"And out of nowhere, the magician Mana called forth even more rabbits to fight on her behalf!" Rajul shouted out, doing his job, and excelling at it, as always. "We've already seen one rabbit causing a lot of trouble, with the field getting as stacked as it is, the pressure will really mount up!"
Mana's hands went through a quick myriad of hand seals. Gunshi prepared to dash at her and intercept, but before he could take off, a quintet of daggers whizzed his way through the air. Whereas normally they'd have skewered the young priest, some fatty, fungal cyst blew out like a balloon over Gunshi's right side, swelling up just enough to take the knives and deflate as the bloated tumors bled ooze which evaporated before it hit the ground.
"What the…!?" Usuvilme looked taken aback by the unorthodox method in which Gunshi blocked his dagger interruption, even if the fling served its purpose of giving Mana some space to work her magic without having to worry about a swordsman pressuring her to defend herself constantly.
"Partial Possession, da lad can make body parts an' appendages grow all over da place. Get used ta it, ya'll be seein' it a lot!" Usuzoku clued his peer in.
"Wind Release: Slice of Life Jutsu!" Mana chanted, slipping out a steel-tipped playing card from the sleeve of her dress and slashing the air after her hand seals were complete. The Wind Release chakra channeled through Mana's body and into the card made the card light up blue, and, as it slashed, expelled a white crescent-shaped slashing projectile hurling toward Gunshi Aspen.
Startled by the incoming danger and feeling some wallop behind this attack, Gunshi tilted his sword to block the incoming slash while channeling the demonic mana his body was overflowing with. The unholy priest grunted and dug his feet back, putting the weight of his whole body while struggling against the Wind Release projectile that ground into the sword's edge, shooting sparks in every direction while doing its best to cut through.
Gunshi's mouth elongated and stretched from ear to the other while displaying lines of razor-sharp teeth, like some kind of predatory aquatic creature that could swallow several times its body's worth of prey before being sated. Blazing with a black aura and sparkling with it from the edge of his sword, Gunshi finally fended off Mana's slice, but the impact of the forced detonation of the Wind Release jutsu threw him stumbling back, off balance.
Just as Gunshi was about to race to return to a defensive position, in case Mana's jutsu allowed her to send any more ranged cuts his way, Mana's calm expression flashed right up on his face. The sudden and aggressive rush toward him shocked the magical swordsman, as he simply didn't see that kind of aggression from the witchy competitor before.
Mana slammed both of her hands into Gunshi's chest, stunning the swordsman and sending him skidding back from the painful slam. Grumbling, the swordsman was about to dash back and return some of the punishment he took back to Mana, but the ninja magician was back at it, vaulting over his head and blocking his wrist with a skillful application of a wristlock. It was as if Mana had seen enough of Gunshi's fighting style already to shut him down and devise a perfect countermeasure for it.
"So, she's finally drawn the profile, huh?" Endo whistled out with a rich smirk on his face as he reached with his right arm off to the side, discomforting even more nearby spectators than the ones in front of him who struggled to enjoy themselves because of the swordsman's legs stacked over their headrests. "Took her long enough."
"Mana doesn't usually rely on taijutsu. If she's rushing head first like that, it truly must be the best way to shut this man's fighting style down, huh?" Damisan observed.
"With Mana, things are rarely as they seem," Shige-H shrugged, earning herself a few wayward inquisitive looks from her fellow Stars members. "Just because Mana is up close doesn't mean that's her intention. Moreover, just because she appears to be there, doesn't mean it's not just as likely it's not a clone or some kind of trickery, lulling Gunshi into responding violently so that she can spring her true trap. She's a terrifying opponent to face in battle because even when you see her moves, you're afraid of that which you cannot see yet. Mana may be a highly controversial and unconventional kunoichi, but she's as real of a ninja as it gets in that way."
After locking Gunshi's arm in place, Mana spun her lower body, as if it were a cranking automaton, slamming her knee into Gunshi's nose and throwing the dazed and bloodied swordsman for a loop. After landing on the ground, Mana's arm flashed with electric sparkles. Her fingers clutched a hand of steel-tipped cards, coated with Wind Release, Lightning Release, and Fire Release chakra, a separate nature for each card. Stunned, teary-eyed, and stumbling, Gunshi fended off Mana's close-range armed flurry of swings with broad, unfocused flails of his Leviathan's Cross.
After finishing her assault and feeling the burn in her shoulders, forearms, and thighs, Mana hurled a whole deck of chakra-coated cards at Gunshi, resulting in sparkly thunderbolts, sizzling fireballs, and localized windstorms overwhelming the unholy swordsman and sending him rolling and tumbling back. Before Gunshi could even pick himself up and get off the ground, he heard a low-pitched yell. As if booted from the land of hazy dreams, back into combat, Gunshi put his massive sword up, blocking the jumping swing of Usuzoku's claymore.
With a spinning high kick, Gunshi swatted the rabbit aside. Instead of pressing on his advantage, Gunshi chose wisely to remain open and aware of the battlefield. With a daring swing of his sword, Gunshi deflected another hail of blades from Usuvilme. Gunshi's mouth opened, spitting out a golden thread, sticky like a spider's web, and pulling Usuvilme in to cut the chunky rabbit down. Instead of focusing on finishing the rabbit off, Gunshi merely vaulted horizontally in midair with a whirlwind kick and kicked Usuvilme down, just so he could stay on the ready and respond to any incoming attacks.
Ground rumbled directly in front of the one-man legion, as the hefty Usupari hopped from all the way back to provide cover for his dispatched comrades. Like a charging bull, the thick and beefy fuzzy bunny leaned forward, positioning its clobbering ears like a sumo wrestled put up their arms for a barrage of deafening and crushing palm thrusts.
"Rabbit Style: Rabbit Tsuppari!" Usupari chanted out, but six black bat-like wings wrapped around Gunshi, shielding him from the overwhelming beatdown he'd have taken if he remained within the range of the rampant rabbit ears that, based on the thunder-like rips they made on impact, seemed to have been trained by flattening mountains and grinding stone to dust.
Emerging from the dissolving and rotting cloak of crossed, fiendish black wings, Gunshi slashed with his sword upward, drawing a flaming line in the air as the swordsman and Usupari, who caught the blade's tip at the chin and got knocked loopy, flew into the air. Just as Gunshi prepared to heave his massive sword and split the rabbit in two, something in his head snapped, and he instinctively put his sword in front of him, absorbing a blazing kick from a limber female rabbit.
"Rabbit Style: Hot Feet!" Usubane chanted out, setting her calves ablaze with Fire Release chakra and assaulting Gunshi with a flurry of scorching kicks that each burst into a fiery halo, like a detonating fireball. A ribcage of obsidian bones wrapped and shut tightly around the unholy priest, protecting him from harm, even though the ribcage cracked and shattered after Usubane was done.
Mid-air, Gunshi's legs became eight, mechanical spider legs that thrust with automated precision, shooting off heaps of pressurized steam from their joints, which fueled their mauling assault, beating down Usubane with this rapid flurry before sending her smashing down into the arena floor with an overhead slam of the hilt of his sword to head of the young rabbit brawler. Instead of letting her partner slam into the ground, Mana swooped in, caught her with Mystical Wings, and put her down.
"I don't like slipping away and letting those fuckers take control, but if you won't tell me what your deal and what your plan in this plane is witch, I'll have no other choice but to risk those assholes eating you alive, like they're lining up to do," Gunshi panted out. Before anyone could attack him or say anything in response, Gunshi grabbed his head and bellowed in pain, wrapping up with pulsating vessels that seemed to transport around molten metal. In an instant, the unholy swordsman became a beating heart that then clanked as obsidian bones shut around it, forming a floating black ribcage and an ephemeral robe of shrouded darkness hanging beneath it and covering up the absence of a waist and legs of whatever unholy abomination Gunshi had channeled through from the Further Beyond.
Six crooked, long limbs sprouted from the complete ribcage, coated with oil-like secretion, slimy and stinking with a millennial rot. Spikes sprouted on the creature's oily shoulders, pushing through the flow of sticky bile that coated its flesh. A while skull flashed two sparks of life for irises inside its empty sockets, flaring them up to bona fide torches as thick and colossal, moose-like horn formations adorned the top of the demonic belfry. The oily six arms seemed to be attached to the heart by some kind of a fiendish chain that held them tied to the body. As the creature let out a high-pitched shriek, a stinger attached to a spine-like tail flailed from the cover of the shrouded robe that concealed it, lightly peeking through.
"Whaa!" Usubane called out, freaked out by the horrific transformation.
"Mana-san fights the strangest guys," Usupari smacked its cheeks to wake itself up from the daze of having been knocked around earlier to prepare to take on whatever godless manifestation Gunshi Aspen brought out and allowed to possess his body.
"How am I supposed to stab its eyes out, when it's got none? Ya can't stab a fireball!" Usuvilme grumbled while brandishing handfuls of daggers in each hand and letting a flock of meek sparks shoot out from each contact.
"Stay strong, we've tangled with one 'a dose things before. Da key is cutting it 'til it goes away!" Usuzoku grumbled, raising its claymore in front of him and achieving a shaky fighting pose. Mana noted that Usuzoku has been heaving this sword around for a while now and may have been getting weary already.
"Just keep it distracted and leave it to me to blow this demon up," Mana directed her ninja rabbit platoon and gave them a game plan. Together they've fended off the worst ninja snakes and fought Yamata no Orochi, the Serpent Father, himself, what was just another demon compared to that?
Accompanying the demon's roar, infernal chains burst forth from underground with such density, speed, and power that they've effectively established a new world order in an arena flooded with chains. Mana felt sharp pain in her arms immediately after snapping out of shock. A turn to the right and to the left revealed to her she was suspended in the air by hooks that were attached to those chains, levitating off the ground like seaweed underwater and keeping her hooked to them and trapped in their hold.
Before Mana could will her body to power through the pain to unhook herself from these infernal restraints, a grungy, metallic clang distracted her. Like beheaded serpents, the fiendish chains fell sliced to ribbons, and shattered around Usuzoku as the rabbit swung its sword around and severed the chains before they could entangle him. Kicking off the ground, Usuzoku vaulted above Mana and split the chains holding her hooked, catching the ninja magician and bringing her onto the ground to go through the harrowing task of pulling those grim hooks off her body so that she could move around freely. Chakra augmentation should keep the bleeding manageable for a while.
"Stop preserving yer energy, girly," Usuzoku warned Mana. "Ya could 'a slipped away like I did with one of yer tricks, but ya let it blindside you."
"I can't burn too much chakra in this match. I'm not sure when the next match is going to be, if it's tomorrow, my chakra won't have enough time to return to its peak," Mana admitted something she's been troubling herself with as well as the current matter at hand.
"Well, if yer gonna hold back, ye'll lose dis match," Usuzoku put it bluntly before preparing for a second round of the demon's wild rampage.
"Usupari-san, Usuvilme-san!" Usubane exclaimed, looking around her and seeing both of her rabbit mentors suspended by infernal chains that turned the Sun Disc arena into some sort of thick, twisted, metallic forest of chains and hooks. The two rabbits grunted in pain, suspended by hooks that etched into their limbs and held them dangling for the fiendish abomination to rip apart at its leisure.
"Don't… Don't worry about us, kid. Don't forget Mana-san's battle plan!" Usupari encouraged his pupil. With tearful eyes, Usubane nodded and turned to the chattering, gigantic abomination of bone, oil, and flowing shadowy robe.
"Hit it until it goes away!" Usubane cried out. "Rabbit Style: Rabbit F. U. Combo!"
The desperate and brave rabbit took off, kicking off the ground with her hardened feet and soaring skyward like a heavenly arrow until she was right up in the chattering ribcage of the horrifying, skeletal visage from the Further Beyond. As if it were just any other opponent, just like a bandit lurking for an easy score on the outside of the village walls or a lowlife mercenary or enemy ninja like those Usubane fought off alongside Mana many times before, the young rabbit began throwing a rampant barrage of blows from both her fists, feet and her clobbering ears that undergone the same training Usupari's had, albeit for a much shorter time.
A fusillade of deafening cracks and pops cluttered the battlefield, attracting Mana's and Usuzoku's attention while Usubane worked on clobbering the infernal configuration of bones, slimy black flesh, and chains. Usubane's reckless and nothing-held-back combination of blows continued seemingly ad infinitum. The stumbling and overwhelmed hellion began reeling and shrieking with a high-pitched tone that embodied the torment of a billion souls in its cries.
Desperate to make the pain and battery cease, the demon flung a loop of the chains wrapped around its arms to tie around Usubane and clutch her in its iron grip. After tying them around the rabbit's arms and chest, the demon whirled her around and began thrashing the young rabbit into the ground left, right, front, and back.
"Dat kid's givin' it 'er all. Fer you, girly. Ye've got no damn right ta give 'er anythin' less dan dat!" Usuzoku scolded Mana, who stood there kneeling on one knee and tense from the torment plaguing her shoulders and arms.
"You…" Mana muttered under her nose. Usuzoku stopped scolding her. Something seated deeply beneath this spiteful hiss of his summoner's voice made Usuzoku shut up. Deep down, even the hardened rabbit mercenary felt a hint of fear that whatever Mana would say next was meant for him. Dispelling these doubts, Mana looked up with eyes quivering with righteous judgment. Her usually focused and calculating stare was now plunged into the stormy ocean of wrath.
"I WON'T LET YOU HURT MY RABBITS!" Mana's arms raced to complete a hefty collection of hand seals. The demonic entity turned its attention to the suddenly booming calamity of surging chakra in the northern side of the arena, sending a torrential plunge of chains to hook Mana and rip her to pieces, however, the sharp hooks piercing her body only made Mana finish her seals with one hand.
"Lightning Style: Supreme Magic Pierce Jutsu!" Mana chanted out, exploding with a sparkling aura of Lightning Release chakra. The sparkling source cast nine separate jolts of chakra that solidified into Lightning Release chakra sword constructs, cutting through the infernal chains with absurd ease and burning them away to ash as they were sliced up.
A hundred solid lightning swords swarmed together, slicing apart the chains holding Usuvilme and Usupari, liberating Usubane and turning the six-armed oozing skeleton into a pincushion. The swords skewering the demon merged while stabbing through the infernal carcass, forming massive cleavers that split the demon into a dozen lifeless parts and chopped it up into chunks that dissolved into ash and cinder before they even hit the ground. The chains cluttering the arena became ash, vanishing alongside their master.
When the tumultuous cloud of ashes and cinder washed away, the horrid sight of Gunshi Aspen, impaled on a giant lightning sword that stuck out his chest and pinned the unholy priest to the arena floor, made the audience go mad with hype. The tormented and weary rabbits that flopped to the ground and struggled to peel themselves off of the floor snickered with cheers for their mistress while Mana took it to one knee, panting from the mounting pressure of a tiring battle.
"Unbelievable! Will the tables of this battle ever stop turning!? Just when it seems like the demons from the Further Beyond possessing Gunshi Aspen are too overpowering and otherworldly to overcome, contestant Mana produces a riveting light show and blows them up! What a truly extraordinary show!" Rajul exclaimed, thrashing around in hype alongside the vocal audience while the chunk of solidified lightning surged into Gunshi Aspen's body and liberated him off the weapon pinning him to the ground, shocking him with intense voltage, and dropping him smoking and twitching instead.
"Is it over?" Usuzoku fell on its butt, rubbing its face from exhaustion.
"Not quite, I'm afraid," Mana sighed. "The demon's body served as armor, absorbing most of the damage for Gunshi. Aside from that one sword, the demon took all the damage."
"Ugh… At least now we'll have one more chance ta wrap dis up since our sleeping beauty's gonna need some time before demoning out again," Usuzoku raised his sword above his head, like a general commanding his army to battle. This gesture seemed to work, as the weary and bruised rabbits picked themselves up and willed themselves to finish this bout until Gunshi could release another demon. Both the rabbits and their summoner had a nasty feeling they might not survive another harrowing encounter with a demon like that.