Standing in front of the only spiraling orb of pure chakra, emanating the same dark shroud that covered the entire building, Mana recalled Musha's words when the team of jounin decided to take Mana with them.
If Kiyomi truly had some hand in causing this, Mana and her past relationship with the Yamanaka may have been crucial in ceasing this. Maybe Kiyomi was corrupted by whatever remnants of the darkness that caused these disappearances still lingered in Ikiro's mind, maybe Ikiro took over Kiyomi's mind after the Yamanaka opened a link between their minds or maybe it was some combination of the two.
Whether there was a hint of a malicious plot at hand, or if it was just a mournful calamity that befell the village upon the sections of a dark and tortured mind getting unlocked, Mana could have been the only way to stop this.
"Meiko…" Mana's lips whimpered. Sure, Kiyomi liked Meiko in a much different way than the friendship between the magician and the Yamanaka heiress worked but the blacksmith was far away and unavailable at the moment. It would have been selfish to try and shift the responsibility for stopping all of this on someone else's shoulders just because technically they would be better suited for the job, even though waiting for them would cause Kiyomi and Ikiro much more pain.
Yes, Kiyomi needs to know that this Mana reaching out to her. The magician pressed her hand against the barrier without any force or an attempt to break it and enter. She just concentrated the flow of chakra to her palm, like she would have if she tried to set off a seal she had placed. Sure, the magician had nothing to do with this barrier and only a little to do with this entire event but that was beside the point.
What was important was that if Kiyomi had any hints of control over this and her own mind, like a spider on an extensive web spreading out wide, she'd have felt the dragging on the strings somewhere and turned her attention. That was the theory, anyway…
Mana just stood by the barrier channeling chakra into it in small quantities for a short while to no end. The spiraling orb of malice did not become less dense, it did not just cease its destruction and the fleshy and nightmarish corruption covering the entire Academy building did not just magically go back to its source and free the sanctuary of education it had tainted.
Nobody answered.
"Let me in, Kiyomi!" Mana called out with a plead. "Just let me in and give me a sign if I can help. At least let me know if you can hear me. Just that… Just tell me I'm not standing here preaching to myself."
Nothing. For people that were exceedingly fast, those jounin took a frightening while to get their minds together. Then again, even if Dorimi did manage to subdue and calm his colleagues down, what possible success could they hail approaching even closer to the heart of their dread? With each step, with each point of space one's glare extended to the direction of the evil's heart, the abyss looked back with more petrifying nightmares to swing back with.
"Missy, why did you not save us?!" The melted abominations that resembled their innocent childish selves less and less with each passing moment began their relentless assault on Mana's psyche again.
Their hands reached out from the fleshy walls and their skeletal and sharp images began forming from the bony protrusions. The constructs, resembling the digestive tract or organs that pulsed with unknown liquid flowing inside them, full of unholy stenches, which luckily Mana could not pick up, burst. In that way revealing some more unfortunate bodies flowing outside them with the pus they were drowning in running down the floor.
Mana screamed out as the feelings boiling inside her combined with the hideous sights and sounds these images sent her way began slowly taking over her own mind. It was so easy to think that nobody could ever corrupt you. Be as naïve as those children sitting safely in their classrooms and thinking no scary sight ever could bring fear into one's heart.
The magician threw elbow strikes back to shake off the corpses of the faceless kids she thought to have failed off of her. Her attacks became less focused on not letting their nails dig into her eyes or their rotten mouths reaching right up her ears to have their blood freezing screams echo more effectively in the magician's head. These were selfish and greedy strikes, their core motivator was just the self-centered desire to stop all those nightmares. To snuff all these abominations out and get just a moment of silence.
No more begging, no more accusations! Please, no more. Then, in just a single point in time, it all just stopped and Mana found herself staring at her own shaking hands from the undignified position, kneeling and almost succumbed to the horrors around her, sent straight from the heart of hell with love.
"Three goddamn jounin and a chuunin can't handle this?" Kusagoro spat aside in disdain. The man must have just recently come back from a mission from somewhere far abroad or just a stealth mission for he wore the black coat over his flak jacket that was used for stealth or warmth-providing purposes.
"This is… Be careful…" Mana huffed, she felt a pulsing sensation in her temples and upon touching her own face she saw blood all over her hands. It felt and looked pretty real, she must have started clawing her own face off at some point.
"You're telling me this? If it was not for me dispelling the illusion for you, my boy would've never allowed himself to get distracted by you ever again." The jounin growled before walking up to the orb of malice that the events inside were producing and spinning like a cocoon of the world's creepiest crawly.
"This shit's expanding. It's reaching out above the fastest but soon it might infect the other buildings too…" Kusagoro let Mana in on what's been going on outside. Just for how long has she been really fighting off these nightmares?
"You're really amazing to be able to resist these visions, Kusagoro-san." Mana commended the man who just gave the orb of malice that kept everyone out a good and honest punch. His chakra control was a whole different matter entirely. He was perfectly capable of restraining his most honest attempt at using his serious strength to a punch that barely even shook the ground beneath his feet.
"I guess it will take a bit more than a good beatin'." The man lamented with a self-reflection. "It's pretty easy to do something like this when you can expel a whole lot of chakra through your skin and reset your flow. It's not something my boy would be able to pull off just yet but the real Jugo aren't to be underestimated."
"I think it is getting easier to fight the nightmares off now," Mana noted. Using her sensory she felt a greatly reduced pressure in the air around her as well as the greatly empowered ability to keep the nightmares off from manifesting whenever they peeked at her from a dark corner.
"You're goddamn right, that's cause whatever bastard's causin' this is scared shitless now that I'm here to kick their ass!" Kusagoro growled through his teeth, trying to throw a couple more blows at the barrier before Mana noticed that the heart of malice really was expanding. It had grown a good cubical meter wider since she had come here. Whatever this event was, it threatened to cover the entire village and there was no reason to think it would just stop there…
"No, I think it is because there are more minds here to resist it. It appears to be fighting all of us at once, trying to corrupt all of us by itself. That means it has a solitary mind." Mana pointed out.
"You mean we should have those scaredy-cat chuunin from outside doing evacuation and damage control rushing in?" Kouta's father growled back at her.
"No, they would be corrupted almost instantly. I thought that my perfect balance of experience, concentration and innocence was enough to fight the illusions off but… I was wrong. It barely took the event a minute to corrupt two skilled jounin. Panicking and rampaging chuunin all over the village are the least of what we need right now." Mana sighed.
"So how the hell do we get in!?"
"Musha-san thought that my past friendship with Kiyomi, one of the two people inside that room would help pass through the barrier of the heart. It did not appear to have any effect, applying chakra to the barrier did nothing and talking to it just made it… Angry." Mana scratched her chin. It was difficult to think with all the nightmares continuously testing her mental fortitude and their ability to break through Mana's mental defenses and manifest again.
Kusagoro pointed his palm at the round barrier as it shifted into a cannon shape. "Have you tried a good blastin'?" He asked before the chakra concentrated in his cannon fired off, making Mana jump back and cover up so that the blast wave and the kickback did not actually injure her.
"Shit…" the man cursed when the smoke cleared out only to reveal the barrier and its malicious chakra still rotating around like it was before with the fleshy bits he had blasted off regenerating at an alarming rate and beginning to cover up the barrier.
"It's a defensive reaction, you pissed it off." Mana noticed.
"Could you women get off my back and stop blaming me for everything!?" Kusagoro snapped back at her.
"Could you stop blasting and punching everything then?" Mana objected.
"I have one job and one thing I'm good at. That's the thing I'm gonna do, that's the thing I'm paid to do. You're paid to think and do your silly tricks and shit, you're the one doing a lousy job at solving this problem, making me resort to my thing." Kusagoro turned his attention and his ire at Mana, changing it away from the barrier.
Was he serious!? Mana was the VIP in this event, she was supposed to interact with the barrier if the team of jounin supposed to protect her… What was she doing? Why was she getting this angry and being this counterproductive? Unless... The corruption was beginning to grow stronger again as its size increased. Soon Kusagoro's presence will no longer be a soothing factor and the nightmares will become to pick up again. Whatever time limit this had, it just got tighter.
A sound and sense of air blowing by alerted the two ninja of the arriving party. Finally, Dorimi managed to catch up to and calm the freaked out colleagues of his. Something that was much easier to do once Kusagoro joined the fray. The women also looked to be in a mostly uninjured state, neither Dorimi nor they themselves have inflicted too much damage on themselves. They did appear a tad bit winded though.
"About time this wussy got a handle on a bunch of women…" Kusagoro mocked his colleague, giving Dorimi a derisive scowl.
"Aww, why do you have to be so mean to me all the time, Kusagoro?" Dorimi sighed with regret in his voice. While the man's presence in the building helped him deal with the illusions and subdue the other jounin, something told Mana that Dorimi would rather have dealt with the situation without his ex-ANBU colleague.
"Kusagoro?" Kouta's father raised an eyebrow, turning halfway at the smaller and more frailer colleague of his.
"Kusagoro-san." Dorimi quickly fixed himself.
"I'll never get why you let him bully you around…" Shibari smacked her forehead looking embarrassed by her friend's behavior.
"It's okay, Kusagoro-san deserves our respect. He has been a high-ranking Black Ops member, after all." Dorimi tried to play it off.
"Yeah, I wonder whatever happened to that?" Shibari sassed the bullying jounin by raising an eyebrow and leaning his way. It was the sass that got completely ignored by Kusagoro as he stone-walled the lean on him by just standing still and not flinching whatsoever.
"Guys, please calm down. I think that the chakra that's coming off from this heart is corrupting our minds on a more subtle level as well as causing these illusions. Kusagoro-san also informed us that it is expanding. That means that it will get stronger and eventually his presence here will not be as useful as it is right now." Mana relayed the information she had put together. It looked to have gotten the jounin in line.
"I am impressed, Mana. You have managed to fend off these illusions rather well for someone your rank. You also have been gathering useful intel as well while we were compromised. You will make a fine jounin one day…" Musha praised the magician's performance.
"As grateful as I am, I could not have overcome these illusions without Kusagoro-san. Him splitting the corruption's influence into more pieces assisted me greatly." Mana shook her head.
"Ugh, don't encourage him…" Shibari shook hers but in a much less dignified way.
"Yeah, that's right. After saving all of you losers, I tried gave this wall here a fine beating!" Kusagoro pointed his thumb at himself with a boastful grin.
"Any success?" Musha looked at him.
"None…" the man's boastful balloon of a chest turned saggy and quickly deflated.
"Awww, you don't say…" Shibari cheeked the man again.
"Shut up, you witch! Didn't you hear that we're on a time limit here? If you have nothing useful to add, better keep your trap shut!" Kusagoro raised his fist up and stepped up to tower in front of the woman.
This was not good. It appeared that the natural differences between these four were only being made worse by the corrupting essence of the evil chakra projected from the heart of malice.
"I have an idea. I can't believe I only thought of it right now!" Mana raised her index finger as her serious grimace turned bright. "Kusagoro-san, could you make some clones of yourself and split yourself into more minds for the malice to fight?"
"Easy!" Kusagoro backed down from his stare-down with Shibari and placed his hands into hand seal position.
"Please have in mind, Kusagoro-san, you need to make corporeal clones and to make a number large enough to greatly weaken the spreading corruption in its current state." Mana tried helping the man but he just disrupted his concentration to brush her off with the back of his hand.
"Get off my back…" he quietly grumbled. "I know what I'm doing…"
"That'd be a first…" Shibari crossed her hands over her chest.
"What was that!?" Kusagoro lost his cool again. It was becoming painfully evident that whatever strain his presence used to place on the corruption shortly before was currently greatly reduced. Soon the nightmares would resurface and reduce their ranks again. With how powerful the corruption was getting with each passing moment, there was no telling how powerful these new nightmares would become.
"Please, Kusagoro-san, focus." Mana pleaded.
"Maybe we should all make clones? I can create Earth Style corporeal clones too, Shibari can make Water Style clones and Musha can definitely use Shadow Clones." Dorimi wondered.
"No, remember that splitting your chakra resources and your consciousness will weaken you. By now we've been here long enough to have a significant strain on our wills, plus, Kusagoro-san is the most powerful of us." Mana tried shutting the initiative of her superior down. Seeing how this was her idea, to begin with, also how unwilling Dorimi was to argue, the jounin backed down.
"Heard that?" Kusagoro grinned before having copies of him split-off from his body. This looked to be more of a Jugo clan technique that shaped his body that the Shadow Clones Jutsu that Mana asked him to use but it did split him into three more copies.
"I'm sure Mana was just too polite to tell you that you are also the least useful to us if you are to be taken out…" Musha added. "Your absolute strength focused fighting style does not aid us in any way in this predicament. I have a feeling that the mind will be our battlefield and that the battle shall be resolved not with fists but through inner strength."
Feeling a greatly alleviated pressure sieging the depths of her mind, Mana stepped up to the wall of the heart and pressed her hand against it again. She closed her eyes and concentrated hard enough to channel a greater amount of chakra than she did before while reaching out for Kiyomi's mental links that may have been out there with her mind.
With a ghastly shriek, followed by an almost liberating shattering, the spiraling orb of chakra seeping with pure darkness and corruption toppled down. Having found a brief moment to enter the doomed classroom, Mana, and the jounin quickly charged in.
The grisly sight they found inside was just about what any of them expected to find having entered the place. It was a den of all the corruption that spread from it to the outside and by now turned the Ninja Academy into a sky-reaching tower of innards, eyes, bones, and teeth, tentacles and other organic oddities while shooting out the drab and pernicious essence of it at the intensity of a quasar.
Kiyomi stood atop of the kneeling Ikiro, similarly to how Mana last saw her. That being said, that was where the similarities ended. Ikiro's body was beginning to break-down as he appeared to have been covered by some odd cells all over. It was as if some sick artist had broken down the man's body to its most elementary and fundamental pieces and depicting him of what he was made of on a molecular level.
The Yamanaka heiress, on the other hand, was standing tall and covered in dark, rising and emanating chakra that was cloaking her entire body. The aura cloaking her was so intense that her silhouette appeared to be nothing more but a bunch of dark shades of colors cutting into the eye of the beholder with the sharpness of its glow. Only the Yamanaka's eyes were completely white and glowing like two white holes – the only feature that still remained of the girl's face. Her hair floated in the air like tendrils of a cosmic deity that was looking to gorge on anything they touched.
With a mere sight of the dark entity Kiyomi had become, Mana froze in place, the loud and painful grunts from behind and beside her suggested that so did the jounin with her. The weight of Kiyomi's glare became too heavy. Mana could feel her consciousness closing down, she was slipping, falling into a black void filled with white beacons of light that were lightyears away and looked like but stars in the distance.
This felt just like the time she once nearly died.