After at last being given the permission to try her approach, Kiyomi stood up and approached Ikiro. The Yamanaka took a moment to gather up her focus and achieve the required state of concentration. She was sort of a prodigy in using the Mind Transmission jutsu to the point where she did not require to say the name of the technique, just weave the handseals but this technique felt completely different.
It was something newer in Kiyomi's arsenal or, at the very least, rarely used, even if learned a long time before.
Kiyomi placed her hand on Ikiro's head, the curious eyes of her target moved into a cross-eyed position to observe the hand placed on his head as if it inspired great curiosity in the man. Kiyomi weaved a hand seal while maintaining her stance of great concentration.
"Psycho Mind Transmission." She uttered. Immediately after the name of the technique was called out, Ikiro's eyes whited out and rolled back. Mana felt a little startled by the reaction but observing the concentration on Kiyomi's face and how it remained completely undisturbed by the result, she assumed that the technique went smoothly and that it was supposed to look like that.
It was an interesting technique. From the first sight, it seemed insanely useful as one could just probe into the minds of anyone they pleased and force the intel out of them. It was an improvement over Kiyomi's usual mind switching techniques in that there was little struggle between her consciousness and that of her target's. When inside another body, usually Kiyomi would have to converse and exert tremendous influence over their consciousness to extract the information but now the process seemed more focused and streamlined.
The more Mana observed the technique in action, the more the reasons why Kiyomi was in no hurry to get her hands on this Yamanaka hijutsu became clearer. It had little to no combat use at all, the target needed to be already subdued or not a threat to the user in any way for the jutsu to be used. Also, despite the more mastered approach to intelligence extraction, it was a still a combat of wills, even if it did seem like more of a matter of time and not a clash of minds as to if the information was drawn out.
The silence and the monotony of the process were beginning to become apparent even to Mana. The magician was usually a tremendously patient individual seeing how she easily got herself lost in meditation all the time. Had it not been for the hundreds of eyes of kids from the classroom Mana would not have minded the calm and static image of Kiyomi standing over Ikiro's seated body without any motion at all.
Just the same concentration. Just the same static and strained face… No. Sweat began running down Kiyomi's forehead. The magician reached out into the duo by sending out the impulses of her sensory ability that felt by now more like her natural sense than a technique, just an extension of her body and mind.
Usually, Mana liked keeping her sensory restrained, unless it was needed. When inside a village there were scary and overwhelming chakra signatures everywhere. Every time Mana felt up a signature of a jounin or Hanasaku or Lord Sixth it would have felt like floating in the vacuum of space in front of a spiraling center of a galaxy. The blinding flashes of light, the overwhelming pressure would have overwhelmed Mana's mind completely and instantly knocked her out.
For that reason the magician felt a little worried when reaching out but almost instantly, as she did so, she felt a problem. Kiyomi's chakra was blazing up. Like the girl was engaged in some sort of a limit-breaking battle when she was just standing in place. Ikiro's chakra, usually just a grain of sand that barely even registered in Mana's sensory range remained minuscule and almost undetectable until Mana narrowed down the frequency she picked up on.
The magician's eyes opened up and she gasped. Before she could act, however, Ikiro's body lit up with a purple emanating aura that blasted a shockwave in all directions. The force of impact locked Mana in place and forced her to fight for every inch of movement and the very act of remaining on her feet felt like a grand victory. The kids all reacted in an instant, using the tables and chairs to cover up from the shockwave and using the structure of the Academy itself as cover.
Their eyes, whenever the curious heads of the students peeked out through the cover, were fixed on Ikiro. Something that alarmed Mana.
"They're seeing the chakra he's emanating…" She realized, gasping in horror as she did so. Usually, chakra was visible and sensed only by sensors. It would have taken an immensely dense and powerful show or a physical manifestation of it binding with the natural elements for it to become visible like this.
Sometimes an emotional disturbance of great importance caused one's chakra to leak out on a grand scale but it was more evident from the side effects it caused on the environment than the manifestation of chakra itself. This was getting out of control!
A powerful explosion sent Mana flying and out through the wall of the Academy building. Any normal ninja her rank would have grunted in pain, writhed around just to let the beatings all over their body circulate with the blood in their veins and then keep going. The sheer explosive might of the blast was too quick for Mana to remove her blocks from abusing chakra augmentation, the girl realized something was off from her fading consciousness.
Everything went black…
Mana felt the cold and freshening sensation that was all too familiar to her from during her mission to find the Box of Ultimate Bliss – the Mystical Palm jutsu healing the damage caused to her body. It felt so blissful all of itself, so nostalgic and peaceful. Mana could have stayed down like this and just slept forever it seemed…
"Kouta…" she heard her own voice whimper. Something feminine and loud but unintelligible returned, ringing inside her mind like the ripples of disturbed water and snapping the magician back to reality and forcing her wide awake.
"Thank God, I thought you were delirious or something…" a middle-aged woman in a chuunin vest and a white cloak sighed in relief. The sight of the woman's long and fluffy dark red curls reminded the magician immediately of this woman being the Academy nurse. All around her were injured children and chuunin in military gear were evacuating people from the building.
"Kiyomi…" Mana grunted, sitting up. To stop the ringing pain and the bloody screams screeching in her ears as she did so, the magician placed her hand, covered in dried blood, against her forehead.
"Something's wrong…" the nurse uttered, looking up in what could only be described as despair. "The Yamanaka girl is still in there with that devilish man. Why did we let him back in…" the woman lamented.
Mana wanted to calm her down, to try and plead that she was merely speaking out of the emotional shock but this was a time beyond such preachy moral speeches. While Mana genuinely believed that every person who reappeared after the disappearance incident deserved a place back in the village, this was not a time when one was to share and exchange opinions.
"Casualties?" Mana inquired.
"Y-Yeah, these kids don't know chakra augmentation, they're just students. It would have been a bloodbath in there if the unlucky ones did not just evaporate. I couldn't even approach the place in twelve meters…" the nurse replied with bitterness in her voice. "Ten years. Ten years working here, ten years seeing kids learn the art of murder and this is the first time I've actually had casualties…"
"It's not your fault. It's…" Mana clenched her fists. The wounds and the cuts from the debris as well as the fractured bones and the concussion she had may have been treated but the emotional wreckage was something no medical ninjutsu could treat. "You did not know. I…"
"It sure as hell isn't yours. Who was supposed to know something like this would happen?" the nurse looked up at the malicious and corrupting dark and cocoa brown chakra visually leaking out from the classroom wreckage above.
Three ninja blurred in and behind Mana. These were all powerful enough ninja to use the Body Flicker Technique. They looked pretty worn out and a bit physically injured themselves. All three of them were jounin, from what Mana knew of them.
"Konoha's Sorceress, I'm not sure if you remember me…" the man that Mana had met under multiple occasions, starting from the time in her first big brawl as a ninja, the whole affair in the junkyard district and the Chuunin Exams named Dorimi inquired.
"Yeah, you saved my life twice. Tough to forget, Dorimi-san." Mana bowed to the man and his two female partners feeling a bit nauseous as she did so.
"Ah, I see, well, this is Shibari and Musha. They are my fellow Konoha jounin and we're trying to deal with this situation." Dorimi explained in a rather odd sense of calm and a slow-paced tempo not quite befitting the dire situation at hand. "It would appear that the source of the incident is still inside the classroom and… Well… We cannot penetrate the force that's pushing us out from there. The leaking chakra is too strong."
"Kiyomi…" Mana whimpered to herself, wondering if her friend was even alive at this point. She was right in the epicenter of the blast and the magician was hit way too hard to recall the precious moments right after the first blast wave of the chakra and if it affected the Yamanaka at all.
"We kind of got the general clue about what happened from the kids. We are not here to blame you or your friend, you're the victims here, as far as we're aware…" Shibari added to Dorimi's words.
"From what we understand, you are a friend of Kiyomi's, you were on a team together before and during the Chuunin Exams, correct?" Dorimi tried to verify if he recalled things as they were.
"Yeah. God, all those kids…" Mana felt completely crushed and hopeless and yet it somehow felt like she was still keeping the true weight of this incident behind her. Like when things are resolved, she would see the true weight of what just happened hit her and things would never be like they were again.
"We're sorry about that. We are certain that there were some casualties but most of the classroom managed to avoid lethal injuries by covering behind their tables. They are made from the Senju trees, after all, they're some tough stuff, very chakra resistant." The third jounin, a woman Mana remembered seeing earlier in the Administration building by the Hokage's office, placed her hand on Mana's shoulder trying to calm her down.
"I want to help you guys, is there anything I can do?" Mana raised her tearful eyes at the three jounin who awkwardly looked at each other. What could she possibly help them with? These three were far beyond Mana's range of abilities and their experience and knowledge were second to none. Mana was just a kid, a bumped up and bruised one at that… For all her disdain for the word and the concept, the girl truly felt usele…
"Actually… That is why we wanted to talk to you. I've dealt with trap seals and mental blocks before. I have a theory that it may be possible for you to help us enter the classroom because of how close you are with Kiyomi." Musha suggested.
"We know it's difficult for you and that you're still recovering from your injuries and that that's your friend in there but…" Dorimi tried softening the suggestion as if there was any need for it.
"If there's any way I can help and free Kiyomi, I'll do it." Mana interrupted the jounin. The three looked at each other before nodding and leading the magician away from the yard where the injured received first aid and back into the nightmare scenario inside the Academy.
The long halls were now completely empty with dreamish mist floating all over them. The strange emanating gloom, combined with the malicious and alarmingly visible chakra that covered the area made the entire Academy sink in a hue of dark purple with breaks of light brown whereas light managed to enter through the windows to outside.
Combined with the shattered windows, complete, grave silence and the eerie feelings of grim and solitude whenever one went, no matter how much company they had with them added up a dreadful harmony of lethargic death seeping all over in the air.
It took remarkable strength to proceed even on the lower floors, where the whatever odd phenomena that affected the Yamanaka and Ikiro did not reach. The place felt covered with an oddly terrifying sheer pressure of air. The pure chakra that emanated through the halls seeped right into one's bones and forced feelings onto them that were unfamiliar to even the most hardened ninja.
Mana wanted to wonder if this was always the case whenever jounin were needed, seeing how it was to be her next goal on her road to becoming a Sannin, but the severity of the situation, as well as the sense of dread lingering around her, prevented her from doing so. Whatever effects drifted about the Academy halls increased exponentially with each step closer to the doomed classroom.
Mana's eyes widened as the shapes of chakra that appeared to float in gaseous, the mist-like state began taking more corporeal forms. Appearing like mangled and crushed child bodies that reached out for her from all around her, eyes whited out, faces that looked clawed off by savage beasts and shrieks to make one drive senbon into each of their ears so that they would never have to listen to the ghastly noises anymore.
The magician was experienced with illusions enough to close her eyes and form a sensory bubble around her. She tried to let the sensory bubble filter out the horrific sights and noises around her. Maybe these actually were the dead children crawling out from their premature, shallow graves reaching out, the better odds were that the odd reaction caused appalling illusions to appear.
"T-This… W-What is this!?" Mana heard a scream right beside her. It broke her concentration, the magician opened her mind only to see Shibari running off all by herself. The woman was so fast, right after Mana's eyes reached her back to see her moving away she was gone the very next instant.
"Stop, goddamn it, stick together!" Dorimi commanded. He was holding himself tremendously well. Mana was surprised to see someone with seemingly no skill in genjutsu being able to concentrate and maintain their composure so well.
"Nooooo!" another petrifying scream reached the two from the right, signaling Musha's own inner problems overcoming and breaking her will. Whatever these two women were seeing broke even their hardened and experienced wills.
"Goddamn it, these two must have some nasty skeletons in their closets…" Dorimi grit his teeth in desperation and anger. He realized that it was up to him to make the shots now and that he had to decide if the two were to continue on their way or if they would have been better off splitting apart and finding the two women before something horrible happened to them too.
"Can you subdue them?" Mana wondered. "Physically if needed?"
"They've been out on more field missions than me, I cannot imagine what nightmares have been brought back for them to freak out this way but… Yes, I think so. As long as their worst fears are there to distract them, I think I can use that to my advantage." Dorimi nodded.
"You need to find them and stop them from hurting themselves or each other. We've no idea what they'll appear to themselves as if they run into one another and they have been completely broken. Hold nothing back, take them out as quickly and efficiently as possible, then rejoin me." Mana asked the man.
"What will you do?" Dorimi wondered.
"What you brought me here to do – get into that classroom." Mana declared. "My friend is in there."
"These… Visions… They'll become worse the closer you get, you do know that, right?" Dorimi looked worried.
"Sure. But the worst nightmare for me would be to leave Kiyomi in there scared and blaming herself over those children. We don't know what else this incident will do. No one else must get hurt. That is the only way for these nightmares to stop." Mana replied after a moment of hesitation where she herself questioned her ability to tread forward.
It was likely because of that moment, filled not with foolish arrogance and desire to prove oneself capable to one's superiors but genuine self-reflection and deep thought that Dorimi picked up on that the jounin nodded and ran off after his broken colleagues.
Mana just hoped that the women would be in any condition to assist her afterward. There was no possible way for her to go through this alone. Looking on ahead at the screaming children digging and breaking their way through the tiles on the walls, the lockers, the vents on the ceiling and the wooden floorboards, Mana closed her eyes and ventured forth.
She did her best to form the sensory bubble again, just wide enough to let her perceive her surroundings but not wide enough to touch into whatever the source of the incident was. It was to no avail, the magician's eyes shot wide open and trembled as if she was seizing. Her mouth gaped open with cold vapor coming out from her when Mana hyperventilated in shock and panic.
Just the air around the hallway leading up to the accursed classroom was too dense with chakra not to make her heart try to break its way out of the girl's ribcage just from catching a whiff of it. Not to mention the constant air pressure that would have popped titanium like a sheet of paper crushed in a hand.
"Come on, Kiyomi… Let me in…" Mana whispered letting another cloud of vapor out of her mouth as she pressed her hand against a dark, swirling barrier that surrounded the classroom and threatened to topple the entire Academy building.
Mana was skilled in concentration and illusions enough to resist these illusions and bloodcurdling horrors all around her but she was not yet experienced enough to where the beasts under her bed would have been too macabre and ghoulish to stomach. She was just perfect for the job, just in the golden middle.
That only meant that she had the responsibility to set things right. So that the true souls of the poor children could rest… Just that, if nothing else…
Author's Notes: So the revision of the old chapters has been going strong lately. The first 105 chapters have been revised a little, fixed a whole bunch of grammatical and structural errors. The progress isn't as fast as I'd like it to be but while it may not be fast, at the very least it is consistent...
One detail I noticed when checking Chapter 105 "A Prelude to a New Adventure", remember that mission in Kumogakure that went horribly wrong for Yoruma Hisako because her target was killed before she could get to him and she got pummeled afterward? That mystery figure that injured Hisako was always supposed to be the same mystery man that chased the Uchiha family to the Wind Country later on from Kumogakure. Not many people may care and the story isn't quite popular yet where people would make theories but that one can be confirmed before it is even made, I guess :)
Anyway, thanks for reading if you got this far 3
