The situation has turned the grimmest it's ever been in this scuffle and Ayushi was not even using what was essentially an antimatter element against her. The bodies that Ayushi had woken up were not just walking up unharmed. Whatever sick will he had imposed on them was leaving burns on them that formed open cracks, similar to the fissures that the man had created earlier. The signature mixture of the northern lights' shade glittered through the cracks in the flesh of the employed bodies.
It was not like Mana could have fought back even in the beginning. Ayushi was humoring her if anything, this entire time. Her chance to win this had passed with her refusal to kill the man she's been preparing mentally and physically to kill for over three years. These people were under Ayushi's control, but they experienced every moment of what was happening, to what extent it was impossible to tell, they were unconscious and their bodies were mere vessels to Ayushi's will. If they were lucky – everything would have felt hazy, like a bad dream.
The nightmare was all Mana's however. The magician could not stop telling herself that she could under no circumstances hurt any of these people. They were not affected by the Game of Souls, they were already brittle and slowly withering away as things were, a stronger hit could have had a similar effect to the direct hit of the Soul Release for all that the young kunoichi knew.
Mana began creeping back, one leg at a time, she kept ahead of the shuffling pile of bodies that had risen to make Ayushi's will come true. Every move felt like a tremendous feat of strength. Her own body barely listened to her and chose to rather shake and quiver. Flashes of what Mana had once seen in the labs of Ayushi's cult, mixed in with the various repulsive images she had witnessed today all kept distracting the magician from what happening here and now. Images of Ayushi standing over her with his fists brimming with Soul Release… The punches just kept landing and landing… That could not have kept going on… No more.
The controlled villagers surrounded Mana, more and more bodies began appearing from the shroud as the magician had underestimated the sheer number of the people she was fighting for. The people that would right now much rather see her dead. Not because of their own will but because Ayushi told them to keep beating and stomping her until she'd finally give in.
A sharp thud at the back of her knee sent Mana to one knee. She had forgotten that some if not most of these people were ninja. With Ayushi's chakra flowing through their suppressed and unconscious bodies they all felt the same – like beacons and extensions of Ayushi's own life essence. A firm grip pressed against Mana's neck from behind while the others hurried. A rough punch made everything go black. Ayushi standing on top of her again… Soul Release burning all over his body. The man's arms raised to smash Mana into the ground…
The magician opened her eyes, this may have been the only time in recorded human history that anyone had felt glad to have woken up surrounded by a corrupted mob doing their best job at trying to kill her. Clawing, tearing, punching, stomping… All of it felt like tickling feathers compared to Ayushi's ruthless brutality before. This fear… This pain would be the fate of anyone that resisted Ayushi and his new regime of forced world peace.
A nasty snap made Mana scream out, someone had grabbed her arm and started pulling it with an attempt to pull it apart. It had enough strength to dislocate it and very nearly remove it from the young woman's shoulder. The hits weren't what these people intended. They felt restrained. As if the hosts were struggling against what they were doing. Pulling punches and yet… If this would be Mana's fate for the upcoming eternity, did it matter? This would be all that there was to the remainder of her life if she was to keep fighting – she could not hurt these people, she did not want that and had sworn against it.
"Stop!" Ayushi demanded with an authoritative tone. The bodies all picked Mana up and lifted her over their heads. A breeze of air had quashed the repugnant stench of her own blood as well as the rotten, slowly singing flesh of the horror show Ayushi had employed to finish wrecking Mana's willpower. The magician screamed out in pain when the bodies hurled her closer to Ayushi.
"It hurts me to do this, you know it does. Then why? Why are you not giving up!?" Ayushi shouted out in Mana's face, grabbing her by the few adamant strands of her uniform that still remained intact, dirtied, burnt up and bloodied.
A coppery taste all too familiar as of late and a sensation of howling brought Mana back after a sense-robbing blow to her ribs. Holding her by her hair, Ayushi kneed Mana in the face and let her crumble down afterward. The corrupted bodies kept their watch, ready to step in and keep doing the deed if need be. Mana quivered laying down in a fetal position, she had no goals, nothing going through her shattered mind but one thing – keep surviving, somehow just keep pushing through. She'd rather face the upcoming eternity of torment clinging to a string of hair representing her fleeting next life than die and face that emptiness again, even if just for a fraction of a second before the Merchant brought her back.
"Just know that it will take some time after you lose for the totem to seal your soul. Whatever state you leave yourself in, caused solely out of your own persistence, you will linger in that state for a good handful of minutes while the last fragments of your soul leave your body." Ayushi grumbled. He was confused, unsure of what he should do. Multiple times the man had approached Mana and lifted his foot up, appearing determined to smash her head into a bloody stain but then he lowered his leg and withdrew every single time.
"I can fade away peacefully…" Mana closed her eyes, whimpering with a tone about as pathetic as her state. She did not need to see Ayushi's reaction to her words knowing that he'd be listening. "When I rushed to find you, I knew somewhere deep down that what I was feeling was wrong. Vengeance, brutality, all of those things alien to me I've clung to these last few years because I was afraid of myself in a way. After all, how could just being me be good when I was the one to make you like this. You've turned from the legendary Guru to just Ayushi after being subjected to my nindo."
"Hardly seems like a peaceful surrender." Ayushi sat down on his bottom, helping Mana sit up too just so the two could share their final moments eye to eye. At least in his madness, the man had retained the basic humanity to lead his opponent out into oblivion himself.
"That's not what pacified me. It's all of this…" Mana tried raising her battered arms to gesture at the nightmarish sights around them. Needless to say, had she had the strength needed to do that, maybe she'd have blocked some of the hits stomping the lights out of her before. "This is not something that my ideals have given birth to. There's nothing noble or good in your intentions, no matter what you tell yourself. Your nindo and mine are polar opposites so I have no qualms failing and fading away. I won't disappear knowing that my ideals are used to subjugate the world, I will fade into oblivion because a madman took my soul away."
"No!" Ayushi roared out, the man jumped to his feet and kicked Mana straight at the chin, sending her flying across the field and back into the arms of the corrupted villagers that crumbled under the force falling onto their collective heads.
"Mo-mmy!" a boisterous roar emanated throughout Juhiru, Honda's detached head summoning the strength to defy the laws of the reality he inhibited and speak despite only being a detached head without a chest cavity to help him control the air entering and leaving his remains.
Ayushi froze and looked at the detached head rolling around, brimming with the polar glow he had provided it. Likely the source behind Honda's sudden revitalization.
As the corrupted bodies crumbled all around Mana, the magician saw that the man that once was a respected and wise Guru realized the extent of his legacy. In the sight of a toddler taken from his parents in his name and experimented on. In the sight of a young woman, battered, bruised and murdered multiple times just so he could strip her body of her soul and use it the way he saw it more fit. Just as Mana had thought, Ayushi realized that there was no scenario where his actions would have led to anything positive.
In some cases, the ends may have justified the means but… There were some means that were too dark to even lead to worthy ends.
"Where's mo-mmmyyyy!?" Honda bellowed with the voice that thundered in volume but cried in tone.
"If you make Honda even more miserable by prolonging his torment, the Ninja World won't just submit to you. They will fight until the bitter end regardless and, in the end, you will be overseeing world peace alone from a mountain of corpses, accompanied by your ultimate weapon – the edge you've abandoned your humanity to step over. The Great Ninja Countries would rather lose and be reduced to charring fields than be under your, or anyone else's control, it goes beyond just the Will of Fire, it's the Will of Hope we all share as ninja." Mana spoke even though drawing breath alone made her chest burn.
Regardless of personal cost and pain, she needed to say what needed to be said. Those words may just have been her last and that had to mean something. In these final moments, Mana recalled the times when she stood in front of an insurmountable wall and just kept bashing her head against it, finally managing to make it stumble and feeling like she just needed to keep on swinging, no matter the personal cost. These final blows would not be delivered with her fists or her jutsu but rather her words. The way a true hero should have.
"I'm not a God, nor do I wish to do God's work…" Ayushi mumbled to himself the words that he once told Mana, the words that sealed the deal for his retirement back in the day. "I… I surrender…"
Ayushi's words spread to the field of lifeless, rustling limbs. The blinding light emanating from the Merchant of Souls made Mana close her eyes as in her current state she could no longer deal with intense factors like that. A dynamic burst of chakra blew Mana off the body pile she rested on. Burrowing through the madness, through the shapeless and lifeless limbs, Mana rose back on top of the body pile just to see the aftereffects of the unexpected resolution to this confrontation.
She could not feel Ayushi's chakra at all, perhaps only an insignificant speck lesser an immeasurable number of times than even the most basic and unimpressive flares of even a civilian's chakra. Only a whited out husk of Ayushi's body laid sprawled out on the ground. The body drained of all its youth, all of its strength and looking like dried out scarecrow was less than a fitting legacy for the final redeeming decision that Ayushi had made.
A majestic and divine rope of ethereal blue shot out from the totem's arm and pierced through Mana. The chakra and the essence of soul contained within expanded to the size of an entire world and the nightmares of Juhiru stayed behind her. Stream of knowledge of power flowed through Mana's entire body. She felt like she could have moved mountains, healed herself over all of her injuries and ruled over life and death itself. She could have ruled justly, made a difference… With all that infinite knowledge streaming through, adopting Mana's body as a temporary route for its travels, the ninja magician finally knew exactly what she had to do.
The essence of Ayushi's soul drew back in and dispersed in a dominant shockwave that knocked down every one of the awakening souls that Ayushi had previously kidnapped. A feeling of weightlessness took Mana over, she had no more strength left to initiate her Mystical Wings anymore and a feeling scratched deep down that the dive from the ninth heavens the Merchant had raised her to would not end in a pleasant way.
The entire dimension around the hostages and Mana began fading out like a bad dream, the crimson walls of the barrier that Ayushi had erected to keep the Konoha ninja out while restraining the spread of Juhiru began to burn and sizzle out as its user had no more chakra to spare for its expenses.
Nothing but black remained in Mana's memory from after that point.
"I don't personally see why the other kids don't hang around with you. You're alright…" Pagu Aphonei smiled at Mana. Even as a child he had the smile of a snake that was about to spit venom in one's eyes after eating one's ice cream just before and was asked to give that back.
"I don't have a lot of tokens." Mana rubbed the back of her head. "The game won't be very long."
"Oh, well… More time to practice for tomorrow's assignment. I know a pretty nice place to play." Pagu smiled. "It isn't too far away from the Academy either."
The two kids rushed to a small and recently opened clothing store. They had far too few coins of ryo on them to make it into the shop but they deposited their bottoms onto the staircase and prepared to play their tokens.
"I'll start with Black Ops Incinerator: Sin Scorcher." Pagu grinned, placing a shiny, coin-shaped accessory onto the staircase.
"That's an A-Rank. My rarest token is a B-Rank." Mana pouted.
"It doesn't matter. Let's not look at the values and just play." Pagu waved his hand without a care that he may have lost a rare token for far lesser potential returns. Back in the day, Mana was naïve enough to not suspect a thing.
"I'll bet my B-Rank Avatar of Five-Tails: Fire Dolphin-Horse." Mana placed her own token before both of the kids from the Ninja Academy pulled out their larger, specialized combat tokens with eight walls to them and flicked them at the bottom to make them shuffle in the air and then land on something. The tokens flew and flipped, displaying an elegant shine as their edges reflected the descending sunlight in a visually appealing way as they were intended to do.
"Mine's landed on Strength." Pagu pointed at the copper side that his token was showing.
"Mine's landed on Heaven…" Mana pointed. She rubbed her elbow feeling bad about lucking out like that and rolling the best possible result. Combat tokens were supposed to represent different specialties with each of them interacting with the other in a rock-paper-scissors type mechanic. "Listen… We don't have to play for reals. You can keep your Sin Scorcher."
"Nonsense." Pagu shook his head. "You don't play too much, maybe if the other kids see you with a rare token, they'll play with you. I don't get why you don't play more, Ninja Tokens are fun and it's a neat way to make friends. Someone like you could use that, you haven't spoken to a soul for the whole last year and now suddenly you're more active…"
"It's just that…" Mana looked away, wondering if Pagu would run away if she told him about her psychological issues and meditation therapy. "I talk to people. The other kids talk to me too."
"Yeah, but just because you know all the different tokens and their ranks without needing to check the guide, they're using you to evaluate their tokens and rule over games. It's not the same." Pagu shrugged.
"I can't help it if I like trading and showing off tokens more than playing with them." Mana adorned an innocent smile.
"Ouch. Don't let the inventor of Ninja Tokens hear you say that…" Pagu raised an eyebrow.
"Come on, Pagu, you're not home yet? Let's go already, enough hanging around with that psycho." A much larger and older kid approached the two, having noticed Pagu and Mana from across the street.
"Don't call Mana that, she won't evaluate your tokens." His pal nudged the larger kid as a warning.
"So I won't know how much my token's worth, who cares?" the bigger kid shrugged.
"So nobody will play with you because psy… I mean Mana won't validate your rarity. You can call your token Specter Rarity as much as you want, as long as Mana won't validate that rarity, nobody will buy that." His friend replied. "Wait… You wouldn't just play with Mana to find out which kid's token she'd validated as actually Specter Rare, would you?"
"Stop messing around with my friend, we're in the middle of a game here." Pagu made a dismissive gesture with his hand. Mana felt a bit impressed as well as shocked that this seemingly short and feeble boy would act so important around two kids older and stronger than him.
"Whatever, you're still gonna come out and play after the homework training, right?" the larger kid wondered while walking away but Pagu did not humor that with a reply.
Mana pouted for a short moment. "If you really want to know, Lithia Uchiha really has a Specter Rare Five-Tails Dolphin Horse. She was the one to give me the Avatar of Five-Tails for rating her tokens."
"Nevermind that…" Pagu sighed. "One thing I'm wondering about though, what's with the weird nicknames everyone's giving you. You're not ugly or that weird even yet some kids are avoiding you like the plague. Why's that? What's with all that psycho nonsense?"
"Oh, it's… I just used to act and think weird, that's all. I guess I may have spoken too much while thinking weird things and the other kids just remember that. I've gotten better though, I medita…" before Mana could finish what she was saying, she screamed out. If felt like the ground underneath her feet had disappeared and like there was nothing holding her. Almost like someone had pushed her off the stairs, except she did not really feel the push which was why she wasn't ready for one.
Something was wrong. The girl felt nauseated and something warm was making her hair feel all sticky. Pagu looked at Mana from up above. He did not look concerned nor did he look mocking or angry. Mana could hear a disgusting, metallic sound but only for a moment, it must have been the remnants of her knocking her head against the ground.
"Oh… Wow, you've cracked it. Looks pretty bad. No other options. Gotta take a look into your brain." Pagu pulled out a kunai with dulled edges that the Academy Students used in their earlier years. Before they became skilled and responsible enough to be entrusted proper ninja tools. "Hmmm… Yes, I suppose this won't do. Don't worry, I've got my own, custom gizmos too!"
"Mana!" a familiar voice that invited warmth and coziness into the little student's heart empowered the fallen little girl to raise her upper body back up. Pagu sheathed the custom-built kunai that he was in the process of pulling out and shrugged.
"I suppose if you can get your head off the ground, a look into your brain might not be that necessary." He said.
Father lifted Mana up and hugged her. Something shifty was going on in the little student's stomach but Mana kept it contained as she'd never do something that unkind to her father. Regardless of her will, her head felt woozy and she may not have been able to contain that impulse for long.
"Did some mean kids do this to you?" mother was beginning to get grumpy. She could have been one of the nicest people Mana knew but if she lost her temper, knives would be flying in all directions. "Is this the little devil!?"
"No… Pagu is my friend, he played Ninja Tokens with me." Mana risked hurling her stomach out empty just to potentially save Pagu's life.
"Stop looking for who to blame, come on, kid, let's go back home and treat that bump. You've got a raven's nest for hair so, with a little luck, you won't notice it in the morning." Father caressed Mana's head where she had hurt herself. Even if every touch resonated with more aching, Mana rubbed her face into her father's chest just because he was there. The two people that would always be by her side, always love her, no matter how weird were the things she said or how unimpressive her grades were.
Mana loved her parents more than anything, no matter if she would ever make friends just like Pagu or even more trustworthy and nice, her parents would always be the most treasured pair of souls in her life.
The magician's eyes shot open. Yet another awakening in the Konoha Hospital, it was beginning to become the norm. The usual rush of pain and terror was absent at the moment but Mana felt drained of any strength to go on. What was that awakened her? A man in a brown overcoat and a hat was eating a dumpling at least two handfuls large in front of her bed. Something about the chakra of this man felt familiar, even if the magician had never seen this man's face before.
"I know what you're going to say. What, are you just gonna eat by my hospital bed while I'm confined to a diet of hospital food, right? Well, the thing is, neither of us expected you to be asleep for two days straight and I was meaning to talk to you the moment you woke up." The man in the overcoat spoke as if the two had known each other very well, even if the magician could not put a finger on it.
The tall stature, the athletic but not bulky build, the sharp ponytail sticking out from under the man's hat and tipping it over on the front to where it covered the man's blue eyes at all times except when he tilted his head to look the injured and worn out kunoichi back in the eye… No. Those were the wrong details to focus on.
"Lord Sixth?" Mana muttered. It took her a while to remember a chakra signature she last sensed a pair of years ago and only allowed a fraction of its massive totality to enter her field of chakra sensory perception.
"Dammit, I guess a Transformation Jutsu can't fool you…" the man sighed before taking another rapid bite of his dumpling. Lord Sixth looked in a rush to finish his lunch so that he could have whatever talk he meant to have with Mana. "Anyway, we need to have a talk about what you've done and where things are and where they could be in the future. You might like what I have to say, you may not, just don't be childish enough to think that things can ever be the same again."
Ever since the tragedy struck her father, even if it was an incredibly recent event, the magician found herself wishing that it had hit her, both to spare her father the misfortune as well as being able to just stay down and asleep and dream of better days, of better times for what was left of her life.
It was a selfish thought, one that would have brought her father about the same degree of pain but… It would have been dishonest to deny that thought the importance it deserved for being such an occasional visitor.