Sekita cried out at the darkening evening sky, her entire body stiffened in tension. That and her roar made it difficult to tell if she was still struggling with the agony of having drunken an entire vat of venom that the Allied Ninja stored in this place to be used by their ninja on missions, or if it was a declaration of violence meant to the gathered staff of Allied Ninja tutors and recruits alike.
The woman's size had grown tenfold and she was already a behemoth, to begin with. Her eyes whited out and twitched lifelessly but there were no signs in her chakra that she was dying or going through any sort of weakening process at all. It was quite the opposite – the Akimichi youth was soaring in power as her flaring chakra signature colored the mixture of bronze and red. It was the color of a particular taste for violence. She did not thirst for blood but merely for breaking things, lashing out at the world for the pain she was feeling at the moment as well as the pain that it made her go through her entire life.
The threatening giantess tumbled over herself, taking a few stumbling steps forward as her upper body leaned over, Sekita clutched over her abdomen as the skin flaps that hung all over her body stretched out and filled up with something else. Veins bulged out, flushing with unclear, cloggy fluid from within the young woman, a sort of phlegm that had an unhealthy shade of blood-red mixed with something corrupted and violet, resulting in nothing short of bloody sludge coursing through Sekita's veins.
Bile poured out from Sekita's mouth as if a hose was let loose and freed to spray and flood all around it without control or restraint. The emerald sludge with webs of black snot covering it as an outside layer threatened to flush away the entire storage yard. The wall of the rushing flood reached to the very top of the vats, forcing Mana to jump up and clap her palms and feet together before waving them underneath her and activate her Mystical Wings Jutsu to form a wind current to ride upward.
There was no time to save everyone, Mana grabbed the nearest staffers to her – the old man with winter clothing and the woman that might have dressed for the exact opposite conditions, wearing an elegant headdress and looking like a priestess of some civilization founded in the eastern Land of Wind deserts. Mana wasn't used to carry passengers around so her flight was slower than she was used to but she persevered and flung the two ninja to the tops of nearby venom vats. They turned around and thanked Mana with their own grateful gestures.
Mana bit her lip, seeing the flood claim one of the tutors – a well-built middle-aged man with dark skin and bone-shade hair. She begged whatever forces might have been listening that the bile wasn't lethally venomous or acidic though, judging from how the man emerged and activated the Art of Water Walking jutsu to get over the venomous tide with his elegant, blue coat corroded to rags with the venom working on his shirt and tie next, the magician just winced.
It didn't look that these people know what they were dealing with, whereas Mana might have had an idea. Sekita was a mutant. In extremely rare cases, there occurred mutations to the ordinary features and abilities of a ninja clan member. The Chinoike clan were all mutant Hozuki clan members and the magician had the honor of meeting them during the Yordalar mission way back. The hanging skin flaps, the unsightly appearance, this unique reaction to ingesting outright poison… This could have only been a mutation on the usual Akimichi features.
The Akimichi clan did not have a bloodline ability per se. They utilized hidden techniques taught within their clan which made them slightly more open towards marrying and procreating with people outside of their own clan as the chance of a clansman mutating like this was only recorded, to Mana's knowledge, on extremely rare cases of members breeding within their clan. It wasn't quite like inbreeding, the clan wasn't necessarily related through family bonds but curiously enough, when it came to mutations, they tended to occur within the offspring of two clansmen.
"Konoha's Sorceress, we would appreciate some help here!" the old man turned at her, his ushanka flapped open from the rough battle he was going through as a buzzard was slamming its stiffened wings against Sekita's face in an attempt to rake or peck out her eyes while the old man worked on conjuring a genjutsu.
"Forget it!" Mana cursed. "Pull out, get the Regimental Commanders and the Supreme Leader out of the building. Move Stein as far away from here as possible!"
Just as the fur-clad veteran was about to curse at Mana, his pet squawked from being crushed within Sekita's massive palms that were now swelling up with flesh whereas previously they were about as much hanging skin as they were fat. There was a faint glimmer of chakra within the avian as it fell down in a ball of blood, sticking out bone and feathers and poofed away back to its domain from which its summoner had called it from. Sekita rammed the vat where the old man was with her shoulder, crashing it down and sending it rolling toward the building.
Sekita's friend from the band of rejects she hung out on jumped in from behind the escalating ramming danger and halted it with inhuman strength. Mana barely sensed any augmentations in him, most of it was all his natural might acquired through lifting weights and working out, no doubt. The young man looked up his transformed friend with a scowl and cracked his knuckles. He also didn't appear to speak too much but not much needed to be said for the youth's intentions to be understood.
As the old tutor landed safely on the drying out puddle of venom, his illusion distracted and squandered by the mighty bash of the enemy, two friends collided with one another in the center in a struggle of strength.
"Give up!" the burly-haired strongman grunted in an animalistic snarl. "I was always the stronger one in the group!"
"No more!" Sekita bellowed as she pushed on with unimaginable strength, smashing her friend to the ground in one push before picking up his dazed body off the ground and smashing it behind her and kicking it away with one, good punt. "I am now strong! I have the strength to change things, to do what I want!"
"Stop fighting her, leave her to me, move the committee, and Stein!" Mana repeated her request, yelling at the tutors. She was frustrated that they wouldn't listen, though she understood that she was just a recruit and they weren't obligated to do so. Still, she knew what she was doing – she had faced similar powerhouses before in Little Honda.
"Are you mad? You cannot face this enemy alone, recruit, only together can we take young Sekita down!" the woman with a stone headdress and bodypaint scolded Mana as her legs moved to draw a circle in the venomous puddle with her heels. She put up her palms and concentrated a great deal of chakra in them after clapping them together to mold it for just a blink. "Nature Release: Mystical Bullet!"
A lone boulder the size of a watermelon rose from the ground, splashing the venom in its path away and levitating in front of the female tutor as the molding chakra manifested around her body in a bright aura that surrounded the floating boulder with a burn of natural green, releasing it at Sekita like a rushing comet in what seemed like an Advanced Bloodline of the Fire Release and Earth Release variety.
Sekita's head snapped to the side, facing her attacker head-on as she opened her mouth and unleashed another bile from her mouth, this time, in a more concentrated flow rather than a crashing wave. This stream of venom blasted the woman's own jutsu away before crashing into her and washing the tutor away, covering her in the venom that seeped through her skin in mere moments.
"You're just a recruit, either assist us or flee as you have no obligation to have any part in this just yet, but do not presume to be in any position to move us like pawns in your battlefield!" the previously poisoned tutor of dark skin and spiky white hair turned to Mana with a look filled to the brim with pain and ire as sweat broke down his body. The man pulled out a thick disc made of some metallic alloy and channeled Lightning Release chakra through it, forming a sort of deadly, three-blade shuriken out of it which he lobbed at the lumbering behemoth in front of them.
Sekita stumbled back as it hit her head-on but instead of slicing through her flesh, it merely released a wild flock of sparks and only made her flesh flab as the giantess herself struggled to regain her balance. This outcome appeared to perplex the tutor himself, it was no wonder as, judging by the large presence of chakra within his projectile, it should have easily been able to cleave through most ninja in two clean.
"Out of my way! I'm strong now! Strong enough to save Stein!" Sekita bellowed out as she jumped and stomped the ground, causing rampant quakes to resonate through them. Despite her massively increased tonnage, this didn't seem natural to Mana, there was ample chakra resonating through the ground too, suggesting this to be some sort of makeshift technique, a far-cry of an actual jutsu that the youth knows.
"Save him for what?" Mana yelled out, trying to reason with the rampant juggernaut but there was a fat chance of that ever happening – Mana couldn't get the abused youth to listen to her when she was in her normal state. Now, with all this power rushing through her body, corrupting her in every way power like this can corrupt, knowing Sekita's warped worldview, there was no way in hell that she'd listen and Mana knew this. "If you break him out by force, if you attack the committee, you'll never be Allied Ninja! To have him be exonerated and for you to stand down is your only chance of things going back to normal!"
"Shut up!" Sekita yelled out, kicking and thrashing but she could only hit scattering flower petals as each and every image of Mana before her scattered away. This would have been Mana's method of wearing Sekita down. She was a behemoth, a monster of power to be sure but that power was far from healthy to her. She was slow, more so, she was bleeding said strength at a rapid rate.
An animalistic roar filled the sky with Sekita's friend splitting the gloom of the night in a cannonball flight toward his friend's upper section. Instead of the bone-crunching outcome that he had intended, the Akimichi mutant caught him like a baseball and slammed him to the ground, stomping him a couple of times for good measure too.
Mana grabbed her head and dragged her fingers through her hair. The fabric of her gloves brushed against her skin roughly, due to the force she put into the expression of frustration as those she came here with proceeded to ignore her pleads and almost get themselves killed. At least Sekita's friend pushed her foot off of him and growled again, winding his supersized arms back in preparation for a good beating. Blood streaked down his face but the scent of his own blood seemed to only drive this one wilder.
A couple of bolts hit Sekita from the side, stumbling the young woman on her feet. One of them blew up with a coating of frost covering the spot, one of them spread inflammatory liquid that lit up from the spark of impact while another one aimed to shock the behemoth out of her boots, and another handful just tried skewering the Akimichi woman.
"You should just join us, Mana," the woman in an orange and brown jumpsuit with metallic plates on her chest, her shoulders and thighs, and an abundance of belts approached the magician and offered her a hand to help her get up. She was short but of spiky, brown hair. She had facepaint and ample make-up that most Inuzuka women wore and she was the only one in a while to address Mana by name. Likely so because the woman had Konoha background before becoming an Allied Ninja. "If your allies won't listen to you, may as well not be a sitting duck and join in on the team assault."
Sekita bellowed out something unintelligible and curled up into a ball, flinging off into the air before crashing back down where the crossbow-using Inuzuka woman and Mana were. After crashing like a wrecking ball, the Akimichi proceeded to roll wildly in place to mash what she had just smashed into porridge but Mana had petalled away, replacing herself with an illusionary avatar of herself while, from what she could sense, the Inuzuka tutor had used the Body Flicker technique to escape in a split-second as well.
The chakra signature of the Inuzuka lady was dipping as more and more seconds tolled, she must have taken a mean dip in the bile that Sekita spread before. A bare-chested man of ginger hair and a vibrant mustache, who appeared to battle bare-chested jumped into the fray as well, pulling out a pair of meat cleavers from his back to try and get a good chop into the supersized enemy who was lumbering and slow. His blades appeared to chop utter, flabby rubber as Sekita smashed him into the ground with a resonant double-ax handle slam.
Sekita let out a painful cry when a handful of Lightning Release streams hit her in various locations as a metallic gargoyle appeared to flap its wings and try to put the weighty young lady on the ropes. Mana couldn't recall seeing this mechanical marvel before but a quick headcount suggested to her that one of the teachers must have slipped into this puppet, wearing it as a suit of armor. His aerial offensive appeared to be moderately effective even if the puppet and the alloy it was made of showed signs of wear and corrosion from dipping into Sekita's bile previously.
"To battle!" a roar filled the air, forcing Mana to turn back and witness a man riding a ninja horse into battle and wielding a naginata in his right hand, thrusting it with a coil of Wind Release surrounding the tip. It was a valiant attack from this tutor, as he used his summon to build up acceleration and used a weapon favoring thrusting attacks while coating it in a gale of Wind Release – the elemental nature well-suited for cutting and thrusting. If it couldn't have made it through – nothing would have.
The rampaging juggernaut fell on one knee as blood splashed from her knee section. It was a very tactful place to target as it was a sort of a weak spot to anyone so hefty in size and weight but Sekita rose to her feet just moments later, yelling out into the sky in pain and frustration. The monstrous Akimichi then sent another washing wave of bile to flood the battlefield that was now significantly clearer and more devastated. A flurry of Body Flickers and substitutions with various rubble in the environment littered the field. Mana took off with her Mystical Wings again, surveying the possible victims of Sekita's attack.
The old man swam out, having lost his hat and furs in the rampant flow of venom that formed a dangerous flow and rushed toward the Allied Ninja HQ building in the quantities that it was present on the battlefield at that moment. The burly friend of Sekita's also swam out covered in venomous sludge, too pissed to care about the deadly venom seeping into his body through his pores and drying him out from his deadly little dip before one's eyes. He just wanted to punch Sekita until she was seeing reason again, that might have just been Mana's interpretation though, the only thing that his face could translate was the need to punch the lumbering juggernaut and not much else could have been made out from it so Mana had to fill in the reason he fought for herself.
Mana went through hand seals and breathed in deep. "Fire Style: Immolation!" she chanted out, breathing out a stream of Fire Release chakra that concentrated on its target and expanded into a twister of flames upon reaching Sekita's position. She didn't see any signs of weary, no end to Sekita's toughness and stamina but Mana kept the flames alive due to only her hope that the giantess would soon fold. The injured, old tutor stood on shaky knees as he prepared an illusion to subdue and knock Sekita out if need be. He appeared to be a potent enough genjutsu specialist to render people comatose with his illusions, while that was not an outcome Mana liked, it may have been the one that was necessary.
Sekita burst forth from the whirlwind of flames, ablaze and wild, she flopped on her belly, smashing the old man underneath her and leaving his lifeless, sprawled out body in the wreckage once she stood up and thrashed about, still engulfed in flames. Mana screamed out and swooped down to pick the old man up and take him away from harm's way. She couldn't even see what was going on in the background, she could hear the priestess-looking woman in a stone headdress scream, a bunch of loud grunts and by the time Mana took the old man away from the battlefield and rested him against a rock where the patrols should have found him and returned – only a field of broken bodies remained.
"Damn!" the magician heard a curse down below. Someone still looked to be in fighting shape, she landed beside the talkative soldier and it was not at all surprising to see that it was Sekita's meat-headed friend still writhing and crawling toward the HQ with fire in his eyes.
"Where is she?" Mana asked, her heart wavered with the knowledge of the answer that she didn't really need. Regardless of that need, the injured brawler lifted his hand and pointed at the HQ. Of course, she'd continue her fruitless quest and smashing the place to bits and running off with Stein in her arms.
"That idiot… Must'a did a real number on me to somehow outpace me, can't crawl fast enough to reach her anymore…" ever the fighter, Sekita's friend flipped over on his back and began hyperventilating. There must have been an influx of venom in him and the direr his chakra became, the less of it his body could utilize in augmentations to postpone the venom's deadly effects. They all needed medical attention, Mana collapsed on her bottom and dragged her hand through her hair. She could sense nearby patrols rushing in to the scene, they've likely already found the old man and were now coming in to stop Sekita too.
Who knew what took them this long? Has it been that long? It seemed like it had been an entire eternity but it might have been just a couple of minutes… Either way, Sekita needed to be stopped, or else more people would get hurt. If only she'd listen… If only they'd have listened and left Mana alone to face Sekita, then she'd have been the only one to suffer the consequences, she'd have held her back for a while, wore her out as much as Mana could.
Sekita's previously sky-high chakra was now significantly leaked and squandered, with every second she kept this mad fighting style going, she needed to take in more and more of whatever fueled her. Maybe it was the venom, maybe it was something in it, some herb or some chemical that triggered this reaction in her mutation, either way, research, and understanding would have to come later, once a maddened behemoth didn't threaten to bulldoze the entire Allied Ninja HQ down and kill all of the committee before running off with her boyfriend.
What Mana saw before her right now was a one of a kind chance to tackle Sekita by herself, no other people, no other lives on the line. Maybe now that Sekita was weaker, Mana might stand a better shot, most likely she'd throw her life out in the garbage bin but at the very least she'd slow the giant down some. That came first, it had to.