Mana tapped her foot on the settled dirt near the village gate. It wasn't like the magician was ever an impatient person or that she could reasonably complain of being bored. Once in a while, she had the luxury of watching the gate guards pat down a cargo that was being moved into a village or talk to a suspicious-looking fellow attempting entry. Most of these cases were just people who've been on their feet for too long and looked like banshees at this hour of the early morning.
No. Mana was in some of her better moods. Yesterday's show could have gone better, she's gotten a tad rusty on the pizazz factor after missing out on three whole years of shows but after this mission's done it shouldn't have taken too long to get back into the swing of things. Unlike many other things, Mana's magic shows did not directly clash with the reason for her intense and focused on a solitary goal training.
"Hey! Figured you'd be first to come, you're always early, even when you have the most to do out of all of us…" Meiko chuckled with a lazy yawn. Her chakra seemed calm and a lot more lively than Mana ever remembered Meiko's signature being. Even after sparring in what inevitably would have gone out of control, the blacksmith had a signature that surpassed her norm by far, at least one that Mana remembered.
Mana couldn't think of anything clever to say, she just smiled and nodded as a polite acknowledgment of Meiko's arrival. The redhead was never the one to hold a grudge so the magician could leave it up to her to not get too mad at Mana for missing out on sparring alongside the team.
"Hmmm? Not like you to be nervous before a mission… Even when things get crazy, you usually out-crazy them by how calm you are. Something's wrong, did you drop something at the show yesterday?" Meiko wondered.
Mana could never understand why her friends so often missed out on her shows. It was not like they hated stage magic or anything, it used to be a fairly popular piece of entertainment locally, more so than even the movies that were by far the flashier novelty. Maybe not yet the awesome sight that they were once perfected like they were in the universe Mana brought them back from but still…
"Yeah actually… But that's fine. Not too many people showed up yesterday so it won't make the papers or anything." Mana arced a melancholic smile.
"Yeah… I haven't built anything in a while. I'd probably mess it up if I tried making something fancy right now." Meiko admitted with a hearty shrug. "Anyway, can you finally explain to me what the mission is all about, I'm not sure if I should be excited or not and nobody had the time to tell me yesterday."
The mission objective may just have been part of the reason why Mana's show could have been better last night. The magician spent too much time reading out compared to practicing her magic tricks. The fact that she missed out on a whole settlement and a rich piece of history to explore that now made itself an important part of her life both irritated, challenged and made Mana a little bit fired up.
"It's sort of a long story. To make it shorter, we need to make sure spies from other ninja countries don't mess with a small settlement that willingly made itself ours." Mana tried simplifying as much as it could have been simplified.
"That's wrong, actually… It is far more likely that we'll be the ones needing protection from both the Yordalar settlers and foreign ninja spies. Though, let Hanshin tell you something, for the sake of brevity, it just about sums it up…" Hanshin spoke revealing himself having stood by the tall village wall out of nowhere. It would have seemed remarkably amazing had the man not had a ridiculously swollen right cheek and spoken in a slight lisp.
"Well… I guess it won't be boring, at the very least." Meiko grinned with a full-teeth smile, holding none of her cheer back. "I wanna show off how much your training we did back while looking for the Box helped me out."
"You really don't have to. I taught you a bit or two because you asked me to…" Mana tried to politely deafen Meiko's obligation to prove something to Mana.
"Nonsense, you've shown off how much our training meant to you by becoming so nimble and fast, it's the most honorable thing a tutor can feel, seeing how far their student can take their lessons. I want you to experience it too." Meiko chuckled.
Almost immediately the blacksmith turned behind her, it was tough to miss out on the cue, Kiyomi had signaled her on the mental link. And yet Mana heard nothing as if she was left out. Examining the Yamanaka's condition as well as the state of her chakra signature Mana could not pick out any exact reasons for the blonde to be mad at her – Kiyomi was pretty much as healthy as she could get and her chakra was, similarly to Meiko, vastly larger than the state Kiyomi departed to train with three years before and just about what Mana recalled from reconnecting with the two after her own training expedition.
"Well, now that everyone's here, Hanshin-Gumi can set out," Hanshin mumbled to himself.
"Hanshin-Gumi?" Kiyomi squinted, firing arrows at the self-appointed team leader. Though she did not appear to be willing to make a whole thing about it, settling down and reducing herself to a fit of silent scorn instead of arguing with someone who clearly seemed crazier by a whole margin compared to her.
Hanshin disappeared with just a flicker. His physical shape must have been considerable to completely disappear any sensory input Mana could rely on except for her sensory. The movement and location of Hanshin's unique signature told the magician all she needed to know about which direction the special jounin was going and how fast.
"You still didn't tell me what was bothering you before." Meiko turned to Mana while the trio was traversing through the boundless forests of the Fire Country. The expanse was known to all four ninja as if they had the map to it scribbled on their hands, at least to some more traveled to directions.
"It's… My father, actually." Mana sighed.
"Is something wrong with him!?" Meiko got startled, it was tough to say whether the reason for her reaction was the fact that the man was somewhat of Meiko's personal idol while he was still an active ninja and the blacksmith did not have the courage to look up at the likes of Chestnut Hanasaku let alone dream of ever training with them or the fact that he was Mana's father.
"It's tough to explain. The whole time after his injury, I thought he was learning to deal with the pain of his injuries but he was just drowning it in the experimental medication that the Ayushi cult produced and sold on the black market." Mana started. Her face made no attempt at hiding the fact this was a painful subject to talk about.
"The Ayushi cult are the guys that were behind that monster attack on the village, right?" Meiko scratched the side of her head. Usually, the redhead was pretty carefree about being wrong about things or not knowing something but when she was not aware of something related to personal matters of her friends – things were clearly different. Meiko did not look comfortable confirming this at all.
"Yeah." Mana nodded. "After we shut them down, I was worried that things would get really bad with father and they did. He got angry at everything all the time. I can't even begin to imagine what it was like for him while I was training away, or for mother at that… No helping me with magic shows to occupy his attention, no way to deal with his pain, most definitely no tinkering."
Meiko looked down and gulped heavily. The prospect of absolutely no tinkering showed it to the redhead more clearly how dire things were better than any fancy wordplay may have.
"These past three years I've trained myself with a sole purpose, a certain man I must stop at any price, one that stands so high above the clouds that nothing else but every thought since then to now focused on beating him will do. I made only one exception to that focus. My father." Mana explained.
"You made that illusion that can ease his pain, right? Numbing pain doesn't seem like such a complicated thing when you say it out loud but recalling our lessons about beating genjutsu… I'd have no idea where to start with an illusion even this simple." Meiko smiled in politeness. Doing her best to make the mood lighter for her friend as she's done so often before, back during Mana's darkest days and deepest lows.
"Sure, just numbing pain with a genjutsu is simple, fooling the body that one isn't feeling pain at all, I mean. But to actually stop it… The Ayushi cult wasn't fooling around for years with that mission for naught." Mana shook her head with a slight arc to the tips of her lips. Just seeing Meiko trying to lighten up the mood always made Mana's day a little bit brighter, no matter how feeble the blacksmith's efforts were, they were often successful.
"It seems to Hanshin you haven't really made an exception to your rule at all then…" Hanshin's strong and cocky voice ringed in Mana's ears, the magician turned to her right only to see Hanshin carelessly dashing about with his hands locked firmly around his buff chest as if he needed to keep no balance while dashing at these speeds. "The way it looks to Hanshin is… You know you can't beat the man, so you decided to beat him at where it would hurt more – accomplish his goal for him."
"Did you know Konoha's Great Trapster too?" Meiko looked at the special jounin with a cheerful smile. Hanshin covered his face with a flappy palm, making a goofy-looking pose.
"Hanshin knows or cares about no man but Hanshin." The special jounin replied.
"Go figure…" Kiyomi replied with what seemed like a grumpy hiccup.
"Maybe. It's been pretty dark and hopeless sometimes, maybe I did start working on the technique just to spite that man at some point. At this point, I honestly could not tell." Mana sighed. "Still, I've managed to work out a prototype for the technique. I can make the pain disappear for real, not just with a mind trick. Though just for one target and just if I stay around them."
"So now that you're leaving home, you're feeling bad about leaving your father alone again," Kiyomi stated the fact.
"So you're talking to me again then?" Mana grinned at her. "Going to maybe include me in the mental link in the nearest future?"
Hanshin turned his curious eyes at the trio of girls, slightly amused by the fact that there was a mental link but then swiftly turned his eyes back at the road ahead, even if he only needed minimal attention to avoid the trees and other obstacles at his pace.
"I never stopped talking to you…" Kiyomi pouted. "And I only left you out of the mental link because it didn't seem important, we haven't picked a fight just yet."
"I see," Mana noted.
"All the more reason for you to complete the mission nice and fast and come back home then." Kiyomi smiled. It didn't look from where Mana was moving around that the Yamanaka was angry at the magician for bailing out of yesterday's spar but, then again, it was tough to say for certain, ironic when Kiyomi's own mind was usually the forum for the trio's conversations.
Because of the unique state of the settlement, with it entering the Fire Country through its own will after leaving the Wind Country, Yordalar laid at the very edge of the Fire Country, right in between Kusagakure and Amegakure, in that way, in between all three: Fire Country, Earth Country and Wind Country. Even though neither Amegakure nor Kusagakure belonged to any of the countries, Yordalar proudly and adamantly declared themselves a part of the Fire Country.
That was where the things got complicated. Yordalar was such a problematic location with so many different interests brewing in it that it was next to impossible to know which country may have had their representatives misbehaving there. The mission objective stated that there were reports of foreign spies inciting a violent coup amongst the Yordalar authorities, one that would fuel a transmission of the rights to the settlement. With so many elements in play, so many foreign politics factors to consider, it was no wonder it flew right over Meiko's head. Mana herself was not overly confident in her ability to ace the test about Yordalar external and internal politics, now of all times, when her grasp of those things should have been the sharpest.
"Mana, you strike Hanshin as an intelligent young lady," Hanshin spoke up out of the blue, breaking the magician out of her nervous trance. "What is your prediction of what we'll find there? Who do you think could send their spies to Yordalar?"
"I'd have less success telling you who would not benefit from splitting the territory off from the Fire Country than telling you who it was that did it. Just about any player involved has things to gain, although my first guess would be Iwagakure." Mana replied, trying to be honest and give her best assessment.
"Interesting. How so? Hanshin feels sure it would be either Kusagakure or Amegakure. A small territory on the border in between the two would significantly bolster their overall forces, boost the village's economy and grant the village notable presence at the border." The special jounin smirked.
"I believe that Iwagakure is in dire need of allies. From what I've seen and heard at the Summit where I was chosen as a Voice of Ninja, the coltan conflict with Kumogakure is not going their way. Had it not been for the mountainous battlefields and their affinity for those types of terrains, the three of us may not have seen this conflict continue by the time of our return to Konoha." Mana voiced the most obvious reason. It just seemed to her like all the other reasons, the things other countries and villages had to gain were goals of ambition. This one was the only goal of survival, therefore much more likely to be the relevant case.
"What about the Wind Country?" Kiyomi wondered. "They can't be too happy about losing a settlement like that. It would be within their interest to pull something shady like this."
"I don't know much about foreign politics, but wasn't the Kazekage kind of a nice guy back when we met him?" Meiko closed one of her eyes while trying to recall the encounter. It had happened so briefly during the group's quest for the Box of Ultimate Bliss that it was just a grain of sand in the vast desert.
A reeling snap woke the team of ninja up from their peaceful, traveling mood. That gut-wrenching sound that telegraphed steel wire being at play. Within a blink of an eye, all four ninja found themselves trapped in a vast net of steel wire, weaved not too unlike the manner in which a spider would weave their trap. Mana had once read of a ninja clan the members of which all possessed spider-like attributes like six arms and the ability to weave silk and infuse their chakra to it. Such a clan may have adopted this trap pattern but not the material used.
"Fire Style: Dragon Flame Ju…" a figure in a dark green coat that landed alongside his partner to a thick branch nearby the trap of steel that the group had laid chanted out, before the man could finish, however, his friend pulled him out of the way by yanking his comrade by the shoulder while using an improvised grappling hook comprised of a hooked kunai attached to a steel wire controlled through a reeling device on the ninja's wrist to escape.
"What the hell? We can get them! We need to strike now! They've got that Yamanaka girl with them." The ninja that was yanked away from a prize that was his to incinerate was not too happy about the "save". The fellow had short, curly hair to him and a moderately flat and boring face. He was a tad bit shorter than his partner too.
"You've been born with the world's most sophisticated pair of eyes and yet you keep them closed when it counts." The red flare of a Sharingan beamed from the ocular orbs of the second ninja, one with shoulder-long hair and a midnight-blue coat of his own.
"I did use them, how do you think I spotted the Yamanaka heiress all the way from Kanabi bridge?" the first Uchiha reacted with all the subtlety and composure of a capricious child.
"And what do your eyes tell you now?" his partner asked. Upon being encouraged, the first Uchiha turned at the captured group and activated his Sharingan only to see a trio of chakra signatures neatly tied up and desperately looking for an efficient way to get out from their bindings without hurting themselves too much. They did have a mission to complete still…
"Apart from the fact that our prey is about to escape? Wait…" the first Uchiha was just about to try and get snappy with his partner but then he also noticed the unusual signature in the chakra of the short magician girl that he had captured.
"That's right." The man's partner closed his eyes as the girl's body burst into cherry petals and scattered across the battlefield revealing that they had only caught an illusionary body, the real thing had managed to catch her chance and escape the trap.
"We need to give chase. She was in the back of the line, she reacted out of pure instinct during the split-second her superior was caught. She's nothing special, we can still kill her." The first Uchiha looked at his partner who just shook his head.
"Let's retreat to the bridge for now. We've wasted too much time already if we were to kill them, it should have been done immediately. Just a moment later we're risking falling for their own trap, for all we know, they may be luring us out of the hiding and into their counterattack at the very moment." The second Uchiha replied. The two nodded in sync before flickering away, using the cover of the trees to mask their movements all the way to the tall, wooden bridge where they were adamant of standing their ground out in the open.
The steel wire around Hanshin snapped easily upon the man's activation of the invisible chakra armor. Meiko wrestled around with the strings, carefully feeling them for any possible application of chakra imbuement before snapping them easier than she'd have snapped silk threads. Kiyomi followed Meiko's example. Snapping the threads immediately may have been dangerous, if their captors knew what they were doing they'd have waited for a while before applying a light coat of chakra to the threads, making them near indestructible and causing any attempts at snapping them to leave grievous wounds. That'd have ended their mission before it even began.
Mana's body reassembled from flower petals beside Kiyomi. Truthfully, she had stood there all along, merely wearing the dissipation of her body as an illusion.
"They were talking about you, both of them were Uchiha. Do you know who they are?" Mana asked.
"Red Hawks, probably." Kiyomi grumped out. Any irritation that the Yamanaka felt for the magician before was now refocused into a blaze meant solely for the rogue Uchiha splinter group.
"Red Hawks or not, they're standing in Hanshin's way." Hanshin played with his hair, stroking and flaunting them about before striking a menacing and bizarrely open fighting pose. "The wheel of fate crushes those in its way."
Mana, Hanshin, and Kiyomi rushed on ahead towards the Kannabi Bridge, Meiko pondered of something for a handful of seconds while scratching her head before shrugging.
"He's always so dramatic about everything…" she settled the matter of her focused thoughts for herself before taking off after the Red Hawks as well.