Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

The Great Lunar Escape

"How did that guy even sneak up on you? I thought you sensed all of his puppets," Endo grumbled, turning to Mana. Mana looked away. Her response got stuck on something in her throat and she felt blood building up in her facial muscles.

"It wasn't Mana's fault, look..." Damisan pointed at a handful of Toneri's mysterious puppets just lying on the ground as if any semblance of chakra that once gave them life had been absent from them.

"So what? Those things are all over the place," Endo replied.

"You twit," Skaven rolled his eyes. "Look over there," the Nara pointed at a line of puppets standing and staring at a blank point in space and time. It was just how the puppets engaging the Stars that they've left behind behaved too. "Those lying puppets aren't doing the same thing as the ones caught in Mana's trick. That means that Toneri isn't using all of them at once. He must be able to switch between the puppets he controls and when he's not using a puppet – it's not emitting any chakra for Mana to sense. We should stop relying on Mana's chakra sensory not to get caught off-guard and use our own heads for once."

Having the real reason for their blunder explained by such a logical reason helped Mana's feeling of inadequacy and inner embarrassment, but it didn't quash it completely. Even though it probably should have. Still, feelings were rarely, if ever, rational. It didn't take the end of the world for one to feel like their world was ending.

"So, should we use the chakra tunnel now?" Damisan turned to the back of Shige-H, addressing his leader.

"No, not yet. We may be on the Moon, but we're not sure where exactly on the Moon we are. If the Moon is hollow and we're somehow inside of it, we can't be sure that the Moon in our universe is hollow too. We may end up transporting into solid rock and beaming a crater into the surface of the Moon beyond repair," Shige-H shook her head.

"Maybe we should," Endo grumbled. "Those Moon Clan guys just invaded our planet and took the Allied Ninja workers for themselves. They've kidnapped our people, so I say we boom right into their home and tear it to bits. Blast a hole through the surface of the Moon, leave the Moon Clan battered and bruised, and make sure they never mess with Earth again!"

"Endo..." Mana mumbled out. The blues she felt deep down after lulling her team into a false sense of security earlier made her tone lower in pitch and weaker in volume.

"What? I thought about your feelings too, Mana. We won't kill them," Endo shrugged as if he was excusing himself somehow with that remark.

"As much forethought as you may have put into that plan of yours, we're ninja, Endo. We don't kick the door down, ruin people's homes and break everything and everyone in sight. As long as I'm still the leader, we move in, we take our workers and we get out," Shige-H glanced back at her feisty teammate.

"Could have fooled me..." Endo sighed. He didn't need to declare that his mind returned to the giant, scorched ring patterns in the Kusagakure grasslands back on Earth and the decimated Allied Ninja party that was watching over the workers.

"Do you think there's even a way out of this place? Even if there is, how are we supposed to find it? This place is as massive as Konoha..." Skaven observed, turning his head to scan the seemingly limitless horizon of the forest ruins that Toneri had built inside of the Moon.

"In that way, we'll just need to make one!" Shige-H proclaimed, cocking back her fist as an emerald shine lit up around her fist that changed colors as the kunoichi molded and morphed her chakra. Just as she would have thrust her fist and propelled a shock wave to bust through the edges of this inner biome, one of Toneri's puppets wrapped itself around Shige's arm and applied a hold on it that prevented her from doing so.