With a loud roar signaling not only his enraged lunge at his friends but also his inner struggle to gain back the control of his mind Laoch leaped down at his two confused teammates. The armored genin was quite fast but Mana noticed that the blue flares on his boots similar to Meiko's own sealing technique that made her boots into jet-boots was missing.
"You can't make him use his techniques, can you?" Mana questioningly glared at the Yamanaka.
Kiyomi was visibly struggling keeping complete control of her opponent but she still managed to shake her head erratically, shaking off some sweat off of her tired and twisted face.
"I don't really understand his armor, a lot of his techniques appear to be based on his armor and switches inside it, setting off sealing glyphs placed inside and such… I think we're stuck with only his physical prowess." Kiyomi concluded.
Laoch's assault was still completely successful as his massive armored arm dug deep into the team's medic gut lifting her off the ground and sending her back through a bunch of trees. While the woman clearly took damage, it wouldn't have been wise to bet that she hadn't augmented her endurance to survive such a crash.
"What the hell, you asshole!?" Clarmac yelled out as he continued to dodge Laoch's offensive taijutsu pressure. Mana possessed more intimate knowledge of evasive prowess and to her it became clear that landing a blow on someone like Clarmac would've been immensely tough for a highly physical combatant such as Laoch.
After one of such dodged blows, where the nimble Inuzuka leaped over his friend's strike that attempted to crush him into the dirt Clarmac tied his legs around his friend's arm and applied pressure on the back of his elbow that had a separate steel piece on it. Laoch yelled out in pain as a snapping sound could be heard in his arm, Mana noticed Kiyomi starting to breathe a little easier for a while.
"Aren't you in pain?" the magician wondered remembering her previously witnessed Mind Body Switch jutsu which completely transferred Kiyomi consciousness.
"No. My mind is in my body here. In fact, pain helps me because it focuses his mind on other things instead of having him fight my influence." The Yamanaka smiled.
With nimble jumps and kicks, vaults and flips Clarmac continued to completely blitz and dominate his friend. Vaulting and avoiding any attempts to grab hold of him or to pin him down with power blows while landing a kick or a quick jab when his feet got back firmly down. While his counterattacks were impressive and matching the abilities of Mana's, if not surpassing them, in that department, he still left little lasting damage on his taller and better geared friend.
"Kraken Fang!" Clarmac yelled out quickly jumping in the air and positioning himself right vertically above his teammate before beginning to spin and coating his tunneling vortex of claws and fists with water.
A dark mass crackling with red lightning blasted Clarmac away with great force, enough to disturb and interrupt his finishing attack but not quite enough to leave too much damage on him. His medical ninja teammate appeared from the rubble of trees and wiped blood off of her face. The streak of bloody crimson matched the shade of her lips and greatly contrasted the white of her pearl teeth and her pale cheeks.
"Don't fight him, Clarmac." she grunted before pointing at Kiyomi with her dyed red fingernails that looked long and sharp enough to scoop out an entire eye.
"She's got control over him. The fact that Mana's team didn't follow Laoch's offensive suggest they wish to protect their teammate – hit her to free Laoch." the kunoichi explained.
Clarmac smiled confidently before turning his glance at the trio of Team Hokage. Mana and Meiko braced for an upcoming attack. Kiyomi breathed out in pain as Laoch's mental defenses quickly returned to lay siege on her own mental foundations. Her body tensed up as her muscles began twitching erratically.
"Alright, let's pull all stops, let's not hold back. Screw the other fights, let's just win this one!" Clarmac roared out at Deargli who continued to leap away and avoid Laoch's simple power swings at her by simply increasing the distance between her and her teammate.
A loud whistle emanated from Clarmac's direction, followed by a barrage of a loud energetic barks and a whine. Basto leaped out of the shade and right to his lifelong partner's aid. Usuzoku landed nearby Mana placing his blade defensively as a barrier in front of her.
"Dat arsehole is a slippery mutt…" he growled angrily.
Even if Usuzoku hadn't managed to take Basto out in the few moments he was given, the white and grey wolf-like canine still had streaks of red covering his body and running down his majestic fur in places where the rabbit's huge sword actually found its marks.
"You've done great, Usuzoku… We couldn't have lead this fight this favorably to us so far without you." Mana whispered to him, her voice was weak in volume but judging by the rabbit's affirming glance back and the way his massive ears twitched – he heard what he wanted to.
"You misunderstand me, Hatchlin', I ain't done carvin' 'em yet. I'll make a filet of that dog still…" Usuzoku threw back at her.
Clarmac clapped his hands together and began yelling loudly, the strain and effort he had to put to manipulate and accelerate his natural chakra flow must've pained him physically as much as the growing influx of power made him confident and proud to yell this battlecry of his. Mana turned back at her team.
"Watch out, I've seen this technique before, his speed will increase many times over and his strength will become animalistic. Sharpen your senses to the limit and hope to survive, plan out ahead a clutch survival jutsu or two, just in case…" she warned her team remembering a similar chakra flow manipulation from her fight with Noji way back.
"Four Legs Technique!" Clarmac roared out as flavorless bland blue chakra burst from all his pores so intensely that Mana could actually see it. Something like that was remarkable. It couldn't have meant anything good…
"Let's partner up, Basto!" the Inuzuka barked out as the overgrowth of fangs in his mouth and sharpening of the more animalistic features of his body made it difficult for him to speak clearly. The great white canine leaped on top of Clarmac's back and showed the Team Hokage three its massive fangs.
The jutsu had a very clear flaw – a massive start up period of chakra channeling, sadly neither Mana nor Meiko wanted to leave Kiyomi's side to interrupt it and it wasn't likely something like a kunai would've helped that much with the degree and amount of chakra channeling in question. One look at Laoch revealed why Kiyomi couldn't tell him to intercept – the armored genin struggling and waled around in the air like a beetle on its back as black with red crackling lightning mass of chakra had tied all around his body and held him in place. That was Deargli's doing, hers and some unknown technique she used.
"Secret Art: Kraken Fang over Fang!" Clarmac shouted out as both him and Basto leaped in the air and began spinning separately. It was a similar combination technique to the one most Inuzuka used and not that much different to Noji's technique, except Clarmac coated his version in water which made it more penetrating and powerful.
Mana and Meiko leaped in to protect Kiyomi as she was clearly the main target of the technique. The blacksmith placed her buckler in front of her whereas Mana lacked any similar tools so she chose to weave a pair of hand seals and breathe out a powerful gust of wind to weaken and slow the opponent's technique down.
"Friendly Gust Jutsu!" she chanted out before the blast of wind flew Clarmac's direction.
Where the two tunneling vortexes of water were slow to start up, choosing to wind back and make half of a circle back before lunging at the three, once they decided to come at their intended target the duo dashed in a blue flash that made anything else difficult to perceive. They blitzed and whizzed past by completely evading Mana's sights and breaking through her measly low ranking jutsu defenses.
A powerful force flew right past Mana, cutting and shredding through what little it managed to graze and sending the magician plummeting down from the immense force of air pressure emanating from the watery drilling technique. There were so many sensations all around her: the feeling of pain in her chest where she was grazed by the passing by taijutsu and ninjutsu combination, the taste of her own blood, the screeching sounds of Meiko's shield shattering and Kiyomi's screams.
Darkness faded slowly. Right after Mana realized that she was alive and needed to get up her eyelids flapped together faster before opening wide and before the girl rolled back on her feet holding a hand full of cards from inside her sleeve and ready to use them against anyone brave enough to come to finish her off. There was no one. Mana looked up and allowed her blurry vision to sharpen, Deargli and Laoch were standing up above on a pair of mid-level stronger branches.
Meiko was nowhere to be seen but Kiyomi was resting on Usuzoku's back up where Mana was tossed away from. The magician leaped up and reached out for a branch to help her quickly flip and cover the distance to where she fell from. Before she could sharp pain on her chest made Mana trip and fall back down. She looked at the nasty graze full of dirt and still spitting out blood. It didn't look good but it was still just a bit more than skin deep of a cut. She was lucky to only have the amazing nintaijutsu miss her and pass her by.
Now fully aware and no longer surprised by the pain that came from her chest wound Mana made her way back up. She wasn't interrupted, Basto and Clarmac were resting back on the higher levels of branches up above. Mana glanced at Usuzoku's body and his dirtied up and blood covered fur. He looked like he took some decent battle damage from that attack which frankly scared the magician a little bit. No normal genin could've whipped up a technique powerful enough to damage a B-Rank ninja animal this much.
"You interfered…" Mana mumbled out in gratitude seeing Kiyomi in Usuzoku's arms, the rabbit placed her down once the shock of pain passed and the blonde started getting back to her rightful mind.
"She'd 'a taken too much damage if I haven't…" the rabbit grunted. "I don' like to help ya out but… That dog is still mine." He declared before ruthlessly dashing straight at Basto.
It was a foolishly bold move – Laoch and Deargli were ready to step in and protect their teammate, Clarmac would've likely offered his life before allowing his ninja dog to die or get badly injured. It didn't look like either of those prospects mattered to the rabbit swordsman as he rushed at his opponent. Laoch pointed his arm forward activating an explosive blast inside his gauntlet which launched out a strong weight attached to a chain which Usuzoku simply rotated around in mid-air making it miss him by a rabbit's hair.
All that Mana heard after that was a loud whine of an injured dog as Usuzoku's powerful foot decked it right in the nose sending it back and crashing through and into trees, sometimes bouncing off of them like a lifeless sack of vegetables. With a rough grunt Usuzoku leaped right after his target pressing his blade tightly by his side. Now that he knew the signal which Clarmac used for calling up his dog partner and the fact that once his master calls for him the dog loses concentration and rushes to him, Usuzoku must've been just waiting for that moment of an opening…
"Where's Meiko…" Kiyomi grunted wiping blood off of her nose and lamenting over her torn, dirtied and bloodied clothes. Of the three genin she took the most damage since she was the initial target.
"Here I am!" the blacksmith laughed out with a mouth missing a certain something and bleeding where that something should've been. "Missing a tooth too, here, look!" the redhead stepped up and opened her mouth to show off her trophy of battle damage she had taken.
"Just give me a couple of seconds guys…" Clarmac breathed out and stood back on his feet again, "Then I'll call Basto up again and we'll finish this!" he firmly stated.
"You think so?" Mana asked him with a soft look at his eyes.
"What, you think you're tough because you survived this? I'll have you know that you two meddled into my attack splitting my force and attention, I only hit your friend with maybe one third of the intended force, the rest was split amongst you two and the rabbit." Clarmac confidently explained before locking his arms on his chest. He had expected this revelation to come as some sort of a shock to the girls but he was the one shocked when neither one of them were that surprised.
"Then go on ahead, call him." Mana called Clarmac's bluff. "Even if you have the chakra left needed to pull this jutsu off again, Zoku-chan is just waiting for an opening to behead your dog."
"Y-You wouldn't!" the Inuzuka jumped up in anger.
"I wouldn't. Did it look like I have much control over him though?" about at that moment Mana felt Kiyomi's mental link return from being briefly muted. That was a sip of good news when they were useful.
"Don't worry, we're still here and now we can continue this as intended!" Laoch grinded his metallic gauntlets against each other before taking an offensive stance, his injured arm moved a bit slower and looked pretty numbed up but mostly functional which was unfortunate. Close to him Deargli extended her arms forward and also prepared for a battle.
Gripping the wand in her arm more tightly Mana hardened her own focus and took an offensive stance. In before any of the girls could figure out a further course of action Deargli's hands went off into a collection of hand seals.
"Tainted Sealing Method: Release!" Deargli yelled out as a red sealing glyph appeared just past her extended palm unleashing the previously seen mass of dark chakra with reddish crackling lightning around it.
Meiko's reflexes were fast, the blacksmith reached behind her all the way to the back plates of her armor unsealing something of her own – a gigantic shuriken that appeared to have been made out of four longswords put together into a cross-like shape and stuck together by a sharpened metallic ring that would've lopped a head off of an actual dragon if such creatures were not a being of mythology and imagination.
The shuriken pierced right through the black mass of chakra that simply molded around it and continued to rush at the trio of ninja. Mana didn't anticipate such reaction as most destructive techniques were highly volatile to any damage, no destructive technique she had seen could've withstood being cut in two and just effortlessly keep moving forward after reshaping. At the least the technique should've been detonated if not completely dissolved.
The two separate string of chakra began rotating around one another like a braid before it reached the three girls in close proximity. Meiko was too invested into the powerful toss of her ninja tool to be ready to dodge, Kiyomi was quite injured so one shouldn't have overestimated her own agility either. The technique didn't injure them at all, however. Instead of hitting them with anything it just dissolved right nearby the girls' faces.
After the immediate danger to their health and lives was over, Meiko looked on ahead to her own shuriken only for her mouth to open in a wide gap – her shuriken had successfully hit its mark and penetrated Deargli through the area from her lower chest all the way to her upper gut. The injured kunoichi just wheezed in pain before blood violently broke out her mouth. Her stance bent into one crooked in agony.
"I-I didn't think…" Meiko whimpered out. Usually murder wouldn't have mattered too much to the blacksmith but she had showed her best friend so recently that she was ready to support her views and her nindo… Meiko didn't want to kill, not like this where it wasn't necessary.
"You… Could've cut me in two if you tossed it harder…" Deargli's ghastly voice emanated through the entire battlefield.
Mana's eyes squinted in suspicion as they turned at Deargli's teammates who didn't appear to be worried the slightest.
"Watch out, it's a trap!" she declared on the recently re-established Kiyomi's mental link. "She can't be lethally injured, her friends don't appear to be worried over her health at all – it must be her ability."
The shaking bloody fingers of the pale axe-blade wearing woman reached for the massive shuriken and pulled it out violently gushing out some more blood before tossing it aside and allowing it to plummet down and get lost in the void of darkness of the Forest of Death. The young woman spat out a mouthful of blood aside before feeling up her wound with her fingers allowing her pale skin to go fingers deep into the redness of her own flesh.
"Hmph… Not enough." She uttered. Her voice was weakening, shaking in pain and she was clearly injured but for some reason it was almost like she wanted to be injured.
A loud clang made Mana's confused face to turn back at Meiko, the blacksmith had fallen on her knees and started shaking. The magician reached out for her friend but then she realized that… She just didn't care. She didn't care if Meiko lived or died, she didn't care that much if Kiyomi lived or died. She didn't care about her own life either. The limitless depths of apathy beneath her feet in which Mana was sinking was scaring her to no end, the magician's shaking hands weaved a hand seal.
"Dispel" she yelled out focusing her chakra and sending a flux of it forward as intended to break genjutsu, she expected to meet a wall of chakra that allowed her to know how much more chakra she needed to send to break it but… Nothing happened.
"Awww… Meiko is afraid. That's so bad." Kiyomi started weeping before ramming her back rudely at the tree she was standing on and slipping down on her bottom. "Mana is so quiet… That's so sad. I like it when she talks, I like when Meiko is brave!" the Yamanaka cried out as tears began running down her eyes so erratically they mixed in with the blonde's own blood.
"Illusion? You think this is a cheap illusion like your knockoff tricks, stage magician?" Deargli smiled through her rapidly paling lips. "I've no idea what emotion you're feeling right now, but I assure you, it's no illusion – it's your downfall."
Following their teammates words Clarmac stood on all fours and concentrated his chakra into his "Four Legs Technique" and Laoch aimed his cannons at the three girls crippled by some odd technique of Deargli's. Just like that with a flick of a wrist Team Hokage was moments away from being eliminated entirely.