The limited battlefield patching that the medical ninja did on Mana did wonders, considering the brief time that the man spent on it. Mana was usually not the toughest person in the room but her chakra size was considerable, given her specialized training. Larger chakra meant higher thresholds to which chakra augmentation could have stretched. Still, if her augmentations were ever broken and she was caught unprepared like this again, she could have died instantly.
The very first thing on Mana's mind, after scolding herself for letting Honda escape was done with, was worry over Usuzoku's condition. This way of dealing with Honda's attack was proven by fate to be ultimately the correct one. Had Mana used her illusions to attempt to escape, there was limited space for her to maneuver in so her illusionary distraction body would not have done her much good. Had she tried a protective measure, like mustering up a barrier or using her Magical Bubble technique, it would have burst even quicker than Usuzoku folded to the immense force of the monster.
She should have summoned someone, asked them how Usuzoku was… No. That would use precious chakra as well as make the rabbits involve themselves in the fight with Little Honda. At this point, Mana saw all too clearly that it was too dangerous for anyone else to get involved. The girl's bloodied hand gripped at her aching chest while tears ran down her cheeks. Trembling, the magician removed her hat and tensed up her grazed hand to let some of her wounds bleed a little.
Mana placed her palm into the hat, letting some of her blood cover the sealing glyph. After that point, she removed the hand from the hat and just observed as a slender yet fit shape jumped out in a purple blur. Usubane looked at Mana with scared eyes, they were nothing like the energetic and cheerful orbs that the young rabbit usually looked at the world around her with.
"M-Mana-san…" Usubane cried out.
"How is he? Is he alive?" Mana grumbled. Her voice sounded a little raspy and sleepy, it was the pain and the exhaustion that made her sound that way.
"Yeah. I've never seen anyone kick Usuzoku-san's ass this hard. What did we get into here? What kind of battle did that?" the rabbit wondered looking petrified in fear and the responsibility that now rested on Usubane's shoulders – to assist Mana in dealing with the undertaking she took up.
"He was pushed." Mana sighed.
"Pushed?" Usubane looked up in the sky, her eyes looked almost pleading.
"Look, I just wanted to know if Zoku was alright. I… I should not have summoned him. It was the first thing that came to mind and…" Mana dragged her trembling hands over her messy hair.
"If he was not there, you would have been the one to get pushed!" Usubane snapped back at the magician. "Whatever you got yourself into, I'm gonna kick them and punch them as hard as I can and sort the odds later."
This was what Mana feared of. Without the rabbit's own will, she was unable to force them to go back into the hat and to return to the new Rabbit Caves. Perhaps summoning Usubane was the wrong choice, Mana's mind was too hazy and she did not always have a choice of who it was that she summoned.
The magician and her rabbit made their way into the main and the more populated streets. Almost instantly the sights of everyone around turned to Mana and the rabbit beside her, luckily the signs of battle on the magician sort of freaked the people out and convinced them not to approach her. Mana loved fans of her show and she appreciated common human kindness but right now, she already had way too much on her plate.
"So where is that bastard?" Usubane asked. Her eyes still gaped wide, she was itching to fight but she was nowhere near confident and feared the very same fight she wanted. This certain feeling of being overburdened by the responsibility one took up was not entirely alien to Mana as well, the magician was a little charmed seeing this particular trait in the young rabbit she worked with.
"Don't know. He got away. The other ninja ran off out the village gate, they think he may have run off out of Konoha. That would be the logical thing to do if you make some noise inside the ninja village – you get the hell out of there while you still can, no matter who you are." Mana replied. Her head hurt, the magician pressed her quivering hand to her forehead as if it could have helped from the pain at all. She was not the one with the healing touch.
"Is there anyone we can call for help?" Usubane wondered. "Those genin really came in for the clutch save last time."
"Not a chance." Mana sighed. "Someone already got hurt. If some ninja will notice the fight and rush in to assist, there will be nothing we can do but I will not ask someone to put themselves in front of Honda. I'm partially responsible for him being created in the first place…"
"That's suicidal though…" Usubane replied, her tone did not sound like that of scolding but rather one of a complaint. She tried to reason with Mana but a single glare into the magician's eyes revealed that Mana was ready to go at it alone until the end rather than ask someone for help again. "Oh well, it's not like that guy can hide inside a village. Someone will come in for an assist, I'm sure of it."
"When those workers were attacked… When Honda showed up again, they said he tried eating someone." Mana mumbled out, she sounded more like a delirious hospital patient rather than a ninja on a job.
"Tried eating?" Usubane stuck out her tongue and squinted one of her eyes in disgust. "As if in a human?"
"Yeah. For whatever reason, he tried eating someone but he did not like it so he threw them up. He is a toddler in a monster's body, he must be hungry. He's been held in sleep for so long, who knows when was the last time he was actually fed." Mana guessed. "Those ninja believe they're dealing with someone clever, they're not. Honda won't run, he will go deeper inside the village."
Both the kunoichi and the rabbit by her side turned toward the colorful vendors and shops illuminating the evening sky in the distance. There was a white, purple and indigo colored gloom from all the light that beamed right up into the sky from the neon signs and street lights. All tremendous attractions for a hungry child in a monster's body.
"I would really like it if you went back home," Mana uttered without looking at the rabbit beside her. "The last thing I need weighing on my consciousness is me calling you onto your last battlefield."
"Right back at ya." Usubane crossed her arms over her chest and pouted her lips. She did not want this fight but she sure as hell was going to swing her meanest blows in it. "You should just leave this to the big guns. If the monster is gonna raise some noise – he will get shut down."
"They will try to kill him." Mana shook her head with newly accepted serenity. She feared this upcoming scuffle, at the same time - she accepted it. "I cannot allow that to happen either. I had a role in him becoming this way, it was because of my words that all of this mess started swirling."
Usubane looked at Mana without uttering a word. When she accepted to train with Usuzoku with the hopes of one day working alongside the savior of the Ninja Rabbits and the person that put the rabbits back on the honor map, she did not count on there being so many terms and conditions in her role.
"This whole district's one big beacon, where to?" Usubane asked. Determined to see this battle through, however it went. Not a minute later a loud yell echoed in the distance followed by a crashing sound. Mana landed atop of an electricity pole to observe the scene of destruction – a totaled sweets vendor and smashed dorayaki scattered all over the ground. A cowering man hidden behind garbage bins, still too shaken to peek from behind them.
In a single dash, Mana covered the distance between her and the man, even without using her chakra sensory she felt Usubane following not too far behind. The twisted after-sense of Honda's chakra was all over the village like a choking fog of tear gas.
"Which way did he go?" Mana asked. Due to the recent injuries, she felt a little dizzy and light on her feet but, in practice, she appeared quite capable of staying on her feet. Perhaps she had it in her to hold Honda off from hurting anyone else? She was lucky that this man managed to escape without irritating Honda too much and that the giant had already learned that he was not overly fond of the taste of human flesh.
"He took my sweet vendor and just tore it in two…" the man still babbled in disbelief of what had happened.
"Not too useful, huh?" Usubane sighed, her breathing was irregular, she was just about as afraid as this man was but her way of dealing with the fear was entirely different.
Mana closed her eyes and concentrated her sensory. Even if Honda's overwhelming signature emitted a smokescreen of chakra sensations wherever he went, making pinpointing an exact location quite impossible, until the monster's chakra skyrocketed again when he got mad, there was a difference in concentration of the nasty aftereffect of Honda's presence.
"There…" Mana turned more to the direction of the village center. Just as initially feared, the monster was moving deeper into the village.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?!" An irksome, feminine voice proclaimed of both her existence as well as her irritation at the carefree attitude of a towering lump of flesh, black threads, and bone. "You're just gonna waltz off after busting that vendor back there?"
A furious stare of a misshapen head turned back to face the blond female chuunin that stopped lumbering Little Honda in his tracks. Wherever the monster treaded, civilians cowered and moved out of its way, their terrified expressions were slightly below Honda's usual eye-level, therefore, they were completely ignored by the curious monster who kept on absorbing the light show of Konoha past his usual bedtime.
The left side of the child's head was protruded, like the entire upper left side of the boy's skull was conjoined from someone else's skull, that of someone vastly larger than even the enlarged belfry of Little Honda. The boy's silver hair ran down his face, covered with sewer goop, blood, and dust. The messy collection of teeth ground so hard that chunks of Honda's teeth flew out from the pressure.
"It may have been a foolish strategy to attract the enemy's attention before engaging them." The fellow chuunin accompanying his comrade on this off-duty assignment due to a date that the two were on previously. For that reason, both Hitsumi and her ally were wearing casual civilian clothes.
"Don't tell me what to do!" Honda roared out with enough force in the center of his yelling zone to rip flesh from bone. Neither one of the two chuunin expected this unorthodox manner of attack, however they both managed to evade it, Hitsumi's body erupted into a blast of water that showered the fleeing civilians in cold water after the woman managed to replace herself with a Water Clone she had created whereas her partner replaced himself with a baby carriage.
The young man pressed the crying baby closer to his chest to try and calm him down, as he observed the carriage placed right at the location he was just in disperse into almost powder-size wooden remains from the intense pressure of the monster's shout. The chuunin dashed off to try and find the woman he took the carriage from to give her the baby back, while Hitsumi dashed onto the rooftops, having decided to stay at a long-range and attack her enemy from where it would not have been able to get her.
"Water Style: Multi-Water Shuriken!" Hitsumi chanted out the name of her B-Rank ninjutsu after a collection of hand seals. Water split off from a demolished nearby fountain and took shuriken shapes. This was less than ideal, the woman would have appreciated a chance to use a stronger water source than this for optimum strength of her jutsu.
With a single swipe of his arm, Honda swatted the shuriken aside like a swarm of pesky flies. Hitsumi noticed little lacerations over the monster's arm but also saw them close up almost as instantly as they popped into her view. Had she not been as confident in her own ability to cause harm to this thing she was holding off, she'd have believed those cuts to be an optical illusion of some sort due to how shortly they persisted before closing up.
"I just want to look at the lights!" Honda's voice reached Hitsumi from high above. The woman turned up and above in shock that the monster had managed to blindside her while her body moved on its own – leaping aside to avoid the meteor-like crash of the massive lump of flesh that took a building with him as if it was just a deck of cards under his boot.
Vines wrapped around Honda's limbs, those that attempted to subdue him the monster shred with barely any effort at all. Wherever one or a couple chakra-infused vines snapped from the sudden application of immense force from the other side before the whole monster was completely burrowed under countless layers of vines, looking like a natural monument rather than its abominable self.
"I'll give you some lights to gaze at!" Hitsumi's partner grunted, producing this many vines cost him some effort and chakra, following this technique up with another jutsu was even more taxing.
"Wood Style: Board Cannon!" the chuunin yelled out as a thick board of wood burst from underground and flew right at the subdued monster. Honda was beginning to emerge from under all the endless green surrounding him but the moment he showed his pissed and ugly mug, the humongous board smashed right into his face at full speed and force.
It barely did anything to faze the freak. Honda just ran through destroying the large board with his own face and just walked through the awesome Senju clan wood, reducing the board to nothing but chips as both the force of its user and the opposing force collided in the object's center and proved to be too much even for the legendary Senju wood to handle.
"N-No way! Those were chakra-sapping Senju vines!" Hitsumi's friend lost his focus and his composure after seeing what supposed to be a rendered powerless opponent burst right through his flawless combination that took him years of training to both come up with and perfectly execute.
"Water Style: Windmill Water Shuriken!" Hitsumi grunted after vaulting up above Honda and throwing a windmill shuriken comprised entirely out of Water Release she could muster up from around her. She was rendering the busted down fountains and surrounding sewers dry with this attack, it was never meant to be used on such a quick notice and without proper setup or a massive water source nearby.
The blue buzzsaw sliced through the monster clean into two parts. Honda's face twisted in pain and shock as his vision doubled and one side of his field of sight began furthering from the other. A half of a chartreuse colored, dried out brain began slowly tumble out of the severed skull of the devilish monstrosity before the two separate sides of the same organ clamped together. Within an instant, the fleshy bits of Little Honda began tying up around one another and bonding quickly forming a wholesome shape of the horror show.
Mana's feet landed on the ground that felt very brittle and damaged. The area around was messy, stuck out pipes and a few downed buildings, the place was completely empty. Honda somehow managed to cause enough ruckus to leave a very real path to his ugly mug but not quite hectic enough for the emergency interference of any A-Rank or above ninja that were in the village. Those few that were still present in Konoha must have been working on a plan, analyzing information and the sort. It would take many more casualties and a little bit more time before strategy came completely out the window and fists started swinging.
"These two did not flee in time…" Usubane's gasp reached Mana's ears and made the magician snap out from the fever dream of fear she was in after just taking a moment to absorb the remnants of Honda's path of destruction.
"They're not civilians, that's for sure." Mana closed her eyes to focus her sensory. "Hitsumi-san is still alive."
Mana could not even look at the broken man that lied just a bit farther, his arms and legs looked crushed and then twisted around, his neck and his head received the mercy of just the second part of the gruesome fate, Honda must have been getting bored by that point.
"He's like a mean kid torturing flies by ripping off their wings…" Usubane rubbed her face with a sleeve.
"He is a child." Mana opened her eyes, looking at the Honda-sized hole left in a nearby, still stationary building. There were plenty of rotten and dried out trees nearby, that certainly did not belong here. These must have belonged to the poor Senju chuunin.
"Don't hold back. Don't fool around with this thing just because it's got a child's mind. I'm warning or you, Mana-san!" Usubane jumped up closer to Mana, hopping off of an erupting chunk of broken ground.
"Warning me?" Mana muttered bluntly and without emotion.
"Yeah, it's been my lifelong dream to work alongside you, even I haven't seen all that much life yet. If I see you holding back or being a danger to yourself, I'm knocking you out and running." Usubane declared.
"Little Honda has taken lives. I cannot run away from such a behemoth." Mana refused such a plan. As if she would have even had a choice in it, to begin with. "I can sense more ninja rushing in. Multiple squads. We'd best join them."
"To see to it that they bring down that freak or to see to it that they don't kill it and babysit it?" Usubane turned to Mana again after looking up and into the distance in multiple directions in a vain attempt to sight any ninja moving towards Honda's current location.
"Both." Mana sighed.