The tight lock around Mana's wrists loosened and then disappeared. The magician pulled her head out of the snow and coughed some of the freezing, watery fluff out. Instead of flipping out on Yushijin for pulling this, she turned to Erumo, matching the confusion that the other ninja were expressing at the moment.
"You had a tribesman captured this whole time and you said nothing?" Yushijin questioned his teammate.
"I mean, I was waiting to see how this whole situation plays out. If we decided to not work with Kumogakure it would have only made things worse if I opened with that, don't you think?" Erumo shrugged. With a shimmering in a way fine jewelry gleams smile, the trapster grinned at Mana who at the moment was glad that she'd been dunked into the snow – something cold enough to temporarily hide away the blush from being humbled this way. "I bet you want you would have been nicer to our best interrogator now…"
"Interrogation's a piece of cake. If you pale-skins don't have the gut for it, just let me at 'em." The Uru-V jumped at the opportunity to commit explicit torture – just about the least effective method of interrogation out there, especially so given the nature of the subject being interrogated.
Yushijin turned to Mana. He could have personally attested to the magician's interrogation and mental scanning skills as the two have trained and exchanged thoughts extensively using the very skill that may have surfaced the much-needed knowledge.
"Go for it." Mana sighed. At some point one stopped being impressed by how utterly wrong an incompetent fool was at everything they did and just let them ram the wall with their heads pointed forward, running at it in a wild dash, hoping to get on the other side. Some degrees of idiocy were so deep-rooted and so incomprehensible that simply leaving the idiot be was the only option, lest one became submerged in the filth themselves.
Mana didn't make a handful of steps from the scene, trying to cool her head, ironic, given her recent tumble, before Yushijin's hand stopped her in her tracks.
"Going to stab me from behind again? Why the hesitation?" Mana's eyes flared at the leader of Team Fir. The merely imagined simplicity of the mission and the number of complications that rose in the middle baffled the magician to where she could no longer feel confident about how reasonable her own judgment was. At this point, she just dunked into whatever flow of emotions burst through and let it rock her boat.
"You know those guys won't do anything but kill our only lead. That guy won't speak, I've never heard them speak once. The only thing we can get from him is his memories and there's nobody better than you in bringing it out." Yushijin spoke with a calm voice, there was no hint of apology for the stunt he pulled back there. He felt being in the right back there which only further aggravated Mana's desire to wash her hands and go rogue on the entire operation. That would be the end of her license, and that's only if she completed the mission by herself. Rogue failure may have meant actual incarceration time.
"They have a Yamanaka amongst their ranks. I'm sure they'll manage." Mana spread toxic fumes from her eyes, granted, of imaginary variety. A weakness of her furor that she regretted at that moment.
"Come on, they're from Kumogakure. They won't use a scalpel where you can use a chainsaw, force is all they understand and they'll try to force their way through. I doubt that Yamanaka even knows proper mental techniques, migraines are the best I see a Kumogakure Yamanaka capable of." Yushijin was an inch short of outright pleading with the magician.
"Even if I would want to help, they won't let us anywhere close that guy. It's the type of machismo attributed to the whole damn country." Mana growled, transitioning to being mad with Yushijin instead of at him.
"Look, I know the whole situation is frustrating. They're basically spitting in your face every passing second but… You want to save the lives of those tribesmen, don't you? Watching their backs the whole time is the best way to make that happen. You know we can't take them out but we can make sure they don't kill everyone. By feuding with the entire country that has military bases all over the location, you won't be doing yourself or those tribesmen any favors. If you want to save those men and women, as unworthy of your mercy as they seem, you still have to do be the one doing it." Yushijin said.
A deep sigh left Mana's chest, her eyes calmed down to almost a radical extent as she stared with a sense of longing and sadness far ahead into the dug up and messy layers of snow that the new and fresh snowfall was being in the process of slowly drowning out. Yushijin was right. If Mana just left those assholes be, they'll just start blowing up mountain after mountain, flooding cave after cave in a show of force. They'll start scanning and ransacking settlements themselves, they'll grow less and less tolerant to the peaceful way of life these settlers have made here.
"I'll give it a go." Mana turned around while pocketing her hands. It felt like surrendering to being chained up and walking back to the square from which she could feel the chakra signatures of both the Kumogakure ninja and the rest of Team Fir flaring up felt like abandoning everything she stood for but that was the only chance at another go to saving somebody instead of leaving a whole bunch of people to be slaughtered. At this point, it stopped being about finding and stopping the tribe and became a lot more about the same thing it always boiled down to – trying Mana's best to save a bunch of people.
It was regrettable that her track record of that final stretch was not the greatest. No matter how much strength she acquired, how much she prepared. The head just kept bashing against the brick wall with the magician plummeting on her figurative buttocks, her body being no closer to getting on the other side than before each successive meaningless charge.
The tribesman stood on his knees all chained up with sealing tags placed on the chains. His face and most of his body were littered with bruises and swellings. The buster must have given the combined forces of Konoha and Kumogakure some trouble again after being freed from the dimension that the trap hole sealed him into. Beating him would not have been the tough part, subduing him was.
"Oh? It seems that you're somewhat in charge of your team after all…" Uru-V taunted Yushijin with a hiss full of irony and mockery. It was not sarcastic in any way but the fact that the leader of Team Fir brought the disagreeable member back was significantly less impressive to the Kumogakure ninja than the fact that she disobeyed her team leader so out in the open.
"I have trained with the Konohagakure Village Protection as well as the Intelligence Division. I can interrogate this man if you give me the chance." Mana suggested to the Kumogakure ninja.
"Wow, much more agreeable now, aren't you?" Uru-V switched to taunting Mana. The more mature kunoichi of his squad calmed her teammate down with a soft touch and interrupted him.
"Come on, play nice. This will not be necessary. We have a Yamanaka of our own. She should be more than capable of extracting intelligence out of this man." The woman smiled to Mana before leaving the blonde to her business and approaching the leader of Team Fir and the magician.
"We've already introduced ourselves. My name is Ara-K, I believe I've already introduced Uru-V and Kari-E. The big guy is Sore-T and the class clown is Hagi-S." Ara-K counted her team members out while the Yamanaka prepared to interrogate the struggling subject.
"Are there many Yamanaka in Kumogakure?" Mana wondered. So far this woman seemed somewhat reserved and more agreeable. Perhaps she could have answered some of the questions that plagued the magician and, at the very least, she could have been the solitary solace to Mana's distaste of working with the Kumogakure ninja.
"Not at all. I understand that seeing one seems confusing to you. Yamanaka are native to Konohagakure, for the most part. Only small branches have split off to other villages once their progenitors have, for one reason or another, fled to that village. Unlike Kirigakure, Kumogakure did not provide a hospitable soil to foster the clan's growth. There are no local, well-established branches, just a handful of families that barely relate or get together with one another." Ara-K shook her head. She appeared somewhat content that Mana's tone had calmed down and that the magician was willing to ask questions now and, at least to a limited extent, cooperate.
"Psycho Mind Transmission!" Kari-E chanted while both her eyes and the eyes of the interrogated subject rolled back in perfect synchrony. Mana had to hand it to the Kumogakure Yamanaka, as far as mental interrogation abilities came, Kari-E's mind transmission was, at the very least, easier and less violent than Kiyomi's.
It was tough to compare the two given how Mana had barely seen Kari-E fight. Neither could magician reliably tell about how skillful Kari-E's mind transmission was, just how effortlessly the Kumogakure ninja slipped into a mind that put up a valiant effort to fend off any invasions. Then again, perhaps the simpleton was just unprepared to be sieged on the mental front. It did not appear that he possessed the mental training background needed to resist interrogation.
A stream of blood ran down Kari-E's nose. Same damage befell the subject making the magician turn to Ara-K with questioning eyes and try to get her on her side without saying a word.
"True, this is unusual…" Ara-K nodded. The woman stepped up to her team and gestured at the bleeding pair. "Perhaps we should let the Konoha ninja give it a go?"
"And hog the intelligence to themselves? The pale-skins and the half-blood have no business being here, to begin with, they've proven to be unwilling to work with us as well. They're lucky we don't share their repulsion to cooperation and let them stick around." Uru-V growled at the woman.
This feather-donning young man certainly seemed like the trouble-maker of his group, however, for whatever reason, given his penchant for violence and absolute murder as the only acceptable outcome for a battle, Mana could not sense any vile and repulsive properties to his chakra signature. These disgusting and brutal things that he did were not what defined this young man. His chakra did not flare with tar-black or the deceitful violet, his chakra in fact beamed with crimson showers. Large, powerful… Just about describing everything that mattered to this youth much better than the first impressions Mana had garnered about this ninja.
"The Konoha ninja were not all too forthcoming. This girl most of all. Maybe if somebody other than her were to do the interrogating…" The massive Sore-T shook his head while keeping up his cool. The giant did not appear to talk all that often, despite the first time he opened his mouth to express his displeasure in how little action he saw during the battle.
"My auntie always said that a little blood from the nose strengthens character." The baldy with extensive tattoos stretched out and flexed his small yet well-defined muscles. This one possessed the perfect build for an agile combatant – hardened like a bar of iron, about as long and thin as one too.
"Look at her, even right now she's sizing us up in case she ever had to take us out." Sore-T let out a rare for him smirk. It was perhaps a bit lucky that the giant found magician's personality quirks amusing rather than alarming for this may have very easily have been the cause for more conflict.
"So not only are they objecting to us going forward with our mission objective, now they're actively standing in our way. At which point will we engage them?" Kouta grumbled while leaning at his leader. He was lucky that none of the Kumogakure ninja have heard what he had uttered nor did they seem overly interested in it.
The Kumogakure bunch appeared mostly engaged in the lack of success of their interrogator. Seeing a Yamanaka struggle made Mana reevaluate her own chances for success. She was just an initiate in the arts and got overwhelmed by the opposing mind as often as she managed to bust through. Whatever measly chances she had, to begin with were being drained each moment that Kari-E was wearing out the tribesman's mind.
Interrogation was not an art of dominating the mind fort of the target. It had everything to do with proper balance, a mere crushing of the target's mind would have left him in a comatose state and would have been useful to no one. Then again, it would have been favorable to whatever grim judgment these Kumogakure ninja meted out their opponents.
"We can't do that. No matter how tough odds get, we need to try and detour around their business, best of all we accompany them in seeing this through." Yushijin denied Kouta's request. "They've got an advantage in numbers."
"Not for long, if this chick continued on the same note…" Erumo cracked a grin. The trapster did not appear worried that she was going to be heard. As a result – she was. Regardless, by now the Kumogakure ninja appeared to be somewhat used to not being on the best of terms with the Konoha ninja and did not make this declaration to be worth the trouble either.
"Sometimes it's not about numbers, it's about skill, just like this battle, right?" Kouta brought it up. "Mana, how strong are they?"
"You know I can't tell for certain. Their chakra signatures are around the range of an average to skilled chuunin. It's no testament of their strength though. Sore-T has easily the smallest chakra signature but… Look at him, does he look like the weakest of the bunch to you?" Mana couldn't believe she still had to explain that. To her own boyfriend, no less.
"Nah, he probably just doesn't work on improving his chakra all that much. I bet he's a monster of physical stamina…" Kouta finally got to the point of the problem with relying on Mana's predictions to estimate strength.
"And yet sometimes, Kouta, fighting is all about numbers." Yushijin pressed his back to the cold and moist wall of a nearby column while he observed the interrogation process in silence. "Just like all of us taking down Mizoma."
Kari-E's body fell backward together with the wooden chair she sat on while interrogating the target. By that point, her teammates had bent the legs and arms of the static interrogator and positioned her on a little chair to avoid muscle pains after she recovered. Two hours later, the revelation that everything amounted to nothing must have really breathed in some excitement into these untrusting ninja.
Kouta approached the downed Yamanaka and scanned through her body. Mana looked at the young man with a speck of worry that she would ultimately be responsible for another loss of life or consciousness just because she did not oppose as actively as she should have. A few seconds after beginning the scan, Kouta finished it and shrugged.
"She should be fine. She's just out cold. A civilian would be threatened with brain damage and permanent memory loss. Your friend will be okay though." He said.
"Thank you. We were fortunate to have you with us." Ara-K pressed her hand to her chest and bowed her head at Kouta with gratitude for his effort.
"Brain damage and memory loss, talk about a soothing reassurance!" the tattooed baldy wiped figurative sweat off of his face.
"At least E has something to lose, we have a reason to feel vexed. If that sword was hanging over your head, we would be absolutely certain that nothing of value would be lost…" Sore-T tried to psyche out his squadmate with some banter.
"Can I give a shot at it?" Mana raised her hand.
"Oh yeah, I was looking to expand our selection of vegetables this season!" Hagi-S gestured with more vigor than he knew what to do with.
"We will wait until E recovers so she can give it another go," Uru-V grumbled. "Until then, we will stay put and nobody will approach the captive."
"Seriously? Mana has been trained by the Konohagakure Intelligence Division, you could have your answers in a couple of seconds if you just stopped acting like a bunch of brats." Erumo growled back at the clawed, feather-donning ninja crashing her own visual, figurative sparks that flew out from her eyes against Uru-V's.
Mana grabbed her hat. Just a few milliseconds later, a blast shook the ground beneath the feet of the ninja, a bubbly mass of fiery, white light expanded all the way from the farthest reaches of the settlement to the square.
"See? We don't need no pussy interrogatin' we've got our tribesmen all gathered right here!" Uru-V smirked at the Konoha ninja while all four of the capable of fighting Kumogakure ninja departed. Not too soon after they set off, a cascade of smaller explosions shook different districts of the settlements, all on completely different sides of the establishment forcing the ninja to part ways or risk missing a squad.
"You're unbelievable…" Erumo glanced at the magician who just shrugged.
"Usujitsa won't blow up a home with people in it. Potty-training avoids his simple brain but not this, never this…" the magician sighed while approaching the chained and still unconscious tribesman. Mana squatted by her target and placed her hand out. For a brief moment, she avoided contact with the tribesman's dirty skin, still covered in dried out clots. It was not the repulsion to what gunk covered the man that bothered the magician but she touched his forehead regardless.
Before she could engage in the interrogation, a flash of chakra swooped down to a nearby electric pole. Mana turned at it nonchalantly. By that time, she had gotten used to and could identify this signature from most others.
"I figured you had something to do with this…" Ara-K said almost as if speaking to herself. "That was low of you to do."
"Don't worry, Mana doesn't kill anyone. She wouldn't have had Usujitsa do anything if she wasn't completely sure that nobody died in the process." Kouta crossed his arms over his chest while glaring at the magician and her unwavering eye-contact with the Kumogakure woman.
"I did not say I did not understand or approve…" Ara-K appeared somewhat reassured by Kouta's words, even if she did not act overly eager to appear that way.
Mana turned back down at her unconscious and restrained target and focused on what she had learned three years ago and rarely had the chance to force out onto the surface.