"You guys move on right ahead." Mana's clenched together hands trembled while the grass rustled beneath her feet just like it would if no one was there to see it do so. "I'm the only one Yamata no Orochi wants."
"It's not that I want you, it's that I'm a little curious to see what you can do." Yamata shrugged. "If I was you guys, though, I'd probably move. I'm not sure just how many more might get swept aside if I get too excited."
The shapeshifter showed some of its sharp teeth as he could not keep the grin back. He was directly under the warmth of the Sun, right beneath the blue spring sky and taking his sweet time to face a human who incited his curiosity. This was to be beyond just his usual trek on the surface. This may have been one he'd remember for ages.
"He's gonna kill ya, ya know…" Usuzoku grumbled. He was such an idiot sometimes. It wasn't like Mana did not know that much. Sure, if they were to actually start a fight, Yamata would be fighting while massively suppressing himself to avoid much-unwanted attention and while constantly maintaining his transformation. The circumstances would be in her favor but the odds could not have been less so.
Even with all those things going for her, Mana would lose. There was no strategizing out of this. The best she could have done was stall for time, try and avoid the cruel and painful grasp of death until the rabbits were far enough away to avoid the unpredictability of Yamata's curiosity and need for self-amusement. The magician sighed.
"It's alright. Go." She did not address Usuzoku, she addressed a scared pair of rabbits holding an even more terrified little bunny in their arms. "That is in your nature, isn't it. Run."
Usuzoku's shape appeared right behind Yamata with a sword tightly clenched in his hands. Mana couldn't even reach out of gasp in the tremendous fright that the disobedience to her request brought up in her chest.
"Genjutsu: Amduat." Yamata chanted out. Usuzoku froze in mid-air while a shroud of black aura surrounded his body. The eyes of the rabbit warrior whited out while his mouth gaped as if his body was left like a lifeless husk in a state of complete emptiness.
Usuvilme, Usukari, Usuchabi, Usupari and a whole bunch of other rabbit warriors also charged at their unbeatable enemy with the intent to kill him. Usukari's All-Mirage shined brightly in her grasp, ready to seal her enemy away, as far away from where it could threaten the Ninja Rabbits as possible. Every rabbit prepared their own fighting styles for a battle, unlike anything they've had before, with this many combatants, just maybe there could have been hope for a strong enough push back.
The space around Yamata warped in a black rift, a disgusting fabric tearing sound followed by a sonic boom followed the dark flash and the sparkling, violent chain reaction afterward. The rabbits that attacked the progenitor of the snakes at a close distance all disappeared without any trace. Yamata's eyes switched on the long-range attackers as the rift quickly swallowed them up as well. Only Usukari managed to avoid disappearance by thrusting her All-Mirage at the front of the oncoming calamity.
"Interesting. This is a Sealing Ninjutsu of Ouroboros, a son of mine. The ability to seal something away into an infinite nothingness. A sealing dimension so vast that another one just as large could not contain it, it appears your All-Mirage functions on a similar vein…" Yamata noted with a hint of excitement. He did not expect to see one rabbit withstand their defiant act.
"Too bad the sealing dimension of Ouroboros surpasses the measure of infinity…" Yamata's smiled bent evermore with his grin beginning to look cruel. He never doubted the capacity of his ability to overcome the legendary All-Mirage. Inch by inch, after a grueling struggle, Usukari caved in. Her entire right side disappeared inside Ouroboros' rift before it swallowed the rabbit whole and disappeared just as suddenly as it appeared.
She should have stopped them. Maybe, if she reacted quickly enough. If the act of defiance and lashing out wasn't so unexpected to her and if she could move as fast as she usually could, unhindered by Yamata's gaze, maybe Mana could have cast an illusion that trapped the rabbits before they all were taken away from her. Before her life's work, the one thing she thought she pulled off so well that she could have looked back on and felt proud of was shattered right in front of her.
Mana saw Kouta's foot twitch. He was still struggling with the Yamata's gaze, much more than the rabbits that got taken out before him. Half of them probably outranked the two of them in strength and they got taken out in a snap of fingers. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was better reason keeping her boyfriend still and keeping him from attacking but Mana was grateful that he was standing still.
"I can't leave you here, I won't." He yelled out. It was an act of defiance alright but not one as narrow-minded as the one that the other rabbits displayed.
"Lead the rabbits home." Mana smiled fondly looking right at his face. Just for that one moment, she forgot that she was about to die, of all the mongooses that she failed to save, of all the rabbits that died foolishly attacking the progenitor of all Ninja Snakes and one of the scariest creatures to roam the Earth with the might comparable to that of the Tailed Beasts. For that one moment in time, there was just Kouta and her.
He would not have listened. His body moved without a care of what Mana wanted or how she'd have felt like after seeing him meet the same fate that the other rabbits that defied her pleads to leave her to die met.
"Sweet Lullaby!" Mana hummed out in a song, Kouta's body jerked and collapsed in a pathetic pile of quivering and writhing reduction of a man to his lesser instincts.
The magician caught Yamata's gaze lingering on Kouta's body. She wondered just how much chakra did the legendary creature spend on that previous technique. She wanted to properly classify it, put a letter and a possible mental measure behind its rank but her mind simply could not think as clear as it normally would have.
It overpowered the All-Mirage, it was really strong, that was all that Mana could say about it. Vasuki and her summoner could only maintain their transformation for a handful of minutes while the source of chakra was fully prepared for a fight and fresh. Maybe the same would be the case with Yamata, except in an opposite case where instead of maintaining the transformed, massive size the snake would have to exhaust himself shrinking itself this much.
One thing even Mana's buzzing hive of thoughts was capable of putting together was that the less she let her chakra sensory instincts roam around the better – if Yamata ever let go even a fraction of his chakra more she may have blacked out from the sheer size of it alone. Let alone the fact that she was standing in front of a mythical creature of such rank, she was winging it completely blind in terms of sensory…
"You did not have to bother." Yamata pressed his lips together. The man in glittering white hair breathed air out in disappointment. "You should preserve your strength for entertaining me. I would not enjoy you getting winded."
"Yeah, well… We don't always get what we want." Mana replied with scorn flaring in her tone. "I wanted for rabbits to live in peace. For the bunnies to play without having to worry about a pair of evil eyes staring at them from the shadows, looking to snag them from their kind and end their childhoods prematurely. It was what I promised Usuzoku, what I have lived my life to do. Now most of them are gone."
"Hmph, maybe I should have killed them… Seems like an awfully inconvenient way to live. Promises, responsibilities. You can and deserve to get whatever you have the drive and whatever is within your capacity to take. Everything in between what you want and you is just a test for your mettle." Yamata shrugged.
Mana did not even waste time thinking about a reply to that or analyzing what he had said and if she agreed. Usually, she would have thought about something a creature as ancient as Yamata no Orochi told her hard and long but now all she could think of was the carelessly let slip pair of words that suggested that the rabbits were not yet dead.
"Fine. I'll fight you, I'll fight you with all I've got and do my best to entertain you. That is, after all, a half of my identity!" Mana grinned, her Audra wand glittered as it spun and danced in her hand and in the air once she playfully switched the hand that held it. "Unseal the rabbits though. I cannot fight with my mind worrying about them all the time, I won't be able to fight you with my full potential that way."
"You are intelligent, kid. But I have matched wits with far more intelligent. Do not presume to be able to play me." Yamata replied with seriousness in his voice. "You are wasting my time here. That is the opposite of entertaining. Whether the rabbits scatter, whether you live or die, ultimately it is all the same to me."
"Summoning: Nirag!" Yamata chanted. He extended his hand forward allowing a black and green serpent large enough to smother a large animal appear from his sleeve and extend at Mana's general direction.
The girl placed the Audra wand in front of her as an instinctive attempt at softening the blow as much as she could. A painful shock similar to the sensation of multiple shards of broken glass skewering her arms made Mana's eyes widen in pain. The moment of agony was too brief for her to have the time to open her mouth for a scream. The force sent her flying back.
So fast. Everything the rabbits possessed in terms of sheer speed in their lower bodies the snakes had during their terrifying charges. Whenever any serpent was lunging at her, all Mana could have done was used Flower Petal Sanctuary to survive the attack by replacing herself with an illusionary self but there was only a handful of times she could use that in quick succession. It was also not very entertaining for her opponent.
This Nirag reptile kept on slithering past Mana's knocked down body before coiling around and opening its jaw. There was another attack incoming.
"Snake Style Taijutsu: Ishtarrat!" Nirag hissed out while its body wrapped around Mana's in what seemed like an instant. The speed of the reptile was absolutely blinding, whatever trained reaction time and skill in evasion Mana possessed, the shock from the previous knockdown combined with the nearly instant judgment of those this serpent wished dead was a deadly combination even for her.
After tying the magician up with its body, the upper ring of the snake's body together with the lower one began pressing at the girl's slowly being crushed body in an attempt to dislocate and tear her in apart by applying inhuman amounts of strength to the upper and lower parts of her body in opposite directions. It was quite an effective combat hold technique that, just as its name suggested, only someone who was of a serpentine body build or possessed otherwise elongated and elastic limbs could pull off.
The magician's body churned, split and ruptured into two pieces but instead of spilling out blood and everything in the same category, it only showered the bemused snake with flower petals while Nirag slowly withdrew back into the sleeve of its predecessor.
"An interesting technique. You fight like a true snake, girl. Still, to get hit by something as trivial as this…" Yamata spoke as if he was about to yawn at any moment. His crimson irises raced across the terrain trying to see past the scared for their lives and frozen rabbits all around him. Desperate to locate Mana's true, invisible to him shape without dispelling the illusion to see her.
"Spear Kick!" Mana yelled out just a moment after her air-splitting kick came crashing down from above like a sharpened and precise arrow meant to shock Yamata just strong enough for him to temporarily close his eyes and weaken his paralyzing effect on the other rabbits and her for just a bit more. Maybe that little bit was all it would have taken for the rabbits to escape?
"Predictable…" Yamata replied as his mid-body stretched out and wrapped itself around Mana as if there was no spine or internal organs inside this human shape of the serpent. Usually, a Transformation Jutsu would have duplicated the physical features like weight and the anatomy of the target but it also may not have, it was entirely up to the user's will and skill with the technique.
"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch!" Mana yelled out in succession with the declaration of her previous attack. Built up currents of Lightning Release chakra crackled down her body and passed down Yamata's body temporarily stunning him on contact.
The elastic arms of the white-haired avatar of Yamata no Orochi weighed down while the still standing body hunched up. The flowing white hair of the serpent dragged down to the grass beneath his feet and stroke it gently. Not a second later, the predecessor of the Ninja Snakes straightened out with an amused smile. He clearly liked seeing the magician play him like that.
This was no fight. They were not playing any game of chess here. The serpent wanted to be entertained, he wanted for Mana to shock him and show him what beat his treasured children and impressed the Ninja Mongooses enough to have them work together with the Ninja Rabbits.
"You allowed yourself to get hit, played with my expectations making me expect less than I should have before revealing your hand. A fine early play…" Yamata grinned with a face of genuine pleasure. While the faces this man-made genuinely looked creepy at times, this must have felt much more liberating and pleasing to him than being confined to the nooks and crannies of the planet's underbelly and core…
Mana's eyes looked at the orb at the end of her wand. It had cracked. Her Audra wand had not sustained any damage throughout all of the battles she had gone through after it was made and now just a single tackle from a serpent summoned by Yamata managed to threaten to destroy it. The magician performed a quick movement with her hands after which the wand was gone, safely hidden away inside her magician's uniform.
"You fight like a true snake. Defiant in the face of death, cold-hearted to pain. I shall release your friends if you promise to stay here and entertain me to the end. That's how you are, isn't it? Promises and responsibilities bind and dictate your destiny just like mother Earth imprisons my body." Yamata dusted off his clothes and stretched the numbness out of his body. The white-haired man swiped his hand aside.
The magician had expected something flashy and amazing. However, aside from a picking up gust of wind rustling the spring grass in the field there was no sign that the man had lived up to his promise.
"Oh, you do not know, do you? Ouroboros can only unseal that which it has sealed on the exact opposite side of the world it has sealed it away in. I assume that your treasured ones are somewhere in the mountains of Land of Earth…" Yamata explained the lack of visible effect. Even if there was nothing to suggest that Yamata was not lying and Mana was too worried over her ability to handle the massive size of his chakra to check the signature of dips, the magician did believe his word.
Mana pulled out a blank playing card from her sleeve before nodding her head to the side, just hard enough to let her hat tumble down her head before stopping in her other hand. She had seen this done before. Just this once she would be unoriginal for the sake of a magic trick that would assist the rabbits.
The girl bit the tip of her thumb before weaving a pair of hand seals and placing her hand on the card. A loud popping sound came out, followed by a cloud of smoke but that was not it. A collection of jets of chakra rotated around the blank card before the signs of the sealing settled down. After the combination of techniques was complete, only a hieroglyph of "Seal" remained on the previously blank card.
Mana picked the card up and threw it at Kouta who was just about regaining his composure and body control after the combination of both Mana's illusion and whatever this frightening gaze of Yamata's put him through. The boy easily caught the card with a pair of his fingers snapping together.
"Please. Finish what we started, lead everyone home and then unseal this card. You must understand, nothing you or I can do will faze Yamata. Even if you unleashed all of your Curse Seal chakra at once, even if all of us went at him together, we'd all be done with. I'm leaving the future of the Ninja Rabbits with you." Mana tried smiling at the boy once more, with more heart and less fear for her own life so that maybe this time he would do the right thing.
Deep inside, Kouta knew Mana was right. And yet… He was ready to resist before a wave of fleeing rabbits washed him back. With all of the rabbits doing as their instinct demanded of them and running with their lives, with Mana begging him to stop resisting and leaving her to whatever was to come, with him being completely powerless to change anything, Kouta surrendered to the mob and let the rabbits drag him away by force instead of fighting them back and potentially hurting them any more.
