With a spreading, circular gust, Mana's feet touched the ground. Despite the controlled and kept back terror plaguing the magician, one that came out from the subconscious desire of a body to draw breath, the magician's landing was soft and silent. The panic was difficult to contend with, it only added to an endless list of disadvantages that Mana's body currently had going against it. Her speed, her combat prowess all were now just a meaningless fraction of what they should have been if this battle was set on a more favorable battlefield, under better conditions.
"Your suit is..." Mana uttered.
"Amazing, isn't it? After all, a genius like me designed it. I felt disappointed by the body that was given to me by fate, I found it feeble and living inside that shell – a joke. For that reason, I have made my own body, one that was able to fix any injustice committed against me, even that of fate…" the mechanical man replied.
"A despicable tin can." The magician finished her thought. "One that spits not only at the art of ninjutsu but one that rots your own strength and instincts as well."
The mechanical ninja opened up its stance and straightened its body, lowering its hands and extending its legs by the joints, allowing thick, steel plates to shut over its knees – protecting the weak points where all the weight of the armor accumulated, no doubt. A compartment that reminded the magician of a safe from the inside opened up, revealing a lab tube with a bunch of water connected to a system of vessel-like tubes. It was not entirely clear what the system of tubes fed into the water or what it extracted from it, the magician turned her head in confusion.
"Tell me all about my strength, my instincts… Tell me again how my existence offends your principles!" a voice spread from inside the robotic armor and, despite the magician being utterly unable to see anyone or anything talking – it came directly from somewhere inside or behind the water container.
It took a while for Mana to realize what the man was talking about. The puppeteer was not lurking somewhere deeper within the suit of armor nor was he behind the container of water – he was the water. This abominable, mechanical eyesore was the only way for the mutant to talk, walk and interact with the environment in any meaningful way.
"Or… Better yet… Just die!" the water-man growled in a great amount of offense as the top-center compartment slammed shut while one lower than it opened up. Mana had to turn her eyes away from the intense light emanating from inside the mechanical suit of armor almost immediately. It was like the man was holding a compressed star inside his costume and using it to fuel the suit's every twitch.
The core of the suit fired off a cascade of flares, the emanating energy merged into a single, focused beam of artificial star energy. The beam simply deleted every bit of stone in its way from existence, carving out a deep ridge on its devastating path to the magician. Where before the water, mixed with the iron dust ever-present in the air around the Valley of Hell was washing the valley, now it evaporated in a far-reaching distance from the beam itself.
The magician hunched over, from the outside perspective it did not look like she had the time to accomplish much before the death ray swallowed her up completely. The highly destructive and infernal attack of the mechanical man began at a slightly off angle but the living tube of water quickly diverted his beam higher up, having it cross as far out as light could cross in the mere moments of its existence before dissipating away.
The heat present in the air made the iron dust in the air turn to sparks, creating a rain of flickering flares in the nearest vicinity. The first few moments after the beam's end, only a curious howling noise could have been made out. Something unnatural that made the dust and smoke surrounding the area dissipate much faster than it normally would have. After the smoke cloud shrunk considerably, it revealed a transparent orb of rotating wind chakra – a protective bubble around Mana with the magician still standing in her crouched over position with her hands placed at her sides.
She could only use her Magic Bubble jutsu at its weakest, prototype version without speaking, she still had to clap her hands before extending the protective bubble of Wind Release chakra and if the solar beam sent at her had any traces of Fire Release chakra her entire plan would have quite literally blown up in her face together with a part of the large chunk of the solar system if the beam wasn't controlled with the finesse most ninja put into controlling their attacks.
Being pushed so close to death, having to roll so many dices all at once just so she could buy a handful of moments to be relentlessly attacked over and over again… It irked Mana and the annoyance was becoming visible on her usually tame and soft expression once the magician resumed her fighting stance, her palms placed against one another in a triangular shape – a stance that optimized the speed for hand seals that required weaving but sacrificed the potential use of one's hands in the process.
"What's the matter? Not even a single attack in return? Are you that short of breath or are you still fostering hopes of a peac…" the mechanical man was offering more words of belittlement before Mana silenced him by speaking over him.
"Shut up. Your sad life has made you bitter, that is often the case and I am sorry for the difficulties you had to go through. But that does not give you the right to treat the lives of other people like something that's easily severed and thrown away." Mana spoke up. Augmenting her body, deafening herself to her own personal phobias of abusing the gimmick and breaking her body again, to push herself through her injuries was not the wisest thing at the moment but this was what needed to be said and done.
"Stop! Don't talk to me like you know anything about the life I've lived or how I chose to live it!" the mechanical man swiped his hand in defiance before sitting into a fetus position. His fingers hooked into the vents present on his armored shins while the suit's feet shut into the suit of armor to aid in creating its spherical shape.
"I do know everything. You've shown me enough to understand all that you folk are doing here." Mana declared with an equally defiant look. The mechanical sphere covered itself in the aura of flames emanating from its core, forming something akin to a mechanical star. With a quick, shooting motion, the feet platforms shot out and launched the blazing, mechanical sphere into the sky to crash back down.
Finally, Mana had witnessed the moment when her opponent has made a mistake, overextended and withdrawn from the battlefield far enough to give her the most precious of resources – time. This would have been a battle that lasted just a few exchanges had she not had to work with busted ribs and limited air in her lungs, have to augment her body or power through pain just to breathe and speak. The words that she offered to send her opponent into a frenzy before came at a costly price, after all.
The magician tilted her face up, having initiated her response already and stared at the crashing sphere that intended to devastate the entire valley and shake the entire world so soon after the last time it had shaken. The sky-crashing sphere landed atop of the little magician, crushing her into the ground and then continuing to splinter the entire valley, creating a cone of shockwaves and burning air that could have been seen all the way from the orbit, beyond even the higher levels of the atmosphere where the sky-diving, mechanical sphere had initially reached to gather velocity and generate force for its impact.
The lightly shaken mechanical man looked around. The movements of the armor were a little unnatural and twitchy, the joints at the middle of each artificial limb struggled to extend all the way creating a weary image of the robotic crutch body. What confused the automated devastator was the fact that a shower of flower petals was getting washed away and scurried along by the wind. Surely the world-shaking destruction that his attack has wrought should have burnt up mere flower petals.
The more the puddle-man worked to wrap his genius mind around the shower of petals around him, the more he pulled the string, the more of it rolled out without any sight of the end. How did these petals come to be if this entire valley was a total dead zone unfit for life? Living in an inhospitable and dreadful place like the Valley of Hell would have been similar to getting used to living on another planet.
The smoke and the iron mist of the valley masked the transformation of the petals. Each one of them blurred and flickered like a dissolving mirage, revealing each petal to be a shuriken that attacked the robotic opponent of Mana's. The dome-head covered himself up, making his stance more defense-oriented and sturdy but it was so not because the armored ninja possessed any skill in martial arts whatsoever. He hunkered himself down out of sheer instinct, like a beaten man covering his head to protect himself from the onslaught.
"Shuriken? You think you can as much as scratch my shell with mere shuriken!?" a squeaky voice emanated from deep inside the armor, augmented by whatever machinery even allowed for a conscious puddle of water to speak out loud in the first place.
"It's not about what I am thinking at all…" Mana's voice echoed from somewhere inside the thick fog of iron dust. The shuriken all moved in unison, directed at the hunched over mechanical man. The shuriken rained down upon the hunkered enemy in a vicious and coordinated assault, bypassing its sturdy defenses by phasing through them. The puddle-man's own, genius mind, capable of making entire stars work for him to realize his wild dream of becoming a ninja, but for all the wrong reasons, had betrayed him, causing intolerable strain of his most treasured asset.
"That's what you fear most, isn't it?" Mana grumbled through pain, clutching at her chest and sides just to alleviate the pressure that made her core ache with every drawn breath or uttered word. Yet the magician was so adamant about giving her opponent something to think about, something to reevaluate his life for and put his genius mind to a better use than building an armor that allowed him to realize his ambition for vengeance and taking the position of the people that bullied and belittled him, so he could be on top of the bullying chain instead on the bottom.
"Shut up!" a defiant response came from the collapsed suit of armor. The machinery tried to pick itself back up but folded repeatedly and continued to writhe on the ground. Had the armor not vaporized most of the waters present underneath the valley, he'd have surely been submerged right now and in risk of drowning. All that the damaged mind inside the suit could do was to pound the ground like a capricious toddler, grunt and yell in fury.
"Your precious mind exposed to the cruel world around you. Kicked back down to where you started from." Mana completed her string of thoughts despite the objections of her enemy. Despite the pain that speaking caused to herself.
"Just stop posturing over me and finish me off! You may have the honor of killing the smartest man you will ever meet – Hozuki Masu, but know that your sweet victory shall be a short one. Amongst our clansmen that have been sent here to eliminate the Blood Lagoon, we have one of the newly formed Seven Swordsmen of the Mist – Mizoma, the Tengu of the Phantom Lantern!" the defeated mech and the puny lab tube inside it found reasons for gloating where they could.
"I don't care about that." Mana shook her head. "I will warn you to stay down, however."
"Just what is it that you're trying to achieve here? Are you here to kill one of the Seven Swordsmen? To kill a bunch of Kirigakure ninja, perhaps? Or are you here on the same mission as we are – to slay the genetic abomination that is the Blood Lagoon?" Masu, the self-introduced, living water asked in the most passive-aggressive tone imaginable.
"That is your mistake, you ask questions after being defeated. You're a man of science, aren't you? I know little about that subject but I know that the greatest punishment for one such as yourself is not having all the answers you want to have. Let it be your lesson for the next time." Mana managed to work up a little smirk before the magician turned around to walk away from the battle in search for the next one. The hopelessness of accomplishing the impossible gauntlet and becoming the hero she always wanted to be had returned to her, these were the odds she always faced and even if she failed… At least she failed to face the odds she herself chose.
"Do you truly intend to fight both the Blood Lagoon and the Hozuki? Because that is what it will take to stop this fighting! Neither side will relent! I may as well finish you off before you get started!" in a final act of defiance, the suit of armor flew up in a desperate attempt to body slam on top of the injured magician. What the stubborn man of science did not expect was to face Mana face-to-face and see the disappointment on her face firsthand. He had clearly intended to land a free blow just like he did before but by now Mana knew what to expect from this mechanical man. By the time the dome-head was in the highest point and beginning to move downward, Mana's hand was already raised with a card in between two of her fingers, pointed right at the airborne attacker.
A gleam of Lightning Release chakra passed through the card with chakra conductive tips sharpening its edges to channel Mana's Magical Shock Jutsu – one of the few jutsu from the earliest point of the magician's ninja career which she had mastered to the extent where she no longer needed to speak words or weave hand seals to use before the finals of the Chuunin Exams.
The lightning appeared to easily circulate all through the suit of armor and, judging from the inhuman screams of the living water-tube inside, sufficient enough to short circuit and break the speech devices, rendering the suit completely silent, was an incredibly effective manner of attack against both the mechanical and the aquatic components of Hozuki Masu.
Mana closed her eyes and felt the environment around her. Kouta's chakra was rampant and growing even more with every passing moment. He must have let out his Curse Seal and the tainted chakra pulsing inside was leaking into his system. He would likely lose control if this continued and then he'd only add another factor on the disadvantages that Team Fir had to overcome here side. Erumo was nearby, the two must have been working together. The trapster's chakra was so calm and felt like much less than it should have felt like. It must have been her own unique way of staying concealed around sensors – not a complete suppression but a half-baked one with a little pinch of chakra camouflage.
Changing the way one's chakra felt required great control over one's own self. Even the brightest soul could have felt like a pool of molasses if they got furious and allowed their bloodlust to flow through their body unimpeded, however, it required more than just a rampant emotion. It required for that emotion to define and take control of who that person was, the ninja wishing to change how their chakra felt needed to dim down everything else in them and then fuel the emotion they wanted to bring out further. That sort of feat was immensely difficult given how most of the time such a change took place one was overcome by emotion. A vengeful soul could not have cared less about pushing sliders of the emotions inside them and meditating…
Yushijin was involving himself in a brawl between the Kirigakure ninja that Team Fir still had not met and the assassin that Hozuki Masu called Burbotta. Before breathing could properly resume with the magician preparing herself for more moving around in her current state, she sensed a handful of alarming chakra flares closing in on her.
The swordswoman with short, dark hair landed nearby the magician and looked straight into Mana's eyes. There was something sharp and very piercing to the woman's glare but the magician managed to withstand it. Despite her worries over the irrational, once the magician realized that there was little that the swordswoman could threaten her with, that she was aware with, it was much easier to withstand her penetrating gaze. Even if her eyes possessed similar qualities to the Sharingan, that the crimson orbs of the Blood Lagoon reminded so much of, it was not like Mana had a particular skill at fighting on the illusionary battlefield.
Even if the Uchiha were one step ahead of everybody else. Mana felt confident in her own illusionary abilities to not get completely dwarfed in such an encounter and these ninja, while similarly smug and wicked to how your usual Uchiha felt, were anything but.
"Had a nice view?" the magician figured that it was still best to be at least a bit welcoming and open towards the Blood Lagoon, given how none of them actually engaged in combat or tried to kill the Konoha ninja.
"Didn't look like you needed it that much…" the fully-armored warrior crossed his arms over his chest. Judging from his tone, he was complimenting Mana but surely he must have seen and known how costly this battle was for the magician and how close she was to losing her life?
"We were under no obligation to help you people, we didn't know why you were here, to begin with. It is true that you seem to be at odds with the Hozuki clan assassins sent by Kirigakure to exterminate us but… It's not like Konoha isn't known for extermination or two." The young swordswoman answered while sheathing her sword and placing it by her side as a peaceful notion, at least temporarily so.
"You don't need to tell me that, my mother is the last of the Wandering Ninja group," Mana replied with all the emotional baggage that came with bringing that old thing up.
"I… Am not sure what that is…" the swordswoman admitted, although the soft rubbing of her neck under the very tip of her dark hair suggested that she felt a little bit guilty about not knowing what was being spoken of.
"Neither do I, I guess Konoha masks their exterminations a little bit better." The armored companion of the young swordswoman sounded quite chipper, considering he was speaking of what basically amounted to genocide.
"I understand that you wish to hear an explanation of what is happening here so that you do not lose your friends for reasons that are a mystery to you. I can explain things a little for you but it will take some time. Perhaps it would be better to defeat the Kirigakure assassins first, although I will understand if you find it deceitful of us to ask you to defeat our enemies before offering you anything akin to an explanation…" the swordswoman appeared to be very softspoken, much more so than any Uchiha Mana had met, perhaps the difference was only skin-deep?
"I would very much like you to explain a few things, however, I am not the leader of Team Fir, I will not presume to make the decisions for the entire team." Mana huffed through her natural difficulties breathing combined with those caused by the battle she just went through. "If it's all the same to you, I'd rather free up our leader and then have you explain things to him."
Without answering anything, the frail, crimson-eyed swordswoman nodded.
