"Forget? Wait, you mean you want me to use my Magician's Touch on you on purpose?" Mana's right lower eyelid twitched. It was such an unorthodox request that she wasn't sure if she should just continue to feel confused about it or to submit to the repulsion that crawled its way out through inside of her throat.
"Yeah, that's right. That's how it works, isn't it? You hold your hands over someone's head, zap 'em, and then they forget things. There are things in my past I'd like to forget forever for some peace of mind." Skaven nodded, turning his eyes to the right. He knew how weird this sounded. Some part of him was ashamed to ask this of Mana though, given his unusual request, there may not have been another person who could have helped him.
"That's not at all how it works." Mana shook her head. The tone of her voice rose, though she couldn't help it. What Skaven asked her to do was reckless. "It's true that I made this technique with a stray, naïve thought that it could have someday been used for bringing people that have strayed a long path from decency back into the humane society. A better method to treat them rather than to do away with them. I've dispelled that idea entirely when I saw how painful and crude the technique truly is."
"If it's pain, that's no problem at all. Pain I can handle." Skaven insisted. "Even excruciating agony beats those voices and faces haunting me day after day. Think about it, haven't you ever failed anyone?"
"All I do is fail people. One way or the other. I've gotten so good at it that it won't break my heart one bit to say no." Mana shook her head and dismissed her fellow Stars member, turning to walk away and pleading to the surrounding universe that Skaven would leave this alone. She knew better, she wouldn't have left it alone had she been in the Nara's shoes.
"Then you know what it feels like. I'm not a kind person. I've hurt and killed people all throughout my life, but I wanted no one innocent to get hurt. And yet… At some point, I could no longer find misguided excuses why people that died and suffered all around me were guilty of anything. Not even one, flimsiest thing. Do you have that one thing that you hate most of all?" Skaven looked up with lost eyes.
"Yeah," Mana didn't hesitate.
"Has it ever dominated your life? Become a second-nature companion of your every step to where it feels like you've been cursed with it because you hate it so much? Have you ever felt that perhaps you deserve its load on your back because of how rotten of a person you are? But even then… Why did the innocent people have to pay for my penance? It makes little sense…" Skaven's wide-open eyes stared at his shaking hands while his knees wobbled and his skin turned pale white from a sicklier shade Mana knew him for.
Why was he saying all of those things? Why did he speak in a way that made this abhorrent thing feel so right, and how did he have such an open wide and straight path to Mana's soul as if he had been inside its chambers before? What a cottony tongue this ex-criminal had. Making nothing less than shocking a young man's brain repeatedly, torturing him for the sake of permanent mental crippling sound so liberating and dignified.
"Yeah. I have a way of imagining what that feels like." Mana put it softly. People she knew and loved, people she vowed to save and help, ended up dead far more often than Mana helped them out. A lifetime of heroics wouldn't excuse her for dragging Shimo out halfway across the world just to die. And for what? To realize Meiko's lifelong dream? To return the control over Mana's severed chakra network back? How could any of those things even compare to the worth of a human life? Just a drop in what was becoming quite a fussy torrent.
"In that case, how can you be so cruel? You owe me, have you forgotten? Maybe the rest haven't told you? They would have put a rubbery ball with tubes and gear work inside of your chest, resuscitating you back to life as an asthmatic cripple. You'd have lived as a husk, just a fancy poster to bring more cannon fodder at the doorsteps of the Allied Ninja. That's all they see you as. It isn't any business of mine to ask if it's any better than Konoha, but I'm asking you to repay the debt of going out of my way to not make you yet another screaming voice in my head. Just another howler saying it's all my fault. If I'm to change my way, I can't have those nightmares coming with. I know it would only be right, but I also know that I can't handle it." Skaven truly pleaded with both his tone and his sorry facial expression. Just one nasty thought away from spraying tears and breaking into a weep.
"It… It won't work like you think it will." Mana sighed, exhaling all sense of reason before submerging into this river of madness that Skaven pointed to. "Shocking the brain, aiming for the memories is dangerous. I've learned to be precise over the years. I've learned to target specific centers, centers that handle certain emotions, and it makes one forget many experiences. In theory, shocking the right centers that handle the emission of pleasure when one behaves in a sadistic manner would make them forget those highs and, more often than not, those experiences."
"If a hardened killer won't remember why he kills, how it feels to kill, whom he has killed, and for what reasons, they might not kill at all…" Skaven mumbled to himself. It restarted Mana's breathing when she realized that he was putting thought into it and giving it a decent second chance of consideration. "I'd imagine targeting blind memories, unaffiliated with pure, base feelings would be harder, but mine are. Fear, hatred, anger… I've felt all of those things so you could take your pick."
"You're right, it's way harder, though not impossible. Though what you perceive as a factor that'll make it easier in fact makes it more difficult. You affiliate your undesirable memories with an entire array of emotions so I would have to hit them all–you'd lose all of those memories and feelings. It's safe to say that you'd have nothing left. As grand and admirable love and joy are, they don't make a whole person. Rip even one feeling out and what's left is a damaged person, rip several and what you have is a husk." Mana pointed out.
"So, is there truly no other way? Please…" Skaven insisted.
"Well…" Mana sighed. "I could perform a more complex operation. I could enter your mind via the standard interrogation technique and scope the place out. Mark what to hit, what to sever, and what to keep. It'd make the removal far more humane and surgical."
"But you'd see the memories I wish to rid myself of." Skaven dragged his hand through his greasy, one-sided hair.
Mana didn't respond. She didn't have to. Seeing Skaven's reaction told the complete story–this looked almost like a complete deal breaker to him. It was a very human thing to not wish to reveal one's darkest moments to another, fearing that they won't like what they see and won't exalt of the man possessing those secrets and those memories. Yet that wasn't all that inhabited Skaven's mind, and Mana could tell. Call it experience in the craft of intelligence gathering and interrogation, or just experience in life, talking to people. She saw a whole different shade making Skaven's expression bitterer, and it made her curious since the magician couldn't put her finger on it for the life of her.
"Maybe you could do something else? Do you think it would be possible to experience everything but the memories I want you to burn? I would submit my mind to the interrogation, manifest my Ego inside of my mental plane and guide you around. We could walk around the walls of my undesired memories and you'd draw a mental map of sorts. Then you'll know what and where to cut without having been inside those corners?" Skaven had a lively pulse of energy in his face as he explained this.
What was going on? The Nara wasn't speaking in broad terms at all–he was familiar with how ninjutsu interrogation worked. He spoke in exact terms and tread the field of the subject that Mana was intermediate at, and there was no discernible reason for him to know all those things and why what he asked for was plausible. It was as if a civilian off the street with only the basic Academy education told a medical ninja that the neurodegeneration killing their patient wasn't because of a neurological condition but instead came to be because of a tape worm growing inside them and ended up being right.
"I suppose scouting the memories you wish to keep is plausible. With your Ego being there to guide me along, it would even take just a few hours to scout the mental plane and complete the trip." Mana stroked her chin, still unable to shake suspicion off of her face.
"I see, that's great!" Skaven nodded with excitement that looked alien stuck on his face.
Of course, with his Ego unchained and present inside of his mind, he would also be capable of switching Mana's course or engaging her with far greater force, with his entire conscious and subconscious mind allied with him while she was scouting. It wasn't like Mana expected Skaven to wish her mental self trapped inside of Skaven's mind. If he had such goals, he'd have never helped her return from her almost final slumber. Still, with his unexpected background in interrogation taking a peek just now, there was something more to Skaven's request for his Ego to accompany Mana rather than merely something to make sure that their scouting trip is faster and more streamlined.
"I suppose if we start now, we'd be done by bedtime." Mana shrugged. Somehow, despite being the one helping Skaven and supposedly in control, she felt like she was just a sheep guided around a narrow corridor toward something at the end. Just who was Skaven and what sort of experiences had he been through? Would he even let Mana see, or was this part of what he wished to get rid of and would therefore remain shut off from her?
"You're hesitating and your voice pitched higher. It's almost as if you're the one who's going to let someone inside of your mind and then ask them to shock their brain a bunch." Skaven cracked a grin. Whatever cards he held in his hand, he didn't let up on them and he enjoyed that bleak shroud of secrecy of his very much.
Once they've made their way back to their room, Endo had still not returned from whatever he did all by himself. Shige-H, Tomi and Damisan had still been training or goofing around afterward to bond a little more as friends and future allies. That was just fine. What they were about to do would have required a lot of explaining, and Mana's wasn't sure that it would go all that smoothly with everyone. No matter how many times Mana tried to spin it in her mind, it didn't feel like Shige-H would have let Mana shock the brain of a fellow Stars member.
Skaven sat on his bed with a calm expression, crossing his arms and adopting a perfectly relaxed meditative position. He was almost lousy at hiding the fact that he hadn't had experience with this. Where would one even get such an experience? Mere criminals would have resorted to torture to extract information that'd be all with it. Something like this, something incorporating proper body posture, terminology… These were details that only formal training taught and only official students aligned to a ninja village would have bothered to learn and apply.
Intelligence Division? Black Ops? Which village?
Mana pressed her hand to Skaven's forehead, breathing a deep huff of unease right out and cleansing her mind of worry and all thoughts that she could purge at that moment. Of course, achieving the perfect state of no-mind was impossible to worry-wart like her, Mana accepted it already. Still, the calmer she was, the easier the way in would have been and the smoother the process. The less time she had to spend preparing herself for the procedure, the creamier the whole thing would go.
A pulse. A black void surrounded by rings of teal. Skaven's mind almost forced Mana to float through them. He had reduced his entire mental fort to mere black space and skipped her along with the whole thing. A true no-mind was necessary for a thing like that. Even Mana, with all of her training and experience, could have perhaps bent the space and time of her mental plane but not nullified it entirely.
"There it is," Skaven's gleaming with an outline of starry-white image spread its arms, showcasing a reflective junction of an endless, metal highway that glistened in rainbow colors. The surrounding void was like a violet nebula clad in stars, while tornadoes and cosmic storms of diamond-flake winds ravaged the landscape far-off in the horizon.
"Orderly," Mana noted.
"I've… Had some practice arranging my man-cave a bit." Skaven scratched the bald side of his head. He must have known the jig was up by the time he showed Mana his mental fort. "Anyway, each path of the junction is a separate highway that will take you to a separate section of my mind. I know this looks massive and those… Things in the horizon might seem like frightening, but they're harmless. The moment we take a direction–I'll streamline our blitz through the highway like before."
"The diamond tornadoes are unavoidable, unless someone's together with your Ego." Mana placed her hands on her hips, giving Skaven a cheeky look. And to think that he even tried acting uninitiated. "Okay, I've seen enough."
"Mana?" Skaven turned back, his eyes met one of Mana's sassier looks as she stared at him, floating in mid-air with her arms crossed over her chest. An invitation to explain himself. One he failed to honor as the Nara just began fumbling through words and supposed meanings for Mana's stoppage.
"You know, I'm quite close to just snapping this whole deal of ours. You're taking me for a fool of some sort and that's especially unacceptable given how you've pretty much guilt-tripped me into doing this. If we are to proceed like this, you'll ruin my impression of you without the need for me to see a single skeleton in your closet." Mana said.
"I… I don't understand." Skaven muttered.
"With this level of training, an Ego strong enough to roam one's mental fort freely, intimate knowledge of the aspects of mental interrogation and the rules of the mental plane. If you wish to make me believe that a ninja this skilled couldn't have sheltered off memories he didn't want to see inside his own mind–we've got nothing else to talk about, I'm done with this charade." Mana pressed on.
"Okay, you're right, I guess I went overboard sectioning off my mind like that and forming blocks before the undesirable locations and mental circuits before the ones we visit, huh?" Skaven dragged his hand across his dark hair with an expression that appeared to only be sorry about the fact that Mana caught him and not the fact that he lied to her so many times while guilt tripping her into coming here.
"Why did you really drag me here?" Mana asked.
"Well, to be honest, for once, I had hoped to show you around the rough, but not too rough, edges, then point you toward the part I can easily section off by myself and ask you to delete that. The crux of our deal was actually genuine. I really want you to delete a part of my memory, but we don't need to snoop around at all. In fact, I can point you to the exact location of that wing of my mental fort right now," Skaven shrugged, raising his arm to point at a seemingly unimpressive section leading to one of a few north-eastern sections of the rainbow mind junction.
"What sort of memories are those? Given how your award-worthy act about innocent people crying into your ear was all hogwash, what's really in there?" Mana looked in that specific direction. It seemed thoroughly unimpressive, save for a few vortexes of turbulent diamond dust winds blasting from the north strong enough to yank one off of the pathway entirely if one wasn't wary, skilled and of dominant will.
"That's the point of wanting to get rid of those memories, isn't it?" Skaven placed his hand on Mana's shoulder softly, though the magician pulled herself away from it. The young man may have saved her career and her dream of becoming a peace-inspiring Sannin, but he was still lying to her and doing so for unclear reason and Mana felt sick of enigmatic figures looking out for her while fostering unclear goals of their own.
"Either we see what's there, or I'm out." Mana put an ultimatum on the table, she closed her eyes trying to will an hourglass of shifting sands behind her but Skaven had such a firm and willful grip of his own mental plane that the magician had no hope of conceiving anything inside without his permission. Part of this was because of the presence of his Ego. The shell of his nut was just that incredibly tough to crack. By Mana's call, not even a hardened master interrogator would yield much in this venture, perhaps not even Seiga-sensei who taught Mana her craft.
"Wait, I'll explain everything if only you give me the chance," Skaven tried pacifying the situation, though it was hard taking him up on his word when he held such a tight clutch over Mana's mental presence inside of his mental fort. In her current situation, she was just a canary inside of an impenetrable glass cage–prime for a sightseeing tour but incapable of leaving wherever her wings might take her. Even if she'd chirp, who'd listen to her or hear her from inside of a glass box?
His explanation better would have been a damn fine one.