As Ezekiel and Jiro made eye contact, Jiro still stayed relaxed. Despite knowing just how dangerous Ezekiel was, he wasn"t too worried about him because this wasn"t reality. However, the forest background and details slowly began to fade away. A library with a large table holding a giant map replaced the forest on one side. In the center of the giant map was a throne that oozed a dark and shadowy miasma. The throne was initially small, but it began to expand and broke off from the map.On the other side, the throne began to form created with the dead bodies of many people. As the throne began to solidify, a tree began to grow from behind it. Two bright red apples hung on the tree.
Jiro"s face stayed composed, but he began to shift his body into a battle stance. This whole s.p.a.ce was supposed to be his mindscape. The throne was the personification of Ezekiel who had been thoroughly trapped, but he escaped. The whole s.p.a.ce was occupied and the two mindscapes began to crash against each other resulting in mental fluctuations that brought about intense pain to both Jiro and Ezekiel
As he clutched his head, Jiro carefully scrutinized Ezekiel who was also eyeing him in a crouched position. Memories from the both of them were flashing by the other"s eyes. Jiro saw more of Ezekiel"s life in a different way. He was experiencing all that Ezekiel had experienced while Ezekiel was being immersed in all of Jiro"s memories.
As the rush of memories finally began to fade, both glanced at each other with caution. Each viewed the other as dangerous and most importantly, they were not sure how a fight inside a mind would go. Jiro and Ezekiel were hiding their killing intent, but their hostility towards each other could be sensed by their souls.
The souls sensed their hostility and acted accordingly by making their mindscapes clash once more. Soul wrenching pain even more intense than earlier forced Jiro and Ezekiel to the ground. As the images of the throne and the library shivered, a couple books fell from the library before disintegrating. The two apples growing from the two trees behind the throne lost some of their l.u.s.ter as well. Turning from a shining scarlet to a dull rusty color.
Jiro stared in horror at the library. He wasn"t sure what it meant for the books to fall, but a permanent sense of damage pervaded his senses. He scoured through his memories, but he couldn"t tell what he had lost.
Ezekiel reacted just as terribly. He stumbled over to the trees and desperately stared at the apples in hopes of seeing them turn a brighter color. With the color still remaining a dull red, the color drained from his face. He desperately whispered soft words to the apples as if they were real people. Sensing something wrong, he turned to Jiro.
Jiro was sure that he lost some memory, but he didn"t know what. Noticing Ezekiel"s situation, Jiro turned as well. Both were trying to keep calm despite their panic and sense of helplessness. One thing that they were doing for sure was avoiding any hostile feelings.
Wanting to maintain a status quo with no more problems, Ezekiel walked back to the map while he placed the throne along with the two apple trees down into the center. The map shrunk the items to an even smaller size and the library began to fill the s.p.a.ce of Jiro"s mindscape while Ezekiel walked back onto the map.
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Jiro woke up with a start. His heart was racing and he was feeling an unprecedented sense of losing self control. His friends were already awake and Jiro began to grill them with question after question. His friends had settled down, but Jiro was pacing back and forth. He recalled the scene of the books disintegrating and he was sent back into a panic.
Eventually, Jiro went out to get some air. His heart was thumping and sending blood rushing through all his body. He was breathing so quickly that he felt like he might pa.s.s out. As time continued to pa.s.s, he was only getting more and more panicked. Nothing was calming him down and when Jiro realized that he wasn"t calming down, he did the logical thing.
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After the sounds of Jiro walking back and forth suddenly went quiet, Fugaku noticed an uncanny silence on the top of the roof. Fugaku went up to the roof to investigate and found Jiro unconscious on the roof. His hands were still placed around his throat and Fugaku figured out that Jiro knocked himself out by choking himself out.
He brought Jiro back inside the house and then placed him onto the bed. A discussion on what to do was set into action.
"What should we do?"
"We should go back to the village and visit the Yamanaka."
"I don"t have any problems with this."
"Let"s go then. We need to get Kana as well, she will want to come."
Duy and Teuchi went into action and began to quickly place all the items into their respective scrolls while Fugaku went out to the forest to find Kana. As Fugaku began to enter deep into the forest and scan for Kana, the sudden shine of a headband in the darkness set him alert. A couple shin.o.bi from the Hidden Rock Village were near where Kana resided.
Fugaku crouched down and silently took several shurikens out of his bag while activating his Sharingan. In the darkness of the forest where only the moonlight penetrated through, Fugaku launched his shurikens into the depths where the shin.o.bi were. All he heard was the sound of wood being penetrated which was not a good sign. The Chakra of the shin.o.bi were nowhere to be seen, but when he looked down, he saw them.
They had gotten underground to avoid the shurikens. It didn"t look like they were planning to get out anytime soon so Fugaku climbed up the tree Kana resided in only to find her absent. While looking into the sky, a faint blur of Chakra could be seen rushing down. It was approaching at crazy speeds so Fugaku jumped off the tree knowing that Kana would catch him.
He had been expecting to land on her back, but he was caught by her claws instead. Fugaku was being manhandled by Kana, but he didn"t care. He began to explain the situation to Kana who increased her speed in response to the information.
Within moments, Fugaku and Kana met at the front of the village with Duy and Teuchi who were all ready to go with an unconscious Jiro slumped on Duy"s back. The team set off with Fugaku at the front. Jiro was held by Duy and Teuchi was at the back.
As they took off, a couple of the Hidden Stone Village shin.o.bi got out of the ground, but they couldn"t find any traces of a person present so they set back towards their village. They hadn"t gotten much information, but some ninja other than them had been living very close to their border which was not good news.
In the night sky, Kana was flying at her top speed. She had activated her wind chakra aura to speed up even faster, but the aura was also covering her pa.s.sengers to make sure that they weren"t hit by too much air resistance. Fugaku noticed that it was getting slightly difficult to breathe, but he wasn"t too bothered. Jiro"s health was the main issue.