"We're making a lot of swerves. Wouldn't it be faster to travel in a straight dash for once?" Kouta asked in a disgruntled tone.
"It would not. We would get dragged into pointless fights and arguments if any of the local settlements or ninja from Yugakure notice us nearby. It is safer and faster to travel around every settlement and especially as far around Yugakure as possible." Yushijin explained in a dry tone.
"Is he making sense?" Kouta asked by checking the reply with Mana. The magician felt a little flustered to be forced in between the two like that and suddenly be made into the deciding figure who ruled on what was right or not. It always felt like she was just along for the ride, not in a leading position to make any sort of relevant judgments.
"Sort of." Mana shrugged.
"Can't you take a position a little bit harder?" Kouta raised an eyebrow.
"Well, the Land of Hot Water is covered with especially tourist-friendly settlements that actually profit from passing by parties of ninja and merchants so we are unlikely to be unwelcomed around any of them but… Technically, Yugakure is still a ninja village – a militaristic establishment to which the presence of ninja from other villages might turn out as more work so some tension between us would be inevitable." Mana shrugged again. The more any of the two would have pressed her to take a stance on one camp or the other, the more rebelliously Mana would have wanted to maintain neutral ground.
"You guys and your camps." Erumo snickered. "You should know better than to think there are just two ways to every problem, Kouta, there are just about as many paths as there are people walking them…"
"Hmph…" Yushijin's glare sharpened and his eyes turned to the side. Mana looked at the squad leader wondering what could have troubled him. The young swordsman stopped and looked around, sniffing at the air. Kouta and Erumo did the same.
"Can you sense something in that direction?" Yushijin asked the magician.
"Too tough to tell…" Mana's face soured from a repugnant sensation emanating from the direction in which Yushijin was pointing at. "There's something overpowering, something that stops my perception from going farther, like a jammer of sorts…"
"Jammer? How does that work?" Erumo appeared especially interested in the mechanics of how to trick chakra sensory. Given how her interest seemed more on the professional side, judging from the young woman's tone, as well as how she was on Mana's squad and giving her as much intel as possible may have just saved Mana's life at some point in the nearest future, the magician tried her best to explain.
"A lot like placing a massive statue in front of someone trying to look for someone. A large, distracting object might conceal a much smaller one hiding right behind it. The chakra emanating from that direction is so massive and has such… Distinctive properties that… I can't seem to go far past it."
"If this chakra is this massive, you must have sensed it for a while now. There may not have been a need to delay until we could smell this thing." Yushijin scolded the magician.
"Well… My sensory is not always taking the stage. Not unless I'm using it. Yes, I've sensed it for a while now but I sense signatures of all kinds and sizes all the time." Mana replied. Chakra sensory was such an exotic talent that she always had to explain to other people just how exactly did it work.
"In other words, despite its repugnant taste, you still ruled it as not a threat to us?" Yushijin asked for an important clarification.
"Yes." Mana nodded.
"I see… Still, I'd like to be informed about any out of the ordinary chakra signatures around the area." Yushijin sighed and looked on ahead. His body was just about tensing up for another leap to continue the dash through the Land of Hot Water heading towards the Land of Snow before he was interrupted.
"You mean we won't even check it out?" Kouta wondered. "What if it's some bad guy doing something really terrible. Doesn't the wicked feel of that chakra suggest that it's a really bad guy over there?"
"When you let your Curse Seal take you over, your chakra feels about as dark and twisted," Mana replied. "Also, you misunderstand. It is not a chakra of a singular individual. There is likely a conflict going on there between multiple people with disturbing chakra signatures. It is a mass of chakra not in a signature form but more like a cloud of chakra lingering in the air."
"In that case, it must be a clash between nukenin committing crimes around this area," Yushijin called it.
"Most likely. I would come to that conclusion too, hence why I did not rule it as that unusual." Mana nodded.
"Not unusual?" Kouta waved his hands in front of him in frustration. "It's a bunch of really bad people fighting it out – what if somebody got hurt? Don't we have a responsibility to stop them as Konoha ninja? Just casually walking passed a fight like that isn't like you, Mana!"
"I'm beginning to feel like you just want to get involved to fight something, Kouta…" Erumo squinted.
"Erumo is right, the job of stopping nukenin is the job of hunter-nin or bounty hunters. Our job right now is the mission, nothing more." Yushijin declared with a strict tone and a cold face. Mana had to hand it to him, he had the attitude and the bravery to make tough decisions needed in a leader. It made her wonder if she possessed the same qualities, they were, after all, necessary to a chuunin.
"I mean… Hunter-nin are pretty messed up guys too. Bounty hunters are essentially criminals killing other criminals for profit, hardly beacons of angelic chakra, right Mana?" Erumo turned to the magician. After Mana nodded hesitantly, the trapster continued her train of thought. "The fact that groups of wicked feeling chakra are duking it out doesn't seem that out of the ordinary outside the walls of a ninja village."
"You've changed, Mana… Back in the day, you'd have attacked all of us just to get the chance to see if there are any wounded in there and to save their lives, no matter how bad those people were. I can't believe you'd just give up on them like this." Kouta sighed in disappointment. "These days it seems like… You're saving your effort for something but… If you're acting like that and giving up on opportunities, what if that moment you're saving yourself for never comes? Then you'll have wasted your life waiting for nothing."
Yushijin was about to step in and stop his teammate, he looked at Mana with an empathic look. The magician looked away and then stared at the rustling leafage on the lower levels of the trees and the ground level of the forest below. Anything to draw her attention away from the here and now and how uncomfortable it felt. Ironically enough, it was Yushijin – one of Kouta's best friends who knew what Mana was going through, as much as the magician let him in on yesterday, and not her own boyfriend.
Then again, he knew it because it was his responsibility as the team leader to know what may have compromised the successful execution of his orders and not some special bond between him and the magician...
"I changed?" Mana mumbled. "You're the one to speak…" the tone of her voice rose up to where it began feeling really uncomfortable and the young woman began consciously devote every available stretch of effort to contain her bubbling emotions inside. Somehow postpone her breakdown that has been building up for some time now.
A deep breath and a sigh signaled that she was successful. Freaking out at Kouta right now would have seriously compromised the overall cohesion of the team as a unit, that would have disappointed Yushijin and Yushijin's trouble would have also turned Erumo against her. Mana did not yet know how dangerous the foe in this mission was but Team Fir had the best chances of success if they were together. The last thing she had the right to do as a tag-along was to shatter the team like she almost did with her breakdown.
"Very well. We will observe the location of the battle for the injured. If there is anyone we can save without compromising our own mission, we will do what we can. You will not, however, engage anyone unless necessary." Yushijin made the call after seeing that half of his team was ready to jump at each other's throats as long as this was not resolved. Perhaps he did see that part of Mana felt bad about what Kouta said to her. That made one conscious member of the four wish to involve themselves and one subconscious one.
"Sure thing." Kouta nodded.
Team Fir turned toward the remotely jarring canyon of dry, grey-colored rocks and a nasty mist rising from somewhere deep in the ravines found within. Judging from the faces of her teammates, Mana called that the mist crawling out from the canyon was especially putrid as it looked like any of the three was about to throw up on the spot. The grisly scenery reminded the magician of the Mountain's Graveyard and other abandoned battlefields found around the Fire Country she read about and saw pictures of in the history books and scrolls.
The air around felt oddly bitter, every moment spent inside only strengthened the repulsive feeling of iron inside one's mouth being present at all times. It was like drawing every breath just added more iron dust that ground and etched into one's mouth cavity and refused to leave. The inability to breathe properly and the constant, unshakeable, metallic taste caused certain feelings of anxiety that only got aggravated the more mind one paid to it.
Kouta's mind appeared just as one-tracked as it was before entering the place, finding the source of the signature was all he cared for, without noticing Erumo's pale face and fastened breathing. It took a while for Mana to notice too but once she saw Yushijin constantly glancing back at his teammate, the magician turned back at her as well and began questioning the decision to come here.
After a couple of more kilometers, covered in a pair of leaps, Erumo excused herself and stopped, only to find herself a hiding spot. The magician felt disgruntling vomiting sounds and, judging from the voice of the young woman, the hyperventilating from the anxiety felt within did not help the proper reaction to the disgusting feeling in one's mouth. Just one's presence in this location was a challenge enough on its own, had Mana not experienced the full brunt of the gorefest that transpired during the calamity in the Konoha Ninja Academy she may have needed a spot to throw up right beside Erumo.
"Feel better?" Yushijin checked in on his teammate. Judging from his face, he knew just the kind of dangerous mistake he had made by compromising with Kouta's wish to punch something in the face disguised as genuine care over somebody's life and Mana's subconscious guilt that her boyfriend tripped her into.
"Y-Yeah… Experiencing the worst possible feeling in this place helped a great deal." Erumo appeared to even have the fortitude to joke around now. The somewhat energetic reply of the paled out kunoichi calmed the rest of the three down. Mana noticed the regret in Kouta's eyes but he was unwilling to speak his mind, given how it was mostly due to the argument he started that Team Fir was traveling through this place, to begin with.
Mana moved in closer to the young man during the resumed dash toward the location of the wicked chakra mass, even if her boyfriend wouldn't apologize to her for guilt tripping her like that and playing on her weaknesses to get something he wanted, something that Mana would have appreciated at the moment, did not mean that he deserved treatment as cruel as the one he exuded at his worst moments.
"Don't feel bad about this. You didn't know how disgusting this place would be, how we'd react to it. You just wanted to help someone, wanted to step in where you saw trouble. It's not what good ninja would have done but it's what a good person would have done." Mana tried comforting her worked up boyfriend.
"I think… What you said before… I think it's right. I've changed too, sticking around father all the time for three years, working with him and training with him… It changed me. I didn't even notice how much so." Kouta replied with a contained voice.
"Changes in oneself are the hardest kind to notice." Mana nodded. She felt similarly shaken by Kouta's earlier words as well. She knew that they were most likely spoken out of momentary spite at the magician refusing to honor his request for engaging the bunch of nukenin likely causing trouble in these canyons but her own judgment kept bringing something bad bubbling inside her, associated with these words, up.
Regardless of the motivation that drove those cruel words, the truth was that they rung close to Mana's heart…
After realizing that they were dangerously close to the battlefield, Mana landed on the nearest plateau she could find. The rest of the Team Fir followed shortly, scattering a little so that they did not all bunker up in a single location making them too easy to notice while they were observing the battlefield all at once.
A cascade of blurs and clashes sent shockwaves all the way to the observing Konoha ninja. Four ninja seemed to be clashing in a high-speed, mid-air battle while one, dominating battlefield presence occupied the attention of a handful of other individuals. With how intense the battle was, Mana was not surprised at all by how close to one another and how intertwined the signatures were. The bond was more than the result from the closeness of the engagement, it seemed much more personal. Whoever these people were, whatever they were fighting for, they were quite similar in the essence of who they were.
"Maybe these guys sent us the earthquake after we left the village?" Kouta wondered.
"While fast and deadly, these people do not appear to be nearly as strong. They are capable of world-changing calamities but they control their power and pace themselves right. These are scalpels, not sledgehammers." Erumo replied after observing the battle for just a while longer.
"Well, it appears to be a clash between two criminal factions. Do their chakra still feel similar?" Yushijin affirmed to himself before asking Mana.
"Yes. At this point, the conclusion that they are all nukenin with clashing interests to be the most likely." Mana agreed while her eyes and her sensory remained firmly fixed onto the battle. They were too close. These ninja were clashing hundreds of times in a fraction of a second, exchanging dozens of blows, reading and evaluating the moves of their enemy and responding efficiently to them, formulating complex strategies and plans of attack. Kilometers away would have been too close, these people were all over the place, one wrong turn in this clash and…
A whirlwind of blades and frantic, swiping and striking limbs passed through the curious observers, freezing momentarily. It appeared that both sides simultaneously believed the odd party of ninja to be reinforcements for the opposing side but because nobody made any conclusive actions, not wishing to upset the balanced deadlock and inevitably tip the scales of the stalemate everybody stood still.
"I would have never taken Konoha to be protectors of abominations like the Blood Lagoon." A kunoichi with short, dark hair and black eyes that suggested her to be from around the Land of Fire spoke up. She was a ninja who favored light armor and short blades, it seemed. Her face was covered with incomplete tattoos of serpentine dragons and tengu. The impressive artworks extended far under her clothes, implying that the tattoos were finished but covered her entire body, even parts concealed by her battlefield attire.
"Don't be foolish, as if we would ever align ourselves with another village. Our allegiance firmly laid with Kirigakure. Up until the point we were betrayed and driven away!" a massive man in full armor that would, undoubtedly, send Meiko into ecstasy if she had ever witnessed his sheer size and the craftsmanship of his equipment rumbled like thunder descended from the sky. His armor was so heavy and lumbering that all signs of a man being inside it consisted of a pair of red, gleaming eyes that pierced the cover of steel around him.
"How about we ask these odd interlopers and find out, instead of bickering and postponing one of our total annihilation?" another heavily geared shinobi, however, one with a much squeakier and less-imposing voice that broke out from under the shell that was his helmet. It was a mechanical man, of sorts, comprised of armor pieces but whereas the crimson-eyed tank from before was evidently a man in a crafty suit of armor, this man appeared to be a feeble puppeteer in a sizeable dome, judging from the general appearance of the shell. There was no head or eyes or other lifelike features to this mechanical man, only a dome on top of where the head would have been making him appear faceless and therefore quite confusing to look at.
"Well, leader? Make a call, which ones of them are we going to support?" Kouta turned at Yushijin. Despite the general excitement of the prospect of the battle that usually donned the face of Mana's boyfriend, this time his expression was much direr, perhaps he perceived the danger that his team was in and how much this battle would tax the squad before they even entered some of the coldest and least welcome corners of the world.
"We will not take sides here." Mana stepped out in front of Kouta and to where the dome-head would have seen her, if he possessed the capacity to see anything from inside where he was. "We were passing through and could not miss these clear signs of battle. We are just here to take care of the injured, nothing more."
"That will not be necessary." Another pale and frail young woman with short, black hair but donning a crimson gleam in her eyes that was unlike any doujutsu Mana had ever seen before. The only infamously red eye technique was the Sharingan and yet none of these red-eyed ninja had it. Yet their eyes inspired great fear, greater even than the terror of not being able to breathe without feeling like one's mouth and lungs filled with iron dust. "We will obliterate the traitors completely, there will be nothing left of them to take care of." The kunoichi declared before entering a sword-fighting stance and raising her katana from the left side in a guarding stance.
Something told Mana that leaving this hellish valley would not be as easy as it was to enter it.