"You've given Hanshin the opening to really get going, stay out of Hanshin's way now." The special jounin grinned while addressing Kiyomi. Obviously, he would not extend the same level of courtesy toward the other Iwagakure ninja. Although it was hard to say what exactly was their most heinous crime: the fact they injured Meiko severely or just that they were in Hanshin's way.

"Black Vicious: Spirit Frequency!" Hanshin extended his palm forward. The hands covering Black Vicious tore the feminine shape of the armor apart once more, scattering the shatters all across the frozen desert of the inner Eternal Flame arena. Just like that, it appeared as if Black Vicious was never there, to begin with, however, upon further, more acute inspection one would have noticed outlines of varied colors of the specter where the general shape of Black Vicious used to be.

"Amazing, the permafrost that this misbegotten nincompoop has produced is entirely unaffected by the incalescence of this fortification." The pickaxe-user took a fumbling pair of steps back, granting his fearsome enemy some respectful distance.

"What idiot…" the third Iwagakure ninja with the ability to use Earth Release elemental ninjutsu remarked. "He removed his only protection, the time to strike is no…"

Before the ninja could finish his sentence, however, his body froze in shock of pain, twisted and cramped in every joint. Most of his muscles tensed up and his face twisted in agony. A careful inspection would have revealed the abdomen of the Iwagakure spy being bent up as if something sizeable had dug into it.

"W-What was that?" the hurt Iwagakure ninja kneeled while wiping the blood and slobber rushing from inside his body and attempting an escape through his mouth. The man's vision doubled and tripled once in a while, a testament to the great amount of damage that he had taken.

"Combat is a game of power. The strength of your chakra, of your physical chakra or spiritual chakra. Hanshin has grown sick of these rules. Hanshin has ascended his Black Vicious to a whole other realm – the realm of mysticism and spirits. Attempting to fight off Black Vicious while it is operating in Spirit Frequency is the same as attempting to combat your inevitable impending death. No amount of chakra will protect your heart from stopping, from natural death." Hanshin turned his body a full 180 before striking a cocky pose, placing his hand with fingers spread out gracefully so that only his eyes would gleam through his moderately long hair and posed finger.

"You're speaking of the afterlife, aren't you? You theological imbecile, there is no such thing!" the pickaxe-wielding Iwagakure ninja flipped out and charged straight at Hanshin. Kiyomi had every chance to butt in and stop the man with a kick to his completely open face but her body stood still. Half of her did not burn with particular passion to aid the man that has neglected to help Meiko despite being so near her when she was hurt, another half was outright curious to see what would happen next.

The large man from Iwagakure grunted in pain, his face leaned back as if he had just hit an impenetrable, invisible barrier but only on the upper side, his lower body still moved out of instinct causing this uncomfortable looking bend of his back. This harrowing position could only be sustained for so long, so the man collapsed in a handful of moments, emitting a pitiful sound that reminded a squeak of a dying rat more than a sound of pain a human would have made.

"What you don't know can still hurt you, it seems… Why would things you don't believe in be any different?" Hanshin taunted his downed opponent. The Iwagakure miner redneck sat up and screamed out in pain as if something had hit his abdomen with enough sheer force to bend both sides of his body. The miner squirmed in pain, showing off his chipped and less than well-looked-after teeth before collapsing in apparent complete lifelessness.

Something about Hanshin's technique still baffled Kiyomi. She was no sensor but she felt absolutely nothing coming off of these hits. It was like the special jounin was attacking his enemies on an entirely different plane, just like he claimed to be. If his attack would have merely been stronger than any defense his enemies could have mustered – the force of such an impact would have raised some noise. Now, the entirety of the force of impact was absent, like a complete enigma, one that may just have existed on the same realm as a man's spirit or the afterlife – the spiritual realm.

"T-This is… Ridiculous! Release!" the Iwagakure explosive specialist bumbled while weaving a hand seal. With a deadly howl, a shriek of impending calamity, the Eternal Fire became covered in flames as every single one of the frozen mines detonated by having the chakra kneaded inside them from within detonating the bomb, instead of the target stepping on them and setting the explosive off through sheer pressure.

The explosive force expanded to cover the entirety of the Eternal Fire, slipping in and out every crack and hole, doing its best to not absolutely decimate the structure but causing the place to bloat from inside ever so slightly as what remained of the expansive force was considerable enough to cause such anomalies of building formation. Blazes of heatwaves howled through the pipes that lead to outside like escaping heated vapor from a boiling kettle.

Hanshin removed his arm which he used to cover up his beautiful face. His arm was covered with ash and dirt, shaking in flashing pain of the overwhelming light show. The clothes on his upper body were completely torn apart and singed to nothingness, tips of his hair where he had not managed to spread his chakra fast enough were still on fire that only faded away after shortening Hanshin's mane by a meaningful margin.

Kiyomi shook in a similar fashion, having thrown her body on top of Meiko's and spread her limbs out to absorb as much of the rampaging devastation as she could. Her back was completely exposed and covered with unpleasant burns. Despite the injuries that the self-sacrificial action brought, the iron resolution in the Yamanaka's eyes burned with the same passion to protect her comrade and do what had to be done that it burned like before.

The Iwagakure redneck picked himself up, the explosion had ragdolled and thrown him to the whole other side of the room, it also caused some damage to the already decently banged up spy, forcing him to rely on his massive weapon to peel his burnt and battered body off the ground.

"Y-You intellectual lightweight! You've obliterated all of these frigid munitions and yet you still have not permanently eradicated a single enemy!" he grunted in dissatisfaction over how the desperation move turned out.

"If you shut up for a second and minded somebody else's business but your own, you'd have noticed something very interesting – the leader of their group is injured." The third Iwagakure spy declared while pointing at Hanshin's battle-damaged stance.

"I did not expect that this chakra armor would fail to protect you while functioning in spiritual frequency, killing the two women would have been just fine with me but… I'll take what I can…" the Iwagakure explosive specialist grinned with pride in his abilities while pointing his thumb right at his own round and plump chin.

"That armor seemed invincible. So many things it could do: channel elemental chakra, attack from different dimensions, act as a chakra armor. This may be the first flaw in the entirety of our intelligence on the ability." The Earth-Release user said while slowly leaning to the ground and placing his hands on it. "So it does have weaknesses, let's explore that…"

The ground floor began shifting and quaking, changing the very foundation behind everyone's feet and forcing anyone still grounded when the technique hit to become burdened by the immense imbalance of the shaking ground. The shake was just imbalanced enough to force anyone to lose balance and struggle to not reach for the ground and try to lower their center of balance by leaning down but not powerful enough to cause actual damage by itself.

The ice that covered the ground of the Eternal Fire started pulling apart, cracking and forming massive fractures that became glacial fissures in mere moments. Kiyomi leaped to the side to avoid a fissure from swallowing her whole, landing further away from the fractures exposed the young woman to more quakes that sent her fumbling around now that she did not have a solid stance beforehand.

Hanshin did not even attempt to avoid the opening crack, whether it was because of his injuries or because he failed to react to the shift in the field of ice he himself created remained unclear. Only the single, bruised hand holding tightly to the edge of the ice crack would have told one the truth of the fate of the special jounin.

There may have been a slight miscalculation from the part of the Earth Release user as his much larger companion also appeared to struggle with the quake all the same as the enemy. Only the explosive-user appeared completely immune to the effects of the technique of his comrade. The man removed two handfuls of metallic sticks and rolled them around in his hand, given the severe environmental effects around him, it was just an act of vanity aimed to show off his superior skill in wielding these tools of destruction.

After a short while of showing off, the explosive-user flung the two handfuls of the sticks at where Hanshin's hand was seen, the last bastion between the special jounin falling down into the fissure that was shaking from both the pain of injuries that it had blocked previously from the massive detonation of the minefield, the cold of the ice he was holding on to and the strain of struggling to hold on with just his injured hand.

It did not appear that Hanshin had intended to avoid the explosive, the metallic sticks bounced about, approaching dangerously close to the man before beginning to shine with a fiery gleam. Only for a blast of wind to scatter them farther away and throw all of them into various fissures and cracks on the battlefield.

"Wind Style: Great Breakthrough!" Kiyomi breathed out while sighing a breath of relief. She did not have the chakra to keep using elemental ninjutsu just to scatter some projectile weaponry of her enemy. Who knew how many more of these the Iwagakure ninja had, given that he specialized in explosives, probably more than the future uses of the same jutsu Kiyomi had.

With a hearty yank of his injured hand, Hanshin pulled himself up with just one hand, his feet moved out first and in an impressive feat of elasticity performed a flipping pull-up, performing a showy pose after completing his movement just to show off to his opponents.

"You could have pulled yourself out this whole time?" Kiyomi flipped out.

"Obviously, but Hanshin needed to gather strength for this specific maneuver!" the special jounin declared with almost a hint of disdain that the genin possessed the nerve to ask such a thing.

"What "maneuver"? You just flipped and vaulted around like a pompous asshole!?" Kiyomi mumbled out to herself with more subtlety than her previous outrage as she did not wish for that question to even be acknowledged by the special jounin.

"Still alive? A pity…" the Earth Release using Iwagakure ninja sighed in a showy, clearly faked manner. "I would have had two confirmed takedowns, at this pace, my teammates probably won't take even one person down."

"You speak as if we are not in a desperate situation." The explosive-user looked at his teammate, "Already forgot when that Konoha ninja found a gap in your guard?"

"What gap? That ridiculous jutsu would have incapacitated anyone… How was I supposed to defend against something that comes at me right from the spirit world itself?" the Iwagakure spy sneered at his comrade.

"All of this foolishness is beginning to wear down on Hanshin." The Konohagakure special jounin declared while placing himself in a peculiar defensive stance that involved him crossing his hands to the opposing sides over his chest and extending his legs to the sides. Bit by bit, preceded by a flame of bland blue shade color basic chakra that lacked an elemental affinity, Black Vicious manifested itself in its physical form over Hanshin's body, stretching out its obsidian, armored arms around the ninja as if displaying physical affection and in such a way swearing to protect its user with its life.

"All this cool aside, you're bleeding out a lot of chakra rebuilding that armor like that every time and using those crazy techniques with it," Kiyomi spoke to her mentor mentally. "Let's fight together for now. Can you do something for me and stop the solo act?"

Hanshin appeared displeased at first but after a brief flash of images in his mind he closed his eyes, sighed and smirked. Bringing Kiyomi's idea to life was simply too alluring to continue the taking everything the enemy had and then dominating them with a far superior comeback game that he enjoyed so much.

"This level of violence… You speak the language of Hanshin." The special jounin declared in a showy pose as he pointed his finger up. From the sudden and energetic movements of this man, the entirety of the enemy defense force clenched up and ducked in place, worried about the man's counterattack. "Very well…"

All of the hands covering Black Vicious converged in one line, gripping the armor in its center and peeling it apart as if attempting to open up a chest cavity by simply tearing through the ribcage from the middle. A lurid gasping sound left the armor and echoed throughout the Eternal Fire, followed shortly by an ethereal scream of torment as the hands finally ripped the armor open at the center, exposing what was inside – an emerging gust of wintry blizzards – a combination of both Wind Releases and Water Release.

"Black Vicious: Snowblind!" Hanshin yelled out while letting the armor do its thing. One that while forcing the enemy on their back feet did not appear to be nearly as potent as his other jutsu, even if it did contain a vastly superior degree of spread and range compared to the other combination techniques used together with the chakra armor construct.

The chilling nature of the gust of winds forced the enemy on their back feet but it did not appear to have much of a damaging effect, other than slightly slowing them down and covering them in excessive layers of snow that required wasted movements to get rid of. However, this slight slowdown, these few extra wasted movements and the bonus seconds were all that Kiyomi needed.

"Mind Body Disturbance!" Kiyomi chanted out while placing her hands in a hand seal position where her thumbs formed a rectangular shape, slightly different from the squared hand seal position of her other Yamanaka clan hijutsu.

"Arhat Fist!" the third Iwagakure spy shouted out, punching the ground beneath his feet and causing the same ripple effect that delivered a heavy deck to Meiko and sent the blacksmith into peril. This time the attack was aimed at his own teammate instead. This time it served pretty much the same effect, blowing his own teammate off his feet.

"What's wrong? Didn't you tell Hanshin you intended to force that fat slob to commit suicide?" Hanshin turned at Kiyomi. His misshapen and torn at the middle Black Vicious just barely hung over the man with its arms dangling lifelessly above the special jounin.

"I did try that…" Kiyomi wiped the blood that started to trickle from her nose. She had spent a significant amount of chakra on that last jutsu and it would appear that it would take that same amount to try again.

"What the hell!?" the explosive user turned at his teammate with ire in his eyes.

"You fool, she tried to kill you. She may look like a stupid child but this young woman isn't fooling around, she's hitting to permanently end you. She tried taking over your mind and forcing you to set off the explosives on your vest, then having you run into me for some extra damage." The third spy explained.

"I-I see… I should thank you then." The explosive user forced himself to settle down, his face was still spraying with sweat and his chest was moving heavily from the sudden build-up of stress that was now completely purposeless.

"It's not like I'm doing it for you alone. What we're doing is bigger than any one of us – we're fighting for the survival of our country. I've been in Sunagakure when a war goes wrong. When the vultures smell the stench of old meat in the wind. It happened to one home of mine, it won't happen to another." The Earth Release ninjutsu using spy declared with iron resolution in his eyes.

"The speed of Mind Body Disturbance is near instantaneous. To realize what I am planning to do, then interrupt it…" Kiyomi grunted, she was almost willing to give the enemy some credit. They were doing a far better job at keeping the Konoha ninja at bay, in any other scenario, if placed in a one on one fight, they would annihilate these guys but now… With all the wear and tear, all the little misfortunes in the way… Could this really be how their mission would end?

"That's right. I've made my own promises as well, I cannot allow this mission to fail either. That is why, and for no other reason, because you've granted me a chance to postpone the enemy for one bit longer, that I could better realize the promise I've made my friend… That is why I am thanking you." The explosive user nodded at his ally.

This was not the first time that Konoha ninja have encountered the sturdiness of the Will of Stone, but because the past was such a fickle thing, so easily forgotten and the battles of the past could so easily be taken for granted that it managed to be effective and that it came as so much of a shock to the active pair.