Takatomi initiated his first move by activating the amethyst. He glided towards Nakamura and tried to clip Nakamura in his neck using his spiked chain.
"Not so fast."
Kyuzo sprang in front of Nakamura and tried to conduct a diagonal strike with his kusarigama, which ultimately obstructed the chain attack of Takatomi. But laws of physics were immediately broken as Kyuzo's kusarigama sickle began floating in the air, diverting Kyuzo's attention.
"Now who's fast?"
Kyuzo was knocked onto the nearby tree by Akizuki, who had landed a kick when his attention had been diverted. But thanks to his legs, he could grind the soil and negate the effect, preparing him for another counter-attack.
The roar that was generated from the other side of the jungle echoed once again, but this time with an even higher intensity.
"The bears will be here soon, so try to enjoy these last moments of yours."
Akizuki sprang from her original position and executed a devastating hacking attack with her claws while in mid-air, locking on to Nakamura. Noticing the incoming attack, Nakamura thrust his nodachi and endured the onslaught. Surprisingly, Nakamura had pre-planned to stick Akizuki's claws into his nodachi, just like he did when he was fighting with the bodyguards. Turns out, it went well and one of her hands became completely immovable due to the nodachi inserted between the gaps.
"Gotcha."
After a successful move, Nakamura attempted a kick into Akizuki's stomach, following Kyuzo's kusarigama assault. But unsurprisingly, Takatomi intervened, and successfully managed to evade Akizuki from the jams that Nakamura had put on.
"Thanks, Takatomi. And now, I feel a bit tired. So I will hand over the show to my followers."
Shortly after her sentence ended, the roars intensified greatly, and three more unwelcome guests entered the battlefield.
Kyuzo was horror-stricken to encounter the bears summoned with the might of the Peridot of Summoning. They looked intense. fearsome from within. The bloodthirsty eyes that the enraged wild monsters retained carried many similarities to the ones that the Kōgas who were blinded by the hate also had.
Though his frozen state threatened to last longer, Nakamura forcefully tried to drag him out of it. He tapped hard on Kyuzo's shoulder while saying in a quite skeptical tone,
"Kyuzo, come on! Try not to lose focus. If you do, the results will be worse."
Kyuzo shook his head and tried to focus. One of the three bears progressed to damage them. While it was dashing towards them, Kyuzo and Nakamura prepared their weapons to fend off the bear and possibly even take it down.
But the bear lost control of its body and hit the dirt just three feet away from Nakamura, sprinkling its blood all over the tall grass. It only took a short period for Kyuzo to recognize the arrow sunken in the bear's neck, which prompted him to turn around to acknowledge the archer for helping them out.
Akizuki, after seeing one of his slaves fall onto the ground, got into an enraged state and engaged in yelling at the sharpshooter who had managed to pull off an incredible killing shot.
"Another Nuisance...How dare you kill my summonings?"
Nakamura gave a smile from the edge of his mouth.
"Nice timing, Isoko," Nakamura said, his eyes locked upon her face.
"Don't mention it. I learned that this arrogant woman right here has ruined an entire village and murdered around fifteen innocent people."
Kyuzo's eyes popped out.
"What? Did she do that?"
"Oh yes she did," Isoko replied. "And the carrier of the Sapphire of Avatars has slaughtered all the monks in the Kinkaku-Ji temple."
Kyuzo's tension grew further and further. He began to speculate about his elder brother and his condition. Anxiety moved to dominate Kyuzo's body, making him doubt the current state of his elder brother.
"Oh no! What might have happened to Onii-san?"
But Isoko made a response full of assurance, which helped Kyuzo to rid of the anxiety that had been trying to take over his mind and body.
"Kento will be okay. A team of samurai and I managed to defeat the bears in that village. And I am certain that half of that team was sent to investigate the Kinkaku-Ji massacre. Besides, you know him more than I do huh? He’s one tough dude. He will be okay. Keep your trust in him and let's focus on beating these guys and their freaking ghastly bears."
After being pumped and comforted by Isoko's phrases, Kyuzo grabbed onto his kusarigama and gripping it tight, rotated its other end.
Nakamura did a miraculous thing as he lifted his weapon just with the assistance of his left hand, and directed it towards Takatomi, who had been levitating in mid-air with the extraordinary power of the amethyst of levitation.
"Why don't we get things started…once again with a little twist?"
Takatomi volunteered and implemented his first move.
"With pleasure."
Akizuki didn't want to fall behind and she stated,
"Not so fast, Nakamura."
She pointed his fingers at the little one and bellowed in a commanding voice.
"Go and destroy those teen Igas!"
One of the bears reacted in a fraction of a second. It galloped towards the Igas to lower their distance to cast a few attacks on Kyuzo and Nakamura. Takatomi chanced in gliding towards Nakamura while spinning his chain over his head. Chaining the two attacks, Akizuki rolled and spammed five shurikens towards her enemies and scrambled to perform a devastating blow with her claws.
Kyuzo cried, "Let's roll."
Nakamura took the front and nullified the spamming of Akizuki just by using his nodachi. His swingings ricocheted the shurikens, allowing Isoko to work on a nice counter-attack.
"Here we go."
Loading an arrow into her bow, she aimed precisely at one of the bears and released. Following the previous shot, Isoko quickly loaded and shot another bolt. The result wasn't that surprising on Isoko's part as both the arrows penetrated one of the bear's legs. After being motivated by Isoko's decent shots, Kyuzo progressed to use his chain sickle against the floating enemy. The vertical strike that he performed made a clean hit on Takatomi's chain, snapping the sickle on one of the edges. After noticing that his move went adequately, Takatomi tried to levitate his chain to free it from Kyuzo's grasp but Kyuzo operated fast and dragged the kusarigama in a flash along with Takatomi.
"Nakamura, now!"
When Takatomi was accelerating towards his foes against his will, Nakamura dropped his play into Kyuzo's move.
Bang!
Takatomi was thrown away after receiving a stomach-breaking hit from Nakamura's foot. But he managed to utilise the amethyst right on time to stop himself from thudding into a panel-faced rock.
Kyuzo was about to make a celebration until Nakamura screamed out saying…
"Kyuzo, look out!"
The reaction was almost instantaneous...Kyuzo triggered his limbs to deflect Akizuki’s incoming claw whack.
But it was of no use…
Isoko had emerged in front of the trajectory of the claw slash to block it with her wakizashi, her trusty companion that keeps her safe during close-quarter combat.
When Isoko confronted the strike, Akizuki tried to put pressure on Isoko to break through her block, until Kyuzo decided to offer some help. he utilised the sickle of his kusarigama and used it to bypass Akizuki's claws and mark a deep gash on her knuckles.
"Nicely done!" Nakamura lifted his sword and prepared for his next move, while Akizuki retreated to give the bears an opening to strike.
"Go!"
This time both of the bears began charging towards our ninjas, while in a complete berserk state, roaring and screaming for their prey. They were quite large, with enough power to crush a human skull with just a little pressure from their hands. Nakamura prepared himself for the attack, but he almost froze in place when he comprehended that Takatomi had moved out of their sight.
A sudden shriek was produced by Isoko, chilling Nakamura to his bone marrow.
"Nakamura, behind you!"
The reaction was almost immediate. Nakamura swiftly turned around while lifting his nodachi to avoid any damage from Takatomi's chain. Takatomi's chain strike was futile against Nakamura's sudden reaction as the attempt to wrap the chain around his neck to crush the blood veins in it was taken away by Nakamura himself, who obstructed the attack with his weapon, which in turn ended up with the chain being wrapped around his nodachi.
"Nice timing!"
Kyuzo appreciated his friend's efforts but got paralyzed a few seconds after Nakamura finished his defensive move as Takatomi managed to pull off another assault on Nakamura with his chain, which Nakamura unfortunately didn't see coming.
“Raa!!”
A painful lament ripped Isoko's high hopes, and she couldn't stand her comrade's arm getting torn by the other end of Takatomi's chain. Takatomi was sneaky enough to divert Nakamura's attention with a distracting move which Nakamura unfortunately didn't see coming.
"Like the taste of that?"
Takatomi stated with an evil chuckle while pulling the chain even harder, which simultaneously tightened the wrapping, causing Nakamura to painfully lose his grip on his nodachi.
"How about a little more?" he yelled.
"No!" Isoko yelled while aiming at Takatomi.
And what made Isoko and Kyuzo even more heated than before, was the roar they started to hear from behind. When they turned their eyes in the direction of the roar, their minds went furious after seeing the incoming bear, who had disappeared from Kyuzo's sight a while back.
"Surprise!"
Akizuki smiled.
"Isoko, we've got to go and help him out!"
Kyuzo panicked. His heartbeat jumped to an extreme. Realising that his friend is in danger, he strove to appear in front of Nakamura to protect him from the incoming bears, but was drawn away by Akizuki, who challenged both Isoko and Kyuzo.
"Oh no you don't! Come and face me!"
Akizuki acted swiftly and implemented a jumping slash with her claws, which targeted Kyuzo's head for an instant kill.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“She’s so fast!”
Kyuzo bravely rotated his kusarigama to deflect the claw slash. Isoko counter-assaulted with a diagonal cut from her wakizashi, which shot one of Akizuki's talons out of her hands, ultimately leaving her with just one set of claws in her right hand.
Aah!!!!!”
A holler filled and enhanced with torment, agony and mortal fear ravaged the entire forest. Kyuzo and Isoko’s bodies were almost immediately shocked. When they turned to see what had happened, it was already too late.
One of the bears had bitten into Nakamura's thighs, which left very deep holes in his flesh, and opened up a fountain of blood. And in a few seconds, Nakamura was on the ground, in oblivion after suffering severe injuries from the monk, Takatomi and Akizuki's summoned bears.
“Oh my god! NAKAMURA!!!”
Kyuzo was speechless and yet his shattered mind wasn’t. He felt guilt. He had failed to do the one thing that his brother had asked him to do; to keep an eye on Nakamura. After Nakamura had collapsed onto the floor, Kyuzo initiated. Blinded with anger, he forcefully sprang forward to impale his kusarigama through the bear's mouth, which was still stuck in Nakamura's mouth.
“DIE! YOU PUTRID ANIMAL!”
And after Kyuzo's onslaught, it only took a few seconds for the first summoned bear to officially pass out. Isoko was highly excited that she almost forgot the current state of the battle.
"Take this, you stupid archer."
Kyuzo's instincts completely went out of his control as they automatically started to react in a flash when he saw the coming attack. Kyuzo simultaneously launched three shurikens to interfere with Akizuki's strikes, which would help him to defend Isoko until she could recover from the shock.
The pure iron shurikens made direct contact with Akizuki's claws, completely invalidating the attack. Isoko finally realised the incoming scene. And Kyuzo shouted as he ran towards Takatomi,
"Isoko, Cover me!"
She sighed and prepared. The other bear attempted to obstruct Kyuzo's way and potentially kill him, but thanks to her efforts, the bear gradually lost his moving capabilities, due to the arrows launched by Isoko in an instantaneous procedure.
Isoko shouted.
"Kyuzo, get him!"
With the bright expectation of bringing down the levitating Takatomi, Kyuzo started to implement his first plan.
Takatomi saw Kyuzo's coming. To him, it was like his prey coming towards him, without any fear whatsoever. As the strong desire to kill a member of the Hattori Clan swelled Takatomi's mind to the fullest, he started to get overconfident and proceeded to use his chain.
But Kyuzo…had something cooking up behind his eyes. While rushing towards his enemy, Kyuzo had formed a truly outrageous plan. When Takatomi lifted his spiky chain to whack Kyuzo in his head, Kyuzo produced a manriki chain from his pouch and adequately released it against Takatomi's legs after tossing it around for a few seconds. The Manriki chain instantly buckled Takatomi's lower limbs dropping him to the grassy floor. Triggering the amethyst just in time, he could levitate and rebalance his body to prepare himself for the targeting.
Isoko was aware of Kyuzo’s plan, almost instinctively. When he was about to perform his next chain trick, she loaded and fired an arrow targeting Takatomi’s head.
Akizuki yelled to warn her comrade while grabbing her fallen claw.
"Takatomi, look out!"
As a quick line of defense, Takatomi began twirling his chain weapon to summon a protective barrier which he hoped would guard him from the arrow. But it didn't last long, before Kyuzo made an appearance behind Takatomi to land a kick to his back, which sent him flying towards Akizuki.
"Gotcha."
Both Akizuki and Takatomi levitated into the air after slamming themselves. As a measure to put constant tension on their opponents, Isoko gave up on her bow momentarily once more to grab her wakizashi to land a slash on the flying duo.
"Take this!" Isoko shouted while plunging towards the levitating couple.
"Oh no you don't.” Akizuki pointed her claws just in time to counter the aggression. But both of the flying ninjas were out blasted with alarm and fear when they encountered Kyuzo, who was holding a bomb inside his hand. Seeing the produced smoke bomb inside Kyuzo's hand, Isoko immediately paused her wakizashi slash and covered her eyes and nose to take cover from the blinding smoke. It only took a while for Takatomi to scream out...
"They tricked us."
Packing a lot of energy into his arms, Kyuzo hurled the metsubishi bomb into the ground with an extreme amount of force, which gave out a devastating explosion that covered the entire plain with a thick blinding smoke screen.
Though the smoke was hazardous, it only took a while for it to slowly fade away, revealing the surroundings in twenty seconds. Both of the Kōga ninjas were still levitating, which filled Akizuki with joy…
Until she saw…
The truly outrageous.
“Takatomi? Wha….WAIT!”
When she turned back to celebrate surviving the bomb with Takatomi, her body went into a totally numb state, after catching a glimpse of the blood that was oozing from Takatomi's head and forehead. She shrieked and yelled and freaked out and moments later, the amethyst that was tied around Takatomi's neck lost its shine, ultimately disengaging the game-changing levitation power. Akizuki safely touched down while her dead friend's body literally fell apart and poured blood on the clean grass.
She managed to speculate the reason behind the mysterious death of Takatomi after seeing the bloody weighted end of Kyuzo's kusarigama. She assumed that Kyuzo might have demolished Takatomi's head when the smoke took over the transparency of the atmosphere.
Isoko and Kyuzo made up their minds to return to their enemy's sight. So they did.
Akizuki polled with words that were ravaged by rage and hate.
"Why did you do it?"
Kyuzo made no reply. And neither did Isoko. Both Kyuzo and Isoko kept their sight locked on to Akizuki for quite some time. But because of some unknown reason, only Kyuzo was able to notice something weird, which slowly triggered an immediate signal to pass on the idea that Akizuki was preparing to attack.
"Isoko, watch out!"
That was the only time she actually replied, as she had been speechless almost all the time after Nakamura fell unconscious in battle.
"I know Kyuzo! Let's synergize our attacks to destroy her!"
"All right! Let's go!"
Right after the mini-conversation expired, Isoko finally thought of using her long-range bow skills as a strength. She made a very fast withdrawal while Kyuzo prepared himself to face the next wave of incoming summonings.
Isoko promptly loaded an arrow and waited patiently until she could get a clean shot.
Kyuzo kept his patience long enough to see the summonings of Akizuki so that he could come up with a perfect strategy to beat them. But when her summonings emerged, Kyuzo was startled, this time far more than ever before. He was petrified to see how the unthinkable had happened. Isoko's movements were suspended after being shocked at seeing what Akizuki had gotten this time.
Not one. Not two. But four more bears. That number was way too much for the remaining ninjas. And above all, the Iga ninjas’ eyes were also quick to notice the enormous size of the new wave. And even with the help of Nakamura, Kyuzo didn't expect to gain the upper hand easily.
Seeing and being satisfied by their faces full of desperation, Akizuki chuckled with a grim, evil look on her face, distracting them from trying to deeply concentrate on the battle.
"So how do you like it? I think I went too easy on you two. But I am gonna make you a nice meal for these bears!"
Isoko scooted towards Kyuzo and commenced a quick conversation.
"How are we gonna defeat five bears and a shinobi? You have a plan?"
"Are you kidding? But we should keep pressure on them frequently so that we can study their movement patterns and make our attack plans. Stay vigilant!"
"Roger," Isoko replied and reloaded her bow while Kyuzo unloaded a few shurikens from his pouch.
"Go!" It was Akizuki's loud commanding yell to her summonings. Following that, she reattached her claws to her palms to start her operation of vengeance.
The bears charged their legs to stampede towards Kyuzo and Isoko. As a method of distraction, Kyuzo and Isoko split up and decided to attack from two directions.
The group of five monsters is divided into two parts. Three of the bears started to chase after Isoko while the remaining two sped towards Kyuzo.
Targeting one's head, Isoko quickly shot an arrow, which made direct contact with the bear's leg as its attempt to dodge the arrow altered its course into the foreleg. The movement slowed it a considerable amount, but couldn't help much as the other bears constantly put pressure on Isoko. As a quick line of protection, Kyuzo laid the shurikens in the bears' path as an obstacle to buy Isoko some time to reload her weapon.
"Thanks!"
Taking advantage of the sudden pause in the bears' movement, Isoko launched a killing blow at the injured bear. The bear's ear-breaking roar started to echo in the forest, unnerving the remaining summons. Interpreting Isoko's killing blow, Kyuzo first attempted to tangle one bear using the other end of his kusarigama. He was successful, and the bear literally knelt on the ground, but struggled to get its first bite in. As a way of dodging, Kyuzo got hold of the sickle and leaped over the fallen bear. While he was moving in the air, he embedded his sickle into the bear, and clenching the kusarigama chain, he dragged the kusarigama while settling on the ground. The razor-sharp kusarigama ripped through the bear's flesh and skin, producing shrieks of mortal agony in the environment. The dead bear immediately collapsed onto the ground, with an exposed internal on its back, ultimately leaving three more bears.
Isoko cried.
"Two down, three to go!"
Isoko jumped over the halted bears and tried to focus on Akizuki, who didn't make an appearance in her offensive. She started to worry as Akizuki wasn't there.
Her comrade screamed to notify her of the incoming danger when Akizuki crept up towards Isoko from behind, allowing her to respond almost instantly.
"Isoko, behind you!"
Losing her grip on her bow, she rapidly grasped her wakizashi to turn around and thwart the claw attack. It went fine for a few moments, but Isoko was kind of underwhelming her opponent. Her senses were completely numb when Akizuki launched her next undefying attack from behind Isoko, bewildering and distressing her even more.
"Let's see if you can dodge this!"
Akizuki snapped her fingers, and all of a sudden, another bear generated out of nowhere and went for Isoko's leg. The bear bit her leg deep enough to make her yell at the anguish that was bursting inside.
Kyuzo was so astounded to see the appearance of this bear and started to dissolve everything in his mind, and in just a few seconds, he made a breakthrough.
“What? Where in the world did this abomination come from? Wa..wai..wait! When we were fighting for the first time, there were a total of three bears. And we took down two of them. So there was only one remaining. But then...how did another one appear so suddenly? I guess that she might have ordered one to disappear from our sight and flank from behind. She was so smart! I didn't even notice its presence!”
The bear still held on to Isoko's leg so tight that she couldn’t even think about moving. Laughing with satisfaction and enjoyment, Akizuki crept up to Isoko and lifted up her claws, with the bright intention of stabbing her.
"Payback time!"
Right after finishing her phrase, Akizuki charged her hands to stab Isoko who was in a half-conscious state because of the bite. Despite the coming wild beasts, Kyuzo scrambled to protect Isoko from death. He sent his hand to grab his last kunai to dart the bear. His throw made a clean hit to the bear's body, but failed to do severe damage. But his little attempt was successful enough to force the bear to release Isoko's leg.
He boosted up to gather enough velocity and secured a pounding kick at Akizuki right when she was about to jab Isoko with her claws. His timely reaction was fortuitous enough to save Isoko from a death puncture but still allowed Akizuki to lay some substantial scratches on her body as the claws had almost touched Isoko's body when Kyuzo's foot had impacted on Akizuki.
After being assaulted by multiple attacks, Isoko couldn't hold things up and immediately collapsed onto the floor, with blood oozing from her belly and her leg.
Kyuzo was left outnumbered. Shortly after delivering his kick, he returned to his previous position and tried to hold it. But, Akizuki got back up with no issues whatsoever and the remaining four bears rushed and managed to enclose Kyuzo in a very small area.
Akizuki started to erase the blood that came out of her mouth after receiving the kick from Kyuzo. And she slowly progressed towards Kyuzo, while edging her claws.
"Now what are you gonna do? Can you take on these four disciples of mine?"
Kyuzo felt a chill that dominated his body. He could hear his heart beat rapidly and strongly. His ears were overloaded with angry growls that only intensified his fear of being ripped apart by enhanced wild beasts. He started repenting...
“I am done for…I failed to keep up with my brother’s progress. I deserve to be eaten alive.”
Akizuki exclaimed.
"NOW KILL THAT HATTORI AND BRING ME HIS INSIDES!"
The bears roared simultaneously and attempted to blow Kyuzo with their sharp edges. Kyuzo had no alternatives.
“This is it.”
He shut his eyes.
Slice…Slash…Swoosh…Stab…
And when he opened his eyes, Kyuzo was surprised. The monsters that threatened to rip him apart had fallen onto their knees, lifeless. Two of the bears had katanas embedded in their heads, while another one had its throat torn away by a tessen. The last one's stomach had been speared by a naginata, stunning and fascinating both Kyuzo and Akizuki.
"Wait...who...killed...them?"
"Where are you? Show yourselves!"
Akizuki started to spew words of desperation to persuade the third parties to show themselves.
Kyuzo turned to his left and his excitement only grew further when he saw the figures standing there. A familiar voice from one boy cried out his name, which sent him into an even more amazed state.
But who were they??
You already know...