriend anyway," Endo glared at Damisan with a distant stare.
"Oh, and you will?" Damisan answered Endo's challenge for a staring competition.
"Decisive blow–yes, killing–obviously not. I respect Mana enough not to claim the bounty that's on her head. Cutting her arms and legs off, on the other hand…" Endo scratched his chin.
"We're wasting time, let's move out," Shige-H scolded the two feuding shinobi with a strict and authoritative glare, doing her best to intimidate her squad so that the previous scenario with Mana didn't repeat itself.
"You didn't exactly debunk any of Damisan's doubts, squad leader…" Asuka pocketed her hands while following Shige-H out into the corridor alongside the rest of the remaining Stars.
"Those same doubts are exactly why we need to move out now. We outnumber Mana, and we know where she'll be headed. She knows our target–meaning that's where she will be. The less time we give her to prepare, the more oppressive our pursuit shall be," Shige-H pointed out before flickering away and blitzing across the walls, all the way to the ceiling. The Stars dashed across the corridor fast enough to blur past the lazy eyes of the palace guards without raising suspicion and quietly enough not to earn any curious looks up. Without a flamboyant stage prima donna in their ranks, the Stars moved like true ninja.
"Our numbers won't be as effective as you think they'll be, Shige-H," Damisan advised the squad leader. "Even if I had no qualms about attacking Mana, I've used out too many of my supplies and materials to fight effectively. You're too low on chakra to fight meaningfully as well, and Endo's respect for Mana dulls his one most dangerous quality in battle."
The squad lined up behind a wall, letting a guard patrol pass while they waited and whispered to each other, setting their improvised plan straight before they ran into a lower-tier A-Rank rogue ninja with nothing to lose. It didn't look like Shige-H was in the mood to argue with another one of her squad mates, but, given that the guards stopped in the foyer, Shige-H reflected on her dragging the squad out with her on this very personal pursuit.
"It's not like we have much of a choice…" she whispered back, while one guard approached the opening to examine the yard through the lush ferns lined up on the windowsill and another one circled the foyer for a few laps before disappearing in one hallway, likely for a little potty break. "Mana's holding too many cards to leave her be. She might head straight for the Sheikh's chambers to snitch on us right now and there's nothing we can do about it. She's pretty much got us locked into a collision course, whether she wants it or not."
"Hmm… To think she's throwing her life, career, and freedom away for something that's not even human…" Asuka smirked with a glint of excitement about getting an excuse to rough Mana up for a change.
"I've been wondering about this too. In the past, Mana has consistently drawn the line in the sand on applying her morality only to humans. I've never heard her having a problem with us killing beasts or animated objects before," Shige-H gnashed her teeth in frustration.
"It's not about the Curse Walker," Damisan offered his perspective. "Mana must genuinely believe that us attacking the Curse Walker is too dangerous and, if we fail, she knows Ryoku Genshi will most certainly die before surrendering to that thing. In her mind, she's looking out for Genshi and all of us by acting this way."
"Hmph…" Shige-H scoffed at this angle before gesturing for her squad to move out. The guards regrouped and moved out toward the right hallway, leaving the bridge that led to the tower staircase leading to the ground floor open for the ninja to move across.
"G-Guys?" Damisan halted, observing in complete befuddlement as the Stars all took different paths and vanished in the shade, all headed to different hallways and different towers of the Agbarmahal palace. The puppeteer felt embarrassed by how long it took him to realize what had happened. Offering no resistance, he pocketed his hands and lowered his head, exposing the back of his neck if Mana wanted to take him captive. "You're just as desperate as Shige-H. It's not like you to use jutsu you didn't invent yourself. Then again, it's probably why no one expected your False Surroundings Jutsu in the first place."
Unlike the impeccable stealth the Stars had shown earlier, Mana's feet touched the ground with a light tap. She'd spent so long trying to be seen and heard that it had affected Mana's capacity to stay hidden, forcing her to rely on illusions just to conceal her presence whereas run-of-the-mill stealth could have sufficed for even a far lesser ninja than her.
"The odds aren't exactly even. I can't fight you off, even when I'm healthy and my chakra's full. The best I can hope for is just to survive," Mana admitted vocally. Hearing the magician talk was a sign for Damisan that he could turn around and face her. "It's a good thing I don't need to fight you. Just do what I think is right."
"You've changed since coming back to your body. You'd have never been this defiant and aggressive before. Even if you disagreed with a call, you used to let it be known, but you went along with it anyway," Damisan observed with a cheerful disposition. Mana must not have been able to tell if he approved of this change or not, that was because Damisan himself wasn't sure. Bravery and strong convictions were admirable, but not when they got someone into too much trouble and made it inevitable that they'd get themselves killed for those convictions. "I take it I'm not affected by your illusion then, why's that?" Damisan wondered.
"You know why," Mana cut it back short and strict. "Unlike with the others, this is the real me. It's just me and you here. I want to know if you're going to fight me or not."
"Honestly, Mana…" Damisan sighed before looking back at her with blaring, friendly encouragement and a quirky smirk. "You're going to hurt my feelings by even asking that. It sounds like you're going to waste a whole lot of chakra. You should've picked up the prototype of the newest prosthetic I've made for you on your way. Would've spared you the chakra on Armor Ninjutsu."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but I kind of left in a hurry," Mana rolled her eyes. "Besides, as I've said, I'm not looking to defeat any of you. I just need to convince Shige-H-san to reconsider her orders."
"Come on then, let's see how that's going to go…" Damisan stepped back and gestured for Mana to lead the way.
Endo skidded across the floor, turning behind and looking around. The samurai noted that the rest of the Stars stopped and were all staring directly at him. "You guys are awfully quiet…" Endo muttered, drawing one of his katana halfway and whisking his hand across it, cutting himself just deep enough to draw trickling blood. The mute versions of his teammates vanished without a trace. Endo allowed himself the luxury of being amazed by the realization he was standing in a completely different-looking room, all alone.
"You sly witch…" Endo hissed, looking around and wondering how long he'd been dashing in the wrong direction. Unlike Mana, he couldn't sense chakra, so he couldn't quite reconnect with his team. Given that neither of them stopped him from running off on his own, Endo figured that Mana hit them with the same condition.
"I don't very much like that word. I'd rather you didn't use it to address me," Mana said while stepping out of the nocturnal shade and into the moonlight that passed through the intricate ornaments, keeping the hallway star-lit and gorgeous at night. Endo noted how the stage magician slowly removed her gloves, seeing this as a sign she intended to take Endo out for seeing through her trick.
"Then stop breaking the law!" Endo sneered with a sadistic grin and dashed toward Mana, drawing two katanas and slashing them in a double drawing slash, striking low and aiming for Mana's legs. The dark-haired young woman surprised Endo with a dainty hop, stepping atop his swords and vaulting off them, landing with her feet against the ceiling and sticking to them. Lightly amazed, Endo skidded on his sandals and connected his katana into a sword-staff. "Whoa, you've been training? You're faster and nimbler one-legged than you ever were in your prime."
"Or maybe you're just slower?" Mana glared down, her hanging upside down, revealing the blankness of the young woman's face and a somewhat cruel look in her eyes.
"Why you cheeky…" Endo flashed a psychotic grin, beaming wickedness from his eyes, and flickered away, appearing directly in front of the upside-down standing stage magician and slashed at her waist, seeking to cut her into two and disembowel the cocky rogue ninja.
Mana's body contorted almost unnaturally, bending backward and sticking her hands to the ceiling before vaulting back as if she was backflipping successively on the ground. This unrealistic and almost impossible way of evading all harm left Endo speechless. Detaching his katana, the swordsman sheathed them and pulled out a handle with pitch-black thorny whips, wielding this Sword of Thorns while landing on the ground and raking it through the ceiling, then horizontally across the room, then vertically, rising upward again.
No matter where or how Endo attacked, Mana vaulted over, slid under, or twisted in between the lashing thorn whips, managing to not get as much as a scratch. Having lost all trace of cool, Endo rushed forward, lashing again and again and again, with each lash feeding off of Endo's progressing battle madness. The thorny whips ripped through the wall, cutting it into ribbons and shredding the bridge wall apart. Mana, however, remained unharmed, almost teasing Endo by sifting her hand through her hair while standing in front of a busted wall.
Bellowing with pure rage, Endo rushed forward with a vicious push kick and kicked the cut-up wall to shatter and for the debris to sprinkle down below. At the pitch-perfect moment, not too soon as to catch Endo's attention or too late as to get tagged by the kick or the resulting debris, Mana slid underneath Endo's kick and moved behind him, grabbing Endo by the shoulder while driving her own foot into his back.
"After all this time, still No. 2…" Mana mocked him with a mean cackle. However, before she could push Endo into the drop of his own making, the specter of dark hair, tanned skin, and white dress whisked away like ashes after the blow of a mean gale.
Wincing in pain, Endo collapsed on one knee with a tanto sticking out of his thigh, dripping blood on the floor while panting incessantly. The samurai apprentice glared up, looking at Mana's lookalike standing with her back pressed against the wall and staring back at him from her completely tranquil and standing-by position.
"So, you've realized…" Mana said, finally looking back at Endo. She had to hand it to the savage swordsman, despite just having been dazzled by a look in the clone's eyes, triggering an illusion that made him chase invulnerable and intangible phantoms and fight against his own mind, Endo sneered back into Mana's eyes with a manic, almost ogreish disposition. It may have been the pain or the warmth of his own blood triggering the worst impulses in him, but… Despite being in the best possible position, with all the advantages in her hand, Mana felt uncomfortable being in the same hallway as this kneeling, injured, and bleeding swordsman.
"That was awfully mean of you," Endo cackled, almost like he was enjoying his self-caused pain twinging through his thigh a little. "Though I realized that there's no way you're that good at fighting. I was fighting myself in there, wasn't I?"
"Genjutsu: Selfish Rivalry," Mana replied. "A technique that pits you against an illusory doppelgänger of your opponent, with your own skill in combat dictating their movements. Unless the jutsu is identified and dispelled quickly enough, the strain of fighting an opponent you stand no chance of defeating will tap you out. And if you die during the battle in your mind, you'll be rendered unconscious."
"We should do this more often," Endo glared back at Mana's image with her back against the wall. All the destruction caused in the hallway during their imaginary battle was absent, proving that Endo did all of those things in his mind. "Admit it, you enjoyed it too. The pressure of impending death. I certainly loved the thrill of the chase."
"I'm not here to fight you, Endo. For what's it worth, you should be glad about that," Mana sighed before, bellowing in torment and strain, the samurai kicked off the ground and cleaved the magician into two with a savage drawing slash that used so much of his body's momentum, he had to turn the whole way around and succumbed on his injured side again after losing balance. The version of Mana that Endo cut down vanished as a whiff of mist that smelled of saffron.
Cracked up laughing, Endo pressed his back against the wall and sat down. He wasn't chasing or fighting anyone with this leg he skewered himself to avoid being knocked out. As a swordsman, he'd much rather succumb to a self-caused injury than get knocked out non-lethally by some dorky illusion.
"Mana…" Asuka half-assed a call while staying behind the quiet group of her peers, who were much louder in their calls. As she was passing through a window, the kunoichi turned to peek through it, seeing instead a fancy mirror, similar to those Asuka grew up around in her mother's mansion, with alluring eyes, glowing violet, reflecting from the mirror and smoky black hair rising wildly in the air. Asuka stiffened and stopped moving, realizing that, all of a sudden, she was all alone. The "Stars" she was dashing with were never there to begin with – she's been running off on her own in some random direction for some time now.
"Oh, come on…" Asuka groaned in frustration. "You know I wasn't going to kill you, even if I caught up to you, right? I mean… It was tempting at first. I had a cool excuse and all, but…"
Rusted chains burst from underground and hooks latched onto Asuka's wrists and feet, yet being hooked this way didn't invite tormenting pain. In a way, Mana was being merciful. Only the feeling of discomfort when one's flesh was being latched on to and pinched, dragged, and moved around without one's own input resonated through Asuka's body as four wooden walls shut Asuka inside of a black wooden box, similar to a coffin.
The rusted chains wrapped around the coffin, shutting Asuka off from breaking out and swords stabbed through the box, though only by their tips. It was a warning of sorts. The Kirigakure kunoichi had no doubt that if she tried dispelling the illusion and didn't apply the proper amount of chakra, failing to dispel it in the process–Mana would have those swords skewer her and render Asuka unconscious.
"You're using chakra to stop us, but not to win your match?" Asuka rolled her eyes, trapped inside the dark and stuffy coffin. "Something's seriously wrong with you, you know that?"
Receiving no response from the clone that cast this illusion on her, Asuka sighed and resigned to waiting it out until Mana released her, rather than tempting her fate and being reduced to an unconscious and drooling mess. Having already experienced Mana's illusions when the magician felt mean-spirited about it, Asuka immensely preferred being trapped inside of a chained coffin in peace and quiet, rather than roaming an endless, stormy ocean and haunted by shadows of Eldritch abominations in the stormy clouds and horrifying Leviathans swimming underneath.
"Tsk… We should've reached the staircase by now…" Shige-H whispered, turning back to address her squad, only to realize she was all alone. Sighing in the admission of having been caught off-guard, the medical kunoichi began looking around, feeling too drained to even try dispelling the illusion. "Really? That's your game, Mana? Divide and conquer? I wouldn't have thought it like you to conquer. Snitching felt more like your style."
The image of an endless, dimly lit hallway rippled. Shige-H's eyes widened in shock as, instead of receiving Mana's response, a bright, ethereal star slammed straight into her and dragged Shige's body up into the air, ramming her against the ceiling while rumbling like a thunderbolt, before bursting into tens of thousands of sparkling ethereal confetti and dropping Shige-H face-down on the ground.
"I couldn't conquer all of you, but I didn't need to," Mana slipped in from the outside through the window opening and dropped into the hallway, carefully positioning herself at a knife-fighting distance from her falling superior. "You didn't have much conviction when you gave that order. You know it's suicide and you know backing Genshi-san is our best play. All I need is to chip at your resolve just a little bit. Just until your wall of self-deception crumbles. Luckily, I've learned a method of manipulating Spiritual Energy that can do exactly that."
"Damn it, Mana…" Shige-H cursed with a strained voice. Mana's defenses glitched for a second, feeling hesitation in her squad leader. One hit with a Spiritual Energy technique may have been all it took for Shige-H's fragile lies to herself to crumble. "You know there are going to be consequences for this, right?"
"As long as Genshi-san is the new Sheikh and our mission is complete, I am fine accepting them," Mana extended her hand to Shige-H, offering her help standing up. "I've already been to Jigoku prison once. I'm okay repeating it, if it's for the right reason and if I can live with myself while doing it."
"That ball-chaser better fucking win!" Shige-H grumbled while standing up on her own and standing Mana up. The leader of the Stars limped the first few steps but then walked the light bruising off and rushed back to the foyer she lost her comrades in alongside Mana to tell them to stop hunting for her.
For better or worse, Mana seemed to have patched things up with her squad for now. She'd face whatever those consequences Shige-H promised were when the time came.