„Stay back, Mana." Junichi hissed at her while the Allied Ninja dealt with the prospect that this unexpected roadblock knew who they were and possibly a great deal more.
"No way," Mana shook her head. "I'm not letting any of you get hurt on my watch."
"Any of us get hurt… Your watch?" Junichi mumbled to himself.
"I'm afraid I must side with the young lady here, Junichi. There are four of us and four of them – young Mana is quite a tie-breaker." Cailar chuckled to himself, realizing that after all the time he disagreed with Junichi just to piss the old man off, he now genuinely felt like he was wrong in holding the young recruit back.
"We can handle it. She lacks training and can easily turn out to be a tiebreaker for the other side." Mollay felt the necessity to open his own rarely opened mouth.
"Come on, let's let Mana loose and see the wild soul that kicked the crap out of Guru Ayushi himself, huh?" Shitaka snickered.
"It appears that our Allied Ninja fellows are too modest to face us. Why don't you encourage them, brother?" one of the four road-blocking ninja turned to another, prompting him to step out and flex his massive arms beside his beefy chest.
All four of them were impressive specimens in physical training. They were also well past the age when they were supposed to appear as if they surpassed the conditioning of the human prime and yet they defied all odds in displaying remarkable bulk when one overlooked their grey hair and thick beards. Their attires were rags though all four had a penchant for jewelry and minor junk accessories that didn't give out the slightest chakra signal at all, suggesting them to be mere visual elements and nothing more.
"Wind Style: East Scorch!" one of the four monk-like rogues clapped his hands together and spun his head around while breathing in. Once he exhaled, the Allied Ninja had already scattered, being fully prepared for the man's attack.
A road-clearing tunnel of a barely visible heatwave reduced the trees in the way of the Wind Release favoring rogue ninja to dry husks. The drying effect was so potent, in fact, that Mana's vision began to blacken at its edges and shortness of breath persisted well outside of the immediate range where the tunneling heatwave blasted.
"You seem to have us at a disadvantage, what with knowing who we are…" Junichi spoke to the ninja blocking the path with a bemused expression that accurately portrayed the irritation he felt because of the fact that the enemy had enough intelligence to ambush them like this.
"Yeah, we'd appreciate a heads-up in case your heads are worth a detour to the bounty exchange office," Shikata winked at the enemy four of whited out eyes and thick hair.
"And why would we bother telling you anything at all?" one of the four stepped out in front of his hot-headed and heat-breathing brother while fixing his wristbands and preparing for a good bashing. "You're all going to be very dead soon enough."
"Arrogant as you may be, it's not like you four gentlemen are absolute idiots. Taking on four Allied Ninja all by yourselves is a daunting task, likely to cost you some effort and trouble. Wouldn't you like avoiding that trouble if at all possible?" Cailar teased the four, remarkable old men, appealing to their values as a quartet of possible ninja monks.
So, the prevailing theory of the Allied Ninja was that these four were indeed ninja monks. It wasn't at all difficult to imagine why a group of ninja monks would wish Mana's head after what she's done. After all, Guru Ayushi might not have practiced all of their various religions practiced on various ninja temples, though he was a highly spiritual man and a sworn non-interventionist. Just the kind of man that the ninja monks would respect.
"Tough luck, punk!" the hot-headed whitebeard stepped out and punched his own palm with a lively roar of his words. "We, the Daisushi Brothers, welcome the adversity of challenge!" he roared out while smacking his forehead with his own open palm, emitting thunderous thuds as the rogue monk did so.
"Hmm, the Daisushi Brothers?" Cailar mocked the enemy by posing in a showy manner, swinging his hips about as he acted to be deep in thought, "Haven't heard of you guys, must not be all that great…"
"The fool is always the most pleasant to silence…" another one of the four brothers expressed his displeasure with the garish Allied Ninja.
"Alright, let's try this again, you are not village ninja. That much is evident. Would you not wish your names to become infamous? Why not spread them as wide across as possible?" Junichi tried de-escalating the situation though it was more likely than not a fool's errand at this point.
"There is wisdom in what this man speaks, Peiras, we should heed his word and tell this story to as many drinking companions as we can," a man in rough-looking, torn and worn jade dogi turned to his brother who donned a scrappy attire that may have once been as white as his hair was now though overtime has turned to ashy grey.
"Perhaps, though I do not see many feasts in our immediate future. We'll have a child to escort with us after all," the almost-white-clothed brother named Peiras nudged his chin slightly to Mana's direction, the young woman couldn't see any irises or pupils in the eyes of the four men making it difficult to make out the center of their attention though she could guess based on the shiver that ran down her spine when the man turned his face at her. A more primal instinct warning her of danger than mere, easily confused pair of eyes.
"She is hardly a child, looks like a young woman already…" another brother, this one dressed in deep and similarly worn-out blue objected by crossing his massive arms over his even larger chest. "Plus, who cares if she sees us drink, she'll die eventually anyway, right? That's the whole point of a bounty…"
"Maybe…" Peiras nodded in acknowledgment of a fair point coming from his brother. "You two should stop talking in front of the enemy though."
"Who cares, they'll be dead soon enough…" one of the four brothers objected.
"Cool your hot head, Nanotus, this is why the Nine Tales Gang sees us as mere footmen," Peiras tutored his hardly any younger though amply more hotheaded brother with a scorching breath.
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, maybe they can stop treating all of us as one person? It's kind of degrading, really… I mean, I get it, the Twelve Tales Gang doesn't sound as good but maybe a Dozen Tales Gang… I don't know, my point is – we do deserve some more respect." The brother dressed in a worn jade dogi scratched his dried out and wild grey hair.
"Maybe we can negotiate these terms with the Allied Ninja eliminated and the head of Nakotsumi Mana in our hands…" Peiras nodded, getting the attention of his brothers back on track.
"I'm fighting too." Mana declared, moving from behind the closed wall formation that the Allied Ninja formed in front of her and in between them, splitting the strict and closed formation apart.
"Didn't you hear? You're the one they want," Junichi grumbled, predictably, not being in favor of the idea.
"Yes, but I have a plan," Mana insisted.
"Fine. If we have to keep holding you down on top of taking on these clowns, it'll be a four on five either way," Junichi sighed, looking none too pleased but caving nonetheless.
"I am Euruston, the East Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" a rogue monk with a soiled, yellow dogi flexed his muscles in a flashy pose while the rest of the flock froze in place.
"I am Nanotus, the South Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" the rogue monk with the ash-grey skin and a worn and torn orange dogi flexed in a different pose, joining in to his brother Euruston.
"I am Shaphyr, the West Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" the rogue monk with a jade dogi joined into the formation with a flex of his own natural gifts, as of yet, unsoiled by his advanced age.
"I am Peiras, the North Wind of the Daisushi Brothers!" the last frozen in place brother twirled in a pirouette into the center of the formation before completing the whole combination pose with a flashy flex of his own upper back and arms before the Allied Ninja.
"Together we are… The Daisushi Brothers! Which one of us is the strongest!? Not even our mother can tell!" the lot chanted all together without breaking their poses, using only their heads and their necks to direct their fierce expressions toward their enemy and their target.
"No, I do believe that chicanery such as this is what makes this Nine Tales Gang not take you guys very seriously," Mana admitted while scratching a slight itch on her cheek.
"Whoa! These guys are way cool! We should do something like this too!" Shitaka almost cracked up holding his abdomen while observing the flashy show of dance and muscle that the rogue monk brothers put up.
"Under no circumstances," Cailar turned his nose up and looked away with a slight flush to his cheeks.
"We've no time for this!" Junichi growled. His hands went through the array of hand seals as blazes that came into being seemingly from just the intensity of the man performing the technique extended in wild jets of crackling flames aiming to bash against either of the body-builder criminal brothers.
Nanotus, the South Wind, opened up his mouth and began slurping the very air around him, taking all of the wild streaks of flames in a mad slurp. The flames flashed in a blazing twirl as they filled the man's mouth and then went down to never come back up again. Nanotus turned around and blew out another tunnel of hot air, this time clapping his hands out in front of him and devastating his own heatwave in the process.
Instead of merely disrupting his technique, Nanotus appeared to detonate it prematurely with both the enemy and his brothers in the vicinity of the blast. A howling rip was the only signifier of the rough fling which sent Mana flying. She didn't see what it was that she hit with her back though common sense suggested that it was just a tree.
She could still feel the heat pulsing off of her arms and shoulders, Mana made sure to not rush her return back to her feet and roll over her back and onto her front to put the few remaining blazes of flames out though they didn't seem to go as easily as she had hoped. These flames were pure Fire Release, it seemed. They'd be demanding active chakra augmentation in order to not cause their wicked burns though they'd fail to expand any further as long as no additional Fire Release flames pump them up.
"Yeah! Now it's a party!" Shitaka shrieked out while rocking his head and rolled back to his feet, reaching under his leather jacket and pulling out a handful of wooden and plastic jars that he flung at the enemy like a madman.
"Wind Release: West Block!" Shaphyr, the West Wind, bent his upper body down to the ground while placing both his knuckles to the ground and blew out his entire chest of air that compressed and rose in the shape of a Wind Release wave which served as a protective barrier.
Shitaka's jars popped and blew up in mild, concussive blasts though they failed to break through the wind barrier or leave that deep of a dent in it. This didn't appear to break Shitaka's spirits at all as the leather-clad punk froze his right hand and substituted a small plastic jar with a larger, red one in his pocket without breaking the natural movement of his arm.
The substituted jar colored the wall of wind with flames and forced the natural escalating reaction of a booming firestorm that overwhelmed all of the parties involved at once. Before the devastation could even settle down, Mollay was already in the midst of the fray, throwing fists against all of the bundled muscle-headed rogue monks.
While Mollay lacked the physical strength to compete with any of the four, his skill in taijutsu allowed him to compensate for it as any time he'd have caved to a blow of superior strength a light tap of his foot at the knee or shin of the opponent threw them off guard and drastically reduced the force of the incoming blow. Mollay's own barrage of strikes suffered no such drawbacks though the Daisushi Brothers were still formidable and hardy so the stalemate didn't give either direction.
"Multi-Kunai Jutsu!" Cailar chanted, extending his hands and lobbing well over hundreds of multiplying kunai that appeared to clone off of the multiple handfuls that he used as the original source.
Mollay's skin hardened when a coat of clay ran up from his feet all the way to his head in a mere snap and prevented him from taking any damage from the hail of cloned knives. The Daisushi Brothers didn't appear to be capable of anything of the sort, making them force their flexed muscles to do the protective job for them. While the bunch did receive a handful of nasty cuts and lacerations, surprisingly, they did manage to fend off the elementary hail of knives coming at them.
"String Reeling Jutsu!" Cailar chanted, pulling on the barely visible strings of steel wire attached to the end of his kunai with both his hands, his elbows, knees, and feet as well as his teeth to entrap the enemy inside the improvised net of steel wire. While the Allied Ninja attempted to follow-up his successfully erected net of steel wire, the opposing struggle of the Daisushi Brothers stuffed the stick right into that wheel, throwing Cailar off his balance as he was still bonded with his trap. Almost as much as his ensnared enemy was.
Mana grabbed the ends of the steel wire herself, focusing her Magician's Touch technique in a quick, jolting pulse all throughout her body that imbued the steel wire with Lightning Release chakra. Given how it was her own jutsu, she managed to control its surge from spreading equally in all directions and aimed it just forward and at the Daisushi Brothers. The quartet of weirdos stumbled for a sec, wondering why Mana aimed her surge in the direction where Mollay was in.
It took them too long to realize that Mollay was still coated in Earth Release clay, making his Earth Release ground and neutralize the jolts of Lightning Release that Mana sent his way. It wasn't a combo they've practiced, just something that they improvised observing each other's actions.
"Nice save!" Cailar licked his lips, examining Mana with his eyes while she released his steel wire and moved back into formation with the rest of the Allied Ninja. The Daisushi Brothers collapsed with an occasional crackle still passing through their stunned bodies.
"I figured that your own ace jutsu got interrupted by all the struggling, I figured I could pitch in here. Something like this was your idea, right?" Mana wondered.
"Actually, I planned on using my wire as a rail for my custom weaponry but… Leave it to a magician to execute plans with such pizazz!"
"Now, Junichi!" Cailar turned to the ex-Konoha ninja who in terms understood his fellow Allied Ninja without any additional input and began weaving hand seals while the enemy was recovering.
"Wind Style: North Breeze!" Peiras grumbled through pain and slammed his hands together, exhaling an escalating gust of wind that proceeded to gather range and gusto as it raged across the area, throwing handfuls of wet snow wherever it passed which left whatever it touched frosted.
Once Peiras straightened his back and gave a strict glare at his brothers writhing beside him, a forest of frozen wooden logs stood before him as the Allied Ninja have all chosen to substitute with the ample wreckage of wood around them rather than face the chilling gales of the North Wind of the Daisushi Brothers.
"One, two… Three, four…" Shaphyr counted as he still grumbled in the paralyzing pain of Lightning Release jolts running up and down his nervous system and causing utter mayhem.
"You're right, where is the young lady?" Peiras looked around. He feared the worst-case scenario – that the ninja magician had used the opportunity of the four's bodies being slowed down by her formidable combo with Cailar to flee back to the village or at least to somewhere she considered a potential sanctuary.
"Fire Style: Immolation!" Mana's voice filled the air as the magician blew out her own chest worth of air in the shape of a focused stream of showering flames aimed at the cold-winded brother who was the quickest to recover. The flames came from a fallen pile of dried-out trees from Peiras' side. Once the Daisushi Brothers had realized that they've been duped by a genjutsu and not a mere Substitution Jutsu which allowed Mana to relocate, they had her flames to deal with.
The stream of flames washed right at the stout chest of one of the Daisushi Brothers and sent him reeling. After all, he was not the one breathing heatwaves but instead dabbled in the combo of Water Release and Wind Release to form his freezing blizzards. Though Mana didn't expect to have discovered any sort of weakness, what she had counted on was the blizzard working the same kind of magic on this one as it would have affected anybody else. It was what she got too as Peiras collapsed on his side, fleeing from the flames as even his own chakra augmentation began to fail in protecting him fully from Mana's counterattack.
Just when the magician thought she had the enemy on the ropes, Mollay tackled her to the ground and the world turned dark. It was once a clay coating shaped just like Mana washed away from her that she realized that Mollay didn't betray her but instead might have saved her hide. She didn't count on her own Fire Release technique fueling that of Nanotus' earlier remaining specks of flame and expanding them. It took Mollay's coating to protect Mana from the growing aura of fire that would have devoured her as a result.
"Thanks…" Mana nodded her head as she rose to her feet, somewhat regretting the fact that she couldn't take Peiras down for the Allied Ninja, even if she'd have suffered some mean burns in the process.
Mollay did not respond, as was his strong and silent type nature.