"Registering our steel weapons... I'll tell that guy where he can stuff these papers..."

"Oh, quit complaining," Corina quietly admonished, snickering a little. "It's not THAT bad."

Mani had been grumbling to himself ever since entering the desert town of Brightsand, still a little caught off guard by the region's... quirks. He couldn't think of a time where he actually had to register his trusty katana (much less the various other hidden instruments of death he chose not to mention), or when he had actually seen, much less used, a glass pen. He was a little worried that it might break at first, but it turned out to be quite sturdy. Brightsand was a busy little town. The town's denizens were up and about in the sandy streets, going about their normal morning activities. Mani thought it was a little odd that a number of the citizens were wearing different uniforms and such, but Eric quickly explained that the Guild system was very prominent in Brightsand. Then there was the presence of some stranger looking types running about ("Mystics," came Eric's tour guide-ish response), but all in all, it was a nice little city.

Except for maybe the heat. Or perhaps that smoldering pile of chocobo dookie Mani narrowly avoided...

"So what now, o' fearless leader?," came Corina's joking voice after they had walked about the city for a while, Tina and Eric snickering loudly.
Mani grinned. "Well, I'm going to see if I can pick up some weapons, hopefully of the non-glassy variety," he made known. "Now, seeing as you ladies have your magic and all, I doubt seriously that you'd be interested..."

"You're right," Tina quickly remarked.

"I'll come with you," Eric offered. "We menfolk need to stick together," he added with a grin.
Corina shook her head, silently laughing to herself. "OK, so while you two run around and bond, or whatever the heck it is you guys do with new weapons, I'm going to get us a couple of rooms at an inn." She thought for a moment. "You know, with all of this gold, we could each have our own room..."

Mani shook his head. "There's safety in numbers. I'd recommend two to a room, personally. But then again, I'm the paranoid sort..."

"Fine." Corina cast a quick glance in Eric's direction (who was grinning broadly) before turning back towards Mani. "But you're rooming with him," she quietly remarked.

"Fair enough."

Corina and Tina took their leave of the group, heading in the opposite direction. "We'll meet back here in an hour, OK?" Mani nodded. "Just try to keep from running around butt-naked in front of any other unconscious ninjas, OK?," he added with a laugh.

His laugh suddenly stopped as he was forced to dodge a rock from a laughing Corina's direction

* * * * * * *

It would appear that their Chocobo-riding friend in the desert was horribly misinformed.

After getting directions to the local Blacksmith's Guild, they were informed that the ban on steel weapons had been lifted quite recently, so finding suitable weapons was no problem. Mani easily restocked his supply of throwing blades, but it looked like getting his hands on some shuriken would have to wait- they seemed pretty scarce.

"So what exactly would you recommend for someone like me?," Eric wondered out loud. He had been wandering about examining every weapon on display, taking an interest to several swords. Mani thought for a second.

"Well," he began. "To be perfectly blunt, I've seen you swing a sword and wasn't terribly impressed... I would suggest something with some length to it, but light enough to be swung at a fairly rapid rate of speed..." He began to look about the area. "How about this?," he wondered, removing a spear from a nearby rack.

Eric shrugged. "Fine by me if you're willing to teach me how to use it." After purchasing the weapon, the two stopped for a moment in front of the guildhouse on their way out. Several members of the guild paused and watched as the ninja took the spear into his hands, motioning for his friend to stand back some.

"Now pay attention," Mani quickly remarked with a grin.

In a sudden burst of movement, he began to twirl the spear about him at a frightening rate of speed. Eric couldn't help but jump slightly, as did several of the other spectators at his sudden beginning, but they were all soon watching him closely as he continued to slice wide, practiced arcs in the air with the weapon. Thrust, jab, spin. Spin, jab, thrust. Mani was alive with motion, an unstoppable force of practiced, and very deadly looking movements. He would swing the weapon about him at such speeds that the spear would seem to disappear for moments at a time, only to return for him to stab at an invisible enemy more times than anyone could keep up with. There was no stopping him- he twirled about like a mad gyroscope, the spear becoming more than a weapon, but also a shield, a shield of impenetrable movement, a shield that no one would dare cross. Just as suddenly as he had began, Mani ended his display, the spear held in one of his hands, hilt at his back and at an angle away from his body. There was an awkward silence for a moment, a silence that was soon replaced by the applause of not only Eric and the guildsmen, but of several people in the streets that happened to be walking by at the time. Mani bowed respectfully before handing the spear back to Eric, who's mouth was opened wider than should be humanly possible.

"...ha... how... wha.... ah... um..."

Mani silently laughed to himself. "Don't worry Eric, I'll teach you the basics first," he made known. "In fact... start practicing here, right now..." He looked up at several of the guildsmen still standing about. "Is it OK for him to practice here for a little while?," the ninja asked.

"By all means," came the answer from the nearest one.

Mani smiled. "Good. Now, I'll be right back..."

Eric suddenly turned towards him. "Where're you going?," he quickly asked, but by then Mani was halfway to the gate.

"Just give me a sec... I'll be right back..." Eric stood for a moment with a look of confusion on his face, but after several seconds turned his attention to the spear in his hands. He soon (awkwardly) adjusted his stance, taking a few practice jabs in the air.

At the gate stood a young lady, her skin tanned by the desert sun, her midlength red hair a stark contrast to the black outfit she was wearing. Most would say that people that wore black in the middle of the desert had some sort of death wish with the sun, but the outfit was skimpy enough to keep her cool, yet not skimpy to the point that someone would get the wrong idea about the girl. Her baggy pants were made of a light silky material, and her top was just large enough to keep her chest covered. She stooped down to adjust the strap on one of her sandals, all the while never taking her eyes off of the group inside.

"Hi there."

The girl nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice that had seemingly come from nowhere. Her pale green eyes were about the size of your typical anime character's when she saw a young man dressed in black perched on the gate above her, looking down with a wide grin on his face. "I'm... I'm sorry sir! I didn't mean to..."

Mani held up his hand, quieting the girl. "There's no need to apologize, there's no trouble or anything." With the grace of a cat, he leapt from his perch and onto the ground right beside the girl, who jumped noticeably when he landed. "I'm Mani," he introduced, holding out his hand. The girl nervously reached up, slowly taking his hand.

"Shari," she responded. "My name's Shari..."

Mani smiled. "That's a very pretty name, Shari."

"Thank you..."

The ninja looked about the area, his glance falling back to the front of the guildhouse, where he could see Eric attempting to mimic his display from earlier. He slowly turned back to Shari and smiled. "So tell me, are you from around here?"

She nodded. "I've lived in Brightsand all of my life." She blinked. "Why do you ask?"

Mani took a moment to lean up against the gate surrounding the guildhouse. "Well," he began. "Me and a few of my associates just got into town, you see, and well, to be perfectly blunt, none of us really know our way around here. Now, I have a few things that I need to do today, but I was wondering if you could show my friend in there around some."

Shari looked inside of the gate. "Which one's your friend?," she wondered, scanning the group.

"The one with the spear and jester's cap."

She stared for a moment or two before pointing. "Him?"

"Yeah."

She stared at Eric for a little while, who was still trying to work with the spear. He had succeeded in getting his thrusts right, but the guildsmen around him immediately took cover as he attempted a spin. "He's..." Shari stared for a while longer. She giggled. "He's kinda cute..." Mani nearly had to catch his jaw from dropping off of his face, but soon regained his composure.

"So will you help us?," he wondered. "I just want you to show him around the city, make sure he doesn't get into any trouble or anything... I'll pay you 200 gold for your trouble, 100 of which I'll give you now. So whatdaya say, Shari?" He grinned broadly, to which Shari smiled back.

"All right."

Mani then reached into a pouch at his side, pulling out several pieces of gold, which he turned over to Shari. "I really appreciate this Shari," he remarked, leading her inside. "Eric's a good kid, a true gentleman in every sense of the word... I can guarantee that he won't try anything dishonorable."

"Oh that's OK, I carry a knife," Shari remarked, her smile broadening.

Eric suddenly stopped his practice as he saw Mani returning to the guildhouse with a pretty attractive young lady following close behind. He realized that most women would consider staring to be rude, but he couldn't help himself. His heart suddenly stopped when he saw her look up at him, and it nearly exploded when he saw her smile at him. Mani stood between the two. "Eric, this is Shari, Shari, this is..."

"Eric, Eric Dulcimer," he quickly interrupted, reaching forward and shaking the young lady's hand. Mani was a little taken back as to how bold Eric seemed to become at the sight of the lady, but paid it no mind. He was well aware of the fact that the presence of a young lady would often change his own demeanor.

"I've asked Ms. Shari here to show you around Brightsand," Mani clarified. Eric's eyes shot open.

"Wha... uh... OK!"

It was a little more reassuring seeing Eric as his normal self.

"Well, if you two will excuse me, I've got some running around I need to do." He smiled. "Have fun, you two." Mani saw Eric turn to thank the guildsmen for allowing him to practice on their lot, and as he did so, Mani pulled Shari a little closer. "There's an extra 50 in it if you can help him pick out some more... regional clothes."

Shari nodded. "Will do," she answered with a smile.

Late evening.

Mani couldn't help but smile. He usually didn't try to do the matchmaker thing, but that was an opportunity that he couldn't pass up. Besides, the two looked so cute together...

<Cute... bleh, I must be getting sensitive...>, he thought with a grin. With Eric out with Shari, it gave him a chance to check out the city in more detail than Shari probably would have been able to tell him- he needed to check out the dark alleys and taverns, the places where most normal people wouldn't dwell after a certain hour. The types in those sort of places always seemed to know what was going on in town. The young man was walking through the streets of Brightsand by himself on that evening, his katana ever present at his side. There were a few people out and about on that evening- most were either drunken men, or women offering wares a tad more intimate than the ones the merchants were peddling early that day. Through an effort to look semi-inconspicuous (that, combined with the fear of passing out), he had opted to purchase some lighter clothes along with his weapons earlier. Still wearing the dark pants and ninja-styled slippers, Mani also had some white in his attire- a white tunic with the sleeves cut at his shoulders. It wouldn't do him any good to pass out because of his black uniform absorbing every punishing ray the sun had to offer. If he was going to find Lily, he reasoned, it would help if he knew how the city was laid out should the need for a hasty retreat arise. Of course, that was still a VERY big if... there was no telling if he would indeed find the love of his life in this city, or if he had come to Brightsand to die. If Phantom could have come through though, then there was a chance that Lily could have too. Mani could only hope... that was all he had at the moment.

He also had his intuition. And according to it, he was being followed.

His training and experiences in the past had given a sixth sense of sorts, and it was rarely incorrect. Perhaps he was being paranoid, with him being in a new city and all, but that nagging feeling was there all the same. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. Three of them. They looked fairly young, a tall blonde-haired youth dressed in black the apparent ringleader. In front of him were two others, a much shorter and stockier man with light brown hair, and an equally short green skinned individual- an imp, if he remembered correctly. Not the sneakiest of individuals, he had to say. Actually, they were pretty damned loud to be perfectly blunt. It could have been that they were traveling down the exact same road at the exact same time keeping the exact same pace as he was, but he doubted that. He strained his ears- he heard something like 'That looks like him', and maybe a 'Speed up'... whatever it was that had been said, it was pretty obvious that it had been him they were discussing. Perhaps they were drunks, perhaps they thought he was someone else, or perhaps they were the crappiest bunch of professionals he had ever run across... regardless, he knew that he couldn't walk forever.

Mani suddenly stopped and turned around, barely having time to reach up and catch the fist of the stockier human about to collide with his face at a high rate of speed. He held on to the surprised man's fist as he glared at his associates.

"Is this some sort of custom that I should know about?," the young ninja casually wondered.

The blonde haired man, ignoring the potentially bad situation his human associate was in, merely retorted with a snide grin. "This is how we say 'hi' in Brightsand," he explained, to which the imp, and soon the other human, began to laugh. Mani nodded, letting go of the captive's hand.

"Oh," he calmly answered. He seemed to calm down, but in a sudden blur of motion, however, his fist shot up and slammed the stockier man right in the middle of his face.

*WHACK!!*

"Hi," Mani remarked, looking down at the half conscious man.

Before he could look up to the others, Mani was winded from a kick delivered to his stomach by the imp. Being somewhat adept in the field of martial arts, Mani unconsciously began to analyze the kick- the form told him that this imp fellow had some sort of formal training, and the sharp pain in his stomach told him that he had obviously paid attention to his sensei. The imp followed with a punch, which Mani quickly parried before throwing out a blow of his own, which was also parried. As he and the imp suddenly began to engage in a furious display of parried punches and kicks, he couldn't help but notice that the blonde-haired individual was standing smugly to the side, watching the entire display. <Must be one of those I'm-such-a-badass-that-I'll-let-you-beat-the-crap-out-of-my-friends-before-I-decide-to-fight-you-my self types...> A slight shuffling sound from behind told Mani that the human he had decked earlier was rising to his feet, and he doubted seriously that it would continue to be a fair fight between him and the imp. Just as anticipated, the stocky man swung at him from behind. Mani quickly turned, caught his fist again, turned back to the imp, kicked him in the shin, turned back to the human and flipped him over his shoulder, taking out the hopping imp. The two landed on the ground with a loud thud, a mess of limbs and swears.

A kick to the middle of his back told him that blondie had decided to join the fray.

"Do you always hit people from behind?," Mani quickly asked, taking a moment to readjust his stance. The blonde guy smiled again. He seemed to enjoy doing that, the smug little bastard.

"Well," he began, "with you being a ninja and all, I figured that there wasn't much room for honor in this little engagement."

"If I really had no honor, you'd be dead by now," Mani responded, placing his hand on the katana at his side for emphasis.

"Oh, really?"

"Really."

The blonde haired man looked down at his two associates, struggling to regain their footing. He smiled again, turning his attention back to Mani. "So am I correct in assuming that you refuse to kill us?," he wondered out loud, his grin broadening.

"That depends. But one thing's for certain." Mani's eyes suddenly locked with blondie's, his gaze harsh and burning. "You're about two seconds away from a beating most S&M freaks would shy away from."

Without so much as a verbal retort, the man suddenly lashed out at Mani with a flurry of punches. The ninja was able to parry most of the blows, but it soon became obvious that this guy was much better trained than the imp he had previously disposed of. Several landed, but not enough to incapacitate Mani, for he was soon retaliating with an assault of his own, much to blondie's surprise. The two grappled at speeds unheard of, their limbs becoming blurs in the dance of war. It had been fortunate that the stranger did not choose to pull a weapon, because Mani much preferred hand-to-hand combat as a means of assault- plugging a man with several hundred shuriken was just so impersonal. Of course, the ninja had to seriously debate whether he should just screw that personal feeling, because at that moment the two other henchmen were not only back on their feet, but were also helping their ringleader.

Three on one, those odds were never good regardless of who you were fighting. Mani had to go from an offensive strategy to one of complete defense as he was forced to block kicks coming from three different directions. Most could be stopped, but too many were getting through- he knew that they would eventually wear him down. His options were few. He wasn't about to let them continue wailing away at him, slowly wearing him down like the bull-fighter does the bull. He could run, but something about that option disagreed with every fiber in his body. He could have drawn the katana and cut them all down, but it would be difficult to stay in Brightsand if he were a wanted murderer. Options running out, he knew that he had to stop this fight somehow, and stop it fast. He continued blocking faster than he had ever blocked before, even faster than when he recalled sparring with Master Renee back when he was training. The blonde guy threw in a punch, which Mani quickly deflected before planting a sudden kick to his chest, staggering him a few steps. With their ringleader back, he knew he had to work fast. The other two quickly advanced on him, but were very much caught off-guard as the ninja leapt up into a split in midair, a foot catching each in the chin.

The blonde guy, on the other hand, was very surprised when he felt Mani grab him by his shirt, roll back and suddenly flip him through the air like he was a practice dummy.

There was a loud crash, the sound of shattering glass as the blonde man went flying through the front window of a local bar, landing in the midst of a large group of drinking Mystics. Most were too drunk to really even care, in fact they began cheering when Mani leapt through the broken window right behind him. Most of the bar's patrons had stopped what they were doing, pausing to see what was going on. Almost immediately after leaping through the shattered window, the other two attackers followed, looking about madly. Before any punches could be thrown, before any threats were made, before anyone picked up a chair and smashed it across a neighbor's back, Mani quickly scanned the area and got the attention of the largest, drunkest man he could find. This happened to be a pretty hefty triclopian fellow with a stein of beer in his hand roughly the size of Mani's head.

"Excuse me sir!," Mani shouted, to which the triclops looked up. The ninja pointed at the stocky guy. "He said you were ugly!" He pointed to the imp. "He slept with your sister!" Finally, he pointed down to the heap that was the blonde guy on the ground. "...and HE said that you were GAY!!"

"He said WHAT?!" The drunken triclops then shouted something that Mani could only assume was a swear as he quickly stood up and began to lumber towards the blonde haired guy. It struck Mani as being pretty humorous that the triclops seemed more upset at being called gay than being called ugly or told that someone had slept with his sister. Upon seeing the large drunken freak approaching, the guy quickly stood to his feet.

"Hey, what the heck...?"

*WHACK!!*

As expected, the blonde's friends ran over to help him, and in the process, managed to bump several of the tables in the way. Beers spilled, tempers flared, and before anyone could yell for the guards, a massive bar brawl began to take shape. It was only a matter of time before the entire bar was getting involved- it was almost as if seeing the triclops in action had inspired each and everyone to take a shot on a neighbor or two. Punches were thrown, threats were made, and several chairs were smashed across the backs of neighbors.

...but in the midst of the chaos, no one seemed to notice the young ninja slipping back out into the streets of Brightsand...