Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Games of Body and Soul

The Great Mental Jailbreak

This entire horror show was reaching new depths with each passing second. To someone who tried operating with a sharp and rational mind, like Mana, every moment provided new challenges and stacked new barriers on top of that noble venture.

The company of jounin Mana came with were nowhere to be seen, whatever Kiyomi had become after this long of dwelling in the very center of this otherworldly corruption was staring right at her in all of her panic-inducing abstract glory and the magician could not stop questioning her mind about every choice and thought flashing through it. Which ones were rational and which ones were influenced by the malice around her seeping inside her every cell and soaking them from within.

"Kiyomi, we need to leave. A bunch of kids had died because of what happened and you staying inside Ikiro-san's mind is..."

Before Mana could finish the realization hit her that the entity she was speaking to was no longer in front of her. Lead through mere instinct alone, Mana rolled forward as her body was electrified by the fear that, instead of locking her down in absolute panic, fueled her movements.

Why did Kiyomi attack her? Mana glared at the levitating unearthly entity of chakra that used to be her friend and the abyssal whites that illuminated the darkness' face stared right back at Mana. Within instants, the being moved up right behind Mana. Had the magician not foreseen this attack, she would have been hit.

These movements... It did not appear like whatever Kiyomi had become was moving through whatever distant, cosmic field that they have moved to. She was phasing in and out, almost like moving instantaneously. Despite her movements from one location to another happening in a literal instant, the time before she reappeared and delivered a hit had some sort of a delay. That brief span, however small, was the only hope Mana had to survive if the intentions of this entity were violent.

"Why did you attack me? I'm your friend, don't you remember?" Mana tried pleading with Kiyomi again. The girl was smarter than to try and measure the exact signature of chakra of this entity. It would have been helpful in determining where exactly she warped, sure, but it carried a disadvantageous promise of being too much for any inexperienced sensor to handle.

The feminine cosmic shape extended her hand forward, the long tendrils on her head that resembled human hair in shape only began flowing backward, as if affected by an intense pushing force from the direction of Kiyomi's hand. Mana moved again, not because she saw what she was being attacked by but because she saw the signs around the attack itself – the bending space, the effects it had on the almost ethereal and made of chakra itself cloak of Kiyomi's.

"Stop attacking me, I'm trying to help you!" Mana yelled out. She decided to keep her mouth shut instead of speaking anything more than that. Her voice must have betrayed it that the magician was working really hard to avoid what seemed to summon almost no effort from Kiyomi's malicious new form.

Kiyomi cocked her fist back and drove it down. Her body kneeled like she was trying to punch an invisible ground with her fist. It was only at that moment that Mana noticed that she was not quite floating anymore. There was some invisible force holding her, like a transparent platform that kept her from sinking into the infinite void in all directions.

An invisible pressure wave lifted Mana up in the air and tore her body to shreds through sheer pressure of it alone. Instead of the rain of blood and flesh that the girl's body was torn into, a rain of flower petals scattered on the invisible platform before beginning to spiral in a shape of a pillar and reforming Mana's body again.

Mana had no choice. Not only did she have to fight back if she was to avoid death, or whatever the fate of whoever died wherever the two were was, but she also had to open her sensory up and just hope that she could control it properly. Kiyomi was attacking her with pure, invisible and perfectly controlled chakra. One required chakra sensory or some manner of chakra tracking technique to be able to perceive it and they were too powerful, too widespread and too fast for Mana to attempt and avoid without it.