Kaien placed the polarity seal on the Mangetsu's liquefied shoulder. But Mangetsu realized kaien's attempt to do something and reacted as he stopped encasing the now cooled down Kaien's lava hand.
The contrasting black kanji of the seal stood out starkly against his translucent form. Without a second thought, Mangetsu blobed out a section of his torso, ballooning his chest out into a watery globe, and ejected the affected mass entirely.
The severed blob of water carrying the seal splashed onto the ground, as the seal was placed on the ground and his liquefied mass returned to him.
"Damn it," Kaien cursed. "Pakura is dead, and Samehada is steadily shaving away the Yugito Nii's MCM chakra. This unit has way too much firepower. We need to fall back."
Kaien, analyzing the battlefield through his Byakugan, knew that even retreat was not an option with Utakata anchoring onto them
Having finished off Pakura, Utakata glided across the charred terrain toward Yugito Nii. But Yugito was no novice; as a student of Killer Bee, her instincts were trained to be razor-sharp
When Utakata attempted to weave his acidic skin to wrap around her... the same tactic that had caught Pakura off guard... Yugito's MCM cloak mode flared as her agility spiked exponentially. She blurred out of the trajectory, as Utakata coiled onto empty air as she still got hit by Utakata hand which had the acidic properties as her skin started to burn
"Claw Creation Technique: Blue Slice!" Yugito growled in pain from the burn.
With this technique Yugito was able to enhance the growth of the nails on both their hands and feet, causing them to grow considerably longer and enveloped them in her signature Blue Flames.
She lunged forward, turning into a whirlwind of blue fire. Utakata found himself forced onto the defensive, barely twisting his body in time to avoid a strike that sheared through a nearby boulder, liquifying the rock on impact.
Kisame began to intervene, but the battlefield has become a web of simultaneous skirmishes.
Through the veins bulging around his eyes, Kaien tracked everyone: Jugo, Guren, Ruri Fuma, and Itachi were locked in a desperate deadlock against Zabuza, whose Silent Killing technique was kept at bay but neither one held any upper hand with Itachi doing the heavy lifting.
"Don't even think about looking away," Mangetsu taunted, stepping into Kaien's line of sight, boxing him in. "It's only a matter of time before every single one of your friends is dead."
"Is that so?" Kaien panted, adjusting his stance. "I'd suggest you don't underestimating me."
Mangetsu scoffed, raising his hand as his arm transformed into a concentrated whip of pressurized water. "None of your physical attacks or jutsu can hold me. I can liquify at will and pass through all your futile attempts."
With an explosive burst of speed, Mangetsu closed the distance. The water blade that grew from his body spun in a horizontal arc, slicing cleanly through Kaien's neck. There was no resistance... just a plop as Kaien's severed head detached, tumbling through the air before landing on the ground as blood pooled.
Mangetsu didn't even bother to watch the body collapse. He turned his back on the fallen head, as he glanced toward Yugito. "Let's put an end to this Jinchuriki and call it a day."
Kaien had been channeling his False Distortion Technique from the moment the fight began... the effect final took, subtly altering perception and weaving a layer of reality-bending Genjutsu over Mangetsu's senses.
Kaien knew his limits; despite his Lava Release offering an advantage against water Hydrification, Mangetsu's combat experience and sheer fluidity made him an impossible mark to kill outright. Turning his own lava-heated fist into a chilled rock shown his opponent was a league above him.
With Kaien seemingly out of the picture, Mangetsu joined Kisame and Utakata. The combined pressure of three combatants proved overwhelming. Even in her tailed-beast form, Yugito couldn't manage three top tiers at once. A barrage of high-density water blasts paired with Utakata's corrosive acids tore through her defense, leaving nothing of her but a steaming acidic paste.
Kisame called out mockingly. "Zabuza! How are things holding up over there? Do you help with those kids?"
The mist parted slightly near the treeline, revealing Zabuza standing over a tree. Bound tightly to the trunk by thin wires were the motionless bodies of Guren, Jugo, Ruri, and Itachi.
"I wrapped them up a while ago," Zabuza grunted, wiping a splash of blood off his cheek. "They wailed and thrashing around for a bit until I got bored and finished them off." He ran his thumb along the intricate needle of Nuibari, the Sewing Sword, admiring its delicate balance. "I'm really starting to appreciate what this blade can do."
Utakata walked over to the remains of the Yugito, as his eyes narrowed with strange sense of dissonance. "That was too fast," he thought. "Even with Mangetsu's help, she was at least able to tag me for awhile. Did her chakra pool really dry up that suddenly?"
"What's the hold-up, Utakata?" Kisame asked, resting Samehada over his broad shoulder. "We are finished with our mission let's go back."
"Something isn't right," Utakata muttered, kneeling near the supposed acidic paste of Yugito. He nudged a piece of the residue with the tip of his blowpipe, but he found nothing. He turned toward the spot where Mangetsu had finished his duel. "Mangetsu-senpai... where did that kid's head drop?"
Mangetsu raised a hand, pointing vaguely towards ten yards away. "Right over there. I took it clean off."
Utakata walked over, crouching down as he stared down at the sight, after a while of inspection the severed human head melted away, replaced by the torn head of a wild forest bear.
"Genjutsu," Utakata said with anger on his face. "It seems to affecting everyone in range. It's been feeding us false visual data this whole time. Now that they've fallen back out of range, the technique is unraveling."
Zabuza grunted, inspecting the thread of Nuibari, which was tied to nothing more than empty bark and carved wooden logs. "A technique like this on a battlefield would turn an army against itself. If even us, the elite Kirigakure ninja are getting caught in it, any low-level foot shinobi wouldn't stand a chance."
~~
A/N: If Kiri themselves were given star-levels: Utakata would be mid 3-star level and Mangetsu would be high 2 star-level.
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