Halfway on her dash toward the gardens, Mana slowed down. Knowing that one of the Salvari would follow her and assist her in liberating Agbarah from the golden barrier dome that prevented those stuck inside from leaving, she decided to regroup and decide on a battle strategy rather than rush into potential peril. Mana didn't expect to see Bishiyari closing in, though she wasn't knocked out of her sandals either.
"Bishiyari-san," Mana said in acknowledgment when the Salvari caught up to her, hovering beside Mana with the power of dharma instead of jumping from rooftop to rooftop and dashing across power cables. "You chose to go with me? I have a feeling that wasn't a coincidence."
"But of course," Bishiyari's lips gently tipped in the opposite directions, curving into a subtle smile. "I promised the young man who cares a great deal about your well-being that I would make sure you return to him."
"It's very kind of you," Mana raised an eyebrow. Something about this sounded a bit suspicious, what with Bishiyari becoming so invested in Damisan's feelings for Mana and his smirking and whatnot. "You're such a kind and noble soul," Mana added in a marginally sarcastic tone.
"Of course, I was also interested in you. You're such an incredibly enigmatic young lady, do you know that?" Bishiyari glanced at Mana with kind eyes. "What with how you've appeared out of nowhere and were permitted entry into the tournament in the middle of the second round. While I understand the fact you've once done a great service to this Sheikhate by changing Sheikh's heart and the direction of the Sun Disc arena, but even we, the Salvari, had to prove ourselves in the battle royale."
"Hmph," Mana let out a half-assed noise, wondering if sparing him something resembling an explanation of the mess that she was a part of which led her to where she ended up being was even worth the effort. Bishiyari sounded like a stand-up guy, but there must have been a limit even to how much he was willing to accept.
"Not to mention how you've managed to master the usage of dharma in such a short time. Sure, the Messiah of Martial Arts also tapped into it during the battle royale, but… No one except for us, Salvari, wove it into our own techniques," Bishiyari added. "I must admit, I was questioning the Sheikh's decision to include you into the tournament so abruptly, even feared it would discredit the integrity of the Succession Tournament at first, but… After seeing you controlling dharma like you were one of the Salvari, I ignored my fears and just wanted to see more of you. If nothing else, you are an entertainer."
"Oh, I take pride in it," Mana smirked. "However, what if I told you I actually took part in the battle royale?"
"You mean…" Bishiyari gasped. "I knew that there was something suspicious going on. Rajul pointed out how there was an unknown competitor in the battle royale, one who proceeded to move on to the second round and even won a match, but no one could remember who they were, how they looked like, how they fought… So, that was you?"
"Well… Not exactly. It appears that we don't have the time to get into it, sadly. It's something of a long story…" Mana said while facing ancient sandstone platforms with octagonal steel pavilions, decorated with hanging gardens of vines and bushes sprinkled with blossoming flowers. Some of the pavilion walls had water spilling over them, shielding the pavilion from every side but the entryway staircase. Spilling so much water to maintain these gardens so far west in the desert must have been like showering one's flowers with liquified gold. If nothing else, just this showcase of the Sheikh's wealth and power left an impression on Mana.
"Who is that man? One of Fennec's mercenaries? I don't remember him…" Bishiyari stroked his facial hair while resting atop a rooftop and observing numerous ethereal streams of golden chakra rising and supplying the barrier with energy to keep it active.
"No, he was there during the battle royale," Mana said, with a focused squint in her eyes. "I can vaguely remember his chakra signature. He's different now, weaker, I think."
"Hmm?" Bishiyari scratched his head. "Ah, yes… His spirit is foul enough to sting my nerves and invite memories. The possessor of the Heart of the Desert, Vizeriman, was it? It makes sense his return from the afterlife would leave him weaker. After all, the Heart of the Desert was destroyed before his death, and, while the man may have cheated death, his precious artifact didn't."
"In any case, let's get to work," Mana uttered, throwing herself in a reckless leap across the district, vaulting over her front side and landing atop the massive sandstone pavilion while looking down at the mercenary dressed in a regal black-and-white robe, now crooked and old. Bald and wrapped in a sheet of wrinkly, diseased skin, with a long beard that threatened to peel off the old man's chin just like his hair had long fallen off. "Undo that barrier!" Mana yelled out, pointing her finger at the sickly mercenary as a warning.
Looking as if he didn't exactly think much of Mana's reckless actions and absolute disrespect of the element of surprise, Bishiyari swooped in by her side to make the petite young woman appear more intimidating before her opponent and make her demands hold at least a bit more weight, supplemented by the Salvari's mere presence.
"You must be the worst ninja alive," Vizeriman spoke in a wet and gargling, low-pitched voice of someone whose lungs must have been drowning in pus. "How much more desert must Fennec conquer before the other ninja villages show some respect and send someone competent for a change? Then again, perhaps letting Sunagakure get sacked while they pretend to take Fennec seriously is their goal?"
"So, Sunagakure is your target after all," Mana mumbled to herself, finally putting the pieces together. It was as they suspected–the goal of this group was to win the Succession Tournament and grant Agbarah to Fennec so that the Desert Fox could move in from behind and lay siege on Sunagakure by surrounding the village, once the revolutionary had conquered enough of the old, western desert to rival Sunagakure's strength. Once that plan failed–they tried entering again by manipulating Batsudoru. Then, when that too failed–they settled on holding the Kazekage and his finest ninja trapped here while Fennec undoubtedly was trying to take Sunagakure.
"I believe the young woman asked you to undo the barrier," Bishiyari said, taking a step to stand in front of Mana while he held his hands together in the position of prayer, looking tranquil. Yet, if one saw the Supreme Being of Ultimate Goodness fight, they would know that was when he was the most dangerous. "Accept her request or deny it, but don't make her wait."
"You know, I've defied death countless times because of the Heart of the Desert. As long as the Heart was intact, the desert and I were one. I could die as many times as the grains of sand in the whole world, and, when one thought they were getting close to counting them down, a sandstorm would usher in dunes upon dunes more. Sand, I believe, is as old as time itself, and only with the end of time will sand cease to be. Sand is like ashes of decay, and decay will claim us all before the end…" Vizeriman looked up, gently untying the knots holding his robe closed and unveiling a gaunt and wrinkly body underneath as he slipped the robe off his shoulders. "Never, however, have I returned from death without the aid of the Heart. It feels like time itself is mocking me for using the power of its decay to bypass becoming sand myself so many times."
"He's stalling for time," Mana said, pushing Bishiyari into action. Golden dharma burst forth as a radiant halo became a booming pillar of energy, with the Supreme Being's eyes peering through even the lustrous flame of his sublime dharma. With the narrow thread of Bishiyari's beads snapping, the beads became swept up in the turbulent vortex of a raging aura. As they circled the Supreme Salvari, they became sated and soaked with dharma, growing vastly out of proportion into bona fide dharma bombs. With a flick of Bishiyari's finger, the beads that have turned into gigantic balls of energy hurled like rumbling celestial bodies, slamming into the fragile elderly body of Vizeriman one by one and rag-dolling him around with each rowdy slam.
Grunting and wheezing, Vizeriman pushed himself off the vertical wall of the pavilion and flopped into the ground, before peeling himself back on his feet and glaring viciously at the two combatants that had come here to stop him.
"Hmm…" Bishiyari's torchlight eyes scanned the battlefield as illusory clones of the sickly mercenary flooded the chamber of the hanging garden. Each one mocking the Allied Ninja and the Salvari with a pained chuckle and clutching the old and rattled ribs while concealing the true source of the energy sustaining the barrier. "So, he does not intend to fight us directly, but to stall for time."
"You attack my spirit? Ridiculous! The spirit of a man who's been confronted with their own mortality and accepts their death cannot be broken, not even by hurling planets at it," Vizeriman scoffed at Bishiyari's excessive attempts to break his spirit and force a surrender with the aid of dharmic attacks.
"Hmph!" Bishiyari ripped through the pulsar of exalted dharma with a slash of his hand and emerged from the relentless lustrous tunnel donning hundreds of golden dharmic arms behind his back while his human hands were pressed together over the Salvari's chest in prayer. "In fleeing and cowering, you betray your spirit to be already broken. Behold, the irrelevance of your so-called unbreakable spirit!"
With a mighty shockwave, Bishiyari's dharma expanded far beyond its body, blasting all across the garden. Mana dashed away, sensing an awe-inspiring threat from her ally as, while the dharma of the Supreme Being didn't disturb the water, nourishing the hanging garden, or the plants thriving therein, every single doppelgänger wearing Vizeriman's face gasped in terror and kneeled before the Supreme Salvari. The unbelievable and complete submission of their enemy shocked Mana, making her glare down at her trembling hand and press it to her side to calm herself.
While Dashula may have beaten Bishiyari in combat, Mana had never seen someone submitting an unwilling enemy by utterly crushing their spirit with merely the pressure of dharma alone. The closest thing she encountered was the power of Intents that some high-ranking ninja or the Justicars used. This didn't appear to be a conscious submission, merely Vizeriman's body caved into the pressure out of natural instinct to submit for the sake of one's preservation. From the looks on the blanked-out faces of Vizeriman's illusory clones, they were despising themselves and struggling against their own bodies submitting unconditionally to the Supreme Being.
"There, behind the waterfall," Mana pointed out. "That's where the real one is."
With an authoritative nod, fully trusting the input from Mana's chakra sensory, Bishiyari took off, seeking to obliterate the real Vizeriman and, instead of fending off and humiliating his sickly clone army, finally undo this barrier and let the Sunagakure ninja return to their village so they could protect it. The real Vizeriman appeared taken off-guard by how suddenly and precisely the Salvari took off, homing straight for him. The hundreds of dharmic fists joined together into paired arms that shimmered with cosmic starlit dust of solid light while swallowing all outside light, like black holes.
A rustling noise preceded a tight snap. Bishiyari's fist stopped just a few inches away from Vizeriman's crooked nose. It was the abandoned robe of the mercenary that's sprung to life and wrapped around Bishiyari's human arm, pulling the Salvari back and preventing him from landing a blow. The loincloth wrapped over Vizeriman's waist became like a sharp tendril, thrusting forward and slashing across Bishiyari's chest before rapidly stitching from left and right in an attempt to skewer the Salvari while it still had the chance.
Diving from the air, Mana descended with a fling of a hand of steel-tipped cards, prompting the assaulting loincloth to pull back and stiffen to a hardness comparable to steel, courtesy of Vizeriman's ability to infuse clothing materials with chakra. With a stamp of her foot, Mana flipped over the armored cloth barrier and dashed behind and over her opponent's head, turning around and flinging more cards at the back of the old man. The loincloth swooped in once more to deflect the incoming steel-tipped projectiles while Vizeriman turned his back on the Supreme Salvari, still held down by the robe entrapment.
Wielding her cards in her hand like makeshift claws, Mana charged onward, clashing with the sharp as steel loincloth tip and engaging Vizeriman's ruthless attempts at fending off the Allied Ninja or, better yet, impaling her on his loincloth and then focusing his attention on the God of the Arena. Mana's card claws clashed again and again with the weaving cloth, fending off its attacks one time, attacking where she thought she saw an opening another time. Just when the novelty of Mana's interference must have worn its course, Vizeriman bellowed out in pain, glaring down only to see a steel-tipped card etched into his foot, nearly severing half of it and pinning the man to the ground by his own treacherous flesh.
Mana backed up, using cards wielded in one hand to fend off the counterattacks of Vizeriman's loincloth, while her other hand lobbed a handful of cards at Vizeriman's openings: his shoulders, wrists, ankles, and feet. There it was! Unable to compete against Mana's relentless pressure, Vizeriman instinctively called in his much wider and more dangerous robe, absorbing Mana's cards with a defensive whirl and dropping them clanging on the sandstone floor.
What Vizeriman didn't expect, however, was taking a numbing punch to the back of his head by Bishiyari's dharmic arms, now that the Supreme Salvari was liberated and could once again reach his opponent. With Vizeriman stuck in between two opponents and his Mist Servant technique being useless against Mana's chakra sensory guiding her toward the real deal, Vizeriman ended up stuck in between Mana and Bishiyari, both of whom attacked him in sync.
Bishiyari's dharmic fists ran rampant across Vizeriman's body, turning the old and crooked man into a rag doll and battering him with a spirit-breaking barrage of crushing punches, meanwhile, Mana leaped up and wrapped her thighs around Vizeriman's throat, squeezing his neck and using her full body weight as well as the momentum of her dash to bring the mercenary down on the ground with a thunderous slam that made Vizeriman cough up blood and roll his eyes back. With an additional boost from Bishiyari's dharmic arms, Mana took a bountiful leap into the air before vaulting over her front and thrusting her right leg out, while performing a vicious dive kick.
"Spear Kick!" she exclaimed, punting the old man through the collapsing hanging garden platform and ruining two floors of the garden in the process by causing debris of the collapsed platform to collapse onto the lower floor and crush some of the gorgeous foliage while busting the impressive plumbing and causing ripping torrents of water to shower the entire district with a refreshing drizzle and color it with rainbows, as opposed to focusing the stream solely on watering the luscious garden.
Mana's fingers slithered to the old man's throat, feeling his pulse, despite his whited-out eyes and an awkward bodily position, suggesting that either his back, his neck, or both were broken. Still, the damage proved to be sufficient to undo the old man's stream of chakra, supplying the barrier dome, which, in term, began thinning the barrier out, until it wholly vanished without a trace.
Standing up and pulling back, Mana took a couple of breathers, admiring the fruits of the Stars' work and feeling the chakra signatures of the Sunagakure ninja disappear from her chakra sensory range as the Kazekage and his party hurried off to rescue their village from Fennec's invasion.
"Even without your chakra, you are still dangerous, it seems," Bishiyari commended Mana's performance as she proved invaluable in seeing through Vizeriman's Mist Servant and liberating Bishiyari from the clothing entrapment of the veteran mercenary. "This man's fighting days are over. Though I can't help but wonder just how much of a service you've done for him. He's already on death's door because of sickness, you only robbed him of being able to move for however long of a life he's got."
"That is none of my concern," Mana closed her eyes, turning away from Vizeriman's awkwardly positioned body. "I have no authority to decide who gets to live and who dies. As long as this man has a life, he has a chance to do good. To make someone else's life better. Wherever there's life, there's possibility."
"What an interesting philosophy. Not something I have ever heard a ninja say," Bishiyari smiled. "However, you are, of course, aware, that while life has the possibility for this man to do more good, it also has the possibility for this man to do more evil."
"That is not up to me. Judging people's potential requires even greater authority than deciding whether someone should live or die to atone for their crimes. If this man continues on his path, I, or someone else, will stop him again. I've certainly made it easier to do so next time," Mana replied, leaving Vizeriman laying on a pile of collapsed sandstone debris while she ran up a steel pavilion bar and looked up at the Sun Disc district, hearing ruckus and celebration taking place there.
Just as Mana turned around to collect Vizeriman's body and carry the sight of a dharmic hand holding Vizeriman's limp and paralyzed body suspended behind Bishiyari greeted her.
"What are you doing?" Mana asked, with a hint of worry in her voice. Given the reaction of most people when exposed to her ninja way, the ninja magician fully expected Bishiyari to crush the unconscious old man and snuff whatever miserable life he still had left in him.
"I'm not letting you drag him on your tired shoulders the whole way back," Bishiyari replied with serene tranquility. "I too don't like killing my opponents, Mana. However, meting out justice is also no business of mine. This man will be surrendered to the Sheikh. The Sheikh can decide his fate if the two of us don't feel up to it."
"I can live with that," Mana nodded with the two warriors taking off back the way they came, rushing to return to the Sun Disc arena, regroup with their allies, count their losses, if any, and lick their wounds.