Enjoy!
Tenzo's assault was going rather poorly, a wooden rod in each hand that was light but fast. Seshu was still moving at full speed despite the icy clime, and Tenzo was continuously feeling himself slowing down. His only stroke of luck came in the form of his enemy's inaction. The iceman focused on dodging, rather than striking back. He was playing a game of attrition, and he was clearly winning. Tenzo's breaths were getting heavier, massive clouds of condensation coming out of his mouth then quickly vanishing into tiny ice crystals. Each time he inhaled, he could feel his temperature decreasing overall, and although his flesh hadn't yet begun to freeze over, he had to figure that it was only a matter of time before it did.
Tenzo disengaged, striking toward Seshu's face but being easily deflected by an icy crystal as he jumped away to land on both feet. He was wobbly, but he wasn't that tired yet—the ground was beginning to turn into ice as well, beneath him. The clock was running out, and Tenzo tried his wood again. With his palms clapped together and his fingers interlaced, he broke ground in front of himself, shattering the smooth layer of ice and sending fragments into the air. Seshu paused in his pursuit, raising both arms to protect his masked face as heavy lumps of wood were fired like arrows toward him. Just like before, the wood froze mid-air, becoming ice and slapping into Seshu's clothing almost harmlessly. It wasn't just the temperature that lowered as things got closer to him; the speed changed drastically as well.
I can't hit him hard enough like this, Tenzo considered, unclasping his hands and speaking up, hoping that his enemy was chatty enough to give an opportunity to slow his breathing down. The faster he breathed, the more quickly the ice would cake in his lungs and draw the fight closer to its end. The answer was calmness. "It's an impressive technique," Tenzo said through ragged huffs, setting both hands on his knees as he doubled over. "How can you be so comfortable in such a cold environment?"
Seshu stopped, moving to stand himself up and fold his arms along his waist. "I know what you're doing, Kinoe; trying to stall, trying to catch your fleeting breath." One of his hands reached up to pull down the hood behind his mask, letting flashy white hair flow outward as if it were being blown by the wind. It fell past his shoulders in stringy beams, bound together by clumps of ice. "It's no use. Your wood cannot strike me, and your speed is ever-decreasing. The more you wait, the stronger I get..." Seshu took his mask down, lacing his fingers between the eye sockets and tossing the deep blue visage away to clatter against frozen dirt. His face was half-covered by black streaks, and the other half was white with accents of blue. He looked half-frozen, though his face was expressive on both sides.
His eyes were wide and blank, purely snow-white from center to edge. The pattern of darkness that crossed his face was similar to the curse mark that Minoru was 'blessed' with, and Tenzo quickly assumed that it was helping him to survive in his own conditions. "I see," Tenzo murmured, standing back up after taking a moment to relax himself. He was still frigidly cold, and he could feel his own skin starting to lose color, even beneath his heavy vest. "Is your whole crew made up of leftovers from Orochimaru's playground?"
Seshu's lip twitched, and he scowled. "How rude of you, Kinoe, to call us leftovers. You're not so different from us, after all," he tossed his weapon from one gloved hand to the next, taking slow steps closer to Tenzo over the crackling ice. It was spreading out from his feet, becoming thick and slippery. "I reckon that Goda has already been defeated, over there—he was always rattling on about how he would 'ruin Kakashi without using his mark', and I believe he really was dumb enough to try it." Seshu chuckled, then shrugged, looking off toward the opaque divider that separate him from his own partner. "Who knows, though? In a desperate situation, it might turn itself on..."
Tenzo was rejuvenated, though he was nowhere near a hundred percent. Sixty, at best—it would have to do. He changed his tactics, "So, Seshu of the Frosted River...anything that comes close to you turns instantly into ice, isn't that how it works?" He began weaving a procession of signs, paying careful attention to their formation. He couldn't afford to screw up, although the creakiness of his bones made mistakes a constant possibility.
Seshu raised a white brow, tilting his head and readying his transparent weaponry in both hands, situating the pole like a spear. "Something like that," he answered with boredom, the empty stare seemingly pointed toward Tenzo in anticipation of something wily. Rather than wait, Seshu struck first, throwing his weapon as a javelin, its razor-sharp point headed for Tenzo's heart. The games were over; it was time to finish it.
Kakashi had successfully wrapped the man—whose name was Goda—into his genjutsu, and during the process he learned a number of interesting but foreboding things about Mamban and his plots. The forced interrogation was cut short by a sudden burst of motion from his stunned victim, causing Kakashi to drop the man's collar and take a quick step backward. The genjutsu was forcefully broken by a sudden surge of sick-looking chakra. It spread out along the defeated man's body and hijacked his systems, forcing his legs to regain their firmness and stand up defiantly. Goda had previously been afraid of Kakashi, but the fear was gone; his unmasked, broken face was craggy and determined as it was gradually decorated by thick black lines.
"I should have known it wouldn't be that easy," Kakashi muttered to himself. The air had been getting colder in his half of the dome, but thanks to the other man's explosive punches, the temperature spiked often enough to keep up a relatively pleasant average. "I wanted to keep you as a prisoner, but that might not be an option anymore," Kakashi said, readying himself for another onslaught. The explosive punches he had become familiar with had been coming from the man before his curse mark had been turned on. There was no guarantee that he would utilize the same tactics a second time—after all, Susumu's fighting style changed dramatically once his mark was activated. Same rules apply, Kakashi thought to himself. Don't let him land a blow.
Goda said nothing, his face sternly held in a state of rage. His breathing was harsh and his body was trembling. His talkative nature had vanished, and he became a man of quick action—his form vanished from sight as his speed carried him forth, augmented considerably by the newly tapped energy of his curse. Kakashi was surprised, that time, and if not for his Sharingan's perception, he might have been struck. As it was, he had to bend himself down to the ground, legs leaning as far back as they could get. Again, Goda's fist exploded against the air, but the force was an entirely different magnitude. Even as Kakashi slipped down and through Goda's legs, he felt the concussive blast of the punch fill their confined space.
Kakashi formed seals in a flash; not even the curse's speed could keep up with his natural quickness. By the time Goda's next sprint closed toward Kakashi, there was a thick wall of earth to absorb the blow. The wall shattered, but as it did, Kakashi weaved through the debris to work his way close to the extended fist. His Sharingan allowed him to see the tiniest possible details in the air, and he could see the process of the explosive punch as it unfolded. The explosion was intense, but the threat wasn't the fire, as it had appeared at first—the damage was delivered by the wave of force that projected outward as a forward-opening cone. The sides were the safest place to be, but the air-tight nature of their arena meant that there was no genuinely safe place.
For Goda, the risk was minimal—his curse mark was like an armor that shielded him from the pressure of his own blows. Kakashi could feel himself being pushed around by the rapidly whirling air, and also pushed against by the rising atmospheric pressure that followed every trapped burst. Goda punched again, and Kakashi ducked and rolled, moving to the left. As the blast fired off, the concussion followed Kakashi rather than launched forward. The rules changed. The curse mark must allow him to choose the explosive pattern, Kakashi thought, raising his arms up to protect his face from the crushing blow of air. He was picked up from his feet and thrown against the curved wall of ice at his back, feeling a tremor through each of his bones. He felt a tiny bone inside his wrist lose a fragment just slightly, and the pain shot through him with total suddenness. He quickly worked through it, and weaved more signs with the same speed as always. The pain was nothing to a man like Kakashi.
"One down," Goda said through the ringing of Kakashi's ears, breaking his unusual streak of silence. "Seshu was probably right; you aren't going to break down at just nine, are you?" He drew his arm back, aiming his fist into the air above his head and creating another huge burst of force. Kakashi pulled up another wall of thick earth to absorb some of the impact before it could reach him, but the waves still penetrated the barrier and hit the man behind it. His body held up for the most part, but he felt another small bone pinch against itself, little chunks breaking away within him.
This is getting dangerous, Kakashi realized. I need to end it quickly, but I can't afford to use Kamui yet...I haven't fully recovered from last night. He held his hand in front of his Sharingan, anticipating the pain that he would feel if he did try to use his gifted technique and comparing it to the minor throb of his fractured carpal bones. There was no similarity—he could handle any measure of physical pain, but the agony of overusing his eye was on a level like spiritual torture. He couldn't afford to use his eye on such a low-level opponent. If what I got from his mind was true, then Mamban is out there right now, too...I need to keep my options open for him.
Another punch came with another air burst. Goda had given up trying to chase Kakashi down and took an approach that saw him hammering away at the air itself, which had a similar effect, though it was far less focused. Over time, Kakashi was tossed further against the wall—he could feel the ice cracking at his back, but it was still far too thick to pierce without multiple strikes. He had thought about using Goda's punches as a way of breaking out, but the other man must have already thought of that, because he refused to come within a certain distance of the solid barricade.
Kakashi paid close attention to every blow, studying Goda's movement patterns and how his technique varied from use to use. He always alternated from one fist to the next, always held his elbow back for a certain length of time, always firmly set his feet into the dirt, and always turned his head away from the blast to protect his face from the resulting fire-burst.
The curse mark protects him from the shockwave, Kakashi deduced as he nimbly danced around the most focused waves that came his way. The larger spread still struck him, but he was managing the impacts by turning his body in a way that allowed him to ride the waves, catching himself against the ice rather than limply smacking into it. Beyond the first two minor fractures, he was keeping his bones intact. But he turns his head away after each punch, just for a moment. He also needs to keep his footing steady, or else the force of his own blast will knock him down.
Kakashi drew up a plan and put it into action, raising a wall of earth to soak up another shockwave. He was using a lot of chakra on defense, but if his gambit paid off, then he would only need two more techniques. Just before his wall was splattered, and during the split-second of his opponent's head being turned back, Kakashi triggered both of the necessary techniques at once. After the impact hit, Goda could clearly see Kakashi stand up from behind the wall of rubble. The battering was leaving Kakashi shaky on his feet, but his awareness and defiance hadn't been dampened in the slightest.
"How much more can that body of yours take, Kakashi?" Goda bragged, grinning wide on his square face. "Unlike you, I've got a limitless source of power." He patted himself on the right shoulder, where his curse mark lurked beneath the black cloth of his robe.
Kakashi sprung into action, rushing forward from behind his crumbling earth wall, clutching his fists to either side of himself and blitzing forth. Goda saw him coming, forming his arm into a fist and pulling it back. Kakashi was fast, but the blow would finish before he could do anything about it. Goda's arm locked itself into position, charging up his next burst, and as Kakashi's feet brought him inches closer, Goda's arm was launched forth like it was loaded by a spring, projecting a particularly huge blast off of his knuckles. Kakashi's eyes went wide with surprise, and Goda saw him take the full force of his long-range, percussive punch.
His arms were up to defend, but the copy ninja couldn't resist the massive impact. He was blown off of his feet. The sound of six bones snapping all at once echoed brutally within the chamber, but Kakashi still managed to land on both feet, primed for another attack. He was breathing heavily, blood soaking into his mask and the air struggling to leave his lungs with a ruined, desperate gurgle. His right arm was hanging uselessly, dislocated and shattered from shoulder to fingertips. Goda laughed uproariously. "Haha! Big bad Kakashi Hatake doesn't seem so tough anymore..." He pulled his incendiary arm back, and Kakashi seemed dead in the water; by all appearances he was barely able to stay conscious.
"One more!" Goda shouted, throwing his fist out with a hair-thin target path. His goal was to punch an explosive line straight through Kakashi's gut. As his fist came forth, he felt a rumble at his feet. It was too late for him to do anything, though; he was already braced against the impact of his own burst, his thick sandals dug into the earth. The explosion was already forming on the ends of his knuckles by the time the broken, bleeding Kakashi poofed into the smoke of a clone. Goda had been had.
With his fist firing with its own momentum, Goda couldn't stop it. In one second, it would explode whether he liked it or not. Kakashi's true body erupted from the earth below, and his hand caught Goda's propelling elbow, giving the large arm a redirecting shove as he came up from the ground. A half a second to go. Goda tried to resist Kakashi's push, but it was no use—he had already put too much momentum into the swing. It was arching back around, aimed for his own chest. A quarter-second.
"Damn you, Kaka—!" Goda was cut off by the explosion of his own technique: he punched himself in the ribs with the full force of a killing blow. Even his curse-mark-toughened skin couldn't stand up to the condensed focus of his final punch, and he felt his robe and flesh blow apart in front of the impact. His back expanded, and out came a massive burst of fire, air, boiling blood, and charred skin. He had impaled himself with his own fist—with just a little bit of help from Kakashi. His next attempt to speak came with a cough of his own blood, trickling down his mouth and over his neck. He tried to yank his fist out of his chest, but his broken ribs were tightly holding his hand in place.
"You turn away from the explosion to protect your eyes from the debris," Kakashi said, now standing plainly in front of his crippled opponent, dropping his headband to cover his Sharingan. "You really shouldn't take your attention away from your opponent during battle." Kakashi was tossing a kunai up and down with one hand, twirling the iron blade in the air before catching it atop one finger, balancing it idly. "Now, isn't this the part where you beg me for mercy, or was that a ruse?"
Goda tried to talk again, but more of his fluids came out. Eventually, after a fit of coughing, he gathered himself enough to murmur. "Ha...ha...didn't you hear a word I said before...? I wanted...to die," he gurgled, his eyes turning dull and losing their light. He wasn't going to survive for much longer. "I wanted to die before the mark took me..." he finished his thought, as ambiguous as it was.
"Took you?" Kakashi asked, dropping the balanced kunai down into his own tight grip.
"Like it took Mamban..." Goda said, a solitary tear streaming down his cheek, brought on by the memories. He had failed, but on top of that, he was going to die with the taint of Orochimaru coloring his flesh. "He wasn't always...insane like this," the dying man struggled, still trying to rip his own hand free of his chest. His other arm was free, but he could barely stand, let alone make another attempt to finish Kakashi. It was obvious who was superior between the two of them. "He was loyal to Lord Danzo, loyal to...his ideals of the Leaf..."
Kakashi lowered his weapon. He wasn't going to need it, after all. "What about you, Goda? Where are your loyalties right now?"
"I don't have loyalties anymore...I only wanted to fight you," he spat out, falling onto his knees. Kakashi allowed him to struggle for as long as he tried; those moments would contain the man's final words. "With the mark active, I feel like I lose myself...Seshu, Cassy, Mamban...they all embrace it, but I see it...for what it is..." He fell abruptly onto his face, then rolled onto his side, using his one good arm to prop himself up. "It controls us...makes us wild...forces us to do things we'd never do...and the more we use it, the worse it gets."
Kakashi nodded once, sheathing his kunai. "It's Orochimaru's handiwork; nothing he bestows is ever really a gift. If you use it enough, you'll eventually crawl back to him...I admire your resolve for trying to resist it for so long, but...your battle is finally over."
"Thanks...Kakashi," he gasped. "It...it really does mean a lot to have my resolved admired by a legend," Goda choked out sincerely, trying to smile but unable to work his facial muscles the right way.
Kakashi knelt down beside Goda, setting his hand on the man's tainted shoulder. "The least I can do for you now is seal the mark on your shoulder. You can feel freedom for a moment before you die."
Goda chuckled once, but shook his head. "It's too late for that, I'm...already..." he got quieter, and then ultimately drifted off. His eyes became colorless, and his body went fully limp as a final breath escaped. Kakashi hummed, taking his hand and running it down Goda's broken face to close his eyes and turn him onto his back. Another victim of Orochimaru's ambitions; looking at the limp, corrupted corpse, Kakashi wondered how long it would be until Sasuke met the exact same fate. Was it already too late?
Kaine was disturbed by the burst of sound and motion that seemed to come from every direction. He threw his head to one side, then the other, unable to find a place within sight that wasn't being torn into tiny shards. His first thought was Makoto—he looked to where she had been tied down, but it was further than he thought. She was still well out of reach of the strings. He, on the other hand, was fully surrounded by the mayhem and it was closing in. Trees were sheared in half and rocks were turned to flying dust. A crater was forming around him and a sound like an electric saw was filling his ears. Cassy was standing in front of him, unharmed as if she were in her own little bubble—she was, truthfully. Her strings were doing the shredding, and they were following her exact commands.
Kaine had to act quickly to avoid being minced into bite-sized morsels, and as the window of opportunity began to close, he roared outward. He punched his fists together, running a lightning current from one arm to the next until both of his limbs were lined with the bright blue glow. He twirled himself into a sideways leap, keeping his arms out in front and aiming to burst his way through the cutting strings. He felt himself collide with something, and his charged fists fought against the friction with a mighty effort. He was repelled, though, and knocked back into the center of the sphere.
Fine, Kaine thought. If lightning doesn't work, I'll carve my way out with water. He formed the seals urgently, inhaling deep and puffing his chest out. When he exhaled, he blasted out a foam of water, constantly tightening his lips until the jet stream was thin and intense. At first, the water was deflected by the strings, but he doubled the force and eventually sliced through the invisible threads. When the debris stopped flying from one direction, Kaine dove through the narrow opening that he had created before Cassy could fill it again. He tumbled out and rolled over his shoulders before landing on his knees and one hand. He stood quickly, reaching to his back by instinct and looking for his sword, which was still missing—it was somewhere in that forest, though.
First step: get away from Makoto. Second: find my sword. Third: don't die? Maybe that should be the first one... Kaine mused, backpedaling from Cassy as she turned to walk after him. She was in no hurry to reach him with her physical self—her strings were long, and the cutting cyclone seemed to keep pace with Kaine with relative ease.
"I'd rather not kill you, munchkin," Cassy chirped, arms writhing and weaving through the air as she deftly controlled the strings. "I'll bet my mask that you hate Susumu almost as much as I do," she wagered, calling through the noise of her technique. The woods were being thoroughly dismantled, giant trees that were centuries old suddenly being reduced to sawdust and table legs. "What'll you bet in return!?" She lashed out with her right arm, sending the threads a bit further, a bit faster.
Kaine was caught by surprise, and although he could get a reasonable idea of where the strings were sent by the way she moved, that thrash was too quick for him, and he felt a searing hot pain cut into his forearm. The gash was significant, and it joined a building inventory of wounds on his right side—first his palm, then his shoulder, and finally his forearm. His enemy seemed to know that he was already significantly damaged. He winced from the pain but he didn't stop his backward hopping. He couldn't afford to turn and run all-out; he had to keep his eyes on those dextrous fingertips. "It's not a bet I want to make!" Kaine replied, trying to maintain his defiance. "I don't want to measure myself by how much hatred I feel!" He was leading Cassy away from Makoto, but he was subsequently being led by the huge cutting zone into a corner made of rocks and fallen logs. He couldn't count on his approaching adversary to cut a new path for him.
Kaine formed more seals, throwing a few of his lightning-charged water bolts. It did no good; the strings were too resilient. The bolts were deflected narrowly in one direction or another, never fully stopped but always flying just a few inches too far to the left or right. The wind of the whizzing projectiles rustled Cassy's hood, but she never even felt an impact when they exploded behind her shoulders. "Gonna have to do better," she chimed, her footsteps becoming tauntingly slow. "Maybe you just need more of a reason to hate me..."
Kaine considered making a jump for the top of the alcove he was being led into. It was high, but he could make it—the question was whether or not he could do it quickly enough to avoid the capturing chakra tendrils. Cassy had already proven capable of catching moving targets, and once he was in the air, he would have been at her mercy. He only had one other option at that point. He smirked at the thought: Well, Kakashi did say that I'll probably need to unlock it through combat training. Real combat is even better...I hope. He gulped at the end, suddenly having doubts. He was backed into the corner by then, though—he had spent too much time mulling it over, and his final option was to see what came out.
He formed a sequence of seals, then clapped his hands together, praying within himself that he was doing it right. He could feel the whipping wind of the approaching strings. His only solace was that Cassy liked to play with her food; if she wanted to, she could have torn him into seven equally-sized pieces and dropped him into a massive pot of stew. Kaine concentrated hard, a bead of sweat rolling over his forehead and down the rim of his eye...but all that emerged from between his hands was the same pittering drop of water that he had gotten before. His tan skin turned as white as it had ever been, and his eyebrow twitched. That's not fair...
Cassy saw the display and broke into a long string of giggles, her threads falling limp as she cackled at Kaine's expense, quite literally falling onto her back and clutching her gut with the intensity of her amusement. "Ohhh, wow...you're so damned adorable when you fail, kid!" she said through a voice that made it seem like she was crying tears of joy under the mask. Her attention was off of Kaine, and with her strings turning docile, he took his moment to strike. He charged with all the speed he could summon up—which was a lot of speed, given his pumping adrenaline.
Cassy was still laughing, right up until the moment that Kaine's fist was an inch from the dark green of her mask. The strings deftly woke from their inactivity and wrapped around his wrist, guiding his punch to the left of her face and driving his knuckles into the dry dirt. He left a fairly nice crater, but he missed his target. A knee came from below as Cassy slammed it into his gut, forcing him to cough up some rather unappetizing stomach acid, spitting it onto the floor beneath and reaching his hand down to clutch himself. He groaned with pain—she was stronger than she looked under all that cloth.
Cassy reached up with her hand and poked Kaine's forehead, lifting him up from his hunched-over pain and rolling him onto his back. She rolled with him, straddling him over the stomach and putting her hands on his chest. "Ohh, you're nice and solid under this vest, aren't you?" she purred, running a finger down the zipper line at the center of his protective blue layer. It was half-purple with blood. "Why don't we take a little break...?" she whispered, leaning down to touch the 'mouth' of her green mask to Kaine's forehead. Although she was an enemy, he couldn't help the rising red blush on his cheeks as she teased him. He snapped out of it quickly, though, and tightened his fist to throw a punch toward her masked cheek. Even with her hands occupied, one of her pinkies was precise enough to guide a string to stop his punch flat. "Now now, if you want to touch me," she hissed, guiding his hand with her strings, touching his tightly balled fist against the side of her hip. "You should aim a bit lower..."
"I'd never touch a woman like you except to blow your teeth out..." Kaine clenched his jaw together, then spat on Cassy's mask in defiance. She was tantalizingly warm against his stomach, and he could tell that she was frustratingly soft beneath her robe, but his mind continued going to Makoto—he couldn't even think of anything else. "Now...get off of me!" He reeled his head back and slammed his forehead into Cassy's mask. She wasn't expecting that collision, as obvious as it seemed—maybe she thought she was getting through to him. She took the hit to the facemask, but its material held steady against the impact. Still, she was sent reeling back at the neck, her focus lost just long enough for Kaine's hand to wriggle free of her strings and launch into a follow up punch that knocked her in the toned tummy. She coughed in surprise and leaped backward, landing upright on both legs and shaking her head as if to shake her hair out.
"Naughty boy," she wheezed huskily through a gasp, bringing a hand up to reposition her mask. It had been knocked slightly ajar, and when she moved it back into place, a tiny hairline crack wrinkled through the structure. "You're not bad, but you could be better," she concluded, giggling without much hesitation. "I think I know what the problem is, though...I saw how angry you got when your lady friends started attacking each other." Cassy turned around, looking toward where the fight had begun beside the stream. "Even though they both had a knife, you only wanted to kill the blonde one...you must really like the other one," she hummed, tapping her chin, then the sound turned into a whistle of thoughtful understanding. "So, if I kill the little one, you'll have no choice but to come crying into my arms, right?"
"What kind of sick game are you playing?" Kaine demanded. He had scrambled onto his feet once the weight was taken from his stomach. "Don't you dare go near her..." he fired off a few seals in rapid succession, then breathed out a quick bolt of lightning. As he should have expected, it was cut in half and forked its way along the trees behind Cassy, linking together as if the wood was made of metal. He formed different seals, this time firing off the jet of water that had succeeded in cutting through her strings earlier—he gave it everything he had, but Cassy brought both of her hands together, lining up a thick procession of strings to disperse the force of the impact and scatter the water into harmless mist. A lovely rainbow formed amidst the uselessness of Kaine's assault, and he started to pant breathlessly. He was losing blood and had used a lot of chakra. Cassy, on the other hand, seemed like she was only getting started.
"If you want to know my game, you'd better follow me quick...you don't want to miss what I'm gonna do to her..." Cassy cackled like a psychopath and turned on her heel to scamper off. Kaine cursed loudly and ran off to follow her. She was fast—faster than Kaine's foot speed, remarkably. She waited up for him, though. Kaine was silently thankful for the woman's personality, her obsession with playing a game—if she had been as quick to act as Mamban or Minoru, Makoto would have likely already been dead. In fact, Kaine would have been, too. He only hoped that her arrogant teasing would end for her the same way it ended for him when he toyed with Akemi during their test—with a blade through the gut.
Tenzo stopped the thrown ice weapon by calling up a torrent of water. The spear was thrown for his heart, and he couldn't move quickly enough to wholly avoid any damage, so he spit up a gush of water as a way of gambling—if the water didn't freeze, then the spear would've slipped right through and rammed into his chest. Fortunately for Tenzo, the freezing properties of the weapon remained, and the water turned to ice on contact, abruptly stopping the momentum. He bit off the end of his water stream before the ice could reach him, then took a step back. So, if everything freezes, maybe I can catch him in his own trap, Tenzo theorized. He worked up another blast of water, sending it toward Seshu in massive volumes.
Seshu grimaced, suddenly finding himself on the defensive. He took a few nimble steps back, avoiding the rushing waves but unable to go very far in the dome he constructed for himself. As water got close, it did begin to freeze, but fresh water continued to cascade over it. Tenzo was smart—he managed the waves in short, controlled bursts to prevent a chain of freezing energy from working its way back to him. "Clever," Seshu said between jumps. "But you'll only end up freezing yourself at this rate!" The icy enemy was working his way around the half-circle shape of their arena to get closer to Tenzo.
"Don't count on it!" Tenzo called out, slapping the ground as Seshu got near enough. A thick wall of earth rose between them, and then another pair of walls formed a ceiling-high canal that led in a curve all the way back to Tenzo's mouth. He forced more water out, filling the tunnel with liquid and ensuring that it found its way to Seshu as quickly as possible. The risen earth was already beginning to freeze. He'll try to break his way out from there. Tenzo turned once the mud was suitably converted to crystal clear ice. Seshu burst through, but he ran into a thick splash of water aimed right for him. It washed over him and began to freeze, slowing the iceman's movements for a split second before he formed a hand sign. The freezing stopped, but Seshu similarly stopped his own advance, putting some distance between himself and Tenzo.
"Nice try, Kinoe," Seshu chided, then formed another hand seal that was similar to the first. Tenzo was paying attention.
He has to form a seal to turn the freezing on and off, Tenzo realized, then spoke aloud. "You're slippery, Seshu. I'm sure you come in handy whenever Mamban needs a skating rink..."
Seshu's brow quivered and he rose an annoyed fist. "What was that?" He threw his hand forward, firing off a few icy spikes from his fingertips. Tenzo rose another swell of water, and it froze on contact. "You're going to regret taking me lightly," Seshu continued, forming up another icy spear. He didn't throw it this time, instead choosing to take the fight to Tenzo on foot. The latter pulled out another thrice-woven wooden polearm, keeping Seshu's attacks at a healthy distance. The wood began to freeze, but Tenzo was preemptively adding new layers to its construction from the inside out, shedding the frozen surface to make room for the fresh wood beneath. Despite being slowed, Tenzo was able to fight Seshu with a superior weapon technique, focusing on tight, controlled movements with a long staff to provide maximum effectiveness.
Seshu was a wild fighter, swinging left and right and pushing to close the gap. Tenzo was eventually overcome by the ferocity, and Seshu got alarmingly close, dropping his weapon and reaching a gloved hand toward Tenzo's faceplate. If he touches me, I'm finished; Tenzo acted quickly on his thoughts. His hands were frigid and he could feel himself shaking off ice crystals, but he sent out a water blast just in time. Seshu seemed to be afraid of the water, which further proved Tenzo's theory that it was a vital tool for his victory. "How long can you keep that curse mark active, Seshu? I'd bet that it's starting to hurt you to maintain it..."
Seshu chuckled, shaking his head and running his hands through his hair, turning the white strands even icier. When he whipped his head from one side to the next, snowflakes fluttered around his face. "I've dealt with it for most of my life. I don't need to turn it off...you should worry more about the condition you're in."
Tenzo gave a confident huff, forming a few seals in a row, queuing up the chakra for a succession of techniques that he hoped would end the battle for good. He was acting self-sure, but in the privacy of his own mind he was definitely aware of being on his last leg. He had chakra left, but his body was beginning to seize up on him. Already, he felt like his limbs were about to stop responding. The first jutsu was a wall of earth behind Seshu's back, seeking to funnel him into an enclosure. The second was a large wave of water.
Seshu lifted his hand, forming a seal to cease his freezing presence, then holding out his hand to divert the flow of the water with his own chakra. The wave hit him firmly, but it didn't freeze—Tenzo took that as the signal to send out his last technique in the barrage, the combination of earth and water. Wooden rods stretched from the raised earthen barricade behind Seshu while his attention was on the wave in front of him. Rather than seek to harm him in the long term, the rods turned to shackles that bound his hands to prevent him from creating his freezing seal. Seshu felt the wood grasping around his wrists, and he put up a valiant effort to resist their hold, but he wasn't quite strong enough, physically. Eventually, when his face was beet red and his mouth was stretched into a huge roar, he gave up and the wood snapped back, pinning him viciously to the earthen wall and pulling his arms far away from one another.
Tenzo breathed a sigh of relief, then picked up his wooden polearm from the dirt at his feet, holding it in front of himself and then pressing its sharpened tip to Seshu's chest. "Are you going to make me kill you, Seshu, or are you going to lower this dome?"
Seshu smirked, slanting his head and narrowing his eyes. He was beaten, though he continued to struggle against the bindings at his wrists. He was pulled too far apart to make full use of his muscles. His curse mark was working on overdrive to feed him more power, but Tenzo's own hand was folded into a seal that gave his binding technique enough strength to match it. "Go to hell, Kinoe," Seshu replied, biting and grinding his teeth together as if he was trying to form signs with them.
"You're wasting your effort. This wood can hold things that are a lot bigger, stronger, scarier, and smarter than you," Tenzo said with full satisfaction. It was a hard fight to get him there, but once the enemy was locked up in his shackles, Tenzo knew there was nothing he could do to escape. "I'll free your hands, and you'll undo this dome. You should know that I'll recognize your freezing seal when I see it...so, if you try to pull a fast one, I'll finish you off."
Seshu sighed, lowering his head. "You got me, then. I'll let you guys out," he said, sounding utterly deflated. His sincerity was difficult to ascertain, however.
"Perfect." Tenzo kept his bladed wooden spear on Seshu's chest, feeling with a prod that he was over soft flesh and not another layer of armor behind the robe. He poked hard just to make sure, and Seshu winced from the pain of near-penetration. Good enough—Tenzo began to gradually loosen the tightness of Seshu's bonds, leaving his wrists wrapped but giving them more room to move.
Once his hands were close enough together, Seshu predictably started to form the seal that activated his freezing aura. Tenzo responded in kind by driving the wooden pike through his chest and into the moist earthen wall behind Seshu's back. The skewered, blank-eyed male looked absolutely shocked. "I...I thought..." Seshu began, struggling to move; struggling to form his seal. "I thought you were bluffing..." He abruptly fell dead standing up, trussed against the wall by wood and impaled all the way through by a spear.
Tenzo sighed, yanking his spear out from Seshu's body and unclasping him from his shackles. Seshu of the Frosted River fell limply to the ground, certainly dead. "I need to learn to stop giving people chances," Tenzo grumbled before he turned to inspect the icy dome. Without its master to maintain it, the sphere began to melt...though, the process was slow on the fifty-five degree morning outside. "And here I am without a fire technique to use," Tenzo lamented, looking toward the divider that kept him apart from Kakashi. "Ah well, he'll get us both out soon enough."
Rika and Akemi were staring intensely at Mamban. Neither one of the women were willing to make the first move. The mastermind in the red mask had clearly heard Akemi's statement about Cassy and decided that he liked the news. He breathed a sigh that relaxed him. "Oh, so the Hamasaki boy thinks he can handle Cassy by himself, does he?" Mamban snickered like a brat. "Should be fun to see what he looks like when she finishes with him. He'll probably die with a big smile on his face..."
"Your girlfriend's creepy," Akemi replied, thinking back to the too-intimate touch that still felt like it was brushing along her cheek. "Hamasaki's probably got her little neck in his hands as we speak," Akemi said without thinking, then immediately regretted calling up the stinging memory. Though she didn't want to admit it to herself, and certainly not to Rika, she was absolutely certain that she was going to die back there at the hands of her own brother. She brought an idle, subconscious hand to her throat, feeling bruises along the skin. Her face was beaten to hell, too—she was glad that her nose was unbroken, and she managed to keep all of her teeth, but her jaw was in constant pain and her wrist still hurt from when he yanked her into the first punch. She was in no condition to take on an opponent of Mamban's level...as such, she decided that her only reasonable option was to stall for time.
Mamban noticed the subtle implication of Akemi's hand gesture, keeping up with his laughter. He was in no hurry, as it was—his real target hadn't yet arrived. "Had a little-bitty run-in with him, didn't you? Ah, well, It's nothing to worry about, I'm sure...siblings try to violently maim one another all the time."
Akemi looked to Rika; to the scar on her arm that came from Makoto, accidental or not. There were other cuts and bruises on Rika's sleeveless limbs, a lot of them left from their personal training sessions, a few from their escape, and a few more from her current predicament in the village. Rika spoke up to answer, noting Aki's silence. "Siblings fight, but they never stop loving each other...right, Aki?" She looked to her teacher for confirmation. She didn't know what might have happened between her two senseis, but she was trying to keep the one closest to her focused on the present, not the past.
Akemi took a moment, but then she nodded. "Right...never stop loving..." she clearly had her doubts. In that all-too-recent moment, it sincerely felt to Akemi like her 'brother' was choosing a girl who was practically a stranger over the well-being his own family. It hurt more than just the physical pain, more than just the fear of death—she began to feel like she was the less-important part of the arrangement. She felt like she was expendable, so long as Hamasaki's precious little Makoto got to survive. Somewhere deep, somewhere petty, Akemi began to wish that Makoto would die that day. She took the notion back right away when her rational mind kicked in, but she couldn't deny that she had heard her own thoughts. The odd sense of jealousy was beginning to worry her. It was Kaine's fault, not Makoto's—she should wish for his sorry ass to die, right?
Mamban was still there, though—she could sort through her personal drama on her own time. She was hardly free to ponder the meaning of life and her position in the universe while surrounded by zombies and a psychotic acid-slinger. He spoke up as if to remind her of his presence. "Do you want to take revenge for your friends from the village? Their shameless screams were quite soothing, but after a time, they stopped...do you know why they stopped screaming?"
Rika tensed, her eyes half-closing at the memory. She tried to resist the tears, but her vision went blurry. She felt Akemi's hand on her shoulder, a tight squeeze of strength that gave her the resolve to perk her head up, stick her chin out, and answer Mamban without a break in her voice. "They're dead. Weak. They never belonged in this world." She didn't mean a word of it—inside, she was still torn up and resentful. She wanted to hate Aki for leaving Mako and Fiona behind, but she couldn't. She owed her sensei her entire life, so holding a grudge would have been far too petty.
Mamban shook his head, the hugeness of his mask swaying on an axis that pivoted with his hidden neck. "No, no, my darling little peach," he said languidly. "Their suffering is far from over..." he snapped the fingers on his left hand, and then two robed, masked figures appeared from the surrounding trees, agile like trained ninjas. They stood obediently at Mamban's side, close to one another. "I've added them to my collection..." he walked over to the bodies, one male and one female, and put his arms around their shoulders like he was a proud father. "They're much stronger now than they were before, you might find..."
Akemi was speechless, and Rika was worse—the tears that she had fought back were suddenly flowing with double their initial intensity, trickling down her rounded cheeks and dropping from her chin to splash impotently on the inn roof. She sniffled, but tried to hide it. "You're lying," she said through a puffy throat and wet lips. "They're free, their spirits are at peace...I brought flowers to their graves..."
Mamban's sickening hands came to the two masks upon the faces of his slaves. He knocked the disguises away with a flick of each hand's thumb, and as the images hidden behind them were revealed, Rika screamed with horrified regret, covering her mouth with one hand and reaching the other hand out as if to grab the hope as it fled her soul. The faces indeed belonged to Mako and Fiona, but were horribly, almost unrecognizably scarred. Acid had streaked across their mouths and eyes, leaving flesh exposed and pulsating. Fiona's left eye was burned away, leaving a mess of ruined skin to seal over the empty socket. Their expressions were dead and gone. "Say hello..." Mamban sang out.
Akemi was typically rather nonchalant in such situations, but hearing the terror and despair in Rika's shriek caused her entire body to tremble. It was a sound worse than anything Kaine had done to her; it was a sound that told her in no uncertain terms that she had failed to protect her cherished student. The sound made her weak, but then it made her strong. "Cry for them, Rika," Akemi whispered, her voice soft and soothing and filled with new resolve. "Cry for them right now, but only until I free them from this monster."
"Mmm," Mamban hummed, unimpressed. "Before Kakashi arrives, I think I'll add the two of you to my collection as well...you will complete a fine set with your friends."
That's all for now! The next update is coming soon.