"Mana-san!" Usubane turned to Mana, looking for a battle plan or follow-up orders. The last time that Mana tried something, she got caught off-guard, which didn't happen too often, and prompted the ninja rabbit's distressed reaction.
"Keep the genjutsu specialist occupied for a few seconds. I need some time for hand seals and it seems like she won't even give me the few seconds I need," Mana said. Usubane and Usuzoku crossed up, each aiming toward a different target with Usuzoku turning toward the lumbering Gwirlon, whereas the speedy Usubane signed herself up to keep the illusionist of the enemy group busy.
Whatever the other two tried, Mana trusted in the ability of the Serenity Arcana to hold it off and give her some time to cast her techniques. This was the first time in a while that Mana had that problem. She had honed her hand seal speed to heights that very few ninja could have rivaled. Still, complicated illusions like her demanded quite a few hand seals and the enemy ranks were numerous.
"Serenity Arcana!" Mana chanted out, extending her hand and ordering the ethereal magic stage to initiate an attack. She had spent a sizeable amount of chakra comparable to her most powerful illusions on this powerful level of armor ninjutsu. This was Mana's first time using Serenity Arcana at the third stage level, so she was a tad curious to see just how powerful it was.
Gloved, cartoonish hands attached to springs of pure chakra expanded outward, chasing down the oddly shaped shinobi who acted as the leader of the enemy group. Either that or he was just the biggest loudmouth. The enemy vaulted to the side with the aid of his beefy right arm, weaving a one-handed hand seal and spouting out a spew of dirt from his mouth. The curtains of Serenity Arcana shut down, forming a layer of chakra construct armor around the stage magician while thousands of airborne swords formed all around the armored stage.
With a sharp hiss through the air and a hefty thud, they slammed into the ground. The skewered enemy ninja splattered blood as Mana had pinned down his leg in between the bone and the back of his calf, and a few other non-lethal but crippling areas she went for. Just when Mana thought about opening up the curtain and resuming the casting of her illusions, the skewered ninja collapsed into a pile of sludge. Evidently enough, he substituted himself with one of his pawns.
"Earth Style: Impure Desserts!" the ninja chanted out from the side, planting his two open palms at the ground and causing it to rumble. Whatever he did to the ground, it had turned it to mushy sludge that gave birth to muddy limbs that sprung forth from the bog of rot he had made. Seeing six mud-men take a stand in between her and the enemy and browsing the ground for leaves or discarded strings of dirty cloth to throw onto themselves forced Mana to resign to dealing with them first before challenging the enemy ninja.
"Rabbit Style: Double Draw!" Usuzoku chanted out, hitting the enemy ninja square in the jaw with his claymore. Because of the intense chakra augmentation used to withstand the attack, the drawing slash caused mostly blunt damage and left Gwirlon's lower jaw to dangle awkwardly. Despite the gruesome injury, the enemy put up his shoulder and charged onward with a bellowing call for violence.
Usuzoku rolled on his knees and slammed the scabbard at the back, sending Gwirlon falling on one knee while the ninja rabbit flipped over the back and sought to stamp his feet onto the front of the enemy's face which stood a decent chance of busting it thoroughly. Gwirlon put his arm up. Where normally even the arm of someone as massive as him wouldn't have grabbed Usuzoku out of thin air, with all the various blades and steel tools sticking out from Gwirlon's arm expanding at the same time to form a scrap-iron arm of sorts, the various tools all snapped closed around Usuzoku while chakra coating flowed through them, preventing the rabbit from powering himself out of the hold.
Gwirlon cackled while pitching the rabbit aside like a ball of rags to slam against the chunk of debris while he charged onward again to crush Usuzoku in between the debris he smashed into and the adamant shoulder of the rushing handicapped ninja whose limbs seemed to be more implanted tools than his own flesh and bone. Despite taking a mean hit at the scrapped debris, Usuzoku had enough left in him to recover in time and take a skyward leap with his unmatched feet that easily put him over his lumbering opponent.
Butterflies swarmed out from behind Gloyfan again, fluttering their wings and showcasing their complex and artistic patterns that served as a genjutsu focus. Usubane staggered on her feet while her mouth gaped ever so slightly, suggesting a loss of control. Gloyfan reached down, scooping up a piece of debris that she rushed toward the tripping rabbit with, looking to slam it into Usubane as hard as possible and, hopefully, behead her. In an illusionary stupor, most bodies couldn't apply proper chakra augmentation, so Usubane may have been just as durable as an ordinary rabbit while affected.
"Stop daydreamin'!" Usuzoku grumbled out, dashing past Usubane and tapping her in the back just before the woman could slam the chunk of debris in. An invisible pulse of chakra passed through the body of the hot-headed rabbit, dispelling the illusion with another foreign influx of disruptive chakra pulse as the young rabbit snapped awake.
"Usuzoku-sensei! But… If you're here…" Usubane muttered out before realizing that Gwirlon was charging across the entire scrapyard with his arm transformed into a spinning drill that busted through any chunk of discarded debris and natural boulders alike. The spunky rabbit jumped aside and tripped up Gloyfan with a quick thrust of her foot at the ankle. Moving aside, the rabbit swordsman and his pupil regrouped.
What they didn't expect to see was just how reckless and mindless Gwirlon was with his charge. Gloyfan shrieked out some obscenities his way, but the mindless man rushed right past her, impaling his own comrade on his drill. Had he not had the decency to halt the reckless spinning, the drill would've shredded Gloyfan to bits.
"You asshole!" Gloyfan's voice resonated from the collected scrap pile where she picked up the scrap chunk from before. The corpse spouting blood from the wound and vomiting it profusely in inhuman quantities on Gwirlon's improvised drill puffed into a dusty cloud and revealed itself to be the scrap chunk that the woman attempted to use as a bashing tool against Usubane.
"Sensei now's our chance!" Usubane proclaimed. Before waiting for her master's approval, the young hothead charged out. "Fire Style: Hot Feet!" she yelled out, igniting a flame over the furrier parts over her calves and feet while delivering a roundhouse kick that lashed at both the thoughtless juggernaut and the illusionist woman. Chasing her lucky chance, Usubane kicked off the ground emitting a fiery halo from the bottom of her feet, and charged up in pursuit of the airborne Gloyfan.
"Rabbit Style: Hot Rabbit Combo!" Usubane chanted out while delivering a series of punches and kicks with enflamed fists and feet that left scorch marks over Gwirlon's body. This was a perfect time to strike with all her intensity as the ninja was the most vulnerable after a Substitution Jutsu–when their body suffered the after-effects of the hi-speed movement necessary to replace themselves with an object.
Gloyfan slammed into the ground in a glorious fireball while Usubane vaulted back, having propelled off of her opponent before her fall to return to a position on her feet. She turned to the magician with a signal, looking for Mana's eyes. She found them occupied with dealing with the ceaseless human wave tactics of the mud-men rushing straight toward the Serenity Arcana and slamming right into it with their best attempts at cracking it.
Despite not looking at her student, Mana sensed fluctuations in Gwirlon's chakra signature. Her body had spent a decent amount to augment her body and prevent irreparable burns and having every bone in her body busted to dust. This was her chance if she wanted to disable the user of the mud-men technique. Mana weaved the "Tiger" hand seal and released a gentle whistle into the air. Wasting no time before forming a pleasant tune out of her whistling.
"What… The…?" the rogue ninja employing the mud-men wheezed out as pleasant sensations passed down his body from head to toe. The tune carried traces of Mana's chakra seeping right at the man's brain, where they had direct access to any pressure point the magician wanted.
"Genjutsu: Sweet Lullaby!" Mana sang out while transitioning into serene humming. The Serenity Arcana magic stage dissolved one stage at a time, turning into separate tools before becoming just a sapphire-colored aura around the ninja magician and then completely returning to her body.
"Ye caught all 'o 'dems, didn't you?" Usuzoku sighed with relief after noticing that both other enemies froze in their tracks as well. That was when the brave rabbit warrior grabbed hold of his own abdomen and fell over on his back, beginning to writhe on the ground.
"Sorry, Zoku-chan, I guess you heard the tune too…" Mana sang out alongside her humming. In mid-collapse, Usubane vanished in a puff of smoke, returning to the new Rabbit Caves in the Forest of Death.
"Dis… Ain't over… Hatchling…" Usuzoku swore bloody vengeance upon Mana for the humiliation she rewarded him with for his services. Just barely, he powered through the immensely pleasurable sensations filling his entire body to return home and away from the area of effect of Mana's illusion. This brought a thought to Mana. What was she to do with these three now that they were writhing with all of their pleasure sensors going off at the same time?
A genjutsu she experimented with as a teen to aid her father deal with the pain of his injuries, now became more of a trap to herself than help to anyone else. A lesser ninja would have just slit everyone's throats and been done with it. But Mana neither had the intent to kill the enemy nor could spare the luxury of doing away with them.
She was also racing against time, as no matter how intense her genjutsu made the pleasures for her opponents, in time, they'd get used to the sensations and grow numb to it. After that time, they'd regain almost unimpaired movement once again, whereas now even trying to break out from the illusion would've been impossible.
"Spear Kick!" Mana yelled out, taking a bountiful leap through the space between her and the enemy that had been controlling the mud-men that must have reached Boulder Town by now. While the peacekeepers and her friends from Stars would've been ready for the attack and the peacekeepers and the Stars would've evacuated all the civilians to the furthest reaches of the town by then, she still didn't want to gamble on injury or deaths of the innocent.
After Mana's foot stamped the enemy ninja to the ground while the magician transitioned it into a push kick mid-flight, Mana finished her rotation. She was careful to monitor the rogue's body for any signs that he may have been free of the illusion or that the pain from her kick canceled out the pleasure. At a certain point of bodily punishment–her illusion would've stopped having an effect.
"Phalanx Kick!" Mana shouted out, revealing a flurry of Spear Kicks released by the dozen in a blindingly fast combination attack before she finished it with a spinning solebutt.
"You lack the oomph behind your girly blows, did anyone tell you that?" the semi-bald enemy ninja grumbled out while standing up with a drool of blood going down his nostril and his busted lips. Mana's kicks lacked no "oomph", he was just a bruiser type like Endo, not knowing just how badly he got roughed up with this knowledge, eluding him until he either passed out or passed away from the sum of the injuries. The least favorable type of opponent to face for someone who wished to protect her opponent from death as well as her allies.
The other ninja began recovering. Mana had become so reckless with her relentless flurry of brutal kicks that she had dropped a beat and given the enemy a chance to move. Gloyfan took that chance to dispel the illusion, whereas Gwirlon was just a bit too thick for illusions to have a full effect on him. Mana wagered he was seeing things that were not always there all the time, though she's been prepared for him and had scoped his mental condition out before committing to the battlefield.
"Summoning Jutsu!" Mana chanted out, rocking her head forward to roll her top hat off and plunging her white glove all the way to the bottom. With the hat filling up with white fluff, she had to force her hand out. One by one, the countless rabbits began flooding the ruined scrapyard.
"What in the…?" Gloyfan gasped, unable to comprehend the number of summons that Mana had called out to.
"Bunnies…" Gwirlon's tongue loosely slapped the right corner of his lip while the grumpy look on his mangled face softened. The handicapped ninja opened his hand, allowing an innocent, white furball to rest on it and turn toward him with an oversized pair of dichromatic eyes. Faced with the white bunny, Gwirlon found an expression just as goofy and thoughtless as that of his own.
"Ji-Ji…" Usujitsa's clone greeted the enemy ninja with a playful nod of his head before detonating with a shriek and a deafening blast.
The unintelligible, two-letter banter filled the atmosphere as the dread behind the fearsome and destructive abilities of the ruinous rabbit psychopath drove terror into the hearts of the enemy ninja. Now that the murderous rabbit was out of her hat, Mana would've struggled to control him even if she tried. Usujitsa's countless clones began hopping about. Playfully, testing every nook, cranny, and surface surrounding them with random yet uncompromising detonations sprinkled throughout.
"Stop!" Mana barked out an order firmly. Usujitsa appeared to listen to her voice at first. A circle of them turned at the magician, recognizing the terrifying young lady that had tamed the rabbit terrorist, whom all the other ninja rabbits feared like the plague. With one ring of white furballs turning their attention to Mana and pressing their cute little ears together, waiting for an order, the others followed the example set by those closest to the magician.
"That man… Break him," Mana pointed at the sausage-shaped man whose eyes widened with bloodshot edges as he began frantically waving his hands to the sides.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me…" he sighed as Usujitsa took it to the air, propelling himself and his thousands of clones up above with the unmatched lower leg strength of the ninja rabbits.
"Earth Style: Impure Desserts!" the enemy placed his palms to the ground, spitting in the face of mortal danger to taunt Mana with more mud-men. Instead of creating another small squadron like before, the Iwagakure nuke ninja disappeared inside of a mouth of a building-sized head of solid sludge which the Usujitsa explosive blizzard rained down upon.
A hail of blades came from the right. Gwirlon had staggered back to his feet with significant damage to his face and upper body, but he was using neither of those to attack Mana. Instead, he raised his hand and just made something break amongst the assemblage of blades and tools imbedded into the strips of his flesh, sending them hailing wildly toward the magician, cutting her as they whizzed past or embedding into Mana's body in her shoulder, her bicep, side, and thigh.
The splintered shrapnel was nowhere as large as the tools themselves. In addition, the pain only kicked Mana's body into overdrive and made her roll over and return to her feet with extra vigor. Yet, instead of the disfigured, sadistic, and bloodied grin of her opponent, Mana realized she was looking at a steel plate embedded into the ground and covered head to toe with butterflies. The problem with telling oneself not to look at their wings and the hypnotizing patterns on them was that the very thought came well after having looked at their wings and the hypnotizing patterns on them.
Mana felt weightless. It was just for a little second, just a meek moment, that she needed to comprehend the fact she was under a genjutsu and force it to dispel. Even if it took just a blink for her, Mana woke up in the mechanical limb assembled out of inter-connected tools. Disc saws rolled about Gwirlon's oversized arm, slicing his own flesh to ribbons but transporting the right tools to the right place to connect into the third arm of segmented metal that's been sticking out from the center of his own right one.
Mana screamed out when Gwirlon's iron-tight grip threatened to break every bone in her ribcage with such brutality that the force of grip transferred throughout her body in a resonating shock wave. Her tearing tendons and innards let out worrying grunge while blunt pops and cracks seemed to linger and wait for their chance to rear their haunting heads.
The head of sludge that served as a decent dome to protect Mana's prime target from Usujitsa's mindless rampage had collapsed, letting a handful of rabbits with crazed looks in their eyes slip in. The enemy ninja let out a grunt just as agonizing as Mana's when the blast force punched them through the head of their own sludge monster with enough force to cancel out his technique. The many Usujitsa clones stopped pursuing the fallen man and turned back to Mana, staring at her as she wriggled, kicked, and struggled in agony within the enemy's grip. This was the absolute last instance when Mana wanted to see Usujitsa form feelings of affection toward his summoner.
"Go…!" Mana cried out through the pain. "Make… That man cancel… His technique!"
"Ji…?" Usujitsa scratched his head, turning to a group of other Usujitsa standing lined up behind him. The clones exchanged an ungodly amount of Jis. Mana couldn't tell quite how many because of the torment she was in, extending every second to what felt like entire hours. Focusing during fits of such pain felt like a naïve dream.
"Selsig, are you still alive in there?" Gloyfan yelled out at her fallen ally, who seemed to float face-up in a collapsed mass of sludge of his own making. The man's eyes seemed to be whited out while his mouth gaped open but, in a snap, the ninja rolled on his front and began picking himself back up.
"That's right… You want me to cancel that jutsu, don't you?" Selsig coughed blood and a mouthful of his own teeth up. "Why don't you wriggle and fight harder for it, Konoha's Sorceress? I'm afraid, it can't be done while I'm conscious."
"P…Please…" Mana cried out, struggling against her own fair share of physical pain besides the guilt that was boiling her from inside. "I'll… I'll give up and come… Come quietly."
"A bit too late for that, isn't it? You've got nothing more to offer us but your notoriety. You've already caused us enough trouble, so it's about time we teach you a lesson and butcher every man, woman, and child in that town. I bet seeing you drenched in their blood will make Konoha and the Allied Ninja that much more eager to get involved in spanking Kumogakure for their war crimes, don't you think so?" Selsig chuckled through excessive drips of blood hanging loosely from the cracks and open gashes littering his body. "We have all the cards in our hands now and you've got nothing to offer us, so why should we give a fuck what you have to say to us? You're our hostage now, nothing more."
"Ji…!" Usujitsa turned around, picking up a stray string of bandage and wrapping it over his forehead like a protector as he turned to Selsig.
"You… You keep the fuck away from me, you damn maniac!" Selsig pointed his finger at the criminally insane rabbit. "If you don't, I'll just tell Gwirlon to crush your summoner!"
"Ji-Ji…" Usujitsa babbled out, looking Selsig straight in the eyes with a look of cold steel.
"Is… Is that a yes or a no? How can you even tell?" Gloyfan scratched her head and checked her hand for signs of blood. She took a few nasty bumps from Usubane's earlier beat down.
A whirling pillar of flames rose around Usujitsa, a jet that carried along thousands of clones. The clones with bloodthirsty faces, all craving destruction and to test the limit of the world around them by just running into everything around them and self-destructing. Seeing the blaze in their eyes, even the ruthless Selsig staggered back.