"Good, you're here," Mana recognized Junichi's voice. She turned toward the pink, morning sky to face the small party of Allied Ninja gathering by the gate. She had been used waiting here in the early hours of the morning. She even used to chat up with the gate guards that were on the shift that time every now and then. Now there was only embarrassment. Fearful glances and craving to not be noticed in order for her waiting period to not become much more upsetting.
"Junichi-san," Mana bowed expressing her politeness as she once used to. With all the people projecting their flaws in insecurities and making a scapegoat out of her lately, sometimes it became difficult to believe in one's own decency as a result. Being polite and kind toward even those that did not answer it in kind and keep the promise she made to her mother were the only two ways at the moment to make Mana's faith in her own decency stand tall.
"Hmph, appalling that you would notice that lug and not me!" Cailar, another one of the Allied Ninja pouted with his arms crossed over his chest. "What's he got that I don't?"
"Don't start this now, Cailar. It's natural that the girl would remember me first, I've known her father for some time, after all," Junichi met Cailar's caprice with a grumpy look. "In any case, we figured that this transition and journey would be easier for you if you were accompanied to the HQ by a pair of familiar faces."
"Naturally, we couldn't get the entire band of Spliced-Splitters back together but this will have to do," Cailar posed with his arms reaching out. With a rugged, brown cloak covering his shoulders, the man almost looked like a normal person with only his face paint and eccentric hairdo being visible while his outfit of clashing colors remained hidden.
"These two are Mollay and Shitaka, they're Allied Ninja too if the forehead protectors aren't a dead enough giveaway," Junichi moved aside and gestured toward a pair of Allied Ninja that supplemented the squad. It made sense that it would take more than just a pair of skilled Allied Ninja to escort Mana, one of the most hated people worldwide, from Konoha to the Allied Ninja HQ. Frankly, the Allied Ninja weren't all that well-liked in many circles either so that would have made Mana a squared measurement of hatred on everyone's shit-list.
Mollay was a tall and thick man. Pale and chubby though his attire was a bit on the eccentric side as well. His outfit seemed somehow both ahead and behind its time at the same time. The stare of stone-shaded eyes was as cold as the pale skin of the chubby giant and his face didn't seem to be much for translating the inner state that the man was in. From what Mana could see of this one, he didn't seem to care much about who Mana was. The only proof that the man could move at all was when he bowed lightly in acknowledgment of his introduction and closed his ever-focused gazers for just one, light blink.
Shitaka was another personality, short, dark hair that fell over the right half of the man's face. When looking at the Allied Ninja, Mana thanked her mother for talking her into leaving her rebellious features and outfits at home because she'd have provided Shitaka with the idea that she was a kindred soul to him if she had applied excessive ink on her face and donned the spiky, black leather. Judging from the opening of his jacket, the man's build was quite frail though his thick jacket made him seem bulkier than he actually was.
"Yo, Nakotsumi Mana, huh? Big fan, the stiff institution of the Allied Ninja can use a little bit of our fiery, rebellious hearts!" Shitaka gestured with the devil horns, formed with his hand, and stuck out his tongue that had a glistening, metallic piece stuck in its core. The man's glove had a few tears and cuts, one of them was meaningful and intended as it gave the observer a clearer view of Shitaka's pentagram tattoo on the back of his hand.
"I look forward to working together as well," Mana nodded with an uncomfortable, forced smile. Junichi couldn't contain his grin from cracking his iron façade when he saw the magician's reaction to his quirky comrade.
"Now, now, Shitaka, don't get all over Mana's face. I'm sure that she isn't looking forward to continuing her cycle of violence but instead redeeming for it," Junichi helped Mana by getting the rebellious punk off of her back and walking in between the two to help guide Mana out the gate and direct her toward the path leading toward their destination.
"Really? Bummer! I'm a huge fan of how she smashed at the root of the problem!" Shitaka once again banged his head with the sign of the devil's horns, as if he was rocking out to a non-existent beat.
"Well, young Mana has also served her sentence in Jigoku for that, it would be wise of you to remember that the next time you plan to burn anything down or smash anything," Cailar shrugged with a dismissive attitude toward his oddball of a comrade.
Traveling during the early hours of the morning through the Land of Fire was a difficult feat. The sun was yet to rise and illuminate the region, making anything beneath the leafage of the forest array as shadowy as it was during the pitch black of the night. It would only be at about noon that the sun would manage to breach through the leafage and soak the ground with some moderate sunshine. At the moment, the Allied Ninja were stuck navigating and dashing across the Land of Fire in complete darkness.
"Where are Mollay and Shitaka from?" Mana asked Junichi, making sure to keep inside the circle of ninja escorting her as they offered their lives as the primary targets for any potential traps or an enemy attack.
"Wouldn't it be better to ask them?" Junichi wondered.
"It would, but Mollay doesn't seem very talkative and Shitaka…" Mana reacted with a light quiver while replying.
"Makes sense, Mollay is from Iwagakure. He's a pretty odd guy, hasn't expressed any pity or regret over what's happened to his village at all. I don't think he liked it much there, to be fair. That pale skin of his, I'm sure it's 'cause he spent most of his life working in the mines. Those weird eyes of his must also be a result of that upbringing. Shitaka is from Kirigakure, he's a relatively recent recruit. He's completed his training only four years ago," Junichi explained.
"I sense some oddity in Mollay's chakra network. It's like his body is constantly in peak activity as if he's augmenting himself at all times, what is that all about?" Mana wondered.
"You would have to ask him, I've no idea. I don't think it's very wise of you to hold on to my skirt too, kid. You'll have to work with a lot of pretty weird people in your immediate future and you'll have to learn to tolerate them all. May as well get started with these two," Junichi shrugged.
"Don't listen to that old coot, Mana, you'll do just fine being at odds with everyone. It's been doing wonders for me," Cailar stretched his face in a devious smile as he craved an antagonistic reaction from at least one of his allies though neither of them seemed to provide him with one. Shikata came the closest to it but he seemed to reconsider right before flipping his pierced tongue to insult the fellow Allied Ninja.
"It's odd that you do not get along with the rest. It seems to me that you're just like Shikata and Mollay, perhaps even less challenging to society's norms, in fact. Unless, of course, that is the reason why you dislike them," Mana shrugged.
Shikata broke down croaking in crude laughter. He was clearly of the type that hyperbolized even the lightest emotion he felt. Even the stone-cold Mollay glanced back at the rest with a slight smirk.
"You'll do just fine," Junichi nodded his head in approval.
"Or, perhaps I'm just ahead of the curve. After all, when rebellion becomes the new norm, rebelling to the rebellion becomes the new cool," Cailar turned his nose up and stroked his tall and asparagus-colored hair.
Somewhat encouraged by the surge of support from the rest of the Allied Ninja, Mana stepped up her movement by just a few paces and closed in to Mollay. For a little while she didn't speak, just move alongside the chunky ninja. Her experience talking to Tala from Sunagakure aided in striking up a conversation with the damaged and silent type.
"I'd rather you moved a bit back. You're close to invalidating our circular formation," Mollay spoke up in an almost gurgling voice. Given how he did not speak often or for very long, he must not have cleared his throat all that often though his voice was quite masculine and low-pitched.
"I'm a sensor ninja, I couldn't help but notice your chakra signature displaying some odd activity," Mana brought it up. "If it is because of a curse seal affecting the formation of our vanguard, I have some well-justified interest in that."
"It is not an affliction or a curse seal. My childhood working in the Iwagakure mines has left me almost completely blind. I am employing my chakra to augment my other senses. Have I eased your worry?" Mollay looked to Mana though even when magician felt she had overstepped some boundary by suggesting that Mollay might have been a potential weak link to the team, Mollay didn't seem at all offended or taken aback by her implication.
Explaining his own condition to the magician seemed as casual to Mollay as it would have been to tell her what he had for breakfast that morning.
"Oh… I guess I should have put it together. I'm sorry. When I was training my chakra sensory I once contemplated ruining my eyesight too. I settled on sacrificing my sense of smell instead. The boost it provided was not as potent but it helped me survive plenty of tough times I'd have perished in otherwise," Mana replied, trying to relate to the Allied Ninja to at least some extent. It didn't seem at all effective, judging by Mollay's expression, and, honestly, Mana was beginning to feel terrible about seeming like the more inadequate at conversation out of the two.
"Oh… Why would you have to sacrifice a sense for chakra sensory?" Mollay looked at her with the first hint at emotion that Mana had seen that day. The joy of making a human connection with the stone-faced chubby made Mana so overjoyed that she rushed to answer right out of the gate.
"Oh, you don't have to. It's just that I discovered my ability to sense chakra in the middle of the Chuunin Exams and I didn't have the time to properly train it. We were also facing off against a particularly skilled sensor so I needed to catch up to him and do it fast. One way of achieving that is to eliminate a sense, which vacates some brain processing power to be attributed to chakra sensory as chakra sensory takes the place of the lost sense and becomes more prevalent and potent," Mana explained.
"That is interesting, I hadn't heard that before. If only I had been a sensor, huh?" Mollay even managed to slip a joke in though his deadpan delivery kind of made it smack flat against a brick wall.
"Yes, given how much we rely on our eyes, I'd image you'd skip more than a few decades of training that way," Mana nodded, choosing to answer the joke question truthfully.
Given how she no longer had an excuse to break the formation, Mana retreated back to the middle of the formation. When she looked back, she saw Junichi nodding in approval that she managed to make a human connection with a fellow Allied Ninja. Especially one that didn't seem like the type to allow connections with him to be formed easily.
"So, what's the deal, huh?" Shitaka asked out loud, addressing Mana without breaking formation. "Why did you do it?"
"Shitaka…" Junichi scolded his comrade.
"Come on, boy, let the lady have her secrets…" Cailar, in a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, agreed with Junichi.
"Oh, come on… She's served her time, Mana's got nothing more to hide or blush about. All that's in the past, gotta confront it to move on, right?" Shitaka looked back with a bratty grin on his face. "Why did you pummel a legendary medical ninja, a sage-like figure, beloved by the entire world into a comatose pulp?"
Listening to his tone, his heart appeared to skip a few beats, racing in excitement as he declared exactly what it was that Mana had done. Almost like Shitaka would have done it himself if given the opportunity and he didn't need any of the prehistory or justifications that Mana had to confront Guru Ayushi to do so either. He'd have done it just for the kicks of it. The fact that such a person was an Allied Ninja and worked to uphold international justice onto the entire world and tried to make the world a better place than he found it made the magician confused and just a little bit sick.
"I didn't like his face," Mana lied. "I'd learned a bunch of jutsu, picked up a bunch of skills and nobody ever acknowledged me. I didn't get a single mission worthy of my skills so I made one up. It was a test of my skills, nothing more."
"That's so rocking hardcore!" Shitaka laughed out with the sign of the horns and his tongue sticking out. It appeared to be an essential part of this young man's gimmick. "Goddamn, sister, loving every bit of your rocking vibe! Let's work together sometime, promise it'll be tons of fun!"
"Mana, can you come closer, I keep noticing flaws in your footwork and it is throwing off our formation," Junichi spoke up. That was odd, Mana didn't notice any flaws in her footwork or her positioning and the formation seemed just fine. She may just have had a better view of it, given how she could not only examine it through sight but also scan it through the chakra sensory.
"You didn't really do it, did you?" Junichi mumbled in a restrained voice when the magician closed up to him. So that was what all that positioning talk was all about – just an excuse to get her closer to ask her. "I always knew that you'd pull the same trick on the village that you'd pulled on all of us back then, act like you're some criminal and betraying your village only to do the right thing in the end. It's the traditional double agent act and I'm not sure how it fooled your superiors,"
"As the man who knew my father, Junichi-san, how can you truly imply that I didn't care about the fact that Guru Ayushi was behind the drugs that sent him into a comatose state? Trust me, when I beat him up, I had my father on my mind the whole time. It was just revenge, nothing more," Mana replied after a beat of hesitation. Telling a lie in front of the Ninja Tribunal was one thing, continuing to lie over and over and over again after her punishment was already over was something that Mana might not have considered back when she signed on the dotted line.
"I see…" Junichi sighed. "Well, if you ever truly feel bad about what you had done, ever wish to do things differently. Working with the Allied Ninja will give you that penance, trust me, I'd know. I know you didn't form the best first impression back at the day but just give it the chance."
"That was the idea…" Mana nodded, emulating Mollay's stone-cold expression and returning to the middle of the formation again.
"Four chakra signatures right ahead," Mana declared, halting the entire troupe and sending them scattering across the rich leafage surrounding an opening in the road.
"Mana, what can you tell us about these signatures?" Junichi whispered after sneaking up closer to her so that the four of them could communicate.
"Not much, all four of them are adequately sized. They'll give us trouble if we confront them, that is all I can tell at the moment. It doesn't seem like they possess any exceptional qualities or aura color to them," Mana explained.
"I see, stay cool, we'll try to move around them. Keep your eyes open and look for any signs of a potential trap," Junichi raised his arm up. With the volume they've been communicating in, there was a potential threat that they'd be picked up on though the four down below seemed quite heated in their argument so they were safer than they'd normally be communicating right in front of the enemy.
Normally it might have been nothing out of the ordinary to encounter a few ninja stuck before a crossroad. Though ninja with chakra this potent would have more than likely planned out their trip and overprepared for it. Seeing ninja stronger than your average chuunin just standing around and bickering with one another looked out of ordinary for certain.
These ninja did not wear any standard ninja uniforms either. All of them wore dulled and worn out forehead protectors and the symbols on them were scratched out, though, if Mana's vision didn't play tricks on her, she could have sworn that she saw the kanji for "nine" etched onto the plates. Once the spectacle of running into them had run out and everyone had gone silent, working on moving around the bickering quartet, their quarrel became more intelligible.
"Of course, I am the strongest out of us four, my wind is so hot that it would dry the flesh off of your bones and crumble your skeletons to dust,"
"Don't be foolish, you would not even get to breathe in before you'd be frozen still. My blizzards bring about eternal frost that cannot be broken by a mere spring breeze,"
"Foolish, utterly foolish. Your winds borrow heat or cold whereas mine needs no such pacts. My wind is power absolute. My wind doesn't need to burn anything for it can flay the flesh clean off of the bone,"
"All four of you are clearly wrong, my wind is the righteous blade that severs foolishness from the tongue that spouts it and leaves it rotting in the clear. Though perhaps we should ask the four Allied Ninja and Nakotsumi Mana just who they think is the strongest one of us?"
"An excellent idea, brother, though they'd never tell without getting a sample of each of our power. Let's showcase our awesome might and then ask the last survivor which one of us is the strongest?"
Mana's heart seemed to sink down to her heels. These four truly were antagonistic toward them and they were waiting specifically for them, having laid a trap. Not only that – they knew who everyone in Mana's group was as well.