The winter night moon spread its gleam, as bleak as the skin of a dead man, the light it lustered across the misty Shukuba streets just as cold as the blood that moved through the cadaver's veins. Every vital intake of breath required a sniff to follow it up. More and more often people chose to breathe inside the collars of their own outer layers of clothing to warm up the air they were sucking in.
A short woman of dark complexion and refined eye-lines, lush eyelashes, and overpowering make-up pressed her heels across the frozen dirt passageway of a more resolute district of Shukuba. One comprised of modern metal sarcophagi that surrounded a large lake, where much of what was not meant to be found upon inspections was dumped, when a watchful eye, less willing to compromise, came to scope about the place. There was always certain scoping about to be done there.
The woman stopped in the limelight of an ancient lantern to light up a smoke, her right hand threw her rich and wild dark hair backward as she set the end of her cigarette blazing. A dark shadow whizzed past the woman, temporarily covering up the light gleaming above her, like a shadow of a hawk swooping down to grab its prey. Loud, metallic thuds and fleshy tearing sounds accompanied the impressive flight and flip of the shade that finally stopped moving fast enough to be given shape by the human eye.
The woman in red reactively jerked to the blades that skewered her frame before collapsing on the ground. Itemi stood back up, scratching the back of his head and his neck as his impressive skydiving trick did not leave him completely unscathed. The man removed a bottle of pills from his back pocket before swallowing them down his dried out throat through vocal and rather gruesome-sounding struggle.
"I knew I'd lure you out here by taking this shape. You've covered your tracks quite nicely, not even Shukuba Security knows what you're up to, they are considering you rogue." The voice of a young girl echoed eerily through the officer's ears, the echo of her voice sounded so dreamy and mind-shattering that the man had to take a couple of stumbling steps back to preserve his balance. Helping him to deal with the mental pressure of genjutsu, Mana dispelled the illusion, letting the body of the westerner woman that Itemi had just gunned down fade like a mirage from his view as the image of Mana appeared into his view in a similar manner. A combination of the Transformation Jutsu and her own Fancy Trick genjutsu technique working in a combination helped Mana feel a bit easier about once again using a jutsu of a foreign invention.
"I'd figured it was too easy…" Itemi grumbled before pulling out his handheld kunai dispenser and firing a bunch of blades at Mana's direction.
The magician effortlessly grabbed the first blade that was approaching her out of the air, disrupting its trajectory and using it to deflect the rest, protecting herself against the entire series of high-velocity kunai projectiles fired her way. She did not expect such a violent reaction from the man, then again, he was going on a rogue rampage across the town and he did warn her multiple times to get out of his way. More so, he must have realized that such an attack would not harm Mana too much even if the magician let it all connect.
"For a man who is not a ninja or can mold his chakra, your speed is quite impressive. I'd say you are well in-tune with the physical aspect of your chakra." Mana smiled as she let go of the heated kunai she still held in her grasp once the man had emptied his dispenser in her direction.
"I told the kid to get out of my way. She may have been a monster in all ways but the ones that actually mattered but she was no master detective. There was a thought in my mind to just direct her at my enemies and watch them burn but… This was something I had to do by myself. As a depressed ex-alcoholic, disillusioned with the world, I needed it to stop the dreams and the constant voices. Which ones were mine, which ones were those I attributed to the people I've killed? I could no longer tell… I needed sleep, so did she but… Pills and smokes were all the joy that was left."
"I know how Okasune-san died." Mana closed her eyes. "She was clearly prepared to leave to work. Her kunai dispenser laid by her side, meaning she had pulled it at some point but dropped it, likely due to the shock of sudden pain. It was not a quick death. She was about to leave but the marking on the wall parallel to the door suggests that a noise of kunai being fired in that direction surprised her, causing her to pull out her dispenser and inspect her own home. While the stab wound in the center of her chest was what killed her, it did not go all the way through and yet the pool of blood behind her was considerable – she was stabbed in the back first, disarming her and dropping her on the ground while the assailant – the western woman, most likely, enjoyed her kill. It was personal, just Diamond Hand taking care of business." Mana needed to take a breath.
Explaining the final moments of Okasune-san was much easier when the sign of Mana's failure was not staring her right in the eyes. It was almost like being in the company of someone the magician had failed to protect sapped all of her strength away, made her mind just turn on and off erratically, firing strands of useless thoughts that did not connect to anything.
"I see someone's read the forensics report… The specifics of how the kid described Kita's final moments were too detailed for an uninitiated eye. It was like she knew too well where to look, which details were important and which ones weren't. A complete newbie would have gotten some things right but they'd have also mentioned a whole buttload of hogwash that was irrelevant to the case. The brat was singing it all like she had it memorized. All on point, too good even for the little magician. I'd be pissed that she was cheating if I wasn't so impressed she managed to sneak around Security HQ to read it all..." Itemi concluded as he sheathed his weapon after preparing it for firing again by loading it with another belt of kunai. "Who's the Diamond Hand, I wondered, that was one secret that the crime scene could not have tipped me off on and none of the people I've silenced that day would have, for all they knew, they were already dead either way."
"I did sneak around the Security HQ, I needed to see if they had any idea where you were, also, figured intel on Okasune-san's death would make you more talkative. The Diamond Hand bit was something I got out of the governor Sho-san. The town's under a secret shutdown, the governor is going to hiding and every executive and legislative work is put on hold." Mana sighed.
"That meant that no one was truly in charge. All the public institutions, like the Shukuba Security, officially powerless. Maybe it was for the better, I couldn't be sure that the Head of Security wasn't also in the pocket of… The Diamond Hand. I was the only trustworthy one, I guess the kid was too. After all, there was no other point for her to be here at this point." Itemi scratched his chin as he monologued.
"We need to work with the Shukuba Security, Itemi-san. You need to check back in, take your orders and do this by the book. We cannot fight both the Security and the Diamond Hand at the same time." Mana tried to reason with the man.
"Shukuba Security may have been the Diamond Hand, for all we knew. Telling the wheat from the chaff would have been too much trouble, too much focus put on things that didn't matter. If Kita was in Diamond Hand's pocket, so could have been literally everyone else. No one was clean, no one was trustworthy until proven otherwise and I wasn't about to play lethal roulette with a bunch of dirty Security officers." Itemi spat aside before turning to the small passageway leading back into the town through a narrow forest path. Mana felt inclined to follow.
"It was a smart trap to parade around the town wearing the woman's face, kid. I couldn't help but commend her. Goddamn it, she read me like a book, maybe I was getting too old. Kita knew she was, look where that got her. She knew she had no time to hit the Diamond Hand, she knew that with the first action she was not specifically instructed to do she'd be shredded. Every passing day at work she was surrounded by her potential supervisors of the lethal kind, every one of whom could have put a blade through her head just while casually passing by if she did not dance to the melody of bastards." Itemi kept rambling to himself. Mana's lips couldn't help but crack a small grin.
It was not that the magician found Okasune's highly tense and deceitfully lethal work environment funny or that there was comedy in the woman's tragedy of any kind. It was just that she's been parading around the town disguised as the westerner for hours and couldn't hear Itemi following her despite him constantly rambling all kind of stuff to himself out loud. A couple of times she could sense remnants of killing intent, a very overpowering, passionate kind. Now that Mana knew the context behind the ex-officer's attempt to murder Bonda on the movie set, the fact that she picked him up made so much more sense.
"Even though Okasune-san spent her entire life as a puppet hero, I can't help but respect her. Anyone who has sunken so deep and has the willpower to make it all right deserves it." Mana dreamily looked up at the moon.
"She knew that the only thing she could do before she was killed was hit the Diamond Hand right at where it hurt – their money. The Diamond Hand were like vampires, leeching off Fire Lord's treasury to build up their own strength. By cutting the leeches off of blood she'd have delivered the only kind of blow she was strong enough to deliver. She even went as far as to play that poor chump and slip him the idea to off Bonda… That's because the moment she'd have actually tried to build up a case – she'd be killed before even one legitimate piece of evidence was collected." Itemi grunted.
"I admired the serenity in Okasune-san's eyes when Bonda-san was released. I thought that those were the eyes of a woman who was accepting her mistakes, accepting she was wrong and willing to punish Bonda-san justly. I guess Okasune-san knew already she was not going to last that long, she accepted it and went out serenely because she knew that she would go out trying to make it all right." Mana looked down, her throat constricted by sadness. "She was no hero, even when she tried to fix everything she did so by manipulating people and resorting to murder but… While I do not approve or agree with her actions, I can at least understand and respect her reasons, somewhat."
"Listening to the kid honoring Kita by my side, talking about the woman like she knew her, felt odd. It was like two good friends remembering a common acquaintance but… The kid barely even knew her. And yet… She managed to take in just the stuff that mattered. I remembered Okasune's final words to the kid, it felt like a passing the torch kind of moment. In her last meeting with the kid, she recognized the enthusiasm and the genuine desire to help people that she herself used to have at some point, before the lines turned blurry, before the clean and bloody money smudged against the other pile, turning all of them smudged and making it impossible to tell which pile was which."
"We need to find the westerner, Itemi-san. She's the only lead we have." Mana turned at the rogue Security officer.
"It's like you're reading my mind." The man smiled. "Don't go around ruining that by telling me some bullshit like that you won't let me kill anyone…"
"That's not for me to decide. I realize that the ideals I hold are extreme and that they are not what other people uphold. For that reason, and several others, I do not enforce my nindo, I will change the world and make people stop killing each other by making them decide that with their own free will." Mana shrugged. She wasn't sure if that kind of attitude didn't make her the worst kind of hypocrite but it was just the way she had decided to do things. She had worked alongside some of the most talented fighters and killers and had she confronted and preached to each of them every time they fought – she'd have achieved nothing.
Let alone, if she achieved world peace through exacting force, whether physical or legal, like Lord Fourth did, she'd only be crushing everything she ever stood for. The world wouldn't really change, no one would truly change, they'd just bury those killing intentions deep down under, letting them spread their roots and grow in the shadows before they would blow up in Mana's face. Too many times the magician had seen Fourth's endless peace treaties be brought up in the negative light not to become disillusioned by them.
"While the kid may have been pretty on-point as to decide to gun for the woman in red, she was a little bit hopeful about actually knowing where she was or how to get to her." Itemi scratched his head.
"We will not be gunning for the woman in red just yet. Before we do that, we'll deal with Shukuba Security and your rogue status." Mana insisted. "We can't just cut off a root off of a tree and hope it to die. We need to separate the tree from its foundation first before we can fully focus on unearthing the roots."
"I sighed uneasily. I knew the girl was right but… That was not your most successful metaphor, I told her, trying to drown my disdain of what she suggested in some levity. Drowning my problems, whether in levity or alcohol, has always been my preferred solution…" Itemi rambled on. "Her plan was for me to submit and work with the Shukuba Security, mine was to send them to go fuck themselves. If we were to work together, a more coordinated solution needed to be found. That may have sounded generous of me, but I liked old man Chontai, he was a pretty nice boss, all things considered, and, had it not been absolutely obvious, I'd have never believed him to be dirty. I guess that's the painful part of a dirty Security office."
The Shukuba Security HQ was slowly clearing out. The only officers present were the ones staying to work overtime, whether with cases they have not done enough in through the day or with, as Itemi explained to on their way there, shady businesses like making evidence disappear overnight during an unexpected electrical outage.
The lingering Security officers batted only curious eyes when Mana entered the HQ and slowly walked up to the northern wing of the building, heading straight for the office of Shukuba Head of Security. The man was sipping on something dark as he worked on a bunch of files stacked on his table. Upon the magician's entry, he gave her a bemused look.
"A bit late for work, isn't it?" The man wondered. For a Head of Security he was relatively short, well-aged and reminded more of a sickly man than a powerhouse that could contain a criminal in this crazy world Mana lived in. Still, she was a living testament that looks were deceiving.
Without uttering a word, Mana walked up to the window and opened it up, after she moved back, Itemi leaped in before fixing his clothes and confronting the Head of Security. The little man was sandwiched between Mana and the rogue officer.
"W-What are you doing here? We're looking for you, you know? You've gone rogue, you've been suspended, you'll be lucky to avoid prosecution!" The man objected
"Shukuba Security is going to close down. Everyone is going to be suspended unless stated otherwise." Mana cut it short. "Shukuba Security is in dire need of a "reboot" of sorts."
"Chontai started laughing, could I really blame him? What the kid said, without the context, sounded like speech of a madman. One of those idiots with cooking paper wrapped around their heads in the shadier alleyways of Shukuba, thinking they were blocking mind control waves that the Yamanaka spread to take control of the world. While it felt a bit triumphant, I always hated that moment when those happy smiles faded. Too many bad memories associated with the core concept…" Itemi rambled off topic. The chief was undoubtedly used to the ramblings of his subordinate as he paid the man no mind.
"The governor is in hiding. Behind the scenes the town is in disarray. There's no more administration to speak of, it's all a farce with no actual power. Sho-san decided that'd be for the better until the Diamond Hand are rooted out." Mana calmly explained why she had every right to make such demands.
"Poor Chontai leaned and squirmed after a single mention of the words "Diamond Hand", like a demon hiding from a praying priest. Of course, he was on their payroll. He was the only official in this town that was worth having in one's pocket. If the Head of Security was not getting paid by you – what's the point of buying anyone else?" Itemi noted, seeing the chief's reaction to Mana uttering the name of the criminal organization lurking underground.
"Your last executive decision will be to call for a meeting. Every single Shukuba Security officer. Here. Tomorrow. Itemi-san will build a task force out of the people he trusts. The others are free to honor their allegiances to the Diamond Hand or get out of our way." Mana finished naming her demands and the plan that she and Itemi worked out.
This may have seemed like a distraction, spending so much time doing something as trivial as job interviews and task force gathering but… If the end result will be clearly drawn lines, a full trust between Security officers, that assurance that one's own comrade was nothing else but that and that one won't be pierced by a blade from behind, fired by their own best friend in the moment of greatest need, it will be worth it.
Even if Itemi did not entirely agree, even if he would have rather waged a two-person war against the world, Mana wanted clarity amongst who was fighting whom, even if that gave the Diamond Hand time to regroup and plan ahead. Without a doubt, they knew all about what was going on by now.
Mana expected the little elderly man to fight her more. Surprisingly enough, the man sat down and scribbled up the executive order right then and there. When the magician looked into the man's eyes she was the same thing she incorrectly identified in Okasune's eyes last evening – regret.
"Even if I can support my family and retire in dignity, it won't be worth it if I cannot sleep calmly at night." The chief sighed before handing the order.
"Just like that the river has been crossed. As old man Chontai handed us the order he had written up right here and now, I wondered just how many more officers were looking for an excuse to defy the Diamond Hand for the sake of a clear mind. For the sake of fighting what they have always wanted to fight. I couldn't help but look back at the kid and wonder, what if she's been right all along to enlist the Shukuba Security. What if behind all of her naivety, childish mistakes and idealistic glasses she saw us all for what we were – like-minded children who have at some point lost their way and burnt down the bridges. Now dreamily watching from the other side at the poor and bare but beautiful shiny grasslands they have left behind while they were breathing the choking corruption of the city air."
For once Itemi's outer monologues actually left an impact on everyone in the room. All three of the people present turned their eyes away from one another, the fight up ahead will be a tough one, likely not all of the Shukuba Security will be so wishful for redemption and plenty will choose the wrong side. Before it is all over friends will have to fire on friends, people may die and for the sake of public order all of this underground war must remain under the civilian radar. As a Konoha kunoichi, Mana would have certainly preferred it that way…
Author's Note: Sorry I haven't been leaving any notes lately. Besides the references and inspirations behind certain characters, I didn't really have much to comment on. I'm not even sure that people like to read them yet :D
I know that the whole Shukuba storyline has started somewhat slowly, Naruto never really delved too deep into just how its world worked because it was too busy stuffing new retcons into just how Sharingan worked every once in a while. I guess the boring details wouldn't have been very "Shonen" of it but I've always been a sucker for that kind of detail like how would a society police itself in a world of ninja and how would non-ninja establishments protect themselves in such a crazy world. I really had a lot of fun thinking about all the different ways that such a society would work, how criminals would behave and act in a world of superpowered people like ninja/samurai/pirates etc... That is why so far the story has been just a slow murder mystery with a lot of procedural junk and slow sneaking around (even then, I had to make sure to get Mana caught a couple of times because I've established she's just as good at sneaking about as the minimal standard for ninja is).
Before everything really starts to get crazy and the action picks back up, I just wanted to have some fun exploring the society of a non-ninja settlement in a ninja world