Crane and Raven are back on their feet, unleashing a ferocious onslaught of sword thrusts, swipes, and verbal abuse. The Marine Contra evades and diverts their blades; a dramatic increase in the Grey Beret's (Anbu) speed and precision forces him to retreat. After wrapping a broken table leg with a flammable cloth and soaking it with whiskey, he leaps onto a bar counter, then ignites the makeshift torch, "Sorry, but I'm about to turn and burn!!"
"You're not going anywhere! You depraved little minx!" the Anbu Captain roars, lunging at Jim. They're but a hair's breadth away from him; too late do they realize what he means by turn and burn, for the mass murderer does just that.
"Ninja Art: Nagasaki!!" The chakra-enhanced rear detonation flips him through the broken one-way window. The fireball sends the assassins tumbling midair, spread-eagle in the opposite direction. He screams, sprinting for the nearest water source. Jim extinguishes his trousers (much to all the koi fish's dismay), flopping his blazing bottom into a koi pond. He shudders in relief as steam hisses and rises from the cold water.
Smooth piano jazz plays over the speakers that line the pillars, droplets of rain tap on the windows, and crackling fireplaces illuminate the courtyard in a dim hue. The ambiance almost drowns out the distant undead groans. The war criminal approaches a window with an expansive view of the burning city; he walks alongside the glass panes, reminiscing the years before the Mutagenic Wars.
FLASHBACK NO-JUTSU
The apocalyptic insurrection is swift and covert. SCAF (Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces) commandos seize strategic checkpoints and supply lines along the borders. They disrupt vital communications networks and render critical infrastructure nonfunctional by sabotage. Key political figures become prisoners of war or prime targets for assassination.
While the city's defenses are down, the Sovereign Colonies Marine Contras storm the beaches. They carve deep into the metropolitan area, block by block, building by building. The Contras converge upon the gates of Fort Firestorm, instilling fear and desperation into their adversaries. After securing the administrative towers and neutralizing the remaining combatants, the fortress-like town capitulates before the bulk of its defense force can mobilize.
END FLASHBACK
Jim sighs, walking towards the courtyard's center, shifting over a sequence of hand seals. A Lightning cloak of thunderstorms discharges around his body; the violent arcs of electricity disappear after a subsequent hand seal combination. He closes his eyes, raising both hands in the air like he just doesn't care. The inconspicuous lightning cloak emits an electric hum, projecting high-frequency electromagnetic waves throughout the courtyard and back to himself.
He detects two inbound chakra signatures; their presence is unmistakable—the sudden gusts of wind surge behind and in front of him. The blustering gales extinguish the fireplaces and scatter the lighter furniture around the enclosure.
"Keep your hands where they are!"
"Don't move a muscle, Malkhaz!"
The fugitive senses the kunoichi's unmasked face within a hair's breadth of his own. His mind races, figuring out what's what, wondering, 'Why didn't they just attack from the get-go?'
"Open your eyes."
Then it dawns on him, 'Ain't no doubt about it; I'm dealin' with one of *them*...' he squeezes his eyelids, knowing one glimpse is all it takes. "No."
"Open your damn eyes," she demands.
"No means NO, Uchiha!" He resorts to using another genjutsu on himself, manipulating his cerebral nervous system's chakra flow to counteract her visual prowess. 'C'mon, just a little more...'
Raven chuckles, "I know you're stalling, Malkhaz. Which is fine, but you're only delaying the inevitable."
'Touch the barrier! I double-dog dare you!'
"We'll get those eyelids open, one way or another," the medical-nin threatens, transmuting the sapphire hue around his hand into a chakra scalpel.
Jim strains to suppress his snickering as he charges an enigmatic jutsu, 'Ninja Art: Cascading Crescendo!'
The Anbu Captain's Sharingan (Copy/Mirror Wheel Eye) flairs, radiating killing intent, "What's so funny, Malkhaz? We caught you; it's over! If you so much as twitch in a way I don't like…"
'Oh, give me a break.' In less than a fraction of a second, the fugitive cups her chin with his hand, lifting the Uchiha's head.
"RRMPH!?!" her face flushes beet red.
The shinobi gasps, then swipes his chakra blade at the base of Jim's scalp; the kunoichi swings a right hook as hard and fast as she can, aiming at his jaw. Instead of a prompt decapitation or that satisfying impact of her knuckles concaving the Contra's face, Raven's fist collides with an electric current. A thunderous shockwave surges electricity through both Anbu. A blinding flash causes them a temporary loss of vision. Their ears ring; the disorientating sensation mimics a concussion. She places the Anbu mask back on her face; they stumble around, struggling to regain their barrings while the concussive effects subside.
"Catch me if you can!" Jim cackles, rocketing in the air. He sways around the suspension walkways and steel girders in his trajectory. His momentum subsides; he leans back, ascending onto a support beam, then sticks to its surface using his chakra. The assassins charge after him, desiring nothing but to rip out his intestines with their bare hands; adding insult to injury, a familiar weapon slides from the mass murderer's sleeve into his hand, 'Neutralizing the enemy's dōjutsu is critical to victory or retreat; it can be the difference between life and death. Likewise, if the Uchiha isn't fast enough, all they see is their demise in slow motion.'
The Anbu Captain recognizes the sword, 'When and how did that insufferable wretch loot Hawk's body?' The hair on her neck stands on end. 'The Byakugan's fallen into enemy hands, once again!' Imagining another Marine Contra with those eyes gives the Uchiha goosebumps. 'Under no circumstances can I allow that scenario to occur; Malkhaz's too dangerous to be left alive!'
He releases a cluster of explosive tags, "Can you avoid this?"
"Incoming!" Crane warns. With professional accuracy and precision, the Anbu demonstrate their proficiency using thrown weapons by diverting the explosives. A volley of tranquilizer darts (some with Jim's tags sticking to them) forces him to evade. The assassins follow up with a barrage of projectile-based ninjutsu. He takes cover behind a wall, preventing himself from suffering third-degree burns or being cut to ribbons via "Water Release: Falling Rain Needles."
They surge up the stairwell after the war criminal, tossing kunai and shuriken as he dodges and deflects the inbound fusillade with Hawk's sword. Jim maintains his distance using teleportation jutsu; at intervals, he tosses debris wrapped with explosive tags over his shoulders as improvised fragmentation grenades. The Anbu maneuvering around the explosives slows them down. He flips a Red Zetsu over the railing, beheads two more, then slaps active explosive tags on their backs before kicking them down the stairs.
They avert the tumbling headless abominations. The explosive tags discharge, splattering bloody chunks and debris. The fugitive slides across the floor, flipping another Red Zetsu in the air; he tosses the flesh-eating ghoul, knocking the kunoichi off a guardrail. The medical-nin catches and swings her around, using momentum to throw Raven back at Jim. She enhances her blade with chakra.
The Contra parries a decapitation attempt; however, the onslaught's power disbalances him. The Anbu Captain kicks him over the railing. He sticks an explosive tag on a kunai before throwing it and landing on a bridge. The assassins vanish before the explosive detonates; they reappear behind Jim with their blades ready. The Uchiha swipes at his throat but misses; he backhand-springs, avoiding another swing at his jugulars from the shinobi.
"I have you now!" the mass murderer teleports away. Explosions destabilize the bridge columns; the Anbu leap onto a giant chandelier, escaping from the collapsing platform as they swing onto the next floor. "Still alive, eh? Guess I'll have to—" he ducks a kunai, "Whoa! You could've put someone's eye out with that!" The tall Anbu responds with a salvo of shuriken; Jim dives into a closet, preventing himself from becoming a pincushion, then slams the door.
The assassins barge in after him, but the closet's empty. Another door opens; he runs into a room on the opposite side of the corridor. They rush into the room after him, but he escapes near the end of the hallway. The war criminal opens a door and evades a flurry of shuriken. He darts back to the previous room with the Anbu trailing him, door to door, room to room, looming ever closer. Jim emerges from another door but hides behind it this time. Both assassins charge out of the room past him and into the next.
The fugitive snickers, "Idiots." Across the hallway, four teenagers and a Great Dane flee from two giggling green ghosts rattling chains on their wrists. The door slams before the evil spirits can enter, but they change course, hounding after him. His eyes widen. He dashes up the hallway and around the corner with his *butt-cheek clenching factor* blaring furiously. The Anbu skedaddle from one room to the next, screaming in pure terror as the ghastly apparitions trail them not far behind.
Jim runs down the hallway and back again, fleeing from a Red Zetsu horde hot on his heels. He follows the teenagers and their dog, running out one door to another. Rather than entering, the Contra opens the door, allowing the cannibalistic fiends to stream in after them. He locks the door, mumbling, "Meddling kids," then hides in an adjacent room. The assassins run up the halls before freezing at the intersection.
"Hold on; I've seen this before," Crane says. "If we continue chasing Malkhaz back and forth, to and fro, in and out, left to right and right to left, over and under, eventually we'll be chasing each other."
"And of course," the kunoichi adds, "there's also the possibility of a random object falling on us from above—" They leap back; on cue, a large piano falls out of nowhere, crashing through the floor, squishing a random Red Zetsu. Jim dashes back up the hallway and jumps out a window, shattering it. Raven nods sagely at the medical-nin before leaping out the window after Jim; the Anbu race up the glass panes, evading and deflecting the kunai and shuriken hurtling at them.
The mass murderer electrifies a kunai before throwing it against the window's surface, causing a chain reaction. The assassins surge up the comminuting glass, avoiding the enormous plummeting fragments while trying not to lose footing on the surface collapsing around them. They approach the top of the skyscraper, increasing their speed. They reach the rooftops before the final glass pane shatters behind them. A silhouette with large pupil-less white eyes stares them down. Lightning flashes across the sky, reflecting off Jim's glasses. He takes a drag of a cigarette before flicking it over the ledge.