It was that time in the morning when the most beautiful songs of birds would've been more and more likely to wake one up. Despite the fact that such a, in a manner of speech, rude awakening would've normally greatly displeased anyone in their fair mind, having these pleasant melodies accompany one through the day would've quickly fixed that foul mood. Takigakure was the home of many species of birds, some that lived and nested in the trees, some wingless species that roamed the watery grounds, lakes, rivers, swamps and never even dreamed of soaring above the thick layer of leaves that separated the sky and the dark and moist heavenly shade of Takigakure.
Mana was observing a hive of bees that was hanging on the eye level, stuck to one of the thick trees that could've only been hugged and wrapped around by a giant such as a Tailed Beast or an entity of similar size. The hive was being sieged by hornets, each as large as a kunai knife by themselves. Mana had never seen insects of that size, she did know the species however from pictures in books she read, she did know how poisonous their bites were in great quantities. For that reason, she kept her distance. A respectable one at least.
Five to ten stings would be all that it'd take to force Mana to ask Kouta for some anti-venom, these hornets were that poisonous. Despite the fact of their wide spread across the land, they didn't appear to worry the Takigakure people even if there weren't any in close vicinity, despite Konoha and Takigakure being in great standing politically the quartet decided to avoid meeting any locals unless absolutely necessary as the knowledge of three ninja moving through their lands may not have been a very pleasant one to the Waterfall Village.
The bees were getting trounced, the mighty jaws of these savage crimson red hornets were able to easily grab dozens of insects from the air and snap them into pieces, their thick chitin shells were impenetrable to stings, their evolutionary body temperature modification mechanisms, that allowed these hornets to survive and thrive inside both fire and snow, made them capable of withstanding the common bee defence strategy of heating the hornets by rubbing against them and covering them up. There was nothing the bees could do but perish, it was an insect genocide in its earliest stages.
Mana sighed, she closed her eyes and thought for a moment before opening her eyes and continuing to watch the scene.
"You may be a bit too close, Mana-chan. You want neither to get stung nor to use your newly gained power to avoid the hornets' stings, each one would provide unneeded trouble to us and drain your stamina needlessly" Kouta's quiet whispering voice reached her as the young man moved in closer to her and gently placed his hand on her shoulder suggesting that they'd move. Slowly Mana stepped back a couple of steps but that was as far as she would've gone.
"I could stop that. I could avoid every sting of every hornet and crush them before they even clacked a mandible, before they even brewed their poison in those organs of theirs." Mana whispered softly looking at the hive.
"You could... For how long have you been standing here, watching this?" Kouta wondered, still failing to see Mana's point.
"Two or three hours. Didn't feel too sleepy. Meiko did her best to place those seals that keep our tents afloat but... It'll take time to get used to this chilly shade and forest smells after just leaving a scorching desert." Mana replied still looking at the poor bees getting slaughtered. Still adamant to defend their home despite the fact that their mother had long since perished.
"So why don't you stop them? Why don't you kill these hornets? Is it because you're saving your physical chakra up?" Kouta wondered looking at the horrific scene of natural violence, not unlike millions of more transpiring in the world at that very moment.
"Because... I'm not sure if I should." Mana closed her eyes before once again peeling them open, almost like she was doing it by force, forcing herself to watch the endless death of millions inside that giant hive she refused to save.
"I'm not sure I follow" Kouta scratched his head, "We could use some of these hornets, their ground shells make for a very nutritional additive and their innards are actually a potent anti-toxin".
"That's the point..." Mana closed her eyes, feeling the beginning of tears beginning to gather before she swallowed her pain away, "Most of the local species of bees build their hives inside the trees, the very steel hard tree bark provides them shelter. For some reason, be it because these bees are a foreign swarm that just moved here or because they don't have time before autumn to build a proper hive they've swarmed here, in an open ground outside the bark, just ripe for the taking".
Kouta looked at the hive again and back at Mana.
"These hornets do not have the needed bodily structure to gather honey or food, their mandibles are too large and only fit for killing. Their way of life and the only way of survival is to loot other hives, they were born this way, that is how they survive, by taking food from others because they cannot physically get any by themselves." Mana explained.
"You're wondering if interfering with the natural order is the right way?" Kouta finally got on the same page, "These hornets are just doing what they do to survive, to blame them for living by their nature would be to look at it from the bees' point of view which wouldn't be right. Autumn and winter aren't far away if these hornets don't stock up they're looking at massive losses, maybe even death of their entire swarm." Kouta slowly explained the same thoughts that Mana has been pondering on for hours.
"Normally ninja don't look at those sort of things. They have it easy – just follow the orders. I've, on the other hand, placed upon myself the responsibility to become a hero that'd change this world, the world of death and violence, every day somewhere literal genocides take place, entire tribes and settlements die out. I myself am the last member of my own tribe and my own blood will die with me... I need to have the answer for these things, because of my lack of answers I need to face this horror, to see it to the end." Mana spoke continuing to stare at the hornets.
"Tsk..." Kouta exclaimed as his hand extended to the side, within mere moments it split into a mace-like shape with the texture of his skin shifting into a more wooden appearance and hundreds if not thousands of beams of light fired off from the boy's morphed limb, piercing each and all hornets within moments and disintegrating them quickly with a mere touch.
Mana's eyes shot open with surprise, she glared questioningly at Kouta who shook his head.
"You're punishing yourself, forcing yourself to see the worst horrors you as a person can endure because of your character just because you don't have answers to questions that'll never have answers to. I, on the other hand, care about you, I don't want to see you punishing yourself and I'll murder as many bugs as I need to just so I don't need to see you as sad and horrified as you were watching this..." Kouta said angrily as his hand shifted back, bees rose up from their hive looking at the two as a threat but they were hit too hard, somewhere between rising up and actually attacking they decided to better tend to the damage caused to their hive.
"There will be times when I'll have to have answers to these questions. When I shall see two countries warring with each other and I'll need to know what to do as a hero I want to become. I don't want to stare at a genocide transpiring by my eyes..." Mana whimpered out.
Kouta slowly walked up closer to Mana and placed his hand on her shoulder. "And you'll make enemies of them both, you'll unite all of them against yourself and it's my duty to make sure that you're strong enough to shoulder all of that hatred, hatred for preventing violence and people will hate you for it, my father taught me that much at least..." the young man looked away for a moment before hugging Mana full out. Initially, the magician didn't resist but then something dawned on her.
"Wait, you said you "cared" about me. The context of that... You don't "care" about me as a VIP of your mission, am I wrong, it's more than that?" She said suspiciously.
Kouta's face blushed, he began shifting his eyes, grunting and making incomplete sentences and excuses before sighing. "Well... Yeah. I wanted to find a moment to talk to you about that the whole time. There was just so much happening and I kept on making excuses that maybe each and every moment wasn't the right moment, then you got lost, separated and... I just don't care anymore, if any of us gets lost again I want you to know that I do care about you more than just a VIP, more than just a friend".
Mana smiled and laughed biting her fist. "I really should've noticed in hindsight... I really kept on looking for signs but I also made excuses thinking that no sign I saw was actually a sign, that it was just my head playing with my wild thoughts".
"So?" Kouta asked, quickly jumping off Mana and moving away from the hug now that it became awkward.
"I... I'd love to. It's just..." Mana coughed out pathetically.
"The identity thing?" Kouta asked before she could find the right words.
"Yeah, it's just... I... Want to fall in love with you, if that's what this is but... There's just so much going on and I... Without my control, I'm not me I... I know it doesn't make sense but I can't do this without being me, all of me." Mana explained uncomfortably. It was slowly suffocating her to say those words but she meant what she said. She did kind of like Kouta ever since meeting him, she always felt something weird for him, some odd affection that was more than just common friendship. That being said... Losing one's identity made Mana unsure of anything she did, anything that went on around her or even inside her.
"Well then... If getting you to go on a date with me takes finding the Box of Ultimate Bliss I'll take you wherever I need to take you for it." Kouta grinned awkwardly and fixed his messy hair lazily with a couple of strokes of his hand.
Mana giggled, she really felt bad about being so dumb and persistent and so unworthy of Kouta's affection in front of him. He deserved so much better than she was... It suddenly made her feel even more awkward around the young man than she was before when she just felt the strange warmth inside of her she couldn't explain every time he was around.
"Hey! Are you two losers moving or what? I even packed the things despite it being Kouta's turn!" Meiko shouted from the distance riling the bees up, Mana and Kouta quickly made a run for it to pick up their bags and move. They still had around two days of moving until they reached the end of Takigakure, despite the fact that they could actually move all throughout the day and didn't have to worry about things like the desert heat anymore.
Meiko looked pretty happy about something, Mana really wondered what that could've been but then the blacksmith began to search frantically for something in her bag, making the girl wonder if maybe Meiko had lost something, something that made her happy. Finally, the redhead pulled out a pair of stickers with kanji symbols on them that looked like sealing tags.
"There you go, Mana. You can stick those on your shoes and you'll be able to walk on water just like we can, you won't need to be carried anymore," the blacksmith laughed out. That was actually great! Mana was really getting uncomfortable about being carried around by Meiko all the time, also now that she finally confirmed her thoughts about Kouta all of the awkwardness when Meiko asked him to carry Mana now made sense, also it added additional awkwardness between them because now they both were on the same page.
"Are those... Bee stings?" Shimo wondered pointing at some bumps on Mana's and Kouta's faces.
"Yeah, Meiko's yelling riled up the bees but there were only a couple of handfuls of them left, we've decided to preserve chakra and stamina and just take a couple of stings," the medical ninja shrugged.
"Awww, there were bees!? We could've picked a lot of honey from a hive, those stings won't even get past the skin if we augment ourselves," Meiko shouted out almost begging the group to turn back and pick the hives.
"Ummm... Maybe we can find another, more prosperous hive, these guys really had a terrible morning already, trust me," Mana smiled like a mother telling a child that they'll buy the toy they want from another store because there it's cheaper. Strangely enough, the effect was almost the same with Meiko just childishly humming something cheerful all of their trip onward.
"So... How do these work?" Mana asked seeing her shoes managing to keep her on water now with just these small paper tags attached to them.
"It's a simple low-rank chakra storage seal, I sealed the technique inside it with a little bit of reserve chakra. I should regain it all in a couple of days so it's no trouble really, not that carrying a bag of bones like you was ever difficult, to begin with." Meiko tried to sarcastically bite Mana who actually managed to buff her frail physique up a bit after her stay in the Sun Disc arena. The blacksmith noticed that Mana didn't look that cheerful and didn't play back the joke at all so she just continued daydreaming about the honey.
After a couple of hours of walking Shimo's hand slipped on the hilt of his blade. "Someone's close," he uttered when a woman leaped out from the upper layer of the treetops slamming her ax on Shimo's head, or at least trying to. The Yuki swordsman effortlessly drew his blade in time and blocked the swing, the entire force of the falling smashing cleave got expelled back at the woman sending her crashing through multiple trees back. The entire forest clearing was suddenly filled with grunting and well-armed and armored men and women.
"Ugh! The fucker blew me away!" The woman grunted feeling her cracked bleeding head that was now spouting blood all over the woman's face. Kouta raised his hand.
"I can treat that, I'm a medical ninja, we're not enemies, we're a party of ninja from Konoha moving to our mission objective in Otogakure." The young man explained revealing their presence in the area despite their genuine attempts to avoid that.
A large man in the center who was strangely wearing no armor at all placed his gigantic gold-encrusted sword on his back. These men didn't look like ninja, if anything they looked like some sort of royal mercenaries as their armor wasn't just the usual light military grade body armor, it was actually pretty sophisticated and well-crafted steel plates, despite their general expensiveness they looked pretty ancient, both the swords and axes they used as well as their armor was far too heavy and clunky to be considered modern.
Current mercenary armor offered protection of nano-sized diamond chain links tied together and could repel even most powerful blows and easily stop a blade in its tracks. These weapons and armors were much older, larger and heavier but also offered much less protection. Mana instantly started feeling like these men may not have been mercenaries at all and felt suspicious.
"Very well then, we thought you mercenaries or assassins aiming to strike from our backs, we apologize most graciously and hope we can work this out, the direction you're coming from is suspicious, however, you're not moving from Konoha or maybe you're lost?" The man exclaimed, Mana blushed slightly looking at him and even saw Meiko keeping a straight and even slobbering stare when looking at him.
He didn't look like a warrior. If anything, he was a model put in shiny armor and wielding a sword that would've fit in plays better than an actual battlefield. He looked almost like a God, Mana tried her best to remain objective but she just couldn't, even Meiko who usually acted completely ignorant towards the manly shapes couldn't move her eyes away from these men.
"We won't tell you shit. We may have. If you guys weren't so shifty," Shimo noticed Mana's predicament and her unusual color of skin that must've annoyed him greatly. Kouta initially glanced at Shimo and tried to question the boy's distrust in these people but then Shimo pointed his shin at the girls who had completely lost themselves and suddenly Kouta also began acting quite cold and distant with these men. The women who were equally as well put together as the men were must've completely not interested the boys because of how muscular they were which didn't appear to be much to their tastes...
"Yeah... I have to admit a bunch of men and women gathering in large military force around a completely random and desolate natural reserve of Takigakure is highly suspicious, more suspicious even than a party of ninja moving by a neutral territory," Kouta agreed, "Before we apologize and treat the woman who engaged us we'd like to hear something that'd make us trust your authority and conformity of your actions here with the Waterfall Village".
"I think they're totally jealous!" Meiko shrieked in Mana's ear leaning towards it and trying to whisper which resulted in a comically hilarious whispered squeak.
Mana turned away and walked back a couple of steps, this was completely irrational of her to act this way, to just freeze like that. These people were all really good looking but she had no reason to be this dense and primitive. The magician took a couple of deep breaths and looked back but then realized that it'd be difficult for her to speak to these men and women.
"We are Justicars functioning within Takigakure territory, Yuki Shimo, when you blame us for suspicious actions please remember that your name was also written on our lists and just because you were pardoned by Konoha doesn't pardon you by our code," the leading man with the golden sword and glowing armor and a purple cape suddenly took a large step forward as well as bowed his upper body all the way to Shimo's eyes' level.
"He's a Justicar, Mana!" Meiko shrieked out. Mana had heard of that title briefly, at some point, Kiyomi may have mentioned it during their mission to rescue the perfume tycoon's son. "Isn't he awesome!"
Shimo's hand moved to his blade again. "Try your luck again, Justicar, me and sensei have stricken countless of you down, I did so as a child, let's see how many I can strike down now before you even blink. You operate without supervision, without authority other than that which you create with your swords. I could slaughter you here like animals and no one would shed a tear for you vigilantes." The Yuki growled. Mana wasn't aware that he had a bad history with Justicars. Despite her strange irrational tremble of breath and bodily quivers, Mana stood in front of the two men.
"We'll try talking this through before we do anything stupid..." She exclaimed with a shaking voice. This had to be a technique of some sort, she couldn't have been reduced to such a pathetic trembling state just by the man's looks alone.
"Young lady, are you a ninja?" The Justicar inquired looking at her trembling with a strange interest.
"No. I'm a person they must lead to Otogakure, you could say... I'm their client..." Mana spoke through great difficulty.
"Oh, then we would be wise to turn down our Intents. I must say I'm impressed by your willpower to still be able to function like this with so many Intents surrounding you... Most impressive. You'll have to forgive us, we use the Charming Intents because today we've been hunting a bunch of female rogues separately to our main objective here. Charming Intent is much more humane than Killing Intent but it disables people just as potently." The Justicar turned to his colleagues who didn't as much as twitch a muscle but within moments Mana's chest started moving normally and she could breathe properly. The presence of these men no longer excited her and made her feel and act weird.
"Tsk, using Intents like this..." Shimo angrily exclaimed, "This isn't a brothel you fucking pigs"! He appeared to be completely oblivious of the fact that these men used a twisted version of the Killing Intent that ninja used to intimidate wild animals and low-level threats, however where the Killing Intent made one scared for their lives this Charming Intent appeared to do just what its name suggested.
"Wait..." Mana suddenly realized something turning at Meiko, "You're a ninja with a functional chakra control, why were you all over those guys"?
"Because they're really damn hot!" Meiko shrugged with an innocent smile.