Even after the match had ended, it did not appear that Gasco was willing to leave the arena. His choice of actions after overseer Oke ruled his victory was surprising to everyone except, it seemed, Stea. The tall powerhouse walked up to his knocked out opponent and just watched him strictly from up above. Then, slowly and calmly, he bent over and picked the young boy up with one hand wrapped around the youth's head, holding the powerless opponent in front of him.
Kiyomi looked at Mana uneasily. This would have normally been a cue for her to do something stupid that would have lead to her getting disqualified. And yet… The magician stood still, lips pressed together, head firmly fixed on one point she couldn't really see in an unwilling instinct that took over when all of her remaining senses were fixed on something else.
Could Mana even tell what was transpiring? What was she thinking? Kiyomi's knuckles pressed tightly, she settled firmly on stopping Mana if she as much as twitched at that direction. It was her duty as the girl's friend to stop her from ruining a journey this long, perilous and one that cost as much to them both as this one did. And yet… The magician just kept on standing calmly.
Gasco's fingers pressed against Dhaogu's temples, he must have considered crushing the boy's head like a grape in between his fingers and he certainly had the strength for it. Had the young Sunagakure genin not been knocked out he'd have been in a lot of pain.
"So pathetic and merciful, asking your opponent to surrender when you believe you have the upper hand. Unfit for service. And yet… Strong enough to be of some use to your village. The potential for developing a Bloodline Selection in the future too. Yes, killing you would be an injustice to your village", Gasco settled as his hand went frail, letting the boy slip from his grasp and slam to the ground weightlessly as the giant turned around and walked away.
Kiyomi breathed out easier. She looked at Mana with a faint smile, "I thought you'd do something stupid, honestly".
"Why? It was obvious that Gasco would not kill Dhaogu", Mana wondered, "Gasco and Doma only kill people they think are wasting their village's time and money with their service as ninja, people they deem a disgrace to the ninja name and reputation. Dhaogu has three active Elemental Natures, which means he may develop an Advanced Bloodline or a Bloodline Selection in the future. Such a man cannot possibly be unworthy of life in their eyes".
"Yeah but… How can you tell what they're thinking, they're just so… Crazy", Kiyomi sighed easier before looking at the large screen that displayed the next match-up. "No offense", the Yamanaka quickly shut Stea down as the Getsugakure kunoichi gave her an off-handed glare after the remark that the blonde made.
"There's a method to any madness. I understand theirs well enough to be able to read it", Mana calmly replied.
"I hope you haven't filed me up with those two in that mind of yours", Stea smiled giving Mana a challenging glance.
"I haven't, your different way of thinking is what makes you more dangerous than your team", the magician admitted.
"Well, girls, I guess I'm next!" Nanaba shrieked out in excitement before running off and turning down the staircase that lead to a long corridor leading up to the arena. She may have heard a couple of good luck wishes before she disappeared or she may not have wanted or been able to hear them, given how excited and fast she was.
On the other side, the familiar frail desert dweller in Buhakim stepped out. The Uber-Spiritual One already had his grotesquely strange looking puppets unsealed and screwed together, wearing them around his body as accessories as the one with many limbs, the one Buhakim called Śrāvakayāna, laid wrapped around his body like an overly clingy lover. Meanwhile, the more abstract shape of a ship wheel covered with fists, Pratyekabuddhayāna, laid behind his back imitating the spiritual enlightenment present on religious art glowing behind important figures.
"He doesn't plan on fooling around", Kiyomi noted recalling how slowly the puppeteer usually unveiled his puppets, almost like it was a religious ritual of sorts, which, of course, it wasn't. The whole point of his Uber-Spirituality was about breaking the stereotypes behind deeply religious people.
"For the next match, you've got our own Nanaba Aomyaku from Konoha's Team Hawthorn. A curious girl who loves her puppet arms deeply and advanced through the semi-finals through sheer luck as her beloved arms were busted during the Forest of Death stage!" Overseer Oke tried hyping Nanaba up but he sort of came out a bit short. Kiyomi found it rather odd how the official did not reveal her status as a Jinchuuriki of the Seven Tails to the audience or list any of the people she's beaten in the Chuunin Exams to hype her up at all.
It was almost like the village wanted the girl's status and anything impressive and noteworthy about her to remain a complete secret…
"She will be facing off against the self-proclaimed Uber-Spiritual guru – Buhakim of Sunagakure from Team Pahlavi. Someone who has been in plenty of intense battle royal style clashes in the Forest of Death and managed to impress us with his massive amalgam puppet in the semi-finals!" Oke hyped Nana's opponent up a bit better. Still, judging from the audience's reaction they did not overly enjoy the prospect of watching a puppeteer fight or feel nearly as invested in into this match as the previous couple.
"Whenever any of you two feel ready, you can begin the third match of the Chuunin Exams finals!" Oke cheered out pumping his fist into the air wildly before taking a strong and hearty leap backwards so that his involvement did not factor in any way into the proceeding match.
Not overly surprisingly, the battle did not just erupt from the moment it had officially begun. Buhakim prepared his puppets for battle by having the many-limbed abomination unscrew its tight grip around him and positioning it in front of him while the other one remained firmly attached to his upper back, protecting him from that front.
Nanaba stood there with her head sunken down, hair falling over her face, fists clenched and shaking by her sides. Kiyomi was surprised to see the energetic and normally cheerful girl tear up a little as she revealed by throwing the flowing hair off her face.
"Promise me, promise me that you'll help me make this battle one that will stand out! They must see us!" She firmly ordered her opponent.
"The path of Uber-Spirituality is not one of the meaningless aesthetics. It's one of hustling towards victory while acting religious, no matter how dirty the means one must take!" Buhakim declared by sending his offensive amalgam of appendages into battle. Normally such a monstrous freak of artistry would have overwhelmed any close range combatant, merely by its sheer number of blurring fists and feet as well as the highly disturbing and unnaturally twitchy manner of movement.
However, Nanaba matched the overly zealous expression of the artistic freedom with the impressive mechanical arms that were completely repaired from the end of the Forest of Death stage. Even as Śrāvakayāna turned and twisted its many joints to achieve impossible striking angles and directions, Nanaba calmly matched the offensive pressure with her own mechanical wonders.
"You must promise me!" She strictly shouted out before pressing on her own offensive barrage of whizzing flashes that could have only been called blows by a manner of speech as their overwhelming number and speed defied the likes which it would have been clumped with had the category been assigned to it. "We will not be invisible!" The girl declared.
"I have been invisible my entire life! I will make them see us!" Nanaba roughed out, wheezing from her lungs as she continued to pressure the handy puppet, her lack of focus on where and how often she was striking instead of the emotions that lead to her accepting the Tailed Beast being sealed inside her made the blonde skip a good pair of blows.
"Puppetry Technique: Vehicle of Disciples!" Buhakim chanted out as his abominable puppet had made quite a painfully clear opening by succeeding to bombard the opposing girl with strikes where she opened herself up due to her emotional outburst.
Buhakim's fingers appeared to completely disappear into thin air as they moved so swiftly and flawlessly, controlling the many-limbed puppet and ordering it to flip and roll abrasively and in a grotesque manner which only this thing could move in, striking and slamming its limbs where the puppeteer's limited flashing fingers could not be bothered to properly wind them up.
Nanaba slid back, still on her feet even after the painful and seemingly endless combination of hammer strikes, punches and kicks that she received from the Vehicle of Disciples puppet. The girl flashed through a handful of hand seals before breathing in deeply. The motion from her opponent to reposition the Solitary Awakening puppet to in front of him in order to shield him from an upcoming technique revealed that even Buhakim knew and respected the fact that a big technique was coming.
"Scale Powder!" Nanaba coughed out as a flow of fine powder blew out from her mouth, shining so brightly that the flash triggered the protective barriers and despite the light being filtered very selectively, it still forced Buhakim to cover up his eyes and writhe around in pain. Even the people watching in the audience covered their eyes up as they began watering excessively to the extent where even closing their eyes or trying to rub the stress out of them did not help.
Mana grabbed her eyes lightning fast, taking a pair of steps back before beginning to outright scream and claw at her temples in pain that the bright flash of light, even as little of it as it passed through her blindfold caused.
"Quickly, go inside the corridor!" Kiyomi jumped up to Mana, covering her friend up with her body and leading the magician into a darker corridor outside to recover. It did not appear like her eyes were in any better condition than they were in when this whole thing started, even if magician's skin had regained its healthy darker hue that it usually had.
"Wow, that powder thing was really bright, wasn't it? Like a little star was stored inside each dust particle..." Kiyomi tried to calm her friend down as Mana cried in pain, sitting by the cold and damp wall in the middle of a dimly lit corridor. The Yamanaka heiress tried to smile and gently tap her friend's shoulder but… She was worried deep inside. So far, the training that her friend did appeared to only be hindering her. Just how could Mana hope to face the strongest genin in the bunch with these eyes and with her sensory shut down to prevent anxiety attacks.
Looking at Mana the way she was now, her hair flowing wildly and more unruly than they've ever been as a haircut was long due for the magician, her skin having just barely recently regained its normal color and all the swelling having just recently disappeared, her senses of sight and smell robbed of her in order to catch up to the insane demands of the Chuunin Exams that were supposed to be just a cakewalk… Kiyomi's heart wimpered for a moment, seeing a young soul broken so much and going through so much physical suffering at her age.
Just how long before their bodies will have nothing more to give? Just what kind of price they pay each time something like this happens and they have to compromise with their own bodies just to keep on breaking them when normally they'd be able to bend be broken no longer?
Buhakim was writhing on his knees, his puppets dangled lifelessly and got dragged around with the puppeteer as he wandered around the stage with his blinded eyes. Nanaba leaped in for a focused cross from the central right of her mechanical arms, aiming to punch her way through the enemy. As the gut wrenching punch connected, sending shivers through the audience who were just recovering from the last flashy show just from how gruesome the sound it made was, another sound followed it – that of a loud bang.
Instead of Buhakim erupting into a fit of vomiting blood that burst through from his innards due to excessive internal bleeding, his body was replaced with the Solitary Awakening and busted into smallest bits and pieces. In his blinded rampage, the puppeteer sent his Vehicle of Disciples chasing off after the blond Jinchuuriki but with a pair of careful and graceful dashes, the girl avoided the overly expressive artistic liberty personified in one creation.
Nana's hands once again blurred in hand seals and her chest inflated from the tremendous amount of air in her lungs before it all got expelled at once.
"Honey Dust!" she wheezed out through a bright cloud of sunflower-yellow powder that covered the entire arena, making the snowy battlefield dye brilliant yellow.
"Puppetry Technique: Vehi…" Buhakim tried to order his puppet to dance again before noticing its twitchy and unresponsive movements. The Vehicle of Disciples was stuck in its initial pose and wouldn't do anything other but twitch meaninglessly.
"Don't you just hate my Honey Dust? It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere, even in between your puppet's countless joints and gears!" Nanaba cheeked her opponent with a playful wink at the audience. As Buhakim desperately tried to walk away from his rampaging opponent and regain his composure, Nanaba moved in and with a sledgehammer strike of her hands crushed the overrun with coarse and annoying powder puppet.
Buhakim stumbled about, trying to perceive where his opponent would come from. The Uber-Spiritual One was scratching his skin to blood as the Honey Dust was causing it to swell and itch, his eyes were still watering and bleeding from the flash of light that Scale Powder caused. He was surprised to see his opponent just calmly standing about and waiting for something.
"Now, come on, fuse your puppets together! Hit me with your strongest shot!" Nanaba commanded, almost bullying her opponent into action.
Mana, with Kiyomi's aid, managed to return to the observation platform. After the returning girls were greeted by the others with a brief welcoming look, Kiyomi just smiled, trying to downplay Mana's painful reaction to Scale Dust's filtered flash. "What did we miss?" She jokingly asked.
"Not much, that cheery girl bashed the shit out of the puppets but she's waiting around", Vinda yawned.
"Oddly enough, Nanaba keeps asking Buhakim to use his Bodhisattva. Something like this will cost her her promotion. No way will the Council be happy with such carelessness and arrogance", Stea noted.
"She's not arrogant or careless, she's using Ukemi" Kiyomi wondered before letting go of Mana after the magician gestured that she will be fine and rushing up to the edge of the platform to get a better look and listen onto the arena.
"Ukemi?" Mana asked. "How is she minimizing her damage by asking to receive more of it?"
"I'm not talking about Ukemi in martial arts, I mean it in professional wrestling terms. She's asking to be hit with Buhakim's hardest and best looking spots to entertain the audience. Without a doubt she intends on taking the shot head-on, she knows deep inside that some of the audience wants her blood." Kiyomi explained.
Buhakim wiped the blood off of his eyes, leaving a grisly stain over his face and then placing his hands together in a praying position. Invisible strings lit up with chakra flares as the lifeless pieces of his puppets came back to life, twitching and rolling around like pieces of a crushed body before rolling together and reconfiguring into a tall, epic shape.
"Ninja Style: Bodhisattva!" Buhakim prayed out as the destroyed Vehicle of Disciples and Solitary Awakening became something else entirely. A large humanoid shape without a face. Taller than the entire arena as its head could have likely be seen from outside of the arena and people just passing by at the same district. A pair of more faceless faces attached to the sides of the epically proportioned puppet as twelve arms rose up from the back and assumed praying position and three legs crossed together, putting the Bodhisattva into a meditative pose.
This Bodhisattva was both larger and differently configured than the one in the semi-finals! This one had twice the number of arms, which implied a great increase in the puppeteer's skill.
"There it is, the Icon of Uber-Spirituality, the Bodhisattva!" Buhakim shouted out through the shocked and awe stricken cheers from the audience. It appeared that Buhakim had caught on to Nanaba's game and purposefully had the puppet strike impressive poses and prolonged his attack until the audience had gotten used to seeing this massive faceless humanoid towering the arena.
"Puppetry Technique: Solitary Awakened Perfection!" Buhakim prayed before moving his hand forward in a special hand seal position, which ordered the towering puppet to raise its hand up. As the massively proportioned arm rose and winded up for a palm strike, the entire arm lit up in blue chakra flare before the towering palm slammed at where Nanaba was last seen standing, crushing the area to bits.
The tremendous force of Bodhisattva caused such a massive shockwave that it blasted away all of the snow that had gathered and layered across the arena, causing violent whirlwinds of powerful gusts that scattered Nana's Honey Dust and changed the brilliantly yellow battlefield into a more rocky and devastated one. Just like before, the protective barriers that were usually invisible, placed around the arena lit up to protect the civilians in the audience but the sheer sound and the spectacle of it made the crowd jump on to their feet.
As the devastation began settling down once more, revealing the remains of the Bodhisattva's wrath, the chakra flare around the puppet's arm faded away.
"No way!" Kiyomi shrieked out in complete disbelief. The other girls, except for Mana, who was still to sense what was transpiring in a meaningful way, joined in on the emotional outburst of the Yamanaka.
Nanaba's feminine figure quivered under the pressure of the Bodhisattva's palm before a mad battlecry and a burst of crimson chakra cloak from her body gave her the physical power needed to overpower the Bodhisattva and lift its heavy arm. Nanaba was not content with just lifting it up, the girl's hands wrapped around the edges of the humongous palm and twisted it sideways, throwing the entire puppet aside and crashing at the audience. Only the protective barriers prevented a massive calamity with thousands of casualties and the destruction of half the arena but the shocked audience got to see Bodhisattva's faceless heads from up too close for comfort.
In just five minutes, the girl who wanted to stop being invisible, the young soul who just wanted to be noticed and in the center of attention so that she could be seen captured the hearts and admiration of Konohagakure and its honored guests.