"Well participated, my collaborator, now you Konoha ninja perceive the sturdiness of our Will of Stone! With what we stand to capitulate if this undertaking flounders, there is not even the slenderized speck of a contingent that we shall abdicate!" the pickaxe-wielding ninja swung his massive, weaponized tool over his head and slammed it into the floor.

"Earth Style: Chainsaw Ridge!" the redneck yelled out with enthusiasm and admirable patriotic feelings overflowing throughout his body. Kiyomi noticed her right foot taking an involuntary step back, begging its owner to choose to gain some distance for a proper reaction to the enemy's attack.

The Iwagakure spy drove his pickaxe into the ground at a rather precise, diagonal angle, one that looked awkward upon seeing it at first but one that seemed impressive, given how rudely and violently the strike was initiated. For the man to be able to form such a precise angle after starting out the attack so suddenly and with such brutishness it would have required intimate familiarity with the technique.

Similarly to Kiyomi's own Earth Style ninjutsu, the smash of the pickaxe compressed and pushed forward a layer of rock and minerals, forming new stone blocks from the underlying buckets of dirt and pebbles and forcing them to harden and polish the stone residing even deeper underneath. The chakra transferred through the conductive tool and the additional pulses leaving the man's own circulation through his feet helped him shape a collection of sharpened, tall stone pillars that burst from the deepest layers of the underground, where the contents of the soil were the hardest. Even more, by taking in the Earth Style chakra, the separate chunks of ground stone became singular, rising pillars that rose and split the ground on their trip toward the enemy just like the teeth of a chainsaw.

"Earth Style: Travelling Rock Pillar!" Kiyomi muttered out the name of the technique that she identified in the enemy's own attack. Hers was the technique from which this attack was derived from, Kiyomi was sure of it. Her own rising rock pillars burst from a deep layer of cracked ice and moved in to clash with the attack of the enemy.

There was no doubt in Kiyomi's mind that the jutsu of her enemy was superior to hers – it would have made little sense to derive a weaker jutsu from another Earth Style technique for a ninja of such a high rank. However, this did not necessarily spell out doom for her, her affinity and familiarity with using the better known, generic Earth Release technique may have just had some degree of compensation for the other disadvantages of the jutsu.

The two jutsu crashed against one another with a thunderous echo, just like Kiyomi feared, the technique of the enemy tore through her earth pillars like wet paper and continued its destructive path forward, by that point Kiyomi had invested all of her possible responses to the enemy's attack… The resolution was inevitable.

Another deafening crack laid siege on Kiyomi's eardrums, when sight returned to the blanked out eyes of the Yamanaka heiress she witnessed Hanshin in mid-leap, punching through the Earth Release technique with a single strike and pushing onward in the direction of the enemy. Now it was the pickaxe wielding, smart-mouthed Iwagakure ninja who was out of responses and overly invested into his attack…

A whistling sound in the air alerted the blonde, her eyes moved faster than her entire head, noticing the whizzing, heated, metal sticks that were moving in on Hanshin – the long-range, explosive weaponry of one of the Iwagakure spies. Black Vicious formed from behind Hanshin, one of its hands, the one used for the punch to overpower the Earth Release technique of the Iwagakure ninja revealed itself, while some other hands that were tearing apart the feminine-shaped chakra armor of Hanshin's let go of the armor's "flesh" and turned for the incoming explosives.

A stream of bursting flames erupted from the center of each hand bothered to intercept the supporting attack of the enemy. Upon being exposed to the highly compressed jets of fire, the explosives flew off in the whole other direction and detonated prematurely, shaking the foundations of the Eternal Fire once more.

"Earth Style: Crescent Quake!" the third Iwagakure ninja also let out a supporting attack at the last possible moment. A pair of ground-traveling shockwaves left the direction of the Iwagakure spy and flew off in a crescent trajectory at the rushing Konoha special jounin.

Hanshin did not stop. Had he done so, Kiyomi thought he could have simply waited out the pre-set trajectory of the enemy attack and allowed the pair of shockwaves to collide with each other, nullifying one another right in front of him, instead of hitting him. All that the special jounin did was let out a battle cry… "Out of Hanshin's way!"

For the third time, an overwhelming thud emanated through the frozen floor of the Eternal Fire as both projectiles collided with Hanshin. Stretching out and bending the man's body in awkward shapes and shattering Black Vicious. It did not look like much damage was inflicted on the man itself as the armor had absorbed most of the damage but… Black Vicious was destroyed completely. While it was never outright confirmed vocally, Hanshin was too vain to admit it out loud, but Kiyomi speculated that there'd have to be some brief delay before the special jounin could build his armor back up from being shattered.

The redneck let go of his pickaxe, still stuck in ice, he leaped forward at Hanshin and threw a wild kick to the man's teeth. Hanshin leaned back, then wrapped his own powerful arms around the leg of the enemy and drove his elbow down to the exposed and open knee. The Iwagakure ninja wailed in pain, his face completely changed from that of rock-hard determination to that of a man broken by pain. The smart-talking giant collapsed on the floor with his hands wrapped around his face as he bellowed in pain, his nails almost clawed off his own skin and threatened to hook out his eyes if they scratched any closer to them.

"It will be hard using that thing with a broken leg, huh?" Hanshin sighed. "Underestimating Hanshin's girth was your final mistake."

Perhaps it was not that much of a mistake, usually, when a ninja saw someone so occupied with creating, using and rebuilding a chakra armor, they assumed that whatever this integral armor was protecting was quite soft. Hanshin, however, appeared to be just as powerful without the armor in terms of physical ability as his impressively hunky appearance suggested.

Seeing an opportunity with one of the spies getting taken out of the relevant and active participation in the big picture, Kiyomi rolled a kunai knife in her hand around, dangerously close to her face, before sticking it into the ground and darting off at the two opponents like mad. Both the Earth Release ninjutsu user and the explosive specialist took on their defensive stances, looking slightly overwhelmed by the extremely daring approach of the Konoha kunoichi. Usually, headlong rushes such as these were followed by a trap and were merely meant to disguise a bigger move at play.

The explosive specialist flung a pair of his glowing red, metallic sticks at the Yamanaka but Kiyomi evaded them on her way to the enemy with some skilled acrobatics. She sat still for long enough to get a pair of good breaths of oxygen in her lungs, even if it all burnt out now, she needed to go for the opening that the enemy's mistake provided them, or else…

The Yamanaka thrust both of her palms forward, repurposing all of her built up momentum into a double palm strike aimed at the chest of the larger target – the explosive specialist spy. A mighty blast sent Kiyomi flying back as well as her target sliding further back while remaining on his feet – the enemy detonated a pair of his explosives on his chest. Previously the Yamanaka had assumed that something like this would kill him, this was a confusing but also a necessary revelation if she was to pull off a win here.

Kiyomi's image puffed away into a cloud of smoke. The explosive specialist glared at the kunai knife still in his hands, the same one that the kunoichi stuck into the ground before darting off. It was one of the thoughts that lingered in the man's mind – that the enemy kunoichi would substitute away from the attack. Another one of the winners was that she'd try and substitute herself with an explosive kunai but the absence of an explosive tag on the blade that the young woman had replaced herself with abolished that possibility.

"Yamanaka Hair Trap!" Kiyomi smirked while weaving a single hand seal. A blue aura expanded from a single point where multiple strings of Kiyomi's hair laid neatly tied up onto the handle of the kunai which she had transported into the hands of the enemy in such an original way.

"S-Stop her!" the explosive specialist turned to his ally, his eyes were just about frightened enough for Kiyomi to believe in the decent probability of her success. Almost instantaneously the expanding chakra aura enveloped the opponent and completely paralyzed him, setting up the conditions for the Yamanaka to use her signature clan techniques on this paralyzed target.

"Arhat Fist: Double Quake!" the Earth Release user yelled out, leaning both of his hands behind him, preparing to slam them into the ground and form a quake that would bust some more of the Yamanaka's ribs and punish her for believing in a chance of her victory coming to pass.

Before the ninja could execute his technique, however, he felt a tight grip of powerful arms slithering from under his armpits and locking firmly from behind his head, locking the man in an iron-tight Full Nelson. Wriggling his head through great effort, the Earth Release user witnessed the severely injured blacksmith ninja from before having snuck up from behind him and put him into the hold before he could hurt her comrade.

"Meiko!" the joy of seeing her comrade standing on her feet overpowered the necessity to rush her attack through. "Y-You shouldn't have… Stood up…" worry snuck up into Kiyomi's heart, even if Meiko managed to get back on her feet, the condition of her body, how the enemy was able to effectively rag doll the blacksmith around in her own hold betrayed the fact that the redhead was seriously injured and that any successive hits could have snuffed her life away at any moment. It was sheer willpower and the desire to help her teammates that kept the young woman standing.

"H-How did you even… Sneak up on me!?" the Earth Release user struggled once more, managing to lift Meiko off the ground and throwing her seemingly weightless body hanging behind him around like a heavy bag of potatoes. Meiko grunted and yelled out in pain as her damaged ribs, burns, and lacerations all resonated and acted up with painful impulses all over her body, combined with the fatigue building up in her muscles.

"Nobody… Ever expects the severely injured…" Meiko smirked, lacking the proper strength reserves to even shape that last sentence properly, everything she had was already put to use merely to keep her alive and to keep that hold applied. "Hurry up!" the blacksmith yelled out from the bottom of her heart, directed at the Yamanaka who was too preoccupied at having her eyes get wet with the joy of her friend managing to survive the collective sum of her injuries rather than exploiting the opening she herself created.

Right…" Kiyomi nodded before forming the modified Yamanaka hijutsu hand seal. "Mind Body Disturbance!"

The paralyzed explosive user twitched a pair of times. His body was fighting off Kiyomi's influence, her consciousness did not leave her body nor did it enter that of the enemy directly, something that greatly reduced the number of weaknesses that her hijutsu had but also made it harder to maintain proper control over more skilled minds.

Now Kiyomi doubted the chances of taking out her target. After seeing the man detonating an explosive on his own chest just to blast the rushing enemy away and barely taking any notable damage from it, whereas before the Yamanaka thought such a strategy to be fatal. Nor could she command the man to rush at his comrade from there – even if Meiko released the hold in time she was still way too close and far too injured to survive such a suicidal explosion. She needed to just detonate the man now…

Shaking and twitching, still resisting the enemy control, the Iwagakure ninja reached for his chest. With every inch that the man's hand moved in closer to the countless pouches of as of yet inactive metallic sticks, he channeled chakra through a stream of memories and thoughts rushed through Kiyomi's own mind. Those belonging to the man she was about to sentence to a gruesome end. It felt like running across the street with every caravan in town having to run down the same street – move an inch forward, wait the stream of memories out so that they don't wash you away, move again…

The blackness of one's own mind was nowhere to be seen, it was as if through the brief connection between Kiyomi and the enemy ninja the man managed to fire his memories at her like weapons. It was a unique method of resisting mind control and a surprisingly effective one, if nothing else, it annoyed the Yamanaka and gave each commanded movement a brief lag before the movement was performed.

The surroundings of the Eternal Fire were no longer there, it was as if both Kiyomi and the explosive specialist spy were placed in a strange dimension where everybody floated without weight or importance in the perpetual flow of the spy's memories. Nothing but mountain ridges and small camps… A feminine face that, for some reason, provided temperature to the entire inner universe of the spy's mind.

"Their army is massive, much better equipped…" the familiar voice of the Iwagakure spy resonated throughout the entire mental realm. It came like thunder that deafened every other sound in the realm.

"What choice is there? We can't just sit on the fence and let them do what they want…" the woman pressed her forehead against the raggedy and sweaty skin of the Iwagakure spy. Her voice thundered likewise, however it did not sound nearly as sharp and felt more like the melody of birds singing their best spring masterpieces for all to hear.

"True… I should go with you."

"You silly, you know your talents don't fit a battlefield. You'd send our entire platoon falling to our dooms with your blasts…" the woman laughed. Her laughter made the entire dimension grow brighter.

There was no time to catch up with the man's memories, Kiyomi pressed on, no matter how hard the man's arm struggled and twitched, it moved relentlessly closer to his chest. The Yamanaka felt immense chakra building up inside the man, he tried to overpower Kiyomi's mental assault like he would an illusion – a fruitless effort. If nothing else – he'd only boost the detonating power of his own explosives.

"Plus, we'll be fighting on our turf. They won't be used to fighting in mines and mountain ridges…"

"Kumogakure has mountains. Their entire village is built in a mountain range, isn't it?"

"Fine, be that way, I guess we're all screwed then…"

"I'm sorry… Just… "

The entire mental dimension became focused on the face of the woman in the spy's memories. He must have spent a significant portion of time staring into her eyes for such a clear and overwhelming focus. The mental realm became hot like an oven, vapor was escaping the woman's mouth, it was the way in which the man remembered her warm breath in the chill of the upper mountains.

"War blows. Sure, I don't want to go but… The real problem is when you do want to go to war, I guess… What option do we have? Run away? Go nuke? That's no option at all…"

"No, the dreams of starving children and ruined Iwa would haunt us forever. We're not some lowly criminals, we'd be just as jobless as our compatriots in the coltan industry."

"See? All we can do is swallow it and do what must be done. I promise you, I'll do everything I can so that none of us lose sleep dreaming of starving children and homeless families."

"…"

"Are you just gonna leave me hanging the evening before leaving for a battle? Promise me, you lug."

"Right… I… I'll do whatever I have to. I'd rather sleep an eternal slumber than a restless one too. Coltan is ours, it always has been, it's what keeps so many of us employed, what trains our ninja and the pride of our nation. To give the industry up would be to piss all over the Will of Stone…"

"See? Wasn't that hard, expressing your feelings, was it?"

A click made the entire stream of memories fade into black. The wide open eyes of the explosive specialist from Iwagakure was the last sight engrained into Kiyomi's memory before the entire wing of Eternal Fire sunk into flames and smoke. Whatever grotesque remains of the man that once was survived the initial shockwave from the tools of death strapped to the man's entire body were evaporated by the heat produced.

The downed redneck lifted his swollen and brutally beaten face off the ground, staring at the aftermath of his teammate's destruction. For a moment even Hanshin halted his merciless beating of the enemy ninja and turned to look at the end of yet another enemy. Whereas the loss of a man they barely knew yet a man with shared views and ideals shocked the Iwagakure ninja and the shock of having taken a life resonated through the hearts of both Kiyomi and Meiko, the smirk of Hanshin's face only saw another obstacle getting blown out of his way. With renewed vigor he returned to pounding the life out of the pickaxe-wielding Iwagakure ninja, seeking to leave nothing but a puddle of red on the ice.

Meiko's iron grip slipped off and let go of the third Iwagakure ninja, for a fraction of a moment it felt like she was floating in the air but the grim reality hit her again once the hard and cold surface of the ice below hit the blacksmith's exposed knees. The Iwagakure ninja did not counterattack immediately. It stumbled forward from the sudden release of the external force that held him tightly and simply stared at the remains of the drastic measure the Konoha ninja had sunk to.