A strong set of fingers wrapped around Yuu’s slender arm. An alarming amount of power still rippled through Daisuke’s grip, despite the man’s clear exhaustion. From beneath a tangle of loosened ribbons, dirt, ash, and his own hair, Daisuke’s eyes burned with the focus and resolve only a General could muster. Yuu couldn’t even process it properly. His own trembling arm lay outstretched before him now like a fragile twig. His brain reeled from trying to figure out what just happened. Daisuke’s voice managed to snatch up just enough confidence to pierce Yuu’s cloud of disbelief.

“Not quite, babyface.”

A large, dark smear streaked across the side of Daisuke’s head. Fragments of torn hair danced in the night air. To Yuu it looked as though, despite the utter impossibility of it all, his attack missed penetrating Daisuke’s skull by quite literally a hair’s length. Instead of rending the man’s brain to pieces, he shredded the side of Daisuke’s head instead. The General would be sporting a nasty looking haircut for some time now, but that wasn’t quite the damage Yuu was expecting to see.

Even with the evidence before his own eyes Yuu couldn’t believe it. His aim had been perfect, perfect! There was no way for Daisuke to have moved! Hana’s ribbons immobilized him, Yuu’s speed couldn’t be matched- there was simply no method by which his Hand of God could be stopped! How had he missed?

“Looks like your partner ditched you, friend.” Hana’s bandages now lay inert around Daisuke, like the shed bindings of a cocoon. Now devoid of Hana’s Weave the ribbons held no more power. She cut herself loose to chase after the flaming artifact, of course. The mission always took top priority.

It was too much to contemplate at that moment but the obvious question refused to vacate Yuu’s mind. Had Hana expected him to ‘finish off’ Daisuke? Did the girl possess that much confidence in him?

Or had Hana abandoned him to secure the mission objective?

The world around Yuu grew fuzzy and indistinct. It was almost like falling asleep. The trees, the night’s cool air, the hundreds of burning welts on his skin, all of it faded into the background as he stared down at the mess of Hashimoto Daisuke at his feet. Yet Yuu was still blindingly, inescapably awake. Daisuke’s scalding grip branded his arm with its strength, the only sharp Yuu could feel amidst the swirling torrent of confusion. It was like finding his arm suddenly in the jaws of a lion. The question in his mind wasn’t ‘how do I escape’, but rather ‘how did I let things get this bad?’

Careful, thoughtful action would be needed to extricate himself. Keeping his voice remarkably level and even given the circumstances, Yuu squeezed out the only coherent thought buzzing around his head. “Let me go, or I’ll kill you.”

That earned a hiccup of derisive laughter from Daisuke. The action made him wince right after, though. The General wasn’t as invincible as he was trying to appear, even as his clear contempt bled through in his voice. “Boy, you don’t even understand why you failed to kill me the first time. What makes you think you’d succeed on the second?” Despite Daisuke’s completely unprofessional demeanor, his logic couldn’t be faulted. Yuu’s other hand was still free. He could no doubt fire off one more burst of his technique at this range. Yet to do so without understanding his previous failure would leave the boy without options. If there was to be any hope at all of leaving alive, Yuu had to find it on his own.

“You survived with a trick, but it’s the kind you can only pull once.” Even if Yuu said it with a straight face, he had a hard time believing this was what he had to go with. “The great General Hashimoto Daisuke isn’t as clever as they say. And, you’re in terrible shape.”

“Really?” Daisuke shifted his weight and Yuu felt the immense force of the General pull on his arm, yet the boy stayed planted on two feet and held his ground. The movement almost prompted him to spring into one final desperate attack yet Yuu held himself back. “I feel great. I’m more of a morning person anyway, and the sun will be up soon, right?”

“Why did you steal our artifact?” A bold interrogation tactic, given Yuu’s precarious position. Hana would have called it stupid and she would have been right. Why would Daisuke answer?

“What do you care?” Daisuke shot back with his own pointed rebuke. “If you had killed me before, you would be asking questions to a corpse. Nobody on this damned island wants answers.”

Sweat was beading up on the back of Yuu’s neck. The muscles along his arm ached where Daisuke continued to apply pressure. So much, so much time had passed. At any moment the boy might find himself blown back by the Divine Wind that Daisuke controlled, or perhaps engulfed in the green pyre that the Ghost of Garion was so famous for using to dispatch his enemies. Their surprise attack had prevented him from doing that so far but now what stopped the general? Was it that he didn’t want to? Couldn’t? Wouldn’t?

The heavy pressure in Yuu’s chest only built up by the second. Even if Daisuke didn’t explode him right there, the boy might burst entirely on his own.

There was no more stalling to be done. Yuu would just have to take a chance.

“Someone on this island is pretending to be you, aren’t they?” Yuu breathed out each word with a deliberate slowness. The low-light conditions and obscured face of Daisuke made his expression difficult to read, but at the very least his grip wasn’t tightening. “The Ghost of Garion is rumored to possess a cloning jutsu, a teleportation jutsu, a illusion jutsu...but it’s all just the same trick. You aren’t the same person I fought before. You have a partner pretending to be you, who pretends to use those other abilities. It’s all a sham.”

The last word fell with a wet thud. For a while the only sounds immediately around the two were their own labored breaths.

Finally, Daisuke seemed keen to respond. “I killed the copy.”

“Your partner?”

“My pain in the ass.” Daisuke shifted his weight and it took all the power Yuu could muster not to be thrown off balance. “I don’t know what that thing was I threw. It was supposed to be an hourglass.”

Was he lying? Trying to get out of a dangerous situation, like Yuu was? Did that even make sense? How could both of them be trying to escape, unless-

Now it was Yuu’s turn to feel swindled. His regret became apparent just from the few words he wheezed under his breath. “It was a setup.”

“Welcome to being an Agent, kid.” Daisuke was nearly sitting full upright now. If Yuu let him continue to get up then the man would have no trouble overpowering the boy. Fighting any further just seemed stupid- not only did Daisuke no longer have the skull, it seemed like he hadn’t even been the one to steal it in the first place! Killing someone in cold blood wouldn’t have bothered Yuu so much- after all, the Metsina way of life was all about slitting throats whenever it meant you could turn a profit. But killing someone over a misunderstanding...

Thank goodness Hana wasn’t here to see this.

“I’m not going to fight you.” Yuu’s attacking posture didn’t change, but his tone certainly shifted from the empty threat he made before.

“Yeah, because you know I’ll kick your ass.”

“Don’t even- look, I need to go after my friend.” Yuu took his eyes off the General for the first time to just briefly glance back up at the forest around them. The dark night seemed to be getting a bit less opaque owing to the impending sunrise just hours away. “I bet you are pissed and you have every right to be, but she’s going to come back and kill you if you don’t let me tell her you’re not of interest to us.”

“I’ll kick her ass too.”

“No,” Yuu tugged at Daisuke’s grip, and found it less imposing as before. “She’ll definitely kill you. If I hadn’t been here, she absolutely would have stuck around to finish the job.”

“You really are a greenhorn. You don’t insult the person you’re begging for mercy from. Very rookie mistake there.”

“Let me go. The longer you wait, the farther she’s gonna get from here. And she’s going to come back to see if I killed you, one hundred percent. Hana loves a good fight and holds a grudge like nobody’s business. It’s best for you to not give her a reason to hunt you down.” This comment seemed to pack a stronger punch than anything Yuu’s muscles would have been capable of, and after what felt like hours of being in Daisuke’s crushing grip, the vice around his wrist finally relented. Yuu wasted no time hopping backwards to put distance between himself and Daisuke, sliding to a stop only after several thick tree trunks stood between himself and the still seated Daisuke.

The General himself didn’t seem to be in as big of a rush. Daisuke took his time, gingerly rubbing the flesh sheared from his scalp where the boy had nearly impaled him. The boy was right about one thing- these dumb tricks were getting harder to pull off the stronger his opponents became. Whenever the General cloaked himself with his Divine Wind there was always a little bit of light diffraction as a result- something like the shimmering of a distant mirage, but far less potent or even noticeable under strong sunlight. At night, though, and surrounded by shadow, that air lensing let him separate his image by just a fraction more. In the best possible conditions it was barely a noticeable shift, even to someone paying attention. Enough, though, to displace his apparent location by just barely the length of a palm.

Or, well, a bit less than that, it seemed. Everything south of his ear was going to be hairless for some time and there would be one nasty looking scar on his scalp when it healed. Groaning, Daisuke rose to his feet and by the time he was upright again, Yuu was nowhere to be seen.

That damnable Motonubu! Even in death, the man’s wiles continued to be a sore spot for Daisuke. Grumbling, Daisuke tossed the limp ribbons off his form as if they were used toilet paper. A closer inspection revealed the fabric to be quite light and permeable- almost as if it had been designed to allow air to pass through the threads easily. Both those Agent’s jutsu were a great matchup for countering his own, at least when he didn’t have the Sixeyes available. The young kid had been right, probably. In Daisuke’s current state, that bloodthirsty ribbon girl probably could have killed him. Daisuke shook off the last bits of loose dirt from his clothes, then stared out into the vast humid jungle.

The hourglass hadn’t been the hourglass at all. Motonubu’s Wispform was literally nothing more than hot air, smoke shaped into fragile structures that let the gremlin of a man imitate people and perform pointless parlor tricks. It seemed the hourglass Daisuke thought he’d taken was in fact that weird skull. Daisuke hadn’t even known that Wispform could be used in such a way! The nasty little rat Motonubu could keep a secret even from his superior officer, it seemed. But, more concerning was the reality that if Wispform had persisted for so long, then there was a possibility Motonubu must have still been alive. The effects of jutsu rarely outlived the person who used them.

Which meant there would be more tricks to come. The thought alone prompted Daisuke to give an angry, frustrated exhale. His quest wasn’t over just yet.