Auntie Rokane ground her teeth against Junichi's kneecap, forcing blood to spray all over the trousers and leg of the Allied Ninja veteran and splatter over the face of the old woman who appeared to be gaining vigor through physical contact with blood. It was not a matter of fact, however, just the way in which the bloodthirsty cannibal hag carried herself as just a whiff of blood got her own old bones ready for a rumble like nothing else.

"Y-You think this is going to stop us?" Junichi hissed in a tremendous amount of physical pain, his face wincing in torment as sweat poured down his face in a desperate attempt to not give his enemy the satisfaction of betraying just how torturous her ultimatum was.

"Just you dare try something!" auntie Rokane howled with a bloody mouth. "Then I'll have to eat you as soon as possible, I wouldn't like such fine meat to go bad."

"Despicable…" Mollay proclaimed, standing up tall. Blood squirting from the wound on his own leg as he extended his hands in a hand seal position, pointing downward. The cannibal of the Nine Tales gang froze and looked up at the enemy as if waiting to see if his response warrants an execution of their squad leader at her hands or if she could continue her feast.

The moment of delay made her decision to come out already too late. A diagonal cylinder of clear-white beamed down in a wild howl and the rumbling that telegraphed the terrific decimation of the ground and rubble it passed through. A bright, flashing spark in between Mollay's hands transformed into a solid beam of light that engulfed both the bleeding veteran as well as the cannibalistic hag and made both of them dry out and turn to statues of solid stone in-sight.

"The Bloodline Selection ability," Mana mumbled under her nose before turning to Mollay. She was shocked initially that the Allied Ninja would use his most powerful ability, using his own ally as a human shield but then she recalled Mollay's words from after the fight with the Daisushi Brothers had concluded. "You can revert the transformation…"

Mollay looked no less drained after using this jutsu without having had a chance to recover after using it a couple of times already in the near past twice than Mana. Not only that but the wound on Mollay's foot continued to spray blood though the liquid had lost its vibrant scarlet hue and began appearing more pink-like in shade. Mana was no medical ninja but this was hardly a good sign.

"I'm going to need some help if I am to approach Junichi and turn him back. If I use the jutsu again from this angle, I risk accidentally illuminating the witch too," Mollay pointed out, turning to the other Allied Ninja. Only then did it dawn to Mana – Mollay would have to use his jutsu again and manipulate Junichi's molecules again and back into a living being. Could he even survive such a thing?

"Are you sure you can pull off another use of that jutsu?" Mana wondered. "Your body already exhibits signs of chakra loss. If you use too many you might…"

"Don't lecture me about chakra loss. I've been on the field for far longer than you, girl." Mollay turned to her. It was tough to say how much blood loss had been affecting the chubby ex-Iwagakure ninja but he definitely had pronounced, black bags forming under his eyes and his blood vessels were popping out on his face for all to see with unsightly bumps of his skin. "What other choice do I have? Just let our leader stay a statue?"

"Maybe we can wait until you are rested? Doesn't the enemy own an inn? With auntie Rokane eliminated we can use her inn to rest," Mana suggested. The last thing she wanted to see was Mollay dying of chakra shortage while Junichi remained forever as a lifeless statue. Granted, this was not a fate she wanted for auntie Rokane either but she was powerless to change anything at the moment.

"That's ridiculous. I used to think you a voice of reason but it appears that your judgment might get clouded when human lives are at risk. The enemy is more than likely to have trapped her inn well. Plus, I have a limited time to revert the transformation, or else it becomes permanent. I have it on good authority that if we wait for two more days which it would take for my chakra to recover – Junichi would be long stuck being this way." Mollay crushed Mana's suggestion mercilessly.

"I… I see… You're wounded, so is Junichi-san. We absolutely cannot continue our journey this way. Even if the inn is trapped, it's the only way we can continue our journey," Mana pointed out.

"Can we continue this conversation once Junichi is back to normal? I had thought that this form is an improvement over his normal self but I am as shocked as anyone to find out that his stone glare appears to be even more judgmental than his normal one…" Cailar lamented with a playful gesture.

Mana moved up to assist Mollay. The two struggled to descend on to the ground level and the magician ended up tumbling over the massive weight of the ninja she carried, finding that her physical strength in her current state was far less than she'd have liked. Mollay sat up and blazed a scornful glare at the magician, just barely restraining his curses while Mana crawled back with a face flushed with red. Neither of the other two Allied Ninja assisted the wounded chubby up though when Mana offered her hand, Mollay smacked it aside and once again appeared to struggle with the desire to send her to hell and back.

With a pain-ridden limp, Mollay approached Junichi and placed his hands over the head of the Allied Ninja turned to stone. A gleam of light flashed in between his pale hands and the dried out, rocky skin of Junichi once more regained its natural shade. The stony appearance only persisted on Junichi's knee and downward. It appeared that the entire injured leg of the Allied Ninja remained to be of stone.

"You'd be impossible to deal with in that state. Can't have you slowing us down. I don't have the chakra to use this jutsu again. You'll just have to deal with replacing this stump with a prosthetic," Mollay pointed at the rocky stump. While Junichi appeared to have some trouble dragging the stony leg behind him, none of the said trouble was due to the pain he would have been under if his leg would have been reformed the way it was prior to being petrified and the ninja veteran appeared thankful for this decision to his colleague.

Mana found it odd. She hadn't witnessed such a lack of care for one's own limbs. It was hard for her to imagine what it would be like losing one of her own limbs. Even if prosthetics were prominent amongst ninja and cultivating them or obtaining good ones was not outside the realm of possibility, Mana saw something sacred in the wholeness of her body. The thought of giving away her leg like that seemed like a loss of her very identity, not unlike when she lost the use of her chakra way back when.

"Are you okay?" Junichi turned to Mana. He turned for the chain blades that the hag tried executing him with once Mollay initiated his jutsu and found them as brittle as dirt down on the floor, having clanged against solid stone and lacking the chakra conductivity to etch into it as their mistress had also been subjected to petrification by the time they connected with their intended target.

"Yes," Mana nodded. "Though Mollay-san seems injured. We should stop at auntie Rokane's inn and let him see to his wound."

"No," Junichi cut it short. "Mollay's injury is unfortunate and it seems like it will absolutely slow us down to a crawl but we must get to the border as soon as possible or else we'll bump into more of this Nine Tales gang. They seem to have lost all reason in the resources they're willing to throw into capturing you, alive or dead. We are in no shape of fighting at the moment, if we are to meet another enemy – there is no hope of winning or escaping them. Our only hope is the border."

"B-But…" Mana objected, looking down at the gruesome display of exposed, carved flesh that still spouted blood of unnatural, pinkish color.

"This mission is already much harder than we anticipated it to be, there is absolutely no need for you to make it any harder, Mana. If you continue to make it so, we'll bring you to HQ bound like a prisoner." Junichi took a bold step up closer to the exhausted magician, imposing his ample physical bulk and dragging his petrified leg behind him.

"Oh, that's hardly a good look. I can only imagine the mockery that fellow recruits will put on you, dear. I can already see all the fancy nicknames: Kinbaku, Asanawa, Shibari…" Cailar beamed a smile in Mana's direction while the magician sighed and caved in.

"Can we at least halt so that Mollay can stop his bleeding and you can figure out how to move around in your condition?" she wondered.

Junichi limped to the tree and took a stout fighting pose. With a mighty kiai shout, he delivered a crushing kick to the tree's body which resulted in a shattering of his petrified limb. The stump that remained had a few sandy chunks falling off of it once in a while with some of the sand carrying meek trails of blood in it. The veteran removed a kunai from his ninja pouch and tied a strand of steel wire around it, swinging this makeshift grappling hook around just to show to the disobedient VIP that he was fully capable of using it for movement the same way that the paralyzed cannibal could use her tools.

"Move around in what condition?" he asked with a hint of bitter sarcasm in his voice that soaked with machismo.

Mollay removed his headband and ripped off the iron plate that protected his forehead and applied the red ribbon to his foot. He seemed to enjoy the fact that the natural color of the cloth made it more difficult to make out when the fabric was soaked with blood. The Allied Ninja turned to his peers and nodded in acknowledgment, declaring that he was ready to move out. Mana rolled her eyes but she wasn't willing to be carried around bound which would have only slowed them down. At this point, had she been free, she'd have considered summoning a few ninja-rabbits and beating her allies into submission and forcing them to rest. The way she was now, she was no better than even the wounded escorts of hers.

Their speed had become abysmal. Mana was hardly moving much faster than any normal human engaging in daily physical activity while the core of the team moved at a hardly faster pace. The pair looked somewhat glad that Mana was as drained of chakra as Mollay was and they had an excuse of slowing down to a crawl. Where they should have passed the Valley of Earth and Moon and reached the border by that morning, it took them a whole extra day and it began looking like they were stuck in yet another illusion.

Had the Nine Tales gang not sent their cleaner that didn't capture any of her bounties alive or dead and simply ate all the bodies, a sign that they have given up on capturing their target for the bounty already, Mana would have been certain that the enemy would have caught up to them already. They stopped for brief rests. Junichi used the fact that Shitaka began lightly modifying their surroundings via the False Surroundings jutsu himself as an excuse for brief stops. Though knowing the stubborn old fool, it was only because he physically had a problem moving around.

It was of no surprise. His shoulders didn't appear to be used to swinging about this way. He hadn't lost that much chakra up until now so he could still utilize light chakra augmentation to keep his arms inside his sockets but it must have been taking a toll on Junichi still, or he simply refused to use chakra augmentation for these swings of his as the big man constantly stopped to warm up and swing his arms around to fix the circulation in his shoulders. He allowed Mollay and Mana to catch up to the rest of the group that way though Mana suspected that he was secretly quite glad for these stops too.

It was when the tension felt the highest that a burst of crystal, transparent liquid from the ground in a rocky clearing of the woods up ahead made the expressions of all of the worn-out and frustrated ninja brighten up. These natural springs present all over all of the half a million square kilometers of the Land of Hot Water were a sign that not only were the Allied Ninja by the border already but they've already past it. Shitaka used this gleeful sign as an excuse to collapse onto the branch and howl into the air, already feeling the warmth of the hot springs and the taste of its refreshments.

"We made it…" Junichi declared. The sturdy hardiness of his own face appeared to soften up in-sight as he declared the obvious.

"I guess it's kinda hard to tell when the Hot Water Daimyo doesn't even bother putting up any protection by his borders…" Cailar sighed. "I guess they take their pacifism very seriously in here, let's see what we can do about that!"

Even though a wicked smile beamed across Cailar's face, the strict glares from the rest of the group made the devious Allied Ninja fold, confirming that he was just messing around with that proclamation. The last thing they needed right now was more trouble, especially one with the authorities when villages already had mixed opinions and recognition of the Allied Ninja and their work.

"This natural hot spring is a sign of a nearby settlement. Nearly every hot spring in the country has a settlement utilizing its comfort and monetizing it as an asset of their own," Mana pointed out.

"Whoa, such a rocking thing has gotta be pretty wanted around these parts. I wonder if we came back here a few years later would the owners of this hot spring be different?" Shitaka wondered striking a pose with his arms over his hips as he admired the view ahead of him.

"That is impossible. There is no conflict or war in the Land of Hot Water. So to speak, the only rightful cause to use physical force around these parts is to quench wrongful violence. No settlement would remain on the good side of the feudal lord or Yugakure by taking over territory from another settlement," Mana pointed out something she learned from history books. Being someone who treasured life, Mana had long admired the Land of Hot Water and the way it handled things with only her ninja creed keeping her from ever working at Land of Hot Water in one way or another. If things go smoothly, perhaps she could end up performing her magic shows, at the very least?

"I wouldn't get my hopes up if I were you…" Cailar squinted in Mana's direction as if he had caught a glimpse of Mana's dreamy attitude toward the country. "I wonder how the locals would think of a young woman who beat a worldwide icon of wisdom and peace into a bloody pulp?"

He wasn't wrong, even though he wrongfully assumed that Mana had been daydreaming about ever being a ninja of Yugakure. A ninja abandoning the village they worked for and just switching sides was very rare and even rarer did such trickery go well for the ninja involved. Assassinations, distrust of their new employer, and their own ambition to pull such a stunt again most often served to do them in. Such a thing would have only been possible for a ninja of worldwide renown or an elite clan heritage and only involving a village that lacked honor or had a particularly roasting beef with the other village, none of which were the case here. Land of Hot Water had a long-standing tradition of fostering a good relationship with everyone, which was impossible, truth be told, which left Yugakure particularly paranoid about keeping things in order and fending off abuses of the country's trust as much as they possibly could.

Despite the inner disarray, Mana found the chance to bathe in the hot springs at long last simply splendid, even though the group had to look for an inn that carried on the tradition of konyoku onsen – mixed-gender bathing, because the Allied Ninja absolutely dismissed the chance of letting Mana out of their sight for any period of time, given the infamy of her face and almost paranoid fear of more criminals and assassins targeting her during this moment of vulnerability. Bathing with the towel on was nowhere near as relaxing as going all-natural but it was better than continuing to strain her feet dashing through the trees.

Even with a handful of male Allied Ninja bathing alongside her, it was a nice opportunity to unwind and relax for just a second with the knowledge that a warm room and a nice meal was waiting for her and the rest of the group. The discomfort of exposing herself before her colleagues also was somewhat temporary as Mollay was not allowed into the springs before he saw a nearby healer to tend the wound on his foot while Shitaka got kicked out for impersonating a crocodile in the hot spring. After a short quarrel, Junichi and his recent stump were allowed into the spring as long as it was properly bandaged and wouldn't cause trouble for the other visitors. Somehow, Mana didn't feel too bad about unwinding before Junichi as she looked at him more as a father figure whereas Cailar didn't show any interest in ogling at any women present nor did he show much vigor at all.

Then again, that was only because everyone tended to be quiet and keep it to themselves in the springs and therefore no one provided any energy for the flamboyant Allied Ninja to drain with his remarks.