Karu was pursuing the two flighty ninjas through the vegetation and forests. They were dead ahead and Karu needed no kekkei genkai to see them.
Not exactly the bravest ninjas.
His right fist was clenched around a kunai and his left held a scroll firmly. His teeth gritted with ferocity as he forced chakra painfully into his feet to enhance his leaping. The mist he had inhaled was still taking effect, making chakra molding painful.
Good thing was, he was used to pain.
His ankle rolled as he misplaced his foot in exhaustion. He fell silently to the ground, his foot was temporarily unusable; he winced as he ripped off his shoe. Calmly but swiftly he wrapped his foot with medical cloth.
The scroll and knife he had held were replaced as he readied his hand for the summoning technique.
"Kuchiyose: Okamazuki!"
The bear needed no explanation as he saw his master's wrapped ankle.
"That way," Mumbled Karu, pointing towards the two running ninja.
"Hai, Karu-sama," The bear sniffed them out and began his surprisingly graceful hunt.
Karu readied himself to attack from his mount. Silence was forced into his mind as he clarified his thoughts. He needed to have quick hands for the upcoming clash. Techniques needed to flow from him like water through a river.
The gen specialist will attempt to immobilize us, while the other will attack. My best chance is to immobilize the genjutsu specialist before he can get me, possibly I could take the other down with the same technique. I will then finish them off, he thought.
Okamazuki saw the tripwires ahead and elegantly leapt over all of them, his rider was breathing calmly, he must have a plan.
"Kami, this will be fun."
The bear chuckled, "That's the Karu I know and love!"
They both fell silent again.
"Wait! Did you see that?"
"When do these eyes miss anything?" asked the bear, "they've stopped in a grove over there.
"There's no grove over there, that's a genjutsu. They want us to think there are obstacles as we dart around slowly trying to reach them. However, we know they want to directly attack us while we can't see so we must dispel their illusion and place our own. But, you must be with me at all times since, until I get healing, I can't run on my own."
"Of course, I understand."
They departed after Karu silently dismissed the genjutsu. The bear lumbered quietly through the empty space where the other two wanted to seem like a grove. Once close enough to set his own genjutsu upon them, Karu stopped his companion.
"Okay, Okamazuki, I'm ready."
"Hai."
"Satsuki Koukotsu," he mumbled so not to alert their enemies of their presence.
In the eyes of the enemies were billions of spores floating through their air, after a short while of breathing in the illusionary spores, their chests constricted and their vision dimmed. Panic assumed its rightful place in their minds as the land around them was consumed by complete blackness.
Karu grimaced as he remembered when Orochimaru had taught him this technique. After he had taught him, Orochimaru had introduced him to the Jinmenju his enemies were about to meet by forcing the illusion upon his "student" with a maniacal delight. Days after the haunting experience he resolved that he would never use the terrible genjutsu against anyone, however, he had now used it against four people. In a surge of twisted benevolence, Karu smiled realizing that his enemies wouldn't ever have to be haunted by the Jinmenju in the trance because Karu would kill them before they exited it.
The two mist shinobi stepped silently through the pools of blackness below them. They both were unable to control their bodies as they marched in a single direction. The knowledge echoes through their minds that this was a genjutsu but neither, despite all effort, could break the trance. They weren't the first unable to break a technique created by Orochimaru.
The two shadow encased ninjas heard a distance moaning. The distance lonely wails approached like the song of a flute, wafting on a cold breeze. They unconsciously altered directions and approached to where the sound was coming from. The musical cries lured them through all of their senses; even had their muscles been under their control, they still would have approached the forlorn entity that beckoned them.
The gloved ninja felt veins of pure cold delight run through his body as a speck in the distance showed itself. His eyelids were drooping and his neck was tingling as an unimaginable sensation came over his nerves. The speck was a tree; its bark was a cracked and flakey grey which stood as a pedestal for the dark, enticing canvas that was the leaves. The details of this mysterious alluring tree became apparent as he approached: it had fruit, relatively the size of human heads, which dangled from the mane of leaves. They even saw the knots on the gnarled trunk that seemed to capture a wild intricacy unbeknownst to the world. The melodic weeping coming from the tree was now melded with imperceptible whispers. The secrets of the world, which drew any mortal close with an unquenchable thirst for that sinister knowledge.
The fruit that drooped from that mysterious tree was slowly turning and as the rotation commenced the multicolored hair that had covered the globes disappeared to reveal the other side of the large fruit. Suddenly, a queasiness and panic entered the previously soothed heads of the victims as eyes, popping with horror, appeared on the fleshy faces of the fruit. Revealed were noses and silent, screaming mouths. All the features of human heads on these human head sized fruits. Finally the drunken minds that were the mist shinobi connected the facts and it seemed that their very individual was shrinking. The sad whimpers of the Jinmenju tree suddenly erupted into a sharp shriek and then a silence. The victims looked at each other in their seemingly last glance as a deaf horror crept into every part of their bodies. Everything was null to their senses except the sight of their bodies being mangled and twisted as their very being, their very soul was being ripped out and slowly ingested.
A sharp shriek penetrated the victim's ears and a tearing agony entered their hearts. The pain spread through their bodies like wildfire through brush. This terrible genjutsu trance would have haunted their lives forever had Karu not just pierced their hearts with projectile kunais.
Karu smiled, "Too easy, eh Okamazuki?"
"Well, I presume, I didn't really do anything."
Then Karu said with a smile, "Let's go back to the princess."
Hibuko opened his eyes again from a short silence. He collected almost every last ounce of his chakra and forced it out of his seal-forming hands. The chakra was transformed into the screaming electrical energy of Chidori.
This isn't for revenge, sensei, though Hibuko, this is to protect the princess.
He leapt once again above the quivering, bloody, but still breathing, mass that was the red-tongued demon. In the coup de grace, he transferred his momentum into a high-speed dive and plunged his blaring fist into the gory pit in the behemoth's belly. The monster quivered and flailed in a last shudder but it became completely still.
Hibuko was fully covered in the pulped bulk of the beast's innards. He vomited until his stomach was empty and his eyes rolled back into his heads. He stumbled deliriously out of the gruesome pit and once his feet exited the sticky viscera, he fell on his face, nearly void of chakra.