"How many days has it been?" Kouta looked at Mana sitting further from the fire with a bowl of mushroom stew still in his hands. All the mushrooms the four had gathered in Takigakure were now compensating for the lack of notable settlements where they could've bought food and supplies in. That being said, if they were attacked by stronger bandits they'd have no tools to fight back with... Meiko's weapons dulled out from the past battles forcing her to have to resolve to fist fighting mostly, everyone's ninja kits had run empty except Mana's who managed to save up her steel tipped cards since discovering the ability to use physical chakra.
"Since Mana hasn't eaten? I dunno... I'm just kinda glad she's not cooking anymore, though." Meiko tried to lighten up the mood but somehow her jokes fell on troubled ears.
"At some point, I will need to force it down her throat. Her survival and well-being are directly dependant on our mission performance." Shimo angrily grunted looking at the fire lit sky. There were no visible stars, only murky dark clouds that could only be seen because of the flaring red fire of theirs.
"You're not the one to talk, you haven't been eating much either lately..." Kouta replied looking at Shimo with a raised eyebrow. "At this point, it's clear that both of you are pissed at each other but also feeling guilty for something. When will it be enough of this self-imposed punishment"?
"You do need some food, you need to be strong enough to fight off someone that decides to go at us. Lately, we've seen plenty of that..." Meiko added on to Kouta's remark. Since Mana was too far away from the fire, sitting alone in the darker corners of the Mountain Graveyard but not far away so that she isn't seen, the two decided to gang up on Shimo and make him eat at least half a decent portion.
"Yeah but I'm a ninja, I can live without food for months, Mana is a civilian, just physical chakra won't sustain a decent ninja metabolism, she needs just as much food as a normal person who walks intensely throughout the entire day does." Shimo fended off both of them coming at him at once.
The Yuki appeared to have had enough of this bickering, he stood up and took his sword with him moving off further away from the fire to train. It was quite impressive that he could still move just as fast and split the ground beneath his feet open just as strong when he had only eaten a couple of mushrooms a day, just to sustain the illusion that he ate something. Still, that was a luxury compared to Mana. The girl didn't eat and she claimed angrily that she drank water but the trio had some reasons to doubt that. That big fight in Takigakure may have just ruined their team and no one felt sure if it could even be stitched back together.
Kouta looked at Meiko questioningly before taking another look at Mana who was just meditating further away from the fire. It was clear that she didn't wish to talk to them.
"How's your training been lately?" The medical ninja asked.
"I dunno, I didn't ask Mana to resume it, I just... She's just so cold and... I don't want to add up on whatever's going on with her with my shit." Meiko replied cleaning another bowl. Wonder of wonders, despite having extra portions of food left over from Mana and Shimo, Meiko was not content with that. She did finish the food since she wasn't sure how well the stew would've held up if left alone and Kouta's cooking was a bit better than Mana's but... The refusal to talk or eat of those two really troubled her.
"You should..." Kouta looked down at a dusty and cracked skull laying on the ground right beneath their feet by the fire. "She's probably suffering a lot over what happened, she thinks so strangely that I'm not sure if she blames us for what happened or herself. Either way, I'd like to talk to her myself but... Things are more awkward with us now than they have ever been, maybe you should ask Mana to train you and I'll talk to Shimo. Hopefully, we can make those two eat together by the time we reach the Sound Village".
Meiko looked down and to the side before looking at Mana's straightened and proud back as she meditated. Approaching the magician would be a thousand times scarier now than fighting off a bunch of Justicars in a blowing up cave system with her friends potentially drowning in magma... The blacksmith wasn't really sure what Kouta meant by the whole "awkward" thing, she has noticed that Kouta and Mana were really sensitive with each other the whole time and blushed all the time when talking about each other or looking at each other for too long but didn't get it nor did she see what exactly could've changed about that. Still, if Kouta made it such a big deal, it was probably because it was... For him at least.
"Yeah... I'll try..." Meiko sighed standing up and loudly crunching and grinding the bone dust beneath her feet as she approached Mana. The blacksmith touched the magician's shoulder softly. She waited but Mana didn't react, Meiko clenched her fingers a little just to cause some slight discomfort but snap the magician out... Nothing. Meiko tried talking to Mana, shaking her or pinching her cheeks. Nothing snapped the girl out.
"Look... I know you're angry. We did something or... Rather didn't do something and... I get it, I mean, I don't really but... I get it that it was important to you and even if I don't understand your feelings, I never do but... We're really worried about you so maybe you can eat just this once and then we can train a little? Please answer..." Meiko exclaimed in a sad and soft voice, the blacksmith was almost whiny in how sensitive she got trying to get her friend to reply but Mana sat completely still without as much as opening her eyes.
She must've been really mad. Come to think of it Meiko has never seen Mana get so personally mad before, sure Mana was always overly protective of other people and she did yell and attack people who threatened other people's lives but... Meiko couldn't place her finger on when the magician was angry like this, so personally hateful and completely shut in.
"Okay... Whatever I did... I'm sorry... I really am, we all are." Meiko slapped her forehead and walked off back to the seat by the fire rubbing her short hair that was beginning to grow out of control and now went past Meiko's shoulders a little and also wiping sweat and tears off her face. That night Meiko decided to train alone, just shadowboxing and some easy exercises just to let some built up steam off.
Sometime later Kouta walked back from Shimo's front. "Yeah... Shimo's not budging. He keeps insisting that nothing of consequence happened, he did what he had to do and says he's not even sorry. He is adamant that he did everything right and acted surprised that I still thought about it, he said he thought everyone forgot it already"
Meiko huffed as she punched air a couple of times before weaving around, dodging imaginary blows and then jumped on one hand in full armor set and did some one-handed push-ups. "Ooof... If he did... Ooof... He'd have eaten his share... Ooof..." Meiko replied in an almost rhetoric observation as drops of sweat dripped from her forehead. She wasn't really using any augmentations currently. If she was using augmentations she'd actually improve much slower, it was a thing she noticed recently.
If one's power had a certain number and chakra augmentation was able to add a multiplier to that number, increasing the number instead of the multiplied version let her grow stronger more rapidly, it also carried no hidden risk of breaking her body and her chakra network so that was good too...
"Clearly..." Kouta scratched his elbow, it was strange how frail and small the young man seemed when he wasn't fighting and in full tension of his body, shaping and malforming his own limbs in battle. He almost looked like a simple rather short young man. "Any luck with Mana-chan?" he asked.
Meiko angrily shook her head without letting it interrupt her training rhythm. "She's silent, completely ignoring me"
"Yeah, she's by far the more hurt one. Or at least taking it worse... Shimo's problems lie with Mana and her overreaction, Mana's problem is somehow with all of us." Kouta scratched his neck, he was getting tired just looking at Meiko working out.
With a graceful leap, Meiko flipped back on both feet and stretched herself out.
"Are we not all to blame? Sure the Takigakure ninja said it was a bad idea and didn't even budge but... We could all have joined in with Mana on the search, we'd have multiplied her chances a thousand times instead of just standing still and watching Shimo betray her." Meiko washed the sweat off her face. She was feeling hungry but, for the first time in a while, she decided to ignore that instinct.
"We couldn't have all went in, we'd have gotten in each other's way, we'd have each other to worry about, we'd never know who entered, who was where and who managed to leave. Going back in there was the wrong idea, it was way too risky to be even considered too risky, it was a whole other level of risky, it was utter madness." Kouta exclaimed without noticing Mana pass by and sit by the fire. The girl longingly looked at him as she passed by, hearing just all the wrong words in the process. Despite hearing Kouta openly discussing her intent to save those dwellers with dismissal Mana did not reply, she just sat down and wrapped her arms around her quivering naked knees wrapping into a little ball of suppressed pain.
"Look Mana... I didn't... Mean..." He tried to squirm out of an awkward situation but she didn't reply, she didn't even look back at him. Almost like she didn't even hear a word he said while she was looking right at him up close to him.
"You've been skipping your training, Meiko." Mana spoke up for the first time in a while, "Are you already satisfied with your results?" She asked almost like she was disappointed in Meiko if she made such a conclusion.
"What are you talking about!? I still suck! I was talking to you right there when you were meditating!" Meiko yelled back at Mana. It was clear that the blacksmith was beginning to get caught up in the major schism in the team. It wasn't like the team was just cracked in two pieces or camps formed or anything – anyone in this team no longer wanted to be a part of it. Everyone was angry at everyone and wanted to just end it all.
"Oh... Sorry, I don't really hear the environment very well when I'm in trance." Mana mumbled out in a somewhat apologetic tone. "I used to be able to perceive it just fine but... After I... You know..." She uttered out like a child trying to whimper out why she didn't read the needed chapter of "Trigonometry of the Shuriken Trajectories" in Ninja Academy.
"Oh... I... Didn't know that. I just thought you were mad at me." Meiko mustered out rubbing her neck uncomfortably to the point where the skin on the blacksmith's neck got swollen red.
"I can't be mad at any of you. You did the right thing, the situation was too risky, just like Kouta said. There wasn't even a 1% chance that someone could pull all the disguised dwellers out from the entire cave system in just microseconds left to the explosion and magma flood. I don't blame anyone that you didn't choose to go in. I'd have blamed you if you chose to try..." Mana replied.
Kouta and Meiko looked at each other curiously before looking back at Mana. "Then what is this all about? You not eating, not talking, just brooding in the corner separately from everyone else." Kouta called her out.
"I'm not mad about you guys not going in. I'm mad at myself, I'm mad because my entire life I wished to be a hero who inspires people, somehow who is a hero that inspires change in people, desire to change the cruel world around them. And yet my friends didn't change, they didn't even believe in me enough to let me try to convince them, live up to my dream... They just knocked me out cold from behind." Mana spoke in a voice that was comprised of both bitterness of betrayal but also some anger and disappointment.
"That's..." Meiko opened her mouth to object but Shimo intervened as he was passing through, having just finished his training and smelling of sweat and rotten dead bodies as those kinds of scents were often brought up when the substance Mountain Graveyard was comprised of was split open and all the skeletons were shown to the beholders above.
"Stop it. You can't reason with Nakotsumi Mana. That's one thing me and Sugemi have learned over our time working together. She'll always wish to be stupid but she'll scold other people for being as stupid as she is. She's just in a rush to dig herself six feet under, become a martyr. But guess what, Mana... There are people in this world who care about you, with all your stupidity and hypocrisy, you make those people give up their own lives and lives of other people for your survival so next time you be a little bitch, you ask yourself – is it right to react this way to those people when being like those people is all you want to do." He said before walking off and beginning to build a tent for himself to spend the night in.
Eventually, Meiko and Kouta both stood up and went off, building themselves their own tents and going to bed. Mana remained seated by the fire, even long after the fire dwindled and went out, even while buzzing mosquitoes began craving her blood, even while the deadly and maddening silence of Mountain Graveyard that made one claw their ears open kicked in. Sitting. Thinking...
Next morning the group set out early. No one was surprised having found Mana just sitting by the dead fire, she needed some extra encouragement to get up and keep moving, they weren't too far away from Otogakure or the Sound Village. As the never changing views, plains and literal graveyards of the Mountain Graveyard changed and passed Mana began thinking about Otogakure, namely minding her apathy towards it. Her motivation to find the Box, her motivation to figure out the clue of the sphere they found in the desert ruins of Wind Country had greatly snuffed up and numbed.
Maybe before realizing the horridness of a whole settlement being experimented on by a madman before let loose as these misshapen tunnel dwellers, before being drowned in magma by intolerant men and women who masked with the social hood of justice Mana could've wondered what kind of place the Sound Village was, what kind of people lived there and just what obstacles she may have found in her way. Usually, Mana made scenarios and plans in preparations for any possible obstacle, she was a schemer, she loved to plan, to overthink and overanalyze things all the time but now... There was just a little point in her heart, where once was love and compassion now laid only grief, regret and apathy.
"So, Mana, what kind of place this Sound Village is?" Meiko kept asking her, wondering about even the smallest details. Of course, she'd ask Mana, someone, who spent countless days in the archive reading of history and being an all-around curious young lady.
"Don't know exactly... Heard it has a rich musical culture scene. Whatever you know in Konoha to be entertainment, in Otogakure it's dominated by music." Mana mumbled out.
Meiko looked really weirded out, judging from Meiko's observations below the ruins of Wind Country the girl loved music. It must've been quite exciting for the young blacksmith to see a whole village the size of a small country focusing on music. An industrial and entertainment haven for artists, bards, and traveling musicians. It was said that Guru Ayushi really loved the place and had countless funds raised to help the place grow and develop. There were few notable Otogakure ninja but the music it produced was chased after, the records originated in the village may as well have been made of solid gold...
At that moment Mana looked at Meiko's whistling and grinning, also immensely silly face and she couldn't help but crack a grin. Where once was apathy drowning Mana down under, where the bodies of the tunnel dwellers wrapped their long cold dead fingers around the girl's throat and feet and dragged her down in the river of madness and grief her simple-minded friend managed to extend her hand for the magician overpowering all of those bad memories of the dead she failed to save. Yoinking Mana straight from out of their very cold dead fingers...
How could she not do so, she was Wakizashi Meiko, the young blacksmith kunoichi who was so ashamed of being disowned by her very own clan that she disowned her own last name and couldn't make up anything else but the name of a short sword. She was so simple minded but also so happy... Not a care in the world, none of the sadness and despair Mana struggled with and the magician thought just for a second that if there was anything to be done that Meiko would never have to feel the way Mana does every day, she'd walk to the end of the Earth to achieve that.
"Did you know that there's a ninja in Otogakure who is also a great composer and his tracks actually physically heal those listening?" Mana mumbled out with a slightly brightened tone.
"What!? Is that for real!? That's fricking crazy!" Meiko almost screamed out.
Shimo cracked a sideways grin.
"That is interesting, how does that work?" He wondered.
Mana sighed and tipped the front of her hat so that her face received little of the autumn Sun that broke through the eternally dark patches of clouded Mountain Graveyard sky.
"You do know that sounds are basically vibrations, right? Well, the human body is composed of water so when those vibrations are infused with chakra..." she began a long explanation. Despite Meiko looking like the least likely person to listen to such long and overdrawn explanations, she looked with the childish eyes of glee the likes of which Mana had not seen for quite a while. Explaining the magic of medical musical ninjutsu was just as exciting as showing magic tricks to little kids, a sensation, and chills which Mana had long since missed.