Kiyomi rolled the two remaining food pills in her hands. So far, Mana has been the only member of the team not to use the pills she had stolen from one of the teams. Maybe it was her own guilt tripping her over, maybe the magician genuinely thought it'd be more reasonable to save them for later. Either way, for the Yamanaka it seemed a foolish oversight which couldn't have been allowed to continue.
Meiko was gulping down water sounding more like a thirsty horse than a decent and composed human girl. Water was not something that was completely unavailable as various lakes and ponds and smaller water sources were all over the place. Obviously, the water needed to be boiled and purified for ideal drinking experience but it rarely was a problem. The redhead could've gobbled down all of the water the trio had and it could've been replaced. After the initial glances at her thirsty friend Kiyomi started to completely ignore her expression of thirst after remembering all those things.
"Mana, you need to take these", the blonde raised the problem out loud. The magician was positioned by the tree and sat up on the branch the trio was resting on. The trio weren't too far away from the marked Team Maruf hideout so strategies needed to be drawn and preparations needed to be made.
The magician pondered on something, trying to come up with an excuse not to take the pills but she couldn't really figure anything out. The usual accelerated ninja metabolism began recovering chakra resources pretty soon after leaving a field of active battle and consuming one's stamina. Her chakra was already regenerating to some extent, similarly to how normal resting worked. That being said, it almost always took a day or two to fully recover chakra resources for a ninja. Even their bodily injuries ached and troubled their body less in two or three days even if they took longer to fully heal.
"I know what you're thinking – we don't have the time. We've wasted enough of it as it is. We don't have two or three or five days, however long it'll take. These pills can return you to half your peak in couple of hours. Even your wounds will stop stagnating and bleeding and will start to slowly heal. We need you". Kiyomi pressed on harder.
"Well, we may need you less in this mission, it'll all be stealth and sneaking around but… You are an important part of the team", Meiko nodded energetically, Kiyomi realized after looking right into the redhead's happy eyes that the blacksmith missed the point of this conversation completely. Meiko thought this was about Mana's self-confidence so she felt obliged to compliment the magician's importance but it was more than that. It was about proper teamwork and getting back into track after spending so much time fighting snuck in rogue ninja and their own hunters in battles that took too much time and too much effort to fight.
Mana closed her eyes and looked down, she looked kind of defeated and submissive but it may have been the general look of her – she was pretty banged up from all she had to go through recently. Kiyomi's pouting frown turned upside-down as she witnessed the magician fondling the food pills for a moment before placing them in her mouth.
"These are red pills after all – they're by far the least stressful to your body so you'll be able to take two of them no problem"! the blonde energetically cheered on her friend.
There were better tasting things than the red food pills that Mana chewed up for a while and swallowed. It sort of tasted like dragée made of old mashed tomatoes, paprika and chili peppers. It was bitter, sour and sweet, hot and acidic all at the same time but it was a little less chewy and seaweed-like than the green pills. Almost instantly the magician felt an influx of energy that was quick to burn up but it felt like her entire body hit the reset button and was quickly beginning to fire up again with newfound strength and stamina.
"My chest itches a bit", Mana noted after scratching it softly to alleviate the uneasy feeling.
"Yeah, well… Those are medical food pills after all – they do stress your body even if those are the least stressful to take. You should be clear of heart attacks just yet", Kiyomi shrugged before lightly tapping on Mana's shoulder and looking on ahead to the empty space of the forest where Team Maruf hideout was supposed to be.
It was truly an impressive camp that Team Maruf of Sunagakure put together. It was a complicated construction of peeled off shells of centipedes and snake skin, it was all held together with mandibles of insects that appeared to pierce everything like laundry pins and act almost like nature's nails and stitches. The camp would've been completely immune to an attack from basic ninja tools or weak ninjutsu attacks or physical blows.
"I could tear it down", Meiko bragged as if she knew exactly what everyone was thinking. "I'm almost regretting sneaking around, it'd look really cool to see this thing fall down".
"Jeez, Meiko"! Mana expressed horror at her direction. "Didn't know you were such a demolitions enthusiast".
"Hey, it's a thing, and as long as it fits that condition I like taking it apart and putting it back together equally"! the blacksmith grinned while rubbing her nose.
Mana didn't really feel easy about this whole thing. On one hand taking the target down silently would've been the quickest and least painful for everybody method. On the other hand – stealth was probably the one aspect of her arsenal she was the least confident in. Her stealth grades in the Academy were just barely passable and as an entertainer she actually liked being showy and very in your face so she wondered if she could even assist her team on this as she was expected to.
At least the medical food pills were working as they should've been. Feeling one's chakra network and metabolism working in an overdrive felt odd. That inner sensation of spiritual and physical energies growing back to their peak with each passing second felt strangely… Tickling and warm. Even her mind was slowly sharpening and she began perceiving things and thinking much faster than she was with a reduced chakra reserve. It was nowhere close to full recovery, Kiyomi's estimations were just about right though. Mana could feel her wounds hurting less and less every minute and her chakra was approaching half of its total capacity.
With Kiyomi giving the signal the entire team took off. It felt really refreshing moving so fast. It felt almost like moving instantly. With a couple of leaps the girls made an entire circle around the camp and observed it from various corners. Surveying multiple possible entries.
"The head piece is made of giant centipede's head shell. It has four holes where the insect's eyes would've been stuck up with bee wax. We can melt that with a weak flame or cut through it. Melting it would be the least noisy but it'd take longer and none of us, to my knowledge can use D-Rank Fire Release jutsu". Kiyomi whispered.
"Cutting it is", Mana nodded. Meiko also gestured her approval of the idea.
"Mana, I'd appreciate a quick sense of the place, try to figure out if they're inside at the very least. I know your ability isn't too precise but if there're any signatures nearby we'll take it as a positive". The Yamanaka then ordered.
Mana closed her eyes and tried to sit comfortably in a meditative position as she extended her consciousness beyond her own mind, trying to feel the outside world as if it was something she could just reach out and touch. It took a good ten to fifteen minutes before the magician managed to slip into the proper meditation mode that fit the description of what chakra sensory usually looked like but it worked – three moderate sized stars floated in a cluster orbiting around each other nearby enough to be the real thing.
The team blitzed away and in a single superfast leap turned up right on the piece of the upper floor made of the giant centipede's head. Meiko pulled out a knife and thrust it at the waxy parts but the kunai blunted out in her hand from a single thrust. Kiyomi closed her eyes and gritted her teeth together as a louder than she had desired clang combined with a fleshy wax damage sound emanated through the entire construction. The team lingered for a moment waiting to find out if they've been discovered but they appeared to have been lucky.
No one heard their moves just yet. Kiyomi sighed with relief as she gave another kunai to Mana. The magician nodded, she realized the problem as well – the kunai needed to be heated. It didn't appear that the wax of the local giant bees could be damaged with blunt or cutting force and required heat to be passed through. The magician gripped the knife tighter in her hand before weaving a pair of hand seals and pointing it into the sky. She needed to half-ass the ninjutsu, just enough to heat the blade but not enough to make a flashy effect that'd attract attention…
"Magic Skewer Jutsu" she whispered to aid her focus as the usual rod shapes of lightning chakra formed around her, this time just barely matching the size of the kunai and drove into the wax together heating it up to the shape of a gooey white substance. The magician drove the kunai in firmly and dragged it across the hole of where once an insect's eye was letting some of the wax drip on the inside despite her genuine efforts to drive it on the outside.
"Nice. We're in", Kiyomi nodded while shaping her lips to form words yet uttering no sounds. Luckily enough Mana and Meiko could read her lips just fine enough.
Right before the team settled on entering the structure Kiyomi weaved a hand seal and initiated the mental link. It was entirely possible for her and Mana to communicate using sign language taught in the Ninja Academy however Kiyomi knew better than to rely on Meiko's knowledge of any languages other than her first one. Something about memorizing hundreds of different signs and all the ways they interact together just didn't seem like anything Meiko would pull off, having her skillsets in mind.
"When we're in stick to the walls." Kiyomi let out an authoritative mental signal. "Meiko, I trust you still have your T-shirts with you?"
"See? I told you two stuffing half of my bag with clothes will come in handy!" Meiko emitted a powerful joyful thought.
Mana bit her cheek on the inside. She knew what Kiyomi's idea was and, frankly, it was quite genius. The Yamanaka wanted the team to use the Cloak of Invisibility jutsu which was one of several E-Rank ninjutsu techniques taught in the Ninja Academy. It'd have allowed the team to stick to the walls while using Meiko's pieces of cloth to disguise themselves perfectly while they moved throughout the area unseen.
"Mana"? Kiyomi signalled for her to follow but the magician lingered. She just tried figuring out a way for her to avoid using a generic technique which she herself didn't invent. She had used generic techniques before but only as a mean to save someone's life. Now she tried to run through all of her options before crossing her principles.
"She doesn't want to use a technique she didn't invent", Meiko reminded Kiyomi casually.
"Oh for… Do you have a ninjutsu or an illusion to replace this one"? Kiyomi wondered mentally.
"Not anything I can think of", Mana shook her head feeling ashamed and disappointed in herself.
"Goddamn kindergarten is what this is… Fine, let's go, Meiko. We don't need all three of us and it might actually be better to use less space while sneaking", Kiyomi cursed before the following thought occurred to her. The less people will be sneaking around inside, the less the probability of them failing or bumping into someone or messing up their technique.
Both girls activated the Cloak of Invisibility technique which weaved chakra into the cloth used for the ninjutsu and made it large enough to cover both of the users individually and morphed their shape and color into being perfectly fit for a disguise when sticking close to a wall. Usually when performed by a low ranking ninja the technique didn't adapt to movement but with additional chakra input it could've been done by a more skilled ninja. The only things the two girls had to worry about now was spreading betraying noises, smells or someone bumping into them accidentally.
"Wow, it actually worked"! Meiko emitted a happy thought onto the link.
"Of course it worked, it's a generic Academy ninjutsu. It's like jumping in joy after pulling off a Transformation Jutsu, you're in the goddamn Chuunin Exams, Meiko", Kiyomi cheeked at her friend's direction, Mana wondered if the blonde had ever seen Meiko fail basic ninjutsu techniques and mess up proper chakra control quite as many times and on such basic things as the she had seen during the search for the Box of Ultimate Bliss. Even while this Meiko here was much different from the girl that left with Mana to look for the Box, she had plenty to cheer on about with pulling this jutsu off.
"This may turn out for the better yet, sit tight and observe the area, Mana", Kiyomi sent a signalling thought Mana's way.
Even knowing that Kiyomi couldn't physically see her, Mana nodded and dashed off to the sanctuary of the woods, careful as to not to trip over or make too much noise with her movements. She probably did make some troubling noises which a careful ninja would definitely pick up but no reasonable ninja would ever react to every noise they hear in the Forest of Death. This place was full of creatures crawling and buzzing with all the subtlety of a Tailed Beast.
"Alright, let's look for this Qarsufly fellow now. I trust you know how he looks like"? Kiyomi began guiding the sneaking process as the two girls carefully sneaked outside the little attic-like room where the insect's eye socket would've been and into a larger skull area lit by small torches and full of different rooms where the other eyes were as well into the rooms left by spaces where the massive mandibles and antenna of the creature were.
"Definitely"! Meiko nodded firmly. That was one person whose face she allowed to sink deep into her mind. In a massive forest filled with thirty two different teams and almost a hundred different genin she most certainly made an effort to memorize the person she was after.
"Good, now let's carefully look for him, slow and steady, then take him out quick and get the hell out of here. After he's down we can ditch the subtlety if we're found out, I'm confident we can outrun most people in this forest", Kiyomi breathed in and out deep before shutting her breathing down completely. A ninja could've held their breath down for twenty minutes at average, longer if they spent chakra to sustain their bodies but after fifteen minutes or so the body began to react – heart rate accelerated, sweating intensified and hiding would become difficult.
"Now that I think about it, how do we plan to take him out? Won't his body instinctively augment itself when we hit him, even if we do it from behind"? Meiko wondered.
"Don't worry, Hanasaku-sensei taught me a trick to bypass that sort of thing when his back is open", Kiyomi sent a calming and happy thought back on the link.
Team Hokage carefully snuck about the place, they've seen a person of slim feminine dressed in all black and wearing a peculiar headdress that made her face completely covered up and a belt full of circular in shape blades with sharpened outer edges and with varied sizes as well. The smaller ones on her waist were of around fifteen centimeters in size but she wore many larger ones as accessories holding her complex and verily concealing attire together. The young lady was meditating in one of the side jaw rooms so the two kunoichi sneaked past her.
"This must be Squlra, of whom we were told about, the one with a nasty attitude. Wouldn't have taken her for the meditating type", Kiyomi noted.
"Faqsamalopolis is probably in the kitchen, stuffing his place. I wish I could help him with that noble goal", Meiko emitted a longing thought back on the link.
"His name is Faqsadid, although, yes, I agree with that assessment. Still, we've no idea which room they've chosen for the kitchen. We've no time to properly map this place out, let's just find Qarsufly and hit him fast and rough", Kiyomi corrected her teammate before moving onwards and past Squlra's room.
Right as her step would've touched the middle step of a long and round staircase which channelled two different levels of the structure Kiyomi's foot froze. Meiko felt the mental link growing cold and an uncontrollable feeling of dread that began to chill the overall mental image.
"What's wrong"? the blacksmith wondered before quaking in her boots in anticipation as Kiyomi was in front of her and was halting the duo's progress.
"Mana just went off the link for no reason", the Yamanaka whispered vocally, almost like the whisper was meant only for herself.
The feeling of firm ground beneath their feet shifted as Kiyomi and Meiko got tossed backwards and slammed into the armored shell wall as a powerful ram built of purple crystal penetrated the structure from multiple sides skewering and crushing it almost completely.
"What the hell"? Kiyomi yelled out mentally before grabbing the t-shirt and shooting up the stairs and into the first little room she saw, only for Meiko to follow.
"That was no one we know about", the redhead stated the obvious.
"Yeah, Faqsadid is an ugly fatso, Squlra is a circular blade using weaponry user. Maybe it's Qarsufly? We haven't heard about his ability yet", Kiyomi tried piecing it all together but the more she thought about it the less sense this all made. Whatever ability Qarsufly had he'd have not sensed and taken out Mana first, whatever threat this was – it came from the outside.
"Faqsadid, we are Team Corundum of Iwagakure, we've come for you", a firm voice of an athletically built young man with golden dyed hair declared. His face was completely covered in red markings and tattoos attributed usually to the Kaguya clan and he pointed his hand upwards holding an elbow-to-hand long blade that appeared to be made completely of bone. That much the two Konoha girls could see through a small crack, likely left over from when the creature was killed for its shell and parts to be used in this structure's construction.
This got out of hand pretty fast…