Mana's eyes switched between observing the proud expressions of the Daisushi Brothers now that they've revealed the greatest ace up their sleeve and the disgruntled Allied Ninja who only now had the full picture of the pickle they were in.
The frustration of the Allied Ninja was not uniform, however. Junichi was the one with the most predictable ire shining from his face. Mollay appeared to be more hesitant than he was intimidated. Mana had seen that expression on the faces of ninja that had ample skill though couldn't make a decision as to which one of them to employ next, given that the right choice would have broken them through on to the path to victory whereas the wrong one would have sealed their fate for good.
In a welcome change, Shitaka was neither rocking out, cringing nor was he shouting and flipping the enemy off. It was a rare moment of reservation for the young man, one that Cailar, another flamboyant and expressive ninja also shared with his occasional ally.
"We can still defeat the enemy," Mana tried helping the squad of Allied Ninja to pick themselves back up. "Tenketsu Shinto techniques require manipulation of every minuscule particle it affects. Such a method places an ever-growing strain on the enemy's body. If we just push the enemy to use the technique over and over again, we can exhaust and defeat them."
"Maybe. Maybe not…" Junichi spat to the side. "We've still got a decent trip to the Lightning Country. We will need that strength on our journey, that's even if we can afford to play games of attrition with these guys and hope to win them."
"Wind Style: Blade of the East!" Euruston yelled out after extending his hands outward and blowing out a tunnel of compressed air through which invisible slashing wind projectiles beamed through, looking to slice and shred any unfortunate soul trapped within the wind tunnel.
Mollay focused the chakra to his feet and released it in a single pulse, resonating through the ground which allowed him to take a robust leap up and over the tunnel. He had ascended just high enough for the stream of wind to have subsided by the time that he'd land back down. It was something that the Daisushi Brothers had planned for, however, as Shaphyr, the Wind of the West, rushed in beside his brother and turned his head around in a vertical circle as he blew picking up a gale of wind from his own vigorous lungs alongside his brother.
"Wind Style: Break of the West!" Shaphyr howled out in a booming proclamation of the name of his technique that echoed inside the rotating gale that arced like a hooked strike and looked to bash against the airborne ninja.
A sharp sound of steel wire reeling between Cailar's hands brought up the possibility of a sound rescue before the arcing draft would bash the airborne Allied Ninja back down to the shredding tunnel of wind but Nanotus was in there, hitting Cailar with a running lariat that sent the ninja who was not used to a close-range engagement sliding back and into the crumbling wall of thick woods on the other side of the clearing.
Mana's shape dissolved into flower petals, serving as a temporary distraction to the Daisushi Brothers who expected to be attacked now that the magician managed to slip away from their sight with her illusion. They did not expect Mana's shape to instead re-assemble just in front of the rushing blast of wind with her arms spread out wide, forming her own protective bubble of Wind Release chakra.
Before Mana could even call out the name of her Magic Bubble Jutsu, let alone form it at a respectable enough rank to block the enemy's own B-Rank ninjutsu, her bubble of Wind Release chakra popped as if it had been caught between two powerful hands and squeezed tight, offering all the measly resistance of a balloon. There was no visual indicator of the overwhelming blunt force that hit Mana head-on, though everything seemed to blank out for a second. By the time Mana recovered, she was flying back and spinning with no control, about to complete the arc and begin plunging back down.
Instead of the rough landing of dirt and grass meeting her face and her spine bending in all sorts of awkward angles, threatening to snap at either of its multiple peculiar bending positions, Junichi caught Mana just before her landing. The man grunted in pain. A rude yank pulled out the figurative ground beneath the young woman's feet before she could even get used to it as Peiras had locked his arms in a sleeper hold around Junichi's head from his exposed back.
Mana flopped onto the ground like a recently pulled out carp though she rolled and returned to her feet, looking to force her head to stop spinning so that she could rush in to help Junichi before Peiras chokes him out. Her hand basically moved on its own, it was hungry for action, looking for stimulation as it had been used all throughout Mana's life. A handful of steel-tipped cards spun around in a curved trajectory, looking to curve just around Junichi's neck and pin the enemy behind him.
Peiras pulled the large Allied Ninja up, demonstrating impressive physical dominance as he manhandled the subdued opponent and fell on his own back, wrapping his feet around Junichi's abdomen and coiling around him like a roided out constrictor. Knowing that Mana was just in front of them, Peiras rushed on to putting his enemy to sleep, using his right elbow he attempted to bash at Junichi's head though the Konoha veteran retained enough consciousness to turn his head and use all of his remaining bodily strength to wrestle out of the one arm that restrained his neck.
A resonating cascade of glass-shattering pops and a decrepit hissing sound of spreading clouds of gas came from the other side of the clearing where Shitaka attempted to nail his enemy with some more of his sealed jar projectiles. Those burst open with hazy clouds of purple, likely poisonous or, at the very least noxious, material. While the spread and attack speed of the Allied Ninja's tools were admirable, the enemy's ability to transform their bodies into living whirlwinds negated his attempt at poisoning them as the trio merely transformed their bodies into vortexes of howling gusts and absorbed the clouds within themselves, scattering harmless smoke and dropping the powder present within them down onto the grass before they took back their human shapes.
"Don't assume that we will pull our punches just because you throw yourself into harm's way," Peiras clenched his fist raised out as a warning to Mana. "It doesn't make a difference if we kill you before or after we capture you. It's just that living targets pay out more than dead, such is the unwritten code of bounties."
Mana kind of figured that much already, those two that attacked her back in the village looking for the bounty that the leader of the Diamond Hand syndicate had put on her head from within his prison walls didn't seem awfully worked up about having to melt Mana's insides.
"I'm not going to let you kill anyone," Mana declared without much forethought of how ridiculous her proclamation might have sounded or how doubtful she was of her own ability to make that proclamation true. The Allied Ninja would have had no qualms about killing these four brothers either and wouldn't have cared too much about Mana's request to spare them. It would be near impossible to prevent deaths on either side, especially in a clash this wild.
"I don't really see how that is in any way up to you," Peiras fixed his wristbands as his lower abdomen became transparent. As dust, torn out blades of grass and scooped up leaves began whirling around Peiras' lower body, it became evident that he had used his Tenketsu Shinto technique on his lower body, rushing in on the pair of ninja as if he was riding the miniature typhoon he himself had created.
Junichi had been on the field for far too long and had taken one too many mean bumps to be caught by a mere speed and momentum boost. Peiras' taijutsu style was powerful yet elementary and a genin would have been able to see through its movements, though avoiding them would have been a whole different matter entirely. Regardless, Junichi's instincts in combination with Mana's training in evasion and acrobatics allowed the pair to dance around Peiras' measly attempts to hit them before Junichi had realized he has had enough and clocked the rogue monk in the face with a stiff cross to his nose. Peiras' shape dispersed in a disembodied gale of wind before appearing behind Junichi.
Mana's feet wrapped around Peiras' throat, squeezing them with all of the augmented strength that Mana could muster while keeping the integrity of her chakra network safe. The ninja magician placed her hands around Peiras head, letting her Magician's Touch technique resonate through her body as she sent a focused jolt through Peiras brain and shifted her weight to flip the imbalanced giant off his feet, driving him into the floor before returning to her own feet with a roll off of him. The young woman spared one glance at her fallen opponent as she fixed her gloves.
"That was a nice move. I haven't seen that jutsu anywhere before," Junichi looked to Mana, wondering if the young woman understood how rare such an occasion was, even if he had encountered such an occasion twice that day.
"I invented it. It's the first A-Rank jutsu I've ever learned," Mana didn't turn her attention away from Peiras for a second, even if the fallen monk laid sprawled out and smoking on the ravaged grassland.
"A-Rank? It doesn't look like you've killed him…" Junichi shared Mana's interest in Peiras' condition, seeing some sickly life signs from the shocked ninja.
"That's not the idea with this technique. I do think it should have knocked him out though I didn't have a hold of his head for too long. If given enough time, I could have made him very dizzy and confused, delirious, vegetative, or even comatose," Mana explained.
"I guess those are your goals when you refuse to take a life…" Junichi stroke the back of his head, getting himself in Mana's shoes in his head and realizing what a pain fighting that way felt like.
Mollay placed his hands onto the ground, raising a dome of dirt that looked to enclose over the bundled-up enemy though the trio of the Daisushi Brothers scattered into invisible drafts of wind and away from harm. The upper bodies of Nanotus and Shaphyr appeared in front of and behind the distracted Allied Ninja. The pair were still rotating, riding the current of wind of the localized hurricanes the pair rode in on as they delivered a pair of lariats from different directions.
Instead of the pleasant fleshy sound of a beheading that the pair of rogue monks intended to hear, came out a noise of shattering glass a miniature lightning storm erupted from it and consumed the pair, shocking them and making their muscles contract and twitch without any of their own control. As the two Daisushi Brothers observed their intended target, they noticed a layer of clay slipping off of Mollay's skin, allowing him to avoid similar shocking results.
"That was a totally rocking combo! Talk about lightning in a bottle!" Shitaka slid on the moist grass, rocking out his head and pumping the sky with horns formed with his hands. It would have been naïve to expect the moment of maturity he displayed earlier to last.
"You two enjoy tampering with your molecular structures, let's see how you like it when someone else does it?" Mollay clapped his hands together as he ascended up to the air and lowered his hands, aiming at the two fallen foes. "Transmogrification Release: Petrification Wave!"
A vertical cylinder of clear-white beamed down howling as the bright flash from a spark between Mollay's hands manifested into a solid light construct that entrapped the pair of Daisushi Brothers within and, despite their best efforts, made the pair exclaim in pain as their skin dried out and began turning to stone. At first, their petrification took its time, formed brittle layers of dried dirt out of the brothers' skin cells though once the transmogrifying beam of light began irradiating its full might, the change completed in a snap.
"B-Brothers!" Euruston yelled out, the hand that he reached out toward the tunneling light with trembled as he saw erected statues of stone remaining of his petrified siblings. The East Wind of the Daisushi Brothers looked to his side to see his other brother sitting up, clutching his splitting head. With the assortment of injuries that Peiras had accumulated, he'd likely not be the threat he used to be.
"He's up!?" Mana exclaimed in shock.
"A tough bastard…" Junichi grunted, beginning to go through his own hand seals.
"Wind Style:…" Euruston yelled out, looking to intercept the veteran Allied Ninja with his swift Wind Release ninjutsu technique. Before the tunnel of howling wind could form and Euruston could blow out the air he had inhaled, his wrists clutched together bound by steel wire.
Using the other end of the steel wire loop he used to entrap the Daisushi Brother, Cailar aimed to flip the enemy over his shoulder and slam him against the ground before he could fully subdue the opponent but Euruston dissolved into a vortex of slashing wind that tore the steel wire binding him to shreds, pulling the remaining steel wire out of Cailar's hands and ripping it to threads as well.
"It will be difficult to breathe in for your Fire Style technique when air freezes to a frigid block inside your lungs – Wind Style: North Breeze!" Peiras managed to slip in a taunt and outspeed Junichi on the draw as well, although, the only thing absolute about his technique was the nothing that happened after his bold proclamation of chilling intent. "H-Huh…?" the rogue monk muttered in bafflement of the fact that his technique did not come out.
"Fire Style: Blazing Eleven!" Junichi chanted out, blasting the ramparts of Peiras' stout chest and dropping the imposing giant on his back with patches of burnt, darkened skin and no signs of consciousness. A trace of chakra still smoldered in his system though with just that much even if he had woken up, he'd have been of little threat on the field.
Before the Allied Ninja could breathe out a sigh of relief after reducing the presence of the enemy force down to a minimum, sharp laughter cut through the dominant silence, coming from Euruston's direction. Throwing his eyes around the battlefield and sharing his attention with the petrified statues of his two brothers as well as his brought down eldest brother, the Last Wind of the Daisushi Brothers looked more like a madman than a combatant.
Still, the Allied Ninja didn't drop their guard, suspecting Euruston of still holstering a wild card given his boost of confidence.
"You fools! Do you have any idea what you just did!?" Euruston spread his arms out, leaving himself wide open as he boasted. "You've just made me the strongest Daisushi Brother by the process of elimination!"
"Congratulations, dude!" Shitaka's voice made Euruston's ecstasy turn to shock given how it came from right behind him. The rocking Allied Ninja slammed a pair of jars at Euruston's head from behind him, beating them like a pair of drums. The white cloud of smoke leaving the shattered jars brought Euruston down for the count, suppressing his chakra to a meager flock of sparks as the rogue ninja fell to a deep slumber.
"Are they…?" Mana pointed at the petrified statues while looking at Mollay. The pale and round ninja looked away looking defensive about being forced to answer that question.
"Every element of their body turned to stone. If I do it soon enough, I can turn them back though I have no intention of doing so. We have better things to do than to worry about two more rogue ninja that we can just abandon as monuments of their own failure," Mollay objected to being asked that and walked away from the two humanoid statues frozen in terror.
Mana took a moment to wonder how she took this end of the pair of Daisushi Brothers. They weren't technically killed, just transformed and the process was reversible for a while. Mollay wasn't a murderer just yet though Mana lacked a technique that could have reversed the transformation. Earth Release was an elemental nature she had little to nothing to do with.
"Don't beat your head about it. It ain't murder the way I see it. Murder is taking someone's life. The life of these two wasn't taken away, it was transformed. The best you can stretch this to is that their births as humans of flesh and blood have been revoked," Junichi tried comforting Mana by pressing against her shoulder and nudging her toward their direction. Nothing in his words really helped ease the heavy feeling on her chest.
"We're just going to leave them here?" Mana wondered, trying to change the subject so that she could contemplate her thoughts on disposing of an enemy this way sometime when she has the needed peace of mind.
"We've got no time to bring them in to a bounty exchange point. Most of our own heads are wanted around black market bounty exchange points too. Whatever gang these bozos work for won't stop coming for you either. It's for the best that we move on and make our way toward the eastern coast of Lightning Country as soon as possible," Junichi replied. There was no doubt or hesitation in his call, something told Mana this wasn't his first time fleeing from trouble such as this nor did the veteran of the Allied Ninja expect it to be his last.
"By the way, rock star, we'd have appreciated the heads up about that bounty and some gang of whackos being after you!" Shitaka nudged Mana with his elbow, chuckling to himself despite having suffered some mean bruises in the brawl.
"I knew about the bounty but… This Nine Tales Gang stuff is new," Mana shrugged. "I didn't know the size of the said bounty. I'd have never thought it to be enough to attract this sort of fish…"
"It doesn't matter," Mollay dismissed the banter and gestured for the ninja to keep moving despite serving as the punching bag for the Daisushi Brothers the longest out of all of the Allied Ninja. "This is why the five of us came as the escort squad in the first place."
The Allied Ninja and their recruit resumed their trip, turning north-east on the clearing and deciding to take the less-traveled and rougher, more direct road toward the Lightning Country. With the corrected direction they were heading in, they'd hit Otogakure by next morning.