The blood that splattered over the wasteland dust rose up, together with the lifeless body of a stage magician girl, skewered by knives, joints broken and twisted by steel wire. Together the gruesome sight transformed into crimson rose, white apple and pink cherry petals and scattered across, dancing gracefully wherever the wind carried them.
"Finally you're fighting for keeps", Doma grumbled to himself sarcastically after landing firmly on his feet and preparing for the petals to reassemble into the magician's shape. He had seen this illusion before, the genin had full knowledge that Mana could reappear anywhere instantly. Her stealthy walk while disguised by the genjutsu was near untraceable while her spirit remained calm.
Just like that, Mana had revealed her strongest defensive escape technique. The girl scolded herself internally for showing it off any more than she already has. If she showed it a couple more times, both Doma and Stea would have figured out that its chakra cost grew progressively with each use.
Mana appeared from behind Doma, the genin had anticipated such bold approach and successfully deflected a bunch of crippling kicks, packed with chakra augmentations that would have shattered his body and while they would have loaded up his damage seals, they would have also made his body too battered for that stacked damage to be of any use. The magician was persistent, however. She managed to force in one good kick right in Doma's abdomen before leaping into the air and shifting the weight to make it into a push kick.
"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch"! Mana shouted out as she felt the strain of focusing so much Lightning Release chakra in her body and augmenting it to withstand the charge running through her body before being channeled right into her opponent's hurt her rusty network and muscles. A strong lightning pulse fired off and out Doma's body, running over his chakra network and interrupting all sorts of bodily functions before sending the Getsugakure genin rolling aside and smashing into the mountainous structure farther away, shattering it into bits from the force of impact.
Her chakra control was lacking. This was dangerous, even after all this time this jutsu was difficult to pull off. Of course, it was, not only Mana pulled out a B-Rank technique, but also she did it on a high enough level where she neither took additional time to focus and channel her chakra nor perform any hand seals. It was a dangerous method of using ninjutsu, even ones she trained with for as long as she did with the Magician's Touch.
A flash of lightning emanated from the messy rubble of rock and dust, splitting the larger pieces of debris that covered Doma up once the mountainous structure collapsed. Overloaded with the force of chakra coming from the strikes, the rock just exploded into smaller pebbles after being cut into pieces instead of just falling apart. Looking excited, Doma burst from the rubble and landed in front of the magician.
"So that's your strategy…", he mumbled.
"You, of all people, can't blame me", Mana huffed forcing her strained body to straighten up and stop betraying her moment of weakness. "I'm being efficient, am I not"?
Yes, she was technically storing Doma's seals with damage by attacking him but that was inevitable. She needed to inflict damage to beat him, that was the essence of battle. Mana's answer was the way she damaged him – hit him with all of her strongest techniques, aiming to take him out quickly. Risking both missing her most costly and powerful jutsu and running out of chakra in the process, it was the most gambling strategy one could've employed. Still, odds were tipped slightly to Mana's favor once one remembered her larger than usual chakra pool.
"Efficient"? Doma cried out with a hurt voice, it must have played a note deep somewhere, so much so that the young man did not exploit a visible momentary weakness after Mana had just used her Magician's Touch with less than completely optimal success. "What do you know of efficiency"? He asked longingly as his eyes looked down.
Little Doma laid quietly in his room. Holding his roaring stomach, wrapped in a fetal position on the wooden floor, he had no bed to cry on. The material possessions went away first of all – bargained away for food. That was when everyone was still chipper and optimistic. When everyone thought this famine was just a little bump on a long and prosperous road, little did they know that famine was the road in its entirety…
Jewelry, furniture, comfort items, later on even the plumbing got disassembled and pawned into the metal shop for the coins that shit covered aluminum in it was worth. Then came the real desperation… By the time caravan drivers started eating their horses in the middle of the street it became clear that all stops were pulled, nothing was sacred anymore. It was survival of the fittest.
Sister was wasteful. Last week she threw away a can of rotten, moldy… It was tough to say what it was at this point, with one rotten olive remaining somewhere in the bottom. Father brought it from someone's garbage bin, he said that the owners of the house must have been dead inside or else the can would not have ended up there in the first place. Doma and sister used to look for food earlier, they were smaller, burned fewer calories that way – it was the less wasteful way.
After Jinuya, Doma's friend, got cannibalized while looking for food by a family whose territory he stumbled into, father took over that duty. It was a bit more wasteful but for kids to be outside all by themselves it was profoundly dangerous at this point. Sister was wasteful last week but father was nice, he only ate sister's arm. Most parents had long since eaten their children at this point. Was there ever to be an end to this hunger?
Mommy used to be a ninja, she said that it was all hopeless. No one was hiring them anymore, no civilian wanted anything else but food and no ninja had enough energy left in them to do anything but eat for themselves. Even their supernatural metabolisms did not hold too well. Mommy did not need to eat for months once she ate one time, still, as her chakra was running low, these impressive stretches shortened with each passing dinner.
Sister was wasteful again yesterday. For someone so small, for someone with just one arm she ate just as much as father. That did not look right. Father and mother will probably eat sister soon, too wasteful. Doma looked at a burst purple balloon that he cradled and played with in his hand, his one and only friend. Frankly, only because it was rubbery and didn't taste too well, Doma would never eat it, it would never feel the need to eat Doma. The balloon slipped off of the boy's skeletal fingers but Doma lacked the strength to pick it off the ground.
"Doma won't eat sister, balloon", the boy mumbled, he felt bad, not the stomach pain, that was a part of Doma at this point. It was the different kind of stomach pain, one that just eating fingernails and dog droppings didn't help with. "Doma knows it's wrong but… Doma feels like eating sister would be more wrong, balloon".
"What am I talking about"? Doma wanted to bang his head against the wooden floor but couldn't, lifting his head off the boards would have required more strength than the boy had to give. "You can't hear me, balloon, you've long since burst".
Something loud rumbled below, people started shouting. Doma turned his head in a way that lifted his right ear off the floor so that he could hear the mumblings below. These boards were trashy, the palm leaves that were inserted in between layers of boards were long since pulled out and eaten.
"Is anyone in this house a ninja, boy"? Someone loudly asked, mother was crying, father could not be heard.
"Yeah, this woman. The boy on the upper floor also has an above average chakra level, this woman must've trained him to make him more resistant to famine", a loud still breaking voice of a male teen reached Doma's weak ears.
"You have cannibalized your own daughter. We understand, it is too common occurrence for me to judge you these days but ninja are too valuable. Ninja are the only hope to make money, money is the only hope to make food now that the Eight Tails had scared all the fish away from our shores…" the shaking masculine voice posturized while mother wept. The door to Doma's door opened. Doma had no power left to resist the tall bald young man in a leather vest who picked him off the floor and flipped over his shoulders.
Mother and father laid by sister's bloody body. They were crushed, they both knew what they were doing but somehow this old man seeing them do it, even if he displayed a surprising amount of understanding and tolerance for their difficult time, made them remember their humanity that was long lost in this perpetual struggle for survival.
"Please… Take our Doma…" mother begged. Her voice had returned to resembling the old days somewhat, the days when food was not necessarily plentiful but at least not nearly as luxurious. "I will never be able to live with what we've done once this is all over but… He's different. He still has a clear conscience…".
"I understand", a short and balding elder nodded, "Let's go, Gasco, let's feed this boy and start his training. We are one ninja short from a real ninja team".
"This boy is weak, are you sure you want to waste as little food as we have on revitalizing him"? Gasco looked coldly at the old man, who just nodded in determination before giving the barely lively Doma a warm look.
"Maybe, just maybe we can complete a B-Rank mission, at least one would buy us enough food to revitalize several more teams for a month. If we completed an A-Rank… This whole famine could be over", the old man dreamed looking away longingly. Doma felt the wind caressing his cheeks, he felt the stench of death all around him but his eyes were too weak to open and face the world he now called reality.
"That's wishful, old man, just who will request for an A-Rank mission of a near-dead village"? Gasco scolded his elder with a lifeless look. This strong teen must have done quite terrifying things to survive and thrive this long, to even be able to walk at this point. "Also why would we bargain with the other villages for food? Didn't we get to this point by offering them our food just so our village was excluded from their wars, back when food was plentiful"?
"It's true… What a pitiful paradox this world of ours is. The ninja are the ones who can survive the longest with the least amount of food. But the ninja cannot work and make profit if there are no weakling civilians requesting missions. That is why the ninja we train must be carefully weighed, it all needs to be calculated and weighed… Gains against the costs…" the old man postured again, speaking seemingly to no one.
"You hear that, pipsqueak"? Gasco shook Doma, just that one shake made the boy's joints and fragile body hurt all over, "If you're weak and useless – we'll let you off on your own. Let's hope your mother taught you some good stuff".
"He just spaced out", Mana noticed her opponent's attention slipping away. During that time her cramped and fatigued muscles got revitalized by the chakra constantly, still richly flowing through her network. "This is the time to hit him with everything".
The magician's hands flowed through hand seals, even if she had only neglected training for a couple of weeks, Mana could see her wrists feeling rusty and working a tad slow already. This will not do, she cannot just attack him from the front this way. She needed a distraction…
"Magical Entrance Jutsu"! Mana chanted out as a flock of sparks erupted from under her, shooting blindly up in the air before exploding into a burst of light. It was the flashy light show that the magician used during her magic shows for a flashy entrance, it got the audience all fired up and ready for some magic to follow.
Doma covered his face and looked away, as expected, in a battle ninja's perception was at its peak. So eager to follow every move, every flash of light, every slightest change in the battlefield conditions that a blinding flash of light would've completely crippled them. Mana's distraction was especially effective, it appeared, as Doma began clawing his teary eyes.
"What the fuck is this? It's not a real jutsu!" he grunted, he must have meant the fact that it did no actual physical damage to his body, therefore he stored none of it in his complex damage seals.
"No, but this is"! Mana shouted out as she took a chakra molding stance, channeling her chakra for a moment before forming a handful of hand seals and whistling a gentle tune.
"Genjutsu: Sweet Lullaby"! Mana sung out in the melodious tune she was whistling and humming in which forced her impaired opponent clutch at his mid section and tumble over on the ground, writhing in all of his bodily sensations getting overloaded. His body was being overrun with so much pleasurable impulses that even dispelling the illusion was impossible until a few moments after they began – this bought Mana even more time.
Mana's tired and numb feeling wrists went through a collection of hand seals again, "Lightning Style: Magic Skewer Jutsu"! she grunted out before extending her palm outward, towards her writhing opponent. The moment when Mana's flow of chakra got disrupted by the offensive ninjutsu, the genjutsu she had used to cripple her opponent before faded, but most effects of it persisted for a longer time, pleasure such as that ignited by Mana's illusion did not disappear so fast.
A mass of crackling Lightning Release chakra formed above Doma's writhing body before forming six rod-shaped forms and charging down at the ground, the name of this jutsu was deceitful as it didn't really "skewer" anything. Upon hitting their target, the bolts of lightning simply discharged and shocked their target or, if they missed, just casually dispersed all over the surrounding area due to them being grounded.
Doma yelled out in pain as the rods of lightning all hit him at the same time, shocking his body. The jutsu was relatively weak, it increased in power from the way it was initially, when Mana invented it as a graduating Academy Student, but it was still weaker than even other ninjutsu of its rank. Still, the shock of its effects not only damaged her opponent's muscles, his heart and his will to keep fighting, but it also temporarily paralyzed him in shock, it allowed the magician to continue her combination of attacks.
Doma shook his hazy and pulsing with pain head and rubbed his teary and tired eyes before noticing that his opponent was charging straight at him. Somehow he managed to get together just enough force in his numbed and shocked body to charge back at her, he had more physical strength, he knew that! In that fateful moment when Doma was supposed to tackle his opponent to the ground, and in the lucky occurrence of having her below him and in his hands, pummel her until he thought it'd be enough, the young man simple phased through his opponent like she was some sort of an apparition.
"You fool, she's a clone! How can you get fooled by an Academy Technique"!? Gasco roared out, looking about as surprised as his fighting friend was when he missed his spearing charge.
"Don't bother, his eyes were too tired and teary from that light show before to notice that she's not ruffling any grass or that the dust carried by the wind pass right through her. She's weak, that Mana, but she's clever", Stea smiled peacefully seeing the real Mana charge in from behind her disoriented opponent and place her hand right on top of Doma's face.
"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch"! Mana roared out as her body was beginning to feel extremely fatigued, not due to shortage of chakra, but because of the strain which she wasn't used to due to skipping out on training for so long. A pulse of lightning passed through Mana's body before violently shaking Doma and blasting him backwards, head first, as he flipped over and over again, flying back past the same pile of rubble he had hit before and through the fence that signaled the end of the Training Grounds.
"That was my all…" Mana huffed, she risked a lot just exploding with techniques and damage left and right. By now she must've stored a dangerous amount of damage inside her opponent's seals. She didn't dump all of her chakra, not nearly so into these jutsu but she certainly was straining her body in terms of stamina of just attacking relentlessly over and over.
The sky turned hazy, it was the middle of the night already when the two started fighting but the sky used to be clear. Now, murky clouds covered it all up, Mana looked up in disbelief. Such effects could only be created through immensely powerful jutsu or very lacking chakra control. Could it have been that Doma could not control his own jutsu? And here Mana went through all that strenuous effort to channel all of the force of her jutsu just from her into her opponent, without letting any leak out and destroy her surroundings.
Trees started flying apart, ground itself had begun to crack and split into fissures beneath Mana's feet as a flash of massive lightning, shaped as a thirty-meter tall fin of an underground shark devastated all in its path towards Mana. The magician clutched herself for impact, she'd rather get hit by that and get seriously injured than reveal to Stea the weakness of her Petal Sanctuary Escape.
"Gasco", Stea softly asked her teammate who just grumbled unintelligibly.
The brute jumped in front of Mana, winding back his strongest punch. The heat from the incoming, ground-splitting colossal ninjutsu blast singed off the brute's hood and burnt up his cloak revealing the pulsing veins all over his massive muscles as the Getsugakure genin threw his clashing punch.
"Thunderstorm Fist"! He roared out as his fist clashed with Doma's wild attack. For a while Gasco struggled with Doma's jutsu before getting blasted back and thrown away wildly by the jutsu's immense force. However, surpassing Gasco's Thunderstorm Fist and knocking the brute flying appeared to be all that Doma's technique had in it.
"What the fuck"! An infuriated Doma shouted out as he leaped from the devastated parts of the forest outside the Training Grounds and back onto the battlefield. "Why did Gasco interfere"?
"I thought you got ringed out, also, you attacked her dirty", Stea replied calmly.
"What? We're not going to let no ring out decide this! We're settling this for good"! Doma yelled out, "Also, how am I playing dirty"?
"Your jutsu was slow, I could've dodged it any time", Mana chose to reply instead of Stea. "But it was also fired off in rage, without control. It was devastating to everything it touched and if I had dodged it – it'd have headed towards the edge of the village".
Doma grunted in annoyance, realizing that Mana decided to stand in front of his technique and take it just so the village wall and the small settlements by the edge of the village were not blown away. He was very short tempered and he could get a bit mean but… Mana saw that Doma did not want to hurt any innocent villagers by the guilty and embarrassed expression he carried.
"That jutsu… It would have seriously injured me, I'd have been in no condition to keep fighting. I fired everything I had at you, the whole combination and you stood back up, if that is the extent of the damage stored in your seals, that they would empower a simple C-Rank jutsu that way… I have no hope of beating you", Mana admitted. "There's no point in continuing this fight, I did everything I could, threw everything at you and it was for nothing, I concede".
Crushed in her defeat, and after Doma showed her just how pointless all of her strategies were in front of even someone weaker than Stea, Mana turned away and started her walk of shame and defeat back to the village. Somewhere, amidst all of that destruction, Zahafbit had also found a moment to slip away, realizing that Mana's defeat was imminent at that point.
"Please wait, I have one more plead to make with you", Stea gently placed her hand on Mana's shoulder, preventing her from leaving