Even though their parting could have been much more severe, had Jagaimo taken his game much less seriously, less as an extension of his own life, a revelation of one's own inner morality system, and more like a means to an end kind of thing, Mana still had little peaceful sleep the night before the big meeting. It was not the closeness to being forced to betray the system she wanted and was tasked by the village to protect, it was more that the magician was worried about just how many others would Jagaimo trick successfully after leaving her room.
With his skill at Weiner, shown by him easily capturing seven souls under his belt before even coming to Mana's chamber early in the evening, it would have been a simple deal to capture at least one more in Mana's stead. That was perhaps why Jagaimo was so quick to void the game he did not like or approve of. It was one thing to void a game which one could still repeat seven more times against seven more opponents, it was another when one's own life hung on the balance.
Something told Mana that Jagaimo's life very much hung on the balance with this matter. He was not working with Kirigakure on this, that much the magician had pretty much figured out. The exact nature of the forces that the young man was being pushed into this by still eluded the magician's grasp and because of that it also intrigued her to no end. She was almost tempted to gamble her consciousness, mission objective and the very content of her soul for that forbidden knowledge. It breathed enough passion into the magician to keep her staring at the ceiling for hours on the night before one of the more important days of her life.
A handful of minutes before midday, the magician descended downstairs and stood by the small crowd of ninja waiting for the meeting to begin. It was an easy matter to find Jagaimo, having in mind that the magician had showered in his signature yesterday with multiple smaller copies of it surrounding her and forcing the young woman to center the entirety of her attention on the quartet. A curious straying glance even captured a familiar look of a dark-skinned individual in a militaristic, juniper colored vest and bright, spiky cut hair and a pair of shades with red numbers running all over it. Must have been one of those cutting-edge scanning devices from Iwagakure…
With how violent the two villages have been with each other, it only made sense for each other's technology to bleed over into the hands of their competitors, although, perhaps, it was a bit less the case in Kumogakure's case as it was the country with the strongest military and therefore the place was almost shoved into the frame of the aggressor and the forward pushing factor of the little scuffle for resources and economic supremacy.
The magician did her best to locate the Iwagakure representative as well, it may have been useful to survey the attitude of that person and accurately decide if they were going to be a problem or not. Mana was looking for any signs of unhealthy obsession with the real Tokui or stares that attempted the good old "looks can kill" method of disposing of someone.
The Voice of Iwagakure was a short girl of brown hair and a red jumpsuit. She was slightly hunched over, her posture left plenty to be desired but the magician may have noticed the source of it. Large bags laid tied around her forearms and her calves, ones with fancy colors and visual enhancements that made the boring, cherry-colored jumpsuit slightly stand out.
It did not take a genius to decipher that the bags were filled with something profoundly heavy, it appeared that rays of light itself bent around the hanging bags as they looked as if they either emitted great amounts of heat or were heavy enough to cause mirages by bending the light passing around them. Several of the ninja standing around the petite girl noticed that detail as well and occasionally turned their sights toward the weighty bags of the Iwagakure representative.
"Sleep well?" Jagaimo smirked at Mana. Noticing the magician and speaking up to her before the magician could, what with all the distractions present in the room.
"Not exactly, how many more Voices did you gamble into speaking for your anarchistic objective yesterday after leaving my room?" Mana went straight to the point.
"Actually, just one. I needed to fulfill my mission, after all. The crooked-vampire bastard is not a guy to take lightly. Even if I could spare someone of your moral standing the torment of being forced into a testimony like that, I couldn't really afford to piss that scary guy off." Jagaimo continued to wear his polite and a little smug grin, giving the passing kunoichi with a white kimono and grape-colored hair an arrogant, finger-pointing gesture, as if reminding her of the deal.
"The snow-woman from Shimogakure?" Mana wondered, uttering it to herself after noticing the violet ribbon carrying the Shimogakure forehead protector on the woman's head. There was nothing submissive about this ninja, she closed her eyes in acknowledgment of her yesterday's defeat but then, when she opened them back up, there was a flare of sorts behind them. Something very shady… Something that Mana, if she was in Jagaimo's boots would have gotten very scared of.
"Vampire-bastard?" Mana wondered out loud. "This man would not by any chance happen to be Guru Ayushi? It is a certain someone I am looking for…"
A curious pair of eyes turned back at Mana after the mention of the name. The magician regretted almost immediately uttering the name of a missing authority figure of the ninja world. One that went missing right after leaving Konoha inviting plenty of dirty rumors that the highly esteemed political figure may have been assassinated by Konoha but no village had the balls, the army and the solid evidence to bring it up in any serious conversation, given how the village with the second largest military potential in the world as well as the second largest population was involved.
It used to be the first largest in population until very recently…
With a squeaky moan, the doors creaked open, slowly and stuttering every inch of the way as every unruly splinter in their wooden frame chipped and locked against the elegant floor tiles, scratching them a little bit and providing more dull lines on the area right around the massive door.
"No… I won't tell you about that man anything else than what I've already blabbered, but it is certainly not the man you're looking for so you can go obsess over something else now. Your obsession nearly cost you your honor yesterday." Jagaimo warned Mana. The only reason why he'd clear it up like that was that he must have liked the magician to an extent, at least enough to advise her to not make the same mistakes he had made. It was undoubtedly obsession with something that led him to this "crooked vampire-bastard" and got him into the Faustian bargain he could not refuse to begin with.
"Now it almost makes me even more curious." Mana smiled. "The man I am after, as I have thought before yesterday, was the most tangible and dangerous threat to the shinobi system and the entire world order as a whole. Now I've been very clearly shown that there are more people or organizations working with similar nefarious goals in mind… It almost makes me want to drop everything and go after them."
"Unless you see it in your mission objective, it would be stupid to bother yourself with these sort of things." Jagaimo turned back at Mana before slowly picking up the pace of walking forward, along with the cattle of ninja who were lead into the testifying room.
"You know, you're kind of an idiot…" Mana uttered.
Jagaimo turned at the magician with a shocked pair of eyes that could not believe the suddenness and the boldness of the magician's verbal offensive.
"You do know that in a tribunal session all testifying parties are removed from the hall, right? Unless you have placed seals compelling your losers to tell what you want them to tell, you will have no way of knowing what they told the Council. The world-crippling plot of this "crooked vampire-bastard" may just collapse into little crumbs by a little bit of some good old lying." Mana explained herself. "And you do not strike me as a sealing master powerful enough to conjure up those kinds of seals. Plus, seals of that nature, I'd be able to sense being in place."
"Heh, they won't lie. They've been brainwashed their entire lives to operate with their own sick sense of honor. You've got your own code, you can't stand being a rip-off, I can't stand my favorite card game being made a mockery of, amongst plenty other things… They won't lie, that I am willing to gamble on." Jagaimo rubbed his messy hair, leaving them even more of a chaotic pile of grease than they initially were. "Which outcome are you rooting for, Konoha's Sorceress?"
The face of the street rat was almost teasing to a point when he asked that. As if he tried to confirm that Mana carried some degree of fondness within her own heart for the lovable Kirigakure gambler.
"I must admit I am a bit torn. I do not wish for you to get murdered but I am under strict orders to preserve the ninja system as well." Mana admitted.
"Oh? Konoha's that rotten, huh? You know, a lot of countries did not give their Voices those kinds of orders, all they said was "fulfill the duty of the Voice", or something like that… Nice to know Konoha's willing to force you to go the extra mile, huh?" Jagaimo laughed it off.
Before Mana could reply, a handful of sophisticated-looking geezers entered the room, had it not been for the Lightning Lord, a tall and rather chubby, dark-skinned old-timer, the bunch would have looked almost like the most uniform handful of little old men in existence, all wearing almost identical ceremonial robes with different colors. Some of the Feudal Lords had their future successors behind them, whereas the geezers were quick to settle down in their roof-reaching wooden chairs with cushions to soften the rest of their royal buttocks, the future successors just stood behind their mentors calmly with stoic faces.
"May the secretary of the proceedings announce who is present?" the Fire Lord addressed an old lady with a grey, long-sleeved, high-collared dress shirt. The addressed granny fixed her pair of tight hair buns and her massive glasses before glaring at the audience of various political and military figures and the Voices. In a flash the piece of paper that she had positioned in front of her set ablaze, the woman, quick as one of the ninja, waved the paper in front of her and put the fire out with a coordinated and skilled set of precise movements before handing the Feudal Lords a piece of paper.
"These are the gathered witnesses and secondary voices. The Voices of Amegakure, Hoshigakure, Iwagakure, Kirigakure, Konohagakure, Kusagakure, Shimogakure, Sunagakure, Takigakure, Tanigakure, Yugakure, Yukigakure, Uzushiogakure are present. The villages of Take no Mura, Chori, Hacho, Rokoko, Inaho, Jomae, Ishigakure, Kagero, Kisaragi, Nadeshiko, Shangri-la, Sugi, Takumi, Tonika, Yumigakure have failed or refused to send their Voices. I also cannot help but notice that the representative of Ishigakure, who has been sighted and reported as arrived at the location yesterday is missing." The secretary noted.
"Did you see her writing all those officials down? All I saw was a flash of light when the paper lit aflame." Jagaimo leaned in on Mana's side, looking seriously impressed with the woman's skill of perception and handwriting speed. There was ample cause for that, the old lady must have recorded well over a hundred of military officials faster than a solitary moment, even with all of her perception and sensory training, Mana could only see blurs of her hand movements. She was not even a skilled ninja, her chakra signature was completely laughable and yet… At this one, very specific skill, she excelled remarkably.
Even when mere words were being written down on a piece of paper the world gave lessons for Mana to absorb for the future. Lessons of weaklings that may have trained their entire lives to do one specific thing and that could have surprised even a ninja with a lifetime of training with their spectacular skill at doing said thing.
The servant girl from yesterday ran out from the crowd of military officials, samurai, and politicians and bowed almost driving her face into the ground out of respect before the Tribunal of the Council.
"Esteemed Tribunal, I must inform you that the representatives of Ishigakure have indeed arrived yesterday, however, this morning they have been attacked by wild animals and found severely injured with grievous mauling wounds." The servant reported.
Jagaimo's face paled out on the spot. Quivering, the boy turned back at where he knew the snow-woman from Shimogakure to stand and gave the woman one fearful glare. The heart-stopping outrage of the Feudal Lords and their successors, the great quarreling between the politicians and the outcry from the samurai had faded away once the young man realized that one of his trump cards was now hospitalized and that the entire thing was now a gamble again. He needed the majority to topple the ninja system, now he may have no longer had it, his life was being drained away but not by the man he feared, it was fading away because of the fear itself.
"Wild animals!?" Isuki, the captain of squad fourteen of the Divine Retribution Squad of samurai, stepped out into the front. "This is bullshit! If the Esteemed Tribunal will forgive my rude, warrior's tongue. We have had troubles caused by this woman, the Voice of Shimogakure and her demonic hounds. It is obvious that she is behind it all. The Voice of Konohagakure can testify to that. This calls for immediate Divine Retribution. Evil must be Slain Now."
"We cannot act on just these claims alone. Let the men of the Iron Shogun arrest the Voice of Shimogakure and may she be banned from speaking at the Tribunal but we cannot just execute her based on this speculation. She will have a Tribunal of her own. If proven guilty, her actions will reflect negatively upon Shimogakure as well…" the Fire Lord delivered swift and rather level-headed judgment. Mana was almost impressed but not nearly as much by the Fire Lord as she was admiring the ninja-like actions of the Shimogakure woman. "The guilt is therefore relayed back to you and your squad, Captain. The only reason you are here in the first place is to prevent something such as this from happening - squabbles between the Voices or attempts at our lives by an outside threat."
She acted like a true ninja would have, she identified the threat to the ninja system, even after falling victim to it herself, she disabled it quietly and as subtly as someone being mauled by demon dogs can be considered subtle. She now removed two of the tainted Voices from the collection, effectively rendering Jagaimo's entire role in this Tribunal completely null. Well… Maybe not completely, six voices speaking out lies against the ninja system were still considerable, even if the rest did not lie, they may still have given disadvantageous testimony regardless. All that the mysterious snow-woman who was being gently led out of the hall now did was remove the absolute certainty of the demise of the old ninja system. Now it was a fair game, somewhat.
"Tsk… Done in by my own stupid consciousness… Couldn't fucking stand it… Making fun of the game I love so much… Wanted to fuck around as little as possible, disgrace my own code as little as possible and here are the results…" Jagaimo almost broke into a pathetic fit of chuckling as he wrapped his hands around his hair and sat down to curl into an upright fetal pose. The other ninja around him completely ignored it, assumedly, even those that were affected by the bargain made with the street rat. "Killed for not being rotten and cold enough… What a joke…"
Mana placed her hand softly onto the young man's shoulder. "I think it's a fine thing that you did, you loved the game you played and you could not see it being disgraced by someone else's chaotic ambitions. That's remarkable, I think. It shows that you're human and not a cold, blunt tool that people perceive ninja to be."
Jagaimo picked himself up and off the ground. He straightened out and fixed his rags somewhat. "I couldn't hear half of that over all the whispering and all the yelling of those self-important pricks but… I assume those were words of encouragement so… Thanks."
"Well then, before we can settle the matter of discussing the competence of the samurai to protect the integrity of this Tribunal," the Fire Lord, who appeared to be in the position of the head of this Council and the leading foot of the entire procession spoke up with an elderly voice of authority. "Do any of the Voices have any requests they wish to bring up before the Council before we begin the Tribunal? They can do that now, or, during the Tribunal, before the testimony and the questioning parts are over, unless those requests should have been brought up now.
The bunch of Voices looked silent. Plenty of them looked relieved that the apocalyptic nightmares of the entire ninja system crumbling down because of a role they themselves played will not come to pass due to the actions of one, bold woman. Someone who could have never been defined as just "average", she was a hero of significant note and yet very few will realize what it was that the snow-woman of Shimogakure did. The ninja gathered were just shown a living example of the values they gathered to protect, in their faces, Mana saw the newly inspired hope to live up to the ideals of what ninja stood for. Humans, specialists with specific sets of skills and ideals and by no means cold, mindless tools.
They were no longer Voices of Kirigakure, Konoha, Iwagakure or Kumogakure, any of the other villages, as of now, as of the inspiration provided to them, they were all now just ninja, standing against a common threat of elimination by bureaucracy and determined to do everything in their power to prevent that outcome. It was almost admirable, to a point, to witness.