"Well, that did not take much at all…" Lithia smiled with self-righteous satisfaction looking at the petty remains of the mahogany lantern.
"Except for the fact we have like a bajillion of these left to smash." Kidenshi massaged his hurting throat. Pompomaru hopped around the Inuzuka before crawling up the boy's body and scurrying all over it in worry. Wherever he deemed it necessary, the little furball settled for licking a couple of nasty looking bruises.
"That is not a real number," Mana replied with an attempt to snuff out any unnecessary and counter-productive arguments while she was trying to figure out a more efficient way to deal with the task.
In a way, Kidenshi was right. There were far too many of these lanterns left for Chominu to commit his own casual hooliganism in throwing walls of dirt about and disgracing the neighborhood. While the chakra signature of the chubby giant was sizeable, it was not quite "smash a bajillion lanterns the same way" large.
"That was quite frightening." Usubane quivered. The rabbit had her long and thick ears wrapped around her short body like she was trying to give herself a hug. "It was like the forest came alive in the middle of a human village."
"You think that was bad?" Kidenshi looked at Bane, he tried to find the willpower to grin or snicker but could not find any. "It felt like I was causing all that. My own strength was getting taken while these vines and roots formed…"
Mana knew that feeling all too well. The feeling of self-blame and pity. The feeling of being all to blame for everything bad happening to oneself and everyone around you. It was not a feeling she expected to find in one so cheerful as Kidenshi but… Perhaps it was an inevitable outcome of doing this job right.
"If you need to blame someone, blame me. I was the one who showed you how to do this job right, which led you to this outcome and feeling the way you feel." Mana replied with a soft tone. She approached Kidenshi with a slow and genuine attempt to pat his shoulder. Judging from the enlarged eyes of Kidenshi and the tamed, hanging ears of Pompomaru, the two shared some appreciation for the gesture.
Lithia glared at the scene of affection with enough decency to not speak up anything infuriating about it. Her stare was not in any way different from the way she usually looked at the things she mocked but this time she kept the mockery to herself and that was perhaps the most anyone could have asked of her.
"So… How do we smash all the other lanterns?" Chominu scratched his head with a confused expression.
"They did not appear to be very durable." Mana sighed. "Most of my ninjutsu arsenal should just barely be enough to destroy them in mid to long range, outside the effective range of where they can activate."
"I shall lend you a hand." Lithia smiled. "May as well show you, peasants, how to do something right."
"That is a great idea. With Lithia's Sharingan being able to track each individual lantern from long distance, we should be able to take a large number of them out in no time at all." The magician nodded.
"I wanna help too!" Usubane complained, dragging her ears down with her arms.
"Do you have any mid to long range techniques?" Mana asked. This was a fine way to know the rabbit's abilities a bit better as well as settle on a plan of action.
"Well… No… But…" Usubane objected before getting all flustered and turning away.
"In that case, you will be of most help if you do not fall for the trap seals and allow us to pick the lanterns off one by one," Mana answered. This answer clearly irritated the teen rabbit as she took a moment to walk further away from the group while rubbing her fluffy ears over her cheeks in frustration. For a moment there, Mana felt bad about shutting a genuinely kind-hearted intention to help this way but, before she could attempt to rectify the situation, Team Walnut started moving.
With a heavy sigh and her best attempts at convincing herself, that she would make it up for the rabbit after this whole thing is over with, Mana followed the team to the rooftops. She could feel Usubane slowly moving after them as well, while the rabbit's spirit was crushed by being useless in the current situation, she did not get lost and at the very least did not lose the hope of becoming useful in the nearest future.
"There you are!" Lithia yelled out, she charged up in the air with an acrobatic vault while her hands worked on the hand seals. The girl's chest inflated signaling that she breathed in a large amount of air before blowing it all out in the shape of a fractured barrage of flame projectiles that homed in on the general direction of the lanterns she saw.
"Fire Style: Phoenix Flower Jutsu!" the girl shouted out.
The projectiles of flames rained down upon the neighborhood. Where they could have very easily turned it into a raging inferno of flames, they merely destroyed their intended targets burning them up to a crisp. It appeared that with the lanterns functioning at a different chakra signaling frequency, they lost a significant amount of protection and durability that being imbued with chakra would have provided against attacks of the normal chakra frequency.
Mana worked through her own set of hand seals while sparks of lightning crackled up and down her body. For the first time since long ago, she found herself without an Audra wand to help channel her techniques quicker and cast them with just a point of it. The feeling both made Mana's heart feel squeezed by nostalgic memories but also made it feel a bit empty inside.
Perhaps it was that same feeling that impacted Mana's ability to aim, as the Magic Spark Barrage technique that she used missed most of the lanterns she intended to hit with the attack and harmlessly dissolved into little shocks of lightning upon hitting their mark. At least the lower ranking techniques were relatively weak and harmless when they were not intended to leave wide-reaching destruction.
Lithia stopped to laugh at Mana's display. Only this girl would have stopped in the middle of a remarkably successful show of precision and skill to mock someone helping her. Well… It was not like Mana did not feel like she did not deserve being poked fun at after hitting maybe just three or four lanterns out of the dozens she intended to wreck. Her barrage of attacks was numerous but not very accurate.
"Watch your chakra," Mana warned the Uchiha who was having a time of her life. "I sense a significant dip in your stamina after that last display."
Perhaps it was due to the girl keeping up her Sharingan open at full potency for a prolonged period of time that her chakra had taken such a notable dip? If Mana ever got absolutely sick of this girl, it was useful to note that she was quick to run out of juice. Even if thoughts like this were merely for the sake of entertainment and mending the bleeding wounds of the social image and not an actual plan for the magician.
"Watch your aim." Lithia snapped back at the magician. While her fit of laughter eased up and faded away, her mocking smirk did not.
"Watch your back." A thundering voice mocked the Uchiha while a lumbering shadow flashed from behind her. A strong blow aimed somewhere at the center of the girl's back flew right at the Uchiha who bent and twisted her body around in a way Mana had not seen before, wrapping her legs around the extended arm of the assailant in an attempt to shift the situation from a surprise attack into an arm hold.
With a strong yank and lack of resistance to the brute force of the attacker, the Uchiha girl was shaken off of the hold. Finally, the image of their attacker came to light. It was a tall and well-built man with a rough stubble and long, wild brown hair and rougher facial features. Unlike what Mana had feared, he did not appear to don the signature flak jacket of Konoha or even the body armor of the ANBU. He wore what appeared to be weaved together from tree bark, leaves, and other natural material.
"That was an amazing reaction time." Mana commended her temporary teammate.
"My Sharingan reacted before my better judgment did." The girl replied with great pride in her set of eyes that may have saved her from an even greater loss of chakra trying to soften the impact with surprise chakra augmentation or a permanent paralysis of having her spine smashed into bits with a single blow.
Mana's eyes wandered away for a moment, a sign of some unknown but remarkable chakra signature flaring up in between them and the rest of the team that was following not too far back. The magician did not notice how far they've split apart from one another, could have been a handful of blocks, she was, at some point, getting desperate with her lack of success hitting the target.
"I agree, we need to join in with those losers. Useless as they are, they are my assets and they do a whole lot of dirty work for me. I shall not allow that secondary attacker to take them away." Lithia noticed Mana's reaction to another chakra signature rearing its head. "You or me?"
Mana's hands moved before she would reply. Of course, it would be Mana, she may not have had those godly eyes residing in her or had the genetic excellence for this spanning dozens of generations like most Uchiha did, but she at the very least had, at some point in the past, polished her hand seal speed to near perfection.
"Lightning Style: Magic Skewer!" Mana yelled out as the crackles of lightning expelled into the outside in the shape of joined streams that then formed five rod shapes that all flew right at their sizeable opponent. The man just swatted the lightning rods aside as if they were annoying insects. By the time the distraction concluded, in just a fraction of a second that he let his eyes blink from the light of lightning rods coming at him and the discomfort and smacking them aside, Mana and Lithia were already gone from the rooftop they were just on.
With Mana's distraction having successfully done its job, both girls timed their leaps of faith down to the ground alleyway level and then separated into blurry flashes that used the shadows of the more hidden away corridors of the village to hide away from their attacker more efficiently. If the lumbering assailant was to give chase, he'd only manage to chase one of them meaning one of them would be forced to improvise their short trek back while the other would regroup without a hitch.
Lithia had her Sharingan still shimmering its blood-red glow. She could have reacted and avoided any incoming attacks even if they come from a blindingly fast opponent with the speed and grace that appeared as if the Lolita girl was seeing the future. Mana, on the other hand, had her own ways of avoiding being hit so no matter which one that giant gave chase to, he would more likely than not fail to kill either.
Mana's feet landed firmly on the corner of the alleyway where Chominu and Kidenshi were struggling against the enemy, or rather, should have been struggling. Chominu, Kidenshi and Pompomaru and Usubane just stood there in front of a curious looking woman who was smiling to all of those that gathered there to regroup.
Lithia appeared beside Mana and the rest of the group not too long after, both girls shared a stare that tried to size each other up and see which one of them was given chase to but it appeared that neither one of them was. With a blinding flash, just like before, the towering man appeared atop of a water tower. He was quite proud of himself as a half-smirk did not leave his face.
Mana chose to instead focus on the woman that she had not seen before, a short thing of blond, shoulder-long hair, a fishnet top and a camouflage cloak with a hood on top that reminded of a ghillie suit more than a piece of clothing. The woman laughed out and slapped her hands together. A shroud of blackness enveloped Mana forcing her to cover herself up and prepare to use her illusions to escape whatever lethal plan this woman intended to enact.
Apart from complete darkness all around, save from the quite prominent shapes of Team Walnut and her other companions as well as the enemy, Mana did not feel anything at all. Just what kind of a jutsu was this?
Regardless of the answer, this seal of total darkness was the plan of these two all along, the attack of the man was a ploy. That was why he did not work too hard on giving chase – he wanted to lead the two girls back to the rest so that this woman could enclose them in whatever this black shroud was. This was pretty horrible, these two were not only likely stronger and faster than all of them combined, they were also in complete strategic and battlefield control of the situation. Mana needed to get them talking, bargain for time to think this through.
"I see… So this closed flower you have created was your plan all along?" Lithia replied shortly before closing her eyes. When they opened back up, Mana noticed the absence of the red shine in her eyes. The Uchiha had closed her Sharingan to give her eyes a brief rest before the battle when they would be needed again.
"Indeed, how else would we avoid unpleasant distractions? We are acting in a middle of a village after all…" the woman smiled. There were some warmth and kindness in her smile. Looking at her almost motherly face it was tough to say that someone like her could have been wicked.
"Your plan has one stupid flaw, lady, nobody will miss a giant flower rising up in the middle of the village. Konoha will be all over this!" Kidenshi took a bold step forward. It was a rebellious and desperate gesture at best.
"All over what?" the woman leaned her head to the side in bemusement.
"Look, kid. Don't use the word "Konoha", it's really confusing given the context…" the lumbering man spoke up at last.
"What context?" Kidenshi squinted his eyes. He had clearly expected a better answer than the enemies who have had their team in their hands this entire time getting flustered over a simple observation.
"It does not matter, just don't say that word." The large man yelled back at the Inuzuka in frustration. The word appeared to have some sort of meaning that flew entirely over Mana's head.
"In any case, nobody will notice it because this space is in a whole another dimension. The flower we are residing in stores its pollen in a different dimension and transfers it all by itself through interdimensional tunneling. I have managed to close us into that very same dimension. While back in the alleyway we were in the flower appears barely the size of a human, in here the space appears as large as an inside of a mansion." The woman explained. "Nobody will interrupt us here."
Mana had to hand it to these two. They were much more intelligent than lowly criminals that acted all loud in the middle of a ninja village. They knew exactly how to work whatever magic they were doing. Whatever their ulterior motives were, they planted those lanterns quietly and only made as much fuss as was absolutely necessary while keeping an option like this open – to dispatch anyone in their way without alerting the authorities or any fish too numerous or too large for their pay grade.
Whatever those lanterns were, they were just an inconvenience to the ordinary civilians and they would not have caused too much noise before ninja came into close proximity to them and attempted to disrupt their purpose. These truly were the actions of a trained village ninja specialist, one that had gone rogue, without a doubt.
"So I take it that all those lanterns we destroyed inconvenienced you?" Lithia flaunted her success at destroying the precious objects of this pair that they worked and plan so hard to place all over this district.
"Very much so." The woman nodded. "We had hoped that enough of them remained all over the town until our plan proceeded to its later stages. You proved yourself to be too troublesome to leave alive. Our interference and a slight revelation of our hand are necessary."
"Preferably soon enough," the woman's partner grumbled. "We still have hundreds of lanterns to place all over the village."
"Yes, that is true…" the woman nodded her head, allowing her hood to slip over her usually quite bright and warm face. By that point, only her plum colored lips and white teeth could be made out in the odd lighting of this sealing dimension where pollen was stored.
A thundering sneeze made all of the ninja present turn at the direction of Chominu who fumbled over on his knees and wheezed intensely, clawing at his own throat as if struggling to breathe.
"What is wrong with you, you slob?" Lithia dragged her hand over her hair looking more irritated by the health problems of her teammate than worried.
"What do you mean what's wrong with him?!" Kidenshi growled, "He's allergic to flower pollen!"
A whistling wheeze informed the others that the gentle giant finally managed to draw some breath but the slurping noises coming out from his nose and the constant thunderous sneezing coming from his direction suggested that it was for the best if they did not overstay their welcome inside this dimension.
It appeared that the plan of action for the new and improved Team Walnut was made promptly for them – escape at all costs.