The scurrying black ones led the bone-covered ninja and Mana through a net of alleyways and passageways that made it look like the shadiest way to get to wherever one wanted to go. Regardless of the first impressions, just what option did these poor people have, looking how they look. It was true what was noted before, a certain degree of weirdness was tolerated in ninja, which was why these odd-looking spliced ninja managed to stay hidden in plain sight, however, for civilians the conditions were a completely different thing entirely.

"Your name," Mana asked. "You know who I am, clearly, given how much leeway I'm giving you, I'll need some more leverage on you."

"Buberuri." The man replied.

"This name is made up." Mana shook her head gently.

"Not any more than the name I put on my documents officially. It is how the people I work with, people I affiliate with and with whom we bond over a common goal call me. It is in a lot of ways a more real name to me than the one my parents gave me." Buberuri said.

"Fair enough." The magician sighed.

The black ones began looking around themselves frantically as if looking for something they've lost or… Simply checking if they weren't being paid significant attention to as they required to bolt quickly from out of a corner and into a shop that laid out in the open. From where she was at that time, Mana could not see the nature of that shop. Even if she tried to somehow guess through the clues present around her, try to recall the village streets she had memorized and tell exactly which shop it was from the sights of the street that laid ahead and out of the shadows, the black ones attracted the most of her attention anyway.

These poor shapes did not run. They merely stepped out in a brisk pace. They did not let their eyes wander over the villagers walking about with their business for curious eyes attracted curiosity in return. Like a humble herd that they truly were, the poor souls walked out and staggered all hunched up like a line of little chicks following their mother.

Mana and Buberuri stepped out after them in a short while. From what the magician could notice, a small group of rotten, blackened people attracted less attention than she did. It was remarkable really but also not outside of what one could have deduced to be the case. After all, was it truly that extraordinary to see someone this messed up in a world where children learned to breathe fire before becoming old enough to drink?

"A fruit-shop?" Mana wondered looking at the faintly glowing neon sign that did not turn off its enticing glow even in the earlier hours when it reasonably should have.

"As handy as the painkiller formula we sell across the Land of Fire is, it is technically black market goods. We cannot just sell them from a wooden counter like we used to but the village does not go out of its way to shut these points down either." Buberuri shrugged before stepping up and leaving the door open for Mana to enter. Had he not been leading Mana into a den of horrible human experiments and genetic splicing on barely sound-minded enough individuals for it to be called "consensual", Buberuri would have seemed like a gentleman.

"Makes sense," Mana mumbled almost is to herself while she stepped through the open door and let her follower close it down. "As long as the painkiller works and doesn't actively cause harm, the village has no reason to expend real effort in shutting you guys down. It's the same as someone selling candy on the street and calling it cold-medicine."

"Indeed, Placebo does not deserve the full kick-the-door-down treatment." Buberuri nodded while he led Mana through what seemed like a normal fruit shop and past the counter, into the room behind it, where normally additional supplies would have been laid down for when the shop required to be resupplied.

The fake salesman bowed before Mana after seeing Buberuri with her, likely he would not have done had the man not been with the magician as to not tip her off, in case she ever came here to legitimately buy some fruit. The magician blushed a little and looked away, she was still not used to people addressing her with the same amount of respect she used to address adults with before, she would have never gotten used to this whole "religious figure" treatment.

"The first thing that people complain about here is the smell…" Buberuri shrugged. "It's not that it smells bad particularly, it's about the combination of the rotting and chemicals and the pleasant smells we use in abundance to compensate for it."

"Your homework is incomplete then," Mana shut her eyes in a sip of embarrassment. "I have gotten rid of my sense of smell to better focus on my other senses."

"Ah, yes… About that… You may want to lessen the range of your sensory a tad bit. Some of the signatures here may not be… Pleasant for inexperienced sensors." Buberuri warned the magician.

"Are you worried about what I might find?" Mana tried to play it off as a jest while she did consciously lessen the range as advised. She began to realize what this ninja had in mind – perhaps the option of these drug-related black market activities and the monster people reported were not entirely unrelated.

"You will be free to see whatever you want to see. You are just about as welcome here as Guru himself." Buberuri nodded his head. He looked just about how a man who asked for somebody's full trust and cooperation but warned them not to snoop around and then realized how backward it all sounded would have looked.

"By "Guru" you cannot possibly mean…" Mana mumbled out a very remote possibility that was teasing her nerve endings ever since the word was first uttered. As much as the magician hated and refused to believe in something as ridiculous as this, it was a link that had to be shut down, just like Junichi and the Allied Ninja showed her yesterday.

"Indeed, Guru Ayushi." Buberuri once again rubbed the back of his neck overcome by awkwardness about how he came to reveal this information. Once more he let out that dreadful scratching sound as he did so but in the shock of the moment, Mana almost managed to let it pass unnoticed. It was as if an abyss had opened up under her feet but, for some reason, she had not yet begun to plummet, only saw its gaping jaws and certain, absolute death beneath her feet.

"Ayushi-san didn't seem like the kind to kidnap people and experiment on them. Forcefully or through manipulation." Mana replied as her eyes shifted from shock to hopelessness. If Guru Ayushi truly has turned rogue, could there truly have been a way to stop his plot, whatever all of this was working towards?

"Not before meeting you, no. He was very much a careless non-interventionist. I've been to multiple seminars of his, he was always the believer that life was to go its own way. Wars were to be left alone to devour its own children and choke on the vacuum it left behind. You changed all that…" Buberuri nodded his head almost similarly to how he'd have moved it in a respectful bow. Perhaps the armor covering his body did not permit movements precise enough to properly covey the amount of respect he wanted to.

While Mana was left to her own thoughts, to ponder on the ramifications of having incited this kind of change in Guru Ayushi, Buberuri moved on and into the next room. One filled with messy tables, some of them still had blood and gore all over them with insects buzzing about while others were cleaner than the wards in Konohagakure hospital.

The enigmatic ninja stopped by a curious looking clock. It did not appear much different from other old clocks except this one was not made of wood and gears clocking inside, it was completely made of minerals Mana could not identify held together by some uncanny force.

"It is because of meeting you that Guru decided to become more active. You taught him about responsibility and that he, as the one with the most power, was the most responsible for the mishaps of the world. I guess you could say he became obsessed with fixing it but you cannot fix that which you do not know the problem of." Buberuri started rambling as his hands moved in to caress the clock almost like he was feeling nostalgic about it but always wary to keep a good bunch of distance between his skin and the clock. Always attracted but never submitting to the mysterious allure that the artifact had to the man.

"It was him, the mysterious criminal element all around the world," Mana muttered half to herself, half as an implication that she did not require Buberuri's confirmation to affirm. It was Ayushi all along, subtly affecting Mana's journey looking for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. He was the strange presence that caused disappearances and the detour that the squad took on their quest, he was the mysterious figure that wanted Mana alive that intimidated Hachiro Uchiha.

Just like the rhetorical nature of the magician's inquiry asked for, Buberuri did not butt into Mana finally inserting the final piece into the drawn-out puzzle that put the entire picture together. Of course, Guru Ayushi had disappeared after leaving Konoha under mysterious circumstances, he abandoned his path as a wise vagabond and took up another mantle. That of a rogue ninja and a self-appointed savior of the world.

"Even a man of Guru's stature, influence and power could not just fix the world. The first years of his pilgrimage were filled with quests for various artifacts and sources of power and knowledge that could assist him in his life's work. To create a world without pain or death, just like you dream it. He never told me that himself but… It may just be that such a world would be his gift to you for waking him up and showing him the higher purpose for his power." Buberuri shrugged as he slowly drew away from the stone-clock and onto the messier displays of experiments with flesh.

Wherever Buberuri moved on to, the black ones drew away from him like bats from a beam of light. The armored ninja drew his hand over the cut up and eviscerated creature that laid hung by hooks above the altar-like table.

"Guru is not holy, he's no saint. He has kidnapped people and experimented on them. Bad people, criminals and the like but still… You would not approve of it and for good reason." The ninja revealed in a half-deafened voice. It was something that he had to let Mana in on but carried no pride inside of him while speaking of it. "It took a while for the Congregation to gather. For others to open their eyes just like you've opened those of Guru-sama."

Judging from Buberuri's body speech, he was referring to the rotten subordinates and the members of this odd sect devoted to world peace through nothing but the most abhorrent methods imaginable.

"That's nothing like what I dreamed about. I told Ayushi-san nothing of this sort…" Mana covered her mouth while her eyes ran over the frozen chunk of flesh in suspended animation. An experiment halted in mid procession just so Buberuri could admire it and Mana could add another nightmare into her already impressive file.

A rowdy roar made the magician clutch to the ground. It was like someone had just opened a door leading up to the strongest typhoon imaginable as if an almighty pushing force had just decided to expel everyone inside the building to the outside. Something of this force should have crushed and ground up these poor people but apart from being thrown about, they appeared to be bothered very little by their broken bodies and the physical pain.

"With the Congregation, Guru could finally start his work. Begin shaping a man without pain, without the option of death and then convert the entire world from its image. Little Honda was the first one, in fact…" Buberuri remarked after getting up from the kneeling position that the mighty concussive force forced him into and helping Mana regain her senses.

The ninja led Mana into yet another room in the vast and grimly lit corridor, one where a massive abomination of science of nature laid subdued with sealing glyphs that a completely transparent man continuously reapplied. Mana was not sure who this man was or how strong he was since she would not dare let her sensory out for a whiff with this massive thing beating about.

"This is Little Honda?" Mana's mouth could not close, no matter how much she tried to force it shut. "What did Ayushi-san do to this poor boy?" she recalled one of the earliest known victims of the disappearances, his mother was found outside the Konoha gate in a completely vegetative state with not a single sign or clue to the boy's whereabouts.

"Little Honda isn't one of us Spliced…" the jelly-man keeping the rowdy Honda asleep with his sealing techniques replied. "He is much more special than us, however. He is the one, the one that's supposed to not feel pain, to be immortal and the one to guide the rest to become like him."

"So Ayushi-san plans on making everyone like this?" Mana gasped pointing at a slumbering abomination of flesh sewn together and tearing apart with every passing second. Some of Honda's body was literally molded together by pouring molten minerals and metals over it and letting it harden. This creature looked like anything but the little boy it once was. Had it not been so hopelessly asleep, he'd have likely devoured every being in the room, living, Spliced or one of the Congregation with a single gulp.

"Well… Once we perfect Little Honda, maybe. The Congregation may have much of Ayushi-sama's devotion but they lack his skilled medical touch. They wish to put the poor boy together and numb his pain just as much but they don't care how many holes they need to drill before they pin the right center or how they reattach limbs back…" Buberuri shrugged. "It takes about five of them to even lift one when it falls off. Just one limb must weight well over forty tons with how much he's had put inside him over the years."

Mana let her hand the luxury to run back her hair in frustration. She looked back at the ground beneath her feet and covered her eyes. She didn't want to reveal the fact that she was weeping but someone who bothered to even look at it could have put it together.

"What's wrong with Mana-sama?" the transparent jelly man turned his blobby-shaped head with drooling tendrils running down where it ended like streams of a bugger. "Must be pretty overcome with joy with how this dream is coming together."

"No," Buberuri shook his head and reached out to pat Mana's shoulder. "I think she's distraught. You must understand, Mana-sama, that you were spared these details early on because they were hard to stomach because Guru knew you were too young and innocent to take them. Now we're almost done, we'd have no pain medication we're selling without Little Honda or the endless devotion of the Congregation. All those people we've made invulnerable and then let back into the village, none of that would be possible without the darker aspects of our work."

"Please… I can't drill them anymore… Just do it already." Mana cried out.

"Drill them?" the jelly-man turned at the magician's side before the gut-wrenching steel wire reeling sound filled the air and both Spliced got trapped in it.

"Y-You brought the Allied Ninja with you!?" Buberuri yelled out. Just this once the Spliced were the ones being shocked by the darker aspects of the other side's work. Mana had sensed the Allied Ninja following her for a while, initially it distressed her greatly, she knew that there could have been no way that they both saved the Congregation groups and followed her – they deliberately chose to follow her and take on the enemy as well as investigate Mana instead of helping the Congregation.

There were no more heroes. Guru Ayushi was no wise man that the magician thought him to be, the Allied Ninja could not have given fewer shits about helping the civilians. All they cared about was their mission, the investigation. Hell, Junichi probably hoped that Mana would be revealed as some hidden ringmaster so he could justify subduing or killing her on the spot.

"Ninja Style: Karakuri Thunderball!" Cailar's voice proudly announced as a combination of dodecahedron-shaped projectiles, reeling across the net of steel wires overflowing with chakra and spikes of silver-shining steel on each wall of its surface. The projectiles blitzed about at speeds beyond Mana's comprehension, all that the magician could see were the streaks of blood bursting from Buberuri's body and the spots were his impressive armor broke down. The jelly-man was the only one seemingly unaffected by the assault.

"Detonate!" Cailar yelled out after moving all of his spiked dodecahedrons in close proximity to the enemy duo. The projectiles lit up with an illustrious glow before the luminosity forced Mana to cover herself up. Not that it would do her much good, something of this might had to be able to kill her from this distance.

Once the dust and the rubble settled, Mana moved her hands from her upper body only to witness a golden-colored barrier sphere around the enemy containing the explosion, not only that, the sphere appeared to have reduced the size of anything it covered proportionately to its own size. Judging from Junichi's hand seal position and the strain on his face – this barrier was his doing.

Once the golden sphere faded away, the lifeless body of Buberuri fell to the ground, bits and pieces of his bone-armor scattered across the room like wooden chips of a shredded rod. Only a jelly puddle remained from the other Spliced.

"Little Honda!" Mana jumped forward to the massive lump but Rushira's arms wrapped around the magician in restraint.

"Even if his seals run out, he is still asleep. What he did before was just him getting rowdy in his slumber." The female Allied Ninja muttered close to Mana's ear.

Despite Rushira's best attempts to restrain her voice, Mana was not going to be this composed in voicing her outrage of the Allied Ninja actions.