Not a single noise alerted to the incoming attack of the Blood Lagoon kunoichi. Chiya moved forward far slower than most of her Blood Lagoon peers as well as the Konoha ninja that have seen her fight or traverse knew her to be able to move. With a quick feint, however, the sluggish pace of movement was revealed to be trickery. Mizoma raised his blade to defend himself but a burst of blood erupted from his right side. Mizoma's only functional eye widened in shock but quickly realized Chiya's deceit.
The young woman attacked him from the right side because his right eye was cut up. His depth perception and vision, in general, was severely weakened in that side making it highly probable that he'd miss the proper angle to block her speedy blitz right. When one was dealing with the speed of blade-dancing like that in which these two tangoed, the margin for failure was narrower than ever.
"You cocky twit, you forgot to apply your own blood to the sword. You cannot use your ability without that…" Chison, the massive armored tank of the Blood Lagoon thundered out in laughter.
"Ability?" Yushijin raised an eyebrow, noting this for the future if the rather flammable personality of the young woman caused Team Fir and the Blood Lagoon bunch to ever clash.
"Just watch and see… These Hozuki assholes won't admit it but we're a clan of our own. When our blood enters someone else's bloodstream, interesting things happen." Chison spoke with excitement and vigor even if the shade from inside his oversized helmet made it difficult to see his enthusiastic grin.
"I won't kill you just yet. You wanted to kill us because the Hozuki ordered you to. I can understand that. But being as cruel as you were to Chisilla was over the line. To those threatening my blood, I show cruelty surpassing their own which is why you will bleed out like the pig you are." Chiya spoke with underlying scorn. She tried to sound apathetic and cold but flames of hatred showed their tongues through the cracks of her facade with every word she spoke.
"Underestimate me and fool around at your own peril. One way or the other, you will meet it." Mizoma growled and powered through the pain. This time his abundant armor pieces and plates served as a hindrance as because of it hanging all over his body the man was unable to tend to his wounds and apply the proper pressure. Even worse, it became evident from the first glance that some of the busted armor only served to dig deeper into his wounds. Unless the swordsman withdrew, he was a walking dead man with these injuries and yet something suggested any casual observer that this was of no worry to the specter of the battlefield.
Mana's feet landed on the uneasy and ruined ground of the part of the Valley where the clash between the Chinoike and the Hozuki representatives was taking place. The magician's movements lacked any subtlety or control as she very nearly tripped and fell over on her face, having to plant her knees deep into the mushy layers of iron dust and scorching, damp gravel to keep her face from eating dirt.
"Mana…" Kouta uttered, quickly moving up to the magician.
"You're back? How is that possible?" Mana wondered, running her eyes across the body of her boyfriend while the Juugo did the same to her. His gaze was much more worried and horrified by the state of the magician's being, however. Almost instantly, without asking for permission or if it was a good idea or a priority right now, the medical ninja placed his hands over Mana's body and scanned it with the navy light of the Diagnosis Jutsu.
"Heh, yeah… That guy has some crazy sword, I think it's because of that…" Kouta managed to power through a smile but Mana could perceive that there was something gloomier hidden under it. She wondered what exactly that could have been, her boyfriend was usually not the type to manage to keep his emotions hidden, his nature was completely wrong for that sort of thing. Yet asking now hardly seemed like the priority…
Mana gazed at the weapon that Mizoma clung with one of his functional hands with as much ferocity and persistence as the lantern-head clung to the remnants of his own life. Even with her notable background in history and lore of the world she lived in, mythologies and tales of all kinds, stories of legendary heroes both based in reality and completely made up, she couldn't put her finger on that sword.
All that the magician could see were traces of its origin, put together out of smaller details. It was no slick and lean weapon, suggesting that it was made by Iwagakure swordsmiths, a place as wealthy with the natural minerals of all kinds hiding underneath those mountain ranges of theirs as it was with stout men capable of wielding such swords. However, it also had notable Kumogakure signatures to it – the fine craftsmanship could not have been achieved by anyone else but the molecular-level smiths of the Kirikuzu and the gold strings crawling up the blade looked more like feather clouds and not vines as the initial impression suggested.
Could this sword have been a joint venture between the factions currently aiming at each other's throats? Aside from the emergency at hand, the irony that this two-handed blade testified of was almost admirable.
Mana got so lost gazing into the obsidian blacks and the golden accessories donning the deathbringer in Mizoma's hands that she failed to properly absorb where exactly the sword was moving. Even with one functional hand, the titan wielded his sword with finesse and mastery that Mana would have felt jealous of had she cared at all about the craft of swordsmanship. Despite her speed and acrobatics, Chiya would have been tagged multiple times had she not sanguinated out of the harm's way. There was something profoundly odd about the sword, it was not just Kouta's testimony nor was it the case of rumors of superstition – Mana could feel it.
Chakra was moving through spaces where the sword simply was not. It was like it existed in multiple places at once. What terrified the magician the most, in this case, was that she could feel the crumbs across the road – the remnants of signatures she could not sense yet, as if she was gazing at a dark path ahead. The path itself was visible yet not the destination it led to. The sword was present in many more spaces and planes than Mana was capable of picking up. It truly befit the status of the tool that one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist would have wielded.
A mighty clang echoed through the entire valley while Mizoma's ornate blade stopped in mid-swing after having met the equal-forced resistance of Yushijin's longsword. A cruel grin covered the right side of Mizoma's face. Mana tried to warn the leader of Team Fir about the sword's gimmick but due to having to physically move away Kouta and interrupt his healing it took more time than the Konoha swordsman had.
A flash of red crossed Yushijin's chest, shoulder to lower waist. The pain and shock of the sudden outburst of pain forced the Konoha ninja to lose focus and stumble on his feet, wave forward and backward while the focus returned to his eyes. By that time Chiya had pounced on top of the ruthless Kirigakure swordsman like a mad cat, slashing at him with newfound rage on her face.
"Out of my way! He's mine!" she said back to Yushijin.
A pair of shallow cuts opened up Mizoma's swollen face. The young Blood Lagoon lady had aimed her attacks higher to the right just to add some more insult to the injury by slashing at Mizoma's face while still abusing his weakness of no vision in one eye. A crushing disadvantage to any swordsman who had not had the time in their lives to adapt to this weakness and learn to fight without advanced depth perception.
Mizoma's own sword danced in return. Chiya used nimble and precise movements to completely lean out of the way of the man's blade. It was evident that she had faced the threat of an invisible extension of a blade before, most likely in her kin – Chisilla whom the swordsman was quite protective of. The white shirt of the Blood Lagoon swordswoman dyed in a manner, not unlike that in which spilling a pair of glasses of wine would have colored it.
The Swordsman of the Mist noticed the weakness and the shock of the pain and wounds that still managed to haunt the swordswoman, despite having completely moved out of the sword's way to where not even an invisible extension of the blade would have reached her. The spectral titan shot his left foot forward in an attempt to push-kick the young woman's teeth in with his armored boots and the rows of spikes present all over his soles and heels.
A deafening thud echoed as the boot met adamant resistance from a steel barrier – Yushijin's claymore. The young man had thrust the tip of his blade into the gravel and raised its edge up to form a vertical wall, tough enough to take the ground-shaking punishment meant for the feisty Blood Lagoon swordswoman. Moved by sheer instinct, as if sensing his impending demise, Yushijin leaped aside, just narrowly avoiding the rising sword strike of the very same youth he had tried to protect just now.
"I said… He's mine!" Chiya shouted. With the awakened visual technique of the obsidian moon reflected in a blood-red sky flaring from her eyes.
"It is my responsibility as a leader to protect my teammates. To bring them out of the trouble I've brought them into. I'm afraid I cannot allow you to shoulder my burden alone." Yushijin replied shortly before the eyes of both passionate swordsmen turned to the rising figure that obstructed whatever limited sunlight broke through the gloomy iron clouds.
A cascade of vision-robbing sparks exploded around the circle within the reach of each swordsman as the three locked down into a perpetual circle of slashing and blocking. Mizoma slashed at both Yushijin and Chiya, about as devoted to his assignment as it was possible to a man that rose above just being a professional get. Chiya moved away from Mizoma's blade while simultaneously attacking him in return while swinging a few cuts Yushijin's way whenever she found that the Konoha ninja was getting too close to attacking an enemy she deemed hers to defeat. Yushijin was busy just protecting himself from both fronts, lacking the agility to move around as Chiya did, he mostly relied on his Last Resort illusion to do the heavy lifting of keeping his blood on the inside.
"Heh, I didn't expect this bout to go three-way! This is glorious!" Chison exclaimed while spreading his hands out wide, embracing the insanity in the whirlwind of blades that displayed its best performance in front of him.
"Aren't you going to help? You could shift the balance for good." Mana addressed the armored giant who just waved his hand at the hurting magician.
"And risk having Chiya gunning for me too? She's got enough on her plate as it is… She wants this and when Chiya wants something this hard, it's better to just let her have it." The careless, living golem replied.
"I must…" Mana stood back on her feet but Kouta's hand pressed against her chest. With a light push, he tried to comfort the magician as well as soothe her rising fighting spirit back down.
"Just watch this for now. If I heal you up, you may still be the deciding factor of this in the aftermath among broken soldiers." Kouta said.
Mana did not resist. Already she was having a much easier time breathing. It would only take a few moments for her busted ribs and the specks of blood leaking into her lungs to all get better. A more reserved expansion of her senses suggested that another wave of reinforcements was not too far away, slightly worn and busted but Erumo was among them in a relatively fresh state. In fact, her chakra appeared the closest to the battlefield, as if she was spearheading the charge.
Mizoma's body froze in a statuesque pose, it jerked a pair of times, suggesting that its master attempted to force through the paralysis but the cause of all time having apparently frozen around him was not something that mere brute force could solve. Having dealt with one side of the equation, Yushijin put all of his effort into subduing the Blood Lagoon woman, hacking at Chiya from both sides and hammering at her guard from both sides. Chiya was a monster of movement. Her sword still clutched in one hand, she danced around Yushijin's sword without committing the fatal mistake of blocking once and becoming locked into the string that could have only ended in shatters of her trusty blade.
Even with the injures on her body, the Blood Lagoon woman had what it took to move circles around Yushijin's attacks and while the face of the Konoha ninja did not tell much, it did betray a modicum of irritation and worry over how agile the unstable youth was. Needless to say, the blush of apparent humiliation did not leave his eyes either, dodging with such grace and flawlessness was seen as a sign of dominance over one's opponent and anyone who had their entire desperation combination avoided would have born the mark of embarrassment.
"My blood is not meant for you, but please do disappear." Chiya mumbled while turning her black-moon eyes at the Konoha ninja and letting them work some enigmatic magic on the man. Mana could sense raw and untrained bursts of chakra leaving Chiya's body and pulsing all throughout Yushijin's system – it appeared that whatever this freak ability of the Blood Lagoon members was, it possessed an uncanny ability to weave illusions through sight alone when awakened.
A circular orb of shockwave pushing the crimson strands of corruption away fired off from Yushijin with the eyes of the Konoha swordsman regaining a sense of clarity and control after a lingering second of confusion and horror.
"W-What?" Chiya's body tensed up in a sense of dread and confusion over the skill of her opponent to triumph over her powerful illusions. Powerful they were, Mana could tell, their power did not hail from skillful mastery or polish, not the truly dangerous stuff, it came from raw, dominating talent and the demonic strength of the illusion and how much effort it should have taken to break out of them. Whatever Faustian bargain Yushijin had made to dispel this illusion with such a brute method, it would cost him in the long run…
With a standing body-splash, Yushijin slammed against the body of his opponent in an instant, utilizing the moment when the young woman was too tensed up and lacked the relaxation and peace of mind needed to pull off her talented evasive maneuvers. Chiya stumbled and landed on her bottom.
"Fire Style: Prideful Roar!" Yushijin exclaimed, shouting the last part of the name of his technique out like a king of the jungle let his roar roam wild and free. It was not just a mere shout, the airwaves coming out from Yushijin's lungs were superheated to the point of where even standing in a respectful distance, surrounded by hell itself, Mana could perfectly sense the radiating heat from the leader of Team Fir.
Skin began peeling off from Chiya's flesh, in mere moments, the chunks and strands of her flesh followed, peeling off from her bones but instead of turning to dust, her bones and fleeting flesh and skin dissolved into droplets of blood and evaporated into a mist that utterly reeked of iron, the stench was overwhelming even in a hellscape drowning in lingering iron dust that filled one's lungs with metallic powder with every breath and summoned irritating and cutting coughs. As each particle came up and down, it tend to slice at the gentle airway membranes, like hundreds of thousands of microscopic daggers moving up and down one's innards. Even in such a nightmare, Chiya's blood managed to reek of iron.
The blood reformed in a pillar-shaped whirl that reached the sky and split the iron clouds for just a moment of their brief existence. Chiya separated the vortex of blood with a swipe of her hand and emerged from the crimson whirlpool, charging at Yushijin with bloody murder in her eyes. Metallic fingers wrapped up around the young woman's head somewhere midway through, only her crimson-sky irises and pitch-black moon pupils shined through from within the iron cage of Mizoma's closed clutch. The titanic man swung his opponent around in mid-air like a wet blanket and smacked her around him, the wounds all over the man forced the barely living revenant to release his hold and tend to his own aches, however.
Yushijin's illusion had ended the moment that the Konoha swordsman had decided to use another technique. There was no way that the leader of Team Fir, one of the pair of genin proven skilled enough to ascend during the Chuunin Exams unparalleled in their scale and difficulty, would not have known such a simple fact – he used the recovery of his enemy and the mutual hatred of this three-way as an improvised defensive measure.
Even if the magician had no interest in meaningless fighting, just for a blink of an eye she wondered who truly would have won between the two of them. Her strategic and analytical abilities that Mana had always counted on in a fight she could not avoid turned bleak and pale in front of Yushijin's. It may not have served as much of an advantage as the magician thought it would have been in such an unfortunate clash.
A sound of string reeling distracted Mana from the complete mayhem of the Blood Lagoon, Team Fir and the Hozuki group attempting to utterly murder one another. With a wooden slam, a large box shut around Mizoma with strings reeling around it, littered with explosive tags that one by one detonated, creating a chain explosion that obliterated the entire box and threw both Yushijin and Chiya aside from the might and intensity of it. It was a trapping technique, one that required enough preparation to force the user to seal it within a scroll first. No wonder Mana sensed Erumo's chakra so consistently and nearby – it must have been her scroll that caused this.
"It's over, Mizoma, the Chinoike will live on." A pale, tall and slim young man with a cross-sword held in his left hand that bled all over its blade ridges coloring it copper declared to a seemingly lifeless and voiceless cloud of iron dust and debris left over from Erumo's performance.
Erumo and the other Blood Lagoons have finally regrouped with their allies and were now willing to commit to the final push with their forces clamped together.