Minara Bebe, the young apprentice magician of the man known as the Paradox Magician–Jishoku Quinton, opened her eyes to the sight of her master sitting by her hospital bed. Seeing the Paradox Magician unstrapped and unmasked was an odd sight. Given the tremendous weight and importance of his personage amongst the higher-ranking magicians, it was especially strange to see Jishoku Quinton acting bored and sitting with a mushy and indented cheek as he rested his head on his right hand and twirled a small wand in his left hand.
It bore a striking resemblance to the wand that Minara Bebe used, however; it wasn't it. Making the best of the few moments after her awakening in the infirmary before her master noticed her awakening, Minara examined the tool that her master relied on to prevent him from breaking down in boredom while watching his precious apprentice rest. It was a sparkling pink wand, decorated with rings of donut-shaped pearls with a shiny and brilliant sapphire heart gemstone hovering at the top, surrounded by pearl wings. The cutesy and girly appearance of the magical artifact didn't look like something that her usually stoic master would use.
"It looks cute, but I don't sense much power in it. Is this another handicap to restrain your unruly power, master?" Minara asked with a smile, snapping her brooding master out of his daze.
"Finally, you're awake. These healers were doing an adequate job of treating your injuries, besides, your metabolism as a trained magician should have pulled you through. My powers rely on the paradoxes of the laws of nature first and foremost, so I decided against attempting to heal you myself," the Paradox Magician scratched his neck by finding a spot where some bare skin was exposed beneath his collar. Jishoku had dumped his ridiculous and incredibly restraining outfit in exchange for something more akin to what the locals might choose to wear. Still, his hair which had a glowing vein of pure magic that made them glisten, shine, and rustle with spikes, and beaming with magical energy eyes would have made him stand out in any room, no matter how Jishoku Quinton dressed.
"I feel alright, although… I don't think I'm in any condition for any more fights or training right now. I'll be more than glad to cheer for you in the upcoming rounds, master!" Minara Bebe sat up and pumped her gentle and cute knuckles while rubbing the sleepy daze off her heavy eyelids.
"It'd be of no use, I lost…" Jishoku Quinton scratched the back of his head, sounding more irritated than angry at it. It was strange seeing one of the most powerful magicians reacting to an embarrassing defeat at the hands of an opponent considered an inferior being to him that inhabited and operated in a mere three-dimensional layer of space-time in the same way that one would react to spilling a bit of their coffee on the table and spoiling the tablecloth.
"Huh!?" Minara Bebe freaked out. "No way! Was it the same guy that got me!?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Jishoku's expression soured to resemble the face of a man that bit into a sour prune. "Although, that guy put a dent in my stamina and had a part to play in me getting caught off guard for certain. Had I not encountered him, I'd have likely swept through that tournament. We can probably say the same about him, so don't feel bad about it."
"Yeah, but… I let my guard down too," Minara's chin tucked to her chest in somber sulking. "I'm sorry, master. After you trusted to take me along instead of another magician from the council that had completed their training…"
"Are you kidding me?" Jishoku snickered. "It's probably the best call I've made."
"Huh?" Minara looked at her master with a baffled look on her face. Surely if Jishoku hadn't put his foot down and argued against the council about taking her along to the third-dimensional layer of time-space, they'd have sent someone around Jishoku's level with him and they'd have watched each other's backs.
"That conqueror that attacked us was a golem of Magister Areteia's making. She probably intended to accompany me here herself or send another one of her assassins as insurance. If I didn't put my foot down against the Magistrate and insisted on bringing you, or not participating at all, I might have ended up getting killed out here. Besides, the reason I brought you along wasn't because I needed your strength, it was because I wanted to reward you for working hard in your lessons by bringing you to see that ridiculous third-dimensional idol of yours," the Paradox Magician waved his hand in dismissal.
Jishoku blinked a few times after surveying the troubled look on his apprentice's face before running his hand across his messy hair and groaning.
"Don't get yourself worked up about not meeting her. I've got you exactly what you wanted right here," Jishoku handed the wand that he was fooling around with to Minara. The puzzled young lady examined the wand with uncertainty, feeling it fitting her hand incredibly well, however, she felt a notable absence of magical energy in it that wouldn't let her use this magical artifact to replace her usual wand. Her master's lessons would kill her with only weaksauce spells that such an awful wand could produce.
"This… Did you make it, master?" Minara Bebe couldn't fathom what exactly led her master who always insisted on her stripping her ridiculous magician's uniform and dropping the Konoha Sorceress act when studying and accompanying him on assignments across different planes and dimensions to give her this stinky wand that only seemed passable at best and had little going for it besides the intricate craftsmanship and cute looks.
"Don't tell me you still don't get it… If you think I made this for you as a replacement for your own wand, you'll break your old man's heart for sure," Jishoku Quinton crossed his arms and made it his personal mission to guide his precious apprentice through what exactly made his gift to her so special. He looked so offended that Minara didn't figure it out from the get-go, that it was as if he was considering dropping her as his apprentice if she couldn't put her finger on it until the end of this visit.
"Huh!?" Minara twirled and rolled the comfy wand in her hand before letting it slip to where she was holding the very heart-shaped gem in its core. It was the only mystical object that powered the entire artifact. "It's a soul gem, isn't it? That soul… It's so lost and… So sad."
"They do say to never meet your heroes, don't they? Unless your hero is me, of course…" Jishoku Quinton shrugged. "I guess your little quack pretending to be a magician is just some depressed human being after all. Behind all that bright and cheerful idol act, she's just as hurt and insecure as you were when I picked you up as my apprentice. Hmm… I was contemplating if I should show this to you since I appreciate this quack inspiring some courage and pizzazz in you. You've become so much more tolerable after becoming obsessed with this charlatan, even if I don't always approve of how far you take this fangirl act."
"N-No way!" Minara Bebe gasped, covering up her mouth as her voice became squeaky. "T-Then… This is… Nakotsumi Mana's soul gem!?"
"It is, despite what it might at first appear. It's odd, isn't it? Usually, soul gems are bland and sparkly prismatic stones and it's the content of the soul being sealed inside of them that gives them their gemstone appearance. Feisty and passionate souls make soul rubies, greedy, acute, and savvy souls make soul emeralds, and… Well, I'd have never thought that a brat playing pretend magician would be defined by her intelligence and sensitivity and make a soul sapphire. I guess you never truly know someone…" The Paradox Magician shrugged, looking smug about pulling this minor miracle off for his student as an apology for failing to protect her on the field for the first time.
"I wouldn't say you knew Mana-san at all!" Minara objected. "All you did was base your impressions of her on what you didn't like me doing. Just because she doesn't know real magic, doesn't make her a quack. She's a kind and curious soul who is restrained by the plane she was born in. Regardless, she's someone who is curious and has an expansive sense of understanding. Unlike even someone as amazing as you, she never presumes to know anything and Mana-san always tries to learn and understand everything as if she's experiencing it first time. You should have peered into her soul and seen it for yourself since you made this soul gem."
"Maybe you're right," Jishoku Quinton shrugged with a faked look of indifference on his face. "You're describing a perfect mindset for a young magician's apprentice. Maybe I should have picked her over you?"
"Even if I believe you to be kidding, master, I'm sure that Mana-san would have made an excellent magician. She'd have been a Magister, I'm sure of it. She'd have cared for the inhabitant of every plane and she'd have brought peace and prosperity to the planes, I believe it to be true!" Minara Bebe clasped the gemstone in her hand and liberated it from the wand's grip, deactivating all, admittedly lacking, magical properties of the mystical artifact as she pressed the gemstone closer to her chest. Just as Minara expected, the gemstone began imitating her heartbeat by making the soul sapphire pulse like a beating heart in Minara's exact rhythm.
"In any case, how did you end up acquiring this soul gem? Last I recall, Nakotsumi Mana was nowhere near the Agbarah Sheikhate, despite being an acknowledged Goddess of the Arena here…" Minara looked up. While she didn't exactly wish to cast accusations, she wouldn't have put it beside her master to kill a third-dimensional entity just to absorb their soul into a gem for a neat memento. Holding the preserved soul of her treasured idol in her hand and warming it up with her bodily warmth, Minara simply didn't know what to think anymore.
"That seemed to be the case, didn't it? However… We appear to have been mistaken. Nakotsumi Mana was here, we just didn't identify her," the Paradox Magician replied, apparently fully oblivious to the accusations brewing in Minara's mind.
"What do you mean? She couldn't have been a participant in the battle royale. Even though there were so many and the battles turned so hectic, I am certain I would have recognized Nakotsumi Mana, of all people," Minara insisted.
"Really? Because she paraded right in front of us and even I missed out on her real identity until her spirit was freed from its stone prison. It was only when the body shackling her true identity was destroyed and her spirit was released that I caught a whiff of something interesting. By then, her opponent had nearly ripped her spirit apart, leaving only a few strands to weave it back together and salvage it inside an empty soul gem. Even my power would not have sufficed to preserve that ravaged soul that loathed its own existence and lamented its eternal failures without sealing it inside of a soul gem," the Paradox Magician let his precious apprentice in on the know.
"Of course… We should have known it was that statue from the Chaos Factor faction!" Minara Bebe smacked her open hand with a hammering fist as a sign of confirmation. "I do recall it having signed up under the name "Mana". Back then, I thought it was simply a popular name amongst the locals. There was no reason to think that Nakotsumi Mana would have trapped her body inside of some brittle and cumbersome stone statue."
"It makes more sense the more you think about it," Jishoku Quinton shrugged. "While "mana" is considered an important and sacred word amongst the magicians, no warriors on this plane label mana that way. The ninja refer to it as "chakra", the samurai as "kenki", the Salvari as "dharma" and so on…"
"Hmm… Considering all that, I wonder how come Mana's named that?" Minara Bebe wondered, placing the soul gem back in the magical field that held it suspended and siphoned out some of its strength to cast spells when its user called upon its strength.
"Who knows? Maybe her parents met some planes-travelers back in the day? In any case, with us having our butts kicked, there's not much use in us sitting around here. If we return to the Magistrate Nexus, you can have an actual healer patch you up to full strength with a snap of their fingers," Jishoku patted and nuzzled his apprentice's head, wishing her well.
"Hmm… That's unfortunate. I'd have really loved to give Mana-san her body back," Minara sighed, looking at the gorgeous, deep-blue gemstone levitating in a mystical field at the tip of her wand.
"We spoke about it before, Minara. Nakotsumi Mana is a third-dimensional human who lives in a plane that obeys the tide of time to the letter. Like all of her peers, she's susceptible to growing old and dying, unlike you or me. We intended to change that by establishing a Nexus here, but we both got our sorry asses kicked. I don't think that Mana would appreciate being given a fresh new body when there's so much suffering around her and people don't get saved by planes-walking wizards," the Paradox Magician reminded Minara of the discussion they had plenty of times already. "You promised me you wouldn't interfere on her behalf, unless she walks the planes and finds our Nexus herself, like all the other apprentices that get taught magic."
"Yeah… I know, master…" Minara sighed before forcing a smile through the tears. "I guess at least she won't ever grow old and die now that her soul's preserved in a soul gem. She'll get to see so much that she'd have never seen otherwise."
"That's a good way of looking at it, kid," Jishoku nodded. "Let's face it, with how weak and uneducated the denizens of this plane are, there was no chance of any of them ever finding us and learning magic. It's like you said, this Mana truly is special that way."
"If it's all the same to you, master. I'd like to rest for today. We can go back to the Magistrate Nexus tomorrow," Minara asked.
"Man… As a timeless magician, you really took that whole waiting and obeying the tide of time thing of this dimension well. I nearly went mad the first time I had to wait and, in my case, it was just a couple of hours," Jishoku Quinton laughed with his arms pressed to his sides before turning around and walking out of the ward with his hands in his pockets. "Whatever, it'll be a while until you will ever need to wait again. Enjoy yourself for today. I'll see how our last chances of establishing a Nexus here are doing. Don't go insane and talk to that stone too much. The spirit's so splintered that it's unlikely it can even understand you."
And just like that, the Paradox Magician left Minara Bebe to relax in her room with a nearly useless but also priceless wand with the salvaged soul of Nakotsumi Mana, preserved in a soul gem that fueled its incredibly limited power.
"Well, we're about as late to the mission objective as we can be, but we're here, at long last…" Shige-H scanned the looming and intense presence of the Sun Disc colosseum. She had expected the place to be much louder, though by now they knew that the first round of the event to determine the new Sheikh was already over. At the current time, people merely blindly wandered the entertainment district looking for places to eat or spend their time while they cooled down after the most intense martial arts event of their lives and hyped themselves up for the next round.
"Look at these," Damisan noted, approaching a poster on the wall that advertised the upcoming match-ups. "The competition continues tomorrow. I can't identify any Chaos Factor or Fennec's mercenaries among these competitors. Does that mean our mission's completed?"
"If so, this has to be the least work we've ever put into completing a mission–the thing basically solved itself," Asuka suggested.
"I would not imply this mission solved itself. A party of Konoha ninja that included a Sannin attacked us, we nearly got wiped out by the Chaos Factor and had to foil a plot by Yamanaka Tenma to get an invaluable Allied Ninja member back. This might just be the hardest mission we've ever been on," Damisan vocally objected.
"It's not over yet," Shige-H clued the rest of the Stars in. "We still need to regroup with Endo, find out what happened to Mana and where her mind is being stored, so we can return it to her body. Then, we still need to confirm that no Fennec mercenaries or Chaos Factor members are competing or are plotting to take over the Sheikhate. I agree with Damisan, this is the most troublesome mission we've ever been on."
"Damn it, that slacker Endo isn't on the bracket either. Don't tell me Mr. Self-Appointed No. 1 got his ass kicked out of the battle royale," Asuka sighed in frustration.
"It's surprising that there's no sign of that Konohagakure Sannin either. It appears that a ninja from Kumogakure, Yoibetsu-N, is the only ninja that made it to the second round," Damisan observed. Had it not been for the Kumogakure naming pattern, the Allied Ninja wouldn't have even been able to identify the fact that this man was a Kumogakure ninja since he lacked the renown of someone like Kusagoro Jugo.
"Alright then, if this poster's any indication, we've only got until tomorrow to clue ourselves in, find and collect Endo and Mana, and determine our course of action. If we're truly as lucky as Asuka alleged us to be, we won't need to make any behind-the-scenes "corrections" to this bracket and risk becoming Public Enemy No. 1," Shige-H declared while the rest of the tired Stars mentally and physically prepared to continue their work for this mission to be complete and all of their friends remain employed, alive and by their side.