While Mana may have only told Yamata that she required the rabbits to move on to Konoha to save them, she had to admit that their absence and the ease at which Yamata let them go truly felt liberating. Combined with the knowledge that all the rabbits that got sealed away into the infinite nothingness of Ouroboros were now wandering somewhere in the Land of Earth, it made for as powerful motivator as any.

The magician was no longer fighting to keep afloat, to keep herself from drowning in the negativity of having lost everything she had worked for and that she'd die knowing that everything she did amounted to nothing. This time it felt quite the opposite, while Mana did not want to die, she'd have accepted it knowing that what she sacrificed it all for was worth it every step of the way.

That being said, the fight at hand was extremely complicated because Mana had much fewer options than she has had in quite a long time. Her Audra wand was busted and was a good blow away from breaking, which locked away a lot of prowess she achieved in control and chakra channeling during her training with the rabbits. She was now a good couple of steps weaker than she was at her best.

"I take it you are not the offensive type?" Yamata grinned looking at the magician.

Mana let it off to silence. She needed to entertain this person. Ironically enough, just for once her life as a ninja and her life as a magician intertwined. Like never before Mana needed to be the least ninja she's ever been while using ninjutsu. She needed to be flashy, inventive and cheerful. While the first two were taxing, the third one was significantly easier now that the rabbits were safe.

The magician placed her hands forward, she took a brief moment longer than she'd usually take channeling her chakra without her wand or without weaving any hand seals but such was her current situation.

"Magic Spark Jutsu!" she chanted out. A flock of sparks fired out from her extended hands, flashing and bursting with warmth all over the battlefield while they raced towards their intended target with varied accuracy results.

The crimson eyes of Yamata no Orochi lit up with a bright, red flash. It was like he concentrated his chakra to augment whatever effects his gaze put out. With this tremendously clever use of his chakra, the man effectively locked Mana down in place, overcome with the tremendous pressure of the weight of Yamata's gaze, and dispelled all of the sparks at once.

"A pointless distraction," Yamata muttered. "A distraction that fails to draw your opponent away from your main attack is a useless one."

A creep of overwhelming fear crawled up Mana's spine like a large spider that meant to put its eggs in the lower back of the girl. The magician could almost feel its hairy legs rubbing against her body, she could almost see and feel the ghosts of her past failures clinging to her body, forming an effective prison of her own inadequacy that locked her down from movement.

"Move!" Mana yelled at herself from within her prison of oblivion but the bars of anxiety did not budge one bit. The girl had completely lost the control over her own body and that fact just made her fear expand into a massive blob of corruption even more.

"If I don't move, I'll die! Move!" Mana ordered herself again but she could not as much as even twitch. Shortage of air was threatening the magician with a blackout, the frightening feathers of blackness began wrapping around the edges of her vision, making the effective field that her eyes could see in clearly extremely tunneled.

She had to run. She had to use all of her chakra in one big burst just to escape this tremendous gaze pressure and then just bolt. Maybe, just maybe, in a decade or two she could forgive herself for running away, maybe she'd gather enough inner strength to find out if the Yamata ever exploited her escape and got back to her by snuffing out all the rabbits, by killing Kouta…

No. She could not do that. Even if all that awaited for her here was to wait patiently for death, she'd have to take it. The price of scorning the serpentine one was too great. It would only cost everything Mana has ever achieved, everything she ever wanted to be and the magician would have rather died knowing her loved ones were safe because of her sacrifice than prove herself a hypocrite and make her own life the first and only, truly, useless one.

"You're all paled out. It couldn't be…" Yamata muttered almost as if to himself. The serpent augmented his gaze once more by focusing his chakra into whatever technique he used with his eyes. It felt like billions upon billions of needles sieging her body at once, like swarms of angered hornets all diving at Mana and unleashing their mighty stings in a mad barrage of pain and death.

At least the incredible force of Yamata's gaze broke through his own paralysis effect which he applied on Mana before. The girl could once more feel her body moving and while her bones felt as brittle as they've ever been and she felt like a porcelain doll who was just body-slammed by an Akimichi, she managed to peel her face off the ground somehow.

There were no external injuries in her body. But it hurt far worse than if there were actual blades piercing her body at that point. It was like Yamata forced his own overwhelming and dominating chakra inside her with just his gaze while when he focused it on her entirely he could somehow force it all out at once. With a technique like that, he could probably kill weaker threats by just staring them to death.

"It is the real you this time…" Yamata noted. "How surprising."

It was the time to try something else. If she could not even distract the legendary snake with her barrage ninjutsu techniques, she'd have to try the more powerful version. Maybe that one could not have been dispelled as easily…

Another pointless fraction of a second wasted channeling chakra where it could have been done quicker by just channeling it through her Audra wand. Pain resonating all over her body, Mana felt so sluggish…

"Lightning Style: Magic Bullet Barrage!" she chanted out firing a more intense and powerful version of the jutsu she just used. The barrage of Lightning Release chakra spheres was faster, it packed more of a blow and had a much more powerful shocking effect. The magician felt rather confident that her opponent, as awesome as he was, could not simply stare away a B-Rank jutsu like that.

Yamata just stood there. The Lightning Release spheres whizzed past him while those that did reach him simply imploded with a powerful shock that appeared to very briefly inconvenience the shape of the Eight-Headed Dragon. By the time that the oncoming inconvenience ended, the snake-man looked on ahead. Deep inside he wanted to be fooled.

Mana was no longer there, just like had wanted her to not be. A buzzing sound greeted his ears before the man's chakra-seeing eyes could pick up on the girl. The amount at which the senses of the snakes "saw" chakra was limited, nothing compared to chakra sensory, the Sharingan or other similar abilities but it was still something Mana had to keep in mind. She did not use cards that had anything special in them, just plain old steel-tipped cards.

Because of that reason, Yamata could not clearly track the flurries of cards coming at him, they were just a flat flash of metallic colors that were irritating to sit through them passing by or etching slightly into his skin. Once again, the serpent barely even bothered to try and avoid it. He wanted to see Mana's trick.

"I had hoped that these cards had some amazing jutsu sealed inside them like the one you gave that boy back then," Yamata exclaimed in disappointment after Mana's flurry of long-range projectiles ceased leaving him with nothing but a couple of shallow cuts.

"Don't interrupt a performer while she's not done." Mana scolded her opponent while she lifted one card up and showed its back to the shapeshifting snake. The girl pulled hard on the card, revealing a metallic shimmer on the sides of the cards to be not just blades, like most of Mana's other cards, but blades pressing on steel wire beneath it while the last card "hooked" on an important link in the web of wire she had just weaved.

The pressure of the steel wire against his taken shape lifted Yamata slightly off the ground while he curiously kept observing Mana's trick. The girl flicked the card spinning before spinning herself and catching the card near the ground with her other hand and then throwing it aside, leaving her an end of the link of steel wire to reach her opponent with. Gently, Mana touched that link with her hand while building up chakra inside her.

"Lightning Style: Magician's Touch!" she muttered while her body lit up with lightning crackles that passed down through the link of steel wire, forming an intricate web of passing Lightning Release chakra with the same resonating, numbing effects like those of Magician's Touch but without the weakness of Mana having to touch her opponent to initiate it.

After the technique settled down, Mana stood still in an observation of her opponent's reaction. Yamata twitched a pair of times, whether it was from the numbness coursing through his body, completely disabling…

"That was disappointing. This time this jutsu was much weaker than when you touched me before." Yamata lifted up his head, sending another paralyzing glare Mana's way with the same frightening alarm of crimson light that preceded it.

Mana could no longer allow herself to remain paralyzed. She focused on intensifying her chakra flow, similarly to how one would do when dispelling an illusion just to avoid the paralyzing effects of Yamata and withdraw a couple of dashes back. If the opponent ever decided to truly come at her, she'd need all the range advantage she'd get.

The pressure of shockwaves emanating in close-range to Yamata loosened up the wire trap allowing the mighty snake to tear it all up with little effort. He most likely had what it took even without the added advantage… This was bad. Mana had completely squandered a good third of her total chakra without achieving much in terms of entertaining the man. Maybe she wasn't as great as she'd thought…

"Maybe it was my mistake though." Yamata sighed. "I did wait around in a state of deep anticipation when I should have been killing you. Just like before, perhaps you are at your best when things are at stake… Maybe I let the rabbits free to early?"

Mana prepared for the inevitable attack, tightening her defensive stance and preparing for an attack of an opponent of an unidentified style. Those were the toughest to dodge but it should not have taken Mana too long to draw up a profile on how Yamata fought with a human body that was alien to him up close.

Yamata extended his hand, his palm facing upward, while the same glyphs that appeared on the ground when the Summoning Jutsu was cast appeared on his exposed palm.

"Summoning: Eobshin!" the progenitor of serpents chanted while a clay pot appeared in his exposed hand, it looked about as old as the snake king himself. Wondrously, the pot then unwrapped itself appearing to be by far the smallest of the snakes Mana had ever seen summoned. Yamata gripped tighter on one end of the serpent while the Eobshin changed its shape once more.

Yamata swiped his hand aside, taking an offensive sword fighting stance and in the one motion it took for him to do so, Eobshin had taken the shape of a curved-blade sword that appeared green and shimmering as if made of gold and emerald. This was the method of Yamata's attack, or so it seemed.

Oddly enough, the progenitor of the Ninja Snakes telegraphed his attacks rather clearly, using a very notable lean back before he dashed onward at Mana with a thrust of his serpentine sword. His body was also missing its notable snake traits, namely the completely blinding and unbelievable speed of lunging onward.

Because of that, Mana's acquired over her lifetime evasion skills were just barely enough to have her survive the initial flurry of blade strikes. Slashes and thrusts just kept on passing through nothing but air while Mana leaned and danced around the blade. It could not have been helped, she was forced to ignore her opponent and focus all of her attention solely on the blade for that much focus was needed just to stay alive.

A devastating pulse of pain emanated in Mana's right thigh. The magician looked down only to see the edge of the blade having moved while she had thought it to have remained static, as a normal blade would have. Due to that, the bent up blade was now stuck through her thigh stopping her in her tracks. Yamata drew the blade out, making Mana feel a burst of blood running down her right leg, the snake-man then followed the attack up with a swipe at where he had predicted the magician's throat to be.

Mana quickly shifted her weight onto her left leg in a mad dive on her back. After having her back hit the ground pretty rough, the girl used the sliding momentum to help her hands push her back up to her feet, using her left leg as the dominant one now. She did not see that curious manner of movement coming from the blade and now her speed was completely shattered to bits. She needed some time. She needed to cope with the initial burst of pain that resonated not just in the leg where the wound was but all over, slowing down Mana's movements even more.

"You're toying around." She taunted her opponent. Yamata was clever but he also may have been just as arrogant as his children. A taunt may have been the only way to slow the pace of the battle down a little while she thought up of a way to not get murdered with the next attack. "You're using summoning techniques, not your own. Maybe that's why you're not feeling entertained?"

"Foolish human, these techniques are not those of my children that I summon to use them. They are all my own, they merely inherited them from me." Yamata replied staring at the blood trickling and dripping down his emerald blade. While it felt really bad, Mana may have used her chakra augmentations to handle the wound for a short while. It did not yet sign a death sentence, just made it more likely and made the battle more desperate.

"That's right," Yamata grinned, seeing the pain and confusion on Mana's face. "I know every jutsu and ability that my children do, the only Ninja Snake whose ability I cannot replicate or have not learned before she did is that of their mother – the ability to force inheritance of ninja techniques. To have little snakes be born with the ability to use a jutsu at a fraction of the original's power."

"Then you are a lousy parent." The magician closed her eyes, almost expecting her opponent to attack after being taunted this way but, much to her surprise, Yamata listened quite attentively.

"What do you mean by that?" he wondered.

"Being more than your children. Keeping them down and distancing oneself from them is nothing to be admired of. That is how a species becomes stagnant. The next generation must always improve on the one that came before. You must let go of the fear of one of your children overcoming you and let them grow." Mana spoke her mind.

"That is a hopeless sentiment. Especially foolish coming from a human." Yamata spoke up. His body blurred in a mad rush, lunging straight at Mana. The magician staggered to the side with her shifted weight. She may have favored the left leg more but if she only used it for powerful space generation she may just have outpaced her opponent that was focused not on outracing her but at poking holes in her.

As she staggered and very nearly slammed her naïve face into the dirt, Mana found out a new salvation to buy her more time – her hands. Instead of avoiding her opponent's attacks on one dominant leg and another one injured and continuously plaguing her with painful resonances, one that required continuous chakra augmentations to stop from spouting too much blood out, Mana used her arms and one leg to move like a monkey, squirm and shift her body about on the ground making her more difficult to stab successfully.

"It is not. You are so preoccupied with your own survival that you haven't noticed it yet – you will never truly be free. Not of your fear of Konoha or some other ninja country becoming sick of you and disposing of you at last, not of your paranoia of one of your children growing too strong for your comfort. That is why the Sun will not make you feel free for long, that is why you seek more and more stimulation with every surfacing." Mana kept on her verbal pressure. She needed to keep Yamata doubting himself, to keep him flailing and buying her time. Who knew, maybe she could time the Eight-Headed Snake out just yet…

"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment Jutsu!" Mana grunted while she forced her palm forward and channeled a powerful bolt of lightning through it. One that fired off in a direct path to the emerald blade and enveloped it completely. Before the lightning bolt could destroy the blade, however, defeating the snake that took its shape, the shapeshifting Eobshin slithered back into its progenitor's sleeve and disappeared.

"Eobshin!" Yamata yelled out, the forearm of his right hand morphed into the same sword that its child previously took the shape of while he lunged at Mana while she was kneeling and still focusing on her ninjutsu technique.

Even before the blade reached her, the kneeling magician knew that this strike would come close. Maybe a bit too close!