"Thank you for the distraction, Meiko", Masen-Z huffed out before his cracked and worked up puppet armor straightened out and prepared for combat again.
"They shifted the entire battlefield to better suit Chominu's style, we'd appreciate if you helped us clear it up", Meiko relayed verbally what Kiyomi told her mentally making it look more like her own strategy. It wasn't that Meiko hadn't noticed how well this shifted battlefield played into Chominu's fighting style but she wouldn't have placed such a high priority on wiping the surface clean.
"It appears I shall have to use the Gearbeam, I will require some time to concentrate and charge it up. It uses both my own chakra stored into the puppetry wires as well as the momentum energy from the gearwork inside" Masen-Z rumbled out to which Meiko affirmatively nodded. Holding her own for a while, as long as Lithia chose to hold herself back to scope out Kiyomi's abilities, didn't sound like too much of a problem. As long as the payoff was cleaning the slate and making Kiyomi's battlefield preferences satisfied.
"I'm surprised your team hadn't involved themselves, we're making quite a ruckus here", Meiko grinned observing Kidenshi rolling aside and with difficulty getting back on his knees before spitting out a bit of blood aside and picking himself back up. Whatever damage her exchange of blows with the Inuzuka had left, it must've convinced him to throw all of his limiters out the window and go all out.
"I doubt they would, they are using the Snapper-Ants' nesting pods for resting, they possess both minimal healing properties and sound insolation. It'd take a much louder blast to make them suspicious. Also, they may be a bit mean to me but they do trust my abilities so even if they do hear something they'd just take it as me doing my job as someone standing guard", the gear giant rumbled back at the redhead.
Unexpectedly to everyone, a white flash with two crimson red trails blurring behind her like a tail of ionized gas and dust that commonly followed a comet burst out from a rocky cover. Closing the distance between where Lithia hid and Meiko's location in an alarming rate, the Lolita style favoring Uchiha attacked Meiko head-on.
The first palm strike dug in deep into Meiko's lower abdomen driving air from her body and slightly elevating her higher from the force of the strike. It was like the Uchiha girl saw events in slow-motion while she herself moved at hyper speeds even for a ninja. The Uchiha then proceeded to throw a blindingly fast chain of punches that almost disappeared from the range of vision even to the three genin ninja. Even confronted by exceptional close range threat of the Sharingan, Meiko placed a firm block that allowed her to cushion most if not all of Lithia's chain punching force.
Seemingly seamlessly Lithia transitioned her chain punches into a jumping cartwheel kick that smashed straight into the top of Meiko's head smashing her head, face first, right into the ground shaking the ground strong enough to move even the larger rubble rocks slightly.
"Mind Body Disturbance"! Kiyomi's voice echoed from somewhere aside, Meiko's head was too dizzy and spinning to identify her ally's exact direction but with Lithia's guard potentially being lowered the Yamanaka was finally free to hit her hated rival with the Yamanaka hijutsu.
Lithia casually leaned her body back before transitioning her painfully uncomfortable evasive motion into a back cartwheel and landing gracefully on her feet, almost like she was just showing off.
"You are aware that the Sharingan allows me to see chakra, right? I can visually see your mind projectile coming at me from over there and avoiding it is child's play." Lithia arrogantly laughed out into her palm, Kiyomi hid behind her cover once again. The Yamanaka was properly furious with Lithia baiting Kiyomi into showing her Yamanaka hijutsu to a hated rival.
"Partial Expansion Jutsu"! Chominu yelled out as Lithia's body twirled aside seamlessly allowing her ally's enlarged fist to pass at her side without even ruffling her skirt. The fist sent still dazed and kneeling Meiko flying back and smashing through one of the larger fallen rock structures making it completely collapse.
Bursting with tiny lightning crackles the Gear-Man armor worryingly looked back at the injured blacksmith being tossed around by the combined forces of the entire enemy team. He was busy charging up the only equalizer his team had meanwhile Kiyomi was temporarily defenseless and disorientated while her missed mental projection returned to her body. There was no one to aid the redhead fight back.
"Meiko! Stop holding back, you've not used a single ace jutsu yet, please take this seriously or you'll get hurt"! Masen-Z pleaded before realizing that the trio of his opponents have all gathered in front of him and prepared to disable his armor before proceeding to team up on Meiko.
"Sorry, Gear-Man, I can't", Meiko's pain ridden yet still cheerful voice came from the side of the rubble causing Team Walnut to redirect their attention at the standing and injured target that surprisingly enough was just as durable and wanted to win just as much as Chominu, who himself took more than his fair share of beatings.
"I beg of you, Meiko, take this seriously"! Masen-Z shouted back at her, "Use all of your ace techniques now, no use holding back for the other rounds if you won't reach them"!
"You don't get it, do you, gear-head"? Kidenshi smiled before looking back at Meiko's crooked and staggering figure walking out from the dusty rubble. His glare was not belittling or offending by any means, there was a hint of admiration and respect in his eyes. "Meiko's chakra control is lousy, she was the only genin to fail the Graduation Exam in our year. Even now she still has to fully concentrate for Academy Techniques, that is why all of her techniques focus on unsealing and using her immense arsenal or physical strength".
"Hm? You mean she can't even use one jutsu without worrying if she can pull it off correctly? That sure is lousy, what good is a ninja without jutsu"? Lithia yawned.
"She packs a good punch", Chominu commended his target before the trio of Team Walnut passed Masen-Z who was still charging up his technique and continued to walk towards Meiko, slowly preparing themselves and building up their chakra for an intense rushdown which would leave the redhead completely unable to stand.
"What good is that?" Lithia dismissed her teammate, "I can nullify her physical strength and kick her ass up close, just by being genetically superior. My Sharingan makes her sloppy movements look slow like a glacier".
An intense flare fired Meiko's body off the ground at a powerful rush forward, charging into three opponents before she was attacked and hunted down like an injured wild animal. The jet boots positioned Meiko's frame as close to the rocky floor as the girl could get without hitting it, she aimed for Chominu's shins and feet with her tackling flight.
The painful shock to her shoulders suggested she did it, she hit Chominu in the shins making him trip up and flip over, Meiko repositioned herself to grab her opponent's feet and toss him in the air. Only then did she see Kidenshi's fist and Lithia's kick coming right at her face. She had already invested too much momentum and force into her movements for her to dodge, the counters were too close to properly avoid them. All of Meiko's responses were too late, all she could've done was look at the two incoming attacks and wait for them to take her down.
Kidenshi's fist changed direction mid-way and flew straight at Lithia's face, forcing the Uchiha to change her course of action immediately in order to avoid a strong hit. The Uchiha's left hand quickly shot sideways and up to lock down on her ally's traitorous attack before twisting his arm and disabling him. Kiyomi's grunting moan betrayed her pain before Kidenshi got broken out from the blonde's Yamanaka hijutsu.
Meiko's attack got initiated successfully with a little help from her hidden ally who recovered and launched another attack just in time, this time one not aimed at Lithia and timed at a very sensitive moment. When all of Lithia's attention would be fixed elsewhere, even if the Uchiha would've been able to see Kiyomi's hijutsu coming, in that moment she'd have not been able to change anything but protect herself.
Gripping firmly at Chominu's shins and feet Meiko soared as high up as the cave height allowed before turning off her boots and allowing the natural laws of physics to do the rest of the work for her. The blacksmith flew crashing down with her hunter in her grip with a supersized piledriver slamming Chominu into the ground.
"Anvilstone"! Meiko yelled out right before the impact driving chakra in a mad rush to add extra force to the slam.
"Taijutsu techniques are jutsu too"! Masen-Z cheered on his friend excitedly as the smoke and dust cleared and both Meiko and Chominu laid sprawled out and huffing, both damaged and worn by the long lasting battle. Lithia and Kidenshi leaped farther aside to avoid the shockwave and earthquake caused by Meiko's slam.
"She's mad, she could've cracked the whole planet in half if she didn't control the augmentation right"! Kidenshi laughed out, laughing at how reckless Meiko's taijutsu technique was.
"There was no risk", Meiko boldly declared before picking herself up and stumbling a couple of times before she stood back up on her feet. "A friend of mine has been teaching me how to concentrate and control my chakra to defeat genjutsu for a long time, the general concept appears the same", she shyly rubbed her nose with a confident grin as she declared it.
Chominu grunted with a rather scary sounding cough that suggested a large amount of internal injuries being present in his body. Either way, it was impressive he could even move being slammed head first into the rough underground layers of hardened rock and minerals.
"Y-You really think some… Puny hit like that could take me out"? The Akimichi taunted Meiko before his eyes widened in a painful shock before closing and the heavyweight collapsed, falling right on his face. There could've been no confusion about it – Chominu was out. The unquestionable and crystal-clear air pressure that a ninja with an active chakra level put out was missing and the young man looked almost lifeless as he laid down on the ground.
"What? Chominu should've taken that hit, what the…", Kidenshi started losing his cool before looking at Chominu's back which was covered in kunai knives being driven in both vertically and diagonally in various angles and depths of penetration. Both Lithia and Kidenshi stood there in silence observing the environmental factor that had taken out their friend and a small puddle of blood started accumulating under the chubby's body.
"I see… It was an impressive amount of foresight", Lithia commended Meiko's attack and the complicated amount of planning needed to scatter all those kunai blades with her previously used explosive weapon only to use a high-flying slamming attack to drive all of those blades in. If the body didn't expect consciously a certain angle or manner of wounds, the chakra augmentation on that area would've been subconscious and therefore strained and multiplied exponentially, proportionally multiplying the true amount of damage dealt by the taijutsu attack as well.
"Actually, I kind of forgot those were scattered here and just sort of lucked out", Meiko smiled with a blush as she stroke her red hair energetically feeling a bit ashamed of being praised by an Uchiha who recently handed Meiko's ass to her in close range combat – an area in which the blacksmith previously thought she excelled.
"It's over, Lithia", Kiyomi jumped out of her cover and leaped on top of the large rock that used to conceal her. "With Chominu unconscious you have no more quarrel with us".
"Oh? I thought you told your friend here that you'd take down two of Team Walnut's members to eliminate us from the Exams"? Lithia turned back at Kiyomi.
"I did, back then. But something I've come to learn after taking leadership of Team Hokage is that being a leader means to rise above one's own self and one's own problems and rivalries. I can see that forcing myself, Meiko and Masen-Z to fight against you any further would mean injuries and pain that would be completely pointless and would harm my reputation as a leader. How could Meiko trust my judgment in the future if I asked her to fight meaningless battles motivated by my own lowly rivalries"? Kiyomi longingly looked at Meiko and Masen-Z who was still trembling and twitching as electricity continued to build up and crackle all over the armored puppet.
"Rivalry? What gave you the idea that you're my rival? I forgot that you existed the moment I left the Academy grounds after the graduation. You were never, nor will you ever be my rival", Lithia indifferently chuckled into her palm before playing with her hair and taking a couple of steps towards Kiyomi. "As of this whole thing… I've heard that gearhead say something very interesting. Something about the Snapper-Ant nesting pods and their healing properties. Chominu may be out cold right now but as long as he isn't eliminated, he is not out of the competition. All we need to do is to place him inside one of those pods before the staff removes him".
"Whaaaa! That's pretty clever, as expected from Lithia! Hey, Kiyomi, we should've done that with Mana"! Meiko yelled out in surprise of the Uchiha's decision to continue the battle.
"We may have, but it's too late now. She's been out of our sight for way too long, also we only figured out about those pods right now", Kiyomi replied.
"Well, if you foul villains still want to continue, have some of this – Gearbeam"! Masen-Z roared out as his armored suit began twitching and its parts began stressing and breaking apart before all of the built up electricity and chakra concentrated on the chest gear piece and the chest piece started to glow in a blinding white light.
A destructive and blindingly fast wave of compressed electrical energy and chakra fired out to the farther diagonal upper left corner of the cave as the shock and kick of the blast forced Masen-Z to get blasted back. He had to activate his jet boots to even maintain proper balance and control the beam so that it could be swiped to the right and all the battlefield obstacles could've been wiped clean. Obviously, if the jutsu ended up knocking out one or two enemies it'd have been just perfect too…
Having anticipated the blast coming sooner rather than later, Meiko leaped up in the air almost momentarily after it was activated. She could still make out the Gearbeam completely swallowing and overwhelming Kidenshi with the blinding and incredible speed of the blast and burning him up as well as violently tossing him out of the concentrated wave of chakra. Even trying to look at the blast's general direction was painful and stressed Kiyomi's eyes. All she wanted to see was the awesome speed and power of the Gearbeam tripping up Lithia and shoving all of her talk down her throat. Kiyomi just wanted to have that much…
Where it appeared that Lithia would also be overwhelmed and swallowed by the beam before being singed up and tossed aside with grievous battlefield injuries, the Uchiha appeared to manage to react just in time and arc over the beam with an acrobatic dodge. The beam only barely grazed her back tearing off a large chunk of her jacket and leaving a small burn where it grazed the Uchiha.
After the beam narrowed down to the form of a simple ray of light before completely fading, Lithia landed firmly on the ground but she didn't try to counterattack or exploit the massive opening on the Gear-Man armor which Masen-Z provided. Right after the Gearbeam concluded the armor appeared to almost completely shut down and just uselessly crook over and get weighed down by its own weight. It was a great opportunity for a powerful ninjutsu response but Lithia restrained herself and just stared at the enemy.
While initially the girl's response proved odd to Kiyomi, once the Yamanaka looked at the girl's eyes she noticed the reason – her Sharingan was missing. Instead of those fearsome red orbs with tomoe positioned symmetrically over its iris, only the void black depth was present. She must've abused and strained her Sharingan quite extensively to avoid this impressively quick and powerful blast, this was the first time Kiyomi had seen the Sharingan being shut down to give it some rest. It was a massive weakness and a possible ace under her sleeve in the future.
A loud masculine battle cry made Kiyomi change her focus from Lithia to Kidenshi who proudly stood back up on his feet and prepared a follow-up attack seeing how his teammate decided to rather remain stationary, instead of utilizing the opening she was given. It was an easy question to answer, as to why she did that. Uchiha were arrogant and the Sharingan was the reason of their arrogance, it was easy to see that without easy access to it Lithia had little faith in her abilities and chose to rather sit tight and wait for her eyes to rest a little bit.
It reminded Kiyomi of her own teammate Yamashiro so much, that young Uchiha boy also overly trusted in his Sharingan and after he had lost it in a poorly chosen battle it completely crushed his confidence to the point where the young boy chose to leave the profession behind for good and retire. Their bond with their own eyes was probably the only human trait of that forsaken clan.
"Pom-Pom Fang over Fa…" Kidenshi yelled out enraged before winding back his fist for an attack as his canine partner started building up momentum and molding chakra for something massive. This must've been his ace technique, one he was saving for the final stages of the Chuunin Exams, if hit with it head-on, without any protection, Masen-Z would've certainly been doomed.
A pink, black and red colored boa locked around Kidenshi's body, completely out of nowhere in an instant. Stretching its body from locking down his legs completely by the joints as well as around his elbow joints and even on his neck. The snake even coiled around his little cuddly critter, whereas the dog lacked severely in size, the boa only coiled around with simple loops around its waist.
"Hidden Wrestling Style Taijutsu: What-What" an energetic mumble came from the further passageway of the corridor leading further into the cave system from an extravagant and highly flamboyant older man. Upon his command the colorful boa constricted and with a bone snapping sound knocked Kidenshi out completely, allowing the boy's unconscious body to just collapse on the ground. After performing the constricting taijutsu move, the reptile then disappeared in a cloud of smoke as unexpectedly as it had appeared.
The newly emerged ninja, wearing the Kumogakure protector on the upper shin area of his wrestling boots as well as on the colorful tights on his groin, was wearing only the minimal required wrestling attire consisting of black, red and pink colored trunks and rainbow colored boots. The middle-aged man had an immensely toned and beefy body build yet it was somehow made much less impressive by the excessive body hair he was sprouting on his chest, his abdomen and armpits. That was to remain completely silent of the bushy full beard and the excessively shaved pate leaving a long bushy strand coiling around the man's head. The shaved pate was obviously to show off the "Boiga" tattoo written in blood red with yellow and black borders right on the right side of the man's forehead. All was topped off with stylish pink shades that, frankly, kind of mixed in well with the darker complexion of the flamboyant Kumogakure ninja.
"What the fuck's with all this ruckus"!? He angrily screamed out, judging from the dripping salad green goo on the wrestling gear wearing shinobi, the Gearbeam had woken up and forced out of the Snapper-Ant nesting pod where he was healing his injuries and resting.