"Really? Are you sure?" Shige-H stood up and scratched her chin in reaction to the bomb that Mana dropped.
"Yes, I saw a memory in Krown's mind about him meeting up with a handful of ninja inside of a mountain cave. Judging from the temperature, the sparsity of oxygen, and the howling wind outside, they were somewhere quite high. They spoke about Kaguya Yaban and then their leader brought up that kidnapping me might have a similar effect to what they're looking for with the former Tsuchikage. Our arrival here shuffled their cards, but they saw it as an opportunity." Mana rubbed her eyes and tried her best to return to a more dignified position on her feet. She hadn't been forced out from someone's memories so crudely ever before, so she wasn't sure what this might have been about.
"We've made far too much noise… Not only have we attracted the attention of the local ninja, but we've also piqued the interest of the rogue ninja as well," Shige-H rubbed her forehead nervously.
"What on earth is going on here?!" a yell came from the area further away from the scene of combat that took place in the dirty crossroad in Boulder Town. It was the blond Kumogakure ninja who accompanied Prim-S earlier. Just another one of the local watchdogs. Right now she was another problem on the Stars' list. "Can someone explain it to me why there are ninja fighting each other in the middle of the town when we're supposed to keep the peace here?"
Although the woman turned to Prim-S, her fellow Kumogakure native, to explain this situation to her, the young man was staring off into the void somewhere. He was leaning down by Krown's body that seemed to have stopped convulsing and now just laid lifeless in the middle of the street. The people had noticed this scene though they stayed further away as they wanted nothing to do with either this creepy, malformed man that lay soaked in guts and the clotted layer of blood in the middle of the street or the Kumogakure ninja supposedly keeping peace in their town.
"He's dead…" Prim-S reported after standing up. His comrade from Kumogakure flickered up closer to him, trying to invoke some sort of reaction out of the fallen puppet master before turning to Prim-S again.
"What do you mean, he's dead? Who is this man? What's happening over here and why are you two involved in this mess again?" the blonde asked, pointing at Shige-H and Mana. Even though Mana didn't need to turn back, she felt Prabba taking her position behind them. The peacekeepers expected the two to make a run for it, which was why they were positioning themselves around the pair.
This was bad. People were glaring at them and Mana, as always, was her poster come to life. If she would once again get involved in terrible publicity like being involved in a murder scene, she'd had the shadows of her public perception with Guru Ayushi's incident pinned on her again. Even if it couldn't have been farther from the truth, even if no one could prove anything, the people would make up their minds and forever see Mana as a murderer. Or an accomplice, at the very least. That'd be the end of her World Magic Tour and the end of the Allied Ninja being able to use it as their excuse to take part in missions around the world without the knowledge of local politicians and leaders.
"We've already told you," Mana did her best in mending the situation. "I am Konoha's Sorceress. I've come here to perform in my World Magic Tour and this man attacked us, wanting to kidnap me for ransom."
"This… Does check-out," Prabba corroborated Mana's story, dropping her strict stance and easing up with her expression. Whether it was gratitude for Mana saving her life or whether the Iwagakure kunoichi truly believed it, Mana wasn't certain, though it hardly mattered. "This man was the same one that Sorceress requested us to check for back in the town square. He killed Montmor, another peacekeeper ninja, and slipped into his body to sneak away from the scene back to his superiors and report of his failure."
"Slipped into his body?" the Kumogakure kunoichi crossed her arms, looking down at the pitiful bundle of bones and sinew and sharp blades laying before her feet, sprawled out with white eyes and foam bubbling out from the mouth. "What are you on about? How could he have slipped into that ninja's body?"
"He's a puppeteer," Mana replied. "He uses some strange technique to create those cocoons of flesh and cancerous skin to masque his chakra signature while on the field. When Montmor-san checked his signature, Krown slipped out and murdered him, then burrowed into Montmor-san's innards and used the Puppetry Technique to control his limbs from the inside. It was a rough use for the technique, but, because of Montmor-san's sheer size, he could pull it off and sneak through all of us, well… Not me, because of my chakra sensory abilities."
"So you knew that freak was inside Montmor all along back then and kept it to yourself?" the Kumogakure kunoichi crossed her arms and raised her right eyebrow, grilling Mana.
"I suspected something, but I wasn't sure. I had a gut feeling that the puppeteer was doing something to Montmor-san's body, but I had no clue he had cut his way inside of his guts and laid there. That sort of thing just doesn't pop into your mind naturally. We kept track of Montmor-san's walking corpse for a while until we saw him make his move," Mana replied.
"Konoha's Sorceress saved my life. This Krown person caught me completely off-guard and would have killed me," Prabba joined in, standing by Mana's left side. Already, Mana could hear rustling and unease amongst the gathered crowd, even though they held a respectable distance from the scene. Prabba's words impressed them. While not in a manner as extreme as Krown's, Boulder Town still felt loyal to Iwagakure, so anyone who would have saved the life of one of their own would have scored some major public favor.
The important part was that the Kumogakure kunoichi who was the one grilling the party of Allied Ninja the hardest and trying to make them out to be responsible for all this mess realized it. She saw the situation could quickly go hairy if she arrested or decided to execute justice right here in the public. While it would have been a piece of cake for this woman to deal with the entire mob of locals, that'd pretty much cost this kunoichi her life and career to muck her mission up that badly. In a lot of ways, she was just as much a slave to the public's will here as the Kumogakure ninja were supposedly in charge of the public.
"Guys, did you see that?" Prim-S stood up from the corpse. "A scorpion just skittered away from that guy's side. It's not one of the local crawlies either. It looked like one of those guys from Land of Lightning."
"I'm a medical kunoichi. I can dissect the body and determine the cause of death. If we indeed find traces of venom in his blood, I can analyze it and let you know what we're dealing with here," Shige-H said, turning to the swollen corpse laying by the feet of the Kumogakure ninja.
"You'll do no such thing. This will be enough of playing us for fools. I'm taking you two to the Police Force HQ and we'll keep you there alongside that third troublemaker wearing your insignia. When you three discuss this with each other and decide to be truthful with us, we'll talk about letting you out. I don't think you're the threat to public security here, but you know who or what is and you're not sharing that intelligence with the peacekeepers of this town. That's enough ground to detain you for now," the Kumogakure kunoichi decided, slowly approaching the pair while scanning them for signs of resistance.
"The third?" Mana blinked a few times.
"Endo…" Shige-H breathed out, smacking her forehead.
"What did he do now?" Mana sighed.
"More importantly, where is Asuka?" Shige-H shrugged. From the looks on her face, she wouldn't have looked all too surprised to find out just about anything right now. With Endo, the sky was the limit with things that could have gone wrong.
"Do we fight back?" Mana looked at Shige-H. While chakra signature sizes weren't a good indicator of basing one's level of skill on, Mana was certain that the two of them could have fought off all three peacekeepers if needed with moderate difficulty. If Mana's illusions fall right, they could have slipped out from their grasp rather easily.
"No. Keep up your public image for now. Also, we might find the solitude and detainment a good place to regroup in and settle on our plan of action," Shige-H shut the thought down.
"What are you assholes doing!?" a shout came from the crowd.
"Why are you arresting the Allied Ninja and Konoha's Sorceress?" another voice joined in.
"She saved a peacekeeper's life, didn't you hear!?" more and more joined in on the unrest.
"Some "peacekeepers" you turned out to be. What a joke!"
"Disassembled our police force for this!? Give me a break!"
Mana and Shige-H let Prabba guide them from behind toward her Kumogakure allies in the peacekeeping task. While the public support made Mana's heart bubble up with warmth as she had heard nothing like it for the longest time, now was the absolute worst time for stones to start flying, pipes to start swinging and pitchforks to start thrusting. The Kumogakure ninja guided Mana and Shige-H away while everyone kept their heads down and tried to drown out the noise of the escalating social frustration around them.
"Endo…" Shige-H acknowledged the presence of the highly bemused samurai apprentice seated in the middle of the bench inside of a barred cell. The cells had sealing tags on them and Mana sensed a decent amount of chakra radiating from them, suggesting that they had some sort of chakra dampening field effect to them while also being protected by some jutsu that prevented the tags from being simply ripped off.
Endo was sitting with his arms and legs crossed, eyes closed and head held high while a handful of ruffians in leather vests and khaki trousers donning hairdos that challenged society's norms sat by the sides of the bench, looking rather intimidated by the swordsman in the center. As it seemed, even with his swords taken away, Endo still had the intimidation factor necessary to bully ordinary troublemakers into submission.
"You know, I expected you two to come to get me out, not join me," Endo objected when Prabba led the two into the cell and walked off to talk to the other peacekeepers. Whereas before Mana felt confident about their chances of fending off the peacekeepers, she could sense more than a handful of ninja present in the building right now. With these odds, a sneaky escape would have served as their only option, with direct combat likely being too much trouble for what it was worth.
"Please don't tell me that the success of our mission depends entirely on Asuka…" Mana groaned after taking her seat beside Endo and crossing up in a sitting position that mirrored his. The terrified local rabble-rousers gulped and pulled further away, with the last few by the edges of the bench teetering with their bottoms over the edge.
"As if… That bitch attacked me and bailed to join the enemy," Endo blew air out through his nose. Evidently, he still didn't get over it.
"I guess that gives us the green light to leave her a vegetable," Mana sighed in frustration.
"Sometimes you and I speak the same language. It's scary when it happens, but it gives me the shivers every time," Endo's mouth lengthened into an excited upward-pointing crescent-shaped beam of his teeth.
"I understand your mutual distaste for that woman, and I second your notion to treat her as an enemy from now on, but I'd rather we discuss our options and make a plan of action now. While this looks like failure, Mana actually got a great deal of useful information," Shige-H interrupted the two before they could get too chummy with their unexpected alignment of interests.
"Is that so?" Endo turned to Mana.
"Well, a ninja who works in the group that we're after tried to kidnap me. They believe that having me in their hands would warrant them even greater bargaining power than holding Kaguya Yaban," Mana said. "Needless to say, we beat him and I got a peek into his mind."
"Great! Let's bust out of this joint and go wreck some shit, then!" Endo raised his fist up with an energetic look on his face that further startled the other inhabitants of the one cell that the now-defunct Boulder Town Police Force HQ hosted.
"It's not that easy," Shige-H shook her head. "While I wasn't able to get my hands on the body of the enemy ninja, it appears that the enemy group masked their tracks by having a tiny scorpion sting and kill him before Mana could extract all the information from him. There is still a lot we don't know and, sadly, even if we break out now, we wouldn't have the time to check every single mountain in the Land of Earth for the one hosting the cave we're looking for. We're talking about eight hundred thousand square kilometers of mountainous land and mountains four to six kilometers high here."
"That's just the Boulder Town mountain range. The entire Land of Earth can be around thirty-six times that size…" Mana nodded with a grim expression. "Our initial intel suggests they're likely based closer to Boulder Town, but… There's just no way to know for certain. Except…"
Reacting to the fact that Mana fell silent, Endo nudged her with his elbow while Shige-H tilted her chin to encourage the ninja magician to speak up.
"Well, I've spent a few days around Asuka. If she's within the ten-kilometer range from us, with enough concentration, I might be able to trace her chakra signature from anyone else's," Mana shrugged.
"If she truly intends to join the enemy, she'll lead us right to them," Shige-H nodded.
"That may be so, but… How does Asuka know where to find those people? She's in the same position we're at, maybe even worse," Endo pouted. "Granted, I won't mind if we take a detour to track her down and kill… I mean… Let Mana shatter her mind or something."
"No, no detours!" Shige-H pointed her finger at Endo, like punishing a misbehaving pet. "The situation became complicated enough as it is. Do we know how many members the enemy group has?"
"It was quite dark in the cave. Plus, I'm not sure that Krown's sight is all that great, so he may have just seen shadows and blurs. It wouldn't be a wonder. He spent entire years inside of the deepest layers of the Iwagakure mines," Mana shrugged. "I recall… Krown, their leader is a young woman with short hair and colorful strands in her hair, there was another pair of ninja of identical size and build, they kept it together and one of them was called Veno, I think… Then there were three other figures I can recall but they mostly stayed out of the conversation."
"Seven more ninja… Those are awful odds!" Shige's face quickly soured.
"Eight, if Asuka joins in with them," Endo suggested.
"She might not fare that well with them. It is in her best interest to make sure that I die, whereas this group is interested in using me as their bargaining chip," Mana pointed out. "This may end up being a problem that solves itself."
"I wouldn't count on that," Endo cleared his throat. Whatever he was about to say–he wasn't too lively about sharing it. "This Asuka, she's awfully crafty and I may have underestimated her. If there's someone that can fool a bunch of people into working alongside them, kidnap you alongside them, and then betray them by killing you when she finds the opportunity, it's her."
"Asuka still has her mental condition working against her. She won't be able to kill Mana soon," Shige-H reminded Endo. "This is the only thing that puts a stick into the wheel of that plan. Do we know what they want?"
"Krown's memories suggest that he's a nasty piece of work, but life helped tip him over the edge too. Iwagakure military reached out to him for his set of skills and his specific type of crazy during a recent conflict. It's more than likely that he feels a sense of gratitude toward his country for pulling him out from his abyss of self-loathing and pity and making use of his talents for violence and carelessness for human life. He wanted to prove that he was the monster that the rest of the world saw in him and his village gave him a chance to do that," Mana said.
"So, they all may be Iwagakure loyalists, just like the intel suggested," Endo summed it up. "That's fine by me. I have no political alignments and I'll kill anyone on any side of the political spectrum."
"Iwagakure has been the offended party in the Coltan Conflict. Kumogakure inflicted a great deal of harm and their civilian body count goes into the tens of thousands. They relied on a cold shower shock treatment to get Iwa to surrender. Are you sure you're okay fighting against Iwagakure in this, Mana? I need to know now, as the leader of Stars," Shige-H turned to Mana.
"I don't care about politics. These ninja wanted to kidnap me and they still plan to kidnap Kaguya Yaban. In addition, they're willing to kill anyone who gets in their way. They're politically motivated soldiers without a war to fight, but all they see around them are enemies. An enemy like that is dangerous and I'll fight to put a stop to them, if that's enough for you," Mana nodded.
One runt, sitting terrified by the side of the cell, shook his terrified expression away and stood up. After fixing his beanie, he approached the bars and kicked an empty can through a minor gap under the bars. This sent the empty can rolling to the other end of the room and hitting a wall. Prompted by that signal, Prabba opened the door and a party of Iwagakure and Kumogakure peacekeepers walked in.
"They tell you anything?" the blond Kumogakure kunoichi from earlier asked.
"Me? No. They discussed enough between each other though," the planted peacekeeper, dressed in raggedy clothes and taught sublime acting, replied while the peacekeepers approached the cell and let the man out, in the background of the stunned Stars.
"And then there's this development…" Shige-H smacked her forehead.
"I knew I should have killed them all. Fell for the oldest trick in the book…" Endo gave the rest of the petrified troublemakers a haunting stare that sent them tumbling from the bench and crawling away, rattling the bars and screaming bloody murder. The rest of the folks pretty much begged to be placed in another holding cell, except the place had no other containment facilities so they'd have to stay there for as long as the Stars did.
"Sorry, I've actually been to prison, but this is the first time I've encountered this intelligence-gathering tactic. Still, it feels like I should have seen it coming," Mana scratched her neck.
What the Stars truly didn't expect was Prabba opening the door again and unlocking the cell, gesturing for the Stars to leave. Slowly and without as much as a sprinkle of trust in their eyes for the Boulder Town peacekeepers, the Stars left the cell one by one before the Iwa kunoichi closed the door again and sealed it.
"Denkka told you that you were to be detained until we find out what's going on here. There's no more reason to hold you, so you're free to go," Prabba informed them while gesturing at the door. "Though she asked me to instruct you to contact us immediately if you find out any information about this group you're after."
"Well, this worked out…" Endo crossed his arms and plunged deep into the lake of his thoughts while the Stars made their way out from the containment facility and through the service offices, then right outside into the outskirts of Boulder Town.
"I wouldn't put it that way. Since the peacekeepers know about the Allied Ninja activity in this area, they probably know about Mana's World Magic Tour stunt too. Soon enough, the gig will be in the hands of Kumogakure intelligence, and then… Whoever Kumogakure sells that information to or whoever snags it from them. This is the worst it's ever been, actually…" Shige-H looked as down as she'd have been after selling her parents' plot of land alongside her childhood home to get out of crippling debt.