"It is your right to request such a thing, Mana-san. However, just for the sake of clarity, you are aware of what type of place Jigoku is?" judge Sheniyur inquired. Given how this judge had revealed himself to be in the pockets of the organization employing Overcoat, his approval of Mana's request would have heavily suggested that the organization was fine with this slight alteration of the deal as well.
"The worst prison in the world. The Fire Country has worked their hardest to make it that way." Mana nodded.
"If you stand by your decision willingly and having full information of what you are getting into here, the Tribunal will have no other choice but to take another vote on changing your sentence as it is the Tribunal's right to follow up on your request and not an obligation." Said judge Kikuzen.
"I understand." Mana bowed in front of the Tribunal and sat down. She turned to Overcoat, fully expecting to have her ears hissed out by his frustration but he displayed no such outbursts of emotion. "Is this okay with you?" Mana asked just to be sure.
"Well… As far as my employers will see it – you served your punishment anyway. Will make for a nice story too, how we sent a young lady to Jigoku. Imagine the crime prevention that this news will make…" Overcoat sighed.
"In that case, may the Tribunal vote again on the motion of changing Nakotsumi Mana's sentence." The secretary ruled giving the Fifth Mizukage a prompt to stand up and voice his opinion first.
"During the times of close cooperation with Konoha the last five years, before Kirigakure regained its autonomy, I have had a chance to visit Jigoku. It is a dreadful place deserving of its name. Just remembering that hole makes my skin peel off and I prefer that hellish feeling over the thought of ever visiting that facility again. I do not believe that it is a wise decision to send Nakotsumi Mana there, however, given how it is her decision, I will hesitantly support it. I vote for the change of punishment." The Fifth spoke his mind.
"I vote against the change. For the exact same reasons as Lord Fifth before me voted for it. Trust me, kid, I'm doing you a favor." Judge Nokubi winked at Mana with an indifferent expression.
"If that is the decision of Nakotsumi Mana herself, I will respect that decision. According to the Land of Fire's Code of Punishment Execution, article 493, the conversion rate of imprisonment in Rengoku to Jigoku is one-to-six. That would make Nakotsumi Mana serve six months in Jigoku. Believe it or not, for the punishment of mere grievous bodily harm, even a single day there is enough penance." Sheniyur nodded without bothering to stand up.
"You have not said if you vote for or against." The secretary noted.
"For, of course." Sheniyur corrected himself.
"Six months? We're letting the person that stole Guru Ayushi from this world off with a six-month punishment!?" judge Laorth jumped up from his chair. Had the throne-like seat of the man been twice its size and weight, it would have likely slid across the platform and slammed against the wall.
"Have you ever been to Jigoku, judge Laorth?" Kikuzen Shimura turned to Laorth Karatachi with the fingers of his hands intertwined together.
"So it's a really bad place to be. Who cares? People that deviate from the law need to pay their deeds. I would break if somebody who beat my own child comatose only got six months!" Laorth spread his arms out and flailed about like a capricious child.
"Made-up situations and appeals to emotion are poor legal arguments, judge Laorth." Kikuzen shook his head in disappointment. "The fact of the matter is that Jigoku has long served as a dumping ground for the entire Fire Country, the place where they dropped off people too powerful and too unhinged for the justice system to deal with. The reason why most of the people inside those walls have never stood trial when they were arrested and were not truly sentenced to Jigoku, merely dropped off there without any documentation of prospects for release, shows the type of place Mana-san resigned herself to. In any other country, just dropping a criminal to prison without a Tribunal session would be a grievous breach of justice but none of the villages residing within Fire Country have ever been reprimanded for this procedure by any international Tribunals or any leaders during international summits. That is because every person there has a specific story that makes them too dangerous to even stand trial. The only injustice towards those people is that they were not executed on the spot when they were captured. Now there is no longer such a chance."
Laorth gulped and sat down. "I vote against the change, regardless…" he muttered.
"Oh my… I understand that you are suffering inside, dear, I understand that you wish redemption but this is beyond penance, this decision is worse than suicide. As someone who still has something holy in her soul left to spare, I cannot sign you up for that sort of six months. I absolutely vote against the change." Judge Yurisa opposed to the idea with the strictness that Mana had never previously seen in the usually cheerful and a bit silly woman.
"If that is Mana-san's will, I will respect her call and her experience, as lacking as the latter may be. Jigoku is truly terrible but if Mana-san's interest is to return to active duty and serve her village as soon as possible, I cannot do anything but admire that sort of devotion to one's village. I vote for the change." judge Kikuzen played it off as just Mana being patriotic, while it did portray the magician in a more favorable light, it hardly pinned down the true motivations that fueled Mana's decision to serve her punishment in Jigoku.
She hardly could have cared less for the village that had eradicated her and her mother's people or the village that was willing to sacrifice its own children like pawns for a more favorable international opinion. A village that prioritized economic and military strength over the happiness of their own people and village ruled by shifty politicians that listened to the advice of multiple councils of other politicians, none of which had the best interest of the villagers in mind. The village, as a grand entity surpassing its parts, was worthless to Mana.
Spending these last few days with her mother and thinking about everything she's been through, Mana just wanted to be done with this deal as soon as possible and return to what little family she had left. Return to her friends and comrades, those that she had not pushed away yet, given how inspiring change in other people has caused all of this in the first place, Mana looked forward to returning to active duty and seeing what still remained of her shattered nindo.
Crippled and broken as it now was, it might have still been good enough to walk. Even if Mana was sick of all the fighting, all the intrigue and everything going the absolute worst way all the time, she had once promised to become a Sannin so that she could prevent curious eyes of predators from the dark. She still needed to become the person that scared those that would harm the innocents through her presence alone. If for that to happen she needed to go through hell on earth, so be it.
"Very well then, it appears that justice has been served. I thank the judges for attending the session and fulfilling their duties. The execution of the punishment will be entrusted to the Konohagakure Police Force. Session adjourned." The secretary breathed out easier. Delivering justice to the grievous offender that did such extensive harm to Guru Ayushi was undoubtedly the largest check on anyone's checklist for the day. The other judges looked relieved as well.
The crowd was beginning to get unruly again, while someone with the education and experience of a ninja may have been talked over by explaining what kind of a place Jigoku was and why six months in that place surmised a meaningful punishment, a common civilian did not have that much space for a paradigm shift in their minds. All they heard was six months of imprisonment for someone that has removed a fundamental shogi piece from the game they've played as children. A piece they've thought would always be there, even if they did not quite know how to play shogi or what that piece was or what it did.
Six was almost nothing. It was just barely more than five. They could count to six and that meant that it was not enough punishment!
Before the crowd escalated into a becoming a mob, Haikan stepped up to the stand in between Mana and the people. An ear-plugging pop and a cloud of smoke allowed the jounin to conceal his weapon until the last moments when the man swung both of his large pieces of a pipe in both his hands and aimed them at the hectic crowd.
"Water Style: Red Zone!" Haikan yelled out as torrents of water burst from his obsidian-colored pipes and formed thick, watery walls in between multiple groups in the crowd, preventing any of them from joining into a complete mob. None of the civilians knew what the water did, maybe it was boiling hot, maybe it was ice-cold, maybe it was acidic… Nobody tempted their luck, especially so given the insurmountable difference in power which dictated that no matter what the effects of the water were – they'd be certain to be deadly for mere civilians.
With a knife that looked more like a fancy cleaver in terms of size and shape, yet fit into a single hand of Mars, the second jounin moved in to assist his partner in mission. If he had done so earlier, perhaps the impressive weapon he clutched would not have been necessary, the mere size and perfection of the man's build appeared to work as sufficient warning against remarkable stupidity in the name of nothing meaningful in particular.
It was not the fact that nobody came to either show their support for or eat alive the stage magician they would have killed to get the chance to praise yesterday that surprised Mana. It was the much more specific element of that solitude – the specifics of people that did not reach out, whether it was to support her or condemn her.
It would not have hurt whatsoever to hear Kiyomi declare that Mana was no better than a common crook and that she'd make sure to destroy the magician just like she swore once to slay all evil immediately. It would not have torn Mana's heart to hear Meiko mumble through words for the first time in her life because she could not fully fathom the excessive betrayal she felt in her heart. If Kouta came to gloat about how glad he was that the two severed all ties and how sick it made him for the few times that they did get together, Mana would have barely shed a tear.
Okay, all of those were lies, but… The truth was that she could have justified that. She made her damn best to become the scapegoat for Guru Ayushi's downfall and any fallout of that nature would have only served to build up Mana's confidence as an actor and a non-lethal agent of as of yet unknown Black Ops organization functioning within Konoha.
What Mana did not count on what complete isolation and silence. Not even the people arrested and detained in the Police Force headquarters bothered to talk to her from the other cells, the magician was even given one of her own. Maybe they were frightened, nobody had beaten the shit out of Guru Ayushi for centuries since he retired, perhaps that was what earned her some respect from the criminal element she now became a part of?
Either way, it was that grave silence that made mother's visit so impactful.
"You could have come I guess." Mana sighed. "They didn't even try to keep everyone out, too many people. Too much bother."
"That's fine. I don't think I could have handled it anyway." Mother shrugged.
"I'm sorry." Mana looked away and shook her head.
"What for?" mother wondered.
"That's a good point. Not just one specific thing. Everything…" Mana said. "Leaving you out of everything I did, disappearing so often, never thinking about what you might think or want or not prioritizing that when I did think about it…"
"Ran out of breath?" mother tried catching Mana's eyes with her own stare.
"That but not things to name." the magician lamented. "Things to come too. People know who I am now, even those that didn't before. I've gone from famous to infamous in a snap and you'll be there to pick that up for me every day."
"I've built my café from nothing. A bit of bad press can't be worse than being forgotten or nobody even knowing you exist." Mother waved her hand as if trying to swat the worries away. "What's important is that I know deep down that everything they're saying about my daughter isn't true."
"It is though…" Mana looked up. The last thing she wanted or needed was her own mother knowing too much or spreading rumors. "I did pummel Guru Ayushi."
"I'd believe that the world-known spiritual leader and advocate of world peace turned into a bad egg over my own daughter." Nakotsumi Kei shook her head. The woman could have been damn stubborn when she wanted to. "What I am pretty mad about is how reckless you are! Jigoku, honestly!"
"I do believe I promised to make it up to you. Making my absence only last a few months is how I can begin our life anew. I need to close down this chapter, even if to do that I will need to tear it out, fondle it and throw it into the fire." Mana replied.
Mother stood up and approached the bars, Mana looked up in surprise and followed. The two touched their hands. It was a lapse of security to let captured ninja touch their visitors. All sorts of bad stuff could have happened but truly scary individuals did not get placed in the Police Force HQ nor were they granted visits. Furthermore, Mana knew all too well that she'd never last if she did pull something funny, not to mention that in her entire body, not a single bone itched with the impulse encouraging her to run for it.
"Stay strong," Mother asked.
"Even if I get broken. I'll keep moving on regardless, what other choice do I have?" Mana closed her eyes as they were getting wet and smiled. Even though it was deemed much more acceptable for women to cry, that was the last thing Mana wanted her mother to see her doing, not before she's taken away to Jigoku.
"When I give you the sign, walk onto the circle glyph and stand perfectly still. If the seal messes up, your limbs might remain outside so struggle at your own peril." The Uchiha preparing Mana for transfer warned the magician.
"Hmmm? You're not going to give me a uniform or anything?" Mana asked with a dull tone. She had heard that Jigoku was much more of a dumping ground for the bad to the bone rather than a containment facility with rules and security but she was not prepared for the amount of lawlessness and lack of any usual preparations regarding the transfer.
"Next thing you'll ask is getting transferred to a prison only for women…" the Police Force ninja smirked before weaving a pair of hand seals and giving the magician the visual cue to step onto the scroll.
Mana gulped before following the instructions. A beam of blue, base chakra colored glow covered her up and sucked her into the scroll, comprising an all too familiar experience, matching the time when Mana participated in the Tag Matches of the Chuunin Exams semi-finals.
Before long, in fact, before any amount of time having past was registered in Mana's mind, the same beam of light scooped her out of the darkness and back into the outside world. Transferring prisoners sealed into scrolls was an oddball procedure even for Jigoku but it freed the transferring parties from additional danger when watching the prisoners. Not everybody was as good-willed about being dumped in Jigoku as Mana.
To claim that Mana was scooped out into the light would have only been half-true. The room she was in was dimly lit and comprised of only one man, or so the first impressions would have made it seem. Mana's sensory abilities tipped her off to her being completely surrounded by at least a pair of dozens of guards all of whom were perfectly concealed in the dimness of the room she was in.
"Greetings, Nakotsumi Mana. My name is Kumobi Morino. I am the warden of this here facility and I was very excited to meet you." The tall and slender man stretched his gaunt fingers out and weaved them together while a morbid smile curved his face with the pearl whites standing out in the gloomy room like a sore thumb. "You were the first person in thirty years to ask to be put in this place. I hope that Jigoku does not disappoint your expectations."
A myriad of blood-red lights lit up, revealing all of the guards surrounding her. All of them wore some sort of black-tinted armor with red goggles that could have been turned off from their haunting glow. The costumes that these guards wore were perfectly designed to remove any traces of humanity. Their movements were agile but choppy like a piano staccato piece. These men and women were not meant to be seen or taken as humans.
Kumobi's fingers extended like rubber to at least four times their length as one of his hands lifted up Mana's shirt and the other one touched her exposed belly with the very tips of his fingers. Kumobi's fingers were ice-cold and reminded Mana of her father's chin when he had not shaved for an entire day – the man's skin was not quite hairy but there was something rough and unnerving covering the thing. Something Mana felt she was best not knowing the nature of.
So far Jigoku has shown a whole different kind of welcome Mana was expecting. It was much less of a cage hanging over an active volcano with greasy and sweaty men stabbing each other with handmade weaponry and much more of the creep one out to the point of committing suicide type of place.