"Earth Style: Impure Desserts!" Selsig grunted out, slamming his lone open palm into the ground and forcing the uneasy hall where the fighting took place to rumble even more and sprinkle showers of irritating pebbles and dust clouds from the ceiling high above at the top of the mountain cave. The ground underneath him brightened and began bubbling up as it changed consistency into a sludge-like bog.
Seeing an opening, Prabba swiftly moved her hand back and forth to her quiver and back, firing off a handful of arrows in a blitz of pulling, drawing, and releasing. Bubbling, half-formed limbs shot out from the bog and moved into the way of the speeding arrows. While the polished, adamantine tips of the arrows punched through the blockade, this merely imbedded the arrows and didn't quite threaten Selsig himself.
A handful of mud-men rose from the bog in a shifty and uncanny manner. Their feet took the stand first with the rest of the body to snap back into an upright position while the bubbling and thick bog struggled to release them from its slimy hold. Prabba waved her hand out in front of her, channeling Lightning Release chakra through it and transferring it through a thin steel wire string attached to the ends of the arrows she had just released. Shocked by their connection to the source of the shock, the malformed sludge monsters that had blocked Prabba's attack bubbled up before popping into handfuls of useless goop.
The formed horde of mud-men slammed their foreheads into the ground with enough force to dislodge debris from the stones that it had been paved from and decorated with. The stone chips stuck into the faceless grins of the sludge monsters as rows of teeth of sorts. The freaky mud-men staggered for a few moments before snapping into action like rabid animals that knew no restraint. Mana's boot dug into the head of one of those creatures, swatting it aside to splatter into wet slaps in a faraway corner while the magician transitioned into riding a Wind Release current to compensate for her missing part of her leg.
Since Mana used just one leg for most of her taijutsu attacks anyway, it didn't feel like she was losing much and her taijutsu was relatively unimpaired by her crippling. Still, she had to rely on an air pocket to sustain her movement, which robbed Mana of precious footing and weakened the wallop behind her kicks significantly. While her technical skill was still intact, the physicality of her kicks and a certain stiffness behind them were now missing.
"Alright, let's see you dodge this!" Prabba taunted while drawing a pair of arrows back and letting them buzz forward straight to Mana's back. Just as the magician glanced back, the arrows curved around her before returning to their normal trajectory. While this curious case of curvature confused Mana, the crippled kunoichi wondered if the pitch-black tips of these arrows had anything to do with their strange trajectory.
Selsig grunted, dashing aside with a hasty scramble. It took him almost no time at all to realize that he was the intended target for the arrows and that, given their already outlandish trajectory, they'd find a way to plunge into him if he stood still, no matter how off-mark they looked. Crackles of lightning danced at the arrows' tip. With a pleasant, electric hum, the arrows switched course again, pursuing Selsig once more, which made the terrified puppeteer of mud-people freeze up in terror.
"Magnetic arrows!?" he realized too late as the arrows punched into his gut and his chest, bringing him down while they tased him at the same time.
"That's right, I've electrified the air around your area with Lightning Release, causing it to become a greater draw than any amount of acrobatics can help you overcome. You could have moved around as much as you wanted in there, even your neurons produce enough electric impulses to draw these arrows to you in such a heavily electrified area," Prabba explained.
"Prabba-san, watch out!" Mana cried out, sensing something off about Selsig. It was true that a pair of arrows had impaled him in what seemed like incredibly important pressure point areas, but his chakra felt far too low for his condition. As his skin darkened and adopted the texture of wet clay, the truth manifested itself as the man had replaced himself with one of his sludge-men, which also adopted his appearance.
Prabba turned around out of instinct, slamming her elbow behind her and clashing with something metallic that she couldn't even initially see. Something that would have surely impaled her from behind and left her to bleed out while the armless Selsig and his horde worked on taking care of Mana. Sparks flew out from Prabba's custom-made bow, colliding with a makeshift gauntlet of stalactites and rocky ridges. The ground underneath Prabba's feet bubbled and shifted, tripping the woman up on her back while a massive shape of a sludge monster that seemed like a fusion of multiple other mud-men formed around the gauntlet and swung it again.
Prabba rolled aside with her bow in hand, coating herself in the sludge that made Selsig's mud-men, but avoiding getting smashed to bits by that fused together abomination. In a lot of ways, this use of Impure Desserts looked similar to when Selsig fused his mud-men into a giant worm-like monster attempting to swallow up the hallway that the peacekeepers and Stars were in. Though this abomination looked a lot sharper and more practical for wide-area usage. It looked almost draconic or reptilian in basic shape, except wet and smooth in texture. Stony ridges and chunks of dislodged stalactites and statue bits stuck out from the fused monstrosity all over, making angled attacks difficult as entire spears from broken statues stuck out from its rear.
"If Ishigakure protects the Tsuchikage and they know we're coming, that means that Konoha's Sorceress is our only bargaining chip against the world. Kill the archer-woman, I'll cook something to capture the Sorceress up myself," Selsig instructed his fused creature, which immediately brought its upper body down to the ground and erected the sharpened stone pillars sticking out from its shoulder blades.
The monster's body bubbled up before shooting out the twin projectiles into the air with narrow muddy goop strands barely connecting from the monster's body to its tips. It was those very strands that helped the dislodged stone-missiles to course correctly toward Prabba. The Iwagakure kunoichi rolled back with evasive movement while pulling out an arrow and firing it off. Mid-way to intercept the oncoming projectiles, the arrow's tip split open, revealing a net of steel wire that sliced the rushing stone pillars to rubble and left them scattered around the hallway.
Prabba pulled out another pair of arrows and took aim for Selsig while he weaved one-handed hand seals in preparation to conjure up something to chase Mana around with. Just as the sweet spot in between the rogue ninja's eyes was on-point, the stray mud on Prabba's body formed into a faceless mud-man that applied an unexpected sleeper hold by wrapping its pudgy arms around the woman's neck and while its limbs wrapped around to restrain Prabba's joints. The body of the peacekeeper sent the arrow away, driven by sheer instinct, though it merely grazed Selsig's cheek instead of sticking in between his eyes.
"Genjutsu: Hell Skewer!" Mana cried out, weaving her hands together. With her current haze that was affecting her agility and precision of her mind and body, Mana didn't gamble with casting a more powerful illusion and instead relied on one of her starting 15 that she mastered to where she wouldn't need to speak their names or weave hand seals by the finals of the Chuunin Exams.
Selsig froze with a horrified expression, his arms, both the one with a forearm and one without, froze in place spread to the sides while his legs sprawled out as well and bent by the knees, bringing his body down a notch. The frightened rogue wheezed heavily upon seeing illusionary sabers manifest over his head and impale him by thrusting downward as mother gravity intended.
Mana swooped up, riding her Wind Release air current before flipping in mid-air and crashing back down with a chop of her palm aimed right at the top of the man's head. Selsig's eyes rolled back and his mouth foamed as both the stress from the illusion and the physical and very real torment of Mana's crushing blow accumulated together into a combination that taxed both his body and his mental well-being leaving the stalwart rogue little choice but to fall to his knees while he struggled to regain his consciousness.
Seeing her opening, Mana chopped at both sides of Selsig's neck before accelerating the Wind Release gale of the Mystical Wings Jutsu to give her the velocity to roundhouse Selsig right in the face and send him flying and smashing into the eastern wall of the hallway with a deafening crash that socked him right through the thick wall and forced the eastern wall to topple over on the fallen rogue.
Prabba's scream froze Mana in place, making everything go white for a blink as it seemed to play Mana's nerves and worst fears, like a violin. The crippled kunoichi waved her hands to spin her whole body around, witnessing Selsig's fused monstrosity swiping its stony gauntlet in a ruthless smack that sent Prabba flying aside through a couple of stone columns. While the hitchhiker applying a sleeper hold over Prabba softened the hit somewhat and prevented the edgier bits of the improvised gauntlet from leaving threatening gashes all across Prabba's body, the blunt force trauma still made Mana skip more than a few breaths in worry over her friend.
Illusions wouldn't work here. As the growling abomination advanced on Prabba, Mana realized the creature's mindlessness clearly. If she was to pitch in with a save on her friend, Mana needed to skip a step and evolve again. From being forced back to the state of being her genin self, all the way to the Chuunin Exams when she polished the starting 15 in preparation to face Stea in the finals.
Mana thrust two of her fingers toward the advancing monstrosity, firing off a Wind Release tunnel that served as a beam of drilling, penetrative force and thrust itself straight into where the eye of the creature would have been, drilling all the way through. Mana gasped for air, feeling weightlessness washing over her from the bottom down. While she used to be able to sustain her Mystical Wings Jutsu while fighting with other weaker ninjutsu techniques at the same time, as she drew closer and closer to the edge of her limited chakra capacity, it would become increasingly difficult to do so. Even with a combination of jutsu Mana was the most familiar with.
Using the window that Mana gave her, Prabba stood up and drew an arrow, taking aim at the wobbly creature, but then she lowered the arrow. The fused monstrosity fell apart with no further need for Prabba to waste any more arrows on it as the kunoichi's supply was already approaching a measly dozen remaining and plenty of fight was still ahead.
"Such a tiny hole brought such a big guy down…" Prabba sighed with relief. "Nice work, I think you've spoken of retirement too early."
"It's not just the damage from my Wind Release: Finger of Fate, it's also the mental damage to Selsig-san's body from my illusion that added up," Mana noted. "Just after casting a few C-Rank jutsu, I've driven myself to the edge. I don't know how many of those I still have in me…" the magician panted while landing on the floor for the first time on her knees, as she lacked proper support to stand on.
"I see that your dismemberment has left your chakra network a complete mess. That works out fine for me…" Selsig's voice came like a chilling gust of wind from Mana's left. It took no time at all for the ground underneath Mana's feet to become bubbling and wet and for a dozen of mud-men to spring to life and grab hold of Mana, pressing her down to the bog and manhandling her with enough brute force to suggest that Selsig didn't want to half-ass the punishment this time and sought to truly break Mana's will to resist. It would be child's play for him, as in her current state she couldn't augment her body at all without the risk of repeating her stunt against Hisako that left her unable to mold chakra for months.
"You made a mistake leaving yourself open!" Prabba declared, drawing an arrow, but the woman then let out a high-pitched gasp as a stony spike drove through her back from behind. Prabba gargled as blood began rushing through her mouth where it could not escape from the stuffed wound as a tall and gaunt, fused mud-man pressed her to the ground too.
"You're wrong, collaborator. I spared no expense this time. Not after Konoha's Sorceress blew up the most powerful weapon of mass destruction that money can buy with a single blast and gave us trouble long enough to see Gloyfan killed and Gwirlon crippled and captured…" Selsig growled out, taking a precious second to enjoy the shocked and agony-ridden expression of the peacekeeper archer caught from behind. "Honestly, you should've known better than to ask for a cripple to watch your back. It's only natural you get stabbed from behind…"
"Genjutsu: Hell's…" Mana tried grunting out through the countless limbs punching, pushing, and scraping her but multiple sludge monster arms forced their way right into her mouth, making tears shoot out from Mana's mouth and her entire body convulse from a need to belch that she just couldn't realize because of her restraints.
"Sorry, I don't feel like letting you pull any more stunts. Keep that bitch shut…" Selsig panted, looking the worse for wear in his current state of battery and exhaustion after having kept up his Impure Desserts and calling forth on his monstrosities and fusing them together into more complex and massive shapes this entire day. "Honestly, you're so fucking dangerous that I should just drown you in gunk right now but… Without your expensive name as our bargaining chip, my village might not have another chance."
A sparkling puddle spitting out bright shiners right in front of Selsig opened up, forcing the rogue to stagger back in surprise. An illusory human arm made of pure light emerged from it. Then, as Mana's entire shape pulled out, more and more clones followed suit. These duplicates had been dressed in Mana's standard magician's uniform and lacked Mana's more recent shortcomings. Selsig bellowed out something unintelligible as more and more of his mud-men sprung into action from around him to tackle and engage the emerging doppelgangers.
"How… How are you doing this? You can't talk… There's no way you can say the name of your jutsu or weave any hand seals! How is this happening!?" Selsig cried out, forging more and more of his mud soldiers to send them to the emerging Mana clones. The soldiers charged head-first into a pointless battle, colliding with the clones and dispersing them into lustrous light blast upon them suffering damage. Dark bags began forming under Selsig's eyes as the bare-chested and one-armed man staggered back. He spat up slobber from his mouth and struggled to stay upright. "Come to think of it… You didn't speak any words back then either… And… Back then… You didn't even use any hand seals… That's right, you must be able to use some jutsu without speaking their names or using any hand seals. That's way too dangerous!"
The entire world seemed to flip upside down. Mana's face slammed against the ground as she felt more and more heavy thuds against the back of her head as the mud-men tried to do their best and stomp Mana to unconsciousness. The most horrific part of it was that they had a fair chance of doing so. Her Genjutsu: Many-Faced Jutsu was the last that she had in her. All that remained now was just what Mana needed to stay alive. Maybe she could pull off a Flower Petal Escape, but she'd be drawing from her vital resources and either pass out or die right after…
Prabba tried reaching for her back but the gaunt mud-man with mantis-like blades around its forearms swiped at her quiver, slipping it off Prabba's back as he elevated the impaled kunoichi over its head to wait until she stopped resisting. It'd have been much faster if it pulled out the rocky spike sticking out from her back though it'd have also enabled Prabba to resist better as she'd have been freed from impalement for the short duration it'd take for her body to run out of emergency reserves, stop being able to restrain her wild bleeding and start giving in to the grievous wound.
The gaunt sludge-monster slammed Prabba back down and pulled its second blade in to her throat to chop the kunoichi's head off with a command to snip its second rocky protrusion to its forearm where it was sticking out from. Judging from its jagged edges, the beheading wouldn't be immediate. As the blade snapped back and Prabba's grunt filled the hallway, this proved to be right as the first snip failed to even draw blood. The peacekeeper had far too much chakra for her body to not immediately augment itself and prevent mere jagged rock from beheading her.
Still, this may have only dragged out the process. With everyone else pre-occupied with their own clashes, it seemed as if though they had enough chaos on their hands to scan the battlefield where Mana had been drowning in sludge-men that were force-feeding themselves to her, and Prabba was restrained and slowly being chipped at in a vain struggle where one snap would inevitably finish the job.