A dry desert wind blew over the land. The gale smashed against a stout rock wall, failing to reach all the way through the opening leading within the massive, crater-like opening where Sunagakure stood tall like a clay jug on the long dinner table. A mountain range of sandstone wrapped its reach around the ninja village, leaving just a single, narrow yet long pass to reach the village by unless one felt adventurous and flew over the range straight above the village roofs.
"So, this is Sunagakure? I'm not impressed," Endo grumbled. "Nothing but dirty mud houses as far as the eye can see."
"I felt a little disappointed the first time I saw it too," Mana smiled. "The artist in me must not have been too impressed by the identical gourd-shaped houses all built on the same foundation, on the same level, and from the same materials. Though in time, the toughness and longevity of this village have left their mark on my soul. Throughout all those years, thick and thin, the village has only grown in size and thickness. It's the same here as it is back home."
"I guess…" Endo shrugged, easing up his grumpy exterior. "How can we know that the locket we're looking for is actually here?"
"It might not be," Kakashi replied. "Still, this is the thickest concentration of civilization in the entire quarter of the continent. If someone knows a thing or two about the locket–they'll be here."
"Finding this locket won't be a piece of cake," Shige-H raised a fair point. "I'm going to see if I can find us a place to stay overnight."
"I'll go pay Gaara a visit," Temari said boldly. "Maybe he or one of his assistants knows something? As the man in charge of the place, there are few better places to start from."
"Well, it pays dividends to have the Kazekage's sister on the team, I suppose," Kakashi teased the young woman. "I'll scout out for some of the ANBU's old contacts from the less friendly days of our villages. We'll be lucky if some of them are still active after all those years of peace. Even luckier if they'll have intel about the locket to barter for."
"What are we supposed to do?" Endo grumbled. "We've got no acquaintances here. We're literal aliens not just in this country but this universe."
"People may be hostile to us while talking to us, but they still might let something slip when they're talking to one another. I'll go snoop around in alleyways and corners, see what reaches my ears." Skaven sighed and pulled his hands out from his pockets. The young man looked a bit disappointed that he'll have to do some actual work around these parts.
"I'll do what I do best… Dazzle," Mana smirked, taking an elegant leap atop a stack of wooden material crates and calling out to the crowd while flicking flashy lightning sparks from her fingers.
"Fine, I'll scout the crowd, see what Mana's adoring audience are whispering to each other about…" Endo growled and pushed his body off the muddy wall. Brushing shoulders against curious bystanders, Endo shuffled into the crowd and began contributing to the success of the team.
"I can help, Skaven!" Damisan raised his finger up. The prosthetic protrusion let out a rubbery, mechanical noise as its joints rubbed together.
"Forget it, there's no way that I'll be able to mix into the crowd with a guy like you hanging around me. Not to mention your ridiculous whirligig-legs. Go fix your prosthetics and do some maintenance while this is happening." Skaven dismissed Damisan with a wave of his hand while removing himself from the vicinity.
"Mana? Can I help you with your show in any way?" Damisan looked up. His puppy eyes shined through his mask after his vizor snapped open.
"No offense, Damisan, but you'll be distracting my audience. I'm afraid that you're way more outlandish than even my smoke and mirrors." Mana rubbed the back of her neck while weaving hand seals with her free hand for a collective illusion for the crowd. As much as she didn't want to refuse Damisan, she just knew that the moment that a man with cutting edge, futuristic armor plates and Scientific Ninja Tools prosthetics stepped onto her crate–she'll be the pretty face assistant in that show in the eyes of the audience.
"That's okay, Damisan." Shige-H pressed her hand against Damisan's shoulder and gently guided him to follow her. "You can have the room all to yourself for your maintenance once we find one."
"Hey, you! What do you think you're doing here!?" loud, discontent voices distracted Mana from her entranced state of continuously shuffling through simple magic tricks and illusions. She could have performed this way for hours unless village ninja moved in to intercept her and break her out from her almost hypnotic state.
People parted way to reveal ninja with brown, baggy bodysuits and zipped-up flak jackets, wearing bandanas with the Sunagakure insignia etched on the forehead protector plates in the center of their headwear. These were Sunagakure ninja for certain. Even though their chakra signatures suggested they wouldn't have posed problems for Mana, starting trouble with Temari's brother and the Kazekage from another universe was the first thing to strike out from her agenda.
"Sorry, I just wanted to entertain the people with some magic tricks," Mana shrugged, jumping off the crate and slipping her hands inside her pockets as she playfully spun on one leg.
"That was no magic. You were using ninjutsu. The sensory units of the Village Protection were alarmed. We thought Sunagakure was under attack." One of the intercepting ninja waggled his finger in front of Mana. Their body language translated their intentions to be genuine and non-hostile. The second young man looked almost relieved that Mana just hopped off of her crate and acted playful instead of lashing out and causing a scene.
"Well, to ordinary civilians, the two might be the same thing. Seeing it from up close can help put their minds at ease. Show that they don't have to fear ninjutsu and that it can be used for entertainment and fun just as well as it can be used for taking lives," Mana replied.
"The amount of chakra you were using. The Village Protection wants to talk to you. Your chakra level surpasses that of the Jinchuuriki. Please come with us, ma'am," the first ninja extended his hand, waiting for Mana to walk through the tunnel through the crowd that the ninja had crafted. "I'm sure that someone of your strength knows better than to treat ninjutsu as just shits and giggles."
"What's the matter here, the banter stopped. People are uneasy." Endo appeared from the crowd to face the scene of the two Sunagakure ninja trying to move Mana to the Village Protection for an interrogation. They were right to be worried. Mana may have been keeping her head down, but she had spent more chakra in the past few hours than most of the ninja present in this village could muster up, and she just barely scratched the surface of her abilities. To the sensory unit of this universe, she must have felt like an otherworldly threat.
"Sorry, Endo, I guess the show's over. These two ninja want me to accompany them to the VP for questioning." Mana shrugged.
"Should I kill them?" Endo muttered, lowering the handle of the sword by his side as he reared his canines, making the two ninja jump up and take fighting positions.
"Oh, Endo…" Mana sighed, planting her palm on her face and shaking her head. "Please, just stand down."
"Right, right… I guess you won't just be able to start the show over with those two laying dead beside the stage, huh?" Endo scratched his head. "Kind of a mood-killer…"
"Who are you two? Why are you here? Who sent you?" one of the Sunagakure ninja pulled out a pair of batons and swung them around before settling in a close-to-mid range fighting pose. The other ninja beside him went through hand seals at what seemed to be a turtle's pace to Mana and pressed his palm to the sand floor, after a pop and a cloud of smoke, a straw puppet wrapped in cloth with bandages compressing its limbs at the joints rose from the ground with the Sunagakure ninja taking control of it pulling its strings.
"I guess you two just can't help it but start trouble, huh?" Shige-H flickered from the air, landing on her knee in front of the two petrified Sunagakure ninja while Damisan buzzed in from over everyone's head with jet boots and landed beside the leader of the Stars, ejecting an empty storage seal cell containing fuel that the user could convert to chakra and spend for menial functions of their Scientific Ninja Tools.
"What the… W-Wait! I can't move…" the puppeteer tried putting some distance between him and the two unexpected interlopers, but he then realized that he couldn't accomplish much more than twitching his muscle. Through a problematic look down, he saw his shadow pooling underneath his feet like a puddle while a long, black string extended from a nearby alleyway and connected with the dark pool under his feet.
"Me neither!" the other ninja said, doing his best to move his shoulders backward to prevent his back from being exposed to the concealed ninja. "When the reinforcements arrive, you guys will be in so much trouble!"
"It's a good thing then that I caught up with the reinforcements and explained to them the situation, isn't it?" Temari's annoyed voice came from the crowd with the woman revealing herself while brushing sand from her blond hair. "Jeez, you guys, can't leave you alone for a couple of minutes, can I?"
"Two minutes? Don't underplay my performance, I've been keeping it up for well over two hours." Mana pouted her lips and turned her nose up.
"Temari-san!" the Sunagakure ninja yelled out. "It's great that you're here!"
"Yeah, I agree. Those dweebs were this close to causing a scene. You two, stand down, they're Allied Ninja from a different universe. I've briefed the Kazekage on their presence. They're not here to cause trouble. They're with me." Temari performed the very function that the Seventh Naruto chose her for admirably. "You, in the alley, let those two go already."
Skaven's shadowy tendril withdrew and released the pair of ninja from his possession. The puppet that one of the two employed dispersed into a dust cloud with an audible pop while the second ninja sheathed his ninja tools. Temari approached the Stars while Skaven walked out from the alleyway he hid inside of and waved to the Sunagakure ninja while passing them.
"No hard feelings, guys…" he mumbled out.
"Did you get any information about the Golden Locket of Sotatsu?" Temari scanned the Stars.
"Well, I was occupied with my magic show," Mana shrugged.
"We took care of the room and Damisan fixed his legs. They work now," Shige-H pointed with her thumb behind her where Damisan waved to everybody from.
"Nothing. Mana may have been a bit too good at her witchcraft. Those people couldn't stop frothing and cheering. The people said nothing intelligible through the whole two-hour thing…" Endo crossed his arms. "Even if one of them knew something, no one talked about a locket of any sort."
"Actually, I've overheard something rather interesting." Skaven raised his hand.
"Put a sock in it, for now, punk, Gaara knew nothing about any Golden Locket of Sotatsu, but Matsuri, a jounin working in Sunagakure, told me something about a collector who's paying exorbitant amounts of ryo for Sotatsu's divine paintings. He might know something about the Golden Locket too since he's such a devoted and reckless fan." Temari crossed her arms over her chest, tapping her sandal on the floor impatiently as she relayed the information she's gathered.
"Where's Kakashi?" Endo looked around. "That asshole's late again."
"You can't be late if there's no scheduled meeting time. Also, the name-calling is just hurtful." Kakashi greeted everyone with a wave of his hand while casually walking up to them from across the street, taking his time. He may have seen their whole encounter with the Sunagakure ninja as the street he walked had to have been at least a couple of kilometers long and it didn't look like the silver-haired ninja was in any rush.
"I'm glad you went first, because this transitions into what I've learned," Skaven cleared his throat. "I've noticed a clueless-looking old, bald guy looking around the place. Given my background with the criminal element, I had a hunch that he was just a lookout. No one's this careful and trying to scan their surroundings while some lady is doing magic tricks at the end of the street and entertaining the crowd. My hunch turned out to be right–he was a lookout for a crew. It seems they're planning a heist tonight."
"Let me guess, the Sotatsu painting collector?" Temari rubbed her tired eyes.
"Turns out, our wonder boy isn't as smart as he thought he was. He inflated their price on both the legitimate art market and the black market by paying those sky-high prices for those scribbles. Everyone's now looking out for them. Those guys looked experienced. If I was a gambling man, I'd bet on them pulling their heist off." Skaven stroked the unshaved half of his head, brushing his greasy black hair with his fingernails while explaining what he sniffed out.
"Do we have a location where we can find them?" Kakashi wondered. "They might be our key into the collector's vault. They will have all the information about his estate either way."
"The Skipping Stone Bar. They're cooling their heads off before the heist there. I'm not sure why they're in such a rush. It seems like their plan only came together today, but they want to pull it off at midnight sharp." Skaven shrugged while pocketing his hands.
"I know the place," Temari nodded.
"This is, the place might also know you." Kakashi turned to the young woman. "Heck, it might even know me."
"I know, I know…" Temari sighed and weaved hand seals to transform into a middle-aged woman of thick and long mocha-colored hair while Kakashi became a tall and chubby man of a tanned complexion, more natural to the region of Wind Country and sporting a full beard.
"Do we need to transform?" Damisan wondered, pointing at himself.
"I don't think so. There's nothing wrong in standing out, as long as we're not recognized as people working with or for the Kazekage." Shige-H shrugged.
The Skipping Stone seemed like a loud and joyous location when viewed from outside. It didn't stand out from the rest of the buildings in its gourd-like shape, but it had been far more luminous, with rays of artificial light shooting out from indoors and the sounds of music, laughter, and banter following the light pollution suit.
Finding a group of rowdy entrants and shuffling into it, the Stars made their way into the facility and lined up in front of the bar while Damisan and Skaven sat by the front seats. The ninja operated without words. Temari turned around on her barstool and scanned the room, offering Skaven just a wayward glimpse at which point the Nara nodded toward the noisy table of ruffians playing cards, revealing their marks. One by one, the Stars and Konoha ninja in disguise shared wayward looks trying to put a plan together when a man from the burglars' table stood up and pulled up his raggedy coat.
He was a tall man with a mask that was shaped like a white crescent moon covering up his face. The man also wore a cowboy-style hat and hat spiky hair as black as his skin with jets of gold spiking outward. The one visible eye of the man had been completely whited out, matching the color of the mask curving over more than half of his face. With a confident strut, the burglar approached the table where Mana sat.
"Say," he said as he pulled the chair back and sat down, leaning over the magician as she sipped from a cup of milk. "You wouldn't be that young lady that did some magic today at the central crossing? Heard you've stirred up a trouble stew. I'm impressed. What're you drinking?"
"Milk," Mana replied, sliding him her cup. The man picked up and tried it, calling Mana's bluff, but then a sly smile stretching his face, full of black markings all over his tanned skin.
"You won't believe it but… That's exactly what I'm having too. In fact, that's exactly what my entire crew is having tonight. Imagine that… So, how come a stunning artist like you is sipping milk? You look like you're old enough to drink." The burglar leaned down in his chair, raising his boots over the table.
"I hate to be predictable," Mana replied, taking a subtle gulp from her cup. "Let me guess, you too?"
"Check and mate…" the man snickered, slipping his index finger under his mask to scratch his itchy nose while he did so. "For the first time, I'm actually outclassed here. I simply must insist that you sit with us and have some fun. No one waltzes into the bar, outwits me, and gets away bored."
"Yeah, let's see what you guys are up to." Mana shrugged, standing up and walking up to the table where all the ruffians entertained themselves in a game of cards. A large man with a round belly and a bald head wrapped his arm around the table and dragged stacks of coins over to his side of the table.
"Hey, guys, you won't believe who graced us with her presence tonight. It's the street magician lady that made the Sunagakure ninja wet their pants, I've heard." The man sat down and flicked his cowboy hat, introducing Mana to his crew.
"Really? What's your business picking a fight with the Suna ninja, girly?" a man in a sleeveless denim vest turned to Mana.
"I just like to advocate chaos wherever I go." Mana shrugged. "I've got to say though, your friend there said that he hates being predictable, but you guys are nothing but."
"You calling us predictable?" a woman with neon-blue, long and curly hair turned to Mana, raising an eyebrow as she slammed a knife onto the table. "I'll have you know, there ain't a crew more advocating for chaos than us."
"I don't know, you guys plan to burglar a house today so you're drinking milk at a bar to stay sober while you prepare. That's awfully boring and predictable if you ask me," Mana shrugged, reaching out for the cup of the baffled fat man by her side rocking a Fu Manchu mustache and sipped from his cup while the rest of the crew snuffed out all their noise and rough-housing, making the surrounding tables quiet down and turn to the table responsible for a decent part of noise around the place and wonder what happened.
"What's she doing?" Endo hissed after leaning down to Skaven.
"I've honestly no idea," Skaven sighed, though the Stars, and the disguised Konoha ninja alike continued to track the scene and its development from the sidelines.