Vatee hissed all of a sudden, prompting Mana to become uneasy as well. Because of the severe damage that her stone prison body had suffered throughout the constant wear and tear of the battle royale, Mana couldn't move in any significant way without feeling different body parts shifting and threatening to crumble apart. Mana had been too fresh with the Spirit Art that a mere disembodied soul and mind could employ to try to bet on being able to help her body avoid breaking down, so she took Vatee's advice of taking it easy for now.
That didn't mean that the rest of the fighters forgot the Chaos Factor faction existed and bordered on the edge of total elimination, however.
"There," a will-o-wisp of a lemon-colored flame formed above the head of the Five-Tails statue and hovered in the direction where Mana picked up the fighter that was approaching them.
He was a stunningly attractive young man of average height, bordering on the shorter side, with deep blue eyes and shoulder-length spiky black hair. His face oozed stillness and tranquility and it didn't look like the prospect of approaching a pair of inhuman combatants bothered him one bit. He wore a mix of a burgundy and turquoise zip-up tracksuit on top of a full-body mesh armor shirt. The right arm of the approaching shinobi had a Takigakure headband tied around it.
"You're looking for trouble? I'll give you more than you can handle, punk!" Vatee thundered with a ferocious telepathic impulse augmented by spiritual chakra that should have been more than able to cause a considerable headache to the one on the receiving end. The approaching Takigakure ninja, however, appeared unfazed by it.
"Wait, Vatee-san, you told me we should be mindful of any conflict from now on. There's something more to this young man," Mana stumbled to Vatee's side, brushing her hefty and damaged shoulder against Vatee's side, which threw her companion a bit off-balance.
"Don't tell me you fell for his good looks. This isn't the time to lose your senses, girl. I won't let my chance to return to my family be undone by your childish crush," Vatee objected as the two exchanged telepathic signals. The serpentine Statuman waved and flailed, hitting Mana with crude lashes of her segmented body hard enough for it to cause a frightening rumble in Mana's body that might have collapsed any time.
"No, this young man is approaching two enemy combatants, the nature of whom he doesn't know. The battle royale is just halfway through, it's reckless to handicap yourself in a 2 against 1 fight unless you've got a very good reason," Mana replied, including the handsome shinobi approaching them who stopped only when he stood a good few leaps away from the two thinking and moving statues with human souls trapped inside of them.
"I have come to eliminate you two because you are simply unsightly," the black-haired young man closed his blue eyes with a blunt admission. "This competition belongs to warriors. Whether they be ninja, spies, samurai, or martial artists, demons and yokai such as yourself have no place to compete here."
There were rare instances when Mana felt a bit of joy at the fact that the Conductor robbed her of her voice, unironically, even. This time, when her instinctive groan at the horrid and shallow nature of the fine-looking ninja from Takigakure was revealed would've made a fool of her to those close enough to hear it, she felt a bit of subconscious relief, realizing that her disappointment in mankind was left confined to her own mind.
In a blink, their opponent became just a flicker. His body shifted proportions as a side effect of the young man becoming a living mirage because of his unruly speed. Velocity such as this could have only been possible because of a full-body enhancement, but there didn't appear to be any indication of an enhancement technique being used. Something else was at play here.
The dozen of shifting mirages were just a means to offer the Takigakure ninja an opportunity to perform hand seals. "Water Style: Waterfall Assault Jutsu!" the Takigakure ninja chanted out from within the hectic mixture of afterimages. Just as Vatee slithered out in front of Mana, preparing to employ her Spirit Art and dwindle at what remained of her soul and mind, her very essence inside of this abstract, serpentine statue, a crude, masculine voice stunned both Chaos Factor survivors.
"Reverse Sunrise!" the voice exclaimed with a firm and immovable like stone, masculine tone as a well-put-together man well past his prime with a black dogi and rocking a pompadour flew in from the side and crashed his bare foot into the arcing wave of roaring water that seemed to come out of nowhere. The collision forced a thunderous explosion and the collapse of the focused, drilling pump of water made for more rain than the desert country saw in two whole years combined.
"You'll pay for fucking up my haircut, you sissy-boy!" the martial artist dressed in black smirked on the right side of his face, looking eager to brawl with the Takigakure ninja despite having little to nothing to do with the conflict he was engaged in.
"You did that yourself," the Takigakure ninja replied, closing his eyes once again. He offered just a single, disappointed breath. "No one asked you to intervene. You don't owe these monsters a damned thing. You should have watched your own hide. There're only two of your faction left in the competition. Is it really worth throwing it all away for those two disgusting fiends?"
Having the fortune of hindsight and the opportunity to see this ninja fight, Mana could allow herself to be stunned by more than his good looks. This enigmatic Takigakure ninja just used a B-Rank Water Release technique in the middle of the desert at what should have been exactly the right amount of strength for such a technique.
Water Release was one of the least favored ninjutsu styles amongst those that wished to have the edge against their opponents or to brag about their knowledge of strategy. Those striving to become the ultimate ninja criticized those that spent time on Water Style techniques because it was the only Nature Release that required that element to be present naturally.
Earth was always there, underneath one's feet. If its consistency wasn't right, one could have used chakra to grind it or to transform the minerals inside the soil into something better suited for the jutsu one wanted to use. One could have molded fire Release inside a person's body. While being able to breathe and spit fire was certainly impressive, these techniques were merely an intermediate level of Fire Release. Lightning Release could easily convert the biological electricity naturally present in the human body and amp it up to an electric field or an actual jolt of electricity or to create one altogether. Wind Release had plenty of oxygen to work with since all of its users needed it to draw breath. The natural surroundings of wind and air were as natural as the placement of earth underneath one's feet.
Meanwhile, Water Release needed something. A body of water, particularly humid air or rain. One could have certainly gotten inventive and carried around a storage seal with water sealed inside it, but that was just another handicap to the Nature Release. Not to mention that novice and intermediary users of Water Release could only use the water available to them from their surroundings. It took an advanced user to convert air humidity into water or to use water from one's own body. It should have been impossible to just create water out of nothing, just as it would have to make the earth sprout from the sky. The artificial water source was present within the arena grounds, but it was too far away to tap into immediately and, from the looks of it, remained untouched before or during the attack.
"Not everyone is born cool," Jonisucho, the Hand Fist martial arts aficionado, pulled out a plastic comb from inside of his black gi and a tube of hair gel stuffed behind his belt. He spread it across the comb and quickly revived his wet pompadour to blaze like a golden flame as he struck a flashy pose, pointing his finger guns at the Takigakure ninja after stuffing his tools of the trade back where he picked them up from. "So, I'll give you this one freebie to go. And I'll let you off easy this time, pansy. Snakes are fucking cool. Hot ladies are fucking cool. And I'll get flattened and kicked out of the fight before I take someone talking shit about a hot snake lady, chains on fire, skulls on fire, or anything five scales of cool above their own rank in general."
"Are you some kind of imbecile?" the Takigakure ninja wondered, barely skipping a beat for a pause or wavering with the detached and apathetic tone of voice he spoke in. "If you don't step aside, I'll wash you away with those fiends."
"Fiends…" Jonisucho's eyes sank in the shadow cast by his own exuberant hairdo as he couldn't stop smiling and shaking in tension, adopting a balanced fighting pose with his feet spread wide and his arms in a perfectly balanced position to defend himself from all sides and angles. "That's another thing that's wicked fucking cool. Demonic beasties with red eyes, veiny, swollen muscles, and bat-like wings. That's just badass as all hell!"
"It will be your disappointment in the end," the Takigakure ninja declared, weaving his hands together in preparation to attack with another impressive ninjutsu technique and stupefy anyone familiar with the inner workings of Water Release with his uncanny talent of not losing an ounce of efficiency in the middle of the driest place on Earth.
"It will be your milksop ass handed to you on a platter," Jonisucho, the Hand Fist martial arts hooligan, replied, shaking in excitement to inflict a beatdown on someone he saw as a pushover wimp merely because of a handsome body build ranging on the effeminate side and polished good looks of his opponent.
The Takigakure ninja made the first move, becoming just a colorful blur once more. Jonisucho crossed his arms out in front of him to defend himself, but by the time his blocking stance was complete, his opponent was already behind him. However, the speed of the Takigakure ninja was also a trap. He had all the time in the world to position himself, but it would have been suicidal to face off against a hardened martial artist in hand-to-hand combat, so the young ninja didn't dare to attack using taijutsu. Instead, he went through a pair of hand seals.
With a horizontal vault, the Takigakure ninja formed a colossal sphere of water in his right hand and waved his arm, causing the sphere to expand into a drilling arc. "Water Release: Mallet Wave!" the Takigakure ninja chanted out, navigating the tunneling water drill to slam against his opponent who, by that time, had turned around and bulked up his body to withstand the incoming assault.
"Stone Drizzle!" Jonisucho yelled out with a tense and swollen body. A rapid flurry of straight punches thrown from a balanced position busted through the crashing wave and splattered the water aside as if Jonisucho was merely punching water in a bucket as opposed to fighting off a tidal water drill smashing right at him.
After his technique was beaten, the Takigakure ninja showed the first sign of shock on his face while Jonisucho stood tall with legs spread out wide and a stance of immovable balance. With his vault and purposeful arm motion, the young ninja positioned himself well within arm's reach of his opponent and his arms had been weighed down. The two combatants ended up in a tense deadlock as the Takigakure ninja stared back at his opponent, who had a favorable position–one arm extended and just inches away from the ninja's face, and the other cocked and ready to smash. Even the slightest movement from the Takigakure ninja's side would have prompted Jonisucho to strike and hit the young ninja with all he had.
With his hair wet and unruly, loosely hanging from all sides and his face scowling with an infuriated, white-eye look. This ridiculous, pompadour-rocking martial artist became a breathtaking pillar to behold. One thing was clear: the Takigakure ninja would not back down.
"All this sprinkling is bad for my hair. I think I ought to just finish this now so that I don't have to slick my hair back up every time you decide to spray it at me," Jonisucho grumbled out, shooting his left hand with a firm power cross, aiming right for the Takigakure ninja's cheek. "Hmm…!?" Jonisucho grunted when his fist missed its mark by a few inches.
A low-pitched bubbling and the condensed roar of water deafened those in close range of the fight. With a silver flash, a kunai blitzed up. Jonisucho didn't correct his position or even attempt to lean out of the way, for it would have impacted the force of the strike he intended to crush the young man with. A bloody spray spat at the black-haired young man, but not a single drop landed anywhere on his robe or pale face. Instead, like a methodical assassin, the Takigakure ninja continued to lean and weave out of the way while opening more and more cuts all over Jonisucho's front.
It wasn't just a kunai slash. Seeing how tough, bold, and aggressive Jonisucho was, there could have been no mistaking it–it wasn't just a kunai going rampant across his front. It was a coating of Water Release chakra, creating an aquatic extension of the blade. It was only after seeing the Takigakure ninja doing it thrice that Mana realized what he was doing. He was truly creating water, but he wasn't creating a lot of it. He was creating a handful of water, but using an additional flow of chakra to manipulate it, to expand it, and guide it. It was all beyond impressive stuff, creating water out of nothing was miracle work, the finesse at which he guided the water streams was a thing of beauty more alluring than the stunning appearance of the young man.
And yet, whether he knew it or not, Mana saw a folly in his method of attack. It was tough to say if the Takigakure ninja knew about it and simply ignored it, fighting through desperation and adversity of Jonisucho's aggression, or if he was unaware of it and simply used it to defeat hordes of unimpressive opponents regardless, but Water Release weapon coating simply wasn't all that good at slashing. It would have been second to none at penetrating through with thrusts, but a Water Release coating may have been worse at slashing than an uncoated sword.
This was visible on Jonisucho's chest. He had some nasty shiners all over his front, but Jonisucho's chest, shoulders, and arms were just too adamantine to be cut through.
"As if such wimpy cuts could ever make me flinch!" Jonisucho beamed a deadly stare at the Takigakure ninja. "Rushing Sunrise!" Jonisucho barked out, leaning forward with his entire body while thrusting a perfectly diagonal rising right uppercut, nearly shoving his fist through the Takigakure ninja's abdomen as he elevated him into the air. "Stone Drizzle!" Jonisucho called out, unleashing a stout and balanced diagonal barrage of chain punches, and inflicting a devastating beatdown upon his opponent. "Lunging Moon!" he bellowed from the bottom of his winded chest, delivering a finishing, lunging, straight punch to the face of the Takigakure ninja and splattering him into a shower of water that soaked Jonisucho whole.
"That guy's so tough to pin down. It's like he's actually like water himself," Vatee noted with a respectful admission. "If we fought this guy, even both of us together, we'd have been eliminated for sure."
"Water Release: Whirlpool Assault!" a firm voice came seemingly out of nowhere. The water-soaking Jonisucho sprayed out from his clothes, body, and hair, drying him out in an instant. The airborne traces of water grew massively out of proportion and became turbulent jets that whirled in perfect synchrony, grinding Jonisucho and aiming to drill into his cheeks and his chin to elevate him higher.
"Splitting Moon!" Jonisucho chanted out with a smug grin on his face, slamming his open palms into the drilling tips of each jet and stopping them from caving in his head from both sides. While at first, the whirlpool pressed down on Jonisucho's arms from both sides, with a triumphant battle cry, the martial artist forced his hands apart and ripped the whirlpool asunder.
"Incredible," the Takigakure ninja whimpered out in a rare instance of humility. "Water Release, when formed into jets of water, is second to none other Nature Release in terms of drilling power. The toughness of your hands is beyond belief."
"Of course, the martial arts style is called the Hand Fist for a reason. There is nothing in this world, or any other, that my hands cannot split with a chop. In fact, a momma's boy like you, I don't think I even need a chop to crack," Jonisucho raised his hand, shaped like a spear into the air. With whited-out eyes and a fiendish face of sheer effort, the martial artist brought his hand down with a chop. "Mound Splitter!" he howled. Jonisucho's hand stopped just a few inches away from the tiles on the ground. All the force that coursed through vanished in a blink.
Meanwhile, an invisible wall rocked the Takigakure ninja head-on. With him having already used Substitution Jutsu to replace himself with a Water Clone, his options of avoiding the invisible splitting wall of raw chopping force shockwave were sealed. He flew out of bounds and splashed into the pond outside the edge of the arena. It took the Takigakure ninja a few seconds before he recovered from floating senseless on his back. Even when the healers scooped and guided him out of the arena to the infirmary, the Takigakure pretty boy still looked stunned by his defeat and didn't look like he quite knew where he was.
"And it's over in a flash! The epitome of toughness, master of the Hand Fist, Jonisucho overcame the Takigakure ninja Kyutosu Nagare!" the announcer sealed the matter of Nagare's elimination into stone. "Certainly a shocker when you consider the fact that young Nagare was in talks to become the new leader of Takigakure but refused the promotion, preferring field work and honing his immense talent further!"
"You watch yourself now, badass snake lady!" Jonisucho snickered with a two-finger gesture by his temples and staggered off into the brewing chaos of dust and rampant slobber-knocking, leaving Vatee and Mana stunned.