"I've figured out how to stop Honda." Mana declared to the surprised special jounin. "His healing…"
Honda did not let Mana finish. He let out an uproar and lobbed his entire body at the group of ninja. After the entire day fighting off ninja, killing some of them, bringing down reinforced buildings with his own bare hands and regenerating from all the countless ways that Konoha ninja have learned to kill a person, Honda was still as fast as he was completely fresh. Apart perhaps from a small difference in speed that the flailing growths all over his body caused by making Honda less aerodynamic and shifting his balance about.
"Fire Style: Fenghuang Tail!" Santei grumbled as he leaped forward to halt Honda's acceleration as much as possible. He knew that in his current state, he stood no chance at properly matching the rushing force of his opponent but if he could only slow him down enough, that would have been just fine.
Flames erupted from Santei's airborne body, concentrating around the leg he used for his jumping spin kick. The shinobi aimed his kick at the monster's face. It was not an attempt to hurt Honda but instead of add onto the imbalance of the flailing voiceless growths and derail the monster. Honda just soldiered on, through the imbalance of his own healing factor acting out in curious ways, through Santei's kick hard and fast enough to tackle the already injured ninja fast and hard enough to send him spinning and falling aside.
"Earth Style: Core Polymer!" Idaru shouted while he slammed his palms together. The storm of black minerals burst from underground, bonding together into a thick cloud almost instantly. Honda felt his feet leaving the ground as the immense density of the swarming mineral dust bent the very space around him momentarily and drew him into the heart of the storm he had no hopes of busting through. After a couple of nasty yanks and spins, Idaru's technique simply spat Honda aside like a piece of gum that had lost its taste.
"Nice instinct, Idaru." Kunshei commended his teammate. "The monster does not appear overly fond of this girl. Nasty history, I assume?"
"Something like that…" Mana gulped, realizing just how close to dying they all were just now. She had no hopes of reacting to an attack like that, let alone defending from it. She was long past the point where she could dodge and weave around the monster and toy with him, try and worry over the monster's life instead of her own.
And yet the magician's convictions did not waver. She felt just as determined to have Honda survive this and be captured alive as before, no, perhaps she felt even more determined now. It was in testing moments such as this one that one's true devotion to their principles revealed if it was something meaningful or just fluff to fill pointless stories with.
"I can't take all the credit, had Santei not… Damn… Who would have thought that he'd leap into someone's aid like that?" Idaru grinned like a monkey while he mocked his bruised and stumbling teammate who slowly made his way back into the formation having risen from a bunch of rubble and stray trash bins he had crashed through before crashing into yet another building.
"You fool… You think I did this for you? If this girl has answers that can help us stop Honda, we need to hear them now! I won't let us die to a pathetic freak like this without at least taking it with us." The ninja grumbled looking at Honda's flat, lumbering body with disdain.
"I had hoped that I would relay this intelligence to ninja capable of exploiting it but I don't think you guys are. You need to withdraw and bring this intel back to the village so that the reinforcements can properly use it." Mana advised the bunch, noting that their condition was not much better than hers when she dove right back into her second clash with Honda. That type of recklessness had cost her dearly and Mana was not quite done paying the price for it just yet.
"That's what I was trying to tell them…" Idaru squinted at his teammates.
"Let us hear your intelligence first, then we'll decide if it is worth paying with our pride for." Hibaru declared. It was rare of the ponytail ninja to look so serious and to consider fleeing from the field of battle. That seriousness alone made Santei and Kunshei to also realize the gravity of the situation they were in.
Honda's body rose from lifelessness into an almost dreamy, ghost-like state. There were no irises, no mood or signs of humanity in the monster's face or body. If things continued this way, at the end of the rope Honda would have less humanity than his tumor-brothers. A pair of the featureless, skinny growths looked bloody purple from the weight of Honda crashing on top of them and hung lifelessly over Honda's body. Just dead weight.
"I'll buy you as much time as you can. Tell them what they need to know and then we flee." Kunshei made the call.
"Are you kidding? You can't!" Hibaru objected. "That thing will tear you…"
He couldn't finish what he was about to say as Kunshei, crackling with lightning and shooting off stray bolts all around dashed off to launch the longest and most intense barrage of Lightning Tsuppari at his opponent that Honda has ever seen. Sadly, Honda lacked the intellectual capacity or any sign of consciousness that could have been afraid. The monster, voiceless as his fleshy brothers, met Kunshei's assault head-on. Like a rabid cat crashing against an immovable object.
"Lightning Style: Lightning Tsuppari!" was Kunshei's swan song, or at least the leader of the squad of special jounin was ready for it to be.
"Shut up and listen for once, Hibari!" Santei yelled out. The gruff in his voice, directed at a man he once considered his unlikely friend, made Hibari freeze in his place and take the advice meant for him. "Kunshei is behaving like a leader should. Now, mummy-girl, tell us your thing. If I am to have an evacuation on my mission record, it won't be an evacuation on a failed mission that cost the entire village."
"Right…" Mana nodded. Her one functioning eye changed its look from a quivering jewel into a sharpened tip with enough killing intent to be put on the tip of a spear. "Honda's healing factor is almost perfect. It does not seem to weaken him in any way, it does not consume his chakra like any of our techniques would. Still, he is a genetic experiment, he lacks thousands of years of evolution and fine-tuning that we have. Cells can act the way Honda's do for only so long before they start functioning abnormally."
"I see… So that transformation is no evolution or technique, it is a sign of sickness." Idaru nodded a pair of times in acknowledgment.
"That's right. In time, Honda's healing factor will go wrong. It will begin healing limbs he does not have, it will create cancerous tissue or break down tissue he needs. It will be perpetual but it will not always work the way it is intended to." Mana replied. "Even now, Honda's body did not heal his wounds, the transplants his body was made of regenerated bodies they were taken from instead."
"Wait!" Hibaru widened his eyes as a thought that had just popped in his mind surprised him greatly. "Why are you telling us this? You mean you're not coming with us to the Administration?"
Mana looked down. To the ninja around her, it would have been next to impossible to read her thoughts and emotions as the only mirrors into Mana's soul were her one shimmering emerald and the few mangled and bloodied patches of flesh that stuck out from the bandages.
"No. Someone needs to stay here and hold Honda off from doing any more damage. I'll hold him here until the reinforcements come with all the intel they need to take Honda down." The magician stated. She had not planned of following Kunshei's example when she left home but seeing the failure of the special jounin up close she began realizing that it was either her or someone else and this was not a choice Mana ever lingered on nor did she plan to start lingering on.
"This is insane…" Idaru muttered before he noticed Santei turning his back to Mana and preparing for a powerful dash that would have brought him up to the rooftop level, just high up enough to scale the upper levels all the way to whichever point in the village the ninja chose to move to.
"Don't screw up," Santei said after turning his face halfway back at Mana and disappearing as far as Mana could see him. The magician was used to the more human limits of the more basic senses. She had spent plenty of time without her chakra manipulation not too long ago.
The rest of the duo lingered on Mana, even as the girl walked out in between them and Kunshei's last gamble against Honda, the two watched at the girl wondering if this was the moment in everyone's life when one disobeyed their orders, acted against the rules because of their own better judgment. That time when one realized that rules and laws were not written for every situation ever conceived and, sometimes, the more vague spirit of the law or the basic principles of morality and justice had to be followed instead of the letter.
Kunshei's blood-curdling yell made the duo snap out from their trance at about the same time. Streaks and stripes of red wherever one turned, the arm that Kunshei had lost in the scuffle was still emitting brief jolts of lightning and twitching a few meters farther.
"Kunshei!" Hibaru called out to his lifelong friend, someone he had met in the Ninja Academy and knew as a rival for the entirety of his early years before circumstance forced him to work alongside the boy he thought he hated. The unwilling partner in the trenches from whom, for better or worse, his own life depended greatly – a twist of fate that mended all petty quarrels.
"Flee, you idiots!" the dark-haired martial artist yelled out, with the turn of his head so close up in Honda's face he pretty much surrendered his life then and there. Not that it changed much, it was not a mistake made out of ignorance but a submission to one's fate for one last look at the people one had the honor of calling friends after knowing them as rivals.
Not that Kunshei would have lasted long with just one arm anyway…
Mana turned away to encourage the duo to flee. Before her head could make the full trip, she noticed that the signatures of the two were fleeing with haste. The magician chose to focus on the gruesome cloud of splattered blood and remains through which Honda walked now that his temporary obstacle was disposed of. Like a cloud of crimson smoke, Mana had wished she had a smokescreen to hide this death she could not prevent so it was no coincidence she chose this analogy.
Honda's eyes were still white. However many rows of teeth the monster had all ground against one another, breaking teeth and growing them back before each successive step could be completed.
Mana gripped the hat she held in her hand tighter. She was lying to herself. She could have saved Kunshei, maybe bought him more time. Twelve percent of her chakra that now rustled within her were sufficient for an illusion that could have slowed the monster down… Kunshei would have most likely hated that, they'd both have died that way but…
Honda growled with rage, he did not roar like before, some of his rage was beginning to settle down with the successful defeat of his enemy and the significant decrease in the need for ferocity.
"B-Rank Seal: Release!" Mana's lips moved as one of her hands weaved a hand seal. She would not get any more moments of somberness from her opponent so she needed to use her chakra for the purpose it was meant to be used. She'd deal with the weight of making the difficult choice when it resurfaced in the form of self-demeaning nightmares as it always does…
Mana sunk in an enormous space-shaded cloud that burst from her hat. Honda roared out in the air, maybe as his more childish self he'd have been more cautious but this reckless monster leaped right into the depths of the cloud that Mana's last resort had left. It leaped only to meet the end of a long, golden horn held by a white female rabbit.
It was not that getting impaled by the horn hurt Honda in any way or that the horn dealt any meaningful injuries. The monster was fighting the collapse of space-time and shifting dimensions around it, desperately struggling with remaining where he was, where food, bright lights, and game machines were. While the monster was not aware of the primal drives of his childish self, Honda who was slumbering deep within somewhere, dictated those very same desires. It was not for Mana's benefit. Honda's desperate craving for bread and entertainment now made Honda powerful enough to hold the rift between dimensions and resist the All-Mirage's sealing power.
"Dat's… Impossible…" Usukari, the All-Mirage wielding rabbit, muttered as she had fought opponents that seemed much more dangerous as far as rank was concerned and saw them getting sealed away by All-Mirage's blind yet just power.
"Cotton Rush!" Usupari, a rabbit with long, fluffy ears who used their unnatural properties for combat yelled out as he threw a succession of quick and stiff shots at the monster's exposed body and face.
Honda moved further and further into the depths of the dimension where All-Mirage took its targets but then as if in a mad rush of second wind, the monster straightened its body out and broke all of its previous limits. With one mighty roar, Honda broke the dimensional walls he was grasping to and powered out of the devouring tunnel by leaving a massive, crackling hole where the sealing effect previously took place.
The feat did break Honda, at least temporarily. All of his featureless, torsos sticking out from his wounds exploded into a combination of bio-organic goop and blood from the sheer pressure of the blood being circulated through them, the incalculable force that the monster was exerting at that moment of desperation. Honda stood there with his head weighed down, his entire body hunched up and the entirety of his build greatly collapsed from the effort he had just mustered.
"So you called out…" a female rabbit with feline features turned at Mana with an almost cartoonish, cat-like smile. Even faced with this monstrous horror show, Usuchabi's enthusiasm persisted.
"I tried doing this alone. I failed and then I failed again. I can't hog all the responsibility when the weight of it crushing me under it is human lives. I need help…" Mana uttered with a tone full of shame, not shame meant for herself for calling out to the rabbits, shame that it took all these sacrifices before she realized her mistake.
"That's all you had to say," Usuvilme grumbled before brandishing handfuls of knives in his paws.
The rabbits all charged at the dazed monster at the same time. Usuvilme took a more height-oriented dash, choosing to unleash a rain of knives upon the monster instead of moving in and up close. It was a clever move, if the monster had the stamina to suddenly pop back into action and was conserving that strength for a close-range brawl, it would have been beneficial to first rain long-range attacks on him. The rest of the ninja rabbits danced around the monster, staying just a hair's length outside the downpour of knives.
Usubingu went smacked his paws together before forcing them into the dirt, removing large chunks of hardened rock in the shape of giant fists as he leaped in to deliver the first punch. Honda's knee came out of nowhere. The sound of it shooting through the air was so high-pitched that Mana's went deaf for a couple of seconds. The poor rabbit shot into the sky like a recording of a shooting star played in reverse. He even dissolved into heated smoke cloud midway through the trip and disappeared with a loud pop to strengthen the metaphor.
Usukari thrust her All-Mirage at the monster. It had successfully strained the monster to the limits of its strength and beyond so if only she could hit him with it again… Honda's head cocked back, his spine bent in abnormal angles and ways but as the gigantic freak felt no pain it was of no consequence to him. The monster's head shot forward just as swiftly as it moved forward, knocking Usukari into the ground and shaking the Konoha soil up enough to topple buildings and knock Mana over.
The vision in one remaining eye turned crimson. The blood that came from her reopened wounds and ran over Mana's eyebrow forced it closed. By the time Mana opened it again, using the desperation of the noises of fighting that transpired nearby as fuel for her quickness in recovering, the rabbits were all gone. Honda's body was patching up another batch of injuries as the monster stared at the kneeling girl.
This was it… If Honda wanted her dead, if he even had the conscious capacity to want anything anymore, Mana would have no way to react to his movement. Not in her current condition. The monster's arms were hanging like they were wilted flowers, his knees bent over, struggling to keep the hefty mass of flesh upright. As the monster lifted his head, Mana noticed what caused Honda to snap back into life so quickly before – his brown irises and rapid blinking showed the pouty child inside Honda awakening again as the monster was overworked.
Honda's belly croaked. Even something as natural as a rumbling stomach sounded grotesque with this abomination, it reminded of industrial sounds, of barely functioning engines that were leaking oil and spitting out parts that were vital for their functioning as they kept working on. What Mana did not expect, however, was seeing the boy's eyes change into wide moons, for that one moment, that betrayal of the dominant emotion made him more human than ever before and Mana felt damned for it but she felt a hint of regret sparking in her heart again for the poor little boy Honda once was.
"Whaaaaa!" Little Honda yelled out making Mana the one who was shocked in exchange. "Don't eat me, scary ghoul!"
The monster turned around and took a wild leap, the magician heard the ground beneath the monster's feet collapsing farther away and felt his signature moving beneath the village. He ran away back into the dark moisture of the sewers. The magician, in her worst judgment, consumed by the responsibility to end this and the instinctual obligation of making all the sacrifices worth it extended her weary and burning with fatigue arm as if begging the monster not to run. Only then did she realize that she was begging the reaper to stay and finish her off. Or… Maybe not…
The magician's horrified eyes halted upon her own reflection in the bloody mess that was left of Kunshei's remains after Honda was done with him in one of his more monstrous moments. She truly did look like a flesh-devouring ghoul, bruised, covered in bandages, hair covered in sticky and coagulated blood, one-eyed, so worn out and dragged under by her injuries that even her movements gave her a very ghastly and undead-like image. The charade was so convincing that just momentarily the magician wondered if she truly was dead and had not realized it yet.
"He's afraid of me…" Mana's cracked and dried out lips uttered in realization.