Despite Mana's most honest attempts of relaying the idea to Usujitsa, the tiny disaster refused to use its clones to help his kind pass to the other side of the cavern. That passage was essential for any of the destinations that the rabbits were to take, whether it was for the sacred home for the Ninja Mongooses or if they suddenly reconsidered on this suicidal side quest – Konoha.
Given how pouty and stubborn Usujitsa was getting, how erratic his babbling voice was and how frantically the little fluffball shook its head in refusal, Mana was forced to back off its case lest she risked running out of whatever favor she had with the little terrorist, killing the Ninja Rabbits far before they even reached the mongooses.
Luckily enough, just as previously thought, there were ample rabbits with the Earth Release affinity. In fact, it may have just been the most common elemental affinity along the entire species so building a bridge in the less than stable cavern was quite simple. Given the sheer number of Earth Release users, Mana wondered if they couldn't have just made a tunnel of their own using all of their abilities together.
Granted, it would be a tough task, the minerals this deep below are immensely hard. Pretty much as dense as anything ever got. That meant that the rabbits would have needed techniques of incredibly elaborate sophistication to carve through this level. They may have passed that obstacle by simply using a variety of lesser ranked jutsu instead.
What they could not have ignored was the distance that such a tunnel would have needed to go as well as the stability it required to have. Not only would the distance drain the builders of most, if not all, of their stamina after completely irrelevant percentages of the tunnel being built, but the builders would require maintaining a level of finely tuned control all throughout.
Given all those factors, it may have just been a safer option to build bridges instead of tunnels and fight anyone using the paths more commonly taken. There was none of that at play with a bunch of rabbits simply summoning a handful of thick, and elongated stone plates from underground and arcing them over the abyss leading to a scorching end.
There was a lingering sense of dread all around while the rabbits took their sweet time getting across. It was an entire population of ninja mammals moving over a narrow plate of Earth Release summoned platforms, after all. Mana kept her sensory open, forced it to scan the surroundings, again and again, almost hoping to justify that awful feeling of certain doom but… Everyone got across without as much as a hitch.
Kouta was carrying Usuzoku on his back. Both the young man and Mana hoped that Kouta's overall chakra resources would last until the fateful journey to the Ninja Mongooses would last in assisting Usuzoku in his valiant battle against certain and most painful death of having his innards liquefied from inside.
After a short while, the whole party of rabbits disappeared into the cold and unwelcome darkness of the caves through which the elusive Nagendi once slithered and attempted its clever ploy to surprise and overwhelm the gathered defenders of the rabbit species. Some of the young appeared interested in seeing the beast's corpse but they were left disappointed – only ash and dusty, burning-smelling remains were all that was left. Usujitsa took good care of that in one of its more capricious moments.
After the rabbits were gone, the entire cavern once again returned to its deadly state of grave silence, breathtaking heat and immense air pressure. There were no living creatures to experience the cavern in a state of illumination provided from the enhancement of their sensory input or to suffer through the blistering heat. Only once in a while, a shaken platform of stone collapsed from one of the walls or the ceiling of the cavern. Eventually, the entire place would collapse, destroying all evidence of any activity ever having taken place here.
The grotesque deadly visage of Vasuki twitched a handful of times before its blacked out eyes rolled even further back and its crushed and battered jaw opened wide. The entire torn to chunks corpse appeared to stretch and tear as a new version of the serpent appeared from where the old appeared to have met a grisly end.
"To think that I would be pushed this far, to use my Snake-Style Body Shedding twice in battle… Scared for my life enough to hide in my dying shell of a body, too afraid to shed it a moment too soon or else I very well may just… Die." Vasuki hissed to herself.
She had never taken itself as the kind of a serpent to do something like this, to talk to oneself but this was a special and a very shameful occasion. The reptile had the chakra maybe for one weak jutsu left after it was sapped completely dry by all the body shedding did in that insane battle.
Who knew that rabbits could have provided such ample challenge? Certainly not Vasuki. Not any of the other higher ranked serpents that have decided to play a little bit and show just a bit of their awesome might. Just taunt the rabbits with the evolutionary advantage that Mother Nature gave the snakes over them as they drove an entire species to extinction.
Many snakes have killed mighty opponents. Some of those who were worth the most honor amongst their peers were ones that killed enemies much mightier than themselves by applying some clever venom injection or a similar type of trick. Someone who would have driven an entire species to extinction… That would have been a different category of bragging rights altogether.
"Shit…" Vasuki hissed. This was what she would get for being greedy. Reduced to the pitiful state of weakness it reveled mocking its opponents for. A bit of cruel but fair cosmic justice… Not true, if justice ever existed, the snakes would have been the ones to take the full might of its ire. Even as a proud member of its species, Vasuki could have admitted that to herself, no, she took pride in that fact.
"Reverse Summoning!" the serpent hissed out, her jaw opened wide once more, this time a little less than before. Instead of a new titanic rebirth of its own self, this time Vasuki spat out an average build man with dark and messy shoulder-length hair covered in green goop from its inner body.
"This must be some kind of a joke." The figure sighed in frustration after stroking its face with one of his hands and swiping the remaining mucus aside. It looked absolutely livid for being summoned in such a gruesome way. Maybe someone of lesser importance, a young and useless contractor to be shown its place but not this man. This man was one of the more important ones, more proven to his contractors.
"I apologize. I do not have the strength to be fancy." Vasuki took no pleasure or enjoyment from setting the fact of her weakness straight.
"As curious as the case of you having your ass kicked is, I have no interest or care in your silly conflicts. I signed the contract to obtain the power of your world-renowned species and enlist their partnership, not the other way around." The person shrugged. The rather odious manner of his summoning proved to be ample reason for its refusal to aid the serpent.
"Hmph. I guess we keep enlisting people not too much different from ourselves. People of talent who crave more power than they already have. Too bad they're just as rotten inside as the animals they use as tools." Vasuki spoke almost in a self-reflective manner as she glanced for a moment at the spot where the humans aided the rabbits in their battle for survival. The sentiment in its agonizing self-reflection, as one as the one behind its own species in its entirety, was too obvious to call by its true name.
"I don't care how but you will return me back. And I am certainly not crawling inside your distasteful stomach…" the summoned summoner appeared to ignore Vasuki's feelings and her reflections in their entirety and only care to be returned to the matters he was attending to before being summoned in such a gruesome manner.
"If power is the thing you seek, there is a power you not only do not have but one you, or any other human, do not even know of," Vasuki spoke up. "If the ninja that have bested me frighten you so much, perhaps knowing of that power will tip the scales enough for you to face them as they faced us."
"Power? You mean there is more to gain from this contract than just occasionally enlisting your overrated aid?" the summoner wondered.
"That's right, the rarely spoken of Sage Mode! The power to make you the master of your own genetic make-up. Given your limited human intelligence, I can assist that immortality which you seek may be in your hands." Vasuki tempted the man.
"This Sage Mode intrigues me. You will teach me about it if I kill those that humiliated you, won't you?" the summoner switched his tune.
"Of course…" Vasuki hissed, its grimace overflowing with deceit but the promise of immortality and mastery over one's own self was too blinding to see anything else.
The mongooses did not live underground like the rabbits and some of the Ninja Snakes did. Those sneaky mammals lived in the vast grasslands surrounding Kusagakure as the massive forests did Konoha. From what Mana gathered from the old tales of wars back during the training in the Rabbit Caves, the mongooses were both the hunters and the prey.
Together with this natural role, came a very mixed mentality between that of the Ninja Rabbits and that of the Ninja Snakes. The mongooses utilized the great plains to see everything on all sides, both a potential threat and a prey. Maybe it was because the snakes lived far too deep to be seen in the rustling grassland that the two formed their bitter rivalry all those ages ago.
The trip to the surface was lengthy but also liberating. One did not come to properly appreciate the warmth of the sunlight, the glee-inviting shimmer of the sunlight dancing in the wet grass and the fresh spring breeze until they've walked a mile right above the world's outer core for a good couple of days. In a way, dealing with the absence of the inhumane conditions of the great below was just as shocking to the bodily systems as the initial exposure.
Kouta was sporting a nasty type of sunburn and was sweating excessively. Constantly out of breath but adamant about continuing to carry the rabbit so dear to Mana on his back. Leave alone the selfless care that the young man put into healing the rabbit once the accumulated pain and symptoms of the excessive amounts of venom coursing through his system were too much to take.
"It's good that we left the underground. You're showing the symptoms of chakra shortage, your augmentations were beginning to fail you down there." Mana observed in a worried tone when Kouta took another stop to scan through and heal the rabbit if just a little bit. Even the smallest fixes could have ended up saving his life.
"Ye should stick yer nose ta yer own business. I'd be a frickin' loser ta die to some snake juice anyway." Usuzoku taunted the young man who saved his life multiple times over the last day.
"It is kind that you're trying to conserve my chakra because I'm dear to Mana-chan but you should stop. Even if there are no unforeseen distractions, given the distance to cover, you will need every ounce I'm investing to stay alive until you receive your treatment." Kouta replied with a grin. It was rather perceptive of him to spot Usuzoku's tough act and call it out. Then again, the two have been forming a sort of a soft rivalry and maybe the Jugo simply saw such a display of perception being a superior leverage over the usual strength-based one.
"See, Zoku-chan, even Kouta can see through your tough mask." Mana grinned.
"Ugh. Just let me die with a little bit 'a dignity…" the rabbit sighed before Kouta could finish his treatment and the journey resumed.
It did not take too long to run into the first mongoose. Those little buggers were quick. All it took to spoil the surprise was a quick peek of a furry, triangular head through the grass and the overgrown critter was gone to gather his allies. Regardless of the act that their movement was scouted out, Mana encouraged the other rabbits to keep moving. Usuzoku may not have survived any delays.
Soon enough a handful of dozens of mongooses burst from the grass. The first time when an animal peeked its head out on a scouting mission, Mana only seemed a bit surprised that her chakra sensory failed to pick it up. When an entire battalion snuck up on the rabbits without her sensory alerting her of the enemy from kilometers away, it was something to completely baffle the magician to the point where she could not attribute her sensory flaw to her troubled and overstressed emotional state.
The curious part was that the moment the mongooses revealed themselves with their best war-grimaces and their fangs and claws ready for a nasty battle, their chakra signatures immediately flared back up. It did not just appear into existence, it appeared the rise up from nothingness, almost like it was suppressed somehow.
"I don't think you've come here to fight. Not with these numbers. Someone among you must be in charge." Mana spoke up while her mind still tried to wrap around the uncanny ability by all the mongooses she had met to mask their existence while inside the wild grasslands.
"Can't blame us for being wary, human." A fiery colored mongoose stood in front of the others. It had very wide flappy patches of skin under its arms connecting to its feet that looked like a cape when its arms were relaxed but would have almost looked like fearsome wings once they were extended to the sides. It did not look like a fashion statement but an ability to glide may have been odd for an animal born in plain grasslands.
"After all, the whole population of a species we've been long at war with passes through our borders." Another one appeared, possessing an identical set of gliders but much darker in the color of its fur.
"Headed right for our sacred land, no less." The third one showed up. A very bright shade of brown with the same gliders that appeared to connect the more important mongooses. It was something Mana could perhaps remember as she could have used any sort of social sense and advantage in her understanding of the mongooses she could have gotten.
"We don't come here as an enemy. We come asking for your aid, I would rather you did not hold us up here and accompany us to the nearest settlement." Mana asked.
The three important mongooses looked at one another in confusion, shining their mono-colored eyes at one another as if trying to verify that the words they have heard were correct and that the rest heard them as well. The three then proceeded to erupt into a mocking fit of laughter. The amusement in their lungs was such that it brought them to the ground, completely concealing them in the grass once more before they surfaced.
Once they disappeared in the grasslands this time, their chakra signatures did not fade out. Whatever the nature of the uncanny chakra suppression ability was, it had nothing to do with the close relationship between the species of ninja mongooses and the grasslands surrounding Kusagakure.
"I hope you're a better talker than this, kid, that was pathetic," Usupari grunted into Mana's side after hopping up closer to her.
"Tsk. Talking to the mongooses is pointless, no matter how good the girl is. We should have never entertained this idea…" Usuvilme sighed in the back of the line. It appeared that some of the mongooses in the fighting squad had heard those remarks and it appeared to snuff out the amusement in the crowd.
"Get lost before we help your heads get lost from your bodies." The fiery-furred mongoose warned before turning its back to Mana and commanding its part of the battalion to retreat.
"We're not done here." Mana stepped forward, knowing full well that she was escalating the conflict she only took half a step and then stopped so that she kept the conflict in a boiling state instead of letting the boiling pot tip over and spill into a bloody stain on the floor.
"We have a dying friend who has been bitten by a Ninja Snake and we know that you are the best at killing Ninja Snakes so you must have an anti-venom," Mana asked. "I promised said friend that I would help him beat up more mongooses and that I would save my life and right now I'd rather keep both promises or at least one rather than none."
"Atta girl!" Usuzoku raised his thumb in acknowledgment of Mana's overly aggressive approach to the matter.
"This is really not how you negotiate…" Usuchabi smacked her head in frustration. She was right, Mana could feel that she was really bad at this. So bad in fact that she should have known of this earlier.
The mongooses drew their swords and hid in the grass again. Mana could sense all of them still, quite unlike when they snuck up on the rabbits. That meant that they could not use their hiding abilities when in mid-combat. This revelation unmasked the nature of their suppression almost instantaneously – they evaded the chakra sensory ability by simply suppressing their chakra signatures to a smaller scale, weaker even than that of an ordinary, untrained civilian.
In that state, no sensory would pick them up but they'd also restrict themselves from using those concealed resources of chakra making any amounts of augmentation or unnatural fighting prowess impossible.
"Mongoose Style: Candle in the Wind." two voices pronounced simultaneously as the mongooses had already dashed through Mana's body and landed on the other side, their sickle-shaped swords in hand. The magician's body shook before the head separated from the body.
"Quick Shredding Dance!" the third mongoose, the fiery one chanted out while in mid-air. The speed at which these animals moved in the grass or switched between the grass and above it was almost miraculous. Slicing blades of wind projectiles shredded the beheaded body of the magician to fleshy chunks without damaging the grass beneath her feet.
Both the cut-off head and the shredded body of Mana turned to petals and scattered away. The magician had ample signs to set up the illusion even before the situation turned from sour to almost unsalvageable. The petals greatly confused all the mongooses as a great percentage of them revealed their positions by standing up from the grass and looking at the petals scatter in the spring breeze.
"Genjutsu?" the fiery mongoose correctly assumed before it was all too late.
A pleasant whistle of a melodious tune made all the mongooses widen their eyes and fall prone as their bodily senses were overwhelmed with pleasurable sensations. Almost all of their mediums of perception received an influx of pleasant stuffing that all combined in an absolutely disarming combination.
"The… Best… At fighting… Snakes…" the fiery-furred mongoose exclaimed through a great physical effort to speak even if the odd pitch of the animal's voice made it sound quite silly.
"That… We are…" the darker colored mongoose added.
"We have… A lot of… Anti-venoms…" the third of the mongoose generals concluded.
With an unsteady pace of her chest inflating and deflating and her mouth gaping open, desperate to take in more air than she usually did, Mana managed to muster up a smile after canceling her illusion, finally revealing her true location to the rest of the baffled mongooses.
"Then maybe we can strike some sort of a deal?" she suggested.
