[color=6ecff6]"Release."[/color] Akio said quietly as he sat high in a tree several meters away from the attack, causing his mud clone that was being attacked by the teenagers to collapse back into it's initial state dirt and rock. Prior to beginning the challenge, he had created a mud clone in order to deceive the teenagers into wasting their initial assault on it while he sat in a tree gathering natural energy for himself and his mud clone. Of course because the mud clone had ceased, all of it's natural energy went directly back to Akio like a waterfall. He slowly stood up on the tree and let out a loud booming laugh throughout the forest, loud enough to be heard by the team. He cracked his neck tauntingly as he entered Sage Mode. [color=6ecff6]"Oh come on you four, you thought I'd let you get these that easy? While I will say that you four's strategy of all attacking at once was flawless, you should have noticed that it was far too slow to be me. I mean, come on now, I wouldn't have to resort to using a sage art variant of a mud wall to stop a fireball jutsu."[/color]

[color=6ecff6]"Since I can see you all are somewhat tired, I'll give you all a handicap..."[/color] He looked far into the distance at Izu, [color=6ecff6][color=6ecff6]"You there!"[/color][/color] He shouted, getting his attention, [color=6ecff6]"Help this team out. They could use the help against me."[/color] He pulled out a kunai from it's holster and held it with the blade pointing down, [color=6ecff6]"Because now you're about to fight me at full strength with Sage Mode active for at least ten minutes."[/color]

Another Akio mud clone on the other side of the forest spurted out of the ground and delivered a surprise underground uppercut to Rin's shadow clone, [color=6ecff6]"Shoulda checked below!"[/color] He then entered a taijutsu stance, ready to face the clone with all of it's hand-to-hand combat expertise.