"Well… Now that this is over with, Hanshin is going to ask you all to clench your bottoms and leave this building. Hanshin would bet that the locals are just about accustomed enough to the chaos reaching out from this place to come and check it out. Provided they're pissed enough about the mess we've made here, which they must be." Hanshin demanded with a stern look at the frozen scene of the Iwagakure kunoichi glaring at the gruesome takedown of her leader with shock and uncertainty.
The Yordalaran collaborators were just shaking in their boots, refusing to play their parts any further than they already have. It was likely the fate of the frightening Iwagakure spy that petrified them, the man they considered the most dangerous one in the room based on his fearlessness in resorting to violence.
Mana wasn't sure at first where Hanshin was going with this but once the realization hit her she couldn't help it but have her jaw drop open. He was trying to defuse the situation without killing anyone, just like they agreed. That was surprisingly mature and jounin-like of the Konoha ninja, that being said, something made Mana just feel lucky that she somehow chose a path of life that Hanshin valued enough and that all the conditions fell so neatly into places for this to play out just right.
The only way that this would not have ended in a bloodbath.
Mana weaved a single hand seal. "Fire Style: Hitsuke!" she huffed out through moderate struggle. The contract, which the party of spies from Iwagakure and the Yordalaran collaborators were so busy drafting not too long before, lit up in flames. It was something obvious and silly to point out that Mana had little chakra left, however setting a single stack of papers ablaze did not require all that much effort. With the fire swallowing up the fated contract swallowing it up, Mana fell on her front, just barely having enough strength left to stop her fall with her arms.
It was beginning to feel like the gravity around her was intensifying, sweat dyed with blood was dripping off of the face of the young woman. It took notable strength to even lift her head up and look at the main scene in the northern part of the hall.
"Nicely done. A useless technique in combat but… Will do the job." Hanshin smirked like a smartass parent would smirk after their child had finally learned to draw the cheeky Sun in the corner of their painting.
"Now… Out you lot go." The special jounin turned back at the groveling schemers with a stern, death-inducing glare. "Don't forget to pick up your broken friend here too…"
"If you think for a second that this will break our Will of Stone…" the female Iwagakure spy rebelled. She pulled out a kunai and took a defensive knife-fighting stance. She clearly intended to score no victory here but considered throwing her life away preferable over the alternative of seeing her home burn down and the mountains that gave her home and put food on everyone's table leveled by the world's largest cascade of lightning bolts.
"Oh? Amusing…" Hanshin smirked again. He looked at the shaking Yordalaran politicians. "Maybe you intend to take me on all at once as well? After all, you guys are Yordalarans, you must have some fighting spirit in you and I am fairly winded after all this fighting… Who knows, maybe you all have a shot?"
Mana knew how cruel her superior's taunt was. These people had no chance even with their now completely paralyzed comrade who probably preferred his fate to still retaining his senses as the agony he would be in at the moment would have made him beg for death, no matter how stern and sturdy the Will of Stone was.
"You do know that it is more than likely the other settlers will kill you, right?" The special jounin taunted the groveling men some more as if taking some sick kicks out of it. "May as well go out swinging right now…"
"Even if it means death!" the Iwagakure kunoichi declared, charging at the opponent who now had his hands pocketed and just smirked with confidence. His eyes looked gleeful enough for a neutral observer to realize that, given his level of advanced perception, he was following every twitch and every smallest movement of the Iwagakure woman.
"Stop!" Mana cried out but her voice did not reach anyone who would have really benefit from it.
The Iwagakure spy leaped forward with a thrust of the kunai blade, Hanshin appeared completely disinterested in avoiding the attack and merely stood in place with his hands completely removed from taking any fighting stance. With an unearthly clang, the knife bent while it got stuck in between the ribs of Black Vicious that manifested itself in physical form around the special jounin. A hidden ace he held in his sleeve this entire time despite most of the players knowing of it but refusing to call the cheat out because of the influence and strength of the man holding it.
The Iwagakure woman dashed back. A sizzling sound alerted everyone of the reason why she dashed back in such a rush – the knife she had plunged into Black Vicious was one rigged with an explosive tag. A deafening blast spread through the hall, Hanshin slid out from the blast zone with his hands raised up in a blocking position. His clothes slightly singed and some minor burns covering his body.
He was taking amusement from further fooling the struggling Iwagakure woman into thinking she had a chance. This felt much crueler than if the man had just killed her outright. The Iwagakure spy placed her hands up in a closed position, one meant for a more ninjutsu-focused combatant and aimed at maximizing the speed of weaving hand seals in the midst of battle.
"You mock my Will of Stone but now, with your armor gone, you will have no way of defending yourself against this!" the woman declared while her hands worked with hand seals. It was like Hanshin had teleported himself right up to the woman, even though the lack of any significant dip in chakra level made Mana realize it was no instantaneous movement – the man was just that damn fast. The man's arm locked up over the woman's wrist in an iron grip. With a single yank, he dislocated the wrist as if it would have been as easy as snapping a twig.
There was no precision whatsoever with the motion, the man may as well have broken the hand at the same time as he had dislocated the wrist as he was operating like a sledgehammer and not a scalpel. The Iwagakure ninja cried out in pain but did not crumble or relent. She tried throwing a pair of elbow strikes and kicks. Because her movements were so sluggish while in so much pain, none of the hits landed anywhere but crashed into the blocks that Hanshin put up.
With the last kick, the special jounin locked up his grip around the woman's ankle and flipped her body over with a simple throwing motion. Just like that, the Konoha ninja had achieved one of the most advantageous positions in battle but he chose to merely dangle his raised foot above the downed and dazed opponent instead of slamming it down and finishing it.
Hanshin's goal was clearly to see if he could make the Will of Stone crumble and not to just defeat this woman.
"What happened to Kiyomi and Meiko? There're a bunch of chakra signatures closing in." Mana distracted Hanshin. Even with the man's eyes off of the enemy, it didn't appear like his guard was completely down, at least Mana would not have tried her luck if she was in the place of the Iwagakure kunoichi but, then again, if she was, she'd have never gotten this far, to begin with.
"The Yamanaka's laid out, Meiko is too injured to carry on but conscious. They're both alive, Hanshin doesn't care much about anything more than that." The special jounin declared with the amount of flippancy that wasn't to be expected of someone who's about to be put in charge of his own squad of genin ninja.
"This must be the mob. If we stay here and get caught, we'll be dead for sure. The only way we have a chance, to begin with, is if we run out and surrender!" one of the collaborators declared after showing an uncharacteristic amount of courage in his behavior for a moment, even if it was just to save his own hide.
"Sure, you guys run along now. Unless you do something entertaining, you're of no interest to Hanshin." The special jounin waved his hand before moving his airborne foot around as if it was beginning to feel numb.
The Iwagakure kunoichi answered the taunt by striking at the man's supporting leg. By doing that she managed to knock the opponent down temporarily. A howling laugh revealed that the Konoha ninja was most of all amused by the willingness of the kunoichi to keep going. After getting back on her feet, the kunoichi took a pair of vaults back to gain some distance and then froze up to evaluate the odds and her options.
"Just give up already, you've got no chance of fulfilling your objective anymore nor can you make a strong escape – there are too many people to kill that have seen you and know of your involvement." Mana pleaded with the kunoichi.
"Not that many…" the Iwagakure ninja replied while flinging a handful of kunai at the fleeing Yordalaran collaborators and reentering her long-range ninjutsu fighting stance to start working on hand seals again. "Just all of you!"
The kunai bounced off of an invisible force in the air while Hanshin returned to his feet as if pulled up by strings. While the enemy couldn't sense it, Mana could and sensing Black Vicious while it was unfocused and invisible was just as potent as seeing it formed. The sensations it burnt out on a sensor were such that it felt almost like seeing the thing for the first time every time.
"If Hanshin didn't have to take you down without killing you, as per what was promised, Hanshin would really like you…" the special jounin smirked. "Black Vicious: Spirit Frequency!"
A howl echoed through the room but instead of the gruesome effects of the attack coming from an entirely another dimension only masculine panting and the image of Hanshin slouched over appeared as the result of the technique.
"I can't believe it, you ran out of chakra?" Mana turned at the special jounin. "You should have had enough, this isn't how much of it the jutsu demanded last time…"
Despite the fact that Hanshin was skilled enough to realize he no longer had the chakra necessary to perform his technique and managed to salvage some of what remains he had to not pass out on the spot was impressive and just another testament to the man's impressive experience and skill, his timing, and management of the core resource, however, irritated the magician.
"The demands of chakra must not be constant but accumulative every time the jutsu is used. Figures such a crazy technique would have an equally crazy drawback…" the Iwagakure kunoichi grinned. While she had skipped the chance to subdue the fleeing collaborators she now faced a new opportunity of killing both of the Konoha ninja that have cost her village its survival. While the chance of saving her home was fading, the opportunity to avenge it had never tasted sweeter.
"Was it so hard to just close your eyes? If you failed your mission, it would only mean a small stain on your record…" the woman cried out while going through hand seals. "Multi-Shuriken Jutsu!"
A handful of shuriken that the woman threw out covered in a shroud of smoke that spread as suddenly as the popping sound that walked back to back with it. The handful then turned into copious dozens while they swarmed the room leaving little space to maneuver in. At this rate, the swarm would have swallowed and overwhelmed both ninja at the same time. However Mana still felt something hidden at play, she recognized the number and type of hand seals made by the Iwagakure spy and it did not match the jutsu she tried pulling off previously.
As deadly and overwhelming this attack was, it was still just a setup for the technique from that time…
Hanshin's Black Vicious fended off most of the projectiles coming the man's way. Nothing but the resonance of clangs came from his direction while the man worked. In his current state, he may no longer have had the chakra to use Spirit Frequency but he could still form Black Vicious in its physical form, even if the early warning from before hastened the special jounin to finish the fight.
Mana knew she was left to fend off by herself. If she got hurt or died – that was her business and hers alone as the only thing that Hanshin taught her as a mentor and a superior was that Hanshin did not like things getting in his way and dragging him down. The magician moved and navigated away from the first wave of projectiles before disappearing behind the crumbled tables and rolling around while the ceaseless assault further trashed the dignified home for politics.
As expected of him, Hanshin didn't waste time making sure that Mana was okay. Mana, on the other hand, felt worried over the man's multiple cuts and his rapidly depleting chakra level. It was his bravado and as inefficient as it was dominant fighting style of always doing whatever Hanshin thought would be the most fun thing to do that drove him to this point. Now the magician just begged her superior to stop fooling around and trying to break his opponent's spirit and instead just break her body.
"You know, your friend's spine is still intact. You could still pick him up and run for it…" Hanshin taunted his opponent having learned nothing from before. Even while wounds of battle and sweat covered his half-bare, overworked body, the man looked just as dismissing towards his opponent as he always was. Mana was beginning to wonder if Hanshin carried this personality over from his early days when he lacked the strength that apparently justified his foolishness. What if it wasn't Hanshin's strength that made him arrogant and so nasty but it was just who the man was, mighty or not.
The Iwagakure spy extended her hand forward, she clearly thought that Hanshin was fooling around with her but Mana knew better. It was well within Hanshin's character to fool around but he would have never resorted to lying just for the sake of buying some time. This was no vain attempt at avoiding certain death from the opponent's follow-up attack but instead an attempt to test her character and further implicate her.
"Magnet Style: Gravity Convergence!" the woman yelled out while extending one of her hands forward. Mana felt immense amounts of chakra just burning away from within the Iwagakure kunoichi, a testament that she was not mad or bluffing and that she truly possessed a Kekkei Genkai ability.
What the enemy ninja gave up in moral standing, she attempted to compensate in raw, destructive and shredding power as all of the ninja tools she had just used resurrected for a second life and began helplessly floating about before rushing in a coordinated manner at the Konoha special jounin. While the woman was fierce, she was no senseless, she did not unleash all of her weaponry at once, choosing to use it in a cleverer, wave-formation. Just in case she needed some for defensive purposes or to redirect them at the last moment…
Black Vicious wrapped its hands around Hanshin as the barrage of weaponry flowed and crashed into his armor again and again like the unruly waves of a stormy ocean. The shuriken were as plentiful as raindrops in the sea just to further strengthen the analogy, however, they wielded little success. Only where the weaponry managed to bypass the Black Vicious' defenses and not in any way bust through did the Iwagakure ninja land her blows on the Konoha ninja.
Hanshin emerged from under his shaky armor, observing its pitiful state and allowing it to crumble. There was no more use in letting this thing carry on. Not with its hands, that comprised the chain links of its armored shell, bent up and busted. Nor was it worth going through the strain of keeping Black Vicious up in its pathetic state where it barely sufficed in fulfilling its purpose. Hanshin allowed his armor the precious time to rebuild while not in use and for his technique to properly reset, however, Black Vicious may not have made its return at all, given the strain that the Konoha ninja has gone through.
"Heh, it appears your Will of Stone truly is worthless, after all…" Hanshin sighed. Even while his body was covered with streaks of red and his muscles in full-overtime to keep the man upright, the physical specimen of masculine perfection appeared dismissing with the stares he offered his opponent. "Hanshin's Spirit Frequency does not inflict physical damage. It attacks a body on a whole different plane. You've just sacrificed the life of your ally for the sake of petty bloodthirst… Such a disappointment."
"I've sacrificed nothing!" the Iwagakure kunoichi declared while raising her hand back up. "There is still more than enough time to kill the two of you and make my escape. If the four of you managed to stay hidden in Yordalar, the two of us could pull it off as well."
"Such a waste… A Kekkei Genkai ninja too…" Hanshin shrugged his shoulders while shaking his head as if lamenting something.
"Bluffing until the end, I see. How very ninja of you…" the arm of the Iwagakure woman lit up with blue, base chakra flames that then turned to intense waves. Ones that flowed in resonance all over the room and transferred the energy within into the ninja tools it passed through.
As a feat of final rebellion against fate, Hanshin stroke a fancy pose, yanking his crotch while twisting and bending his body to turn the cheeks of his bottom towards the hardy woman. It was no mere act of dismissal or mockery, however. A flash of silver buzzed right through Hanshin's body, missing his abdomen due to the nature of his pose. A spear the size of a person that impaled the woman facing Hanshin and pinned her to the wall of the main hall.
The face of the Iwagakure spy was twisted in surprise as she examined the position where she ended up shortly before her life faded away and let her body dangle pinned to the front wall of the Eternal Fire depicting the Yordalaran insignia of a red flame symbol with a yellow sky and green dirt backgrounds. The heraldry which was soon stained by blood as well, albeit nowhere near enough to cover the entire coat of arms.
The Yordalarans have come to reclaim their parliament at last.