Hanasaku's body disappeared from Meiko and Kiyomi's field of vision. Despite her injuries, the Sannin could still race with the fastest of them. Through the sheer speed of her moves, Hanasaku clearly translated her decision to ask Kiyomi and Meiko to stay behind her and let the woman deal with this for now.
After all, there could have been no way that Kiyomi and Meiko could have kept up with that sort of speed, something that was necessary when ninja fought together. Even if one of the two partners was faster, they purposefully toned down their speed to allow a perfect synchronization of movements. Cooperation was preferred over raw speed.
"It is useless," Togure yelled out. His body leaned back in fear, fueled by pure instinct. He was able to perceive Hanasaku's movements as he blurred his yell out in between the first telegraph of her intent to attack and between her fist met his palm.
A powerful shockwave resonated through the surrounding area, bending trees as old as the world that raised them, tearing leaves as plentiful as the stars in the universe and making Meiko and Kiyomi spread their feet apart wider to maintain balance. Togure's body shifted like the surface of water when a pebble hit it, resonating the forces within Hanasaku's punch and nullifying the blow completely.
Surprised by the profound success of his defense, Togure smiled. He could almost taste the triumph. The entire body language changed at that moment. His elongated pale grey back straightened, the protruded spine spikes returned inside making the man look less alien in appearance. His previously wide and shaking glare was now sharp and confident.
"Your strength cannot hurt me!" Togure breathed easier after pushing Hanasaku back with the palm that stopped her blow, forcing the woman to flip backward and land on one knee and one foot, crouching on the ground.
"He figured it out! Hanasaku-sensei's weakness, just like we did during our survival training…" Kiyomi grunted, feeling the cloud in the sky gloom, muddying the future of their mission. Whereas before the girl felt confident about managing to overcome the traitorous criminal, now their destiny was like a hazy crystal ball.
"B-But why didn't Hanasaku-sensei phase through the sound waves like she did when we tried that?" Meiko looked at her companion sharing the Yamanaka's worry.
"It probably has something to do with her injuries. She probably can't do that anymore…" Kiyomi closed her eyes just to feel the warm sweat running down her face, making her hair sticky and unruly.
Chestnut Hanasaku was one of the most powerful ninja alive. She was by far the physically strongest person, her abilities matched well with her intellect, namely, the lack of it. The woman could accomplish anything she believed and knew she could – her mind was the literal limit to her power but… That was a double-edged sword. It worked both ways.
"That bastard just sat back this whole time. Watching us fight, letting our enemies figure out our weaknesses for him to absorb. He must have been watching Hanasaku-sensei especially closely. He kept babbling this whole time, asking about her abilities…" Kiyomi grunted seeing Togure attempt to land blows on her sensei, using a similarly flappy and elastic fighting style that her own opponent in the Chuunin Exams, a fellow victim of these mysterious disappearances, used.
"I thought he was just being curious. I was just as interested in Hanasaku-sensei's abilities when I first met her…" Meiko clutched her fists tightly, blaming herself inside. That much her tone and the pitiful facial expression she wore betrayed.
"We all did…" Kiyomi grumbled. Restraining herself somehow from yelling it out with all of the anger that she felt rustling inside her.
Hanasaku managed to recuperate after the initial shock of being figured out. She may have been tricked and had her abilities being toyed with but she was still the superior combatant. Chestnut Hanasaku was always a very transparent person. Her feelings were printed out in smoldering letters right there for anyone to read from the surface of her face.
Right now she felt angry, also self-conflicted. It was evident that the woman tried her best to speak to her own body, try and have it ignore what her opponent just told her – that her strength and speed were useless but… It did not matter. It was more than just words that made her ability work. It was as much her conscious as it was her subconscious will that gave Hanasaku her might.
She may have been whispering to herself how strong she was, pleading that she needed to summon her awesome strength to defend the people she cared for – her precious students but it was all for naught. Deep inside she doubted herself, that her face did not betray, that was merely self-evident from the fact that she could not summon all of her limitless power anymore.
"What gave it away? My ability?" Hanasaku tried talking to her opponent. It was a smart strategy. She needed time to convince herself, to impose her burning willpower to protect her precious students onto her quivering and shameful body. Her enemy was willing to talk as long as they saw it as a chance to avoid bloodshed. It was worth a shot…
"I saw you shrug off the enemy technique when you were first hit by it. It was only after you saw the complete shock of the enemy and had the jutsu be explained to you that the effects caught up with you. Your subconscious, as thick as it is, realized that eternity may just be too much to just shrug off, even for you." Togure elaborated how he, in Waiso's shoes, figured Hanasaku out.
"Hmph, I have grown too intelligent over my time as Lady Fifth…" the chestnut-haired woman grinned with cheer in her face. Carelessly, like a child. That carelessness alerted the opponent who once again, subconsciously, leaned back in worry that Hanasaku may be inches away from figuring out a way around her mental blocks.
"Enough, your speed cannot possibly be enough to escape. You are tired, you're too weak to move!" Togure declared before throwing a punch. Hanasaku grunted in pain as the blow dug deep into her core and sent her down. "I am more powerful than you can manage to keep up with in your current state, another punch you take from me will kill you!"
"It cannot possibly!" Meiko pleaded Kiyomi to confirm that it was not so but the Yamanaka just shook her head.
"It does not matter. Truth or lies do not matter, as long as Hanasaku-sensei hears it being so – that's the way it will be." Kiyomi sighed.
The two genin charged forward before Togure could even consider throwing the next punch. They may not have been nearly as fast as Hanasaku before them, but they had the element of surprise on their enemy as well as the fact that he had no leverage over their abilities by simply speaking to them.
"Blockbuster!" Meiko yelled out. She rushed in a wild tackle aiming to throw her opponent off-balance and send him flying back so that Kiyomi, who had kicked off and leaped into the air, could finish the combination attack.
Togure's body expanded like a piece of gum, enveloping Meiko and making her disappear inside. From up above, Kiyomi slammed at the opponent with a double foot-stomp that was supposed to drive the old man into the dirt once Meiko's charge threw him off-balance. Given the current circumstances, the Yamanaka would have been satisfied by simply forcing him to spit Meiko out from the rubbery elastic hell he enveloped her in.
Togure coiled around Kiyomi's feet, enveloping around Meiko like a scroll of paper while at the same time coiling so that Kiyomi only stomped on the empty ground, forcing it to shatter beneath her feet and causing powerful earthquakes as a show of force meant for Togure.
The man's body opened up a gap through which his elongated arm pulled Meiko out, holding the blacksmith by her leg. The old timer smashed the redhead into the ground before smacking Kiyomi away with her own friend and throwing Meiko after the Yamanaka.
Kiyomi fixed her flight path, landing her feet firmly on the ground by flipping over her back and then catching Meiko. It was a feat that demanded a slight augmentation of her body to accomplish but time was precious when the last Konoha Sannin could have been killed with a single blow of this traitor.
"Did you grab the head?" Kiyomi wondered.
"Nah, he was rubbing all over me. It was disgusting!" Meiko stuck her tongue out. "It wasn't like he was elongating his body or something…"
"Yeah, I know. I fought one of those guys in the Chuunin Exams, remember?" Kiyomi observed as a windmill shuriken stuck through Togure's body making the surprised traitor look back at Chestnut Hanasaku who was the owner of that weapon.
"Y-You? But I'm going to kill you if you don't stop this!" Togure yelled out, scolding the woman's persistence.
"Yeah, maybe. But I'm ready to throw my life away for this. Both of my brothers threw their lives away for their mission. I'd follow their example any day of the week and I'd throw my life away a thousand times for my students!" Hanasaku snapped back at the man.
With all the fury of a man fighting for the life of his son, Togure threw a mighty backhand smack with his elongated hand at the Sannin. He was willing and going to kill her. Whether he remembered the fact that he lied to Hanasaku that her speed was pointless and that she could no longer dodge his attacks was a mystery.
Meiko and Kiyomi tried leaping after Togure, they tried rushing up to him before his blow landed but even when they kicked off the shattered and ruined ground beneath their feet they knew they'd be too late. Hanasaku's neck stretched out in a gruesome manner after the impact hit her cheek and threw her head sideways. All remnants of life left her body but the horror of dealing with another death on the battlefield was postponed by a popping sound and a cloud of smoke into which Hanasaku's dead body disappeared.
The Sannin substituted with the windmill shuriken she just threw, her right hand was stuck right through her opponent's elastic body, just like the blade of the weapon she substituted with was before.
Kiyomi and Meiko leaped up, using the force of acceleration they have gathered in their failed charge to intercept Togure's attack to deliver a double dropkick in the back of the old timer's head. It was an attack that, surprisingly enough, connected. Togure's eyes whited out and almost popped out from his face, his teeth and tongue stuck out following his eyes. In a shout of pain, the dropkick threw the man flying back and through the black market point building.
"Come on, we don't have much time!" Hanasaku encouraged the two girls as she tried numbing the pain in her wrists that almost got busted after Togure's body flew off fast enough to force her hands out of it. "Let's grab the head and move back."
"And leave him be? Forget it!" Kiyomi swiped her hand in anger.
"Wait, what?" Mana questioned what she heard in the story. From the point where it got conflicting to hear out it was getting uncomfortable and who could have blamed her – she was listening about a man being denied a chance to save his son because the village wanted to recycle a powerful set of eyes to create a weapon in the shape of a person.
"Yeah. She just rooted herself into the soil and decided not to move an inch." Meiko pouted her lips and crossed her hands over her chest. The blacksmith glared at Kiyomi with a stare that was a little bit scolding but not quite on the scale of where it may have been taken as scornful.
"I don't know what got over me." Kiyomi shrugged. Her face did not suggest any melancholy or an apology, she was still defensive about her decision to stay there and fight up to now. "It's just that the man we fought was a criminal. I couldn't just grab hold of the head and run…"
"It couldn't have been the first time?" Mana raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Maybe, but… People change, so have I. You would never reconsider your ideals and take a life just because the alternative is too tough." Kiyomi was reflecting. It was not that she tried to counter Mana's honest inquiry in a highly defensive manner that troubled the magician but the fact that she may have been right.
What if Mana's persistence really did influence the people she worked with to stand by their own ideals? Nindo were just fine, they motivated ninja to work hard but this time it directly conflicted with the mission objective and even endangered lives. As much as Mana wanted to bring that point up, would she truly have behaved differently, not in terms of the specific events at play but if she had to choose between a mission objective and living by her own code?
"He's a criminal and a danger to our village. He won't stop pursuing us or trying to get his hands on the Sharingan even if we retreat now. We managed to hurt him, he's not as powerful as Shigin. We need to eliminate him here and now!" the Yamanaka stood her ground before she heard a creepy sound of shifting flesh and muscle.
Grey, fleshy substance was wrangling over the containment jar where the head of the recovered Uchiha was secured. This man did not bleed, he lacked the complexity of his anatomy for it, just like the previous specimen of these peculiar experiments that Kiyomi has faced but he spread his remains in entirely different ways. The grey goop formed an eight-fingered hand that wrapped all around the head before flying back at the black market point.
"Grab the head and flee? Are you kidding?" an angered voice came from the depths of the pitch blackness of the dim and quickly abandoned laboratory complex.
"As if I would ever allow you to retreat with the miracle that brought me here." Togure walked out from the hole in the building completely unscathed, at least visually so. Who could have known in what state his true vitality and chakra was? The goopy hand connected to the fleshy stump of his left hand, resulting in the man now holding the jar in his hand.
It was an odd feat of creepy, given the fact that he had all of his limbs when "entering" the building.
"Well… It's too late to run now." Hanasaku sighed, raising her hand to smack her student in the head playfully but then her hand froze in mid-air. Something about Kiyomi's mood and the vibes she resonated made the woman reconsider any attempts at lightening the mood. Somehow, the Yamanaka was not the same ever since that fight in the Chuunin Exams…
Could it have been the tremendous weight of the expectations that troubled her so much? Being expected to excel as the student of the Fifth Hokage and the heiress of the Yamanaka clan? Maybe it was the fact of her failure to achieve promotion and the slack that her family and her clan were giving her? Real or entirely imaginary and in her own head, either kind of emotional and social pressure weighed the same.
"I did not wish to shed your blood. You are not like these rogues, you're just kids serving your village, just doing your jobs." Togure closed his eyes as the reattached arm spun around its axis to reset to the proper side, instead of hanging upside down. "But if you get in my way, I will be forced to show you the power of the miracle that brought me here. The miracle that aligned so many opportunities and events to cause that which shall save the life of my son!"
Togure moved forward, followed by Kiyomi and Meiko who kicked off in a dash at their opponent at the same time. Meiko lacked the killing intent in her eyes, Kiyomi noticed that, but she was worth every ounce of the trust that the Yamanaka put on her. She wished to protect her mentor with all of her essence, she may have flirted with the idea of embracing Mana's ideals but when push will come to shove, Kiyomi knew Meiko would do the right thing.
Togure's free hand shot forward, it was insanely fast now that the element of surprise was gone and the man was full-on "miracle-mode" in terms of his mindset. Made-up miracles were a scary thing. The blow of his extended rubbery arm threw Kiyomi's head back, almost snapping the blonde's head immediately. Togure may not have been as invulnerable and "perfected" version of the experimental human that returned from disappearing but he was certainly faster and stronger.
Meiko wrapped her arms around the extended arm of Togure's before it could return to the man's body. The blacksmith felt for any bones or any structural oddities she may have detected, then, upon failing to find any, she simply tried pulling in an attempt to dislocate or pull off the man's arm right out.
With a fleshy splattering noise and a strong explosion of goop flying left and right where blood would have flowed normally, Togure's punching arm separated from the body but the expression on the man's body only suggested shock at the sheer visual disgust of the sight. There was no blood inside this man, whatever erupted from the sheer, built up force of Meiko's world-shattering pull were brighter and softer chunks of the same goop that Togure's entire body was made of.
Meiko squished the arm still dangling in her arm, compressing it into a ball before kicking it far far away. Unlike the morning cartoons that children watched on the television sets before leaving outside to kick balls of rags and play ninja, there was no bling or shimmering sound when the arm left orbit.
"You attempt to stand in the way of a miracle?" Togure grinned with the face of shock still very much alive in his expression. The man gripped the containment jar tighter before slamming the whole thing right into his face. The entire center of the old timer's face caved in as the man pushed the containment jar right inside his gummy belfry.
With shifting and fleshy rumbles, the face soon returned to the way it was before and, without a doubt, re-enabled the hardiness it usually took to break the man's body normally. One that was willfully toned down for the containment jar to be able to be shoved right into the man's head without breaking it. While this was normally nothing but a visually disgusting show of the man's abilities, it also taught Kiyomi who had by then recovered from the powerful blow she took that her opponent did have significant control over his abilities.
"Be careful. He can soften and harden his goopy body at will, it seems. That means that he can completely manipulate himself and make something like spikes that are hard enough to penetrate our own skins…" Kiyomi wiped the blood off her face.
"We should have fled." Meiko glared back at her friend with anger in her eyes, then back at their injured and endangered sensei who was forced to stay in the back now due to recent developments.
"Yeah, well… We didn't." Kiyomi took a fighting stance, preparing to walk the distance her tongue announced for her.
