A bubble of transparent force burst around Junichi's body, blowing away the smoldering tongues from Nanotus' combination of Wind and Fire Release that required constant upkeep of chakra to fend off. Like fighting against genjutsu, this was a potential way to fend it off, however, it might have been more effort for what a measly after effect was worth. This much flexing suggested that Junichi was going for something more serious this time.
"Sealing Technique: Two-Minute Gold!" Junichi chanted out, emitting a mighty burst of golden-colored intensity from his body that focused and drew back down, focusing around the enemy. The Daisushi Brothers lifted their arms up and resisted the closing of their entrapment.
The brothers' arms flexed and worked overtime. The tension flowed up and down their entire bodies as their taxed muscles began shaking and their expressions twisted to reflect the laborious task that they were taking up but they held the golden sphere from sealing them into a mere ball of energy to be disposed of through sheer physical force.
"All of their silly antics, we might have underestimated them. To be able to prevent the Two-Minute Gold from closing while still shocked and partly stunned by Mana's technique…" Cailar flicked a messy strand of his hair with his hand before sighing and raising up his palm in front of the enemy.
"Ninja Style: Lightning Net!" Cailar chanted out, flinging kunai with steel wire attached to their rings all across the stage, focusing more on flinging a wild number of the knives rather than trying to aim them well. In fact, most of the blades flew off into the cover of the forest and etched into the woods there. Once his setup was complete, Cailar grabbed a strand of the steel wire and let his body jolt with Lightning Release chakra, aiming to shock anyone caught in his net of steel wire.
The surge of Cailar's Lightning Net destroyed what struggling remains were left of Junichi's sealing technique though it did end up covering the entirety of the enemy force in the trap, due to their limited potential to resist or elude it since Mana had them already hazy and Junichi's jutsu had them trapped in place.
"M-More Lightning Release?" Euruston, the East Wind of the Daisushi Brothers, growled writhing on the ground while his body spat out unruly electric sparkles. His entire nervous system was being taken to its limits by one Lightning Release technique sieging it after another.
"I've powered through it before. I shall do so now as well!" Peiras roared out as he stood up and flexed picturesque build to force the Lightning Release traces out from his body using nothing but the sheer power of the intense physicality present inside his body.
"D-Damn it… Peiras!" Nanotus rolled on the ground, struggling to repeat the excellent resistance against the paralyzing effects of the enemy ninjutsu like his brother. "Just wait… Until I recover…"
"That's… Nothing, Peiras…" Shaphyr growled through his teeth. "This doesn't mean… Nothing… I'm still stronger than you!"
"I don't know," Mana shrugged. "You guys do look quite pathetic. Your brother is clearly the one with the strong genes in the family."
Junichi turned to the magician with a confused look. He had never heard the magician sound this bratty and use mockery to belittle her opponents. He hadn't known her that long during her ninja career, but, based on what he had experienced working with Mana once as well as his memories of the girl as a little kid, he couldn't quite connect the dots with her current behavior and her general personality.
"Hmph… You see, brothers, even our target acknowledges the fact. Thank you, Mana. I knew you'd see reason, you are, after all, deserving of the bounty on your head," Peiras, the North Wind of the Daisushi Brothers, nodded in acknowledgment of the girl's declaration.
"Dammit, Peiras, I've had it up to here with your vanity! Have at you!" Nanotus jumped onto his feet and threw a right cross straight at his brother's jaw. Peiras leaned down under and socked Nanotus in his gut right back. The confused brother wheezed when all air left his body and collapsed on his knees, tongue sticking out and doing his best to catch even the smallest trace of air.
"You think you're better than us!? You've always thought you're better than us!" Shaphyr jumped onto his feet and breathed in, hesitant to repeat his brother's mistake and half-assing his attack against Peiras. The West Wind of the Daisushi Brothers clapped his hands together and let a vociferous roar out from the bottom of his lungs.
"Wind Release: Great Breakthrough!" he yelled out as an overwhelming force hit his brother Peiras head-on and threw him like a ragdoll smashing through the woods on the other side of the clearing, raising a ruckus and leaving trails of devastated land wherever he flew by.
"What are you doing, brothers? This is no time to engage in our legendary rivalry! We have a mission on our hands and we must complete it if we are to ascend past our reputation amongst the Nine Tales Gang ranks!" Euruston pleaded with his more hotheaded and easily confused brothers.
"I see, nice thinking," Junichi nodded with a compliment that was weak in volume so that the enemy wouldn't get the confirmation of the fact that Mana was just playing them like cords, based on the snippets of their conversation she'd heard and taken to heart.
"Using the personalities of your opponents against them, so devious…" Cailar licked his lips. "That's just the kind of stuff that'll save your life on the field."
"Yo, sick, shredded monk dudes, don't you get rocking without me! Ninja Style: Heart of Fire!" Shitaka yelled out at the confused lot of rogue ninja monks as he pulled out a jar that was wrapped in tight leather and charged at the enemy with the package in hand. Euruston's hands were fast for someone so bulky.
"Wind Release: Blade of the East!" he yelled out. A tunneling stream of a gust running in the opposite direction halted Shitaka on his feet as slicing blades of compressed air rushed through the stream, slashing at anything it caught in its path. An arcing streak of red splashed and scattered into the turbulence of the wind stream as Shitaka collapsed on the ground. His package rolled aside from his twitching hand.
"Can't you see, brothers, the little witch girl is just playing us to try and sick us on each other. She doesn't truly see Peiras as the strongest, or any of us, not until we show her the full extent of our power," Euruston reasoned with his brother, grabbing hold of Nanotus' rugged and hairy head and pressing his forehead against his own as he drove his brother's greasy body closer for a momentary embrace that would cool both of their heads.
A roar followed a cascade of loud, wooden crashes as Peiras burst forth from the woods with streaks of crimson running down his face and the cuts over his impressive musculature. His chest and his arms. His baggy pants were littered with tears and holes as well and the pearly whites of the pissed off Daisushi Brother didn't make for a fitting match for his grey beard and hairdo.
"The nasty tricks of these Allied Ninja might have made beginning our stomp difficult but employ anything less but your full power at your own peril, lest you be judged upon the merits solely of the power you've shown to the enemy at that time!" Peiras clenched his fists before relaxing them and swinging them in a circle as he eased his breath and prepared for a larger jutsu that he had shown up to that time.
"Transmogrification Release: Dirty Dome!" Mollay grumbled as he lifted his arm up and allowed a whirl of white, glowing matter form a twisting, shuriken-like shape before he drove it into the ground and expanded an ethereal, dome shape around his teammates that appeared like a protective dome.
"Wind Release: Absolute North!" Peiras thrust his hands outward as if lobbing a gigantic snowball. His roar picked up speed and strength but it was not the sheer velocity of his wind that was truly troublesome about his jutsu. It was the cold that sunk the entire battlefield in a haze-like state of misty white. Ending up hit by such a technique spelled out certain, frosty doom to anyone foolish enough to be caught in it, and given how the channel of the enemy's force was none other than the wind itself, it seemed rather problematic to avoid.
And yet, whatever curious barrier Peiras had formed around the squad appeared to work its goofy magic. As the wind hit the surface of the barrier, it didn't appear as if the transparent energy dome posed any resistance to it, though frost and the chills that the wind had brought in quickly turned to just splatters of mud that vexed the team caught inside the mud bath though it was a favored alternative to freezing in every way matter could have been frozen in a split instant.
"Madness, what manner of trick was that!?" Peiras breathed out a heavy breath that drove his hands dangling by his side and slobber littering his lips and thick beard. The eldest of the Daisushi Brothers employed the back of his hand to wipe it off his face.
"A Bloodline Selection ability?" Mana stood in total awe of the esteemed Allied Ninja she found herself in the presence of.
"That's right, Mollay is one of the few rare individuals to possess the ability to combine three nature releases into one, exceptionally powerful nature," Junichi nodded. "It makes Mollay the man to fear amongst the entirety of the Allied Ninja."
"Heh, all that power, all that cool and yet you couldn't save your own country from being obliterated by a giant sky laser…" Cailar chuckled earning a gruesome stare from Junichi that suggested that the flamboyant Allied Ninja had finally crossed the line.
"Why would I have saved Iwagakure? That was not my assignment at the time as an Allied Ninja. I have surrendered my Iwagakure headband the moment I joined the Allied Ninja." Mollay stated with what would have seemed like an emotionless expression had it not been for a solitary vein popping out on Mollay's forehead, clear as day.
As much as Mana wanted to find out the exact ability that Mollay's Bloodline Selection had, how exactly did it turn an absolute zero blizzard into just a meek drizzle of mud, what its capabilities and limitations were, this was neither the place nor time to do so. The enemy would not wait for her to figure it out, nor did Mollay seem like the type to employ the necessary amount of crayons to explain it to her. She'd just have to observe the fused nature release at work in order to understand it.
Shitaka rolled on his side and then picked himself off the ground. He put up his dukes with one of his hands still clutching the package he had dropped earlier and ran at the enemy, greatly confusing them in the process. The Daisushi Brothers were physical brutes and challenging even one of them at taijutsu was a questionable venture with only a veteran such as Junichi being able to hold his own for a little while. Shitaka looked plenty puny underneath that thick layer of leather so Nanotus stepped out to smack the overzealous young man aside. The brave display of Nanotus prevented Euruston from employing his technique of slashing wind blades which he employed earlier, forcing Euruston to lower his arms from half-completing the motions necessary to call upon that technique again.
"Ninja Style: Heart of Fire!" Shitaka yelled out, diving underneath Nanotus and slipping underneath his groin as he appeared in between the trio of the East, South, and West Winds of the Daisushi Brothers.
A rotating pillar of flames burst from the package that Shitaka slammed against the ground. The force of the impact was sufficient to break whatever laid encased in all that protective leather and, as it appeared, the leather was not just a dry string of protective material as the rest of the Allied Ninja pinched their noses, suggesting that a smell highly unnatural for ordinary flames had filled the forest clearing.
When the blazes cleared out, revealing some singing damage on Shitaka's own leather outfit and significant patches of black littering the area where the Allied Ninja had detonated his unstable ninja tool, there was not a trace of the Daisushi Brothers to be seen in the immediate vicinity. It was only when the wind picked up and began bashing at the squad of Allied Ninja from unnatural directions, beating relentlessly from all sides, that the Allied Ninja receive a tip that they might have thought of celebrating the obliteration of their enemy prematurely.
"Wh-What is this? It's like the enemy is the wind itself…" Junichi grumbled as he could find no other way but to engage in a meaningless struggle against the wind. Once the gales have had enough of their shoves and yanks, they whirled around in four separate vortexes until they've settled down and formed the shapes of the four Daisushi Brothers.
"That's a Tenketsu Shinto technique," Mana gasped.
"A Tenketsu Shinto?" Junichi turned to Mana. He would have, under normal circumstances, have been pleasantly surprised by how knowledgeable this young lady was, perhaps, in some aspects, even more so than a veteran such as himself, though currently, he hated the predicament their squad found themselves in far more than to engage in compliments.
"It is an ability to use chakra to modify one's own body on a molecular level, namely, by utilizing a nature release technique with one's own body," Mana explained. Regalia from Sunagakure once showed a similar ability though Mana could only understand the novelty and sophistication of her technique after years of additional research in the archives.
"Well, well… And here I thought we had the black caviar of ninja techniques in Mollay. Who would have thought that the enemy had something to show of their own?" it seemed that Cailar was incapable of sounding like a normal human being for one second as even when he felt pressured to a corner he sounded like he was still poking fun at something or someone.
"I've modeled my Flower Petal Release genjutsu to work something like a Tenketsu Shinto," Mana pointed out. "Though I do not truly become a shower of flower petals, I merely place my opponents under the illusion that suggests that I do. That is the difference."
"Very well, brothers, perhaps we should save our feud for when we have the witch girl captured. Once she's subdued, she'll be able to tell us which one of us is stronger," Shaphyr, the West Wind of the Daisushi Brothers, sighed in exasperation, having been the last one that still showed signs of wanting to lash out at his own brothers to settle their rivalry.
"I'm glad you finally know the reason," Peiras nodded in acknowledgment of his brother's resolution.
"Well then, let us pound the enemy to dust and be done with it!" Shaphyr clapped his hands before raising his open palms and thrusting them at the same time as he let out a kiai shout with each successive palm thrust. "Wind Style: Fist of the West!" he roared out once his flurry of Wind Release ninjutsu blows was well in play.
Mollay covered himself up in a stout, cross-shaped block while clapping his feet together and erecting a dome of Earth Release around himself to aid him in his defense. The gale fists rushing him were tough to make out, though with her chakra sensory Mana would have been the absolute worst opponent to be targeted with this technique. The rest, on the other hand, seemed rather taken aback by it, making it their lucky break that the jutsu was not too accurate and whiffed both Junichi and Shitaka.
The barrier of dirt burst in an outward pop while the fist of blunt gale smashed Mollay to the ground, drilling him and driving him into a small crater. The gale fist became easier to make out moments before its dissolution once a streak of blood from Mollay's nose covered its side but the vital liquids then splattered across the nearby grassland once the gale fist lost its shape and dispersed.
"They've realized that Mollay is the most dangerous of us all. They'll be trying to take him out first," Junichi alerted his squad mates as the Daisushi Brothers scattered and attacked the Allied Ninja in close distance. They took their time measuring the worth of their enemy before doing so but at this point, they all realized that they had the physical superiority against the Allied Ninja that they seemed to have at the first glance.
Junichi put up his arms and bent his hands behind his elbow, forming a sharp, triangular shape of his head that served him well in driving Euruston's jabs and crosses off of his head and opened his opponent up for quick countering strikes. It wasn't long before Junichi's hands grabbed hold of Euruston's head and slapped the balance out of the imposing combatant before driving Euruston's face down to his rising knee strike and sent the brute rolling back on the grass, reeling and clutching his busted open nose.
Mollay did not seem to be able to read Nanotus' mindless rampage at all. A rushing lariat sent Mollay down on the ground while the tall monk lifted his opponent off the ground by his shoulders and kicked him up like a ball of rags before grabbing his chubby opponent out of the air and slamming him back down into the ground before proceeding to pummel the possessor of the Bloodline Selection technique while he was down.
Shaphyr's storm of fists was not something that Cailar was ready for either. It was a martial arts as simple as they came but Shaphyr was so well versed in just throwing fists and employing all of his physical strength and speed at once without offering the enemy the necessary time to utilize any proper counters to such a simplistic martial arts style that they might have had that Cailar just had little to no chance. The only saving grace of the flamboyant Allied Ninja was that the enemy did not seem to employ his feet or knees at all, which helped Cailar cling to consciousness when he fell down on his knees and helped him get back up by rolling down and under his opponent's relentless flurry of strikes.
Peiras' style of physical body manipulation looked painful just watching it happen. The eldest of the Daisushi brothers used the entirety of his body, unlike Shaphyr, and his particular style of combat appeared to utilize a more wrestling styled moveset though Peiras used his body to manipulate that of the opponent's to bend them and strike them when they were in uncomfortable holds. Shitaka bent and fell like an autumn leaf once Peiras brought this unique style of his to the rebellious ninja.
The Allied Ninja were in a desperate need for an x-factor.