"Could you please describe me the place you were attacked at? I need to find that thing and keep it from hurting anyone else." Mana asked the three men once light made her eyes burn up with irritation.
"You're going back? You're crazy! That thing will eat you up like it did Rurise!" one of the sewer workers objected.
"That creature is a child trapped in a monster's body. It is confused. It rests inside a dark and smelly sewer so it is scared. It likely cannot control its own strength." Mana was justifying her own stupidity to herself as much as she did it to the sewer workers she had led outside. "I'm going to lead you to the gate but I need to go back and find it."
"Confused things don't eat living people up. It is dangerous more than anything else." Another worker objected to Mana's idea.
"It's near Filter 72-B, a crossing between Iguana, Skink and Komodo channels." One of the three let it out. His voice was not happy but after seeing the determination blazing in the magician's body the man apparently had decided that pointing her in the right direction was the correct thing to do.
"The sewer channels have names?" Mana expressed her curiosity that merely tried to mask the rising sense of dread in her chest.
"Of course they do, do you know how massive a sewer system is?" the worker replied. "You just take this pipeline and go straight until the fourth fork in the road, then turn right, then turn right, left and take the utmost right in the final fork, should take you to the right corner, you cannot miss it."
"Yeah," Mana sighed. "It's only all dark, stuffy with dirt and filled with turns and forks… How could I possibly get lost?"
"Hey, it's your choice to go back in, not ours. We're not going back to work 'till we see the pictures of that thing dead on the info board." The first worker took a deep breath of the freshened up air of the great outdoors. Speeding a little, but not too much so that the workers would lose track of her, Mana led the workers back to the village gate.
"Whoa! What's wrong with them?" one of the gate guards rushed up to the party of bloodied and scared workers. The gruesome sight was beginning to slowly terrify the surrounding civilians as the gate was usually a point of interest for their curious glares, the time was not exactly fitting for people and caravans to come in and out freely like during the trading rush hours.
"They've been attacked. There were multiple casualties. Whatever attacked these men is lurking in the Konohagakure sewer system. I'm going back after it." Mana quickly gave the gate guards the gist of it.
"Wait, no! You need a proper response squad, weigh in the threat, let the Administration decide on how many ninja are needed. You may be completely outside your league!" the gate guard objected.
"There's no time. We need a quick first response before Little Honda gets away." Mana refused the notion with a sense of calm in her face. Honda only peeked his head out for a brief moment, letting his latent, rotten chakra out for a split-second before disappearing. Who knew when he'd appear again and when he would – casualties would follow. That was something Mana would not allow, even if the cost for this approach would be her own life.
"We're not letting you go off after that thing alone, Konoha's Sorceress." The second gate guard blitzed to Mana from behind. By the time Mana's body realized that she had to prepare for a brawl, she was already cornered and all she could do with this information was to follow it happen with her sharpened senses.
What was she supposed to do? Engaging these two would once again get the magician in trouble, in the best-case scenario she would get suspended again and deepen the mutual distrust between her and Lord Sixth even more. In the worst-case scenario, she was looking at Ninja Tribunal, probably indefinite suspension or prison time. Given that this was not even Mana's first time acting up in front of the Hokage's authority and decisions, she'd not be in any position to expect softer blows coming her way.
"I'm sorry." Mana closed her eyes. One of the guards charged in with a wide-stance guard, ready to apply a subduing hold on the magician. These two must have known that in her current state Mana was a challenge to any one of them, she matched them in rank and possibly surpassed them in actual battlefield experience. Taking both of them at once, everyone fighting all-out would mean Mana's definitive loss, definitely, but ninja rarely slugged this way.
All that the gate guard caught in his grasp was a shower of flower petals that the as strong as it was warm spring breeze washed away and bashed mercilessly against the face of the gate guard that stood behind the magician, trying to prevent her departure.
"We need to start a search and get a capture party ready." The gate guard lit up a smoke, frustrated by the way that two ninja who each matched the opponent in strength and speed were played by a minor.
"Search and capture? For whom? Mana or that thing?" the second gate guard joked, stroking his thick, brown hair by the handful. The second man harbored similar distaste in the way that someone who looked like a child had eluded them with a simple illusion. "You! Where were you three attacked?"
"Filter 72-B." a different worker from the one that was addressed, replied. The man saw the intent of lying in his colleague's eyes. That would not have been very wise.
"Holy shit, that place actually has structure and a plan?" the first gate guard fixed his sliding atop of his eyebrows headband protector.
"Of course it has a goddamn plan, do you know how massive the sewer system is?!"
Mana may have done it now. She would be underneath the village, still inside the village walls. It was a fact that the Village Protection ninja working on the Liquid Village Sensory System could confirm if needed. That meant she could not by definition be treated as rogue, she may have defied orders of a pair of ninja who were not technically her superiors nor did she defect to another village with intent of selling it her secrets or joining their ninja force, regardless, what she did was eminently reckless and even more stupid.
She could still feel it, the rising aftertaste of Little Honda's chakra. Like a smell that a hurt animal let out that lead the great cat right to it, except, in this case, the prey was a hundredfold more dangerous one than the pursuer. Mana barely needed to recall the directions she were given before, something was different, Honda was heating up, he was emanating his suppressed rot all over the place. It was heavily toned down from the real thing Mana had sensed a handful of times before, it could not even distract the magician from bustling signatures in the village above.
"Honda…" Mana uttered at a hunched over, fleshy giant, crouching over and staring at something in the water. By now the little kid was even in a more pitiful state than before. Its skin was pale white and beginning to shred off his flesh in some parts, his eyes were completely whited out and drowning in black bags. It was near-impossible to believe that this creature was once just an unfortunate toddler. "Let's go home."
The colossus extended his quivering and toned with muscles hand into the light, a small beacon falling from the opening high up above. When the monstrous limb lit up with sunlight, Mana could see the artificially cultivated, massive muscles sewn up on the boy's reworked body. The anatomy of Little Honda made absolutely no sense, but Guru Ayushi managed to make the monster work, somehow.
"Missy…" a horrendous voice, both pitiful and frightening in its tone and volume echoed through the sewer area that the two were in. "There's a monster in the water."
Mana's eyes wandered at the peaceful reflection of Honda's own shape that petrified the child. As the abomination continued to stare at its own reflection in the filtered out water, illuminated with the artificial lighting that the workers stuck to the walls when they worked as well as the sunlight that fell in through the cracks, Honda's chakra continued to skyrocket. The monster was shedding itself of its humanity with each passing moment of fear it was in.
That was why Mana could not find it. It was being peaceful, it was being awfully quiet and Little Honda was managing to hide without his own conscious intent or effort.
"H-Honda-chan…" Mana tried to distract the hulking science experiment from what terrified his childish mind, if Honda was not going to be afraid, maybe he could have still retained its childlike innocence and be peacefully brought back.
That was as grand of a thought as it was naïve. When the monstrous figure jumped up on its feet, its eyes dyeing red of blood that burst on the inside from the immense tonus of his hand-crafted muscular anatomy and the sophisticated, experimental weave of his blood vessels, Mana realized that between the two, she was the one being too childish.
"Don't talk down to me!" Honda roared out, his chakra hit the peak that Mana remembered, luckily enough, by now Mana had sensed it just about enough times to adjust her sensory. She extended the scope as far as she could. A two-tower-tall cake was only impressive to someone who had their mouths open a few inches, after witnessing her own fair share of towering cakes, Mana had learned to unhinge her jaw and open up as wide as her mouth needed to be.
The monster charged at the magician with a silly push. Thrusting his palms forward, the childish manner of attack and lack of any substance or style behind Little Honda's actions was not to be looked down on, however. In her entire life, Mana had not faced anything more dangerous, anything more defiant to the rules of nature and the conventional scales of might. To say only this much was to ignore the fact that Mana was enclosed with the bestial toddler inside a sewer, severely limiting her moving space.
Moving space that the monstrous, put together from muscle and tissue as if it was a curious and grotesque puzzle of sorts, hands covered up almost entirely when Little Honda's palms extended to the front.
Evading would have been foolish. All that Mana could hope for was a miracle, that the sleight of hand which she had honed for her entire life would pull her out once again. A bite in her thumb. The hands were moving in closer. The monster's size limited its speed somewhat but the slowdown was deceitfully pathetic. The madness and rage, let alone the unconventional physiology that knew no limits of how its limbs and muscle could be twisted and turned, made Honda faster than he had any right to be.
The sewer lit up with a sapphire-colored glow. Once that blinded Honda for just a moment and managed to derail the charge a little, slow it down, have the confused monster turn his palm sideways at just the right angle to greatly reduce the amount of force that would meet Usuzoku's blade once he popped out of the hat.
A loud clang. A mighty popping sound followed by a chain of shattering rain of steel that was still sharp enough to dig ever so slightly into the surfaces it hit. Some chunks littered Honda's fleshy and massive body as well but the monster appeared to barely even register it.
"I'm a big boy! I'm already this old! Don't talk down to me!" Honda roared out, shaking the foundations of the very sewer he stood in. Mana was not entirely sure of her position. She could feel the taste of blood in her mouth, multiple of her teeth were dislodged and bleeding heavily, she was not entirely sure why she could only see white and why someone was shrieking into both her ears.
Where even was Usuzoku? Mana could only feel the irritation in her throat that was also stinging at her nostrils, the usual sign of smoke but not the smell. Could he have been beaten and dispelled just mere milliseconds after he was appeared to attempt and block the beast's charge? His slowed down, weakened charge?
Cold air brushed against Mana's cheeks, making the magician wonder just where exactly she was. Once sight returned to her eyes, in a blurry state, she stared at the night breeze up above and the completely totaled sewer system. The flow of the sewer water was blocked off by the collapsed ceiling of the tunnel and layers upon layers of dirt, rock and whatever buildings sunk into the sinkhole that a childish push of Honda's hand had created.
Mana wanted to let her head just slip back, just relax it and fall asleep because damn if she wanted to just pass out. Never has the force of gravity felt more powerful and more alluring but the girl pushed her upper body off the wet floor, feeling and hearing her own blood dripping from somewhere. Her head was cracked open pretty badly, light nausea was working its way into Mana's system but her chakra network was playing its part for now.
Because the magician demanded her body to stay in fighting shape, it worked overtime to make sure that she was as presentable in combat as possible right after being beaten near-senseless by a mere distracted push. Ninja were buzzing about. Some of them were worried about Mana's state, the magician felt the light alleviation of the pain and the sense of weightlessness that the blood loss was giving her. Whichever medical ninja of the bunch was treating her, they forced the magician to stay down while they patched her.
"What happened here? Was it that thing that escaped that cult's lab again?" A flak jacket wearing ninja Mana knew only by sight asked. The magician could barely muster up the strength to speak now that she was forced down and kept this way so that she could be given elementary battlefield treatment.
The two gate guards were amongst the ninja that flooded into the massive hole that Honda had made. They pointed at Mana and tried to explain it to the other ninja that she ran off to confront the monster all by herself.
"We've got neither the time nor the manpower to keep hold of one of the trickiest ninja in our village. If she wants to help, we would be wise to use that help." The chuunin that appeared to be in the front of the fold of ninja pondered while stroking his chin. "How is her condition?"
"She's taken a mean hit, she should be up in a bit but I wouldn't advise her to fight in this state. Multiple fractures, pretty mean bruises that would require more extensive treatment than the quick patch-up I'm doing and an unparalleled stress to her chakra network. From where I am at, it looks like a ram meant to take down buildings slammed against a chain-link fence and, somehow, the fence held it together." The medical ninja explained, looking at both the ninja leading the emergency reaction squad and back at Mana.
"We don't have the luxury to call on jounin right now. Some of them are out on a mission, some of them are preparing to join us. The best we can do is track the monster and see to it that once the jounin do join in on the fun they can confront it right away. Stay on its tracks but stay out of its way!" the leading ninja ordered.
The rest of the ninja scattered, they did not even bother to ask Mana which way did Little Honda go. To be honest, with the nasty hit she took, she was not entirely sure she could tell. It may have dived in underwater and moved to one of the larger areas of the sewer where it had more space to breathe and move in, it may have leaped right out through the sinkhole it had made and begun wandering around the village, like a time bomb waiting to go off.
If a villager notices Little Honda and as much as points a finger at the poor boy, he'll go off again. This time, when he does flip out, there will not be just a handful of civilians working in the sewers within his reach, there will be an entire ninja village to take out. Gripping her burning and spinning head in between her arms, glaring at the hazy image of her own grazed and blood-covered fingers and hands, Mana sat up.
"Leave it to us now." The medical ninja smiled. "I can help you get home if you need it. How are you feeling?"
"Fine. I'll get back myself." Mana smiled back at the kind man who stayed behind to make sure she got the treatment and that she was strong enough to make her own way home. Encouraged by this bold smile, the man disappeared in a speed-made blur while it ran off to follow his colleagues who thought they were hot on the monster's track.
Except Mana did not intend on going home. These ninja were just a tiny bit more experienced than her, less than a third of that group was more powerful and skilled and experienced than Mana. All of them were just first responders and none of them would have faired any better in the arduous task of halting Honda's rampage if the need for such a task rose. She could not allow those people to confront Honda. They would not be fighting that thing to stop it, they would not even attempt to reason with it. All they'd be gunning for was to kill it.
If this was how mad Honda got just because he thought Mana was talking down to him, just how livid would he become once someone as much as touches him more rudely than the boy is used to in his past life?