"Now that was just rude…" Mana pushed the falling strands of hair off her face before taking a mighty leap and sticking to the wall where the enormous snake-human hybrid once stood. Now the giant just lumbered up and over, it had clearly not predicted ever needing to withdraw as its lower body, comprised solely of faceless reptilian tentacles was ill-suited for climbing.

"Hurry after it, human. If it aims its heads from up there, we'll be fish in a barrel!" One of the mongooses growled.

The magician focused a precise and controlled amount of chakra to the bottom of her feet. While her feet were attracted to the surface of the cavern as if drawn by magnets, the magician dashed upward in an attempt to chase the monster. If the titan had not slain so many mongooses that day, maybe she'd have given it the chance to withdraw. Although the mongoose must have been right, it was not withdrawal that the titan was seeking but a superior position to kill.

Following the rushing onslaught of mongooses running up the wall in a berserk chase of the giant that could have easily threatened their entire population, Mana heard loud thundering from up above. While the mongooses were too self-indulging in their rivalry with the human-serpentine titan, Mana got absolutely baffled by the insane reaction to the giant's uncontrolled strength.

Thunderstorms raged all around the plains, causing large fires all around. The walls of flames tall enough to reach the sky, the turbulent and suffocating smoke that rose from the flames covered the sky in a dark gloom while the leaking from the giant chakra dyed the layers of gaseous clouds violet.

"Because the giant is not balanced, its chakra is leaking out. It can't control it. It seems that Earth itself is crying in pain of supporting such an abominable monstrosity." Mana figured to herself as she looked around and truly listened to the Earth's cries. Yes, that was how the thundering and crumbling ground truly sounded like. Moans of pain. The gurgling, fiery magma from below that burst from underground whenever the giant attempted to stomp out dozens of mongooses at once and missed sounded like spilled blood.

"This battle cannot drag out. If it truly cannot control its fearsome might, it will destroy more than the human mind can stretch if such fearsome chakra leaks." Mana looked around, desperately trying to find the blazing orb of the Sun in the sky but failing for the Earth's gloom was too thick. They were lucky not to have the battle take place near an ocean, being as far from the far-reaching watery embraces as one could be at each side.

If the giant had approached the edge of a continent, he would have broken it. If it stepped into the waters, it would have drowned the world in them.

Regardless of how fearsome the situation was, there was only one thing left to do. There was no use coordinating the mongooses. Those that had any semblances of their mind left to lose would have known to cut for the upper heads, those that had lost it in the heart of battle would be too far gone to reach and only the defeat of their enemy could have brought them clarity.

While the natural, seemingly cosmic thunderstorms raged around Mana across the entire land that the battle was raging in, the magician had some lightning of her own left in her system. The girl's chakra turned to lightning, arced and sparked around her before the Audra wand in her hands lit up. It was time to thunder how she had never thundered before.

Mana moved on, she did not waste chakra on a flight, even though it may have helped her aim a little. It would have made her too slow, her maneuverability would have been limited. The magician ran forward, carefully feeling her massive opponent. It was an odd feeling, reaching out for its chakra.

As the young kunoichi evaded the giant's stomps and massive fists and dispersed into rose petals before compressed streams of water and flames tried to leave not a single trace of her, Mana realized something profoundly curious about the way she's been sensing this giant's chakra.

"Magical Shock Jutsu!" Mana yelled out, pointing her wand at an elongated and exposed neck, seeing mongooses buzzing past and over her with their own attempts at beheading the top half of the titan. What normally would have been just a shock now pierced through the weakened flesh of the titan sending more and more heads crumbling down and foaming into black, tar-like goop.

Mana dashed back with all of the fortitude and speed her powerful thighs could muster up, evading another crushing blow that summoned jets of hot water as well as magma from down under. Mongooses buzzed and cut with their weaponry all over the giant's arm but left absolutely no scratches on them.

Yes, her initial hunch was right, she sensed more than just the giant's chakra. She could almost see it, it was not a growth of her sensory abilities but a deeper look into what they were. She could see the flow of the energy surging inside and leaking out of the gigantic transformation, it helped her a great deal anticipating the upcoming attacks and not getting trapped under them.

It was because of the beast's size that Mana could sense this clearly. Under no other circumstances would she have been able to do so otherwise. Maybe, if her abilities continued to improve in the future, she'd be able to see this flow in everyone, not just someone tall enough to brush the stars.

The heads opened up again, spitting showers of poison that could have drowned entire mountains while another serpent fired a bolt of lightning of its own that traversed through the dark purple torrent of liquid death. The faceless serpents on the lower half of the giant raced across the ground as well. For a being weakened by its imperfections, someone who was halfway incomplete of its chakra network, the gargantuan projection of sick, human imagination was incredibly dangerous and mighty.

This was the time, Mana leaped off the ground letting the currents of wind carry her while she prepared another Lightning Release jutsu right after lifting off to launch at the open mouths of the draconic-heads. She could have done it, dispatched of those quite potent heads, judging from the power of the jutsu they used, it must have housed a significantly sensitive chakra pressure point inside them… Yet…

"Magical Twist Jutsu!" Mana yelled out. This was one of her earliest jutsu, after the training in the Rabbit Caves where she aimed to perfect her weakest jutsu she invented as a complete child, she may have been able to cast them without uttering a word or using a hand seal but… Not at this scale.

An awesome propulsion of Wind Release chakra blasted from below Mana's feet, creating a cylindrical shield from the overflowing torrents of venom and lightning to protect the mongooses below. It had to hold, it must have held! When the stakes were this high, Mana could not have failed, no matter how much of her faltering chakra resources she had to expend to protect the mongooses below.

For a brief moment, the mongooses seemed to snap out of their berserk states and glare at a human floating above their heads because of the cylinder of air she had used to protect them from an ocean of deadly poison with a current reaching trillions of bolts in might surging through it.

Two coiling dragon heads attempted to crush Mana in between them. They must have noticed what she was trying to do and, for that reason, they did not open their abyssal jaws, instead choosing to use their massive size and scales to crush the magician in between one another. What the combination transformation failed to take into consideration was that Mana was running short of chakra and that she'd no longer be floating by the time the two heads buzzed past her in an attempt to crush her like an insect. The magician was plummeting.

Mana screamed out in pain, the weakness she felt emanating from inside her body made her mind get hazy. Almost like a creeping sickness of sleepiness after a long and tedious day. Then a massive, all overpowering pain in her lower body. Mana opened her eyes only to see her legs caught in between the heads that tried to crush her.

Something was wrong. Her legs did not respond to her commands. She could have used Magical Twist Jutsu again to propel herself into the air and prevent slamming into the ground at freefall. Maybe try and summon another gust for her Mystical Wings Jutsu and stay afloat at the cost of even more chakra but… What was the point? She had lost so much stamina and the magician began feeling like she may not have had much more left to offer.

A tight grip yanked Mana from mid-fall. Wind surged past Mana's cheeks bringing her back from the miserable delusion of a world of nothing but the pain in her lower body into reality. The magician wanted to speak in acknowledgment of one of the mongoose generals from before using its odd gliding ability to swoop in and save her from the dangerous sky fall. Only a pitiful moan escaped her throat as the pain in her legs was too overpowering.

The other mongooses moved in using their synchronized and well-planned moves to attack. Using their sickles and short blades, the mammals moved in for the heads once the foaming and sizzling oceans of poison got absorbed into the fissures that the giant himself formed with its mighty strength and mass or simply evaporated from the intense air pressure and heat of the battlefield.

The titan leaped up with a spinning motion, extending the faceless snake heads on its sides out wide while it slammed entire battalions of mongooses away with its mighty spin. Like falling meteors, one by one, the poor animals crashed into the ground. The magician felt dozens of signatures fade out again. Some of them died on impact, some of them survived it. Some of the mongooses died from getting bashed into the gazers of magma while others were merely severely inconvenienced by it, having enough chakra to augment themselves through such a dive.

"Keep gliding." Mana grit her teeth while her shaking hands pressed her Audra wand tighter. Her legs felt like thousands of shards of hot glass were trapped inside her flesh and were being shifted around, cutting and shredding her from deep within, slicing through muscle and further fracturing bones.

"Aye, aye." The mongoose general nodded its dark grey-furred head while it tried to position itself in a superior position for Mana to bomb the heads from above with her Lightning Release jutsu.

The pain, the weariness… It was so distracting, so demanding of Mana's attention but, truth be told, they were not the important thing. Yes, everything hurt, yes, she wanted so desperately to rest that death sounded like the most alluring outcome right now but she had to keep going. Things would have to get more painful, more hellish before things could get better.

A mere thought of what was at stake: the Ninja Mongooses, the Ninja Rabbits… Kouta…

"Lightning Style: Magic Bullet Barrage!" Mana yelled out as a bombarding flurry of balls of Lightning Release chakra constructs whizzed out from the tip of her Audra wand aimed right at the necks of the fearsome abomination below. There was no air to breathe up above but the pain was too shocking to Mana's system for her to stop quivering and whimpering to draw breath properly anyway.

All of the heads simultaneously moved aside, exposing a wide growth at the top of the titan's body where Mana's attacks harmlessly detonated, causing absolutely no harm to the monster. Not even something as mighty as B-Rank ninjutsu managed to scratch the titan otherwise. Things were beginning to look bleaker and bleaker.

"You need something stronger. You need to aim better too." The mongoose scolded Mana. It was nervous, being so far away from the active battlefield, of course, it'd regain some sense it previously had.

No air… Mana couldn't breathe, not only because there was little air up above the clouds where the two had to rise up to properly hit the beast from above but because the exhaustion that was beginning to take over. The magician felt pressure around her eyes, the drowsiness that was threatening to take the girl away at any moment now.

The grey mongoose could hold Mana in its arms and glide upward no longer, it had to take a good swoop down to catch another current before changing direction and swooping upward again. That was when they'd be in danger. The combination beast shifted its attention from the countless injured or knocked down mongooses at Mana. Even if her previous attack had failed to leave any damage, somewhere deep in its consciousness the monster had taken her for a threat. That had to be a good sign…

The monstrous serpentine humanoid roared out loud, the throats of its upper, draconic heads swelled up and bloated out. Once it opened their mouths once more, exposing them to some pretty nasty counterattack, it sent a downpour of scorched, flaming rocks from its hundreds of mouths.

Avoiding them was a valiant attempt. A blood-curdling grunt made Mana's blood freeze while she felt the familiar feeling of wind fondling her hair wildly and air screeching as it rushed past her ears. One of the rocks managed to hit the mongoose and send it crashing down together with Mana.

Blackness. Stars blowing up all around while loud, unfamiliar voices spoke of things Mana couldn't quite make out. Some of them were screaming, some of them were joyful, some of them were of children laughing. Mana's eyes managed to open up, they felt so heavy. She failed. The mongooses that were still alive could not have been in a much better state than she was.

Maybe she had it in her for one more Flower Petal Sanctuary before her resources run dry but what was there to gain from it? Her legs were crushed, her ribs were burning up even as the air was now much more plentiful around her. Even if she could evade the incoming crushing stomp, she'd only be pushing her impending death only a few seconds away.

As her body would reform, the pain in her legs would burn up, unable to support the weight of her body, Mana would collapse and would be left waiting patiently for when the titan notices the changed position of her incapacitated body and finishes her off. Damn… She was so close too… There was barely any chakra left in the star-reaching serpent beast as well. It was burning chakra just by maintaining its mighty transformation, it was burning through chakra with each jutsu it used from each one of its heads… If only Mana had been strong enough to buy one more second…

That's right!

The titan's foot landed in a triumphant stomp on where the magician once stood. It only managed to pick up a cloud of whirling and dancing petals as they burnt up in the intense heat of the cataclysmic battlefield while the magician's shape reformed a good hundred meters away from where she almost died.

Blood burst from the wounds on her crushed legs and Mana's screams were just loud enough to alert the world-breaker that threatened two entire populations of Ninja Animals in its incomplete and imperfectly executed and rushed form. The beast roared in frustration before leaping up and aiming its massive feet at the nearest fifty meters area around the magician.

This was it… For real this time. Mana couldn't even keep her eyes open. She only had enough chakra to stay mostly conscious and experience her final, agonizing moments. She bought herself all the time she could, she struggled…

A mighty poof sound overwhelmed even the crackling thunderstorms all around. Instead of the airborne titan of shapes combining both snake and man, a man in a Konohagakure flak jacket and dark, spiky, shoulder-length hair was falling at Mana with both of his feet aimed at her chest for a foot-stomp. Up above its head, Vasuki was falling in an unconscious state. Whatever remained of the snake's chakra after its initial battle with the rabbits was now gone and it had passed out.

Knives skewered the Konoha jounin in mid-air, forcing the ninja to puke out blood and his eyes to shoot out wide in shock. The knives were glowing with the faint blue of the base, lacking of elemental affinity chakra cloaking color. The force of impact coming from the knives forced the skewered ninja to change the course of its fall and change into a powerless plummeting position.

"Grass Hot Wind!" a feminine voice echoed throughout the battlefield during a brief moment of silence between two thunderbolts as a cat-like rabbit form blitzed up in front of the freefalling Konoha jounin completely covered in an inferno of flames. With a soaring and burning spinning kick, Usuchabi sent the Jounin crashing down to the ground below.

The feline rabbit glanced up at the freefalling, gigantic, unconscious serpent above its head. Hundreds of rabbits blitzed in from the cavern nearby the battlefield where the colossal battle started and claimed its first, unfortunate victims. They may not have all been mighty warriors, as strong as Usuzoku or Usukari, but they all possessed the fighting instinct and the training to help out just a little bit.

"Dynamic Entry!" hundreds of rabbits screamed out from the depths of their lungs as their combined effort managed to send Vasuki flying the complete opposite direction from where Usuchabi was looking to land and where Mana was laying sprawled out and on the verge of passing out.

"They finally let you guys fight…" Mana smiled as she breathed out her final breaths before her eyes closed, not permanently but just for a brief moment of well-deserved rest. Finally, the snakes were defeated. Not by Mana, not by the rabbits or the mongooses but the two warring and feuding species fighting side by side.

Mana did not know a finer sight than that to pass out after seeing.