Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Journeys We Make

The Six Paths of Lightning

"Endo, wait, they might have some more intel on this situation. They must know who masterminded this affair and prompted them to betray Hanada's men," Skaven yelled out, but his words smashed into a brick wall and scattered all over the floor in disarray.

His coated with lightning blade etched into Geppo's armor with a dull and low-pitched thud. A spray of blood covered the chest of Geppo's equipment but the mercenary still brimmed with life as evidenced by the painful and filled with scorn expression that he offered. A painful grunt filled the air when both sides of Endo's blade browsed for openings in the armors to sever the mercenary's limbs but ended up cutting into something too hard to slice with unfocused and widespread slashes.

Despite his pitiful attempts to crawl back in retreat and salvage his life and what remained of his future combat potential, Skaven's shadow held Geppo stationary, ignoring his most genuine attempts to fall down. Endo, however, allowed himself the luxury to forget the fact that Geppo wasn't standing because he still intended to oppose the Allied Ninja recruits but did so because Skaven's technique compelled him to.

Growing increasingly frustrated at what he saw as Geppo's toughness resisting his blows, Endo wound up for a focused power slash that he meant to split the cut-up and bleeding mercenary clean into two with, right through his heavy gear if his blade ended up meeting some of it in its path. A resonating slice of Lightning Release chakra split the ground where Endo hit it, missing his mark by what seemed like a mile. Skaven breathed one out, feeling pressure rolling off his chest.

It was once Endo continued to wail, swing and slash at what he saw as Geppo's weak points and ended up swiping around and cutting thin air, spreading that dreadful, electric hum wherever his chakra coated weapon went, that the Nara realized what was truly going on. His ally wasn't at all showing mercy to his opponent, it was just that, one reason or another, he was incapable of hitting Geppo anymore.

"What's going on?" Shige-H turned to the confused Nara.

"I'm... Not sure..." Skaven shook his head.

"That noise," Damisan noted, throwing his masked head around in search for its source. "Like whistling air or something... No. It's not just that, it's being filtered, or something like that."

"Sound?" Skaven turned his head around in search of what Damisan was talking about. As far as he was concerned–everything was dead silent until Endo didn't fill the air with his wrathful grunts and that noise of a double-bladed sword swinging through the air and hitting nothing but dirt. Geppo's wincing and whines also stood out, but Skaven couldn't pick up anything like that which Damisan described.

"This must be what that bastard gave us, huh? That voice box?" Raitoncide turned to his bleeding out and severely injured comrade with an energetic smirk. "Atta boy, you don't need your hands or the use of your body to spread your sound waves, do you? How about you raise some ruckus and break those shadow lines connecting to us, huh?"

"I... I can't, he cut up my gear... This is all that I can make out right now!" Geppo yelled out a whiny complaint.

"So, it is his doing..." Skaven bit the right side of his lip in frustration. "He's spreading sound waves indistinguishable to most of us, that disorient us and make us see things. Even with his limbs chopped up and useless, all he needs is to use his voice."

"His voice? I can cut that too!" Endo growled in frustration, slashing again at where he saw an opening to Geppo's throat, but his blade once again only cut thin air and the samurai apprentice stumbled, failing to maintain his own body's weight. "What the...?" he cursed upon realizing he needed to stab one side of his sword into the ground just to keep himself upright.