Toxi pounded his open palm, stretching himself out. Kaguya Yaban saw this as an opportunity to adjust his fighting stance so that he let Toxi's dangerous sister into his field of view. Something that the bulky Tsuchikage did not expect, however, was the young man clenching his own fist to the point of it letting out a forceful grunge and slamming it into his own shoulder.
While one may have assumed this to be a way for Toxi to psyche his opponent out, when the young man moved his fist further away, it became clear that the corrosive nature of the venom that his fists spread had eroded through his jacket and burnt off the right sleeve and shoulder to expose a grievous blunt force trauma over the area where Toxi had just punched himself. This was no mere taunt. Nothing this harmful to oneself and handicapping could've been just a way of flexing, and the pair of youths were in no position to flex anyway.
Toxi roared out like a wild animal. All traces of consciousness faded from his mannerisms and his eyes blanked out while frothy spit began accumulating over his mouth. It was as if the young man had gone absolutely mad from pain and the torment of his own venom having entered his body through the self-inflicted trauma spot. With no sign of fear of the absolutely dreadful opponent, Toxi launched himself at Yaban.
Just as Yaban prepared to answer, Veno's image flashed over her brother as the young woman lingered in the air, having gone through a few hand seals. "Venom Style: Gunk Assault!" she chanted out while a jet of water surged upward and slammed into her open mouth. The mass of water filled the kunoichi up, slightly inflating her body before she spat it all out at once, dyed purple as a sign of the grave transformation of the life-giving water into the deadly venom.
Yaban hopped aside, avoiding the splash of venom from hitting him directly, but his motion put him off-balance and rendered him ill-prepared for the berserk rush of Toxi. The fist of the rushing berserker dug into Yaban's abdomen, bending the man's body out of shape and leaving crawling black trails of veins splintering all over his core while the red and violet rot of the poisoning spread across Yaban's lower body. Despite taking a nasty and highly dangerous shot, Yaban merely skid backward without losing his footing.
Toxi weaved a few hand seals and lowered his upper body, drawing it down as blue flames ignited over his venomous fists. "Chakra Absorption Jutsu!" Toxi growled out with a primal tone and spearheaded his relentless assault. The blue flames lingering over his hands merely added a terrifying chakra draining effect to his touch, besides the highly potent venom covering his skin and pumping through his forearms, wrists, and fists.
An uppercut heavy enough to let out a whistle that echoed throughout the entire opening in the mines, followed by a crashing thud of Toxi's fists colliding with Yaban's weakened flesh in the core of his body. It was as if Yaban's tainted muscle and blood vessels were rotten to their core, soft and pungent as a rotten apple and unraveling from a mere cruder yank. Besides that, the Chakra Absorption Jutsu coating Toxi's fists weakened his opponent furthermore, making fun of the tremendous endurance of Kaguya Yaban that he displayed earlier.
The advancing madman didn't let up his attacks, pounding with a rising flurry of fists to every weakened area on his opponent's body where the venom had the chance to soften his muscle to the touch and leave just a painful, wet, and bloody sores as opposed to rock-hard muscle. Yaban threw out black bile from his mouth, a combination of venom that coursed through his veins and his own blood from his battered body.
Yaban let out a roar that matched the intensity of his opponent's own battle cries, grabbing hold of Toxi's head but just as the Tsuchikage pulled Toxi in for a crushing headbutt, Toxi's elbow found its way into Yaban's already ruined solar plexus just before Toxi slammed with a hammering fist vertically, left from right, repeatedly after having made his own opening. All this concluded with a rolling cross that blasted Kaguya Yaban punching through solid stone and left him laying sprawled out on the ground with whited-out eyes and an ajar mouth.
"Shit, I think we might have killed him…" Veno winced. Despite her worst fears, she was still hesitant to walk up to the lying bruiser and check.
"I don't think so. It's crazy but… Even after taking enough venom to kill five hundred people in a heartbeat, he's still fighting on. That's why I employed Chakra Absorption, I need to stop that ridiculous chakra augmentation 'cause his augmented metabolism is no-selling my best shots," Toxi stood with his upper body leaning down from pain he caused onto himself. His arms hung heavily by his sides, wavering like a pendulum left and right as the rogue ninja let them have a bit of a rest after the shock of the battle.
"I see…" a voice filled the mines, frightening both Toxi and Veno to their cores and making them prepare for an inevitable comeback of their opponent. "So that punch you delivered onto yourself introduced your own venom into your own body, causing a chain reaction that made your body's nervous system go haywire. It's like an adrenaline shot to your own heart, isn't it?" Yaban sat up, wiping his bloody nose and the black bile off his lips while vapors of purple smoke went out from his mouth as he spoke.
"What an absolute monster, we're the perfect combo to take this man down and yet he's still giving us a proper fight…" Veno shivered.
"Yeah, when I sapped a chunk of his chakra, it was like there was just no end to it. It's like this guy tries to compete with the Tailed Beasts or something…" Toxi ran his thumb through his itchy nose, leaving it red and swollen from a mere touch of his own thumb pad against his nose. The swelling eased in mere seconds as Toxi's body worked overtime, reminding itself of the immunity it has built up over its entire lifetime of exposure to this strain.
"You're actually using chakra yourself, brat." Yaban stood back up and cracked his neck left and right. "With each punch, you're forming a brief pulse, like a blast of energy that splatters the remnants of venom covering your body ever further, wider and deeper. In addition to keeping up that flare of absorption, you need to help yourself to some of your opponent's chakra to keep that style up, don't you?"
"Yeah, prolonged bouts just aren't really my forte, I guess…" Toxi shrugged before resuming his nimble, shadowboxing stance and preparing to go at his opponent again until Yaban stopped getting back up.
"Enough, he's too much of a threat up close. Let me wither him down from afar some more!" Veno alerted her twin brother. The underground lake that the woman stood on rippled and waved as its surface became highly uneasy. Veno went through some hand seals and placed her hand on the ground. Just before she could speak the name of her technique, an invisible force swatted her aside, shooting her through an entire field of stalagmites and leaving rocky wreckage of the backside of the mines.
"Veno!" Toxi yelled out, alarmed by the sudden and grave dispatching of his sister. When he turned back to snarl at Kaguya Yaban, the Tsuchikage stood with a clenched fist hanging in an extended position, suggesting that the man had just punched the air. It wasn't something that Toxi had expected–Kaguya Yaban turning the airwaves from his own fists into a deadly weapon by super-sizing their mass in mid-motion and making them highly destructive forces of nature on impact.
"Your sister's a long-range type, right? That means she ain't too good with taking a beating, I'd reckon," Yaban pulled his fist back and tapped it with his open free hand, almost as if petting his own fist and commending it on a job well-done. "You took me for granted, thinking I'm only dangerous from up close and I fully intend on making you runts pay the price for it."
With grunts and shouts, Yaban thrust his foot with a lower jab, propelling another superheavy airwave toward Toxi. Knowing what to expect now, Toxi hopped aside while prancing around his opponent, transitioning into a full-on dash while Yaban sent airwave after airwave his way, crushing and grinding the stalagmites and the mountain surface to powdery dust upon collision. Yaban's grunt intensified as he curved his power blow upward, creating a crescent whirlwind of inflated mass that ripped the air in-between Toxi and itself. The oppressed rogue ninja only barely sent enough scattered junk and debris and oppose its pull long enough to get yanked out of the way by the implosion of the pressurized, supermassive airwave.
"I sure hope you runts are sweating now. It's as they say–no pain, no gain, right?" Yaban smirked. The ability to inflate the mass of the airwaves coming off of his punches to cosmic scales made him not need to stress his body too much with attempts to bring the fight to his opponents, which let him refrain from too much movement which risked spreading the venom already pumping through his body in alarming amounts any further.
Yaban performed a roundhouse kick, sending a pressurized, superheavy airwave that socked Toxi in the upper body and left him flat after a horizontal spin in the air. The Tsuchikage swept the ground, wiping the entire surface clear of stalagmites and causing the underground lake to tremble and quake before propelling upward-aimed showers from the intense airwave that resonated throughout. Toxi grunted in pain before letting the supermassive invisible force send him hurling across the stage to the very end and slamming through the mountain stone.
Light taps of warm red soiled Toxi's face as the overwhelmed rogue ninja realized he had crashed and was left lying upside down. With just a puny, willful push, the rogue ninja crumbled down on his front and began crawling while feeling the burn in his ribs when he breathed and savored the taste of blood in his mouth. It felt bitter, combined with the venom that had never fully cleared from Toxi's system. When Toxi tilted his head to observe Kaguya Yaban slowly walking up to him to finish the job, the assassin let his vision stop blurring and doubling to focus on the approaching dread when he needed that focus most.
"Venom Style: Field of Swords!" a feminine yell filled the stage of grave silence, tagging out the crumbling rocks and alarming Yaban, but, by the time he processed what he'd heard, it was already too late as water burst through the layer of stone he stepped on boomed upward in a geyser-like pillar, showering him with venom and forcing the man to stagger out from the corrosive and highly deadly liquid he'd been sprayed with.
"You're not… The only one capable of chakra augmentation, Kaguya Yaban," Veno panted, using this opening when her opponent had flinched up and was on wobbly and staggering legs with his entire body crumbling down from the excess of poison coursing through to pick herself back up. The woman had signs of battery all over her, bruises and blood trickling down her lip from her mouth–a sign of nasty internal injury. Even as she stood, she did so slouched, alerting anyone caring to see it that the last sneaky direct hit had crumbled her ribs. "Not to mention, I've figured out your technique already,"
"There's not much to figure out, as you've said, Lightweight Boulder Jutsu is nothing too fancy of a technique," Yaban coughed black bile up while slouching up and clutching his own ruined abdomen that had been left a bloody and rotten pulp from the inside. His skin had reacted to the deadly venom Veno has soaked him with as it had swollen bright red and blistered.
"That's right, though very few opponents when they witness your mad feats of strength, care to analyze just where it comes from. Your technique allows you to change the mass of everything you touch. The numb-minded ninja use it to reduce the mass of boulders they lift so that they can fling them at their opponents. And while your usage goes light-years above that, you are still subservient to the jutsu's limitations–you can only mess around with the mass of that which you touch," Veno pointed out.
Yaban yelled out in pain as the cumulative effects of the venom coursing through his body and the damage that it had wrought began taking its toll. The man collapsed on one knee and grabbed hold of his head, squeezing it to the best of his ability as the pain he must've been under had been astonishing. Veno saw it as her opening.
"Obviously, that doesn't make your technique that much less potent. You pretty much touch everything all the time–the air that you're surrounded by, your opponent whenever you contact them or they contact you. It's funny, in a way, because of their Shikotsumyaku ability, the Kaguya clan was meant to be the most deadly at close range, you lack that rare talent yet you've become just as deadly if not more so at close range. It's impossible to attack you up close without opening yourself up to your jutsu," Veno reported while dashing up to the man. Oddly enough, despite how closely his sister moved in, Toxi didn't seem all too alarmed for her safety.
"You've made a grave error when you evaluated me, Yaban…" Veno taunted her opponent, weaving a few hand seals and extending her hands closer to him to where they hung almost directly in front of him, within his reach. "You've thought that I was a long-range combatant, unable to handle it from up close and frail when tagged. Truth be told, I'm always delivering my coup de grâce from up close."
"No! Veno! It's too early, you're going to waste our chance!" Toxi yelled out, after realizing what his sister meant to do. "You'll burn all of his poison too early!"
"Burn?" Yaban muttered after seeing a cooling blue light emerge from the other end of Veno's hands.
"That's right, just like you, I've adopted a basic technique and made it into something remarkable. The point of the Delicate Illness Extraction Jutsu is to extract the foreign agent that's causing illness to the victim carefully. I've… Left some of that idea in mind. Medical Ninjutsu: Illness Extraction Shock!" Veno chanted out with triumph seeping from her voice while the gentle, sky-blue glow intensified and expanded over her hands.
A single resonant shock pulsed in Kaguya Yaban's chest. The overwhelmed Tsuchikage collapsed on his front as masses of something thick began accumulating in fleshy bulbs sprouting all over his body. A black corruption flowed freely, bubbled, and boiled throughout his entire nervous and circulatory systems before bursting out in violent splashes of blood and corruption all at once, ripping and shredding violently from Kaguya Yaban's body and leaving the man just a stringy mess of rattled and raked flesh as he flopped on his side, surrounded by a violent and far-reaching splash of bodily fluids and venom that carried it alongside it upon its violent exit from Kaguya Yaban's body.
"Burn the venom?" Veno turned to her brother while she approached to help him get back up. "What are you talking about? We've never placed this much venom into any single target, it's only elementary that upon the execution of our ultimate combination move that even a man like Kaguya Yaban would be rendered unable to move."
Toxi wanted to object, but, every time he did, he just looked at the helpless mess that Kaguya Yaban had collapsed as and at the terrifying pool of red and eggplant that had accumulated underneath his twitching body. Even after all this, he appeared to still be alive. It was true that their combination of envenomation and Veno's violent venom extraction method had been flawless until now and could subdue any foe that fell ill to it but… Then again; they haven't met a man like Kaguya Yaban until that day. If anyone could have proved them wrong–it'd have been him.
Just as Veno leaned down to heal her brother up back to fighting shape and help him up so that they could've hauled this ridiculous man out from the mines and back to their headquarters as their captive, Toxi sprung to action. He grabbed hold of his sister and dashed to the very top of the cave, clinging to one of the impressive stalactites and hiding behind it. The entire mine rumbled as a massive stalagmite spike had blasted its way through where Toxi and Veno had just been and drilled through the mountain clean, all the way to the outside. The cave opening rumbled and fell apart with even the stalactites that Toxi clung to, seeming like they'd fall down and collapse into rubble at any time.
"Should've… Listened to your brother…" Kaguya Yaban wheezed out, bloody mess with haunting lacerations covering his entire body where the venom pumping through him had violently burst out but was now officially venom-free. "A few more pounds of that stuff and… Even I don't know if I'd have made it."
"Now what do we do?" Veno mimicked with her lips, looking terrified that their opponent had just taken something that no one before him had survived before, let alone walked it off. "This man, Kaguya Yaban, is a monster…"
"We sit tight. He's bleeding like a stuck pig. Now it's only a matter of time before he passes out," Toxi whispered to his sister, pressing her against the stalactite while pressing his own back against the crumbling cave ceiling.
"Seriously? You've just decided to sit tight and hide now? What's the matter? Where did all that… Feisty spirit from before go!? Weren't you going to capture me? Beat the snot out of me and never accept my surrender!?" Yaban staggered before tensing up his entire body. By bolstering the weight of his own forearm to its limits, Yaban wound it back and slammed it down in a pulverizing blow that expelled blinding, white light and seemed to sap all the howling and rumbling that should've followed such a devastating strike in. Only for the light to explode, releasing all the pent-up hellfire with it.
Veno's eyes blinked slowly open. When she next opened them, she was laying on a flattened summit of a mountain that had been shattered to man-sized boulders, all of which had been floating weightless and airborne. The man that was once the Fourth Tsuchikage had pulverized the entire mountain, reducing its rubble to weightless fodder, just balls of cotton floating in the air so that he could set his eyes on his enemy once more. And thus, with whited out eyes and madness seeping from his lungs in the form of a rabid battle cry, Kaguya Yaban slowly descended from his original position with the weightless boulders dancing around him, waiting for their opportunity to regain their original weight at any point and crush anyone foolish or weak enough to end up at the other end of it.
Kaguya Yaban was a nightmare, despite how perfectly polished their combination was, Toxi and Veno just weren't prepared… Then again, how does one prepare for a man such as this?