A chorus of dissonant pain and machines was humming in the Capsule Corps med-bay humming. Sakura Brief walked back and forth between the stasis pods and her brow was tightened in concentration. The cherry blossom on her shoulder looked like it was drying under the dark light. Behind the pods, shinobi and Saiyan warriors, who had been symbols of vitality, were twitching and groaning. Having been, themselves, in their accustomed brightness and clarity, a clear gray, now turned murky and unsteady, like the flicker of dying embers.
Vitals are stabilizing,but their Prana coherence is reduced another seven percent, she said to herself, and her fingers were flying on the holographic panel of her gauntlet. A patient was bathed in a light of soft pink, her Healing Palm Drive. For a moment the gray receded. But when the light had gone the corruption leaked back in again, undauntedly. It is as though one attempts to bail out a boat using a sieve. I am not treating the disease, I am treating the symptoms.
Her Bio-Arguing, the Sakura Mk-IV, was able to complete diagnostics on a cellular scale. She had a stomach-churn as she read out. This was not a poisonous or a traditional energy drain. It was a rewrite. Their cells themselves were being torn down and restructured into a foreign and non-living thing by the very Prana pathways.
Come on, demonstrate what you are, show me, said she growling, and made the scan even more. The hologram enlarged beyond organelles and DNA helices, into the flow of the life force itself, which is quantum.
And there they were.
Clearly visible in these tiny and geometric constructions was that same prismatic and voracious energy which Gohan had felt. They were not merely attacking the Prana; they were cohabiting and borrowed the own energy of the host to generate their destructive duplication. They were microscopic builders, they would dismantle a cathedral and use the stones to create a tomb.
Bio-weapon, she said, and shivered. This was an excess of any natural disease or curse. This was a designed, a perfect, self-replicating Prana pathogen.
The med‑bay doors hissed open. Naruto came dashing along, the normal energy of his manner changed by equal parts anxiousness. "Sakura! Gohan's clone—"
I know, I know, I do not look up, she thought to herself. He transmitted the data burst in advance of it dissolving. He referred to it as a Divine Genome Burst. I'm looking at its handiwork." Her emerald eyes were ajar and she turned to him in her final move. "It's not a technique, Naruto. It's an infection."
In the doorway a shadow was cast. Sasuke / Vegeta was leant against the frame with his crossed arms. His face was very bored, though his crimson eyes were ever alert. "An infection which made the Golden Scholar frantically send a warning. How mundane."
Go, Sasuke, go, Sakura replied hot-temperedly. "We don't need your commentary."
"Your patients are failing. You have inadequate technology. The only thing here that is likely to identify the source is my commentary, which I have just said, on my part, coolly. His Sharingan Ki Vision became active with a slight beat and detected the sick warriors. The signature of its cohesiveness is energy. It's not a wild plague. It's reporting back."
Naruto intervened between them with his hands up. "Arguing won't help them! Sakura, you found the bug. Can you find the hive?"
Sakura sighed and suppressed her temper. She was a lady scientist, not a fighter. However, fieldwork was needed in the lab sometimes. "Maybe. The creatures are producing a weak resonance. A homing signal. Unless we can trace it to its basis we may discover whatever is operating them.
Sasuke took off the doorframe. "A sufficient plan. Let's go."
The hive was discovered in the polluted waterways under the city. And it was no building but a creature--a throbbing, anthropomorphic, matterless mass of the same prismatic energy, shapeless and yet conscious. It possessed no visage, just one, ouroboros, core that shone with evil purpose. An Eclipse Being.
What followed was a brief but brutal struggle which was very disturbing.
Naruto ran like a rocket, and his Spirit Rasengan crashed into the monster. It did not scream; it vibrated and taking in the shock restructured around the space which the attack had created.
Sasuke was a ghost and his Blaze Fang sword traveled on time-cuts. He cut off energy limbs which reformed instantly. Learns, he said in a detached way. "It adapts."
Sakura helped, her Capsule Kunai unleasing walls of barrier and sonic disturber which disrupted the creature temporarily. Its Prana logo is mutating live! It is deconstructing our fighting styles!
It was the last and desperate burst of his Super Sage Mode that caused Naruto to deal the killing blow with a Prana Burst Wave that finally overloaded the creature with adapting to its environment.
The Eclipse Being never blew up. And then it shook, and then it just, unravelled. Its shape melted into a river of pure shining light. The light was frozen a moment, a gorgeous, fatal rapist. Then, like a tide, it caused a streak as up it went and was gone, sucked back across a great distance.
The three of them were in the abrupt silence of the dripping tunnels, and the echo of their own power had passed away. The foe had passed, and the triumph was empty, as the smacking of one mosquito out of a swarm of them.
It is a scout, Sasuke, said, sheathing his sword. And we have only validated its data to its master.
Sakura glumly shook his head at the spot where that being used to be. "It wasn't fighting to win. It was fighting to learn. There it understands all about us. She made her fist, and the cores of the Prana in her gauntlets burned with angry light. "We didn't win a battle. We have just been the enemy field working.