"If you are Mana's friends I have no reason to fight you. I have seen and helped much younger than you find their deaths during my quest for survival." Regalia exclaimed in anger when it appeared like an inevitable conflict would erupt between them.
"Oh yeah? I see Mana-chan passed out and running out of time with you above her lifeless body, that's shadier than I am willing to overlook. What did you do with the real Box?" Kouta yelled back at the woman angrily clutching his fist and focusing what little he had of chakra into it making it glow in a blueish flare.
"That chakra focused punch... You're a medical ninja? I suggest you save your chakra for helping Mana and not waste it for pointless..." Regalia couldn't finish her sentence because Meiko kicked right at the center of the woman's spine from behind her. The body of the woman in the red dress dissolved into sand as if the genin kicked a large sandbox and then reformed when the grains of sand re-entered her body.
"What the?" Meiko's eyes shot wide open in surprise and confusion. She had never seen an opponent like that before. Usually, even when her opponent was stronger they merely augmented their body to be incredibly hard so that her fist never really did any damage but she had never seen a ninja become sand before.
Regalia's hand extended to the side firing a blindingly fast wave of sand that slammed Meiko to the wall and held her there.
"I am running out of patience, how such a kind soul could find friendship inside such brutish and numb-skulled kids is beyond me" the woman growled almost like this outburst was more meant to herself than the kids attacking her for no reason.
"Ice Style: Freezing Wolf Blade Jutsu!" Shimo roared out letting his hands flash through a couple of hand seals as a blinding sandstorm covered the entire area extending to the corridors and rooms much further to where the scuffle was going on.
The blizzards were shaped like a dozen of smaller scale vortexes of cutting wind with knife-sharp icicles inside, the winds were cold enough to also freeze whatever they passed through. At the same time as those roaring winds of absolute frost collided at Regalia's location, the young swordsman leaped over the woman with a wolf-like figure shaping from solid ice around his sword making his blade appear several times larger and much more impressive in length and appearance.
The attack itself only lasted for an instant as Shimo's figure appeared behind the woman. Regalia's entire body froze into a solid chunk of ice that then split into three pieces and collapsed onto the floor, the same also happened to the stream of sand that held Meiko pressed to the castle wall crushing her chest slowly so that the blacksmith did not resist.
"Enough!" Regalia screamed out in anger as her body reformed. She was breathing much heavier as she had beaten many much stronger opponents that day and spent quite a large number of chakra on them, she wanted to stay there and slowly explain everything to these kids but frankly they were surprisingly much more capable than ordinary genin and she had little chakra to spare on them after wasting so much on that Jashinist and his team leader.
Regalia's golden sand exploded violently all over the room, avoiding only the small spot on the floor where Mana's body was laying and blasting all three of her friends off their feet and bashing them mercilessly into the castle walls breaking all of them through them. The woman remained standing for a brief moment just to see if the kids still had some fighting spirit in them but all of them appeared to be quite battered by that blast of sand. It appeared like these kids also had very little chakra to spare as even such a weak blast injured them quite heavily decimating their clothes and opening a bunch of nasty looking wounds.
Slowly the woman walked up to Kouta and lifted his body off the ground holding the youth by his hair, she turned his bruised and battered body at Mana. "She is your priority, not me. This girl is a remarkable youth who is ready to sacrifice her own life and dream for a total stranger on a whim. There aren't many people like that. I don't know where the box is, nor do I care. The magician girl has convinced me to reach for my dreams using my own power and not some fairy tales and legends. As the medical ninja of the group you have the responsibility to heal her, if she dies I'll hold you responsible"
"I thought I froze your body, it should've been drenched in water when that ice melted, didn't that make your body vulnerable?" Shimo's loud huffing growls came from the next room as the young swordsman clutched for his ribs.
"It does not matter if you heat my golden sand or if you drench it. Tenketsu Shinto techniques cannot be beaten using ordinary chakra nature advantages for I do not just become sand, that sand is more chakra than it is sand" Regalia explained before letting go of Kouta's head and allowing the young medical ninja fall on his knees trying his best to crawl to Mana's aid. His own remains of chakra were already keeping him alive and kicking so he had to reach the girl before his own body uses out too much chakra for his own survival.
"You're a Sunagakure ninja, aren't you? What are you doing here? Does the Sand Village intend to interfere with our mission?" the rogue swordsman asked. If Sunagakure actually knew about the box and intended to interfere it would've made their mission much more difficult.
"The Sand does not care about the Box because it, apparently, isn't here. Your mission is over, go home" Regalia replied, she didn't really like this swordsman because he still looked quite hostile and was readying his body for another attack, as an advanced sensor she could somewhat tell.
"What do you mean it isn't here!?" Shimo yelled out burning up with rage. "We've come all this way, fought through crime syndicates and faced the Nine-Tails, we didn't come all this way for nothing!"
"Open your eyes, boy, look around you. Two villages clashing with deaths on every side, people are ready to kill each other over a fancy fairytale. That is the kind of world we live in now, the world where wishes don't just come true. If you have a dream, in this world, you need to work for it, kill for it. Most of the time all those deaths are pointless, in war people die all the time and none of it ever makes any sense. We are born and we die without a purpose, only if we give ourselves a purpose, a thing to live for do we have actual point in our lives. Only then can we have dreams to work for. That is what I have come to realize after meeting Mana. I know you are ready to attack me, I can feel the blacksmith girl waking up as well... I need to disable you to actually make you stop coming for me"
"If I find out that you were responsible for Mana's pain, that you stole the Box or made it disappear, I'll find you and kill you wherever you are!" Shimo declared to which Regalia only smiled.
"Get in line, boy..." she closed her eyes, the woman could no longer feel the chakra of her sister-in-law. Jiou's chakra has shot blazing up as if he had just received a second wind. The chakras of his opponents were slowly fading, did Aisha actually get herself killed? Perhaps it was for the better, she received a fair and honorable death instead of being tortured and sucked dry by that man. Regalia would've chosen to die a thousand times in battle over another moment in that man's grasp.
"Sand Style: Temporal Shift!" Regalia chanted unleashing her genjutsu that made the three friends of Mana's de-age to their infant years upon their very eyes. She looked at the medical ninja who was crawling and rubbing his tired and disabled body against the stone crawling to Mana. Regalia knew that feeling inside the boy's heart, that feeling that made one crawl when they had no legs to walk with. She felt calm leaving Mana's fate in the hands of this young one. Then she felt a crushing pressure on her chest that made her open her eyes and fall to her knees.
"No! He has found us... No... Not here..." she started mumbling to herself before releasing Kouta from the illusion while she left the other two to writhe on the floor whining like little babies asking to be taken into someone's arms and calmed. By now Regalia was used to seeing grown people acting like babies so the sight no longer looked comical to her.
"Whatever you need to heal Mana is already inside her. Please do not rush to leave the castle until you absolutely have to. It'd be for the best if you forgot the way you came from, this is a castle, it must have some emergency tunnels, use them instead, wherever they lead it will be safer than the way you came from" the woman in red spoke to thin air but she knew that Kouta heard her. The woman's body dissolved into sand and rushed off to assist her husband who was about to have his hands full.
Finally, Kouta's hand touched that of Mana's, the boy pulled himself up closer and sat up placing his hands on the girl's body. He tried to gather the last bits of his strength but he couldn't find any left. He had just what he needed to survive, just enough to stay in a better condition than Mana was in currently.
"What you need to heal Mana-chan is already inside her..." Kouta mumbled to himself as he used the diagnosis technique to scan the girl with a blue light flaring up from his hands, illuminating his friend in the shadow of passing time that had devastated this castle. Mana looked terrible, once again she got injured to the point where she lingered on the edge of living and dying, that was how much they had failed her as friends and as ninja protecting their client. The world past the village walls was so scary. They could've never been ready for it.
"The woman gave Mana-chan chakra because she wanted her own body to use it to augment itself but Mana-chan's control is disabled so the chakra just stayed there..." Kouta realized pulsing a small flare of his chakra that illuminated his hands in a green light and quickly pushed the mass of chakra out of Mana's system into his own stream. Usually, chakra couldn't just be passed around like water from a jug, however, in this case, Kouta wouldn't pass it to anyone, he'd use a small signal from his own body to repurpose that chakra mass to heal Mana. He'd use that woman's gift to Mana to bring her back, it won't be enough to heal Mana, she'll still be banged up but at least she'll be in no danger of dying...
Kouta used one of his arms to wipe blood that was dripping on Mana's body from his forehead which was busted up, he took a moment to look at the side seeing his friends still affected by the illusion. They either still haven't realized that they were under an illusion or they simply didn't have the necessary amount of chakra to overcome the genjutsu technique. After all, usually it took much more chakra to break out of illusion than that was used to cast it and the illusion that manipulates one's own perception of time must've been incredibly advanced one.
"Then there're you guys..." the young man smiled a little...
*****
"What happened, what is wrong with his eye!" Gokibure yelled out when he saw Jiou's Sharingan symbol shift around, circles formed inside the tomoe signs that a normal Sharingan eye had, they also twisted into a strange shape that reminded more of a manly trinity sign with two of them positioned at the top corners of the eye and the third taking the central bottom position. Two shifted circles that looked similar like the asteroid rings accompanying planets formed around the tomoe signs in Jiou's eye.
"You killed your own teammate to acquire more power? What sort of a twisted man would do something like this?" Remashi spoke horrified by Jiou's actions. The woman always thought that most people she met on the battlefield were innocent, just people doing their jobs.
Maybe that was part of why she could never actually push herself over the line to satisfy her cannibalistic curiosity. This man was sick, twisted... And the worst part was that he used an ancient Uchiha ritual to gain power, that meant that being twisted was the whole point of his cursed clan. It was said by many romance novel writers that no one loved stronger than an Uchiha, which was why most main characters in novels and plays were Uchiha. However to love so strong and yet choose power over the life of one's love was just wrong to the Hyuuga woman.
"I wonder which of the Mangekyou Sharingan powers I have acquired... Either way, I am incomplete, I need both eyes to fulfill the Mangekyou potential" Jiou mumbled to himself as he reached over his eye and touched it while his other hand made a handseal.
A deafening scream of a woman being murdered and screaming endlessly overwhelming all the other senses of the two opponents of the newly awakened Mangekyou user and stopped both Gokibure and Remashi in their tracks. Their bodies witnessed their own deaths, their blood vessels exploding in gruesome ways, their limbs contorting into positions no one had ever taken for imaginable. The genjutsu completely overwhelmed the senses of the two and froze them making them unable to protect themselves.
Remashi quickly burst her fiery chakra all over her body recovering from the shock but when her vision finally ceased seeing her own death all over and over again with the voice of an unnamed woman screaming in her ears and overwhelming her senses. Finally, that terrifying voice calmed down and then disappeared, however, the first sight she saw of the real world was Jiou standing in front of her friend with a sword penetrating Gokibure's chest.
"I figured you'd see through the illusion and recover first with your Byakugan and all that..." Jiou mumbled. He was no longer the man that Remashi started fighting, he was currently just a monster who has just killed his own precious one and had little to no feeling in his eye or his expression. He pulled the blade out with Gokibure's body squirting blood all over Jiou's body and face, the man turned back at Remashi with a blank stare, his face still dripped with her comrade's blood.
"His body didn't even try to resist, didn't even augment itself in any way... You guys are so invested in strength, finding the strongest technique you can that you lack the ability to protect against the simplest illusions, then again, the power of Mangekyou Sharingan is anything but simple..." he spoke like a man who has lost his mind but not due to how emotional he was, how he lacked any emotion whatsoever.
"Come, Hyuuga woman, push me to my limit and force my body to reveal which one of the Mangekyou abilities my eye has..." Jiou shouted with emotion finally returning to his twisted with rage face. The man leaped forward thousands of times faster than sound, Remashi's pain-ridden muscles forced to woman to follow albeit slightly slower, the two clashed again and again. Remashi's Byakugan couldn't even track Jiou's chakra points due to how fast the man was moving. The woman's fire infused pinpoint strikes clashed with Jiou's blades firing off miniature explosions of flames and sparks, they clashed again and again, it looked like there was no end to their battle.
The sound of Remashi's fiery strikes colliding with Jiou's swords reminded of automated fire barrage except one sound followed the other so closely that sometimes one hid the other beneath.
"Fire Style: Eight Trigrams Inferno Crusher!" Remashi roared out focusing most of the chakra she had into her last resort technique, thrusting both of her palms at the equally exhausted opponent of hers. A fiery beam shot off of Remashi's palms that was supposed to incinerate her opponent. Hundreds of millions of degrees of concentrated power intending to destroy and absolutely obliterate the man who has killed her comrade.
Her hands moved in closer and closer. Remashi's eyes observed every fraction of a moment of her own movement, it was like the entire attack played out in a slow-motion crawl, her heated palms and the concentrated beam firing from them ready to incinerate the central chakra points and leave a large gaping hole in her opponent moving up closer and closer to Jiou, the man was tired, he may have been much stronger than Remashi initially but all the holding back and worrying over the castle ruins forced him to squander that advantage – he was caught open. He was within range!
Jiou's body started disappearing, fading, almost like it was spaghettified instantly and flushed down some sort of a hole in time and space appearing from his eye. Remashi's beam fired off into the distance, continuing forward without an end. She missed... The woman waited for her opponent's punishment, she was fully expecting to feel a sword stabbing through her from behind but as she kept on standing nothing happened. She just stood there and her opponent was nowhere to be found. What happened? Where did that man go? Did she win?
"Shit... That fucker stabbed me..." Gokibure's annoying voice reached Remashi's ears making the Hyuuga turn around and rush to her friend. She kneeled up to him observing his blood spitting wound on the man's chest.
"He just disappeared..." Remashi uttered still confused about what had happened.
"I really hope you incinerated him somehow, I mean that beam puts a large star to shame, doesn't it? Maybe he just burnt from the intensity of it, disintegrated instantly?" the man coughed up blood when his insects burrowed inside his wound covering it up from bleeding.
"You should've defended yourself against that illusion, didn't you see it coming you idiot?" Remashi tried to annoyingly bite her friend. Now that she saw her friend being in no danger of dying she remembered how much he pissed her off sometimes and what their working relationship actually was.
"He... That illusion was different..." the Aburame sniveled like a whining child sitting back up and standing up in time. He could've walked that injury off now that his insects would cover the wound up and keep supplying his body with chakra that they eat, using their instinctive minds to keep their host alive so that they too can stay alive.
"Yeah, it didn't attack our chakra flow, it pinched our brain centers. Even if we somehow suppressed our chakra or even if we were of the clans immune to genjutsu we'd have been completely defenseless... I thought genjutsu focused chakra flow and not one's brain directly..." Remashi nodded.
"Damn genjutsu users, no one is ever ready for them and then they evolve their techniques even further..." Gokibure spat blood to the side. All of a sudden his body just burst into a combination of blood and exploded all over the desert sand and over the rocks and the debris around.
Remashi's eyes continued to stare at the space where her friend once was now only seeing a tall three meter-sized, hunched over man with long black hair and a rich beard, the man's eyes were glowing red as if they were red lanterns or two small stars that just glowed red. His position implied that Gokibure blew up due to the man's overpowered punch. The man's massive hand quickly wrapped around Remashi's mouth, surprising the woman by how deceitfully fast the man was and lifted her into the air.
The woman tried to resist but it felt like her whole body was powerless, she still had chakra to fight back, she was supposed to but she felt more powerless than she had ever felt. It was like the man's touch took away all of her essence, all of her chakra in one instance. She kicked around in the air, flailed her hands and punched and kicked and clawed at the man. All of her kicks and punches did not even register, it was like she hit a diamond wall, her own nails broke and peeled off from trying to claw the man's eyes out. Remashi's hands powerlessly weighed down as tears squirt from her Hyuuga eyes.
"Excuse me, did you see a woman in a red dress somewhere around here? I see her teen friend lying dead here so I just wondered..."
Remashi felt her essence: her emotions, her memories, her strength and everything that she called her own being sucked out of her, it was almost like a mere touch of the man tore open her body and had the man burrow inside her guts, both literal and emotional and scavenge for whatever he fancied. The woman had never felt such a horrible feeling, she's been blasted by explosions more powerful than exploding worlds, burnt than fire hotter than anything found on Earth and punched by people strong enough to lift mountains and yet she'd choose all of those combined over a second more of that man's touch.
"No? Nevermind, I sense her closing in, thank you for your time..." the man spoke Remashi screamed out in the man's grasp as she felt his palm penetrate her body as he thrust his arm through her and let her go, leaving her dead body hanging on the arm he pierced her through.
A twister of golden sands circled around the red-eyed man forming a humanoid form that then took Regalia's shape. The woman was tired and she felt like any technique she used could've been her last but she was the happiest she's ever been since that night when she met this man for the first time. She was finally free of fear, free of that feeling of powerlessness. She was facing her greatest fear, facing her problem and she wasn't about to let more innocent people die and suffer because she was too scared to face her fear.
"Was she even delicious to you at all, monster? Anything like feasting on me for all those years was?" Regalia asked angrily yet without any trembling or fear seeing the Hyuuga's body dangling still impaled by the man's arm that didn't relax and let her slip off his grasp.
"Not really, she didn't feel like anything, I killed her because she was in my way" the man's strong and loud voice thundered out. "Well, which direction are you running to now? Who will you hide behind this time?"
"No more running... No more dreams or fairy tales. We do this here and now" Regalia replied thrusting her hands forward and surrounding the man in endless waves of sand.
She kept on adding more and more and raising the ball higher and higher. She used the sand below the man as a basis to lift him above the ground and it was not even remotely easy even when he was surprised to lift him off of it. Regalia tapped into the supply of sands around the entire desert forming what looked like a miniature planet made out of the compressed sand with a core made out of the golden sand. The planet rose up higher as more and more sand was added to it, the Sabaku clan's woman of the golden sand moved the planet way past the Moon even to the point where it only resembled the size of a small ball in the sky.
"Desert Planetary Funeral!" Regalia chanted out making a handseal and releasing the technique, all of the sand crushed the golden sand core inside making it rain grain of sand and gold. Giant chunks of sand started falling from the sky as Regalia had to elevate the ball of sand well above the tallest layers of her home.
She smiled, she purposefully pushed the planetary ball of sand farther than the Moon, she wanted the central pouring stream of sand to land onto the Moon and not back here. Regalia screamed in pain and fell to her knees. She knew she pushed well past her limits but it didn't matter, she faced her fears, she ceased the chase and she may not have killed that man but she at the very least left him stranded.
Let him choke on space, let him die on the Moon... She will be the last one whose life that monster will claim, no, Regalia died on her own terms, she died free. The woman coughed some blood up as black circles formed around her eyes, her skin paled and she fell down on the rough rocky layer that laid dormant deep below the sands she lifted. The woman felt rushing waves of sand lifting her body up slowly, she probably left most of that sand up in the Moon together with the man only returning less than half of what she'd taken, still, it was worth it.
"Live your life free of the chase, Jiou. It was fun being your wife and loving you. Live your life to your heart's content, Mana and... Thank you..." Regalia closed her eyes peacefully as her life faded from her body letting the overflowing sand flush her away and bury her beneath it as her lifeless corpse offered no resistance.