Author's Note: Sorry for uploading the same chapter twice instead of the next chapter. Fixed it as soon as I noticed it ;D


As the reality of the upcoming conflict dawned and appeared more and more inevitable with each word exchanged between the three participating parties, time seemed to freeze as if it was actually Mana who was capable of manipulating the perception of time with her illusionary abilities and not the leader of the squad.

The four, previously airborne ninja from before: the mechanical man and the tattooed, shoulder-length, black-haired kunoichi on one side, the short, dark-haired swordswoman and the lumbering human-tank on the other, for now, were the only two aware of the Konoha party but that was subject to change. And yet… While their chakra were collectively impressive, it was not any of these four that bothered Mana, it was the pair fighting at the bottom of the valley.

Down at the bottom stood a single shinobi who was holding off an entire group of other ninja, one of which was also worrisome as ruled by Mana's gut and assisted by her chakra signature. The man deserving Mana's fear was almost as tall as the armored man on the Blood Lagoon side and sized up to about half of what the dome-head stood at. He wore a black, metallic plate on his chest, his arms and feet remained unprotected except the vital spots: the armpits strapped with leather, the shoulders and the wrists covered with guards that had multiple swords attached to them.

For the second time that day, Mana wished to show something to Meiko, not just the impressive, sword-switching device on the wrists of the mighty ninja, but his fighting style too. At any given time one of the six swords, three at each hand, was switched to where the man's hand could grip it while the others remained stuck vertically to the man's wrist, forming oversized wrist-blades that could at any time be switched out. The swords differed in shape, style, and even steel alloys, from what Mana could tell.

The most curious attribute of this fearsome man was the helmet that he adored on top of his head. It looked like a furnace: two massive, round plates at the top and the bottom interconnected by steel bars, forming a lantern-like shape on the man's head, as if the shinobi chose to wear a personalized prison cell on top of his attic.

The man was singlehandedly fighting off the other troublesome kunoichi – a woman of jet-black, flowing, long hair who was swinging at her enemy with her bare hands, swiping with crooked yet steel-hard finger swipes that threatened to tear entire chunks of flesh out. Mana felt glad for a moment that the adrenaline rushing through her body allowed a few curious sights of the woman's style as if she ever lunged at the magician that way with no first-hand experience from the magician's side, the sheer unpredictability of the curious martial art would mean Mana's downfall at close distance.

It was not that the three ninja fighting alongside the taijutsu-using woman were weak combatants. The fact that the lantern-helm was holding off all of these ninja by himself did not speak ill of the skill of the four, it spoke credit to the immense lethality of the man on the defensive. By his lonesome he'd be able to carve through any single ninja around, but confronted by these four, he was held permanently on the defensive.

"The four down there, they are Blood Lagoon as well, they have the red eyes as well." Erumo noticed, speaking out loud and breaking Mana out of the trance of fear and rising tension. "We would most likely have the greatest chance at survival aiding them."

"No. We won't just survive. We've come this far, may as well do the right thing. What's going on here? Depending on your answer, we will determine which side we will help." Mana declared. She could almost feel the piercing gawk of Yushijin from behind her but it did not matter. They would use all the power they had to ensure that nobody died, but they'd make sure to find out just what was going on here as well.

"To hell with this!" the tattooed assassin cursed before sheathing her two wakizashi and pulling out a pair of sai. In an unexpected move, she rushed at the Konoha team all by herself, intending to kill them in a single attack and then proceed to fight the Blood Lagoon group.

The woman was a lethal combatant and an experienced sword-fighter, that was to say nothing of her hand-to-hand skill. By using sai she would put the environment around her to best use – the hazy mist of the dreadful iron feeling and the smell reminding of sumptuous rivers of blood would conceal her speedy movements and the flowing motion of her blade. Needless to say, even without the cover of unidentified minerals present in the air around the area, the sai was a deadly and unpredictable weapon.

Mana leaned back just far enough to where the extended sai from after the assassin thrust it at her very nearly reached the tip of her nose. The magician then ducked under the follow-up swing and prepared to read the incoming movements and browse them for a chance of a counterattack, one that would not expose her for attacks to any of the endless enemies around them as well. Oddly enough, the assassin moved on ahead, thrusting a bunch of times at Yushijin who blocked and deflected each strike coming his way on a careful yet sustained dance of his feet that carried him back while his blade moved left and right.

And yet… The sai were a quick and weightless weapon. Even after deflected by a lump of iron like Yushijin's claymore, they did not expose any openings for too long. Having failed on two fronts already, the sai-wielding assassin moved on with a blinding spin of feet and steel but using a string reeling device on her wrist Erumo moved away, she vaulted over the edge of the rock formation where Team Fir were caught in the erupting battle due to the fact that she hooked the steel wire onto it to move away from the attack.

Before the enemy would move on to him, Kouta's feet morphed, cracking the rock and creating a pair of craters under them from the weight and intensity of his transformation. The sheer pressure of his transformation and the chakra that leaked out of him ground the rising rubble to stone. Using the jets on his feet, Kouta spiraled like an arrow into the air and then whizzed right down to where Erumo disappeared into. Whether it was to see that his comrade did not get overwhelmed by the ninja down below or because he wanted them all for himself in his current, murderous state remained to be seen.

The Blood Lagoon ninja looked hesitant to involve themselves in the battle. The swordswoman with short dark hair continued to observe the dancing assassin in preparation to be her next target, the massive, armored man crossed his arms over his chest, enjoying the show. Prompted to fight back by the assassin pressing her offensive, Yushijin drew his sword.

With the final moment of his weapon leaving the scabbard, Yushijin's Last Resort initiated. Mana observed carefully how her nimble opponent would deal with the subtle illusion. The woman froze in mid-motion, the illusion undoubtedly hit her hard, the leader of Team Fir blinked in right up to his opponent, swinging his sword from down low. A slash like that may have split the enemy kunoichi in two, even if she augmented her body as hard as she could, the might from such a strike may have disemboweled even the toughest of ninja.

Yushijin's blade slashed, then again and again, the longer the string of attacks continued, the more momentum the claymore gained, the more devastating the blow and the faster it connected before transitioning into the follow-up attack. Even if Last Resort was not canceled, it only granted mere moments of time which the opponent considered halted, judging from the speed and ruthless nature of Yushijin's combination, the Konoha chuunin had trained himself to perform the maximum possible amount of attacks in that short span of time.

Blood burst from the woman's body, just after Yushijin's final attack connected. So fast was the Konoha swordsman that he managed to carve his opponent up as if heated bars were pressed against a block of butter in the span of time it took for blood to appear from the first wound the young man had opened. It slightly sickened Mana to see such brutality but she sensed a speck of life still burning from inside her opponent, it was her own fault to open up so recklessly and underestimate the Konoha ninja.

"You… You could have helped your comrade, yet you just stood there unfazed by it." Mana spoke through the nausea of what she just saw, directing her sickness at the mechanical man still left standing.

"I would love nothing more than for it to be the end of Burbotta…" the mechanical man shrugged. Alarmed by his words, Mana turned at the bloody mess that was left of the young woman only to see her body collapse into a puddle of water. It was no blood that streamed out of her – it was water, dyed slightly red by the iron in the mist around this valley.

"A water clone, huh?" Yushijin closed his eyes, still leaving his back turned at the assassin he thought he had just put down. While it did look profoundly cool of him to do, the motion had more reason than one would initially admit as Yushijin was covering the most likely direction he would be targeted after being tricked with the old clone-switcheroo trick.

"No, watch out!" Mana yelled out to warn her ally while the carved up shape on the floor reformed into the woman it once belonged to and the assassin charged forward once more. The thing that Yushijin had beaten was not a mere water clone… And yet… For the most part, it behaved like one – after being struck down it collapsed into a puddle of water, except it reformed afterward…

The woman froze up once more, her sai just an inch away from the sensitive vital point at the back of his neck while Yushijin performed a back-dashing swipe from his massive blade, cleaving his enemy clean into two. The upper part lifted off into the air, rotating around from the sheer force of the swing that sent it flying before collapsing into a shower of reddish water.

The woman's chakra took a large dip every time she was cut down but… There was no doubt about it, as similar as all of these killers and scumbag felt, the more unique aspects of her signature remained consistent and they all belonged to the puddle of water that momentarily reformed from certain death once more.

"It's no water clone, it's like she becomes water every time you hurt her. It's definitely her, however, it…" Mana tried to explain it to the squad leader but the mechanical man moved without tripping too many of the magician's warnings. The large, metallic fist slammed into the ground, crushing the area where Mana stood and attempted to recklessly warn her ally of the weakness to his opponent's technique. The smash of the humongous, steel fist was impressive enough to threaten with the collapse of the entire rocky plateau that the short scuffle took place on.

The details remained hazy, the head was spinning, everything around her was sinking into hazy dusk but that must have been because Mana's eyes were closed. It was not too long after that the pain from the nasty, crushing blow she just took set in. Even the limited light that seeped into Mana's eyes burned. A pair of flashes that Mana did manage to take in while her eyes fluttered were those of the mechanical man standing in front of her with his arms raised and ready to drive them back down again.

All-covering agony set in followed by a not at the least less abominable rumble of the collapsing plateau around Mana. The magician felt Yushijin's signature disappear, followed by that of his opponent that never tread too far away from the Konoha swordsman, which more than likely prevented him from coming to Mana's aid. This time the pain felt… Cold… Soon, little by little the sounds of thunderous rubble was tagged out by the howling of the wind… Mana was falling.

The magician's eyes snapped back open, she spread her hands and legs out wide before driving her hands together to weave a hand seal and initiate her Mystical Wings technique that allowed her to stay in mid-air. Her back hurt… Breathing felt like torment. The attack from the back must have busted more than just a few of Mana's ribs. Warmth trickled down Mana's forehead. The magician knew that feeling all too well…

That attack from before… It felt like her mechanical opponent did not have any chakra that the magician could trace, not much of his personal signature. Obviously, whatever the man inside the puppet-suit was had chakra, every living being had chakra and even non-living objects had aspects of physical chakra to them. However, the signature from whoever was inside this mechanical man was almost non-existent and the surrounding mists of iron-red completely covered the movements up like a smokescreen.

The free-falling mechanical man lifted its right leg up, throwing its left back. A flare of flames erupted from the bottom of the armor's feet and rose all the way from its back. The force from the jets was sufficient to throw the entire mechanical structure in Mana's direction with this improvised manner of a divekick. Clutching at her aching chest, failing to see with the left side of her face or properly perceive depth due to the blood running all over her left eye forcing it closed, Mana managed to dive away from the massive kick and followed the armored structure all the way to the ground.

The valley below split into separate plates with boiling water rising, bursting and pouring over the shattered ground of the valley floor. The lakes, colored blood-red from whatever substance was in the mist, spilled over into the cracks between the separated plates and threatened to drown the entire valley floor eventually. Even the mechanical man, having stomped the ground with his missed divekick and having caused most of the damage to the surface of the valley's bottom, struggled to regain its balance and chose to stay on its knee.

Mana did not sense the armor's previous attack either. Chakra sensory had become such a fundamental and basic aide in her fighting style that having it rendered completely inefficient stumped the magician momentarily and demanded her rely on different senses, fight the way she fought before discovering sensory. Something was different about this man. The mechanical man was no puppet shell. The Puppetry Jutsu employed by puppeteers required chakra and Mana would have sensed it very clearly, she'd have never been hit like that. Any attack surpassing the human barrier, employing the augmentation of one's physical or spiritual limits, would have been read as a book…

Then why?

Mana's attention faltered once more. It appeared that she had not sensed all of the combatants yet. On a front a bit farther to the west there was another battlefield consisting of a three-on-three engagement, although the chakra present there were nowhere near the level of the lantern-helmet man or the Blood Lagoon woman in the fancy dress with a liking for taijutsu.

The upper part of the puppet reached out for the plates of stone floating in the flooding waters. Its fingers locked down into stone and managed to get a solid grip as if tightened by some sort of device. The upper body of the mechanical man spun around its axis a handful of times in rapid succession, launching the entire platforms of the shattered valley ground all around the place. The city-sized boulders continued to ravage the setting of the Valley of Hell while one of them flew off into the distance, far away from the valley altogether.

Mana dived to the side, planting her feet firmly atop of the titanic plate of solid stone hurled at her, using her Mystical Wings she softened the landing. Using a combination of natural balance and her flying Wind Release ninjutsu to manipulate the wind currents under her, Mana worked her way over the surface of the platform by simply running across it and then leaping off of it. Those unnatural movements… This dome-helm was no puppeteer, his spine surely would have been snapped if his outer puppet armor behaved this way. The armor truly was mechanical in nature…

"Mechs… I hate mechs…" Mana mumbled to herself with the limited volume that her busted lungs could afford her. It was a new discovery as she had barely ever encountered anything of this like. The closest she's experienced to this was reading about and seeing puppeteers using their puppets not as mere tools or dolls under their control but as an outer, protective shell. She did not fancy it all that much back then either… This… This felt like nothing of the art of ninjutsu was sacred anymore.

The problem was that with her current condition, floating helplessly in the air was the best she could do as the busted ribs demanded too much from her. The only jutsu she could use were those that she could use without speaking and her hand seal speed was greatly reduced at the moment. The only thing keeping Mana opposing this heresy as valiantly as she did was the distaste of being killed by a mech, of all things.

"You are nimble, I'll give you that. Maybe you will serve as fine practice for when Burbotta jerks my switches too hard and I will decide to finally give her what she's owed!" the mechanical man managed to taunt the magician while simultaneously commending her talent of staying alive against its highly unorthodox method of combat.

Breaths were a luxury resource, what few Mana did manage to draw were all tainted by the taste of iron that only furthered sending the magician into a sense of dread. She couldn't breathe… She couldn't breathe… Luckily, self-control and meditation was something that the young woman excelled at since childhood. If she lost control now she risked plummeting the rest of the fall down and breaking something more. There would be no more of that… No more mistakes.

Kouta was right, Mana has been so focused on overcoming the hurdle of Guru Ayushi that she forgot the point it all was done for.