This entire horror show was reaching new depths with each passing second. To someone who tried operating with a sharp and rational mind, like Mana, every moment provided new challenges and stacked new barriers on top of that noble venture.
The company of jounin Mana came with were nowhere to be seen, whatever Kiyomi had become after this long of dwelling in the very center of this otherworldly corruption was staring right at her in all of her panic-inducing abstract glory and the magician could not stop questioning her mind about every choice and thought flashing through it. Which ones were rational and which ones were influenced by the malice around her seeping inside her every cell and soaking them from within.
"Kiyomi, we need to leave. A bunch of kids had died because of what happened and you staying inside Ikiro-san's mind is…"
Before Mana could finish the realization hit her that the entity she was speaking to was no longer in front of her. Lead through mere instinct alone, Mana rolled forward as her body was electrified by the fear that, instead of locking her down in absolute panic, fueled her movements.
Why did Kiyomi attack her? Mana glared at the levitating unearthly entity of chakra that used to be her friend and the abyssal whites that illuminated the darkness' face stared right back at Mana. Within instants, the being moved up right behind Mana. Had the magician not foreseen this attack, she would have been hit.
These movements… It did not appear like whatever Kiyomi had become was moving through whatever distant, cosmic field that they have moved to. She was phasing in and out, almost like moving instantaneously. Despite her movements from one location to another happening in a literal instant, the time before she reappeared and delivered a hit had some sort of a delay. That brief span, however small, was the only hope Mana had to survive if the intentions of this entity were violent.
"Why did you attack me? I'm your friend, don't you remember?" Mana tried pleading with Kiyomi again. The girl was smarter than to try and measure the exact signature of chakra of this entity. It would have been helpful in determining where exactly she warped, sure, but it carried a disadvantageous promise of being too much for any inexperienced sensor to handle.
The feminine cosmic shape extended her hand forward, the long tendrils on her head that resembled human hair in shape only began flowing backward, as if affected by an intense pushing force from the direction of Kiyomi's hand. Mana moved again, not because she saw what she was being attacked by but because she saw the signs around the attack itself – the bending space, the effects it had on the almost ethereal and made of chakra itself cloak of Kiyomi's.
"Stop attacking me, I'm trying to help you!" Mana yelled out. She decided to keep her mouth shut instead of speaking anything more than that. Her voice must have betrayed it that the magician was working really hard to avoid what seemed to summon almost no effort from Kiyomi's malicious new form.
Kiyomi cocked her fist back and drove it down. Her body kneeled like she was trying to punch an invisible ground with her fist. It was only at that moment that Mana noticed that she was not quite floating anymore. There was some invisible force holding her, like a transparent platform that kept her from sinking into the infinite void in all directions.
An invisible pressure wave lifted Mana up in the air and tore her body to shreds through sheer pressure of it alone. Instead of the rain of blood and flesh that the girl's body was torn into, a rain of flower petals scattered on the invisible platform before beginning to spiral in a shape of a pillar and reforming Mana's body again.
Mana had no choice. Not only did she have to fight back if she was to avoid death, or whatever the fate of whoever died wherever the two were was, but she also had to open her sensory up and just hope that she could control it properly. Kiyomi was attacking her with pure, invisible and perfectly controlled chakra. One required chakra sensory or some manner of chakra tracking technique to be able to perceive it and they were too powerful, too widespread and too fast for Mana to attempt and avoid without it.
The magician closed her eyes, opening her reach out and spreading her own chakra out in a manner that would touch any extending chakra signatures on the outside. It felt like walking up to the chopping block, Mana knew she was taking an almost guaranteed to kill her risk but she had no other option but to take it.
Kiyomi's chakra was massive. There was no other way to describe it but… Strangely enough, while it was comparable to that of a powerful individual far outside Mana's own chakra signature size, it was nowhere close to where it would have caused Mana significant trouble to track.
"You're not really here, are you?" Mana realized. "You've split your consciousness amongst all of our minds and attacked all of us at the same time. This image of you here is just a representation of your will invading my mind. Whatever measly amount of your strength that you spared to try and wipe me out."
The overflowing burst of light, as bright as a blazing star in the blinding abyss of the cosmos, moved again. It moved in an instant but Mana noticed something else this time around. Not only was there a brief delay after her instantaneous movement and when her body mounted an attack, but also she left trails of her awesomely powerful chakra to the direction she jumped to.
Mana leaned her body to the side to avoid a high kick from this malicious side of Kiyomi's will without wasting time to turn around and face her opponent. She did not need for that kind of a waste but it would have also significantly slowed her down to do so. Most starting out martial artists in the ninja world believed that avoiding attacks without looking behind you was a sign of superiority over your opponent when in most cases it was merely a desperate measure to try and not die.
Kiyomi's body continued to blitz and warp around, throwing slow but packing considerable force kicks at her. Just somehow, Mana had enough memories in her mind of this entity's movements, also of Kiyomi's own movements in general, to know exactly how to deal with each continued attack. Something about this icon of malice was wrong, it was holding back on top of being just a split part of Kiyomi's darkest parts.
The moves that the entity used that were its own were alien to Kiyomi, whereas the ones it extracted from Kiyomi's memory were alien to it. Therefore, no matter how it chose to show off its considerable strength and cosmos-shaking chakra, it came just a snippet too slow.
Almost like something inside it forced the entity to hold back by restricting its access to the full control of Kiyomi's body. The entity was immensely powerful but it was using its own strength and moves in a body that was untrained to perform them and alien to it.
Dodging a push kick that would have undoubtedly shoved the entity's foot right through Mana's body, the magician managed to slip in a counter-offensive of her own by slinging a handful of cards that emitted a bright blue colored cloud. Like childish candy ground into dust and tossed in the air, the substance should have slowed down anyone who breathed it in.
This thing in charge of Kiyomi's body and mind was holding back, without its wish to do so, sure, but was Mana also not doing the same? She knew that no childish, low-ranking chemistry experiment that slowed down the speed at which neurons sent signals to the brain would have worked at this moment. It did not appear that Kiyomi was controlled by someone with a nervous system and a brain, even though, the girl herself had one.
Mana attempted to reach out with her sensory to the girl, try and feel about anything specific of the chakra that gave this new malicious form shape. It was in this moment of distraction that Kiyomi disappeared again and reappeared right behind Mana. Her suffering friend let out the most crippling and loud scream from her inside after raising her hands up and blasted out a pillar-shaped expulsion of chakra from her body. One that pierced the endless vastness on both the heaven side and the lower one.
With the most fearful dash for her life, Mana just narrowly avoided the expanding pillar blast of chakra with the range of it coming dangerously close to the magician and singing some of her long hair that struggled to keep up with the girl's movement. Just before the chakra dissipated, Mana was almost sure that the attack would reach her and incinerate her completely.
As the necessity to fight back to save her mind from being emptied and Mana being left as a hollow husk grew direr, the magician began putting a plan of action together. She could not just sling techniques at this corrupted Kiyomi. Every time she stood still or concentrated on something else but reading exactly what her opponent was doing she risked certain death.
Then again, the only thing so far that proved useful in fighting this corruption was to weaken it with simultaneous relentless attacks and then apply chakra from someone intimately familiar with the source of corruption. That meant that… Kiyomi really did have some hand, willful or otherwise, to play with this crisis.
As the corrupted Kiyomi continued her restrained and jerky instantaneous warping combination attack again, Mana concentrated on fighting back once more. By now these movements of her friend were so drenched in the girl's memory that Mana could fight back on pure instinct while her mind was occupied elsewhere. For example - fighting back the chilly sensations of fear emanating from the darkness of Kiyomi's chakra.
Given how Mana's sensory was in full action now, there was no avoiding dealing with the grotesque and repugnant feeling of being subjected and surrounded by chakra that represented darkness itself. This went beyond just sensing the presence of a hardened emotional murderer. This malice was much different, more primal and while Mana was so far capable of fighting its influence off, it was just another front of the battle she had to fight in. Time was certainly not on her side.
The projectiles and manifestations of Kiyomi's chakra became sensible with Mana's sensory working as it was supposed to and no longer restrained. It manifested in masses of dark purple energy, surrounded by the crackling lightning of buff brown. Seeing what was flung her way assisted greatly in not letting her body get torn to shreds by the massive forces inside one of those attacks or spending more chakra trying to escape them with an illusion again.
Mana had to stop just mindlessly moving around and trying to avoid Kiyomi forever. This was going nowhere and if her hunch about defeating the corrupted version of her friend was right, the other jounin had no chance of breaking out by themselves. They could have weakened the split manifestations of corrupted Kiyomi's will but they would not have been able to put her down and kick her out of their mind for good.
The magician swung her hand, letting the Audra alloy wand slip out from her sleeve while she transferred a great deal of Lightning Release chakra through it. She swung the wand around, firing spheres of concentrated lightning chakra at her corrupted friend, beginning to work on weakening Kiyomi's influence on her mind so that one good push could finally get rid of Kiyomi's mental assault.
Then… The fear of thinking of what she could possibly do next was too great for Mana to occupy her thoughts with that problem.
The form of corrupted Kiyomi jerked in acknowledgment of the impact of Mana's technique, it moved back but it did not display any other shows of pain or injury. It was as if it only reacted to the mere force of the magician's push back but it had no effect other than slightly pushing her back and inconveniencing her.
Kiyomi spread her hands out wide, the cold and heinous chakra ran down all around her body, streams of it intensified until she formed an entire aura around her body before the chakra created a ball larger than her body and pushed it at Mana with a powerful shockwave created by a mere shove of her palm.
Mana raised her hand up, channeling chakra through her Audra wand as she had no time to weave any hand seals given the speed of Kiyomi's projectile. A current of wind picked up under her feet propelling the magician aside and aided her in avoiding Kiyomi's absolutely obliterating attack. The ball swooped past where the magician was covering lightyears in mere seconds and detonating somewhere far away.
The reaction of its explosion covered the entire mental dimension that the two friends were occupying in a bright purple light that forced Mana to close her eyes and cover up. While pain emanating from the bright flash of light and the searing heat from the resulting explosion troubled the magician, what the magician was more worried about was what corrupted Kiyomi would do now.
An overwhelming force hit Mana covering her entire body. This was no punch or another of Kiyomi's corrupted chakra constructs, it was something much simpler and weaker, but covering much wider space. It was a smart tactic to attack her while the entire mental dimension was sunken in the remnant chakra from the explosion, it served as a flashbang for Mana's sensory seeing how it was tough to tell Kiyomi's actions when the entire dimension was sunken in pure chakra coming off from the all-covering explosion.
A much more direct, much more powerful blow sent Mana flying in the exact opposite direction than the one where the primary shockwave sent her spiraling toward. Kiyomi used her instantaneous movement to warp right where she sent Mana flying to just so she could deliver another attack.
Mana used her free hand to drive her palm into the invisible platform holding her suspended in air to repurpose the energy of her flight into a flip that would result in landing on her feet. Once she opened her eyes, the magician could not help but be distracted by the dramatic change in the surroundings – the entire dimension was now covered in pure white with the transparent platform that held both combatants suspended now letting off a darker grey hue.
"Those attacks… They completely changed the confines of my own psyche without my input. She destroyed everything inside my own mind with a single attack. I may be the only relic of what I am left… Just a little snip of willpower and concentration." Mana thought to herself while she looked around the infinite white, lamenting the mental universe inside her own mind that was just obliterated in its entirety.
The corrupted entity began jerking as if it was seizing. Its normally cold and gloomy with ire eyes were now gaping wide as if genuinely afraid of something. It did not take Mana too long to realize what it was afraid of and what troubled Kiyomi – the other jounin were pushing back much more efficiently than Mana was. They must have been putting a considerable strain on even the mighty and seemingly infinite darkness of Kiyomi's corruption.
Now was Mana's chance!
Gripping the Audra wand in her hand, Mana lunged forward, adamant about exploiting the chance that may never come again and save her mind from complete deletion. The corrupted entity extended its hand at Mana, firing off another small sphere of chakra her way but the magician, having seen it in action once before ducked for the ground and slid under it while keeping up most of her momentum.
Mana needed one touch. Lightning began channeling through her body, a preparation for the technique she would use. There may not have been a strong enough jutsu in Mana's arsenal to break corrupted Kiyomi's will, that meant that Mana just had to fire off the strongest she had and hope for the best.
The magician stopped in her tracks and dashed back, seeing the entity raise her hands in the air and summon the same explosive chakra blast that she used before. Bolts of the dark lightning split off from the towering pillar of pure chakra, aiming to prematurely destroy Mana's resistance and delete the last remnants of the girl that remained. Moving around the bolts or leaping over them, Mana moved around and into the dissipating chakra pillar's range.
She would not risk just launching her Magical Punishment Jutsu like this. Kiyomi taught her that much, as someone who fought with fight-ending, high-risk, high-reward techniques. Every time the Yamanaka aimed to use her hijutsu she set them up, trapped her opponent and completely removed the possibility of missing. That was why Magician's Touch was in order to temporarily overwhelm and flinch the enemy before the main effort.
The recovering entity tried using some of the borrowed Kiyomi's taijutsu moves against Mana as a last-ditch effort to stop the magician's mad rush. A vault over corrupted Kiyomi with a backhand slam from her wand to avoid the nerve-striking chop. The lightning chakra for Magician's Touch started surging in Mana's body, building up with each moment but she needed more time, a second felt like an eternity with so much at stake.
A lean under corrupted Kiyomi's high kick. A roll to the side to avoid her jumping kick after a warp away, trying to catch Mana in her ducking position. Mana wrapped her legs around the entity's chopping arm to swing back like a monkey from a branch. The moment her feet landed on the grey floor, Mana repurposed her momentum into another forward dash. The entity tried forcing its extended hand through Mana's gut but the magician saw it through. She had trained with Kiyomi too much in the Yamanaka resort not to recognize the gut-pinching nerve strike.
Using the extended hand as a vault, Mana twisted her lower boy into an improvised swinging kick to the entity's jaw before leaping atop its shoulders and rushing at its head with her palm strikes just to disorient the entity for as long as she'd be able to. Before corrupted Kiyomi could recover, Mana slipped down, using her feet to push off of the entity back and send it tumbling. At the final moment of touching the Yamanaka Mana set it off.
Magician's Touch required Mana to stay still, not to command any new movements but over time she had learned to overcome that limitation by setting the movement before setting off the technique and then stiffing up her body to use it, after which point natural laws of physics finished the sequence of events for her. After Mana completed her evasive roll she stood up to the sight of the entity frozen in its tracks and crackling with lightning that was transferred through its body and paralyzing it.
Before it could recover, Mana began channeling her finishing technique. The magician extended her hand forward, still clutching to her wand while the gathered up lightning flowed through her body and channeled through the wand into a fearsome beam that hit corrupted Kiyomi right in the chest.
"Lightning Style: Magical Punishment Jutsu!" the girl chanted out.
"This is what I've learned from you, Kiyomi. I will use this knowledge to stop you from hurting anyone else." Mana declared with a melancholic tone while the entity dissipated together with the white dimension of the magician's own mind. Her eyes opened only to face the nightmare she met after entering the classroom.
Dorimi was crouched over a body laying on the floor of a woman in a black dress. Her glasses were cracked and hanging awkwardly on her face, covering only one of her two whited out eyes. A small nosebleed had run down her nostril and that was as much as a sign of life that she showed.
Kusagoro was hyperventilating on his knees, veins had popped out on his forehead and his tensed up arms. Musha appeared to have recovered affected by Kiyomi's assault the least.
"It's about time you two broke out…" The woman said after turning to Mana and Kusagoro. Had the circumstances of their awakening been less grim, she would have been smiling and used a more teasing tone.
"Y-You… Saved my ass, kid." Kusagoro breathed out heavily. He must have woken up a moment later after Mana pushed Kiyomi's influence over them back enough for the corruption to back off entirely. "Could have ended up like Shibari there…" the man clenched his fists.
A brush with one's own mortality was never a pleasant experience.